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Thread: Monthly Development Update: January 2012

  1. #181
    Quote Originally Posted by eroz_c View Post
    but the bottom line is other attraction and retention methods of people are needed.
    It's just my opinion and I don't have any numbers to prove my point, but I think retention numbers are pretty good.

    I guess quite a lot of people quit the game after playing for only a few hours/days, but you can't avoid that really. It happens with any MMO and any game in general (especially if it's f2p).
    But people who play for one month or two usually tend to stay abord for quite long. For what's it worth, from my experience most of these people play for at least a year. You can't really make them stay more, after that time I guess it's either they become fanboys and will have a strong interest in the game for the rest of its lifespan, or they go away and never return, because they do not feel the game has anything special.

    I think this is quite different for newer MMOs, those have a hard time retaining people for more than a couple of months. Again, this is purely my opinion based on people I know.

    Where AO fails indeed is at attracting players.
    Last edited by Thorneee; Feb 8th, 2012 at 20:41:51.
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  2. #182
    Interesting to say the least of all these posts, server merge...I wouldnt mind it, but it wouldnt bother me if it didnt happen either. I think a lot of the frustration is personal experience players have had of course. I've been blessed with playing for so long I know a lot of players that still play. We all play at same times usually even though different factions and orgs. We see each other at raids and that trickles down to us teaming our alts together at lower lvls. So I can't really complain because I am involved in a strong base of long term players. So yea I do see a lot of same people 99% of time. The players I play with are AO for life, we tend to be older and satisfied with the product. It's easy enough for casual play, and has enough challenging encounters to keep you on your toes. Is it all milk and cookies.. no but there is enough pie for me to be content. I trully feel that yes there are encounters that favor some profs over others. But high lvl instanced content aside I also feel you can do anything in AO with any mix of team. Some of my favorite theme teams have been:

    The Pet's paradise all engi's/mp's,
    The 007 missions all agents,
    The UFC fight night all enfo's/ma's,
    The Elminster's disciples all nt's,
    The Ninja Assassins all fix/shade.

    Let me tell you when you play like that it trully makes you use your tools hahaha. You will notice none of those team had doc/adv/sol/crat. Those are teams I've been in for heckelrs, albratuum, alappa, Inferno spirit and anassi quest, db1 and db2 (very tough), arid rift. Very fun times.. not always succesfull but very exciting.

    Perhaps it's the times you play or the zones you sit in that make it hard for you. I can easily say the most popular zone for RK1 is borealis.
    However a shameless plug if you have neutral alts feel free to look me up on rk1. I'm pretty easy to find if you ask around.
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  3. #183
    Quote Originally Posted by eroz_c View Post
    ...
    I could nitpick several pieces of your argument, but I feel this will lead us astray from the main point. This time you provided points, which is good. They were valid points too. There is nothing good about lower population if all of the games mechanics were designed for large populations full of teams. Well, perhaps chat channels being flooded with conversations you don't want to hear.

    However, we are talking about AO, which is not (and probably never will be) a game with good mechanics in place to encourage team-play everywhere and take advantage of high populations. So in terms of AO, it is reasonable to admire a "cozy" population.

    Some examples of AO mechanic/gameplay elements that discourage teamplay:

    -Various quests require that drops to be farmed. When there are few drops, it will just take longer to farm them for a whole team, rather than an individual.
    -Quests in general: Its hard to keep everyone on the same page with a quest. Much easier to solo (or dual log) then to actually team up.
    -Dailies: I love these, but they don't really encourage team play.
    -Anything that drops good loot: Why form a team and risk losing the loot you could have for yourself? Much better to multi-log instances, to solo inf dynas, solo ground raids so you can have the loot, rather than having to share it.

    Would be awesome if these were addressed, then I'm all for a higher population. For now, I'm not to eager for a population increase. It seems fine as it stands.
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  4. #184
    Quote Originally Posted by Kuegen View Post
    I could nitpick several pieces of your argument, but I feel this will lead us astray from the main point. This time you provided points, which is good. They were valid points too. There is nothing good about lower population if all of the games mechanics were designed for large populations full of teams. Well, perhaps chat channels being flooded with conversations you don't want to hear.
    You can turn OOC off. It's harder to switch population on when you need a hand.


