Game Director's Letter - September 2013

[ViolentLeonidas]

man, wake the fck up. Do u even play the game you are a director of? U ever heard of memory cloud runs? Have you ever tried to make pvp 10 char on ur own?

Well he did say from his PAST experience of aoc

maybe he never farm pve Tire 4 (big guild that have it on farm so easy to get best weapons in the game)

[Nusquam]

man, wake the fck up. Do u even play the game you are a director of? U ever heard of memory cloud runs? Have you ever tried to make pvp 10 char on ur own?

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

Joel-

How will you try to balance the classes in PvP?

More importantly, do you agree that there are imbalances between the classes? If so can you give an example.

Thank you.

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

[-Blash-]

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

Game director talking about pvp matters current 3-4 years ago is more than upset for pvpers. Sorry for being nervous and enraged, but try to understand pvpers who remained here in this game since the very beggining and not having much things done in pvp promised even before the game launch.
What we have for so long time: senseless sieges, same minis, almost no world pvp, worse pvp gear than pve...
We support this game, we pay and we will still pay - because we still believe AoC will become pvp oriented game. Will it ever happen?

[Nusquam]

Game director talking about pvp matters current 3-4 years ago is more than upset for pvpers.

That's fine but I was asked a question about something that was made 3-4 years ago. I can't answer that in the context of today - I actually said that we would look at it. Some of the reasons it was made both grindy and with poor stats don't exist to the same extent.

Sorry for being nervous and enraged, but try to understand pvpers who remained here in this game since the very beggining and not having much things done in pvp promised even before the game launch.
What we have for so long time: senseless sieges, same minis, almost no world pvp, worse pvp gear than pve...

The sieges are complicated because it is a mess of code and systems and hacks that scares me to commit people too. I feel like it could be a development black hole - you throw resources at it forever and you never see anything for it.

Minigames - well spreading the population too thin by having a lot more minis is not the best solution. We are trying to do something with Unchained to improve this - but it takes time and we are a small dev team.

World PvP - Another area where I have already made some tentative initiaties. People weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of the Hyborian Race, but it *is* a direct attempt to increase the world PvP. We'll see what comes next after that.

PvP gear - We can take a look at making this better *and* I believe the tradeskill system will also help in this regard.

We support this game, we pay and we will still pay - because we still believe AoC will become pvp oriented game. Will it ever happen?

AoC will be what it always has been a game with both PvE and PvP elements. We have plans for the PvP side - I've outlined pretty clearly what we are doing. It's hard for me to commit to more than that for now.

[tman1991]

What Tier will the new raid be??

[Kurt2013]

...

The sieges are complicated because it is a mess of code and systems and hacks that scares me to commit people too. I feel like it could be a development black hole - you throw resources at it forever and you never see anything for it.

With the current latency and engine problems, i don't think you can even fix it to a playable version. But i don't think it can be a black hole...maybe reconsider once you expanded servers back into the eu, asia, australia and africa?

Minigames - well spreading the population too thin by having a lot more minis is not the best solution. We are trying to do something with Unchained to improve this - but it takes time and we are a small dev team.

Why do you think more options will thin out the population? This would only be valid, if the number of those interested in minis would be constant. But you seem to leave out those who tried minis and found them not to the liking at actual state. This could be a HUGE iceberg number, with those playing minis now just the tip.

Also, what about considering adding customizeable mini rules? If done for a new map, it can be a onetime development effort for many variations and options. There have been good suggestions on this (combined with a minigame lobby) on the old forums which are gone now. You could start trying out with "event" days...like a low mana day, a no AA day, a foggy day, a low movement day etc.. Then sit back and watch the results...might help a lot with pvp balancing as well, if you observe which ruleset is favoured and which aren't and who does best under various rulesets.

World PvP - Another area where I have already made some tentative initiaties. People weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of the Hyborian Race, but it *is* a direct attempt to increase the world PvP. We'll see what comes next after that.

Trust me, the ffa ambush/gank/run/exploit pvp we have now is a model that needs certain population and a huge inflow of new players to abuse and to filter out from. Both you now have not.
If you don't believe me, just wait and see what you get when you analyze the results of your "hyborian race" with actual blood and glory rules.

