Friday with Means - July 10th, 2009 - Stims, Neutrals, Content and Vacation

[styles999]

Very nice

only thing and im sure someone has done some type of statistical research.....

how many players will take advantage of this new 150-200 pf? is it giving equivilent or better xp? are you forcing ppl to go into it?(ex: just to aquire the superduperthing)

if not, well sad to say it will end up like totw, foremans etc..etc.. go in get your crap...back to hecks after a couple of train wrecks ofc

[Con]

When AS gets nerfed, will MPs get +500 AS?

You already have a better AS weapon than agents. Hopefully they make AS work the same as it is for agents only.

[Firestorm518]

Whats with all the mech talk lately? I dont know who would have actually sub'd to this game because of the mechs they added, which IMHO are more of a novelty/bonus then anything.

Who really cares about the mechs not being OMFG AWEZOME?

AO has a lot of older gamers. Hell take a poll of our group you wont find many in the 13-18 range. These older gamers were playing through the mechwarrior series before AO hit, MW was in its own way with the various leagues and stuff its own MMO.

I had a subscription to this game significantly before LE. HOWEVER when LE was announced i was deeply hoping for Funcom to take it all the way and make Mech Combat a completely different level of the game. I was hoping for mech sim capability. I knew THAT was a long shot. But the fact is FC didnt go far enough in how mechs work and how mech's should have been implimented. I think AO has suffered because of it. I want to see AO's Mech and tower fighting changed to no small degree. I would at least like to see Mech's become a different sight on the battlefield. This is the 29th millennium after all. Either way if it becomes a choice between AO's tower fighting and being able to butt heads on Solaris again i am off to solaris.

[Novaelis]

Fixers

Next week will not see the +500 Full Auto issue fixed unfortunately. It has proven to be a larger change than originally thought to get this band-aid type temporary measure in place. We have been having discussions regardling the larger changes required to return fixers to what makes them special and hope to include the fixer community in these discussions in the very near future. We all want to see the fast moving hacker/slicer type class working the way it should and standing apart from the other choices....what makes fixers special seems to have been lost along the way...we need to find it again and bring it back.

\o/ personnaly i can live without +500 FA, even if some FA boost would be welcome (ie add few FA points to some lvl 10 research ?)

so, means we'll have again the higest runspeed on the world ? maybe a ligher cap on it ? the higest B&E and finally some challenge on hacks ? new items to hack ? a new fixer (only !) shop ? a GA 5 ? a fgrid quest 3 to warp self/team in fgrid from everywhere on rk ? a team meep on sl ?

<3

[Sturmfaust]

AO has a lot of older gamers. Hell take a poll of our group you wont find many in the 13-18 range. These older gamers were playing through the mechwarrior series before AO hit, MW was in its own way with the various leagues and stuff its own MMO.

I had a subscription to this game significantly before LE. HOWEVER when LE was announced i was deeply hoping for Funcom to take it all the way and make Mech Combat a completely different level of the game. I was hoping for mech sim capability. I knew THAT was a long shot. But the fact is FC didnt go far enough in how mechs work and how mech's should have been implimented. I think AO has suffered because of it. I want to see AO's Mech and tower fighting changed to no small degree. I would at least like to see Mech's become a different sight on the battlefield. This is the 29th millennium after all. Either way if it becomes a choice between AO's tower fighting and being able to butt heads on Solaris again i am off to solaris.

But mechs are a small part of AO. Its not like they should be super focused on them.

I'm sure archeologists would like there to be more hecklers with more realistic rock textures; but these are all small parts of the game o.O

I understand that a lot of people like mech games, but I think the mechs in this game are probably at the very very low end of prioritys.

I looked at LE as a booster pack, and nothing more really. SL was an expansion, and I consider Alien Invasion to be an expansion. NW and LE were nothing but small little boosts.

[Castaras]

#6!



....i am not a number, i am a free man!

You win one internet. Use it wisely.

You are, number 6...

[Namiren]

Means,

Will we ever get other options to get tokens over 200? As more of the game takes place in the 200-220 level range the amount of time available to grind tokens has shrunk and will shrink more with new ways to advance in levels faster.

[babaoroody]

It is fantastic news to see some attention being given to the mid game experience.

[Tlatoani]

Means, right now the Neutral population that is 201+ across all the servers is 6.73% of the total of players.

With this new additions being planned for the Neutral side, what do you think will happen to the Neutral population compared with what we have now?

Is it something planned by Funcom for Neutrals to be such a small percentage of the total population of Rubika?

I believe the decision of joining the fight and choose a side was a decision made on the grounds of ideological sympathy for either one of the sides, but as you might expect, and that is something that was even predicted by the original creators of the game, some will not sympathize with either one of the sides, that's why a neutral side was created.

