Monthly Development Update - 1st November 2013

[Boozee098]

Heh.. what exactly was the idea? I think I missed it. I hear a lot of whining, a lot of cool stories, and the sound of many pitchforks making 'woosh' noises as they flail wildly in the air; ->some<- succinct criticisms, mostly from the experienced posters that actually know waht they are unhappy with, but I don't think I saw in the last dozen posts a giant awesome idea, let alone an awesome idea, let alone an 'idea' as in a specific suggestion. Possibly because the Game Suggestions forum is over there ...

<------------------

If the awesome idea is an apology, then here you go, from one player to another, "sorry" on behalf of FC (virtual hug), hope that will make you feel warm and fuzzy soon and we can move on. However, I'm not on some altruistic crusade against gamer injustice and will not be joining the angry town mob anytime soon. Besides, I've seen all sorts of FC staff apologise many many times already in the last decade.

I'm going to do my best to be brief, something I'm obviously not very good at.

While I appreciate your effort, no, a virtual hug is not what I'm looking for. In terms of specific game changes, I don't care to weigh in there because so many great ideas are formulated, promoted, fleshed out, finalized, and then ignored daily. For myself though, as a new player, I can tell you I am most looking forward to seeing the NPE. I have not taken the time to articulate all of my thoughts / feelings on the matter yet. I wish I had time, but to be honest with you, there is so much wrong.

This is a post from another player from within the past 2 months that does a rather good job encapsulating the current concerns:

http://www.aofroobs.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10314

I feel this player's experiences are pretty much 100% typical in the current state of the game. I am a Steam user who came to AO when I came across a year old press release saying AO was coming to Steam. I just assumed it had already came and went. Turns out it never happened. Nevertheless, I'm sure I'm not the only one that figured I'd give this game a shot anyway. So I see a lot of negativity about concern over new players experiences, but they are a significant source of potential revenue that is currently being marginalized.

Read the AOFroobs thread I posted and ask yourself how likely is it that this player will stay around given little recourse to his/her grievances?

Adding item coloring doesn't change the facts about itemization, which has been completely broken since I played in 2001. Please explain to me what making the following item GREY does to the new player experience:

http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=123306&ql=7

I started a new Fixer on my froob account. I left the newbie island with all nanos but only 1k credits (not enough to buy even a QL5 shop weapon). Went on an adventure in the subway. After 20 minutes, the only weapon that dropped that fit my template ( SMG / Burst ) is the one I pasted above.

Just put yourself in a new players shoes for 5 minutes, and ignore what you know about farming credits or any other kind of metagaming. What does the color of that item do for this player? To what extent are we altering the frustrations inherent in low level itemization with this change? I don't need a different hue to know this weapon is complete garbage. It has SUB-SINGLE DIGIT dps listed in the description. This explains a lot about why a veteran will not seriously play a new character before they have twinked on a Neutrino Flash. So I find it hard to buy any kind of double standard that it's "just part of being a new player".

Now don't interpret that to mean I think every new player should have a Neutrino Flash handed to them.

But let me share a simple idea I had with you. You've got leveling memory and armor in the subway. So clearly at some point a game designer understood that philisophically it would improve the experience to add readily available items that could be upgraded over some length of time. However, it would seem for balance reasons weapons were a sacred cow in that regard. Or at least that is the reason I cited when I finally found an upgrade to my newbie island baseball bat on a level 38 Enforcer. In this instance I was able to ride the Challenger line of nanos and rely on OSB from a soldier alt to squeak through.

What if I were a fixer without a pocket paid account to follow me around? I'd probably have a bad time right?

So let me just say that...they modified the vagabond cloak in the last patch. One of the first items a new player will see. And arguably for the better. It's not that far-fetched to believe that on an item by item basis they could begin modifying the new player experience. Start with the complete piece of garbage I posted above. Create a series of leveling weapons that drop in the subway and stay with the player up until QL50.

But I haven't seen that sensibility from the dev team.

So to finally respond to your concerns about nonspecificity and wrap things up, I'll tell you what I'd expect, in my own words.

You tell me if you can see the difference.

- - - -

Hey everyone, Boozee here, and I just wanted to give you some quick updates on the progress we made last month.

First off, let me just say that I know you are all waiting patiently for the new engine. We really appreciate that our customers' excitement in this new technology mirrors our own. So I'd like to take this opportunity to reassure you that we are doing everything we can to get the engine up and running and in your hands. With that said, we are severely behind schedule on the completion of the project. New challenges are popping up every day with the translation of old artwork into the new engine. Fortunately we have a dedicated resource behind handling those limitations, and we expect to have the issues ironed out by the end of next month.

