Enough is enough

[Invino]

Never quite understood the need for "news" while playing a game.

Stuff is coming .. Soon .. would be sooner if it wasn't for terrible lack of cash in FC ..

.. economics is a bitch.

[Chaman-bourru]

Never quite understood the need for "news" while playing a game.

Seems player expect hope in addition of the game itself.

[letsdance]

They really can't write off TSW its too big and they put too much money into it. But TSW as a game is just not that great...

I don't think it's possible for TSW to ever make back the money lost, TSW would have to make another $30-40m, the money it's making now is hardly covering operating costs.

They can launch TSW as a full F2P at some point and get more players and itemshop money, but the big problem with the game is still there so the game will probably just sink again a little after.

[gduncan]

I have never encountered a company that displays as much disregard to its customers as Funcom is doing now.

I agree with this.

Unfortunatly it is what we have come to expect. Players in game have been using the adjective "Funcom'd" to describe failure for a long time now.

[chesus-sliced]

Is enough enough? Or do we need more? Its metaphysical innit

[SlightlyMad]

PRESS PLAY AND LISTEN

The interviewer was on AoC's side, tried to keep Joel talking about AoC but Joel rather wants to focus on TSW it seemed.

My 2 cents to Joel;

I really dont know how is TSW, never played it never wanted to play it or any other MMO cos AoC's mostly have what I'm/was looking for. So if it's worth the development focus rather than AoC... up to FC.

I dont know if it's the same case with other MMOs but there is a reason why a lot of players keep quiting/taking a break from AoC and most of them are coming back also. I dont think it's because of the new contents(which is rare) but the game itself; combat, graphics, animations, detail in characters/world, individuality etc. These are the things that made vet players fall in love with AoC, make people miss AoC, make them want to come back. Before I say my suggestion, I'd like to declare that I'm enjoying both pve and pvp sides of the game, I'm daily in minigames and raiding up to t4, also doing instances bla bla bla.

...There is a lot of content!; for pve the gap between people flies away in no time. I mean if a vet player can make a new toon ready for T4 raiding in 2 weeks, a new player could/should make it in 2 months... maybe more cos of AoC's learning curve's steepness. PvE progression is where it needs to be maybe it's even fast.

There are 12 different classes to explore the same 'huge' content with a different view angle. Surely PvE needs content at a game like this but at this state it can wait.

So from my view point what needs to be done:


***Fixing stuff. Stabilizing game performance on certain occasions. Renewing UI. (and renew the crappy servers!)

***Focusing more on PvP balancing.

***Differing PvE rewards from PvP.

***PvP progression to be a bit faster and reward better AA-wise(x10 prowess gain except Bori ofc.)

***Making new players prepare/ready for PvP via giving them the lowest tier PvP sets for free! early at the game(self-levelling gear only viable in PvP).

***Making AA gain speed x50 while levelling to 80.

***Encouraging PvP players to do PvP in open world(with rewards/factions whatever, lots of suggestions on this already)

***Making old playfields viable for vets to want to explore them again.(Example: AoK: Unchained instance)

***Balancing PvE instances(their rewards vs difficulty) so people shouldn't farm same instances all over and eventually get bored.

***Revamping crafting

and FIXING STUFF again.

probably more things I cant remember atm.


If you'd do all these, maybe finally the game will be ready for new content WITHOUT broken mechanics, breaking existing content etc.

[Mellaus]

+1.

Frankly, AoC does not really need more highest tier content per say, polishing old area to make them more attractive and creating unchained versions of all old instances would do just fine.

[Nusquam]

There is a letter coming this week, as I have stated. Unless it gets held up by translation or marketing. That is out of my hands, it is written.

Please understand, however, that the past few "months" of silence have been me getting a handle on things with three projects and putting together roadmaps with the producer and team that are realistic.

For some reason I get the feeling people think we are lounging around smoking cigars while sacks of money are delivered to the door daily.

There are a lot of things that have been "promised" to this player base, and assessing our ability to deliver those on the current team has also taken a fair chunk of time. We need to "clear the slate" so to speak, before we can putting our own mark on the game.

The good news - you'll have answers for most of it when the GD letter goes out.

I'm equally sure that some of it won't be what people want to hear.

[letsdance]

I'm equally sure that some of it won't be what people want to hear.

As long as you don't jump on another huge pink elephant..

What the game need is small surgical updates that get the players to play again. If we could get things like smarter itemization, raids with a sensible difficulty level compared to reward(lurker/Erlik). Economy incentives etc. Pretty much normal mmorpg stuff.

We don't need a 18 month "Nemedia" expansion without any updates in between. Because what we got in Dragonspine is not really worth it. The resources could have been spent a million times better in my opinion.

[KullOfValusia]

There is a letter coming this week, as I have stated. Unless it gets held up by translation or marketing. That is out of my hands, it is written.

Please understand, however, that the past few "months" of silence have been me getting a handle on things with three projects and putting together roadmaps with the producer and team that are realistic.

For some reason I get the feeling people think we are lounging around smoking cigars while sacks of money are delivered to the door daily.

There are a lot of things that have been "promised" to this player base, and assessing our ability to deliver those on the current team has also taken a fair chunk of time. We need to "clear the slate" so to speak, before we can putting our own mark on the game.

The good news - you'll have answers for most of it when the GD letter goes out.

I'm equally sure that some of it won't be what people want to hear.

Kudos to your efforts Joel. We're just expecting a good detailed response touching on most of the subjects from PvP to servers to classes etc. whether you can actually do any of these things is irrelevant as this is a factor of money/resources you may or may not have. Thanks again for the recent responses.