Friday with Means - April 30th, 2010 - About the Future

About revamping old RK stuff, please make sure that you don't change the difficulty on these, otherwise froobs will not be able to kill them anymore. Some of the RK encounters are still a great challenge for froob teams (mercs, agent lamb, aztur, HI...) and I think it would be a shame if it became too hard for them.

As far I as I am concerned, the biggest issue is the boringness of the grinding, and I know you are already concerned about it ; as you are working on daily missions (yay for these !) and similar stuff.

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Originally Posted by Alternity

Heya Means



I'd really like to see a new endgame raidzone, along the lines on Pande.
We've raided Pande for what 7 years now? Yes there is a lot of new stuff for us to do: APF + Sector 42, LoX, DB.
However all these "new" additions are either instances, or takes a lot of planing (s42)


I think the instancing of Pande was the right thing to do, people need a kick in the ass, and I salute you for doing so.

The instancing of Pande was not a WIN/WIN situation, we gained freedom from the bots but lost one of the most important aspects of endgame PvM raiding, the Kill Team wars @ Beast.
I know I'm not speaking only for my own Org here, but the loss of that competitive aspect made many people leave the game.

I suggest doing a open raidzone like Pande, but when it comes to the endboss make is so that only Team 1 from the Raid Interface gets warped into the Lair.
Open it up for multiple RIs and we again have a KT situation.
You can also give the forces outside tasks that needs to be done, to keep the boss kill team alive.
Makes it more interactive, ofc it must be scalable to the raid force(s)


Also how about some new outdoors RK boss encounters, along the lines of Mercs.
Come on Means I know your spidersenses tingle when you think of 30ft pink Mercs walking over RK!




Viz

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In regards to an open raid zone like pande, good suggestion but we already have one like that, its called sector 42. And with how things have been running population wise its been very difficult to form a sector 42 raid, let alone have success in completing it.

Anyways, new big raid encounters/additions need to be put on hold until after something is implemented that is expected to increase server activity/bring people back.

Thats a meany, Means. :) Throwing the ball back into the playfield heh?

I was hoping for some info of what the team plans to do for the future. I get this lousy T-shirt instead. :p

I will have my vengeance though. Gonna organize it neatly and throw you a huge compilation. And you have to read it too. :)

Someone just ruined my lazy weekend. Sigh.

Most problems that we see in AO atm stem from 3 things (as I see it anyway):

1. Lack of people.
2. A "screwed up" level progression.
3. Various different types of gear imbalances.

Let me go a bit into detail on each of those 3:

1. Lack of players affects a lot of things. For example it can make it hard to get a team, which is ONE of the reasons why so many fall back on outside-tanking groups. So that's the problem. Now what to do about it? Well, this problem is tied directly to every single other problem that AO has. For example, if you fix the problems I listed as number 2 and 3 above, you will automatically make problem number 1 better. So let's just look at number 2 and 3 now instead.

2. Leveling progression in AO is a bit.. funky atm. Startup area is fine purely for getting levels but as an introduction to AO, it's very sticky and slow and confusing (even just in terms of the default GUI for new chars which is absolutely horrible). Subway, totw, missions and nascence is great for leveling to 60. So far so good. THIS is when the leveling progression becomes "funky". It feels a bit like hitting a wall. Solo-leveling becomes harder and harder from this point on and getting teams is hard when everyone is doing outside-tanking heckler teams from 60 to.. well almost endgame? :p Maybe stopping for a quick bit of alternative XP in adonis instance. The balance of mob availability, XP-gain from mobs, xp-gain from quests and so on has to be addressed fully. If any form of mob or area is DRASTICALLY better than other areas for XP (like ely hecks for example), then getting any other form of team can be very hard. The leveling progression from 60 to endgame is the number 1 problem in AO atm by far.

3. I could go on and on about this particular topic but I will try and keep this short for now. When it comes to gear imbalance, the difference between a twink and a "normal" or "casual" player is too big in AO for most people to deal with. Now, it's very important that anyone reading this doesn't misunderstand this point. I do think that one of AO's greatest strengths is that people can twink their chars. I would never ask for a change that made twinking hardly noticeable. The thing is though, a lot of people stop enjoying a game when they figure out that the game they recently started playing requires them to give up their RL in order to make their char good enough to not be laughed at in teams or in PvP. In both PvM and PvP, there is a sense of "elitism" in AO. Not really from the behaviour of players but simply from the reality of the gameplay that has arisen from the gear imbalance itself. If you meet a PvP twink on your main, when said main never had a "sugar-daddy", you wont even get to perform 2 hits before you have been splatted. This puts a lot of people off. Similarly, in PvM people will go where their gear allows them to go, so if you join that team with sub-par gear, you might not have much fun as everyone around you does 5 times your damage.

