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Thread: Monthly Development Update - August 2014

  1. #81
    Anarrina since you're apparently in the know. Who were the main people responsible for the design (not coding) of the following?

    - Dark Ruins/Team Dark Ruins << Especially curious about this one as its one of my favorites
    - DB3 instance
    - Gauntlet
    - Collector

    When new things come out, no one really ever tells us who took the lead on it.
    Last edited by Traderjill; Sep 3rd, 2014 at 22:08:35.
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  2. #82
    Quote Originally Posted by Nusquam View Post
    The entire structure of the Live Team is to counter this to a certain extent - people get to work with games from different time periods which provides a certain perspective as well as a decent number of titles for the resume.
    Has the Live Team done any actual work on AO yet? I was under the impression that AO would remain a separate team until the engine was released, at which point the Live Team would understand at least some of the code and could actually help out. Since the engine isn't released, is the Live Team focusing entirely on AoC/TSW/Lego? Looks like AoC has definitely benefited from the change to a Live Team, seems like they're getting fairly regular patches/hotfixes.

  3. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by Traderjill View Post
    Anarrina since you're apparently in the know. Who were the main people responsible for the design (not coding) of the following?

    - Dark Ruins/Team Dark Ruins << Especially curious about this one as its one of my favorites
    - DB3 instance
    - Gauntlet
    - Collector

    When new things come out, no one really ever tells us who took the lead on it.
    DR: Genele
    DB3: Kintaii/Genele
    Gauntlet: Kintaii
    Collector: Kintaii again I believe.
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  4. #84
    Quote Originally Posted by Traderjill View Post
    Anarrina since you're apparently in the know. Who were the main people responsible for the design (not coding) of the following?

    - Dark Ruins/Team Dark Ruins << Especially curious about this one as its one of my favorites
    - DB3 instance
    - Gauntlet
    - Collector

    When new things come out, no one really ever tells us who took the lead on it.
    This is what I remember from various forum posts and conversations with these individuals, but if memory serves (and corrections are welcome): Kintaii did Gauntlet, Means was primarily responsible for Collector, and Genele was primarily responsible for Dark Ruins. The others I don't recall off-hand.
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  5. #85
    Hello Michi, one question please.

    Is there any chance at all to add Oculus Rift (VR) support in AO?

    This game would be so friggin awesome in VR!

    If you need a Oculus Rift - Development Kit #2, let me know and ill get one shipped FC HQ!
    - As long as you do your best efforts to add it to the game :-)

    Thanks.

  6. #86
    Quote Originally Posted by Nusquam View Post
    This may seem like I am being a jerk (I come across like that quite often) but the reason Anarchy Online has a high dev turn over is because...it is a 13 year old game with 13yr old development tools.
    Tools that FC developed and are 13 years old (taking as not updated for 13 years or in a very long time) is FC fault for not having a plan to keep them current and improve them. Third party tools like 3D Studio for example need to be updated to take advantage of improvements but generally they continue to support older formats for exporting work. So I just see this as an excuse more than reason.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nusquam View Post
    The entire structure of the Live Team is to counter this to a certain extent - people get to work with games from different time periods which provides a certain perspective as well as a decent number of titles for the resume.
    So can the live team get to work on the engine update and address the performance issues?
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  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by Lheann View Post
    /snip
    So can the live team get to work on the engine update and address the performance issues?
    I second that as it's vital if this 'new' engine is going to go anywhere with this community, imo ofc.
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  8. #88

    Funcom employee

    Dark ruins was my first content contribution to Anarchy Online. I made this primarily alone with the guidance of Lindelu as she was teaching me the tools. The team version of dark ruins was a collaboration between Lindelu and myself. The new artwork was done by Mstrbstrd and Flaptoot and the texture variations for the monsters/armors and the icons I did myself. I believe the initial world building for dark ruins was made by Znore (and then not used) but I modified it a bit when I learned how to use TIDE (AO world building tool).

    Db3 was designed by me and the word building and artwork was done by Mstrbstrd.

    The collector design was done by Means and Kintaii.

    The gauntlet design was made by Kintaii.

    For the two content projects I did not work on, I am not sure which of the two artists who worked on them. However it was likely either mstrbstrd or flaptoot or both.
    Last edited by Genele; Sep 4th, 2014 at 02:15:21.

  9. #89
    The point of my post was to question "direction" of the project.

    Clearly, introducing small integrated or standalone content additions do not signify direction.