    -Various quests require that drops to be farmed. When there are few drops, it will just take longer to farm them for a whole team, rather than an individual.
    People can be nice and stick around to help each other if the farming is maybe kinda fun, maybe in the form of the mobs being tough or having some tricks that would be hard for an individual player to play around. I can think of one instance where you're right: Farming the stuff for T2/T3 armor (which sucks, I know, but maybe it's due for a buff too; this is not a "one problem one solution" post and I won't pretend it's that easy). The problem is, at the level where you could farm it yourself, you're late getting a "half decent" (approximately!) armor for AC and a few semi-useful buffs, and at a level where it would be more useful, those mobs are way too hard. There's not a lot of room to kite in catacombs. I know, somebody, maybe you, are about to say NO THAT IS EASY. Sure, if you're a twinked up veteran who doesn't need the armor anyway, and are running multiple paid accounts to do the content. Isn't that basically Pay (more) To Win?

    -Quests in general: Its hard to keep everyone on the same page with a quest. Much easier to solo (or dual log) then to actually team up.
    Or people could help each other catch up, so that they could do the rest of the stuff together once they're all on the same page. Just because you CAN pay subscription six times over to fill up a team of yourself six times over, doesn't mean "just pay to win, dawg" is the way to go. It is undesirable to have to pay for multiple accounts. Some people have money to burn and just don't mind, but some do it because they don't want to quit the game, they have a lot invested, and so they go through with it because it's what it seems they HAVE to do. (Others just quit.) I'm not going to go so far as to blame player mentality -- that's like saying you're sad because bad things happen to you, but that's YOUR problem for getting sad -- but player mentality determines the course of action to take in these circumstances. It's up to the game to solve the underlying causes. I, for one, try to bring friends into the game. I got two that played for a while, one that has stuck with it. Hey, I tried. The ball is back in FC's court to figure out how to populate the game.

    -Dailies: I love these, but they don't really encourage team play.
    They don't absolutely discourage it, either. There are some people do team up for, like the AI daily, the elite daily, and maybe a few of the regular ones that are a bit hard to do solo for average players. We can't blame dailies because they aren't *specifically* team content, but maybe a few really should be made that cater to that intentionally; perhaps the same selection of team/solo could be made when accepting a regular daily.

    -Anything that drops good loot: Why form a team and risk losing the loot you could have for yourself? Much better to multi-log instances, to solo inf dynas, solo ground raids so you can have the loot, rather than having to share it.
    Player mentality problem, again, a response to circumstances. Maybe droprates should be better, and rarity decreased, as I've suggested in the past.

    Would be awesome if these were addressed, then I'm all for a higher population. For now, I'm not to eager for a population increase. It seems fine as it stands.
    It's fine except for the fact that it isn't.

  5. #185
    Well this might be off topic but over past 1-2 weeks I have watched this game massively decrease of players. You are fixing little things that are not even making a scratch on the surface. All your doing is delaying us. No one likes to be lead on in anyway way and that is what is being done with this supposable upgrade, etc..

    Ill put it like this. No one cares about your pathetic little graphic changes your doing and it won't change a thing. People care about what gameplay you put into the game and new things. Your trying to compete this carebear(Simply easy mode now) with some advance mmos that have way better graphic engines/gameplay/community.

    Funcom, what are you waiting for? What miracle are you hoping for? There is no advertisment. You rely on players to bring new players in this game.

    Funcom, where are these greeters that when you created a character on a brand new account that they would greet you to the game. I have yet to see one in the past 2 years.

    Funcom, Why are all petitions answered by Gm's 95% of the time now?

    Funcom, How do you think your going to better yourself when you hand everyone a free lifetime pass for this game?(Even ones with expansions, more then the gsp give outs). How you expect to pay for a good coder? You can't because of this froob thing.

    Funcom, you notice alot of (Non-exp accts) more then expansion packs. Don't you think that is a bit weird? Why? Because the begineer system to make you want to play the game past lvl 24 worthless..
    >>> Ill lay it out for a froobs leveling system. (Every froob). Startup Island > Subway > Totw (Most quit after totw due to lack of knowledge of what to do next) > Borgs/rk missions.
    >>> Are froobs even allowed to post on forums and ask for help yet? Or are they secluded to a game that has some extremely dead timezones.

  6. #186
    WoW have playfields where all playfields have different missions and things to do.
    Like kill 5 mobs, harvest something, find something and mobs who are giving missions inside those playfields with a story.
    So all playfields where you walk in have a story and all farms or other things you see is also meaned for a mission.

    AO have a terminal in some cities and from there you need to travel 10 minutes and sometimes for froobs without a yalm and lowbie 2 hours to get to the location of the mission that don't have a story or somthing. All the same looking missions. And you get in a playfield that have nothing inside, only some different mobs with higher or lower level. 80% of RK can be deleted and that content can easely put in the 20% of playfields with some content.

