Friday with Means - January 15th, 2010 - Nothing personal

[Mastablasta]

I see potential issues with that. Someone could wait a while for most others to transfer, then camp all of the high valued tradeable or shop sellable items until they are forced to transfer... bringing exaggerated amounts of credits & items, further crippling the already distorted economy of the remaining servers.

There should be a "Soon™" deadline where everyone that has not willingly transferred is forced to RK1 (or RK2). "Months™" is just asking for problems.

Bringing more stuff and players into an inflated economy would cause deflation rather than more inflation, in effect fixing the economy.

[Igri00]

I see potential issues with that. Someone could wait a while for most others to transfer, then camp all of the high valued tradeable or shop sellable items until they are forced to transfer... bringing exaggerated amounts of credits & items, further crippling the already distorted economy of the remaining servers.
.

"bringing exaggerated amounts of credits"

What??? In your scenario, the player would be camping an almost empty server. Therefore, they would not be able to sell anything until after the transfer, as everyone left on the old server would soon have all of them...

Plus, if you are telling me that 500 new Alien Augmentation Devices might be introduced into RK1 and the 5 selling for 39M each are going to come down to 5m each, then I'm all for it.

[chaosaddict]

To bad this game is lossing more players then it is gaining them.....Make this new engine if you want more people....that is the key factor....not the AoC engine either...that fails....lol

[Mastablasta]

To bad this game is lossing more players then it is gaining them.....Make this new engine if you want more people....that is the key factor....not the AoC engine either...that fails....lol

Good suggestions! You're totally winning there

What fails about the AoC engine btw? Runs at 100 fps for me with everything set to absolute max... at 1920x1200 :|

[Mekh]

Good suggestions! You're totally winning there

What fails about the AoC engine btw? Runs at 100 fps for me with everything set to absolute max... at 1920x1200 :|

Maybe it fails horribly because it can't run decently on a i386...............!

[Technogen]

I dont think current can run on a 386 either, Macro has a list so maybe he can tell us the oldest machine the game is currently running on is.

[Edta]

With the work on The Transfer I'm guessing Character Clean Up will be happening soon. I have 2 suggestions for this:

- Deleted accounts: it seems that the character-names that were on a deleted account are not deleted themself and as such not available. I had an account in 2005 with the character "doodelidoo" on it. I deleted the account, started a new account in 2007 with the same account name. My ex-toons are not on it (obviously), but when I try to make a new toon with the name doodelidoo it says "Nickname already in use". And the 'doodelidoo' in the database is obviously the same as the toon I used to have.
It's not that I want this toon-name, but I guess it's 1 way to make more names available. Not sure it's worth it, guess most people stop without deleting their account, so you might not win much. But it's a bunch of names that are totally unavailable for anybody...

- Inactive accounts. While it seems a bit rude to just delete all inactive ones (and not so customer-friendly :P), it sounds like an option that when they come back they have to pick a new name if their old one is taken. Inactive players likely have a less strong bound with their name then current ones anyway. Not sure how difficult this is to code in though and whether you were already planning this or not.

Regards,

[Arlancor]

Nice to see that you are working.

Is the priority of the new gfx engine lowered abit? I thought the deadline was late in 2009. Do you plan to "balance" the game first so that comeback and new players will have a good experience when joining due to the new graphic?

[Swardbearker]

- Inactive accounts. While it seems a bit rude to just delete all inactive ones (and not so customer-friendly :P), it sounds like an option that when they come back they have to pick a new name if their old one is taken. Inactive players likely have a less strong bound with their name then current ones anyway.

If FC goes off and changes my main's name (Swordbreaker) to something else to accommodate the much newer Swordbreaker in RK3 just because I sometimes keep the account he's on inactive, I'd not only cancel all my accounts, I'd also quit playing AO altogether. Let alone if they start deleting inactive accounts or toons on them. It'd be BYE BYE to AO for good.

[Hacre]

I wouldn't mind some exits to cop anc cot, icc got one so its do able.

It at least needs an fgrid exit, otherwise those poor people who have cities in the depths of Perpetual Wastelands will have to price things ridiculously low to attract sales.

