Monthly Development Update - August 2014

[drakio]

Funcom had 280ish employees in the 2010 NCSoft around 3k, Blizzard over 4k, CCP 600ish.

While CCP (that's the closest to FC numbers) mainly focused on EVE, funcom launched AOC and TSW (and also lego...).

Comparing the numbers i can say that i'm happy for 18.7 released on testlive.

We can argue that FC could focus more on Anarchy Online, as CCP has done with EvE. But certainly this is not the fault of the Funcom's developers.

And still i love AO over GW2 and EVE... (i never tried WOW cause it sucks with his kiddish graphic)

[haxi]

That's not you getting taller, that's expectations being lowered.

[Anonimofied]

Since Funcom are the only western company that hosts multiple MMO games simultaneously, and having trouble maintaining MMORPG that they already have on the market.
I there for have a question to the board members that seems to be invisible, but having major influences to how Funcom operates.

To Funcom board members:

- Do you push Funcom to creates new MMORPG titles for the market, just to manipulate the real values of the company?

[Traderjill]

Do you think funcom's CEO or Board of Directors is reading AO's forums and going to respond to your questions? We barely get responses from the staff. Before this month we'd only seen 3 posts from the Creative Director this year and I think he managed to double his yearly posting count with just the responses in this thread.

[Psikie]

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.

I think I've said that almost word for word for about 4 years now.

*Slow clap*
Once again, well played Funcom. Now I realize where most of the $15/month subscription fee is going...straight to the PR team. You guys know *just* what to post to keep taking advantage of desperate and gullible customers.

FC: Oh hey! Ummmmmmmmm...the intern brought us the wrong lunch order so everything is pushed back for a year or six. We're still working on it tho I swear. *hands Fool1 a T-shirt*
Fool1: OOGM SWEET THXPLX FC IS AWSUM *pays 12 month sub*

I have never bought a 1 years sub, but I'd still like a macrosun T-shirt

I would dare say the only fools are the people paying for subs just to complain on the forums roflol.

[Raggy]

I would dare say the only fools are the people paying for subs just to complain on the forums roflol.

You don't need a sub to post on the forum.

[Anarrina]

You don't need a sub to post on the forum.

If you don't have one and you get caught, your forum privileges will be revoked until your subscription returns to paid status.

[Difs]

If you don't have one and you get caught, your forum privileges will be revoked until your subscription returns to paid status.

we should call forumpolice

[metaluv]

If you don't have one and you get caught, your forum privileges will be revoked until your subscription returns to paid status.

Darn tootin, you gotta pay to troll around here, no freebies.

[lainbr]

If you don't have one and you get caught, your forum privileges will be revoked until your subscription returns to paid status.

*hides*

[BytEfLUSh2]

If you don't have one and you get caught, your forum privileges will be revoked until your subscription returns to paid status.

That may be true, but it's not the point of Raggy's reply to Psikie.

[haxi]

*hides*

Don't worry about it, the policy is selectively applied.

[nums214]

AO still stands in a class of its own; Every other mmo requires a level or "time served (Eve online gear) in order to equip items. This was the only mmo I've ever seen with the ability to not only utilize a toons toolkit but GEAR better then your opponent at any level in order to beat them.

This type of playstyle still has a place in the marketplace, unfortunately most games aim to satisfy the "stupid" gamers who would rather easily equip gear as soon as they hit a level.

[Cyberleet]

- We've been asking for years to have inferno missions listed as easy/medium/hard with the same rewards regardless of if they are rolled by a 210 or a 220. Is there anyone that's played the game in the last 5 years that is in disagreement with such a change? Is it a hard fix?

Or better yet. Make rk-missions instead. We been asking for that for years.

if you don't fix what is broken with the current content, the new people you manage to attract will leave.

mhm. Something I dislike is that all players wears the same weapons and gear now basicly. There is no point in advanced char-customation when it is just one cookie-cutter setup thats relevant.

