Game Director Letter – August 2013

[Chillee]

IT HURTS.
because funcom prefers to make this instead of fixing gamebreaking pvp armor imbalances and minigame bugs.

Everyone has a different idea about what to fix.

IMO, they should make T4 pvp gear and resolve the QQ over the pve gear.

But for most of the complaints, 100 players have 100 different solutions.

My guess is they don't know how to fix the bugs. I doubt they've ignored them completely, may have tried to fix them, just like broken rez windows.

[perbear]

are you trying to make people play for 100 hours a week? are you serious with this hyborian race thing? it makes no sense what so ever, and it sounds horrible. If this is what we can expect for the next years of Age of conan, you will lose more players than you can afford.
what about actually trying to take care of the players you have, instead of scaring them away?

i can't speak for everyone else, but what this game miss is a new
raid, more dungeons, more minigames with different gametypes, more continents, more factions, new gear, more mounts etc etc. it's so little of everything.

and have you ever thought about achievements? this is a major thing people could enjoy. the game would be much better if people actually could go for a reward from a difficult achievement, instead of watching the wrong item drop each time you use one hour of your life to see a useless item nobody in your group need drops. Get a grip on yourself and start making this game what it's supposed to be, the best MMO it can be.

- Perbear.

[Muffz]

I'm glad you enjoyed the video.

[Sarcopthes]

Yes but how does the race exclude work on those things? We are already working on the achievement system and when that is closer to release I will talk about it (and show it).

Again this is not an either/or situation. You will get what has been outlined previously. We thought people might like the race in addition.

Edit: Regarding the definition of grind, I can't define that for you. Positive people use the word progression, negative people use the word grind and everybody has their own mileage. I don't consider doing something I enjoy grinding. When it stops being enjoyable, I stop doing it.

it does not exclude but you are just wasting resources, another point is - you just started to be new GD - if you would like to show yourself as a successful GD - you have to take successful actions only - if ppl will trust you that you are creative person, who is not afraid of risk, and if makes mistakes can admit it - you will be respected and you can get only more new players. 3rd reason - its not good time to start B&G again as you have nothing new to get back new/old players and sadly I cannot believe that majority of old playerbase would like to level up & gear up alts another time. Fix systems and then you could do it.

About progression and grind: grind is when your success(advantage over other players) is relevant to the hours which youve spent on the game, while when speaking about progression- there are different types of progression, what we can describe as a pvp progression - it is progression in your skill and progression in cooperation with your teammates. Instead of wasting resources on another B&G server you could spend those resources and introduce new pvp level 7 and 10 gear - give tokens for attending pvp premades vs different guilds, new pvp armors: slightly different stats and visuals of the armor (you can even just change colour if you dont have money to pay someone to make concept art). Give new social armor parts for achievements: i.e. every gear part for every 2000 kills, 200 flags capped or 100 minis won, or 50 premades won. I hardly believe it is demanding so much resources while it would give new targets to veterans who dont have pvp targets for quite a long time. Premade wise - it would also encourage all players to play them providing with social pvp aspect. Imo thats progression not grind , even though you need to spend some time on it - however you dont get power advantage over other players. Idea is pretty simple & cheap I believe, and couldnt be unsuccessful as wouldnt be gamebreaking. Your 'hyborian race' will be unsuccessful if there will be hardly anyone interested in leveling another alt, and it doesnt matter if those are pvp levels or pve levels. I was in this game since early 2009, now i dont play mostly because of high ping and lack of social pvp. We organize premades when possible, but giving a carrot would help us a lot, making it much easier.

What do you think about it Joel?

[Kurt2013]

Grind and progression are completely different...think of them as grind on x-axis and progression on y-axis. Sure, they "can" have the same values, be symetrical or reversal, but they are not the same variables

You might want to replace "grind" with "effort"...and effort becomes grind subjectively...

[bandytaz]

Oh, this thread is SAD in so many ways. Guys (noite80, ViolentLeonidas, K4nnyc to mention few reapiting same stuff over and over) if you wanna be taken seriously (and I'm sure you want) start reading with comprehension and STOP thinking that your opinion is same as everyone else. You do not represent whole PvP community (at least not the part capable of having their own thoughts), you are all full of anger, hostile and unbelievably BORING.

