Friday with(out) Means - Aug. 21st, 2009: The Last Ramble

[Nanostratege]

I will never tell anyone what's in the CoH chests.

Then please at least help us with the Xan rune alphabet.

The door in Number 9's chamber may some day lead somewhere if you guys buy me enough beers.

great news!

Well, it's still on track for the same basic release schedule - It's just that 18.2 is coming a lot sooner than *we* thought. So the time frame hasn't changed, just the number of the patch.

So in how many weeks can we expect the Dark Ruins to hit live?

[Kintaii]

So in how many weeks can we expect the Dark Ruins to hit live?

That one I don't know. Genele still has some work to take care of, but from what I've heard from her it isn't much - Beyond that, Means will decide after he gets back when we'll be seeing it hit the live dimensions. =)

[Zandibel]

Ahhh, good stuff.

[ninst]

Kintaii, when we can expect new Testlive build with reworked AS mechanics?

[Herkulease]

Armor looks great. Thats how the ofab armor should have turned out.

Wtb a blue version. 8p

[Mistiz]

Woot. So. Technogen. Congrats.

Yeah, wtb some updated info about AS nerf as well as prof balancing (cough fixers cough).

[Saetos]

The armor admittedly does look a bit like it belongs in a medieval game, but as long as it's just the helmet I can see it as a cyberpunk type of armor

[Kintaii]

Kintaii, when we can expect new Testlive build with reworked AS mechanics?

Very, Very, Very Soon™. Like... reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal soon.

[aleah]

Fantastic pictures!! Those love seats are awesome.
That NPC is sitting down. In a chair. Not cross-legged! I'm not sure I've seen that in this game before.

It would be helpful if the daily missions were available every 18 hours or so, not 24.
It's still daily, but this way, if you are late pulling your mish one night, the rest of your week isn't thrown off by it.

[Poufpaf]

Will the changes Means announced for neutrals be released in 18.2 then ?

[MassDebater]

Hmm the armour does look a little out of place, but its one of the only helmets fc have made recently(and ever in fact) that looks even vaguely attractive.
i think the cool thing with that armour will be the glowing transparent purple stuff, maybe it has a trail like ai rapiers.


the best thing in that picture is the npc is sitting down! omg does that mean we can finally sit in chairs?


i tried to incorporate locations that showed people various locations
Mish ideas:
PvP Quests !!!! with vp reward and/or xp
-Kill X guards in one(or more opposing cities)
-Kill X players in one(or more opposing cities)
-Scout the enemy(tag guards/players/towers and maybe BS terminals for low lvls so they learn where they are )


PVM
General
-Escort mission, take a mob from point a to point b, keep it alive.
-"You shortchanged me" - Kill a vendor npc mob (ot bartender etc)
-Athletics competitions!, make mobs spawn with rs about 10% lower than yours, then utilise the mitaar mechanics but alter it so you have to reach them before the mob. Running track maybe around cities/outdoors/dungeons
-"Feed The Leet!" - The leet (in bor or newland) is hungry! and he needs X and y(bring them before timer runs out, have to give 1 at a time, so you gotta run to leet,feed,run to new vendor n back, feed etc etc)
-Tradeskill FRENZY - You are given one step at a time instructions to TS an item, do it in the time limit!
-"QUICK, a vaccine!" - You are poisoned and need a vaccine, the parts drop off mobs around the game world, doc scales with lvl(or maybe a time delayed nuke0


AI
-Target each elevator in apfs
-Kill/Tag or other mobs in s10 (lvl 125-150)

SL
-Kill/tag/find incarnators around sl(which 1s depends on your lvl)
-tag a heckler in 1 or more sl zones(which 1s depends on your level)
-tag lotv in each sl zone(again which ones depends on lvl)

LE
Tag each omni/clan dread lock boss

more to come maybe better ones when it isnt 3am!

[Suicidal]

Whoever designed that new armor.. does he/she play Guild Wars?

[MassDebater]

Grinding from 1-220 is an inconvenience to some, let's get rid of that also :P

Please.

[Kintaii]

Whoever designed that new armor.. does he/she play Guild Wars?

<MstrBstrd>: No.

... ok, looks like he doesn't. Flaptoot has, though.

