Monthly Development Update: February 2012

[MyGift]

My question is why you want players trying the game right now? And

A couple of hours later they're stood in WA or Rome without enough creds to buy implants wondering where they find their next weapon, nothing makes sense and you lose them.

If Marketing are waiting for the 'opportune' moment to attract new players then it HAS to be once you have the infrastructure in place to support, encourage and keep those new players. Because for every new player you attract with the video that doesn't stick with it, you lose that potential player when the infrastructure IS there.

This.

Thats why this "marketing" thing is proly just another cause every semi normal person would know that and not to mention awsome guys in FC Marketing.

[Mastablasta]

I think you're missing what I'm saying. It isn't about why there is a delay.. like I said, what you said makes TOTAL sense to me. The question is why communicate things to the community when you aren't sure of an ETA? If, at the time that Lindelu wrote her update, it was still being floated around internally then saying a couple days is irresponsible... because she didn't know if it would actually be a couple days, right? It's not about the time frame but the constant (prior to you and Lindelu being at the head of the team) miscommunication to the community that I find frustrating. I was hoping that said miscommunications would stop with new people but it is continuing and now I'm really feeling like you guys are just playing games with us... well I've been feeling that way awhile but I had high hopes for a change. Now funcom isn't exactly a mom and pop operation so it is beyond me how you guys are not able to clearly communicate in writing. A couple days delay.. that's very specific as in 2 days. That's not the same as "we are done with the video and waiting to hear back from marketing for a firm release schedule."

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse but really when it comes to these types of things you guys need to be more considerate of your player base. I'd say that those of us still around have been more than patient with the delays. At this point, you can just 'Keep it Real' with us because if we haven't left by now we'll probably stick it out a few months to see what you're going to actually do.

On that note, I'm again done with the miscommunication complaints.. it is what it is.. hopefully it wont continue.

I think what you're missing is that the AO dev team is a mom & pop operation

[Mastablasta]

This.

Thats why this "marketing" thing is proly just anothe cause every semi normal person would know that and not to mention awsome guys in FC Marketing.

Read what he says; they want to make it clear that it's a work in progress and that there's none of this "right now", but it's coming. Generate awareness.

Hopefully they'll give the exclusive to a non-brogamer site like anything to do with IGN. Either Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, Eurogamer. Hopefully. They are generally positive towards smaller, more obscure projects. And giving a long with the video an explanation of what's being worked on. Without making it sound like this is the AO equivalent of SWG's NGE.

[Neosh1]

A couple of hours later they're stood in WA or Rome without enough creds to buy implants wondering where they find their next weapon, nothing makes sense and you lose them.

They cant afford implants because they have to buy stims

[Thorneee]

A couple of hours later they're stood in WA or Rome without enough creds to buy implants wondering where they find their next weapon, nothing makes sense and you lose them.

They cant afford implants because they left noob island with 5k creds and thought they were rich.

Fixed that for you.

[Zeephonz]

If FC were truly committed to ensuring that the life of AO was going to extend another 10 years (as we've heard many times), and FC's annual report was showing AO continuing as revenue positive, then you should be nominating a fixed date of release for the new engine, and telling marketing to gear up for that date of release.... then you should be telling us definitively what that date is.

If you're revenue positive, you should be demanding a scaling of resources to get this new engine in and running as soon as possible... sure it means some short-term pain on the balance books, but if AO is revenue positive on a crappy engine with a small population, imagine how much better it could be on a newer one with more people.

In the film industry, when a date for release is set, THAT IS IT. There is no changing it. Everything from that point forward is about scaling to meet the deadline, and things can get really fat to meet it. But, if you back your output, and it's a good output, then it's all worth it in the long run.

The big scary thing is this. If marketing are pushing the hype on the new engine delivery, and you're delayed in any way, you are going to have a load of new players coming to check it out, and they're going to be faced with barely tested graphics technology on the servers, with all it's inherent problems, and an experience for players where they will be wondering why they even bothered. Worse still, they turn up on the existing engine and poor starter experience.