    Direction is systemic, relevant, change to gameplay affecting all persons engaged in game. So, balance work is definitely directional.

    The point was, someone started the re-"balance" years and years ago, and many GD's or dev's have worked on it some capacity or other for a very long time - some contributing more, some less, but, the most remarkable thing to date is that it has not yet been finished.

    You, Genele, are to be congratulated on getting the version you're working on to Test.

    I can't speak for the other customers here, but I personally feel that while it is a reasonable accomplishment, I wouldn't have wanted to step aside at such a critical moment. As a coder myself, I know that the final touches on a large critical patch are probably the most important aspect of the patch, and it's the type of thing that if you bail on it, you take an enormous gamble on the outcome.

    I would want to be remembered as the person who brought the rebalance to AO. Not the person who brought the rebalance to test. But that's just me.

    Good luck in your new position!

  10. #90
    Quote Originally Posted by Nusquam View Post
    This may seem like I am being a jerk (I come across like that quite often) but the reason Anarchy Online has a high dev turn over is because...it is a 13 year old game with 13yr old development tools.
    It's not a mystery that people like to work with newer tools and engines. It's also not a mystery that people like to try new things every so often.
    New game development is project based and you see a lot of staff inflation and deflation on new projects. There is always excitement about what can and is being created.
    Live game development (such as AO) is a more stable and more steady job - but you have to be able to work within limitations. Sometimes really odd limitations set in place a long time ago.

    My point is this - I don't think there needs to be a conspiracy around why some people leave the company. Often they just want to try something else. A 13yr old game that everyone in the industry has heard of is a good thing to have on your resume, but it isn't somewhere people want to be forever.

    The entire structure of the Live Team is to counter this to a certain extent - people get to work with games from different time periods which provides a certain perspective as well as a decent number of titles for the resume.

    And yes, I'm sure people will counter with "you should only hire AO players or people who love the game" - yes we try. The overlap of good designer/coder and AO player interested in moving isn't that big. But we try!
    While your post addresses these speculative and half-assed rumors you dance around the subject of AO development.

    You say in your post that AO is an old game that uses old tools. You go on to say that people get tired of working with the same old tools and not experiencing something new. You then explain how the "Live Team" is there to counter this monotony in development work. I believe when you refer to the "Live Team" you are referencing the "consolidated development team that works on all 3(AO, AoC, TSW) FC MMOs (and quite possible the Lego MMO)".

    Correct me if I am wrong, but this "Live Team" has been in existence for more than a year now. In that time frame, I have not seen any sort of increase in development speed or power to AO. I have played this game for 9 years now and I am fully aware that AO development is slow and daunting.

    In this post by a former GD https://forums.anarchy-online.com/sh...d.php?t=603567 the community was led to believe that with the consolidated development team "that developers can more easily shift between projects". Since that post (and up until recently) there have been 2 dedicated developers and 1 part time developer (the part timer being Michi who bounced around the other MMOs and worked on AO part time) specifically for AO. With the recent leave of Genele and Macrosun that left only Michizure to pick up where they left off. Even in your own announcement post you said FC is looking to hire new people, whether that is for them to work on AO more than the other games or you are hiring developers as a whole, regardless we are left with one dedicated developer for AO.

    Now here is my point with all that said. It has been more than a year since the consolidated team, why has there been nothing done to insure that AO gets the continued development from all developers at FC that are within that team? Why was has there been no training done for all members to deal with AO code, AO tools, AO related things? Why in your announcement post you basically say that with Genele and Macro gone its going to take even longer to get content and engine work going again when that shouldn't have happened in the first place with this "Live Team".

    Maybe I just ask really hard questions or things people dont seem to care about or maybe this question is so bold and damaging it will be disregarded by FC stuff and people of the community, but what I have mentioned should be taken seriously by everyone. I dont think you can possibly fathom the perspective a customer or a player goes through when something that will boost the quality of life to a game they lovingly play for is stuck in development hell for a decade because a company keeps making poor decisions.

    Yeah I know, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive and not everything works out as planned but around these parts anything you say is comically unbelievable because of past actions. Actions speak louder than words and I haven't seen much positive action and I just keep seeing words and its the same thing "We are just chu-chu-chu-chu chugging along".

