Monthly Development Update - 1st November 2013

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Originally Posted by MyGift

How come that AO engine got delayed million times for years and years now and nothing happens, FC still financing this project and everything is all right? Its just unbelievable unless order from the top was "make something up and keep them playing as much as u can".

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The difference is, that in this case, the top is one of the main culprits of the delays... zomg let's decentralize followed by a zomg let's centralize has consequences on project delays. Not speaking of the zomg let's harvest potential by pooling resources.
Put a total sociopath among the directors to get rid of the schmoozing going on up there. Next idiotic cover up should face a total jerk wanting to tear it down for his own gain.

NB: yes I know, I'm totally clueless on the subject, but was fun writing it ^^.

Again, let me reiterate what I said ages ago: make ao autonomous, financially and decisionally. Stop the current situation where ao has to be drained of it's blood to keep the others alive. Oh, and ao wants it's money back... naow!

Clicksaver should definitively be integrated in the game. Done well, it would actually lower the pressure on the system. The user could enter some parameters such as what it is looking for, amount of tries and so on, the system would calculate the odds of finding it, and sometimes would fail, sometimes would give a link to a mish with what was looked for... instead of the current inefficient way of doing it.

To make myself clear, this is a rant post... I still find ao to be by far the most interesting mmorpg on offer... doesn't mean some stuff doesn't irk me. I've tried a bunch of others... they just pigs with shiny lipstick.

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Originally Posted by Gimpynoob

. Quests add variety to a game and variety is good.

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Along with variety, a learning curve.

I think the colour-coding will be alright.
Its damned near impossible to understand the value of anything slightly esoteric-sounding in AO (thats most things, right?) without years of experience or plenty of web-research.

The only thing I'd ask is that FC make the colours readable as part of a DB rip we can get our hands on - and listen to the community when we tell them that item X ought to be/or not be - a given colour.

I can already imagine dealing with "but its purple! - i thought that was rare and valuable!" complaints from newcomers when they get their hands on a technically rare but worthless item.
Or a powerful but hardly-ever-used object due to its requirements.

Hi guys i'm back after 2 years of inactivity,.. it's been frustrating watching AO from the sidelines and reading the monthly development updates which have been bland to be polite.

One thing mentioned here which was on Page 2 about the price of AO.. Yes AO is cheap if you buy in bulk as is most things, but why penalise people who pay monthly who never know whether they will have the cash to subscribe next month with the price you have set for monthly subscriptions!! seriously.. more modern, newer, upto date actively patched mmos etc do not charge £14.55 a month, in fact some are £8.99. I brought this up in 2006.. so I doubt it will change any time soon.
*EDITED LINK ADDED*
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=458840

Also please just focus on getting the Beta out for people to test.. you didn't offer it for inactive accounts such as myself at the time.. you pull active players into beta testing, who will be left to play AO on live??..

{Removed exploit reference: Anarrina}

I Suggest Funcom listen to the players, do some market reseach youtube a few AO videos and read peoples comments and push out something soon.

Anyways cant' wait to play if I can find some activity in AO.. glad to be back shame it's not for any good reasons apart from nostalgia.

I don't see why resources are being apparently being put into "new player experience" Given how the vast majority of subs are older players; and new players get to AO largely on the recommendation of an existing player base.

Looking at business models what you should be aiming for is a game that sells it's self; for example here's a question for UK players.

Q:When was the last time you saw or heard an advert for Tescos?

A:4 years ago, as that's when they stopped trying to attract new customers and started concentrating on the ones they had.

Have they lost any since then, no! are the selling their customer base what they want at a price they want it? yes, are the still gaining new customers yes!

The best advert for anything is the people that use it period.

What the FC team should be doing is exactly that, find out what the people paying part of their salaries want.
And then make it.

Putting resources into a new player experience, what was the logic behind that? that a lack of uptake is being blamed on how much learning the game requires?

