The tech is already pretty good. Not something you would make a narrative driven title with yet, but it 100% can fill barks and voices for background NPCs. Only a matter of time till it reaches that level, however.

Union is doing what it has to in order to survive because even though VO isn’t the lion’s share of a project’s budget, it’s enough to make the executives salivate. Especially with something like the Vader concept where you can’t used canned lines or live actors.

Sort of a lost cause, sadly. Even if the US and EU passed strong legislation against the tech, it would just move to Eastern countries with less concerns about VAs. Hopefully some small part of the industry survives and there is still work to be had in indie and more passion driven spaces.

Really enjoying it. Combat is just different enough to make the turn based stuff feel good without going full FF7 Rebirth.

Biggest thing I love is the narrative. Refreshing to be playing a game that focuses on a bunch of 30yo characters and not getting bogged down in coming of age or daddy/mommy issues. I love myself a good JRPG where a group of best friends get together to go kill god, but it is nice for them not to be all teenagers. There is a single teenager and she is actually quite endearing, themed more as a daughter figure, and not annoying.

Reminds me a bit of what I liked so much about Lost Odyssey.

The Half Elf wrote on Apr 20, 2025, 13:51:
I do hope they get a retail game and someone licenses the tech to make a properly managed game.

The tech is built on a heavily modified CryEngine 4. The same version that Lumberyard was made from and that version is barely usable for anything but an early 2010s style first person shooter. Even when SC switched to Lumberyard, they took very few actual changes that Amazon released, mainly doing it to avoid paying CryTek any licensing fees.

The AWS cloud integration stuff never worked, as it was nothing more than some CloudFormation templates that quickly grew stale, and the changes Amazon made to the engine itself for cloud-distributed systems tanked the performance of the engine in a lot of other scenarios and made it difficult to work with (everything is an Event Bus which is great for things like social services, but slow for things like rendering or physics).

What teams like New World and Shatterline have done with that engine is nothing short of amazing, but the tech is honestly holding those games back in probably the same way it is holding back SC. $800M dollars is insane for the barely playable game that SC is and that tech is a large reason for it.

Honestly, the assets would probably be the only thing salvageable, should SC go bankrupt.

Smoke and mirrors just to change the game’s monetization. May not of been the plan originally, but that is what it all of the OW2 nonsense ended up being.

Having tried to use their motion tracking through the iPhone app, it is pretty buggy and will constantly swap my left and right sides making it unusable for any motion game. Using Steam VR with controllers works really well for precise motion tracking. Not sure this camera will be a viable improvement over that except for maybe gimmick party games.

As someone that was also an early adopter of the Kinect, I’d want to see some solid tech analysis before jumping in.

I mean, you can be both. Just because you are nice and invested in your product doesn’t mean that what you produce is going to vibe with the gaming zeitgeist. Concord is also a technically sound and well built game from a performance perspective. All it takes is some bad design leads and directors to take a project in a direction that is destined to fail.

From what I am told by a former member of the team, they tried to point out the issues pre-launch, but the leads thought they knew better.

I’ve personally been on some phenomenal game development teams that I was proud to work with, but the game itself was cursed with mandated trash from upper management and sunk the titles or got them cancelled before launch.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 30, 2024, 18:31:

SimplyMonk wrote on Oct 30, 2024, 16:29:
You’d think with that much investment they would want to maintain the talent that managed to launch a technically sound game.

Yes. The design, art, and marketing were horrible, but those are fixable problems and finding a competent team of people that can actually launch a functional game is really hard.

Easier to scrap the whole team I guess than try and salvage the components that worked well.

I think the opposite is true. The game was functional at launch, and had solid mechanics from what I've read and seen. The problem as you say is the marketing, art, and design were bad, and once that reputation was solidified, there was a huge uphill climb to undo that perception. They could change all the art and characters, and spend another $100M on marketing, but it would just be throwing good money after bad as it's unlikely it would ever attract the playerbase to be profitable after becoming a laughing stock and synonymous with failure.

