Friday with Means - November 11th, 2011 - 111111 - Open questions

[Gaveup]

That is, unless you can somehow explain how grinding regular mobs creates adept players?

I think this is gained more-so through things like RK mishs and team instances at lower level through to tl5 where you more or less hit the tops of your nano toolkit and are looking to really advance your character to the next phase. RK mishs were a great learning pool,

-different types of mobs (previously ment ac holes and expecting certain tricks from them)
-multiple mob rooms (crowd control or careful pulling were exercised)
-boss mobs incase of team mishs (agg control, healing, and a bit of an extended fight if you were doing the mishs at or above your level)
-incase of team instances (totw/is) you need to learn your role in a dynamic team setting, I remember lots of MA requesting we slow down because they are not a doc :P

these are things many players don't encounter anymore, whens the last time you saw lft with more than 2-3 froobs lft for rk mishs.

So I don't really have a comment on any of this cause honestly I'm just waiting it out till they kill it, and that seems to keep coming closer by the day.

[Kron]

ok, looks like most of my questions have been asked. One remains that I've had for a while.
The economy is obviously being inflated at least partially by the sale of credits for $.
Newcomers to the game get adverts on newb island for buying creds.
A simple piece of code could scan messages for particular website addresses and delete messages containing them. Why not do it?

[xtasie]

pretty sure its fairly easy to create a free website that just forwards you to the website intended for you to see, so in that case, every cred selling message could technically have a totally different website in it. And cred sellers in no way inflate the economy, that is just creds changing hands. Inflation comes from things like ingots and bounties generating creds that were once not in existence and are easily farmable.

[drainbamage]

Means,

Additional question: When SL released Gaute and team tried something of interest but had to roll it back so that all the 200's could get the items needed to progress. The concept they tried was: When you kill a mob that is gray to you (awarded loot rights) that mob will not have any loot on it. The idea was to prevent gray mob's having any value at all to high level players. Of course 200's needed keys and other items so they could level and it was pulled very quickly to allow existing toons a way to move up.

However today when a 220 can farm all the Ado Dryad's for the rare drops and usually does prevent proper level toons from accessing them (also see predator's) this mechanic would be a great way to stop players farming gray mobs. So is there any chance of making this happen again? I really do not see how having a system where 220's can own every low level spawn is helping AO. If you feel that allowing 220's to camp/own the gray spawns is acceptable please explain why.

Thanks.

It would also royally screw over anyone who legitimately needed drops from grey mobs.

If you want to solve the camping problem there are a number of ways that don't involve making things needlessly aggravating for players.

Disable XP Gain and OST Hecklers are about more than just low-level dungeons.

Opposition is to be expected though, both from people who provide loot/credit/xp "services", and their many fans. These things need to change for the good of the game. Instancing content does not improve the situation. One would be inclined to believe that you yourself are a "service" provider here, attempting to spin the topic so you can continue your "business".

Seeing as how I've advocated for the elimination of lootright selling I'm inclined to believe you don't know what you're talking about.

Removing Disable XP Gain would do nothing to the professional farmers because they would just die or /terminate if they needed to clear their bar. As above, there are a number of better ways to solve this problem.

[Lheann]

It would also royally screw over anyone who legitimately needed drops from grey mobs.

When you need something from a gray mob chances are you have heckler kited or OST past the point where you should have done the content. Progression items could continue to drop from gray mobs but rare loot should not.

And tell me one time when you need something legitimately from a gray mob please?

[drainbamage]

When you need something from a gray mob chances are you have heckler kited or OST past the point where you should have done the content.

What an ignorant assumption.

And tell me one time when you need something legitimately from a gray mob please?

Tradeskill components. Quests that you forgot to do or couldn't do at the "appropriate" level yet have unique rewards tied to them. Helping someone with one of the many poorly designed pieces of content in this game.

[Lusos101]

Regarding disabling xp gains and OSTs. I must agree that those 2 are very hurtful to keeping new players interested in playing the game. I would had duallogging, grey mob farming and the "one room dungeons" that are farming paradises.

