Would make my life all the harder, with all the CM requests....
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Would make my life all the harder, with all the CM requests....
Please add Divaad's armor to the game, and give it to me. I want it more then anything in this game.
PLEASE!
:o!
So people are saying that we should identify a problem area, suggest a solution and be ready to flesh it out. And that will get the game fixed. Haha. But let us talk about what I have done over the last several years that has been ignored.
Item 1:
Pre-Xan actually just post LE It was clear that low level toons had no APF area to play in. The problem I identifed was "Paying for content that you did on noob island then not again till 180. OK S10 was there but that was the original ultra hard version that had few people playing it. I felt that a 40-60 area was needed.
What I did was design a map of the play field. Design the alien types for it. Create loot tables for it. Designed neat no-drop items to get for it that were level appropriate. I introduced some mechanics that AO still does not make use of. In general it was a fully fleshed out near 20 page zone proposal. Not a forum post or two of info. About a month of effort in it. Yeah I really tried to make things better for low levels with respect to AI now almost 7 years ago.
I then submitted it to Sil. Oh wait he was leaving and Means was taking over so he had be submit it to Means as well. There was some nice conversations about the area and finally Means was like it over laps with TOTW and SOM to much for content range. (Like having choice in a range is bad or something) So I spent another month and reworked it to be level 50 to 85 based (a range suggested by Means) and resubmitted it. Wait for it. We talked again and was even told that they would take it up after Xan was released and that it was a great idea. Well it never came to light and it made me feel like I had been led on quite a bit.
Item 2:
Well it was being discussed how to help noob island and new player experiences while Means was around but before the loot tables got sort of fixed on the island. So I figured it was time to address via the forums this time how leveling weapons and armor could be expanded to last till QL50. There are so long post on this subject in the game suggestion forums that I made if you want to read them.
The thread drew good discussion and at the end exposed that a set of armor and a weapon that leveled could be designed that was not over powered, still left options for twinkers to go crazy on, and reduced the cost of starting a toon for new players. The idea was that they could just play till about level 35-40 before money would really matter at all.
Well we still don't have this either even given got it good feedback. Totally ignored.
Item 3:
-000 weapons are a bunch of junk but they were a lot of work. So I took the time to write a long suggestion on how they could be fixed and make people happy while making them so much easier to get. Even got some dev feedback on the subject which this time was shot down with a message from Means that basically said "they are done, they are what they are, we like them as they are, not changing, have a nice day." Yeah really I was not happy with that at all.
So there are three items that I took time to build up something and turn it in. One of them was a full blown effort much like Docaholics icon effort in that I did nearly all the leg work of the initial design. Referring to the low level APF.
I will also point out that shortly after Means took over I sent a PM to him asking why Xan offered nothing for people below 210 basically. That having the expansion as a newbie was pointless till you had played a long time. The answer shocked me and I think it is why the new player experience is so poor right now. Means told me in a PM that "their" data said almost all the people online where over 210. Talk about catering to the Vets and saying screw expanding the games population. But that statement sure covers the view point that was expressed during his run as GD. I liked Means and often PM'd with him. But we are now reaping the harvest of the seeds Means planted when he catered to end game toons almost exclusively.
Since then we have seen the player base dwindle till 3 servers are now merged into one server and the visible population is no better than it was when it was three servers all struggling for players to be on them.
Simple truth is we are customers and FC is the owner of the game. FC is now bottom line driven and changes in the game do not provide upwards pressure on the cash flow you can bet they get the executive veto. Likewise at the age of AO the reality is that it going cash flow negative will result in the plug getting pulled. AO is now at the mercy of bean counters and the quarterly reporting metrics. The devs and the players just have to weather it out till the lights go out.
You 220 yet?!Quote:
Originally Posted by Biancha
It seems to be logical words - thus, It will never get into the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trousers
I will be back in december, next year, to see when lunch of new engine is planned. Way to go loosing customers.
Sad but that is how it is. Funcom has a horrendous history of failure to listen to what players want resulting in an ever dwindling number of people willing to pay for the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lheann
They consider themselves to be our Momas and Papas teaching us poor ignorant players what is best for us.
They continually repeated the same mistakes with AOC and TSW.
There isn't game on the market to compare with the richness of AO.
Funcom just do not listen. They know best so why listen to what players have to say?
Joel should create 2 new characters for himself - a froob and a paid player and play them both without added buffs as if he were a noob entering the game.
Funny, Xan wasn't all done by Means, I am sure he had a hand in it, but Sil bears most of the responsibility and also there was a completely different dev team pre-Xan then post-Xan. Also that was at a different time when the game WAS thriving still so they catered to what was bringing them in that revenue (from LE launch to Xan launch).
