Game Director's Letter - September 2013

[MajorAppleSauce]

Reading everything I wrote will help you with your rage issues.



I don't really want to comment or speculate on anything regarding classes.

... We honestly have one of the coolest GDs. he just pwned him on the forums with this response lol love it


Serious note

@our Gd and others that care: crafting, skillbased, and criticals
So, i dont get to play too much throught the weeks as i get way too much wife agro if vent is going and we are slaying **** for hours. When i do play on off raiding nights, my wife doesnt mind that its a game i can easily walk away from. With that said the game im talking about is final fantasy 14. It will never be AoC and nor would i want it to be, but one thing that they did that was profound was to seriously introduce a crafting system that was skill based. I always thought skill based crafting concept was cute at best but when you get down to the details, it is possible. What they had done was they had given players crafting skills/actions, crafting attributes, and a means to cognitively consider the many combinations. For example:

A crafter has two main stats craftsmanship and control. A crafter also has a certain pool of crafting points per crafting (think of it as crafting endurance and ill refer to it down below as CP). Craftsmanship is used to determine how fast can the crafter complete his her craft. Control (this is important) would determine how much quality can a crafter invest into an item

Each craftable item has a quality, durability, and craftmenship limit. Meaning that if you were to pump enough quality into the item before its durability gave out you would have a higher percent chance of a crtical item. Even 100% chance.

So, the dance and skill of the craftsmen came into place when he/she would have to consider how to use what skill in order to keep the durability high, the quality high as possible, and how much crafting endurance the crafter still has left (CP)

Some of the short comings was that you couldnt really have a chance to craft different types of rarity items. Just normal quality and high quality

Also, here is were funcom could introduce buffs that grant crafters elevated CP, control, etc. these buffs are used to supplement that which skill is still required ... Make sense?

Perhaps funcom is down the revamp path too far to even consider such options or thinking, but i would ask that they be considered?

Lastly, you know that skill is involved with a style like this when you see people posting up thier own strata on how they personally combine actions together to make thier HQ gear. People like to show that off more than (here is my ingredients, here is me clicking the button for a random chance)

[Invino]

I am still in awe of some folks who for years have been saying the same thing and yet here they still are .. saying the same thing and expecting something to magically appear.

If one is still expecting AoC to fix itself, they need their head examined. Economy is a bitch.

Only thing to say is enjoy it while it lasts, and frankly I am rather surprised it lasted this long and is actually getting updated.

[MajorAppleSauce]

One last element. Is that with every slam of a hammer during the crafting process there would be a chance of a failure on adding quality and/or furth finishing an item. This is to simulate the fact as crafts crap happens that are not planned, so now its up to the crafter to thinkk about ways to handle the situation through the skills he/she has to use. Thus eliminating the possibilty of creating documents or videos on "these are the exact steps you need to go through toget HQ items" makes sense?

[KullOfValusia]

+ I have a feeling the new crafting system will be fairly in-depth meaning master armourers weaponsmiths will be ultra rare (I count maybe 5~8 on all of Crom?). Going from weaponsmith 0 to mastersmith would take as long as going from pvp0 to pvp10. I would even venture to say that peeps will join a guild JUST SO they have access to that guild's master crafter.

+ Raid gear will be used as ingredients for crafting. Meaning I see the big gear change coming to AoC is raid gear upgraded/reforged into something better. If done right crafting could lead to a sort of progression platform wherein dungeons or even new unchained content can drop rare ingredients needed for upgraded raid gear. Be brave Joel! Take this step so we can finally get off this raid crap cycle and our toons can progress!

+ Better gear assortment...so we can combine any stat to any item.

[Sadistious]

And in the end, there will be only handful of players that will even craft an item that is worth selling, and when they do, it will be put up on the trader for more gold than anyone in game can possibly farm.

Sounds like this is going to be the next Funcom EPIC FAIL!!!!

[Texan615]

And in the end, there will be only handful of players that will even craft an item that is worth selling, and when they do, it will be put up on the trader for more gold than anyone in game can possibly farm.

Sounds like this is going to be the next Funcom EPIC FAIL!!!!

Funcom can then sell gold in the item shop!

[Duskwood0585]

I dont know if its sad or not that a major part of my month is checking everyday towards the end of the month for the dev letters O_O

I think Joel is awesome, and has a lot of great ideas for the game, and wants to do a lot to advance it along, but doesnt seem to have the man power.

I am eagerly awaiting October's letter! *crosses fingers on tradeskill being done so we can move to mage (HoX!) revamps*

"With the server merge done, it paves the way for the future of AoC and allows us to work on cross dimension mini games and dungeons."

that part of sept letter made me squeal like a girl. (And im a big dude)

[Derled]

They sure made loads and LOADS of promises what they gonna give us...but... they did not give us any good, they only stab us in the ass.
and then our beloved game director is wondering why some ppl are not happy about it, im not gonna quit game just because there is few FAG classes, or cus there is just 5 mini games, as long as i can farm noobs and corpse jump them, and hear their crying in global chat.. <3 it

btw those who cry about getting killed in pvp are having serious problem in head, either they should go to crom, read server description before going there, or then they should just gtfo.

i wonder if Joel played aoc more than 2 hours when he did play aoc, he seem not know anything, maybe play game before u start adding / taking stuff?

[bolas]

So, whats up with this month letter?

The incompetence hited so hard that FC will not even make the terrible lieing letters anymore?

"WE (all the 2 of us) are doing great things. Thigns takes time. Keep paying"

[Nusquam]

It's written and sent off so depending on when it gets back from translation - today or tomorrow.