Monthly develpment update

[Hawkeye-67]

Valar Morgulis!

God damn it people!

The thing isn't even live yet and already you tear it apart!?

As a matter of fact, nobody 'xept FC knows how that thing is going to work exactly,
so for fairness sake wait till it's implented. There will be plenty of time to shred that
D-Finder into pieces - if need be - with your razorlike criticism once it has gone live,
ain't it?

Imho FC is trying hard of late, so just give 'em a chance and at least try to be fair,
that's all i'm calling for!

Tc
Hawk

[LunaticAsylumLA]

Here is the translation of the newsletter:

Hello! This is a new person who writes newsletters!

You will get your T1-T3.5 loot weekly in raids. You do not have to do anything. Just click LFG, type /follow, and occasionally collect loot. Please drool and relax. There is no need for you to react or think. There is no need to organize raids or be in a guild anymore. If the /follow command made you die, please complain; and we'll readjust the difficulty and add more rewards.

You will fight resized existing monsters with Pokemons to get rewards. If your friend comes, you will get PVP levels and gear.

We will keep you playing by offering a pet for the Pokemon arena along with a subscription discount.

See you in not-so-harsh-anymore Hyboria!

I am sorry (no insults intended), but it sounds like that.

[Scaevacas]

I hope I misread this, but it sounds like the raid finder doesn't let you choose which raid you want to find - instead it's chosen for you and the choice changes every week. It does indeed sound like "world boss week" where every participant gets an item. That in itself isn't terrible, however it's far from what was expected.

What I expected a "raid finder" to do was allow people to select from a list of instances, then teleport (same as joining a minigame countdown) to the instance they chose automatically when the group/raid filled. Having prerequisite gear or achievement checks would be a bonus on that. As a raid "starter" optionally being able to filter further to people in your guild or friend list would be even better, so guildies could join their scheduled raids more easily. Many people log into this game for the raid content, and they carefully plan their online time around that. I think if such a tool existed, more people would spend more time online.

[Belsvard]

well to me all this is something totally different from what i expected, but to be honest, anything FC could add to the game is welcome.
The game is not what it used to be and will never be, but for what i see, yes they try to make it more accesible for all players, not only the "hardcore" and elite players. that's what the more succesful games made...

i only hope they add it now...
and if the new subscription offer is good, i'll resub for a year.

[pekka]

Currently paying customers don't pay for developing something like that... We need new 6-man instances, already promised revamps, debugging and pvp content. I don't think those Arena and Raidfinder will bring new paying customers even if it's premium content and is carrot for world boss masses.

[Ernests]

The idea of arenas sounds interesting.
I hope the rewards will be useful. Not as usual - collect 100 pets, in order to obtain, OMG, another pet))

[Kurt2013]

Valar Morgulis!

God damn it people!

The thing isn't even live yet and already you tear it apart!?

As a matter of fact, nobody 'xept FC knows how that thing is going to work exactly,
so for fairness sake wait till it's implented. There will be plenty of time to shred that
D-Finder into pieces - if need be - with your razorlike criticism once it has gone live,
ain't it?

Imho FC is trying hard of late, so just give 'em a chance and at least try to be fair,
that's all i'm calling for!

Tc
Hawk

You are right about fairness, but wrong about the first point. You can not wait till funcom spent all the dev time and money for something customers might not accept. History and other games as well have shown, that once something is developed, it will NOT change fundamentally. Professionals would welcome criticism stating what they would accept or want content to be. This does not mean you have to follow and do all that is suggested, but keep in mind the "no goes" and direction to avoid passing a point they can not revert changes.

If you care about something and want to prevent desaster, you have to influence it from the start to save everyone involved time and money.

As with crafting revamp, a dungeon finder CAN be a great idea and great tool, if done right, but can also be a complete desaster if hurried or badly implemented. Of course it also plays a role how new additions are marketed...if you advertise adding a dungeon finder, bringing up hopes that it might be similar to something good players know, then you better design it this way and not like somehting else OR change the way it is marketed.

[Mustaine]

**edited
So that this doesn't hurt anyone's feelings.

.

[Kurt2013]

I don't see anything where the current manner of Raid forming is becoming effected. This seems a tool for the more casual player who often gets f****** out of a raid when a piece of blue-gear becomes a focal point ( or something of that nature).

As for it being a "disaster" ~ give it a couple months before judgement.

See how important it is to not wait? Questions like "does it affect current ways of doing things?" are important to clear up in front ...to prevent that said "desaster" Luckily, if you know what you are doing, such things are easy to get out of the way...usually by a faq, forum post or monthly letter (NOT by external sites, TL or rumors).

If something is really just an addition, you can far easily brush off certain criticism as unjustified (in worst case you waste that dev time and money for unwanted addons), but this changes if you replace, remodel or directly influence existing content (here the worst case is far worse).

[Mellaus]

We already knew all that, expect the fact the raid finder turns out to be very different than what we were told at first.

The way i see it, that tool is a raid/dungeon bait. It's basically telling the casuals and newbies "Just click on that button and see what raids in AoC looks like", with the hope that those players who don't know raiding will be all amazed and feel like it's the best experience ever, and will start trying to actively raid outside of that system.

It's also a way to create an event and some activity in game.

All in all, on the paper, it does not sound horrible to me. It might even turns out to be good for a part of the population.
I'm really curious though about how it'll actually work. I mean, port 6 newbies in blue gear in coils, see how it goes ^^
Most raids and dungeons are way too hard for the average newbie/casual who's got 0 clue about tactics.
So, will all the encounters have a strawman version for that tool specifically ?

As for the solo arena and the pet system, i for one like it, but i really wonder what will be the incentive to do it. I'm pretty sure i'll use that content regardless of the reward, just because it'll be new and veterans have nothing else to do anyway, and nothing they do in game will reward them with better stuff than what they already have from T6.

Now, that solo arena will be both for PvPets and PvP, but will those 2 aspects be patched to live separately, or will it be all part of one batch ?

And do we have any timeline at all about the raid/dungeon finder ?