Dear KK (Kirk); please, please do something.

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Originally Posted by Flashlite

lol nice setlec if you know who runs that site ask them to add a new timer of his newest "promise to respond to everyone about neocron"

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ask MrTrip, He is the one running that website!

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Originally Posted by CoreInsanity

I agree with this - to me NC is better than all listed. However, neocron can't compete with them.


The graphics are out of date. No, this isn't everything, especially to me. But eye candy brings in customers. People that say "Hey that looks good" and try it. You don't want people to say "Hey that looks outdated" and walk away. That's what neocron in it's current state would do.

Sadly, game play is not all that sells a game now. And as much hassle as people have to go through to actually sign up for this game, plus the reputation of KK on the forums, etc. It's going to need more than an outdated graphics engine and a fan base that says "It's good I promise!".

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Hiya. I also disagree here by saying "Minecraft".

NC doesn't offer the latest render models of current games, but it offers things as housing, hacknet, dynamic armor and several other things that current games simply don't. :)

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Originally Posted by Flashlite

lol nice setlec if you know who runs that site ask them to add a new timer of his newest "promise to respond to everyone about neocron"

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Done. Lets see how long it takes, I replaced the NC3 timer with this one since it is a bit more important.

lol awesome mr.trip




<3

-xanu

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Originally Posted by CoreInsanity

I would rather not see another thread. I already posted my questions, on top of that I think most of the important points have been brought up. I would hate to see another thread pop up for questions just to see it spammed with a metric crap-ton of questions that would undoubtedly roll in.

Besides, the standard community "blabla" is a sign of passion for the game. People don't rant about something unless they have feelings involved, especially a decade old game. He needs to know how much people love the game, and want to see it continue. I think part of the idea behind the original post by L0KI was to convey some of the displeasure and emotion felt by the community in general. Let's not make that bypassed.

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Yeah that's right, haven't thought about that one. Let's see what happens.

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Originally Posted by Kirk Lenke

Promise!

I will go through this thread within the next days and answer some of your questions and get back to you into a proper discussion!

All the best and thanks for caring about the game you seem to love (still)

Kirk

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please this time actually answer the questions, instead of deflecting them by showing a shiny concept art image and promising some things that as usual have come to nothing.

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Originally Posted by Kamuix99

Hiya. I also disagree here by saying "Minecraft".

NC doesn't offer the latest render models of current games, but it offers things as housing, hacknet, dynamic armor and several other things that current games simply don't. :)

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Again, I agree. Neocron is the best MMO I have played. However, this does not stop the fact that without a big community to back it up, or better looking graphics people will be turned off by simply looking at it.

Sure, features wise this game can compete. But,
1) The engine is out of date.
2) The code is very inefficient, I'm sure.
3) There are a ton of bugs, one of the biggest one is FREs which so far only the really loyal community has put up with for so long and these supposedly can't be fixed.
4) There are a bunch of hacks, and depending on how bad off their code is who knows if they can fix them all.

People don't generally go for games where cheating is as much of a problem as it is here, the company has been bashed to no end for the last couple years and the game has so many bugs it's not even funny.

Sure, I think if they fixed the bugs/hacks and had some kind of aggressive plan to advertise this game they could probably pull it off. But without aggressive advertising this game won't get noticed, and they will have to downplay the crap out of graphics in favor of features. Even then I know probably 5 people who are shallow enough to not try it on graphics alone but would actually love a game like this.

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Originally Posted by CoreInsanity

Again, I agree. Neocron is the best MMO I have played. However, this does not stop the fact that without a big community to back it up, or better looking graphics people will be turned off by simply looking at it.

Sure, features wise this game can compete. But,
1) The engine is out of date.
2) The code is very inefficient, I'm sure.
3) There are a ton of bugs, one of the biggest one is FREs which so far only the really loyal community has put up with for so long and these supposedly can't be fixed.
4) There are a bunch of hacks, and depending on how bad off their code is who knows if they can fix them all.

People don't generally go for games where cheating is as much of a problem as it is here, the company has been bashed to no end for the last couple years and the game has so many bugs it's not even funny.

Sure, I think if they fixed the bugs/hacks and had some kind of aggressive plan to advertise this game they could probably pull it off. But without aggressive advertising this game won't get noticed, and they will have to downplay the crap out of graphics in favor of features. Even then I know probably 5 people who are shallow enough to not try it on graphics alone but would actually love a game like this.

