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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  MMOG Discussion  |  Topic: So what's Mass Market Again? Conan hits 1M (shipped). 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: So what's Mass Market Again? Conan hits 1M (shipped).  (Read 251455 times)
Jarnis
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Reply #140 on: June 11, 2008, 12:09:50 PM

I've only been lurking here. However, I have trolled participated in MMO-related Broken Toys comment threads from time to time...

One of the biggest complaints I see floating around, and one of your complaints, is a lack of endgame when compared to WoW.  IIRC WoW shipped with a (very broken) Molten Core and Onyxia as far as end game content goes.  The next raid instance was added about a year later (BWL), with raids being added around every 6 months to a year after that.

Stupid Question:  Do modern mmogs have to ship with end games that match or beat WoW's current end game to be successful?  The comparisons are never made to WoW at release, they are always made to modern WoW, going on 4 years after release.

If this is the case, will there ever be another successful mmog released?  If the comparison will always be made to modern WoW, I can't imagine that anyone will ever have the budget to compete with what WoW eventually became (instead of where it started).  I can't even imagine the next Blizzard product having the development dollars to release a game with end game content that has the depth of modern WoW.

No, but the progression to maximum level should not be broken, and there should be *something* to do when the exp bar stops moving. Any raid content included at the launch is a definite bonus, but I'd take less stuff that actually works over more stuff that isn't finished.

While WoW raids were somewhat unfinished at launch, there was a good working "endgame progress" game involving smaller dungeons and gathering of "blue" gear upgrades from those places. You could play at level 60 for weeks without the urge to hit the cancel button. WoW didn't have enough content (it still doesn't, in a way), but what was there generally worked fine. Servers were a whole another matter, but that was mostly due to the overwhelming popularity.

AoC endgame is just one flaw that will be fixed for sure - in fact, I hear there are already four horribly bugged raid instances in the game. But before that, it has a broken level 40-80 (roughly) game, and has smaller issues before level 40 as well. Only Tortage is actually polished to any standard.

Also, the itemization is a joke and most of the items do not actually improve the combat abilities of your character - in a MMO! I'm actually interested to watch how they plan on fixing that without having to go and re-balance every single PvE bit of the game... so far all they did was change the tooltips. It used to say that STR would add to your melee attack rating, but anyone could see it didn't. Now it just claims that STR adds to your damage... same goes for DEX, WIS and INT, and their related combat attributes.

My main beef with AoC is the unfinished state of post-level 20 game at launch, poor design choices related to instancing and zoning, and non-existing economic system with faucets and no long-term sinks. Rest is fixable. Note that I gave it a score that tried to discount my personal "grrr, Hulk hates unfinished crap, turns green" bias, while writing the text with a very clearly disclosed bias against unfinished/unpolished products (see page 1).
Nerf
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Reply #141 on: June 11, 2008, 12:16:34 PM

See, your whole schtick just falls on its face when you start bitching about the instancing.  First you say it feels like a single player game because you never see anyone, and then you bitch that people camp bosses.

Well, which is it? If you're going to bitch about somthing that is a non-issue for the vast majority of people, at least be fucking consistant.
(Edit: I've only run into the boss-camping cockblock a couple times up to 53, the most notable being the cistern/main system, which is a spawn rate issue more than an instancing one)

Zoning issues? Is this more "Theres an invisible wall!" bitching?  Sorry that they didn't feel that every single area should either be so massive it takes EVEN LONGER to get around, which you bitch about, or that they wanted some open areas instead of having everything surrounded by impassable mountains.


You made some good points, the 40+ game really is shitty, but at least half of your "review" is just angsty shit that you had to dig deep to find, because noone fucking cares about it.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 12:26:12 PM by Nerf »
Jarnis
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Reply #142 on: June 11, 2008, 12:27:46 PM

See, your whole schtick just falls on its face when you start bitching about the instancing.  First you say it feels like a single player game because you never see anyone, and then you bitch that people camp bosses.

Well, which is it? If you're going to bitch about somthing that is a non-issue for the vast majority of people, at least be fucking consistant.

