Entropia News: MindArk Test Workshop

Sometimes I think these are "get rid of (non paying) annoying customers announcements". ,-)

I guess some MA employee googled for "camera mods" in drunk mode, thinking he reached the zenith of awesome with it, while he ended up with the following Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft results...thinking, it might be a good idea to try it anyway...and the CEO going all crazy after getting introduced to the idea...(and ofc they added the "performance issue" as reason...SEE WOW links)

There was a community outrage in WOW in 2016 because of this "super idea" (suddenly declared as a bug) and it was just the max. zoom, that got "modded" to less then 50%. Quickly the community "developed" anti-50%-camera zoom mods...that got you banned. Diablo 3 was just a "proof of concept" by a private modder :

https://www.slashgear.com/diablo-iii-becomes-mmorpg-with-a-camera-angle-change-02377081/

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/21517-max-camera-distance-in-wow/

https://www.mmo-champion.com/conten...tance-Limit-Increase-August-4-Hotfixes?page=5

https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17613051191


Almost all other games, no matter if MMO or "just" online, never ever changed their ingame camera style. Mods by the community got tolerated now and then, but usually got you banned. This is a gigantic topic if you google...regarding camera mods...for example, if you discover "hidden" console commands, that let you change your field of view...the devs will go after you, or patch the game.
This is also how Blizzard explained it...we "suddenly" seen videos on youtube and wondered how the heck those camera views were possible...so we fixed that bug...Axe 1x0 anyone ?

I can only imagine the "performance boost" of Entropia, after the Camera Mod got introduced... ;O

Motion Blur and quick camera movements in their press release ftw ! ;D

https://www.mindark.com/press/press...the_Art_CryENGINE2_R_to_Create_the_Future.pdf


If you really read deep into this matter, you will understand, that it is not a good idea, regarding Entropia.
Too obvious...yet too awesome to be able to describe it. x'D

I wonder whats their next PR-gag will be...

 

Yeh getting the camera right is SUCH a big deal for any game. If MA think they have even the smallest hope in hell of getting it right by replacing the existing options with some new restricted thingy, they have just lost themselves a fuck ton of players

 

For pvp fish eye lens view can be advantageous. ( being able to look behind you while looking at a flat screen). Maybe this new camera will counter that.

 

i REALLY really hope you are right. Or better still, it simply doesn't get released. The camera system is 99% fine as it is. I listed off a bunch of bugs on the other forum. Can't remember exactly what now, but there were some about NPC getting in the way, some about vehicle views, some about getting locked out of control system via the map or chat somehow, some about being able to see inside your head and the old favourite of course.... ending seeing inside a mob.

I'll provide free consultancy on these issues if they'd like to fix them instead of changing the camera system in the name of "performance".

Incidentally I was chatting to my ex crytek friend about it the other day and he was confused. He didn't think changing the camera could have any effect on performance.

 

but does he know what mindark did to the poor cryengine? i know it doesn't happen often, but their explanation sounded very reasonable to me: to reduce the amount of (their own swedish excellence) scripts behind the curtain...

think about it:

first/third person, OTS
select mob
autoaim (bad coding)
run to 90% (?) of weaponrange
efficiency calculation 2.0 (lol)
loot (more lol? or maybe not)
next/previous target (sometimes funny, sometimes not)
obstacles in front or behind you

and things like that maybe, but it's only a rough guess ;)

 

then get rid of the auto aim crap and make people play properly rather than using bots/scripts

 

jak is also one of those oldskool disturbed family members.

Its amazing to SEE, how he actually defends MA, saying, that the camera is almost the same as it is now...while MA hasnt posted again (ofc not)...

Another very annoying hide & seek, between the family and the guessing community...without any further informations.
Like always.

Now, while I guess, that this will end up in some "State of the universe" (that we never got again) as a "camera system got canceled right after the 1st announcement", there is a slight chance, that this new camera will fuck with the game hard asap...changing things, that were never supposed to be changed, while we are all getting used to it... x'D

"This is still in early beta (bata) stages..." roflcopter jak, roflcopter...
Best repetitive, brainwashed phrase of 2018 so far, kudos to MA ! x'D

 

I was at the test workshop thing and met lots of the people at MA, I paid for my own trip excluding the dinner they bought us, the 1500SEK for hotel costs and the gifts they gave us at the end our visit (tshirt, posters, etc)

I don't work for MA and am not and have never been paid for the stuff I do with EU in regards to PCF/Wiki/EU Discord or any other community projects I'm involved in, it's just a fun low stress passtime for me when I'm not occupied with other things and even though I think the game has a lot of issues and room for improvement and I literally don't even recommend the game to any of my friends when they ask me about it, I'm still a fan of the game on some level or I wouldn't play it or care about any of this stuff.

I'm a 22 year old male living in Canada who's current full time employment is Twitch streaming an entirely different game.

