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July's Newsletter is Live!

    • 24 posts
    July 24, 2019 3:32 PM PDT

     

    I'm guessing they are on lockdown until Project Faerthal is finished for anything even referencing goals or targets. I'm also assuming that there is a team of cyber ninja monkey lawyer frog people on standby that will be dispatched to deal with anyone speaking about it. ;p

    Jokes aside though, I'm think that they probably have a big marketing plan for when Project Faerthal finally gets revealed and they don't want to say anything at all to maximize the impact of the reveal and try to draw in more players and maybe additional investors. Drips of information don't go to far with viral and media stuff but a big substantive announcement can get a lot of traction.

    Now I feel like someone working in marketing. I gotta stop trying to understand stuff. lol

     

    Nobody wants to make less money. They wouldn't put aside months of work to just show us what they can do. It has to be a big payoff somehow. I'm guessing a short demo of the game they can use as a proof of concept to get more funding and start advertising the game for release. As long as we get to play it too thats fine.


    This post was edited by brandon at July 24, 2019 3:32 PM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    July 24, 2019 3:39 PM PDT

    Comments are a bit more negative than usual this month and the reason has nothing to do with the newsletter.

    Some people hoped that the delay of a week presaged some unusually meaty feature or information - it didn't.

    Some people hoped that Brad's interview would contain something new about the game or its schedule. It didn't.

    Not VR's fault I'm sure the pictures and fluff were prettier and fluffier than they would have been a week ago. Not our fault - such hopes are quite normal.

    Maybe next month Project F will be definitively finished and the timing of the rest of pre-alpha sufficiently locked that they can discuss it.

    Then again ...perhaps not.

    • 31 posts
    July 24, 2019 3:48 PM PDT

    One thing people also have to keep in mind timing wise, while there was a delay yes due to wanting to get that tech demo showcased, the month of AUG, if July newsletter was released last week, would be a 5 week gap before AUG newsletter.  Because of the Delay we are only having to wait 4 weeks for AUG newsletter instead.  So really there was no delay at all, they just used that extra week now instead of later.  Thats at least how im looking at it =)

     

     

    • 4 posts
    July 24, 2019 3:55 PM PDT

    As a software developer, I can tell you that there is nothing more frustrating than having to provide expectations and timelines around work that isn't completely and thoroughly defined and understood. But as an end user (or someone who only wants to evangelize the product, even), not having any real expectations provided is just as frustrating.

    VR, you guys are in a tough spot, communications-wise, we get that -- but a suggestion is to communicate goals/objectives/major initiatives as best as you can right now because you dont wanna lose the positivity in the community. You'll always have some negativity but once the status quo has changed to a primarily negative one, you will spend all your time and energy trying to win em back. Don't let it get to that point.

     

    Re: The newsletter itself

    Those sweet, sweet movement animations are crisp. I was blown away at how smooth jumping -> hanging happened. Whoa.


    This post was edited by tylerdmace at July 24, 2019 7:25 PM PDT
    • 4 posts
    July 24, 2019 5:23 PM PDT

    Okay. Im not from an english speaking country and im not super proficiant (if thats even spelled right), so please take that into account while reading this.

    Hey! first post i do here. And its becuase Vandraads comment about mechanics.

    Here, on one hand; We have this great article of insights and details of "making a mmorpg" while it´s actually beeing
    developed. A game, that we all put our trust (important word) in (tm bazgrim) to have all these old school mechanics that pits us, the players,
    against a cruel and unforgiving world. And on the other hand we have you, who just cant wait to re-live a feeling
    not unlike a certain thing that has a certain effect. Now im not saying i cant understand you, because i do. But
    you have to understand that you have put your trust into something that you have no actual control of. I say; enjoy the trip and hope to "god"
    the result will be almost close to what you dreamt it would be!

    Also thanks for the newsletter. It was a good read! 

    (again sorry for the shitty english xD ) 

    • 211 posts
    July 24, 2019 5:34 PM PDT

    Nice newsletter! My favorite bit of info was the lore on Bel-Iris, look forward to more signature characters!


