Game Director Letter - April 2013

[sageman72]

in regards to the coming unchained minigames; for the love of god, don't just throw pvp10 gear and full AA at everyone and leave it at that. If you do it will fail as hard as your B&G servers did, all because you tried to take the easy way out.

What you need to do besides giving everyone same gear and AA, is to implement a proper balancing algorytm that goes something like this;
1. Only one of each class pr.side
2. Max two of each archetype pr.side
3. Players gets balanced out based on win/loss ratio in minigames, not on pvp level.
4. When system finds 12 players in the minigame queue that fills the needed requirements and balance, all 12 players gets the accept button to enter and nobody gets zoned in before all has accepted. If one declines, the others will get a message up stating "waiting for players", the system will not pick the first in line, but take the best suited candidate from the queue to fill the spot.

Additional important points;
5. If one leaves during unchained minigame, you get a 1 hour cowards shame buff.
6. Start making a ladder system, based on the unchained minigames only.


In regards to the servers, acknowledge the failures and start anew;
Just merge all current servers into one PvE server, because the combination of no tokens and enormous amounts of fast-travel to everywhere in this game has caused world pvp to become next to non-existant anyway. Call this eve-style-merged-giant-server for Fairytale.

Set up a new server that has faction based PvP, so it will be Cimmerians vs Stygians vs Aqulonians vs Khitai'ans, all classes will have several possibilities to change their allegiance. Tortage and major city hubs will be PvE, rest will be world PvP. All players will drop minigame tokens, bori tokens, pvp-xp or a combination as long as the victim is not more then 5 lvls lower then the attacker. Victim will drop substantially more if killed in an "enemy" controlled zone. Almost all fast travel is removed and the only paths remaining is the major city hub paths and the "path of azura"-path. This server can be called Warfare. Give all regular stats on all gear a 50% reduction when used in PvP, reducing the impact gear has and making PvP gear the best choice for this. PvP stats are left as is. Bori removed.

After some time, if Warfare server is a success, open a third server that is Free-for-all-PvP, starting in Tortage. Much the same as Warfare, but no factions and players also drop items and money. This server could be called Mayhem.

Common for all servers, all guards are removed and consequence system with them.

[Zulusonne]

A healthy population is needed for any online game and this is what will happen with server merges, as you will have more people to play with. The merges should have happened earlier especially the special treatment for Mitra was definately the wrong choice...

The PVE-Servers has enough player, no reason to merge it.

Only the PVP-Player need a merge. AOC is more PVE than PVP actually, why the outnumbered PVP-Player not make her things on a merged PVP-Server and let us alone. No PVE-Player need this, i think.
Thats a risk for a badly server-performance, AOC isn't TSW, if there the Server-Performance is real good.

And latency is an argument in Raids, in Group-Dungeons ...., why many PVE-Player leave the game, because of the horrible latency for two years on Christmas.

This is not alone a risk for the Players, its a risk for the Business of Funcom with AOC. And for what, for outnumbered PVP-Player. Merge the PVP-Server and thats all.

[Maelkjar]

The PVE-Servers has enough player, no reason to merge it.
Only the PVP-Player need a merge. AOC is more PVE than PVP actually, why the outnumbered PVP-Player not make her things on a merged PVP-Server and let us alone. No PVE-Player need this, i think.

Can't stand reading stuff like this anymore...
First off - AoC and pretty much every other MMO is both, PVE and PvP, usually about equal.
Second - PVE already IS the focussed group of players when it comes to content. No reason whatsoever to QQ about getting no content on PVE-side.
And for the record - the merges do not come up because the oh-so-whiny pvp-players are getting less and less but because Funcom wants to cut infrastructure cost and provide all players with Single Server Technology which would benefit greatly from, if not even definitely require, the servers to be on the same physical location.

This is not alone a risk for the Players, its a risk for the Business of Funcom with AOC. And for what, for outnumbered PVP-Player. Merge the PVP-Server and thats all.

Trust me, if latency gets worse, the PvP-Community will be the ones who notice most as melee's will have problems landing combos. What you're talking about is the lagspikes where the whole raid is affected by high latency for 5-10 secs.
I'll admit that this is bad, but usually the raid will just go on after that without a wipe - at least thats my expierence from T3/T4.

[konungr]

Why would anyone want MORE minigame maps? It takes long enough to get in a game as it is. I'd rather they work on open world objectives, like quests to collect enemy heads for bounty rewards (vanity items/titles/consumables).

Nice seeing you back in game firstly Roargathor.

I think another mini map is good, and I STRONGLY agree with the open world objectives. It could be something simple. When the crafting thing happens and players drop crafting mats that is a big help.

[Frayala]

Please give Hox some love. We Do Not need a full revamp. Bring us up to date

[Bibik]

No special poll about merges like germans have 1 year ago ?

[Maelkjar]

Well I guess if there's nothing to choose from then a poll would simply not make any sense.
FC doesn't seem interested in just merging EU-Servers, so there's no alternative but to merge 'em all or to leave it as is. Even if the first would be considered as no alternative for us, the latter is no alternative for FC, so i guess its obvious what will happen.
Besides, IF the merges are to be done during may then the preparations for that event should already have begun.

[Bibik]

The tradeoff here is - higher latencies in EU for one server tech which equals higher population and more opponents in PvP/friends in PvE. That is what you should be evaluating.

If i readed that correctly, we have to consider ourselves if it worth the deal. Therefore a poll should be the better way to express our feelings about that.
If there's no real choice like previous merge, i fear we will lose hundred of players in the process.

[Zulusonne]

Can't stand reading stuff like this anymore...
First off - AoC and pretty much every other MMO is both, PVE and PvP, usually about equal.
Second - PVE already IS the focussed group of players when it comes to content. No reason whatsoever to QQ about getting no content on PVE-side.
And for the record - the merges do not come up because the oh-so-whiny pvp-players are getting less and less but because Funcom wants to cut infrastructure cost and provide all players with Single Server Technology which would benefit greatly from, if not even definitely require, the servers to be on the same physical location.



Trust me, if latency gets worse, the PvP-Community will be the ones who notice most as melee's will have problems landing combos. What you're talking about is the lagspikes where the whole raid is affected by high latency for 5-10 secs.
I'll admit that this is bad, but usually the raid will just go on after that without a wipe - at least thats my expierence from T3/T4.

Latency is a problem for everyone, including PVE-player, they also left AOC for bad latency over a long time in the past. Most of AOC players only play PVE and PVE just want to play. WOW has achieved its success purely on PVE. One-Server for PVE is uninteresting and servermigration are uninteresting. AOC is older technology than TSW, why this risk, for the few mini-game players on PVE servers. Merged the PVP server and free transfers for some time there.

Funcom may eventually reduce the cost with one server, but what does that when disgruntled customers leave for the game.

[Jaynorth]

LoL, this dude is following the same play book. It's all talk for AoC, TSW as had 4 updates in two weeks and AoC can hardly get a letter. State of the game is abandon ship.