Well that's just plain wrong, the game is complex and should always remain; so if a player wants to play something simple they will, you run a unjustifiable risk if ever try and change that. Case in point?

SWG.

Nothing wrong with the game then they changed it to copy the wow model, result wow type players tried it, then left the players that they did have also left, double disaster I believe the correct phrase would be "EPIC FAIL" on the devs/board part.

If you take anything from this then don't fix it if it's not broken.
And question the business model that trys to ram a square peg into a round hole.

My opinion.

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Originally Posted by Caloss2

I don't see why resources are being apparently being put into "new player experience" Given how the vast majority of subs are older players; and new players get to AO largely on the recommendation of an existing player base.

Looking at business models what you should be aiming for is a game that sells it's self; for example here's a question for UK players.

Q:When was the last time you saw or heard an advert for Tescos?

A:4 years ago, as that's when they stopped trying to attract new customers and started concentrating on the ones they had.

Have they lost any since then, no! are the selling their customer base what they want at a price they want it? yes, are the still gaining new customers yes!

The best advert for anything is the people that use it period.

What the FC team should be doing is exactly that, find out what the people paying part of their salaries want.
And then make it.

Putting resources into a new player experience, what was the logic behind that? that a lack of uptake is being blamed on how much learning the game requires?

Well that's just plain wrong, the game is complex and should always remain; so if a player wants to play something simple they will, you run a unjustifiable risk if ever try and change that. Case in point?

SWG.

Nothing wrong with the game then they changed it to copy the wow model, result wow type players tried it, then left the players that they did have also left, double disaster I believe the correct phrase would be "EPIC FAIL" on the devs/board part.

If you take anything from this then don't fix it if it's not broken.
And question the business model that trys to ram a square peg into a round hole.

My opinion.

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Priorities are wrong anyways TBH, They needed to fix and bring AO upto 2013, fix the economy, implement balance, changes to weapons in Vendors change what is needed now.. Then once you have a working game, you bring in gfx, then bring in the new players.. they will be more likely to stay after the previous suggestions are implemented. What new players will stay in a game that players are monopolising in, that has a low population, that is 1/3 of the price more then other mmos.. that is outdated.. the list is endless, things need to start changing now, they have been living on borrowed time since 2007 or whenever they offered us the new engine.

All these toons on my accounts. I don't play any of them cause they are worthless as dirt. They have been worthless going back years since LE. Shiny graphics won't make me have fun playing ao. Shiny graphics might sucker in some new player until they learn the class they rolled is trash through ooc or an org and get pissed and rage quit. Like its been said you guys can't be bothered to do a database purge and update the crap weapons and armor. You can't even get AC's to be a viable stat. Better yet lets tell the new players they will need 8b creds to buy css armor to be viable at endgame pvp because the lack of variety of armor sets and an economy based on the Zimbabwean dollar.

1. Love the new item colours for rarity. Don't care what anybody else thinks, too many whiners. Finally we get a hint to know what a whole bunch of 'maybe useless' items like Shapeshifting Mimic does. GOOD WORK FC!

2. When I pounded the forums with suggestions for starting to do some real financial analysis on AO's market and how that will turn into revenue for FC and more employees and returns to investors, I didn't mean macrosun implements it and runs OFF with it lol, instead of running with it :) I meant if possible also share it with the players so we can *see* and work out who some of the nasty players are, and avoid giving them our credits (or via funcom-store+in-game sales, our real money). Let us do some of the work for you. We will obviously be feeding back rumourmills and any discoveries back to FC via the forums :)

3. With the introduction of this GMI / market data tools, please consider introducing new currencies, Shadowlands Yuttos "Auras" and Alien Kyr'ozch "Greenbacks" or whatever, with direct FC controlled conversion rates back to Rubi-Ka credits, to devalue the credits. Make it so that those mobs/zones only deal with their native currencies. That way the RK market currently flooded with credits as it is, will be 'froob currency', devalue it, and the inflation settles a little. Careful financial advice will have far better impact than listening to forum rants and creating 'credit sinks'. FC also has an amazing opportunity to capitalise on this and make more RL credits :)

