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Thread: Letter from the Game Director

  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by zirca View Post
    i vote for not paying rl money for virtual items.
    virtual items should be obtained w virtual money.


    zirca
    very very true, got disapointed when i read that. At least it should be a cred coversion for those points. like 50m - 1 paid point

  2. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by Silirrion View Post
    With the packs that are playfield packs, there will of course be new items just like any other expansion style content, just not on the same scale, so you will in most cases have to have purchased that booster to use the items. Those packs can be seen exactly as expansions just on a smaller scale and at a cheaper pricing point.
    I have a quick question in regards to this point.For the vehical booster pack we pay x number of dollars for the pack..no problem there.

    What im curious about is after we have the pack must we quest for the vehicals,or pay 10s of millions for the vehicals before we can use them?
    Steveo:
    NT's who survived SL are into S&M, its been proven several times on here

  3. #63
    Anyone remember Chopper from 2000AD? I'm already suckered into getting at least one board.

    Some requests:

    Omni get floating battle / security platforms instead of boards - Omni don't surf!

    Scout mecs get to damage surfers; surfers get 'sticky bombs' they can plant on mecs.

    New playfield with mec vrs mec combat heavily favoured (e.g. non-mec's take damage / -skill HoTs etc. Inside a radiation / lava zone comes to mind) for both PvM & PvP.

    Mec upgrades bought for VP for your personal mec only: speed, damage, armour, anti-personnel etc. Yes, anti-personnel. I don't care if I'm in 20 meter tall armoured mech & you can't hurt me while I can mow you down - runaway, grab a rocket launcher or go get your own! Better yet, have Mec only XP research lines - you have to be mech'd up & killing mecs to get it!

    Paint jobs for Ofab / Mecs buyable for VP.


    LE needs some lower level content love!

  4. #64
    i vote for not paying rl money for virtual items.
    virtual items should be obtained w virtual money.
    True to some extent. I have no Problems paying for fun stuff. This shouldn't have a serious impact on the gameplay, social armor, special appartments, cool vehicles. Etc.
    But I'm absolutly against paying cash for Credits, or Weapons, Armor etc. That would'nt be the best for the game, see all the "Goldseller"-issues games have these days.
    I think Funcom sees this in the same fashion as I ( or we, the majority of the gamers ) see it. Hence, they did two surveys on the theme.
    But it would be cool to get some input from Silirrion here, if these Money-for-stuff Trades are really Social or fun things ONLY. Like the Veteran points, the top notch of this stuff is something that makes your life easier, but not something that will empower your char. I really like that line, and I hope it is kept in the near ( and distant ) future.
    A bullet may have your name on it, but a grenade is addressed To Whom it May Concern.

  5. #65

  6. #66
    Quote Originally Posted by Rubera View Post
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oinonHHGFrQ
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYlb_wEkYs

    If you can't download the other videos for some reason.
    Thanks for that!

    Almost forgot to mention that this is great news.
    Last edited by Okono; Jun 27th, 2007 at 16:54:02.

  7. #67
    THose tricks with those boards looked so oldschoolish liek in 1991

    I hope they will add more than 1 trick combination that would be awesom!

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by Ikarus View Post
    True to some extent. I have no Problems paying for fun stuff. This shouldn't have a serious impact on the gameplay, social armor, special appartments, cool vehicles. Etc.
    But I'm absolutly against paying cash for Credits, or Weapons, Armor etc. That would'nt be the best for the game, see all the "Goldseller"-issues games have these days.
    I think Funcom sees this in the same fashion as I ( or we, the majority of the gamers ) see it. Hence, they did two surveys on the theme.
    But it would be cool to get some input from Silirrion here, if these Money-for-stuff Trades are really Social or fun things ONLY. Like the Veteran points, the top notch of this stuff is something that makes your life easier, but not something that will empower your char. I really like that line, and I hope it is kept in the near ( and distant ) future.
    As I said earlier in the thread, there aren't any plans to include any items that would have any significant effect on game play in that way. We are very conscious of people's thoughts and concerns there. The new system will be for the types of social 'cool and fun' items that are optional for players. The comparison to the veterans items is a good one, we won't be offering new weapons or armor or anything like that for direct sale.