You need a consequence system. Many ways to do this.

You can link xp and kill calculations to situation and power difference (even kd ratio can help here) and make it self-regulating.
You can add a renown stat reflecting how the players actions are seen by npcs and merchants (can vary by region...criminals are welcome in certain places, but get shunned in others...and vice versa).
If this works, you can expand the system to pvp factions. Also such stat will help with creating pvp quests, if used as a measure to judge a chars behaviour and activity.
Changing guards to green was a good first step, but at least you need to adress content blockage, abuse of guards, abuse of "npc talk" and fixing bugs.
The whole system and idea was explained in detail on TL.

Other systems taking risk/reward into account with a self-regulating approach can work too, of course. A successful system also does never focus on the winner alone. Loosing should be rewarding (at least in rl fun terms!) too. It is a game after all.

Another way to adress the pvp/pve mood problem can be to allow players to choose between pvp and pve mode/instance. There are threads about it, too.

And when you mix pve with pvp, you should keep the rule of "pvp progress through pvp >> pvp progress through pve" in mind (which atm is shamefully neglected in AoC).

PvP gear - We can take a look at making this better *and* I believe the tradeskill system will also help in this regard.

Let's hope so Still you can use copy&paste&quickedit to add more stuff in between the ranks, so at pvp3 you have 3 sets to choose from (dps, survial, hybrid) and so on. Just use existing stuff as base.

It looks you did answer the yourvoice in may in a hurry, but the news seem rather good regarding the crafting now (i preferred the video, where the "system" as such was quite similar to what we have now with more options and addons over a complete random revamp). Also the conversion options seem good. Let's hope you do it thoroughly.

Still some questions:
- will there be enough time between announcement of revamp date and patch?
- will users on TL have an advantage with recipes?
- what about guild cities and building?
- will there be a question/answer thread or faq?
- will players have options/shops to buy basic skins (like those you get from quests now)?

[SelfRez]

If you do make something with PVP weapons and fix stats. I think you need to make something to Bori too otherwise people run again there to grind.

[-tomhet-]

The sieges are complicated because it is a mess of code and systems and hacks that scares me to commit people too. I feel like it could be a development black hole - you throw resources at it forever and you never see anything for it.

one of the major issues with sieges is common to pug minigames, wich is certain class stackings results in huge unbalance and increased lag due to more particle spells.
another issue is when random loot was introduced on players with b&g server that actualy increased lag in sieges due to overflow of more objects in playfields.
another realy bad issue is the targetting issues of friendly players tagged red and buildings.

a simple limitation to 24 players could do wonders to make sieging more often.
a lont time request is to actualy give pvp rewards to do a siege its still not rewarding nothing for doing a siege.
to instigate rivalries how possible would it be if border kingdoms were cross server shared would it be even possible?

not wanting to invest time making sieges better is huge mistake its best guild pvp content possible...

Minigames - well spreading the population too thin by having a lot more minis is not the best solution. We are trying to do something with Unchained to improve this - but it takes time and we are a small dev team.

i only wish to play with friends again i dont care if id get pawned by premades i would welcome back competitive minigames again and possibility to play with 1 friend at least.
but if that is too scary for some people at least revise balancing algorythm its so demented that one team gets all the high lvl pvp'ers and all the healers or tanks and other team none.

World PvP - Another area where I have already made some tentative initiaties. People weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of the Hyborian Race, but it *is* a direct attempt to increase the world PvP. We'll see what comes next after that.

is world pvp quests and guild issue pvp quests realy that much to ask???
integrating kithai & other factions to issue pvp quests against members of other factions???
i couldnt care less about lvling another toon while racing to lvl80

PvP gear - We can take a look at making this better *and* I believe the tradeskill system will also help in this regard.

hope so.
but most likely with lucky crits people in big guilds will have access to better pvp weapons/armors again

[-Blash-]

Just hire us. We will fix PvP for ya.

[-tomhet-]

and why exactly is you funcom people keep dodging introducing arenas for 2vs2 and 3vs3? they are already ingame add a damn quest to participate and a quest to win.

even if a signup system is not possible atm from minigame/pvp window
randomly selcting oponent team by entering instance shouldnt be that hard to program :/.