Friday with Means - June 19th, 2009 - AO Complexity

[shadowgod]

Tell the Wine/Cadega folk to fix their stuff.

or just tell the users to buy some windows

[Xephonics]

To be honest it's on you to upgrade, not on the game developers to maintain support for entirely obsolete "hardware". My cell phone is more advanced and powerful than your PC I bet.

It's quite difficult to develop a game that maintains equal performance for both pre-industrial-age computers and modern computers. Additionally the price of modern hardware has fallen so far that it's inconceivable to not upgrade. Video cards for $21, entire PC systems (with monitors!) for $350. Upgrade already, stop trying to hold the rest of us back. Stop making the devs have to develop two drastically different and non compatible games just since you have an old PC.

I could agree that new games should not cater to old machinery, but expecting a very old game to suddenly change and alienate half its customers is a bit drastic.

A game starting from scratch it different than an old game suddenly changing its reqs drastically.

[PhoenixOfAges]

I could agree that new games should not cater to old machinery, but expecting a very old game to suddenly change and alienate half its customers is a bit drastic.

A game starting from scratch it different than an old game suddenly changing its reqs drastically.

They said in the past they plan to keep the requirements around what they are now. AoC has much higher reqs as it is far more demanding graphically. It's not the engine that displays the graphics that bump the reqs, it's the graphics it is going to display. As those will not change much (only getting some new effects (which we likely can turn off), new faces and new trees) and more of the work will go to the graphics card rather than the CPU the reqs should be around what they are now and it could even run smoother with the gear you have now.

[Xephonics]

nice that is all i was wanting to know

[Mastablasta]

Has anyone read if they are going to keep a legacy client, or do they just plan on killing half their customers with mega system reqs on the new client? (refering to the new client, since they say it will use an engine a generation above AoC's)

Mega system reqs to render with new tricks old models and stuff won't change reqs all that much. it might be worthwhile for all those people playing AO to upgrade their systems to take advantage of all those neat modern games that are available. And it's so very very cheap to get performance that'll run Crysis now a days...

[Noxira]

I used to whine about games not getting ported to MacOS.. Got Windows, problem solved :P

Seriously, just borrow your friend's install disk or something and run it in Bootcamp.

[Ayria]

If your goal is to balance enforcers and keepers separately by making the reaver perkline extinct you best update those patch notes, this friday with means, oh hell front page of your website with your plans. Word of this change is spreading fast and even non keepers think it is retarded. So splain me the plan lucy.

Means, or any other employee of Funcom, has no obligation to tell us squat. FwM is a privilege that he is giving us, brief insight into the goings on of the company. If they so choose to do something without notification they can.

As for the change, yes it sucks, nerfing SnD really wasn't needed. However, provided that the nerf isn't a mistake (which has happened before) I'm sure Funcom has their reasons and; disclosed to us or not, they really don't need to justify it to us.

With the balancing act in effect lots of things are going to change, lots of people are going to get all riled up as their lose tools they have become used to and dependent on. (Everyone buy earplugs when they touch AS cause oh boy we'll have a lot of screaming)

Depending on how this balancing act goes Funcom may see fit to return some power to Keepers in another form. But then again, with all the epeen Iruberpvpskillz whiners we have on the forums talking about how everything is OP chances are it will be a wide spread downgrade which will bring Keepers back to par.

(Off-Topic: I really don't get the "omg OP" fad people partake in. Do you think Perens are OP? To a Froob they are. Xan weapons compared to Perens are OP. Down the line it goes.)

[Saetos]

With the balancing act in effect lots of things are going to change, lots of people are going to get all riled up as their lose tools they have become used to and dependent on. (Everyone buy earplugs when they touch AS cause oh boy we'll have a lot of screaming)

Depending on how this balancing act goes Funcom may see fit to return some power to Keepers in another form. But then again, with all the epeen Iruberpvpskillz whiners we have on the forums talking about how everything is OP chances are it will be a wide spread downgrade which will bring Keepers back to par.

The problem was though that there was no tangible reason to make any sort of nerf against Keepers. They are in fact behind other professions in terms of attack power and Slice and Dice is one of the few attacks that helped them win a few kills, but now that that's been "modified" the Keeper profession is at an all time low because of a sudden, unannounced and unnecessary change. And as quite a few people said it's not sensible for this to happen and have to wait months for the next balance cycle, if indeed this was the intent of SND's nerf (balance issues).

[Marlark]

After reading Means emm initial post i decided to read all the pages of replies and to my surprice noone have done this yet .....

Means your a n00b!!!!

I am shure macro and the rest have already picked on him already and will for a very long time remind him of this emm failure.

[Marlark]

I could agree that new games should not cater to old machinery, but expecting a very old game to suddenly change and alienate half its customers is a bit drastic.

A game starting from scratch it different than an old game suddenly changing its reqs drastically.