[Moyahno]

I hope that name thing will work both ways, german characters created after november doesnt get priority either


and also, i think it should depend on lvl, a level 10 character created after november shouldnt have priority over a 220 character


only annoying thing i can see is if someone is left on server and gets a RBP or two from soloing tara basically, but oh well

[ThatsNotMyName]

FIRST POST!!!! (For me)

[Worldofalts]

Nice to see that you are working.

Is the priority of the new gfx engine lowered abit? I thought the deadline was late in 2009. Do you plan to "balance" the game first so that comeback and new players will have a good experience when joining due to the new graphic?

I hope not. graphics bring people into a game more than anything else these days. heck, I've seen friends play mmo's for months on end that have absolutely horrible mechanics, no balance and no depth whatsoever, for the sole reason that the graphics are purdy and provide realistic immersion. ao has it all, except graphics.

[Sidana]

Means,

Would it be possible to do a small review on AI City layouts? There are quite a few plots on RK which has insane ammounts of land wasted because the designers who painted them were not aware (or ignorant ) of the building sizes. The whole zone of 4 Holes is a great example for that, with 0.75 building block** wide stretches ad infinitum, 1.75 block wide stretches, 2x2 plots missing the tree sizes corner, etc. I guess you could do it by letting the players report the issues with the layout (and only the layout) and review them when you have some spare time.

Like... I'm sure if you dip your pizza into your coffee you could eat almost twice as fast...

**1x1 building = 4x4 tree, the smallest block

[Keldros]

Kind of related to AI cities...

Way back when the landscape was altered to make room for the city plots, a bunch of mission entrances vanished. A few have been fixed, but I know there's still a rock pile in Milky Way where I occasionally get missions with no door to enter the mission. I don't know whether the missing doors are buried or just vanished, but how about a fix for these?

If it can't be automated, then how about putting a terminal on the test server to hand out "Find the door" (or better, "Enter the door and tag an item") missions? Keep a log of the doors that have been found, and remove them from the search pool each week. Eventually you'll be left with the missions no one can find.

[Worldofalts]

Means, .... Like... I'm sure if you dip your pizza into your coffee you could eat almost twice as fast...

thanks, i just puked in my mouth.


just curious, are these missions with missing entrances clan side or omni?

[Ebondevil]

thanks, i just puked in my mouth.


just curious, are these missions with missing entrances clan side or omni?

As far as I know mission location is based on the level of the mission and the location it is pulled from, the higher the mission level the further away the mission will be from the terminal, with a bit of randomness thrown into the mix as well.

Generally I suspect it's possible for both sides to pull missions in the same locations, with the missing entrances, though one side is more likely to pull certain locations than the other.

Not done many clan sided missions though so I could be wrong.

I have noticed there is a missing entrance when pulling Omni missions.

[Tinypain]

@Means,

After the last few weeks mess that was created by account sharing within certain omni orgs...they recieved clear help and some even getting IPR's and nodrops returned. I

'd like to point out that there were clanners who also lost entire accounts worth of characters, nodrops, gear, IP redistributions and wasted IPR's but when they petitioned they got zero help. What's with the prejudice? Is there anything your willing to do? Currently some players are very frustrated with the response given to omni, who clearly broke EULA while no response was given to the clan who had accounts stripped. They've all since but quit because we are trying to convince them to stay and maybe you'll get the GM's to show them alittle support.

And bump for server xfer...

Bad publicity for funcom when they screw people over

[Sama]

If FC goes off and changes my main's name (Swordbreaker) to something else to accommodate the much newer Swordbreaker in RK3 just because I sometimes keep the account he's on inactive, I'd not only cancel all my accounts, I'd also quit playing AO altogether. Let alone if they start deleting inactive accounts or toons on them. It'd be BYE BYE to AO for good.

i seriously doubt FC would delete any characters on accounts that are anything close to sporadically active. if anything i would imagine them drawing a line in the sand several yrs in the past and start there. then do the same for froob accounts that are long dead...

[PingBong]

whos gonna be in that new server testing pvp stuffs? im sorry to say but somehow enfos ended up with 2 profs whose enfs i could solo at the same time without breaking a sweat... as did some other professions