    I say by this, why make RK soooo big when 80% of the playfields can be skipped because of useless content inside.

    For excample, when iam going to a themepark. Then i don't want to walk 30 minutes to see 1 things that i better could skip, because of the 30 minutes walking.
    And themeparks are building the thinks at a small place and then making it bigger, not making things on a huge ground to put 1 things in the high north and one thing in the far south.

    Expand only when all playfields are full, don't expand when all playfields are 5% filled.
    And why make a area in TIR and a disco in ICC and all other stuff like this far away from each other.

    Why not make it @ Borealis where 80% of the players are walking, sitting and doing PVP, just too stupid for words with such a low population.
    Last edited by Jupiler1; Feb 11th, 2012 at 09:33:04.

  7. #187
    Quote Originally Posted by Leeson View Post
    I personally do not like the idea of a server merge.

    What happens to city plots? I own my favorite city plot on RK2, I don't want to lose it and have to go to some lag-filled city zone like 3 craters.

    And what happens to those of us - like me - who play actively on both servers and have developed characters on both? My accounts are full on each side - do I have to lose half my characters, or else pay double for what I currently have by being forces into buying another account to put them on?

    Also I think it would have an unhealthy effect on the prices of camped items - you suddenly have double the number of people wanting something, but only 1 spawn of the mob that drops it.
    Quote Originally Posted by lindelu View Post
    This is a valid concern and we're taking it into consideration. We're investigating our options at this point so I'll let you know when we have a workable solution.
    Quote Originally Posted by Firasting View Post
    Some people are all for the server merge, but I have to say right now that if you guys do it in the same sloppy manner that you did DNW i'm fully against this.

    What's gonna happen to the fully formed organizations that took so much life of the people that started it and run it, their cities, their org members. When you guys did DNW they lost these organizations, and at this point it would end up in favor of the existing orgs of the hosting server where the merge is happening. If you can transferred all characters to one server and keep their orgs in tact that would be an improvement, but then cities. I have worked VERY hard on my organization cities, they are both right next to each other now for my neutral org and omni org, and this took a lot of work to get this to happen.

    You know funcom that i'm all for a larger population, but if you merge the servers, screw over existing organizations by making us have to reform then i'm out of here, because the DNW closure was just not executed well at all. Do this wrong, and you wont help the population grow at all, you'll have several people follow me out the door.
    Quote Originally Posted by Lheann View Post
    There are many world mob quest lines that are not in anyway setup for large numbers of players. Bazzit's quest being one. You have to kill 6 of a mob type and there are only six total. They are on a 10 minute timer as well. With one or two folks doing the quest line it is not bad. But have been there when there were more people than could fit in a team with current population and since the quest does not update in RI it was really a pain. Doubling the players would be a total PITA for quest like that.

    Open world Dallies like the goo mines in Broken Shores would be a PITA if there were 10 or 15 people there at once. Subway, TOTW and Foremans all would be that same as well.

    But compared to Cities and Towers this is still ranks in the top 4 or 5 items to consider. And before some says instance the areas I really hate the concept of Anarchy 6 person team Online.

    But if the looking at a merge gets us true auction house style buy thru GMS and gets all Cities instanced so the RK landscape can be pretty once more I would love it. I am one of those that consider the AI cities a blemish on the face of RK. I would love to see them gone.
    I personnally would be against a server merge ... it breaks up the community too much and makes the 'busy' area's even more difficult.

    I like the player cities out in the landscape so we have wampas to return to town with after doing a mission.

    I like having our city out in the landscape so we can use it as a 'highway' to destinations in that part of RK.

    Also, I don't think the hardware can handle a server merge anyways ... if the hardware could handle one then why do we have soo many lag spikes now?

    Even with two servers and the supposedly low toon count that makes you want to do the merge ... I still have to wait on respawns to finish missions or quests and I still get trained by larger toons wanting to camp the dungeon I am hunting in to finish my research or level.

    Merge the servers and these issues will increase. Prices won't go down with more people in the 'market' they will go up with it harder to get what you need for all the increased high level campers. Frustration will go up, not down ... people will be upset with loosing cities and towers they have held for many years ...

    I think a merge is a bad idea ... get new hardware to reduce lag issues and improve conditions so more people come back. Don't drive us away by merging the servers.

    Colrain

  8. #188
    What busy areas?
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  9. #189
    Well it seems that there will never be any game updates that make it more interesting.

