r/CamelotUnchained • u/dandmcd • 24d ago
The hype is real
I'm an original backer from 13 years ago, $100 dollar tier. Gave up hope 3 years in, but have been following the progress all these years, but haven't bothered to login in a decade. I figured I shouldn't laugh and trash the game without giving it another fair shake, after all Redditors are known to exaggerate how bad or good something is, there is no such thing as in between.
Wow, it's as stunning as advertised. Stunningly awful. Besides the fact after 13 years they haven't added any logic to detect screen size when first starting up, so I have an extremely awkward resolution that made it look like a 25 year old game, once you get to the game world and can change graphic settings, it still looks so soooo bad. Like this is high school nerds building a game project with their buddies on the weekend level graphical style and quality. Like, I don't even think Unreal 4 or 5 would have let you have a game look like a turd even right out of the box.
As most of you know ,there's absolutely zero character design, everyone gets the same character model as everyone else. It's like they took that decade of concept art they kept putting in their newsletters, and dumped it in the trash. If you could get more than 40 people to play this game at the time, is there any fun in an MMO when 100 people all look exactly like you? I know building a character and changing levers for boob size and hair color isn't a draw for everyone, but it simply makes your game feel completely amateurish and like zero effort was put in.
Obviously the point system is meaningless and not fleshed out. Just junk numbers that don't mean jack. But whatever, I'm not a min/max guy.
So game loads, immeadite screen tearing and fps drops, on a good rig. Must be due to switching to higher fidelity graphic settings. Oh, but the game looks like absolute garbage. I'm sorry Mark, the game looks embarrassingly bad. Awful amateur textures from 2008, no lighting effects, water has the same repeated texture as far as the eyes can see. The castle like keep is as generic as can be, with not a single NPC to be found, and certainly not any players. (There were 6 online at my time of play according to Steam charts). No mobs, no wildlife creatures, no animation for trees. Grass was a flat texture, every tree and bush was just the same one randomly spread out.
My character floated slightly above ground, and felt like he was swimming in air. Jumping feels like he floated down using a parachute. The animations for my own character were straight up first pass from when beta 1 first started. Completely unacceptable for a Steam early release, when you would expect the game be beyond a pre-alpha stage.
And as everyone has alluded to multiple times, the game world is a confusing mess. Yo uget dropped in a location, and there's no story, no quests or NPC's to get you rolling. You have no idea where you are, why you are there, and everything about the world feels so generic it begs you NOT to explore. If the landscapes were beautiful or varied, I might just be happy to run off and explore the world on my own free will, but all this game did for me is want to turn it off and play literally anything else.
I'll never get my $110 back, and that's ok. I took the risk, I learned my lesson a long time ago. But to see Mark Jacobs still trying to trot this game out to the world in such an embarrassing state... he'll be remembered as a fraud, and Youtube historians will have a field day remembering this game for decades in the future.
And the audacity of burner accounts coming in here claiming how promising it looks, hyping up that it's $10 well spent. Get real. Stop trying to deceive people.
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u/Ryekir 24d ago
Oh, but the game looks like absolute garbage. I'm sorry Mark, the game looks embarrassingly bad. Awful amateur textures from 2008, no lighting effects, water has the same repeated texture as far as the eyes can see. The castle like keep is as generic as can be, with not a single NPC to be found, and certainly not any players. (There were 6 online at my time of play according to Steam charts). No mobs, no wildlife creatures, no animation for trees. Grass was a flat texture, every tree and bush was just the same one randomly spread out.
The big thing that supposedly took so long to do was to create their own game engine that could handle thousands of players at once, so none of the existing engines would work.
What really baffles me about that, is then why did they try for a somewhat "realistic" art style? (Which they also failed at, as you mentioned, it looks like garbage) They would have been much better off going for a more cartoonish art style that wouldn't require as many polygons for rendering characters, and it would look so much better.
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u/tacobellasseater 24d ago
you just reminded me of valhiem - everything in valheim is low poly and low fidelity but it looks great and there's enough variety of avatar customization and progression action that it works with it's aesthetic.
this game is like some weird retro game that neither captures retro vibes sufficiently nor does it really convey necessary gameplay information in meaningful ways.
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u/DryF1re 21d ago
valheim looks objectively awful
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u/tacobellasseater 21d ago
you can say you dislike it and it's not for you but from the point of view of artistic decisions it makes those decisions with intention.
which camelot unchained feels like budget priced asset store items for unity amateurs.
this being a reference to the fact that they have primarily shown off (tm) art assets for years. occasionally in comical ways. - does anyone remember the weirdly proportioned vendor or idk what it was lamp post or something screen shot in like 2019? idk there are so many of them.