I dont really buy the whole "DEY SHUD HUV LUSTIND 2 OS111!" mantra. Everyone has 20/20 hindsight. The fact of the matter is, while the players may not necessarily be wrong in stating that the game needs XYZ addressed, the devs (I am sure) have already pre-planned what they will be doing to the game and cant really deviate from it. Also, things get tied up in other projects, I have seen multiple times where the general theme was "We cant do this until the engine comes out" or because of someone getting fired, leaving, waiting for devs on AoC/TSW to help with such and such, the dev team moving, the dev team moving again that things can easily fall by the wayside.
Suggestions that players make and that devs seriously consider do make it in game, but for AO it takes a very long time to do so. My guess because it is of the pre-planned development schedule and lack of man power. So that suggestion you made in 2007 may not come full circle until 2008 or 2009 when they can actually fit it in to the game.
Sure are a lot of people apologizing for FC on here. Hope you are getting paid for it.
Just re-read my post. I didn't see any sort of apologizing on my part. I guess some people misconstrue logic and critical thinking as sticking up for the underdog/bad guy and is a form of apologizing for whatever failures. Just re-read my post again, yup still no apologizing. I must be missing something. Just re-read my post again thinking that maybe I missed something, so I double checked my bank account and I didn't get paid by FC. Just re-read my post again after I emailed it to FC, they said that doesn't sound like any sort of apology and to stop wasting their time. Just re-read my post again and I have memorized the first sentence but didn't see any sort of apology in it. Just re-read my post again, maybe I should add some sort of apology in it so I can get paid for it. Just checked my bank account again still no money in it from re-reading my post and seeing if their was an apology in it.
Help, I am full of stupid.
Did I specifically call you out? No.Quote:
Originally Posted by MachSchau
Did I specifically call anyone out? No.
Am I entitled to my opinion? Yes.
Do you or anyone else have to agree with my opinion? Nope.
Can you or anyone else have a different opinion? Yep.
fix orange to pink ;pQuote:
Originally Posted by Genele
No devs should be at the disposal of the community. Many games have gone to **** with the devs paying too much attention to the community which are the vocal minority, and not the actual player-base which is mostly content with which way the game is going. "Everyone" was whining about the shuttle experience, and now the player startup experience is a gutted and incoherent mess that turns away new players that don't have a clue what to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by MachSchau
The fact that there had to be a server merge is a pretty good indication of the opinions of the non-vocal playerbase.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reacon
Devs would do best to pay attention to those who communicate in the community as those are the people who care most about the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reacon
Or care about making it easier for them to reach 220.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kron
Let me give you a first-hand example:
Global Agenda is an MMOFPS, and the very first game of independent developer "Hi-Rez." I'm sure some of you know of them now for Smite and Tribes:Ascend. As a GA player from early alpha, I have witnessed first hand the rise and fall of a game, and I was all but powerless to stop the process.
The game released with a brilliant balancing mechanism that branched out as you levelled up rather than upgraded linearly. It had excellent potential and made it out of Closed Beta with integrity. All of their specially selected Beta participants were communicative and active on the forums for the single purpose of bettering a game. The forums were an accurate representation of the majority of GA's community. Continuing out and into release, the beta community was still active, and some even remained on the forums to continue the feedback and support, at a slower pace of course.
However, something really idiotic that can be blamed almost entirely on the CEO occurred. As the sole investor in the company, the CEO decided after the game had made a successful release that the entire game balance had to be scrapped and redone based on his own opinion. Support went dry for a few months while the cooked up this new, linear progression platform, and the competitive beta community died down with the lack of support, the devs stopped playing their game as much. When the patch finally hit, those left finally took off and left the casuals behind. So the game was left with a community that had no reason to hop on the forums other than if something displeased them.
The cases of "X needs to be nerfed; it's unfair" were many, and HiRez in its inexperience was still keen on listening to these calls due to the support they had in early development. They obliged, patched their game, and eventually someone else would complain about another area. It became a vicious cycle. Global Agenda descended into a spammy, spongey shooter where it punished skillful and competitive players, rewarded long time players. After a while it settled in a weird, undesirable middleground between skill-based and stat-based which made it alienate MMO players and competitive FPS players alike.
They seem confused to this day why, no matter how they bent over according to the "community's" demand, the playerbase kept dropping.
