Monthly Development Update – 29th of November, 2013

[Wakizaka]

And sure, AO is a good game.. Mostly thanks to the original developers.

A lot of AOs problems are courtesy of the original developers.

[Pennypacker]

A lot of AOs problems are courtesy of the original developers.

And the sandbox, gameplay and various other things we love in this game is also courtesy of the original developers. I fail to see your point Waki

[Wakizaka]

And the sandbox, gameplay and various other things we love in this game is also courtesy of the original developers. I fail to see your point Waki

Clearly.

[Krause]

A lot of AOs problems are courtesy of the original developers.

Your talking about bugs though, I'm fairly certain he was talking about design choices.

The original game aesthetic was a some kind of cool Space Roman mixed with overly huge and/or hacked together gear (Hellspinner, Hellfury, Div9, Pretty much any SMG, etc).

Around the time the Battle Stations were introduced with the OFAB gear/weapons we got a flood of very Very VERY generic looking Space Marine gear that served to wash away much of this games original aesthetic. They were very well done in their own right, the team that made them did a good job, but they really ignored the games pre existing design and had no place here.

At least now we have a social tab so we can use whatever, be it old design or new, unfortunately that currently doesn't work on weapons.

[gresh]

Nope. You can't. Close beta, NDA and so on. so, basically, nothing would be public.

I guess edward snowdon wasnt held to an NDA when he spilled secrets for the gov?? I guess they didn't really threaten to get him and he didn't really spend so long in the Ecuadorian embassy.

An NDA doesnt stop people talking about things... it stops them being allowed. There have been NDA's before and other betas and people still to this day mention in otooc "oh well ive played since beta blah blah blah..." Just simple bragging rights.

I can conceive the idea that some people like to just get involved and some like to provide input and others just like to "break things" but it seems to me that many people ingame just want bragging rights like it gives them some kind of precedence in the universe just because they took part. Its just just pointless incessant bleating.

I pay to play the game, and the promise of continued development. If they decide to stop that development I will be prompt to cancel my accounts.

You say this while they talk of releasing the beta of the continued development... lol

Can we atleast agree that a gaming company should atleast try to keep some sort of acceptable timeframe regarding the development they've announced they're doing ?

Ok lets forget about the engine for a second... lets just imagine that its out and all is fine... Lets say that Funcom announce some new content and they happen to mention a date when they hope it might be out... If this date passes and the content is not ready... what should they do? Should they A) confess to all its not ready, scrap the content and carry on with what they were doing before they started or B) keep working on it till its ready and then release it late?
I know which id prefer

In life there are many things that could happen that could thwart any deadline set by anybody... within a business with shifting budgets/technologies/staff that works on a Live game that still needs regular maintenance combined with all the petitions/other updates/other goals , there are many things that could halt or hinder any progress that pushes the work past a deadline. Im pretty sure with the amount of flak they get for missing deadlines ... I wouldnt want to come and tell you all or offer the next proposed deadline.

While the work has been done on this gfx engine work has also been done on alot of other things with the 2 server merges, the character selection, the new gmi, the instanced cities the textures not to mention the meshes and alterations to loot tables and everything else they have done that doesnt spring to mind at this second as i type... people ask way too much and are always way to easy to go dev bashing cos there socks aint folded neatly enough first thing in a morning when they come to put them on.

[Esssch]

if you need proof on that, just read the monthly updates dating from 8 years ago.

And which monthly updates would those be?

I could agree with you in 1 thing. Companies needed less time to develop a successful game.
The catch here is that most of those games to my knowledge used several already existing engines. Be them free or not.

So did the engine update. Not once, but twice!

That sounds like justification for NDA for a game not yet published.

Nothing you said applies for AO, as it's not game mechanics being published, it's new content and gfx update. (granted some minor changes are bound to come to mechanics, however this is in no way the focus of this product enhancement)

I'd actually say quite the contrary to everything you pointed out.

When a company fails to meet any deadline they set for 8 years, I think a change of systems are in dire need. Funcom has to be transparent (Plenty of inspiration from studios across the market)

The average customer isnt playing anymore, but theyre out there and they have knowledge of AO and it's past. Win those back by communicating, showing progress and let other players spread the word.

Couldn't agree more.

