Discussion: The Cry Engine uncertainty effect

[Hurrikane]

Originally Posted by Wollongong

It is pretty common notice that investors invest only when they have a reasonable certainty of an expected return. The less certainty, the higher the expected profit must be to warrant an investment.

No investor will want to invest in a city/country which has been announced to receive an atomic bomb within the next few days. As such, an announcement of intended attacking already has a direct economic effect on the target nation.

This translates to EU.

Our expected return, on EU, is quite certain: on average, we will lose some money on every minute we play. So far no problem, as it is no weird thing to pay for entertainment.

However, this set rate of return is now accompanied by a major uncertainty factor: The Cry Engine update.

Many people are uncertain whether they will be able to run EU on CryEngine. And EVERYBODY is uncertain as to when it will come.

Will it come on june 11th, after the exhibit ends? Will it come just before summer holidays, so that all schoolgoing youths can spend fortunes on the new and improved EU? Or will it turn out to be christmas? Nobody knows, and those who claim to know have either a real-working crystal ball, or they are lying.

So... say you are uncertain whether you will be able to play, and you are also uncertain about when this update will come. And, of course, you are aware that you are uncertain.
Would you be willing to deposit then?

Most people will say no. There is no use in depositing 10, 20, 30, whatever dollars into a game, if you aren't reasonable certain you will be able to play in 7 days.

What motivation lies in increasing your skill, building your avatar, if you know there is a chance that in 7 days, nothing will be there?

The motivation is limited.

As such, I feel it is safe to assume that many people are sitting on their dollars, waiting for what comes next. During this wait, the influx of money is less. MA will be hurting as they have less income, and the economy will be under strain.

Implications:
- Expect dropping rates for the time to come, at least untill CE comes into effect (not nice)
- MA have a strong motivation to work their asses off to ensure the CE will be implemented ASAP (nice, and not nice)

Computers become obsolete in around 3 years. EU's been around a bit longer than that. Upgrading is inevitable with PC's, not just because games keep up with technology, but eveything else does too.

FarCry uses the first CryEngine and worked on my original (shitty) PC btw, no problems at all.

Don't worry about CryEngine 2. Not many companies choose to improve their business by alienating most of their customers

Hurrikane

[Ozi]

I think if a small minority start selling out because they are afraid of CE2 then you will see others depositing more to buy their gear and skills.

I have been saying for a long time that EU only needs to create opportunity to see just how many current players could deposit alot more if only they had something to invest in.

If decent items started to drop in price that simply means opportunity for those who can deposit to snap up some bargains.

Once bigger numbers of players come into EU, especially the Chinese the demand will rise again. I swear there seems to be some ignorance about China as an economy. It isn't a country of people all earning $1 a day and eating rice for breakfast lunch and dinner.
BEIJING (AFP) — China had 345,000 millionaires by the end of last year, the second-most in Asia after Japan, according to a new study by US investment bank Merrill Lynch.http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...n1PFb2nZwzEPPg

Sorry chicken little but the sky isn't falling

[Dragon Fire]

Originally Posted by Outman

With the money MA is putting into the crytec engine I am willing to bet that it will have minimal lag. Games like call of duty, gears of war, ect. have good graphics and minimal lag (graphics and such are not transmitted during the game usually). There may be a bit more lag due to more users online to gawk at the graphics. There could also be more computer based lag, but with the money coming in I am willing to bet MA will be sure to keep lag as it is now or reduce it. As far as specs go I am sure low end specs will be even lower then Crysis is atm, since MA has a ton of time to work on the engine. Overall the engine should bring more ingame advertising, some good press and some nice investments. Heck if done right loot should increase.

Yes But this is a mmo so there maybe some problems when the CE2 is relesed wether it be leg or something else...

[Xandra]

Hi,

my machine is capable to run Crysis in medium settings - what does it tell me about the capability to run EU/CR2? Right, exactly nothing! It all depends of what MA's team does with it.

For instance, Oblivion. I'm able to run at max. settings - stunning graphics, fluid movement, and working very well (not a good game although, IMHO ...). And EU utilizes the same game engine, gamebryo. What do we have in EU? Crappy graphics, rubberbanding, lags, CDT's, and movement like or keyboard/ mouse commands would be transmitted via an old 9.6 modem ...

So we don't know:

• anything about EU/CE2's hardware specs
• anything about what we'll get
• anything about a timeline

What we guess to know can only be speculation, and judging the competence of MA's developing team by their work with the gamebryo engine cannot give me much hope.

But this is not topic here. How will this all influence the readiness to deposit/ invest now?

