The Epic Failure of Neocron via NST

If you're reading this it means you probably love NC. I've been playing on and off for the better part of a decade or more and every time I check to see whats going on in NC world I am utterly disappointed.

I am going to dish out an incredible amount of criticism towards NST with the hopes that perhaps they'll actually listen.

Here are some things that I would confidently say at least 80% of long time players would agree with. Hands down.



1. The games major bugs need to be fixed and those bugs are the reason MOST long time players no longer play or play sparingly. They include:
-Constant crashing
-Difficulty simply installing the game
-God Awful launcher
-So buggy that PvP is almost impossible
-Zone crashing/lag
-General game glitching/object issues

If Neocron were a paid game, with a real manager or owner, they would be prioritizing fixing these issues and not doing things like balancing and new content. I find it hard to believe that with 1)Better personnel 2)Better hardware 3)More time the vast majority of the major bugs couldn't be fixed. Period. I personally would be happy to contribute to a hardware fund to get new equipment as Im sure many other players would but really we'd like to see the game handed over to people who care and are qualified. On every level from player interaction to server maintenance and game management NST don't just fail but epicly.

2. Balancing
Honestly was the reason I haven't started playing again. Without getting into the details of how incredibly awful the last round of balancing was, it honestly has ruined the game. NST have no understanding of their own game mechanics and they blame any balancing complaints on the fact that players don' engage on PTS. (Most players cant get on PTS to begin with). Rhino's and VHC damage in general have been nerfed down to joke levels. A second love last time I checked shelled out more DPS than a rhino or dex glider. Thats stupid AF.

3. NST are the worst.
On every level of support and game management they are the epitome of awful. They are immature, lazy, uncaring, in-equipped, lacking necessary skills, lacking proper time to actually run the game server to the detriment of the players. NST is "clichey", have ridiculously high standards, and deflect almost ALL game issues elsewhere.

NST have a plethora of rebuttals in their arsenal.
1. They have real lives and little time to work on NC.
2. They don't get paid.
3. They can't get help/volunteers.
4. "It's the communities fault"
5. No one goes on test server

I personally would not be speaking out if these problems were inevitable or unable to be rectified but the fact of the matter is this simple statement: the poor state of Neocron is directly and nearly entirely the cause of NST. Period, hands down, cut the check and take it to the bank

So I ask NST, when will the excuses end? When will you take REAL steps to make this game "something" again? When will you admit that you are the problem?

To the players I ask, will you stand up and echo your frustrations, too, until change is made?

Their is no plausible reason that NST cannot find replacements for themselves to non-grumpy, experienced, motivated people. Clearly you hate the players and the game and your jobs so just give it up already! For the love of N.C. !

What a nonsense, sry bro.

The NST doesn't try to keep it secret that we have huge problems in man power for example but telling us we wouldn't love NC anymore is just a huge bs. Our love to that game is the only thing that motivates us to pay the bills to keep the servers running.

Telling us we don't have any skill is also bs... Tell you what, I am going to invite YOU to the team, so you can be the savior of neocron. Deal?

Well, we appreciate that you took the time to write that all down; it must have been cathartic. We do our best given our starting point and the constraints we find ourselves in terms of manpower and funding. Thanks for sticking with us.

Oh man, Billy...you sound like that guy who came over to our forums and tried to tell us how to do our job on Neocron. Points for playing both sides of the NC world!

I've gotta hand it to the NST and their self control, they sure keep it together don't they folks? I don't though, because....well I don't care :D

First off, the Neocron codebase is a dumpster fire of the utmost degree. It was written back in a time where things just didn't matter, and it was more important to get things out and working and patched up vs writing it correctly for the long term. Sorting through that mess was the first about 6 months of our teams project. The NST had to sift through even worse shit as theirs had an entire rewrite done to it.

Patching security holes, keeping up with cheaters, finding ways to stop DDoS attacks, they have their hands full. I'm surprised things are still running honestly, but really our teams are pretty much one in the same. They have a hand full of content guys and only one or two source guys. We have a hand full of source guys and a hand full of content guys. Nobody works when they don't want to, nobody is paid, nobody is forced to a schedule, and everything is out of pocket for both teams.

Long story short, you sound like a child on Christmas that was given a used Nintendo NES fully refurbished by his parents who barely scrape by, and you threw it back at them and told them if they both just worked better jobs and more hours they could provide you an xbox one. You have no idea what is going on and you'd like to call the shots.

