The Patch Thread.

[Xuri]

Ah, of course, sorry. :)

[Mrbloodworth]

Thats a nice bit of patches. I can see some of the ground work for other fixes in that.

[cevik]

Undocumented changes thread:

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=135910

My favorite part:

-Male and Female attack speeds were matched-- Males now attack as SLOW as females.

I saw that coming a mile away!

[Mrbloodworth]

RE: Update Notes 17th of July

With this week’s update we wanted to start a new tradition in providing a more detailed commentary of the reasons behind the changes in the updates on the live servers. So welcome to the first update commentary where we will provide a little insight into the current update priorities and explain how we are looking to further improve the game experience for everyone.

Update focus

The focus of this update was to ensure that we could continue to resolve a good deal of the inconsistencies that we can see have been affecting the game-play and at the same time improve on some of the existing game systems so that they are more accessible and more intuitive. So this update sees a good few changes intended to deal with some of the most frequently raised queries from the community.


General Updates

The first set of these changes were generally aimed at what we termed ‘convenience’ fixes, things that have provided unneeded frustrations for players. Not the largest or most comprehensive changes by any means, but ones that we felt could have a direct influence on the general play experience.

    * We have added more travel NPCs to the capital cities that allow travel to more locations in the game world.
    * The price of the basic mounts has been reduced from 2 gold to 75 silver.
    * The price of additional bags has been reduced by between 20% and 50%.
    * It should no longer be possible to accidently sell your mount.
    * A teleport item, the Totem of Origins is now dropping from boss encounters in group instances. You will be able to acquire it from locations throughout the game starting in the Black Castle. This totem teleports you to your home city once a day and can be used in addition to your path of Asura.
    * It will be possible to get experience from ‘grey’ quests again.


Combat Changes

Combat is obviously the core part of the game, and we have been working flat out to ensure that we can address the game mechanic issues that have lead to some inconsistencies. It’s important for us that players feel they are in control of their combat actions and the changes in this update have been worked on to improve the flow and immediacy of the combat system.

    * Clickable instant abilities will now actually be executed instantly rather then queued behind other attack animations.
    * We have resolved the basic issues with discrepancies between male and female attack times. This has now been resolved for all standard attacks and we are moving onto looking into the combo animations as soon as possible.
    * The issue with multi-hit combos ‘rolling back’ their damage if aborted should be resolved. You won’t lose any damage that has already been inflicted anymore.
    * Combo finishers (the last attack in the combo chain) now have 25% extra range, which should aid in getting them to land in PvP.
    * We have changed the way that requirement checks were processed when spell casting so that the target still needs to meet all the necessary criteria when the action finishes. In the case of range checks, the range of the spell gets an extra 25% bonus to its range when checking at the end of its cast.


GUI Updates

On of our early focus areas now that we have more and more feedback from players has been improving the GUI and this update sees a lot of new features and improvements in the GUI. This update sees a series of changes to improve the options available in the GUI, including

    * A GUI element for emotes has been added. Press Y to access this window.
    * A host of improvements to the Tradepost Interface to make it easier to use.
    * The ability to toggle off the on-screen messages off is now available.
    * The Friends/Guild Members window has been changed. It now works with tabs that sort friends by type: Guild Members, Friends, Offline members, and Ignored characters.
    * Ranged combos will now appear red on your shortcut bar when your target is out of range, similar to spells
    * Floating/movable character portraits were added. They can be enabled from Interface > HUD options menu.

There are a host of other improvements and tweaks as well that go live with this update and we will be continuing to refine the GUI in the coming updates.


Class Updates

In terms of class specific additions and changes our focus for this update was making sure that the abilities and spells had their effects and notifications improved where needed. A lot of abilities that were without appropriate visual effects have now had them added and a few abilities should be easier to use with clearer cooldowns. This has included optimizing a few of the spell and ability effects so that they don’t adversely affect client performance as much.

Quests, items and other fixes

We have managed to resolve a lot of quest, item and world bugs with this update. Ensuring that we keep resolving these issues will continue to be a major priority for us over the coming updates.

You can find the entire list of update notes here.

Content Updates

In closing we just wanted to provide a quick update on where the content addition plans are! We are very excited to be very close to introducing the first major new additions to content with coming updates. Of course our primary focus is the addition to the new PvP system changes that are being tested extensively at the moment. The systems are now all in place (and indeed you will start to see some of the first signs in the GUI in preparation for it in this update) and it’s now a case of ensuring that it’s fun and stable before we let it lose on the live dimensions.

In addition the live team has some of the new updates just about ready for your consumption. Within the next couple of updates you will see the latest revamped dungeon in the form of a new and improved version of the solo instance the Pyramid of the Ancients in Khopshef. With some great new challenges and quests the designers are really looking forward to seeing how you fare against their latest efforts.