The new engine was originally scheduled to enter beta on X-DATE, but we are now uncertain we can meet that timeline.

While we can give no firm ETA, here is a list of major milestones that need to take place before the launch can complete:

1) Server Stability

2) Critical Rendering bugs

3) Water shader behavior

...

15) ...

* It's important to note here I just plugged into this template...Ideally these are actual items that portray a realistic timeline *

** Somehow I find it hard to believe the above items delayed an engine 6 years. So I'd probably take the 50,000 foot approach which seems less disingenuous than suggesting a water shader is holding back an entire CLOSED beta **

As you can see, there are some fundamental items important to the gameplay experience that need to be addressed before the new engine can go live.

On a similar note, the NPE is coming along nicely. Although it is long overdue, the dev team really appreciates your continued support, as well as your generosity in sharing great ideas. We know players have waited a long time to invite friends and family to experience a revitalized AO, and that time is right around the corner.

First though, I wanted to talk about some changes we are going to be making RIGHT NOW to help transition into the fully qualified NPE. Feedback from new players indicates that the ICC shuttleport instance is working as intended, but there is a sharp dropoff in player experience thereafter. One item we have identified as an issue is the lack of continuity between then ICC instance and the games early missions / dungeons. To that effect we are adding a new NPC to the game called the "Underground Arms Smuggler" who will stand outside the subway entrance and flag new players down.

The "Underground Arms Smuggler" is a back room dealer who is interested in the illicit but useless weapons that drop in the abandoned subway. He will initiate a dialogue with new players and instruct them to bring him 6 such items in exchange for a type-appropriate leveling weapon. The weapon given will have a seed QL equal to Player Level, and is good for 5 QL upgrades. The quest is repeatable.

This is a small change we are making, but it will have a BIG IMPACT.

We are looking forward to spending more time each week on similar changes. It is very important that we feel we are meeting our goals both in the short term as well as the long term. In order to do so we are looking at smaller more frequent updates. The tradeoff there is that you won't see the monumental / monolithic content updates you are used to. However, in the interim to things like the pending rebalance, we can alleviate some issues that are roadblocks to higher subscribership.

We will be creating a monthly poll with the top 5 ideas from our Monday morning information session (the one where we review the top 10 forum suggestions currently outstanding). Understand that we cannot cater to every suggestion, but we will choose a few of the ones we think are workable in a short amount of time.

The idea that gets the most votes on the forum will be slated as a development item for that month.

I want to reiterate how important your ideas are to us, and how much we value each of you as customers.

We are here for you and because of you.

Thanks for your continued patronage,

- Boozee

[Traderjill]

Heh.. what exactly was the idea? I think I missed it.

.....
Besides, I've seen all sorts of FC staff apologise many many times already in the last decade.

If I do something to unintentionally wrong/harm/offend another, my actions are two-fold. First, I apologize. Second, I try to do my darnedest to make sure the offensive action doesn't happen again. Look at Anniversary and Halloween events for the past 2-3 years and tell me if they represent the actions of someone that is apologetic. There's hundreds of other examples but I think that'll do.

I think a lot of players (as I said before few posts ago and TJ asked me what I meant) actually owe FC and the great team/s over the years an apology, an apology for whining miserably all the time, an apology for doing naughty stuff in the game that was unintended, an apology for constantly demanding they get heard in the forums, every time they post.

1. If Funcom views the concerns of their paying subscribers as 'whining miserably' then that's part of their problem. I read the forums quite a bit and see very few whine posts. Most are just paying subscribers asking questions and not getting answers. There's also a lot of people pointing out fundamental flaws in the game and a lot of suggestions. Whining miserably.. that's gotta be the 20% in the 80/20 rule in regards to AO posts.

