The day I left ICC Shuttleport Island with my fr00b Engineer, a Greeter visited me in West Athen. Just sayin'.
The day I left ICC Shuttleport Island with my fr00b Engineer, a Greeter visited me in West Athen. Just sayin'.
Don't mind me. I'm just passin' through.
::CLAN ADV :Chairman's Prize for Holy LOL recipient: RK-I::
The Red Brotherhood
“ If this is gonna be that kind of party, I'm gonna stick my leet in the mashed potatoes.”
I mean the economy has massively crashed in past month. Way more then after s10 nerf. You can buy a full set of intels for any prof just about for 70-100mil if that compared to 400+mil back in December.
If you don't believe me. What does every single player aim for or need which can be delivered at a massive rate. >Symbs...
I priced all my symbs at least 5mil cheaper then gms unless they were under 20mil which wasn't worth the time or shop space to me. Last night I checked and repriced my entire shop. Symbs that were 50-100mil dropped down to 10mil/each.
Every prof uses symbiants but a massive amount has rose about of symbs. That only leads to one thing.
>>> Supply has stayed the same but demand has dropped below the supply percentage.
If anyone here has any small business you could see very clearly what is happening. Just my 2 sense
When was that? During peek times of the server your talking about which is accumlated of about 12-16hrs.
Server every single year picks up in player base when kids get out of school for the year. I feel if they don't do something by then before they get out of school. They won't keep around the 30-40% playerbase that will come about during the summer.
ZeePhonz :: 220/30/70 Adventurer
ZeeMedic :: 220/30/70 Doctor
ZeeDaKeep :: 220/30/70 Keeper
Cratscan :: 220/30/70 Bureaucrat
ZeeStabbie :: 220/30/65 Shade
ZeeInstein :: 220/21/60 Engineer
President of A.R.S. (Athens Recovery Service)
Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "If an emergency, notify:" I put "DOCTOR".
Ive played since 2003, and never been greeted. just sayin'.
Scempio General of Midnight Society
Lheann
President of When I Grow Up
Lhisa - MA - RK1
MaxKillz - Enf - RK1
Namaru - Enf - RK1
"If you find yourself loosing a fight, your tatics suck."
The ARK program is strictly volunteers from the playerbase, if you feel like there aren't enough lately then join it yourself and help out instead of complaining. And at the big ARK hoo-hah a month ago, 15 people joined ARK... frankly that sounds like lots of greeting to me. I assume that once you reach a certain level, you won't get greeted, and experienced players tend to level pretty fast... So I'd say that all those people griping about rarely getting greeted should probably level up slower
I didn't really understand everything you tried to say there because of terrible grammar. But it seems like you're identifying the most common way froobs level. I dunno what the point of doing that was, because one can do the same for sloob and fully paid players too. But I did also notice that you left out other froob content like Crypt of Home, Biomare, and Inner Sanctum. Then it also seems like you're saying froobs need to post on forums to get help with .. something? Froobs can get accounts afaik, need a certain level on the main characters. It's an anti-spam measure that I think is very wise.
Based on Auno data you created your first toons in '08. AO was still relatively populated at that time - I did the same in '05, and there was a definite drop even in that period. But one thing that boggles the mind is, if you had to spend so much time waiting for the mob spawns, having to share the loot, and generally having a bad time due to the "high" population, why on earth did you stick around? Did you know there's going to be less people?
I am asking the above, because for me, it was never an issue, and people in AO - even people semi-unknown to me - would sit for an hour at the Lab Director, waiting for him to spawn, waiting for other people to get him first, just so I could get a CDR for my lowbie engineer. Sure it wasn't the smoothest way of design, but it was not an issue that caused rage back then, why would it now? That's another example of adjusted content, btw, Foreman's got a revamp and can't be farmed by 220s anymore and spawns on static timer...
I can only speak for myself that I couldn't give a rollerrat's ass if I have to skip camping Nippys because someone else is already there, or having to help a semi-unknown guy thru the first 45 minutes of Arid Rift quest, or having to get thru 50 Beast raids to get lucky on a roll for a BoC (or earlier, get enough points for it). What bothers me more is there's not many people for buffs, very little market activity, extremely few people on LFT, miniscule chance to interact with people outside of hotspots, people on org chat can be counted with fingers of one hand, etc. And as I said, most importantly, even actively seeking out teammates for nearly content is most often fruitless.
