[----]

Ronan, on 06 August 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

I think you would like to say what you really think about this game but there is a conflict of interests.

As I said, I only had played a few minutes of it. Half of the first Level or so. Will play after patch 1.02 (if that also fixes the RShift and RCTRL issues besides the announced numpad issues, otherwise I wait until 1.1).

And no, there is absolutely no conflict of itnerests. I will write my opinion down as I see it.

My current opinion up until now is, that the game shouldn't have been published in this state (only talking about the bugs and glitches, not the content, cannot say much about the latter)



I think this image is proof enough that my opinion is valid, that it shouldn't have been released in that state. But since I want to enjoy the game with proper controls I wait for the patch. Subtract keyconfic and graphic settings from these 13 mintes and the intros and I played maybe 4 or 5 minutes of the game itself.

[Ronin]

fuegerstef, on 06 August 2013 - 05:27 AM, said:

As I said, I only had played a few minutes of it. Half of the first Level or so. Will play after patch 1.02 (if that also fixes the RShift and RCTRL issues besides the announced numpad issues, otherwise I wait until 1.1).

And no, there is absolutely no conflict of itnerests. I will write my opinion down as I see it.

My current opinion up until now is, that the game shouldn't have been published in this state (only talking about the bugs and glitches, not the content, cannot say much about the latter)

That is fair enough, but it is also fair that people get pissed off with the glaring issues that this game has on release. I am a patient man, I want the game to be good so I don't mind waiting, especially for the editor. But it's perfectly acceptable for people to get bent out of shape about what is a shoddy product at the moment. Maybe Interceptor should have released it as a pre-release version and let people know there will be problems. Also if you played a bit more than 13 minutes you would be quite shocked at some of the problems, I played for about 3 hours and loved it at first, but the problems do stack up so I stopped playing before they reached critical mass and really pissed me off.

[----]

Yeah, I am with you. Especially because they hut themselves with the early release. Not only that some review scores had been higher if less bugs were there ... they also have to fight their reputation of releasing an unfinished and buggy product.

I have no idea if the early release was to get some money because budget ran out, or so, bso an early release as you suggested would have been a solution.

[Ronin]

fuegerstef, on 06 August 2013 - 05:42 AM, said:

Yeah, I am with you. Especially because they hut themselves with the early release. Not only that some review scores had been higher if less bugs were there ... they also have to fight their reputation of releasing an unfinished and buggy product.

I have no idea if the early release was to get some money because budget ran out, or so, bso an early release as you suggested would have been a solution.

Yeah a lot of people are doing that and have done it, DayZ will do it and people will be aware its not ready and be more forgiving. I think Chivilary did it too and they also had a team in the same style as Interceptor (guys all over the world) and that game get all the love.

[MusicallyInspired]

There's this idea going around that if you want to be a quality developer you have to act like you know what you're doing even if you don't so people will take you seriously. I don't know how true that is. I think Interceptor did the best anyone could do with the type of game they wanted to make. Sure they're brand new and have a lot to learn but even considering that, they did a lot with what they had. To have any credibility at all they probably had to put on some faces to get to where they are. Was it right? Did it work? Maybe not how they imagined, buy they did the best they could, it seems. And I certainly don't get the all-egos vibe from them.

[uraganotkirki]

Well, I posted my UT3 vs ROTT comparison in terms of frames per second on the Interceptor forums.


System info: http://pastebin.com/UZKNFTNp

Quote

Maybe Interceptor should have released it as a pre-release version and let people know there will be problems.

Open beta + a proper way to gather information / crash reports. I wonder why isn't this an industry standard.

[Kathy]

StrikerMan780, on 05 August 2013 - 07:57 PM, said:

they only give good reviews to those who bribe them / pay them massive sums of money to give said good reviews.

I seriously doubt they are involved in raw bribing. Their reviewers might be more inclined to give(or just be somewhat biased regarding publisher/developer) better reviews to some games, but outright taking bribes is most likely out of question.

[leilei]

They had all this time since their originally projected Dec 2012 release to figure out the obvious issues.... I keep hearing "it interceptor first game" and "money" as excuses on other boards about it from "oldschool fans". They've had a game to show in the reveal trailer, and from there, that's plenty of time to realize getting bumped into microdetails and long-range instant hitscan isn't a fun thing from just self-testing.

Even the original Rise of the Triad had a buggy internet-exclusive public shareware release before they've gone through with the registered release months later, with the intent for feedback. Duke3D and in other companies, Descent and Quake as well (Quake had a few more months for its multiplayer testing). If they really wanted to stay faithful to the "oldschool" FPS design they proclaim to, they should've had a premature buggy shareware episode release.


