Too late Hand Solo, Freelancer is a hit. BTW, you aren't the one that got banned on Elite so early on because of the money cheat....are you? If not then someone is impersonating you.

Freelancer? A hit? *supresses laughter* Hardly. It's a total....complete flop.

I've never been banned from any server and I don't play enough for anyone to bother impersonating me, or vice versa. I have never used any cheat of any kind, in any game, EVER. It is just a coincidence. I am not the one you mention, but for the brief time I played on Elite, I was accused of being that person by NEO Tasiin, and within and hour was stalked and dock-raped by the NEO scum that you seem to like to have ruin your server.

I played on the Elite server under 1 other name too, minded my own business, and the same dock-rape thing happened, so I went to a better server where "smacktards" are banned and enjoyed a couple weeks of the game as best I could between lag bouts and crashing (not the server's fault, just the bugs that occur on all FL servers). Then I got incredibely bored with it and moved on.

Edited by - Hand Solo on 25-04-2003 03:43:46

Do you need a drink of water? How about a cookie? Sandwich?

I hear prozac is a wonderful gaming tool nowadays...

right, i play FL a lot online, and have bumped into some frustrating moments (elite going down just as i reach the dizzy heights of eagledom for one), but i still play.

Why?... its fun, simple.

I've been looking for something like this since i first played elite on ye olde bbc micro with ye wire frame graphicse, and truth be told Freelancer has a ways to go before it gets us to that sense of total freedom we enjoyed back then. But its close, closer than a lot of other efforts, and its pretty as all that, so i'll just keep on enjoying this lovely game, and see if the continual updates/adaptations coming from the mod community can improve on it.

So, how can we help this guy track this bloody bug down, as i have spare time to kill and might as well do something productive.

Hand Solo wrote:

---

Freelancer? A hit? *supresses laughter* Hardly. It's a total....complete flop.

---

Really??? Then why do so many here say they enjoy the game? Maybe you should pull your head out of your rear end and quit complaining. Nothing is perfect. Apparently, the few bugs in Freelancer are not enough to ruin the experience for a LOT of gamers. So...lighten up. Or better yet, just go play some other game...and quit bothering the people who DO enjoy this game.

Hand is just ****ing you guys. Can't you tell by the name he picked?

Ignor him and he will go away.

I was waiting for this:

---

Tasiin:
Idiot. Beta 1196 was more stable and complete than most retail games out there now, and you're telling us 1.0 is buggy? I can think of maybe only one or two minor bugs at the moment, seriously, what are you smoking? FL is one of the most stable and bug-free games I've seen in quite a while. I wouldn't be complaining.

---

Well, lets see,

Fl Crashes at random when a web browser is left running.

Fl crashes for no reason for many players.

It has fatal sound card issues with SB Live and Audigy cards. (Not entirely FL's fault)

The installer has a fatal bug that does not permit the game to be installed on some machines.
FL has graphics issues with the latest Nvidia chipset and most ATI chipsets.

Many players cannot connect to MP games despite having done everything correctly.

Microsoft has not kept the master servers up on a reliable basis.

2 out of 3 of the masters listed in the Freelancer.ini file do not exist on the internet despite having registered domaign names.

The Master server lists will list dead servers as live for hours after they are gone.

When a failed connection attempt is made, FL stupidly sends a last packet to the dead server and then waits for a return, locking up the game for 30 seconds while it waits for a packet that will never come.

The game browser server polling runs at a snails pace.

No cheat protection what so ever. (what were you thinking here?)



Now to the gameplay:

AI physics allow large ships to spin uncontrollably in certain circumstances.

Lag can cause mines to vastly extend their blast and detection ranges.

There are items for sale that cannot be bought.

SP only jumpholes are not removed in MP play, only disabled.

Thrusters can actually slow a ship under certain circumstances.

If you lag out in a "random" battle, it is often seen as a loss, and all cargo is lost. I can see this being ok in missions, though.

Auto pilot can often crash players into bases, jumpgates and, planets while attempting to dock.

Auto pilot does not account for formation for the wingman of the formation. This can cause wingmen to be destroyed when local objects are reletively sparse. When traveling around a sun or planet this can be especially deadly to the wingman

Players can be destroyed while in the docking sequence locked view by other players.

There is no discernable auto reset for derelict ship items.

Players always start as navy in MP. Needs to have no affiliation.

Server engine is unstable at best. Totally unreliable at worst.

Game installations can "die" for no reason. Making the game unplayable. Sometimes even uninstalling the game and reeinstalling the game does not fix this.

The default game resolution runs above most existing cards optimal specs. 800X600 32bps default is fine.

I think I made my point here.

Freelancer is an excellent game overall, but it certainly needed more work before it went out of the door. I hope DA will look at this list and fix these items. Testing a beta is one thing, but to push an item out the door before thoroughly testing and correcting the release version is foolish.
1.0 is never a good number to be seen on a release engine. It just screams, "HEY!!! WE PUT SOME LAST MINUTE CHANGES IN THE GAME AND SHOVED IT OUT THE DOOR UNTESTED TO MAKE SURE THIS SUCKER GOT OUT TO THE RACK ON TIME!!!!"
"When it's done" is always the best policy to put on dev and testing times, despite the odd abandonware occasion like Duke Nukem 3D. I would have rather seen Freelancer released as late as September with a less buggy engine than to have seen it out the door when it was released in the state that it is in now.

blizzard always uses the "when its done" policy, ever wonder why their games are always the best out there?

And what brand of cheeze do you prefer with your whine Nog?

