The MMO that never existed - The admirable stupidity of Chronicles of Elyria

[@TheSaltFactory]

I know I said Fable 2 was gonna be next, but that was before I realized that the game isn't on PC lol. I tried the Xbox Cloud Gaming thing, but it lagged like crazy. So I bought an Xbox 360 with the game in Germany since I didn't bring any of my consoles with me. Then I found out the game wasn't in English and that there was no way to patch it, so I was gonna try to mod my Xbox. Turns out that needs a soldering iron, which I don't have/have never used. So I bought the English version from the UK. The controller that came with the console had some buttons that didn't work half the time, so I sent it back. They said it's gonna take a week or two to get me a new one, so I went to Gamestop and bought their last 360 controller. The controller doesn't even turn on, so now I'm debating whether to buy a controller from someone on ebay who can get me it in 3 days, or wait god knows how long for the dink who sent me a faulty one. Anyways, all that led to this video since I didn't want to spend my time doing nothing. Hopefully it suffices for now. 🤠

[@blackout295]

You're a good boy salt, remember that now.

[@kylerobenhorst7242]

Good lord what a mess! Always glad to have your content, no matter what the subject is.

[@Roof5tone]

It is all good. As much as I look forward to that video I also believe in waiting for something good. So no stress!

[@ethanfritch3706]

What a wild ride

[@Peter-pq2cw]

I love you

[@serlistogiette4168]

Imagine having a 50ish percent chance of dying upon starting a new character cuz infant mortality rates

[@yurigagarine6998]

That's the catch of their business model.

[@serlistogiette4168]

@@yurigagarine6998 Hehe

[@Steve-eq8iz]

Sounds cool.

[@serlistogiette4168]

@@Steve-eq8iz Yes hehe

[@ancapftw9113]

*gets to 10 years old* *dies of the plague*

[@wargriffin5]

"Play as a leader who sends out armies of other players to do as their leader commands..." - I can ALREADY see how this is going to fall apart.

[@MechanicWolf85]

I can see this working only if the players are as devoted as that Red Dead Redemption 3 Clan (and that's reaching extreme levels of cringe)

[@simowolt-dh4nd]

@@MechanicWolf85 wtf

[@atashgallagher5139]

Ah yes, EVE online if the creators were high off their asses on cocaine and Ecstacy the whole time they were planning things on.

[@camolotthe42]

To be fair, Foxhole clans can be SCARY effective when competently led. I've seen sprawling city fortresses of concrete and guns erected in a day or two, and huge infantry or armour pushes with a ludicrous amount of logistics support break frontlines. I even participated in defending from a clan push that was nearly a beheading strike for our side's backline logi, which would've (and probably did, while the fighting was happening) put a stop to the flow of armour, equipment and ammo to the northern theater. The average player holds the lines and makes sure the bases have shirts and rifles, but the clans get the big things done.

[@greatulcer2117]

A kingdom lead by a player character could work, but you couldn't expect other players to want to be mooks. Now other players being his generals and leading armies of NPCs with group commands, MAYBE and it's not the most optimistic maybe.

[@NoPantsBaby]

Imagine running a studio as an inexperienced dev. Screwing it up and then having to spend the rest of your life making monthly blog videos to avoid an 8 million dollar lawsuit.

[@vocalcalibration8033]

If we hear about homie being assassinated in the next few months I won't be surprised.

[@infidelcastro6687]

At least until the statute of limitation on fraud is up

[@mariavienna1305]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Sounds like black mirror episode

[@lotusthemermaid]

Sounds like the next hit POV title

[@jbach7274]

I thought this too, and so had the community involved.. they’ve had over a year to share their expenses to where the money actually went and they’re extremely hesitant. Even promising they would release such info in an official statement, and never doing so. So there’s that lol

[@joelhaggis5054]

Yet another studio that forgets the most important rule of game design: Make the fucking game

[@champis1337]

HEY! Sometimes you forget...

[@KanishQQuotes]

We don't bring up negative thoughts. We only focus on positivity and an optimistic outlook towards innovation

[@SkreltNL]

@@KanishQQuotes which will be the downfall off an entire generation...

[@PuellaMagiHomuraAkemi]

Yet another stupid community that forgets the most important rule of spending money: Dont fucking fund ideas

[@KiotheCloud]

@@SkreltNL too much depression could lead to faster just be neutral XD

[@Ghi102]

"Indie" and "MMO" are 2 words that should never be used in the same sentence

[@sheshin]

Is that even possible? I mean, could a AA MMO be a thing?

[@jellyfishjig]

@@sheshin If you consider massively multiplayer text-based RPGs like Fallen London (which you can play single player but has a bunch of social actions and events and actually just finished a game-wide "holiday" in which players contributed in real time to deal with a city-wide challenge/impending apocalypse, almost like a game-wide raid/world event), then yes, small indie studios can indeed make and support successful MMOs. It's just that they probably won't look like what you'd expect.

[@xelloskaczor5051]

Dunno man ashes of creation might actually turn out to be a pretty decent niche mmo.

[@JoshuaJacobs83]

@@jellyfishjig I’ve heard of Fallen London but didn’t know it was text based

[@ryanambsdorf2859]

Isn't that what RuneScape is? Was?

[@acetrainerarcane1755]

This concept sounds like they just wanted a large scale D&D campaign. That would have probably been a more realistic goal

[@rompevuevitos222]

Would have been so much easier too No need for intricate systems, just add a lot of animations, a solid framework for modding and make your own "rule book" (or copy any open source ones like Cogent) Character creation would be tough, but we are talking about an MMO here, nothing is gonna be easy

[@SHDUStudios]

Yeah, I’ve done something like this, and I didn’t have to program it.

[@bookroach6742]

or a roleplay minecraft server.

[@rompevuevitos222]

​@@bookroach6742 minecraft just doesn't have the depth nor could withstand more than a handful of people if it did A game as vast as the one proposed would require an insane server to run and for people to have the best PCs available, consoles wouldn't even be in the picture

[@SmoltingWassie]

Way more realistic concept

[@fmsyntheses]

Do not ever try to kick start an MMO. It's the most expensive and labor intensive genre of game by far.

[@PuellaMagiHomuraAkemi]

I wish everyone would so we see more idiots wasting their money pledging garbage

[@creatorsfreedom6734]

does the game have sex ? sex sell's

[@awesome9174]

@pippin I'm glad people do. Otherwise games like Kingdom Come, Pillars of Eternity, Visage, etc would not exist.

[@creatorsfreedom6734]

@pippin but all the R thirty four artist's got kicked off patreon - LAWL

[@musikalniyfanboichik]

don't ever make a commercial mmo unless you know what you are doing

[@fireflocs]

I love how they acted like this was crazy, original, revolutionary idea, even though 'video game where you can do literally anything' is the first idea that every eight year old has when they think about what kind of video game would just be the coolest thing ever.

[@emmestein]

Yes. Exactly what I thought. This was basically my idea of the perfect mmorpg when I was 9 years old. I remember it clearly since I thought it was such a brilliant idea, YOU COULD DO ANYTHING!

[@yuurina5092]

That game is unironically minecraft

[@jessepond2062]

Basically life simulator 😅

[@jessepond2062]

Excellent comment yes, the young kiddo doesn’t factor in how much money and time and effort this would actually take

[@misham6547]

That game is dwarf fortress

[@grendelbiter303]

As a hobby unity dev I recognize every single one of the assets they used in their "alpha". I'm confident I could have made it in about 2-3 months on my own.

[@PartnershipsForYou]

As long as you don’t charge me a million dollars, I’d play it.

[@ricksandoval7130]

thats freaking impressive and I'd try it too

[@robertparker6280]

Damn

[@Laszer271]

I bet that's what they did after deciding that it's easier to make a new game than to get something quasi-ready from their messy 1000-files source code.

[@bryanthegoalie5692]

Well im interested in playing and your comment is two months old... So beta starts next month

[@Sergei_Ivanovich_Mosin]

Basically the single most concentrated example of "I'm more of an idea guy" ever seen.

[@lilpwnige]

Honestly as a game developer I see this with a lot with Kickstarter games. Inexperienced developers, with pie in the sky idea's, asking for pennies to do the work... You could literally have billions of dollars and not be able to make the game work due to a myriad of flaws and needless complexities. The Dunning-Krueger effect is very real, even nine million dollars only pays roughly 25 employees to work bottom dollar, for 5 years. World of Warcraft had over 300 credited developers at launch along a similar development timeline, with a 10th the complexity, and a ton of very talented and experienced developers and managers behind the wheel.

