for how loong does funcom think we can play without changes?

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Obtena, quiet down.

[Raggy]

There is something to be said for paying attention I guess.

FCs word is worth about as much as mud. People asked for evidence of the engine being worked on and it took nearly 3 years to get anything in motion that couldn't have been faked in Photoshop. Nobody believes anything they say anymore.

We should ask him what his plans are to ensure the composition of the rocks in AO stay true to their original intent now that AO shares resources with other games, just to ensure our immersion is complete.

You're being obtuse for the sake of it.

AoC = Fantasy themed MMO about vikings.
AO = Sci-fi themed MMO centred around science on a desert planet.

Using the same assets would be stupid.

[Obtena]

FCs word is worth about as much as mud.

Maybe. OK yes ... but I still see changes that are inline with a long term strategy for the game. I don't need to listen to them. I see things happening and don't dismiss anything I don't think as worthwhile as 'nothing'. It might not be what I want to happen, but at least I'm objective enough to recognize those developments aren't 'nothing' to everyone.

You're being obtuse for the sake of it.

Oh you think so? No more obtuse than say, claiming FC has done nothing, if they do something, it's 100% wrong, they don't listen to players, they don't care, don't know how to run the game, only play ranged trox Advy, etc ...

Using the same assets would be stupid.

There's nothing stupid about it. It's not inconceivable that a rock, a tree, the sand, the water etc ... in AO is no different than AoC. Our expectations for what those things should look like can only be what you see in the game. That guarantees no loss of immersion, even if the trees are pink or the water is yellow. If the tree is in RK, it's an RK tree and if it looks like a tree in AoC, then that's the way it is. FC defines the game space, not the players. There is no reason to be concerned if AO shares resources between other games due to lost immersion and artistic license.

[Iancu]

Clearly? It wasn't even clear they were even developing the engine until recently. There is nothing clear about how FC has handled the repeated promises of changes and development to the game, people got fed up of waiting, people are getting fed up of waiting yet again.

Mstrbstrd.

This was explained long ago by Means (At least I think it was Means. Too lazy to search for the relevant thread atm). The deal with the engine upgrade is that it is needed in order to bring AO's ancient content generation tools in line with those in use with AoC and TSW. This is the only way you're likely to ever see new content for AO given FC's current financial situation, where having a team of developers working exclusively on AO is totally out of the question.

[Khlin]

But the graphics engine has diddely-squat to do with core gameplay mechanics, which is what the rebalance, and this thread, is about. As for continuing the development of the game, only in terms of graphical assets does the engine age play a key part, and for those to be developed, AO has to have an active development team, which it doesn't.

Ergo, Rebalance -> Engine

Completely wrong...

Engine / New player experience -> Rebalance

For new players rebalance will mean absolutely nothing. And even if you have rebalance before the engine, what good is that to the new players if any of the following would happen the first thing the start AO:
- chat / items info windows display no text
- very annoying clipping issues
- graphics not loading up properly (toons with no heads, missing textures from armors)
- black screens because their video drivers for their brand new card can't handle AO
- gfx artifacts due to AO's rendering engine
- zone crashes because their computer doesn't like AO and will not load up the next zone properly
- poor performance with lag / stuttering

This are issues that the new rendering engine will fix by making AO run with less issues than before while still adding a bit of eye candy to the game so people won't say "what a pile of rubbish!!!".

And trust me, new players won't go making 4-men teams to farm end-game content. They'll either run with a good raid org, public / faction raid bot or quit the game before reaching that type of content.

Engine + new player experience will increase the chances of new players sticking around. And by the time new players actually get to where they can start worrying about serious pvp and raiding content with the dream team, rabalance would most likely be out already.

[MassDebater]

If your statement were true, why are there no more shovels? The tro basically overwrote any ranged PvP setup since it meant there was very little sacrifice for a massive gain; who wouldn't want a Doc which can land perks at the same rate as a Soldier AND have Aimed shot?
Tiger Docs/Crats didn't have the perks and the 11 second Aimed Shot, on the most part.

And as for Advies... kiting and unrootability + 11 seconds Aimed Shot = Did someone spike your tea...?

For the last time.

Tro did not make Keeper, MA, MP etc underpowered and docs, crats, eng overpowered.

[Wyoming]

No, but it did flip the tables on who would, in an equally geared/skilled match, win by a massive amount.
For example.
Doctors had to choose between Aimed Shot for Evaders and Perks/Damage for non-evaders. Now they get both; both with much higher damage than before.
All it means now is that if a Doctor has high enough defense, they need never worry about damage since they're taking off a chunk every 11 seconds with no effort.
Same applies to Crats; except Crats have the ease of Fighting Fire with Fire and using MR or Aimed Shot against them. Engi's to a lesser extent, since they lack healing but are invulnerable to a counter AS. Decent enough though; for a dedicated PVPer. And especially Advies. They get it with much higher AR than everyone else -and- all the defenses in the game. So, once DoF/Limber/Cocoon are down, they can run away and come back later all while hitting Aimed Shot every 11 seconds.

So, yeah. It didn't make those classes UNDERPOWERED but it did make Adventurer/Doctor overpowered simply due to a lack of effort for a supreme PvP experience. It's fine on classes where they have a low healing and now have an option to pack a punch; such as Engineer, Bureaucrat, ect.
Adventurer and Doctor are the main culprits.

[wonderland]

I learned today, that engineers are vulnerable to aimed shot.

and doctors consistently cap aimed shot on an enemy's health every 11s with any troa'ler setup.