That instance, on an AO scale, is brilliant and probably the best designed in the game (with the exception of the fact that something a bit more awesome needs to be provided as the final reward.. to coax more people to do it).

What FC often do is try to fix something (tarasque-announcement for example) but then it doesn't work as intended and they fail to follow up with a additional fix (add taratimer for example) to the problem. Imo, it should be bannable to do pvm-tarasque, or considered harassement. Since the phatz can be gotten through collector it doesn't matter if the raid is reworked into a 'pvp-raid or no raid'-encounter.

The same thing will happen with the monster in the miner-area. They are obviously trying to create a pvp-encounter, but it will probably end up as a pvm-encounter (1 side dominate and the other doesn't show) instead. The biggest issue is that FC let it happen. They don't fix it. That bugs me SO much.

[Platypus135]

I approve of the amount of dev contribution to this thread. Bout time we started viewing AO for what it is and have communication between devs and players.

[Teknologist]

Michi!!!

[Psikie]

That may be true, but it's not the point of Raggy's reply to Psikie.

that would actually make it worse, trolling without a sub.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/82691350/

Internet quote on trolling (....what kind of boring, miserable life would someone have to have to act in such a way? ....some are on here almost 24/7. so, one would assume they are also unemployed? are they also perhaps, jealous because we're happy (no matter what nasty crap they say to us) and they're not? )

[Raggy]

that would actually make it worse, trolling without a sub.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/82691350/

Internet quote on trolling (....what kind of boring, miserable life would someone have to have to act in such a way? ....some are on here almost 24/7. so, one would assume they are also unemployed? are they also perhaps, jealous because we're happy (no matter what nasty crap they say to us) and they're not? )

Despite the fact that a large amount of the posts on the AO forums are not actually trolls (outside of LoRK). I fail to see how not having a sub reduces the veteran knowledge that a huge majority of the posters have.

Also on top of the fact that nowhere in any of the registrations/ToS for accounts for either FunCom Account/AO or Forum accounts that not having an active subscription will halt your posting privileges.

[paperjockey]

I just resubbed after a 6'ish year break. Played since launch before that. I am pretty impressed with the dev conversation and openness in this thread. Refreshing. May not be answers everyone likes but better than hearing crickets.

If I was in Michi's position I would probably skip the 18.7 patch minus any QoL improvements and changes to item store (and would like to see more stuff there more often.. micro transactions are the rage these days). It sounds like maintaining this game on the old engine is a pain for everyone. Thats why I'm a bit surprised it still hasn't happened. It reads to me as though it will be easier for all parties to maintain ao with the new engine because if someone moves to the team, they dont need to learn a different tool set. So just to make life easier, I would make that my first focus. Especially if it can lead to more hands on deck to help out.

Hopefully you get the support you need and Welcome.

[MachSchau]

Nusquam,

From the vantage point of a customer, Funcom has horribly mismanaged this game over the years and I'd have to be a fool to believe that was going to change. It has never been the sole fault of any individual be it a designer, coder or director. So the past couple times that I've returned to AO, I returned in the spirit of: Play the game for released content, not for the hopes of what is to be released.

I don't think it is unreasonable for us, as players, to expect that you at least make sure that existing content is working properly. Fixing bugs, exploits and correcting blatant game design issues with EXISTING/CURRENT CONTENT is reasonably in the scope of what one should expect when they pay for a monthly subscription. So if you are choosing to spend the resources our monthly subscription and item shop purchases provide on future content rather than focus those resources on what we are indeed paying for (per your explanation) then I guess I'd like to know why you're doing that? I mean I already know but since you're making it seem as if we're way off base to have reasonable expectations for future development then I'm very interested to hear why you aren't fixing what we have previously and are currently paying for, contentwise.