[@NightRogue77]

Yeah I’ve discovered just recently got a lot of preconceptions I had about AAA game development were very wrong. I still believe piss poor management is why 500 people can’t do with 36 people can do, but I was a little awestruck at the complexity involved in simple things such as not-canned locomotion (skeletal movement w/ physics eg), And how simple miscommunications can result in months of delay. Edit: whoops I meant to conclude that I do see how it could easily be (VERY ignorantly, to be sure lol) assumed by programmer very proficient in one area, to come to the conclusion that they could whip some complicated shit up on their own.

[@lilpwnige]

@@NightRogue77 Good management can go a long way, but ultimately it goes hand and hand with talent and experience. A small team, made up of good, experienced developers can accomplish a metric fuck ton with good management, tooling, modularity and extensibility as a focus. Usually managers (with no games experience) bite off way more then the development team can chew, leadership is afraid to push back on those demands which forces developers to crunch and burn out thanks to a combination of unrealistic deadlines and scope, which leads to shitty, unpolished games being forced out the door. I feel like even people within the games industry fail to realize just how many "unsolved" problems game developers have to solve over the course of their career. I wouldn't call myself senior and I've had to solve/help solve dozens of issues that have never been documented or encountered before.

[@Astroqualia]

Even had a clearly overreaching idea. JFC. It's obvious based on the features they promised based on what studios with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal.

[@Talisguy]

Out of interest, which idea(s) do you guys think they should have focused on? Myself, I like the cartography idea - a game based around exploration where one of the mechanics allows you to draw your own maps and then sell them sounds like it could be neat, especially if you can charge extra for things like adding in major hazards and particularly strong enemies. I like some of the other ideas as well, but the cartography is what's springing to mind right now.

[@NerdishGeekish]

All these people who gush about "fully destructible" environments should take a look at the 2b2t Minecraft server, one of the oldest Minecraft servers that still uses the same map since the server was first created. The thing looks like the Tyranids were unleashed upon it, and so would any MMO with fully destructible environments.

[@gamermoment656]

It'd go from Lord of the rings to Metro reaaal quick

[@artisticcannibalism1350]

This is just one of the many reasons why I roll my eyes whenever someone starts gushing about realism in a game.

[@garbaegpandea8074]

the problem is people are like, why me no able dig hole. but playing games like the red faction series, its obvious it can be done well

[@niche950]

didn't that get hacked and completely destroyed not so long ago?

[@screamingcactus1753]

@@niche950 Nah, it's still rocking. The hack as far as I'm aware was basically just for spying on other players. It told the hackers which chunks were loaded, which let them determine where players and therefore possible bases and item caches were. A lot of damage was done with that info before its cause was rooted out, but nothing that undermined the stability of the server.

[@trbd]

"Immersive realistic world where you can be whatever you want" sounds cool until you realise that there can only be a handful of kings, saviour of the world, and mob bosses and you have to settle for shopkeeper

[@Cecilia-ky3uw]

Id love it if you could be some charismatic mercenary who just overthrows a king the lols would be funny, but those are the moments people like

[@Megan-kl1od]

Yeah, I think there's a reason video games don't try to mimic real life too much.

[@CoolCraftCool]

Yeh everyone thinks they get to be Han Solo but when you play EVE online its more like you get to be Watto.

[@lauralide4804]

I'd love to play a shopkeep! Love cozy games like that. But there'd definitely be a lack of choice in a game like that, for the exact reasons you said

[@captncuddlybear9404]

Definitely could work for a small group of dedicated players, but the problems start when more players are interested.

[@homefront1999]

I do love the fact that if this was a single-player RPG instead of an MMO, then a lot more people probably would've believed it could happen. Like what incentive is there for some random player to do mundane tasks instead of going and committing regicide? What happens when there is no one playing this game anymore? MMO's that ask for public funding is more than likely a scam or bound to fail.

[@trazyntheinfinite9895]

Aye. Hobo devs

[@izawa9211]

The people that actully pay to support a game are just dumb cuz even if its released it may be a hit or absoulute trash

[@rikowolfin4984]

Day one all of the Royalty would have been killed by every peasant that could pick up a rock and become jealous of their big fancy castles while they are stuck in the literal dirt and shit. I would say it would be like the French revolution, but I think it would be far more feral since they wouldn't wait to build the guillotines and just beat them to death in their own fancy homes.

[@mikealvas]

Even then, it would be difficult to accomplish. The features they said would be in the game would the the death's kneel to even rockstar's team. Its honestly quite ridiculous. Just look just at the promised AI system. What game on this planet right now claim to feature such an advanced AI system? Lets compare the closest game that is a success, Kingdom Come: Deliverance by Warhorse Studios. Development time took 6 years, with a prototype taking 17 months. Remember how that game came out? It was a broken mess, and it took years longer to fix the game. It is a good game, but its core features is nowhere what CoE promised.

[@willywonka7812]

@@rikowolfin4984 and rightly so

[@TheMusicalFruit]

The metagame of Elyria was imagining playing the perfect MMO.

[@xeranok]

it can be everything that everyone wants if it never gets finished, right?

[@Gustoberg]

Tha PERFECT MMO... with a budget of an indie 2d platformer

[@achtsekundenfurz7876]

11:09 sums it up perfectly: " Also worth _nothing_ "

[@mayday92]

Can we just appreciate the naivete in thinking players could pay 10k to rule a kingdom and expect anybody else to actually listen to them

[@anyoneattheendoftime4932]

This is the middle-class version of those apocalypse bunkers in New Zealand.

[@cozychamomile]

When I heard that resources were finite and that the environment is fully destructible, I knew that I was in for a treat.

[@mouseymousey02]

Environmental catastrophe speedrun

[@cadneemountai2791]

Wurm Online did it pretty well

[@pisscvre69]

the heatdeath of Elyra

[@shcdemolisher]

Full crazy minecraft environment destruction.

[@williamdrum9899]

TragedyOfTheCommons%

[@DinsRune]

10 seconds in: "A game where your character can grow old and die." Me: "That doesn't sound that great."

[@oz_jones]

I mean, Fable had that, without dying though.

[@FeuerblutRM]

I'd actually hate that! First thing I do when playing Sims: disable aging!

[@zacheray]

Really, sounds baller to me.. then again I like the first Pikmin.. time limit fetish

[@masterloard]

The concept is that instead of paying monthly game time, you buy a life, and your character ages and dies eventually. One life is about 3 months of game time.

[@stardoogalaxie9314]

If I wanted to play a game where I live as a peasant, grow old, die and need money to survive Id just....fuckin live my life I guess.

[@sammyi2505]

"A game where your character can grow old and die..." Me: I think I'm playing it.

[@mavcotm8006]

I'm really bad at the being happy minigame, but i am a master at the getting distracted with various tasks i do to not think anymore

[@confusedaf1112]

@@mavcotm8006 I suck at the happiness minigame, but I'm really good at the sleeping one.

[@mavcotm8006]

@@confusedaf1112 can you give me tips, i never sleep when i probably should. And even on my free days i often can only sleep a few hours

[@ragerasse7616]

The "failing" portion of the game can make it a bit tedious considering how often it shows up, what the results of it are, and how it seems to be impossible to remove it in the first place.

[@fawnieee]

I honestly didn't think I'd make it this far.

[@gloomaker9875]

This sounds like someone watched Sword Art Online once and decided that being just a merchant in a virtual world is awesome

[@zoinksscoop20yearsago68]

Just what I was thinking. They watched any medieval fantasy world anime and thought "huh, what if we did that in a game... BUT EVERYBODY WAS A MC".

[@magnum155]

Honestly, playing merchant characters in Ragnarok Online was pretty fun... even though I was AFK most of the time. Watching numbers go up while selling random junk made me feel like a big brain financial mogul.

[@benito1620]

Path of Exile Simulator

[@daedalus6433]

@@benito1620 Or RuneScape simulator.

[@СергейОрлов-в4е]

Being a Merchant is actually quite fun. I've done it in a couple of online games and one of the most interesting examples was being a Trader in Elite dangerous. It's not for everyone, sure, but I like the economy, exploration and interaction parts of it more than fighting all the time (which can get a bit frustrating at times too)

[@elijahwatson8119]

This is kind of like a kid saying "I'm gonna build a car that can go 12000 miles an hour! And shoots rockets! And can fly in space! And unlimited amounts of candy shoots out of its vents" And then someone actually giving that kid millions of dollars expecting him to be able to actually build it.

[@shocktriple]

It could if its a movie instead & staring Vin Diesel.