The best option would be to keep the engine and mechanics in place, completely redo the world and characters, and launch under a different title, hiding the fact that its origins were Concord. But that ignores the tactical decision to even pursue a hero shooter in the first place. There are already established brands, and the market is saturated. Even with a stellar title, it's a tough sell. Maybe it could be done if tied to some popular IP. I would say "Star Wars," but that star has fallen quite a bit. Marvel maybe?

Oh, I don’t think the game was salvageable. I meant more that the engineers and producers that made up the team which made a technically sound and performative game. Design was bad, but there are usually a few designers and creative leads that probably needed to have their priorities checked or be reassigned. It is crazy to me to throw away a studio that can ship a solid game from a technical standpoint. Tech, engine, online services and all that could be reused and repurposed for something better.

You’d think with that much investment they would want to maintain the talent that managed to launch a technically sound game.

Yes. The design, art, and marketing were horrible, but those are fixable problems and finding a competent team of people that can actually launch a functional game is really hard.

Easier to scrap the whole team I guess than try and salvage the components that worked well.

Prez wrote on Oct 13, 2024, 21:22:
In response to JTW: yep. That's why I can't truly claim to be pro-union. Unions will often vote to limit a companies long term success for personal interests. I get why they do it, as I said they are a net positive compared to corporations that have no checks and balances. Unions at best are a lesser of two evils. I worked union jobs for 20 years, so I have seen it firsthand.

Ideally unions are for the long term success of the workers. That comes at the expense of the company but shouldn’t be detrimental to the long term success of the company unless the union or the company is poorly managed, which does happen. If a company goes under though or can’t pay out pensions, that is bad for the union as well.

It is all a numbers game and the instant the company thinks it would make more money shutting down the union shop and moving operations offshore, it will.

JTW wrote on Oct 13, 2024, 21:03:

SimplyMonk wrote on Oct 13, 2024, 17:05:

Marvin T. Martian wrote on Oct 13, 2024, 15:40:

Overon wrote on Oct 13, 2024, 14:05:
Labor actions are good.

NO THEY ARE NOT "The demand by striking U.S. dockworkers for a 77% wage increase is breathtaking in its scale even to veterans of the bare-knuckle negotiations of past port labor contracts." "captains’ pay at US mainline carriers has increased 46% since 2020, while those flying for US regional airlines saw their wages rise 86%." and on and on. Just more increases in prices for those that can't hold the public and country hostage

What they negotiated was an increase of 68% over 7 years which is pretty reasonable given inflation. On average that means that in 7 years, the most senior of dock workers will be making $120K/year working 40hr/week which seems pretty solid if not still on the low side due to our inflation over the next 7 years and real estate prices in around those docks. Probably not even enough though to support a family without their partner also working a comparable job minus daycare.

What is your problem with any of this?

To be fair, they're not really doing the rest of us any favors with this. Our port system is backwards - of developed countries, it's one of the most out-of-date and primitive, also making it slow and much more expensive.

Why? Because the union has blocked the automation that has improved every other modern port in the world.

Yeah. That’s fair, but it isn’t like automation would do anything for us but remove jobs and increase corporate profits. Also, if automation was really ready to replace dock workers management would roll that shit out instantly and burn the union.

Marvin T. Martian wrote on Oct 13, 2024, 15:40:

Overon wrote on Oct 13, 2024, 14:05:
Labor actions are good.

NO THEY ARE NOT "The demand by striking U.S. dockworkers for a 77% wage increase is breathtaking in its scale even to veterans of the bare-knuckle negotiations of past port labor contracts." "captains’ pay at US mainline carriers has increased 46% since 2020, while those flying for US regional airlines saw their wages rise 86%." and on and on. Just more increases in prices for those that can't hold the public and country hostage

What they negotiated was an increase of 68% over 7 years which is pretty reasonable given inflation. On average that means that in 7 years, the most senior of dock workers will be making $120K/year working 40hr/week which seems pretty solid if not still on the low side due to our inflation over the next 7 years and real estate prices in around those docks. Probably not even enough though to support a family without their partner also working a comparable job minus daycare.

