View Full Version : How about this idea then.....
Ok since NC 1 was released in 2002, NC has seen over 100,000 diffrent player's, unfortunatly it is now at around 250 people, i really do hate to see that when the game mechanics's has so much potential, my idea may bring alot more people into the game, even more so boost the income of KK and the other company's that hold this game....
Ok, what should happen is..
1. Make Neocron absolutly free, no monthly fee
2. Make an ingame shop that you buy credit's to purchase rare item's such as... Woc Disk's, Woc PA, Woc Weapon's, MC5 cpu's. with this you could add other thing's to the game that will require credit's to purchase such as: Woc 2-3-4-5 item's, Rare trophies, Rare super apartment's, Glowing insignia's (player glow's with a big light or somthing), Woc Vehicle's (like Salvaged F15's and such from the past), Woc normal armor (legs boot's etc.) and other stuff like drugs that boos the ammount of money/exp you get from a mob (these should only last a certain ammount of time)
Now here is an example of where this has worked before....
A game called RF Online was a bi game on release, it had thousands of player's, the cost was around £8 per month and the game kept dying and dying untill there was only a few hundred people per server (3 server's) they then merged all 3 servers into 1 super server but it just wasnt enough, they then decided to make an in game shop and make the game free (can only spend £20 per month in the shop) it brougt back alot of players, now per annual turnover they make around 400% more money they then ever did with a subcription fee, they have now mmade 2 new servers that have over 4000 player's on them.
Please leave youre feedback here, no flaming please!
Err Spinx, dont know if you are aware, NC is currently free to play while KK sort out the insolvency issues... I know the free time isn't going to last, but it's worth installing NC, and trying your account out.
Also NC was reduced from about 10 to 5 to play per month back in July, which is about £3.
Even before the insolvency issues, the new reduced price of 5 was bringing people back to the game.
The game is as good as free at the moment.
This has been asked for already, countless times. Here's one example:
http://neocron.jafc.de/showthread.php?t=142946&highlight=free+play
I personally hate the idea of item shops. They break economies. The NC economy has always been pretty good (Until the massive fluctuations on the prices of WoC discs that is).
ReaKKtor, I'm certain, are currently undergoing some pretty big changes, with the recent insolvency of 10tacle. Why not hang fire for a while, and see what happens? :)
Ofcorse i know its free, and the price was reduced, im just throwing out some idea's for the future, because not being funny but how many people will stay when the fee comes back in?
Ofcorse i know its free, and the price was reduced, im just throwing out some idea's for the future, because not being funny but how many people will stay when the fee comes back in?
The incredibly loyal, die-hard fans & everyone that feels the game is worth £3 a month.
£3 = ONE pint of lager
£3 = TEN cigarettes
£3 = 6 bars of Dairy Milk
£3 = About 10 miles of petrol
£3 = HALF of what my paper round paid, per WEEK, 12 years ago.
£3 = NEOCRON, for ONE WHOLE MONTH.
Is it really that big a deal?
I dunno.
I have an idea! Let's count if off. I'll start it off:
Me!
I find item shop idea quite intresting when you consider this as a profit for a company.
But like in other games, items which can be bought via such shop, shoudlnt affect tradeskills in game.
Possibility to buy items like chips, weaps will infact ruin economy, because ne1 will care to gain them in other way than shop.
What item shop coudl bring to the game are gadgets. Things which woudl make you look special but not affecting ingame economy.
For example - character look modifications - i.e. glasses, hair style etc.
Also some of things which will not give you advantage over other players.
Personally i dont think such idea will goes live at all.
and btw, hi to all after long time no see :)
Yeah but if you look at the posiblitys they can make with say New WoC item's, as people are getting woc 5 and having nothing to use for it, im just thinking of ideas that can benifit KK and get Woc 2-5 into play, yes i know there is a WoC 3 PA but still there are 4 levels of WoC that can be used to provide assistance to KK and other campany's because lets be honest, if you have WoC 5 and they implemented an in game shop with woc 5 gear would u get some? i know i would, then id have somthing to show for my hard work!
I know people hate the idea of an in game shop because people have to pay bill's and cant spend alot on games, thats why you could have a good deed type thing, say you get 5 people to come to the game and play for 1 month you get like 2000 credits, stuff like that.
