rec.autos.simulators

--
Steve

Ignore this post. I found a thread further up basically asking the same
thing. After reading that thread I have now lost any interest I had in MCO.

Too bad I couldn't return the box :(

-Larry

-Larry

Not been around here for a while - and since NFS Porsche was one of
my favourite "non-GPL" games and older threads on MCO appear to
have expired - could you perhaps repeat what your discovered?

Sorry if this is a hassle.

Steve

I haven't said anything before on this thread, but
had to chime in to add to
this one. I beta tested as well.

I *loved* the theme of the game, but it was just
done so wrong. It's great
fun...for a few hours. Then you realize...this
isn't a massively multiplayer
game like it's being billed to be. The *only*
thing even remotely MM are the
auctions.

The racing is limited to 4 extremely warpy cars
(maybe it's better now, but
even at the end of the beta, you usually wound up
racing yourself anyways,
hoping you were fast enough because you rarely saw
the other cars around you
that you were "racing" against). Drag racing by
it's nature is limited to 2,
which is fine, no complaints there as i did have
fun with that. The problem
is, there is no built in run-off feature to hold
big competitions.
Basically, you jump in a room, there's a bunch of
drag races listed, you hop
in and race...but only if the goober who formed
the race doesn't kick you
out.

Yes, that's another big gripe. Information about
your car is *way* too
accessible. If they're really trying to capture
that car world feeling, they
need to drop all the info you can get about
another car. Last i checked,
when you do any form of street/strip racing, you
can't walk up to the guy's
car and look at a dyno and spec sheet on his car
to see if you can beat him
or not.

On top of all that, most of your time is spent
doing solo runs racing
against the clock to earn money to build your car
up to go race one other
guy. This means hours of running the same track
over and over. The physics
are fine, it's NFS after all, i was never
expecting GPL. The graphics are
good. It can be fun, the racing can be good but
overall, the gameplay (the
important part you pay for) just isn't there.
--
- Will DeRivera
- GPL Rank 113.13, damn the 'ring!
- http://www.numic.net
- http://www.luxt.com

On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 14:04:54 -0000, "Steve - CD"

Yeah, pretty much my thoughts about it as well, and I too dropped it
after Beta was over, good idea that was not so well executed

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

* Spam is for losers who can't get business any other way *
"Spamkiller"    http://www.spamkiller.com

Hi Steve - here's a repeat of one of my previous posts (thank you
Google!)...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - <old post below> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I played MCO for several months during the "semi-closed" and "open" beta
phases. While I enjoyed some aspects of it, ultimately I didn't feel it was
worth the on-going monthly fee.

Since it's a online-only driving game, the multiplayer racing and sense of
community should be it's strong points. Unfortunately that's not the case.
About half the time there's lots of lag and warping while racing - cars
popping in and out, collisions that one player sees (and is affected by) but
the other one doesn't, indicators listing you as leading the race for
several laps, then suddenly updating when the race ends to show that you
finished third. If you get the right group of people together (non-wreckers)
and everyone has a good connection, the racing can be fun, but often it was
frustrating.

Creating a sense of community requires interaction between players, but this
is limited to chat windows. Many people were expecting some sort of
"cruising on Saturday night" feature - checking out other people's rides at
a drive-in, impromptu drag races on city streets, etc, but MCO isn't set up
that way. Players can band together to form clubs, but it doesn't go far
enough.

Trying out combinations of cool parts on your car was kind of fun, tailoring
the car to do want you wanted, eg. street racing v.s. a drag machine.
Unfortunately the cool parts were only available at auctions. Supply was
quite limited, so prices were high, and the only way to compete was to use
the fastest available method of raising cash, which was racing against the
clock at one track over and over again. Besides being boring, you start to
wonder: Hey, wasn't this supposed to be a 'multi-player' game? Same thing
was true when you eventually wanted to move up to a better car - they're
only available at auctions. In addition, EA seems to be trying to extend the
longevity of the game by deliberately withholding the better parts, then
slowly introducing them into the auction system as the months go by. So if
you work hard to build a great car, well, too bad, next month it will be
outclassed. You're back to solo racing trying to earn enough cash to bid on
the new parts. I don't mind being beaten by somebody who's a better driver
than me, but it's annoying when they won because they were the only one who
could afford to buy the best (scarce) parts because they could spend untold
hours building up cash.

There were some problems with cheats and hacks, but EA seemed to take care
of most of them during the beta, although sometimes it felt like they took a
long time to respond to the problems. I haven't heard how it's doing now
that it's gone live.

Geez, this post is getting wordy <grin>. Graphics: NFS4 level, not as good
as Porsche Unleashed. Physics: on par with PU. Search this NG over the past
couple of months, there have been other threads discussing MCO.

 ...Klinn

Steve

Oh, I've made my fair share of those too. Hard Trucks 2 anyone? :-)

  Where?  Is there a link?

  Thanks,

Todd Wasson
---
Performance Simulations
Drag Racing and Top Speed Prediction
Software
http://PerformanceSimulations.Com

a quick search on google pulls up http://www.streetrod3.com/sr3rev.shtml

Google.com is your friend  =)
--
- Will DeRivera
- GPL Rank 103.93
- http://www.numic.net
- http://www.luxt.com
- Hi, I'm a sig virus.
- Please add me to the end of your sig and help me take over the world.

This site tries to install Comet Cursor, which if I remember correctly is
SpyWare.

You are presented a dialog, just make sure you hit the right button.  It is
NOT required!

This is the first time I"ve seen CometCursor pushed like this.

-Larry