Both. They use instancing *wrong*. They instance everything - even bits that really shouldn't be instanced, and then do it poorly with the "public dungeon instances" concept - leading to boss camping. In some cases it's quest-related boss camping, where you want the boss for a quest while couple of chinese goldfarmers wait to gank it for the resale value of the loot. I thought EQ1 already demonstrated why MMO players need private instanced areas with the bosses & phat loot...

Quote
Zoning issues? Is this more "Theres an invisible wall!" bitching?  Sorry that they didn't feel that every single area should either be so massive it takes EVEN LONGER to get around, which you bitch about, or that they wanted some open areas instead of having everything surrounded by impassable mountains.

Impassable mountains are ten times better than a flimsy five feet high wooden stockade. Or an invisible wall (yes, there are areas in the zones that actually just end in an invisible wall). You can do zone borders and non-continuous area poorly or well. DAOC actually did it fairly well - it had zoning to capital cities and (later) to frontiers and player housing areas - each time those zone borders looked beliveable and you could suspend your disbelief for that one teeny moment and ignore the loading screen, and believe that you just stepped ahead for a few feet and the world now continues. AoC just has a big world map with curvy roads between dots, and those dots are the zones we see - you can't step on any of the areas outside those designated zones, and in many places the access is prevented with very crude barriers. It doesn't feel like a world - it feels like a collection of sandboxes, with teleports between them. Heck, in some cases you travel one way with a "caravan", but the return trip is actually supposed to be a boat.

Quote
You made some good points, the 40+ game really is shitty, but at least half of your "review" is just angsty shit that you had to dig deep to find, because noone fucking cares about it.

Sorry. That's probably just the Finnish way of describing things... we don't get much sunlight in the winters, and tend to be bitter and stuff...  rolleyes
Nerf
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Reply #143 on: June 11, 2008, 12:31:33 PM

Both. They use instancing *wrong*. They instance everything - even bits that really shouldn't be instanced, and then do it poorly with the "public dungeon instances" concept - leading to boss camping. In some cases it's quest-related boss camping, where you want the boss for a quest while couple of chinese goldfarmers wait to gank it for the resale value of the loot. I thought EQ1 already demonstrated why MMO players need private instanced areas with the bosses & phat loot...

Didn't you write that bosses weren't itemized and it was pointless to kill them?
And if you want private instances, why are you complaining that it feels like a single player ga..aww, you know what, fuck it.

You're a fucking hack and can't even make up your mind as to why you don't like this game, you're arguing opposing points and blaming funcom for both.
Im done.
slog
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Reply #144 on: June 11, 2008, 12:39:12 PM

Both. They use instancing *wrong*. They instance everything - even bits that really shouldn't be instanced, and then do it poorly with the "public dungeon instances" concept - leading to boss camping. In some cases it's quest-related boss camping, where you want the boss for a quest while couple of chinese goldfarmers wait to gank it for the resale value of the loot. I thought EQ1 already demonstrated why MMO players need private instanced areas with the bosses & phat loot...

Didn't you write that bosses weren't itemized and it was pointless to kill them?
And if you want private instances, why are you complaining that it feels like a single player ga..aww, you know what, fuck it.

You're a fucking hack and can't even make up your mind as to why you don't like this game, you're arguing opposing points and blaming funcom for both.
Im done.

What he wrote makes perfect sense to me. 

Friends don't let Friends vote for Boomers
Jarnis
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Reply #145 on: June 11, 2008, 12:52:30 PM

Both. They use instancing *wrong*. They instance everything - even bits that really shouldn't be instanced, and then do it poorly with the "public dungeon instances" concept - leading to boss camping. In some cases it's quest-related boss camping, where you want the boss for a quest while couple of chinese goldfarmers wait to gank it for the resale value of the loot. I thought EQ1 already demonstrated why MMO players need private instanced areas with the bosses & phat loot...

Didn't you write that bosses weren't itemized and it was pointless to kill them?
And if you want private instances, why are you complaining that it feels like a single player ga..aww, you know what, fuck it.

You're a fucking hack and can't even make up your mind as to why you don't like this game, you're arguing opposing points and blaming funcom for both.
Im done.