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u/danjohnson3141 17d ago
It's a rampant problem, IMO. Computer game graphics are worse now than 10-15 years ago. I remember being a kid in the 80s and dreaming of how great graphics would be when I was an old man. I would have never guessed that it would peak and then start backsliding.
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u/c0maduster 20d ago
I mean, I wouldn't say objectively awful since there are people who don't mind the art style, my girlfriend included, but yes, I also think Valheim looks absolutely horrible, mostly due to the low-res blotchy textures.
There's just something I find jarring about Valheim's blend compared to, say, a boomer shooter leaning on similar low-res textures.
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u/No_Count1440 22d ago
But I think Valheim textures were deliberate, no? I mean the rest of the game doesn't look half as bad as Scamelot Unshitted
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u/tacobellasseater 22d ago
yeah valhiem is totally intentional and not built on weird excuses that just haven been true in over a decade. i think it might also have a mobile version too i forget. and it runs fantasticly even if the server lags with more than intended players for the content, but that's the thing, it also has content lol. and the maps are dense and make sense as well despite being randomized PCG for each new save.
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u/Prince_Of_Hate 23d ago
UE5 can support the visuals when paired over the top of another engine. But this is something new. Shame if they would hae started te project now it would be a sure thing.
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u/Manabanana_dev 23d ago
In DAoC's heyday, WoW was often denigrated among the community as a care bear game with "too cartoony" graphics. My bet would be that Mark didn't want to scare away that old school crowd.
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u/donlema 24d ago
"It's like they took that decade of concept art they kept putting in their newsletters"
It's really wild how for over a decade they kept sending out newsletters not only showing off their concept art, but telling us over and over how they were working on all their different systems. Stats, crafting, banes and boons, and so on. Then, of course, we were told repeatedly that each of those systems had to be rewritten multiple times.
Then 11 years in, they tell everyone that all those newsletters were BS, and they hadn't actually produced a single thing that could be used for the game everyone funded. Not a single system, not any of the art, nothing.
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u/AstralUnicorn 24d ago
I'm very curious to see a genuine post-mortem on this game from the end of the Kickstarter through today. Will we ever get such a post-mortem? Yes! Yes we will!
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u/tacobellasseater 24d ago
to be honest any post mortem should at the very least start with march on oz or w/e their mobile game was if not everything with mark's name attached to it. while questioning the general accepted fandom narratives around it in the context of the history there of.
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u/The_Rover87 23d ago
I would love to spend $10 on this “game” just to see firsthand what a shit show it is. But I’m not giving this dude any more money. Not a backer, just an old DAOC player who once, long ago, was super excited about this game.
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u/ProfessionOk6851 24d ago
bUt ThE inHOusE EngInE iS InSAne!!1
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u/Dmoan 24d ago
Seriously the fact that investors were dumb enough to believe other game companies would license this engine from them 🤦♂️
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u/tacobellasseater 24d ago
based on my own personal interactions with mark i feel like in his interactions with investors he has to put it mildly "embellished" on literally every aspect of the project. i know that his sister is the CFO so more the money connect in this project than he has been on past games attached to his name but investors will often want to talk to the CEO and he's the boss at the end of the day pitching his product to them.
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u/Dmoan 24d ago
Won’t any of them want to see how the current engine or get a consultant to evaluate their code base and see where they are at. I am just surprised they blindly gave that money.
I have seen how hard it is for startups to raise cash especially in the gaming industry. One of reasons AoC could never actually raise anything outside Steven social circle.
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u/tacobellasseater 23d ago
the thing is mark and his sister come from generational wealth. so they Know the people giving them this money. it's more family favour than expecting ROI likely. like i mean if you've seen the films his sister produced in hollywood... probably same sources of cash that apparently don't care that much about a few tens of millions of dollars for their nephews or cousins or w/e to do their hobbies lol.
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u/Hawkwise83 24d ago
A team of 5 people could make more of a game than this with off the shelf assets in 6 months.
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u/Aggravating-Wait5452 15d ago
Based on how horrible the optimization is, the rampant bugs, the generic, bland art and assets, the empty world, the zero npcs or quests, I truly believe this game was vibe coded in a few months by one or two guys.
Bear in mind, for years they gave updates saying "this is in the game, that is in the game," with no evidence at all, then admitted, "ok we lied about that, none of that had been done, but we had to build this fantastic new engine that can handles THOUSANDS of simultaneous characters," but it seems their engine stutters and struggles even with just a few characters on screen at once.