We hope you enjoy the update and look forward to seeing you all in Hyboria!

- Age of Conan Live Team -
__________________
Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz
Senior Community Manager

Link

[Tarami]

So those of you who still play, how are the patches working out? Is Conan improving or are they just jumbling up the location of the bugs?

[Falconeer]

I am still playing and I don't think my opinion can be taken into consideration as I was so happy even when the game was a blurry mess.
Of course it is improving, small details here and there, but honestly I am not even noticing. I am not bugged easily by.. bugs, and that is probably true for all the braves that endured these 2 months without a break.

My point is that whoever is still playing is not in a position to say much about the improvements, they are appreciated additions/fixes in an experience that, although extremely unpolished, was already fulfilling for them/us.

It would be nice to hear from returnees, but I guess it's too soon for that. I stand with my prediction: thanks to all the improvements AoC will have lots of satisfied returnees in septmeber.

[Morfiend]

Seems they reduced the speed of Male characters 1h weapons to 2 seconds to match the female attack speed. But left 2h at 1.56 second per swing.

 

[CharlieMopps]

No, they used to cost 2 gold + 1 for basic riding skill (3g). Now it's down to 75 silver + 1 for basic riding skill (1g75s)

/rant on

Which is still COMPLETELY ridiculous. Why the fuck MMOs want to treat horses as prestige items never made any sense to me. Horses = Cars, everyone has to have one for Gods sake. If they stopped pretending that forcing their player base to run back and forth between 2 useless NPCs to finish a quest somehow equaled gameplay, giving their players faster ways to travel would suddenly stop being such a problem. Invent some god damned content and stop making me run in circles to pass the time. You should be given a mule when you step off the fucking boat... if I can afford a suit of armor but not a horse, I've got a serious friggen problem.  A Dragon mount is a prestige item, a horse is a Farm implement.

/rant off
 

[Falconeer]

Outlook on the next updates
We want to give you a short outlook about things to come in both this week’s update as well as the plans for the update scheduled for next week. This week’s update will be a smaller maintenance one in order for us to tidy up a couple of the issues while we work on the next larger update which is currently being tested and hopefully will be ready for the live servers next week.

Our tech team is hard at work to investigate about memory leaks (like for example the issue with your map going gray) and they have made inroads on those issues, and we have found and resolved a couple with this weeks update. This is of course a process that does not end now - on the contrary. The team will keep on working hard to find the leaks that are still there so we can expect more of them to be resolved in updates to come. Finding such memory leaks is quite a tricky thing but we are making progress and the tech team is keeping the focus on this issue.

Also fixed should be the issues from last week was the behavior of caster pets as some of them were in fact quite passive after they had been summoned. Our developers have found the source of that issue and the fix for this is getting tested by QA so this week's update should resolve this issue.

Lastly with this week’s update we wanted to give you all the opportunity to revise your feat points given the recent changes to the abilities and feat trees. What we have done is that the counter of how many times a character has reset his feats will be set to zero so the next reset will be viewed as being the first one in terms of money it will cost, as if you had never reset any feats before.


As we mentioned at the top, the update planned for next week should include some additions and changes that our community has been looking forward to (beside the usual fixes and updates).

Instance Changes

There are for example changes to the Pyramid of the Ancients dungeon which include wide improvements of the encounters and dangers that can be found in the pyramid. We really think that this will make it an interesting dungeon and should provide a real challenge for solo players.

Next up is Toirdebach’s Tomb in The Fields of the Dead. This group instance has been tweaked so that the mob levels are more in keeping with the level of the Fields of the Dead. We have also been through and amended the placement of mobs in the dungeon so that the balance between ranged and melee opponents should be much fairer to groups trying to tackle this ancient evil!

Resource Zone Updates

The resource and building zones (Lacheish Plains, Purple Lotus Swamp and Poitain) have had a thorough repopulation based on player feedback as to what resources were problematic. New resource nodes and many new camps have been added to these zones to help the avid tradeskillers amongst you find what you need. Be warned though venturing too far off the beaten path may result in you finding yourself face to face with some dangerous foes who won’t take kindly to you trying to harvest from them!


These fixes will be made available on the Testlive server later this week. So if you are interested in checking out these changes beforehand make sure you connect to the Testlive servers.

Please bear in mind that all these updates will of course be tested in detail before we decide whether they can be made available for the live servers. But we will keep you up to date about the latest status.


