Monthly Development Update - 28th February 2014

[Freor]

I personally think it's a good change. The current PVP game is controlled by people who use timers and all kinds of other things to get information that those of us who do not have these extensive setups have not got. That's not "skill", that's just having stuff installed. Giving that information to everyone levels the playingfield. And I can understand the epeen drop that will cause for some, as suddenly they'll no longer have that unfair advantage.

WTF? Are you seriously saying best pvp'ers all have sploit programs running? That's more than little insulting. What they need to do is ban the ones using 3rd party programs and/or change mechanics so they can't be used, not give the same exploit to everyone lol.

If you have effects/buffs enabled and you know what to look for, for each profession... You could just look for each buff effect that happens (with a bit of time looking at each prof) and, with your brain, memorize them to see what buff/perk/proc it is.

In duel, maybe, if you have good enough memory to remember the different effects of all profs. In mass pvp? Good luck keeping an eye on the effects of everyone in the other side's RI and remembering their timings.

[Wakizaka]

I personally think it's a good change. The current PVP game is controlled by people who use timers and all kinds of other things to get information that those of us who do not have these extensive setups have not got. That's not "skill", that's just having stuff installed. Giving that information to everyone levels the playingfield. And I can understand the epeen drop that will cause for some, as suddenly they'll no longer have that unfair advantage.

Timers, you mean ?

/text %t popped DoF. 40s remaining
/delay 40000
/text DoF is down

Built into the game client since launch. Pretty hard...

[Phatkeep]

If I were you guys and had very limited resources I'd focus on convenince stuff that you KNOW most ppl will love you for. Such as

1. Account wide GMI/banks.
2. Shared org bank.
3. Searchable inventories so ppl won't lose stuff all the time and don't have to rely on third party programs.
4. Personal transaction logs, so you never have to forget who borrowed your twinking phatz.
5. Putting Battlestation signups on the lft interface, giving ppl the ability to see if it's running, what classes are in there, how many on each side, if it's past maybe 400 in score etc etc.
6. Leaderboard for BS with perhaps a small reward to the winner/winners. Should be personal, org, faction and daily, weekly and all time highs.

The list of "easy" stuff could go on and on. Relatively simple stuff like this that don't require a new engine could do a lot for game activity and to alleviate some of the tediousness of AO that surely deters some ppl. Why don't you try some of this stuff that the community has asked for for years and forget the seemingly random stuff that noone ever asked for?

[RedWatr]

good luck guys n girls.

[Rurounin]

Slept on it. Still bad ideas.

[Mastablasta]

what's bad behavior is seeing how your opponent is setup up before you battle him and only accept if you are sure you can win. and it is bad behaviour on your side if you think that is cool. but kudos to you trying to turn this into something bad about the one who does not inspect first.

You specifically used the example of targeting a noob fresh off newbie area, or just as similar, you know you will crush and attempt to trick him into a duel so as to gain a +1 on your duel stat. You cannot make that into a positive, no matter how you try.
If you can't stand fighting someone who has superior gear, you probably won't be doing any fighting regardless of whether or not you know what the other person is wearing. And if you do accept, then it's because you enjoy a challenge and you probably would've accepted anyway.

i believe there are 10 posts at leasts in this forum alone. if you don't care to read them doesnt mean they're not there. if you don't agree with them doesn't mean they're not there. it just means you prefer to know exactly how your opponent is equipped, when his buffs run out to be able to push the buttons the right moment. that's ok, but apparently this is taking a lot of the fun (ie unknown variables) away from the game for the majority of people posting in this thread.

And most people will knee-jerk against something new and strange to them. The disagreement I see is mainly based in "sploiters and such did this and your solution is to let everyone do it?" and not consider the overall impact of these changes to the way everyone plays pvp. Hidden information that is as powerful as it has become in AO is not good design, or fun for anyone except the one sitting on it. Add to that the ability for some to overcome the barrier through non-standard means and you end up with a situation like you have now, where hardly anyone pvps because of said problems.

Would you rather that many pvp, with open cards and spend their playing time finding out the new, best ways to handle this new information, or would you rather have pvp be even more intimidating and hostile to non-20 billion twinks who bought all their stuff and installed a few macros... that's really the question.

[Mastablasta]

WTF? Are you seriously saying best pvp'ers all have sploit programs running? That's more than little insulting. What they need to do is ban the ones using 3rd party programs and/or change mechanics so they can't be used, not give the same exploit to everyone lol.

No, but the change that appeared around the introduction of those "tools" and various other things, was felt throughout the entire game and many people quit or stopped pvping altogether.