I think everyone is kind of sick and tired of wishy-washy timelines that have now stretched out over several years. Soon(tm) needs to never ever be uttered by an FC person ever again, and it's time to front up with some definitive timelines we can look forward to. Personally, based on everything you have been telling us, I can't see this engine arriving until later this year, maybe next, but it would be better for you to tell us that, rather than all of us having our own thoughts on its coming.

[MyGift]

This is the first time i hear Marketing wants to pimp out things more and dev team want release asap.

Marketing is the usually guys who push release of even unfinished things.

[Neosh1]

Fixed that for you.

What else should they do? farm 1mil and then come to mainland?

Oh sorry i forgot about that ingame tutorial that says its recommended to leave noob island with atleast 1mil.

[Siorai2]

Read what he says; they want to make it clear that it's a work in progress and that there's none of this "right now", but it's coming. Generate awareness.

Hopefully they'll give the exclusive to a non-brogamer site like anything to do with IGN. Either Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, Eurogamer. Hopefully. They are generally positive towards smaller, more obscure projects. And giving a long with the video an explanation of what's being worked on. Without making it sound like this is the AO equivalent of SWG's NGE.

The thing is Masta, there is only any point raising awareness of something in the run up to release. New MMOs tend to have people following them 12 months before there is even a BETA, people patiently watch the stream of news leading up to release and the site is flooded with Beta requests. But this is gated entry, the developer knows that noone will be running around in the game world until they want them to be.

With AO it's different. The game is already sat there, so anything which generates interest isn't gated. People will see the video, read the article and want to go try AO (we hope) and as much as I love this game, the new player experience simply isn't friendly. It wasn't friendly back in the day and it will be perceived as even less friendly in a marketplace that has polished the new player experience over years into something people 'expect'.

Appealling to the smaller, indepedent friendly media I entirely agree is the right option. But I'd also argue that those gamers interested in smaller projects have had 10 years to find AO and likely have at some point. What marketing needs now is broader appeal, and it won't generate that by showing a preview of a graphics engine with no release date and a long history of missed deadlines. How can you generate interest in something when you don't even know internally when it's going to be relased? Do you honestly believe people will read the article and then wait patiently in the wings for a release date? of course they won't, they'll make an account and play the game.

Right now marketing should be inwards facing. Keep the people you already have paying, because they're the people financing development. Wait patiently and then WHEN there is actually a release date, WHEN the infrastructure is in place to support new players, THEN go out and market externally.

I just think that from a commercial point of view they're getting it backwards.

[Thorneee]

What else should they do? farm 1mil and then come to mainland?

Oh sorry i forgot about that ingame tutorial that says its recommended to leave noob island with atleast 1mil.

I just wanted to highlight the fact that money is a PITA to get for the first 50 levels of a newcomer.

But this is gated entry, the developer knows that noone will be running around in the game world until they want them to be.

With AO it's different. The game is already sat there, so anything which generates interest isn't gated. People will see the video, read the article and want to go try AO (we hope)

Exactly what I was thinking. I don't know if right now is the right time to advertise.

[Ahndracorvid]

but if ao is revenue positive on a crappy engine with a small population, imagine how much better it could be on a newer one with more people.

qft!

[sannz]

Hmm... waiting till post-GDC for the video release... GDC is running this week. Suppose it'll be the first week of april for us then?

Please, please, please don't make it a AFD event -.-

[Mastablasta]

What's AFD?

[Gorathon]

April Fool's Day I'm guessing.

[drainbamage]

Screw the video, where's the motherloving rebalance

[Leetlover]

Profession Changes

Currently some professions have very strong, unique roles, while others have to rely solely on DPS, and we're looking at the fundamentals of each profession's primary and secondary role. As part of our vision, we're extending the usability of your tools to allow you to be more efficient in your role and depend less on just attack rating.