You can discuss this news in the forums right here.
__________________

Funcom   Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz
Senior Community Manager

[Falconeer]

Update Notes - 31st of July
COMBAT

    * We're now done with the majority of the process to completely equalize Male and Female damage. We've balanced the animation-lengths for all "white damage" attacks as well as all "combo finishers", and furthermore we've matched the animation length of "moving attacks" to the lengths of "stationary attacks". As a result players should now experience no difference in damage dealt or time needed to execute an attack based on what gender their character is.
    * Aborting multihit combos before they're finished won't activate their full effects anymore.
    * Pet commands should now be more responsive.
    * When aborting a multihit combo finisher, you now get a percentage of the full cooldown depending on how many hits you got in before the abort happened. (It's really in this time!)


CLASSES

    * All Assassin, Barbarian, Bear Shaman, Conqueror, Dark Templar, Guardian, Herald of Xotli, and Ranger combo damage and stamina costs have been rebalanced to match the newly adjusted animations.

Priest Archetype

    * Spirit Aegis will now give 0.5% invulnerability to Holy and Fire instead of 1% Fire with the first rank trained.

Assassin

    * Combos granted by feats should now deal significantly more damage than before.

Dark Templar

    * The Talisman Mastery buff will no longer be removed upon death if the proper feat is trained.

Guardian

    * Shield Sweep combo will now scale more consistently across the first three ranks.

Herald of Xotli

    * Pillar of Internal Flame Rank II is now a three-step combo (including combo starter) instead of an instant cast.

Necromancer

    * Bone Horde debuff now uses the proper icon in the debuff GUI.



ITEMS

    * Resolved an issue that caused item bonuses to not scale correctly.
    * Many items are now 'bind on equip' meaning that once equipped the item can no longer be traded.
    * Resolved the issue with raid gear that had lost it's bonuses in a previous update.
    * The bonuses awarded by gems have been rebalanced. Unfortunately some of the gem bonuses were originally applied incorrectly leading to situations where too much bonus was given, mainly for invulnerability rating. These gems have now been modified. The benefit of the different level gems has been also been amended though, meaning that higher level gems should now be better than the lower level versions.
    * All items Green+ are now Bind on Equip (BoE) or Bind on Pickup (BoP).
    * Items which are BoE/BoP should now state this fact below their item name in the mouseover tooltip. When these items are equipped and bound to the character, the text below the item name will change to reflect this. A message will now ask if you are sure when attempting to roll "need" on a Bind on Pickup item.


PVP

    * Players will now always see Massive PvP results, and the time left in a battle during battles. This information is displayed in the right top corner, below the minimap.


QUESTS

    * Field of the Dead: Changed the level on the quest Entourage from 52 to 47.
    * Field of the Dead: Changed the level on the quest Cleansing the Tomb from 53 to 48.
    * Khopshef Province: Forbidden Knowledge - The Crumbling Codex will now despawn after it is picked up.
    * Khopshef Province: Slave Cages will now show a visual effect when player is on the correct quest to interact with them.
    * Pyramid of the Ancients: New Quests have been added to enhance your questing experience. Bosses have been upgraded to present a challenge to solo (or small groups) of players. Pay careful attention to the items they drop - they could be the key to defeating more challenging enemies.
    * Pyramid of the Ancients: All quests should now be working.
    * Tarantia Sewers: Orphans in the Hovel - Galeria should now talk to you after you kill her captor.
    * Defeating Lord Atum-Keket in the Pyramid of the Ancients will now reopen the door to the Lord chamber.
    * The teleport altar behind Lord Atum-Keket will now be visible at all times.
    * The Master Torturer in Pyramid of the Ancients will no longer spawn multiple times in a row.


NPC / MOBS

    * Toirdealbach's Tomb has had its level range adjusted from 50-53 to 46-48. Loot in Toirdealbach's Tomb has been adjusted to fit the new level range of mobs.
    * Pyramid of the Ancients: The Harem Girls have been dressed up properly, and sexily!
    * Many of the spells used by raid bosses will now ignore line of sight-checks, thus making it impossible to avoid them by hiding behind pillars and such.
    * Many of the spells used by raid bosses will now be impossible to fully resist.
    * The Dark Flames breath attack used by Vistrix will now use normal line of sight checks.
    * The knockback strength on Kyllikki's Blizzard has been reduced.
      Yakhmars adds have been modified, they will no longer stun players as they did.


TRADESKILLLS

    * Cloth Resource droprate in the world has increased somewhat.
    * The Resource and Building playfields (Lacheish Plains, Purple Lotus Swamp, Poitain) have new NPC camps that will drop tradeskill items previously only available through the Alchemist's Cache. Some of these encampments will aggro, some will not. This makes these zones more dangerous, but allows lower level players a chance to get the tier 1-3 resources they need.