You come here acting like you know just what is wrong and how to fix it?

https://media.giphy.com/media/Ym4F0Q...LEBX/giphy.gif

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: Seriously kid, go back to your corner before the adults give you a tongue lashing you'll never recover from.



Edit: Nobody talks shit about the NST unless its us. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Lykos summed it up. Hey dude have you actually made a character of any class, and capped it from start to finish? Dude, the NST absolutely 100% nailed the PVE balance. I am a classic NC1 and 2.1 player and the PVE is, again, very similar to NC1. All classes are viable again. Apus destroy in pvp and PVE. You can make hybrids again. Warbots and firemobs and hoverbots don't fucking one hit kill you anymore. Even KK couldn't manage that balance. They redid the entirety of the aggressor cellars. They are awesome now. Implants got balanced. Droners got power armor. Weapons got balanced perfectly and the NST took the time to address all our gripes about nerfed aoe damage. The nst have real lives dude just like the rest of us.

I was one of the people making a massive gripe about nerfed aoe damage because it affected leveling tanks when certain heavy weapons weren't viable. The NST listened to the community's concern, took their time and fixed one of the biggest problems in the game that was killing PVE balance. Im glad they are in charge, and not people like you. Have you seen some of the unpacked .PAK files and put them in a decrypted text file? Dude thus games basic code alone is mind boggling complicated.

As Z said: We never made it a secret that we have a lack of man power, that’s why we started several “We want you” threads/posts.

We’re also still working on our beloved Neocron, the thing is: we don’t have a ton of DEVs, sadly.
There is an update in the queue, but it needs some code changes first before we can roll out that update.

If anybody is willing to contribute time - tell me, maybe we find a task.

BTW:
It’s intended that not everyone is working on balancing or the code.
Why an artist should work on the code, without the skill set?
The content guy who is writing missions is also not capable to work on code stuff, and for this reason you see new content.

We’re trying to listen to the community and we’re trying to evolve.

So, should everyone stop working on their stuff and waiting for other fixes first?
Should I stop working on new missions for instance, because you think something is broken?

Instead of claiming and flaming you may want to give proper bug reports.

What is crashing for example?
I don’t have crashes, no probs with the launcher for example.

How can we fix stuff we can’t reproduce, because of missing (proper!) reports?

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Originally Posted by Lykos

Patching security holes, keeping up with cheaters, finding ways to stop DDoS attacks, they have their hands full. I'm surprised things are still running honestly, but really our teams are pretty much one in the same. They have a hand full of content guys and only one or two source guys. We have a hand full of source guys and a hand full of content guys. Nobody works when they don't want to, nobody is paid, nobody is forced to a schedule, and everything is out of pocket for both teams.

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^this

Given the fact, people like Zoltan, Bifrost, Trivaldi or Niddhog contribute to the project since the beginning, financial, administrative or content wise, should show that there is some love for the game. Rumors about some quite more attractive hobbies than running a MMO to troll it's community, have made it to me.

Both teams had to dig through huge amounts of non-pleasant and "ragequit" moments alone, to simply have the codebase and servers start and running NC on current machines. There is no part in any pipeline that will not break your beautiful code, asset, mission or documentation if you don't go through that process. Thus, it requires people who love the game from the very bottom of it's heart to get over, stand by and still contribute even with all that headaches. And it is also to a certain understanding, people can't contribute with the passion they want and better keep running away. In an active studio, a lot of NC problems are to a extend, you gonna thorw away everything old and do it from scratch, but to do so it takes ressources as well.

I am going to have to partially agree with the original post. I am not saying that the NST do not care, but the lack of communication did push a lot of the playerbase away. There were times it would be weeks without a post from NST on discord for example.. people asking questions (new or old players) to no answers. The communication has been very poor.

There was talk of some balancing changes that were being made almost 6 months ago now with a response from NST saying patch should be out within a week or 2.. 6 months later still nothing. There has always been a lot of complaints and the new launcher and how it is buggy / a resource hog but now it is being treated like this is new news. The current balance is horrible.. this is a huge thing that pushes players away..

We all know NST is trying, but you shouldn't lash out on someone for expressing their concerns.. and pointing out things (not everything that was said) that many people have stated in the past. We all love the game, we all want to see it work.. it feels like NST look down on the playerbase often, and when a concern or issue is brought up instead of internally questioning if maybe that is a valid issue it instantly goes to a defensive stance...

Myself along with many others love this game and miss what it was.. sorry that a good chunk of the playerbase feels let down. Of course there are diehard fans who will defend everything until the end.. but the numbers tell the real story. None of us hate the NST, just work on your communication, work with the playerbase, and make us feel like we matter..

