Friday with Means - July 3rd, 2009 - German Server and AO Learning Curve

[JazlynKeppler]

I did not flame.. yet -.-

[Flyingengi]

You can't really split the "anti-DNW" options because of the nature of the question... The idea is the same and everyone who voted those doesn't like the current state of RK3.

You can't look at the current views of those on DNW bc of the ppl blabbing on the forums. That survey DOES show how people on DNW think. The MAJORITY want to stay.

[nitr0]

i don´t care anyways, i am out of AO... if it´s about me - call ao the number one "swinger party" game if u and ur friends can make out while teaming also, because all you do => everybody can and does, u are fine - we are all fine...

i am out of ao after 6 years, if u want a low/mid level team on dnw - hey - i log in my 3 accounts - that´s my team... more u won´t most likey find...
u wanna do anything else? dual log chars and try to gather a team with some other dual logged ones....

sorry, if U LOVE ANARCHY ONLINE to be a LAN game to be played with some friends - have fun - i don´t.

i like servers and games where actually a lot of ppl play, and i will never ever do all the stuff i did on dnw again, the chars are trapped there - be happy, now 54% are happy, because one of the left 100 left.

screw it, fc gave us hope - and now they **** us hard, that´s it.

[Inovaye]

1/2 want to stay 1/3 don't... Looks more like a minor majority.

[nitr0]

Idiots are just like slinkies. It makes you smile when you push them down a flight of stairs.

i would go for...

Idiots are just like Flyingengies. It makes them smile when everything around them wents down.

[Saetos]

Idiots are just like slinkies. It makes you smile when you push them down a flight of stairs.

i would go for...

Idiots are just like Flyingengies. It makes them smile when everything around them wents down.

So anyone that disagrees with you is a complete idiot?

Smooth.

[nitr0]

So anyone that disagrees with you is a complete idiot?

Smooth.

nope, but usually people laughing about other ppl being pushed down somewhere are.

and it´s definately not smart to do nothing about a server that gets more and more empty.
and 53% happy customers should be a alarm sign to FC, not sth to interprete as "everything cool, majority loves playing with themselfs"

[Saetos]

Meh... you could say that only 30% of players are "unhappy" with the current situation; 17% of responders didnt' have an opinion of the matter according to the poll.

[nitr0]

Meh... you could say that only 30% of players are "unhappy" with the current situation; 17% of responders didnt' have an opinion of the matter according to the poll.

ok, let´s get this straight... without the free month, dnw would be kinda empty atm, without the ppl who started playing again in hope of the xfer/merge it woule be even emptier...
if u work at night shift - quit ao, because in the morning u will be alone in almost any zone aso...

apart from that dnw more and more gets like a monkey cage, ppl rl threatining ppl in ooc, calling other moms names and stuff like "i will do this and that to your family"... ppl calling their orgs and themselfs catpee and so on... nobody cares anymore...
ppl exploit, do harrass, do what they want... nobody cares anymore...

and then there are 53% of ppl who like to solo or have a steady group of friends to play who think their lil wonderworld is fine and dnw will be overcrowded with ppl again soon, because the gfx engine will come, there will be tv-commercials, a funcom center on mars what do i know.

dnw is going down, faster than ever.

[Ebondevil]

No merge, no transfer. I like DNW how it is and would prefer to be able to continue playing on a German server. - 53.65%

Merge with RK1 or RK2 - 19.88%
Free transfer to RK1 - 6.59%
Free transfer to RK2 - 5.17%
I am undecided - 14.71%
[/B]

Or to put it another way:
People who do not want a server merge - 80.12%
That's a huge majority, over 4/5ths of the current population

People who want a server merge - 19.88%
Fairly small Minority

People who want to be able to move to another server - 11.76%
Again another small minority

People who want to leave DNW - 31.64%
Again, a Minority if not a small one

That leaves over 2/3rds of the player base not activly wanting to leave DNW, so the best way to do something about the problem is to revitalise the server, not annoy the large majority by scraping it.

and it´s definately not smart to do nothing about a server that gets more and more empty.
and 53% happy customers should be a alarm sign to FC, not sth to interprete as "everything cool, majority loves playing with themselfs"

This means we need to work towards a more populated DNW without destroying it with character transfers or server merges.