Now, let me tie these 3 points together so that it hopefully makes sense:

There are a lot of positive aspects to joining an older MMO like AO. One of them is that there's a lot of stuff to do. One of the bad things however is that the hill you need to climb in order to feel like "one of the general playerbase" at this point is so steep that a lot of people choose not to climb that hill at all. When you combine that problem with a leveling progression and a leveling culture that.. is what it is.. then it really doesn't help the situation. It only helps people to give up and stop playing. Lastly the game has various problems as a direct result of a lack of players, which is why I think looking into point 2 and 3 on my list should be on top of FC's priorities.

So that's my logic. Basically, this game needs a better flow, better balance all around (not just in PvP). It needs to be more accessible and the startup area and introduction to the main aspects of AO needs to be better.

So (in this specific order):

1. leveling progression needs to be balanced and smoothed out a bit.
2. Startup area and general introduction to AO needs to be fine tuned and made logical and immersive from the perspective of new players.
3. Gear balance needs to be looked at so that the average player can at least have some fun even though there are twinks around. In the old days, there were no alien armor and relatively overpowered weapons (like chirops and such), so twinks would be very powerful but they would not cost 1.5 bil to make so everyone could make one if they wanted to and even then they would not be quite as ridiculous as twinks are today (unless I remember the old days wrong). This goes for both PvM and PvP.

1) Startup experience.
As Means has mentioned before, the new startup experience has to be in-game on live and thoroughly debugged before the engine and associated advertising arrives. Make sure the new startup experience includes fun and productive training on the use of implants(this aspect might be dealt with when they first arrive on the mainland).
Add a 9th char slot as a VP and/or Paid Points item to help vets roll new chars to test this new startup area on paid accounts and help newbies there, as well.

2) New engine.
We understand that a lot of textures may still look lame at launch and that Devs will be updating them on an ongoing basis. Just get the bugger in! Just getting it on a testserver with public/semi-public access and in a playable state will do wonders for moral and word-of-mouth (and people will undoubtedly make amazing videos out of it, saving FC staff the time and trouble).

3) New content immediately after lvl 60.
Far too many noobs make it as far as ToTW and then, still not knowing how to twink or even figure out implants, they die off. Would be a good point for an AXP zone, as well as most of the new paid players probably still have 0-2 AI levels at 60.
Foremans might fit the XP part of this bill, with some rework. For the AXP part, just open a new zone, set a level limit of 89 (below CI for a challenge and still leaves room to complete Foremans), and populate it with appropriate level camps of aliens - call it a nursery zone or such, and we got to rob the cradles.

4) AXP 151-179.
Make a zone like Sector 42. Badass zone with QL 240 lead bot drops possible. Have access to it require loot items from the bosses in S10, mirroring the process needed to get from 13/28/35-->42

Other stuff:

Old items - leave them as is, for the most part. Fr00bs wearing classic armor, and wielding classic weapons, can still kill RK mobs just as well as their ancestors did in 2001. Besides, an enormous amount of game lore is buried in the descriptions of all those 'junk' items.


Notum Wars.

Excellent concept from conception and is still active every day. Problem is two-fold - the gap between the PvP 'haves' and 'have-nots' and the lack of incentive to hold lowbie towers. A Fr00b org that can field 10 competent players at lvl 15 should be able to hold their land against 2-3 of the best 'twinks' in the game but this is not the case today. There also needs to be better benefits given to orgs holding low towers, as well as perhaps some notable penalties to those that lose towers so that you don't get a planet filled with 'CT-only' plots. Perhaps make a few Contracts able to give benefits comparable to what they would give on a 255 CT but also make those contracts not become active until the land had been held for 36 hours. Treatment and Comp Lit contracts, for example, could become a 'one-size-fits-all-CTs'. All orgs would be very motivated to get their hands on -any- size tower field and to populate it and defend it, so as to boost their core twinking capabilities while strong orgs would still have motivation for big fields for all the other contracts as well as big individual towers to boost skills.


State of The Game:

Game Director should be required to issue a lengthy State of The Game in June at the start of the anniversary celebrations. Should be pretty detailed on how things are and what is coming in the following year. Means December letter detailing the Engine status was a smaller version of what should be presented each June.