For example:

- I spent darn near 2.5 hours trying to farm a Brimstone Heart from a Brimstone Demon for the Inferno Anansi quest last night. We even killed the other type of demon there with the thought that maybe it was an either/or random roll thing to determine if a brimstone or the other demon would spawn. TWO AND A HALF HOURS to farm a quest item. I contacted a GM and was actually told that 2 mobs spawning in 90 min was working as intended. Additionally, there's a part of the same questline where you have to kill 5 mobs and only 3 are spawned at any given time. To add insult to injury, both my toon and another guy's got stuck in the geometry and had to deal with the good ole "Cannot use /stuck while standing" message. It makes absolutely 0 sense when about 90% of the time you get stuck its because you dropped down into something or hopped up through a celing and won't be able to sit down. The result, for me, was that my evening of questing with friends and having fun got completely ruined by messed up game design. I'd also like to add that I didn't even get to finish the quest on my fixer because I didn't want to hold the others up (they all got their hearts from the first spawn of mobs). So yeah, 2.5 hours on a quest, not finished and have to go back today to kill left/right hand to get it done.

- The GMI was put on Live over 2 years ago and there are still things that were not completed from back then. We never got org bank functionality or a replacement for the 'org only shop', for example. This is the only MMO I've played that doesn't have any sort of org bank functionality, yet if you store stuff on a froob and account share you risk getting banned.

- I was recording a How-to video the other night on basic GUI customization and went to open my friends list and got a blank panel. This happens quite a bit and has been a bug or problem since I started play over 10 years ago and still hasn't been fixed. I actually had to do that section of the video over because I stumbled through how to explain why my friends list wasn't populating. It really is mind boggling.

- We've been asking for years to have inferno missions listed as easy/medium/hard with the same rewards regardless of if they are rolled by a 210 or a 220. Is there anyone that's played the game in the last 5 years that is in disagreement with such a change? Is it a hard fix?

- It seems like most people I know utilize outside tanking at 2 Mountains and Kite Hill to level their toons. I'm generally anti-OST teams and I've even jumped on the bandwagon because the alternative is to level alone. There haven't really been any implemented solutions to address this long-term problem.

These are the types of things that really need to be fixed with existing content. No matter how much effort you put into the engine or how much you try to re-balance the classes.. if you don't fix what is broken with the current content, the new people you manage to attract will leave. The people currently playing are going to be way more tolerant of the blatant game design flaws in live content than some new person trying the game for the first time. We are, after all, used to the problems and we just find a way to work around them.

I'm not in your industry but I can't believe that some of these 'quality of life' fixes would take a lot of time. We're not talking about implementing new playfields or doing complete reworks of a profession. Some things are as simple as placing an extra mob or two in the world, adjusting spawn timers, fixing drop rates, changing loot tables and swapping out rewards. I have no idea what your budget is for the game but I can't imagine that pulling someone in for a 3-6 month clean-up project would break the bank or overly tax your resources. It would, however, make a world of difference to the enjoyment factor of your released content.

----

So I asked a question yesterday that I really should have asked a long time ago regarding who designed my favorite playfield in game. Turns out it was Genele that designed Dark Ruins.. and apparently, from her own statement, when she was new to using the tools. That instance, on an AO scale, is brilliant and probably the best designed in the game (with the exception of the fact that something a bit more awesome needs to be provided as the final reward.. to coax more people to do it). Whoever opted to have her working on whatever she was doing instead of putting out more of what she was obviously good at doing really dropped the ball. And I'll just leave it at that because anything else I could say wouldn't be founded in fact.

To piggy back on your experience, about 3 years ago there was a thread created in the game suggestion forums (that Kintaii told someone to create so the devs could have a consolidated place to look) that centered around areas of the game that were frustrating to complete due to having to kill 5 mobs but only 3 existed, https://forums.anarchy-online.com/sh...d.php?t=588382. Kintaii even responded to it and here we are with those issues unresolved.