2. Every game has exploiters and cheaters. Most games takes steps against them. AO, however, seems to support such behavior. My guess is because its easier to turn a blind eye/deaf ear then fix the game. Things go wrong in games but they let stuff get of hand in Pande, at Collector, with the GMI, with the Items Shop, with 3rd party programs, just to name a few. Pande took so long to fix that the average player doesn't know what is/isn't an exploit when playing there. Over the years I've contacted GM's and asked "Is <insert action> allowed and within game rules?' and all i get is 'if you think its questionable then don't do it." Well almost anything could be questionable.. if i stopped doing everything that was questionable I wouldn't play the game at all. Case in point.. is the way enforcers use 1he/1hb perks legit? Ask players and I bet you at least 50% have no idea. When enf's first start doing it I thought it to be a bug.. and so did a lot of people. Now its just a feature of the game. How are players supposed to know the difference between 'working as intended' and not. I used to think it was pretty black and white regarding using 3rd party programs but they blew that out of the water with their multi-boxing stance. So... are players to blame for doing stuff wrong in game? Maybe in some blatant accounts but then again, maybe not. It also wouldn't hurt if they updated the EULA to reflect their current definitions of what is/isn't allowed to happen.

Regarding Boozee's post:

There's one GD that i think was under-appreciated and that's Lindelu. Of all of the GD's so far, she was my favorite because I actually saw changes in game that impacted my day to day game experience. She made adjustments to Smug Den, she removed the Alien snare towers (though, think she did design those things in the first place), changes to the DB bracer so lower levels could wear them, she fixed that annoying bug with the MP PB crystal process.. a lot of little things like that.. they went a long way in making me happy as a customer. The GMI.. mixed thoughts on that one but it was at least a step towards improvement of the 'day to day'. The more recent change to remove unique tags off some items goes in that category. AO has a lot of low hanging fruit and I think that's a big concern of mine.. that even when we get our new shiny engine.. there's so much low hanging fruit stuff that's wrong that the engine won't be enough. Then once the engine is out, they'll be so many bugs and issues they'll spend more time trying to fix that and the game usability things still won't get fixed. It would really be nice if they just start picking the low hanging fruit now/consistently rather than waiting for this big project to complete to get things done.

[Mastura]

Well +1 to both your posts, but seriously. If the problem is getting heard, then perhaps suggestions to do with the forums are a step in the right direction. The forums here are a form of meta-gaming aspect of AO it seems. Not just the forums say, the problem might lie also with any other forms of feedback and/or dev input, assuming you are both already submitting tasks to "Bugs/Exploits" forums, already participating in the test server, council of testers, etc.

That aofroobs post linked did express some specific frustrations that new player encountered that I genuinely believe FC are/will be addressing with the NPE, but likewise a lot had to do with a simple lack of experience with the game from that player. You cannot expect to know how a game works from day 1 or even week 2, especially from a game mechanic as complex as AO.

If you believe these forums are the correct avenue for raising issues and cannot be bothered submitting bug/exploit requests, or reproducing them on test server with feedback and info, then maybe herein lies the root of the problem.

I personally think that the forums are here for us, not for them, with a few exceptions, and personally do not expect them to read half or even a quarter of the posts on here - except obviously the moderators. Furthermore I believe FC's time and resources are better spent coding and not wading through post after post of how each and every player believes the game will be better if x, y or z, often mutually exclusive and conflicting with each other, or more importantly, why they don't like x, y or z - especially if none of the actual hard work (testing, benchmarking, comparisons, recommendations) are contributed with the whine as well.

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/announcement.php?f=540

Like in the real world, if I go up-to my CEO and say boohoo this sucks and this company generally sucks and we aren't doing anything right, it will either fall on deaf ears, or worse still, get myself fired.

If on the other hand I approach it concisely, break down problems into smaller ones, and specify background, recommendations, risks, advantages/disadvantages, possible outcomes, etc, then I might even get rewarded for pointing this out, a pay rise and promotion. If they see it as a benefit because they understand the entire problem thanks to me, they may even set out to fix it, given enough resources.

Of course, if I was a customer complaining about the service, that's entirely different, and handled by a completely different process. However no right company I have ever heard of let their customers tell them how to run the company, or change their products. Some of them have a 'let us know what you think' feedback thingy, but that almost always follows some kind of formal process.

[lunarsolace]

I am glad to see them work on problems new players would have and not veteran emo manifesto.

As far as croakers go... remove their death animation plz!

[Traderjill]

If on the other hand I approach it concisely, break down problems into smaller ones, and specify background, recommendations, risks, advantages/disadvantages, possible outcomes, etc, then I might even get rewarded for pointing this out, a pay rise and promotion. If they see it as a benefit because they understand the entire problem thanks to me, they may even set out to fix it, given enough resources.