WORLD DESIGN

    * Checkerboard textures should no longer appear on the ground throughout the world.


MOUNTS

    * The horse ability Hind Leg Kick will now have a 12 second reuse timer, like the other horse abilities.
    * The Skewbald Pinto Horse has had its stats adjusted to horses of the same tier and price.


GUI

    * The "Quests" tab in the quest journal should now indicate the current number of accepted quests and the total number of allowed quests.
    * An option to add a player to your ignore list was added to the "Add by name" dialog.
    * If your trade is rejected, you will receive an onscreen message.
    * Tooltips for NPCs on the map should now show up in the localized version of their names, instead of their default English names.
    * You can no longer trade while in combat mode.
    * You will see an onscreen message stating that a team member has joined your team.
    * Onscreen feedback for a failed attempt at a trade due to a full inventory has been tweaked.
    * Added a new option that allows the player to make his cloak invisible.
    * Strange or seemingly out of place text in the UI should be removed


GENERAL

    * Several causes of crashes and assert failures have been addressed and fixed.
    * Important notification sounds now won't be interrupted by other sounds.
    * A fix was implemented for item descriptions when switching between languages on the client.
    * Fixed an issue that would cause some playfields to be empty after logging out for some time, and then back in.
    * You can no longer send unlimited mail through the tradepost. If you send several mails and are informed via system message you cannot send any more, you will need for in-game time to pass before being able to send more mail.
    * Ignored users will no longer be able to send you mail.
    * Raid playfields will now kick players who are not in the raid.
    * Fixed some animations that weren't blending properly

__________________

Funcom   Oliver 'Tarib' Kunz
Senior Community Manager

Hideable cloaks. Weeeeeeeeeeeee..............

[schild]

Does 'white damage' mean non-stygian?

/chuckle

[Engels]

BoE 

[Mrbloodworth]

To go with the patch notes, there is now always a "Reasoning" post of a sort.

Update 31st July

The main focus of this update has been in three key areas, firstly to update some of the instance locations to provide some great new encounters for you all to enjoy and secondly we have completed the process of ensuring the combat and item mechanics are consistent. Lastly we are continuing to focus on improving the GUI functionality based on player feedback.

New Instance Challenges!

The Pyramid of the Ancients dungeon has been updated and repopulated with a variety of new quests, encounters and dangers for you to face in this ancient site! The new content should provide an interesting and challenging experience for solo players and single teams alike.

Next up is Toirdealbach's Tomb in The Fields of the Dead. This group instance has been tweaked so that the mob levels are more in keeping with the level of the Fields of the Dead. We have also been through and amended the placement of mobs in the dungeon so that the balance between ranged and melee opponents should be much fairer to groups trying to tackle this ancient evil!

Combat Updates

This update sees the completion of the work to ensure that the combat animations are consistent amongst the different class and sex character options.

Resulting from this, all Assassin, Barbarian, Bear Shaman, Conqueror, Dark Templar, Guardian, Herald of Xotli, and Ranger combo damage and stamina costs have been rebalanced, the vast majority of stamina costs have been lowered to reflect the new attack speeds and the damage ranges will now be correct and consistent across any weapon and sex combination.

Item Updates

The issues that were causing item bonuses to not scale correctly across all level ranges has been resolved with this update. Items should now scale correctly between level 1 and level 80.

In addition the raid items for high level players that lost their bonuses in the earlier update should now be fixed and correct again.

Massive Resource Zone Update

The resource and building zones (Lacheish Plains, Purple Lotus Swamp and Poitain) have had a thorough repopulation based on player feedback as to what resources were problematic. New resource nodes and many new camps have been added to these zones to help the avid tradeskillers amongst you find what you need. Be warned though venturing too far off the beaten path may result in you finding yourself face to face with some dangerous foes who won’t take kindly to you trying to harvest from them!

GUI Updates

Continuing the trend of recent updates there are continued improvements and tweaks of the GUI in this update.

• Added a new option that allows the player to make his cloak invisible.
• The "Quests" tab in the quest journal should now indicate the current number of accepted quests and the total number of allowed quests.
• An option to add a player to your ignore list was added to the "Add by name" dialog.
• If your trade is rejected, you will receive an onscreen message.
• You will see an onscreen message stating that a team member has joined your team.

There are even more changes which are introduced in this update and we will continue to even further improve various aspects of the GUI in the coming updates.

We also want to take this opportunity to remind you that future updates and fixes are always available on the Testlive servers some time before they are introduced to the live servers. So if you are interested in checking out some of the future changes yourself and also have the opportunity to talk to the developers on various topics then please head over to the Testlive servers and forums. All the necessary details about how to join the Testlive server can be found at the official forums at this link.

