Game Director Letter – August 2013

[Asharoth]

Not going to read 18 pages .. 2 is enough ..

.. probably missed an answer back there .. a new server for new toons for some time ... I really don't see the point apart from a very very few PvPers who like low level PvP for the pvp rather than rush to 80 and grind Memory Cloud.

But I'm not going to bitch as it doesn't have any appeal to me (not since Bori anyway)

It's a temporary server, it will go up at the beginning of the event then come down once the event is finnished.

[Kellaxe]

It's a temporary server, it will go up at the beginning of the event then come down once the event is finnished.

Also, they said free transfers would be given from the temp Race server to the B&G server, so your toon is not gone once the race is over.

[Kurt2013]

Also, they said free transfers would be given from the temp Race server to the B&G server, so your toon is not gone once the race is over.

I thought i read something like that too...but after checking the GD letter again today, i could not find the reference there.

But it is here in this thread in the first post of Nusquam.

[tapwater]

As a primarily PVE player, I wouldn't normally consider ever rolling a toon on a pvp server. However, and event like this does spark some interest. If there was a way to win something account wide, not just from being the #1 fastest person who has no responsibilities and thus all the time in the world, then I would consider rolling a toon on the new server. As it is, I have no chance in hell of coming out on top of that competition, so I have no reason yet to provided pvp fodder for others. We shall see how this develops in the coming weeks.

[edinazzu]

As a long time player it would be really nice if funcom supplied us with an extra character slot for said race because I don't have an extra one, I'm not buying one and, I'm not deleting a toon for a one-off game.

[fractolytt]

I think the opposite is the way to go:

1- Open a blood and glory where we can choose 1 character from other servers every time you want to play in it. Make It impossible to create new character on this special B & G server. Give Everyone Level 10 pvp and all AA.

2- Remove all PVE which aren`t related to PVP specific goal.
For exemple, remove all annoying spiders but keep big Bosses dropping rewards.

3- Make all sieges fully build and upgraded and give it to any guild who take it down. Automatically make it open to attacks after all others been open to attacks once. So a siege will always be available to attacks all the time. Of course give rewards every times you win a siege. Guild may put their own town open to attack by a push of a button if they want to.

[Azanath1979]

It´s a wonderful idea you people are suggesting. Sure let Funcom focus only on PVP, with all the available resources. Let them not do any work on TSW, AOC PVE content or the upcoming lego game. It should only take them a bit over the year to do a complete overhaul of all the PVP systems in AOC. Than at the end of the day pvp might be what you want it to be - or more likely Funcom would be bankrupt by than.

Funcom had some idea for world bosses in PVP zones, which would have bought more players in the borderlands. You guys said no. Fine it was back to the drawing board - and no for you. Now Funcom offers you an event which is solely focussed on PVP while they think about how to improve pvp (the roadmap is out there new minigame, Unchained pvp) and you still say no.

It baffles me beyond believe how some of you regard changes like completely disabling xp for anything but pvp in the game on that new server a "quick" fix. This will affect everything. It is not that they have a miraculous switch that Joel just needs to pull and suddenly large parts of the code will be auto rewritten. The ongoning system changes (no instant CCs, energy instead of stamina for running etc. are done with pvp in mind).

Surely you can complain that Funcom is not bringing back the pre-1.4 era of AOC were everything was better (except there was no endgame, the computers at that time had hardly enough power for this game, gem-stacking for one-shots etc.) That will change absoluetly nothing.

Joel has been absolute upfront with and brutally honest. So why are you attacking him? Because he has not the magical wand to turn that game around into your carebear-free-paradise? Most people enjoy PVE and PVP, if you focus on just one aspect in this game, there are for sure better alternatives, especially for the later.

Time for this game to forward and step from the shadow of its past into a new light - the question is whether you will be part of the journey or not.

[Kurt2013]

Sorry, but if it takes them longer than ONE patch to fix the longterm reported pvp bugs and change a few line of code...something must be VERY wrong, no matter what content they are developing otherwise and where the focus is. A lot of pvpers (and probably some who left) would be more than happy with so small a boon, so this should be a start (and you probably will fix a lot of pve bugs on the way as well).

Sure, if it is not yet a certain bugs turn on a priorised list, then it looks from outside as if nothing is done. But IF you have such a list and people working on it (without bosses messing with your list or others adding new bugs on top of your list), sooner or later the changes will be visible from the outside.

If something is not on the list, you need testing and team involvement to develop something new (like maps, mob AI, factions, crafting revamp etc.) sure, you have a good point and for this bigger resources, time and management is needed.
But most pvp (and some pve content you even already find in AoC) is sandbox content. You develop a SYSTEM once...then you just need tweaks, not much resources needed after that (assuming your system is at least decent in a way).

For example open pvp:
The decision of having only temporarily consequences, the way how you become criminal or murder and the way xp is balanced makes your "pvp system".
What we see that it was (if at all) working only under certain circumstances (decent population influx, not much gear gap, decent latency, enough players to group up and build different teams).
Still there is NO need to scare the crowd with "ah! new system development! resources! money!", because you ALREADY have a system you can base things on. Turning the guards green already had an effect on player behaviour, don't tell me that used lots of dev power and resources.

Many of the conditions under which it works, can be influenced by minor tweaks (every player notices them after a few days, so comparing this with years is ridicolous, imo) and balances.

Bigger updates, like factions, global and individual renown, achievements, arenas, new gear etc. of course will need development. But again, if this takes a year or more than a month, if one or two people focus on it, you are doing something wrong. If there is a serious bottleneck (like having to reconstructure the whole database), then it might be different, but then you can communicate it honestly. People will understand this.

