Balance will end sooner or later ?

[Aenarionnn]

Those are simple questions for Devs & Means.
I play this game from looong time and now I really feel tired of how the things are moving. I understand there is alot of works behind BUT, once you announce a radical change for many professions months ago, it's ridicolous not give a simple statement of how the works are going on by time to time.
We know NTs are going to loose doubles and triples, Agents going to get a secondary AS etc. etc. but those are OLDERS info, after 4-6 months AINT time to start to deliver us the NEWS of today ?
It's FC going to release all the implements all in a single patch or time to time to see what on the paper works and what online doesnt work like planned?
There is a single profession that it's "done" for real ?
IMO if we can stop to put online social stuffs in order to have the resources to complete what started will prevent ppls to leave this game.
Bcouse let's face the situetion, this is an old game with old graphic engine, it's more the ppls that move on for another mmo than the ppls that join and pay.

[Ocene]

Good thinking Aen. I hope FC will react.

I actually would like Means to come address this issue here.

[xtremsniper]

i vote for this,

cause it takes fc AGES before they tell any details

i'm still waiting for the new graphics update from AO

c'mon hamsters

do ur job better =.=

just close age of conan, and get back to anarchy online, spend you time in that game, not age of conan

they should put a deadline for those stuff

not 'coming soon'

[Gaveup]

We know NTs are going to loose doubles and triples, Agents going to get a secondary AS etc. etc.

Best part is were those 100% confirmed or were they just ideas at the time? Where are those ideas now? Have they changed?

[Aenarionnn]

Best part is were those 100% confirmed or were they just ideas at the time? Where are those ideas now? Have they changed?

I dunno, that's why I'm asking for an UPDATE.
Instead to release docs about nanos of 1 prof they couldnt simply say after 6 months what is their plan now?
What is changed and what is not ?
I'm not asking for the precise day when they are done with the job, but simply what they have done till now and what they are going to do.

[Dollcet]

Only way to coax replys from the officials it to anger them so much they nearly bust a blood-vessel and write somethign just to shut you up .
Nice asking even by dozens of People and several bumps normally doesnt get responses

[Autohead]

Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo.

Unfortunately in this case, I still consider the rebalance to not even have begun yet. The only things that have been changed so far are things that should have been nerfed regardless of rebalance (see GTH & BR). Now if they'd just remove AS pistol we'd be back and square one and ready to start rebalance. So to answer the question of your topic subject, yes it will end, some time after it actually begins.

...and no, posting documents of changes that haven't been made yet is no indication the rebalance has even started, all they are are spreadsheets. Until we see results in game, nothing has started.

[Demoder]

The work with the rebalance probably started some time before we saw the first documentation. And as work is progressing, they'll come with more documentation.
IMO, this is the way to go; Plan everything first, let the community get the bigger picture of their plan, then:

while (MasterPlan.Feedback.Count > 0) { 
 MasterPlan.Change();
 MasterPlan.Feedback.Reset();
} 
MasterPlan.Execute();

If they don't do this, people complain they didn't plan enough.
If they do this, people complain they plan too much.
Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

As for the "stop everything else untill a single task is complete" thing:
They're different people. They have different skills. Not everyone have the skill to work on, say, the rebalance. Not everyone have the skill to work on the new engine, either.
And this is the beauty of a team. Each member work on what they do best, and the team as a whole get many things done simultaneously.

[Ievanenc]

/signed

[Gaveup]

As for the "stop everything else untill a single task is complete" thing:
They're different people. They have different skills. Not everyone have the skill to work on, say, the rebalance. Not everyone have the skill to work on the new engine, either.
And this is the beauty of a team. Each member work on what they do best, and the team as a whole get many things done simultaneously.

Stop posting the same thing over and over again, we get your opinion but you have missed the point being made. Don't care when just drop the PR-Propaganda and be straight with us, if it's a year so be it, if you have bitten off more than you can chew c'est la vie.

As to what Autohead said I totally agree, "still consider the rebalance to not even have begun yet." All the mucking about without any clear goal, get a goal to aim for and maybe there will be some direction. What is the overall goal of the re-balance?
There are a few HUGE things that have been pointed out by the community over and over, yet we've seen some band aid fixes such as the changes with BR/GTH, yet focus remains on a professions entire build? Going as far as changing special mechanics? It has been rumored NT's still be totally remade around "nano weaving" ... ok fine does that mean they push Q and nukes start coming?
We are all clearly missing what your intentions are with the changes to specials/nanos/perks is it simply lowering damage? So once again we are in a position of well, AS/SA/FA will be tied together, and as we all know certain professions hit points are so high you need a full load of perks, burst/fling/fa/as in order to be able to actually kill them, BUT WAIT! Items and everything will be changing too so maybe you don't need all that to kill profession X anymore... but can I ask if the point of that by reducing offensive and defensive capabilities is to make the game more... simple?

