The Elder Scrolls Online

Sutekh_sl said:

What the fuck is the point of making a new game with 10 year old animation/graphics? What the fuck?

Click to expand...

So it can run on 10 year old computers.

Not being an expert at all, is it possible to make a game with say 1-2 year old graphic technology and have the hardware capable of supporting the graphics online with 100-200 players on the screen? I ask this with a reasonable money cost in mind, not "Yes if you converted a small city into a giant server hub".

Not right now. PC hardware has gone for more triangles and more fill to the expense of all else for many years. The end result is that draw calls themselves are very expensive, and the usual approach is 1 character == one draw call.

Multiple characters can be lumped into an atlas and drawn with a single call, but this is very expensive to set up, and the atlas is thrown out if anyone changes clothes. Also the bone updates for a character atlas require heavy bus traffic as you have to stuff the bones in a texture and send it up to the card.

If you could limit players to a "uniform" in a warzone and use a simplified rig with no fingers or ponytails etc then a few hundred might be doable.

So, if they aren't lying about having 200 combatants on screen, that's a pretty good achievement?

Blackwulf_sl said:

Hey, any of you guys going to PAX East? Looks like they'll be letting people play at their booth:

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en...so-at-pax-east


I'd like to see what people have to say... I live in Seattle, so gotta wait for PAX Prime.

I'd love to see a vid of Aleksei playing this game and shouting out random questions about what Hero Engine beta/alpha it was.

Click to expand...

Lol they kick me out man.

But jokes aside 1st thing would do would be to run more then 1 client at time on same pc for the players that box more then 1 account.
By doing this I would know rather quickly if its Alpha Hero engine, Beta Hero engine, Hero engine etc.

I know your asking,But aleksei you have many pc rigs you build, and gaming rigs for travel, so why would you do the above test?
Cause hero engine cant run, more then 1 fucking client on same pc with out metric ton of code updates dont care if its the Alpha, Beta, Regular version, even the Hero 2 shit.

But yah would not hold back if haveing camera's there about there white board shit.

If you are spending 100-300 million plus on a MMO, a normal accepted standard question should be hey this our game engine for our MMO, we are Proud of it etc, we built or we are useing this engine.
Hell also with all the marketing,hype they are doing it would be in the fucking game FAQ this is our game engine we are useing etc, but there is not a fucking word about it.
Instead its denial all the way around on the very subject.
Hell I bet you money they make the press they do interviews with and show them game stuff sign NDA that states you cant ask us about the game engine.

kudos_sl said:

This is just annoying. At what point do you keep dumbing down your game so casuals can play and where do you draw the line and say, "You need this and this or fuck you"?. EQ did it with a graphics card. They did it again somewhat with the Shadows of Luclin expansion. Make the fucking game you want to make or don't make it at all. At this point every MMO is going to be 10 years old looking so every 52 year old deadbeat housewife can play. God forbid if you have to upgrade your PC for $500 every 6 or so years. I mean it's an expensive hobby. Deal with it.

Click to expand...

Because people staking their reputation and livelihoods on this industry took note of WoW catering to the low-end crowd vice EQ2/Vanguard catering to the high-end crowd. Casuals make the game; no one wants to be hardcore in a game that only 3 percent of the target audience can actually play.

Utnayan_sl said:

No. It's fluff. I had 200 on screen in DAOC on a Pentium 3 500 Mhz machine. The fact that they are pointing that out as a feature of the game should worry you more than what you aren't seeing.

Crash and Burn at Pax. Where they will funnel everyone into a subsegment of the game for hype.

Click to expand...

Look, I get you're skeptical. I get that you have inside info that Firor is a terrible manager. But when you say stuff like this, it just sounds silly. I played DAOC plenty, bro, and I had upper end gaming rigs at the time, and there is no way you played smoothly or even remotely smoothly with 200 people on screen. If you did, it's cause you pointed your camera at the ground and hit /stick to your zerg leader, which isn't really having 200 on screen. DAOC was playable in a zerg vs. zerg fight, but not enjoyable. 100 vs 100 would be a slideshow if everyone was on screen at once.

Compare their claim of 200 on screen at once at acceptable frame rates with any semi-modern mmo. If they are telling the truth, that's pretty damn good. The graphics might not be up to Aleksei's standards, but they are quite a bit more detailed than DAOC or WOW. SWTOR was a slideshow with 20+. That's all I'm saying.

The reason this is important is because if the RVR is done right, then it will help this game escape one of the pitfalls of many modern MMO's - nothing to do at cap.

Blackwulf_sl said:

Look, I get you're skeptical. I get that you have inside info that Firor is a terrible manager. But when you say stuff like this, it just sounds silly. I played DAOC plenty, bro, and I had upper end gaming rigs at the time, and there is no way you played smoothly or even remotely smoothly with 200 people on screen. If you did, it's cause you pointed your camera at the ground and hit /stick to your zerg leader, which isn't really having 200 on screen. DAOC was playable in a zerg vs. zerg fight, but not enjoyable. 100 vs 100 would be a slideshow if everyone was on screen at once.