Sounds like Means does indeed want to do something about it, so what's up with all the doom and gloom?

[nitr0]

Or to put it another way:
People who do not want a server merge - 80.12%
That's a huge majority, over 4/5ths of the current population

People who want a server merge - 19.88%
Fairly small Minority

People who want to be able to move to another server - 11.76%
Again another small minority

People who want to leave DNW - 31.64%
Again, a Minority if not a small one

That leaves over 2/3rds of the player base not activly wanting to leave DNW, so the best way to do something about the problem is to revitalise the server, not annoy the large majority by scraping it.




Sounds like Means does indeed want to do something about it, so what's up with all the doom and gloom?

that means, NOTHING EFFECTIVE WILL HAPPEN... oh boy... and a survey: u want a server merge or transfer yes/no (determinated in later poll) would have given the right answers, not sth like the question they asked, even i almost marked 5 because i was undecided if i should choose 2-3-4

but i give it up, i quit anyways, that was one slap too much.

oh, and try to play on dnw and post again...

[noizmchn]

I have got a few friends to try out AO and all of them have quit for various reasons. One friend quit because when they went to talk to the very first npc all that was available was a crosshair and they didn’t want to shoot the person. In most games and cultures, target crosshairs do not mean “interact” they mean “shoot”. They gave up and quit.
The next friend quit after a few hours because they felt they were fighting the UI all the time. Fighting target, Nano target, cooldown and abilities that, at the time, did not grey out to inform you they were on cooldown. You just simply kept pressing the buttons until it worked.
Another friend simply left because the felt that AO was boring. Sure, there was a huge world and some cool looking stuff… but there was no motivation to go anywhere except “there might be stuff to kill that way”.
There are a few things that I think AO could do to increase the draw for people, and once they are here keep them. First of all: The game engine. This is being worked on and will be out asap I am sure. Also please note I said game engine and not graphics engine. I truly hope that the sound and database are being upgraded as well. Sound is half of the game and AO has some great music tarnished by a horrible, horrible sound engine that most people turn off. The fact that most people turn it off should be your first clue.
Second: Complexity. Quite a few people claim to like the complexity of AO. But I have to ask, what does this really give us as players? What does the complexity of AO give to us that any other game does not? Better characters? A more in depth tradeskill system? A better market? From what I understand, class balance is being worked on, the tradeskill system has always been horrible, and the market is far behind what other games offer today. So why so complex?
Third: Instanced Content. This is really something that AO should have shining and everyone on the web saying how Funcom got it right, since as I recall, AO had it first. On Demand Content that scales to the player’s desire. Randomized instances that spawn for the player’s group at the players’ demand and at a difficulty of the players’ choosing. People in WoW run the same instance over and over until they are blue in the face for better gear. Why is this not working for AO? I have a couple of ideas: AO missions are boring as hell. The AI is simply some of the worst AI in any game available today. Mobs are just simply standing there waiting to be killed and everyone one of them is a one trick pony that players figure out how to work around after 1-2 encounters. The only way that they seem to get any harder, is their health bar gets bigger and they hit harder. What if they worked together? What if they fell back and called for reinforcements? What if they actually used even half of their class abilities? What if the missions were scalable for 1-4 groups doing raid content.. on demand with raid level loot? What if the missions had multiple locations.. maybe one group had to defeat a boss at location A and once that was done, a 20 second timer started that allowed another group at location B access to a server room so they could shut down the defenses for a third group at location C? All of this would require timing, communication and teamwork. Once it was done, everyone involved gets a token to redeem for raid level loot. I would do that. How come the grid is never employed in these missions? Maybe a door is locked, players have the choice of defeating a very difficult boss or maybe there is a “mini grid” (Intranet?) that players could navigate to unlock various items inside the mission. I’m thinking doors, disarming mines, taking control of defense systems, etc etc.
On this topic, I think Bosses need a serious revamp. They are all so easy, that people know how to defeat them just by the aura around them. They have no tricks of any sort for the most part, they just have massive health and massive regen. Also, I think it’s time to rethink the idea of “open dungeons” the best example being the temple of the three winds. I can’t think of a single friend I ever made inside that dungeon, but I have a list of people that have trained, ganked, and stole from me longer than my arm. I can only imagine what it would be like for a new player, to go inside and everyone’s farming engineers that never come out because they are too high level, are running around killing everything and doing more damage so they cannot loot anything. Lien the memory stalker… seriously.. is that not a train setup?
Ao will always have a place in my heart, and once the game engine is updated I will be back and I will bring as many friends as I can. However, unless the gameplay itself is fixed, I doubt any of us will stay.