    This post was edited by AgentGenX at July 24, 2019 5:34 PM PDT
    • 36 posts
    July 24, 2019 6:07 PM PDT

    I'm a sucker for great animation, it makes what I'm playing more immersive and it's great to see it being done so well in an MMO, I cant wait to see it first hand and hopefully it really does look this good when I get my hands on the game!

     

    Melee characters with bad animations don't really hold me for long, one of the reasons I never used (way back) the newer animations that were released in everquest, I never did enjoy them as much as the origionals.

     

    They look great! and I do hope to see them in action on all the classes, (yes even spell casters could use some love there) anyway thanks for the news letter! I myself liked it because as I said before! I'm a sucker for great animations!

    • 945 posts
    July 24, 2019 6:42 PM PDT

    Jazhara said:

    One thing people also have to keep in mind timing wise, while there was a delay yes due to wanting to get that tech demo showcased, the month of AUG, if July newsletter was released last week, would be a 5 week gap before AUG newsletter.  Because of the Delay we are only having to wait 4 weeks for AUG newsletter instead.  So really there was no delay at all, they just used that extra week now instead of later.  Thats at least how im looking at it =)

    Good perspective, but speaking of "timing", keep in mind some of us have been supporting and following this development for over 3 years now.  We know the graphics will be better than games from 20, 10, or even 5 years ago because its nearly impossible to make a game with poor VFX today... my friend took a 3 month class and can do animations like they are presenting in Maya in a couple of hours.  We want to hear about the intentions and progress of core game mechanics.  Lore is cool, and maintains people's interest but ultimately not what makes a game because lore is lost to a large % of the population once the playerbase becomes concerned with the combination of objectives/missions/quests/crafting/socializing/progression/LFG at which point all of the lore turns into a player's roleplaying perogative... if the mechanics (and admittedly VFX) keep them engaged (but as I mentioned, cool VFX in today's age is not news-worthy to a lot of us).

    The mechanic info doesn't even have to be that detailed - just high level anwers to questions we've been puting on forums for years, like:
    -What is the progeny system? 
    -What will the Bard and Necro roles be?  (Not even their skills, although that would be lovely).
    -What are some "ideas" they have for racial differences?  (Aside from starting areas, cosmetics and available classes)
    There are so many other things, but just these 3 questions could be 3 entire newsletters along with player spotlights and shout-outs to new hires.

    If not for some of the YouTube and Twitch streamers, we would be in a more precarious standing with the non-EQ fans.

     

    • 48 posts
    July 24, 2019 7:10 PM PDT

    I really appreciate the length of the dev portion of the news letter (both the asset creation and the vfx). By far the most interesting parts of the news letters to me (every month).

     

    Edit - And the animation system that I left out...quite important too.


    This post was edited by Merkades at July 24, 2019 7:13 PM PDT
    • 1714 posts
    July 24, 2019 8:25 PM PDT

    To people complaining about people complaining, every newsletter has concept art, and last month's had tidbits on climbing. So a month later we get more concept art, of a leaf, and more climbing? In the history of mmos, of all the things that people lament are missing from the genre, has anyone ever said "what mmos need is a robust climbing system!"? Animations are important and it's nice to see progress in that regard. 


    This post was edited by Keno Monster at July 24, 2019 8:32 PM PDT
    • 2419 posts
    July 24, 2019 8:40 PM PDT

    Ok, serious question about the video showing the spell effects.  For the Shaman, the first series of effects are (or at least appear to be) the same effect but colored differently.  I'm not opposed to that.  My concern is where the effects are shown, right at ground level.  Have you look at these effects in a real environment that has groundcover like grass or tall weeds?  It could very well be that in many locations where you aren't on a solid, flat surface, these effects will be completely covered.  Could there be a visual element that encompases the hands/head?

    • 624 posts
    July 24, 2019 10:18 PM PDT

    Enjoyed the community spotlight - was fun learning more about the big dog. Finally someone sticking up for playing humans...#weAreNotBoring. Excellent choice going for a Thronefast Guard, made me smile. Bravo Chris, look forward to grouping with you!