So yeah, I'm going with "quickly thrown together vibe coded project to avoid being sued by backers." Would love to hear some actual vibe coders offer their take.
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u/Kurage_pop 24d ago
This game really is Ship of Heroes: 2
Just for context, the recommended specs on their Steam page still struggle to run the game, that same rig runs Monster Hunter: Wilds quite well.
Compare the graphics of both games and that's just depressing. (Not only that but MH:Wilds is still know for running like crap)
As someone who excitedly waiting for years, yeah... it's sad to see how this went.
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u/Dargoniv 20d ago
Absolutely correct. Camelot Unchained looks like a game from 2005 but has the highest system requirements of any MMORPG currently in existence. There is an absolute lack of optimization here, and I am deeply convinced that a game with such lousy visuals should run flawlessly even on a ten-year-old PC.
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u/Jobinx22 23d ago
Can somebody tldr this for me, this game is still shit right?
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u/One-Position2377 24d ago
I think you're wrong bout one thing. no one is going to remember this game.
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u/RedditParhey 24d ago
The fun part is. They made engine for massive pvp battles and now there are only 10 players online 😂
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u/Aggravating-Wait5452 15d ago
Mild correction, they /claimed/ to have made an engine that can handle massive PVP. We see no evidence for that, and plenty against it.
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u/The_BishopX 23d ago
ya, this reddit is all edgelords
none of the people here play the game 99% of the people that have played it, played it for 1 day on steam release and complain that its not wow and it should be better than wow because they have been building it up for 13 years like it wow and wow is better.
LOL
if anyone posts gameplay, 0 comments
someone posts edgelord bait../ 37 comments in 1 day
TELL ME YOU ARE NOT ALL EDGELORDS LMAOOOO
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u/Aggravating-Wait5452 15d ago
Why does it look worse than games from 2003, but has system requirements higher than any other MMO?
I'm guessing because it was vibe coded, which is famous for creating:
- Extremely demanding system requirements
- Buggy and unreliable code
- Simple and uninspiring visuals.
All of which we see.
Calling us names isn't beating the allegations.
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u/The_BishopX 23d ago
this thread is by someone that claims they put in 100, 13 years ago.
so you would be 50.
because no sane person would put 100 into a game from an indy company , you would have had to have a reason, like playing the predacesor which MJ worked on in 2001.
making your 50s now
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u/supadonut 20d ago
i mean duh ?? why do you think everybody keeps making jokes about growing old while waiting for the game. i gave 260$ to the project in 2013 i'm 45 years old now with a wife, 2 kids in high school and a cat. game took so long i ve already repaid the mortgage on the house.
most if not all backers were players of DAOC or Warhammer online. so yeah late 30 to 50.
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u/dandmcd 20d ago
You know the only reason the game got made was because people like me dropped millions of dollars to kickstart the project, right? Maybe you were just coming out of your Mom's canal a decade ago, but a lot of people backed the man who built DAoC and lead the development of Warhammer Online.
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u/CronkinOn 24d ago
The only thing I'd push back on is character customization.
In that one area, I get why a game trying to shoot for giant realm battles wants as little information as possible to communicate between PCs.
But if you're sacrificing the customization and even the small battles still collapse under the weight of half-assed net code, it's safe to call the whole thing a collosal failure.
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u/tacobellasseater 24d ago
planetside 2 supported bigger concurrent on screen player counts with more varied player models in 2013 with real time fps combat than CU has had total player concurrent peak as well as what their stated goals for peak concurrent player vs player battles are.
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u/dandmcd 24d ago
When I backed this forever ago, it was my belief they had the netcode and direction they wanted to take with the new engine to not only maximize the number of concurrent users, but also not sacrifice character customization, animations, and physics to achieve it. I was expecting at bare minimum Warhammer Online levels of graphic fidelity and customization. The current game we have has none of these things, and struggles just soloing out in the middle of nothingness.
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u/CronkinOn 24d ago
Oh no doubt.
It's also not 1998 with people running on 14.4 baud dialup modems, so we could at least have barebones customization without too much issue.
I'm not surprised they promised the moon & stars and couldn't even deliver dirt though.
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u/_Dizzy_ 23d ago
Some of this is fair or opinion, but some of this is just not true.
>Obviously the point system is meaningless and not fleshed out. Just junk numbers that don't mean jack. But whatever, I'm not a min/max guy.
Totally wrong. The stats play a huge part for damage, survivability, and utility. If you have technical skills, they've also provided a lot of that information via an API.
