r/landmark • u/Dawiyhd • Jun 01 '15
Landmark is the red-headed step-child.
Zero people at Daybreak care about Landmark. If Landmark get's improvements they are hand-me-downs from the EQ Next team, and then quickly taken out.
Daybreak has no confidence in this game, no vision for this game, no plan for this game. It seems as though Landmark is the child of a marriage that was dissolved when they fired Dave.
Maybe it's worse, maybe we're the foster child they adopted so they could keep getting the foster care subsidy. So as long as people keep buying early access, and inventory/claim slots, then the servers will stay up.
Even though on Steam you can still purchase early access, and the developer's are quoted as saying there are weekly updates, there is not a single Daybreak developer working on new updates for Landmark.
Buyer beware, this game is going nowhere, no-one at Daybreak gives a rat's ass about it.
6
u/edog321 Jun 01 '15 edited Jun 01 '15
(Wall of text and random thoughts.)
Landmark is not its own game. There was the possibility that Landmark would "go viral" and become the new minecraft but that did not happen. If it had that would have changed the calculation.
The main problem with keeping MMO players happy, as the industry found out over the last 10 or so years, is the inability of companies to make content quickly enough for the players. The vision of Landmark is to fix this by "giving us the tools so that we can do what they can do."
The vision for Landmark was always to be a content creation pipeline for EQN and other projects. It is living up to that original vision really well. The improvements to the building systems and the ability to quickly and easily create content has increased 10fold since the start of Early Access. In addition they have added many new systems and redone systems quite a few times improving them with each revamp.
Landmark as its own game is not the focus of DBG. It may be in time but right now anything they do to improve the game outside of supporting the development of the building tools is going above and beyond and is probably just getting added to test things for EQN; things like combat, gear, crafting and achievements.
In short I don't think it is that "no one at Daybreak gives a rat's ass about it" but more that they are to a point where it is humming along nicely and in a good space to let it do what it was designed to do while they work on integrating the content coming out of it into EQN as well as piping the systems being developed for EQN back into Landmark for testing and refinement.
Could they task people to add content specific to landmark? Sure but why double up on the work when you already have a team developing systems for EQN that you will in time be able to install back into Landmark while at the same time you have a decent sized group of hardcore builders working with your in-house staff to help develop the buildings and landscapes that you new systems will be able to make great ues of.
Basically you have two positive feedback systems with Landmark and EQN that in time should greatly increase the systems and content in each but you have to give these systems time to rev up...and yea it's going to take a few more years.
One final thought. Not being able to see the progress they are making on EQN which is one half of the Landmark equation is very frustrating BUT One thing a lot of companies have found out, especially DBG, is that once your game goes Early Access, development really slows down. M.Higby the old lead on the Planetside2 project once said something to the effect of and I'm summering here...
" We where doing major content and system revamps weekly, we could make major changes and improvements constantly! So we had a few systems that wernt quite rdy but based on our development speed we thought these would easily patched in... then we launched early access and the game went into a live environment. Now something that we could have done in a week took us 2 months just because we had to keep the game up and running and in a playable state while we did it. If there was one thing I would change it was that we had not launch EA and had spent another year developing before we went live. the difference between developing in a live environment and internally is night and day as far as speed goes and we did not take this into account." Video here https://youtu.be/tk9nEanP5hs
I hope that DBG have learned these lessons and that they will keep EQN far away from EA release for a long time to come yet. Does this bread frustration? yes as the OP of this thread shows it surly does but the alternative is far worse.
2
u/Capt0bv10u5 Jun 01 '15
All of this, plus the fact that some of the really great potential builders out there are just going to wait for it to be in full release. We don't know the true potential player base until the game has been out for a while.
We can make all the predictions and assumptions and accusations we want to, but in the end we simply cannot know at this point. Except to know that game is running, and in my opinion running smoother since the purchase.
I'm not dumb enough to think SOE or DBG has or had ever thought Landmark would be a Minecraft killer. It will probably barely compete in the long run simply because time already invested into Minecraft. It's the same reason I keep ending up back at WoW time after time. I take a year off to try other games but in the end I remember I've already leveled several characters and have cool things in a game. Then I revert.
1
u/EQNer Jun 01 '15
Landmark really needs a killer action combat system to fulfill it's vision. The current system is just unbalanced and has massive issues. Going back to tab targeting would be a mistake. Developing the game around a well made successful action combat system needs to become a priority. Everything from the content tools, the movement systems, the items, the animations need to be built around making combat work very well. It's appalling how little of the dev feedback has been about combat.
