Good post, totally agree. It just makes sense when you look back, all these years of subscription doesn't justify the amount or better say the lack of content we've been getting comparing TSW that meanwhile was getting much better quality content yet it went B2P. Just points out to one thing AoC was and still is a collateral damage that's been funding TSW for all these years and getting absolutely nothing in return, no real investment nothing, where were all of those subs going to? And they want to charge us for this ridiculous patch now?
The biggest reason for AoC failure is that after Khitai and Turan it never had proper development you can see in other games.
Last edited by Redd; 22nd May 2015 at 16:27.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Evil Elitist Veteran Wanker ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
-- Make AoC Great Again --
I disagree on the part that competition drives games. It might be true for PvP content, but for a lot of people who play games, playing is mainly supposed to be... fun.
There is no absolute need to have every new instance, playfield or whatever else become harder than before. We already have a massive gap between beginners and veterans, many of the newer players don't even know T1 and T2 anymore, or the "old world" dungeons. I would love to see something created with as much dedication as was once put into making Atzels Fortress, Xibaluku or the Iron Tower come alive. But I know it takes resources and dedication to dish out quality - something vital that AoC could bank on for quite some time, but sadly, not anymore.
Increased difficulty today only comes from having to run around/away half the time, always watching a cast bar or timer or visual effect... or just clobbering out an insane amount of DPS. That's a cheap way of making things "harder"... especially considering that players who can't afford the latest hardware are in a bad position. (Well, even if you have nice new hardware like me, there's always a good chance - almost a safe bet actually - to experience lag and latency spikes at the most brilliant time in an encounter.)
Want some free advice, Funcom? Don't bother remodeling existing content to have it pretend to be something else. Use the many areas you already have at your disposal, and which are almost deserted. I always loved Khopshef... equip some existing NPCs with a few new quests for Lvl 80 players, giving them a reason to return to such areas. (Imagine returning to Zelata in the Wild Lands, and she starts with "Oh no, not you again..." - That already creates an amazing feelgood moment, especially for veteran players.)
Dear AoC developers, you have already created an incredible world - USE IT! If you still have any say in this... Don't use "old" content to turn it into unworthy "new" content. There are smarter and even easier ways that would work better.
Last edited by Coryan; 22nd May 2015 at 17:13.
Coryan (DT) - Stinja (Barb) - Mishal (Sin) - Roneca (BS) - Vihani (HoX) - Jainh (ToS) -
Kimarys (Guardian) - Demracon (PoM) - Zhandiya (Demo) - Rova (Ranger) - Josephyn (DT) -
Surioara (Nec) - Alizani (Conq) - Kivonah (Sin) - Victess (Demo) - Subil (BS) - etc.
It's quite sad to read this. As a TSW player I would like to add some information. All that new TSW content... we have been waiting for ONE new zone for years and it's still not complete and it looks like numbers of missions will be cut off. We lack any pvp update from the game launch. There is very limited endgame content. There are only 2 raids (and one of them has so badly designed rewards that most players ignore it). The scenarios has ended as half done... So it's far from ideal. Yes we got updates, but from the other side of view, we have nothing like Khitai expansion (and we will have).
I think it's not right to accuse TSW for state of AoC.
BTW I have played AoC. I even came back and bought Turan and Khitai and I have to say Khitai is amazing. But as someone said, the all philosophy "pay for content and then you have to be subscriber to be allowed to get there" is quite strange in 2010s. So after 2 months behind the great wall I unsubscribed and left...
Last edited by elsunga; 22nd May 2015 at 17:21.
if you were right, then the old world dungeons were overcrowded. But the reality is that they are very difficult to organise. In fact, you can wear T1/T2 in couple of days with farming WB. Almost every evening on Crom going on T4 pug raids. But people no longer want it, because they get all what wanted on several characters. The vast majority of subscribers are veterans. The new players are few and mostly FtP. It is sufficient to look at any alive guild to understand it.
Last edited by Ernests; 24th May 2015 at 10:23.
Kattas - 10.PvP, full T6 and full AA demo
It's not about being right, my friend. See, the competitive stance fails you. (Don't take me too seriously.)