[Keldros]

Game Intro/Arrival Hall: I think, looking at the starting areas of AO at the moment, there's a distinct lack of focus in the questlines and the progression - Particularly the transition from n00b island to the game-world proper. I tend to believe that there's a lot there which could be done, but as it tends to go in a team as small as ours we often have to make hard judgment calls on what takes priority. That said, I don't personally think that the introductory experience to our game should have a low priority in the slightest - Far, far from it. But there are other things we're working on at the moment from a design and technical standpoint which, unfortunately, does. Does that mean we'll never revamp the intro to the game? Not at all, and I personally hope we have the opportunity to do so fairly soon. But, as always tends to be the case with this sort of thing, I can't make any promises.

The arrival hall is a completely different matter all-together, though. As an oldskool AO player, alongside being a roleplayer in general, the arrival hall was, to me, an awesome, cute, interesting little addition to the game - I remember the first time logging into AO and just wandering around the hall, talking to everyone there, learning about the game's story and world from the various NPCs. It was really interesting and fun to me because... well, I get into that sort of thing. But as we've discussed in the past couple of weeks worth of Fw(o)M, content in an MMORPG has to appeal to as many players as-is possible; the problem with the arrival hall is that while it gives worthwhile and interesting content to someone such as myself, most players see it as an inconvenience. And to an extent they're right - The arrival hall is very cool looking and gives some great information about the backstory of the game, but it does little to actually engross the average player in terms of a "gameplay experience".

I think the arrival hall was a great idea and concept that was just utilized in a wrong manner - A location like that should be easily accessible to new players, but someone who doesn't want to experience that sort of social content shouldn't be forced to. I'd love to see the "arrival hall" experience retooled a bit, maybe into some sort of museum-type location where new players could easily go to and learn a bit about the history of Rubi-Ka and the conflict. Maybe even use it as a good way of keeping players up-to-date on important in-game happenings by adding in NPCs which talk about current events and have their chatter changed each patch or so. Naturally, anything like this would ultimately be a low-priority issue at the moment, but I still think something like that would be beneficial and cool for the game. I'll harass Means about it when he gets back.

bump? (And yes, this is a topic in NLC council meetings on RK2)

[Suicidal]

<MstrBstrd>: No.

... ok, looks like he doesn't. Flaptoot has, though.

Ok. Just that first thing that came to my mind when looking at the pic was an elite armor set in Guild Wars I like. Thought maybe it was inspired by that GW armor.

[Gralmuph]

Daily missions:
[Combat style] Go vaporise a outside camp in a given zone on Rubi-Ka.

Change between camps filled with normal Mobs for XP, and aliumz for Aixp.
But the XP the mobs on RK gives, got to be tweaked... so that it's worth spending 20->30min killing. Sure adding a great mission reward is one thing, I would say the easy way out... But the mission should be somehing you enjoy the whole time you spend on it!

[Hacker style] "The uncle bazzits quest is kinda cool..." So anything like this, but do it outside, or in some other location than a normal mission...
But skip the mobs, until you do something wrong on a terminal... and creates a security log. By this you should be given a timer, where you should be able to delete this log before any administrators sees it, and makes action.
Such a action could lead to security sentries would spawn or something... and that terminal would be shut down for a period of time. So that you would need to reloacte to another terminal...
Unless you were actually connected through another terminal, just to mezz with the security allready...

Additional ideas to the hacker-style:
- Set off the alarm on one terminal to gain more time at the one you work on.
- more important task to those allready members of the hacker-club?


Well something to set your brain spinning

[Homeostasis]

…to log in every day and accomplish something for both an immediate reward, and to build toward larger rewards over time.….Each 24 hours real-time this NPC will cycle through its mission choices, meaning that each day the roster of available missions will change… we could even use a little bit of help…

This is fantastic! A sincere thank you to all involved. So, where do I send the home baked cookies?

[Eseb]

Are the new neut necks still planned for 18.1? :P

[Saetos]

If you go the route of sided missions:

One kinda cool idea would be hacking shop terminals. You're handed a special Hacking tool and are told to go to x shop in enemy territory to retrieve some souped-up weapon from the shop. Apply the tool to the terminal, you retrieve the weapon, then run to your contact