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Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

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Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#151
post #134
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the brand is a little bit hyped to begin with? I suspect there are only two companies these VCs have ever funded that are known to turn a profit. It seems like they've trained a generation of young smart people on how to get rich by losing money.

What a strange thing to hear. Even I can tell you that many more than "two" YC companies have become profitable, and I'm pretty removed from the business side of YC.

Which ones? There are only two public companies that currently make a profit that I'm aware of: dropbox and coinbase. I don't really pay much attention, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#152
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain how world of Warcraft works then? You can certainly have more than 200 in one place at once... Are they doing some tricks to make this appear as if it's working but in reality it is not? Would love to hear your opinion.

Not an MMO dev but my random guess is that there's not a lot that needs to be directly p2p. I've only played FF14 but most of the interactions you have don't require you to have precise locations of your party. Server has a tick rate and for mechanics you need to be aware of server latency. Most everything can be calculated server side and/or predicted. Many abilities often have a cast time which can be used to hide…

Unless you are playing on console, almost nothing is p2p in gaming (Due to cheaters). The server has to simulate the entire "world", and as I understand it, the problem becomes when you have one server instance simulating a world for 100s of players.

The said, FTA I think people are focusing on the wrong side of aisle. From what I understand, I don't think anything they said is impossible; it just seems like the team is very inexperienced and MMOs are incredibly complex and given how few MMO developers there are (MMOs are popular, but they aren't diverse) they might have bit off more than can chew. I'm really not seeing how what they are trying to do is anymore complicated than Fortnite or Minecraft from a backend standpoint (I'm very green to game programming)

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#153
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely damaging to the YC brand. I'd like to see a postmortem on how these _blatant_ con artists got through.

Some of us remember when YC funded InstallMonetizer and people around these parts were defending it. I doubt it'll affect the brand.

YC didn’t fund installmonetizer! They funded the next venture from the people behind installmonetizer, who then proceeded to say “we’re funded by YC” on their about us page.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#154
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't understand this comment in the article. Demo day comes after being accepted to YC... Do YC ban companies from demo day? I thought everybody presented. I can't see any reference to them having raised any money at demo day either.

I read this as not having anything to show (in terms of numbers, product) at demo day and I assumed the implication was that they had also not been meeting their weekly obligations, but you’re correct that there isn’t really anything for YC to do at that point - short of running up and snatching LoIs which is obviously overstepping.

There really isn't any weekly obligations when I went through, other than a dinner weekly. You met with the partners as much as you liked. At Demo Day, there were folks in 2011 with no product, someone even pivoted the day before demo day and just had an idea on a powerpoint. Some of the folks went on to build very successful businesses. So the lack of demo day progress in of itself doesn't mean too much i think. The other points might though, to be fair.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#155
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Stadia et al. your computer sends keystrokes and mouse movements to Google's servers, and the server returns a video feed that's then displayed on your screen. Today's multiplayer games send and receive movement information and such, but the graphics rendering, which I believe is the main issue here, is still done client-side.

I don’t think graphics rendering is really the problem — worst comes to worst, you just reduce graphical fidelity — and regardless, rendering 300 AI characters roaming around is clearly doable, and it’d be the same with viewing real players. It’s a client-side problem, and doesn’t have to really scale much with player count (Stadia’s main pitch was that you didn’t need high end PCs to play AAA games — not that it wou…

> Runescape was basically turn-based and ran like 1 turn a second

actually, runescape still has 0.6 sec ticks. it has become part of the meta-game to input commands at exactly 0.6 second intervals for optimal efficiency, and is basically mandatory for high-level pvp combat.

https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Tick_manipulation https://runescape.wiki/w/Tick_manipulation

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 200 in one place 200 players in one map instance. But not 200 visible player with interactions refreshing on real time. Most likely you see diminishing level of details, if anything besides complete fabrication or no data at all after a certain visibility range threshold.

The spiffing Brit managed to get 500 people into a single Factorio game, not all visible at the same time but all interacting with the environment. It was an interesting video, the performance was fairly good.

I saw that video, the game definitely struggled.

It's certainly doable though.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are 100% right. I didn’t have the words for it I guess, just the emotion, and picked something off the shelf. I’ll just add this though, I promise you 2 girls would never have gotten this funded lol. And I ain’t a girl either, or a white knight.

> I’ll just add this though, I promise you 2 girls would never have gotten this funded lol. You mean "girls", like Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the infamous Theranos [1]? Incidentally, she fits the mold I describe above: highly privileged childhood (Dad an Enron VP, highly politically connected), to Stanford, to a well-funded scam start-up with a board packed with our nation's elite (eg, former Sec of State George Sh…

Aight, you got me. No sarcasm, we need better ways of describing this shit, I’m with you 100%.

Screaming at the top of my lungs:

Hey PG, I’m not a white dude or girl that went to Stanford. In fact, I did great and bad at school. So fuck you. I’m gonna take over your whole shit, so stop discriminating.

Dumbass couldn’t even spot a half assed mmo clone.

Re: Y Combinator backed MMO metaverse game is a blatant scam

#160
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 200 in one place 200 players in one map instance. But not 200 visible player with interactions refreshing on real time. Most likely you see diminishing level of details, if anything besides complete fabrication or no data at all after a certain visibility range threshold.

It's an open world game, but let's assume you mean local map. In that case, let's assume that each player waves (/wave). I've done this before with >50 players and took a screenshot and we were all in sync. It's also possible to have 50 players in the same area fighting in real time, e.g., in a battleground. This was back in 2010 when I played ... So I am not sure if it's any fabrication at all, otherwise everyone wo…

Ultima Online could do 100+ visible people back in 1997.

But I don't believe WoW could do it now, the last time I played WoW, early last year, in a large raid, there would be spells cast from invisible people because the characters wouldn't even load.

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