Community answers - the system

[Cz]

Allow me to explain a bit on how we hope to have questions and answers running from now on.

We get a lot of questions in several channels; Bulletin board, e-mail and IRC being the most important ones. Answering one e-mail gives answers to one person. Answering in IRC gives the info to about 100. Answering in a thread in the Game Mechanics forum hands out the information to... 600, if I make a generous guess.

Collecting all these, and posting them in this forum, then pointing everybody here (e.g. through the launcher and the main site news), hands out the information to thousands.

Get my drift?

Profession specific issues
To get purely profession specific information, people go to the profession forums. That's where fellow Adventurers, Agents, Bureaucrats and so on, hang out.

Hence, I request that you bring up profession specific issues through the profession forums. The Professionals are very good at picking up the issues and handing them over to us. We will then feed the answers back through them. This allows us a little more time for other forums and tasks, and give you better and more coherent answers.

And anybody flaming the Professionals on the forums will be in trouble. Got any issues with them? Send us an e-mail.

Other issues
All other issues will be answered here, and to avoid having hundreds of threads in the forum answering different issues, we want to make one or two threads each week where we give feedback and answers on all issues brought up lately.

These threads will be open for comments and follow-up questions, and moderated strictly to allow people to get their information without havig to dig through rants, flames and other unnecessary posts. They will also be sticky, at least until we get too many sticky threads in the forum.

Hot topics
Some issues create a lot of (often well founded) havoc. The recent level requirements issue - which blew up even more because of our lack of communication - is one very good example. Such issues will be handled individually - and immediately, with their own threads.

And no, that does not mean you can get any issue in an own thread by creating lots of noise around it. We will be more observant - and quicker to respond - than in the level requirement issue.

---

Soooo... any big flaws in this we haven't discovered yet? It will mean that you won't get an immediate answer (unless we know it already, and can type it in quickly), but you will get more answers, and you will know where to get them.

Flames unwanted. Sarcasm unneeded. Comments appreciated.

[cold]

Originally posted by Cz

Hot topics
Some issues create a lot of (often well founded) havoc. The recent level requirements issue - which blew up even more because of our lack of communication - is one very good example. Such issues will be handled individually - and immediately, with their own threads.

Might want to mention that 'immediately' isn't 'within 3 minutes'

[Darkbane]

Cz, if this actually happens, and you can keep it going, it will go a *long* way to easing community concerns. I'd still like to see more regular articles from the devs & designers (maybe fortnightly would be good), but this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship...

[_______________Intra]

In principle it should work, and it is these types of changes that coule potentially bring me, and maybe a few others, back to AO. Since the lack of respect to the community is my main issue.

But it will take alot of work over many months, as I am sure you are aware, to gain back the faith of alot of us. Especially since this is not the first time changes in communication system have been proposed. So its time to sit back and see if FC will put the necissary resources into this and make these changes happen, since the community IS the game.. inside and outside of it.

the changes look good.. but...
"talk is cheap... shut up and dance"

[Tyndel]

Well, good enough idea, will save me the time of running one search for cz, cosmik, blackmane, dai-galean every time i login to the forums, but really.. its not the form of the info that annoy me, its the amount of it.. so speed up and raise the amount of info you give out too please.

[Cz]

reality, good point. Actually, when we get aware of the issue, we should normally be able to let you know that within 3 minutes. But a longer reply in an own discussion thread will probably take a bit more time, depending on who we have to contact, and the issue at hand.

[Darkbane]

Oh, and can you unstick the 14.2 and 14.4 notes in the 'next Patch' forum... (notice that 'Next' part?)

[Warlock]

Originally posted by Cz
Profession specific issues
To get purely profession specific information, people go to the profession forums. That's where fellow Adventurers, Agents, Bureaucrats and so on, hang out.

Hence, I request that you bring up profession specific issues through the profession forums. The Professionals are very good at picking up the issues and handing them over to us. We will then feed the answers back through them. This allows us a little more time for other forums and tasks, and give you better and more coherent answers.

And anybody flaming the Professionals on the forums will be in trouble. Got any issues with them? Send us an e-mail.

This simple doesnt work.

