Friday with Means - August 19th, 2011 - Progress

[Obtena]

Yes WoW fo reelz. If you look at the big picture instead of looking to the little details you will see a clear Wowification of AO. Namely in its approach to the leveling system. In WoW leveling is fast and easy, where people are expected to spend their time is not during leveling but farming gear at endgame. AO is going the same route. Leveling is becoming less and less important, what counts is the farming of stuff after.

I hope the comparison to WOW here isn't a negative one because leveling in AO is the most boring aspect of it's gameplay. Dailies improved that alot, but that's certainly not what I would call fast leveling, so it's not WoW in that respect. Even though endgame raids are a massive grind, it's not even close to the hell of leveling to 220. The writing is on the wall: FC wants people to play at the endgame and experience all the content they have introduced there in the last 5 years. It is a big diversion from SL and Ai approach and it was bound to happen: how many GD's has AO went through? Each has their own spin on the direction of the game. At the same time, I can recall how crap it was to level in those days as well. Anyone that complains about how 'easy' it is to level now has lost their perspective on how hard it was before. I honestly doubt that anyone wants to see TL7's que for heckler spots in inferno, do tundra in Adonis and farm faction spawning Mord EVER again. The alternative to 'easy' here is 'stupid'. I will pick easy thanks.

[SoapTarder]

I know a sure-fire way of making BS rewards attractive: Give the "daily" XP reward to everyone at the end of every round.
Of course, level locked twinks and 220s don't get any direct benefit from that, but at least they won't run out of people to shoot at and won't have to suffer waiting hours for BS to start (at least around euro primetime).

This also goes toward solving the complaint that there is no real leveling alternative to "cripplers, hecks, hecks, hecks, inf", and the traditional complaint that you can't level a character by doing PvP.

such a great idea. bs queues at every level would be piled up. too bad there will always be a way to abuse a system, to make it more efficient though. damn 4 cappers >X

[Technogen]

Because people are leveling too slow!

[Alternity]

Well, we see games like Earthrise and Darkfall try to go the hardcore path, but where are they now

Yeah I get that point Masta, but remember EVE started out with a low population. Now I'd say it's rather large, and it looks like CCP has done quite well for themselves.

There will be and is heavy competition in all segments of the MMO market, the world has indeed changed since we started in this business. However I will dare state this: The themepark MMO market is by far more saturated than the hardcore market, and thus it's easier to drown in that sea.

What I notice is that more and more of my friends and "enemies" in AO, dwindle in numbers at an increasing scale. And the majority of the people I know quit because AO is becoming to streamlined. Or that FC implement questionable mechanics, that force the fun out of the game for many. And no people don't leave because someone whine on the forums, like stated earlier in this thread iirc. They quit because FC are implementing changes that does not currently fit within the game mechanics, not to say they won't work better post rebalance. Or they quit because of features that are horribly thought out to begin with.

To end this wall of text I'd like to say that not all of FC's plans are bad, they do have good things on the horizon. Stuff that should have been implemented years ago. It's not all bad, there are some bright stars out there, just a shame that there is OVER 9000! stars in the sky ;x

[MidgarClan]

Not everyone levels slow. The majority of players in the community have extreme difficulty. I see it on a daily basis. That does not mean it's all good, many things need adjustment in this regard.

[Lusos101]

The world is full of black and white. There is a lot of grey too however. And dont even get me started on colors!

Boring leveling is boring. Games where progressive upgrading of a toon is the objective can be made in many different ways. WoW's approach isnt unique and is not the only one that works, proven by many games that did and do it differently with succes. As said before, there are already many competitors trying to steal the demographics that plays WoW. AO becoming one of them, by trying to modify an old and different game with a tiny team has as much chance of sucess as the proverbial snowflake.

Leveling to be fun can not be a boring and repetitive task. But it doesnt need to be made irrelevant. A game where leveling takes time but where a player sees progress is a perfectly viable game. Im pretty sure that AO would be able to retain more players if it made the leveling grind more rewarding. There is nothing writen anywhere that proves that a game is better because the player can go from level one to two with a simple click of a button but needs to do the same dungeon a gazillion times to level from 219 to 220. Both extremes are bad. The first robs the player of any sense of accomplishment and the second becomes very boring very fast.

