Petition Against Upcoming Changes in AAs (PvE)
Quoting Tarib.
"We are currently also looking into ways to improve the subscription for new players. The idea is to decrease the disparity between end-game players with full AA trees and players that arrive at the end-game. This is something that many of you veteran players have mentioned to be worth taking a look at and we are planning to do that. More details to follow."
Please do not do that. Thank you.
Quotations against it (I have to paste some of those here so that they do not get erased):
Arguments:
- A freshly 80 character has no crazy gap in AA, but in skill. Boosting one's skill is only a personal task.
- The AA speed has been increased twice or thrice already, and it is at insane speed. Working on AA points does not take much time).
- People will rush to 80 rather than take a leisurely stroll at last PvE levels, thus creating more problems in group-making at higher levels.
- Why would you rush newcomers to "join" the veterans. New players should take time learning their class and studying it properly with other newcomers and then earn the status of a good player (where AA do not matter much).
- Newcomers are often dragged to a decent gear level by veterans too fast, before they even realize how to play a class. Why would one want to speed that up.
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Here are the other concerns:
"A lot of upcoming and recent changes are aimed at egaliterianism, simplicity, short attention span, and quick boredom.
The latest changes in T3, breaking quests like GGG and Saddur's Key without even caring about the text in the quest lines, a crazy amount of AA bottles given out for free (you could collect over 20 for level 20s), sprint revamp without fixing stamina, skills removal, overly powerful revamps for some classes, and now promised faster AA gain will make you progress too quickly and be bored.
...Also, there are a lot more new bugs that are not getting fixed. The game is not what it used to be in the terms of challenge.
What to expect in the next patches?
1. AA gain will be much faster. You will progress and be bored with your main character.
2. Skills tab will be completely removed from the game.
3. T3.5 will be reduced in difficulty to feel like T2.
4. There wll be no more open-world group quests while levelling.
5. All bosses in low-level dungeons will be tank-and-spank.
6. Stamina will be removed from the game.
7. All classes will be revamped so that you can tank-and-spank every boss and dozens of mobs while levelling or in high-level dungeons with little effort.
8. All 3-steps combos will become 1- or 2-step combos.
9. Free powerful items like bottles for Premium players each week to keep them logging in.
10. The last three bosses in T4 will be much easier to control and kill.
11. There will be new content for people who always want something new that will release more powerful items each time, effectively reducing the previous work to naught.
If you can cope with that mass market business model, then you can try it again."
And (copying from the older forum) (Entitled "Is Age of Conan Going the Same Way as World of Warcraft?":
LunaticAsylumLA: "I am just reading news on Pandaria for fun, and I discovered the changes that they had done. I am posting this only because it scares me that Age of Conan may have the same perspective
1. First, they locked all feat trees as soon as you had chosen one until late PvE levels. Now, all feat trees were removed (the fate of Age of Conan in a few years, judging by the recent patches) and people were given choices of three abilities every five levels, starting at 15, to choose from. The abilities are almost similar.
The reason for this: avoiding the best builds that some get to avoid bad performance (read: so that others who click buttons randomly and do not read what their abilities do will have a chance against them.)
We have it in Age of Conan now with the Skills pane.
2. You no longer need money and to go to a trainer to learn a new spell.
3. World of Warcraft has no stamina and mana was "fixed" (read: "became endless in groups") with the recent patches. Age of Conan is on the path to that (the stamina resource now is almost endless).
4. You no longer need some scrolls (crafted) to reset your abilities gained through inscription (crafting skill) scrolls till the last level. You need them at the last level.
5. I suspect that difficulty was decreased even in some tank-and-spank encounters (?!).
6. Added a location reminding Khitai. Is that a new trend to mix this theme in, or did Blizzard steal the idea of Funcom?
7. Seems like companies try to fight any interaction between player skills, putting mindless zombies in front of them to fight instead. People in World of Warcraft complain on the recent changes indicating that the changes focused PvE only, ruining and neglecting PvP completely (for example, added instant casts for some powerful spells). A match! Age of Conan was advertised as a PvP MMORPG action game.
I can go on, but that will be too much.
My concern is that soon, there will be a luminous line leading you in both games (check Duke Nukem Forver or latest Halo and old Doom maps), compare Mass Effect 1 to 3, Diablo 1/2 to 3, Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2. Moving to the sides will cause you to teleport back. You will have to press 1 or 2 when required. If you do not press it in time, you will be punished with a beep...
Are all games going the casual way to become lucrative? Is there a hope for medium and large publishers to release a playable game, or do they have to dumben everything down to the gameplay of Pong and Frogger so that the massive short-attention span casual audence buys it to become bored with it and neglect it in a month (money from common and hardcore players is insignificant and can even be neglected nowadays)? The answer seems apparent just with an example from music: the lyrics written using three words for a tune containing three notes is flooding the market of today."
Darknessjw: "Yeah and it is very sad. It started not too long ago, when CoDs started to "shine" with their MW series.
Lots of children like them and dont like complex gameplay.
That market is really big so ofc all companies try to copy that and make games too easy and simple + they turn great single player games for multiplayer game (Mass Effect, Command & Conquer, Heroes of Might and Magic), those are biggest "QQ" games for me, ruined all of them to make them more casual friendly and dull easy mode, ME1 easy mode is many times harder than hardcore in ME3, i mean WTF! Or in Heroes 6 you dont need to create complex armies, you can now transform different race castles/req areas to your race. Like, you are human race and capture demon fortress, you lose lot of soldiers, ohh wait they added selfresses, loads of healing skills etc... you cant lose a single unit if you play well . And after battle, you just turn castle to human castle, tadaa now you have 2 human castles. And top as cherry, you can teleport troops for free between castles so tactical surprise attacks no longer work.