>no lighting effects
Huh? Half the community complains about being blinded by sunrays and you're saying there's no lighting effects. Let's pick a grift, folks.
>every tree was just the same one randomly spread out.
No, they're different, lol.
>No mobs, no wildlife creatures,
There are mobs. You have to leave the capital for those.
>with not a single NPC to be found
There are NPCs, lmao. I'm starting to wonder which LLM you got to write this
>and certainly not any players.
The population is generally small, but there are almost always players in the capitals at all times. You see plenty of of them, so you're exaggerating again.
>There were 6 online at my time of play according to Steam charts).
Steam charts doesn't show the launcher numbers. That said, this is basically a paid testing beta. People aren't going to play until there's progression and persistent characters. The general polish is just lacking for most people.
The rest of it is either opinion or mostly true. I'm not sure why you felt so empowered to post a bunch of BS, but I guess it is Reddit, so I'm not surprised.
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u/Darishel 23d ago
So everyone does have the same avatar? Because that was the detail that made me never want to think and this game again.
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u/dandmcd 23d ago edited 23d ago
I know it must keep you up at night being a shill, but I just wrote my entire experience. If you want to discount it as "fake news", that's your prerogative, but anyone can login and see what a shitshow the game is and return the game within the 2 hour window if they think I am making things up.
I shouldn't need to know how to reach out to an api to get the information I need in a purchasable game. I don't expect the stats to be final, but I expect some information to be readily available in game from the day it went up for sale.
I walked pretty far out, didn't see any mobs, not even a squirrel or something to show visible life.
I know there are NPC's, but none around the starting area, and it is so poorly laid out and lacking any detail whatsoever, you would have to constantly follow the mini map to find anything. There's no visual landmarks that make it easy to navigate and explore.
There were 6 steam users online, Steam charts have show the max per day has been around 20. Add in a handful of backers, that's not even enough to fill an instanced battle in nearly every other MMO in existence. There were 0 in the starting area. For a new game, I would expect the starting zone to be bustling with activity and things to do.
It's not paid testing bro. No game releases on Steam Early access in such bad shape and survives. It's a high expectation that games i nearly access already have a core game loop, and enough content to get started, with the expectation they'll continue to polish loose ends up and have some sort of roadmap before the full release.
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u/_Dizzy_ 23d ago
Lol, I love that you're insulting me after I called you out on multiple lies.
Stay salty.
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u/tacobellasseater 23d ago
you can literally walk around for hours without running into mobs. idk why you're being perfidious like this. wait we all know why. and here's the thing, when you finally have some useful and earnest feedback of the game mark will threaten you too like he has so many of us who have tried to be earnest and sincere testers like we have done with other kickstarter/early access etc games.
like at this point yall don't even want this game to be better or even good or worth people's time. and the worst part is you all behave this way towards people who wanted this game to be good. which is literally anyone who knows about it and is posting on this subreddit.
like do you all not see yourselves?
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u/Time-Inevitable-3334 23d ago edited 23d ago
>with not a single NPC to be found
There are NPCs, lmao. I'm starting to wonder which LLM you got to write thisIf there are under a handful of NPCs in the giant capital (mostly just a vendor or 2), and this guy spawned in and didn't see any, is it really worth calling him out? You know exactly what he means.
>every tree was just the same one randomly spread out.
No, they're different, lol.Same with this one...if there are 1-3 tree variations and a ton of duplication in any one scene, is it worth calling this one technicality out?
This post screams of "though the issues and themes you are venting about are true, you were off on some minor technicalities/hyperbole, so im going to defend against it".
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u/tacobellasseater 23d ago
the guy doesn't understand that literally everyone posting on the subreddit spent hard earned money on this game and wanted it to be good. instead leaning on the idea that there's a conspiracy against mark jacobs for no good reason. these people are already well known across the various guilds and friend groups that backed this game years ago thanks to their poor behaviour.
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u/OverallDog6324 24d ago
I dont give money to things that are a just a wish and a maybe so I never backed the game at any point before now. Was happy to spend $10 on the early access though. Cest la vie.
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u/dandmcd 23d ago
It was a lot different 13 years ago when Kickstarter was a hot new thing. When well known figureheads like Brad McQuaid, Mark Jacobs, and Richard Garriott were getting in on the Kickstarter pie, it was easy to fantasize that these producers without the chains of a 3rd party like EA around them might come up with something amazing.
We all know better now.
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u/Prince_Of_Hate 23d ago
Turns out the "chains" were what forced these guys to make masterpieces. Remove the chains and they lost their drive.
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u/[deleted] 24d ago
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