Friday with Means - December 12th, 2008

[Glarawyn]

Means would it be possible to get the Scorpion morph on live?

I'm guessing you haven't been on test live and tried Scorpion. Scorpion form is a hostile nano, so you have to die/terminate or wait a full hour to get rid of it. Also none of our perks that are dependent on morphs will work with Scorpion form. Lastly Scorpion form in it's current form is targeted for 1he adventurers. If 1he adventurers get a new morph, ranged adventurers should get something new as well.

[Ocene]

There is a much simpler solution concerning city plots and availability: make COP instanced. Works well in AOC, and AO has all the instancing functionality too.

[macattack]

There is a much simpler solution concerning city plots and availability: make COP instanced. Works well in AOC, and AO has all the instancing functionality too.

>.< would sux when trying to buy in a playershop

I would recommend opening up a New land area... (hello how long heve they been terra forming now?) Making it available to RK3 toons/orgs and give them a moritorium say... 3 months? to gather (after char transfer, one time deal) form org, select the plot and have FC be gracious enough to (nano-magically poof) transfer/create thier existing city on the new plot. FIrst come first serve and only for those transfered toons in those particular orgs (no new ones to circumvent RK3 toons by rk1/2 toons). THis will take some coordination with arks/org leaders/etc, but I think that may be tangible. After that 3 months, the # of city plots left over shoudl be halved and then become FFA.

This will allow for RK3 orgs to more to a server of their choice (RK2 ftw), not ruin the work they put into their city (though palyer terminal transfer will be interesting) and be a Personable method of FC direct support to the player community.

[Darkbane]

I'm guessing you haven't been on test live and tried Scorpion. Scorpion form is a hostile nano, so you have to die/terminate or wait a full hour to get rid of it. Also none of our perks that are dependent on morphs will work with Scorpion form. Lastly Scorpion form in it's current form is targeted for 1he adventurers. If 1he adventurers get a new morph, ranged adventurers should get something new as well.

The textures also don't work right... maybe if they do fix it though, ranged advy's could get a mini gun beetle?

[lugoman]

>.< would sux when trying to buy in a playershop

Just make the items buyable from the gms. This would make buying multiple items a lot easier and also make all shops equal. I hardly ever buy stuff from out-of-the-way org cities. If you have a city far from a whompa you are forced to price your stuff low.

[Lorddarcek]

Questions from this week:

Q: What is holding FC back from server transfers and/or server merges.

This is a complicated issue in AO for a couple reasons. Player cities and Towers. Players moved from one server to another would lose their towers and cities...if a true merge then EVERYONE would likely lose their towers and cities. Towers are available through combat and could be fought over, but player cities operate on a "I got here first" mechanic. The "I got here first" mechanic would be unfair to any new transfers to a server and not much fun for those who would lose their cities in a complete server merge. Rubi-Ka-1 is once again the default server for new clients which should stabilize numbers compared to RK2 over the next couple of months. I do not consider the populations of RK1 or RK2 to be low enough to consider the drastic action of server merges yet..especially with all there is for the players to lose (cities and towers). The general game population was up over the duration of November...and with the release of the booster and the upcoming engine upgrade I'm hoping that activity remains stable and some old friends come back to visit us to try out the new content and toys.

Our German server population is not what is should be at the moment...so we perhaps need to open dialogue with the players from that dimension on how they best feel the problem should be addressed so we can come to the best solution together.

Thank you all again for the feedback!

Colin "Means" Cragg

If the merge happens this way..with orgs in RK3 and RK2 simply losing their cites hundreds of people will quit the game...

i know you cant make an Omlete without breaking some eggs..but consider this seriously as i know many of my friends will simple cancell their subscriptions,plus FC would become known as a ruthless company,and players will remember this.
Im working on raising cash for my org to have a city...its a hard and very long process..just to lose all of that in a day,guss i would quit also.

[Darkirbiskaa]

That's really good idea!

[Armus]

Closing rk3 first seems like a good idea. But you'd ofcourse have to give the "major" orgs a chance to get a city on rk1/rk2 as well. The only way to do that is to open one or two new zones. But that should be entirely doable and everyone would love some new zones.

Ofcourse some ppl on rk3 would be unhappy about this. But given how extremely desolate the place is (feel free to roll a toon and check if you want) I think the number that would like to transfer would be far greater than those who would be unhappy. At least I got that opinion when i visited some time ago. The few ppl I ran into desperately wanted to play their toons on rk1/rk2.

An alternative and cheaper/easier option is to simply give ppl on rk3 the option to move their toons when they feel like it. Some of them would have to pick new names but it's a small price to pay to get an active game again without rereolling/refarming.