I'm not trying to pick on any one thing or make any point regarding any potential changes, my point is that with what we have been shown and the time lines we had been given it has pasted turning into a joke however the punch line will still be here, Soon™.

Btw how long do I have to farm a new setup and get a few IPR's for after the balance in case I need to experiment to find what will work for me after you make your changes? ;p

[Esssch]

And this is the beauty of a team. Each member work on what they do best, and the team as a whole get many things done simultaneously.

Except for the fact that they haven't really gotten anything done. They added a new PvP PF that probably took about 4 days total to create.

In fact, this video makes me think of what likely happens at FC's AO offices quite often.

[Demoder]

Stop posting the same thing over and over again, we get your opinion but you have missed the point being made.

And you clearly missed mine.
If they stop doing anything but the rebalance, they'd have to fire the content designers, graphical artists, those working on the engine and the other "code monkey(s)".
If they stop adding content untill either rebalance or engine is done.... wow. This game would be boring very fast for those of us who have done all the existing content. It sounds like a REALLY bad idea to me.

I can't really recall "posting the same thing over and over again" either. Are you sure you're not confusing me with someone else?
This whole thread, however, is about something which is being posted over and over again. And I don't understand why. Btw, anyone else noticed how those two threads and this thread were all started within 14 hours of eachother, two of them just 25mins apart?

Except for the fact that they haven't really gotten anything done. They added a new PvP PF that probably took about 4 days total to create.

Please take a look at the Consolidated 18.3 Update Notes and tell me again that all they did was add a PvP pf. (which, for the record, isn't added yet.)

[Artyomis]

Please take a look at the Consolidated 18.3 Update Notes and tell me again that all they did was add a PvP pf. (which, for the record, isn't added yet.)

There are several stages in project management, my man.
And most of us complain about completely missing "planning" part.
Alright, we got our rebalancing details approx 10 months ago, then again, one extra minor update over there approx 7 months ago.
You know, good project goes on with daily project plan updates. Besides, i barely believe you can successfully deploy any project without having an exact goals written in the corner of your plan sheet. And it doesn't really matter how many content designers or graphics coders you got over there, since all we care about is rebalancing as a project and its millestones.

I doubt Means is a schoolboy who knows nothing about project management. I believe in his skills and passion, but then again, can we please have an overall rebalancing project plan updates, not just single nanoprogram or standalone idea quotes posted in FWM or patch notes?

You know... When I was working as CIO in one of companies - my CEO strongly required detailed project progress updates every monday at 9 AM. Neither because I'm not competent enough, nor because he didnt trusted me, but because it's how project management should run, because it affects everyone around it, not just a project team or general manager.

Thanks..

[Esssch]

Please take a look at the Consolidated 18.3 Update Notes and tell me again that all they did was add a PvP pf. (which, for the record, isn't added yet.)

Please take a look at that list yourself and try telling me that's been more than a week or 2 of actual work. The thing that took the most time was the collector instance, and simply because of the kick effect. Which from what I understand, they already had done. And even with all this extra time, it came out and was practically broken from day 1. For the record, the PvP PF is on live servers? It's added.

[SoapTarder]

where I'm from a construction crew can take 2 months to pave a small section of highway, when they could actually do it in a week or two. why, because its a career for them, and until another job comes up, they will milk the one they currently have because its all they have. imo, this is why some bugs are left unfixed, some stones unturned, etc etc. when the boss rolls around and asks someone what they are working on, they can pull out a list a mile long of stuff that needs doing, and thus they are off the radar for some time. years later, they might have a new boss, and promptly pull out the same mile long list of stuff that needs to be fixed, but never gets fixed.

imo, so much was swept under the rug over the years, that now with engine and rebalance in the works, the ao team are constantly running into these bugs and glitches that are causing them constant "wtf moments" everytime something else comes along that was swept under the rug, and now needs to be fixed because new stuff just won't work otherwise.

this is all speculation on my part, but believing it helps me to sympathize with the current team, and understand that giving deadlines is near to impossible because they are constantly stitching nine instead of the one that wasn't caught in time years ago.

