Monthly Development Update – 31st of January, 2014

[Gimpynoob]

Making content harder is neither good nor bad. What might be good or bad is how it is used.

First some definitions:
1-Solo content: Playfields where a solo toon can farm level appropriate upgrades.
2-Team content: Playfields where a team can farm level appropriate upgrades.
3 Soloable content: Playfields where a solo toon or a small team can farm obsolete upgrades for the purpose of selling or equipping alts.

AO has very little solo or team content. Everything is soloable.
RK outdoor mobs rarely drop any useful loot and almost never at an adequate ql.
RK missions can be farmed for useful loot but only by cheating in solo and team missions and by using 3rd party software.
Most dungeon bosses are farmed by overtwinked toons with gear that is much better than what the dungeon drops or by using toons of a much higher level.
SL is a lol-worthy "fubared" mess with some good leveling gear almost always placed on the wrong place.
AI expansion content has good gear but farming vp is a pain and players are still required to use higher level toons and/or to resort to buying from other players.

Players on their first toons usually get gear that is less and less useful till they can only kill grey mobs and cannot level anymore.
To choose between farming crappy and boring content for creds, paying a lot of extra RL money on an already very expensive and obsolete game or looking for games with more interesting gameplay is... not difficult.


And removing meaningless features is not "dumbing" down the game.
Allowing "powerleveling", "main-farming" and "loot-rights selling" is.

[Dogtrauma]

My take on the MP pet thing was that there would basically be 1 Anger Manifestation nano, 1 Frenzy Embodiment and so on, i do not think devs are looking to make a 200'ish MP with wrangles, moochies and ql 300 Arith armor able to slam out Rhiven.

[nanoforcer]

There will most likely still be level locks on the pets so no whiner on lvl 200-isch

[Scottik]

I'm glad to see a progress on nano and perk changes. Hopefuly we will recieve more of these changes by the time 18.7 hits live. By the way has been release date (month) announced yet?

Edit: Just came into my mind that Vehicles could use some merge as well. I mean nobody ever raises any of that line of skills (for serious purposes).

[Caloss2]

RE:- adv morphs:
Firstly it is a pain when someone runs around buffing "insert morph here" other on people; however if these are to be removed from the game, some people may be unhappy about the creds/time and effort they have effectively lost buying them in the past. I think this is a case of robbing peter to pay paul. the suggestion of a temp item is a much better solution and the coding is already there ie fixer grid.

Secondly is the intention to retain "insert morph here" team? as currently with in a team the adv wolf auras are more effective/effective at all if the rest of the team are in a morphed state, if these are also removed then the attractiveness of having an adv in team is reduced.

I don't see that making adv morphs completely self only benefits anyone except people that have become annoyed at a random morph being cast on them.

I'm not being adv-centric either, I play adv 220, fixer 220, soldier 217, keeper 190 etc, morphs are not as bigger game changer as a nano like RRFE, if that where made self only the effects would be pretty dramatic, but I would suggest to remove "pest-buffing" the temp item spawn idea, while retaining the "other" lines as-is is a much better option.

[Scottik]

RE:- adv morphs:
Firstly it is a pain when someone runs around buffing "insert morph here" other on people; however if these are to be removed from the game, some people may be unhappy about the creds/time and effort they have effectively lost buying them in the past. I think this is a case of robbing peter to pay paul. the suggestion of a temp item is a much better solution and the coding is already there ie fixer grid.

Secondly is the intention to retain "insert morph here" team? as currently with in a team the adv wolf auras are more effective/effective at all if the rest of the team are in a morphed state, if these are also removed then the attractiveness of having an adv in team is reduced.

I don't see that making adv morphs completely self only benefits anyone except people that have become annoyed at a random morph being cast on them.

I'm not being adv-centric either, I play adv 220, fixer 220, soldier 217, keeper 190 etc, morphs are not as bigger game changer as a nano like RRFE, if that where made self only the effects would be pretty dramatic, but I would suggest to remove "pest-buffing" the temp item spawn idea, while retaining the "other" lines as-is is a much better option.

FWIU, single morphs will be self only and team buffs won't be going away, although they will be most probably changed as well according to single morph changes. I think this change is great as it should eliminate spamming random morphs and it should encourage teaming up with advies.

[Gunforhire]

Hai 2u!

The largest change we have made to the systems so far is removing Swimming and Map Navigation. Everyone will get all Rubi-Ka maps and all map upgrades, which will make navigation a lot easier for new players.

That’s it from me this month. Have fun!

- Genele

Will we get the xp back that we have wasted on map navigation to reassign it to other skills?

[Aiken]

/SNIP: encounters don't have to be hard, they have to be interesting.

^^

That line needs repeating until someone pays attention to it.