People want different things. In life, in games, everywhere. I know a lot of people in AoC that enjoy a trip to Atzel's more than doing T5 and Unchained. Just to have some fun, for once, as life can be serious enough. Sure, it feels good to have something more, something new, something better now and then. But if I don't like it, I don't care about it.
The ideal approach would be having something new from time to time, but also creating content that is fun to play again and again and again, because it always offers some dynamics. Most stuff gets dull after a time, and surely some people have more patience than others. Still, I believe that an atmospheric game world that can surprise you time and time again would be more appealing than an endless race to be better and better and better... have it harder and harder... more, more, more...
This is just my opinion. It is not exclusive to me, nor is it the only I accept.
Coryan (DT) - Stinja (Barb) - Mishal (Sin) - Roneca (BS) - Vihani (HoX) - Jainh (ToS) -
Kimarys (Guardian) - Demracon (PoM) - Zhandiya (Demo) - Rova (Ranger) - Josephyn (DT) -
Surioara (Nec) - Alizani (Conq) - Kivonah (Sin) - Victess (Demo) - Subil (BS) - etc.
The one thing which is really great about the bear mounts being included in with the content is that the bear mounts are account wide. Normal individual mounts you can buy in the item shop are not account wide. I would have hated it if they had only put the bears individually in the item shop like other mounts, forcing you to spend hundreds of dollars to get them on all your characters.
I don't think you have to sub to play the new content. You just need to buy it.
Also, random side note, people need to quit using the term "expansion" when talking about the content updates AoC and TSW are getting. AoC and TSW don't get expansions. They get small content updates. Issues. Quest Packs. Not a whole new expansion like Khitai was. I swear it seems that every time a new content update comes out for AoC, no matter what it is or how small it is, people everywhere start calling it a new expansion, and everyone who sees them use that term expects there to be another 5+ new zones, dozens of 6-man or solo dungeons, and a new raid.
I think the biggest layoff was right after the Godslayer expansion came out. The AoC team had big plans for polishing the rest of that expansion off. T4 was supposed to come out soon after, and the huge grind was to be greatly reduced within 1-2 months after the exploits were all caught. They then wanted to start right into another big expansion. But instead of getting to do any of that, the higher ups in Funcom fired most of the AoC expansion team.
That layoff I think was quite a bit bigger than the TSW release layoff. The TSW layoff probably had a lot more people who were responsible for TSW being fired than it did the AoC team.
It was only after these layoffs that the teams were finally merged together as they are now.
They did this a bit when quickly throwing out the Achievement system, getting us out into old areas again. But yeah, I think it would be awesome to put level 80 stories straight into the older zones. A problem though with this is that all the mobs are low level, and it wouldn't do to just have sections of the map all of a sudden have level 85 mobs for the poor level 20's to run into. To fit into the existing zones without causing that problem, the quests would all have to be rather special. Any mobs would have to be spawned by the level 80 character at each point.
The way they did it with Vanaheim is honestly much easier. Make a duplicate instance, strip out all old mobs/npcs, and add new ones. Then you have no bad overlap of level 20 content and level 80.
Maybe something in between could be done, duplicate the instance, with all low level npcs/mobs intact, and add the 80 stuff to the duplicate, and a level 80 can choose to enter that version of the zone. Honestly not ideal, but they have limited options as to what is really feasible.
I don't considers layoffs right after releases since they're "normal process" in videogames. Studios don't keep all the people they hired to made the game when there's like 20 time less work to do. But yeah, they are numerically biggers than the one i presented. In the other hand, the 2013 Jan one was the worst cause it hitted the developpment process right in the heart and was the reason #1 we don't get crafting and Dragonspine in mid 2015. If i presume well, it was the closure of chinese branch of Funcom, who made Turan pack.
That's why it was most than unlikely that we'll get Tales of Hyboria content of the same side as Turan.
Now i'm thinking about it, they said the same about Kithaï expansion size when they developped Turan : "We can't and we won't develop large expansion like RoTGso we're aiming at smaller xpacs like Turan one" and then "Turan one was too big so we'll aim for smaller patchs but more regular ones" and so on until today with Vanaheim/Bluemountain mini-map smaller than 1 Turan solo-instance ;o
At one point, they can't shrink content anymore ?
Your Storm Field critically healed Officer of the Wolves for 7038.