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Good point, especially the fatals are something which definitely will upset new players. Most probably it will not be possible to attract many new people without rewriting the complete game to fix the fatals. Instead of trying to attract new people, i think it is easier to fix at least the most annyoing things, like cheating and the crappy interpolation, maybe reintroduce a hard speed cap and after fixing them write an email to all former customers and reinvite them, i promise, if things are really fixed, there will be many people who will return, especially once the word spreads that the most annyoing things have really been fixed.

To attract new people i think fixing the problems and advertising the pvp component of neocron would already help.

But i think at the moment we can only speculate about that, at the moment it is more important to know what is taking KK so long and how we can help to get that stuff fixed, there are many people who would be glad to help.

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Originally Posted by r2d22k

Good point, especially the fatals are something which definitely will upset new players. Most probably it will not be possible to attract many new people without rewriting the complete game to fix the fatals. Instead of trying to attract new people, i think it is easier to fix at least the most annyoing things, like cheating and the crappy interpolation, maybe reintroduce a hard speed cap and after fixing them write an email to all former customers and reinvite them, i promise, if things are really fixed, there will be many people who will return, especially once the word spreads that the most annyoing things have really been fixed.

To attract new people i think fixing the problems and advertising the pvp component of neocron would already help.

But i think at the moment we can only speculate about that, at the moment it is more important to know what is taking KK so long and how we can help to get that stuff fixed, there are many people who would be glad to help.

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Yeah, that's basically what I mean by my initial post on the last page.

1) The game is outdated, buggy and probably poorly coded by today's standards and was more than likely the code was not designed to be expanded upon.
2) There are a lot of hacks, bugs and technical limitations that seem to be in place for some stuff. For instance, FRE can't be fixed without getting a new engine (From what I remember reading a long time ago). Or the fact that the net code seems to be screwed up. Some of these seem to be caused by poorly planned out code, and some to just logic errors. I can point to a few exploits that honestly look like some one stuck an if statement in the wrong spot, or did an action in the wrong order (Not going to say more detail than that).


Like in my main post, the main issue I see here is the fact that they have no viable way or apparent plan to make the game prosper. As a business, they need money. As a dieing business, they need it more. Thus, neocron appears o be more work than reward so they push it off until later.

Even if you got back all the old players, I don't think they would be making enough to cover the costs of developing a game these days; and the only way to bring in money is to remake neocron.

The fact that every patch something seems to get broken indicates either extreme incompetence on the development staff (Doubting this) or the code is written poorly causing changes to become a problem. The code was probably not written with expansion in mind.

Either way, I would love to see NC survive. Through the company if they want to actually take care of the game, or through the community if the company can't afford it or doesn't want to try. Either way, NC open source is better than it getting shut down for good and us losing the game. We could at least fix it over time if it was open source.

But again, if KK actually has viable plans for the game, I would like to know what they are and what we are waiting on? If we are waiting on BP, how is BP doing? The company too, for that matter?


To quote my questions from the last page, and add one:

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Originally Posted by CoreInsanity

1) How is BP doing? Is it bringing in profit?
2) How is KK doing now financially? Are you stable?
3) What are your plans for NC3, or NC2. What are we waiting on for development and what (if anything) are you actively doing development wise on NC2/3?
4) Why won't you open source NC2 or 1 (If you even still have the source for 1)? Are you actually making money/have plans to make money off of it? Can you tell us what they are, or hint at them?. I would be very interested to know how you are going to make money off of an outdated buggy game.
5) Will you open source it if you can't develop it further/decide to not develop it anymore?

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(I added the 5th)

Opps. Double posted on accident.

Here is the sort of questions I would like to see an answer from Kirk.

1. When is the next Neocron 2 patch planned to be released?
2. What's the long term plans for Neocron 2?
3. What is Reakktor's view on the current state of communication to the community, and what plans do they have to change it? (If any).
4. What is Reakktor's view on the current state of in-game and out-of-game support, and what plans do they have to change it? (If any).
5. Would you like a cookie? ;)

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Originally Posted by CoreInsanity

Yeah, that's basically what I mean by my initial post on the last page.

1) The game is outdated, buggy and probably poorly coded by today's standards and was more than likely the code was not designed to be expanded upon.
2) There are a lot of hacks, bugs and technical limitations that seem to be in place for some stuff. For instance, FRE can't be fixed without getting a new engine (From what I remember reading a long time ago). Or the fact that the net code seems to be screwed up. Some of these seem to be caused by poorly planned out code, and some to just logic errors. I can point to a few exploits that honestly look like some one stuck an if statement in the wrong spot, or did an action in the wrong order (Not going to say more detail than that).