I check this forum from time to time so if anyone has any questions me about the test workshop or literally anything else feel free to ask.

 

Yeah, for sure, while I was there some of the other participants and I spoke about potential improvements to their marketing and different possible marketing pushes and the discussion we had on that topic was primarily that currently they'd like to focus on making improvements to the game and platform in several ways prior to investing in marketing because they also are completely aware their product has many flaws, everybody there seemed to agree with that.

League of Legends. I've played Entropia Universe for many many years, I originally signed up as a young child in 2006 and thought the game seemed really cool but I couldn't figure it out. I told myself I'd get back to it when I got older and I would figure it out. Three years later I received an e-mail notifying me nearly three years had passed and my account would be deactivated, so I decided to try the game out again with a new account.

I've played on and off since then and in the last two or three years began to play more regularly due to having more free time and money to spare.

In League of Legends I'm one of the highest ranked players in North America so my wait times for matches are often times extremely long (15min-1hr), that's when I normally play Entropia Universe, browse the community forums, work on EntropiaWiki, etc.

 

This is how most felt after 1-2 years of playing Entropia...except for family members, addicts, gamblers and scammers. :p

Then you will get used to it...because nothing ever changes...often things got even worse.

Yet we all still hope for these improvements...that will never ever arrive...thats the saddest part of the story.

p.s.
But you werent/arent one of those (paid) streamers to pr-gag the sh!t out of Entropia ?

I remember Hypnotyk having his 2 minutes of fame...by not answering much...just to become silent,
when MindArk hired "REKT Nation" in 2016...to make Entropia great again... x'D

http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/f...ound-Official-Streamers-for-MindArk-on-Twitch



You want to know more about MindArk and REKTNation ?

Feel free to go here :
http://www.entropiaplanets.com/thre...nation-2016-another-partner-vanishes-o.22248/

 

Thanks for letting me know Mr McC. I've not been there for a bit.

Well that is the most encouraging thing I've heard so far. Darkaruki, can you concur with this assessment?

That said, I'm confused by his aggressive attitude. I wouldn't exactly say I was trolling but I'll hand him that I was making an extreme point (in essence a "quit threat") - that doesn't make it any the less true or valid. I don't remember ever threatening to quit before, except there is a chance I may have just before VU9 (I didn't get on with those plastic avatars)... but the thing is... I DID quit after VU 9... for the best part of 3 years... only coming back about a year into CE2 (VU11). So if I did threaten to quit at that time, it wouldn't have so much been a threat... more of a statement of fact. I don't know if I did though (threaten to quit) anyhow... my reasons for leaving at that time were largely personal circumstances (I had something important to work on and couldn't afford distractions) and then I think what followed was a combo of waiting for MA to bring back a lot of the old content/sort the bugs, and getting around to buying a new (CE2 capable) graphics card.

Anyhow, I suspect Jak's issue is that he can't disassociate himself from his own knowledge (this is a hard thing to do). Likely when he reads all the posts, mentally he augments their content with what he witnessed first hand. So when others get upset about the vagueness he probably can't understand why.

I think his post confirming we can still zoom from 1st person out to 3rd person (and that one OTS view still exists at least) with full 360 positioning (but in what/which axis? X? Y? or X and Y like currently?) is the first I've seen that "plane as day" states that this is still the case.

From what he writes it sounds not so much like a change of view/camera but more a change of targeting system?

 

Actually, I think if you look at the patches in the past two years they have made some fairly good improvements to the game and changed the economic direction in a way that is more sustainable while still providing many opportunities for profit for players who know their way around the game well, and I think events, while still leaving a lot to ask for, have gotten a lot better than they were in previous years in terms of the Mayhem events.

That's just my opinion though and, of course, I still think the game does have a ton of issues and room for improvements and fresh content.

No, I don't stream Entropia Universe on my regular Twitch channel. On a fairly rare basis I stream a little bit on an alternate Twitch channel in order to not alienate my viewerbase with content they are not interested in, but that's purely for leisure, gets only a handful of viewers at most, and is in no way connected with my regular Twitch identity.

I'm not really too certain about the rest of what you are talking about or how it pertains to this discussion, the only part I know anything about is Hypnotyk being involved in an EU streamer promotion program type thing a long while back when they wanted to encourage players to create content for their game, I don't think the initiative lasted very long, but I only know that much because he is a friend of mine and fellow Administrator of the EU Discord, as for who he is, I'm pretty sure he's a guy in Chicago who works for some sort of tech company and has a wife and kids. :-)

 

Well, based on my time playing with the new beta or alpha or whatever of the new stuff and talking to the developers/designers behind it during my time there, it is certainly both a chance of view/camera as well a change of targeting system, but the changes to the targeting system are probably the more significant ones.