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Originally Posted by Arzon

I am going to have to partially agree with the original post.

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As is your right, but lets break down the rest of your post...

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Originally Posted by Arzon

I am not saying that the NST do not care, but the lack of communication did push a lot of the playerbase away. There were times it would be weeks without a post from NST on discord for example.. people asking questions (new or old players) to no answers. The communication has been very poor.

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Right again you are! We get the same complaint over at NCC. Let me tell you why that is....we've said all we've needed to say. We have told people multiple times we are short staffed, that we cannot put content guys (You know, artists?) on the source team because....those guys don't know how to write source code at all! That would be like telling a McDonalds grill worker that today is his day, and he is going to perform heart surgery. Anyway I'm off on a rant lets continue...

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Originally Posted by Arzon

There was talk of some balancing changes that were being made almost 6 months ago now with a response from NST saying patch should be out within a week or 2.. 6 months later still nothing. There has always been a lot of complaints and the new launcher and how it is buggy / a resource hog but now it is being treated like this is new news. The current balance is horrible.. this is a huge thing that pushes players away..

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This could be because the source team has all but vanished. Again, they are volunteer as are we. Our source team has also gone AWOL. What are we supposed to do? Threaten to fire them? Write them up? Withhold their pay? :lol: I'm sure you'd all like to know EXACTLY why something has been delayed and I get that, but the answer might be as bad as the question... "The team ran out of give a fucks, we'll check with them next week"

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Originally Posted by Arzon

We all know NST is trying, but you shouldn't lash out on someone for expressing their concerns.. and pointing out things (not everything that was said) that many people have stated in the past. We all love the game, we all want to see it work.. it feels like NST look down on the playerbase often, and when a concern or issue is brought up instead of internally questioning if maybe that is a valid issue it instantly goes to a defensive stance...

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I think there is a boiling point. There is only so much a team can take of "Give it to somebody else so they can do it right" or "If I was in charge this would all be finished" or one I love the most from our side "You have 8 team members (4 content 2 QA 1 sourceish and 1 strictly art) on almost all the time, what the fuck are you guys doing? Why can't you fix the netcode?" before we finally tell you exactly how the hell it is. No, you cannot do this better than us. No, we are not giving it to somebody else. Sorry, you'll just have to wait for us to feel like donating our free spare time again to the project.

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Originally Posted by Arzon

Myself along with many others love this game and miss what it was.. sorry that a good chunk of the playerbase feels let down. Of course there are diehard fans who will defend everything until the end.. but the numbers tell the real story. None of us hate the NST, just work on your communication, work with the playerbase, and make us feel like we matter..

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The NST and NCT love what Neocron was, and what it could possibly be. What the community has forgotten is that this is now a free game. The development is unpaid, the servers are paid out of pocket, and the development team is all volunteer. There are no deadlines, and none could even really be enforced. We don't have a barrage of people beating down our doors to code a 10+ year old game. We don't have the advantages of big online communities offering support of the engine. We have old code, old programmers with families and full time jobs, old apps to maintain old resources, and a bunch of community members who think they've been ripped off by people who haven't charged them a dime.

I'll say it, get over yourselves. Be part of the solution or shut up. The solution is be patient and be grateful that the game is still running. I've often considered pulling the plug during the downtimes of NCC but I've never done it because we still have 4-5 people playing full time, and I do this for those who don't complain but enjoy the game and quietly submit bug reports the proper way and have PATIENCE for fixes to come.

:o

Lykos killed it. You guys keep bringing up your opinion regarding the balance changes. What exactly is it you're seeing, that others aren't? What am i not seeing. Personally it boggles my mind that some players think the balance is horrible. Why don't y'all blame KK for that? They started the mess this team has worked very hard to clean up, and still is. So what are the balance issues you guys are seeing from your perspective when playing? All weapon types are viable now. Woc weapons still rock. All combat professions through out the leveling process can stand their own ground just fine. Please help enlighten me too. I wanna do some testing on the test server to explore some values and make logs. Apu seems fine to me. Pistols seem fine. Heavy weapons seem fine, as do rifles, drones, except melee. I don't think melee can ever be fixed and made viable in the 2.1 and up code. Just so you others know, i personally have discovered on my own time what procedure is neccesary to change weapon balance values. For rhe NST, it isn't as easy as just manipulating the server side .PAK files and manipulating the data through live, soft code updates.