I have said this before and say it again; Something AO has for itself is the professions as is and the game-mechanics. Often when gamers talk about playing AO they talk about creating X profession with X setup and X weapons at X level range and that AO is a very complex, advanced and sophisticated game.

Now, the item-database IS the professions. Without it, the profession is just a shell and this results in a less fun gaming-experience. Therefore, ensuring continious production of the database and profession-repetoir should be a priority.



I often complained about AO being several seperate grinds instead of a cohesive game-experience.

This should be fixed by the devs (FX; Put much more loot into the content that players play now, readjust existing content etc) cause they just patch in content without consideration, which causes playersgaps (note that profession-disparity is not the same as playergaps), dead areas, and players to resignate.


Also, this rebalance looks more like a redefinition and remake of the professions, and is this such a good idea considering the professions has been developed by educated persons for 10 years?

Please continue to play without too much worry of what these changes will bring!

Hah!

[MrMojoRisin]

2) a little GM birdie (no, that's not the GM's name) told me that FC is officially pulling the plug out of AO in 2015, any comments?

If this is true then a major, major sad face! Maybe this will make the AO team work like crazy to get AO back to popularity! It can be done, I'm quite confident of it, but it has to be done right.

Also I better get my fixer to 220 then!!

/lft tiigs .. oh wait I play on Rimor.. the ghost server, solo time :P haha!

[Kintaii]

If this is true then a major, major sad face!

It is in no way, shape, or form true. ;P

[Boltgun]

1) Times New Roman is a bad font for forums >_<

2) a little GM birdie (no, that's not the GM's name) told me that FC is officially pulling the plug out of AO in 2015, any comments?

You trust GMs now ?

[kesh]

It's also a problem with the Secret World being released just around the corner. They can't bang the "big" marketing drums for a rival product... maybe they shouldn't have kept AO open all this time ?

Product? Is Anarchy Online the rival product? You're crazy and sometimes your replies are long enough to show it.

And, when I sat down with the marketing guys we all agreed that we wanted to see if it was possible to position its release to a broader market than just the AO community, in order to generate exposure and visibility for the AO project. I want to stress that there are no promises, but the marketing team has been working on finding something along these lines. The unfortunate part of this, is that it needs to get delayed until the post-GDC (Game Developer's Conference) coverage clears a bit, so we're not competing in the media space with newer and larger projects which are all doing their own PR during and immediately after the GDC week.

I think it's easy on these sorts of things to get caught up in "forum time," but in this case we decided in the scheme of things whether we release in Feb or March isn't what's truly important. What's important is that we try and get the best and broadest coverage for the engine upgrade that we can, in order to increase the awareness of AO both in the short term, and when the new engine is released. The biggest card we have to play here is being able to offer an exclusive on the video, and getting the timing right from the perspective of the gaming media landscape and the gamers that navigate this landscape to learn about what's going on in games they may or may not be following. Even if the marketing team can't land us the level of coverage we want, it is smart to wait until we are competing with as few pieces of gaming news as possible.

And then you come... Marketing, schmarketing... I'll go to those sites and my comments below that video, saying that this is a hoax, that FC has been falsely advertising this for years and that the engine will keep the same old textures of characters and mobs and blablabla, whatever I'll rant, my comments plus some reviewer's hint that this engine took a bit too long and it's not sure when is coming out will fade your super strategical exclusive schmarketing campaign. Word of mouth rulz and there are too many displeased voices out there to silence with any marketing campaign. All you'll have achieved was to piss off a few guys on these forums with the delay. And frankly, without much spitefulness from my part, not enough to distort what I'm saying, I think that any marketing gimmicks, that are trying to attract new paying customers based on this engine, are shameless. You have so much credibility to restore, yet you keep going the same way. Mmmm, I can't wait for that video to be posted externally, finally my rants will get some exposure. <3