I don't think anywhere I said directly you were the above, mostly I generalised about people who undertake the above. Although I will admit suggestions were equally ripe. More what i meant was that I got the impression from your post of a very arrogant outlook and If I wanted you to get any idea of what I was saying was that you were too arrogant to see beyond your own viewpoint.Originally posted by potoole
Wow my friend, you make more assumptions and personal attacks in your post than seem warranted by my expression of opionion. I directed my post to FUNCOM and Godager. It was a musing on what Godager must be going through in trying to decide these issues. Do I want to affect his decisions? Sure, all of us do. I did not personally attack anyone. You seem to have taken my post very personally, however.
To label me as a not nice, power-leveling, over-equipped, non-roleplaying ego-maniac simply indicates three things:
Taking every dissenter and putting them into a group called the"Have-Nots" everyone who would make a change to nerf you.
Things are more than Black and white, yes or no, have or have not. that was my main and admittedly Off topic point.
But yes it wasn't a very nice response and I apologuise for that, Your response certainly shows that you are at least level minded, and certainly tells me I should restate my assumptions from your original post.
I would guess that is the case I don't often slag off my friends unless its unknowingly or perhaps if they are really wrong, so i guess I do uhhmm. But anyway no I haven't met you in the Game.
1) You have not run into me in the game. - I have a reputation in game for being very kind and helpful. I spend several hours a day doing implants for free for people because of my characters high NP. I spend lots of time answering newbie questions in game and giving directions to places on Rubi-ka. People know they can even interrupt my missions to ask me questions.
But again its less about you as a person as about the Idea that the people saying that the change against anti equippers are the "Have-Nots" its a theme I see repeated all over the message boards and a baseless and pathetic reason.
Ahh but I do. I have a poor talent of not looking at a game for what it is but beyond the game at how it works, which is probably something to do with my cynicism.
2) You do not understand what it takes to gain levels quickly in this game. - TEAM! FUNCOM has stated numerous times in numerous places that the deck is stacked in favor of teaming! Have you done it? Team hunting is my favorite part of the game and yes, if with a good group you can level in a few hours of hunting. You can also die many times because group behavior can often be erratic.
For instance AO runs on a set of rules, if you understand these rules and how they work you can use them to your advantage, simply this is what Over-Equipers do, the rule is simple equpiment only checks if it meets the requirements when its equipped, so if you manage to get highly enough buffed you can equip a better item. The flaw is the fact that the Item is only checked when its equipped which allows players to do everequiping, Its a game flaw which Funcom didn't see.
I would imagine its something borne from lack of Experience in this whole Genre, which is understandable being that MMORPG's are fairly new, that said they are only Graphic versions of MU*'s so any experience with how those work with skills and such would have shown them this problem. Its a shame that they have wasted the talent of people who already know about game rules and problems that they entail and instead have found out at their expense about the possible problems in a skills based system.
I also know that if you want to get any enjoyment out of the game its going to be more fun if you play in teams, I know this and I know well because I've played mroe than my fair share of online games, FPS, RPG, MUD's MOO's MUSH's I've even been an Admin on several of the former. (And let me tell you becoming an admin really take the fun out of a game). When it comes to online interaction team play is so much more fulfilling and rewarding.
Its like in Tribes, you can play on a team of individuals, who all play their own game, and lose repeatedly, If you organise yourself into a team on the other hand you can actually feel your doing something worthwhile, and when you win you know you were part of the Team that made it happen.
I know exactly how to "play" AO, but the skill on the other hand is playing it differently from that.
Learning how the mechanics of something works is easy, like playing a guitar, its easy to learn how to play the guitar, but just because you know how the mechanics of playing the guitar works, if you know the physics of the sounds it creates if you know everything about the sze the shape the material its made out of, your not going to be any good at playing it. You need soul man, you need somethign extra that magic, you need to realy understand the rhythms, you gotta know when to flow when to really keep with the rhythms and when to break with them. When you keep to the contempry or when you go off into the unknown.
Its the act of doing this that makes a genius to take a pile of wood and metal, or a bunch of zero's and one's, or a host of polygons and text and turn it into more than it already is.
Hey I wouldn't call it mindless, Misguided, twisted, offtopic character assasination yes, but not entirely mindless.
3) You would rather engage in mindless character assasination than offer FUNCOM any well thought out, constructive opinion on how their decisions effect your game play.
Perhaps I let my artistic License take me a little too far on what I say, and certainly I know the message I am often trying to convey gets lots within the flotsam. But in response to the cinstrustive critism charge... I have already offered constructive critism on other lists, as well as non constructive.
The tall and short of it is...
Its Funcoms fault, they released an unfinished product and they're paying for it.
The issues have to cover more than just one group of people.
You have people who have used the curent rules to create their character and by being nerfed they will have wasted time building them up.
You have new people who have a disadvantage from the other people because of subsequent nerfs, that have effected the ability to use the previous methods to create high characters, since these nerfs are based towards the higher characters, they penilise the new lower characters.
Then you have Mid levels, people who have been rising fast but suddenly find it much harder to play.
You have the powerlevelers, and you have RolePlayers.
You have the Nanotechnicians and Martial artists that can't over equip to the same extent if at all. And probably many more to mention.
All of these people need to be pleased, all of them have arguments even if it isn't heard.
But putting people into a "have" and "have-not" does not do it justice and is selfish. And thats the simple truth.
And the Simple fact is Funcom know what they have to do, they need to balance the game which is going to be more than just looking at over-equipping. Its looking at the economy, its looking at the mobs, and its looking at the players. The fact that they're 6 months into the game and they still haven't got it balanced shows their inexperience, its also typical of poor management of large projects not to mention quality control processes in such a project.
My constructive critisms would be to improve their project management. Have definate achieavable goals, at the moment they seem to be trying to do too many things at once. concentrate on something simple such as the game dynamics get that sorted, then get the bugs sorted, then get on with the game, and whilst they are doing that they can improve and implement the stuff they haven't got round to.
Now once they've got a good plan running their next thing is to introduce some kind of Quality system, so that they can review the steps they are taking or proposing to take, these will typically be inspections of the processes and such and I'm not going to go into the boring detail. They need to create a sustainable plan to develop, maintain, implement, etc. AO.
If it makes you feel better I'll accept my faults, I am a cynic I am also fairly bitter about the world, the good thing about this is I'm generally bitter about everything which gives me a blanced but cycnical approach to most things. I'm not an entirely nice person, infact. If i was going to compare myself to music I'd say I was like ATR to a normal persons uhh what do normal people listen to these days? Cliff Richard? Lets say i'm an aquired taste ok.
So by all means you meet everyne elses standards but no one can meet my standards so they all get the same treatment. And if It wasn't you who wrote the article but someone else I would have given them the same treatment.
So again I apologuise for being a little personal, when I was really trying to make a point which wasn't about your person.
