Friday with Means - October 23rd, 2009 - Perpective and Party

[haxi]

My friends list is longer now than it ever has been. It is more typical than not that I have to scroll to see all of my current online friends. I guess my friends are just more loyal to AO than yours are. That doesn't mean that AO is dying though.

Loyalty is a hallmark of friendship and dogs, I do not see how that attribute applies to a game. I am probably far less social than a GSP party maven though and likely have a much different definition of "friend".

My statement applies to real friends that I still maintain a relationship with outside of AO, not a random list of people that I only know by their nickname. When real friends (my definition) stop playing, you tend to notice. I probably do not make friends as easily or quickly as you do, I am more inclined to have few close friendships as opposed to many casual ones. Apples/Oranges, and I would note that I never said AO was dying.

[vallikat]

My friends list is longer now than it ever has been. It is more typical than not that I have to scroll to see all of my current online friends. I guess my friends are just more loyal to AO than yours are. That doesn't mean that AO is dying though.

Loyalty is a hallmark of friendship and dogs, I do not see how that attribute applies to a game. I am probably far less social than a GSP party maven though and likely have a much different definition of "friend".

My statement applies to real friends that I still maintain a relationship with outside of AO, not a random list of people that I only know by their nickname. When real friends (my definition) stop playing, you tend to notice. I probably do not make friends as easily or quickly as you do, I am more inclined to have few close friendships as opposed to many casual ones. Apples/Oranges, and I would note that I never said AO was dying.

I'm sorry that so many of your real friends have quit playing. That must suck. However, you were responding in a discussion that was debating the current state of the game. Therefore I mistakenly assumed that you were entering the evidence of your shrunken friends list on the side of "AO is dying." I apologize if that is not what you were getting at.

[Keldros]

I'm just glad not many AO players are doctors IRL.

...because the "we must merge servers" crowd would be telling patients "Hmm, stitching the cut on your finger would take too long to heal. WE NEED TO AMPUTATE THE WHOLE ARM NAO!"

[Maical]

Roar!

[zartosht]

Edit: 56th! (just had to do it)

You are 55th, not 56th. l2c

[spookiepants]

I'm just glad not many AO players are doctors IRL.

...because the "we must merge servers" crowd would be telling patients "Hmm, stitching the cut on your finger would take too long to heal. WE NEED TO AMPUTATE THE WHOLE ARM NAO!"

worst..analogy...ever.

[Keldros]

worst..analogy...ever.

Spoken like someone who just doesn't get it.

Merging the servers doesn't increase the population, it eliminates 1/3 (or 2/3) of the potential growth--without fixing any of the problems that caused the population to shrink in the first place. besides, more people will quit if they're forced to change servers than if they have to reroll to join a new one.

[Yama]

Means...you have 18M credits and you are still lazy buy better NCU mems ?
And going full-agg. You are so offensive !

[stormranger]

you are still lazy buy better NCU mems ?

why should he since he can selfbuff this which require 1 ncu at all.

[Mereditche]

why should he since he can selfbuff this which require 1 ncu at all.

I think this nano is becoming a bit outdated.

Might have been uber in the past. If you'd give it to some profs today, half of the forum dwellers would still whine it ain't good enough.

[stormranger]

I think this nano is becoming a bit outdated.

in combination with this and some of those i think it's up to date

[meatybtz]

Spoken like someone who just doesn't get it.

Merging the servers doesn't increase the population, it eliminates 1/3 (or 2/3) of the potential growth--without fixing any of the problems that caused the population to shrink in the first place. besides, more people will quit if they're forced to change servers than if they have to reroll to join a new one.

....and you base this assumption of quitting if forced to move rather than choosing to regrind a massive load of crap on what? Eh?


There isnt enough population influx to counter the attrition rate on two servers. RK1 was slowly bleeding out due to attrition, it was getting bad.. very bad. Because the influx of people who were new and didnt use the default server was small, very small. I recall the slow but sure ghost towning of RK1.. Right now its happening to RK2. Our influx is small, our attrition is high. RK1 people right now say: Everything is fine. Before RK1 people said, AO IS DEATH DEATH!

The point is that this proves our lack of sufficient population growth to sustain 2 servers at functional levels, let alone 3. I have characters on both servers (actually all 3), and I tell you RK1 is hoppin compaired to RK2, which is dead most of the time. There is just no way in HELL I am going to refarm BILLIONS on BILLIONS OF CREDITS and 8 full sets of 300 AI armor, let alone my 4 or so sets ecompasing 150s, and 210s. Plus all my supporting alts and buffing alts and tradeskilling alts.... oh yeah and all my NODROPS. I am 90% socializer.. I spent a good 2 hours chatting it up with an old buddy in the Ado garden turning down teams because both of us were interested more in talking than bashing rocks. I had just resubbed last night, thanks to the wife not wanting to leave and dragging my carcase back to AO time and time again. To me an empty server with no one to talk to IS death. Socializing>everything else. And having to burn my socializing time releveling, reGRINDINGMYASSOFF to start on a server with life in it... screw that.