All big companies think only money, they dont care about customers, only money. Nowadays you can always turn difficulty level to hardest possible without even trying game because they are usually too easy even with that setting.
GW2 is really good example about this, game is so god damn simple and aimed for brainless people. Everywhere is hand holding so little Tims and Janes dont hurt themselves or get lost in rat world. You get some few skills at start of game, tadaaa you play next 79lvl with same skills. Only few xtra skills you can choose. Compared to GW1, combat is dumped down waaaay too much
I have big hopes for Valve's games, cant wait to see next Half Life 3. I hope they dont do that Halo 3 casual noob gay thing that they add health regen, reason why games are so easy"
Buffarse: "I'm getting old now. I see it like this. It's going to sound arrogant and snobbish but hey, shoot me.
Computers used to be a geek only domain. When I remember back to 80's and early 90's (thats right kiddies, before the Internet even existed) I knew no one who dabbled in computers who was not either
1. At university (back when they were exclusive and you needed to have half a brain to get in)
2. Older but equally technical/intelligent
3. A very small number of youngsters who were "into" computers
Back then games were written for intelligent geeks who relished and loved the challenge games presented. A few people attempted to write "easy" games but on the whole they were unsuccessful because, frankly, geeks and the intelligent hated the lack of intellectual and stimulating challenge.
Then in the late 90's and early 2000's the Internet took off for the masses and gaming hadn't caught up yet. Oh it had technologically but not in reaction to the market that was growing massively around it. Games like the early MMO's were still modeled and written by and for intelligent geeks. Rewards were still difficult to achieve. Games didn't spoon feed stuff - you had to fight for it and fight hard. This to me was the golden age - the age of gaming where technology was good enough to produce expansive and convincing games but still geek enough to be a challenge.
Fast forward to today. The Internet is now mass market and PC's (and phones, tablets etc) are in the hands of the stupid, uneducated and lazy masses. The market is now exponentially larger but it is also exponentially dumber. The masses do not want a challenge. They don't want mental stimulation. They don't want to work at anything to get that feeling of achievement you only get through hours and hours of hard work. Instead, they want instant gratification. If you have to actually DO something to get that gratification then they quickly lose interest. This, ladies and gentlemen is where gaming is going. To a certain extent, you can't blame the likes of EA and Ubisoft. Why spend £10 million on a complex, difficult and involving game when you can throw out any old shallow cra* for £1 million and get 10* the sales? That said I have the utmost contempt for the shallow, lazy and feckless generation thats growing up now and the mindless capitalism that exploits them. The iPad generation. The people who "just want to use the computer, I don't care how it works". The software companies like Microsoft who do everything they possibly can to hide everything "difficult" from the user for fear they cock it up. The car manufacturers who hide the engine under covers so you can't work on it. The food manufacturers who put any old **** into the food and pass it off as fresh. The TV producers who supply an endless menu of reality TV and "talent" programs that promote the idea you can "make it" by doing nothing more than appearing on a TV program for a few weeks.
The era of serious gaming for the mass market of old (the intelligent technocrats) has passed. We are left with a shallow, homogenised pile of unmitigated drivel. That is the future of gaming and it deeply saddens me.
...
Like all generalisations they are not accurate in all cases. I too am casual but I wouldn't count myself in this group either. But without question, the thrust of game development is towards the "casual" player. In the general populace that implies the Zynga/Angry Birds masses. They generally have little interest in "learning" how to play a game. If you can't pick it up and work out the controls straight away or drop in and out of games without any long term time commitment (think 4h raids) then they quickly lose interest. I'm not talking about those people who roll the "flavor of the month" class to look good - they have a LOT more interest and commitment than the general populace. The people I'm talking about don't play AoC at all. It's WAY too unfriendly and hardcore for these types of people even in its dumbed down state.
I also have no problems with making older content easier to a point but sometimes I think it's a little too far and detracts from the quality of the game. Saddur's key excepted (it's a ridiculously irrelevant simplification) I still get despondent about other simplifications/nerfs. For example, the whole of T2 and the changes made to Athur Bast and Ahazu Zagham. They were interesting, technical fights - Athur Bast especially so. Most of the people playing today have absolutely no idea about how "difficult" that fight used to be. It's a shame that a fight like Athur Bast was turned into what is effectively a glorified tank and spank. What should have been done was to keep the mechanics of the fight entact but made it simpler by other means. Making it so the imp didn't hit as hard, making it so aggro swapping was slightly easier, making the small imps easier to kill so you didn't need 4 top DPS mages to kill them etc. That fight could have been made easier without ruining the core mechanics of it. I can't help feeling that it serves as a poor reflection on the quality of the game when most raids in the lower tiers are no more than a pretty simple tank and spank."
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I am not trying to sound snobbish, but I am writing that in frustration as we love to have a lot of challenge in games. Games are played for complexity and skill that becomes developed in months, years, and we certainly do not need to come back to the stage in our lives when we were digging sand with our shovels for hours for fun.
I understand that money are generated only through the short-attention span audience, but veterans must have something worthy, not a half-sucked ice cream on a stick, too.
Oh, and for PvP, I would just suggest adding a separate queue for AA-less or AA-maxed minigames so that everyone is happy (even though I love progressing in PvP as well).