    • 627 posts
    July 25, 2019 1:10 AM PDT
    Why are all The Shaman Spell effects on the grund? Is it just a part of the Spell cast? As in more effects will be added to hands or the body.
    • 2 posts
    July 25, 2019 3:21 AM PDT

    Yes, I am getting frustrated with some monthly news post I would like to see some real progress, I really understand and appreciate the skills it takes for someone to create a tree,I was hoping buy now there would be some real progress monthly on game mechanics instead of pictures.


    This post was edited by gagnon at July 25, 2019 3:25 AM PDT
    • 1247 posts
    July 25, 2019 9:07 AM PDT

    Beautiful! The magic is coming to life again. :)

    And once again: thank goodness it is you guys/gals who are making this game. Looking good VR! 


    This post was edited by Syrif at July 25, 2019 9:08 AM PDT
    • 36 posts
    July 25, 2019 10:20 AM PDT

    I really appreciated this Newsletter. Great work!

    • 159 posts
    July 25, 2019 10:53 AM PDT

    On the Lore of Bel-Iris and her people the Archai's I can see how VR ties the upper skills/spells for monk and wizard to this. I know it has been stated that some skills/spells we are going to have to find as we adventure in the world of Terminus.  I like the Lore story behind the Archai's and Bel-Iris. So if you are going to show us a key figure for ever race we got two down out of nine with seven more to go.(?)Hmm

     

    I know when you finish with Project Faerthal ( Old Woods ) and are able to use these libraries you talk about often the development process for the rest of Terminus "should" go fast in comparison. So I'll give you all the benefit of the doubt and save any productive criticism I have until that day. With that said however. When I read that visual effects for the Paladin haven't even been started that was alarming to me. 

    Almost forgot. After reading the Lore on Bel-Iris and her people the Archai's I can now see why Wizard is a playable class for the race while Summoner isn't. So I do appreciate that. That brings light to that question I had, but never asked.

    • 17 posts
    July 25, 2019 8:46 PM PDT
    I enjoyed the newsletter, but I don't have any expectations about reveals and deadlines.

    If I read some of the technical talk correctly, the art team will be able to swap out leaves easily? Which could possibly mean trees changing with the seasons or something like a limited time quest/event where a particular forest is sick/diseased. Then again, I probably didn't read all the tech talk correctly.
    • 523 posts
    July 26, 2019 6:20 AM PDT

    High quality newsletter.  The tree stuff is signifcant in showing how they are avoiding lag and optimizing as they go.  Anyone that played Vanguard at launch should greatly appreciate this approach.  The player controller looked responsive and fluid, that's a big fk'n deal.  The major complaint with some MMOs is being too rigid and not responsive in controls.  Spell effects continue to look promising, thought the Cleric Aegis showcase was the absolute high point of the entire thing.  The lore piece was actually pretty good.  I mean, this was a good newsletter.  Yeah, we didn't get the flashy headlines we all want to see, but for behind the scenes meat and potatoes game advancement, this newsletter had it.  Signficant progress.

    • 160 posts
    July 26, 2019 7:49 AM PDT

    High-quality graphics doesn't have as much effect in a MMO, and could be counterproductive if performance suffers (which it almost certainly will).

     

    In a MMO you can and will have many players at the same time in the same place. A raid of 20, 40, 72 people, plus some people in the same zone but not in the raid - say, another two to four groups of them - plus 5, 10 or 20 mobs.

    And all people in different armor items, all casting like mad, with shiny special effects going on all the time.

    Hundreds of polygons to form a single tree, and then textures on top of that, and then multiply that by the number of trees.

     

    The first thing that's going to happen is that the speed is going down into a crawl, or even a slideshow.

    That's how it was in Vanguard. I remember for Vanguard beta, I burned close to 2K $ (CAD) on graphic card etc upgrades just to bring the performance from unplayable to barely playable in groups... and raids weren't even in sight. And you know how that game ended. My PC after upgrades was, not the fastest in the world for that time, but probably within 5% of that.

    And it was still too slow. How did people with normal PCs for that time play?

     

    Everquest 1 was, for its time, a success, and remained a success for years.

    Did it have the absolute best graphics, special effects, rolling animations, hanging on ledges etc? Nope.