The full list of updates can be found here.

We hope you enjoy the update and are looking forward to meet you again in Hyboria.

- Age of Conan Live Team -

[Lantyssa]

BoE 

*sigh*

This was one of the things we thought Conan got right.  Why this incessant need to make items BoE or BoP?

[cevik]

This was one of the things we thought Conan got right.  Why this incessant need to make items BoE or BoP?

BoP is because people need to be pushed to experience the content parts of games.  If you allow them to stand around and spam "WTB FBSS" they'll do that rather than go fight their way to the Frenzied Ghoul and get their own item.  When fighting your way to the Frenzied Ghoul is the fun part of your game, you want to encourage people to do things like fighting their way to the Frenzied Ghoul so they can have fun, rather than stand around frustrated that they can't buy the FBSS and bitch about the game.

Makes sense to me.  Force people to go explore content, because if you don't, they will avoid the content because they are afraid it may be hard, or something.

[Threash]

BoE 

*sigh*

This was one of the things we thought Conan got right.  Why this incessant need to make items BoE or BoP?

Because crafting becomes useless if people can just sell the items when they are done using them over and over again.  Either item decay or BOE needs to be implemented, personally i hate item decay so im fine with BOE.

[squirrel]

This was one of the things we thought Conan got right.  Why this incessant need to make items BoE or BoP?

BoP is because people need to be pushed to experience the content parts of games.  If you allow them to stand around and spam "WTB FBSS" they'll do that rather than go fight their way to the Frenzied Ghoul and get their own item.  When fighting your way to the Frenzied Ghoul is the fun part of your game, you want to encourage people to do things like fighting their way to the Frenzied Ghoul so they can have fun, rather than stand around frustrated that they can't buy the FBSS and bitch about the game.

Makes sense to me.  Force people to go explore content, because if you don't, they will avoid the content because they are afraid it may be hard, or something.

And then complain that there's no content...people are so broken.

[Mrbloodworth]

I would prefer BOP and BOE for drops, and Decay for crafted ETC..

[Lantyssa]

Makes sense to me.  Force people to go explore content, because if you don't, they will avoid the content because they are afraid it may be hard, or something.

Then the item needs to drop every time I go kill the frenzied ghoul, because having to repeat the content will make me quit.  Kind of like my trips through the Sanctum.  My Dark Templar got four friggin' bows, pretty looking light armor, and a nice two-hander, but couldn't get Black Vash, heavy armor, or anything useful to drop.  (The people with me were well past it, so two of us got to loot everything.)  I've done the content but still couldn't get what I wanted.

Because crafting becomes useless if people can just sell the items when they are done using them over and over again.  Either item decay or BOE needs to be implemented, personally i hate item decay so im fine with BOE.

Given the crafting system, I cannot imagine there are a ton of people clamoring to make items.  If there were more depth to it or the economy I could see the need, but with how things exist now I don't.  YMMV.

Anyways, the main benefit of crafted goods in AoC is slotting gems, which cannot be removed.  Sure some people won't care about using old equipment, however the best use of it is to customize the slots to your preferences.  That cannot be done with already made gear.

I also hate artificial systems which let players trade some items but not others.  Either keep everything restricted to a character, or let everything but a few items with good reason be tradeable.  (Quest items and character-defining quest rewards for non-tradable examples.)

BoE doesn't completely turn me off, but it always seems to take over so there is never any usable equipment which can be passed around, and in the later levels everything desirable seems to turn into BoP.  I much prefer Guild Wars' method where it's tradable until you customize it.  At that point it's yours.

[tazelbain]

I also hate artificial systems which let players trade some items but not others.  Either keep everything restricted to a character, or let everything but a few items with good reason be tradeable.  (Quest items and character-defining quest rewards for non-tradable examples.)

Slowing the game strangling effects of inflaction and mudflation seems like a pretty good reason to me

[Lantyssa]

Making things BoE and BoP will have the exact opposite effect of slowing inflation.  There will be fewer available options, so the prices will go up for any desirable items.

[cevik]

Making things BoE and BoP will have the exact opposite effect of slowing inflation.  There will be fewer available options, so the prices will go up for any desirable items.

Mudflation is a form of economic deflation though, as there becomes more and more available gear, more and more people have better gear and thus are more powerful and more able to do the content more easily.  Thus, to keep those people playing, you have to make the content more challenging, so that their gear doesn't make the content too easy.

Deflating prices on gear leads to inflating encounter difficulty, making the line between the haves and the have nots way more apparent. 

[Lantyssa]

The haves will always have the gear.  They're the ones who would be spreading it out to others, if allowed to.  As long as every game chases after keeping the top tiny percentage of players happy, mudflation will be a problem.  (Not to mention it is simply the nature of a DIKU.)

