Why was Transformers Universe hated so much?

Discussion in 'Transformers Video Game Discussion' started by Rikkmaery, Apr 12, 2015.

  1. soundwaverulls

    soundwaverulls Taking a break

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    Oh, wow. I forgot about this discussion. I keep forgetting TF games is even a thing. Anyway, what I was saying is that it's unlikely the game was ever going to develop them. If I'm remembering right, the game wasn't even going to have an ongoing story, so there wouldn't be anywhere to put character development in.
     
  2. Prime Jetscream

    Prime Jetscream HE PULLS THE STRINGS AND HE MAKES THEM RING

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    I personally liked the game for what it was, but I was very, very bitter about the way Jagex handled it. They stumbled around doing nothing and delaying updates, and then just threw their hands in the air and closed it. It had very obvious potential. It could have very easily been expanded into a legitimate MMO, just by adding more areas that you would walk to, and they showed that the developers (who were not at fault, it was the higher-ups who doomed it) were willing to add interesting mechanics like teleportation.

    I was also hugely disappointed when they changed it from an MMO. I've played many MMOs that were very fun and actually felt like a world to explore.

    It was. The planned story was that a starship Optimus was on went missing somewhere, and the Autobots had to figure out what to do without him in his absence.
    There were also files with scripts for very interesting story missions, one of which had Wheeljack describe Terrorcons stealing volatile human weaponry and mourning their dead.
     
  3. soundwaverulls

    soundwaverulls Taking a break

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    Oh. I stand corrected. I guess there was the possibility for character development then.
     
  4. Rikkmaery

    Rikkmaery Lurking Forever

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    Like I've said countless times, both here and on the TFU forums back when they were up.

    You don't put focus on the story when your beta is for the multiplayer.

    That's like complaining that Unreal Tournament 4's alpha lacks a story, when the game is built around it's multiplayer and is still far from finished.
     
  5. Plasmapause

    Plasmapause Active Member

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    Just saying but Macro did have a backstory in the game files:
    And so we return to Cybertron's colony worlds, and the planet Optimus Prime re-discovered following the Great Exodus: Velocitron. On the equator, at the junction of the Delta Highway and the Long Road South, sits the New Kalis Crossroads. It was hear that an ancient traveler from Cybertron, who departed at the very end of the Golden Age, encountered Optimus Prime - a near head-on collision, in fact, reveals the Quill. This traveler's name was Macro, and unlike most Velocitronians he was not infatuated with racing. He was disinterested in the Speedia, the planet's premier event, and had elected to maintain his Cybertronian chassis configuration. Thus, to the long-limbed Velocitronians, he appeared "squat and ugly", with "redundant superstructure and suboptimal aerodynamics". Macro spent his days as a pit-mechanic-for-hire in the hangars of the capital, Delta. However, he was an unpopular, unfashionable choice, and so had plentiful time on his hands. He would sit in his garage and remember his former life, far away across the galaxy. But eventually, as with all Velocitronians, he began to forget Cybertron. It took Optimus Prime to resurrect the memories of the places Macro could still feel, but that he could no longer name: the Helix Gardens, the Tower of Pion - and, most significantly, Six Lasers Over Cybertron. Macro's youthful excitement on hearing of Cybertron's long-standing amusement park almost made Optimus Prime question whether this bot was truly as old as he surely must have been.When the Ark departed Velocitron amidst the outbreak of civil war, Macro requested to join the Autobots - although not bound for Cybertron, he believed that one day they would return there, and he desired to stand there with them when they did. Optimus Prime naturally obliged. However, in the chaos of the departure, the Ark was attacked. Macro leapt from the ship and delayed the assault long enough for backup to arrive. But he suffered heavy damage in the process, which depolarized his spark. Now he lies in the Ark's repair bay, indefinitely unconscious, en route to Earth...


    I think I do have some screenshots of the website announcements somewhere on my PC (my folders and files are in a complete mess).

    From the quotes and scripts, this is how I think the story goes:
    Basically Autobots had been stockpiling energon on Earth during the war on Cybertron. Switchblade knew this and so set up an ambush waiting for the Arclight to approach Earth to refuel. Switchblade succeeded in destroying the Arclight but the Autobots escaped in pods heading for Earth. The debris from the Arclight rained across the North America continent, while the Decepticons's ship, the Leviathan invaded Central City (because it was one of the major locations Autobots had stockpiled their energon) and the Decepticons began attacking to the humans in order to draw out the Autobots and Optimus Prime. This incident prompted the president to order "a national state of emergency and the total evacuation of eleven major cities." Optimus Prime contacted General Freeman, who provided these Autobot refugees with a base of operations. In return, the Autobots vowed to protect human civilization from the Decepticon threat.



    Also the 'scripts' from the files that you're talking about basically accompanied missions in freeroam/incursion/Dispatch/whatever-you-call-those-missions-in-high-grand-and-central-city. In early closed beta they had those pop up whenever you started a mission, however I've no idea why they removed it.
    In fact they did remove a lot of features when they "ramped up" the closed beta. They removed map selection, the tier system (which they showed off at comic con and is really really fun for people new to the game). They stopped doing mini-tournaments with players and I don't mean that skill score competition, I mean devs vs player teams.
     