**edit**
plus the fact that they have a small team working on a few massive projects.

[Demoder]

Please take a look at that list yourself and try telling me that's been more than a week or 2 of actual work. The thing that took the most time was the collector instance, and simply because of the kick effect. Which from what I understand, they already had done. And even with all this extra time, it came out and was practically broken from day 1. For the record, the PvP PF is on live servers? It's added.

I don't think either of us can assess how long it takes to implement any of that. We don't know how their tools work, nor how much had to be changed in the spaghetti code to make it work.

I might have missed a notice somewhere, but last I read was that the PvP pf was considered being under testing on the live servers? Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Xtremtech]

All the mucking about without any clear goal, get a goal to aim for and maybe there will be some direction. What is the overall goal of the re-balance?

Well... the primary goal is to try to balance the professions more equally. In order to achieve such a goal though, it was recognised that rather than just tweak at things as has been done unsuccessfully for years, some really basic changes needed to be made. Stuff that people have wanted FC to address for years but it's always been felt that it was too risky or too large a job to really tackle. They isolated things like:

* Alpha damage being generally too powerful and in particular the long recognised difficulties with AS in PvP

* Crowd Control mechanics and spammability needing to be changed

* Defence Vs Offence issues with perks and nanos, in particular the way AAD and AAO work

* Healing, HD and HP being generally out of balance and causing issues

* Runspeed and Synch issues causing general issues

* etc

They also realised that some professions have had a great deal of tweaking here and there over time, which has left them unfocussed and with toolsets that don't fit well together and quite a lot of knee-jerk type tools that may have fixed immediate issues but in the long run had a bad effect on the game and the professions involved (e.g. BR/GTH for traders, SS/SoZ for MPs etc).

So, some professions will be having their toolsets quite deeply modified to make them more unified - and also to fit them in with a more generally balanced PvM and PvP envvironment.

It's quite clear what the goals are and, to be frank, we've had an unprecented amount of communication from FC about the direction of change and what issues they hope to address with the changes. If you've been keeping track of the FwMs and other communications, then you should really have a fairly good idea of what's coming up.

What we're beginning to see more of now is the detail of the changes that are being planned... but with the level of change across so much of the game and to deep levels, we'll only really get a good firm idea of how it'll all turn out when all of the changes are in place in beta testing of the rebalancing.

As to time... well AO has never been a great game for seeing change happen quickly. It's a small team working on a huge system. It's all too easy for plans to go tits up when you've got such a small resource pool and so many variables and change risks built into the game itself. To be honest, you're going to have to live with that to some extent...

X

[erozc]

We should all just rejoice anything at all has happened between the period of mid-June to mid-August. It's holiday season in the Nordic countries, and while the typical holiday is just one month, it's usually really hard to get anything done even when you're in the office since the other people you need are somewhere else.

[Youfirst]

Please take a look at the Consolidated 18.3 Update Notes and tell me again that all they did was add a PvP pf. (which, for the record, isn't added yet.)

Not only it's ingame already, still in some beta version, but it's already empty. Entered it myself 3 times so far, twice it was EMPTY, and once it had 2 ppl in it. The game's population is going down. I personaly have witnessed 2 ppl quitting in the last month. One is a org m8 and another one quit due to the penumbra rubberbanding "i'm not paying for this anymore"...

If things don't change SOON -™, RK1 will merge with RK2, and RK1 will be a ghost town in a year after that.

[Demoder]

I have two theories for why the new PvP pf is empty (I don't know if it is or not, I haven't been able to be ingame much the past week):
1) People avoid it cause they know it's still 'beta'
2) PvP'ers ain't as many as they claim to be on forums

You know... When I was working as CIO in one of companies - my CEO strongly required detailed project progress updates every monday at 9 AM. Neither because I'm not competent enough, nor because he didnt trusted me, but because it's how project management should run, because it affects everyone around it, not just a project team or general manager.

But we're the customers. We're not the CEO. Did your CEO give your internal working plans to the customers?
Sometimes, it's a bad thing to show the plans to your customers; Especially when you ain't sure if you'll manage to pull it off or not. We've seen the effect of that with all the complaining regarding the new gfx engine not being released yet, or even the video of the engine (which was a really vague 'I'm really hoping to get another video to you guys within the next 3 weeks.', not 'I am sure I will get' thing anyway) ...