And no, I completely disagree. Opening information up makes the game more complex by giving players more options on the fly, rather than leaving everything up to blind luck and hope.

[Hassler]

No, but the change that appeared around the introduction of those "tools" and various other things, was felt throughout the entire game and many people quit or stopped pvping altogether.

And no, I completely disagree. Opening information up makes the game more complex by giving players more options on the fly, rather than leaving everything up to blind luck and hope.

could you tell us in what way it will make it more complex? i think its rather just the opposite what will happen.

[EmSeeBee]

Ah great job on bringing Clans and Omnis together in unified agreement that you guys have come up with the most moronic ideas to date.

It's making my head hurt just thinking about what kind of idiotic rationale made you decide that ANY of these changes were good ideas. If any of these changes hit live I'm most likely going to be unsubbing til a new staff takes over (assuming your ideas don't drive the game into the ground before then)

How about banning ****ing exploiters instead of accommodating them?

[Phatkeep]

could you tell us in what way it will make it more complex? i think its rather just the opposite what will happen.

You are ofcourse right. But if you had known Masta, you'd have known that he always supports FC no matter how insane their ideas are. So just ignore.

[nanoforcer]

There was talk about changing how mr works, so that you had to run another perk BEFORE you can hit MR that also has text that pops above the head like MR, this would be a good time to implement that even though this info is several years old it would benefit if ncu stuff is opened up.

I'de really would like a lot more info on changes, but i guess i'll have to wait another month at least. Bläärgh.

[ByLogic]

If I were you guys and had very limited resources I'd focus on convenince stuff that you KNOW most ppl will love you for. Such as

1. Account wide GMI/banks.
2. Shared org bank.
3. Searchable inventories so ppl won't lose stuff all the time and don't have to rely on third party programs.
4. Personal transaction logs, so you never have to forget who borrowed your twinking phatz.
5. Putting Battlestation signups on the lft interface, giving ppl the ability to see if it's running, what classes are in there, how many on each side, if it's past maybe 400 in score etc etc.
6. Leaderboard for BS with perhaps a small reward to the winner/winners. Should be personal, org, faction and daily, weekly and all time highs.

That is to hard to code, remember they are "technical" people not programmers.

[Freor]

And no, I completely disagree. Opening information up makes the game more complex by giving players more options on the fly, rather than leaving everything up to blind luck and hope.

Well, if you call waiting out AMS/DoF etc knowing you have a sure kill then, yeah, I guess that's giving more options. I surely wouldn't call that very complex though. Change like this could work if the defences of many classes weren't so on/off. As it is, solja ams for example is something that is totally on/off. If you can just check when it's down and the poor guy has no defences, I can't see how this makes anything more complex.

[Freor]

Making players jump through hoops and go around completely blind is arbitrary complexity that bars you from game content, not good and rewarding complexity. It's penalizing players for not knowing something they were never even clued on to begin with, and it's honestly pretty annoying having to rely on orgmates for things the game might as well have tipped you about so you'd even know it's there.

It's not good complexity that extremely valuable items can be indistinguishable from vendor trash items and you have no indication ingame at all that you're about to throw away something worth 200m on the player market.

??

We were talking about making player equipment and nanos/actions running in NCU viewable by others. So you can see other players equipment / nanos (like AMS or DoF) whether they want or not.

[Khrystanna]

Lol...
All i can say...
Keep breaking the game...

[Louderer789]

Can we get more information on deflect?

You say it works against both ranged and melee attacks. Does that include specials?
You describe it as a defensive stat rather and not a melee special. That means ranged characters are also allowed to use it? Will it remain a requirement on some weapons (in place of parry?)
What are the tiers of it's effectiveness? i.e. How much skill do you need for 15% chance?

I appreciate that you guys are actually doing something about balance. There are more changes in the last few patches than AO has seen in years. But it seems to me like you are still dancing around the issues of Mongo Rage and Aimed Shot, which have overshadowed nearly everything else in PVP balance for the last 10 years. Decreasing the necessity of aimed shot, and nerfing MR to a reasonable AR increase + providing good breed perks for the other breeds (promised years ago) should be a priority.

[Metafly7]

Post written and deleted, just doesnt make sense to post anyways. Its not like anyone listens anyways

[Winning]

PVM just got alot more easier with deflect. Removing apoc. rings takes away a tool people have worked for to gain an advantage. Shade sneaking is just somebody throwing ideas who hasnt played the game.

[Ahrimazd]

If you guys wanna show true community impute make a petition thread against this update. Also make an ingame petition as well.

[Awikun]

When I first read it I thought it was written by Alex11...
But then I realised that even his suggestions made more sense ...