Development letter for September.

[Hot-Ice]

I am completely against you taking away set bonuses already earned. With the current state of the game you should be nurturing core players - not poking them in the eye. There should be a way of grandfathering in those that have the current sets/partial sets. Even making a FoA like in Testlive for a few weeks then petitionable after that?? If your genuine and only reason for the runes is to allow the T6 sets room to breathe then this should be no issue. For those that have been grinding to get the sets and have yet to kill K then this is a huge slap in the face. Yes, increasing the drop rate for weapons would help but this has been discussed for a long time anyway....
From this point on then you can make the pieces purchasable without disenfranchising too many players - but taking away what we have already been grinding for - and set a target for an additional 90 - extremely not impressed

[Mellaus]

I can't believe people complain about the cost of the runes. 90 relics is nothing.

Just by farming T5 for weapons, everyone has been stacking relics for ages anyway. A character that does not have 90 relics to spend right now has just not been in T5 much, or maybe just killing Yak religiously and thinking that is what T5 is all about ^^.

And it already seems that this thread is evolving into a whinning session about T5 weapons.

[Caudilloo]

I agree with Hot-Ice.
People in more advanced raiding guilds shouldn't really care much. They can kill Kyllikki every week and get 90 relics in a few weeks so it's a small price to pay for the advantages the system offers for later gear progression. I feel sorry for the people in more casual guilds that have slower progression and after raiding for 8 months they have progressed up to Honorguard or Kyllikki.

Those people have worked much harder for their 8 pieces then most in more advanced raiding guilds and are still raiding every week on their mains trying to kill the last or last 2 bosses while not needing the gear. Now they lose their set bonuses they earned and can not be sure when they finish progression to gain them back. Those players that earned their gear just as much or more and can use a little help are the people that feel the negative effects of this.

[Maly]

Things surely look different depending if you watch them from top or bottom of the food chain.

[lmagowz]

Give us 1-2 months without updates and AoC lose all "advanced raiding guilds" - problem solved.

[Noobody]

Give us 1-2 months without updates and AoC lose all "advanced raiding guilds" - problem solved.

The problem with progression raiding is it's generally only used as end game threadmill for big AAA pve titles with a lot of ressources. It's costing more than anything else to produce and the few hardcore pve raiders still logging in aoc are exceptionally resilient because that kind of content is very fast obsolete and supposed to come at a regular pace to keep the few most active raiders flattered with always the strongest gear, the content itself once figured out quickly turns into a farm/grind.

Funcom doesn't have nearly enough ressource anymore to compete with the other big titles whom they tried to copy the model (end game tier'ed raid content) just after the original game director had left the boat back in the days.

If funcom had done for pvp even only 50% of what they have done for end game pve raiders, you would see people on pvp forum cheering funcom for caring so much about them, the big problem being only the lack of anti-cheat software (even steam can provide it) and it would cost less than to produce a single raid.

Once that news would be shared on the net, i am pretty sure a good ammount of people would come back to the game and log for competitive premades the same way spoiled end game raiders do now and some still complain even knowing funcom does everything they can to keep up with such an expensive content to produce regulary.

[Nephturi]

the lack of anti-cheat software (even steam can barely provide it)

Fixed, as anyone playing CS:GO can attest.

[Unutterable]

So, any chance this rune concept will be applied to pvp? Instead of another tier of gear?

[Noobody]

Fixed, as anyone playing CS:GO can attest.

AoC is not CS, i am pretty sure there aren't 100's of hackers ready to update their program the next day the protection gets updated and it's always the same with popular fps unless you play on private servers, beside you can always play with a proxy to prevent a real ban from one of the 1000's servers. A niche mmo is a paradise in comparison, cheater risk their account for detection or who didnt update his hack if ever.. one second chance? And a gm can easily catch people directly when the software give alarm, or even only with evidence, just a matter of will for a game like AoC.

[Nephturi]

And Funcom is not Valve. However you look at it, your argument is flawed.