Farmers and twink owners may cry (and win) but these are some of the worst things in the game. I agree however that the solution is not simply to eliminate some of these things but to create valid alternatives.

A reasonable, for me, alternative to simply removing xp gains is to keep it as it is until the xp pool is full and then putting the leftover xp into leveling even when the toon dies. Overpowered twinks have contributed to the death of teaming and PvP. I think however that we are past the chance of recovery. Specially considering that nothing has been done until now to reduce this gigantic disparity.

I hope that the well intentioned players who like to help their org mates are able to see that by helping a friend they are removing a team member from a regular team.

[xtasie]

I think the biggest question on everyones mind is "when will you give adventurers full access to CiB, reduce Invocation of the phoenix recharge to 1s and add a 4 perk line (advy only ofc) with a 1k per second HoT (1min duration, 10s recharge), 2500 evades, 50k absorb and 1,000,000 AC"

[Johnnykay]

Means: Boxers, briefs, or boxer briefs? If briefs, why do you like men?

[MidgarClan]

Can we Expect pvp suppression range changes sometime soon, to even out the naturally lopsided-ness of pvp? Rebalance can't work without one. When is the re balance again? And oh yea, can we get a server wide credits wipe? Nothin' quite like a Good old Fashioned stock market crash to balance things out.

[Lheann]

What an ignorant assumption.

I have to only go to Kite Hill or any of the heckler spots to find both with Kite/OST teams working from the level 90ish to 160-170 range. So while not everyone does it this way. The shear number of toons one can count over a week doing this make my assumption not so ignorant (assume you meant arrogant). There is a lot of content between 90 and 170 that if you Kite/OST past I have no feelings for people that would loose access to it. It was a choice and it had consequences that the player has to accept.

Tradeskill components. Quests that you forgot to do or couldn't do at the "appropriate" level yet have unique rewards tied to them. Helping someone with one of the many poorly designed pieces of content in this game.

As for quest items. Perhaps you missed where I said progression and quest items could continue to drop even if the mob is gray. I do remember the mess this created at SL release so I understand that progression and quest items need to be accessible.

Not being able to do at the "appropriate" level. Well maybe if someone was not in a bloody rush to 220 they would stop and equip and gear up for the encounters. Exactly what players told other players to do when they were complaining about DR at its release. Seldom do you find non twink range toons that are truly geared out. So I am sure there is content that seems to hard. Stop and gear out your toon, get a team of proper level folks and it is not so hard.

As for helping someone with poorly designed content. Well if the mob is gray to you the helper then that just sounds like OST to me. And I have already asked what FC is going to do to fix it.

For the content that is truly not doable as FC says it should be. If we are doing it the FC way and failing I bet FC will consider changing it. But as long as we abuse it I seriously doubt FC will change anything.

So again outside progression items and unique quest items what content do "YOU" need from a gray mob that you could not have done properly during your leveling?

Regarding disabling xp gains and OSTs.... And some good points....

Well to address the dying and /terminating folks trying to keep a twink at a specific level. Remove XP lost on death. Do away with XP pool. To prevent folks from fussing about loosing all the XP in there pool, award it all them all at once and well they should level up quite a bit in many cases. In a very straight forward manner FC would remove level locked twinks from the game. Problem solved.

OST tanking easy. Mob runs when gray. Or a more impressive option for heck OST. 220 Enforcer mongos a group of gray hecks. Three QL400 heck Bosses spawn each with 10 million HP doing 10K minimum hits with 1/1 attack speed and 10 million evades and AC. These super hecks also cast a 10K hp AOE nuke with a range of 40 meters ever 2 seconds. That would pretty much make attacking a gray heck instance death. Of course FC could just simplify and if heck is gray to you then set player hp to 0 and send to reclaim.



Sorry for derailing the question thread. But good points had been raised about my suggestion/questions to Means and I figured I would expand on them so folks understood where I was going with it.

[Tommara3]

When you need something from a gray mob chances are you have heckler kited or OST past the point where you should have done the content. Progression items could continue to drop from gray mobs but rare loot should not.

