RIP Project Nova.... again

Communications Center General Discussion
241

Well…reading between the lines, it just looks as if the level design and game mechanics were not flushed out, yet; they spent time/money on pretty polygons before they knew if the game they were making would just ‘work’.

That is an almost unforgivable act.

  1. Design the game mechanics of your FPS.
  2. Build a ‘dojo’ test environment.
  3. Test.

Now, you are in an iteration-loop.

  1. Test.
  2. Make change to game mechanic &/or geometry.
  3. Repeat step (1)

Step (1), in UE4 is very simple and requires no compiling (unlike source) and leads to (2) which is micro-to-macro alterations of the geometry and mechanics (like TTK, bullet-spread etc, range, sightlines, scripts/blueprints) and then you go back to (1).

At no point in this loop is one building polygons in 3DMAX/Maya/Modo or anything that could be considered ‘art’. That, is really the very last thing you build and is (typically) authored by the environment artist(s).

Now, I could build you a Dojo in less than an hour, and this becomes the ‘standard’ for all assets to use.

This is also known as ‘whiteboxing’ - and if it fails at this point, the game is flawed.

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242

I just kinda want something like Planetside 2 was but in EVE setting. Bonus points for being able to affect the world of EVE (and vice versa?) from that game.

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243

What’s most unsettling from the NOVA gameplay video is that what is obvious at first sight (terrible gameplay) is something that should have been addressed first while the game still was in design phase. How could they develop to nearly Beta a game whose design flaws are self-evident by just watching it for 5 minutes?

Watching that video felt like testing the CQ at Sisi in april 2011: “Is this it? Are they really going to release… this?”.

Now CCP has learned a bit, but still NOVA looks like somebody’s first attempt at developing a videogame without a formal education on game design.

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244

That is a little harsh, but probably very close to the truth :slight_smile:

I’m nursing a cold right now, so perhaps my perspectives are flawed, also hence why I have got a little time to comment on this. Takes my mind off the pain :smile:

245

Except it wouldn’t be “free” there would be the costs of developing and then advertising a whole new game, when they could have just spent that same money advertising EVE, there is nothing wrong with being a niche product, i would rather it be smaller (relatively speaking) and good at what it does than it trying to appeal to people who aren’t interested in the core game, the lore of the game itself isn’t anything ground breaking and any shooter would just be seen as a generic sci-fi shooter in terms of aesthetic, yes the lore can be interesting to read and i’ve read templar one, but at the end of the day the lore itself really doesn’t even feature much in the day to day activities of players, i’m a minmatar who is currently flying a caldari/gallente hybrid ship while shooting at rogue drones, drifters and triglavians, but from my point of view i’m just grinding that ISK and shooting shapes on my overview

They could literally replace each faction with a colour and no backstory and the game would still play the same :stuck_out_tongue:

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246

If the game mechanics were good - the game would be a success. Just as, if a film has a good story, good characters and good acting - it would be a success.

Now, to side with you slightly, if you have umpteen squillions of € to promote a game/movie, it will also be a ‘success’ but insofar as it will generate $.

‘Man of Steel’ is a classic example of massive marketing budget, but actually a poorly received movie, yet made (barely) its production budget back.

‘Revulsion’ is a good example of an FPS game that had no marketing, was made by one person (in UE4) was critically acclaimed, and made bank.

So, yes. You can pump tonnes of $ into marketing and production, but a good game it does not make - yet, this is what gamers want.

There shall always be a market out there for the big AAA releases for games, but in many instances (CoD is great example of this) 96% of purchases play the single player campaign, get the XP and PSN/XBL medals, and by the time monday comes around, have completed the game, returned it, and have got the bragging rights at school on their PSN/XBL account. Job done. The remaining 4% play the online MP, which is just the 3-lane levels.

These levels are not much more than running in one direction frag, rotate 120-180 degrees, run, frag, rinse/repeat and after 30 mins, order a pizza, then come back with greasy fingers on the controller. It’s just simple, repetitive, brain-switchy-offy escapism, with easy kills and easy maps to get them on. The skill compression is nutty on these games. Totally out of control skill gap with something like…Quake champions, or CS:GO

This figure surprised me when I heard it, but yeah, they get sucked into the marketing and just want to be the one who completes the game ‘first’ out of their group of friends and then trade the game in.

Everyone wants to play the ‘big game’, and feel as if they are part of something ‘big’.

