Just a general note from me regarding feedback: In over 25 years of working in our earthly world of manufacturing various commodity materials, I've learned to think in possibilities rather than problems. A basic guideline to keep in mind when providing feedback derived from that perspective, is to always try to present possible improvement options when you wish to point out a flaw, risk, mistake, oversight or shortcoming. That makes life much more pleasant for anyone involved.

Due to the anonymity in this Forum, a lot of people hide behind the rating system without giving a proper response as to why they disagree with a post. I try to follow up a 'dislike' vote with a reason but I wont if the post is general garbage. Now, I don't agree that the following on here is "cultist like" but it's a bit nauseating at times. Nowhere near as insufferable as Star Citizen's following though, nowhere.

A very fair and sincere post, worthy of a 'like' not a dislike. Perhaps your posts were disliked in the past for reasons you have not considered? Perhaps it has nothing to do with being toxic or hateful.

My only issues with the post came from the section about a toxic community. I do not disagree with it, but I also do not agree with it. I'm extremely active on Discord, as I have a nice sized phone that I can prop up near my screen as I work or game... and from my perspective the toxic activity has been significantly diminished over this past year as to have all but disappeared; much to the dismay and boredom of the drama baiters, Hyenas and self-humiliators. As for the forums, I don't see toxic behaviour but I absolutely see A LOT of forum rookies who still don't understand this social platforms format is essentially based around arguments due to its 'turn based' nature. If people are down thumbing you, getting heated and purposely trying to manipulate the situation/put words in your mouth/argue with a strawman they're, 80% of the time, not trying to be toxic but rather trying their best to prop up their position.

Finally, the outsider reviews and the 'cult like community'. As far as ive seen, most reviews have been total garbage and most outsider communities relish the idea of doubting the development teams abilities. Most reviews and communities mistate facts and often resort to strawmaning and/or talking points that rile up the community theyre in so the comment count gets flooded by hatred and endless arguments. This is where I suspect almost all of the toxicity youve absorbed has come from. These people aren't "The Chronicles of Elyria community", theyre bloggers on popular platforms with a following; seperate from the community and not a part of it. All of this being said, it would be dishonest of me to say there isn't a cult like following for this game. But the saving grace in this fact is that the weird behaviour never comes from experienced community members who understand the mechanics of the game but instead the newbies who find themselves neck deep in hype, head canon and 'pledge doubt' after the first week they learn of this games existence.

Anyways,

Appreciate the honest dialogue Viktor, it's refreshing. Wish you well.

Posted By Gunnlang at 12:56 AM - Mon Oct 15 2018

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.

I'm sorry but I disagree with this statement. The forums are the first place most new members come. If the first thing that they see is toxic or trolling behaviors then they are not likely to join. I mean toxic/trolling as both positive and negative; vehemently opposing any and all criticism, trash-talking any support, or just general trolling.

I do agree with your later statement that it's better today then it has been though. I see a lot of people returning to the forums/discord to join in the conversations. I really think we're returning to more of a community than just a bunch of backers demanding that we get our way. It's very nice to see!

Posted By PixiePunchPie at 12:59 AM - Wed Oct 17 2018

I'm sorry but I disagree with this statement. The forums are the first place most new members come.

That's why I wish SBS would update their dam forums already. The search feature is so crap. Info is mostly all over the place, noted from the countless threads from newcomers that can't find simple info.

But all that aside, I was mostly meaning. While sure new people come here first. They soon find their way to discord, knowing it's way easier to find out anything. Not many people really stay here.

Posted By Gunnlang at 10:49 AM - Tue Oct 16 2018

Posted By PixiePunchPie at 12:59 AM - Wed Oct 17 2018

I'm sorry but I disagree with this statement. The forums are the first place most new members come.

That's why I wish SBS would update their dam forums already. The search feature is so crap. Info is mostly all over the place, noted from the countless threads from newcomers that can't find simple info.

But all that aside, I was mostly meaning. While sure new people come here first. They soon find their way to discord, knowing it's way easier to find out anything. Not many people really stay here.

Agreed. As has been discussed before, the forums, and the website as a whole, is not very user-friendly or transparent when it comes to finding info.

Still, they have told us they are updating the forums, and I imagine the website itself will continuously iterate, especially as we get closer to the game actually launching.

Posted By Marovec at 07:20 AM - Wed Oct 17 2018

Still, they have told us they are updating the forums, and I imagine the website itself will continuously iterate, especially as we get closer to the game actually launching.

Someday, they keep pushing it back, cause it's not important. Even though if anything it's more important. Should be something they do from the start, make it easier for new people to find out all the right info. Higher chance they will back the game etc.

Regarding the networking performance for the single shard world and dropping SpatialOS, I am concerned that their proposed solution won't be up to scratch.

Firstly there's no mention of caching the state of player-characters in RAM, though since this can also be done in PostgreSQL maybe they just didn't want to get too technical in their announcement post (though it would have better assured tech geeks like me).

Secondly rather than PostgreSQL I'd have expected a NoSQL database like MongoDB or CouchDB, as they typically have faster performance and also support spatial data. Though to be fair there are many MMOs (that are instanced) which also use SQL databases like EVE and Guild Wars. Plus I guess NoSQL is trickier to implement since it's not ACID compliant.

And finally I'd have expected Kubernetes rather than Docker Swarm, it's basically the gold standard for container orchestration.

The problem is I don't think that they will discover whether their current tech stack is sufficient enough without stress-testing their servers, and it's currently nowhere on the (albeit dated) roadmap.

So I hope there's more information and testing forthcoming on that front soon, a comprehensive dev blog on this subject would be deeply reassuring. Because it'd be a shame for them to realise they need to reimplement large parts of their stack late into the process as it just means more time waiting.

I believe MongoDB is ACID compliant now.

And I firmly believe the community makes or breaks a game. The issue I've had with modern MMOs is you take a browse through their forums and they are cluttered with kids. Absolutely not the community I want to game with(Sorry young people, I was like you once ;) )

Caspian's vision spoke to many of us disillusioned by the state of the MMORPG. Yes, he's promised the world(Literally!) and won't deliver on every feature at release. But he also invested a significant sum of his own savings and funded the early stages of development before going to Kickstarter. It encouraged me to see this guy had a vision and was putting down his own money to make it happen.

I am not alone, as the community's response has been phenomenal. I've not seen another game where the forums are largely populated by mature adults, browse any Kingdom's Domains and Organisations forums and you will discover player-lore and professionally written backstories selling their place in the world.

Outside of dedicated RPG forums, I've not seen this level of roleplaying on MMORPG forum before the game has even entered alpha. I haven't seen this quality of engagement even years after release. The CoE community is generally mature and sociable, to even hint at toxicity is selling it short.

There will be technical challenges to the game ahead and I can see several proposals will be pruned off the final product, but so long as the community holds its course I envision a grand experience ahead with the tools available to us.

Will we enter a stage of discussing the Minimum Viable Product during the alpha/beta stages? It's a possibility I'm open to. Somewhere in SBS's deepest, darkest vaults, there must lay a manifest of the game's barest essentials, with additional features deferred to successive years and updates. Maybe SBS will surprise us, but I'm expecting the MVP on release and so long as they form a solid foundation, I'll be content.

My compliments to The Chef.