So just asking, why should I dislike your post? You are taking the time to honestly give your opinion on the game in its current state.

Have to say your pros are points to agree one. But still interested in your cons.

Toxic community, sure all communities have their toxic parts some more than others. But I get why you see it that way.

There are some short videos about the engine at work. So lets agree to disagree on this one. Dont get me wrong I agree on the point that there isnt anything solid to work with atm. Which I find normal with a game in prealpha stadium.

Dont really see this point as a con, the market, not only in gaming, is all about finding the "holes" thats what SBS is doing. Is it time consuming? Yes. Could it fail? Yes. But its also a leap alot of people dared to make.

About the serverload, thats a big hurdle to take but it has been done before. Ok its on a smaller scale but its possible.

Can you dream to much, hmmm dreams are just things we didnt achieve yet.

Anyway in my honest opinion its not bad if the developers see which concerns their playerbase has. This way they can take a look at it and maybe find a solution to the problem.

This must be your first rodeo if you think this community is toxic. We get a troll here and there but I'd say this is a very healthy community.

Everyone is allowed their own opinion though.

I think if you dive a bit deeper into the forums, you will find a few of us have absolutely no qualms calling out bullshit from SbS when we feel it is deserved. (if you can deal looking through all the false results from this shitty search engine, search my name for some examples)

As someone usually opposing you in these here forums, I want to clarify that not once have a given you a dislike because I disagree with views on anything, and I feel that goes for most people arguing their points as well.

Going to try to keep this brief because honestly who reads every single long reply to a thread like this, lol.

You're points are all valid, but I disagree with most of them. For some reason you think that everyone is being too optimistic about the game and then your cons are all centered around pessimism. It is like you are just trying to get people to be jaded about the possibility of the game being amazing, and I for one refuse to do this.

I recognize that many things can fall flat, or are not balanced, or rely heavily upon the community to not be horrible and toxic. That is exactly why we support it with such fervor. If we give up on the game before it starts it is lost. Who's to say the servers will fail until stress testing? Who's to say crafting is too hard until Alpha? There is always the potential for things to go wrong, but we back it because we believe in the studio, the community, and the premise of the game.

Posted By Labbe at 12:24 PM - Sun Oct 14 2018

For some reason you think that everyone is being to optimistic about the game

most of the community are too optimistic - they see everything through rose colored glasses and attack anyone who points out flaws and what we feel are bad decisions

just reinforces the fact that we need to voice negative opinions much more often

Posted By Sanguinesh Eviscerator at 09:28 AM - Sun Oct 14 2018

Posted By Labbe at 12:24 PM - Sun Oct 14 2018

For some reason you think that everyone is being to optimistic about the game

most of the community are too optimistic - they see everything through rose colored glasses and attack anyone who points out flaws and what we feel are bad decisions

just reinforces the fact that we need to voice negative opinions much more often

I guess you can say I have rose colored glasses on. It is partially intentional as I feel like it is a good balance to the pessimism.

By all means voice negative opinions. Well constructed discussion can only help the game long run, and if the entire player base agrees something is no good, but no one voices it, then the opinion will never be heard.

This post is a lot more fleshed out than the other thread's OP, I feel. I'll preface this by saying there's absolutely nothing wrong with playing devil's advocate. If some of us come across angry or aggressive, it's likely because we see the same points being raised a lot with a fair few people either not reading the available info on the game or actively shitstirring rather than angling for discussion of the topic at hand. And I apologise in advance for the wall of text. It happens a lot more frequently than I would like >.>

I'm largely in the same boat as Labbe on this one: I feel much of what you're saying is valid, but not necessarily correct.

One thing I partially agree on is that the vast majority of people watching the game's development are hanging on fumes. I wouldn't say nothing of value has been shown - though small, the asset and art updates we're getting are marks of progress, as are the progress updates as each stage of development is cleared. But the game gained too much popularity far too early in its development process to sustain most of its fanbase. Nobody's fault in particular - it's an excellent concept map with a lot of potential, and once people get into the documents it looks very appealling. It's hard not to be excited about what the game might be. But it does mean that there's a lot of expectations riding on the game that may not turn out to be realistic or warranted, and that CoE's got a hype train that would be more suited to an early beta game showcasing its full base featureset and ironing out bugs than a game only just closing up pre-alpha. This inevitably leads to a lot of polarisation between the people who are confident the game will succeed with its current design plan and the people who are terrified of it falling apart and turning into a shitshow. Not much can really be done about that until we get to test the game, unfortunately. Speculation is all we have to go on in the meantime.

Regarding players with less time/slower reflexes, the main point I'd raise with this is that while they're not going to be as successful, they'll still be able to play and enjoy the game. They might not, say, be able to push for masterwork/legendary status (not, at least, within the first few years of play; masterwork might be achievable at least with good enough skill ramps on a soul), but that doesn't mean they won't be able to become accomplished in their craft and at least float themselves in the economy in some capacity. Even if you're not pushing out noble-quality weapons and armour as a smith, for example, plain weapons and armour, and general miscellania (horseshoes, nails, and the like) are never going to not be in demand.