The Fixer and Adventurer Pros gave you an enormous amount of negative feedback regarding the level restrictions. What 'fedback' through them.....nothing. It wasnt until after the event that a statement was made and this issue _still_ hasnt been addressed adequately. You have avoided further comment on it in _all_ of your updates (aside from using them as an example). There have been no replies to player comments regarding the 'Shadowlands buffs' and better ways at controlling them rather than level-restricting the new nanos, or backing up the comments of Dai regarding the fact that existing nanos will not be retroactively limited (despite the obvious imbalances these _will_ cause with the 'Shadowlands Buffs')

This 'information void' is still the problem. Posting other issues (memory leak etc) gives the _impression_ you are here and active but the really big issues are still being swept under the carpet (which I call stonewalling). If you _truely_ have no intention, depite player feelings and alternative suggestions, of removing the level restrictions just tell us outright now so that we can leave the game, rather than hang on (and keep paying you) in the hope that soon you will get a clue and change your minds.

In addition the other Professionals (and I can only really speak for the Engineers now) have received _no_ official info via the Professionals regarding _anything_ we have provided the requested feedback regarding bugs and balance but have not heard if or when anything will be done about it.

Originally posted by Cz
Flames unwanted. Sarcasm unneeded. Comments appreciated.

Thats fair comment, but leave people in the dark for long enough and you cant expect then not to get frustrated - human nature, no one likes being ignored.

[Tetra]

the recent attempts from FC have been a nice first step but as others have said you [funcom] are still just shoveling out new questions and avoiding the issues that players are still not willing to accept as a "dead issue". In your answers part2 you seem to be hinting that there will be discussion on things like the outragous level req's that set the forums off, and more importantly my personal pet peeve the fact that *EVERYTHING* is bossdrop only... but in the same post you went and talked about the advent's 1he buff and mentioned how it was self only because advents were supposed to excell over other professions in that field, now seeing as it was just an example I believe that it was simply a random choice partly fueled by the enforcer complaints on the issue but since 14.4 was placed on test there has been complaint and questioning as to why multiranged req which need to be much higher than multimelee due to req's on weapons as well as why the +100 pistol advent buff is level 195 only while engineers can cast +120 at any level once they have the skills+buffs to do so... It was brought up in the thread... are you going to ignore and sweep it under the rug like has been done so far or will you acknowledge the issues and discuss them without the smoke and mirrors we got on level req explinations.

[Bionitrous]

Comments appreciated

If you open a dialogue with the players. If you explain how the level requirements don't dilute the skill system. If you re-evaluate the seemingly haphazard level restrictions placed on benign nanos. If you can make a NanoMage more effective in utilizing nanos. I'll be encouraged to log in again.

If you open up a dialogue. That goes two-ways, mind you.

I want an explanation of why my main character cannot wear armor that he has the Strength and Agility to wear without even even using the General buffs for another 23 levels. I want to know how this increases my enjoyment of the game.

Answer that specific question in the previous paragraph. My character is not even implanted well and cannot wear a helmet he got of a monster he killed all by himself for 23 levels. This is even so despite the fact that he has all the Agility and Strength needed to wear the item and swap it out for a pair of sunglasses in one of your nightclubs. Please explain to me how this is not a mistake. If you didn't want him to wear this armor at this target 'level' why didn't you simply increase the ability requirements? Finally, explain how this makes the game more fun to have an item rotting in the bank while you force me to grind through more god-awful 'missions' like some rat on wheel just for the privelage to wear an item he already has the physical skills to wield.

Give us an answer from someone who matters about why this makes the game better that people who have the skills (without even buffing) aren't allowed to use even mediocre gear due to some artificial restriction that essentially says 'it doesn't matter how strong, smart, agile, or knowledgeable you are. If you don't push the blue button 20 more times, you can't wear your new pants.' Please give us an answer from someone who knows how to phrase a response in such a fashion that people can understand it. That last explanation regarding the nanoformulas might as well have been newspaper clippings put through a shredder and pieced together randomly for all the sense it made.

You've killed the enthusiasm of the majority of people on this board and almost every person I spoke to in the game by turning this into Everquest. The least you could have done is warn us and provide an explanation.

[LTK]

This 'information void' is still the problem. Posting other issues (memory leak etc) gives the _impression_ you are here and active but the really big issues are still being swept under the carpet (which I call stonewalling)

Warlock, and others who are STILL flaming even AFTER Cz shows up, you need to rethink your efforts. He's here to help. You want to address an issues, don't throw accusations left and right. Address the issue with him. If you think he dodged, address the issue again. I'd like Cz to stick around and help us out, and he won't do that if the posts look like that last one from Warlock. I know I wouldn't.

Another thing, Warlock. The quoted statement above seems exceptionally void of thought. You just quite literally called the memory leak a minor problem, and the level restriction a big one.

Um, it's vice versa, duder. From a lot of people's perspectives.

leave people in the dark for long enough and you cant expect then not to get frustrated - human nature, no one likes being ignored.