I don't want to run in an outside zone with 9 copies of that zone existing in parallel - that breaks immersion. It doesn't feel like a "real" world, makes it harder to actually form groups, and there are plenty of MMOs that do fine without it. Dungeons with slowly respawning bosses are another matter, and it's been generally found to be a bad idea to keep these areas shared between players/groups of players - it leads to camping.

I wouldn't mind a non-instanced dungeon as well, but that would require it to be massive when compared to what most MMOs consider to be a "dungeon" these days - and even then, if you can set up camp on a spot where a big fat loot pinata spawns every 30 minutes, people will. Many games have solved it with private instanced dungeons with no boss respawns - you have to do the whole thing to get to the loot pinatas again. Yes, those bits are not "massively multiplayer", but on the flipside we have EQ1-style camping - sometimes with *calendars* when each group/guild can kill each loot pinata in turn. In this case I take the lesser evil, thank you.

Some bosses (well, many of them) are not itemized. Some are. Guess which ones people are camping?
shiznitz
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Reply #146 on: June 11, 2008, 12:59:19 PM

His four examples of graphics settings are crap. The third one - supposedly on low settings - still has player shadows enabled. That should be the first thing you turn off.  Same with detailed grass.  Who favors those two things over view distance?

Those are the default views you get when you hit "High", "Medium" or "Low" in the game. Last one is Medium with Pixel Shaders turned to 2.0 (for those with systems that just can't run the game at SM3.0).

I actually wrote a small tech article earlier that spelled out the fact that the shadows are the biggest drain on performance in the game. But I didn't decide those default settings - I just show what they look like for reference. I guess I could've panned the game for non-practical default graphical settings as well...  smiley

Ah. Then it does makes sense to use them. Funcom's problem, not yours.

I have never played WoW.
Miasma
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Reply #147 on: June 11, 2008, 01:04:11 PM


Sorry. That's probably just the Finnish way of describing things... we don't get much sunlight in the winters, and tend to be bitter and stuff...  rolleyes

Yes you are, I saw that episode of 60 minutes and believe it without question.  You also tango a lot.  I bet you hate those Norwegians over at Funcom due to some war you had way back when.

Edit: waltz->tango
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 01:07:34 PM by Miasma »
Jarnis
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Reply #148 on: June 11, 2008, 01:17:00 PM


Sorry. That's probably just the Finnish way of describing things... we don't get much sunlight in the winters, and tend to be bitter and stuff...  rolleyes

Yes you are, I saw that episode of 60 minutes and believe it without question.  You also tango a lot.  I bet you hate those Norwegians over at Funcom due to some war you had way back when.

Edit: waltz->tango

I hope you don't believe everything you see on YouTube (or, on 60 minutes for that matter).

On the other hand, the scary truth is that the 60 minutes episode in question is not that far off from reality... those early clips from Helsinki are quite realistic - if someone would mix in with a big happy smile, everyone else would think that he's either drunk, mentally unstable or a tourist  rolleyes
Venkman
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Reply #149 on: June 11, 2008, 01:18:54 PM

Quote from: cevik
Stupid Question:  Do modern mmogs have to ship with end games that match or beat WoW's current end game to be successful?  

This:
I think the big focus on the endgame has to do with exactly how many people are reaching level 80 within the first month.

If the leveling speed was anywhere near what even WoW's was, we'd only now be hearing big complaints about the lack of endgame. But they didn't do the not-secret launch day nerf that a few other MMOs have. Smart of them not to piss off their core, but risky because there's not only no real endgame per se, there's not much else to do at all except build your cities. Crafting's pretty broken at the moment apparently, and the woefully imbalanced classes make PvP a bit of a crap shoot unless you're really dedicated to the core concept zone control for the good resources (which apparently does work after a fashion).

