Question: CryEngine 5, DX12

I know for a fact that the current engine is pretty much the worst possible choice for an open world MMO, which means that whoever imposed it for VU10 didn't do the homework.

This is not the first project I somewhat witness that had such a bad decision when moving from one "platform" to another (I'm using "platform" more as a generic term here). Back then somebody did an awesome powerpoint presentation (or maybe on an overhead projector) and everything looked awesome and the answer to every Mindark-question was "yes, that works" and "yes, we can make that work".

Besides:
  • Developers aren't the idiots in the system. As I tried to explain more than once not everything that changed in-game is their fault. They do what marketing/management tells them. If you use the TT-pistol and can kill a L1000 mob with one shot, that's a bug, if the skill increase becomes terribly slow before a new level/rank, that's marketing/management.
  • New features are added to the game before more or less serious bugs get fixed resulting in new more serious bugs that should be fixed before the former ones, but a new feature should be added in the next release. Who does that? Marketing. Who has to handle that? Management. Who has to take the/your blame? The developers. (disclaimer: I don't like marketing in general; too visionary, not realistic)
  • Normally there are migration guidelines for software to upgrade from a release to the next major release. Due to that those who read them and can compare that to the existing system and the implemented changes in it should have a fair understanding what the numbers behind the Euro-sign could be. At least they should be able to and I don't know if there are such guidelines for CryEngine. If the move to CryEngine was a (financial) disaster they are more reluctant now to another stunt like that.
  • There is a very high chance that they won't create a new version for a new client-side rendering engine. The only option for them is to throw everything into cloud computing and use a rather new technology called Cloud Gaming, for some sort of an overview read this.
  • However, while it lowers the client-side requirements and allows more operating systems to join in it also increases the requirements to the game provider as they now have to maintain not just the typical server handling (loot, skills, shots, auction, mob movements, chat, player interaction, ...), but also the entire rendering of all graphical client sessions (yep, as many sessions as there are players playing at the same time). On a client all there needs to be are inputs (keyboard, mouse), output(s) (one or more monitors) and a fast and reliable internet connection with low latency.
  • So the question is not about VR or not VR, more realistic graphics or not.

Here's to the future :)
 
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