[Pennypacker]

While the work has been done on this gfx engine work has also been done on alot of other things with the 2 server merges, the character selection, the new gmi, the instanced cities the textures not to mention the meshes and alterations to loot tables and everything else they have done that doesnt spring to mind at this second as i type... people ask way too much and are always way to easy to go dev bashing cos there socks aint folded neatly enough first thing in a morning when they come to put them on.

Do you know the reasons for server merges ? You can say that while the work was done on the gfx engine the population decreased rapidly and so greatly that there was no other way to keep activity up than to merge rk1 and rk2 into one. Instanced cities is also a cause of the merges. Beyond that, they've added some social loot that I don't care about what so ever. And alterations to loot tables surely can't be that hard to accomplish. I mean, if they are gonna have to go trough a tedious process just to change a minor detail in a loot table, no wonder ****'s taken this long.

The character selection is something i think vhab worked alot on when he was a intern before he got employed.

As for deadlines, missing a deadline is fine and will be understood fully by the community if you explain the situation, missing by like 4-5 years however, is not. Dev bashing isn't really all that hard in AO community. If you can't deal with the minor bashing/trolling that goes on here you have no business being in the game industry as it's riddled with far worse human beings than the ones posting on this forum.

[Alternity]

I think going out stating that there would be some sort of special treatment getting into the beta, was a really bad idea. Especially when it revolves around money.
Of course it would piss people of, I mean this community of ours is pretty frank when something like this goes down.

Like already stated I think it would be fair to let the people who have stuck around for years get recognition.

At least the beast is out of the cage now, some of us know we won't get in because we have a rep sheet hardcore criminals would respect.
Personally I can't wait to edit videos to show off this amazing mmo.

Dark

[Brampfine]

- I did not get a "beta signup" at the account page from my "Pay Account" with my original email where i payed 12 month.
- i was able to make a "beta signup" at the account page with my 2 "Free Accounts" with a fantasy name trash mail account.

- Active Community size is ~300-500 Player
- The most guides r outdated

a few have a Beta invite and the few Active Player can feel it with a lower population at this season of thoughtfulness close to x-mass^^
dammed to get bored and loosing interest from finding new Communitys in other games.

Funcom try to keep Veteran´s ?
spend a "Free Month" and bring back old Veterans they are ready to start !



enclosed:
GZ Fia to ur 1 Year Celebrate at ur new home
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/credits/
they still found no time to edit the Homepage^^
http://www.anarchy-online.com/wsp/an...ent&navID=1142

[Alves]

Nice to ready that the grafik upgrade is near, but the graphic engine is more than 6 years old :x
It's nice to have an new graphic engine but it will not save the game. Anarchy Online needs urgently new content stuff like a new playfield (e.g. Inferno), rebalancing in PVP and Towers and new game mechanics... All Areas are so old and incredibly boring now... Some playfields and the battlestation are nearly dead, because Player are missing or they have enough from the pvp ****/exploiting...

I think, the game will be dead in 2 or 3 years without any significant changes! The new graphic engine is for me not an significant changes - only a new makeup for Anarchy Online!


Edit:
I dont believe that Anarchy Online has an future - i give funcom 3 or 4 months to convince me of the contrary... If we dont get any significant changes, i will leave these game with my org-members, play an new upcoming MMO...

And I have to say that the rest of the community with their harassment contribute to the downfall of anarchy online! I've never seen such a bad community...

[doctorgore]

@ Alves The game is dead now. This new engine is too little too late. They could of done balance years ago and breathed life into the stale useless grind and piss poor condition of the professions but they did nothing. They never added any new raid experience except for gimmick garbage like the collector and DB3 which 5-10% of the population can complete with success. We are still doing beast and apf after all these years as primaries. Any wow player would consider that a joke and insult. Did anything worth adding to beast ever happen? We got xan upgrade crap forcing us back to old content rinse and repeat. where is a new raid encounter with relevant loot and effort that relies on challenge and not gimmicks?

[Azazelkeep]

@ Alves The game is dead now.

OMG! OMG! The game is dead! Funcom PH41L!

Pwned by at least... 11 years? Good job on that.

Seriously I get tired of that. This "game is dead" monthly thread trend becomes a bit boring and less original everytime. To hell with you all people. Stop crying over the same stuff all the time and unsub if you don't like it. Better to play with less people that love this game that with all the trolls that scream around doomsday stuff till our ears bleed.

[doctorgore]

OMG! OMG! The game is dead! Funcom PH41L!

Pwned by at least... 11 years? Good job on that.