This side, the neutral side, includes several ranges of ideologies, those who don't care about it, those who want the fight to stop, those who want a balance in forces and those who oppose both of the forces in battle.

There was a post from someone saying that neutrals neck items or boards should be something based on a different concept rather than "more modifiers" or "less modifiers", taking that idea, and trying to be constructive I suggest to you Means to make various versions of the new incoming neutral boards, these boards should reflect the different ideologies neutrals have, as we're not of a single ideological idea like sided people are, these boards would have different modifiers based on the ideology of the neutral who uses it. This would not only make neutrals stay neutral but will make the side itself more interesting and more suitable for us.

[Posid-]

When neutrals get to go omni/clan there will be a huge rush for 220s to get 2.5k tokens.

The most efficient way to get tokens at the moment is by doing the pvp quests higgins/lee. The way the quest is designed it's possible to kill higgins/lee 4 times and still get tokens for it. That's 1 hour of respawns, which means that there's only 24 people that can get their 116 tokens a day, it can be done twice a day for one player, see the problem? . Do you plan on changing this, or do you want countless people to go through the frustration of trying to OD people on higgins/lee? A simple fix for this would be to add the quest item drop x6 instead of x1. This would make the amount of players that can do the quest substantially higher.

[sebquantic]

With this new additions being planned for the Neutral side, what do you think will happen to the Neutral population compared with what we have now?

Well they aren't able to do anything (without omni help) with thier 6.7% now, so I doubt the neutral population shrinking to 1% would make any difference. Like Means said they were always supposed to be an RP faction. The only non-RP reason to stay neut. after the low levels is if you really enjoy your neut. org.

About the token boards,
I know the 2,500 board looks impressive on paper, but in practice it won't win you any fights that you weren't already able to win with a Smuggled Nanite board.

[MrGizmol]

When neutrals get to go omni/clan there will be a huge rush for 220s to get 2.5k tokens.

The most efficient way to get tokens at the moment is by doing the pvp quests higgins/lee. The way the quest is designed it's possible to kill higgins/lee 4 times and still get tokens for it. That's 1 hour of respawns, which means that there's only 24 people that can get their 116 tokens a day, it can be done twice a day for one player, see the problem? . Do you plan on changing this, or do you want countless people to go through the frustration of trying to OD people on higgins/lee? A simple fix for this would be to add the quest item drop x6 instead of x1. This would make the amount of players that can do the quest substantially higher.

What rush?

Neut4evah

[Cdogg421]

omg i didnt see anything about the rollback t-shirt!


WHERE R TEH ROLL BACK TEE!


but then again i could just be blind and sleepy

[Towerblock]

- The first of a network of daily missions to speed up leveling and add variety to the journey.

This sounds very nice, and something that also sounds like WoW dailies. Although I think that dailies would be an interesting add, I hope you consider making it very much more AO. Sending the server after The One or Ljotur the Fanatic would see huge clogging in boss camps. If you can make some nice RK/SL related stuff that is instanced (like uncle pumpkinhead) I think that would just be fantastic!

Of course, if its NOTHING like WoW dailies, then I say... at least make them interesting and worthwhile to pursue, in soloable and in team situations.

[Esproc]

Pinkness, thats whats missing.

Turn grid armor from blue to pink and make SWS give fixers a fluffy pink glow.

Only if MA's get an improved Gamboling Masters Wear with flashing pink lights and sirens.
And a matching leet pet.

Very nice

only thing and im sure someone has done some type of statistical research.....

how many players will take advantage of this new 150-200 pf? is it giving equivilent or better xp? are you forcing ppl to go into it?(ex: just to aquire the superduperthing)

if not, well sad to say it will end up like totw, foremans etc..etc.. go in get your crap...back to hecks after a couple of train wrecks ofc

I personally love playing in totw/IS. I learned to play there and it's what made me stay while I was learning.
The feeling that I can strive where others epically fail is happy time fun time yeah yeah yeah.

I frequently lament giving into the weakness of choosing a side for the phats. Can we get a quest or something for ditching our side?
Would be epic for the RP aspect I think

[Auroch]

omg i didnt see anything about the rollback t-shirt!


WHERE R TEH ROLL BACK TEE!


but then again i could just be blind and sleepy

Rollback Tee? Did I miss something somewhere? I guess that would be pretty funny...

"I lost all my phatz at the rollback, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!"

They should write that on it, lol.

edit: nvm... searched it. found it. lulz.

[Boltgun]

Neutrals

After long thought and discussion with both neutral and sided players alike I am preparing to move forward with some actual action on this issue. This will consist of two separate actions:

Both coming together will do good. The forms will allow us to rebind neutrals again (on rk1 I hope), but where I'm concerned is about your position, as LoX had shown.