Instancing on the other hand makes some sense in the context of the game. Being PvP centric after a fashion, you're supposed to want to fight other players to get to the good stuff in ways you couldn't in EQ1. But AoC's specific implementation is sorta half pregnant. They use instancing ala CoX public spaces to account for population problems, but then have PvE servers where the primary motivation of players is leveling up and good gear to get to the endgame that maybe someday will be about PvP and raiding as a choice (ala WoW).
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Reply #150 on: June 11, 2008, 01:22:05 PM

Seriously Nerf, the combined "overinstancing/underinstancing" argument makes a lot of sense. It's a bit of confusing from the lack of proper terminology perhaps, but the gist is that Conan uses the wrong KIND of instancing in many, many cases.

Public dungeons are errorneously used for instances with few quest mob spawns and long spawn times. This means that -despite- you're in an instance, you're still short on mobs. And bosses. And anything that's public. These should have been private, larger, or have faster spawns. As it is, many of them give no benefit but instead compartmentalisation of the player base. You're still waiting a lot for shit to respawn. Yes, it would be worse if everyone was in the same instance, but maybe then it would be larger aswell. As for the itemisation in private instances, I can't say, but I'm still to receive anything worthwhile.

Even less diplomatic: I agree fully on the whole backdrop/tease-crap Conan is doing. "Look lad, such a pretty view! Whattaya mean, go there? Sorry son, can't allow that. Go talk to Max and he'll cart you somewhere else entirely." 10 feet fences belong in Counter-strike. Like Jaris is saying, a 100 feet drop or a 100 feet cliff wall is way better because it doesn't -promise- anything. Here we're promised candy but instead get a broken nose against the store window. It doesn't bother you? Great. It bothers quite a few other people. Vistas are one of the primary goddamn reasons these games are called MASSIVE, not solely because there are massive amounts of people somewhere you can't find.

- I'm giving you this one for free.
- Nothing's free in the waterworld.
AcidCat
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Reply #151 on: June 11, 2008, 01:36:49 PM

Even less diplomatic: I agree fully on the whole backdrop/tease-crap Conan is doing. "Look lad, such a pretty view! Whattaya mean, go there? Sorry son, can't allow that. Go talk to Max and he'll cart you somewhere else entirely." 10 feet fences belong in Counter-strike. Like Jaris is saying, a 100 feet drop or a 100 feet cliff wall is way better because it doesn't -promise- anything. Here we're promised candy but instead get a broken nose against the store window. It doesn't bother you? Great. It bothers quite a few other people. Vistas are one of the primary goddamn reasons these games are called MASSIVE, not solely because there are massive amounts of people somewhere you can't find.

The more I play the more it bugs me, being something of an explorer. In WoW you could travel from one end of a continent to the other in a way that felt logical and gave a great sense of a world you were actually travelling through - sure you couldn't go everywhere, but the places you couldn't go made sense - mainly steep moutain ranges. It's a similar feeling in Conan to CoX in that you are just playing in connected boxes. Some areas of Conan hide it better than others - and certainly it is a thing you can forget as you are enjoying chopping some poor mob's arms and then head off, but it's one of those background things that is disappointing.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 01:41:53 PM by AcidCat »
Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #152 on: June 11, 2008, 01:37:38 PM

Seriously Nerf, the combined "overinstancing/underinstancing" argument makes a lot of sense. It's a bit of confusing from the lack of proper terminology perhaps, but the gist is that Conan uses the wrong KIND of instancing in many, many cases.

Public dungeons are errorneously used for instances with few quest mob spawns and long spawn times. This means that -despite- you're in an instance, you're still short on mobs. And bosses. And anything that's public. These should have been private, larger, or have faster spawns. As it is, many of them give no benefit but instead compartmentalisation of the player base. You're still waiting a lot for shit to respawn. Yes, it would be worse if everyone was in the same instance, but maybe then it would be larger aswell. As for the itemisation in private instances, I can't say, but I'm still to receive anything worthwhile.

Even less diplomatic: I agree fully on the whole backdrop/tease-crap Conan is doing. "Look lad, such a pretty view! Whattaya mean, go there? Sorry son, can't allow that. Go talk to Max and he'll cart you somewhere else entirely." 10 feet fences belong in Counter-strike. Like Jaris is saying, a 100 feet drop or a 100 feet cliff wall is way better because it doesn't -promise- anything. Here we're promised candy but instead get a broken nose against the store window. It doesn't bother you? Great. It bothers quite a few other people. Vistas are one of the primary goddamn reasons these games are called MASSIVE, not solely because there are massive amounts of people somewhere you can't find.