4. With the introduction of time-codes, please consider selling of characters via a forum 'Character Bazaar' where players can trade toons for in-game credits, with a manual overseen process staffed by a GM. Work out the exact rules. This will undoubtedly convert directly to a huge number of froob->paid conversions (for lvl 200 froobs, twinks, whatever) and toon transfer revenue to FC. Allow trading of time-codes for in-game currency as an item, for a month or 90 days or whatever. This will be the tool FC uses to regulate and control inflation in the AO economy, and muscle cred-vendors and sploiters out of operation, by allowing them to set the cost of RL$ to creds, via the monthly/quartery/biannual and annual subscription costs. This will allow special offers by FC to reduce the effective cost of a toon per month keeping those players saying 'it costs too much' happy as well. Yes, this means credit-rich players can 'play for free' but, isn't this a cred sink itself, since there is a froob system? hundreds of thousands of players already pay for free, this is just another clever way for FC to make $ :)

5. Please consider update to a shiny new payment system that doesnt freeze your account accidentally when you still have playtime left when you go to resubscribe. It's really really really annoying and you don't mess with people's service/money like that.

6. I would really still like to see inventory management fixed. badly. simple stuff like seeing if packs are empty or not, and searching through packs still depends on an external 3rd party tool. In between characters would be too much, but at least a searchable org bank could be doable. It's a basic necessity.

7. We don't need more content. Keep fixing the broken stuff and making it ready for the AO renaissance. When you get time, add quests, lots of them, hundreds of them, long and short, easy and impossible. Screw the hard work new zones and instances are, just scatter NPCs all over the place that make u run everywhere and waste time. That will keep the player community busy. Consider ****ing them up a little by changing the rewards for quests to have a number of possible items, that way people will revisit old quests to get new items and populate currently under-populated areas.

8. Great work all-round. Keep up the good work on the engine and all that. :)

P.S. Never played WoW. But LOL at all the WoW talk. Wake up call to the 14 year olds: There are hundreds if not thousands of RPG games that utilised the colour-coded rarity indication LONG before WoW, you just weren't around then :) FC continue to pave the way with innovation and pioneering (just check out AoC's graphics, or TSW's game system), just right now the resources are geared in stealing new players back to AO (from any mmo) and get them re-educated with cyborgs instead of dragons. So kudos to FC with getting with the times and tsk tsk to the players have only got WoW to compare to :)

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Originally Posted by Cariadast

Just seems like a lot of work, and a lot of man hours spent on folly. The game will be 13 years years old. Perhaps consider changing your definition of "spoiler"s and understand what you see as a spoiler is a basic player guide these days. What you're suggesting is a spoiler to me anyway.

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Not too much work in fact. They >already< have internal loot tables that actually determine the rarity already. This will just be exposed to players, which is a bonus, by changing the show item description functionality universal to all items, not item per item.

Not really a spoiler, more like a 'hint'.

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Originally Posted by Teknologist

Add a +1 or Like option to the forums so that you can tell what the player-base thinks is important.

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^^^ THIS! You would think that saves time for the 'censor committee' by viewing individual comment karma instead of reading entire threads? That would be enough to go insane. Only us whackjobs do that. Also auto-generate stats on suggestions and instant alerts bells and whistles on foul/troll/hate posts. The forums in general need to be modernised. I, for one, would also like them to be visible on mobile devices.

I've heard more than once of players that no longer 'play' but just come here for the forums!... I find that generally-speaking the AO player-base is extremely metathesiophobic... and yes I used this word just so I can forcibly cram some change down their throats :-P

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Originally Posted by Mastura

AO player-base is extremely metathesiophobic...

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I didn't know that word existed.

gunna go google it.


Edit: fear of change.

really? I don't think that's true of the AO population. I think AO population is more adaptive than you give them credit for.