Restricting access of those items to the bulk of players, by making them BoE/P and thus not passed down, is what emphasizes the gap between the haves and have nots.  People lack the equipment to be invited to see the new content, so they're left out.  How do they get the gear though, if everyone is two steps ahead and none of their leavings can be handed down?  Isn't running old content to gear up people one of the biggest complaints about raid progression?

[Engels]

Makes sense to me.  Force people to go explore content, because if you don't, they will avoid the content because they are afraid it may be hard, or something.

This logic is entirely bogus. If a player gets his rocks off standing around auctioning, he's doing it right. Forcing content is like forcing fun. People play MMOs for all sorts of reasons, and coralling them into your precious content is telling your players that their way is the wrong way. Look at the success of EQ's auctions and East Commons. Players thrived there as well as in any dungeon. Forcing everyone and his brother into LGuk to get their own FBSS is ignoring the playstyles of a significant portion of the player base.

Also, everything Lantyssa said.

[cevik]

This logic is entirely bogus. If a player gets his rocks off standing around auctioning, he's doing it right. Forcing content is like forcing fun. People play MMOs for all sorts of reasons, and coralling them into your precious content is telling your players that their way is the wrong way. Look at the success of EQ's auctions and East Commons. Players thrived there as well as in any dungeon. Forcing everyone and his brother into LGuk to get their own FBSS is ignoring the playstyles of a significant portion of the player base.

But the numbers disagree with you.  Just from purely looking at the popularity of the two games (EQ, which let you buy anything and bypass as much content as possible) and WoW (which fixed that problem by forcing you to experience the content yourself if you wanted the gear), WoW was vastly more popular.  Once players were forced off the message boards and into the dungeons the players had way more fun and started liking the game. 

BoP forces people to play the game, it keeps them from standing around Freeport yelling WTB all day because they read on some message board that the FBSS is really hard to get, and instead forces them into Deadmines so they can get the gear themselves.  If they don't like the game, that's fine, they should log out and cancel their account.

Players ALWAYS take the path that they perceive will be the least resistance.  If you let them bypass content by farming gold, then they will, because solo farming gold is perceived as "easier" than getting together a 5 man to experience the content.  If you force them to experience the content, arguably the only strong point of any of these games, they will do that instead.  One of those options will result in way more fun for way more of your customers, which means you have more customers that keep playing longer, which means BoP is a smart decision to make.

[cevik]

Isn't running old content to gear up people one of the biggest complaints about raid progression?

Sure, there is design left to make the perfect solution, but that doesn't mean that BoP isn't a decent solution.  I'm sure a better solution will eventually come down the pipeline and be copied a million times by a million mmogs.

Blizzard has approached this problem though, with Badges of Justice and Rep rewards.  Now you are rewarded for experiencing old content even if you already have all the gear drops in that content.  I'm sure someone much smarter than I will eventually come up with even better solutions to the problem.

EDIT:  Back to the original subject, any way you cut it, I'm sure that everyone here will agree that Funcom will not be the people that create the better solution.  So, for them, copying a decent solution is better than no solution at all.

[Vinadil]

This logic is entirely bogus. If a player gets his rocks off standing around auctioning, he's doing it right. Forcing content is like forcing fun. People play MMOs for all sorts of reasons, and coralling them into your precious content is telling your players that their way is the wrong way. Look at the success of EQ's auctions and East Commons. Players thrived there as well as in any dungeon. Forcing everyone and his brother into LGuk to get their own FBSS is ignoring the playstyles of a significant portion of the player base.

But the numbers disagree with you.  Just from purely looking at the popularity of the two games (EQ, which let you buy anything and bypass as much content as possible) and WoW (which fixed that problem by forcing you to experience the content yourself if you wanted the gear), WoW was vastly more popular.  Once players were forced off the message boards and into the dungeons the players had way more fun and started liking the game. 

BoP forces people to play the game, it keeps them from standing around Freeport yelling WTB all day because they read on some message board that the FBSS is really hard to get, and instead forces them into Deadmines so they can get the gear themselves.  If they don't like the game, that's fine, they should log out and cancel their account.

Players ALWAYS take the path that they perceive will be the least resistance.  If you let them bypass content by farming gold, then they will, because solo farming gold is perceived as "easier" than getting together a 5 man to experience the content.  If you force them to experience the content, arguably the only strong point of any of these games, they will do that instead.  One of those options will result in way more fun for way more of your customers, which means you have more customers that keep playing longer, which means BoP is a smart decision to make.