FC can do what ever they like to their game ... if you want all the new bells and wissles you have to adapt ... And Xeph : The alienate half of its customers part... you cant back up in facts so stay away from trying to paint a picture that most likly dont exist.

[shadowgod]

FC can do what ever they like to their game ... if you want all the new bells and wissles you have to adapt ... And Xeph : The alienate half of its customers part... you cant back up in facts so stay away from trying to paint a picture that most likly dont exist.

one could argue they alienate half their customers with every single patch.

[Ayria]

one could argue they alienate half their customers with every single patch.

Pretty easy to alienate 5 people.

[Maeventura]

People, let's calm down and breathe a little.

I am not pleased either with the nerfs my favourite prof (aka keeper) is undergoing, but don't forget we only see what's right in front of our noses.

We don't have the big picture, we have no clue how they plan to redo all specials and the rest of the perklines.

I guess we'll just have to do momentarily with what we got, suck it up and wait upcoming patches to see how this is all turning out.

Cos if in the end, everything and everybody gets nerfed to some balance we're asking for for some time now, we won't have any reason anymore to complain.

[Grayfox211]

just one question....do u have adequate comments in ur code means? or any comments at all? THATS what comments are for, so after 4 years later u dont have to spend all day figuring out why u didnt get an invite to the ship, because before diving back into ur code u supposedly looked over ur comments section again to refresh urself.

ur post should read *face palm* i shoulda wrote better comments

just a suggestion, but in ur defense, i know from personal experience that its easy to get into the habit of NOT writing proper comments.

[Vhax]

just one question....do u have adequate comments in ur code means? or any comments at all? THATS what comments are for, so after 4 years later u dont have to spend all day figuring out why u didnt get an invite to the ship, because before diving back into ur code u supposedly looked over ur comments section again to refresh urself.

ur post should read *face palm* i shoulda wrote better comments

just a suggestion, but in ur defense, i know from personal experience that its easy to get into the habit of NOT writing proper comments.

You know.. Means doesn't write or read code.
Code is also not always the best place to document things.
Imagine if you want to know how many people it takes to trigger an AI ship you'd have to dig through the code every time?

[Ayria]

You know.. Means doesn't write or read code.
Code is also not always the best place to document things.
Imagine if you want to know how many people it takes to trigger an AI ship you'd have to dig through the code every time?

Code is a bad place to document things imo. Only thing I use comments for are deactivating parts of code for testing/archiving.

[Exachix]

I have but one simple question for you.

Attempt Three

Macrosun and I run an attack..both of us Dual logged.

Facepalm Three: Genele laughed at us and mentioned we all needed to be on the General's hatelist to get an invite. Possibly 10 seconds after the death of the General.

After waiting for Genele to leave the room and lowering her desk an mind-screwing 4 cm.

How long did it take for Genele to notice? And then how long did it take for you to be identified as the culprit?

[Lheann]

All the whining that Means should have checked the code to see how to trigger a AI ship invite from ground raid. Sorry I am with Vhab. Code needs comments but a rule list should have been part of the development process and documented long before there was code.

I personnelly would love to have seen him write:

Today Macro and I tested AI Ship Invites in the new instanced cities. After a quick viewing of the AI Raid How-To on the offical site we were off and running with a team of 4 toons to ensure the ship invite.

or even better would have been:

Today Macro and I tested AI Ship invites in the new instanced cities. I pulled out the AI City Raid design package and dusted off my 4 year old rules list of what will and will not trigger the ship invite. Macro and I decided it was best to do some regression testing and we ran about 6 raids in various team sizes and such.

Then the only mistake he could have maybe made was one being a GM. Since I have helped test content on Test Live through NW and SL and AI I know that not all content has the GM restriction. Since that restriction is not universal (why i have no clue) then it would be an acceptable mistake. Still a mistake though.

The fact that a fan site has better guides than the offical web site says tons. For me it is a marketing indicator. "Um actually having guides and player handbook is to costly for us with the low population. Let the fan sites handle it."

I agree FC should keep some stuff a mystery. But the basics on all the content should be there for everyone to look over. Even the Devs.

As i said on page 1. Even if it was a mistake it was excellent regression testing of the mechanics. So noob he may be. But in the end it was much better tested.

[erozc]

All those times of hugging the CC were in vain... I remember upgrading to SL&AI and my org officers explained it is very necessary to pull the general to CC to ensure ship invite. Such superstition

[Lupusceleri]

The fact that a fan site has better guides than the offical web site says tons. For me it is a marketing indicator. "Um actually having guides and player handbook is to costly for us with the low population. Let the fan sites handle it."

Or, funcom might not want spoilers to be out there immediately. I have a strong su****ion that FC asked AO Universe and co to hold off their guides until a few weeks after LoX released.

Come on, is it more fun to do the quest by what you get from the game, or just grind it out with a guide.