I've said these same arguments pages ago(or maybe another thread) and got yelled at, i think probably by nerf(wtf?)  and they are spot on. AoC got instancing wrong and they got massive wrong. I had fun, it was worth the price of the box but i doubt i'll be playing past the free month as there simply isn't enough variety for me and not enough fun to counteract the glaring bugs that would eat up hours of my nights until i realized something about my quest or class was broken.

To me, this game is no different from wow in an appreciable way. Sure you can say it has a 'fun' factor but what is that? it just means you like the style of things here or maybe aoc is just something newer to your pallatte but even though it may be a new york strip instead of a ribeye you're still eating cow. You level, you quest, you do dungeons with your tanks and healers and you get loot, then you level up and do it all over again. at high levels you can even *gasp* do it with dozens of other players! how is this new? the combat? take away auto attack in wow and you have the same system, just a bunch of special attacks and combos just with more button mashing.

pvp? seriously? turning a server into pvp+ does nothing that other games haven't done, aoc still has wow style battlegrounds and instead of horde/alliance its every man/guild for themselves. sorry no difference there, whether you are more fun in aoc than wow or eq or eve is not the point. lots of people enjoyed n-sync too, it doesn't make them not just another boy band.

what really grinds my gears is not that aoc is just another diku clone with tits and gore, it's that it did not learn from past diku models. it tried too hard to say "no really, we're different" that i think they believed they're own hype and didn't you know, try and copy the good parts that other games have proven players want.

~a horrific, dark simulacrum that glares balefully at us, with evil intent.
Nerf
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Reply #153 on: June 11, 2008, 01:45:04 PM

Diku IS quests and ding gratz, if you don't like diku then why did you even start?

I agree that it would be nice if you could walk from one area to another, but after a month of that they would put in the caravaners and boats and we would all be praising them because walking sucked hairy balls.

Whatever though, apparently alot of you just don't like the game, that's fine, there is plenty of shit wrong to bitch about without having to cry about the way they implemented zone lines.  Every MMO I've ever played had hard zone lines that sometimes didn't make sense, crying about it being a fence instead of everywhere you go being surrounded by a massive mountain range, or on a plateu is just reaching.
Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #154 on: June 11, 2008, 02:00:18 PM

Diku IS quests and ding gratz, if you don't like diku then why did you even start?

I agree that it would be nice if you could walk from one area to another, but after a month of that they would put in the caravaners and boats and we would all be praising them because walking sucked hairy balls.

Whatever though, apparently alot of you just don't like the game, that's fine, there is plenty of shit wrong to bitch about without having to cry about the way they implemented zone lines.  Every MMO I've ever played had hard zone lines that sometimes didn't make sense, crying about it being a fence instead of everywhere you go being surrounded by a massive mountain range, or on a plateu is just reaching.

Reading comprehension is hard, apparently. Yes it's diku, what I'm saying is that they were trying to pretend they weren't and thereby failed at doing it right. Travelling? EQ2 had gryphons, wow had flightmasters and aoc could have done something just like that with caravans. In other games you don't have to walk from the northern tip of the continent to the southern if you don't want to but that option was there.

I'm sorry but the moment you start saying a large portion of people talking reasonably and in well thought out posts(one of them writing a goddamn 8 page reveiw which was also fair) and saying these people are 'crying' and 'whining' then maybe you need to take a step back yourself. These are real issues that may not bother you but yes, do bother a large number of the population, as I said before you and others like this game, great. Also a large number of people will continue to play this game just as a large number of people still play eq1 but that doesn't mean that game should be put on a pedestal. 

AoC has flaws, a great deal of them. Wow has flaws, EQ2 has flaws....every game ever conceived has flaws and this discussion is not about that. It's about the severity of those flaws and the impact it will have on the customer base. I personally think the flaws in aoc are glaring past a certain level, even those who like the game immensely know they are there, in addition to all those intangible 'zone line' things that bother people and they aren't sure why. AoC will do ok, it will make money and it will be running still a couple years down the line but it will be forgetteble and it will never live up to the potential of what could have been a great game, it will always be mediocre.