An excuse, but by no means a valid reason. Chill and address the issues while you've been given the opportunity, don't turn into a whining no0b.

[Warlock]

Ah Tarryk my friend, if you think that was a flame, I hate for you to be on the receiving end of a real one.

Ok since our little outing in the 'Birthday' thread I see little point in trying to get you to understand my statements however I will try one last time

Firstly, we _have_ been addressing the issue (and are _still_ trying to have the issue addressed), in the threads relating to that topic. I have no intention of repeating myself again in an entirely new thread. All the info is where it supposed to be, I'm afriad FC will just have to read through and separate the wheat from the chaff. Had FC stayed 'on top of' that thread then this would probably have been put to bed by now. The only people guilty of not addressing the issue are FC.

Never at any point did I catagorise the problems in any sort of priority. If you recall Cz was very recently stating there was no memory leak at all (just that AO was memory intensive) so clearly there is an 'information void' as he is being fed incorrect information. Since the memory leak does not regularly effect me (since I have been blessed with an abundance of RAM) I chose to concentrate on the issue I feel most strongly about and that has received _no_ official 'attention' since the statement by the nano designer despite numerous well-reasonsed and constructive arguments against its reasoning.

Like it or not Cosmik and Cz are _employed_ as customer service representatives. There isnt really any option for them to 'drop by' as its part of their job (the same way I cant choose not to fix one of my customers systems regardless of how rude he is or if I dont like him). Granted they have the ability to go 'beyond the brief' and give the player/customer better service than one could reasonably expect but unfortunately as it stands at the moment I personally dont think that what they do even meets a 'normal' expectation. Granted this could well be because 'their hands are tied' by the 'powers that be', and to be fair I believe that this is most likely the problem (cant give out info if you're not given any to give out). However that is _their_ problem and not mine, while I can be considerate and patient for so long sooner or later something has to happen (either results or people snapping).

If you 'wind people up' (by whatever means, but in this case ignoring them) you cannot expect their patients to last indefinately, sooner or later people _will_ snap (moreso if they are paying to be 'ignored' - in a manner of speaking). If someone 'pushed your buttons' I'd like to see how receptive you were to 'take a chill pill' suggestions at that point. Regardless of this I have not lost my 'rag' yet. I just use sarcasm and satire to illustrate to people (like yourself) and FC the severity of the situation. One could easily apply your logic and ask you to 'take a chill pill' regarding your stalwart defence of FC.

'Whining noob' - ok, now _your_ in flame territory, I think I'll be the bigger man though.

[Jayde]

A strongly-worded post does not a flame make. =)

Being honest, to the point, and direct is not flaming. If Funcom really wants to know what the players think, it's important to listen to those unhappy with the system that can express their distaste in a choerant manner--even if the content of thier message is negative.

An example of a flame would be:
DAMNM U FUNCOM!!!!! U DONT CARE ABOT THE PLAEYERZ AT ALL!111!! I QUIT!! UNFUNCOM SUCKS!111~~

That means nothing. Warlock's post brings up an honest opinion that is displayed without being disrespectful or overly brash. There is *nothing* wrong with a post like that.

At any rate, like the others...if this works out, it may persuade me to reopen my subscription. But it's up to Funcom to carry it through and make a success about it.

I'd certainly like to see more come from the professionals at the moment. If *they* can't make an impact on Funcom--and Funcom has designated them as being able to--why should the other players think they can?

-Jayde

[Cz]

Warlock, we were way too slow and gave too little info about the level requirements. I have no trouble admitting that. And that is part of the reason we're putting an effort into making sure we handle things differently on the bulletin board now. This was not done before the level requirements issue, and I believe this new system will help us towards avoiding such slips in the future.

Having the professionals being a formal link for profession specific issues pretty much started today, so please give it a little while before saying it doesn't work. (Yes, the program started a while ago, but we didn't use it for this until now.)

And we - that is the Community Team I am referring to right now - have the best intentions to work with you player to make sure the designers listen top what you have to say, and give everything one more good look (or more, if needed) before leaving the issues, e.g. level restrictions.

That said, this is not another level requirements thread. Cosmik sent out a very extensive report on your feedback in the thread on the issue, and we have already recieved some feedback from designers and others. We will continue to push the issue until we get a final answer. Bringing it up over again in every single thread is not needed.

Tetra, that paragraph above goes for the Adventurer pistol buff too, with regards to level restriction. It will be handled with the main issue. If needed, I will start a thread on the boss MOB loot.

