Friday with Means - September 11th, 2009 - Video Q&A, Sceenies and Info-Nuggets

[Gridpain]

Opisexes are good enough , i don't like the Solitus though. Old one is hot, new one looks like teenage prom queen with way too much make up.

and too big a beard

[Glarawyn]

Thanks for the video ShadowGod.

[shadowgod]

2nd page!

[erozc]

This means jetlag?

[Troxxor]

nth! (...cba counting, w.e.)

Welcome back Means & Co! Hope you guys had a great time

Comments:

Written transcription of Q&A session would be nice....possible?

Please, had trouble hearing some of that especially the Qs & the funny bits

OK I'm going to fill out that petition survey, didn't realise they all got read

Sexy heads <3 Can't fault them

OK questions:

1) Will those new heads blink? Yes, no, maybe later?

2) Are you gonna nail our toon's feet to the floor some day?.. If you don't know what I mean: Log into game, get your toon to stand & watch their feet drift around on the floor

If the game's going to look as awesome as we all hope (*excited at the thought*), I think these two little things might spoil the magic a bit.

[Troxxor]

Questions questions!!!

You did mean ask some right?... Well I have anyway!

P.S. Info-nuggets?....

beginnnig implementation of a new "EXPLOSIVE" end game raid instance

wat

Have I been living under a rock, or is this new news?

[Menzagitat]

For those who were unable to attend DragonCon this year, we hosted a Q&A session in the Sheraton. ShadowGod was nice enough to film it for us (in 5 parts).

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

I'm certain that these videos will draw even more questions...put them here and I will try and answer them.

Questions questions!!! Its good to be back!

The videos remind me of...
The three pirates from Monkey Island

and they are one step in front of the game made by Funcom
http://www.alkis.org/eadv50.html

[rakhabit]

The new heads look nice, but as others have said, the Opifex ones need to be more slender and elfish.

[Raynefists]

Questions:

I like the new lock out based trashless instances, but it completely defeats the purpose of bringing 10 of the 14 classes. More dps won't get you loot any faster(because you can only kill so often), but bringing more people reduces your chances at the loot that does drop. This gives an incentive to bring fewer people. What are you guys going to do about this in the new raid instance?

In the Q&A you talked about fixing things that have been broken for a long time, that should have been fixed years ago. Is there any chance of having completely worthless skills(parry, ripsote, adventuring, etc) looked at as part of this initiative?

Is there any chance we could get a scriptable UI? I'm not talking about automation, i mean being able to script our own ui components that respond to things that happen in the game and to player interaction. If you look at the suggestion forum at any given moment, there is generally at least 1 UI related suggestion in the top 10 suggestions. If players had greater control over their UI, they could simply program these changes themselves and distribute them to the public. The best additions could even be patched into the standard client. This feature could also be used to help new players, as players could write guide widgets that would help noobs move along in the game even long after they've left the island.

[Grim-One]

Well as others have said all the heads look as if they are a bit cross eyed, and the opifex faces are to "plump". More noticeable on the ones without a full head of hair.

[Boltgun]

The heads looks nice. But... Am I seeing an attempt at adding animation to them, like moving/blinking eyes?

[ninst]

WB means!

Questions:

1. Could you give us more details about heal changes? Will these changes affect PVM?

2. Is "secondary attack action" based on AS skill (mentioned here: http://forums.anarchyonline.com/show...&postcount=124) going to have a defence check? Is this attack going to be available for everyone with AS weapon?

3. BS only virus scanners/free movements - how about removing the "BS only" tag? It's silly to have different rules (ability to remove debuffs) in BS/outside of BS.

4. With instanced pande we lost DD wars in AO Are there any plans to bring them back in a new encounter?

5. Is GTH going to be reviewed during prof. balancing?

6. 110% blind resist items - how about toning it down to 20+30% ?

[Noddle22]

Cheers FC & Means, good talk!

[Anarrina]

OK, usually I keep my nose out of these threads, but I have to ask. Means, are you wearing two watches? And if so...why?