Tried it.. doesn't work. I spent I dunno how many hours testing GMI, providing feedback, etc. It got ignore, they implemented it halfdone, still haven't fixed some of the issues that were identified in the testing phase, etc. It doesn't matter what approach you take to communicating with Funcom.. be it thought out or just a rant.. it still gets disregarded most of the time.. to the detriment of their game. And, I will add, that I personally spent 2 or 3 days in game.. in fact all of my ingame time on implementation day, dual logged (in clan and omni ooc) answering questions on that monstrosity when it was released on top of the time spent the day before release putting together 'how to' videos to help people with the over-complicated market. And only did that because i cared about the people in the game, despite me feeling that it was the job of the game dev company to handle proper communication on how to use their tools. I also submit bug reports and I go to test server when there's things I'm able to assist with testing on and submit feedback. I don't just write complaints on the forums but unfortunately most of the issues I have in game won't fit in the scope of a Bug Report. Imbalances and things that just don't make sense aren't considered to be bugs and by submitting said things in a bug report you just muck things up for the people responsible for sifting through those items.

On another note, there's always been one or more community managers and I would expect that role would indeed include reading the forums and addressing player concerns. I have no idea what that role actually does and I've played this game close to 10 years. Tarib stated he was a background guy.. ok that explains why I only know him as the German translator for the GD updates. The other folks.. no idea. I don't expect devs to read forums and respond to every post. I do expect that a Community Manager, in touch with and concerned with the needs/concerns of the community, would sift through posts.. find relevant concerns and talk to the dev staff.. get answers and post responses. Anyway, that's a topic for another day.

Maybe at this stage of the game people are jaded, they are 'ranty', they are bitter.. but its not because 'us' posters are just those types of people.. honestly, I haven't even mentioned 10% of the issues I see with the game since I've been back because I don't like beating a dead horse for years. When I came back this go round I promised myself that I would do so knowing full well that the new engine and NPE (and anything else) would not be released during the 4.5 months of my subscription time. I just came back to mess around in what is the best sci-fi mmo on the market (despite itself). I wasn't expecting to come back and find out they'd screwed with stuff that wasn't broken (i.e. beast) or that they'd start putting the approval stamp on the use of 3rd party programs in gameplay. Those were nice 'bonuses' for my return I guess but also the reason why I won't add additional gametime to my account.

Which, honorable mention to the fact that they extended the Halloween bonus offer for Age of Conan but not to AO. I went to go add time to my account this weekend to find that the offer was expired. Checked my AoC account.. and yeah, it was still there. If it hadn't been there for AoC I prob just would've shrugged it off and added another 3 or 6 months regardless of the issues I've seen since I came back. But, since it was there it felt like yet another slap in the face. And this is what I'm talking about when I say they don't learn from their mistakes. The AO community is VERY forgiving. We're all like the little chihuahua dogs that bark alot but don't bite. We're loyal and yeah they have to endure some complaints and rants but we still continue to give them money regardless. It is ashame that the only way we feel we can talk to them is by hitting the cancel button on multiple accounts. It is ashame that you have to walk away from something you enjoy out of principle for not wanting to give your money to people that don't care about you as a customer. Bottom line is that they don't appreciate the people that have kept this game going, financially, for years.

[Psikie]

I'm going to do my best to be brief, something I'm obviously not very good at.

(Darth Vader voice Impressive, most impressive indeed!

Almost to much like common sense. Even I can't defend FC after that post.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

@ mastura

My interpretation, boiled down into one brief sentence:

If the Devs apologize, it will infer accountability, and prompt the impetus to act accordingly with industry predecessors in order to improve those aspects of the game which are currently at fault.

[Mastura]

I just got a flashback of Johnny Howard and the "Sorry" campaign. Centrelink, anyone?

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Like in the real world, if I go up-to my CEO and say boohoo this sucks and this company generally sucks and we aren't doing anything right, it will either fall on deaf ears, or worse still, get myself fired.

If on the other hand I approach it concisely, break down problems into smaller ones, and specify background, recommendations, risks, advantages/disadvantages, possible outcomes, etc, then I might even get rewarded for pointing this out, a pay rise and promotion. If they see it as a benefit because they understand the entire problem thanks to me, they may even set out to fix it, given enough resources.

This is exactly what I would also expect, and as such I put a lot of effort into JUSTIFYING any adjustment to game.

And I also try to prompt others who are requesting a nerf/adjustment to anything to similarly justify the approach.

People who post "nerf this" "upgrade that" without giving a breakdown as to why such a change is needed, will precisely, be left unheard... it just makes up the cacophony of forum garbage spam.