    Of course, as also mentioned above any boosters that are playfield packs will of course have loot, but like an expansion any charge there is for access to the content just like an expansion, those packs will in effect be 'mini-expansions' and the points there just another valid payment option - we also plan to make the previous expansions available for points as well once the system is live (kind of like buying the full games on the XBox live system for example, its just another thing you can get for your points)

    You will never need to buy individual items though to get the best guns, armor or items in the game. Those will always be something that must be gained through normal gameplay so you don't need to worry there
    Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
    Old Timer

  9. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by Jelacore1 View Post
    I have a quick question in regards to this point.For the vehical booster pack we pay x number of dollars for the pack..no problem there.

    What im curious about is after we have the pack must we quest for the vehicals,or pay 10s of millions for the vehicals before we can use them?
    Hehe, hope not. I got a kick out of buying LE and hitting "mech" right afterwards.

    In line with this question, comes:

    Do I get one motorcycle, or all of them, when I buy? If I only get one, is that motorcycle active on my account or just my one toon? Will the boards be included in the same purchase? Am I buying off the value menu, or getting a combo meal?
    Causes:
    Make the battlestation a reality for all levels!
    FC, we need Noob Island fixed!
    Go go Godzilla! (Please)
    Amateur CoH Chest Detective
    Temporarily out of game due to XBL. I shall return.

    KAES
    Breakdown: Achiever 53.33%, Explorer 46.67%, Killer 60.00%, Socializer 40.00%.

  10. #70
    Well I have to say this looks promising.. from a person with a computer that is AoC ready I am having a hard time making heads or tails of staying in a game that lags more than games that require 10x the power to even launch.

    I really hope the server/engine updates are headed here faster than the rest because thats what I care about most. Fix the engine, fix the bugs and I am an AOer for life. I have never liked Direct X games till 9.0c came out. So I hope to all thats divine that you are going with a DX9.0c-10.0 route for the game in terms of not only appearance but also visual glitches, latency and not to mention just what is possible.

    Direct Input in DX7 is horrible.. always has been. Very very few games came out with DX that I played and enjoyed due to the chunkiness of the controls alone. So this is good news Sil. Keep at it. Re-invent this game. Focus on RK content. Expand the Sci-Fi side of it more than the SL/Fantasy side please. Dust Brigade, Unicorns, Red Freedom and more...

  11. #71
    All Great News!!!

    I love the GFX / Engine Update (been waiting years for this one)

    I love the booster pack concept

  12. #72
    I really hope this graphics upgrade is going to solve the problems for ATI card users. I'm getting fed up of crashing in missions

  13. #73
    Quote Originally Posted by Silirrion View Post
    Its unlikely we will move up to DX10, but we will certainly try and get to be able to use some of the newer features, but we will also have to be mindful of not trying to much so that it remains playable for the majority of our players. The main area it will benefit is performance as we will hopefully be able to utilise the GPU rather then just relying on the CPU
    Okay. No probs with that. As long as you start using more of my vid card i'm happy

    Quote Originally Posted by Silirrion
    I can't go into specifics on the pricing just yet, we will announce those a little closer to the time, but I would imagine it certainly wouldnt be any more then that for most of the types of packs we are aiming for as a rough guide.
    Around there about for the booster packs? Not bad. I can handle that depending on how i'm gonna be doing financially(starting college in August).


    Quote Originally Posted by Silirrion
    With the packs that are playfield packs, there will of course be new items just like any other expansion style content, just not on the same scale, so you will in most cases have to have purchased that booster to use the items. Those packs can be seen exactly as expansions just on a smaller scale and at a cheaper pricing point.
    So there is gonna better items? Well.. i guess that you can skip buying the playfield if nothing is intended for a profession which is nice, so you dont have to complain about not getting anything in x playfield when you dont have to pay for it.

    One more question, can you be in combat with the hover boards?

    Edit: Just saw the hoverboards in action. CRAZY! I'mmmm soo gonna buy them asap Nice work on them.
    Spartanx9 220/25/70 -Inactive
    [TR]Zuka Zamamee level 50 Grenadier, Executive of Aethyr Knights, Pegasus Server. -Long Live TR-


    Silirrion:I was a gimp

    I stand alone on the road to hell.