[torakx]

id like to ask about the games intended progression.

at the mo when you hit 220 you have ALOT of work to do before you can pvp properly. hours upon hours upon hours of grinding in different instances most abandoned some semi active depending on how recently they were released.

now i just heard another instance is coming for high levels.
will it have the same loot as previous pf's that are dead right now?
if not i can see a continuing trend to push out items and long quests just to....keep us busy so we dont get bored with endgame pvp? or even just endgame?

i would like to know if you guys are considering widening the content instead of going in a linear direction.
why not put loads of items with drop chances on these latest instances in LOX? like items alot of people cant get from APF now.or dustbrigades.

half the problem is when you reach endgame the pvp is either boring and/or restrictive that we either reroll and do it all over again or we are not fast enough to complete our characters before its outdated.leaving you with a situation it seems where you may feel you have to create new content or people will leave the game.

please at some stage have a well thought plan to create a pvp enviornment that perpetuates itself to some extent.i think if you really sort out the pvp at endgame you wont have such a big need to create new items for players..or not as much.
instead you might find yourselves focused in part on roleplaying and mixing that with pvp.
pvp scenarios once a week.

take a look at dekaron EU/2moons this has a pvm dungeon raid (Dead-front) with high xp gains.a different instance for different level ranges.now as you level during the day at the same times each day the call is put out very clearly across the server that it is open soon and people gather in massive numbers to get a team and go in.
after your team and the other 2 or 3 teams make it to the boss room they end up gaining a certain amount of xp but also for the final prize they have to fight each other to the death. last man standing his team wins gold and xp.
just an idea of how the two can go hand in hand.

sorry for the long post. i been away from forums a couple days haha. needed to vent

[Deaconfrost]

Hi Means,

I took a 9 month break from AO to try AoC when it came out. I returned to AO (my first mmog love lol) and other than performance issues it's been wonderful. The news that we are being ported into the AoC engine caused much rejoicing because I know what its capable of.

Then I thought "oh noes", there's things I hate about the AoC engine! So are you going to modify for AO players the following two issues?

1. Fall Damage ... taken out of AO eons ago (along with our jumping ability being nerfed lol). It's in the AoC engine though. Will this be disabled in AO?

2. Dual/Triple etc Log-ins ... You cant have two "clients" (or whatever, Im not a programmer lol) of AoC open at the same time on your comp! This is a massive part of the fun of AO is double/triple whatever logging. Again will this be changed to make dual logging available to AO players?

Last unrelated to new engine question...

Since returning I have had a great time with friends, old characters, fun new content, etc. My performance is absolutely terrible tho. I used to be able to push "0" and fly from one end of a zone to the other and come back 5 mins later zoned into the new zone. Now the engine can barely go 20-30 secs with out rubberbanding me AND stopping me from auto-running? Whats up with that? What is cancelling my auto-run?

Thanks

[Gracee]

OK, usually I keep my nose out of these threads, but I have to ask. Means, are you wearing two watches? And if so...why?

That's my question too.
I can't focus on the contents of the video until I know for sure.

[Kaitoujeanne]

Hopefully we can see some of the Male Models soon, I can only recall seeing a Atrox Head but no other Male Models yet, kinda curious how those are turning out too.

Some of the Opi Heads are very cute but could use slendered a bit and eyes fixed so they not cross eye'd looking but overall can't wait till we can see them ingame, detail is amazing.

Soli Head looks a lot younger compared to the other one, not a bad look tho but would like to see it a lil more mature looking.

Also if there's any way to correct the females with long hair so it doesn't look like its stabbing into bodies or overlaying wrong w/ the armor when moving or fighting it would be nice.

P.S.

WTB more Tattoos ingame.

[Raynefists]

1. Fall Damage ... taken out of AO eons ago (along with our jumping ability being nerfed lol). It's in the AoC engine though. Will this be disabled in AO?

Means touched on this in the Q&A, the engine changes only effect the visuals of the game.

[sultryvoltron]

. . .implementation of a new "EXPLOSIVE" end game raid instance . . .

Micheal Bay Anarchy Online?

Nice videos, Anarchy is death death!

Can we get the big picture of what's happening with balancing? Alot of professions are looking at receiving huge nerfs with the pvp system changes and I'm sure I speak for all of them in saying that we'd like acknowledgement of how it will effect our toons at the very least.