[@ThePhilosophicalOne]

Kind of like NASA... $60 million a day, we give them. 🤣

[@f1r3hunt3rz5]

@@shocktriple Ah, the Onion watcher too I see

[@mage1439]

Right? All the people who donated to this project are stupid. It doesn't take game development experience to realize this is impossible. A AAA studio with a billion dollars and 15 years to work couldn't make this game.

[@pvt.prinny759]

Perfectly fitting analogy for this project

[@AustinH7]

Even if this game worked as intended, there’s no way players wouldn’t grief and troll the hell out of every aspect. Would probably play more like Dark RP on garrys mod(absolute fucking anarchy lmao)

[@Ramsey276one]

That’s what I was thinking! XD

[@lionheartt15]

also don't forget to factor in how many players would leave when finding out that if you get killed that is 2 DAYS OFF YOUR PAID SUBSCRIPTION! that had to be the worst idea for a paid game ever

[@Ramsey276one]

@lionheartt15 that’s a Vendetta INCOMING XD

[@chalibard3826]

@Aluzky then you get 13y old abusing their godlike power in total impunity. Dark rp should be taught in sociology classes, especially to open world mmo developers.

[@MotherSoren]

@Aluzky This is supposed to be essentially a realistic life sim mmo and cops don't have god mode irl, the players aren't breaking any rules by griefing either so they wouldn't be literally banned, and trying to somehow arrest even just 3 players would get your player killed. And raiding the cells would probably be a constant occurrence by multiple groups

[@Fordragon]

The "continuing to do tasks while offline through scripting and macros" thing is actually super feasible. It used to be common in MMOs. I used to farm combat skills in SWG while at school. The popularity of this feature died off around the time WoW came out.

[@delrowanep]

LoL same, while I was in college I left my SWG character running on a macro in Cantinas, I'd cycle between the player buffing songs and occasionally solicit tips - I'd usually get back after 4 or 5 hours to massive musician skill points and thousands of credits. Sadly after a year or so they removed macros as a feature (or at least gutted them so you could no longer automate.)

[@lycheemyusic]

nah feature was still very popular up into the 2010s

[@chaoticleaf3658]

SWG?

[@ic3olate]

Good to see some fellow Galaxies players around every now and then. I only ever really used very simple macros to grind musician and dancer a few times, but it was definitely a lifesaver lol.

[@Fordragon]

@@ic3olate I consider it to be one of the best games I've ever played. There are definitely certain things that would have been difficult to do in that game without some level of automation. Luckily I never got a holocron that required me to master one of the particularly grindy professions.

[@BrennanCh06]

Watching this, its actually really amazing how much No Man's sky got done with a small team.

[@Srab23]

Talent and experience is really important. It's the difference between coming up with a bunch of ideas, and coming up with solutions and plans

[@psyjinx]

@@Srab23 No Man's Sky wasn't about talent or experience. It was about development time. Sony pushed them to launch earlier than they were ready for. We got everything No Man's Sky promised, and they are still pumping out content. Just took time.

[@Srab23]

@@psyjinx I made no claims about No man's sky, and I haven't played it. I was commenting on the difference in progress between a larger less experienced team and a smaller one who know what they are doing

[@psyjinx]

@@Srab23 My bad dude! Got the wrong context out of it. Have a dope August

[@Srab23]

@@psyjinx Best regards

[@reidleblanc3140]

there's already a few games like this, they're called tabletop roleplay and fiction writing

[@Earthstar_Review]

Caution: Discord has literally this in text form. It's either impenetrable or addictive depending on the person.

[@no_opinion1065]

@@Earthstar_Review Oh thank god I escaped that hole a few years ago.

[@lasskinn474]

it's really expensive to bribe others to go along with you being baron because you paid the gm a couple of k. ..pretty sure somebodys done it.

[@jacob9538]

Except those are inherently completely different from video game playing (especially writing).

[@ธนาเดชศุภนัทนพร]

@@Earthstar_Review What is the bot name?.

[@epickduk]

This sounds like the devs read a bunch of different manga and manhwa about VRMMOs and thought 'wow that looks cool, we should make that!'

[@Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan]

Hay you know Yggdrasil, that fictional game from the 22nd century that we know for sure about 2.5% of the features of. I was thinking we do that, but like more.

[@barba3377]

To be fair, many manga/manwha fictional mmo have some very interesting and appealing systems but actually putting them in a modern mmo or even a single player game is another story.

[@rosaparks6479]

I took a game design course for two years. It was 3 hours of work a day, and we made a handful of small games, mostly to learn how to code. Our best game took hundreds of hours to make, and it was basically something you would find on the SNES. In this class, I learned that there's a type of person in games design called an "ideas guy" The type of person who makes up all sorts of ideas for a came without a clue of to code them. Thing is, ideas are worthless and super easy to come up with, and idea guys tend to only have ideas to offer up, and nothing else. This seems like what a game made by an idea guy at the helm would look like.

[@3u-n3ma_r1-c0]

i am truly the "ideas guy" ive had about 30 combat ideas for games and made none of them cause i have no fuckin idea how.

[@diegomacara5658]

@Cryo which is good because some people are good in tech stuff and have not an ounce of creativity. Thats why there is a teamwork.

[@dumbfish97]

As a 5 year game design student and award winner i can tell u now that the complete opposite is also real, a coder who thinks they know everything about design cus it's easy. Meanwhile the games they make work but are ass to play. Designers and coders/tech are both important

[@dumbfish97]

@Cryo this is true lol, 3D and concept artists are often terrible game designers but have cool narrative and visual concepts

[@derekkinney2277]

Being an ideas guy is the first step towards learning how to develop games, you just have to do the rest where you actually learn how to make stuff.

[@yaldabaoth2]

The entire concept is illusionary. You would need millions of active players like WoW on its highest point to even BEGIN making it feasible. This should already make all the alarms go off.

[@rompevuevitos222]

MMO that starts out with both pre-paid and monthly payments could never work WOW had a legendary franchise behind it and pretty much the first MMO to really focus on RP, it covered a niche AND had popularity already

[@TheAntiGravityMaster]

For about 3 years I was a solo developer making a visual novel, which if you don't know is basically the most simple kind of "game" you can make. Even among visual novel development groups, there's a lot of people advising you to keep your scope small and manageable, because **even for visual novels** it's a recurring problem. So, yeah, trying to make an MMO where you can do literally anything when you have no prior experience making games or paying people to make the game for you (which you hardly have the money to do anyways) was an idea that was doomed from the start. Anyone who backed this anything more than a couple 10s was out of their mind.

[@EdmundKempersDartboard]

They actually wrote "no longer wants to be associated with the studio?" 🤣 i mean, at least they were honest... painfully, stupidly honest. "Hey backers, our mods are fleeing because all your fears are justified."

[@cinnastag]

From what I could gather...the mod left because they got bored of video games and didn't wabr to be associated with gaming anymore. Now...imagine if they said that they didn't want to be associated because of life choices instead of just because.

[@Dong_Harvey]

@@cinnastag "I'm so bored with video games, political forum moderation is where it's at!"

[@cinnastag]

@@Dong_Harvey Lmao. Nah, while it is a funny idea, they probably just said that to not hurt their feelings or raise suspicions.

[@mydogbullwinkle]

He got off at the right stop. Based on those poor fools who commented on that "shiny" update, I'm fairly certain that that forum had become a safe community for recovering lobotomy patients.

[@sweetssandbox3526]

finally, an mmo for shenmue III fans

[@chrisconnell4308]

Or elder scrolls 6 fans

[@scritoph3368]

@@chrisconnell4308 hey elder scrolls 6 will be a great game once fans develop half of it for Bethesda!

[@cnhnx]

Shenmue online was actually announced complete with a teaser trailer, but got cancelled

[@jghifiversveiws8729]

@@scritoph3368 Half? You'd be lucky to see a quarter of development.

[@nullpoint3346]

@@jghifiversveiws8729 That's when it starts getting good, when the fans get it to 50%.

[@ohnoitsthenoooo]

The concept of having aging and death as part of an rpg isn’t inherently bad but for an mmo where part of the fun comes with connecting with your character over time it just doesn’t work. As a single player game I think it would be really interesting. But I don’t want to have to have a new character every time mine dies of old age.

[@Anomal0]

become vampire

[@jeffreynowak8866]

The Wizardry franchise had an age factor in like 1985

[@Elrealsodapop200]

Nah i think its an awesome idea if its the main focus. I imagine a sistem that would let you slow down your aging or speed it. You can have heir by marrying and having kids or adopting. Hell, you could even become some kind of semi immortal wizard and have much longer lifespans and stuff. I think this was their best concept

[@370joon123]

It worked for crusader kings

[@themikatoon]

My dude let me introduce you to Sims. There's people who play generations and generations after they made one sims in the game. Like there's people on the 100th sim of one generation

[@snowbeast4463]

This reminds me of the type of person who claims they're 'working on a novel' when they've been worldbuilding for years and have yet to begin chapter one.