Like say you make a huge RP event that works out good (have to inform a GM to be there ofcorse) you get some points, and fraps the events and stuff post on all websites, and make sure people know you get rewards for doing good deeds on the game so it will show new people that the game has a good community and the GM's do stuff in the game, unlike AoC where you send in a ticket and the first reply says "we cant do anything" *ticket closed* like ive had many times.
The incredibly loyal, die-hard fans & everyone that feels the game is worth £3 a month.
£3 = ONE pint of lager
£3 = TEN cigarettes
£3 = 6 bars of Dairy Milk
£3 = About 10 miles of petrol
£3 = HALF of what my paper round paid, per WEEK, 12 years ago.
£3 = NEOCRON, for ONE WHOLE MONTH.
Is it really that big a deal?
NC is £3.93, sorry for correcting you :)
KK wouldn't probably be able to implement such an item shop anyway.
Just advertising would save NC...
but meh
I've never EVER seen NC advertised anywhere.
I saw a "review" on TV about 6 years ago for NC1 but that was ever it.
i dunno...
Maybe if we all pot in some money, we could "buy" a TV advert for NC on a channel specific to gaming, like Pulse.
I dunno...
I've tried already with word of mouth and silly posters i put up around college/ town but little happened after.
The main kill point that made people leave (who i got to join NC) was simply the bugs. 4 guys couldn't log in due to sync and said "fuck this" and deleted NC. That's how simple it is to get people to leave, especially in this day and age of expectations for games.
I give up basically
Yeah if you look on youtube at any NC vid you will find either me or daralzand have posted that NC is free get on there now lol, but its hard to find big populated sites that allow advertising of games, we have been looking to post alot of vids everywhere for NC,
I got an idea, lets all each week post a vid of nc (fang promo on youtube) << best vid so far. and post it on 1 site per week, if we all did this about 1000 vids per month would go out, that means 1 million people would see that video a year (rough estimates) i think if we did this we would get quite a few new players maybe, and lets all try to help the new players out, dont want people starting then being like ooo the people on here are like kids lets F*** it off!
NC is £3.93, sorry for correcting you :)
5.00 EUR = 3.95431 GBP (source (http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi))
Damn the Euro and its recent strength!!!
Anyway, the point remains, it's not expensive.
I personally believe regular patches are the key to bringing people back and keep people playing - moreso than advertisement videos & making the game f2p. I'm not deluded enough to think this can and will happen though.
Hell-demon
01-10-08, 14:11
More in-game advertising.
More revenue for KK and it creates more atmosphere because in a corporate run cyber punk city there is gonna be shit loads of advertising.
Damn the Euro and its recent strength!!!
Anyway, the point remains, it's not expensive.
I personally believe regular patches are the key to bringing people back and keep people playing - moreso than advertisement videos & making the game f2p. I'm not deluded enough to think this can and will happen though.
I do very much agree that frequent patches are the key to bring more new and old people back to any game, but the problem is there arnt any patches sorry to say, so im thinking outside the box, if we get our own advertising out there we may bring more people to the game, if we get the servers to like 50% this game would be F***ing good because there wont be any lack of PvP it will be constant fighting!
imo commercials in game and advertising is not the key.
As for decent potential player game looks still unatractive. Engine is outdated, bugs, errors, etc. This discourage newcomers to the game.
Also gamesystem is much complicated. I remember when i was total newb back in 2004. Every aspect of the game was strange, new, wicked and complicated.
I have a friend which introduced me to game. I remember when he have to explain me everything in the game.
For examlpe plain new player which starting the game, i must admin, have really fucked up situation. To buy simple ammunition for ur weapon, u need to know localisation of the shop. There is nav ray u;ll say. Ok, there is navray, u have to learn to use it, and recognize the terms which it use to get anything from it.