    OMG u added collector that the best thing it drops is GoC and some social...
    OMG u added gauntlet that the best thing it drops is parts for a bp/shoulders that 75% people only wear one shoulder. Better slots for backpiece,right shoulder.

    {removed}

    Even thou WoW is fairy tail like it has way more gameplay then this game ever will and thats what keeps players around.
    Even thou Ultima Online is 2d,very poor graphics compared to today the pvp in it still brings 1000+ players on private servers even after 15 years!

    See a problem? I do.
    Last edited by Anarrina; Feb 15th, 2012 at 21:37:12. Reason: nonconstructive

  10. #190
    Quote Originally Posted by Alternity View Post
    What busy areas?
    I didn't know that a busy area contained 2-3(If that) players infront of FT/Bore G either. lol

  11. #191
    Quote Originally Posted by Jupiler1 View Post
    WoW have playfields where all playfields have different missions and things to do.
    Like kill 5 mobs, harvest something, find something and mobs who are giving missions inside those playfields with a story.
    So all playfields where you walk in have a story and all farms or other things you see is also meaned for a mission.

    AO have a terminal in some cities and from there you need to travel 10 minutes and sometimes for froobs without a yalm and lowbie 2 hours to get to the location of the mission that don't have a story or somthing. All the same looking missions. And you get in a playfield that have nothing inside, only some different mobs with higher or lower level. 80% of RK can be deleted and that content can easely put in the 20% of playfields with some content.

    I say by this, why make RK soooo big when 80% of the playfields can be skipped because of useless content inside.

    For excample, when iam going to a themepark. Then i don't want to walk 30 minutes to see 1 things that i better could skip, because of the 30 minutes walking.
    And themeparks are building the thinks at a small place and then making it bigger, not making things on a huge ground to put 1 things in the high north and one thing in the far south.

    Expand only when all playfields are full, don't expand when all playfields are 5% filled.
    And why make a area in TIR and a disco in ICC and all other stuff like this far away from each other.

    Why not make it @ Borealis where 80% of the players are walking, sitting and doing PVP, just too stupid for words with such a low population.
    WOW is a themepark type MMO, AO is not. I don't think too many folks want AO to become just another WoW-clone with linear gameplay, since there are already so many of those.

  12. #192
    Quote Originally Posted by vitriolic-v View Post
    ...
    You refuted my list with player mentality. My list was of game mechanics. They are different. Whether a player could be "nice" and do things is irrelevant. If its not beneficial for the whole team, or if some of the team must make sacrifices, then the mechanic is designed poorly for teamplay.

    Also, turning chat channels off isnt a good thing. It would be an annoyance. While I could probably look past it, its still an annoyance.
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  13. #193
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukelewis87 View Post
    I didn't know that a busy area contained 2-3(If that) players infront of FT/Bore G either. lol
    An exaggeration.
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  14. #194
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukelewis87 View Post
    OMG u added collector that the best thing it drops is GoC and some social...
    OMG u added gauntlet that the best thing it drops is parts for a bp/shoulders that 75% people only wear one shoulder. Better slots for backpiece,right shoulder.
    If they added new loot that was better than everything else, we lose variety. When they dont, people like you complain

    According to my understanding, with every new instance in WoW they essentially add a new set of gear that trumps the gear before it. I dont think everyone likes this approach, and that some of us would prefer variety of gear rather than a cookie cutter setup.

    Anyways hf in your next game then.
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  15. #195
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukelewis87 View Post
    I didn't know that a busy area contained 2-3(If that) players infront of FT/Bore G either. lol
    Well I didn't count areas where only thing that is going on is chat and buffing ... like FT or Borealis.

    I am talking about areas busy enough with people that you get trained on to force you to leave so the trainers can have the spot and/or dungeon.

    I am not worried if Battlestations or Borealis pvp is not 'busy'.

    Colrain

  16. #196
    Quote Originally Posted by Kuegen View Post
    An exaggeration.
    Really? Try around 10pm-12midnight EST time. Like atm theres 4 people.

  17. #197
    Quote Originally Posted by Kuegen View Post
    If they added new loot that was better than everything else, we lose variety. When they dont, people like you complain

    According to my understanding, with every new instance in WoW they essentially add a new set of gear that trumps the gear before it. I dont think everyone likes this approach, and that some of us would prefer variety of gear rather than a cookie cutter setup.

    Anyways hf in your next game then.


    Well funcom already screwed up the armor situation with combined armor. Every single endgame prof will use 75% combined armor. Why? Because it is the best of the best and it adds everything all at once.