[@fawnieee]

Tolkien: 👁️👄👁️ Tbh though I'm very guilty of this, only I don't strictly announce I'm writing anything I just sort of enjoy world building in my mind.

[@snowbeast4463]

@@fawnieee I understand that. Worldbuilding is fun and I know some people do it as a hobby. Point is you can't just do that and still claim you're working on a novel/game.

[@akai4942]

@@snowbeast4463 you didn't have to attack me like that 😭 one day i'll finish it i know it...

[@lyndislegion287]

Oof. That metaphor hurt, though I can't really argue against it lol

[@stardusst]

why would you call me out like this

[@Apollomasque]

Salt getting increasingly mean as the video goes on to the point that he's actively calling the project head an unedited Dark Souls PC is very therapeutic.

[@shreksballs3070]

"Dragged their balls across the keyboard with Unity opened, by accident" was an absolute kill shot. Literally made me laugh out loud.

[@gwa-reap3r54]

Getting increasingly salty*

[@shayposting]

"Spending 8 million on something that looks like it's trying to run Death Stranding on an N64" fucking lmao

[@kennyblaze6303]

welp... Salt on the wound

[@TheGamingMotionTGM]

Ngl that zipline animation looked like dark souls to me.

[@django-unchained]

"Now,due to our unique approach to software development.." Only non-developers fall for that shit. Anyone that worked with development would cringe hearing that from someone that never been a developer professionally themselves.

[@theencolony5595]

"unique approach" is formal speak for "not following any codes or standards"

[@Nerdgirl9853]

Only trust the unique approach of studios that have proven themselves beforehand. It is 100% okay if they are actually shown to be trustworthy. But for a new one, yeah, massive red flag.

[@flaviomonteiro1414]

@@Nerdgirl9853 If those studios can fuck up by not following the standards, right documentation and procedures... But I agree with you, with a well oiled machine and experience devs new approachs are possible...

[@KanishQQuotes]

There's no unique approach to software development You need to follow codes or it's going to fail

[@dh8765]

@@KanishQQuotes League of Legends would like a word with you. I have seen plenty of post-mortems for games that were not developed with proper or traditional structure or standards. A good chunk of those games end up failing but there is always a few that prove to be an exception. The "unique approach" exists, it just isn't highly recommended unless you're extremely crafty or lucky.

[@brapcast]

I have met so many of these people. “Idea guys” and “theory guys” decide to get cash first and hand wave a “we will figure it out” to any technical details. These are the guys that will work on a Dnd world for 10 years while constantly telling people about it. Don’t give money to a Kickstarter without an in game video. Dont kickstart until the ideawork is done

[@GUNDAMURX73]

Don't forget "they'd be terrible at actually running their D&D world for actual players, because they put no effort into figuring out how to actually play their ideas out in a fair and fun manner".

[@Cysecsg]

I bet they spend more time on crafting forums and articles with different ways of scamming money than the actual dev work.

[@kunjin2513]

@@GUNDAMURX73 what’s that quote from

[@pisscvre69]

i wanna make games but ive spent years learning how first and have a lot more to learn still and will not be trying something on this impossible scale lol, imagining if i started when i first had an idea like these guy lol, id be so fucked

[@3u-n3ma_r1-c0]

@@pisscvre69 same i wnana make a game that has a crazy scope but I'm starting from scratch. my only benefit is that im under 20 years old and have a lot of time to learn before life kicks down my door and makes me focus on other things.

[@lmSheep]

Truly a game ahead of its time. Just imagine, in 2022 this could have been a NFT cash grab

[@CErra310]

We actually have a couple

[@anyoneattheendoftime4932]

The idea of selling land in a nonexistent virtual world was really ahead of its time.

[@DocDoesGamingTV]

I swear I've been rewatching all of your old videos trying to fall asleep lately, today we sleep like kings again!

[@williamnelson5549]

His voice is pretty soothing ngl

[@sidauthur7836]

thats weird

[@Spinevoyager]

I do this too!

[@d2heffz231]

Don't be gay

[@ACrustyCount]

Honestly, I thought you were calling him boring. lol

[@Swat_Dennis]

The thing is, I would ducking love an MMO like Chronicles of Elyria but then just in a singleplayer setting. I wonder what you can do with slightly less graphics but with a billion game systems. Just... Make a damn life simulator or something like that yet with magic nonsense added in.

[@AJ_Ol]

Check out dwarf fortress

[@reliktim]

Mount And Blade with mods

[@Nicorox43]

Its not the same but you should play kenshi. I think its pretty close to what you are asking

[@getkawedbythecrow2524]

@@AJ_Ol I second this.

[@FantasmaNaranja]

so like Cataclysm dark days ahead, or dwarf fortress sure they look like shit but you can do literally anything you set your mind to in either of em Dark days ahead specially has an insane crafting system and is more in line with a singleplayer adventure game than dwarf fortress is

[@KingLeon1994]

Ironic thing about all of this? is that in the end they ended up doing what they should have done from the start. focus on one thing at a time get that stable then add in the rest separately and piece that puzzle together while giving people something even if its not what they specifically wanted yet

[@emilyarmstrong83]

Exactly. Just, focus on the core systems, the REALLY essential stuff, THEN worry about everything else.

[@JJAB91]

And now they have to do so with no money and no employees!

[@sigmundfreud4472]

The problem is decisions need to be made in a way conscious of future features and extensions, requiring good foresight and planning to do right. Bad infrastructure could make some new features difficult or impossible. The voxel backend is actually a pretty slick solution. Too bad the devs could not pull it together.

[@Cat-up6hb]

yea the problem with that is those devs had 0 experience in actually finishing a game, just like the dood in the video said^^ they should have created a game (any game for that instance) first to show that they actually have the capabillities to produce a game at all

[@deathofanation7ify]

Should have just made a single player rpg and tried to build a customer base

[@Kirbita22]

honestly out of the billion Kickstarter MMO That Never Happened, this one looks like of the few where the people behind it actually genuinely thought this was accomplishable and fully intended to deliver. however they did not realize how absolutely impossible it would be to create and deliver a product on the scale they were promising, in the timeframe they set

[@EveryDooDarnDiddlyDay]

Ideologues think money is magic.

[@RisingRevengeance]

Even the premise doesnt sound fun, why would I choose to live as a peasant under other players. That's some masochism right there.

[@TitaniusAnglesmith]

You have a point but some of the most fun I've had in CK2 is starting as a count and trying to move up in the ranks. But in that case it's you as the player that decides the situation, rather than being enslaved by some rich kid.

[@RisingRevengeance]

@@TitaniusAnglesmith Yeah that's totally fine, everyone starting that game plays by the same rules. It would even be fine if players could become monarchs and whatnot, so long as that is an option for everyone.

[@quitegauche]

I'd have fun playing the game as an NPC running a small hospital and having a double life as a smuggler for illegal shit. That sounds like my kinda game.

[@quitegauche]

Especially, if I could recreate the French Revolution lol

[@vt8414]

@@quitegauche lmao oddly specific

[@fyrentenimar]

The idea of having limited resources, monsters and quests in an MMO strikes me as really bad. Can you imagine how depleted the world would be even a month after launch? New players wouldn't be able to do anything, unless the devs actually recreate the whole of Earth, and that's just not happening.

[@TheNzFox]

Even if done completely perfectly the concept still will not work, you simply can not have a game that requires all the jobs be done by players as there simply is not enough people willing to log onto a game to role play the local farmer while others go off and adventure or rule the land

[@oz_jones]

Right? "Oh boy, I am a farmhand in real life and after 14 hour days of grueling and hard work, I want to relax by playing a farm hand."

[@mirageowl]

depends on the farming system tbh... but there are many other problems with the premise I agree

[@foobazabar]

Its like everyone's first "great" game idea they come up with when its 2am, you're at the park, and you drank a 40oz. I can't believe this ever got off the ground.

[@jeremyrosal6049]

@@oz_jones - Tbf, I have a friend that works on a farm and really enjoys playing Farming Simulator in his free time.

