Friday with Means - October 1st, 2010 - Gratitude

[Ayria]

It's hilarious that you still apparently have no idea why I said you were naive. Keep digging your hole!

Right uh huh.

Basically, you don't have an argument or a point so you'll do the "What?! Zomg you can't see it? OMG u must be rly dumb to not see it!!!" routine to make it look like you have some great insight or argument in plain sight and I'm just incapable of seeing it.

You know, there was this Emperor once who got a new wardrobe...

gosh, you guys still defending FC, claiming they didnt broke any word by failing to deliver 32 weeks

Never said that. I said that they are not legally bound to deliver said video or any other updates. I totally agree that Funcom should have delivered, but do not agree that they must deliver.

[Lusos101]

*shrug* I won't defend that at all, it's just some people tried to make out that there is a contract issue and that they can sue FC.

The juridical system is the ultimate method of evaluating the conduct of individuals and associations of individuals in a society. Because it has the strongest capability of enforcing values and behaviour.
You may not care what your neighbours thinks about what you are wearing, but a prison sentence from a judge will be carried out to its last consequences, even if it kills you.

Arguing about promisses made or not made by FC employees can be analyzed under various lights. We can discuss semantics, morality, social acceptability, etc. But we can also analyze it in terms of its significance under a legal perspective.
Presuming that such analisys is an implied threat of legal action is an abusive attempt at socially discrediting those who dont agree with you.

If you honestly think that only explicitly and precisely phrased promisses are binding under the law (and this actually applies to all major legal systems, be it "common law", "romano-germanic", "sharia", etc.) of almost all countries, then you only deserve one title. Clueless.

An announcement of a future improvement, implies a compromise to deliver that improvement. Because it can influence the behaviour of paying customers. Joe kept his subscription active because there is a new engine coming. Phrasing the delivery time in ambiguous terms doesnt change much. Hoping to deliver until the end of the year may, in a court of law, cut you some slack for any REASONABLE delay. But nothing more then that.

Reasonable ofc is a dubious expression. But I wouldnt bet much money on any delay that is longer then the average time for a game to be made from scratch.

Flame on.

[Ebondevil]

They Confirmed work on The Secret World on the 6th March 2007, though the Wiki says pre-production started in 2002, certainly before they announced the new AO Engine on 27th June 2007.

They had to unavoidably scrap the Ogre version of the Engine they were working on, on the 22nd May 2009, and basically restart after 2 years of work.

As a result they've been working on getting the new engine working with AO for 1 year and ~4 Months.

I fully expect the new AO Engine will be ready before The Secret World is released.

I also expect the new engine will be ready before they've been working on it for 2 years.

I would prefer the new engine to be ready and work right, instead of be a rushed job and full of bugs.

[omegahealer]

Really funny how people whine about this still...
Go play the game and enjoy it!!!! the video isn't some miracle thing that will suddenly make AO fun again or put your hopes up that AO will be awesome again (for you), cause it's just the same game with a prettier look. And face it, we don't play AO for the looks, but for what it has to offer in complexity, world, story.

[Anarrina]

I think the topic of the legal issues has been beaten senseless. Take it elsewhere and move on in this discussion, please.

[-Klod-]

OMG, just lock the thread.

[jorricane]

I would prefer the new engine to be ready and work right, instead of be a rushed job and full of bugs.

qft

[SoapTarder]

...The point being baiting the players and not providing something really really erks the players.

ironically the whole stupid argument for the past two pages was started because someone overlooked the above, which was "the point" of what was being said.

Having seen dozens of friends leave this game solely for the reason above does "Really Erk the players", at least those of us still playing. those that left were down right pissed off for being set up and knocked down like bowling pins.

oh yeah, before everyone completely forgets, Means, when oh when will "Not shade" tags start disappearing from game? I know you guys are planning to do away with the not shade tag, but havent seen anything happen yet in game so far, and it feels like months since it was announced. unless of course, you were being completely sarcastic and had no real intention of removing the not shade tag...

[Esssch]

Right uh huh.

Basically, you don't have an argument or a point so you'll do the "What?! Zomg you can't see it? OMG u must be rly dumb to not see it!!!" routine to make it look like you have some great insight or argument in plain sight and I'm just incapable of seeing it.

You know, there was this Emperor once who got a new wardrobe...

It's amazing how you love to argue when you still have no clue.

Want to know why I said your black-and-white viewpoint was naive? Because sure, we can't sue them over this (or maybe we can, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer - the point is we don't want to), but although they didn't sign some sort of contract, they did form a verbal contract (well...written since we type on these interwebs) with us, the paying customers, and if they fail to uphold their end, then they lose customers. Enough customers lost from these delays and AO gets shut down. No legal action needed. Hence why on the previous page I said we wouldn't want to sue them even if we could, we would simply talk with our wallets and it would hit them harder than any attempted legal action would.

They had to unavoidably scrap the Ogre version of the Engine they were working on, on the 22nd May 2009, and basically restart after 2 years of work.

As a result they've been working on getting the new engine working with AO for 1 year and ~4 Months.

No. They've been working on the new engine for 3 years. They've been working on THIS engine for 1 year.

Really funny how people whine about this still...
Go play the game and enjoy it!!!! the video isn't some miracle thing that will suddenly make AO fun again or put your hopes up that AO will be awesome again (for you), cause it's just the same game with a prettier look. And face it, we don't play AO for the looks, but for what it has to offer in complexity, world, story.

I fail to see how you could possibly tell me what would cause me to enjoy AO more.

oh yeah, before everyone completely forgets, Means, when oh when will "Not shade" tags start disappearing from game? I know you guys are planning to do away with the not shade tag, but havent seen anything happen yet in game so far, and it feels like months since it was announced. unless of course, you were being completely sarcastic and had no real intention of removing the not shade tag...