96%

247

From the demo videos it seems like the gameplay is trying to follow currently popular trends in mainstream FPS. Why limit it to that when you can be creative with what’s possible in terms of Eve universe technologies? E.g. COD/Battlefield/PUBG/Fortnite etc. guns work very differently from the original 1998 Rainbow Six, is very different from Quake Champions… Bring back jump pads, telefrag, trigger hazards, rocket jumping, etc. go wild with the ideas!

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248

And, all of those things are easy to do in UE4

249

ftfy …

250

Oh, lol.

251

No, we don’t. You’re still thinking of EVE as it was, with a NOVA connecting to a case of virtual life based on emergent behaviour. Trouble is, CCP decided to take a different road a few years ago now. So any NOVA to connect with the new EVE model, if CCP were to go down that road, would carry a primary microtransaction focus. Which would accelerate their focus on moving EVE over to the new model more quickly.

As for Valve, duh. Publisher relations are a commercial relation.

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252

CS is doing increasingly good and the only microtransactions you got there are cosmetic (still not buying any since they are lootbox keys or whatever).

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253

And all the vehicles plus more.
And maps of all kinds.
And all the modes, also PvE.

Hehehehe.

Or just make it single player RPG. Without trying to challenge the actually competent competition and estabished titles, where they dont have any strength to push thru.

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254

I got my ten year coin the other day…and it got me thinking…CCP really have issues with how they market their IP.

255

No.

The path of least resistance is not single player, because you are relying on there being a story (and a story well told) for it to be received positively.

Then, you got another host of issues surrounding animation, motion capture, actors, suits, sound stages etc - this is a lot of money to spend on something that if you do, then players will skip it (unless it is better than Stephen King in its prose) and only truly exists to pacify a reviewer so it gets a ‘tick’ in the story component of the review.

I do find it slightly mad that this is the state of play in the games industry, where money is being spent on story, just so the reviews cover the ‘story’ element of the game. I do not know what the percentages are, but I do know it’s very high when people just ‘press x’ through what must have been hours/days/weeks/months of work recording, animating, etc. Just mad.

Better to avoid all of that and just get the MP aspect of the game out there. Guns, guns, guns, bullets, bunny-hop, kapow, frag, slide, bunny-hop, frag, kapow, kapow.

If the game mechanics are godly - no one will need a priest to explain the plot to us.

256

But have you seen the vidio?
There is lot of that already, everywhere. Simply changing models and maps is not going to fly anymore. But there was no EVE single player story driven RPG. Those story driven games are good in that they allow for far more than repeatable grind of multiplayer experience. Stealth tactics, romance, enjoyable characters, loresplaining, freedom to make giant maps etc. The thing is, it would start to look like GTAV but in New Eden, and CCP never had so much money. They would have to go sequel route, with chapters, like a books saga. Something like a route of slave from Amarrian wheat fields farm to the minmatar space to become warrior and then shoot and pilot his way, devise alliances with Matars to liberation of his own people in Amarr. And that is only one idea.

But I suppose CCP never knew how to do such things, they only dabbled in MMOS, while the games that could use EVE lore and settings are many, and its great Sci Fi, with a lot of lore to take from…

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257

How could they. They are throw away from the company the man who created Eve Online and after that they only modified his original ideas, nothing what THEY did was not successful.

258

Its not that amazing to be blunt, on its own in a mass effect style setting the story would be pretty meh, its just generic space drama, while some of it was interesting to read there really isn’t much you could do to make a fully fledged RPG out of it, it would just be mass effect with a different skin and mass effect was meh

259

Those are great ideas!

However…

In development, you write those ideas out in five minutes and put them on the shelf - because the core mechanics of a game are more important as - people skip cut scenes faster than Physical Ed!

The person who designs the game mechanics is there to ensure deployment of the mechanics comes first, just like level design focuses on the raw geometry of a level - nothing more.

Also (and just to extend a tiny olive branch) they do design levels (in SP/story FPS) with geometry that leads the players, with lighting above doors. Whether that is natural light or artificial lamps, the are charged with leading/directing players in a particular direction.

You may or may not have been aware of this, but when playing something like Half-Life, your path through the level(s) and across Black Mesa, C-17 or whatever was led through lighting, but primarily through geometry.

260

I would set it aboard a space station - as in part, the player will be seeing elements of New Eden through a window.

Literally and figuratively, and it would generate interest in the ships that fly past, and better connect the player to the outside world.

A world they are apart of…

1 Like