  14. #74
    Sil, will the new Vehicles be items that you use, or summonable like Mechs. And do you need to obtain them after through some means like crafting (Like the Stiletto) or their just there when you log in after buying?

    And will they require varying skills in Vehicle air or ground? (like the Bike seems to preform like a Yalm anyways) Like lower to higher skill depending on the model?
    Krause Equip

    *** Krause's Evil WTB Thread! (Weird/Odd Stuff) ***
    (Items like "Lost Faith/Hope", "Wreath of Insects", "Chirop Exoskeleton Wing Mesh", "Small Jar", "Old Barrel")
    Quote Originally Posted by Means View Post
    This is going to get done if it kills me or preferably someone else.

  15. #75
    Quote Originally Posted by Silirrion View Post
    You will never need to buy individual items though to get the best guns, armor or items in the game. Those will always be something that must be gained through normal gameplay so you don't need to worry there
    I have a suggestion that would get you a TON of money:

    Ofab designer packs.

    It doesn't give you new armor, but it lets you PAINT the armor like the old Yalm paint. With new textures. More detailed textures. Maybe even textures created by players that filter through some contest.
    Theonara: "...but if I weren't married, some days I'd offer to kiss you. You just make too much sense. "
    Maeventura: "Sigh, once again I can but only bow for hyde's wisdom."

    ...."Social" keys, lightbars, wen-wens......Better tabbing!

    ... First Troxdoc with QL300 symbs (AO 17.0 pre-Albtraum guide) ... as well as first with 12 of 13 Alpha symbs.
    ... First TL1 Clanner with Omni-Armed Forces armor (pics) (pointless yet hawt)


    <original UI hacker ... when not actively playing AO ... email = 'hyde [at] athenpaladins • org'>

  16. #76
    First of all, happy birthday to the game, and thanks to the staff and crew behind the scenes who are working hard to keep us entertained; this is what games are about afterall, to have fun. While we may not seem to be 100% satisfied all the time with every aspect of what we have or get, there's still something that made/makes us stick around for more. For six years already (2.5 for me). So you must be doing it right afterall...
    AO will be getting some competition soon as far as SF-themed MMORPGs go; how successful they will be is yet to be seen tho. But flashy graphics isn't everything, and I think beating AO in terms of richness and diversity of content, while maintaining the "classic" RPG gameplay is something not easy to achieve.

    A few thoughts about the shape of things to come...

    The engine upgrade. This is probably the best thing that ever gonna happen to AO. And the game deserves it, too. But what's even more important about it that it seems to suggest that FC has not given up on AO yet (as some of us theorized earlier this year, that this sudden torrent of new content that was introduced over a course of just a few months marks the "End of Days" for AO, a time when all your wishes come true before the game goes out with a bang), and in fact have long term plans with it.
    Don't try to improve looks and performance at the same time. Build a solid engine and some tool to convert the existing resources into the new format it uses, so it'll look the same for the time being, but will perform a lot better, which is the most important thing at the moment; to get rid of Dx7 and its drawbacks and driver-related issues ASAP. Try to do something like VALVe did with the original Half-Life when converted it to run under the Source engine. The game looks and plays the same (with some minor changes here and there), it uses the old resources, maps, textures, everything, only on a modern Dx9 engine. Then you can start reworking the resources themselves as time permits, to utilize the new features that come with a more powerful engine.