I don't know what kind of feedback you have read, because so far neutrals ask for token boards, and sideds make assumptions about what neuts are supposed to be despite that they do nothing that the storyline expect them to do.

Honestly, who cares if neuts have boards, and who cares about what kind of choice it is to be neut. Neutrals are players and requires attention as much as sideds. I'm sure many are thrilled about being labeled the rp guys. What neuts bring to the game is beyond RP, and this mentality will only hack parts of the game out.

Edit: My point is all sides aren't a rp choice, it's a community one. This problem is more about sideds not having reasons to act as such, Dreadloch bosses and BS must be the only successful sided content since well... Notum war ?

Giving crap gear to neutrals, to justify sideds, only brings frustration without fixing anything. Sideds and neut should get progress in their own way, even if they collect the same item in the end. I don't think many mind having a harder path, but we prefer be as strong when we're finished.

[Chrys]

It is possible to level quite quickly now but the bigger problem for new players tends to be in getting gear and such rather than new levels. So a little help like with more missions such as the living cyber armour ones would help them greatly. Better access to VP would also help. Making it linked so heavily to BSs when few run and the PvPers that get and keep them running tend to have little to no use for VP isn't good. OFAB would be of great use to those that would be willing to spend some time getting VP but lack the means to get combined. Improving the way the LE types are gained would be good too.

No. You can do just fine with Miy's, Pred, tier and a ginormous variety of other armors for all PVM activities till tl7. PVP armors should remain PVP.

About item grind though, it's a sad fact that AO's grind to 220/30/70 plus the extraordinarily long TL7 item grind (most of which is compulsory since there's no other way to get things like DB, APF nanos along with tons of nodrops) makes it currently the worst MMO grind in the market atm. Even the Asian MMO grind games that people laugh at (and refuse to play) for their grindiness aren't in the same league as AO's.

Just look at the new Asian MMOs like Aion and you can see even they won't create grinds like they did in the past. AO is now a grindcore game because of FC's strategy for desperately keeping old players playing at the expense of new players coming in.

You already have a better AS weapon than agents. Hopefully they make AS work the same as it is for agents only.

I'll trade Tigress for Agent AR template anyday xD

[Djantro]

About the grind :

I don t really see how one could consider the current grind needed to achieve a character "reasonnable". The whole grind being not only the regular lvling and research and axp, but the item gathering also.

The current 220 char i lvled went that way : a month to 150, 1 other month enjoying tl5 BS and twinking, 1 more month to lvl to 215, arrived there in my tl5 equipment. 1 year break. After that it rly took 3 months of hardcore playing during summer to gather a decent gear and do those last few lvls. And an other 6 months to perfect it to what could be called an end-game character, lacking finally only an ACDC to perform better, possibly 1 AI lvl and half to AI 30 for social braggin, and tl7 tower field to finish those last 300 symbs.

Full process took more then a year, almost not playing other alts, and 130 /played days. That is totally hardcore when you look at it.

Ofc after all that i don t even wanna consider starting a second toon despite that i d love discovering an other 220 pvp prof toolset. I even considered e-baying.

My main concern being : what would be so bad about lowering the grind drastically (like cut in half, at the very least) so that one could roll and achieve several char to 220 (or whatever lvl is fun for him to play at) ?
Would the result be that we d play less time, or would that just be shared beetween more alts ?
Asking that one cause i bet it s one of the main concern on FC side.
Wouldn t we all just have an average of 3/4 achieved 220 char along with 4ish lower alts instead of 1/2 finished 220 char and 1/2 lower alts ? ...
Wouldn t that sitution be better since player would get to know a larger content of the game (by trying more different profs) ?

And please stop about the carebear/hardcore player debate allrdy, there is no such things as carebears player in AO, we are all beyond sane limits allrdy.

[tacoleet]

Fixes I want to see in next patch:

1) New Shirt - I got wtf rollbacked and all I got was this f**kin shirt

2) Fixer Prof Deleted

3) New Social item for Neutrals - Looks like a giant black tutu (like gothic lolita). on wear it spams /facepalm and /s BAWWWW I FAILED TO CLICK OMNI FORM

4) Fix facepalm... way too fast

5) Erect the Nickle Statue of Means at ICC.. remove that ugly arse thing that is there now. Around the Square Base have 4 Devleets around /bowing to the statue

6) MP's get a new Attack and Healpet.. the previous problems with Healpet's "Dumbass" ai are now fixed and it can go around corners. The new attack pet is a giant gold heckler that does about 1.7x the dmg of Rihwen