It's like expecting Atomic Bomberman to be as good as Super Bomberman. ROTT13 has many of the similar issues in parallel - hyping on "oldschool", uptodate graphics, system instability, lost charm, missing features, and a whole lot of swearing shoehorned in just for the sake of "by gamers for gamers".

[Striker]

Kathy, on 06 August 2013 - 07:10 AM, said:

I seriously doubt they are involved in raw bribing. Their reviewers might be more inclined to give(or just be somewhat biased regarding publisher/developer) better reviews to some games, but outright taking bribes is most likely out of question.

You'd be surprised in some cases. Metacritic caught IGN taking bribes before, and reduced the impact their reviews have on overall scores.

There's also suspicion that EA is planning to bribe IGN again in regards to Battlefield 4.



In some other cases, you're right, they aren't raw bribes, but they give incentives for reviewers to give good scores, or threaten to reject early access to future titles, among other things.

[Kathy]

StrikerMan780, on 06 August 2013 - 11:41 AM, said:

Metacritic caught IGN taking bribes before, and reduced the impact their reviews have on overall scores.

Source?

Quote

There's also suspicion that EA is planning to bribe IGN again in regards to Battlefield 4.

Whose suspicion, yours?

You're grasping at straws. IGN is an entertainment site with various activities which includes reviews and promotions(ads).

Nevertheless, I'm more amazed about melodrama concerning game reviews in general. Or amazed about gaming community itself cause it's one big pot whereas other industries and art media aren't that united. Whether it's Ebert saying whether games art or not, or some dumbass about violence affecting kids, the whole 'union' get up in arms to push intruders. Where was I... Long story short - ROTT sucks.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

If nothing else, there's hints that this sort of thing goes on with other reviewing sites:

CVG.com - Fired Kane & Lynch reviewer rejoins Gamespot parent, explains story

[Hank]

Kathy, on 06 August 2013 - 12:11 PM, said:

Source?


Whose suspicion, yours?

Gaming is Big Business, kick backs are sort of expected, well, in my books.

http://www.vgchartz....-taking-bribes/
http://systemwars.co...to-be-the-goty/

Still, as for Rise of the Triads, the reviewer at IGN obviously did not expect any kickbacks, I think

[Kathy]

I read these links. The first one failed to mention anything about IGN and the second concerns preview-related prediction ad or something. It is sure is questionable for a site with reviews to make that predictions/ads but nowhere near to call it a "bribe".

[DavoX]

For UDK even if it's a great engine (I love it) you really have to take a LOT of things in consideration to keep the framerate up, After mod tools I'll check for proper optimization on the levels and see what they've done.

[Hank]

Kathy, on 06 August 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

I read these links. The first one failed to mention anything about IGN and the second concerns preview-related prediction ad or something. It is sure is questionable for a site with reviews to make that predictions/ads but nowhere near to call it a "bribe".

The first link gives reasonable cause to accept the possibility that kickbacks may happen.

The second one shows a strange entry about a game that has not been released yet. The webmaster was under the impression IGN will call it to be a GOTY?


You will be hard pressed to find real evidence of criminal activity, but I can't help wonder about critics in general, be it music, film and now games.

[Striker]

Kathy, on 06 August 2013 - 12:11 PM, said:

Source?

My bad, it wasn't IGN that Metacritic caught, but another reviewer. Got confused with something else that I'll post further down. (Both things were posted in a single conversation on another message board.)
Here's one article: http://www.vgchartz....-taking-bribes/

Kathy, on 06 August 2013 - 12:11 PM, said:

Whose suspicion, yours?

You're grasping at straws. IGN is an entertainment site with various activities which includes reviews and promotions(ads).

No, not mine.

Here's what I've been talking about:

http://www.maxconsol...romote-the-game
http://3dsforums.com...-preview-46901/
https://twitter.com/...452542048313345

Note that I mentioned suspicions, not outright proof in that case.

Regardless of anything, I personally liken listening to the opinion of an IGN Reviewer about the quality of a game, to listening to Justin Bieber's opinion about the quality of a song.

Kathy, on 06 August 2013 - 12:11 PM, said:

Nevertheless, I'm more amazed about melodrama concerning game reviews in general. Or amazed about gaming community itself cause it's one big pot whereas other industries and art media aren't that united. Whether it's Ebert saying whether games art or not, or some dumbass about violence affecting kids, the whole 'union' get up in arms to push intruders.

It annoys me when people bitch about Video games causing violence, when evidence demonstrates otherwise.

Also, I never got this whole thing about Video games not being art.... How can something that often requires a team of several ARTISTS, not be art?

