Discuss: Game Director Letter December/January

[Mellaus]

"A part of the achievement system rollout is a new notification system, which we will be taking advantage of later in the year to create a smoother tutorial and introduction for the game."

Very nice, that plus the achievement system are things that will serve AoC very well.
But it's too bad it comes so late.

As for T6, well, nerf T5 a bit before, overall the gear from there does not justify that tier being harder than T4 at all (and why on earth DT and barb get so much more love from there than every other class ?).

[EmSi86]

so basically 3,500 G off your 7 accounts?

what would you do with 3,500G anyway?

maybe 50G is a fair compromise, but only if all assets that can be duped are wiped from inventories (cash, any consumable or wearable bind on equip item). 50G is the price of the fast mounts, something i have yet to be able to get across my dozens of toons

my main is still stuck there (like literally, havent subbed back since, so its locked. ill only sub back when xfers are available, ill also sub my second most played account if xfers are available). It would naturally be cool to be able to xfer.

At least if someone really wants to bring alot of gold off Rage theyll have to spend alot of money on subbing alot of toons

well i can asure you i earned it all hard way - and im not saying that i got that much ...

and well i was playing it to the extreme on rage exactly for the purpose of upcoming crafting revamp - i accumulated vast riches - i had toons on various levels to 'farm' other players there from resources that drop in those brackets - like lvl 29 ranger ... :/ great for connals and wild lands - i got hundreds of lvl 20 leather from it ... like having cang jei fatality pet on one toon and farming 72-80 players who accumulated most gold through out their adventure and next me having it ;D (and ofc plenty of uncut gems from lvl 40+ players), i even had to purchase biggest bag there was and additionall 50 slots in my bank - and i only did it on my main rage toon... pathetic now when i look at it and them :/

i never exploited anything - im against it - and as soon as i got to know about it (it was kind of about 1+ years ago now) i stoped playing there and i logged in there max few times since...

also i could transfer out of it with it all already - there was option for it - but while then the population was quite decent still and i was having fun - and closely after sh1t hit the fan ... its not my fault that FC made some bugs that at the start few ppl find out about and exploited it like madmen, btw im having some shards too on rage currently - not many - i only bought some - like few - was thinking of making some bigger bags from em - so you see i could become another shard lord - but i wont - i dont like to - and im not a cheater!

[EmSi86]

also i know about ppl who have 1x/xx thousand of gold already on other servers ... so see it wouldnt be much of diference for the market balance - they just grinded ibises or t3 crafts one after another through whole time - and price for t3 craft was what? like 5k gold in past? this is sick ... honestly

so imo just ban shards and t3 crafts or other really valuable items cos i cant see any other thing coming to my mind what would make a disaster while transfering ... also please have on mind fair ppl who played or are still playing there

[raist718]

Anyone at Funcom know if any of the 7 people fired over Christmas and the 12 or so transferred from Canada to another company, did any work or were working on AoC?

Understand funcom stock dropped below 2 and there is not many resources for AoC with TSW having a better future and Tokyo needing to be finished, but why can't PvP gear be better for PvP than PvE gear? Why can't damage be balanced between classes in PvP before the arena is added? These two things do not seem to require many resources or added content. Just a change in base stats and damage numbers on attacks/abilities.

Not trying to be negative, but confused as a active player since beta still playing the game.

From the letter it seems Funcom believes gear is balanced. Which we all know it is not.
Quote from letter
"There has been a lot of feedback on PvP over the years, and we wanted to start taking a look at balance, gear and the overall state of PvP. Naturally this is a long process, so we started by dividing it into smaller chunks and tackling those pieces one at a time. Our first step was addressing some of the stat imbalance on PvP gear vs PvE gear. We did a pass on the PvP gear stats in the game, bringing the Tiered PvP gear closer to the PvE raiding tier gear in order to allow PvP to remain a valid and important progression pass."

Class balance is as bad as ever right now. It is extremely evident for anyone no matter the skill level or gear. Again does Funom believe that any changes in 2014 helped with balancing?
Quote from letter
"Continuing our research into class balance, the Update 4.3 series brought a long awaited class balance revamp. This was another improvement aimed at both the PvP and PvE sides of the game and allowing us to get the playing field ready for our next series of raids."

If PvP development is dead in AoC, Funcom should acknowledge it and let the handful of us left who don't raid know.

[Chegy4]

Thats the thing about funcom... Talk about raids, but no mention about rage transfers.

[kalston]

Anyone at Funcom know if any of the 7 people fired over Christmas and the 12 or so transferred from Canada to another company, did any work or were working on AoC?

Understand funcom stock dropped below 2 and there is not many resources for AoC with TSW having a better future and Tokyo needing to be finished, but why can't PvP gear be better for PvP than PvE gear? Why can't damage be balanced between classes in PvP before the arena is added? These two things do not seem to require many resources or added content. Just a change in base stats and damage numbers on attacks/abilities.

Not trying to be negative, but confused as a active player since beta still playing the game.

From the letter it seems Funcom believes gear is balanced. Which we all know it is not.
Quote from letter
"There has been a lot of feedback on PvP over the years, and we wanted to start taking a look at balance, gear and the overall state of PvP. Naturally this is a long process, so we started by dividing it into smaller chunks and tackling those pieces one at a time. Our first step was addressing some of the stat imbalance on PvP gear vs PvE gear. We did a pass on the PvP gear stats in the game, bringing the Tiered PvP gear closer to the PvE raiding tier gear in order to allow PvP to remain a valid and important progression pass."