Eh... I know the numbers may be lopsided towards WoW, but I think you are adding a Causal effect here that just does not exist.  If you look at the way WoW is changing, it is making gear MORE accessible to the guy standing around shouting for it, not less.  Instead of forcing people into the content already created they are attempting to change the content to fit the way their player base is Playing.  I don't think having BoE/BoP gear is a factor in WoW's success to be honest.  The fact that both the casual And the hardcore can get gear that satisfies them... that might be closer.  And, that seems to be the focus of the future design; more access to the gear that you want.

[Engels]

One can't really draw a comparison between EQ and Wow, simply because they are entirely different generations of games. When EQ launched, the pool of people capable of playing PC video games was smaller than it was when WoW started to take off in the millions. Furthermore, MMO technology had much advanced by the time WoW launched, or ostensibly, even because of WoW, leaving the rather primitive looking EQ behind.

Attributing WoW's success to enforced content 'experiencing' is myopic. If that were the route to success, you'd see CoH or EQ2 have equal numbers, which they don't.  Its the content itself that provides success, not pushing people to it.

Let's also make a brief note that AoC's content isn't exactly stellar; pushing people into it rather than letting them do their own thing in their own time will, if anything, precipitate subscriber loss rather than ameliorate it.

[cevik]

Eh... I know the numbers may be lopsided towards WoW, but I think you are adding a Causal effect here that just does not exist.  If you look at the way WoW is changing, it is making gear MORE accessible to the guy standing around shouting for it, not less.  Instead of forcing people into the content already created they are attempting to change the content to fit the way their player base is Playing.  I don't think having BoE/BoP gear is a factor in WoW's success to be honest.  The fact that both the casual And the hardcore can get gear that satisfies them... that might be closer.  And, that seems to be the focus of the future design; more access to the gear that you want.

Of course it might not be the reason for WoW's success, it's my suspicion that it has at least a little to do with it, and of course it's your suspicion it does not.  No one knows.   One can certainly say that BoP didn't hurt WoW when it's compared to other games that did not have BoP (i.e. the WoW vs. EQ comparison).

I think the big huge giant change that Blizzard made to the MMOG world was taking it out of the catholic age.  Instead of the old McQuaid model of punishing the players for playing, Blizzard rewarded the players for doing the fun parts of the game.

In EQ we were told "Quests are fun, therefore they should not be rewarding, because if they are players will do them all the time!", in WoW the design appears to say "Quests are fun, therefore we should reward players for doing them, so they will do them all the time!"  In EQ, when it came to gear they said "Getting gear is fun, therefore it should be hard otherwise players will get gear all the time."  That led to the Frenzied Ghoul that spawned once a week and had a super low chance of dropping the FBSS, which then led to people deciding to skip the Frenzied Ghoul and spam "WTB FBSS!!!" all day in Freeport, which, while not fun is more fun than being punished to try to get the gear.

In WoW they decided "Getting gear is fun, therefore lets use it as a reward to get people to play the game."  BoP specifically leads to this as a design practice.  You can't stand around in Org yelling "WTB" and get much in the way of gear, so then everyone stood around in Org yelling "LFG, UBRS!" and people did UBRS.  And they found out that UBRS kicked way more ass (the first 1000 times) than farming gold.  So people had fun and played and WoW was successful.  Do I think it's 100%, or even 50% of the reason WoW was so successful?  No, but I suspect if WoW had been the old catholic model of MMOGs it would have been a lot less successful.

And you are right, they are making gear and gear more accessible every day.  Which leads right to my point:  They realized people like the reward of gear, and they realized that the best thing to have their players do is play the game.  So they are giving more and better gear every day as an incentive to play the game.  It's really quite genius when compared to the past.  Reward the player for having fun and the player will go out and have fun and continue to play.

Now can you predict what 100% of the players will think is fun 100% of the time?  Of course not.  You'll always run into the "ZOMG SANDBOXES R UBAR, LEVELS AREN'T LEVELS IF YOU DON'T CALL THEM LEVELS!" crowd like Lantyssa.  Blizzard seems to have made the design choice of saying to people like Lantyssa "Hey, great idea, go find another game, WoW isn't for you."  The good news for Blizzard is that they've found a pretty popular game type and have regularly prodded their customer base into playing that game type and have had a lot of success doing it.

Anyways, I'm sure you didn't read any of that, which is cool, I'm not worth reading anyways.

[cevik]

Its the content itself that provides success, not pushing people to it.

Of course pushing people into playing a game that sucks isn't going to be successful.  You have to have a fun game.  One would assume that the developers of these games think their games are fun to play, even if they aren't.  BoP is a solution to the problem of how do you get your players to play the game you've created and think is fun.  It does not, in any way, guarantee that the game is fun.  If AoC isn't fun BoP isn't going to help them, but then, if AoC isn't fun allowing people to spam "WTB FBSS!" in Old Tarantia isn't going to help them much either.