Also, the other things you listed fall under a category of bugs, annoyances and quality of life. There is a stickied thread in the knowledge database that sort of brings these issues like yours to life. The list is HUGE and expansive and its existed since 2010 and was closed in 2012 but all that information is still there and available to look at and reference.

I do agree that the issues brought up seem like a rather simple fix if they just got someone to actually do the work for it. But I imagine there is a lot that goes in to addressing these issues such as investigating the report, duplicating it, finding the cause etc etc so saying that you have to jump to get over stairs in SL missions seems like a clear cut case but it could be hours worth of work to fix it, possibly days in AO's case.

In short, and I have said it many times, AO has a lot of problems that have been swept under the carpet for years for a variety of reasons (that I dont want to list). AO does not have enough revenue or popularity to invest the time and money to fix these issues on a scale we would like to see but instead fixes to them will come over time or not at all. It has kinda always been that way and I dont expect it to change. Dont get me wrong though, I have seen lots of bug fixes and stuff before and to say it never happens or it rarely does is a joke, but if you look at what AO needs fixed its like looking at The Wall in Game of Thrones.

I find this line particularly funny:

"Play the game for what it is, not what it could be".

Yes, in an industry saturated with early-access/kickstarter/crowdfunded games and especially in MMOs, a genre explicitly known for steady content generation and 'carrot on a stick' actions. This particular train of through is frankly, a load of bollocks.

Let's look at the 'big guns' of MMORPGs.

WoW has a content patch on average every 6 months of it's expansion development cycle. When Blizz announced a year of ICC in WotLK, people left in droves. They did the same for SoO pre-WoD, it happened again.

GW2 has a content patch every few months, with loads of story driven content.

Wildstar has a monthly patch with new content.

EVE has very frequent patches adding little bits here and there and HUGE patches adding swathes of new content.


Why the hell do you think 'Play for now, not the future' is a viable business practice in a game with an extortionate subscription cost?


LoX was released FIVE YEARS AGO. I'll let that sink in for a while.

I agree and disagree with that statement but in order to do so you have to look at it objectively. You dont buy a game before it is done being developed because it doesn't have everything in it, it would be less fun. When you buy a fully developed game you buy it because what was advertised looked fun. In the case of an MMO purchase (new or old. subscription, f2p or b2p) you purchase it because it looks fun and interesting and it might be fun and interesting in the beginning. Once you have done everything there is in an MMO you want more to do. But you shouldn't continue to pay (or play) for a game you no longer find fun just because content is "just around the corner".

What makes an MMO different to other games is the people in it. Some people continue to pay for a game because of the friendships they made in that game and dont want to lose touch with those people. However, the game itself might not be fun to them anymore and they play the game to help them and wait out until the next content patch which somehow always feels right around the corner.

Now, the company sets the expectation on when the game will be fun. Some MMOs have it to where they release content on a regular basis thus always keeping players interested in the game and keeping their subscription while the promise of new things is right around the corner.

But here is where I agree with that statement. Without subscriptions (only using AO as the example), without money flowing in from customers/players to the company, there is no game. The customer/player pays for the developers salary (maybe not directly, lets also ignore all the in between costs) and the developer is paid with that money to develop things to keep the customer/player interested in the game to give them more money. Advertising also plays a role as well. Notifying old players (as well as current) that there are new and exciting things planned and is just around the corner drums up sales and makes people want to get ready for whatever is about to come.

The reason why the MMOs you list have more frequent content cycles is because of a large population, the ability to create content in a timely manner with the resources given, more modern way of development, more developers.

The statement, "Play the game for what it is, not what it could be" is neither one way or the other. If you like the game, then support it whether the game play is no longer fun to you or not. Your support makes it so the game still lives on so one day you can return to it when it is fun. But also, dont have unreasonable expectations in how far your support goes and if you think paying for a game you no longer find fun is reasonable, then do so.

To summarize, that statement is neither right or wrong and one side is no better than the other. They both work hand in hand but finding harmony in both is the real problem.