    Lastly, I mentioned this in a previous post of mine so maybe I can answer all this crap I said and you (the typical forum goer or the developer) can go about ignoring me or actually engage in what I have said. AO is not worth the time, effort and money to seriously develop. AO development (at this point) is extremely slow, limited and complicated. If resources were shifted with the live team to work on AO specifically for a short period of time other FC MMOs would suffer. In that same short period of time the other MMOs could have developed far more than the smidgin they developed with AO. In that same short period of time they would have earned more money developing the other titles than AO.

    I really want to know what is the long term plan for AO. Is this all that its going to be? Years to see anything worthwhile? Because actions lately all point to that and that is the greatest counter to anything someone at FC has to say to deny it.

  11. #91
    Quote Originally Posted by Genele View Post
    For the two content projects I did not work on, I am not sure which of the two artists who worked on them. However it was likely either mstrbstrd or flaptoot or both.
    The Gauntlet I want to say was me, Flaptoot & Mstrbstrd all on world-building and art, but for The Collector MB did the world-building and environment art, and *you* made most of the mob textures.

    Edit: I'll also only claim about 95% of The Gauntlet in terms of design; the central conceit of "I want a boss that shoves people off a platform" was an idea Means had been floating around ever since we got the knockback mechanic working (thanks to Macrosun), and what initially lead to the creation of the area.

    Also:

    Quote Originally Posted by Genele View Post
    I believe the initial world building for dark ruins was made by Znore (and then not used)
    This is also true of Alappaa (my first project on the game) and Albtraum, and I want to say one other Shadowlands area we added in while we were all there as well. The man loved him some tunnels.
    Last edited by Kintaii; Sep 4th, 2014 at 05:39:38.
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  12. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by Snakebite View Post
    I still think it would be faster, better, cheaper and more sensible to create an AO2 rather than try to update the engines on the current game.
    FC could allow character imports (but no credit imports) and it would be like moving to a new world...
    I agree with Snakebite. This game really needs a fresh start.

    A fresh start would draw back a lot of old players and plenty of new ones. Just keep what makes this game great, the absurd number of character customization options. Keep the skill system and the character equipment system. Everything else can change. The setting, story, dungeons, graphics, etc.

    As long as it plays like AO I will be happy.

    Quote Originally Posted by Snakebite View Post
    It's gotta be easier than trying to alter things in AOs notoriously complex and convoluted code...
    Quote Originally Posted by Nusquam View Post
    ...it is a 13 year old game with 13yr old development tools.
    There have been many advances in coding techniques, rendering techniques, optimization, computer hardware, game development software etc. AO, in it's current state, is too old to gain any benefit from any of this.

    If the game is rebuilt from the ground up, it could get more than just a new code framework or graphics engine. It could take advantage of all the advances in technology over the many years since it's release.

    ---------------------

    Aside from that, I just about lost all hope for this game when Genele resigned but Mich has given me hope with his great attitude.

    I wish all the best luck to our new GD cause he is going to need it.

  13. #93

    Funcom employee

    Quote Originally Posted by MachSchau View Post
    While your post addresses these speculative and half-assed rumors you dance around the subject of AO development.

    You say in your post that AO is an old game that uses old tools. You go on to say that people get tired of working with the same old tools and not experiencing something new. You then explain how the "Live Team" is there to counter this monotony in development work. I believe when you refer to the "Live Team" you are referencing the "consolidated development team that works on all 3(AO, AoC, TSW) FC MMOs (and quite possible the Lego MMO)".
    I am referring to the Live team - the Lego team are completely separate.

    Quote Originally Posted by MachSchau View Post
    Correct me if I am wrong, but this "Live Team" has been in existence for more than a year now. In that time frame, I have not seen any sort of increase in development speed or power to AO. I have played this game for 9 years now and I am fully aware that AO development is slow and daunting.

    In this post by a former GD https://forums.anarchy-online.com/sh...d.php?t=603567 the community was led to believe that with the consolidated development team "that developers can more easily shift between projects". Since that post (and up until recently) there have been 2 dedicated developers and 1 part time developer (the part timer being Michi who bounced around the other MMOs and worked on AO part time) specifically for AO. With the recent leave of Genele and Macrosun that left only Michizure to pick up where they left off. Even in your own announcement post you said FC is looking to hire new people, whether that is for them to work on AO more than the other games or you are hiring developers as a whole, regardless we are left with one dedicated developer for AO.
    Well, other people on the Live team have contributed to AO during the past year - creating art assets for the NPE, for example. I think what you perhaps fundamentally misunderstand here is that the Live team is a fraction of the dedicated developers that each project had in the past.