Heh 'generally' speaking, and I think it has something to do with the older-than-normal player-base (not counting wownoobs, which is a minority at present now that they've all fleed to other mmos)

'Don't touch the forums!'
'Don't rebalance!'
'The economy is fine!'

I like your glass is full mentality but I sadly think too many players point the fingers at Funcom, when in reality, it's the player that is at fault. Funcom can't point the finger back at players because it would be wrong, but some players deserve a spanking.

Just for fun: Go to Forum Search and search for "ain't broke" "isn't broken don't fix" etc :)

It's been said more than a few hundred times across forums that I've read over the years.

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Originally Posted by If6Was9

I despise quests. They are the opposite of a good sandbox game.

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Yeah, and elfs. AO is good for elfhaters.

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Originally Posted by Caloss2

What the FC team should be doing is exactly that, find out what the people paying part of their salaries want.
And then make it.

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mhm, to a lot of people shaddowlands wrecked the game stylisticly. Revive the cyberpunk-theme imo :cool:

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Originally Posted by Caloss2

Putting resources into a new player experience, what was the logic behind that? that a lack of uptake is being blamed on how much learning the game requires?

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Yeah, NPE could easily just be removing noob island and replace it with a slightly changed santa's workshop. Just take off the christmas-cap and have termileetz0r be endboss. He stole a card from a NPC after u crashed so you needed to get it to be able to transport to the mainland. The End.

What they need to focus on imo is the 1st playthrough of the game.

They should make a more cohesive game and stop with the solo-dailies stuff. All wow-clones has failed.

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Originally Posted by Mastura

.When you get time, add quests, lots of them, hundreds of them, long and short, easy and impossible. Screw the hard work new zones and instances are, just scatter NPCs all over the place that make u run everywhere and waste time.

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I think many AO-MMO'ers wants to peform the functions of their profession in a team instead.

Case in point: Scheol-quest.

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Originally Posted by leetlover

Yeah, NPE could easily just be removing noob island and replace it with a slightly changed santa's workshop. Just take off the christmas-cap and have termileetz0r be endboss. He stole a card from a NPC after u crashed so you needed to get it to be able to transport to the mainland. The End.

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And then send us to the Arrival Hall b4 we go to the mainland. :D

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Originally Posted by Mastura

Heh 'generally' speaking, and I think it has something to do with the older-than-normal player-base (not counting wownoobs, which is a minority at present now that they've all fleed to other mmos)

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wownoob, lol. There's some concept out there that if you play WoW you must be braindead. Raids in WoW take a level of coordination, dedication and skill that raids in AO don't even come close to touching. The closest thing AO has to even the most basic of WoW dungeon systems (not talking about even a raid boss.. just a leveling up dungeon) is DB3. And based on the number of epic fails happening in that playfield and how people area always calling for content to get nerfed.. I'm going to say that the average AO player probably doesn't have the skill to be in a top raiding guild in WoW. And yeah, I've seen some people that play AO very well do very poorly in WoW over the years.. this isn't some random comment that I'm pulling out of the sky.

That being said, I disagree strongly with your belief that the AO community is opposed to change. You only need to look at the Game Suggestions forum area to see thousands of suggestions from players to change things. We want change, we crave change, we are begging and pleading for change. Let one thing be clear, however, there is a difference between being opposed to change (in general) and just being opposed to dumb changes. Case in point beast reflects. That was a dumb change. I'm opposed to it. I posted about it, some players said "hey its a good thing" ok.. that's their opinion. I happen to think additional aggravants aren't necessary.. we have enough. It isn't because I'm a wownoob.. it isn't because I'm old and set in my ways.. its because the change was dumb to begin with. The same can be said for my current confusion over the changes being made to MP NSD (the regular one, not the PvP nano). These changes they are making that effect us RIGHT NOW that might make sense in the grand scheme of things in 2 years.. should be implemented in 2 years. How about that change they made to SL key quests not give you massive SK at high levels. Does the change make sense? Yeah, in a game with a healthy population and lots of different opportunities to level. Does it make sense in a game where you struggle to find a leveling team and half the folks sit AFK on a hill for xp? Absolutely not. For every person that opposed change X there are probably 10 other changes they would whole-heartedly support. Don't short change the community by thinking or saying otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Mastura

I like your glass is full mentality but I sadly think too many players point the fingers at Funcom, when in reality, it's the player that is at fault. Funcom can't point the finger back at players because it would be wrong, but some players deserve a spanking.

