Game Director’s Letter – May 2013

[Kurt2013]

Agreed completely. What a waste of development effort to cater to a substantially small subset of the population. There is a reason why so few MMOs have 'player housing' ... especially if they are not viewed from a flat, fixed perspective (hi Ultima Online). It would incredibly hard to implement well, and for what?

Let me give you some points about that "hard to implement":

The engine already supports individual instances that scale and allow for visitors (neither you or me do know the limit of how much of those can be active at the same time though, but that limit can be stretched by placing a few of those doors in different areas). So creating one door leading to multiple player houses of a certain type/design is utterly possible without much dev effort.

The engine already allows for placement of structures to nodes that can be defined from different node types. So making the "housing" a basic design with customizeable notes is utterly possible without much effort now.

The engine keeps track of completed quests already. So allowing for a trophy wall in that housing is utterly possible right away.

The basic designs for different cultures are already there. Even sample rooms and houses are already found in game ready to use for "housing" with a simple copy/paste + cleanup + node adding.

The engine also already supports doors closed till certain quests are done or active (thus allowing to place doors in the housing leading to areas that need to be earned or bought to expand).

Also you might be quite wrong about that "small subset of the population". First, it might be small because there is no housing ingame and the guild city building is extremely tedious, thus putting the kind of players who would like it busy doing other things. Second, it might not stay a small subset, if the housing is done right. Third, it might not even be a small subset right now and the "impression" or "evaluation" is wrong.
There is a reason why games allowing for modding or player customized content (nwn, sims, ultima online) were (and are) popular even when the tech and graphics were outdated.

[Redd]

Why would someone want to logg in game and sit on a chair, while you're already sitting on one in real life?

Give more action!

[Prima]

Why would someone want to logg in game and sit on a chair, while you're already sitting on one in real life?

Give more action!

Because the more authentic a world feels, the more real the dragon or enemy feels. And for some people, it takes more than a nice texture on the opponent's avatar for a world to feel real.

If we didn't care about authenticity and immersion, we'd all still be playing cards or Tetris.

[Suctum]

Player housing?... who cares. If they spend any time dealing with inventory they need to up the player inventory, even with the extra 50 slots you can buy from the store, 100 slots is hardly any space when you factor in trade skill items, multiple armor sets (tanks...), RP gear (very plentiful), and whatever else you want to store. Mainly, they should expand storage for crafting though.

If player housing somehow assisted in opening up more bank slots than I'm all for it though...

[mardragon7]

When it comes to tradeskill they should make a bank just for that and a button to automatically sort to bank(look at gw2). Every item has its own slot. I really hope the amount of items in tradeskill revamp is extensive enough that such a system is needed. Ofc also that the new system is good enough that we want to use it.

Micromanaging inventory is just unnecessary.

They should sell us vanity dolls to deck out. As many as we are willing to pay for.

[Maelkjar]

I for one don't see the point of player housing and such things in MMOs, I'd say something like this is likely to be prioritized as "nice to have", and it should, as new content like areas/dungeons/raids will be more likely to consolidate/increase the playerbase. Imo even the crafting revamp has lesser priority than that, although it's been announced earlier.

[Kurt2013]

Completely agree about the inventory and bank space.

The problem with new pve content is just...that it does not stay new long. How popular is Turan? How popular are the quests in Dragonspine?

You are getting serious problems, if you focus too much on endgame and predefined linear addon content (like one more tier of this and that). You can see this not only in AoC. If you do not add "niche" content once in a while (and i do NOT mean horseriding or such...that is still predefined content) and are innovative you will be in trouble with the player pyramid. MMOs build only about gear progression are bound to fail, no matter the resources and company behind them.

The so called "nice to have" content is in most cases what sticks around and defines the game atmosphere, playability and fun factor. Sure, nice designed pve instances work for many as well (at least once). But if you are low on resources, you need to develop content that involves either randomm elements or the playerbase to define and customize.

They should not just cater one crowd (especially since one player can belong to a lot of "crowds"), but keep offering a wide variety of game choices (ideally each with a progression or renown system). Power progression in pve (in a non-linear way) and pvp, levelled field pvp, crafting, collecting and trading are all parts that glue the thing together. Allowing players options, choices and customizable content in all these fields will only save development work in the long run and give longterm player motivation.

[bolas]

Completely agree about the inventory and bank space.

The problem with new pve content is just...that it does not stay new long. How popular is Turan? How popular are the quests in Dragonspine?

You are getting serious problems, if you focus too much on endgame and predefined linear addon content (like one more tier of this and that). You can see this not only in AoC. If you do not add "niche" content once in a while (and i do NOT mean horseriding or such...that is still predefined content) and are innovative you will be in trouble with the player pyramid. MMOs build only about gear progression are bound to fail, no matter the resources and company behind them.

The so called "nice to have" content is in most cases what sticks around and defines the game atmosphere, playability and fun factor. Sure, nice designed pve instances work for many as well (at least once). But if you are low on resources, you need to develop content that involves either randomm elements or the playerbase to define and customize.

They should not just cater one crowd (especially since one player can belong to a lot of "crowds"), but keep offering a wide variety of game choices (ideally each with a progression or renown system). Power progression in pve (in a non-linear way) and pvp, levelled field pvp, crafting, collecting and trading are all parts that glue the thing together. Allowing players options, choices and customizable content in all these fields will only save development work in the long run and give longterm player motivation.

Finnaly, some1 who gets it. Thks

[Erock25]

Completely agree about the inventory and bank space.

The problem with new pve content is just...that it does not stay new long. How popular is Turan? How popular are the quests in Dragonspine?

You are getting serious problems, if you focus too much on endgame and predefined linear addon content (like one more tier of this and that). You can see this not only in AoC. If you do not add "niche" content once in a while (and i do NOT mean horseriding or such...that is still predefined content) and are innovative you will be in trouble with the player pyramid. MMOs build only about gear progression are bound to fail, no matter the resources and company behind them.

The so called "nice to have" content is in most cases what sticks around and defines the game atmosphere, playability and fun factor. Sure, nice designed pve instances work for many as well (at least once). But if you are low on resources, you need to develop content that involves either randomm elements or the playerbase to define and customize.

They should not just cater one crowd (especially since one player can belong to a lot of "crowds"), but keep offering a wide variety of game choices (ideally each with a progression or renown system). Power progression in pve (in a non-linear way) and pvp, levelled field pvp, crafting, collecting and trading are all parts that glue the thing together. Allowing players options, choices and customizable content in all these fields will only save development work in the long run and give longterm player motivation.

How can there be a non-linear power progression in pve?

[bolas]

How can there be a non-linear power progression in pve?

One sugestion: being abble to increase non pvp stats like hate, mana/stamina regen, etc... (by crafting or anything u want), what actually, should have being done since the start.

Imo, should not be pve and pvp gear, all gear should be the same, and upgraded diferently (pvp = +crit; +crit damage, etc...) and pve (+/- hate, mana/stamina regen, etc...) of course pve gear could have some "pvp" stats or pvp gear could have some "pve" stats, but u know what i mean right?

PS: including weapons.