[Saetos]

So because Means sees the survey as saying 70-80%+ of Die Neue Welt's players want to stay in Die Neue Welt, it means he WON'T improve it?

That's some extremely weird logic. Can you take off your rage glasses and post a response as to how this makes sense?

[Obtena]

I think the people of DNW should realize the reality of their situation, whatever it may be and understand that any action will likely mean compromise. A move to different server compromises language true, but staying on a dying(?) server compromises your ability to play certain aspects of the game and losing the account if you miss out on an opportunity to move it.

[vadagget]

Implants are one of the core reasons AO is complex, yet there is not a single NPC who talks about implants and about the only related quest is the Adonis Brain Quest. AO needs a lowbie quest where the reward is a set of profession-specific implants (say QL 20 or 30) and the process of doing the quest introduces them to and explains Implants.

[shadowgod]

Or to put it another way:
People who do not want a server merge - 80.12%
That's a huge majority, over 4/5ths of the current population

technically, thats 80% of 53% of the population.

which makes irt not sound so huge.

[nitr0]

So because Means sees the survey as saying 70-80%+ of Die Neue Welt's players want to stay in Die Neue Welt, it means he WON'T improve it?

That's some extremely weird logic. Can you take off your rage glasses and post a response as to how this makes sense?

yes, i can take off my rage glasses ^^

and i will tell u, a lot of ppl are BEGGING for char transfer since months, the reaction after a year or sth (together with the dropping population) was this survey. now the outcome is "we will do nothing" (sorry, but getting more ppl to dnw (so population times 2,3,4,5...) is a dream, a nice one - but it´s completely unrealistic)

if u would have played on a server for 6 years and u suddenly log in and u can´t find teams for anything that is not "in" atm anymore, u see the same let it be 200 faces just on different alts all the time, nothing makes sense anymore.
what u grind/level/equip for? for raiding with the lil bunch of ppl left a year ahead? for what?
yes maybe if u know a server transfer/merge would come... but hey - that was just a hope (and we got faceslapped for it now)

i won´t start all over again, i won´t play on a server where u can run around alone in nasc/ely/adonis/inferno at a lot of non-mainstream times.

i would easily pay 100$ or something for char xfers, i wouldn´t care after all the time invested, but i won´t pay a $ anymore for being trapped on server that gets more and more a joke.

[Aethyrguard]

Bump for an entire new introduction to AO.. Drop Newbie island.. Bring back the morning star space station with some improvements and then get this party started. There have been some excellent suggestions for how to approach it and I look forward to seeing it in the future.

[Lektronik]

4. There are concerns regarding the number of active players on DNW. Which of the following actions would you prefer?

No merge, no transfer. I like DNW how it is and would prefer to be able to continue playing on a German server. - 53.65%

Merge with RK1 or RK2 - 19.88%
Free transfer to RK1 - 6.59%
Free transfer to RK2 - 5.17%
I am undecided - 14.71%


This was of course the most important question. All concerns and suggestions aside...what did the general population really want? The overwhelming majority of players on DNW want to remain a german population on a german only server.

Overwhelming majority? 53% is not an overwhelming majority. Not even close. If you do want to stay on the server, then you say "yes". If you don't want to stay on the server or you see a major problem with the server, then you say "no" or "undecided".

I don't think I would focus on the half that want to stay. I would focus on the half that doesn't.

50% of the population having problems with the server is waaaaaay too many people that don't like the current situation.

[Flyingengi]

Nitr0, I could care less what happens to DNW. I just know what the number say. I'm just pointing out that the majority of DNW wants to stay. THOSE ARE FACTS. If you where FC would you do what the majority of the players want to do or the small minority that complain on the forums?