Same can be said about the reward system. Silly fedex missions and grinds that take months to find an item are probably easy to design, they kill the interest of most players very quickly. It doesnt need to be a handout and it doesnt need to be a horrid grind. That is what OA is doing, leveling at lower levels is turning into a joke while endgame continues to be a silly grind. A boring and repetitive grind. Here I have to point out that the devs have made a significant effort to reduce the grind, I just dont think they did it correctly. It would be much better if the daily missions gave a constant proportion of a level then to made leveling at lower levels very easy and keeping leveling at endgame hard. I also think that the time they spend creating endgame content for people to play the same old toons would be better spent creating new and alternative ways of leveling. If a player enjoys leveling a toon to endgame in a reasonable amount of time he will be most likely interested in doing it again if he has a chance of finding and doing something new. And that can fill an account pretty fast. Renewing old content is as important or more then creating new endgame content.

Enough ranting, Im wasting my Latin.

[Biancha]

Remember when people only leveled to 215 because that was considered "good enough"?

I do!

[Corporative]

I think that hmm hmm hmm

With wow, the quests really do get somewhat boring, but they are not the optimal way to level unfortunately. The optimal level is their dungeon finder, which gets really old really quick.

What I like(d) about AO is it feels like...I know this is gonna sound weird...more like life. It was always more immersive. I guess the industrial sounds.

And. I dunno. Every1 says AO's graphics suck this, Ao's graphics suck that. I still think that the sky and weather in AO is like the best weather I've seen in any mmo. In terms of pulling-ingingess. It just needs some snow.

(Ninja insert. Can we revamp some classic areas to have snowy times or even seasons like Ryzom? Please devs? Also, could big rain storms leave puddles and the such? )

Back to saying. The subway is a really cool place to level. You band together. You explore. Wow dungeons do NOT feel like you are exploring jack, because you know that you have minion wave minion wave minion wave boss. <--Potentially one that drops w/e ur char needs. Maybe not.

The subway in anarchy, as simple as it is, for me, has a TON more immersiveness and therefore desireability as a playfield than any dungeon in wow. (Except, perhaps heroic deadmines.)

Even totw is worser in terms of immersiveness. And foremans was alway no fun to me because my froob chars were always seemingly too weak to do much there.

So yeah. Moar areas like the sub please. And daily missions, every now and then, you get a cool layout like the one with the 3 cars parked in one room, and one of the cars looks like a 1950's roadster or something. It was cool.

[jorricane]

So yeah. Moar areas like the sub please. And daily missions, every now and then, you get a cool layout like the one with the 3 cars parked in one room, and one of the cars looks like a 1950's roadster or something. It was cool.

Seriously, some of that old RK content is waaaaayyyyy underutilized. There have been missions where my jaw literally dropped because a room or set piece was so well done or just so out-of-the-ordinary that it surprised and delighted the hell out of me. I'm sure all that randomly generated content is hidden away from the current content team by layers and layers of spaghetti arcanitude, but to see some of that stuff actually used, especially under the new engine, would be really, really neat.

[Prosthetics]

Because people are leveling too slow!

What do you classify "too slow" as being and why is it exactly a bad thing? The game should be about the journey to 220 and enjoying every bit of it. Not paying some NT to kite you 80+ levels then bugging some 220 to roll Inf for another 60.

[Technogen]

That was sarcasm in my post...

[Prosthetics]

I should have known. My mind wasn't exactly in the most joyous of places when writing that other post so just ignore it. )

[lainbr]

Man. There are only 3 reasons for "Why AO dont drag new members?"

1) Zero marketing. I know many ppl who recognize "Age of Conan", some who are excited for "The Secret World" and 1 who I asked "Do you know Anarchy online?" and doesnt answered "WTF?!"
2) Graphics. Sad but truth. Way to many ppl dont play a game if it does have no shinny graphics which burns their graphic cards.
3) Ppl are way too acostumed with WoW and WoW playstyle. Ever thought AO playstyle is better (at least for me). Ever single time I try a WoWish game I rage because: you cant mousescroll hotbars; you cant move everything around; if you are fighting with a mob and target something else YOU FREAK STOP ATTACK!!!!! FUUUU :x

We need advertisement and new engine, and focus on WoW quitters prolly isnt a good idea.