    Essentially the live team divides manpower among the games based on their revenue and budgets. As AO is the oldest, it has the smallest playerbase and therefore the smallest budget allocated.

    Quote Originally Posted by MachSchau View Post
    Now here is my point with all that said. It has been more than a year since the consolidated team, why has there been nothing done to insure that AO gets the continued development from all developers at FC that are within that team? Why was has there been no training done for all members to deal with AO code, AO tools, AO related things? Why in your announcement post you basically say that with Genele and Macro gone its going to take even longer to get content and engine work going again when that shouldn't have happened in the first place with this "Live Team".
    Why do you think there hasn't? We've just spent weeks training people in many aspects of AO - but remember Genele and Macrosun were only capable of working on AO - neither had any experience with AoC or TSW tools. In essence, they were dedicated AO devs because that was what they knew.

    Most people who work on anything for AO will never post on the forums.

    Quote Originally Posted by MachSchau View Post
    Maybe I just ask really hard questions or things people dont seem to care about or maybe this question is so bold and damaging it will be disregarded by FC stuff and people of the community, but what I have mentioned should be taken seriously by everyone. I dont think you can possibly fathom the perspective a customer or a player goes through when something that will boost the quality of life to a game they lovingly play for is stuck in development hell for a decade because a company keeps making poor decisions.
    The poor decisions have very little to do with the current team. Besides that - AO is allocated the resources that align with its profits - I don't really know what else we can do. If the project becomes unprofitable in the long run, do you think it will be kept open on charity? There is some tendency for people to bring out the old "You've got to spend money to make money" argument here - which is all well and good - but the relationship between MMO player numbers and time is easy enough to plot on a graph and the only people who buck that trend are WoW and EVE.

    Quote Originally Posted by MachSchau View Post
    Yeah I know, you gotta do what you gotta do to survive and not everything works out as planned but around these parts anything you say is comically unbelievable because of past actions. Actions speak louder than words and I haven't seen much positive action and I just keep seeing words and its the same thing "We are just chu-chu-chu-chu chugging along".
    We are chugging along. I suggest going back and reading the past year or so of community updates. We are pretty transparent about what we are doing, and hell, we even have a beta of the engine up and running (finally). It's not as though we're discussing things that aren't tangible in some form.

    Quote Originally Posted by MachSchau View Post
    Lastly, I mentioned this in a previous post of mine so maybe I can answer all this crap I said and you (the typical forum goer or the developer) can go about ignoring me or actually engage in what I have said. AO is not worth the time, effort and money to seriously develop. AO development (at this point) is extremely slow, limited and complicated. If resources were shifted with the live team to work on AO specifically for a short period of time other FC MMOs would suffer. In that same short period of time the other MMOs could have developed far more than the smidgin they developed with AO. In that same short period of time they would have earned more money developing the other titles than AO.

    I really want to know what is the long term plan for AO. Is this all that its going to be? Years to see anything worthwhile? Because actions lately all point to that and that is the greatest counter to anything someone at FC has to say to deny it.
    I can only suggest you read Michi's OP again. This is what we are working on. You can define that how you like (chug chugging!)
    People seem to want some vague long-term roadmap which, in all honesty, seems to have been something that they were given in the past and has led to the type of skepticism I see all over these forums.

    As for rebuilding AO from scratch as AO2 or whatever - I understand the wish but the reality is a bit different. A modern game on the scale of AO would cost millions that Funcom doesn't have (see quarterly report).

    It's been discussed many times over the years - AO really does hold a special place in the hearts of most people at Funcom.

  14. #94
    Quote Originally Posted by Nusquam View Post
    Essentially the live team divides manpower among the games based on their revenue and budgets. As AO is the oldest, it has the smallest playerbase and therefore the smallest budget allocated.

    There is some tendency for people to bring out the old "You've got to spend money to make money" argument here - which is all well and good - but the relationship between MMO player numbers and time is easy enough to plot on a graph and the only people who buck that trend are WoW and EVE.

    I think you've touched on the subject which many, many current and past players of AO wished they could communicate:

    Many players feel that AO fits into the same category as EVE and WoW, but lack of attention, lack of reasonably frequent content release and completely botched communication/planning/release of the engine and rebalancing have invariably accelerated the sub-bleed that has put AO into the "lowest revenue" bracket.

    It's not the players faults that AO is the way it is.

    It's FC's fault.