The camera we had available to us there, as jak describes, was similar to the OTS we currently have, but it lets you zoom into FPS mode. One of the main changes to the current OTS camera was an "Action" mode and a "Passive" mode with different angles and controls. The targeting system was fairly different and basically allowed us to lock onto mobs and seamlessly engage in combat with them and completely eliminated all hitbox issues that currently plague EU, it also handled very smoothly and made "Active Hunting" more enjoyable while keeping the accessibility of the "Passive Hunting" (low effort) which the majority of players as far as I can tell use these days.

The "Birds Eye View" camera mode we currently have as, I believe, our default camera, which allows for 360 viewing and extreme zooming out was NOT available in the Alpha we played, however, a special "Avatar Viewing" camera mode (also currently in the game technically) was available and, I believe, improved, for use in taking screenshots and whatnot.

I did speak to the developers about the lack of the "Birds Eye View" style camera saying that although it may not be an issue for hunting, it would be unfortunate to not have it available in a similar fashion to the "Avatar Viewing" style camera mode for observing vistas and whatnot, they said they agreed and that they planned to make it available in this fashion in the completed release.

There were some other planned improvements to the game we had mentioned to us/got to play around with a bit in the Alpha but I'm not entirely sure how much I am at liberty to describe, I guess there were some changes which made vehicles easier to use and some changes which made avatar movement a bit nicer.

Not sure if that answers all of what you're wondering about, let me know if you have any more questions and I can try to answer.

 

Thanks for the reply, appreciated.
I added the additional "streamer-info", to avoid double postings of informations, in case the question "What kind of paid streaming are you talking about ?" would arise. I love to add infos. :)

Hence I made a seperate thread about the Mindark-Streaming-Deal, to not to interference with this thread.
All you need to know about this "streaming promotion" can/will be found there :

http://www.entropiaplanets.com/thre...nation-2016-another-partner-vanishes-o.22248/

 

Clearly that’s not the case or you wouldn’t have seen so many mid and higher level players selling out.

The game reached a ‘peak of excitement’ with the big loots and high mark-up items of PE days.

Back then you could play for hours on end and have fun.

Now you log in and minutes later you wonder what you ever saw in the game.

That’s just my take on EU as it is today and I know I’m not alone in this opinion.

 

Thanks the attempt at clarity Dark... it still smells extremely fishy to me... something about the descriptions just doesn't seem to make sense and feels like a "guarded explanation". Hard to describe what I mean,... it feels like there is something major missing and everyone who went is trying very very hard to avoid specifically mentioning it. Sorta a bit like everyone is leaving out that MA removed the floor or something and hoping no one directly asks them "is the floor is still there?" so they don't have to deal with the uproar when the community realises that MA covertly want to remove the floor, and hope that no one would care or notice.

That probably doesn't make a lot of sense. I guess another way of putting it is that no one is explaining it in the detail I personally would, if I were in their position. [That is assuming I was allowed to by MA]. None of the explanations feel enough like a specification for my liking. I can imagine McCormick, as someone who regularly finds bugs in the game is probably equally nerked by this. He probably has a very analytical mind and is good at thinking up "but what if"" or "what about?" style questions. It's this kind of thinking that leads to the uncovering of bugs.

Anyway, let's try a few direct questions:

1. Can I zoom out to the level I used to be able to, position the camera where I want (say 30 degrees from the ground and 90 degrees to the left of my avatar) and run around and hunt, re positioning the camera as and when I please?

2. Can I turn off all on screen icons and UI while doing so and just play with the keyboard and mouse?

3. Can I control the vertical height of the camera (say put the camera about 2 meters behind my avatar and move it directly up and down so that is aiming on my avatar's head, waist, or feet?

4. Were there any changes to how we control ships in space? (I ask because I use a joystick, and if MA have changed anything, that will likely need to be dealt with at my end)

 

I understand where you and NotAdmin are coming from about wanting the camera style and feel you most prefer staying available in the exact way you are currently using it, being averse to changes, especially on a game that pretty much all of us have been playing for years, is pretty common and I can tell you right now I'm not at all an enthusiast of change or anything like that, along with this pretty much everybody else at the Test Workshop, in the discussion we had prior to getting our hands on the Alpha, talked about how we weren't sure why this was needed, how we didn't really want these changes, several participants even basically said they hated change, but all of us ended up finding merit in and enjoying some aspects of the camera changes, so I would really say that getting a feel for how it handles is pretty important to actually judge it, it did feel good to use after a bit of getting used to.

I covered this, the camera style I believe you're describing was not in the Alpha and, as I mentioned, I believe will be allowed as an alternate camera choice when outside of combat mode. (My impression)

Yeah.

This is definitely available in the "Avatar Viewing" type camera, and might be available elsewhere but I would be surprised if it was enabled in the combat mode, nor would you want it to be.

We didn't do anything with space in the Test Workshop.