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Originally Posted by Dagget

4) AXP 151-179.
Make a zone like Sector 42. Badass zone with QL 240 lead bot drops possible. Have access to it require loot items from the bosses in S10, mirroring the process needed to get from 13/28/35-->42

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So anyone who is 150+ atm won't be able to get in?

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Originally Posted by Crat360

So anyone who is 150+ atm won't be able to get in?

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No, the easy way would be the same elevator as S10 (and 13/28/35) but have a level range check of 151-179 and you have to have the special combined loot item in a HUD slot.

Could also talk to an NPC, show them the item, get a nano running that lets you enter (again, lvl 151-179 check)

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Originally Posted by MachSchau

In regards to an open raid zone like pande, good suggestion but we already have one like that, its called sector 42. And with how things have been running population wise its been very difficult to form a sector 42 raid, let alone have success in completing it.

Anyways, new big raid encounters/additions need to be put on hold until after something is implemented that is expected to increase server activity/bring people back.

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No Sector 42 don't count, yes it's open. My Org raids it 1 time per week with a coop, that's been going what 2 years?

Problem with Sector 42 is that the 3 towers need to be downed at the same time to spawn Artillery Commander, the ease of sabotage is to high with multiple factions in the field.
There were multiple ways to hinder the opposing force in Pande, but those never involved in The Beast not being there at the end of the line, one swift move in Sector 42 and the raid is ruined for all involved parts.

It does not have fixed spawn timers in the same sense Pande has.
It does require vastly greater numbers than any normal sized Org has, again this only serve to defeat the playfield as a Org encounter.
The way Sector 42 is setup don't allow for the same sort of DD wars Pande used to have, it's folly to compare the two zones when they are so different as they are.


Viz

What awesome stuff should we get?

1) All players should have decently easy access to weapons and/or nanos that'll allow them to be competent in a team. Junkloot may still exist but should not represent the vast majority of ingame weapons because of stagnant evolution.

2) More reasons to twink at lower levels than PVP and S10.

3) More clearly defined roles for all professions. There should be very few "jack-of-all-trades" professions.

4) More non-combat roles for more professions.

5) 100 extra Melee Energy on the Syndicate brains of Enforcers and Shades, and 100 extra Ranged Energy on the Syndicate brains of Traders and Soldiers.

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Originally Posted by Shaylon

AO endgame content is fun if you have teams.

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No other problem is worth addressing currently. And for that there seems to be a consensus around the need for rolling out the new graphic engine.

I would like to see some work on Notum Wars towers, pvp gas mechanics, and the rewards for tower pvp so it's more attractive to the average player. Also some way to prevent the large masses of players on single towers/sites. We can't base the gameplay on needing 50+ players anymore. One idea could be that the tower fields mine notum, this notum is transported to the notum silo in city, and generates creds to the organisation bank. The more towers you have, the more income.

As for the storyline, I hope we are done with the shadowlands/AI theme for awhile, and can focus some more on the original Rubi-Ka. Sided PvM/PvP content including omni and clan strongholds. Could be dungeons or outzones, but I would really love to see an area like the Bay of Rome making it into the game. Is it possible to make functioning boats in this game? Like one player can drive it like a mech, and others can stand on top of it. Could make interesting encounters with seamonsters or something. I also like the idea of defending a structure or NPCs like it's been done in Sector 28 & 35 in APF.

Some fixing I would like to see, is balancing in the lower level ranges. Adding some level restrictions to "overpowered" weapons, nanos, and the ability to get outside buffs way out of your level range in PvP. By overpowered weapons I mean especially the ones with really high minimum damage.

Last, we do need more players in this game, one way or another. I'm sure you think about this everyday, but yeah, that is the biggest issue as I see it. I'm sure players would want to pitch in on the recruitment work, but there has to be a strategy behind it, maybe some more official videos when the new engine is done? Something with storyline, action and smooth graphics.

NERF XP-GAIN ON HECKLERS! (they could be a source for faction points and a general threat if you get too close to the brink, nothing else)
..if something is heading in the wrong direction, put up a roadblock and send it the other way

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Originally Posted by Wulf-GTI

More info for neutral.
No change back or put change back.

|------> This. <------|

One way or other way need remove grind. Low and medium level are empty for Heck and Inf teams.

PLEASE -> balance -> ignore veterans and 220 -> focus on low level (more option) -> continue for medium level.

Why? Need new people. Need hold people. New engine are big shiny for pull people. MUST have better game mechanic for first sniff for drug so hold new people.

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The BIGGESTEST problem. No people for team with new person. Game look empty!

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Big bump from me.
Focus on the beginning and the middle or there won't be people left to enjoy the endgame.
We wont get new people with the start the game has now.

