Monthly develpment update

[Halfdead]

I don't believe it should be purely solo. You should have the choice of solo or group. This isn't TSW Lol.

[Kurt2013]

Solo arena, solo pvp. Maybe one could turn all the AoC in a nightmode and never see any players ...

How about more emphasis would be put on doing things together, on playing with other, not random people ? Even those pvp festivals on Crom with supposed group events like Group Arena end up more solo rewarding, when specific class is being rewarded for amount of kills. The only decent event that focuses on teamwork is really a FoS.

So how about we skip solo crap and someone will just work on 6-mans, add more life to pvp events on Crom (yeah yeah, I know thats not PvP server, but thats the only server with good population). I'd personally like to see pvp event not once a month but ever weekend, so instead of 7 days in a row it would be 4 weekends every month. Full 7 day event may for for WB farmers but for the pvp groups it did not work for last few times.
Also something could be done to the events there, I spend more time waiting for the events to start then actually participating in them. If someone spends hours there than maybe its possible to do all the quests, but if one comes after work and can dedicate 2-3 hours than chances of getting more than 2 FoS are none.
Really, make it shorter but more intensive - 4 x 2 days and with more events. Weekends are a perfect time as most of the top guilds go for the raids during week, so weekends would bring more people. Even quests can be adapted, like instead of 7 day quest make it 30 day quests, so one can complete them any weekend he wishes to. And if he misses one, he will be able to do it other time. Now if you cant participate in an event (like many people are occupied with jobs) you miss all the rewards.

There are really so many simple things that require little effort to improve overall feeling, yet another ways of splitting the community are introduced. AoC is not single player game but mmo, solo content in form of Refugee of Apostate or Isle of Iron statues is cool but giving it priority over group instances, and particularly in form of solo arenas ...

They even actively destroyed group content during the pvp festivals where people socialised during farming (farming = bad, socialising = good -> not necessarily whole action is bad, unlike solo alt farming or slave farming, where no social or abuse is involved), because certain self-righteours hypocrites did not like people doing as they did. If you constantly fight, you do not socialize. If you have to fight always as underdog against the odds including cheaters, haters and trolls, you do not socialize. I seriously prefer non powerfull charsfarming that can be disturbed over OP chars farming each other that can not be disturbed (as it is now). And do not tell me the quests are not designing for farming. If you see farming there as an exploit, you should ban the developers too or delete the content. They get farmed either way, by big guilds, friends or with low pop by randoms. PvP is not really rewarded there, if you want optimal rewards (that's why i mentioned a few quest changes, this is fixable with proper design). "Intended" behaviour there is the exception, not the rule (as with Bori, btw).

I still remember the old days, where you also met antisocial trolls, but for each of them there was an enemy that could talk and socialize also (someone you could respect and play with, as ally or enemy). Now, when you use player search during the events, you always see the same people, involved some you would not like to play with at all (there is a reason cheatersm haters and bad loosers are not liked in games)...so you do not even bother with the events, because with the instance limit you would be forced to feed the trolls quite literally.

About the events, it would help a lot to make them more accesible for participation with a few changes to the quests. Also as you say, the waiting is not good...but can be a good opportunity to socialize. Right now you either have zerging or people leaving to minis or people going afk, resulting in bad integration of newcomers to the events. Here a better status report, more available instances and maybe shifting or random respawns can help, combined with a proper announcement. Not only once when you enter the zone, but available as info from player search or a seperate announcement channel (a bit like the player generated world boss reports : instance, event type, time till start/end). Combined with a few quest changes, this will for sure bring more life (and more variety of people to fight).
Not mentioning some bug fixes...you can get "participation" xp now by staying in hide and watching (participation checks should involve: heals given, damage taken, damage done, objectives taken etc.), you get kill xp by getting killed , if you are grouped with the killer...

[Ingen175]

I dunno, for the most of the time on the last event I had no problems finding a group and socializing with them (of course to a certain degree). We had common enemy in form of United Resistance, and while me and few other folks were farmed alot we could also turn the odds and farm them. But pvp is about fighting, though I agree that quests for the most part are just silly focusing on getting x kills for this or that, it does not take into account that not everyone plays ranger or assassin but some focus on supporting the team, its a teamplay and yet kills are attributed to specific players, not a whole team so even a group quests end up as a solo quests.

I dont mind fighting, even a lot. Its what makes this pvp so dynamic, and reminds me a good times of fighting in Khesh on Fury with guild zergs.

And well, if you dont like everyone from the participants thats your own problem. I had no issues finding good guys who even noticed that I'm low lvl pvp and tried to help me. I died plenty of times, I had hard time killing some of them but still kept going.

Right now waiting is a problem. People jump into minigame or something else because there is little to do in between. This events should really trigger more often. Also the problem I had (and noticed few others had) was that during the events some targets were more exposed than the others - almost 50% of the time there was a fight for The Rock. And if not Rock, than Brandock Village or Two Trees. Even though I did event every day for multiple hours only 2 times I have seen Crossings as a FoS target, but as I was in the loosing team I had no opportunity to collect it. In the meantime I captured Rock multiple times. This was quite annoying when for the quest I made 5 of 6 targets in first 2 days and for the rest I could not get that one, specific.

But still, most important for me would be having events more often. Waiting whole month for the 7 day event is a nonsense, its not a wb, it should be a normal thing happening every weekend.

