Friday with Means - March 11th, 2011: Full Steam Ahead

[Autohead]

Not that anyone wears it anymore.

They probably would if it wasn't orange!

I personally think it's one of the cooler looking (style wise) tier sets.

[Ebondevil]

They probably would if it wasn't orange!

I personally think it's one of the cooler looking (style wise) tier sets.

Should make it tiger striped (Black and Orange) for utter awesomeness.

[Igri00]

They probably would if it wasn't orange!

Yea, I had such a problem with orange clothing IRL. Just couldn't see wearing it... then I ended up at the University of Florida. (Orange and Blue). Now, wearing orange just seems so normal.

[Autohead]

I actually have like 3 orange shirts, and every time my 3 year old decides she wants to pick out my clothes for the day, she always manages to point at them first..."this one daddy?" ...no, no, no.

[Lheann]

Should make it tiger striped (Black and Orange) for utter awesomeness.

So you would be Tiger Striped? Hmmm could we get a special for wearing a full suit of it called "Tiger Blood" and if you are in Adonis and use it you enter "Sheenanite" mode till you log out and the special has a 1 sec recharge on it too.

Sheenanite Mode = 4 billion HP with 1 million point heal delta on 1 sec tick. Nano is set to infinite. Damage is set to 100000 - 1000000 ( 1000000 ). And Evades and AC's are set to 1 billion. Player can cast all Nano's of all classes.

Of course to counter this they would need to Crat to have a "Trump Pet" with a special attack called "You're Fired!" Using "You're Fired!" on a player in "Sheenanite" mode will cause the player to rage log and then post a rage quit forum post and then use a base ball bat on their computer. Afterwards they and Mel Gibson will talk about feeling the "Passion".

Yep bored this Sunday night and figured what the heck. Lets poke fun at all the news getting folks.

[TheDrizzler]

Yup, the newbie island is due for a remake/fix. Only reason I tolerate the new alt experience is cause I've done it so many times before and know exactly how I want it and how to save my favourite setup. A new player wouldn't probably even figure out how to get to the prefs window at first. The default setup is horribad and the item database is WAY too big, like 95% useless crap in it. Hope you made some new character models with the new engine cause it's sorely needed.

Anyway, posting cause I'm bored camping fgrid part2 placeholder mobs. Kinda crappy set up that quest line(quest npc's with aggro, right ) and even on a slow'ish respawn timer with a low chance to pop the right npc needed for it.

[Hunni]

*yawns* I find it hard to get excited about these posts anymore.

So, for you cheerleaders... Rah. Go AO. Yay.

[Isvarte]

Yup, the newbie island is due for a remake/fix. Only reason I tolerate the new alt experience is cause I've done it so many times before and know exactly how I want it and how to save my favourite setup. A new player wouldn't probably even figure out how to get to the prefs window at first. The default setup is horribad and the item database is WAY too big, like 95% useless crap in it. Hope you made some new character models with the new engine cause it's sorely needed.

Anyway, posting cause I'm bored camping fgrid part2 placeholder mobs. Kinda crappy set up that quest line(quest npc's with aggro, right ) and even on a slow'ish respawn timer with a low chance to pop the right npc needed for it.

I totaly agree. I'm at my first toon (just dinged lvl 100. Whohoo), and - for me - the hardest part is to get decent equipment compared to all the other players around. There is too much junk around, and there is too many long playing players that have equipment that will every whip newcomers ass (especially in BS!).
I do understand that there should be "special" equipment that is hard to get. But something is wrong when half of every toon at every lvl range got em. The bar for decent equipment is just too high these days..

(PS: I do apologise for my NorEnglish)

[haxi]

Anyway, posting cause I'm bored camping fgrid part2 placeholder mobs. Kinda crappy set up that quest line(quest npc's with aggro, right ) and even on a slow'ish respawn timer with a low chance to pop the right npc needed for it.

That quest is horrible. Spawn mobs, find someone to calm them or try the yalm approach, meanwhile hope someone else is not doing the same quest and either they ruin your mobs or you ruin theirs.

[Rustytools]

W00t! Nice to hear that the startup experience is being looked into.

So fixx's dialogue is you, Means? Hmm...I always wondered who made it...

One weekend eh? Heh. That's quite an admission, considering the officiality of your position. Hehehe.

Looking forward to moar details about teh new startup. Keep up teh good work ladies and gentlemen!

[spookiepants]

W00t! Nice to hear that the startup experience is being looked into.

I agree. It was nice when we heard it over a year ago too.

[Alternity]

I totaly agree. I'm at my first toon (just dinged lvl 100. Whohoo), and - for me - the hardest part is to get decent equipment compared to all the other players around. There is too much junk around, and there is too many long playing players that have equipment that will every whip newcomers ass (especially in BS!).
I do understand that there should be "special" equipment that is hard to get. But something is wrong when half of every toon at every lvl range got em. The bar for decent equipment is just too high these days..