Class balance is as bad as ever right now. It is extremely evident for anyone no matter the skill level or gear. Again does Funom believe that any changes in 2014 helped with balancing?
Quote from letter
"Continuing our research into class balance, the Update 4.3 series brought a long awaited class balance revamp. This was another improvement aimed at both the PvP and PvE sides of the game and allowing us to get the playing field ready for our next series of raids."

If PvP development is dead in AoC, Funcom should acknowledge it and let the handful of us left who don't raid know.

Are we playing the same game? The difference between pvp t3 and t4 (or 5) pve gear is extremely minor damage wise (when there is any...) and pvp gear has way better survivability (even the weapons have constitution) so what are you on about?

And class balance is probably better than it ever was in the history of AoC, it's impossible to balance a MMORPG perfectly anyway. Sure there's always room for improvement but they already did a lot of nice things, they nerfed guard's retarded burst (by removing magic damage from frenzy), they made brute conq non-noob friendly and they even reduced necro dots duration. Oh and while DT is still strong, they have way less armour than other tanks in pvp gear and vom can be removed with FH. They also removed pom's instant kb and nerfed their bubble...

Sure you get rangers left as silly as ever and barb got an unnecessary buff to decap but it's still great compared to the previous years (where pvp was truly neglected and got absolutely no attention whatsoever)

[sempthegreat]

As a recently returned player, I am very happy to see the positivity and the optimism in the letter. They're still working on the game, they still fix bugs, they still push out new content and is showing that the game isn't dead, and the devs still love the game. With the resources they have available, they're doing a great job! I can't wait to see what will happen in 2015r but I have a feeling it's gonna be a great year. I just hope they find some sort of way to bring more people back. Age of Conan is the best MMO out there and I'm happy and proud to be a part of Hyboria. Good job Funcom, don't lose hope and don't listen to the Nay- and Doomsayers.

- Sempthegreat

[Texan615]

Frankly I am surprised there is an expected date for the crafting revamp already. Beginning of 2015 (I take this as Q1) is also rather ambitious considering this is such a big system and is not even on Testlive yet.
I just hope there will be enough time to try it out, give some input, change things and try it out again so we don't end up with a rushed and not well-tested/finished product like T5.



What he said. Aiming T5 at fully geared T4 characters was the way to go since half of the server has at least 1 char geared out in T4 by now. For the sake of progression I would like to see T6 aimed at T5 geared chars again but I don't think this will be realistic for at least another year and/or a serious nerf to at least the retarded last 15% of Honorguard and Vistrix and Killikky overall.

A hard and a normal mode would be nice but it will make loot very complicated I think. I guess we will hear next month.

Agreed that Funcom needs to do something with the last 15% of Honorguard and Vistrix (haven't seen Kylikki yet). Very frustrating to have everyone alive at the end and the fight just turns into a clusterf*ck at the end (tired of having entire raid alive at 15% on Champ and wiping over and over at 5%....).

Considering how few guilds have moved past Yakhmar in T5, some changes should probably be made.

[Crowbar911]

well i can asure you i earned it all hard way - and im not saying that i got that much ...

and well i was playing it to the extreme on rage exactly for the purpose of upcoming crafting revamp - i accumulated vast riches - i had toons on various levels to 'farm' other players there from resources that drop in those brackets - like lvl 29 ranger ... :/ great for connals and wild lands - i got hundreds of lvl 20 leather from it ... like having cang jei fatality pet on one toon and farming 72-80 players who accumulated most gold through out their adventure and next me having it ;D (and ofc plenty of uncut gems from lvl 40+ players), i even had to purchase biggest bag there was and additionall 50 slots in my bank - and i only did it on my main rage toon... pathetic now when i look at it and them :/

i never exploited anything - im against it - and as soon as i got to know about it (it was kind of about 1+ years ago now) i stoped playing there and i logged in there max few times since...

oh, ok. We didnt knew that there were any honest players on rage. If you say so, you can bring everything you want - NOT!!!
you can promise, but can you PROOF this?

you are caught in the system and you have to accept the rules of the system. there are no exceptions. If you fly by plane you will be checked at the gate, and even if you are a honest guy and even if you are organizing charity events - you are not allowed to keep your gun on the plane!
a 10 Gold limit and other restrictions are the only way to not harm the economy on the last server.
everyone who leaves home has to leave most of his goods behind

Rage was created for PVP and not for crafting. and even if you played honest and farmed all Millions of resources legaly this is not how it was planned and so it is an exploit. And even it was it planned for crafting, it was planned for the environment of Rage where it was much easier to get resources by killing players. so leave it on Rage!

also i could transfer out of it with it all already - there was option for it - but while then the population was quite decent still and i was having fun - and closely after sh1t hit the fan ...

no you couldnt! as the gate was closed very early and only very few people have come through. the option was deleted nearly 2 years ago and i know many People who will stop playing if the Ragers come with their whole Money. This would kill the entire Server!

[Filter3]

merge the servers to one. most important work, which u guys should start now.