The logic is simple. It's why you always have either 5 star or 1 star reviews on Amazon. The majority of customers are just going to be content. Only those either seriously impressed or seriously pissed off will go through the extra effort to make their opinion known. Enter the vocal minority. Spending less time in their own game, HiRez had less understanding of their community and relied more on the outspoken members.
Instead of having an in-house balance team, they relied on the people who didn't understand that strafing made a projectile-based (bullets have travel time) sniper useless against you. Instead of working with payed employees that lacked ulterior motive or emotional involvement, they listened to players who felt they were wronged in one way or another in a skill-based first person shooter.
Back to AO:
What can we learn from this glorious f**kup? Well, as it stands now the playerbase of AO is almost entirely old players. All of these old players have skewed their perception of many game mechanics that make the game attractive to newer players but inconvenient to themselves. By gutting out all these mechanics that make the game stand out, Funcom are going to leave themselves nothing to sell the game on, and instead will be left with a game unattractive to newbies and serving the ageing playerbase of vets that can only decrease as time goes on.
A skeleton of a game that makes it easy to grind to 174 or 220 so you can PvP and do endgame. But in the process of making it easier, it lost all the content that kept new players interested before they got there as well.
Well, actually that's already happened. All I'm saying is don't make it worse before the Steam release gets here and defibrillates the playercount.
To add on the complexity of AO and its beginning experience. I have always wanted to play Everquest and I have tried 4 times over the past 5-6 years. The first time I played it I think I couldn't get past the GUI or something like that, basically didn't really play it. The second time (a few years later) I couldn't get it to run. The third time, the area where I started, wasn't very newb friendly and I discovered that I would have to use text commands to talk to NPCs and the quest I did get was extremely vague in how to get to the location, so I looked it up, I finished it and had a pain of a time talking to the NPC to turn it in. Also, there was literally no introductory experience in how to play the game where I started. Most recently I have given it another shot and I am pretty impressed with the introductory experience. There are multiple NPCs that explain what things are in the forms of dialogue and quests, how to interact with NPCs etc.
What I find really interesting is how Sony has dealt with the problem of finding people to level with (at lower levels I believe). They have introduced an NPC where you can buy a merc (or in AO's case, a pet) and he levels up with you and there are multiple mercs you can get such as healer, caster, dps or tank and they are quite good you are limited to 1 though. I have read you can use them for a long time like level 50+ (max level is 100 for paid, 80 or 85 for free players). You can also use them in a team but they take up a slot in the team, I dont believe you can use them in raids or anything, but not sure on what you can and cant use them on.
Also, one thing I like about the free program in Everquest is that for the most part you can experience a majority of the game (18 expansions worth, there are 20 total) for free. Granted, there are limitations in terms of what a paid and a non-paid player can do and get and the differences are pretty dramatic but in my opinion the free program really lets you explore the game and see if it is something you want.
AO on the other hand really doesn't. Classic AO is completely free, but there isn't much there in terms of things to do and people to do them with. As a froob, you rely heavily on teaming to make any sort of progression in a timely manner (as is most of the game) and its like pulling teeth as a free player. The game play of classic AO is pretty monotonous and boring as well, you only have 2-4 specials and thats it. No special profession based attacks, no unlockable attacks at certain levels just Q afk damage, and 2-4 specials depending on your profession. Things dont get dynamic unless you pay for the game.
All in all, AO could benefit making the entire game free but leaving it to where a free player is limited in how many perks he gets or what raid zones he can enter or whatever. Could even charge a free player in to purchasing extra perk points in the shop. With the NPE coming out Soon TM it should hopefully address the complexities of AO and make it easier for new players to understand the game better. As to whether or not that will boost server activity is hard to say seeing that classic AO doesn't paint a decent picture of what AO has to offer. I think in order to retain new players, seeing as how I think most start off on froob accounts, is to change what froobs have access to in game so they experience more things about AO and decide that this game has a lot to offer and to add on to what they have already experienced.
SL for froobs would go a long way to address those concerns. Froobs already get NW by default, so it seems like it would be a relatively simple thing to do. Having played sloobs for several years, it is a really fun way to play and the only thing that offset it was the fact that so few people knew about the offer and were completely confused at 220/0 characters, plus the fact that I couldn't enter certain playfields to help orgmates, which I would have done even knowing I couldn't use the gear. Just the perks from SL all of a sudden gives you a lot more to do in combat, gives you access to double or more content, enables you to really contribute to org activities in a meaningful way, but also leaves you really underpowered at the endgame or in pvp, so the incentive to upgrade is still really obvious.
I suspect that most of the regular posters to the forum have at least one 220.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reacon
o/ Enno... get back on the team already, they need you :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Enno