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What exactly is the fault of the players as opposed to Funcom? I'm curious as to where you're going with this thought process.

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Originally Posted by leetlover

Yeah, and elfs. AO is good for elfhaters.

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How have you played this game for a decade and never seen an Opifex? :)

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Originally Posted by Esssch

Does this include the subscription offer?


AO did have a free trial, 7 days in 2001, changed to 14 days in 2004, then changed to the froob program a month later. AO was the first MMO to offer 7 day free trials.

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Indeed, AO was the first to offer F2P in the MMO arena, good job. That model is fine. FC could increase the amount of credits that paid players can hold to 10 bill and limit Fr00bs to 500 mill. The shop could sell a credit upgrade for Fr00bs to 1 bill for 25 $ USD and 10 bill for $50 USD there by creating another revenue stream to help fund the game.


As to the colors - bad idea we do not need it so don't waste programing resources on it.

The free to play model is to me, and I am sure to many other people, a clear sign of a failed game.
The logic is very simple. No game is really free to play, games are made to generate income. There has to be somewhere in the game an incentive for players to spend RL money. This is usually done by creating inequalities between players. At best by creating boring grinds that can be bypassed with RL money and at worst by selling "Iwin buttons" to those who have smaller Epeens than wallets.

This is also a self limiting income generating mechanism that will never allow those games to thrive.
First because the people who actually pay for the game are older and conservative in terms of money management. They are older players and/or parents of younger players. It is much easier to convince them to pay a monthly or yearly subscription than to convince them that they or their kid need to spend money to bypass random gameplay areas.
Second, these inequalities created between the players who can and those who cannot afford to pay are a (often very good) reason for the poorer (or unwilling) players to leave the game. Removing the best asset any MMO game can have, players.

Almost all (afaik) "free to play" games are games that have failed already in the paid model or are low budget games with little expectation on the part of the developers themselves. The fault is not in the income generating model but on the games themselves.

As far as AO goes it has 2 big problems that should have been adressed a long time ago and that will eventually kill the game for good. Or at most keep it indefinetly as a crappy minor subtitle nobody cares about. A very expensive initial subscription model and gameplay that is outdated, broken and extremelly unfriendly to new players.

A few fixes could increase AO's gaming population significantly. None of them includes item-shops, PvP rebalances, endgame instances for veterans or events during EU prime time.

The saddest thing for me is the neglect. It is obvious that FC decided long ago to use AO as a milking cow to feed other titles. AO has a huge potential as a niche game and it could become very popular with a decent population if there was just a bit of effort put into saving it.

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Originally Posted by Gimpynoob

The free to play model is to me, and I am sure to many other people, a clear sign of a failed game.

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Yea LOL, DOTA 2, Guild Wars 2, Path of exile they are all such a fail games.

And even if your logic is correct then AO should be free, cause AO atm is definition of fail game.

No updates, constant delays, dungeons and game mechanic outdated, player base of ehmm 1000 players ?

Don't get me wrong, for me there is no game like AO. I've been playing it for over 7 years now and it will always be my love. But today there are indie devs that do more for their games then FC for AO. Also P2P games with 15$ subs means u get bunch of content in patches, new items, dungeons, pvp mods etc and what do we get for paying 15$/Euro for AO? Servers running and "soon" every month?

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Originally Posted by Dogtrauma

How have you played this game for a decade and never seen an Opifex? :)

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lol, opi ftw...some just have funny ears. :p w r still lightyears beyond elves.