Note that "discussion thread" does not mean "we will haul the designers in here to discuss with you". It's for players to post their views, and agree and disagree with each other. We (Community) will sometimes throw a comment in to set off some more discussion (or get told we're n00bs ), but you usually cover all sides by yourselves. Then it is for us to make a summary, hand it to the designers, and have them give the issue some consideration, and hand us an answer back (which might spur off a new discussion, and the process is repeated).

Tarryk and Warlock, it looks like you have some personal discussion going. Please take that one to private messages, e-mail or something.

Thanks for the support though, Tarryk, but I also agree with JaydeStargunner that the post wasn't that bad.

And while Warlock is perfectly right that we have to be here and handle customer issues, our job does not require us to have to accept all kinds of language and postings. If it gets too rough - it rarely does, and people normally calm down when we ask them to - we are fully entitled to revoke posting rights, temporarily or permanent.

Gonna check a few other threads, then play a bit. Might check by later tonight. If not, see you tomorrow.

[DaveDread]

The "professional" program was started with a bang, and all the "professionals" were very efficient in throwing suggestions, ideas, bugs and balance issues at the community dewds. This turned into the "Profession Reports", most of which have been posted on the respective profession forums. It is quite a bite I must say, the MA report alone is pressing 20+ issues, and MA's already got a top10 questions answered. We're talking over 300 questions/issues in total here. Everything from nanos not having correct descriptions, to very large issues like how sneaking should work and how traders should function in teams. I'd say it takes some time to get all that info from the devs, not to mention the 14.4 patch and the reorganisation kinda taking some time.

Answers to this will come, pretty soon I'd say. I (and my professional colleagues) are as wanting as you are for these answers, lots and lots and lots of discussion will start with them. When that is done with, we'll move on to a steady flow of profession specific communication, we'll try to get things going on a weekly basis.

Cheers, and personally I think this looks like a pretty darn good plan.

edit: uh man that was some odd formatting.

[Therion]

This is not the first time we've seen proposals from FC for vastly improving communication, although I admit that so far you do seem to be doing more than simply talking about improving communication.

If it continues I might actually let myself remember that this is the same company that made The Longest Journey, still one of my favorite games of all time.

Answers and explanations that we do not like are inifinitely better than silence.

[Tetra]

Originally posted by Cz
Tetra, that paragraph above goes for the Adventurer pistol buff too, with regards to level restriction. It will be handled with the main issue. If needed, I will start a thread on the boss MOB loot.

Note that "discussion thread" does not mean "we will haul the designers in here to discuss with you". It's for players to post their views, and agree and disagree with each other. We (Community) will sometimes throw a comment in to set off some more discussion (or get told we're n00bs ), but you usually cover all sides by yourselves. Then it is for us to make a summary, hand it to the designers, and have them give the issue some consideration, and hand us an answer back (which might spur off a new discussion, and the process is repeated).

my behaviour on IRC over that issue went from calm and attempting to be constructive to annoyed and downright pissed because funcom had ignored everything that everyone had said about every issue they had with 14.4 from the point it went on test till it went on live. There was never a discussion or anything besides calling the complaint a dead issue from the start. Most people would agree that some of the new nano's are fine for bossloot but having all of them on bossloot then refusing to engage in any sort of discussion while giving no valid reasoning on it does nothing but set people off... starting a thread on boss loot along with a logical reason for having *everything* being boss loot in a game where when grouping and soloing are such a far cry in advancement from each other that it might as well be forced grouping would be much appreciated.

In reguards to the pistol buffs, I know a few engineers who could cast the +120 in the latter stages of their 125-150 titlecap with somewhat simple buffs given the level (mochams+small wrangle or big wrangle+small MP buffs) and got said buff a few times while leveling my advent reroll and while the advent pistol buff does do a few things besides simply add to pistol those things are such a small bonus they are practically a nonissue
Ballad of the Plains Wanderer
+100 pistol
+20 perception
+6dmg
+25 fling
784SI/PM

Extreme Prejudice
+120 pistol
+120 grenade
648SI/PM

even at level 200 an advent could not cast their best pistol buff without serious external bufs, which would be understandable and even supported if it was worth the effort, but to be frank plains wanderer is hardly uber once you break it down.