It's obvious that Joel has good will and he is trying to make best he can in given circumstances. If you can't appreciate it and can't understand that Funcom just simply can't do anything else right now, why do you still play? Why did you pay your sub in advance for year or so? I'm not judging you, I just can't stand people who always complain and try to force their point of view on everyone else.

Some of you in latest posts keep repeating about "wasting resources" and stuff. Joel said clearly, couple times in this thread already - they can do this (race) without slowing development or losing resources which are needed for making actual content. So it is worth a shot.

so again dodging to make new pvp systems just same stupid idea of a new server with same pvp content a pve server has.

New servers are the only way to attract new people and encourage that old school PvP. Some of us are not "hardcore" enough to grind 80 in couple days, but we still can gather some friends and make it a little harder for those making it asap. When Rage was launched a lot of people raced to 80 and than left, it was fun for a while though.

Such a thing might even become some kind of repetable event like reseting ladders in Diablo 2 or something.

still no arenas

I miss them too, still we have minis, more than "arenas" itself we lack some kind of ratings/ladders for them.

still no siege fix

I haven't participate in any siege for a while, they were never my favourite content (lags, latency and fps issues and I like my games fluent), though I felt THE NEED to participate in them when BK's were giving huge advantage. It is community who made sieges completly useless - creating big alliances to keep buffs from bk and than all people who couldn't have them started crying about unfair advantage. You might say all you want, though I will keep repeating participation and especially winning in 48vs48 should grant HUGE rewards and maybe even advantage over other players.

still no world pvp quests

These might be cool, but than again I like it more with world bosses/event style (like anniversary)

still no removing of bori

Damage was done a long time ago. I would even sign "taking away" all PvP exp anyone get from sacrificies made there (because I wouldn't lose more than few tousand pvp xp points which is nothing for my character). It is pretty much dead content anyway and if anyone feels like missing on some PvP action just to dig their PvP levels I don't mind. A lot of level 10 people get their exp, aa's and shiny gear there so why newcomers should be without that possibility?

still no guild war tags/quests

It seems that so called PvPers prefer big alliances than having war with real opponent so who cares.

still no word on a pvp ranking system

What can I say to that? It is pretty much connected to what I said before.

still no touching guards and criminal system on "real" servers

System was made because people were crying that they are ganked by higher levels and when taking quests etc. I wouldn't say that it is really something that bothers me.

still no word of balancing classes

How can you talk about class balancing when every class can shine? And every class can be played so it looks like it is the worst class ever...There is to much diffrent factors - gear, aa's, skill, buffs from other classes, heals, latency etc. I like all the classes in AoC and it was long time ago when I said last time that some class is OP or UP.

still no mention of making pvp amors good for pvp for every class

They seem bad only if you compare them to PvE stuff. I don't do that because all I play is PvP and all gear I have is PvP gear and I'm doing just fine.

still no word on fixing gap or removing pve armors in pvp
still no word about fixing aa gap wich destroys new players in pvp

It was mentioned even in this letter that they are still working on unchained minis.

still no word on increasing skill in pvp with improved dodge mechanics

And why would they do that if PvP is mostly about one step combos or instant abilities these days? And still some people complain that it is too hard...

you already did blood and glory server it failed.
why? beside all of the above players drop all their gold so economics is a joke, players made free accounts to hold their gold.
it has no diferent pvp content then a pve server.

It failed because most of PvPers had their fun for a while and than left when grinding and PvE begun. And that's gonna be the point of new server: "have fun for couple days and than go back to your usual".

so instead of actualy making pvp content you make a new server where i cant play the characters i played for years.

Let me get this straight, you are talking about this gap between new players and veterans, about competitive PvP and than you can't leave your shiny characters for a couple days of fun? Well, your choice.

congratulations you proved your same as last guy unwilling to make pvp content, just sad new servers.

And you proved nothing - you say that you care about PvP, but somehow I don't see that in your negative attitude.

[Jaedelyia]

i can't speak for everyone else, but what this game miss is a new
raid, more dungeons, more minigames with different gametypes, more continents, more factions, new gear, more mounts etc etc. it's so little of everything.

and have you ever thought about achievements? this is a major thing people could enjoy. the game would be much better if people actually could go for a reward from a difficult achievement, instead of watching the wrong item drop each time you use one hour of your life to see a useless item nobody in your group need drops. Get a grip on yourself and start making this game what it's supposed to be, the best MMO it can be.

- Perbear.

Did you miss the previous GD letter or something ? Or are you seriously missing deliberately all of Joel's posts ?