Instead of splitting hairs, I'm going to attempt to be the voice of reason here. All those "issues" you mentioned above do NOT pertain to 100% of the people that play the game Nog. I can not be the only person on the planet that doesn't have the problems with Frelancer you stated. Sure, these problems may be your experience, but they aren't mine. And to finish it off, how often do you really hear people complain about everything working right?

I've been running TLR-GOLD server for two month solid now on the same build and it doesn't crash every 15 nanoseconds. I must be doing something wrong huh? What a maroon....

Edited by - Stinger on 25-04-2003 22:22:26

yeah, but the blizzard approach is extremely risky, time consuming, thus a cash guzzler. its the publishers job to get a game to sell, and on the market as soon as possible. u could blame developers for lack of skill, or call them idiots, but the publisher, and in this cash Microsoft has the final say. and in the end, even games that are constantly marked and reviewed as awful will still sell great, and there will be some great games that will sell like crap. Ever wonder why movie tie in games play like crap most of the time? Because they will still sell, so it makes sense to rush dev, keep costs down, and end up with a hit. it wouldnt be the greatest business decision to spend a few years on the game when it wont affect sales to the greatest degree.

Edited by - Cr0no on 25-04-2003 22:54:57

Yes Nog, you made your point, if your point was to show us how incredibly ignorant you are. Let me pick this apart piece by piece:

"Fl Crashes at random when a web browser is left running."

Maybe you shouldn't leave your web browser running? Besides, I don't get this problem.

"Fl crashes for no reason for many players."

Perhaps they need to maintain their systems properly, as FL does not crash for me.

"SP only jumpholes are not removed in MP play, only disabled."

It uses the same world. Is this really a huge issue? I mean, are a couple jump holes that say "access denied" when you enter them going to make you stop playing the game until a patch for it is released? Get real.




"Microsoft has not kept the master servers up on a reliable basis."

This is not Freelancer's fault, this is Microsoft's fault. If this bothers you so much, pick a server, stick with it, and write down the IP address so you can connect manually.

"The installer has a fatal bug that does not permit the game to be installed on some machines.
FL has graphics issues with the latest Nvidia chipset and most ATI chipsets."

FL had no "graphics issues" with my GF4 Ti4200, and none with my new Radeon 9700 either.



"It has fatal sound card issues with SB Live and Audigy cards. (Not entirely FL's fault)"

My SB Audigy has never encountered the sound bugs, even after a fresh format. As I said, people need to maintain their systems properly.

"Many players cannot connect to MP games despite having done everything correctly."

*People need to maintain their systems properly, installing hundreds of file sharing applications and having over 2000 spyware components in your machine probably isn't helping your connectivity.*

"2 out of 3 of the masters listed in the Freelancer.ini file do not exist on the internet despite having registered domaign names."

I wouldn't be surprised. Again, Microsoft's fault, not the Freelancer game itself.

"2 out of 3 of the masters listed in the Freelancer.ini file do not exist on the internet despite having registered domaign names."

Wow, how many times do I need to say this? Microsoft's problems, and these will be fixed server-side eventually.

"When a failed connection attempt is made, FL stupidly sends a last packet to the dead server and then waits for a return, locking up the game for 30 seconds while it waits for a packet that will never come."

Try 10 seconds, and if you don't have that much free time maybe you shouldn't be playing Freelancer in the first place.

"The game browser server polling runs at a snails pace."

M-I-C-R-O-S-O-F-T.

"No cheat protection what so ever. (what were you thinking here?)"

Ahh. I have to agree with you on this one, it was a bad design decision, and I wouldn't mind if the game had to be delayed for this to be implemented properly.

"AI physics allow large ships to spin uncontrollably in certain circumstances."

I've never seen this, and I've been playing for well over 400 hours now. Are you just making stuff up now?

"Lag can cause mines to vastly extend their blast and detection ranges."

True, no argument here.

"There are items for sale that cannot be bought."

Umm, no?

"Thrusters can actually slow a ship under certain circumstances."

What in god's name are you smoking, sir?

"If you lag out in a "random" battle, it is often seen as a loss, and all cargo is lost. I can see this being ok in missions, though."

33.6 connections became outdated quite a few years ago, maybe it's time for an upgrade. I've never seen this happen before, *ever*.

"Auto pilot can often crash players into bases, jumpgates and, planets while attempting to dock. "

Is that so? Did you want them to delay the game for several months to fix auto pilot or something? I guess steering your ship manually into the correct position before hitting dock is too much for you. Besides, doing it that way is faster as it allows you to use thrusters or cruise.

"Auto pilot does not account for formation for the wingman of the formation. This can cause wingmen to be destroyed when local objects are reletively sparse. When traveling around a sun or planet this can be especially deadly to the wingman"

Avoid suns then.

"Players can be destroyed while in the docking sequence locked view by other players."

Player ships are invincible during dock sequences, you should know that.

"There is no discernable auto reset for derelict ship items."

Server restarts will reset derelicts.

"Players always start as navy in MP. Needs to have no affiliation."

Yeah, geez, serious bug here.

"Server engine is unstable at best. Totally unreliable at worst."

I have no experience in this area, so I'm not really qualified to answer this one - but seeing the validity of the rest of your complaints, I wouldn't be surprised if this was overstated.

"The default game resolution runs above most existing cards optimal specs. 800X600 32bps default is fine."

Do you have trouble finding the options menu to change your resolution, then?

I think I made *my* point here.

Too bad you aren't in IRC, we all had a good laugh over this one.





















Edited by - Tasiin on 25-04-2003 23:22:09

Come on now Tasiin, stop complaining that everything works okay on your machine...that's just not fair.

It does work okay on my machine. What's not fair is him pulling a huge list of complaints out of nowhere just to invalidate my above statement.

Works swell on mine too. And ill have to say i have experienced little or none of those "problems." mebbe its just me