And tell me one time when you need something legitimately from a gray mob please?

My level 18 was given a daily mission today to get blood plasma and was given a level 10 biocomm to do it with. I don't want to spend points in Pharma Tech. So I killed gray mobs. Was that legitimate? I don't really care - there were no lower levels around that my actions harmed, which is where I draw the line on killing lower level mobs that don't give exp *shrug*.

[drainbamage]

I have to only go to Kite Hill or any of the heckler spots to find both with Kite/OST teams working from the level 90ish to 160-170 range. So while not everyone does it this way. The shear number of toons one can count over a week doing this make my assumption not so ignorant (assume you meant arrogant). There is a lot of content between 90 and 170 that if you Kite/OST past I have no feelings for people that would loose access to it. It was a choice and it had consequences that the player has to accept.

So you want to punish players for playing in a way you don't think is acceptable. Gotcha.

And no, I do mean ignorant, because you're ignorant if you think there wouldn't be situations where someone misses content.

As for quest items. Perhaps you missed where I said progression and quest items could continue to drop even if the mob is gray. I do remember the mess this created at SL release so I understand that progression and quest items need to be accessible.

Not being able to do at the "appropriate" level. Well maybe if someone was not in a bloody rush to 220 they would stop and equip and gear up for the encounters. Exactly what players told other players to do when they were complaining about DR at its release. Seldom do you find non twink range toons that are truly geared out. So I am sure there is content that seems to hard. Stop and gear out your toon, get a team of proper level folks and it is not so hard.

As for helping someone with poorly designed content. Well if the mob is gray to you the helper then that just sounds like OST to me. And I have already asked what FC is going to do to fix it.

For the content that is truly not doable as FC says it should be. If we are doing it the FC way and failing I bet FC will consider changing it. But as long as we abuse it I seriously doubt FC will change anything.

So again outside progression items and unique quest items what content do "YOU" need from a gray mob that you could not have done properly during your leveling?

Again this comes down to you wanting to force players to do what you think is "proper".

Frankly I don't see why it matters when, again, all of these problems can be solved in ways that don't involve saddling players with more and more arbitrary restrictions. But that would involve actual change and we can't have that, can we?

Well to address the dying and /terminating folks trying to keep a twink at a specific level. Remove XP lost on death. Do away with XP pool. To prevent folks from fussing about loosing all the XP in there pool, award it all them all at once and well they should level up quite a bit in many cases. In a very straight forward manner FC would remove level locked twinks from the game. Problem solved.

It would also force people to choose between gaining XP and trying to obtain items stuck in level-locked dungeons before they level past it. That, frankly, is stupid design.

OST tanking easy. Mob runs when gray. Or a more impressive option for heck OST. 220 Enforcer mongos a group of gray hecks. Three QL400 heck Bosses spawn each with 10 million HP doing 10K minimum hits with 1/1 attack speed and 10 million evades and AC. These super hecks also cast a 10K hp AOE nuke with a range of 40 meters ever 2 seconds. That would pretty much make attacking a gray heck instance death. Of course FC could just simplify and if heck is gray to you then set player hp to 0 and send to reclaim.

You think it's that simple? You think the players wouldn't figure out some other way to powerlevel? If it wasn't hecks it would be other mobs.

The problem with people like you is you think you can solve fundamental game design problems by trying to hammer the square peg of the playerbase into the round hole of how you think the game should be played.

[Tommara3]

Regarding disabling xp gains and OSTs. I must agree that those 2 are very hurtful to keeping new players interested in playing the game. I would had duallogging, grey mob farming and the "one room dungeons" that are farming paradises.

Farmers and twink owners may cry (and win) but these are some of the worst things in the game. I agree however that the solution is not simply to eliminate some of these things but to create valid alternatives.

A reasonable, for me, alternative to simply removing xp gains is to keep it as it is until the xp pool is full and then putting the leftover xp into leveling even when the toon dies. Overpowered twinks have contributed to the death of teaming and PvP. I think however that we are past the chance of recovery. Specially considering that nothing has been done until now to reduce this gigantic disparity.