[@andosan5995]

There was maybe a month when I was 10 playing RuneScape where my whole thing was I was the lobster fisherman. Just caught and sold for no reason. No plans for money I just liked RPing lol. Now that only lasted month imagine a 20 something year old having to do that. They would quit in 4 hours and just play something else

[@amandadadesky5192]

Revisiting this video, and a thought came to me: A lot of the developers' behavior SCREAMS "the video game version of Fyre Festival."

[@naturegirl1999]

What ‘s Frye Festival?

[@user-lx4zx4yd2e]

@@naturegirl1999 kzbin.info/www/bejne/i3OzmGicqaiArJo

[@kx_xx]

Imagine going into the game and your player has to sleep in a wet FEMA tent, eats soggy cheese sandwiches, then gets all their shit stolen by starving trust fund baby looters, then when they try to escape to a different land they lock them inside a room for a day lol.

[@jjpc225]

Lmao so true

[@dionstrolin-partch182]

I clicked to this video from another video about Fyre Festival💀

[@tespenkr9924]

One day, there will be a developer who creates a real to life MMO, and no one will play it thinking it's a scam or too complex.

[@kalevala1778]

Dwarf Fortress, although it’s only single-player. Play it, I dare you.

[@AllahsStrongestSoldier]

@@kalevala1778 That and to anyone that hasnt grown up playing a game that looks like that they would probably have a hard time comprehending it.

[@alexanderrahl7034]

You'd think so right? And then you realize people are gullible as fuck and will always fall for this shit then cry about it lol. So that day will never come, if someone ever does really make a game that good, e don't have to worry about not knowing about it

[@gibbcharron3469]

@@AllahsStrongestSoldier Da; though there are tilesets to help with that! But the game does have a bit of a 'learning cliff', to put it mildly. Thankfully the community shares a lot of knowledge on the wiki and forums and whatnot.

[@coffeefox5703]

@@kalevala1778 Dwarf Fortress? Pah! Aurora 4X is the way to go friend. Spreadsheets galore!

[@katesicle]

This sounds like a nightmare to me - imagine all the merchants fixing prices and making the game unplayable. There would have to be a whole in-game npc government to avoid chaos

[@pennysquires03]

Imagine paying like 1,000 dollars just to join the chronicles of Elyria labour union

[@suezuccati304]

Tbh giving us capitalism and then giving us permission to go berserk sounds like a good time

[@Yurikon3]

@@suezuccati304 At least MMOs give an option to literally "cut" down competition.

[@suezuccati304]

@@Yurikon3 price war, with prices being a nickname for nukes

[@markdotinc8371]

And now the cartels have in game lobbyists, and suddenly corporations are people

[@callumge]

i remember in 2017 a friend who spent waaay too much money on backing this game was trying to convince me to also back the game on kickstarter. his attempt to get me interested was to invite me to a CoE kingdom roleplay discord server. i had never used discord at this point. it was basically the whole server of maybe 60 people all roleplaying as if they were vampire slaves to this one guy who paid the 10k to be a king, from what i remember he came up with a vampire kingdom idea which coincidentally was black, red and gold themed. glad i didnt pay any money for that shit.

[@highjumpstudios2384]

Black red and gold you say?

[@devilknight358]

Soooo did he regret

[@KaeYoss]

You know, the "problematic" colors aren't black red gold. The "evil" one is a certain religious symbol in black on a white circle with a red background, or variations thereof. The black red gold is the color scheme of the eternally pussy whipped nation that tells its own citizens to be ashamed of a past they were never part of.

[@DeagleGamesTV]

@@KaeYoss they want you to be aware of your past, if you feel shame there's a reason for that.

[@KaeYoss]

@@DeagleGamesTV It's not my past. It's not my parent's past. And my grandparents were little children when the war started. I have no reason to be ashamed. And I will not be conditioned into agreeing with the government whenever they call those who disagree Nazis.

[@jamdeluxe7456]

I like how they were adamant to never let micro transactions ruin the game but they also put extra lives and positions of power behind a paywall on the kickstarter and website, like you basically already had a pay to win micro transaction system before the game was out???

[@vraolet]

To be fair I wouldn't qualify 10 000 Dollars as a "micro" transaction

[@critterfeatures]

They never had publishers contacting them it was all a lie

[@areyouwelldoyouhavebrainda2023]

@@vraolet It's a macro-transaction 😂😂😂

[@tiacat11]

ngl my first reaction to hearing the "AI controlled player" idea was to go "Ah, it's similar to the Day Job mechanic from City of Heroes! Logging out in specific locations grants you a steady stream of exp and a small little buff depending on the job you're doing. If you log enough hours you get a neat little title. It's pretty cool :)" "...wait, you mean, like, the _character_ stays online??"

[@fromthegamethrone]

"Gorgeous 1 frame animations." Took a while for it to click, but when it did I damn near spat my cup of tea out.

[@MrJackets]

That's why we keep our cups in our hands, lad

[@ragnarok7976]

I'm just going to leave my single flower bouquet right here...

[@notmyopinion4981]

... tell me you are not bright, without telling me you are not bright

[@fromthegamethrone]

@@notmyopinion4981 yawn x

[@user-wq1kl4so6f]

Lmao same

[@laurendearnley9595]

The premise of this game seems to be "imagine being an NPC in an MMO." Like, legit, you'd need millions of people doing the stupid stuff they get NPCs do, or that they just magic into existence. Most games don't have characters actively mining the ore, which another NPC refines and smelts, and another NPC builds into a sword, and all of which is being supported by a vast web of full time farmers, tailers, cooks, cleaners, transport, merchants, soldiers, administrators, healers, lumberjacks, builders, animal breeders, hunters, innkeepers and trainers. Among other things. Before finally a final NPC sells the sword to the player, who is off doing the fun stuff - which may involve mining, crafting and trading, but doesn't involve doing one of those over and over for months to ensure the train of production doesn't screech to a halt and crash the economy.

[@lazergurka-smerlin6561]

Yeah I was thinking about this too. I suppose you could just have NPCs fill in gaps players wouldn't fill but that seems like it is counter to what this game is for

[@jvranjicic2941]

Isn't this just albion online

[@ThirdXavier]

Tons of MMOs do this and it works. Albion Online and Old School Runescape off the top of my head.

[@slothvr5752]

To be fair Albion online is pretty much this and actually work very well, really fun too give it a try!

[@thespecter6416]

@@slothvr5752 it's boring as hell and devs are screenshot-proven hypocrites.

[@okamichamploo]

4:39 this is actually exactly what the devs sounded like in their livestream sessions, and it was at that point I realized they were never going to be able to make the game. They sounded like dreamers more than game devs. They never really broke down the systems. They would just say things, well it will work the same way as it works in real life

[@clickingaming]

I used to work in the games industry, and this group would email me on a daily basis asking me to cover the game. Thing is, there was never anything to cover lol. I totally forgot about it until this video.

[@gortomod9630]

Shroud of the Avatar sits on my shelf at eye level so I can never again forget rule number 1: "NO early access or crowdsourced games until after they release fully. Never again."

[@PhileasLiebmann]

"The economy is based solely off of how players value items." Oh, so these people have no fucking idea what they are doing. Got it.

[@DynoSkrimisher]

Or scalpers will get involved with their better equipment and you could probably buy a country with the price they ask for

[@SeisoYabai]

Eh, this is arguably the most feasible part of the whole thing. I mean that's pretty much just how RuneScape worked before the Grand Exchange, and still does to some extent. I paid 30k back in like 2005 for a Clockwork Cat because it seemed so rare and like a good deal. That was... a lot of money for a 9 year old. Now with the GE, every price is effectively "set" by the community at large. The only thing you need for a player-dictated economy is a lack of set prices.

[@pepebeezon772]

I mean in tarkov if you remove the ability to buy from traders and dev interference you would still see a trend where good kits are more valuable on the flea market as well as hard to find hideout upgrade items costing more. This is nothing new

[@misham6547]

That's basically Eve Online though

[@emilyofjane]

The fate of humanity is that every 10 years or so someone tries to reinvent the Neopets economy

[@scoutobrien3406]

Looking at what they actually produced, and having seen several of the "biomes and playable hominid" updates, I don't think they spent the money on working on too many ideas at once. I think they spent the large majority on coming up with the ever ballooning ideas in the first place. One of their commonly featured devs on the video updates would go on at length about how important it was that the arm length of a newly designed playable hominid obviously needed to be longer than normal humans with its own animation set because it would be ridiculous to imagine a treehouse based society without reliable metal tools to use the same models. And not to worry. He had an academic background related to this and had secured money for getting help with the most scientifically accurate predictions of this evolutionary path. After that dev vlog, it was clear they weren't ever going to be finished deciding on even the aesthetic or world building focus and were still spending whole salaries on that If they'd stayed even vaguely within the pseudo-European or even broadly Mediterranean feudal culture and geography focus, I actually think they'd have had a remote shot in getting some publisher help in making the absurd scope of mechanics into something resembling the core of their vision.