    A bit about the faster content cycles we have now... They are a bit too fast, I'd say. At least as far as I'm concerned, I feel overwhelmed, and can't really keep track of what's happening to the game lately; what new stuff is there to watch out for, to make plans of trying out or getting, or even just to be aware that they exist as alternatives to some other things I do happen to know about. New stuff is good. But too much new stuff can still be troublesome, especially for the casual players, who doesn't have all the time in the world just to stay up to date to fast, large scale changes, and thus they inevitably lag behind as all this new content just overwhelms and washes them (us) away.
    Allow some time for the dust to settle, review feedback, take some time to tweak the newly released content a bit based on the players opinions, before hitting us with yet another bunch of new stuff. Also, try to shift the focus of them a bit; less endgame stuff, and more for the middle levels (I'd say the 160-190 range lacks the most at the moment, in my experience most players just grind through it as there's not much else that can be done, while the abilities and skills are capped for the most part of those levels; at least there should be some fun things to do instead of just grinding either hecks or Pen missions).
    Also, new content should be designed with consideration to less players available lately for heavily team oriented activities; and I think designing new quests/encounters for low/mid level in a way that they're virtually undoable without high level (TL7) help is a bad idea in itself. There's enough of that kind of content already (especially in SL), and it's hard enough to find high level people who are willing to do them for you, which is understandable: they do all the work but only you will benefit from it. I don't see much point in those kind of quests and stuff.
    Alternatively, instead of adding completely new content, some time could be taken every now and then to review and refresh old content, including things for froobs. Classic/RK items, tradeskills, monster behavior, missions and mission types, outdoors encounters for all levels, maybe even a few new uniques and dynas, new static dungeons (not like ToTW, BioMare, etc, less complex than those, but still something worth discovering ang going back for a bettrer chance of a phat drop every now and then, a safer levelling environment or whatever). Maybe even try to implement that new kind of mission/quest hybrid system used in Albtraum on RK, for all levels. This sort of things.

    Content packs. It sounds interesting enough, if done well, it can be a valuable and useful feature of the game. The tricky part will be to offer things that will actually incite players to buy them without offering significant (or any at all) advantages (becoming more uber is the most important, if not the one and only motivation for some), except for the mini-expansions, and the stuff you can get if you play there.
    But what's more important is to firmly stick to this policy, no matter what. Because this has the potential to ruin and kill the game if buyable advantages will still appear at some point. Players will then want more, and then yet more, and then there's no stopping anymore; 99.9% of the game content will lose their importance because of the buyable stuff, and it'll become just a blitzfest to 220 in the shortest time possible (not that it isn't already, at least for some of the playerbase) since you can buy whatever phatz you want with real money for 0 time and effort.

    All in all, the plans are promising, there seems to be a lot of exciting changes worth waiting for. Let's hope we can discuss how it all turned out yet another six years from now...
    Last edited by Honorbound; Jun 27th, 2007 at 18:23:48.

    "All things point to that they didn't play to win, but for the game itself and to play well. ... Later in their evolution, they forgot all about playing and having fun. When their corrupted minds only cared for what new ways they could gain power, there was no room for the simple things in life."
    - One Who Will Always Listen
    "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
    - Librarian Isador Aikos, W40k: Dawn of War
    "If you want to make enemies... try to change something."
    - Adam Jensen, Deus Ex: Human Revolution

  17. #77
    don't **** it up.
    Limefire, The Great White Hope

  18. #78
    Its All About The Phats.
    Sil and Team,

    Having been here since January 2002 and a regular thorn in your side, i wanted to say that things are looking so good at the moment.

    The regular updates, and regular forum updates are most welcome indeed - seeing the 17.5 patch notes up as the 17.4 patch went live was awesome - the apparant image at the moment is that the Funcom team are totally on top of things

    It feels great to be playing AO at the moment because yourself and the team seem to be so focussed on things and the feedback makes us see this. Its brilliant!

    Im not trying to be patronising at all cuz im nothing but a mere noob in the grand scheme of things, but AO is once again awesome at the moment thanks to these efforts.

    Im surei speak for a massive proportion of the playerbase when i say thank you, and keep up the good work!

    P.S - i almost wet myself when i read you were working on a new engine 0.o there is no game out there quite like AO, an engine upgrade could keep this incredible world going for so much longer. Thank you!
    Acetsuntura (220]/21/70) - Adventurer

  19. #79
    please please please (1000x more) think about instancing pande when you get a new server in place. Having such rigid times for beast zergs sucks so badly.

  20. #80

    ...

    This is very cool! I just re-opened my account after 3 years, and looks like I picked the perfect time to return to AO. The hoverboards and jet bikes look awesome. I like the ideas you have in mind for the future--Graphical update--Yay! New Playfields--Yay! Please, please, please keep it up. AO is perhaps one of the very few choice sci-fi MMOs on the market, and I would like to see it continue to thrive... and perhaps reach the fateful day when a full-blown sequel is announced.

    Great job, Sirillion (I hope I spelled it well)
    Claudian Omni-Tek Meta-Physicist Lvl 27.RK1

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