    Im not asking for better loot at all. Im asking for gameplay, pvp. Which they have yet to deliever. Why is the market prices crashing massively? Because there is no one to buy it. Because the game is dying at a severe rate after promise after promises have been made and then not delievered in January. For god sakes, people have updated and upgraded outside sources for AO much faster then your piss ant coding team. Alot of people are getting angry and I don't blame them one bit.



    The game is dying and will be extinct by August prob if they don't make some severe changes. I got one word to fix it. Advertisement + ETA on these supposable changes atleast. Not another lie!


    Im not ranting about not being able to achieve something or anything of that nature. The fact of the manner is im displaying true current facts that proves the fall of AO finally.
    Last edited by Dukelewis87; Feb 12th, 2012 at 08:11:14.

  18. #198
    ao economy crashed as a direct result of the s10 nerf.


    everyone and their mom's heard of ao. the problem isn't advertising. it's that once they check out the game they see this 10 yearold carcass we're still kicking along, trying to patch it up with cellotape as pieces fall off.

  19. #199
    Little thing about AO experiance:

    We all know that AO ain't noob friendly. Thats baing said, I was figuring how the hell I managed to play this long, and how my friends, that is deliberatly dragged into AO managed to stay too? Well, At first, when I reach out for distant memories, I can recall there was lots of reading in-game: starting from Backyards (where guide helped you: ask in vicinity for money, and she responded something with missions, ask about missions and she also gave nice feedback), Greetings ARK's, which gave A LOT of help at start (I havent seen Greeter since 4-5 yers!), and community in OOC. From those 3 parts, only OOC stays somewhat usefull, but oh well, I saw many times questions without being answered, and many players (it may be frustration) tend to misslead newcomers with lies about certain things (its not common, but occasionaly can be seen). So newbsie island gave newcomers also few lies (which I have revealed in one of my post about NI) and from other hand, gave false view of the game without giving right answers about most important things in game: credits and implants. Every noob will find himself lost just right after leaving island and without outside help (in that case, players) won't be even able to hang in game.

    I advised AO (back in 2004/2005) to few friends of mine (to be exact, there was 7 of them) and I provided detailed help about game mechanics, missions, tweaking, gathering cash ect. From this seven, three still plays. Now after all these years, I saw around 30-50 newcomers from around my country and none of them stayed longer then level 60-80. The reasons were two:
    (1) First, lack of lowbie content and teaming possibilities besides ToTW and Foremans. Despite leveling was hard in this areas they tried hardly siting in said dungeons for 4-5 hours roughly, only to find out that there is nothing else to do. Then it became borgs kite/hunt which - in fact - was also boring. I managed to show them team missions: doing such gave them great loot and exeprience along with great XP, but once again they failed to find teams to do them when I am offline or bussy. Reason of this is mechanics in NewbiIsland, where there are only mobs to kill and few quests, without introducing players into team mechanics (be sure to note that teaming on newb island cuts down XP gain by half... figures). As we can see, from very start with AO, player is drowned in soloing content and when it comes to teaming, its only 3 know ways to gain XP (none other alternatives are known because lackof support from in-game information and missing PoP-up window for LFT interface...)
    () Second reason they didn't played longer is (AO)shops economy (I am telling about fr00bs), where obtaining a gimpy gun or piece of armor costs big fortune from very start. Only to mention, that most of grear (weapons) is close to not being any use in terms of dealing reasonable damage even in subway (dang, island weaps are more usefull, uses no ammo and costs none).

    As a game designer myself, I could introduce fast and easy way to help newcommers catch-up fast with AO... but FC never listen to good solutions...
    Last edited by Pomidor; Feb 12th, 2012 at 14:23:19.
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  20. #200

    Smile

    One thing that would be helpful from the developers is an accurate date for release of the new engine. It appears that one is not forthcoming because a: they are not really very close to releasing it for what ever reason or b: they are not working on it at all except to set up some cheesy clips to show us and keep us at bay. Either way if something isn't done soon there will be a mass exodus. I think players are beginning to feel like they are being deceived and led on while FC drains every penny they can from a game that they have given up on. If the latter is true it would make me very sad. I have been playing this game since 2006 and do like it very much but being in retail sales I know that the consumer can't be mislead indefinitely with the expectation they will continue to buy my product. If I don't deliver I am out of business. That being said I believe that any of these other solutions being offered such as merging the servers are simply stopgap measures that cover over the real problem, that being the fact that this old lady needs a face lift badly.

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