1. For myself, it's simple: It cannot come much worse. For me, the fun factor (and thus my willingness to pay for) was steadily decreasing since my start in '05, nerf after nerf, I'm sparing you my long, long list. I'm just telling you that there's quite some more people like me, that have dramatically reduced their deposits and are just in game still because of good friends there. And maybe because there's still a little hope that the better old time might come back sometimes ... These participants are hardly affected by the upcoming change, contrarily, it might help to hold them. There's a word about planets managed by other companys, maybe me might migrate there?
   .
2. Then there's a large amount of participants that simply don't care, that maybe not even know more than the most meagerly marketing releases from MA. Guess this would be the by far biggest part of EU participants.
   .
3. And then there are the heavy depositors, "investors", that drop several 100's of $$ every month, some even more. Since I cannot really understand them [*1], I have a hard time to guess how they will react. A lot of them seems to gather here (on EF) and from what I'm reading, they have full confidence mostly. These must be MA's most valuated customers ("MAMVC" ;-) ), and I doubt MA would try to screw them more than just acceptable, if possible.

So I'm rather sure the CE2 thingie will not affect depositing very much.

The things that are affecting the happiness of participants, the readiness of depositing, and the rate of newbies that don't run away crying after first few deposits are others. There's countless threads about, and it's OT here.

Have fun!

[*1] I'd never ever drop these amounts of money on pure confidence in the business partners good will, without any binding contracts and/ or without any kinds of security like insurances or trust fund to cover at least the TT of the participants belongings. There's things like bankruptcies, takeovers and such in this world ...

[Wikkerman]

It never ceases to amaze me, that whenever there is some discussion about CE2 there are many who seem to make this automatic assumption, that on its launch, there will be this sudden massive influx of people just queing up to deposit massive amounts of $ into EU.

Sorry, but I suggest you dont hold your breath.

As for the comment about there being 345,000 Chinese millionaires. Do you really think they got to be millionaires by sitting around on their asses playing games like EU?? Or that they await with orgasmic anticipation for CE2 implementation to join in?

[Ozi]

Originally Posted by Wikkerman

As for the comment about there being 345,000 Chinese millionaires. Do you really think they got to be millionaires by sitting around on their asses playing games like EU?? Or that they await with orgasmic anticipation for CE2 implementation to join in?

The millionaires maybe won't log in, but maybe they will; or their kids will. The Chinese love a gamble (as do aussies btw) and the younger chinese love technology. China's one child policy has meant many of the wealthy children are spoilt and selective abortion has resulted in more boys than girls; the youth will flock to games like EU. That is my opinion and everyone is free to have their own. The Chinese are extremely entrepreneurial which MA's marketing targets. So all in all I am confident that the Chinese will enter EU in droves and some, but not all will be heavy depositors.

[JackFree]

I think people are still depositing and playing as normally since we have no idea when the CE2 VU will come.

The update will be (from what I understand) mainly a graphics upgrade, although I'm certain that the new engine will allow for many new "functionalities". As much as there is concern about how graphics intensive it will actually be, there are many people playing on PCs that will, at the very least, allow them to continue playing at lower graphics settings. I really don't see that the new engine will cause anyone to stop playing, unless they are already playing EU below minimum specs. Of course we won't really know how Crytropia will play until it is implemented.

One thing to remember is that the new engine will be good for everyone in the sense that it will bring more players to EU with graphics that will put EU among the best looking games around. MA will benefit from an influx of new players, like the CND boom, and hopefully the loot will improve...

Cheers

[Doer]

My own personal pet theory is that the vast majority of effects on the in-game economy when CE2 is unrolled would be a crash in certain mediocre item prices and common, high-ticket commodities (ESIs) when half the resellers can't log in anymore.

Alas, i really don't think that CE2 will break compatibility with most computers that can currently run EU, so my theory will not get gloriously proved.

[NightwolfAA2k5]

There is no such thing as an investment without risk. But you'll never succeed if you don't bite the bullet

[davidgr1200]

There are several points here:
Many people deposit, not to succeed long term but to be able to hunt tonight.
When a new VU comes some things will change and some people will see opportunities to buy up things in advance which they can sell at a profit later. Maybe apartments will look superb and more people will want them? Perhaps clothes will increase in value because they will look much better? Someone may well be buying up hats and coats right now.
Personally I would like to see MA introduce the CRY engione in the following fashion:
Create a new continent (small island?) with just one tp which everyone can reach (like PA or New Oxford) which uses the new engine. Implement the engine only on this island to start off with. This would allow players who want to and have to appropriate hardware to be able to try out the new engine and expose the inevitable bugs. It would also mean that people will see the difference in graphics between the new and old engines. Once this seems to be working then perhaps Amethera can be converted and when that has been working for a while the rest of the game can be converted. I would much rather the conversion is done this way than the whole game changed at once, even if it means having two versions of the program installed on my PC at the same time.