  6. Ranger Silver 6

    Ranger Silver 6 Bang Bang

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    I lost interest in Universe when I got into the game and it just played like a horribly optimized mess with a lot if latency issues I don't get in other games.

    But I was disappointed when they announced that the game was transitioning from mom to arena combat, because I felt the mom had more potential. It wouldn't necessarily have played like a traditional wow style just because it's an mmo. Had it used the same game play style the beta did and had solid writing, it could have been a lot of fun.

    I do like the creative character designs, but I wish they kept the character customization we saw at botcon.

    What we got wasn't bad, but didn't stand out the way an mmo would have.
     
  7. edgs2099

    edgs2099 Optimistically realistic. Moderator

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    It turned from an intriguing concept, a Transformers MMO, into a shitty "MOTA". As proved by the lack of support for the last version of the game, my opinion appears to be at least semi popular. I have maybe 4% interest in a virtually storyless game where you're only shooting at another person in some arena, no character customization, no soul, no heart.

    You can say "THEY WERE GONNA..." until you shit your pants. It's obvious even they didn't believe in their project in the end.
     
  8. Rikkmaery

    Rikkmaery Lurking Forever

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    That was only the upper management. All the developers and community managers were doing what they could with the horrible system Jagex has, where builds and release dates, concepts and directions, are all filtered by management before the actual crew can do what they want to do. They were being dragged down by their managers and weren't warned about the shutdown until the day the managers told them they were all fired.
     
  9. Autobot Burnout

    Autobot Burnout ...and I'll whisper "No."

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    By game files, you mean stuff you could actually access within the game client itself when said client was running, or stuff that was in the files downloaded by the client updater but only accessible by digging through the files in the computer file manager (I.E. Windows explorer) and not the actual game itself? I'm going to guess the latter since even if one character got this level of detail, that's still just one out of over a dozen total that had no reason not to get the same kind of superficial prose.


    I'm beginning to wonder if the first branching off point for Aligned was in fact the end of WFC because the rather impressive retelling you've provided from what you say were scraps of lore absolutely contradicts everything from FOC (and I've verified your stuff on the wiki, but I also feel the need to point out this sounds suspiciously too similar to the background plot of another game; Firefall. Like, the ship that gets torn apart even has the same name Arclight and the whole point of its existence involved energy resource stockpiling)


    Nah, they probably just got reassigned to something else - Jagex's main breadwinner is Runescape which has been running for who knows how long and looking at their online site's roster of games (which is Runescape, a spinoff of Runescape, and something that looks similar to some exploding block puzzle game I have for the Wii).

    Which also highlights what could be a strong reason for why Universe went down the drain: Jagex couldn't make the groundwork of a Runescape clone (which more or less is the whole reason the idea of a TF MMO brought them in at all) into a workable PVP only type game, at least not based on the fragmented franchise plan Hasbro had made grow way too fast and inevitably it all came crumbling down alongside the Hub and any further pursuit of the Aligned "branching" concept.
     
  10. AlexSparks

    AlexSparks Member

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    I do understand what you say about the story part, but you guys didn't gave the game a chance and if in the files were plans to make a storyline we just had to wait the game to make a right multiplayer (in the last update notice they said they were deep into matchmaking system, to make it right )
    Not only MMOs can have char development...and MMOs are hell boring, idk why you wanted it so bad.

    I play Digimon Masters Online, and its an MMO and its pretty boring...but i keep playing because I love digimon and I want to collect all Digimons that's why. But its more an obligation than fun while i'm playing it.

    The characters are pretty cool, you just mad that they got rid of the own char builder...

    I would have loved to play as:
    [​IMG]
    He is looking at the mirror omg xD
    But the game closed before they add more characters :c

    Maybe Jagex only wanted money and thats all.
     
  11. Prime Wylde

    Prime Wylde Candy Coated

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    EXACTLY.

    You took what was the MUST PLAY game of the year for me and turned into an easy pass.
     
  12. GroundStorm

    GroundStorm Member

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    not so sure, block n load is having issues as well, maybe they can't be a success at anything but keeping people interested in Runescape (which I find very boring not sure how so many people are still playing it with today's graphics engine games around)
     
  13. AlexSparks

    AlexSparks Member

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    I tried Block n Load and its very fun, so sorry I cant pay in dollars in my country, so I just playes the free weekend from Steam :c

    It can be the reason, they wanted money and then ended with the game or maybe Hasbro have all the fault (its very possible)
     
  14. Deus Maximus

    Deus Maximus Well-Known Member

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    The biggest issue I had was the inevitable power creep.

    Originally, there was great balance in the game, but as they started adding more and more characters, the older characters started to suffer, and some great characters - like the Autobot tank Showdown - just downright became useless.

    It became an impossible juggling act to add new characters with new abilities, and balancing them with the existing characters. Coupled with a matchmaking system that paired level 1 newbie Autobots with level 30+ high end Decepticons, and you had a downright painful experience for brand new players.

