I started boycotting EA a long time before Battlefield 3 came out, so idk for sure. They probably wanted people to be able to launch games from their ~GAMER SOCIAL NETWORK~. Web browsers don't allow webapps to run arbitrary programs on the host computer, for obvious reasons, so you need some sort of plugin to do it. ofc you also want to do a bang-up job securing that plugin, otherwise someone else could embed it in their website and use it to hijack your users' computers.

Well, I got into the beta. What was strange is that they sent me the message that I got into the beta, and I only had that same day to try testing it out. I got home from work and tried it. I was initially pretty bummed about it being a web-browser based launching game, but the graphics were decent enough (however the settings were completely uncustomizable and anti-aliasing couldn't be enabled).

The controls, like that guy said in his review, were strange. Overall they were what you'd expect using a mouse and keyboard for a flight sim. However, there was no explanation of what the controls were anywhere, so for the first 5 minutes or so I was literally just pressing every key on my keyboard to see what it would do. Also, unless I somehow missed a key, there was no way to switch into a cockpit view, which I found pretty annoying.

The three ships you could select between operated fairly different, as you would expect them to - (X-wing, Y-wing, and Tie Interceptor). However, they all had the exact same loadout availabilities, which seemed odd to me (proton torpedoes and homing missiles).

The gameplay was fun, but got old pretty quickly. I guess I suppose this was due to a lack of any real objectives. The only gamemode that was available was team deathmatch, which was simply a timed skirmish where the team with the most kills at the end of the round wins. I didn't really try the customizing, as I really couldn't even figure it out. I tried messing with it for a couple of minutes and couldn't find anything to spend my in-game credits on, so I gave up and went back to playing.

That's really all of the comments I have. Overall the game was fine, but only having three ships, one single map to play on, and only one gamemode really hurt the experience. Not to mention a very unpolished menu. I'm sure most of these points will be addressed by the time this is released, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Terrible. It has like 3% of the functionality that TIE Fighter did.

Not trying to resurrect and old thread, even though this may not qualify as an old thread some years ago, but I'm wondering if anyone here still plays this?

Ah yes, this reminds me:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131402-Disney-Abandons-Star-Wars-1313-Trademark

Option A: Good riddance
Option B: All that potential is now lost ... in time. Like tears... in ... rain. Time to die. It's too bad this game won't live... but then again, who does?

Once everyone found out this game was a goddamn microtransaction money maker everyone stopped caring. It was guaranteed not to be a fun game at that point.

Ah yes, this reminds me:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131402-Disney-Abandons-Star-Wars-1313-Trademark

Option A: Good riddance
Option B: All that potential is now lost ... in time. Like tears... in ... rain. Time to die. It's too bad this game won't live... but then again, who does?

Besides, your examples were terrible ones. Guild Wars is paid for up-front and has no real server-side infrastructure.

If you really wanted to shoot me down, you should have mentioned TF2.

A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO and MMOG) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting large numbers of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet.[SUP][1][/SUP] MMOs usually have at least one persistent world, however some games differ. These games can be found for most network-capable platforms, including the personal computer, video game console, or smartphones and other mobile devices.

MMOGs can enable players to cooperate and compete with each other on a large scale, and sometimes to interact meaningfully with people around the world. They include a variety of gameplay types, representing many video game genres.

Guild Wars 2 is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. Set in the fantasy world of Tyria, the game follows the re-emergence of Destiny's Edge, a disbanded guild dedicated to fighting the Elder Dragons, a Lovecraftian species that has seized control of Tyria in the time since the original Guild Wars. The game takes place in a persistent world with a story that progresses in instanced environments.[SUP][3][/SUP]


As a sequel to Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 features the same lack of subscription fees that distinguished its predecessor from other commercially developed online games of the time, though a purchase is still required to install the game.[SUP][9][/SUP] As reported by NCsoft and ArenaNet, by September 13 (about 2 weeks after launch), despite temporarily halting first-party sales, the game has sold over 2 million copies.[SUP][10][/SUP][SUP][11][/SUP] The game's peak concurrency exceeds 400,000 players.[SUP][12][/SUP] By January 2013, over 3 million copies of the game have been sold.[SUP][13][/SUP] By August 2013 the sales have shifted 3.5 million copies,[SUP][14][/SUP] peak concurrency at 460,000.[SUP][14][/SUP]

You're referring to Guild Wars 1, which was much more like Diablo in that sense. Guild Wars 2 is not instanced, you choose a server and play on it and anyone on your server can be seen anywhere outside of specific dungeons that are party-driven.