About that communiction thing. I just can speak for myself but I kept the communication from the very beggining of our discord channel - All communication about the source development part was in "real time" side by side with my IDE and it was good so far UNTIL the good know shit show on discord has started. I tried it few times over and over again but in the end I decided for myself to op out. I was tired to play nanny or read all these insults, harrasment and flaming against each other. I was asking myself pretty often "Why do I do this for such kind of ppl?". Discord was/is the topmotivation killer for me. By the way.. those guys successfully managed to blame and flame our Developer "Farril" like 24/7 so he decided to leave the team - ggwp community you did well.

So please... stop asking for communication at least from my side. If I have some information I am willing to share with you I'll share it.

Z

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Originally Posted by Zoltan

About that communiction thing. I just can speak for myself but I kept the communication from the very beggining of our discord channel - All communication about the source development part was in "real time" side by side with my IDE and it was good so far UNTIL the good know shit show on discord has started. I tried it few times over and over again but in the end I decided for myself to op out. I was tired to play nanny or read all these insults, harrasment and flaming against each other. I was asking myself pretty often "Why do I do this for such kind of ppl?". Discord was/is the topmotivation killer for me. By the way.. those guys successfully managed to blame and flame our Developer "Farril" like 24/7 so he decided to leave the team - ggwp community you did well.

So please... stop asking for communication at least from my side. If I have some information I am willing to share with you I'll share it.

Z

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I miss Farril so much, people don't realize just what he did for us. When I was on the team, I remember he wrote a tool to roll patches so we could start pushing updates to the game as soon as we got the green light, and before we had the source code. Also before we had access to the source he fixed a casting bug using a hex editor. He loved Neocron.

Shame on people for shitting on such a good developer. At this point, I wonder if the community deserves Neocron at all anymore.

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Originally Posted by Zoltan

About that communiction thing. I just can speak for myself but I kept the communication from the very beggining of our discord channel - All communication about the source development part was in "real time" side by side with my IDE and it was good so far UNTIL the good know shit show on discord has started. I tried it few times over and over again but in the end I decided for myself to op out. I was tired to play nanny or read all these insults, harrasment and flaming against each other. I was asking myself pretty often "Why do I do this for such kind of ppl?". Discord was/is the topmotivation killer for me. By the way.. those guys successfully managed to blame and flame our Developer "Farril" like 24/7 so he decided to leave the team - ggwp community you did well.

So please... stop asking for communication at least from my side. If I have some information I am willing to share with you I'll share it.

Z

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So I'm going to chime in here.

I 100% agree with this. Frankly, one of the reasons I'm away from working on this so much is because of a lack of motivation. I spend 9 hours a day at work (8 hours + 1 hour lunch.) Sometimes more if we have a big project we're deploying or finishing. I come home, I have maybe 4 or 5 hours depending on how late I want to stay up. Of course some of that time I spend doing other stuff, like making dinner, store, etc.

I'm now presented with a choice:

1. I can play some games with some friends of mine, or hang out with my family
2. Or, I can work on this game (from the NCC side of course) and progress.

My day job is software development, sysadmin, and networking. So I'm already kind of tired of it when I get home. Neocron is... interesting to work on. And by interesting, I mean a frustrating pain in the ass. Then to stack on top of it the toxic self-entitled trolls in the community.

I'll let you guess which one I do. Now I can't speak 100% for Wizard on our team, but I know it's at least a similar situation from his perspective as well. We get asked all the time about netcode, sarcastic and condescending comments about it (and other things.) You want to know where netcode is guys? Well, it's playing POE league, because he pretty much got sick of dealing with this toxic shit early on. He mostly works on the game for his enjoyment and the challenge. And the same pretty much goes for me.

Now, I'm not saying the entire community is this way, but it's been our experience that they have been some of the most vocal. Especially on Discord. It's pretty demotivating.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not quitting. Wizard hasn't quit. Lykos hasn't quit, nor anyone else on our team. We work on it as we want to. Things are progressing. We aren't as loud about it, and we aren't very fast. I'm simply saying our motivation is hurt when the community side of it is full of such toxic entitled crap. So progress slows, because we're not paid to work on this, or put up with this. I'll go through periods where I game for a while in my free time, and I'll go through periods where I work on this for a few months on end and do no gaming. That's how it's been for a while.