    It's basically like trying to pick up Quake 3 or Quake Live today, having never played it before, and playing against people who've been playing since 1999. For those who invested in the game at the beginning, it was fun.. but it had no way of attracting or keeping new players. As their stats showed, most new players would play a couple of rounds, get completely humiliated, and quit. It simply was NOT FUN for new players, even those who played it and enjoyed it at Jagex's various convention showings.

    Ultimately, it needed something for players to do other than leap into multiplayer matches and be slaughtered. A way for players to build up their skills, before facing off more veteran players that'd been there since closed beta. Once getting the multiplayer down, the focus needed to be on team based PvE, or game modes that don't necessarily need to concentrate on player skill as much. Something that would give new players a fighting chance, or a reason to invest in a game that only ever provides defeat in PvP.

    I loved the art design, I loved the new characters, and I loved the setting of the game. I think it could have been great under the right guidance, and I certainly have no ill feelings towards the developers or the community managers... but Jagex's management screwed it up, and the bull headed direction of the game lead to its downfall.

    At the very least, I wish that Hasbro and Jagex could have been kind enough to give it to the community, for us to make a free game of our own... but I can imagine the copyright issues would give their lawyers headaches.
     
  15. WireNemesis

    WireNemesis New Member

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    Some have, but some haven't. For example Mod Crow left Jagex entirely after the shutdown, Andrew Bee now works at TT games (he stayed up until 2014 November and got hired by TT games in May 2015), Kavi Mewa stayed right up until January 2015 with Transformers Universe and is currently unemployed as far as I know. Sam Hogg worked at Jagex until April 2013 and was probably laid off. Gerard Miley also stayed with TFU until January 2015, but exited Jagex as well. Clive Stevenson also was laid off in November 2014. Rodger Barnett also worked on Transformers universe, but I'm not sure where he's at. He-Sun worked until February 2015 which is strange considering TFU did shutdown in January... Naveed Aasim also worked on TFU until December 2014 and was laid of as well...
    Tom Stockwell and John McCambridge still work for Jagex on Runscape.

    There's also plenty of other devs I haven't mentioned, but some of them are freelance Unity programmers who come and go.
     
  16. GrimlockPrimal

    GrimlockPrimal Mini-Dino

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    Same here, I literally could not play the game without horrid lag on the lowest possible graphical settings. From what I did sample, it had decent concepts, but Jagex missed what made the original Runescape so popular; it didn't need powerful computers to be played. That's why I've barely heard of the revamped Runescape, and probably why TFU failed; it just didn't have enough of a userbase due to the complexity of the game's graphics.

    The horrid optimization is what really crippled the game; without a wide spectrum of computers it can be played on, the userbase is much smaller.
     
  17. Onslaught24

    Onslaught24 Ayo Fryman. That uh, that's highly illogical. Moderator News Staff

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    Not everyone likes MP-only games but would love the game if it offered a single player mode.

    Let me stop you right there, cause FOC had five times the amount of customization as TFU and let people pretty much bring their OCs to life. Another issue with the customization was that they promised all-out, full-blown customization. All you ended up being able to do was pick from five or six shitty color combos per character.

    That's on the devs. They took forever to even get to open beta. They over-promised and over-hyped the game to the moon and back and under-delivered horribly.

    Again, that's on the devs. They should've been expecting heavy traffic with all the hype they had. In short, they handled this game as well as FunPub handles Botcon registration.

    As for what I didn't like, despite running terribly in general, there could've been larger teams to make it an all out war in each map. There could've been actual customization, better weapons, better steering, faster transformation reaction time, less shit servers, SOME way to prevent spawn camping because holy douchebaggery Batman, more space between obstacles on the map, jets, and probably lots of other stuff. It could've also used more moderators who gave two shits on the forums. That place was...scarring- to say the least.
     
  18. Risko_Vinsheen

    Risko_Vinsheen Well-Known Member

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    They refunded every player every cent they paid for the game. I got all my money back for my Cybernite Founders and any relics I bought. No doubt that money had already been spent so they were essentially paying out of pocket. On top of that there was the skill score competition that resulted in them paying out thousands of dollars.

    If they were just wanting to make money then clearly they weren't planning on doing it through Transformers Universe by shutting it down. They didn't make a cent from the players themselves.
     
  19. WireNemesis

    WireNemesis New Member

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    This game was a browser game meant to compete against over browser games like Darkorbit or Dead Frontier.

    They dropped customization 3 years ago. The colour schemes however is kind of a result of upper management as a way to make money rather then give players a colour palette.

    The last Mod to give a one was Mod Eddy, and he was fired during closed beta (and this is an actual quote from an e-mail he received from upper management) for being "too involved with the community".

    That would be upper management who insisted the game should be optimized for integrated graphics cards rather then dedicated graphics cards considering the game was aimed at casuals.
     
  20. Rikkmaery

    Rikkmaery Lurking Forever

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    Onslaught missed my point entirely.

    The game was angled towards multiplayer, so the beta was multiplayer.

    Tell me how many people are playing the campaign in the current starcraft 2 beta.