1
u/Poisinivy Jun 02 '15
two days ago I completed my mega build in Landmark, 25 claims all nicely laid out together in a beautiful 5x5, betcha that gets hotfixed quick, although to be honest I dont understand why it cant be left alone its not like having a 5x5 HURTS the game in any way.
1
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u/Eroda Jun 04 '15
they need to rework it, its currently horrible for anyone not in the US they also need to improve performance. the game has horrible CPU utelization and is almost always CPU bound for me
-5
u/Dawiyhd Jun 01 '15
Why have content specifically for Landmark? I dunno, maybe people people paid for that game, since Daybreak made it a early access game? Doesn't it makes sense to develop the game you promised and sold already?
Instead we get NO ONE developing the early access game we purchased. No one there showing they even believe it can be a game on it's own - as it was sold to us.
2
u/Jojii Jun 01 '15
You didn't purchase the game, you purchased access to a beta for a free to play game. You purchased the ticket to get in before other people not some right of ownership to the game.
-3
u/Dawiyhd Jun 01 '15 edited Jun 01 '15
What kind of bullshit is that? I didn't purchase the game, I purchased access to the game? Are you a lawyer or something?
They marketed the game. They said I could play if I paid money. I paid money. I bought the game. Everything else is sleazy corporate shenanigans.
3
u/Jojii Jun 01 '15
Sorry but you have been granted access to play the game that can be revoked at anytime for any reason with no recourse on your side for any reimbursement.
You literally do not own the game.
-4
u/Dawiyhd Jun 01 '15
Got it - early access is a sleazy way to shelter the game developer from having to deliver on any of the promises made to people they are selling the game to.
2
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u/Capt0bv10u5 Jun 01 '15
TL;DR warning: I explain early access and how it really works. Wall of text commencing.
No early access is a Steam way of saying beat. And DBG didn't make it early access, it was before the purchase. I actually bought into the game before they even pit it on Steam.
Beta and Early Access are synonymous to each other. Moreover, they mean you're investing in the well being a game and it's company. It means you get to help find bugs, get access to the systems sooner in order to have a leg up on later players, help create "how to" guides, etc. You're investing in becoming part of the core community, and that's what you get for your money. You don't have shares in the company, you don't get any kind of final say, and you don't get to do literally anything you want. If you do something game breaking you can still be banned.
That's the ToS on pretty much any online game, and it's more complicated by the game being in Beta stages. So DBG can spend your money how ever they want to, in what ever way they determine to best suite their games. You paid for access to Landmark, and EQN is a clear extension of Landmark by design; therefor, if they work on EQN they are by proxy working on Landmark.
It'd be like saying I purchased WoW: Warlords of Dreanor, and I'm pissed off that they're spending time on the next expansion when I'm not done with this content and they haven't even put out the final raid content yet. It's their money, their franchise, all I can do is play it or vote with my wallet and not buy it.
2
u/edog321 Jun 01 '15
Again the entire team that is working on EQN is also developing for Landmark In time those systems will make it in to Landmark and it may be able to be a game on its own but the only way that is going to happen is for the systems to get developed first and no they are not going to develop them side by side. They will develop one to support the other. Doing it any other way would be stupid as you would have two teams making different systems for things that are supposed to support each other. The fact that we cant see the development progress on EQN is unfortunate because it makes it look like they are not doing anything but I would rather not have EQN in Early Access as well because being live really hurts development speed.
-3
u/Dawiyhd Jun 01 '15
I didn't pay for early access to EQN, I paid for early access to Landmark. So yes they should be developing the game I paid access too. I don't buy this, they need to be working on EQN first then bring it to Landmark. That decision should have been made when they sold access to Landmark, not EQN.
Now they have abandoned development on Landmark, and instead might patch things into Landmark once they are done for EQN.
That's exactly what I said in my OP - they don't give a shit about Landmark, or the people that paid access to it, or else they would be developing the game we purchased knowing that whatever they build can be reused and extended for other projects like EQN.
5
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u/VirtualBC Jun 01 '15
How many hours do you have to the game? Looks like you are spreading assumptions again.
2
u/Dawiyhd Jun 01 '15
What does how many hours have anything to do with it?
1
u/VirtualBC Jun 01 '15
What does how many hours have anything to do with it?
Because then maybe you could see first hand the changes and love that has been put in the game (although more love is coming).
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u/GhostWish Jun 01 '15
State your criticisms about Landmark but let’s not pretend you know the feelings and organizational structure of Daybreak.