The server load is one of my bigger points of concern as well. SbS initially had a pretty workable solution for this in Improbable's networking engine, and I'm very curious to see how their substitutes perform in its place, and how running the game on the cloud affects its ability to handle such a massive backend load. Before SpatialOS was revealed during the Kickstarter as the team's answer to the networking problem, this was the main thing that concerned me about the game's potential to succeed, and some of that doubt persists now that it's no longer going to be used.

Regarding overblown wishing/dreaming: Yep. Pretty much all of us have been overhyped about what we're seeing at some point or another. And of course, a lot of people foresee their own ideal in the game's future, where the end result will likely be different from what most of us imagine. Speculation is rife, and until the game's playable that's likely not going to change.

Regarding the featureset... I'm confident most of it will be in at launch - but also fairly confident that, as a result of that, the game's launch date's going to be pushed back pretty far beyond the existing estimate. The game is still pulling a decent amount of crowdfunding through the shop and the events SbS is running. Whether this will be enough or not, time will tell.

The main thing I'd stress is that most of us who answer on these topics semi-regularly aren't doing so out of blind faith in the game's success. We know the game's potentially going to flop. Many of us have been watching the project develop since (or before) the kickstarter, though. We know how SbS approaches complications and challenges, and our stances are in part based in what we've seen of their responses to those challenges. Nobody's expecting a miracle. But we're pretty confident we're going to see a product of quality. And if not, if the game does flop... the precedent has been set. The next person to take up the mantle of producing this kind of MMO (a game that actually fits the label) will know what went wrong, and what was good. And so, one way or another, we're supporting progress in a stale genre that really, really needs someone in this corner making something new and exciting.

This is a better opener and I've upvoted it together with Labbe's and Wolfguarde's.

Not going to quote as there's a huge amount of text in thread as it is but this (Wolfguarde) : "we're supporting progress in a stale genre that really, really needs someone corner making something new and exciting." is the absolute truth.

Lastly, as someone who definitely falls into the category of having slower reflexes, it's an issue for sure and I'd normally play melee classes but for games with PvP I always play ranged so that I can at least contribute in group play. Personally I prefer games with consensual PvP simply because those games with open world combat in a fantasy setting all seem to fail horribly. I think this is because there are fairly few places in the real world where going about your daily business is likely to get you attacked by random strangers whereas in MMO's the chances are higher by several orders of magnitude.

I am very curious as to how SbS's vision plays out and I am very much hoping for the best whilst fearing the worst.

Without reading all the posts above, I too am concerned about the capabilities of the server to process the massive amount of code (or whatever it is that servers do to make the game work).

I too experienced Ark's failings, as well as other games (PUBG, Day7, Rust) which sacrificed maximum active players per server and game mechanics to attempt to stabilize servers.

I welcome input if there are experts of IT capabilities that can explain it to a layman. My ray of hope (and one reason I don't mind being so far behind the wishful timeline/schedule) is that everyday technology gets better. Every year servers get more efficient, optimization methods develop, and I'm sure stuff I know nothing about. Even if the game takes another two years to be fully released, that's two years of technological advances creating a product that is truly enjoyable that we players can play for years.

@Kelipski About server infrastructure, you just have to imagine that game servers are like a huge online marketplace, with a lot going on like plenty of secure transactions, demands on price or details, etc...

Another example, any decent internet domain hosting service, or registar, have technologies in place to handle sites of big and small companies in numbers, their employees and worldwide customers.

Basically the technology to handle such high demands is there since more than 25 years: a page nowadays exchange more and more easily than an entire site web back then. And understand that when a game release, it is already outdated in terms of technology, tech that was maybe state-of-the-art when it was integred into the game years before.

Network-wise, process-wise, technology-wise: all is in the green... but there are very few actors that create/provide engines dedicated to game development or hosting... Improbable was one of the few that had some legit success already.

Unreal provide a whole game engine but cater more to the graphical solo experience, and to my lesser knowledge, never did much for the multiplayer genres.

Except maybe a basic lobby and server list... that you find as is in many games since there is no one with the job skills or time to get under the hood.

Publishers don't help... they are as clueless as always. You may remember a recent game of swormanship with three factions, required online gameplay, no bargain price, a hefty paying season pass, and still took an eternity to have servers of its own. Until then, it was peer to peer on the customer machines, like the first multiplayer titles (DOOM, Quake, etc..) decades ago.

Back to SbS, main problem is the size, not of what they want to do (it is largely feasable, bitcoin ,trade market, online market during black friday... there are plenty stuff you can experience smoothly and are way more challenging).