Compare their claim of 200 on screen at once at acceptable frame rates with any semi-modern mmo. If they are telling the truth, that's pretty damn good. The graphics might not be up to Aleksei's standards, but they are quite a bit more detailed than DAOC or WOW. SWTOR was a slideshow with 20+. That's all I'm saying.

The reason this is important is because if the RVR is done right, then it will help this game escape one of the pitfalls of many modern MMO's - nothing to do at cap.

Click to expand...

not trying to be a dick, but what do you mean if RVR is done right? seriously, how many times can you play capture the flag or storm the castle before you're bored to tears? what would actually make RVR really viable in a game?

etchazz_sl said:

not trying to be a dick, but what do you mean if RVR is done right? seriously, how many times can you play capture the flag or storm the castle before you're bored to tears? what would actually make RVR really viable in a game?

Click to expand...

Something about having a large map to play in with lots of different objectives is addictive to me. The pvp element adds a level of intensity and unpredictability that doesn't exist in just large pve zones. Now, granted, I'm assuming best case scenario, and my expectations are greatly influenced by my time in DAOC. So what am I looking forward to?

• A large open zone where there are many pvp and pve objectives
• A character advancement tree similar to DAOC's realm points (I'm sure it will be watered down, but we'll see)
• The best fun I had in DAOC was running with a small group and just looking for enemeies that were at the pve objectives in the frontier
• Taking and holding towers or smaller keep type objectives from the defenders that come out to answer the warcry

I could go on and on. I mean they've already confirmed "alliance points' as an alternate advancement path. That alone is pretty addictive the the RPG nut in me. They've confirmed Darkness Falls style dungeons. You know what DF was? In case you don't: imagine a huge open dungeon in the middle of Cyrodil - great xp area and great loot, but hotly contested by all three factions. I"ll never forget some fights we had in DF: we battle our way down in deep, get to one of the Prince's rooms and see Mids right in the middle of a fight with him. We jump them, wipe them out, get to work on the Prince and fucking Albs come out of the woodwork and end up taking him from us. Such chaotic fun.

I was never an open world all v. all PVPer, and I never would have had that kind of fun if it wasn't for the way DAOC introduced pvp as RVR; you had your safe homeland where you made friends, did every day pve, crafting, etc., but then you go the rvr zone when the mood strikes you and get into all kinds of unpredictable fun. This is what kept DAOC alive for many of us, and I'm just hoping that Firor isn't too stupid to just copy the best parts of DAOC. I hope he doesn't pull a Mark Jacobs and try to reinvent the wheel ala WAR.

So far he's doing a lot right: One place to pvp: Cyrodil. WAR screwed up with RVR "lakes" in lots of areas. WAR also didn't have meaningful realm points. WAR also didn't have any decent PVE objectives in the RVR "lakes." WAR copied WOW by having queued pvp matches ala capture the flag that sucked a lot of population out of the real RVR. Another way WAR failed was with the population imbalances and huge lists of nearly empty servers. If the Megaserver tech works as advertised, those problems won't exist in TESO.

So, I guess it's clear I still have some hopes for this game, despite the misgivings Utnayan has given me. We'll see more details soon, I suppose - PAX East in under 2 weeks!

All the RVR games screwed up for the same reason. In a pvp game you need a pretty shallow vertical progression and a very long horizontal progression. People hate having to grind a ton to be competitive, its why Aion and L2 failed in western markets. And people hate having nothing to do, which is why WAR failed and why DAOC tried to fix their game by adding a gear grind.

It is honestly mind boggling to me that EVE is the only long term successful pvp game ever made and yet every time you see some game come out it is DAOC or UOs failed mechanics they copy.

You could pretty easily do RvR as a sec0 variant. Your map is just gonna have to be immense. That's a big reason why it works so well in eve -- it's the sheer scale of the map. That creates logistical challenges that you don't get in other small map pvp games.

I mean the most logistics we ever had to deal with with splitting 5 battering rams between the group so that we wouldn't have to go back to the realmgate.

Just so you know Blackwulf shilled the shit out of this game on F13.net until everyone told him to shut the fuck up.

Utnayan_sl said:

Why does that not come as a surprise.

We need a shill icon. Maybe next time he won't make it so blantantly obvious. There are two people (possibly 3) working for ZO that are doing the same thing on the Somethingawful forums. At least two of those have already come out and said they work with the company. The thread finally got knocked off the first page. I think people are finally tired of the BS in this genre.

Click to expand...

Somethingawful what a appropriate name for TESO.

Utnayan_sl said:

Why does that not come as a surprise.

We need a shill icon. Maybe next time he won't make it so blantantly obvious. There are two people (possibly 3) working for ZO that are doing the same thing on the Somethingawful forums. At least two of those have already come out and said they work with the company. The thread finally got knocked off the first page. I think people are finally tired of the BS in this genre.

Click to expand...

I don't expect TESO to be any better (or worse) than the massive slate of high budget clones that have been shuttled out the door the last few years. And neither should anyone else no matter how many people shill for the game.

Companies actually do pay people to do things like this, there are firms you can higher to essentially spam all of the "social media" outlets with positive stuff. It is known.