Another point is implant system, which personally i find great thing. But u need a poke. What is poke? i remember my 1st venture to P1 from via-2 where i used to lvl just for poke. Friend told me to go there and crouch in middle yelling 'need poke' i was like "WTF"
Weapon - ok u lvl a bit, u go for new weapon to shop and get a crap. sm1 told u that u need constructor ... so u yell for constructor.. most of ppl doesnt bother make tl20 weaps. Ok u find conster, he asks for bp's - wtf are bps :O .. u ask for researcher .. researcher tells u its gonna cost 20k - all ur money is 3k nc..
somehow u pass all this and u lvling higher, and willing to go pvp. U think u can kill some1 and have fun.. no u wont. U'll die in two shots, or get camped or zone whored. U go back for ur belt as armor u've lost cost u fortune.. bah u dead again..
U want join clan to feel safe .. clan tells u u need to be capped ... wtf is being capped ... u realise u have to make 250mil xp in total ..
hope u got the point. Im trying to help every new person which came into the game with resources cash taxi team up etc etc. but this is not the game supposed to be about.
Its the game about postnuclear enviroment and only enusiasthic persons which loves the feeling game creates will come into game. And these already tryed or still playin neocron.
Advertise and telling friends works, but when game is so strict and dedicated to specific target group with not so userfiendly game mechanics.. u have the results.
Take for example games like wow or other mmos.. there new player isnt bothered by anything, he simply plays the game and is directed by hand, pvp? why not u get rewards for pvp - why not pvp then? explore? dungeons - nice loot - why not go for dungeons.
Personally i think wow created new kind of mmo system - the core for other games and matrix how it shoudl be done. Why u ask? just look for number of players worldwide.
Its not a whine post, its just a realistic point of view that we play very specific game with very specific support in the very specific enviroment.
As most companies woudl close the game long time ago, KK keeps neocron running, and bless them for that.
didn't bother to read everything (sorry bout that) but an item shop requires many many people to play for it to be profitable for those happy few hardcore players to fund the game for the x1000 non-paying players, look at for example maple story (one of the most successful free/itemshop games), which has over 30milion subscribers, of which maybe a milion buy cash items once or twice, and maybe 100k regularly. And this is a 2d game for which development involves nothing nearly as difficult as what neocron is.
lets turn neocron into a browser game !!11
:rolleyes:
Browser: Port it to Java and run it on mobile telephones?
Thought not.
I'm for porting it to Java. You'd be able to say goodbye to all of those VB-based FRE's.
Also, is Reakktor still making money from having Alienware logos in the game?
Can I just stop this whole VB thing right in its tracks. Neocron is not written in VB. Ok? Thanks. Let's move on.
N
If you say so, but the title for the FRE windows begs to differ.
Regardless, I think it would do better in java than whatever it is written in.
That's just a shell, not the game client itself. Go and research Genesis if you want to know the (distant!) roots of Neocron. I'm not having a go at VB because it's a great language for implementing certain things (like GUI shells, for example), but it's not the kind of thing anyone would develop a 3D engine in.
N
I always assumed that the game was so unstable because of the language it was written in.
There goes that. :(
Anna Finster
01-10-08, 22:35
If you say so, but the title for the FRE windows begs to differ.
Regardless, I think it would do better in java than whatever it is written in.
java for fast-paced-fps 3D engines? :rolleyes:
btw what do you mean with FRE?
Never played the Java version of Quake 2? (Jake2 (http://bytonic.de/html/jake2.html))
Also FRE = Fatal Runtime Error.
Anna Finster
01-10-08, 22:49
No I haven't, I have to admit ;)
Ah. FRE. Thx.
"Back to almost on topic": so Genesis is the source of the Neocron engine? Which should be written in Cpp, i suppose?
I always assumed that the game was so unstable because of the language it was written in.
There goes that. :(
It doesn't matter what language anything is written in. The stability of the code is only as good as the code written, and the NC engine is written in C or C++ for getting the best speed out of the game.
The problem with C or C++, you can get away with a lot of thing that wouldn't be allowed in other languages.
It's upto the programmer to decide what extra checks needs to be put in. In the case of games programming, you are coding for speed, so you need to decide what checks to skip, where in application programming you don't code for speed, but for accuracy, where everything is checked.
Glowing insignia's (player glow's with a big light or somthing)
Fuck Me! That's a FANTASTIC idea... Oh wait a sec... No, thats fucking stupid!
As Brammers said (and as I said earlier) there's nothing wrong with VB per se. It's a tool, and as with all tools you have to choose the right one for the job - but in our case the tool of choice is C++.