[@zyaicob]

so they fell into a trap 15 year old me learned about watching Extra Credits? people gave them millions of dollars omg

[@minermortal1997]

The ageing mechanic could be a really interesting system in an RPG-like game. Imagine a story that spans generations where your playing a lineage of hero’s going up against a threat that you’ve been chosen to deal with (think Belmonts vs Dracula). How it would be implemented effectively would require some really clever game design right enough.

[@kiptheott5932]

Wildermyth has something like that. The game has several storylines in it, and when one is completed there's a timeskip of a few years where all the characters are aged up, one of their kids might join the party, and some of the older heroes might retire and pass their experience down to a protege. It's not that long of a timeskip though, and a full game of doing all the storylines only takes a few in-game decades. The only example I can think of where that kind of idea spans many generations though is Rogue Legacy, and the extremely long family line is more just an explanation for the roguelike mechanics there. Something that really explores the concept could be really interesting.

[@ZorotheGallade]

Mount and Blade 2 also has such a mechanic. If your current character dies and you have a family member who can become the new clan leader, you continue the game with them. Your character has a chance of dying if defeated in battle (depending on the difficulty level) and can also die of old age.

[@flippanties]

This is why I love CK3 and CK2. It's a strategy game that makes you feel like you're playing an RPG at times.

[@lunaangeleclipse9745]

Sounds like the sims with battle mechanics. Not that thats a bad thing lol

[@Kaiserboo1871]

That already exists, It’s called Crusader Kings 2 and 3. It’s not an MMO and is a “grand strategy game” but it has a major RPG element to these games.

[@Unemportant]

Maybe the mmo that didn't exist was the friends we made along the way (they don't exist either)

[@powderedground78]

That was so subtle. "With two of them dying off by now" - changes WoW to Final Fantasy. Loved it!

[@skeletonbuyingpealts7134]

11:31

[@powderedground78]

@@skeletonbuyingpealts7134 thanks. I couldn't remember how to do a time stamp, haha!

[@powderedground78]

@@comfydragon8139 I love Eso!

[@Nerobyrne]

@@comfydragon8139 even Classic WoW is better than the actual game 😂

[@dudere]

@@Nerobyrne That is arguable. Classic does not have pokemon. Wow retail is the biggest Pokemon MMO.

[@swimmerkat3965]

My favorite part was the fact that some of the devs listed their experience working on Star Citizen. You know, to show that this isn't just a kickstarter scam

[@definitelynotobama6851]

At least Star citizen is a game that actually exists, even if it’s still in perpetual alpha.

[@eivindlunde7772]

@@definitelynotobama6851 Star Citizen has fulfilled about as much of Chris Robert's promises as CoE did, only at 40 times the funding and twice the development time. Everything these developers did has been done previously by Star Citizen, including legal shenanigans and outright lies.

[@BlindingSun_]

I’m from the future, star citizen is doing well

[@foxloaf8843]

hollow knight's backer goals are an example of how to do it right, the "design a boss" tier was around $250, and all the bosses that came from that turned out to be really fun and have some cool lore

[@KnakuanaRka]

Yeah, that’s how you crowdfund a game honestly. Not with these lunatics with no game dev experience promising something impossible and demanding massive sums that are still nowhere big enough.

[@chloemarlowe3817]

Honestly, the game sounded awesome... just not as an MMO. An MMO where you can log off for the night and come back the next day to find your farm raided and your character killed sounds super frustrating. A game where players make the laws that you have to follow is a disaster waiting to happen. It's not like guilds in MMO's guilds deal with their rulebreakers internally because every player would be bound to it with a punishment for breaking the law as opposed to rules only being placed on guild members who agreed to the rules by being part of the guild. As an MMO, the game sounds like nothing but balancing issues. As a single-player game, maybe with a small scale multiplayer system, I think it could be a great game.

[@bballjosh11]

One of only 2 things I ever backed. The other was Hollow Knight. At least that was a good call.

[@osets2117]

Metroidvanias are definitely a better backing than an MMO

[@xelloskaczor5051]

Neither was a good call u got lucky

[@loopygordo]

Silk song cant come soon enough. Team cherry is awesome

[@MFG1243]

Eh, a 50% success rate is phenomenal for Kickstarter luck

[@juanrodriguez9971]

Backing MMOs sounds like an awful idea, while backing realistic single player with maybe local multiplayer ideas is perfect, thanks for being one of the heroes that helped to make Hollow Knight a reality.

[@piyoweb]

I love how even into the end of 2022, he's still writing wall-o-text of updates that pretty said nothing.

[@IceBlueLugia]

He has to. The second he stops, he’s getting sued for 8 million + potentially whatever he made on PayPal, Patreon, and the Chronicles of Elyria merch store. He has to keep showing that he’s “working” on the game

[@dblundz]

Lmao you need hundreds of Millions, time and a huge team to make a MMO. If you don't have those few things? it's never going to happen. No idea why people throw so much money at "I need 500,000 dollars for the best MMO ever made and there's 4 of us making it"

[@juanrodriguez9971]

And not only to make it playable and work, but also to make it enjoyable, imagine finally releasing the game just to have it fck up because of hackers, bots, etc. MMOs have all the problems a single player game has multiplied for 1000 since they will be spending millions while trying to stand on their own feet.

[@petrus9067]

@Krazy Kommando and not start promising EVERY FEATUTE IN THE WORLD and imply its gonna be quick . AAA mmos take years to implement many features while the game is running, while these guys had no focal point at all and thought it was possible

[@nobody2996]

Don't forget "And I'm promising all this revolutionary tech shit that people with far more money and experience haven't been able to pull off, all while none of our team have any actual game development experience."

[@deathZor42]

@Krazy Kommando it depends how you set your expectations like you can make a functional MMO if you drop a lot of the graphics keep the game relatively simple in terms of features the problem is you never get the player base for it to survive unless you manage to build some unique with a hardcore fan base, the problem then is you now need to please that player base and there is no real breaking out of your unique game play.

[@exedeath]

@@petrus9067 " and not start promising EVERY FEATUTE IN THE WORLD" then why have crowdfunding sites to start with if people are going to use it to make shitty normal ideas?

[@Prizzlesticks]

"We want to create Capitalism - The Game, where you can literally buy your wealth with real world money and skip the toil to the top. But no loot boxes, we have morals." I mean, they could have just agreed to microtransations instead of loot boxes and had a revenue source coming in without the indignity of digital gambling, but. Eh.

[@robertfaulkner1824]

I think a game like this might have to go back to straight up subscription. Like clearly they need money but I feel like a game, especially one like this, your accomplishments should be made IN GAME. I love the idea of an actual economy but I think it should be virtual. I’d pay top dollar for the game and if it did what it claimed I don’t see why they couldn’t get 10-15 a month from players.

[@Prizzlesticks]

@@robertfaulkner1824 Agreed. I mean, you have no idea how much I've spent on FFXIV, and it doesn't even let me buy a kingdom. (Shit, it's a struggle just to get a house, but damn straight I clicked on a sign for four hours nonstop, it was Lavender Beds, don't judge me.) And for that matter, I've spent additional money just buying glam from the Mogstation, because glam is end game. Do I regret it? Not really, I've had a ton of fun, and that's worth the cost for me. I mean, I spend three bucks on a latte that's gone in an hour, why not twelve bucks on hours and hours of entertainment in a month and amazing Astrologian glam that I get to keep even if I don't renew my sub for awhile? My point being, I agree. So long as the content is fulfilling and the game is not stagnating, I have no qualms with subscription fees. I also have no problem with microtransactions for cosmetic purposes. I just really hate gacha and loot box mechanics. That's so shady and exploitive. To mask it under a guise of chivalry and morals is a total farce. -_-

[@fawnieee]

Their concepts are honestly something I would have come up with when I was 8yrs old and playing MMO'S, no understanding or knowledge as to how games are made let alone as something as colossal and undertaking as an MMO! I even recall listing out game concepts with a friend at the time (it was obviously just a fantasy) and yet even they were more realistic than these systems smh. And yet these are adults, who were funded by OTHER adults. The mind boggles!

[@scoutobrien3406]

I participated in a jousting tournament at PAX that was acting as a tech demo for this game. I wish they'd just release that demo as a tiny game. It was fantastic.

[@Toberumono]

Wait. Holy shit. That was their proposed feature set? That’s not just programmatically difficult. It’s literally impossible due to basic psychology.