[Dren]

The BoP debate is tricky and has probably just as many advantages as disadvantages.  However, the BoE issue is pretty straight forward to me.  I believe it is necessary if you ever want your crafting game to work long term.

UO had an open item use system and while it worked for the first few years of the game, the amount of hording and passing down of items through guilds or just through your own characters made vendoring way too common.  The state of the game from then on was that every house had at least 2 vendors with a massive amount of "stuff" for sale.  It became a job just to sift through all the crap to find a decent buy.  Most of the time, people just wouldn't even bother because they have a multitude of other characters that could either make their own items or pass along like a standard hand-me-down.  The market became flooded with supply.

I really do not see an advantage to allowing an item to be reused over and over again forever by anyone.  I suppose you could put degradation into the game, but it is essentially the same thing and only pisses off those that may have originally purchased or made the item.  You basically penalize everyone with item degradation, while BoE helps the original user and just penalizes the rest.

To make up for any loss of economy due to items being "used up" upon equip, use a system that can break down that item to be used by crafters to make something else then.  It provides yet more activity in the market and allows one to feel like they didn't completely lose all value in their item once they grow out of it.

The only other option I can see is binding the item to the original user.  Then, forever after, that item will work at 100% capability for that person, but if used by anyone else it will be at some x to xx% less capable.  A buyer would then be faced with a full priced NEW item compared to the same item used at a lower price, but with a reduction in capability.  That would give the buyers some freedom, while at the same time, the crafters would still have a niche market to play with.  You could call it the "Custom Fit" market.

[Nebu]

The BoP debate is tricky and has probably just as many advantages as disadvantages.  However, the BoE issue is pretty straight forward to me.  I believe it is necessary if you ever want your crafting game to work long term.

That sums up my beliefs as well.  Since itemization requires availability to a limited number of classes for any item obtained, BoE is the best way available to allow characters to acquire the items they need through the economy without having a hugely detrimental effect to the economy of crafting.  I'm also supportive of any mechanism that increases the value of crafted items.  People that enjoy crafting should be given value for their time investment just as those that enjoy adventuring for their spoils.

[cevik]

People that enjoy crafting should be given value for their time investment just as those that enjoy adventuring for their spoils.

In games that have that as a primary (or even a secondary) focus of design, then sure.  AoC (and WoW) are not those types of games.

We have to stop thinking that mmogs have to be all things to all people.  I've said this in other threads, but keep the sandboxes out of my DIKUs and I'll keep my DIKUs out of your sandboxes.  I personally think Blizzard did a good job by telling the people that don't want to play a game like WoW that they are sorry, but better luck with your next game.  It's time to start focusing designs and stop trying to cater to everyone, because it will never happen. 

Adventure games should reward adventuring, because the development focus and the game play focus will be on adventuring, thus adventuring will be the fun part of the game.  Trying to shoehorn a crafter's paradise into your adventure game will only result in a crappy crafting system that no one likes and less development time for your main systems so more risk in the investment there.

WoW's crafting system works okay for the game, but it's really just a different form of customization for your adventuring character (via BoP epic gear) and a few ways to grind out raid supplies via harvesting instead of gold farming and buying the stuff at the AH.  It doesn't compete with, lets say, SWG's crafting system because that isn't the focus of the game.  Making everything BoE in a WoW type of game would result in a lot less playing and a lot more grinding, because the "easy" thing to do would be to grind out gold so you can buy your epic gear, rather than trying those "hard" 10 man raids you keep hearing about that are only for hardcore people. 

The sooner we realize the crafters and the adventurers want different games, the better off we'll be.

[Nebu]

We have to stop thinking that mmogs have to be all things to all people. 

The sooner we realize the crafters and the adventurers want different games, the better off we'll be.

I agree with the first statement but not the second.  There are MANY people out there that love the adventure/combat aspect of games but also enjoy crafting as something to dabble in while their grouping friends are offline.  I think that there exists a lot more similarity between the two cultures than you're giving credit.  Crafters want to be able to adventure when they're not crafting... adventurers often want to craft when they can't adventure/raid.  Having both not only adds to the diversity in the game world, it also provides an in-game service to those that prefer one over the other without wanting them to exclusion.

[tazelbain]

Making things BoE and BoP will have the exact opposite effect of slowing inflation.  There will be fewer available options, so the prices will go up for any desirable items.

That is not inflation, but supply and demand.  Prices went up because supply decreased. Now if prices went up because of an increase in the supply of money that be inflation.