[MachSchau]

I do like the init changes to allow for content to not be such a cake walk with 3-4 professions and while I dont know what the numbers of how much professions will be able to debuff (yes I know they will not be stackable) I am curious as to how difficult it will make the content. The population of AO is low, if the changes to init debuffs is drastic enough it will make completing content more difficult.

The workaround would obviously be to get more heals/dps but recruiting those types is a chore in itself. Doctors are the go to heal profession for everything and what I remember from the various nano docs and everything is that adventurers and MAs (and maybe one other I forget) would be able to provide much better healing where it will be enough to actually support the tank. I feel that if the changes to init debuffs is substantial it should be postponed until support professions are looked in to and provided better support tools such as healing and other elements.

[Xootch]

so the change is to make people multibox more accounts? i can see how that makes sense for funcom. what i don't get is why the community is psyched about it.

and in terms of "largest change" the swimming change is not worth mentioning compared to the init change if the speculations here are true. maybe in an effort sort of way. in that case, again, i want to appeal to you to use your resources more wisely.

fix battlestations. fix towers.

people are not in this game for pvm. how could they? pvm is as broken as it can be. there is not need to do it for leveling purposes, except for masochists due to more dailies that you can dream of, the majority of people doesnt raid for phats anymore either since they just buy stuff. the remainder is either pointbots, orgraids or people (multiboxing) content to sell stuff. and this is where you put your efforts? even if you succeed, no one wants to grind their 10th toon to 220/70. no one wants to redo pvm for the 100th time to equipp their 10th toon. people want to play their toons. and they make toons for 2 reasons: cashcow or pvp. maybe we can slowly realize this now. pretty please.

as for crats: haha! first stripped of stuns, now inits. next thing you know, you're an engi without reflects and better evades.

[Caloss2]

FWIU, single morphs will be self only and team buffs won't be going away, although they will be most probably changed as well according to single morph changes. I think this change is great as it should eliminate spamming random morphs and it should encourage teaming up with advies.

Oh that's good then, I've played adv for 13 years, and I face palm when another adv goes spamming their latest "other" nano, and spamming dragon on players clustered around GMI is really immature if not worthy of a warning.

[Abcewaitwhat]

First of all my dear keepers: Getting this doesn't mean you're not getting other updates.

The idea behind giving this to Keeper is simply because Keeper needs more interesting tools considering they are one of two subscriber professions.
Doctors are already desirable teammates, and their job is to keep people alive. If anyone dies, they failed their job now didn't they? Time for someone else to step in and save the day...

The Keeper Resurrection sickness removal nano is a "target" nano. Meaning you can execute it on anyone, but it does have a cooldown so it can not be spammed.

Humm this kinda seems scary... flippery slope to sub to win type proffs.
Not screaming murder but this stuff is gonna be convinience lvl type stuff and not something else that can break the game i hope.

I love this game and i have been playing for many years so i really hope it wont be lowered to the standard console lvl mmorpgs we see these days =(

[Abcewaitwhat]

Also this game is mostly about twinking and being able to trim IP the best way.
How will leveling pets effect that? For pvp engis and so on.

[Aiken]

Just wait 'till you see what's coming to the Item Store & THEN start crying over Pay to Win...

[Abcewaitwhat]

Just wait 'till you see what's coming to the Item Store & THEN start crying over Pay to Win...

Uff really =( ?
Please stop this crap Funcom! Anarchy Online is a game about twinking not the other crap going around in the world!
You have a sub and a ingame store so stop being greedy with pay to win items !

[Vhab]

Giving desirable things to a profession that is considered less desirable is a bad thing now? :P

[Xootch]

if it screws up game play: yes.

this nano will mess up tara fights even worse than they already are.

[Abcewaitwhat]

Giving desirable things to a profession that is considered less desirable is a bad thing now? :P

Yes pay to win stuff can easly break a game.
Especially a game like AO and especially if it makes its way into the game, so people can buy it before the company finds out they loose players because of it, since then they have allready tasted the quick money from it.
Please be carefull with this Funcom... Anarchy Online is too great of a game to fudge with.

[Caloss2]

Pay to win is a very dangerous path to walk with a healthy game with a large base of subscribers, how safe would you say that makes this idea in AO ?

Remember expert leveling vid? humorous as that was there is a warning in there.

Pay to win in AO would equate to short term gain turns into long term loss, please don't be the team that destroys the game.

[Emma]

FWIU, single morphs will be self only and team buffs won't be going away, although they will be most probably changed as well according to single morph changes. I think this change is great as it should eliminate spamming random morphs and it should encourage teaming up with advies.

How do you know this ... about the team buffs? Or, just guessing? Did the professionals do their posts?

Emma