Well I know they took it off of CM helms, although idk about any other combined helms.

[Demoder]

I still have a screenshot of the land control from sometime in 2006/7 entitled "Clanarchy Online" from the day omni had no tower fields on RK2... It was nice of them to stop there and not attack us neuts.

Any chance that was related to this thread? Just saying.

[PhoenixOfAges]

oh yeah, before everyone completely forgets, Means, when oh when will "Not shade" tags start disappearing from game? I know you guys are planning to do away with the not shade tag, but havent seen anything happen yet in game so far, and it feels like months since it was announced. unless of course, you were being completely sarcastic and had no real intention of removing the not shade tag...

That's part of the whole rebalance thing, which isn't done yet. The upgraded combined helms lost the not shade tag since the regular ones never had it so it didn't change all that much. Removing it from other things would change more and right now they've even said they're trying to not add or change all that much in the way of new items while working on the rebalancing. Of course it didn't stop them from messing around with HH@B now.

[Aeliniyah]

I haven't really checked ingame, but i was under the impression that only the upgraded Combined Mercenary helmet lost the Not Shade tag, and the rest of them still have it?

[nikkydkhick]

The Duke got a demo vid out (which rocks) while AO grfx II not so much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-97N...layer_embedded

[Ayria]

The Duke also had quite a few more years headstart on being behind schedule.

I don't see why so many people are using it as a comparison.

A couple years != a decade.

[PhoenixOfAges]

I haven't really checked ingame, but i was under the impression that only the upgraded Combined Mercenary helmet lost the Not Shade tag, and the rest of them still have it?

As I said, the upgraded ones had it but recently lost it while the regular ones never had it. Take a look.

[Aeliniyah]

As I said, the upgraded ones had it but recently lost it while the regular ones never had it. Take a look.

Umh, Auno still shows, all of the upgraded helmets as "not shade." Though Auno seems to be a bit outdated.

Still haven't been able to log in game for the last few days, and thus couldn't check how they actually are now, but in the patch notes when that change came, Means said that the "not shade" requirement was removed only from the upgraded CM helmet. Which is pretty useless for most shades out there (mine included).

So... the question still remains, did they change all APF upgraded AI helmets, or just the Sillum's CM?

[PhoenixOfAges]

Umh, Auno still shows, all of the upgraded helmets as "not shade." Though Auno seems to be a bit outdated.

AUNO is out of date (18.2), I did that more for the old helms. Even Xyphos which is suppose to be up to date shows all the upgraded ones as not shade though. When looking in game the upgraded mercs one does not show the not shade tag, although the others do. I thought it was all of them that lost it, never bothered to look till now.

[Aeliniyah]

Cool. Thanks for the confirmation.

Too bad the CM helmet sucks for a shade anyway. Only one that really needed to lose the not shade tag was the CC helmet... oh well.

[Arbor]

kind'a thread necro, but i dont know where to put my question instead of here

Will there be any kind of a final event on DNW or do you plan to just let the cleaningwoman pull the powerconnector ?

would be sad if DNW dies unnoticed without a final bigbang

[KennyPowers]

Fair enough. What I did wasn't entirely appropriate...making more work for our own moderators is hardly rational behaviour. What is acceptable...and I use the term losely...behaviour from members of the player base is not necessarily "Ok" from me. I'm sorry if turning tables a bit there wasn't "Ok". I'm even sorrier that some people took themselves so seriously that they were unable to see the humor in it. Some of you work pretty much full-time trying to get under my skin. Sometimes you manage. The vast majority of the time I think I handle the collective scorn thrown at me and my team rather well. I didn't explain this (HHAB changes) earlier as other pressing issues kept me busy. Friday with Means is now written on Thursday to give the community team a chance to translate it in a timely manner...this one was finished at 10:30pm last night.

Giving an answer as to why we changed HHAB doesn't necessarily mean you will agree as I imagine some of you previously had characters with HHAB equiped and you therefore will have perhaps less than unbiased perspective on the subject.

While not *everyone* will agree that +500 NR on a single BUYABLE item is excessive...I think we can all agree it is significant. We felt that it was too significant in both PvM and PvP at the levels it was currently available at. While we are in the process of changing level ranges for PvP and making a PvM playfield that covered the level range in question we felt we would change it. We did not "add" another level locked item to the game...but we did change the nature of it. I do not like level locks but there was no other way to remove this from players of that range. I would prefer to have switched it to a pure skill requirement...but removing it based on people not meeting that skill requirement on log-in would produce obvious results in this game. I recognize this will make life difficult for players who at level 190 feel they need Beast loot. The fact that this is the gear being used seems like another small problem to me rather than something that should be further enabled and encouraged. We have further plans for this item and others that I am not prepared to share at this time. Sector 7 (new upcoming 150-200 Alien single team instance indoors playfield) will more than likely have a more level appropriate ring covering similar stats...and likely without a level lock but rather skill requirements.

Level locks are bad. I still feel that way. Things are not always black and white unfortunately. No matter how much some of us wish they were.

Hmm. Means it seems at the moment you wrote this people were for sure under your skin. That's pretty easy to see! Sigh, it happens man. BTW, doesn't everyone know that NR is a broken skill? Hmm? MAYBE you and your team should look into that first? Broken skills in a game are bad, mkay? Also bad: announcing an engine release years before it is even close to being completed. I get the intention: keep people here as long as you can while we all keep holding on to what seems to be AO's last precious moments, in an attempt to revive the game.