(PS: I do apologise for my NorEnglish)

So you want equal gear handed out to you, when you start the game. So that you can compete with the people who've spent hours upon hours farming the good stuff?

Yeah that sounds fair.

[Wrangeline]

So you want equal gear handed out to you, when you start the game. So that you can compete with the people who've spent hours upon hours farming the good stuff?

Yeah that sounds fair.

To be fair, I don't think that's what he was saying. What he said is true, it's very hard for new players to have fun with "older" players when the difference between the toons are so great. It's just the general notion that people would have to play a MMO for months and even more before they can properly tango with the rest of the playerbase, that puts a definite hamper on the fun of jumping aboard a "new" MMO.
The cost of entry in AO is very high and a bit of a turnoff for a lot of people.

[Pomidor]

imho, problem will dissapear as soon as advertisement will hit live: we get fresh blood which will cooperater together (new onews with new ones) and only visable difference will be in PVP, field, where those new ones will not likely want to participate at first days. Also - what I belive in - if things will get 1/4 as it was 6 years ago, playerbase wise, getting stuff at low/mid lvls wont be big deal, since there will be plenty of TM/Dungeon/Org Raids going on, so thus this, newcomers will have change to go on paar with oldies (of course, skills arent the case!).

Requesting ANY change in acces to items before we actually can see the difference after engine/advertising AO is not good idea.

[Mastablasta]

imho, problem will dissapear as soon as advertisement will hit live: we get fresh blood which will cooperater together

I don't understand how the new advertising partner will get more people ingame?

[Arriviste]

I don't understand how the new advertising partner will get more people ingame?

I take it that Pomidor is not referring to streaming in-game advertisements, but rather a marketing campaign out-of-game.

[Worldofalts]

good to hear some quests are getting a work-over.

sitting in northern scheol atm killing the passive-aggressive spirits over and over to find the xan burial stone that likely has a 10% drop rate, while the 4 or 5 spirits that drop it have a 15 minute (i think?) spawn timer. if someone else comes along that needs the stone, i think I'm going to /wrists. after doing the Scheol quests many, many times on many different toons, i seriously hope they get cut down to a 5 minute quest where you have to acknowledge to a couple npc's that the place exists, before you head to adonis (SERIOUSLY!!).


{edit} finally found a xan burial stone after 45 minutes of camping, although its taken longer in the past iirc for a couple toons, and sometimes it drops on first kill. did both of the Scheol quests teamed up with an orgmate one time... suffice to say we didnt speak for a couple days/weeks afterwards.

[Starphoenix]

Unless you can play this game and find useful weapons and armor as you go about leveling I doubt any new players will stay for very long. I don't even like to start new characters because of all the shopping I have to do to get them somewhat decent.

[Regarok]

So fixx's dialogue is you, Means? Hmm...I always wondered who made it...

One weekend eh? Heh. That's quite an admission, considering the officiality of your position. Hehehe.

It was never a secret that the startup area we have at the moment was done in one weekend. As far as I remember, Gaute Godadger (or was it Cz?), the GD in charge back then, announced the new startup area very proudly with something like "Last weekend we sat down and had some beers and created a completely new, Alien based startup experience.", think this post can still be found somewhere in the forums.


Edit:

On the noob topic:

The forums just deleted my first edited because it logged me out while typing and I didn't have the chance to save it before it was deleted, but now it should work.

What I wanted to say: The startup weapons and the noob island armor are nice and decent. But the weapons only until you hit the mainland. And then, a noob will try to find something better, be it in missions or in the subway. And he won't find something better (except for lucky Agents who stumble into a Gripo), even worse, many of the subway and mission mobs have way more hp than the noob island ones (while not providing as good xp as the island ones) and the weapons they drop are often crap compared to the already not sooo perfect startup weapons. The armor is also kinda problematic. While the noob island armor is decent until it hits the level cap, the noobs don't know what armor could suit their needs. Most of them will be told to get some carb armor when asking for some good armor. Carbonum isn't bad, but for many of the newbies it's damn expensive. Same thing for the weapon upgrades for old crap weapons, the idea was nice, but it's way to expensive for new players (which means: the players which use them). I know, there should be a gap between hard core twinked toons and newbies, but at the moment the gap between most noobs and nearly untwinked toons from long term players is huge.

The Newbies shouldn't get everyzthing stuffed up their arse, but a better progression equip-wise would make a huge difference. It wouldn't make them comparable to hard-core-twinked toons, but it would make them a bit happier. And happier players don't rage-quit too often.

[Mastablasta]

It certainly wasn't Gaute as during AI we were on our 3rd game director