Growing concern for server population

[eNTi]

i want to be blunt. more so than ever. poor communication and lack of progress is a dampener, but exploits and cheats are killer.

if you know there's a game braking exploit in the wilds that is used by people who excuse their doing doing so by stating that they "don't want to have to care about money after all those years playing" i want to puke. open secrets about ongoing cheating in op fights and severe lack of perspective regarding ANY progress are just the nail in the coffin. i can't be bothered playing a game that is essentially broken while no fixes are in sight. no time frame when the major issues are addressed, that should have been addressed the day before yesterday.

all i read is "these things take time". this is a non-statement. how long is "time"? when will X addressed/fixed? all this political correct "communication" is completely worthless.

volunteer or not... it doesn't matter to me. i don't care if you don't have the time or have problems irl. i want a good game experience and you fail to deliver that. since i have no way of helping/paying or doing anything worthwhile i may as well stop playing.

many others might not feel about the issues as extreme as me, but i'm sure some people agree with my sentiment even though they would never have the audacity to formulate it so bluntly. a dead horse can only beaten so many times before its remains turn to dust and are blown away with the wind.

what makes me really sad about this whole issue is the fact that i really like neocron. i care, otherwise i wouldn't write all those awful words.

[William Antrim]

i want to be blunt. more so than ever. poor communication and lack of progress is a dampener, but exploits and cheats are killer.

if you know there's a game braking exploit in the wilds that is used by people who excuse their doing doing so by stating that they "don't want to have to care about money after all those years playing" i want to puke. open secrets about ongoing cheating in op fights and severe lack of perspective regarding ANY progress are just the nail in the coffin. i can't be bothered playing a game that is essentially broken while no fixes are in sight. no time frame when the major issues are addressed, that should have been addressed the day before yesterday.

all i read is "these things take time". this is a non-statement. how long is "time"? when will X addressed/fixed? all this political correct "communication" is completely worthless.

volunteer or not... it doesn't matter to me. i don't care if you don't have the time or have problems irl. i want a good game experience and you fail to deliver that. since i have no way of helping/paying or doing anything worthwhile i may as well stop playing.

many others might not feel about the issues as extreme as me, but i'm sure some people agree with my sentiment even though they would never have the audacity to formulate it so bluntly. a dead horse can only beaten so many times before its remains turn to dust and are blown away with the wind.

what makes me really sad about this whole issue is the fact that i really like neocron. i care, otherwise i wouldn't write all those awful words.

Who said anything about exploits? What do you have to gain by ranting? All this post makes me think is "bye then".

[Hell-demon]

Unfortunately population rising and falling is nothing new to Neocron. If there isn't a consistent stream of content or fixes then the population will stagnate.

However, neocron faces more hurdles because of it's age and competition with other free online games. I am amazed that neocron is still going (I congratulate the volunteers on their sheer hard work), especially in a time where most people favour twitch based shooters and generic fantasy RPG's. Yet I think in order for Neocron to thrive it needs some serious financial backing and content overhauls.

Right now there seems to be two camps in neocron and that is the PVP crowd and the PVE crowd and neither party is happy. The PVP crowd suffers from hackers and just bad game mechanics like zone whoring or just weapon imbalance. The PVE crowd suffers from boredom as they finish the limited quests for items that have limited use because most are WoC centred and they just so happened to role a class that isn't a spy. To top it off events are infrequent and are usually just high level mob spawn fests so new comers can't really participate.

If anything Neocron needs to really help new players and give them more content, but I digress. I like Neocron but a lot of people here are veterans and nostalgic. If we get some balancing then great but Neocron really needs more and there is so much potential. Hell, just bring some life to ghost city that is DoY - which frankly was hyped so much with NC2 that it's insulting that it is left to rot.

this post isn't particularly funny so have an amusing pic.

[Dropout]

Who said anything about exploits? What do you have to gain by ranting? All this post makes me think is "bye then".

I feel the same..

eNTi, take a break from NC.. It is needed once in a while..

[The Red Guy]

They took over a rotten piece of shit of a game and resurrected it to the current state. In their spare time. Don't know about you guys but I really don't have that much and by all means don't want to waste it in front of a screen, working on a time sink that others left to die.