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You don't need a new engine to fix FRE's. You need a debugger, and some time to track the issue. Also a bug report with how to recreate the FRE also helps. (Like Alt-tabbing in the wastelands while in full screen mode is one well known FRE, there are others I'm sure)

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Originally Posted by Brammers

You don't need a new engine to fix FRE's. You need a debugger, and some time to track the issue. Also a bug report with how to recreate the FRE also helps. (Like Alt-tabbing in the wastelands while in full screen mode is one well known FRE, there are others I'm sure)

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Ah, well either way I just seem to remember them saying something about it being an issue with the engine or something that they couldn't fix. That's where I got that from. I wouldn't be surprised if it could be fixed with some time and debugging, with the help of some proper bug reports. Though they never seemed to get around to doing it :/

But still, the point of my post wasn't FREs.

So once more on the topic. You have to differ if you want a perfect game - impossible for every game and every company - or you want a good game compared to others.

Neutron already has lot of things that other games don't have and never had. Apart from graphics, where is the engine inferior to other mmorpgs? In Fallen Earth or Earthrise you also have elemental or physical damage classes. At least for FE you didn't have dynamic armor, your protection was always same, regardless how many times you were hit. Only healrate counted. Same will be for other mmorpgs

As far as bugs and fatals, let other games run 1 or more years without serviing, you'll see what you get...

Cheats and exploiters have the same origin - without a regulating instance, some people do what they want

So IMHO Neocron has the potential to also win several new customers. People who got disappointed by current mmorpgs on the market

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Originally Posted by Kamuix99

So once more on the topic. You have to differ if you want a perfect game - impossible for every game and every company - or you want a good game compared to others.

Neutron already has lot of things that other games don't have and never had. Apart from graphics, where is the engine inferior to other mmorpgs? In Fallen Earth or Earthrise you also have elemental or physical damage classes. At least for FE you didn't have dynamic armor, your protection was always same, regardless how many times you were hit. Only healrate counted. Same will be for other mmorpgs

As far as bugs and fatals, let other games run 1 or more years without serviing, you'll see what you get...

Cheats and exploiters have the same origin - without a regulating instance, some people do what they want

So IMHO Neocron has the potential to also win several new customers. People who got disappointed by current mmorpgs on the market

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I honestly haven't tried those MMOs, except for Global Agenda. I don't really want to. And further, it doesn't matter.

My point is simple. I see this game as an excellent game. I love the mechanics, the community is really good and the gameplay is fun. This was the first MMO I have ever played and so far the best.

However, some random person who has never played this game doesn't know the gameplay is fun, the community is good and the mechanics of the game are fun. He sees screenshots of what looks like outdated graphics, and sees a ton of bugs and exploits.

That person is going to walk away thinking "That game is old and probably not worth my time" and more than likely not give it a second thought. This goes for the majority of people, general people, not neocron vets. I don't see Earthrise, Fallen earth, Global Agenda or any of those games really thriving. None of them are pulling in much money I would bet, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they shut down. All of them but global agenda and earthrise look like crap.

Global agenda and Earthrise have what Neocron doesn't, pretty graphics. But they lack in either gameplay or they have a ton of bugs. They draw people in, but people get bored or frustrated and leave. That's their flaw.

Neocron has the game play and over time could fix some of the bugs. But they need a way to draw people in. Graphics draw people in, features and good game play keep them paying money.

It's like trying to sell a car. You could have a great car on the inside; excellent motor, electronics, expensive radio system, really good seats and so on. But if that car looks beat up and rusty on the outside most people would pass it by without a second thought even though all it needs is a new paint job. Sure, some will stop and play it and love it. You and me for instance. But I don't think enough people would do that at first. That's probably why they are working on BP right now and not neocron. BP looks pretty, game play wise I don't know (I havn't played it).

Exploiting and bugs are not a side effect caused by lack of regulation. Exploiting is a side effect of bad code. So are a lot of the bugs that exist. I know, and have reported in the passed, I think most of the exploits. The fact that some of them work astonishes me, they are so stupid it's not even funny. This is not lack of some one banning cheaters, it's a lack of some one coding properly. Perhaps a byproduct of a system that wasn't designed to expand.

If they design an inflexible system and then try to bend it, it's going to break. That's what I think started most of these exploits. That's why they are so numerous.