The Neocron engine is called Tekktonic and is in fact a combination of two completely different engines: a highly modified version of Genesis for city zones, and a custom-written engine for the wastelands. Tekktonic was originally written by Reakktor for a new game (new in 1998!) called Typherra which later evolved into the Neocron we know and love today. You may recall that we have a monument to Typherra in-game even now.
The interior and exterior engines use two separate mechanisms in order to provide their different experiences. The interior engine is based on technology called Binary Space Partitioning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning) which was a very common approach to rendering self-contained, so-called convex 3d spaces. It's a bit out of date now but it does what we need quite well, and since the division between indoor and outdoor areas (for example the huge doors to the wastelands) are always zone lines this means we can easily swap from one engine to the other without having to worry too much about a smooth transition. ;)
The exterior engine uses terrain rendering techniques which are quite different from internal, so-called portal rendering engines. In the city you have many enclosed areas that connect to each other with things called portals (which may be a door or could be a large surface that the player wouldn't be able to detect. The portal rendering engine displays the current space plus anything that is visible through all the portals in that space, but in the exterior terrain rendering engine there is only one large area where Levels Of Detail (LOD) are used to maintain detail in the immediate vicinity while maintaining frame rates by not worrying about stuff way off in the distance.
The Tekktonic engine also provides other features such as 3D sound and the now infamous netcode! Back then it did what no other MMO could do, which was twitch-style gameplay. There's still not too much of that about even now, a whole decade later!
N
Anna Finster
02-10-08, 11:21
thanks alot for the information! :)
sounds cool compared to technical standards in these days ;)
The Tekktonic engine also provides other features such as 3D sound and the now infamous netcode! Back then it did what no other MMO could do, which was twitch-style gameplay. There's still not too much of that about even now, a whole decade later!
N
But it isn't really twitch gameplay. If I pull the trigger on my gun, only graphical effects actually extend out of it. If I wasn't aiming at someone, nothing meaningful at all happens. If I was aiming at something, the game does a nice little dice-roll and then applies damage or not, depending on the result of said roll.
It's a nice illusion, but at the end of the day it doesn't even feel like real FPS gameplay that much. (Although I will grant it is far more fun to play than click-and-wait).
You forgot about when you shoot a door with a gun, that opens them.
It's a nice illusion, but at the end of the day it doesn't even feel like real FPS gameplay that much. (Although I will grant it is far more fun to play than click-and-wait).
Of course, and it can't because stats, levels and all that RPG stuff is involved. What we provide is a middle ground where FPS skills (reaction time, aiming, movement, avoidance etc.) can still influence the outcome but while still maintaining an RPG experience. Why am I telling you? You know how it works by now! :p
N
Of course, and it can't because stats, levels and all that RPG stuff is involved. What we provide is a middle ground where FPS skills (reaction time, aiming, movement, avoidance etc.) can still influence the outcome but while still maintaining an RPG experience. Why am I telling you? You know how it works by now! :p
N
I'm not sure I agree that it would be impossible to do such a thing. It would obviously put a greater strain on the game, but I don't imagine a huge one (not that I know or claim to a great deal about game network and movement coding - I just know some conceptual bits). That said, I'm unaware of any game to actually combine serious stats and FPS combat in multiplayer (plenty in SP), so its impossible to say for sure if it is possible. (May go poke around Hl2 mods to see if anyone has tried).
I'd hope that any Neocron 3 would have true FPS-like combat, considering how much both computing hardware and software understanding will have moved on by then.
Powerpunsh
02-10-08, 16:07
...
The Neocron engine is called Tekktonic and is in fact a combination of two completely different engines: a highly modified version of Genesis for city zones, and a custom-written engine for the wastelands. Tekktonic was originally written by Reakktor for a new game (new in 1998!) called Typherra which later evolved into the Neocron we know and love today. You may recall that we have a monument to Typherra in-game even now.
...
N
wow, looks very similar!
http://www.ezgoal.com/channels/games/sshots.asp?ID=19298&Games=Typherra
Seeing as the other got closed on other reasons and this thread seems frequented by people who know these things
I would just like to point out that KK has told us that there is currently no development team on Neocron, so the reason there has been no patch is because they have not been working on one.
