Not So Massively Extra: Hi-Rez talks Gamescom plans and shows off first SMITE screens

@Amusednow What's wrong with Unreal Engine 3? As far as I know it is one of the most reliable engines and most popular for devs.

@Amusednow The Unreal 3 Engine is awesome. The graphics are very good, it runs fairly well on almost anything from the past 2-3 years, there is plenty of room for detail, and it's cheap for devs to use.

It's not a terrible engine, but from my point of view such widespread reliance on a single piece of technology is holding games back both in terms of graphics and gameplay. Most unreal engine games look kind of same-ish to me, but that's a personal impression. And performance also varies, i wasn't impressed how Global Agenda's PvE zone performs compared to what it looks like.

@Joshua Przygocki

Honestly, the Unreal 3 Engine is pretty damn good, but it seems to be a real pain in the graphics department at times. I have yet to play a game built on the engine that DIDN'T suffer from absurd texture pop-ins. One game I ended up waiting close to 30 seconds for the texture on the close-up of a character and just her clothing to come in.

@DevilSei

That's an HDD issue on your end. Trying purchasing an SSD or a WD Black (or other high quality 7200 RPM drive) next time as is the standard for gaming.

oh this looks fun where do i stick my credit card

@Kroktar
I feel you man. I mean, this game looks great and I'm happy that they're making it. I absolutely LOVE Global Agenda.....But it's definitely far from completed. They have ONE zone and you can't even quest past what....Level 18? MAYBE?

There aren't nearly enough maps, the glitches are almost game-breaking sometimes for me, and the grind to level 50 is just a little absurd, especially since you're doing the EXACT SAME THING OVER AND OVER.

Plus they're starting to screw over people who have Elite by just offering some services (other than faster leveling) to Booster subscribers. Elite? PFFTT, we get less now than we did before the game went F2P!! Same leveling speed, less gear from missions, and apparently the bonus doesn't give gear any more? LAME.

All in all it makes me extremely sad, the potential for this game is incredible. If this had been made by any other company, it would be considered in its Alpha stage with the miniscule amount of content offered right now.

@Kroktar I have over 1200 hours on GA since beta and any class is OP if played well. A good snipercon cant take out a good medic who in return is healing a good roamer who is now hunting your ass down. A good drobo can shut you down 90% of the game. A good meleecon can stick on you and ruin your 20min game. A good poison medic will rape you, unless for some reason you have sealed systems equipped. The game is more of a test drive for tribes, thus the reason it is now free2play and not pay2win. The only people who bitch about good snipercons are the ones who cant outplay them. LOS was created for a reason.

And by definition the game is a MMO. It's massive, its multiplayer, its online. Sanoran Desert is a persistent world containing 50+ players at one time per server branch. City hubs have 50+ players at one time. Just because games like WoW have lots of money to toss at servers doesn't mean smaller mmo's are not mmo's. It's different, it's fresh, its outside the cookie cutter. Servers are room based in other mmo's, think of each server as a room.

@trinica

Games using or used the UE3 engine:
Batman: Arkham Asylum, (NEW)Batman: Arkham City, (NEW)BioShock Infinite, Borderlands, Bulletstorm, DC Universe Online, (NEW)DUST 514, Gears of War 1, Gears of War 2, (NEW)Gears of War 3, Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, (NEW)Mass Effect 3,(NEW) TERA, (NEW)MU2, Lost Odyssey, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, APB: All Points Bulletin.

Sorry to break it to you, but even the top games from before and coming soon are using UE3. Will probably be around for 3 or 4 more years:)

@Godsafk
Way to completely and utterly miss the entire point of what I was trying to say. I was saying that I was sad it was running UE3 because their other game running UE3 is not optimized well. I can run all of those other games with absolutely no issues whatsoever. Global Agenda? Not so much.

That pretty much means that they're not great at optimizing with UE3....Thus the reason I am disappointed. I couldn't care less about that fact that a game is running UE3....I do, however, care about how well it was optimized.

@trinica

Correlation is not causation. Expecting that somehow because it's using the same engine it will not be optimized is ridiculous. Also GA was optimized wonderfully, you're just giving an excuse for an improper computer setup in this case. Sorry your Athalon x2 isn't going to cut it in 2008, and it won't cut it now.

@trinica Dunno, I run global agenda at max with 60 fps cap. Smooth as any game around. Maybe you should optimize your computer with new technology.

@theinternetman
I'm not expecting it to be poorly optimized JUST because it was UE3, way to completely misread what I said.

Also, LOL at the Athlon x2 bit. I enjoy my gaming PC thanks. I've never met a soul that could run GA without hiccups. I can run it on 60fps consistently, sure, but I have a lot of screen tearing and weird freezes when I turn a certain way - I've never met anyone that didn't have those issues with GA, no matter how good their computer was.

You don't have to be a dick just because you failed to even bother to read my comments correctly. Bad troll is bad.