This would likely drain rk3 even more. But that's the point.. There is no point in running a server if it has no ppl and this would make the decision to move even easier.

[kemi]

Any fix incoming for the "mobs not returning to their camps" issue?

Right now on RK2 inferno, many of the adds of some of our most popular dynas are permanently alone. Spetses spawns next to just one heckler, Conflagrant has no spirit pals, Crete stands alone, etc. (lots more, I figured just keep it to three examples though.)

People are abusing the hell out of whatever changed to let this happen, and are simply dumping mobs into lava sea's, and then ignoring them for weeks at a time.

[Klodovik]

A quick question: is there a chance that we (MPs/crats) get promised 2 hour pets before the booster pack hits the "shelves"? Via some tiny patch or something.

kthnks

Come on Means. Is it booster treat only or what? I already started to spend credz on chocolate, booze + stuff and I'm kinda running out of them (credz and booze, that is).

[Falkvinge]

That's really good idea!

yup that's nice.. but it would be even more fancy, if they do it like in aoc, where greyed out buttons clockwise go into normal state.

[Mekh]

yup that's nice.. but it would be even more fancy, if they do it like in aoc, where greyed out buttons clockwise go into normal state.

I like the idea with a timer better actually.

aoc's timer works ok too, but I like the timer better.

[meatybtz]

Some do.

No mob currently in game uses special attacks that players do. This functionality was removed (read about instagibbed players). Mobs have mob-special attacks that function like procs or perks. They may even wield multiple weapons. But since the feature was removed never seen a mob use aimedshot/burst/fling/fullauto/sneakattack/fastattack/brawl/dimach... which is what special blockers block against. Mobs at one point did use player specials but usually because Mob ARs are stupidly high (in order to hit evaders) their specials were usually very very very hard hitting. I still remember being on RK fighting mobs only to get gobsmacked by a massive burst. It really hurt. Nothing like loosing half or more of you HP from on hit. If my memory is still working from that time if mob hit you for lets say 350 damage per hit it wouldnt be surprising to get hit by a mob special that was well over 1.5k, sometimes more. Basicly it was about has painful as players hit mobs. No PvP caps meant mobs could instakill low hp profs with FullAutos. Mobs have never had damage caps so they can instakill anyways if you are a lowbie taking on an LoTV for instance. 11k crit yey! But the problem was yellows could instakill.

Before mobs are given specials mob damage vs players should function similar to PvP to prevent the gross overpowering nature of MOB AR+SPECIALS.

[SoldiTwo]

Closing rk3 first seems like a good idea.

It certainly is not a good idea. A good idea would be to use the spare server resources that the loss of AoC players generated and place an AO server in Europe. Most European ao players have a ping around 150~ atm, and a server that's not in the US would help a lot for us europeans.

...

Ofcourse some ppl on rk3 would be unhappy about this. But given how extremely desolate the place is (feel free to roll a toon and check if you want) I think the number that would like to transfer would be far greater than those who would be unhappy. At least I got that opinion when i visited some time ago. The few ppl I ran into desperately wanted to play their toons on rk1/rk2.
...

Are you kidding or is your server on which you are playing so empty that you desperatly need toons from rk3? I'm playing on RK3 - it's not overcrowed yes, but it's in no way so empty like you try to make the forum audience believe.

An alternative and cheaper/easier option is to simply give ppl on rk3 the option to move their toons when they feel like it. Some of them would have to pick new names but it's a small price to pay to get an active game again without rereolling/refarming.

This would likely drain rk3 even more. But that's the point.. There is no point in running a server if it has no ppl and this would make the decision to move even easier.

Last time I checked there were approx. min. 30+ ppl raiding pande. and that's clan only at at least 3 times a week.

[NoGoal]

No mob currently in game uses special attacks that players do.

Guess you never tanked/TC in pande or did clan inferno missions.

[Eskarin]

Guess you never tanked/TC in pande or did clan inferno missions.

Not about the topic, but a single meta with eNSD (If it lands ) would get your notum miner in his setup.

[lugoman]

No mob currently in game uses special attacks that players do. This functionality was removed (read about instagibbed players). Mobs have mob-special attacks that function like procs or perks. They may even wield multiple weapons. But since the feature was removed never seen a mob use aimedshot/burst/fling/fullauto/sneakattack/fastattack/brawl/dimach... which is what special blockers block against.

Thought blues in pand used burst or fa, havent checked my damage taken there in a long while though.

[NoGoal]

Not about the topic, but a single meta with eNSD (If it lands ) would get your notum miner in his setup.

Utils/Symbs aren't affected by OE.

[Eskarin]

Utils/Symbs aren't affected by OE.

NT with GA Nukes then?

[NoGoal]

NTs maybe.