And a note on balance: Balance changes are fun. At least on NCC, Like AgentKane said, it's not just a matter of manipulating some server side text files. There is a TON of crap in the source code that's done through hard-coded magic numbers with absolutely no documentation. It's split between many locations / systems in the source. We have Zodiac on our team who spent a week or more figuring out how all the armor math worked together with the files, incoming damage, buffs, etc, and re-balancing it to add a PA slot, and make it work with hit zones properly. It's not as easy as just "Oh yeah we'll just change this one number here and it's good." You change something by a little, and suddenly it's had a drastic effect because, after an hour of debugging the source to find out why, you find a spot in the source dividing it by 8 then somewhere else multiplying it by 1.2235512 * techlevel. Why 8? Why 1.12235512? No idea. You just have to work out the math and figure out what it's trying to accomplish. Keep in mind, this isn't a real example, and in actuality it's more complex. I don't know how it is on NST, but that's some insight into how it is on ours.

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Originally Posted by Therenall

It's not as easy as just "Oh yeah we'll just change this one number here and it's good." You change something by a little, and suddenly it's had a drastic effect because, after an hour of debugging the source to find out why, you find a spot in the source dividing it by 8 then somewhere else multiplying it by 1.2235512 * techlevel. Why 8? Why 1.12235512? No idea. You just have to work out the math and figure out what it's trying to accomplish. Keep in mind, this isn't a real example, and in actuality it's more complex. I don't know how it is on NST, but that's some insight into how it is on ours.

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Exactly this. Don't forget about the "if (randomVariable == magicValue) { somePreviouslyRandomlyCalcuatedResult *= moreRandomlyGeneratedStuff + SomeShitFromDefs + SomeClassSpecificShit + SomeWorldSpecificShit * 0.1337f / SomeShitThatisSetByAAdefineAndJustActiveWhenTheBuildIsAServerBuild; }" and yeah.. these codelines are somewhere in 35k line methods full of c&p'd codeparts.

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Originally Posted by Zoltan

Exactly this. Don't forget about the "if (randomVariable == magicValue) { somePreviouslyRandomlyCalcuatedResult *= moreRandomlyGeneratedStuff + SomeShitFromDefs + SomeClassSpecificShit + SomeWorldSpecificShit * 0.1337f / SomeShitThatisSetByAAdefineAndJustActiveWhenTheBuildIsAServerBuild; }" and yeah.. these codelines are somewhere in 35k line methods full of c&p'd codeparts.

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I've never seen a more accurate representation of the NC source code in my life.

If anybody wants it dumbed down, you ask a girl out on a date. Her answer hinges on what you had for lunch, the color of your socks, a random magic number she was told about when she was 6 years old, the color of your dog, the neighbors current mood, and the color of the next car to drive by.

Neocron.

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Originally Posted by Lykos

If anybody wants it dumbed down, you ask a girl out on a date. Her answer hinges on what you had for lunch, the color of your socks, a random magic number she was told about when she was 6 years old, the color of your dog, the neighbors current mood, and the color of the next car to drive by.

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Explains why I can never get a date; wrong socks.

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Originally Posted by Lykos

If anybody wants it dumbed down, you ask a girl out on a date. Her answer hinges on what you had for lunch, the color of your socks, a random magic number she was told about when she was 6 years old, the color of your dog, the neighbors current mood, and the color of the next car to drive by.

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I've been enlightened. That explains why I don't get on with the NC code. Clearly not my type.... :D

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Originally Posted by Bifrost

I've been enlightened. That explains why I don't get on with the NC code. Clearly not my type.... :D

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Thanks! I'm here all week :lol:

Truly amazing yet not surpriaing that not only will NST never acknowledge any responsibility or shortcomings or failure, but they chalk it up as "players talking non sense"

Too bad no active players are here to echo my sentiment - whys that? Cuz ya'll are so awful they don't play NC anymore.

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Originally Posted by Arzon

....but the numbers tell the real story..

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True words - given that everyone agrees the game is great, I'd love to hear the argument where NST is NOT responsible for 4.5 people actively playing.....If I had to rank the top 5 reasons people aren't playing NC (besides no player base) theyd be

1. PvP and In Game Bugs
2. Launcher/Crashes/Software issues
3. No support
4. Poor new player experience
5. NST balancing and prioritization of new content vs fixing existing gameplay

all of those items are the sole responsibility of whom exactly?

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Originally Posted by Mozencrath

So I ask NST, when will the excuses end? When will you take REAL steps to make this game "something" again? When will you admit that you are the problem?

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Please answer the OP question....when will you take responsibility and not blame trolls, complicated code, no RL time, and the moon and tides.

when will real steps be taken to alleviate your burden and Make NC Great Again?

I just did; our burden has been alleviated. Thanks for playing.