What is your problem with any of this?

Don’t understand the desire for games to essentially offload their databases to the blockchain. Security concerns and blockchain manipulation (depending on what flavor of blockchain they are using) alone would make it undesirable.

You have a database. You have player IDs. Implement player trading in your game. Done. Why you need to crowdsource ownership for game data is a mystery to me.

If you want to monetize trading just do what Warframe does and make it cost a paid currency.

Blue wrote on Sep 8, 2024, 10:28:

Cutter wrote on Sep 8, 2024, 10:13:
Sure they do, so long as its their ideology. The problem is we now live in an age where people feel they have the right to be outraged over the slightest thing - and I do mean slight.

This is sadly super common. People will follow a chain of logic or make an observation that is bordering on true insight, but then completely miss that final step to relate it themselves and their actions.

Prez wrote on Sep 7, 2024, 18:06:
In the meantime I am considering a breast reduction

Your back will thank you.

Having talked with a former coworker on the dev team, it was supposed to be F2P except that management changed their mind in the last year. It was designed a more of a Counterstrike/Valorant style game, but again the lead designers pivoted in the last year to more casual. 4 characters had years of design done for them, but the rest came in hot with a lot of complaints internally as they failed to have distinct silhouettes and were not recognizable in fast paced gameplay. Designers didn’t listen to feedback thinking they knew best even after the horrible playtest.

Lastly, tremendous amount of time, effort, and money went into the cinematics. They had a year of cinematics backlog made. The reason for this is suspect, but my friend said the cinematic director was sleeping with the game director (married at the time) and received three promotions in the space of the year to creative director.

If you want to make a year of cinematics, locking down the look of the entire roster early and with no room to pivot is what happens. Characters had to be rushed to make movies for them and then they couldn’t change since their “look” was locked in.

Ignoring the gossip about the affair, that alone would cause your character design to be flawed. Using the Sony Motion Capture studio is expensive and probably also another reason the additional characters were just generic humanoid as you don’t have the cash to do motion capture for extreme body types.

Why someone thought a multiplayer game needed weekly movies is beyond me.

Eldaron Imotholin wrote on Aug 19, 2024, 05:26:
It's kinda cute 😂

Thank you. I am kind of cute. And I just don’t buy into the Imperium’s propaganda. My Thousand Sons regularly work over marines by the squad.

I mean, lore accurate marines are monsters when they are taking down normal troops or backwater corrupt governors, but against a Chaos Marine it is a pretty even match. Tyranids have been know to wipe out entire battalions of veteran Terminators. Hive Tyrants and Daemons are no joke either. Just depends on what they are fighting.

Game looks like it is going to be solid, but that feels like pretty weak reasoning to not have 4 player co-op.

Just saw it. It is a “fuck you” to fans of the series, but the PG-13 rating and decent production value will probably garner the appreciation of the 10-13yo demographic who haven’t played the games.

Plot is very predictable, acting inconsistent, but Pandora is spot on and the action is almost Marvel quality.

jdreyer wrote on Aug 1, 2024, 21:36:
Hmm, looks pretty derivative and uninspired.

Yeah. Nothing here looking interesting. Just WoW Mythic dungeons. Even the combat, skills, and art style could of just been Burning Crusade era

Not really defining a new genre either. MODA? Ugh. If I take WoW and remove everything but Mount riding is that MOMA then?

Awesome. Looking forward to 1.0. I went heavy into this a year or two ago and played for a week solidly but stopped when I kept running into the WIP narrative stuff. Wanted to hold off that that point till the full game is out. Minor quibble, but I honestly take any reason I can to hold off on playing an EA game and waiting for full release. Really paid off on BG3 and hoping the same with Hades 2.