But the size of their team, and budget, they are already quite numerous (around 25-30) to make the game and systems they need... but they would need a dedicated team for a couple years just to develop that top network and data engine. And also have external customers to maximize rentability, and some real tests to tweak and proof it.

So like always, they will have to play smart, try to make it happen with libraries and existing bricks and a limited crew: check client and server programers in the team, they are the ones with that make-it-or-break-it pressure at the moment.

They did miracles in the past, this website and forums was almost made from scratch, and is probably a daily test of a good chunk of their game hosting infrastructure. Sadly, as they seem to be spread thin, they don't have the human resources to finish its overhaul, a v3 that was planned some years ago (times fly by) when the game had another schedule.

Also you may remember how they did a live test very recently, with players "plaguing" their character event and contracts databases with requests at regular peak times for an entire month or so.

It went rather smoothly, only one major hiccup at the end of the first week, promptly corrected, it could have been worse for a first rodeo; yet the performance at reset time was quite subpar. All in all, they must have learned a lot with that experiment, it was a smart move.

The good news is that the network engine will integrate better, like no other really, with their proprietary narrative engine.

The bad news is that they may intricate it too much to swap it when something goes wrong or a new player enters with a solution on a silver plate (we can still be dreaming).

A partnering investor would indeed be welcomed, be it technical skills or raw cash, so that the team (and us as well) would have lesser concerns.

I'm not even considering failure as a possibility or an option for the network code, since I don't think the game would be able to recover from such a blow... at least it would be the first of its genre to do a successful come back.

Seems wrong to end on such an ominous note, so lets throw another two cents about when retro-fitting the design.

SbS have access to the tech, and they enlisted old souls with a good range of skill ramps and a ton of knowledges, so everything they do, they do it more effectively than any average or better studio, even if it is a one-of-a-kind job... or maybe because it is such. :)

We've been shown (glimpse I agree with OP, enough for keeping trusting folks, not well enough to bring new bloods) when the cursor is set on "Research" (aka the concepts and shinies) at their crafting station, and we're looking forward to check the results after it is switched to "Production".

Ahoy, on to map selection!

I can mostly agree with everything you said OP. But you can't really take much of anything from the forums. What's the statistic? Something like 5-10%? Only come onto the forums.

It really just comes down to the topic itself, then how the person even writes about it. Like this thread, it's worded fine. No reason to really dislike it. Over some threads, that basically trash the game, saying it will fail but not explaining themselves either.

Or maybe it's just better in general these days. Forums are way more quiet. Then say a year back or longer. Back then, sure people were getting jumped more. But then everyone was more hyped, just found out about it. Wouldn't listen to people trying to bring them down, for whatever reasons.

While reading comments about any game on youtube/facebook etc. People will trash every single game. Trash the communities. Doesn't matter what is it.

Having a balance would be better. At times, it does seem like the forums/discord gets filled with the crowd that SBS can't do no wrong. Yet in kingdom level discords people are unhappy with how things are going. Just not everyone sees a point to publicly sharing their view.

Posted By Labbe at 11:49 AM - Sun Oct 14 2018

Posted By Sanguinesh Eviscerator at 09:28 AM - Sun Oct 14 2018

Posted By Labbe at 12:24 PM - Sun Oct 14 2018

For some reason you think that everyone is being to optimistic about the game

most of the community are too optimistic - they see everything through rose colored glasses and attack anyone who points out flaws and what we feel are bad decisions

just reinforces the fact that we need to voice negative opinions much more often

I guess you can say I have rose colored glasses on. It is partially intentional as I feel like it is a good balance to the pessimism.

By all means voice negative opinions. Well constructed discussion can only help the game long run, and if the entire player base agrees something is no good, but no one voices it, then the opinion will never be heard.

There is something that should be pointed out about unabashed positive feedback. Just as negative feedback needs to be constructive so does positive feedback.

Folks who approach any negative topic or people who defend sbs’s choices without critical thinking or without some skepticism actually hurt the game more than those who throw out random unsupported negative comments.

Things like “this games sucks” are easy to dismiss for us and for the devs. Comments like “CoE will be the best game ever made” are harder to dismiss. Yet both comments are exactly the same just opposite ends of the support spectrum. Neither has anything to support the viewpoint nor does either actually contribute to a discussion. Yet the more positive comment is easy for people to latch onto and especially for SBS they feel vindicated on their current design path even if it isn’t desirable to the mass player base or even feesible.

Bottom line pure negativity is indeed a bad thing but so is unabashed blind support. Blind support leads to a place where SBS listens only to positive feedback and turns the forums into an echo chamber and reinforces poor design decisions.

In short what the forums and indeed the game need isn’t to balance negativity but rather for people to think critically and be realistic in their responses and give SBS useful and honest feedback. Not just a yes-man bobble head response.

This thread was a delight to read, valid points, polite quastions/responce, respecting other views and so on. And it was also the opposit responce the OP belived he/she would get, that is a really good sign.