And to Windguard.... well Yes, I want the new engine NOW. I am not asking for instant gratification when I say that, because I have been waiting for 3 years now. Sure they changed engines 3 times. What they had in the "still alive" video is more advanced than what they have in the current screen from the AoC engine.. so we are still less far along than we were 3 years ago. Now, what we are ahead on is all the little niggly bits that also needed to get done.. however, even if we had stuck with the first try engine..we still would have all those niggly bits as far along as we ahve them today... therefore we are actually not going anywhere fast. The latest screenshot was primitive, with terrible shadows vs teh very nice shadows of Game Engine Upgrade 1.0.. and this is Game Engine Upgrade 3.0.

-We should have had a new engine by now
-We still would be were we are today with the codebase advancement if we had stuck with 1.0
-We DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH NEW PLAYERS TO POPULATE 2 servers. We have the influx for 1.. not 2. In the hayday of explosive growth of '04 we had plenty.
-People do not like playing a "team oriented game" on nearly empty servers.
-Socializing used to be great back in the day. I played then too on another account. Soo much social activity. Now there is so much damned grind to do that people have not time to just relax. Everyone is fixayed, eye on the prize....terrible really. I watched the "social" bleed out of the game replaced with an ever longer and more annoying and tiring grind.

[Ayria]

worst..analogy...ever.

Here's a better analogy. You don't move the population from one sinking ship to another without first patching the damn hole.

-We should have had a new engine by now

If there's one thing that's abundant on this forum it's people who think that they can judge that which they have never partaken in. An engine isn't some simple program you make in high school, it's not something that consists of a few thousand lines and you're done. We're probably talking at least tens of thousands (plural) of lines just for the engine. That takes time.

Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick two.

I for one would like Good and Cheap (as Good and Fast doesn't appear to fit in FCs budget) so I'm willing to wait a while. Goodness knows the community first complains about Funcom being slow and then complains about ****ty, rushed work. Here's a tip. Stop trying to rush them.

-We DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH NEW PLAYERS TO POPULATE 2 servers. We have the influx for 1.. not 2. In the hayday of explosive growth of '04 we had plenty.

So lets get the players instead of just sitting here saying we don't have the players. For such "dedication" from it's customers Funcom certainly has it rough. People love to bitch and moan and complain to high heaven and back again about how Funcom is lacking and yet you're still here so something must be holding you, why not go tell your friends about that? Go tell random people. I got someone into AO just by mentioning that I played it, nothing more. It's not like it's hard.

If your buddies don't want to play because the graphics suck, then they need to learn that graphics aren't everything. If they don't want to play because the population is low, then they need to learn that they aren't helping the issue by not sticking around. How do we get more people? People have to come in and stay. If everyone just says "Oh there's not enough I'm leaving" they'll never be enough no matter if we have the new engine or merged servers or not.

-People do not like playing a "team oriented game" on nearly empty servers.

Some people don't like playing it on full servers. Funcom's mistake was attempting to force everyone into one style of gameplay.

-Socializing used to be great back in the day. I played then too on another account. Soo much social activity. Now there is so much damned grind to do that people have not time to just relax. Everyone is fixayed, eye on the prize....terrible really. I watched the "social" bleed out of the game replaced with an ever longer and more annoying and tiring grind.

That is their choice. Yes shiny prizes tend to distract but unless you are predisposed towards wanting some reward it wont matter to you. I do however agree that socializing should become a larger part of what the game allows without making you fall permanently behind (see team oriented instances etc once everyone has gone through and you sat talking to long and missed the boat).

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a373/Dyo_K/SLMap.jpg

Take a look at that Funcom, that's the world map of Second Life the game that is, well, socializing. Anyone care to count the green dots? According to statistics there are currently about 64,000 people logged into Second Life at this moment. 64,000 people logging in just to play a game that has no inherent combat system and revolves totally around the idea of talking with others and role playing or doing business (which I seriously doubt counts for any kind of majority amongst the crowd). Walk around in the grid (SLs world) for a while and you'll find that RP/Socializing is 10:1 on business and work related things.

64,000 people are being drawn there to pay LL money just to socialize and play barbie with their avatar. Perhaps, Funcom, you can realize that your players don't want a never ending grind all the time (Something that does appear to be dawning on you somewhat, with the release of The Grind and new social armours by MstrBstrd (did I spell that right?)) and that socializing is just as fun to many people as doing BS (etc) is.

[SoldiTwo]

...

If there's one thing that's abundant on this forum it's people who think that they can judge that which they have never partaken in. An engine isn't some simple program you make in high school, it's not something that consists of a few thousand lines and you're done. We're probably talking at least tens of thousands (plural) of lines just for the engine. That takes time.

...

What do you think what it is, a magic cauldron?