Nah, I refrain to point out whats wrong to demand something from a volunteer team that way. Fking waste of time.

[Doc Holliday]

Who said anything about exploits? What do you have to gain by ranting? All this post makes me think is "bye then".

same.

[Trivaldi]

As promised.

[yavimaya]

Thank you Triv.
Thank you Team.

[Model192]

So, anyone care to explain why the sale of Neocron/the rights to Neocron are being held up?

Secondly, with you guys "taking a break" and talking about "later in the year" people will just stop caring, plain and simple. Then, you will have nothing to work for, or the game will die because your team will fall apart.

Let's not beat around the bush here. You guys just need to say you won't be working on it and get it over with. In all reality you've made some small useless changes and played with the netcode. We still have the same game, which is why people will be quitting all over again.

eNTI is right, period. If you're going to take over a project don't promise the world then half ass it. This will be the coup de grace as far as I'm concerned, unless the rights actually get sold to a GOOD buyer, not just for his money, but because he can and actually will put resources toward the game and have some people on it full time.

[Brammers]

So, anyone care to explain why the sale of Neocron/the rights to Neocron are being held up?

I think you need to explain where you heard that with a source. Don't think anyone else here has heard that.

Secondly, with you guys "taking a break" and talking about "later in the year" people will just stop caring, plain and simple. Then, you will have nothing to work for, or the game will die because your team will fall apart.

Let's not beat around the bush here. You guys just need to say you won't be working on it and get it over with. In all reality you've made some small useless changes and played with the netcode. We still have the same game, which is why people will be quitting all over again.

I still care, and think it's good the team should recharge their batteries. Otherwise the team is going to burn out. And seriously they have just played with the netcode and added useless changes?

Go and read the patch notes and dev blogs again.

The team have done a bloody good job trying to understand the legacy code and trying to fix it. There are still problems, but understanding the problem first is more important than fixing the problem.

eNTI is right, period. If you're going to take over a project don't promise the world then half ass it. This will be the coup de grace as far as I'm concerned, unless the rights actually get sold to a GOOD buyer, not just for his money, but because he can and actually will put resources toward the game and have some people on it full time.

Tell me you have a clue about project management. I rather have a project done right and delivered late, so players are happy. A project delivered late, on-time or early that is wrong will do more damage to the player base. And yes this game is being run by volunteers who give up their spare time to run this game, so you can play this game for free.

And again where do you get this idea that Neocron is for sale?

[The Red Guy]

what did they promise? to keep a game alive that never had a big player base, improve it with the resources avaiable so ppl can play it for free. whow... what a bunch of lying bastards!

shame on you volunteer team! stop spending your time and money on NC because some complain they have the choice to play a game for free.

do you even care how ppl suffered because of you? the endless hours of playing a game...

[The Red Guy]

edit

[Ivan Eres]

...Mindless Rambling...

Dude, did you expect that three people would build Neocron 3 for you?

I guess you misunderstood the intentions of the Volunteers Team.

They took over to relive NC2 and they have done a very good job so far. The situation was catastrophic one year ago. The servers were in Canada after Kirk had moved them there. We had big lag spikes every few minutes and were DDOS'ed to hell every day by one of the banned mofos.

NC was not playable at all.

Do not come here telling me that they did only small useless things. Do you even work in IT? Do you know how much work it is to move and set up servers and a complete infrastructure? Protection from DDOS? Working thru a code that's more than a decade old? Would you had read the current Dev update you'd know that Z even hosted NC on a bunch of his own machines after they took over last year and that he has now consolidated the servers at a new data centre.

It's the second move in one year and it took him more than one week of constant hard work. It's a shame that you're coming here now after this was just finished yesterday, spouting stuff like that.

If you want NC3 you'd better get 5 million Euros together tomorrow to make this happen instead of having these expectations from some guys working in their spare time. Then you can make the game that you want, and be responsible for its successes and failures.

But please don't come here to put other people's hard work down while you have done nothing.

[Ryan Steiner]

What Ivan Eres said !

Let me add one more point:

In all reality you've made some small useless changes and played with the netcode.