    The players, the ones that are still paying for the game wanted in 2008 results, waited... in 2009 hoped for results... in 2010 waited... in 2011 waited and discussed... in 2012 rehashed balance... in 2013 got a sniff of movement... in 2014 waited, discussed and tested but still waited... for results from the development team.

    And here we are in Q3 2014 and AO has only been kept from bleeding dry by the die-hards.

    I know we can't go back in time, but those poor decisions could have been rectified a hundred times since 2008.

    It's time to stop making bad decisions: throw a coder into the AO team so Michi can crank out some content, some preliminary balance patches to give the community some FRESH gameplay.

    Controversy in game + quality fixes + slow but frequent small balancing = rebuilding a reputation.

    Repuation ==> subs.

    Continued bleed = slow death and none of us want this.
    Last edited by McKnuckleSamwich; Sep 4th, 2014 at 08:50:18.

  15. #95
    Simple case and point.. We have no reason to play some profs and continue playing. Balance is horrible. Some these proposed changes are utter nonsense such as what is going on with MEEP and deflect mechanics, improved nanos being shop buyable at insane prices instead of just removing them or adding sane means to acquire them. Stop focusing effort on such BS changes and make changes that will make us want to roll and/or play certain profs.

  16. #96

    Funcom employee

    Quote Originally Posted by McKnuckleSamwich View Post
    I think you've touched on the subject which many, many current and past players of AO wished they could communicate:

    Many players feel that AO fits into the same category as EVE and WoW, but lack of attention, lack of reasonably frequent content release and completely botched communication/planning/release of the engine and rebalancing have invariably accelerated the sub-bleed that has put AO into the "lowest revenue" bracket.

    It's not the players faults that AO is the way it is.

    It's FC's fault.
    Nobody is blaming the players. Also, I doubt you have numbers on the sub bleed. But to give you a tip the correlation between subscriptions on every game I have seen numbers for is not lack of updates or lack of communication - it is simply time. The further from the launch, the lower the subs.
    As I say, exactly 2 games in the genre buck that trend.

    Quote Originally Posted by McKnuckleSamwich View Post
    The players, the ones that are still paying for the game wanted in 2008 results, waited... in 2009 hoped for results... in 2010 waited... in 2011 waited and discussed... in 2012 rehashed balance... in 2013 got a sniff of movement... in 2014 waited, discussed and tested but still waited... for results from the development team.
    This is always going to be the comment that gets me in trouble and makes the PR people at Funcom cringe - but I stand by it. You should never ever pay to play a game in the expectation of what you hope a game will be in the future. You should pay to play a game that you like *right now*. Subscribing to a game doesn't buy you future updates, it buys you access to the game right now, as is.
    A game needs to be played for its current merits, not what you hope the dev team might do in the future.

    And I don't say that to excuse the dev team - we will always tell you what we are planning. I just think consumers should have a reasonable expectation of what they are purchasing.

    Quote Originally Posted by McKnuckleSamwich View Post
    And here we are in Q3 2014 and AO has only been kept from bleeding dry by the die-hards.
    Surely by the people who like the game? Nobody pays money to play something they hate and I assume everybody who is here on the forums either likes or once liked, the game Anarchy Online.

    Quote Originally Posted by McKnuckleSamwich View Post
    I know we can't go back in time, but those poor decisions could have been rectified a hundred times since 2008.
    As they aren't defined, I can't engage with you on whether they could rectified a hundred times. What you mentioned about communication simply isn't true as far as I can tell. And as for lack of attention - AO has always had a dev team that relates to its revenue. You can't expect a lot more from a business than that.

    Quote Originally Posted by McKnuckleSamwich View Post
    It's time to stop making bad decisions: throw a coder into the AO team so Michi can crank out some content, some preliminary balance patches to give the community some FRESH gameplay.
    Nobody makes bad decisions on purpose, and I can't see where you define what those are beyond "lack of communication", "lack of attention" and "lack of frequently released content".
    I can understand the last one - but that has little to do with a decision and just the fact that producing stuff takes time. It gets even harder when people leave.
    The others are, frankly, just an opinion. AO has frequent communication - at the minimum monthly updates as well as forums posts from devs. And the attention it gets correlates to the revenue it generates and AFAIK it always has.

    Quote Originally Posted by McKnuckleSamwich View Post
    Controversy in game + quality fixes + slow but frequent small balancing = rebuilding a reputation.

