April GD Letter !!

[Kurt2013]

Agreed, cins. That is what I fear too (in both PVE and PVP). Maybe the current list and classes can be debuffed? No. That is too much for the current team.
I would say, focus on bug fixing for a year or two.

Even passive AA can work, if you do not get all sooner or later (e.g. they have to be equipped and CHOSEN by the PLAYER).
Power will also be an issue. Imo, designwise it would make more sense, if one feat point would be at least on par with one AA point...but just look at the prot and other AAs...this is not the case.

[Rathothis]

Unless they can find some cheap intern to do it I'd rather see they focus dev time on slithering chaos/cetriss and crafting revamp. If they manage to get those out before 2016 I'd be happy with this year.

Indeed. The invisible horse has become a feature, why fix it now? Same for clipping issues or the remaining HoX transformation bugs. The renown system was kind of cute back in the day, but quite frankly it does not extend the player experience nearly as much as the crafting revamp would do. Sure it would be nice to have all of this fixed, but I'd rather see FC focus their limited resources on something that provides added value to players, rather than mere annoyances.

[Kurt2013]

Indeed. The invisible horse has become a feature, why fix it now? Same for clipping issues or the remaining HoX transformation bugs. The renown system was kind of cute back in the day, but quite frankly it does not extend the player experience nearly as much as the crafting revamp would do. Sure it would be nice to have all of this fixed, but I'd rather see FC focus their limited resources on something that provides added value to players, rather than mere annoyances.

If there is even a walkaround (like with the invisible horse) and though it is just an annoyance, it still needs to be fixed asap...just because they have limited resources and can not risk doing too much at once. Especially when documentation is not their strength. THere is also a phsychological aspect on both sides. The more unfixed bugs, the bigger the haystack and mountain becomes and the less motivated the employees will get. Customers are even worse there. Sometimes you just have to succumb to the nagging and take out the thrash, even if you see a lot of better ways to spent your time. It will not go away or get better over time.

The renown and tournament queue rejoin and mini group bugs are simply not only annoying, but actually have hurt the game A LOT. Also many bugs do mess up code and get harder to fix with time, so actually ...no, low money and resources are no excuse for sloppy work, sorry.
If you know (and if the players give you that amount of clues (patch when it happened, where it happens, what is affected, how it looked before the bug, walkarounds exist, other solutions exist), you should know) where the bug lies, you should fix it and not put it away "to do another time" because not the right people complained or you deem it "just an annoyance".

[Rathothis]

If there is even a walkaround (like with the invisible horse) and though it is just an annoyance, it still needs to be fixed asap...just because they have limited resources and can not risk doing too much at once. Especially when documentation is not their strength ....

The renown and tournament queue rejoin and mini group bugs are simply not only annoying, but actually have hurt the game A LOT. Also many bugs do mess up code and get harder to fix with time, so actually ...no, low money and resources are no excuse for sloppy work, sorry. ...

A company with limited resources needs to set priorities. I hope you will agree that bug fixing also needs resources, and with FC's current team size - 2 people for all we know of, plus what little time people who mostly work on TSW can spare - fixing all bugs (as you seem to advocate) would delay the release of any new content or features for quite some time.

Hence, there's a need to set priorities also as regards bug-fixing:
* I agree that fixing new bugs should be a priority, for the reasons you mention (namely that it gets much more difficult to fix things later). Fortunately, they seem to be getting a bit better at this lately.
* But the bugs you mention have been around for a very long time, which means that FC probably don't have an easy fix for them. With that in mind, it does make sense to prioritize bugs which seriously affect gameplay (mini bug, res bug) over mere graphical glitches.
* Regarding bugged content, like the renown system, it's quite likely that players who regard the bugged features as absolutely integral to their game experience will have quit already. Which is why it makes sense to compare the benefits and costs of fixing the renown system to the benefits and costs of other content updates. The most obvious case here is the crafting revamp, which concerns a game system which isn't technically bugged, but obsolete to the point that it might as well not be in the game. Now, one may disagree whether the renown system or a working crafting system is more important to the game experience, but arguing (as you seem to do) that they should not be weighed against each other doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Bibik]

On a game with such messy coding (part of coding was inherited from AO, part not) and many many devs & QA people turnovers over the years, we can't really blame funcom to let non critical bugs and graphical glitches being unfixed.
I presume how hard is to work on codes & systems you never created or handled before, and in a company where restructurates happens almost every year you don't keep experimented coders much long (and anyway they are working much more on TSW).
I think it's easier/cheaper to create new systems and content (with old assets) than trying to fix old stuff that anyway were already messy when AoC team was in a healthier state. Isn't they tried 3 times to fix invisible mount before then ?

[Kurt2013]

A company with limited resources needs to set priorities. I hope you will agree that bug fixing also needs resources, and with FC's current team size - 2 people for all we know of, plus what little time people who mostly work on TSW can spare - fixing all bugs (as you seem to advocate) would delay the release of any new content or features for quite some time.