What is hard to understand is, that player based suggestions (and your players are sometimes professionals with maybe a longer work experience than your employees) are seemingly ignored (a bump from a dev/mod or a single comment can work wonders here to your customer perception). Especially if they are given, with a low state of resources in mind. But if independant game designers and freeware people can come up with certain things and present them ready in months...why shouldn't funcom do similar things?

Not even speaking of the fact, that a SYSTEM once developed, can be used in any of funcoms games (because it is a theory mainly, like a pen and paper ruleset). And if the engine synergy advertising speech is true, it should not be too different in the execution, too.

Please reconsider the approach and at least be involved in the discussions (for example by singling out the (as Nusquam stated)
incoherent, nostalgic and utterly unusable ones).

Especially since i hope to have made clear above, that you already have a pvp system and you do not have to do a complete revamp each time. You can simply add things step by step and it can change to the better.

For many of the suggested things, you already have similar code, basic structures and examples:

- deathmap minigame
use an existing map, add a new queue (as with Jhebbal Sag)
- new minigames with unsymetrical gear and teams
should be possible, but maybe wait till you sort out the "unchained ones", since many stuff you do there, will be needed for those

- Arenas
use the existing "practice ones" as basis. Also you can do invisible blocks, define zones, area effects etc. already. Again might be worth waiting till after the "unchained" ones, since you might want to predefine gear and rules for the arenas

- factions
you have a faction window and the basis since khitai and Turan...you can do faction checks for players (for example in grouping up), so you could use it for player vs player outcome too (simply give pvp xp, faction renown or criminal renown according to predefined faction preferences or the players faction choice).
Imagine players kicked out of the Aquilonian faction (that would come with certain gear access and special priced stuff or dungeon access maybe), because they kept on farming people of that faction.
Faction camp locations are already enough in the world. You would have to add maybe an armoury kind of small instance for each and a door as well as add merchant npcs and quest givers. But on a positive side, you don't have to do all at once as long as you release them in pairs (cimmerians and vanir, aesir and hyperboreans, stygians and stygian rebels, aquilonian and aquilonian rebels etc.).

- guild pvp and alliances
should all be possible to do right now, if i just look at what you have already. What new has to be done, is to let the guilds decide who is friend or foe...and then implent it similar maybe to the factions.

@Azenath:
Only very few here attack him personally. But just look at the direction and plans: Instead of moving to more sandbox like content or onetime developments with constant replay value, they seem to offer adding more individually designed instances, individually created events with decreasing replay value etc. etc.. This is fine for me. But i find it kind of weird, that tweaking and improving the game system (be it through small changes up to revamps or even simple bugfixing), which require a limited shortterm focus you do ONCE, seems to have a lower priority than constant updates and are deemed "more costly" (which of course is a question of time, of course they can be more costly if looked at with a quick glance, but they are usually by default less expensive in the long run).
And if the GD is not the one to adress for things regarding longterm plans and strategy, who else?
Who said when and where, that during the event on the server, there should be xp awarded only for pvp? Then how do i level to 80?

[Azanath1979]

But the suggestions are not ignored. The GD himself said that he checked the them (in fact if memory serves me right he was the one asking for them in first place) Where do you think the idea for Unchained Battlefields stems from? If you commented on one saying that`s an awesome idea, poeple will tread it ias if Funcom will redirect all resources towrads it and it will be deployed on the liveservers next months... And a lot opf the things people asked for are simply not feasible to do in a short timeframe or at all (like the example of one guy asking Funcom to disable xp from everything but pvp for the race...)

[Kurt2013]

This might be true (and i hope so).
But you can't rule out the customer perception. There is only so much work, you can do in the background without feedback (and this does not have to be from the GD!). Just imagine a more structured approach to suggestions, like one thread like we have now and then for each one, funcom considers valid and possible after sorting the rather long and chaotic open thread, one thread on TL for each possible suggestion open for discussions. Or when you plan important revamps (classes, sprinting, comboskipping, crafting etc.), e-mail surveys? You could rule out a lot of "how could they come up with THIS????"-effects by doing so. Also it would be less one-sided as it is now...just look at the number of double posted suggestions or similar ones over the years...(oh wait, the old forums were deleted ).

The GD said he checked and might consider, but he could not refrain from saying "most were incoherent and unuseable"...and this should be a deescalating measure?
He might have been personally taken by surprise by the reaction to such a nice and harmless idea (in funcoms eyes) like the race, so no offense taken.

Look at the feedback so far, it just proves what i said earlier in the thread:
"The new server is maybe good for letting the pve crowd test open pvp or to keep some players busy for more than 3 months..."

This again, is completely fine and shows, that the race is not automatically a fail or bad idea. If funcom learns something through it for future plans or system revamps (that might be hidden in some drawer), all for the better!

Some find it good, because it gives them a similar start to try out hostile open pvp, others will do it because of nostalgia, others will ignore it (or simply can not participate), others will find it weird and others will be offended. That's life, no need to take each legit reaction (depending on the players history with funcom) personally.

Why should something like disabling (or rather globally changing) xp rewards not be possible (especially if you want to modify all by a set multiplicator and not change each value individually)? Have you never programmed a game?
If they have a formula for it, it can be globally changed in minutes. If they have it defined per instance, it can even be manually changed in a reasonable time. If they have it defined per mob, it should still be doable with a complete database "edit and replace". They are making that server new...so they will need a different database for the ruleset anyway.
One example:
In 1.05 to 1.06 at least, you got pve xp for a pvp kill. This took ONE patch to change it to what we have now. So, why should it not be doable? If some changes make sense or should be done, is a completely different measure...but imo for those cases you should have the discussion threads i mentioned above.