Just about every mmo has instancing/zoning of some type and of some magnitude so as to not over tax the server and clients. Imagine a zone with 500 players, each client will receive 499 position packets of all surrounding players roughly some 30 times per second. That means a server would roughly be sending out 85.66MB a second of JUST movement packets. Now imagine the added load of chat packets, inventory queries, attack packets, etc...

(MATH for those interested)
Update packet is roughly 12bytes (3 floats, not including headers)
Each player receives 499 update packets 30 times a second
There are 500 players to update

89820000 bytes a second.

Each player would be downloading roughly 175KB a second.

MMOs never update at 30 snapshots per second. More like 10. Sometimes more like 1. And they use techniques to trim down the data they send, like taking advantage of the client PVS (networking "LOD").

Zoning isn't remotely necessary, it's just a lot more difficult.

It's kinda disturbing that 3 Star Wars games have gone off track now, 4 if you include BF3.

Like the Darth Maul video game:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/04/08/lucasarts-canceled-a-star-wars-darth-maul-game

Has there ever been a truly popular Star Wars game?

It's been happening since forever. And the ones that do get released are always so obscure. Has there ever been a truly popular Star Wars game? Battlefront 2, maybe? Star Wars Galaxies at its peak?

Okay, okay, Kotor.. I'll give you that. And I guess SWTOR..

MMOs never update at 30 snapshots per second. More like 10. Sometimes more like 1. And they use techniques to trim down the data they send, like taking advantage of the client PVS (networking "LOD").

Zoning isn't remotely necessary, it's just a lot more difficult.

Also, just because there are 500 other clients around doesn't mean the server will actually tell you about them. Your client may be aware of a lot less than that (well under a 100), even if you theoretically should be able to see them around you.


Zoning/Instancing can help reduce cost though, especially client side if you are a console MMO.

Exactly. I don't have any faith in console MMO's though, I just don't see their technical limitations allowing people to expand or develop an MMO without considerably more difficulties.

Exactly. I don't have any faith in console MMO's though, I just don't see their technical limitations allowing people to expand or develop an MMO without considerably more difficulties.

The challenging parts of MMO are on the server, not on the client. Also, ps4 and xbone are pretty much just PCs.

ps4 and bone might be underpowered compared to a modern desktop but they are both based on the same commodity AMD x86 SoC, they are both little endian, they are both SMP, they are both OoO superscalar, with the same branch prediction and prefetching and all those other nice things we have on a modern desktop.

They aren't space alien architectures like earlier consoles. They aren't might-as-well-be-VLIW in-order superscalar. They don't have impossible to program asynchronous stream coprocessors. They aren't two consoles glued together driving different screens. They don't use a repurposed character mode for graphics and you don't have to fit your draw calls between scanlines. Consoles are stupid and have always been stupid. So yes, ps4 and xbone are pretty much just PCs.

ps4 and bone might be underpowered compared to a modern desktop but they are both based on the same commodity AMD x86 SoC, they are both little endian, they are both SMP, they are both OoO superscalar, with the same branch prediction and prefetching and all those other nice things we have on a modern desktop.

They aren't space alien architectures like earlier consoles. They aren't might-as-well-be-VLIW in-order superscalar. They don't have impossible to program asynchronous stream coprocessors. They aren't two consoles glued together driving different screens. They don't use a repurposed character mode for graphics and you don't have to fit your draw calls between scanlines. Consoles are stupid and have always been stupid. So yes, ps4 and xbone are pretty much just PCs.

The first paragraph is extremely general hardware characteristics. And definitely because you can cite some of the crazy things people used to have to do, means developing for it is the same. :p

In your experience, you have found developing for PS4 and Xbone to be the same as developing for PC?