    Repuation ==> subs.

    Continued bleed = slow death and none of us want this.
    The assumption that reputation = subs is simply that, an assumption. The people who care about reputation are the people playing the game and those who are interested in playing the game. For a 13yr old game, that pool of people is not very large and AO will never be able to rebuild into an EVE or WoW like situation. As mentioned earlier, we'd be better off doing AO2. Which we can't afford.

    I want people to enjoy playing AO and I want the dev team to provide good updates that are aligned with what the community wants for the game. Michi is the right person to provide that.

    I don't think anybody reasonably disagrees with this plan. I understand people want more more more, but there is a limit to what I can do.

  17. #97
    To FC's defense, WoW does not really buck that trend. But this game is successful in region western games fails and as a result, even losing 10% of the playerbase for is still a crazy figure.

    I have a similar situation, working on a project in production is not fun. You spend a lot of time and energy outside development for the project and this is frustrating because there is no resources to improve the dev tools or the project itself. That's how production works.

    The post about Tide being an unstable and code smelly tool just shows that the AO team feels the same as the players do.

    I just wish bad decisions weren't made to start with, but those were made. Unless you have a time machine, we just have to deal with it and hope that lessons were learnt.
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  18. #98
    I think I have never seen so much communication, replying on statements (partially crude, rude and purely untrue trolling statements) and open & honest words from "Funcom" than these last days and threads.

    Personally, I like the fact that some of you (Nusquam, Kintaii, etc.) finally state things just as they are - and not like we or you might want them to be. Or atleast try to do so.

    Please, dear AO community, dont throw all of your year-long-grown-hatred/frustration to these guys and girls now. Keep in mind that they might be persons "to touch", but they are no persons with unlimited ressources and granted rights. As far as I can see, they are doing theyre best, while walking over a small bridge over troubled water.

    If the community insists on scaring of more and more employees, the next thread about the loss of another important member of this staff wont be away too far. There, on the one side, there is a desperate situation with AO, with Funcom - I can imagine this only this side is (or can be) more then extremly frustrating. Then, on the other hand, there is a nagging playerbase which is spreading even more frustration. No one of them would ever admit this last point, but if you think over my words and try to walk in their shoes, you will know that I am right.

    These guys and girls already got a very heavy cross to bear - lets try to not make it even heavier.

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  19. #99
    Thank you for the honesty showed in this thread.

    And... Thank you AO!

  20. #100
    Good luck Genele and Macrosun in your new endeavors.

    I would:
    - scrap the idea of multiple clients. We don't have the team to support two clients. But also, the new engine should be easier on the computers than the old, due to the gpu sharing the burden. Since the new client isn't targeted at the latests directx versions, it shouldn't be a problem of old computers not supporting cards that support the directx version either. Options to disactivate costly effects and 2 size of textures would be enough.
    - scrap the rebalance and replace that with something a lot less ambitious such as just doing a couple rebalance changes here and there to cover the biggest problems.
    - focus on one item at a time. Engine + rebalance + 18.7 patch + npe + new playfield is kind of a recipe to get nowhere with such a team.
    Dilute down 18.7 and get it out.
    Correct new engine bugs and get it out.
    Then, the team can focus on the rest while developing from one release, on one client, while the graphist makes the game prettier.


    I find nothing jerky about telling people about the budgets available. I find it refreshing.
    I personally liked the new instances added the last 7 years or something. They fine with me and the people behind them should be proud.

    I would scrap the idea of a big rebalance eternally unless the team grows significantly, because all it will do is loose you players. Rebalancing ao all the way is an insanely hard task and bound to irk lots of people.

    As for the future, you can't keep adding strength to toons. While we all love new stuff, it's just making us all stronger and stronger and that just doesn't work in the long term.
    Instead, favor an approach where stuff only works in some world.
    I would make a copy of rubi-ka, just changing some main textures and making it darker (and a new sky) and call it a new expansion. Toons would get a new equipment panel which objects would only be effective in that area.
    Add a lil twist for going from rk to dark-rk and you got a nice base for a whole new world to explore and increasingly fill with mobs/loot etc. I would add a twist such as suns being replaced by moons and when no moons visible (basically, periods of time), extremely hard mobs would go after players unless they are near a base camp. Basically, those mobs would hate anything producing light... which will be a great occasion to have the new engine graphics shine.
    There are no problem that an absence of solution could'nt solve

    Wielder of the "IWin" button.

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