Seriously I get tired of that. This "game is dead" monthly thread trend becomes a bit boring and less original everytime. To hell with you all people. Stop crying over the same stuff all the time and unsub if you don't like it. Better to play with less people that love this game that with all the trolls that scream around doomsday stuff till our ears bleed.

Longevity is not the single stat for the baseline for success to be based on. If ao is around in 2025 and you are still doing APF and beast and agents,keepers are still trash... Get the idea.

[Azazelkeep]

but... it should be dead... 11 years ago. Someone lied to me!

Trolling aside I agree with that. We need updates. We need a lot of stuff... What we don't need is drama. Especially of the same old kind of "this game is dead and buried. I know, I buried it."

But on the other hand the OP of the tread I gave asked for the same thing 11 years ago. Content. Since then we got 1 expansion and several booster packs with new content. Many fixes and many many more updates and we're still here to discuss it. AO has not enough devs and those devs are busy with the engine. Why? It was just an idea a GD had back in '05 and since then people asked for that 70% of the time. And game engine take long to be developed so yeah... If you concentrate on that, not enough free time to add new stuff... Still tho' they did.

I don't say anyone's wrong ('cept those doomsday prophet, which we have a ton of already). I'm just saying show a bit of appreciation. not to the FC CEOs. You can hunt them down and kill them with your uber troa'ler but to the current dev team that are doing everything they can, maybe even more due to them being understaffed. But still everyone here blames THEM. Not the people responsble

[Leetlover]

Do you know the reasons for server merges ?

I'm not very impressed with how the latest teams has developed AO.

The original game aesthetic was a some kind of cool Space Roman mixed with overly huge and/or hacked together gear (Hellspinner, Hellfury, Div9, Pretty much any SMG, etc).

Around the time the Battle Stations were introduced with the OFAB gear/weapons we got a flood of very Very VERY generic looking Space Marine gear that served to wash away much of this games original aesthetic. They were very well done in their own right, the team that made them did a good job, but they really ignored the games pre existing design and had no place here.

yeah, I am a big fan of the cyberpunk-theme. 2 a lot of people SL wrecked the game stylisticly.

the ofab-rifles looks fantastic tho

It's nice to have an new graphic engine but it will not save the game. Anarchy Online needs urgently new content stuff like a new playfield (e.g. Inferno),

That, or make a more cohesive and fun '1st playthrough' of the game.

All Areas are so old and incredibly boring now... Some playfields and the battlestation are nearly dead, because Player are missing or they have enough from the pvp ****/exploiting...

Yeah, they neglect pvp so much and seems very clueless to be honest.

It's a lot of good suggestions but it seems to fall for deaf ears.

[Krause]

yeah, I am a big fan of the cyberpunk-theme. 2 a lot of people SL wrecked the game stylisticly.

the ofab-rifles looks fantastic tho

I actually liked SL's theme, it really nailed the different universe feel when you went through that portal to another world with artifacts of a long dead civilization that somehow was advanced enough to look like magic even to Omni's current level of tech.

Plus it was pretty well encapsulated in SL as far as drops went, RK stuff still looked like RK stuff. OFAB served as the infection/reinvention of RK gear.

[Shareida]

Can't say that paying to beta test is cool.

liek butn

[Liwa]

I don't see the problem with giving some priority to 12 month subscribers when selecting for the beta invites ... current subscribers have been supporting the company and are most likely to continue playing the game as they are all paid up.

I have no problem not giving any priority to players who stopped their subscriptions because they were waiting for the new engine, etc. to come out before renewing their accounts.

However, I can see justification and/or logic in also giving some priority to players who have logged noticeable amounts of time or bug reports for Test Live over the years.

Just my thoughts ...

Liwa

[Dagget]

Announcing that beta invites are ordered by subscription period is just bad PR. While there may well be a good correlation between 12-month subs and level of involvement by the person, FC -announcing- that is just sending the wrong message and creating negative karma in an otherwise positive announcement. There have been people who have played steadily for years paying 3 months at a time, for example, and are equally suitable testers.

Better criteria would be sheer longevity (by paying subscribers) in addition to also getting in certain hardware configurations they really want to test out, and the Devs would be best off not detailing what criteria they are using to pull ppl into the beta period.

[Ekarona]

Sheer longetivity that is veteran months probably, is also bad as it goes to long time vets.

Probably activity of paid subs would be resonable. That is those with subtime left who have logged in in last month, 3 months, given priority.