I guess it's fine and cozy for you - for me it is barren and desolate, and uninspiring, not an MMORPG game but a single player online game with none of the boons of a single player RPG game. That's why I didn't continue my subscription for now, though I still do stuff with my froob at times. To be honest that was only 70% of the reason, the other part of the reason is knowing damn near all quests, zones, and mobs by heart, as well as pretty much all the interesting items, so there's little in the way of surprise or discovery. But I digress.
Different points of view and different desires mean there's little use arguing over what should be done with the future of AO. But I probably automatically lose the argument anyway due to not paying anymore.
Last edited by eroz_c; Feb 13th, 2012 at 17:24:48.
Eroz, finally 220/26/70 Adventurer & proud General of Regulators on ex-RK2 (outdated) equip
Rokroland, 170 Engineer No more crab for j00 Northern Front on ex-RK2
Ranged roxxorz!
Sig last updated properly when West Athens still had people sitting about the subway.
Seriously, WTF cares about greeters? That's the LAST think worth bickering about.
Awwww muffin, need a tissue?
-Tanisthonus. 212MP. Unity of the Rose. Atlantean.
Because maybe new player retention would improve if they had someone nice and informative come along and give them advice and tips?
Not all of us came into the game with full knowledge of how to play, for many of us it was our very first MMO style game. I never got a greater till a year or so later once I'd already figured things out, not that it really mattered to me because I obviously stuck around without their help the first time around anyway.
But who's to say who all is leaving because the place is confusing and that, until the new starter area is up and running - which should hopefully be less confusing, they'd be more inclined to stay if they had an ARK greater come along and give them reliable advice rather then the crap OOC is bound to spew.
Hi There,
I can confirm for you that the Greeters Program still exists, and we do have active Greeters right now. The way this works is, 1 character per account will get greeted. This means if any character on that account has been greeted before at any time, you will not show up in our list again.
Further to that, if you don't play while we have greeters out and around, you may not see them until late in life. With as fast as some people level these days, it's a common occurance for our Greeters to get people who are level 150+ before we can get to them. I personally greeted a Level 210 no more than a year and a half ago. There are also restrictions on what playfields our greeters can go to, so if you spend all of your time in certain places, our greeters just can't get to you.
Greeters don't stay greeters for ever though, and do move up through the ranks in ARK. The only way to ensure more greeters, is for more people to join ARK, which you can do by visiting http://ark.funcom.com/Public
An ignored player on a forum should also have a blanked out quoted text. That's all i have to say.
Neophyte Nerf"Shareida"Batted First Order
Freshman Jefferey"Bailan2"Ginsberg - Retired
Shareidah - First Order
A Producer's point of view
Honestly, that's not how I think FC should be using greeters. They are appear once, say hi, and can direct people to information resources, not tell people about implants or things like that. Advice and tips are needed continuously and greeters simply aren't effective in that role. On the other hand ... players are the best for that.
So again, assuming that greeters impact player retention to the significance you assign it ... I'm not so certain. Other games don't retain players with greeters ... Player retention is a function of how the game works and the resources available to give people info. Those things are more efficiently done through a new player experience in the game, not through a singular instance of someone talking to you.
I think it's unfortunate that greeters are used in this way in AO and hopefully whatever FC has planned for the new player experience will remove that burden from greeters.
Last edited by Obtena; Feb 14th, 2012 at 20:13:28.
Awwww muffin, need a tissue?
The economy is too bloated as it is. This may be the start of something good -- the deflation of AO economy. Meaning it will now be easier for newer players to get the items they need and make the economy more accessible to the general masses.
imo I think that more regulation needs to happen (increasing drop rates, raising general prices on items when selling as shop food, opening GMS to froobs, nerf shopping channels, putting individual cred caps on all items for selling through gms, etc...). There would still be a black market for item goods yes, but this could inevitably further deflate the economy to a more reasonable and manageable level.
Last edited by spz0; Feb 14th, 2012 at 18:11:47.
Well ya, directing to information resources would be great. Even if all they do is pop in say "Hi, check out this site for an FAQ and links to other sites that can help" that'd be great for newcomers who may feel lost. But with so many people not even getting a greater they're still lost.
There is no doubt that AO is terrible financially for new players. If i made a random alt to pass the time, I would easily spend 10m on just non twink items between maybe level 1 and level 60. That's just imps, ncu, armour weapons etc. That has always sukked since AO started.
As to the rest, many drop rates suck but that is for a reason ( get people to grind/pay/gain epeeen etc).
But overall, rare items are always going to be expensive. If you deflate the market as you put it, little will change. You wont be buying an RBP for 10m creds.
You might perhaps buy one for 300m, but everything you earned and sold to make that 300m will have been sold for a lot less than now. There might be a small gain but it wont be "game changing".
stuff