I think you're saying that doctors could cap aimed shot even commonly with a troa'ler, and have high attack rating without cutting themselves down to 25000 health [Before bodily invigoration] (At the least)? I mean, they have a few swap options, but almost none of them are between health to aimed shot. I do not get it. 28000 health is well within the range of alphaing for some professions, depending on how high some things land, whether you get a brawl stun and what your setup is. Doctors aren't "the nerfest," but they're not overpowered either, as they were before the +dmg patch. Maybe middle of the road.

Engineers lack healing (Because, they, you know, do not have the whole bio shielding line or anything).

Bureaucrats, I couldn't really get what you were getting at there. But apparently they get less effect out of the aimed shot pistol than doctors (!?!?!?!?!?).

[Wyoming]

Engineers lack healing. Ever played any class, Wonder? A constant defense is better. While cocoon's up, sure, you can stand and tank. But when it's down; what then.
And Crats.. don't.. need it really. Nukes, Pets, higher AR, they do get a use out of it, but not as significant as Doctors; I mean, if you're PVP-Orientated, you could use the other OP special; MR and just wipe the Crat.
Doctors and Adventurers will normally survive long enough to kill you soley through Aimed Shot; they need nothing else.

[wonderland]

Wyoming, hate to break it to you, but the bio shielding lines gives you bio rejuvination and regrowth (You know, that really large healing perk? ) also, not just cocoon. Every profession also has healdelta, which constantly heals heals them every 2s while standing at tl7. Engineers also have blockers, that block incoming specials. I'm legitimately wondering whether you knew this before now or not.

Zzzzz bureaucrats "don't need" it (Which isn't true), so that means the extra damage is ineffective? I mean, they don't need the whole package that the troa'ler has, but they need some burst damage past their nukes and pets. What sort of logic is this, I don't even.

and you don't kill someone with only aimed shot as a doctor, I don't know what profession you're talking about. Because there's literally none that could be victim of that. No doctor caps aimed shot on someone's health every 11s in any setup that isn't vulnerable to most alphas (and even then, aimed shot mechanics rule out the possibility of every aimed shot capping, unless you're really, really low health). Almost every profession in the game is able to survive "just aimed shot" from a doctor.

[Wyoming]

As I said; constant or just a brief special? Shades are vulnerable to AS even though they have SC. If you can explain that to me, I'll believe you when you say Doctors aren't the class which was most.. upgraded with the gun.

[wonderland]

Shades don't even need to alpha a pistol doctor to kill them, just drain their nano. You shouldn't have a problem outhealing their damage with all your health regain/drain, shade's caress and perks to force them to heal. Unless their special edition helmet were to proc maybe 10 times, and their ring chain proc perfectly, you don't have the nanodrain nano proc (Which I understand, no shade runs with) and don't swap Albtraum ring (Which you should be able to do), I don't see a real reason why you couldn't kill a pistol doctor, even if you couldn't alpha them.

I don't know a single pistol doctor that could actually kill a competent shade.

Still have no idea where you're going with this.

[Wyoming]

I'm trying to say that the Troa isn't as OP as it is on Crat/Engi as it is on Doctor/Advy where it ramped up the PvP damage on two of the most defensive classes ingame. Crat/Engi already had damage from the pets, and could kill Evaders with Pets/Procs/Nukes. But Advy and Doctor -couldn't- and now they can. Which is bad because Doc/Advy were already tough against EVERYONE else.

[Vurtuoso]

Somewhere around August for me. Some people and their fanatical reasoning for defending a dying archaic formula for everything in this game send the Devs a bad message. Two servers down, one left, and this is a good thing, for the fanatics, because they are only happy to see the game die. So they can claim the title of epeen bestest ever server killers, because I think they are bored with Ao and rather it slide into the ocean then see it populated with more players. Also with the Breed and Side changes, I think it should be free to play 100%. I also think the Devs are currently afraid of losing the dedicated payers against the possibilities of microtransaction customers because new players might not be as reliable.

That being said, I hope the best for this game.

[Cratertina]

This are all endgame problems, stuff people get in trouble once they pvp at endgame... So after about 6 months of various farming to get there at all.

Most newbies quit before lvl 125, mongo rage is not a problem, or aimedshot.

Pvp is totaly retardedly balanced. Why does it takes months for a newbie to have a decent pvp toon? And why do newbies need another pvm lovechild to support it?

Problem with balance is that pvp in AO is so inaccessible.

[Wyoming]

They are kinda fixing it but I think more quests in Subway-ToTW-Smuggler's Den-IS are needed.

[Otansaanpas]

Number of people starting new sub for rebalance = 18

Rirf is patching some balance issues.. are you excited yet?

[Rikaria]

ide rather have new content as in an expantion with a theme that links in to AO's storey line, with new places to go more pf's pb's and dyna's. city raid that are not made up of timed waves of a predictable amount of mobs with out the expected gen but possible diffrent types of gen or gen's. battle stations that have multi PF's on a random roll of what pf you get that round (if i had FC's 3ds max plugins ide make some)

its gona take more then a new game engine to get a lot more players to the game, stale content is just going to keep the game stale with low population.

[Cratertina]

aboit 6 months, this is why we are getting new gameplay content in new patchzor. Can hardly wait personaly.

[Notcrattey]

Again, Tiger is more dangerous to high hp and evade profs.

As a shade, I agree with this. Most doctors just tickle with troaler, when more used bow it was like a truck to the face.