I hope that the well intentioned players who like to help their org mates are able to see that by helping a friend they are removing a team member from a regular team.

The org mate helping a friend IS a team. Why is that less worthy than forcing the lower level to join a PUG?

To head off the ad hominem attacks, I'm a returning player. There is no one left in my org, i.e., I don't do this. But I would love to able to.

I normally play EQ2, which has a feature that I dearly love. EQ2 has lots of flaws, else I wouldn't be here now. But this one feature is terrific - higher level players can mentor lower level players, which temporarily lowers their level to that of the mentored player.

This is a wonderful feature, since friends don't have to worrry about out-leveling each other. And newbs can find more people willing to team with them.

That won't work in AO for game mechanics reasons, but I think the concept is great. Higher levels helping lower levels is not the reason for the game dying.

The first reason is AO is hard, which I'm not complaining about, it's why I'm here now rather than playing easy mode games. But WoW went mainstream because it is easy.

The second reason is that while the game offers a lot of options to make it less hard for newbs, newbs can't afford them. Try playing a newb without cash from a higher level to see what I mean. You can't even afford to buy all the nanos you can use.

If you could afford to buy the nanos, you don't have the NCU to use them. They cost money too.

The profession implants are great (compared to the old school days when they didn't exist, and you had to find someone to make them for you). Problem is the cost. A level 20 set can be equipped by a level 9 newb (i.e., no twink items), but costs about 80,000 - 100,000, after you throw in the cost of ability nanos. And the NCU to use them. Plus the cost of general nano buffs.

No, you don't need any of the above, as those of us who have survived our newby days can attest.

But the game is much harder without them, which is already hard compared to newer games, and of course, those without sufficient gear makes newbs way out-classed compared to the twinks.

[JustinSane4]

I kinda think that once upon a time when there were more players leveling, you would have had an excellent point. Unfortunately, right now you're blaming the effect, not the cause. Specialized twinks are the reason a lot of content gets done right now - ToTW and Foreman's end bosses for instance. Leveling teams aren't geared to take those bosses (for just leveling, they don't have to be), so if they whatever they drop is going to be accessible, twinks are going to have to do that job. Get rid of the locked-level twinks and players just won't be able to get stuff at all.

If there were vastly more players leveling, you might be able to make a well-balanced ToTW team of players in their mid-50s who could take Aztur and company, or a team of leveling players to beat Lab Director. But right now, it's just not a realistic option. When I was starting 3 years ago (more players at that time btw) I tried, quite hard, to find a team to beat the Subway endboss. Failure. Non-twinks just struggle with bosses in lvl locked content. I'd suggest people make twinks because they recognize that normal teams can't deal with the content, but still need the loot. I believe they are a reaction to that, not the cause of it. And I'd bet anyone with a ToTW twink has more efficient means of making money. Most ToTW twinks are probably made to help other players out.

[Siyra]

It is all one giant, tangled web, and it is destroying the game. Disable XP Gain is the primary tool of these "services", and it needs to go bye-bye, along with the people providing the services.

Seriously.. people could, and did, keep static level twinks looooong before disable xp came around. It is hardly the source of problems.

[Rktim]

Can we pretty please have the SL tower bases opned up sometime in the future with the new engine and all? =D

Oh oh oh!!

And can we pretty please have some new ql200+ (so they dont mess with the frooobs or something..) Lost Eden NW towers bought with PP? =D

[Fhinn]

and another thread descends into bickering.

My question -

Could yu give some comment on whether AO is financially profitable/stable/running at a loss, and in light of this are there any future plans to alter the payment strategy for AO to say a reduced subscription fee or even free to play like Age of Conan?

And as an aside I agree wholeheartedly with the vets who post that they feel left out of these free month offers and feel they should get some sort of 'loyalty offer'
I'm an old player (2003) who is always offered a free month when it comes around. maybe trade veteran points for something unique?

Cheers
Fhinn

[drurban]

Q: Where is Waldo?

[Gaveup]

Why is it the same 2-3 people throughout this whole thread trying to push their agenda on just about every post made when this is a question thread? Answer that one Means.