[@KnakuanaRka]

Yeah, it isn’t feasible, but what does psychology have to do with it?

[@notmyrealname5268]

The op is likely referring to the fact that only a very small percentage of the potential player base would be interested in being anything other than a king or chosen one. Also, with a realistic economy and no real-world consequences to stave off human nature, people would just go on mass killing and looting sprees for their amusement. In certain parts of the real world it's already happening even with law enforcement. Imagine how much worse a videogame would be. Point is, even with billions if dollars and decades of development time this project would fall apart.

[@Toberumono]

@@notmyrealname5268 That and people’s general interest in having their own thing making every location effectively single-use, yes. (I mean, how interested would you be in re-mapping a place when somebody’s already done that, for example)

[@Nutmegowns1]

As long as there's nerds willing to fork over money, there will always be an open world MMO where you can do anything on Kickstarter

[@mirageowl]

you realize that there wouldn't be any other games than candy crush if nerds weren't willing to fork over money right?

[@Nutmegowns1]

@@mirageowl I'm sorry you're defensive about Star Citizen or something but maybe reread what I said because it doesn't have anything to do with gaming at large?

[@ska187]

@@mirageowl good, gaming fucking sucks.

[@thalassaer4137]

@@ska187 just cuz you got bodied by fhe first boss in darksouls.

[@jackcanham1196]

@@ska187 no fun head ahh

[@jimmyvbuck1868]

I love in depth looks at failed games, no idea why but I like them.

[@JustinBailey91]

Then you might wanna check out Death of a Game on KZbin if you haven't already, it's really good.

[@EricDrinksWater]

@@JustinBailey91 Honestly the death of a game series is a case where I wish the presenter was much more charismatic. I love the idea but the execution is pretty meh.

[@jopearson6321]

In my leisure time I'm making a 2D indie rpg with some sim elements. My day job is a pro developer, and I have some game design experience. My game is two or three orders of magnitude less complex than making the MMORPG they are pitching. I estimate it will take me up to 9 years at my current rate of progress to get to version 1.0, and maybe an extra 3 years to make it feature complete (game dev is hard!). The fact that anyone on the team thought that their pitch was remotely feasible given their level of budget and timeframe ia beyond me. Honestly, it sounds like it is aiming for at least RDR2 levels of system design, and that is a game with a long history of talented developers and a 50x budget. Absolute madness.

[@Ike_of_pyke]

They should have started with the basic adventure MMO with aging mechanics and the high level role systems(being able to request assaults and indepth trading) being run by pre-programmed npcs & advertised the roles would come in later expansions/overhauls. This may have still failed but I feel like the failure of the original system is partially because of how big they went in at the start

[@sultanofswag8901]

That would've just been Mount and Blade

[@jooot_6850]

@@sultanofswag8901 a mount and blade styled MMO would be sick

[@sultanofswag8901]

@@jooot_6850 there are mods for mount and blade that do that kind of thing

[@centurosproductions8827]

"You can craft maps and sell them to people!" The internet: "I'm gonna end this man's whole career."

[@Eclin]

Honestly yeah, what’s stopping someone from posting it on the internet?

[@nodvick]

Seriously, Put in capsule primitives as all your characters, all your monsters, all your everything. Make a simple primitive "interactable" model (just a cube is fine!) and get all of your systems working, work out what you can and cannot fit in and make work, you don't need ANY real graphics of any kind until much much later. once you have all of your foundational systems in place, you can expand on them and start mapping, don't worry about modelling your monsters or anything yet. lay out a basic world, don't decorate it, don't texture it. ust put in placeholder everythings. Placeholder npc's, placeholder monuments/landmarks, etc. they can all be colored cubes, it doesn't matter. once you have enough real estate to hold your first version of your game, add your story, modify your mapping, placement, and objects to fit your story and side quests you add in, once you are DONE with the story and the quests, NOW you texture your map, terrain, landmarks, etc. THEN model your enemies and characters to fit with the environment. If you are expecting a magnanymous gaming project from an indie team and this is NOT the path they take, they WILL fail, don't fall for it, don't back it. Especially since the MAJORITY of the budget for these things is spent on the custom art assets.

[@DracoHandsome]

I was there for the absolutely disastrous Searing Plague web event (only mentioned briefly in this video.) Chronicles of Elyria's setting revolved around the Searing Plague and they had an event to hype up the game where you signed onto the web site and worked with other players to fight off the plague. This event was explained incredibly badly so nobody understood how to play it, and the team dared to accuse me of "confusing new players" when I explained it in terms that were possible to understand. The way I chose to explain it was: - Players who bought or earned game access generated Pure tokens. - All other players generated Plague tokens. - Players traded to get both Plague and Pure tokens, using the latter to "neutralize" the former, thus holding back the plague. - Unpurified Plague tokens would make the plague worse at 9AM PST every day. - Players unlocked roles by consuming the coins they generated (10 and 30 coins.) - Free players could unlock game access and become Pure players if they saved up enough Pure tokens (180). ........................... Chronicles of Elyria's "epic 10-year story" required the players to win, so Soulbound never planned for the possibility of the plague winning. *WHICH IT DID, OF COURSE.* How could it _not?_ Look at the way it's designed! The event became overwhelmed with the inactive accounts of Plague players who abandoned the event out of confusion or frustration, meaning their tokens were not being neutralized. Pure players were useless because they had no (active) Plague players to trade with. I do seem to recall they started culling inactive accounts (but only under the pedantry of saying this was like culling actual sick people in a medieval society), but they also didn't account for Plague players proactively trying to spread the plague or just how generally slow and inconvenient this trading system was. So the plague was clearly winning and Soulbound made up some contrived excuse to force the result they wanted, pissing off the few players remaining after this catastrophically-bad event was finally over.

[@ZealotOfSteal]

Personally I had a decent amount of fun with that event, even earned the 180 coins I think. Two friends were following the game at the time and were part of a fairly large community discord, so didn't see the shitshow you described, but saw quite a bit of organization. Then again, I wasn't following the project closely so no wonder I missed that.

[@DracoHandsome]

@@ZealotOfSteal I remember there being circles to help players get the 180 Purity for game access - but also remember absolutely everybody ducking out as soon as they got it, or before then if they weren't able to find such a circle.

[@bluedistortions]

Hahaha! Thanks for sharing the cringe.

[@siradmiral734]

If Covid had never happened Elyria would’ve been released - the devs or something

[@TheREALAvengerr]

Imagine this but on a much larger scale, and it sounds exactly like Star Citizen.

[@spartan117zm]

I mean SC actually has a playable game, a large/skilled enough team, and one person who’s driving the creative vision as opposed to half the studio sitting around throwing ideas at a wall. I’d argue they’re leagues ahead of where this game was.

[@unloyal4847]

@@onyxsuccubus What game is completed these days though? all of em are in progress live service trash, I mean look at cyberpunk lmao.

[@dy031101]

@@onyxsuccubus CIG's own narratives aside, what exactly do *you* think "being completed" means though?

[@realrealqbok]

@@spartan117zm they certainly are leagues ahead in magnitute of sums embezzled :D although, granted, their half-baked unplayable pre-alpha-for-two-decades-now BS certainly does look better than the proverbial Death Stranding running on N64

[@bigpigeon2384]

Nah Elyria doesn’t have a fan base as horrifically zealous as star citizen

[@SuperCrazyEstonian]

When you try to make an entire game in the scale of Runescape, without realizing that it took them over 20 years to build it all.

[@royalcrumble2384]

This whole thing sounds like a griefer's paradise

[@AndrewBarsky]

Exactly, I’d be all for it

[@GreebleClown]

13:09 If they had kept it at a MUD i can see their plans working, I've played some textbased MUDs that get really complex due to not being constrained by graphics. But they're trying to do too much right out of the gate.

[@rottencandy2675]

what are some of your favorites? I want to get into stuff like this.

[@karablack8336]

@Rotten Candy The Discworld MUD is my absolute favorite. Elysium and Aardwolf are pretty good too.

[@dawson3776]

Here is a lesson in games, if there is pvp and there are no limits or rules, there will always be griefers.

[@ftniceberg874]

Always have to offer the pve only option...enough people have experienced the garbage 12 year old online to never want to deal with them online with no rules to control their idiocy.

[@GenericInternetter]

You're right, except for the "limits and rules" part. Even with those in place, griefers and hackers will always find a way

[@dawson3776]

@@GenericInternetter yes, but it takes a lot more effort to pull, something that might not even be worth it to circumvent. Its also easier to report said player for such behaviour.