I did however read your comments and as a direct result, work on a new patch has been started and as you already know, the subscription fees have been lowered.
uhm, i guess I missed something in between this, when did work on the new patch stop again?
Mighty Max
02-10-08, 18:31
I'd guess that a CEO's statement is much more official then one of a normal user and as official as it ever can get.
I don't think any KK other then the CEO itself would declare his statement wrong / "worn out". So as long as this did not happen...
James most likely just had missed Kirk's words.
james_finn
02-10-08, 19:32
Seeing as the other got closed on other reasons and this thread seems frequented by people who know these things
uhm, i guess I missed something in between this, when did work on the new patch stop again?
Appologies, as Max said always take what was said by KK staff (especially the CEO) over anything I say.
Although tbh Biglines I would have thought you would know that...
/Delphi
Just to point out - Kirk said that he had said that work on a new patch should begin before the insolvency. He made no comment about how far (if at all) work had got on that patch, and absolutley nothing about whehter work on that patch was continuing. It actually strikes me as rather unlikley that any work is going on for Neocron at all - if KK are attempting to finish BP purley on savings (this is a guess based on the fact that KK appear to be divorcing from 10T, but have no apparent new investor), then all work must presumably be going into getting i out the door before the money runs out.
Again - nobody at KK has said there is presently work on a patch taking place. It would seem foolish to assume there is. Equally, there are no statments outright removing that possibility. Still, a lot of people seem to be reading things into Kirk's statement that wasn't there (as perhaps I was guilty of at one point).
maybe against better judgements but:
can we get an official response from KK whether or not the promise made by your CEO is actually still valid and why we haven't heard anything since?
james_finn
02-10-08, 20:58
maybe against better judgements but:
can we get an official response from KK whether or not the promise made by your CEO is actually still valid and why we haven't heard anything since?
No promise was ever made, Kirk only said that one was being worked on... not that one would be released in x amount of weeks. You need to understand the financial situation reakktor is in, they will want to get BP back on track as to be honest it is going to be a quite mainstream MMO and once released they will start to get back on their feet. As Cmaster said I would not be surprised if KK are focusing all their efforts into BP.
/Delphi
well what I read in his post is that it was an announcement that work on a patch had started during the insolvency thingy, if not, damn, kk needs communication skills...
well what I read in his post is that it was an announcement that work on a patch had started during the insolvency thingy, if not, damn, kk needs communication skills...
... or you may need a lesson or two in comprehension skills :cool:
if there was any work on a patch (according to kirk there was, but before the insolvency issue came up they certainly didnt start them efforts "during the insolvency thingy") it has been put on hold or slowed down significantly due to the unfortunate events related to 10tacle. thats what I understand from kirk's post :)
(slowing down a NC patch ..well... might be equal to putting efforts on hold :p ... j/k :angel: )
... or you may need a lesson or two in comprehension skills :cool:
if there was any work on a patch (according to kirk there was, but before the insolvency issue came up they certainly didnt start them efforts "during the insolvency thingy") it has been put on hold or slowed down significantly due to the unfortunate events related to 10tacle. thats what I understand from kirk's post :)
(slowing down a NC patch ..well... might be equal to putting efforts on hold :p ... j/k :angel: )
I read it again, and he certainly doesn't say the work on the patch had been put on hold or slowed down. My comprehension skills are generally not bad (officially uk academic), for example:
"has been started" is generally not describing something that has happened and has stopped again, clear English would probably have been "had been started".
I would like you to quote what makes it clear in your opinion that it's slowed down instead of initiated.
the general jest of it is in my opinion (paraphrasing of course):
hey guys, we're pretty screwed, but we're trying our best, meanwhile here's some good news, the subscription is lowered and we have started work on a new patch, ttyl!
Edit:
Hmm, the german version of the press release indeed says "wόrde", which as far as i know is more like the second option ("had been started"). So I still think the release should have been properly formulated, but now I agree that their native version (ceo is german right?) seems to support your claims more than mine... damn, i hate getting my hopes up over an imperfect translation. (never gonna admit I could have read it wrong :P)
Why don't they just hire unpaid (or low paid) interns to help do stuff like most software companies do? A lot of people don't get the internships they want and will take smaller company internships.