It's their job and for the gfx / engine coders it actually is "a simple" program because they do these kind of things everyday - of course that doesn't mean that it's easy.

Btw the old Quake 3 has ~64k for the engine and ~52k for the renderer but the number lines of code doesn't tell anything imho. WoW is supposed to have 5.5 million lines of code.

Imho there are too few ppl working on AO.

"As things stand now, we're a three man team. Yeah, we lost two of our five man team recently. Not nearly enough manpower to get where we need to be. Rebuilding the team isn't really an option for various reasons. So, where does that leave us? Can you guess? Yes, that's right, we're going to be shutting Dungeon Runners down at the end of 2009. New Year's Eve to be exact."

The above is from a "professional" game developer:
http://www.dungeonrunners.com/news/c...utting_do.html

But even if AO is finally shutdown like Dungeon Runners, I will have many fond memories about AO - but I hope the best.

PS
I'm really glad AO is in the hands of Funcom because companies like NCSoft would have killed it many years ago.

[Tazalanche]

I'm really glad AO is in the hands of Funcom because companies like NCSoft would have killed it many years ago.

Of all of the "doom & gloom" posts that I have seen in these forums over the past 4+ years, this has to be one of most positive statements made.

Well said!

[Ayria]

It's their job and for the gfx / engine coders it actually is "a simple" program because they do these kind of things everyday - of course that doesn't mean that it's easy.

Btw the old Quake 3 has ~64k for the engine and ~52k for the renderer but the number lines of code doesn't tell anything imho. WoW is supposed to have 5.5 million lines of code.

How large the code is has a lot to do with it. It tells us just how much code you not only have to write initially but how much code you have to sift through to find one bug. When's the last time anyone here looked at a 64,000 line book? Do so, find me one sentence in it and point out the grammar or spelling error in it.

That's what bug hunting can be like when things get super large like that. The biggest thing I've ever programmed is only a measly 3,000 lines of code and it still takes me hours to find a single bug because while you may find a line you think is the issue its really that line combined with this line or that line that looks like its wrong but it was really right and holding back these two other lines that were wrong and would have blown up if not for the first line.

Imho there are too few ppl working on AO.

Agreed. But are you willing to pay more per month so that they can hire more?

[meatybtz]

Its not my job to bring people to AO to play it. I used to try to do that and they were very WTF about AOs bugs and slow Dev Cycle and Small Team.

If Funcom wants to PAY ME, to bring people to the game.. sure. Thats advertising.. you pay to get people to want to come play. Does AO have any? No.

As for the game engine.. Sorry. But 3 years is plenty of time to implement a game engine. The real stumbling block to the advancement speed is two pronged: Dev Team Too Small and Code Base Too Uncomment and Convoluted.

AO as a game has some behaivors and apparent techniques used to acomplish things that could be coded more streamlined and more reliable. Its like spigetti code... thousands of paths all intertwined in wierd ways. When your dev team "discovers" how something works, thats a warning sign... they shouldnt need to discover. It should be commented, documented and that documentation should have been maintained and passed down so that all the voodoo they did and still do to make things work (hacks essentially) should have been written down.

I agree, they are FINNALY REALLY MAKING HEADWAY. Impressive. But it took them 3 years to get to the "start", as a paying customer I have the right to say.. if it took you 3 years to get to the starting line.. how long to get to the finish line? 3 more? 7? 20?

I personally would like to see AO have a 20-40K subscriber Base, active. If we had that much we could hire more devs and get this ball rolling in a timely fashion. The DEVS ARE WORKING HARD. We cant deny that, but the job they have is too BIG for so few.

[haxi]

I'm sorry that so many of your real friends have quit playing. That must suck. However, you were responding in a discussion that was debating the current state of the game. Therefore I mistakenly assumed that you were entering the evidence of your shrunken friends list on the side of "AO is dying." I apologize if that is not what you were getting at.

No need for an apology, just different perspectives. I think the current state of the game is less than healthy, but not actually dying. I have never witnessed AO in a lively state actually. It just kind of cruises along, somehow.

I have seen pix of a thriving AO, but those are all from before my time. It would be very nice to see something like this again:
http://www.dd.org/~tale/ao/screensho...annc4-full.jpg

[shadowgod]

No need for an apology, just different perspectives. I think the current state of the game is less than healthy, but not actually dying. I have never witnessed AO in a lively state actually. It just kind of cruises along, somehow.

I have seen pix of a thriving AO, but those are all from before my time. It would be very nice to see something like this again:
http://www.dd.org/~tale/ao/screensho...annc4-full.jpg

the funny thing is, back in the day, we always cursed about how specific areas were huge lag fests, due to all the people. and how something should be done about them. course, lack of people has "fixed" this. which now makes some of us which for those laggy days again.

[spookiepants]

Here's a better analogy. You don't move the population from one sinking ship to another without first patching the damn hole.

Ok, that one makes more sense. I don't think it applies to this situation, but the analogy works.