Game Director Letter – July 2013

[bruceleroy]

That's called not subbing... and that is entirely up to you.

Not really. If he is responsible to give me a great game with updates and content, and I am paying him, and he takes a leave of absence, then I should not have to pay for this down time. Unless regulated by the Canadian govt otherwise. He still has a duty to all other gamers to continue to develope and deliver great new content, regardless if I pay him or not.

[Kurt2013]

@bruceleroy:
Which actually should prove, how important fixing the shop options and product palette (including pricing) there is. You can think what you want about the people "complaining", if they are f2p and keep in contact or even buy something once in a while...that seems way better than having these customers go away completely.

[phatcasey]

Things are moving very slowly, one of the reasons I was not playing much in 2012.

The game-play is starting to age along with the graphics and character models.

Emergent game-play I believe is the answer. Get people fighting over player controlled areas with real resources on the line. This would relieve the need for constant content pushes. Make zones factional warfare areas. Also giving all the content past Tortage a level 80 zone selection type would go a long way to helping the PVE side.

Personally I feel that we are closing in on a point in time where games like this are going to disappear. You can't force feed the same content for multiple years with little or no updates.

[MajorAppleSauce]

He did just have a baby recently and told us all he wasn't going to be posting as much for a while. Don't forget that.

Head Mod won the interwebs....

Just cut him some slack. He'll be back to posting when he can.

[EnReX]

Its easy to say that when you haven't been here 5+ years.

This is the last of the server merges, once the pop dies after this, and it will inevitably happen, there is nothing left. It shouldn't even be at this point. If they had bothered to listen to the community 4 years ago, or put forth any effort, they wouldn't have needed budget cuts/layoffs/restructuring. They asked for their own doom.

Its August, and the new dungeon hasn't been released, they have done NOTHING this entire year so far besides smoke and mirrors.

Unchained versions of 3 worthless dungeons that are just a recycled difficulty/gear change, and will take until the end of the year to go on live. People will give up on them quick.

And still, nothing is happening until the end of August, at least they claim. Keep paying those subs to fund TSW content though.

Deal with what again?

eyeyeye! watch what your saying.. Only smoke and mirrors?!? Dont forget about the server move, it introduced us to higher latency and made the game unplayable for 2 months, its better now though i feel.. mby i've just gotten used to shitty ping...

[Halfdead]

eyeyeye! watch what your saying.. Only smoke and mirrors?!? Dont forget about the server move, it introduced us to higher latency and made the game unplayable for 2 months, its better now though i feel.. mby i've just gotten used to shitty ping...

They have zero communication was the intent of my post. GD is MIA on this forum, probably with good reason as by now hes gonna be bashed for the updates being so slow. The RL excuse is getting old. Any neglecting of a real job nets you out the door quick.

They've taken way longer than they should have on that new dungeon and the bug fixes. I sit in zones just running around. I can't find anything to do. My friends would rather go play Star Wars than do the same stupid dungeons again. But how convenient, they offered cheap year sub deals sometime ago, and 3 of my accounts are locked into a year sub, maybe because the GD promised a lot of things on his shiny dev letters. But yes, it was all smoke and mirrors.

I have invested so much into my toons and this game, it would take forever to list, there is no way I could just bounce to another game, so of course its easy for some people to say just leave.

And, I know you didn't ask for a higher ping, but here we go again, no one to blame but Funcom.

[Arishanya]

They have zero communication was the intent of my post. GD is MIA on this forum, probably with good reason as by now hes gonna be bashed for the updates being so slow. The RL excuse is getting old. Any neglecting of a real job nets you out the door quick.

A little reminder of Joel's forum requirements in his position with Funcom.

I'm not employed to post on forums. I do that in my free time. Nobody at Funcom would give me any kind of grief if I never posted anything again because while this is something that I feel is valuable and good for the community, I am not employed for my skill in posting on forums (should be obvious from some of my more rancid posts). Plus the % of the playerbase I am communicating with here is tiny.

The point being, that it would be a cop out if this was in my job description. But as a "career man" I logged about 60hrs during my "holiday" and none of it was forum posting, it was design work that needed to be done.

The understanding that these forums need to have is that I will post when I can and give information when I am certain it will be correct.

I can't promise any more.

Anyone with a decent job is given holiday/vacation time. When they use it is up to them and their company, regardless of the industry. RL or not, that's how employment works around the world. It's not solely Joel's fault that someone takes vacation. It's how having a job works. Some of you seem to be forgetting that this IS just a job. It is not the Dev's or Joel's life and sole purpose to make AoC a glorious game that you can sink all of your time and money into. It is their JOB to do that. Jobs aren't 24/7/365.

...(by the way most of the dev team has hols until the 5th August which is why it is quiet now).

Someone else earlier mentioned the HoX revamp. So again, another reminder of what was said on that.

The HoX revamp I know about...but it isn't a priority until the systems team have time to finish the tradeskill system. Unfortunately that is the way we have to do things now, one thing after another.

If I can search through the forums and find this information so can you. It's not that hard to find the information out there if you take the time to look - even if it's not the answer you wanted to hear, the answers are there.

[Chillee]

Anyone with a decent job is given holiday/vacation time. When they use it is up to them and their company, regardless of the industry. RL or not, that's how employment works around the world. It's not solely Joel's fault that someone takes vacation. It's how having a job works. Some of you seem to be forgetting that this IS just a job. It is not the Dev's or Joel's life and sole purpose to make AoC a glorious game that you can sink all of your time and money into. It is their JOB to do that. Jobs aren't 24/7/365.

Only morons expect the dev team to work 24/7/365.

But that doesn't change the fact that we have no new content since January, in spite of being told we would get it. Joel said in April that the new dungeons would be on TL in May. It's August, neither is live, and only Coils is on TL. He also said the team "have several of the older pre-80 dungeons almost ready for their "Unchained" releases". Again, It's August, and none of them are on TL.

If they expect the game to have a functional, subscription-paying population for much longer, they'd better get some content out, fast. I've never seen so many people I've been playing with for years "taking a break" from the game. IMO, FC doesn't have a whole lot longer to hold this game together if they have any plans of a future for it at all.

[Halfdead]

lol ah EMOs

GRRRRRR /wrists

Now that I think about it, my posts fall on deaf ears.

3 accounts paid for with year subs each. Why shouldn't I be emo?

Oh well. Truth is too much.... I'll stop posting.

[cins]

A wise woman once said: Give an old dude a red button to press and it's like viagra to them.