You think the game miss new raid, dungeon and mini, but it's exactly what it is coming. Palace Raid, Slithering Dungeon, Dragon's spine mini. Without talking of the 2 new 6man already released. I know you also said "New continent and factions" but that seems really unrealistic regarding FC situation and resources available for AoC.

You also talk about achievement as a scoop never though, but they are already working on it. Last Nusquam post speak about it, btw : http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpos...&postcount=114

are you trying to make people play for 100 hours a week? are you serious with this hyborian race thing? it makes no sense what so ever, and it sounds horrible. If this is what we can expect for the next years of Age of conan, you will lose more players than you can afford.
what about actually trying to take care of the players you have, instead of scaring them away?

Well, I see the point you're making, but in reality, we don't know how the reward system will go. Maybe there will be some reward for doing thing that doesn't need to go no-life for one week. Also, it's optional, so just don't sign if you don't like the even.

It's a bit like if you we're telling that "spawning boss at 5AM suring the 5 years anniversary event was bad because it urge people to pley at night to get all the reward". Well, don't do it for the reward, do it for the fun. I'm sure it can be fun even if you don't end in the top 100 of the race.

[Kellaxe]

In other words: if we set the expectations at rock bottom we cannot fail.

AOC has little to no resources and so saying: we don't want to over promise sounds a lot better than "we don't have any money".

The Hyborian race, for me, is pvp equivalent of horse racing track: no one asked for that and you are delivering because its dirt cheap to deliver.

While I appreciate that GD comes here with replies some of the posts are just cracking wise at paying customers. I personally don't enjoy this "forum buddy" attitude in GD and posting "lols" in replies along "you don't like the game then quit". That is the kind of stuff that I can get from other forum posters, I don't think it suits paid professional with high position in MMO industry.

Again my personal stance is that I am disappointed with current GD and how AOC development is going.

I have to agree with this assessment of how things are and the response to an obviously upset community over yet again, another cheap band aid "fix" that fixes nothing.

Seriously...who wants to start yet another toon? Maybe...just maybe, some PVP may happen for a week or so on the race, but offering something with no long term fix is not at all needed. I would rather spend time on "progression" on an existing toon rather than "grind" a new toon for a short term race.

I have now lost faith (yet again) that anything will ever change.

[Nusquam]

it does not exclude but you are just wasting resources,

No I am not. The resources are not the ones on my team.

another point is - you just started to be new GD - if you would like to show yourself as a successful GD - you have to take successful actions only - if ppl will trust you that you are creative person, who is not afraid of risk, and if makes mistakes can admit it - you will be respected and you can get only more new players.

To be honest, so far the community seems more angry about the time-to-implement rather than successful/unsuccessful actions.
People liked the anniversary. People like the dungeon we have added. It's not about quality, it is quantity people are raging about. Quantity is harder to do with a smaller team.

3rd reason - its not good time to start B&G again as you have nothing new to get back new/old players and sadly I cannot believe that majority of old playerbase would like to level up & gear up alts another time. Fix systems and then you could do it.

It's an event. It is being run on a new server so people have equal footing. When the event is over, the server will be removed. It's not a new, permanent server. Running it on the old server would be impractical.

If you aren't interested in the event, you are not forced to do it? The idea is to have fun. Imagine whitesands the day the event starts. If you enjoy a good pvp brawl, you will be there, even if you are not trying to win the competition.

*snip*

So you want PvP achievements and rewards for said achievements? You have seen my actual comments about these things *in this very thread* right? Short version - this doesn't affect that.

[PunkJiuJitsu]

Edit: Regarding the definition of grind, I can't define that for you. Positive people use the word progression, negative people use the word grind and everybody has their own mileage. I don't consider doing something I enjoy grinding. When it stops being enjoyable, I stop doing it.

LOL well put. Nusquam 1, negative unhappy troll 0.

We have been begging for anything and you delivered. I am looking forward to the new server. That is what I asked for was to force people to level but smell the roses along the way. Maybe its the term RACE that is throwing everyone off. All I know is I will be racing home to make a new took and kill as many unhappy trolls as I can while the fun lasts.

Nothing lasts forever so lets enjoy this game for what it is. The best PVP game out hands down. We are all here because there is nothing better. And I will be here till you turn the lights off (or my PC dies lol). But I will for sure expect an AOC 2 if this game ever shuts down.