I have these ideas:

- When starting the game new players should be able to hear about what the game is about again. I think new players beginning now just ending up on newbie island doesn't give them enough of an idea of what they're getting involved into. I think the old welcoming hall was good for that purpose, it gave this background story. Something should be done about this.

- Add new things to already existing places, like extra loot. I wouldn't really revamp the old loot but just add new stuff so people can explore new things again. Both on RK and SL (dungeons). It doesn't have to be new super weapons or super armor, just something so people can have fun exploring new things in the whole AO world. It doesn't have to be to hard either.
An addition to this might be to add level locked items in the level ranges where ip caps apply and players have little character improvement to look forward to for a while.

- Open new areas on RK, perhaps something for TL 3-5 to do there. Exploring is fun.

- New ways of axp below and above S10 could be combined with good xp rewards from quests. Kill aliens and get high xp rewards as well. It'd be nice if the grinding at some levels could be made gentler. Perhaps add new questlines that are soloable that will end up people earning axp and high xp rewards.

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Originally Posted by Junkseller

Maybe an Auction area were people can auction there stuff ie:bid rather than buy from gms for set price

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Better yet...a "warp to shop" option so we dont have to spend 20 mins getting to some of those out-of-the-way cities for 1 item :)

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Originally Posted by Trousers

QFT.

I think it's safe to assume the Arrival Hall wasn't the cause of losing new players since the ICC shuttleport suffers from the people getting confused and logging out also.

What should you do next? Bring back the Arrival Hall and make it part of a New Player Experience that actually shows players how to play the game and teaches them storyline.

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When i was new i loved that little arrival hall/space station area, it had the right kind of feel for the game and the whole boarding the right ship/ship crashing on beach thing did a much better job of getting the player going than the current pop-on-a-beach-with-a-broken-ship-behind-you thing. :D

My suggestion:

Replace the old junk RK weapon drops (the ones not used for buffing) with usable competitive ones. Kind of along the lines of Miy armor. Make it a good choice that doesn't require freaking trade-skills and farming rare "upgrades" to make it usable and noob friendly.

+90% of these old world weapon are junk and a waste and only add to confusion for new players.

For example, as a doc, it would be nice to have a consistent, quality, line of pistols that helps give a clear upgrade path (and i don't mean dyna loot). Just don't make them trade-skill weapons or boss/dyna loot. They shouldn't be close to the best for their level but should be competitive to be usable to level and easy to replace every few levels.

This alone would help with the newbies experience. Remove a lot of garbage clutter and help provide a clear path for folks to help prevent unnecessary frustration for a new player.

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Originally Posted by Dagget

No, the easy way would be the same elevator as S10 (and 13/28/35) but have a level range check of 151-179 and you have to have the special combined loot item in a HUD slot.

Could also talk to an NPC, show them the item, get a nano running that lets you enter (again, lvl 151-179 check)

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So how would anyone who is 150+ get the item from s10?

I think you'll find that the Start Up experience will win hands down as the number one thing that we all think you should work on first.

This, plus the daily missions should help to begin to revitalize RK. If you look at the excellent thread that Wranline started regarding what drew people to AO (and you really, really should), you'll see how many people started out in the fr00b program and then bought the full package. Make RK a fun place again!

As for APFs before S10, I would disagree. I think what you need is alien encounters between S10 and 13, 28, and 35. The scale of difficulty for LE missions means that you can do the lower levels ones fairly easy. Once you get past 150, though, LE missions become much more problematic. And having tasted S10, and then having to wait 30 levels before you can get into another sector has never made sense to me.

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Originally Posted by Crat360

So how would anyone who is 150+ get the item from s10?

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Simple - They wouldn't, and I don't think the game owes them that, either. When sector 10 came into existence everyone over 150 couldn't get in and it dropped unique loot. Stuff from the 151-179 zone should not be unique, but also available from AI city raids and APF zones.

Profession bug-fixing is a good idea, but there are some many little & annoying bugs still present for years (e.g. perks are disabled/broken after LD).

fixing bugs is not as popular as adding new content, but I would love to seen some of theses old bugs get fixed :)

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Originally Posted by Dagget

Simple - They wouldn't, and I don't think the game owes them that, either. When sector 10 came into existence everyone over 150 couldn't get in and it dropped unique loot. Stuff from the 151-179 zone should not be unique, but also available from AI city raids and APF zones.

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Is anything in s10 no drop (when its in the TS parts)?
IMO it would be best to have a "trial" or quest before you can enter the zone, like mini quests.