Hence, there's a need to set priorities also as regards bug-fixing:
* I agree that fixing new bugs should be a priority, for the reasons you mention (namely that it gets much more difficult to fix things later). Fortunately, they seem to be getting a bit better at this lately.
* But the bugs you mention have been around for a very long time, which means that FC probably don't have an easy fix for them. With that in mind, it does make sense to prioritize bugs which seriously affect gameplay (mini bug, res bug) over mere graphical glitches.
* Regarding bugged content, like the renown system, it's quite likely that players who regard the bugged features as absolutely integral to their game experience will have quit already. Which is why it makes sense to compare the benefits and costs of fixing the renown system to the benefits and costs of other content updates. The most obvious case here is the crafting revamp, which concerns a game system which isn't technically bugged, but obsolete to the point that it might as well not be in the game. Now, one may disagree whether the renown system or a working crafting system is more important to the game experience, but arguing (as you seem to do) that they should not be weighed against each other doesn't make a lot of sense.

You are right about the priorities. But you have to set the right ones and use working criteria to determine them as well. This can be a bit initial work, but will pay off (been there, did that). If the amount of bugs will not decrease AND they start to annoy you to a point where you rather put them in a drawer or start completely new...you made the criterias wrong and you end up doing neither bugfixes OR content updates because you lack positive feedback from daily work.

About bugs, housekeeping is a good analogy. When your house is dirty, of course you can priorize inviting a lot of guests, but they will not stay...even if you pay and serve 1st class pizza. Also when you spend time cleaning the house, you will get more motivated to invite guests, make pizza yourself and the guests will enjoy the stay more. I agree with your second point too...of course you need to catogerize your bugs. But you need to get the criterias right (which they obviously have not). And "ease of fixing" definitely is a quite important criteria, if you ever worked in such business and had to do priorities by yourself.

Funcom might not have an easy fix, but customers given them ALL the clues they need to fix it. Renown bugged? Just remove the cap. Invisible Horse? Look at patch where they thought it fixed and next day players reported there were now 2 horses. Should give a hint, right? Quest objects not useable, but gms can update manually? Should also give a hint.

Basically my point is: It is simply not true that there is such a high tradeoff as they want it to appear. More likely they are too focused on one way it HAS to be fixed or want to do too much at once.

Also i do not agree with the crafting evaluation. Of course now (after years of neglect) it appears obsolete. But even the system they advertised on the 2012 video was still recipebased and just had more options in slots and components. Many new players will disagree with your evaluation too. The stuff you can craft is actually still very good for real new players.
There is also no NEED to link renown fixing to crafting revamp. The fact, that they seem to do it in their evaluation (as well as there are no guild city related achievements) is actually rather concerning. The bugged renown concerns every aspect of guild related gameplay and nullifies a lot of the positive aspects of it.

[Chillee]

Just fixing 2-3 bugs per month would do it for me, until that's done, they don't have to add any content for my part..

Start with whats broken for everyone, like resurrection window, ffa looting, server lagspikes (not talking about relocation latency), invisible mounts, authorization error and community server bugs..

After thats done, I'd really like that Funcom could fix clipping issues on many armor kits. Some of it looks really bad.

With a promise of getting these things fixed, new items in veteran trader shop (4h buff potions, combo/spell books, resurgence pots, big healing pots etc..) Players should get tempted to buy more subscription.

Right now most my chars have more than 1000 vet points and nothing to spend on. :/ Could blow it all on swift horses for that achievement but man... What a waste. Been a while now since veterans in game was rewarded for their loyalty to Age of Conan. :/

While there's some validity to fixing the bugs, I don't expect it to happen. I don't think it can happen. They couldn't fix invisible mount and rez window back when they had a much bigger team, fully dedicated to Conan.

Invisible mounts a priority? Spend a lot of time and resources on something that is, at worst, a minor annoyance to a very few players? Zoom in and out and it's fixed. OTOH, the rez bug is a major annoyance after a wipe.

The authentication error, mini bug, and any server side lag issues should be a priority. They can be game breaking.

But otherwise, I'd prefer they work on the crafting update, Slithering Chaos, and Cetriss. If it's done well, the crafting update will do more for bringing back some old players than anything else realistically could.

[Ernests]

I personally know many of the players who return to play if the crafting revamp were introduced.

[henryabccba]

I hope the new AA can reduce the huge aggro gap between guard and dt/conq

[magnum92]

I hope the new AA can reduce the huge aggro gap between guard and dt/conq

The gap you are talking about is not THAT big, most of the people that whine about it is Guards that use Bloody Vengance and Counterstrike and Dulling blow when they dont have aggro, maybe if the new AA's blocked that, it would be better ;P