While I don't like to toot my own horn, I do feel that the recent perk thread I started, to some extent outlines why each perkline needs an upgrade, and justifies those changes in accordance with other changes/toolsets already in game.

[Esssch]

There's one GD that i think was under-appreciated and that's Lindelu.

I vote Cz.

[Enno]

Are you allowing former devs into the beta? I certainly hope you are. How do I go about signing up for that? I am the best bug finder you can wish for, because I know your source code. Muahaha.

[wonderland]

I am the best bug finder you can wish for, because I know your source code. Muahaha.

#rekt

[Ekarona]

Are you allowing former devs into the beta? I certainly hope you are. How do I go about signing up for that? I am the best bug finder you can wish for, because I know your source code. Muahaha.

Couldn't you have told about it to them then? ;D

[Leetlover]

This is a post from another player from within the past 2 months that does a rather good job encapsulating the current concerns:

http://www.aofroobs.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10314

Yeah, they forgot to xfer the old lootfolders to the new playthrough (dailies/hecklers/inf-missions w highbies) of AO.

[Ophiuchus]

Are you allowing former devs into the beta? I certainly hope you are. How do I go about signing up for that? I am the best bug finder you can wish for, because I know your source code. Muahaha.

Oh my

(*coughs* https://register.funcom.com/account/ao_beta/ctrl/ )

[Boozee098]

Like in the real world, if I go up-to my CEO and say boohoo this sucks and this company generally sucks and we aren't doing anything right, it will either fall on deaf ears, or worse still, get myself fired.

I have given a lot of thought to this over the past day or so and just wanted to say that I do find this insight very profound, and it does really get down to what I think is the kernel of the matter.

I agree with you 100%. In fact, in the past when I've been in a situation where the CEO of our company solicited recommendations for improvement from employees due to problems with attrition, it was more of an exercise in giving the appearance of compassion rather than any intention of making the kinds of changes required to make it a sustainable place to work.

So they started an initiative called the "best place to work" initiative (cough-new player experience-cough) and they kicked it off by wheeling out a giant tent in the parking lot and serving fajitas. I remember always laughing to myself that those executives might have actually thought or hoped that just by calling themselves the "best place to work" it may actually improve morale. Something about lipstick on a pig...

It didn't. Because we were computer programmers, and fundamentally it is a hard job with long hours and intermitent rewards. Your phone rings with someone telling you your work is broken and needs to be fixed, or it doesn't ring at all. In a decade of doing this I've never once gotten a call from a client saying "Hey bud, just called to tell you the application is running great, thanks!"

You can't change those dynamics with a token gesture. A tent full of fajitas doesn't make the job any easier, make the clients less demanding, or make the pay any higher.

And last time I checked they actually DO have "best places to work," which are determined by independent rankings. Turns out you actually can compute that, and it's more meaningful than just assigning the label and hoping for the best.

My point is you can call these things anything you want. New engine. Rebalance. New player experience.

You can say they will alleviate all of the ills with this game. They may very well do just that. Shoot, maybe the fajitas worked on a couple people too? (In case you're wondering, the proverbial Initech next door gave us all raises)

At the end of the day what is substantive is the here and the now.

What matters is the current player experience, not some mythical unicorn.

If the Devs apologize, it will infer accountability, and prompt the impetus to act accordingly with industry predecessors in order to improve those aspects of the game which are currently at fault.

I wish I had just typed that the first time and saved myself the effort.

Also, you forgot the part where they can choose to do none of those things, and we can continue to not feel too terribly bad about not recommending the game.

[Mastablasta]

I vote Cz.

Cz was never GD.

[Esssch]

Cz was never GD.

Truly under-appreciated then.

[doctorgore]

Until I see something worth making my current toons worth playing this game is dead to me it can rot into oblivion. The NPE is worthless as it assumes we will be getting new players which is like saying someone will win the lotto and get struck by lightning twice in the same day on a full moon in the month of may... We won't be getting any new players and its time the players accept that and fc actually start telling us when the servers will be closed and not phantom and broken promises. I won't be visiting any NPE because its not worth rolling another useless toon like many I have an account full of them. All of them are trophies of failure called pvp/pvm game design or lack of...

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Rest assured that, at least with current balance, every single new person will roll fixers!

most likely, you won't EVER be bothered for NCUGSFHNQFGRIDKTHXBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEE ever again.