Kathy, on 06 August 2013 - 12:11 PM, said:

Where was I... Long story short - ROTT sucks.

In it's current state, yes. I personally won't say it sucks definitively until a few months down the road after a bunch of patches and tweaks come out. If it still sucks then, yeah, it sucks.

[Mr. Tibbs]

The two former Pc Gamer editors who discussed and reviewed game, Dan Stapleton and Chuck Osborn, weren't on the take. I mean, no one got upset and threw around accusations when Gameranx published their silly review on the other end of the scale. It's just a little strange because sites like Gamepot and IGN usually hand out a 5 just for showing up. Nice to see they're changing policy, even if I don't agree with all of the review.

[100199]

IF IGN wanted to suck on EA'a ass, they wouldn't give such a lame review for Medal of Honor Warfighter while praising COD for the same type of crap linear/cutscene/scripted/setpiece garbage. The campaigns on both games were equally awful. There's nothing better on MW3/BLOPS 2 superior to MOH warfighter on that regard - and neither in multiplayer tbh. But go compare the ratings...

The multiplayer on Warfigher was actually decent, despite some questionable map design, it was nowhere worth to be in overall 3.0 rated game. Gamespot did a way better review for the same game. (they gave a 6.0, and they were fair pointing the problems and the standouts). I dislike EA, they rushed it [moh], but I think IGN were unfair at some point with the game imo, terribly biased review.

Anyway, don't know about GOTY but I don't think BF4 will get any higher ratings than cowadoody. I've hear that story before back in 2011 with BF3 and prior to BC2 release, but in the end IGN always give COD the best reviews/grades.

[Striker]

100199, on 06 August 2013 - 01:38 PM, said:

IF IGN wanted to suck on EA'a ass, they wouldn't give such a lame review for Medal of Honor Warfighter while praising COD for the same type of crap linear/cutscene/scripted/setpiece garbage. The campaigns on both games were equally awful. There's nothing better on MW3/BLOPS 2 superior to MOH warfighter on that regard - and neither in multiplayer tbh. But go compare the ratings...

Probably because Activision gave the higher payout. Either Monetary or otherwise.

[----]

DavoX, on 06 August 2013 - 12:45 PM, said:

For UDK even if it's a great engine (I love it) you really have to take a LOT of things in consideration to keep the framerate up, After mod tools I'll check for proper optimization on the levels and see what they've done.

Remember, this is not UDK but the full Unreal Engine.

[ReaperMan]

I thought UDK was the full Unreal 3 engine.

[Kristian Joensen]

Yes but without access to the engine source code, Interceptor has a full UE3 license with source code access.

[DavoX]

fuegerstef, on 06 August 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

Remember, this is not UDK but the full Unreal Engine.

If it was the full license then they would've had to fork one millions dollars for it. As far as I know they could only use the UDK with the 25.000 dollars limit, if they exceed it they have to give 25% to Epic if I'm not mistaken. At least that what we did at my work place.

Kristian, did they come to an agreement or did someone at Apogee actually paid one millions dollars for the actual engine?

[Micky C]

I'd be surprised if they did. Seems like a huge investment for such an indie project.

Can anyone actually see ROTT making millions of dollars? I mean enough to cover the engine, computers, and of course salaries for interceptor, and then still have a reasonable profit margin for apogee.

[Kristian Joensen]

I am pretty darn sure UE3 licenses are not anywhere near 1 million USD any more. But yes Interceptor has mentioned several times that they have a full license and you could even see the UE3 source code directory in what I think was one of Fresch's Child's Play streams.

Edit:

AFAIK full UE3 licenses are negotiated on a case by case basis, probably based on stuff like how many platforms the license covers, how many games it covers and stuff like that. There is probably a trade off between a x$ once off payment and a y% of sales payment. The bigger the x, the lower the y.

[ZedSlayer]

Would Unity have made this posibly worse or better, or what other engines could Interceptor have used with better results?

[Kathy]

Mikko C, on 06 August 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

I'd be surprised if they did. Seems like a huge investment for such an indie project.

https://www.facebook...427821617286519

[Hank]

GasSnake, on 06 August 2013 - 06:50 PM, said:

Would Unity have made this posibly worse or better, or what other engines could Interceptor have used with better results?

The game I have here right now lacks the three Ts: Time, Testers and Testing ... Unity is supposed to be an easier engine to work with, but I doubt it would have tested the levels by itself.

[Fox Mulder]

A friend just said to me; "save states might be very hard to implement on modern games, but STALKER did it, and it was made by a team of russians working on vodka."

[randir14]

Saves in the STALKER games are not exactly perfect. A lot of times loading the game will cause the weather to completely change, and put previously non-alerted enemies into combat mode.