[@foobazabar]

@@dawson3776 If only we made murder illegal, there'd be no murders!

[@dbgr9875]

See, the being an npc thing worked in Sword Art Online because your other choices consisted of literally risking death and you were trapped in the simulation with no way out.

[@3u-n3ma_r1-c0]

"sounds cool"

[@Earthstar_Review]

Or live in an orphanage I guess.

[@KnakuanaRka]

Yeah, plus it being full-immersion VR made it more simple and interesting to keep up your daily life in the virtual world compared to doing so at a computer.

[@burningsnow9870]

I'd honestly love the idea of being a medicine/potion salesmen in one of these games. Maybe have players get discounts for bringing me in rare ingredients while I ply my trade. Maybe specing myself as a healer too if someone convinces me to join them

[@zerodollarbird]

I once ran a mobile shop in Runescape and would do trade routes through the Wilderness, and hired several people on as caravan guards.

[@DarthMcDoomington]

There's actually games like that. Recettear and Moonlighter come to mind. The thing is they're entire games, and not just one system in an absurdly massive game.

[@TheFlipsta97]

This is pretty much a classic case of scope drift, and I would hedge my bets at it being a lack of strong management. So imagine you're part of a team of engineers, and you set out to build a car. You settle on the idea of a 4 door sedan, and someone asks why I can't seat 200 people, someone asks why the aerodynamics aren't better, someone asks why there is no electric engine, before you know it, you've built the bullet train, and the client asked for a Mercedes Benz. You need directors and micromanaging asshats whenever big projects are undertaken. I think that before they decide to create a system of ultra realisting butt jiggle physics, they need to make sure they've finished the boob jiggle physics they started six months ago. I think it's not them scamming anyone, rather it's overly enthusiastic and ambitious youngsters, that need a more strict system of management to reel things in and ensure that loose ends are being tied up.

[@Duhgel]

@@tamagothchic this honestly

[@theREALChadsexinton]

Divinity 2: Original Sin was also a kickstarter game. They spent 4.5 million Euros on development. They not only delivered a game within two years, but one that has been hailed by critics as the greatest CRPG ever made. Point being - crowdfunding does have potential. And this is why the biggest tragedy of Chronicles of Elyria is that it gave crowdfunding a bad name. Even if the lawsuit succeeds, the damage has been done.

[@honeybadger6275]

They also had the advantage of being a game studio that has been making games for 20 years and didn't try to make an MMO. Just a classic RPG with online co-op.

[@IHMyself]

@@honeybadger6275 Exactly.

[@Madrigal025]

Why do I have the feeling that The Salt Factory has experience dealing with dogs being put into a Labyrinth from someone with a shovel and oak planks?

[@jon-from-tx]

The difference between video game production and architechture is that you're not allowed to practice architechture for the public without having the skills to follow through on completing a project.

[@emmestein]

I was surprised by how Caspian actually revealed how little he’s accomplished in his latest update. He starts by showing of 72 super complicated detailed flowcharts about how to make ale and shit. Details worth working on when you have a complete basegame. Buuut, in the same update he also talks about grappling with questions like “what constitutes a room?” “How are buildings constructed” etc. he’s talking about and showing off piles of leaves he’s made for another biome, but he hasn’t even started to work on the first one. He’s working on the details, or at least he starts to work on a detail, comes up with something new and abandons what he was previously working on, sets on working on the new thing -> repeat. To think that he paid himself 200k a year, and is now using emotional manipulation like “I HAVE TO FUND THE GAME WITH MY OWN SAVINGS” Well yes. You paid yourself way too much (since you did absolutely nothing) and used a PPP loan maliciously for your own winnings. I think it’s only fair that you face some consequences. I’m so glad that his “foolproof” TOS don’t hold up in court, and that he’s getting sued. I realise that the 72 flowcharts and build numbers are only mentioned for legal reasons, and I love how pathetic that is.

[@KnakuanaRka]

Yeah, this guy clearly has no idea of how to prioritize things when developing a game, or what is feasible in a game.

[@SpartanD63]

I tend to (rightfully) shy away from Kickstarters. Shovel Knight was a very pleasant surprise that I was happy to have backed though

[@gagne6928]

and undertale

[@demonicthan742]

And Hat In Time

[@valmarsiglia]

"Looks like someone ran their balls across a keyboard with Unity up by accident." That's gold, man. Made me lol for real.

[@celestinemorningstar4851]

I feel like if the people behind this mess hid behind a persona and started making merch memeifying the tragedy (eg "The Elyria Devs owe me money" or "I backed Elyria and all I got was this teeshirt"), they might actually be able to make money off this mess. Probably not enough to pay people back or put out the game, but enough that he might be able to pay for a legal defense.

[@VickNumber7]

Idk how many times ive watched this. Its a great background video

[@Akranejames]

I feel like just deciding to make an Indie MMO in 3D is in itself the biggest Red Flag you could fly.

[@SheepUndefined]

Everyone's laughing at the idea of being a peasant in a game with player controlled rulers being boring, but honestly that's kind of the point behind games like Space Station 13, and it's oddly engaging. If the devs know what they're doing, it can be pulled off. I don't think *these* devs could though.

[@SarzaelX]

Space Station 13 features a relatively small map and dozens to a hundred of players in a game that lasts a few hours before restarting. It cannot be compared to a large scale MMO where everything is supposed to be permanent.

[@desertkite2732]

There's a reason I've never heard of that game

[@ekki1993]

@leonis It's actually an useful comparison. It highlights how fucking hard it would be to pull off without those restraints. People do dumb shit and it's hard to design around it when your game allows so much dumb shit.

[@robertagren9360]

I recall an online game where you had to speak german and was a resource management simulation where roles was a job profession and adventurer was a subclass to hunt fur. Furnitures could be made only by going through a maze of trading with people that it's likely that people had one of each kind of profession. A king is basically a role of walking around tossing coins on the streets. There need to be a game before making a theme for the game. Oblivion or skyrim online is the foundation and within it you set up roles for each class. That's why there are many clones because R&D cost and takes twice as long to make than making a game.

[@BEMEiTY]

They could of just a made a jousting game, upgrade your horses, your armor, your joust. The jousting actually looks pretty fun, lol.

[@ekki1993]

For me, the jousting was the part of the video where it became painfully obvious the devs were either dumb or scammers. It's an extremely niche thing that could be done naturally if you did the open world game as promised. The fact that they started focusing on that meant they were too dumb to realise that or that they were selling a lie that sounds well and thus probably adds a bunch of money from backers.

[@714KH]

They prided themselves so much on their 'integrity' when refusing microtransactions in their game that they ended up being dishonest in other aspects. Never back someone who is unwilling to compromise

[@NotoriousLightning]

False witness cast an evil eye.

[@willischwabe1324]

Yeah. They talked about what they do but never actually did what they said they were doing. Then they make a shift or switch. Into the story about the story. From showing footage or giving any kind of receipts to "the tale of our development of which we never showed receipts of", changing the topic from "show us" to "we show you the story of you asking us to show you". A weak shift of focus, away from what people actually asked them to show. Deflection at its finest.

[@MezzoForte4]

"Dark Souls default character" Jeremy Walsh. Holy shit, I can't. 😂

[@T0mN7]

The salt is getting real!

[@TheJum]

Games like this and Star Citizen always make me think “Man, wouldn’t it be funny if they persist and then end up somehow eventually making the best game to ever exist?” It’s not a serious thought, just whispers from a whimsical heart. Nevertheless, wouldn’t that be something?

[@alex12342715]

Star Citizen has potential, it's just to be seen if they bit off more they can chew. Or if it becomes GTA:Online in space with more and more, and more inconsistent & whacky DLC to get more and more money with no theme or goal that dilutes what the game was. Both are likely.

[@ragnarok7976]

It would be something but as the saying goes: wish into one hand, shit into the other and see which one fills up first.

[@starmorpheus]

I know Star Citizen gets flack, but putting it and this game in a sentence of comparison is an insult to Star Citizen lol

[@SilverZephyrFalcon]

I was thinking of mentioning SC but just looked it up and at least they have a playable alpha. Seems like they've solved at least some of their issues to get that far.

[@ForeverShadowBanned]

Star Citizen actually has a game you can play, it's nowhere near what they've originally promised but it's a huge game with huge goals and it's slowly but surely getting there. Chronicles of Elyria is nothing more than a concept and still even to this date doesn't have an actual feasible game you can play that is anything like what was promised at all.

[@EmmaEquinox]

"looks like someone trying to run Death Stranding on an N64" Had me crying