If they were to make a project like "Write this framework to simulate a fatal runtime error so we can fix them" and give the intern 3 months to do it, they would do it.
as far as I can tell most of the coding is actually done by other companies, with whom KK have contracts that they do everything. So this wont allow them to either do it themselves, ask others or accept help from community, only the contractees.
as far as I can tell most of the coding is actually done by other companies, with whom KK have contracts that they do everything. So this wont allow them to either do it themselves, ask others or accept help from community, only the contractees.
nah... most coding was done in-house. they did licence 3rd party technology to build up on tho'. On the other hand, quite a few of the visual contents were done by other companies or freelancers or -again- licenced with gfx bulkware.
they do have a clear policy of not releasing any of their sdk pieces to the public and considering NCs healthy past in terms of stability and security (:p), I can well imagine why I wouldnt want the 'internal slavesoft' to be spread either ;)
Everything else concering authors rights, potential copyright infringements, the need for costy QA and an increased risk of exploiting has been stated by nid and others about a dozen times... and they are still right.
Those were legit reasons to bury the NC modding forums and they are equally legit when talking about even broader community involvment (adding stuff to the core.. be it mapping, tampering with code or screwing with .def files)
Why don't they just hire unpaid (or low paid) interns to help do stuff like most software companies do? A lot of people don't get the internships they want and will take smaller company internships.
If they were to make a project like "Write this framework to simulate a fatal runtime error so we can fix them" and give the intern 3 months to do it, they would do it.
a) you get what you pay for
b) even if "a)" may not be true each and everytime with a short-time perspective longterm: you get what you pay for... and you pay for what you take cheap.
c) a)
apart from that I find it somewhat disrespectful to assume that the FREs could be fixed by a relatively unexperienced intern within a short period of time. If you write a piece of code and it spits you in the face like the FRE used to do with NC (people tend to forget it was significantly worse in nc1, with nc2 closed beta having been extremely stable, nc2 retail sort of a slight fallback - but nevertheless much better compared to earlier times), wouldnt you put some effort in fixing it? If an intern would be able to do it that easy, KK would've been able to do so too even sooner.
that said - how come you think that KK hasnt employed interns in the past?
as far as I can tell most of the coding is actually done by other companies, with whom KK have contracts that they do everything. So this wont allow them to either do it themselves, ask others or accept help from community, only the contractees.
Coding? No evidence that that part is outsourced.
For Black Prophecy, the music (http://www.dynamedion.com/) and some graphics (http://www.rocketbox.de/). Of course, the graphics engine is third-party middleware now too - but still, most movement/game engine/inertactiity code is presumably in house.
hmm they could use Nel (http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/show/nel) framework for NC. it's GPL 2 and they don't need to release any of their modifications, but the originals files from nel must be released as GPL v2. oh KK don't need to release any of their art, sound, or whatever work. Ryzom is a game that have been developed with NEL... If KK would use the NEL i would suggest them to enhance the 3d engine to run with OpenGL 3.0 and enable a native linux client! (i'm sick of fatal run time errors.) and another thing plz create a anti-hack/exploit program if you use NEL.
here is the NEL features (http://www.opennel.org/confluence/display/NEL/NelFeaturesList).
Cheers!
so u want nc to go use a new engine, thereby having to redo pretty much everything?
do nc3 instead then... more likely to happen
NC 3 sounds great to me but the current state of things are quite... err... how to say... hmmm.... difficult, maybe?
and about using new engine means redo almost everything, i don't know how messed up the nc's code is but i think it's worth for a new NC code.
NC3? Why not just start work on Neocron v1.0?
Time to move on from alpha-phase and work on releasing a beta.
Man.. Slow day on the NC forums it seems.
well yeah especially when your last post was at 3 in the morning ... -.-
i think this thread has already said enough...
close?
Man.. Slow day on the NC forums it seems.
Never too slow to ban a troll.
N
Is this difference between the two game engines one reason why the Dome could have not been made into Clan OutPosts?
Is this difference between the two game engines one reason why the Dome could have not been made into Clan OutPosts?
nope - thats a different story.
there used to be outposts in city-sectors in the early stages of nc1.
omg really?
Tell me more !!! :p
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