Vayde - great, really great post!
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Vayde - great, really great post!
Welcome to the revolving door and Funcom's only true MMO
Suggestions
1) Read Ragner's 'Prophet Without Honor' early on for a sense of the lore fabric - it's still relavant today.
2) Troll all the old production material from the early CD's for more atmosphere.
3) Do *not* add enforced solo content to the game - it's an actual MMO, not an adventure game like TSW.
4) Do *Not* add end-game raids, it's not a WoW-style theme park like AoC.
Edit:
Just read Vayde's post - pretty much covers things, including what I was poking at.
A year to, what, strip active characters to move everything all over to a couple of mules and sit there and not play a bunch of your characters (because you've just stripped everything) for an unknown and indefintie period of time - in this case that turned out to be a year?
I too am actually quite annoyed that 12 hours notice was all that was given that this process would be happening right now, and without any sort of confirmation about how many active character slots we will be given post-merge depending on account status and so on. As it happens I had done most of the prep work already but there's a few things I missed and did not have time to sort out overnight (I have a day job).
Farewell Ilaliya, good luck in your life!
Welcome Joel. I enjoyed your "End of days" vlogs. You sound like a cool guy :D.
I do wonder how you will manage to run 3 x 200% jobs (being director of a game seems like more than a full time job to me) and playing Anarchy Online (which is a full time job on its own) at the same time... Good luck and enjoy!
Greetings Nusquam & welcome to Anarchy!
Oh boy are you in for a treat when you start digging a little under the surface of Anarchy! I'm sure there will be a few eyebrow raising moments as you get up to speed.
When you get a little downtime, might I suggest you spend a couple of hours reading http://tinyurl.com/57sskm
That will help you figure out why many of us still play this game, despite the faults & problems, and continue to enjoy Anarchy after all these years.
Have fun !
Oh, Ilaliya is leaving. Saddens me a bit, I have to say. But... I'm really excited to read Joel's blog post about playing AO.
"Day 5... After I made it to level 50, I thought about going to the Battlestation and test some PvP in AO for the first time."
"Day 5.1... Adventurers and Agents are OP'ed."
"Day 5.2... Bureaucrats, Doctors, Enforcers, Engineers and Fixers are OP'ed. Especially... Come on, level 200 Engineer robot at the lowbie PvP area? Smells like an exploit ban incoming!"
"Day 5.3... Keepers, Martial Artists, Meta-Physicists and Nano-Technicians are OP'ed also. This game needs some serious balancing work!"
"Day 5.4... Shades, Soldiers and Traders are OP'ed also. That's all professions. How can they all be OP'ed?"
"Day 5.5... Just looked up the equipment of all these characters on the battle station killing me all the time. This game is full of exploiters! How are you able to have level 200 implants and high level armor in a low level toon??? I'm going to get a GM to ban all these idiots!"
"Day 5.6... The GM laughed at me and gave me a 5 inch thick book, titled 'Anarchy Online - the Art of Twinking'. Okay, I'm going to have a look at it after I fired that ******* for laughing at me. Phear the allmighty Creative Director, puny being!"
...
"Day 243... Wtf? That's insane! That's so damn insane! *evil laughter* I'm going to twink so hard, these battle station guys will feel their asses kicked in front of their PCs when I'm done with them!"
"Day 243.1... Oh... and I need to invent a new title to replace 'Creative Director'. It really doesn't sound as dangerous as I thought when I say 'Phear the allmighty Creative Director, puny being!'."
Day 244... Discovers MR?
Arguru has pretty much summed it up, you would do well to pay attention to his post.
The parts of Arguru's post that are relevant are more related to player attitude than any problems with the game.
Bye bye I! It was interesting to read your views. It would've been more interesting to really see behind the scenes.
Welcome to the new guy! I would like to reiterate what others said: Play a character to level 100. See what's going on. Don't ask the dev team what you should do or where to go. If you want to make it hard on yourself, have your significant other start too with a "hard" profession.
And on a general note, engine videos of grass features are so 2008... or 2009? I forget. Either way the first grass videos are older than my soon completely paid for car. I could've lived without the grass if that meant 3 less years of engine development. ;)
Yeah, it's one of the things which make AO a great game, but it's also one of the reasons why the learning curve is a bit harsh for new players. Especially when you consider a guy just doing his first steps in PvP and getting the impression of a lot of exploiters in this game. That's one thing I hope the reworked new player experience will at least give some explanation AND is open enough on the developer side to add some additional features and explanations.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ekarona
I mean, it would be nice to have a building or something with profession statues (like in the character creation) which can be looked at with the inspect function. These could have a mediocre level 50 twink setup and the description of the statue is a complete description of how to get that gear and everything in. Just to show new players "Hey, we've already told you about implants and gear and how it works and here are some tip-of-the-iceberg-examples of what is possible with it!"
The way things are at the moment, the game is great and the twinking mechanics are still way above most other MMOs around, but they are also a very effective way to frustrate and scare new players. And frustrated players leave. I'm not saying to make the game easier, I just want it to be explained a lot better ingame. The work this awesome community has done over the years in the forums and on different websites is great and even I do learn new things, after more than 11 years, sometimes when reading guides or something, but it is not ingame and I think the majority of players doesn't look into forums that much. And with the spoon fed gamers today, giving them a complex system like this without a lot of explanation, they leave very fast. Just look at TSW and what is asked in general chat there. Sometimes it makes me think the zombie apocalypse could happen any moment and the only difference we would notice on gamers would be a diet change from pizza to braaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiins.
was that trox on the video using the new head meshes? It did look like it.
Also, don't listen to the yaps suggesting you try to start and solo the game to some level - some ppl can do that but you won't grow the AO population catering to that sort of player. Ideally, start off as 1 of a six-pack of noobs (not necessarily f00bs) and work together to learn the game and progress. That is how the game was for most ppl in it's heyday and where it's strengths lie.
Truthfully, I see nothing inspiring about this letter from Joel Bylos. In fact, I'd like to point out that it looks and reads like a naive attempt to paraphrase everything that everyone else has said before him. At least he's not fooling himself about the uphill battle of attrition he has about the current state of the game. That's a plus.
Vayde's post is about as positive, I think, as anyone can get. Many kudos to him. But, don't forget that a fresh change in hand is a mixed bag at best. I'm not going to make the mistake of always thinking that 'new' is or isn't always the best. A complete restructuring of AO is not going get you what you want, Joel. So, now I wonder.. what exactly DO you want out of this? That's the most pressing concern I have, is your motivations: Are you here because of the money, or the job pressure? Are you here for the challenge of tackling this ancient beast? Its entirely plausible that you are not allowed to answer this question openly and truthfully. But, be warned. The AO community is highly skeptical at this point, and many of us have the decade+ long perspective and memory that a new game director may not.
For instance:
I see you have a video about grass today. But, didn't we have a finished video about grass delivered to us by Means and Co, in AO over 4 years ago? I want to know how this managed to go from old news to new news.
Stuff like that.
http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/t...oomsday_bunker all hail our new Director? :(