    Did we play it way more than any other game? Hell yes.

    There is a lesson in that, for those willing to learn.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    • 470 posts
    July 26, 2019 8:32 AM PDT

    @Aethor 

    And this is a good point. With no instancing we're sure to see way more than that crowded into a zone at times. And to this day I'd say EQ is probably the MMORPG that I have the most played time in despite playing many different MMORPGs over the last 2 decades...ish. 

    On the subject of performance. I am no developer or engineer so I can't speak to how all this stuff works internally or how tweaking this or loading that can make things better. But I will say listening to Bruno discuss how they're approaching some of this to make loading and performances better for Pantheon did give me some hope that they might have gotten a handle on an important issue early. Here's to hoping.

    Here's the video with Bruno I mentioned:
    https://youtu.be/T3mr5_SDgsk?t=547


    This post was edited by Kratuk at July 26, 2019 8:34 AM PDT
    • 35 posts
    July 26, 2019 8:42 AM PDT

    Aethor said:

     

    Everquest 1 was, for its time, a success, and remained a success for years.

    Did it have the absolute best graphics, special effects, rolling animations, hanging on ledges etc? Nope.

    Did we play it way more than any other game? Hell yes.

    There is a lesson in that, for those willing to learn.

     

     

     

    This update and previous ones just seemed to be focused on "pretty" which to me is frustrating because the game is losing its heart. You could use any game almost as an example, but EQ and even WOW both started off like gangbusters and the reason was simple, it was not pretty graphics, it was not being able to hang on a ledge, it was because both games at thier beginnings were community and group focused.

    Both games lost thier way and started destroying that group/community with automated group finders, mercenaries, raid finders, insta travel anywhere etc etc etc. Both games slowly declined in population the more "features" they added, though they would see a spike after a new expansion it would quickly die off because people would check it out, ooh new content but die out slowly again because they had no real attachment to other people playing. EQ started progression servers which were highly successful and still are because people didn't want to kill Naggy or Vox again for the 1000th time, they want to feel that community again. Even mighty WOW has realized this, with WOW classic on the horizon. People want to rely on thier community, thier guild and most importantly thier in game friends. That is more important than how a leaf looks on a tree.

    Yes NDA yadda yadda. Pre-alpha was awesome, not because of how the world looked, the character animations, being new content to people. It was awesome because you had people talking to each other, seeking and finding groups. Planning groups via discord, forums, chats etc before the game was even available. You did what the original goal of this game was, to create a community and you hit out of the ballpark. The community was amazing.

    Please focus on why you made this game, to create that gaming community again and stop focusing so much on "pretty" things.

    I personally don't care about pretty. I care about finding new friends, rediscovering old friends and having fun with them in a challenging game not destroyed by convienences. 

    Azzudien

     

     

     

     

    • 429 posts
    July 26, 2019 10:01 AM PDT

    Maybe I was blessed in Vanguard ( had no issues in alpha /Beta ) , I was playing it on a laptop (had hyperthreading which made all the difference IMHO ) .

    As for graphics in any MMO many people think its the be end all , personally I find the playability the core design the lore the game itself and how it plays to be far more important then graphics the look the eye candy . 

    I do understand VR going all out on graphics , but in the end graphics won't keep you playing .. ( I still play EQ1 , I play Project Gorgon {which is less graphics then eq1 }).

    In the end its a fine balance between the two .

    As for the Newsletter , was fine .. ( mom always said if you have nothing good to say , Say nothing at all :) ) ...

    • 379 posts
    July 26, 2019 12:06 PM PDT

    So they have something that looks good to attract the moths and also something for the spiders to catch them.


    This post was edited by Fragile at July 26, 2019 12:07 PM PDT
    • 627 posts
    July 26, 2019 11:11 PM PDT
    I belive grafics are very important to a game, that realeases in 2020+. It is a deal breaker for many players, that the world and things within looks up to date.

    On the other hand, optimization and performance needs to be top tier also, if we lag every time we are in a raid its a deal breaker also.

    I hope VR findes the sweet spot, where we can have an amasing fantasy game world, with beauty and mystery, where latency is low aswell.