Pistol can be buffed in the following ways... which im pretty sure is more than just about anything else in the game with the excepion of perception/sneak.
+??? from implants
+120 by an engineer
+132 by a trader
+20 by general buffs
+15-22ish by neural interpreting Nball handguns (but it's a pain to get and requires way too much work in camping)
+20 or +40 by a crat (cant remember not looking it up)
+who knows what else from other items
[edit]+50 from a soldier[/edit]

+25 flingshot, I have *never* not oncce been at a point where i didn't have enough flingshot... in fact i think my fling is somewhere around 50-60% and i have enough to equip most ql200 pistols that require it without needing buffs. raising fling past that doesnt seem to affect the damage you do from fling at all so buffing fling is only useful for equiping better weapons which is just a trivial requirement so it's only slightly more useful than +25 swim

+6 damage... erm... well... you can get +5 from a nano in the general store +50some from CF:sabretooth, or +32 from grinning hunter, etc this is before you even count the new +damage buffs for cat/wolf forms. while +6 damage is certainly a nice thing it's decidedly not something that makes said nano above and beyond uber

+20 perception... ok... by the time an advent can cast this we can buff perception by six hundred and eighty points an extra +20 amounts to wel... squat...

Ok obviously that the +pistol buff is nice for us advents to have and nobody is complaining that it's not but there really is no reason for the absolutely insane skill req's on top of an equally insane level req when most of it seems to be because of several pointlessly trivial additions to it.

[Darkbane]

OK, let's have a thread on that one. But expand it to cover the entire issue of loot, mission loot, mission rewards, outdoor loot, clicksaver, trading, rarity... it's all connected.

I don't know how your loot generation works, but I'd expect something similar to Diablo2's treasure classes, though probably simpler. This way you'd assign each type of MOB a treasure class (or maybe several, one for solo missions, one for team missions and one for outdoors). These would give chances of the MOB dropping anything, and if so, exactly what. In D2, the treasure classes associated with monsters generally did not specify exactly what sort of item to drop, they instead gave likelyhoods of further treasure classes being selected, and the process continued down through the hierarchy until an actual item was found. This allowed a lot of control over item drops.

Better trading facilities in-game would be useful too, such as a built-in auction system operated via terminals. Players could put up to say 6 items up for auction specifying a reserve price and a timeframe (maximum of 2 days perhaps). Other players would use a different terminal to browse items available (use filters to keep the list manageable, ie show me all NT Nanos, show me all 1HE weapons etc) and could see the current bid and if desired place their own bid.

Once the time had elapsed, the player with the highest bid over the reserve would have the item placed in a special bank for them. You'd only be able to remove items from this bank, not put them in, and it would have limited slots, maybe 12 total, 6 for successful bids, and 6 for items you had put up for auction that did not sell. This would require that if you could only have a maximum of 6 bids active at a time.

When the auction concluded, the successful bidder would get the item in their special bank, and the auctioneer would get the cash (which would be taken 'up-front'). All failed bidders would get their bids returned. If no bids succeded, then the auctioneer would get the item back, again into their special bank.

Obviously, you could not put NODROP items up for auction

You could also try and get player created missions working again as another avenue for trade of sorts.

If the loot tables were better structured so you had a better idea of what and where to hunt for general classes of item and if trade was easier, you could possibly do away with item reward from missions and 'identify item' type missions could have their items expire with the key, just like 'return item' missions.

This would make finding items a bit more random once more, but still enable players to focus their efforts by picking particular mission types or hunting particular mob types.

Ok, it's pretty radical, but, I suspect that this issue needs radical...

[EDIT forgot the, give us 'who-looted-what-from-whom' messages so if you can't stop ninja looters, we can at least see who they are...]

[PhoenixKebab]

Originally posted by Tetra

Ballad of the Plains Wanderer
+100 pistol
+20 perception
+6dmg
+25 fling
784SI/PM

Nice point Tetra. Change pistol to rifle and fling to aimed and it's about twice as good as Snipers Bliss which any agent can cast/receive at low levels (can be used on a LEVEL 1 agent with belt!). How would it be if SB got a level 100 req?

Anyway to my main point. Cz/Cosmic - can you cite a few recent examples (barring trivial fluff/stuff) where the designers/developers have actually have complied with the wishes of the - and I have to use this word with some caution - "Community". Everyone here can cite at least 103 examples where they have not.

[Cz]

Both issues noted. I'll try get a write-up to start a discussion on boss loot later today (but please don't flame me if I don't get time. I will get to it this week, at least. )

The pistol buff issue is on my list, and will be taken with the other answers when we make a new thread.

Now, one more thing: Please stay on topic. Long posts about things that has nothing to do with the topic get into every thread we make here. If people continue doing it, I will consider temporarily revoking posting rights on this forum to keep it clean.

If you feel you need to bring something to attention to get it on the list, send me an e-mail, and I will add it, and ask for more info if needed.

Thank you.