I summarized the patchnotes from the last 12 months for you. Yes, you are welcome!

Technical changes:

• Dropped support for DirectX 7
• Changed FoV, therefore players seem to be slower
• Fixed numerous exploits and vulnerabilities
• Fixed several possible server crashes
• Fixed a bug that stopped Neocron from launching when certain applications are open ("Chrome Bug")
• Fixed a crash on alt+tab in wastelands in fullscreen mode
• Fixed the main menu going black on alt+tab in fullscreen mode
• Fixed a crash caused by neocron.ini not being writable
• Changed the way interpolation is handeled ("clipping fix")
• Tweaked the netcode to always include y updates and update more frequently
• Fixed a bug that caused the HUD not being rendered on screenshots
• Screenshots are now saved as .jpg
• Fixed a bug that caused the HUD to reset to default state after a crash
• Removed legacy elements from the HUD (e.g.: recover backpack)
• Fixed misalignment of worldmap at widescreen resolutions (fullscreen mode)
• Fixed culling problems with widescreen resolutions (fullscreen mode)
• Fixed misaligned outpost signs
• Added widescreen resolutions to the launcher configuration panel
• Added Anisotropic Filtering, configurable via the launcher configuration panel
• Fixed truncation of entries inside error.log
• Added timestamps to the damage log
• Fixed Venture Warp returning players to appartment
• Fixed several possible reasons for server crashes
• Fixed issues with the netcode causing packet loss
• Fixed a number of exploits
• Fixed a number of server and client crashes
• Fixed a bug that could lead to damaged chardata
• Interpolation fix redone from the ground up
• Fixed an issue preventing players from activating Gene Replicators inside appartments
• Fixed GenRep costs for Crahn, Black Dragon, Tsunami Syndicate, Fallen Angels and Twilight Guardian HQs to reflect their post-DoY locations.
• Fixed the combat rank of droners being lower than expected in certain cases
• Fixed drone AoE damage, LEd droners now damage themselves as well as their drones
• Fixed Fallen Angels CityCom missions
• Fixed the CR being too low when changing zones inside a vehicle
• Fixed CR being too high inside hacknet
• Fixed the respawn behaviour of several container types (containers spawning quest items, e.g. Grim's ID cube, as well as hacknet code fragments)
• Fixed the buy/sell window covertly resetting the amount to a value of 1 when clicking buy/sell. Now it properly retains the previous value
• Fixed item count not corresponding with the entered amount when moving stacks of items
• Significantly increased rare part drop chances for Warbots and a number of related techmobs.
• Fixed several server side crashes
• Fixed a problem with the patcher
• TL92 Pulselaser Pistol is back in stock
• Staff Sergeant Van Dyk moved
• Turrets in energy core 2 shoot back
• Reworked netcode
• Window mode now supports very high resolutions as well (numbers must be multiples of two)
• Fixed a number of exploits and critical security issues
• Fixed a number of bad world data causes
• Fixed an issue with the loginserver
• Fixed a number of gameserver crashes
• Fixed incorrect team money distribution
• Team money distribution is now calculated at once instead of receiving all money first, then paying a share to teammates
• Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to retreat from combat
• NPCs now use a line of sight for targeting that is comparable to that of player characters
• Fixed drones not launching in a number of situations
• Reduced wait time between drone launches, in case a launch failed
• Appartment passwords may now contain the ' char
• Account passwords may now contain the chars . and #
• Slightly tweaked/increased overall performance
• Fixed several exploits
• Used an approach similar to splines to smooth interpolation
• Several further tweaks to the interpolation
• Fixed rubberband bug
• Fixed hacknet mobs not dealing damage
• Fixed parsing of default options for several NPCs
• Fixed a buffer overflow when updating world actors
• Raised Neocron's bandwidth limitations
• Fixed several reasons for invisible damage
• Fixed an error which lead to items dropping from the trade window back into the player's inventory
• Music should now play independent of the windows compatibility mode setting
• The damage of beam weapons should now be calculated correctly
• Fixed beams not showing on several weapons

Content changes:

• Turned around the CopBot staring at the wall in Plaza Sector 1 (after 8 years, the wall wins)
• Temporarily removed outpost turrets
• Added TL92 Tangent Assault Pulselaser Pistol to high level tech pistol vendor
• Added TL63 Gatlin Cannon to high level low tech cannon vendor
• Added permenant spawn for the Outzone 2 High Tech Cannon Smuggler
• Added entrance to the Drone Racetrack
• Added RN Terminals to Crahn HQ
• Replaced Outzone Station ambient sound
• Removed OOC advertisement from the Plaza area
• Fixed a conflict between Reza's Calling & Regant's Faith Missions
• Fixed spawn of Heff in TG Canyon.
• Fixed spawn of Malfunctioning Warbot Prototype in the MIRL-600 Warhammer Mission
• Fixed drop rate of fragment from Tacholytium Titan Warbot for Crahn Epic mision #4. Now always drops for those with the mission.
• Fixed a large number of wrong object types (e.g.: CityComs being tagged as chairs)
• Fixed position and alignment for a large number of static objects and NPCs
• Fixed many more miscellaneous gameworld issues
• Added a new loading screen
• Overhaul of H14 and the H14 Command Unit
• Replanted several trees in J 04
• Fixed several floating objects in H 15 and fixed the hole in the fence near MC5
• Arrested the thief of the sign post in the newbie Area MC5 and returned the sign safely to its home
• New vendors have moved into Battle Dome
• Female vendors now have the correct skin
• Outzone Sewer Sec-1 now uses the correct world
• Added Outzone and Pepper Park apartment key smuggler to Pepper Park Sec-1
• Black Dragon contacts have been sighted outside of the Pussy Club
• Fixed a number of gameworld bugs and missing objects in Via Rosso Sectors 1, 2 and 3.
• Fixed a number of gameworld bugs and missing objects in Pepper Park Sectors 1, 2 and 3 including the Crahn Church
• The Snack-A-Tack shop in Pepper Park Sec-3 went out of business
• Removed OOC advertisment in Pepper Park Sec-1 and Via Rosso Sec-2
• High level Plasma Pistols can now be obtained from the Canyon Smuggler.
• Misc. smaller fixes
  

Gameplay changes

• Fixed an issue with team xp calculation
• Fixed combat rank not always being updated
• Fixed a bug that allowed overcasting of stronger shields.
• Fixed low level drones being very hard to use
• Reduced the intensity of visual interference when Drones are being damaged
• Fixed several issues and exploits concerning casting
• Changed the way combat ranks are being calculated
• Fixed AI not being able to target drones in special cases
• Fixed a reloading bug
• Added the techlevel of the item to construct to blueprints
• Law enforced players are now buffable by non law enforced players, but not vice versa!
• The existing speed cap has been adjusted so speed tapers off more dramatically at higher livels of agility and athletics. Players with extreme speed setups will see a reduction of speed

SOUL LIGHT SYSTEM

• Access to the Gene Replication Network now requires Runners to have -31 Soul Light or higher.
• Access to the Venture Warp Network now requires Runners to have -31 Soul Light or higher.
• Access to vendors in safe zones requires Runners to have -31 Soul Light or higher.
• Access to Apartment Access Interfaces in safe zones requires Runners to have -31 Soul Light or higher.
• Automatic Soul Light regeneration has been disabled.

WEAPON BALANCE

• Damage output of the TL115 Disruptor lowered by 25% to compensate for aggressive burst bonus.
• Damage output of the TL113 Ceres Assault Rifle CAR-47 and the TL108 Infiltration Assault Rifle IAR-47 lowered by 20% to compensate for aggressive burst bonus.
• Speed malus when equipping a heavy weapon has been reduced from 20% to 10%.
• Switching weapons while reloading has been disabled.

NEW FEATURES

• New hit box colouring has been added to more easily identify clan mates. (Customise BBClanMate in rposcolor.ini)
• Gamemasters are now able to set zones to safezones while the server is running.
• Gamemasters are now able to set zones to automatically log out players after a certain time of idling.
• Gamemasters are now able to set zones to spawn players at the reset point after logging out.

[Dropout]

Snip

Yeah those volunteers sure have been lazy!!!

....