[Kurt2013]

...

Could be the difference between Crom and Fury, on Crom you have a tad more and varied population for doing it, i guess. I even remember about 30+ people in CE doing the event week (unlike the always same chosen few on fury)! The few times i played the event there were generally always better than on fury. Fury is generally all about driving people off, abusing gms and not fighting much after that. On Crom as you say, you had actually more than one contended point and more than 1 very powerfull zerg faction, at best one other large guild faction that stays not very long and a few randoms. Fighting is fine for me too, unless you waste your time for the pleasure of rl sociopaths and help them progressing

I agree about waiting...they should have one day a week maybe and include it in the daily quest routine. Also adding more sources for victory points might be a good idea (minis, bori, random open pvp drop). It would take the pressure off from "having to win to get something cosmetic" and the random element gives everyone a chance at them.
A slight change to the theme and permanent cultural fitting quest givers in the daily pvp zone with maybe different intervalls and less rewards might do the trick there to make it permanent non-event content. On Crom the festival is the only thing like that, but on Fury you also have the daily quests that might fit into this category... They could easily add the daily quests to Crom too and give them their own instance (or epic for that day). The whole events play differently anyway if you have epic bosses or mobs involved.

As with world boss week, these concentrated events tend to leech population off other stuff...and when the events start to annoy people, they do log out and not play other stuff they might have done with friends or more people. Might be more relaxing if you had a chance to participate in them or do part of the large quest bunch coming with it in between.

[Mustaine]

+1

... so stop to cry ...

I already have; Stopped what I was doing to have a good cry.

How about you?

--------

since i don't see this thread anywhere, there you go ... [/url]

As for a customer posting on behalf of the company; I'm baffled why we STILL haven't seen some sort of msg to un-F*** this mistake ...

Sorry; that was actually totally my fault.

THIS doesn't count ... not in ANY business environment.

I picture a Benny Hill skit when ... ugh ...

.

[Ernests]

You tell, community is poisonous and ungrateful! Yes, but it has its own reasons for that. If any other community had cheated with empty promises so long as the AoC community with craft revamp, it would also be unhappy.
With the resources that have been invested in the world boss and achievement system, Vanaheim, raid finder, many different pets and social stuff should be enough to finish the craft revamp already many times.

What really miss this game for years is alive economy. When each member of the commune, playing in his favourite way, may participate in the single economic system and earn useful stuff.

Just introduce that would be possible to buy valuable craft resources for:
- minis and PvP Fest tokens;
- fraction tokens and rare trophies;
- trophies of different levels of raids,
to the final result create powerful items for group PvP, dungeon master timers and raids. And everyone will be happy at last! It is really so difficult to realize it?

[elsunga]

You tell, community is poisonous and ungrateful! Yes, but it has its own reasons for that. If any other community had cheated with empty promises so long as the AoC community with craft revamp, it would also be unhappy.
With the resources that have been invested in the world boss and achievement system, Vanaheim, raid finder, many different pets and social stuff should be enough to finish the craft revamp already many times.


Just introduce that would be possible to buy valuable craft resources for:
- minis and PvP Fest tokens;
- fraction tokens and rare trophies;
- trophies of different levels of raids,
to the final result create powerful items for group PvP, dungeon master timers and raids. And everyone will be happy at last! It is really so difficult to realize it?

As for crafting revamp. If I understand it correctly it needs massive amount od coding work and catalogize every item in a game, so I understand it would take massive amount of resources (which Funcom does not have). So it is far easier to make something different (and moreover I think people who did achievement system or Vanaheim are not people from coders team).

[Ernests]

http://www.ageofconan.com/news/game_...r_october_2013
http://www.ageofconan.com/news/game_..._february_2014

From this, and many of the earlier official letters could understand that a lot of work has already been done to the craft system. It is time finally complete it, to all the work was not in vain. Rather than deal with other unimportant things.
Cannot hope the game will continue to develop and bring the expected income without live economy. It is one of the cornerstones of a modern successful MMO.

[lmagowz]

Main problem:

AoC players still don't understand how "Instance Finder" feature will work and what bonuses we get from it
AoC players still don't understand why Funcom decide to create "Instance Finder" feature when game have so many problems and so many promises we don't see since 2008
AoC players still don't understand how this feature affect on regular normal raids. I mean why I need use "Instance finder" over regular guild raids and PUG raids?\

[iudexinferi]

Main problem:

AoC players still don't understand how "Instance Finder" feature will work and what bonuses we get from it
AoC players still don't understand why Funcom decide to create "Instance Finder" feature when game have so many problems and so many promises we don't see since 2008
AoC players still don't understand how this feature affect on regular normal raids. I mean why I need use "Instance finder" over regular guild raids and PUG raids?\

I guess the issue with Instance Finder vs PUG/normal raids thru global is;

Some people, like myself, log on for a brief session of AOC. Joining a global pug/raid which might include waiting for the needed numbers joining (with correct class etc) might be less than desirable.
So I would just join a group automatically (if the feature is semi-properly made) and "instant" gratification.
Will this reduce the number of people joining PUGs/raids? Possibly, but it will most certainly get people less inclined to join the "global" made raids, to actually join and get expirience thru an automatical system.
Personally I find it very useful in WOW (when I played). Sometimes I joined (in AOC and wow) groups with friends, but more often than not; automatic groups.