~a horrific, dark simulacrum that glares balefully at us, with evil intent.
Venkman
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Reply #155 on: June 11, 2008, 03:29:00 PM

I've never seen anyone quit a game because of zone lines. I think this is sort of Nerf's point, which I agree with. There's a lot of worthy stuff to complain about in AoC. How zones are maps is sort of a B-level issues. How instancing is handled, that's A-list. Travel too.

This isn't to say the complaints aren't worth it.I just feel like how the zone lines wouldn't matter a whit if that was the only thing wrong with the game.

Having said that, I do wonder about the travel. It's a pain, but that seems intended. Gryphons and ringways and PoP books are great and all, but they really make the world smaller. There was a time when people would complain how the little immersion there was with these easymode ways of traveling. AoC lacking them highlights the other side of that complaint. Be careful what you wish for...  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?
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Reply #156 on: June 11, 2008, 03:31:31 PM

Even with the walking, leveling in AoC is still faster than uhhmmmm, anything else.
Tarami
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Reply #157 on: June 11, 2008, 03:33:11 PM

Diku IS quests and ding gratz, if you don't like diku then why did you even start?

I agree that it would be nice if you could walk from one area to another, but after a month of that they would put in the caravaners and boats and we would all be praising them because walking sucked hairy balls.

Whatever though, apparently alot of you just don't like the game, that's fine, there is plenty of shit wrong to bitch about without having to cry about the way they implemented zone lines.  Every MMO I've ever played had hard zone lines that sometimes didn't make sense, crying about it being a fence instead of everywhere you go being surrounded by a massive mountain range, or on a plateu is just reaching.

What can I say, immersion is a big fucken thing. Put bluntly, immersion is one of the top reasons -anyone- plays these games. Someone who isn't feeling immersed in the game will stop playing, because they might aswell be playing Pong or Tetris or any other strictly mechanical, non-thematic game. We appriciate slightly different things -as- immersion, but it's none the less about mentioned experience. In terms of gameplay value, MMOs are cadavres. RPGs in the 80's had more interaction and RP'y "cleverness" than your average MMORPG. This has been said before, yet it's still as true for Conan. They've added some layers of complexity without adding actual value - like the dialogue system. I'll buy you all lunch if the fancy combo system is anything but tried'n'tested button mashing in a year's time.

Really, what I'm asking for isn't a brand new game. I'm not looking to find some whole new depth in a diku, that'd be in vain, I'm looking for a game that does your vanillia diku well enough and then adds or differs in 10% of the core gameplay. The 10% that makes the whole play differently and makes it feel fresh despite being a rough rehash of games we've already played. That's really all it takes to sate my hunger for dikus. I like dikus, I've been playing some form of them since my early teens. HeroQuest, Adv. HeroQuest, Warhammer Quest and now Descent with online forays in MMOs.

Before I unleash the last paragraph I'm going to say this: I'm not saying that any of you are doing it wrong. You like it, that's great and I mean it. My intention is not to effectively rain on anyone's parade. What you do with your free time is quite frankly none of my business.

But, a rant -

I recall another diku that launched about fourteen months ago. It was nothing special, just your average diku, decent polish and a smooth launch. It had functioning loot, crafting (while a bit incomplete), even endgame instances with bosses that required some diku'esque strategy and even a working damn raid. Point being, a functioning western diku was released that while it may not have been to the tastes of everyone, it worked and it worked, relatively speaking, well. That game received a total panning by many people around here, despite its many actual qualities. (Hey, a working MMO, whattaya know?) Yet some people are sitting here hyping a total fucking wreck of a game to the skies based on pure potential and a new flavour of mindless button mashing. I'm not arguing whether you're having fun. I'm arguing whether the game is as awesome as you're telling yourselves it is.





- I'm giving you this one for free.
- Nothing's free in the waterworld.
Rasix
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Reply #158 on: June 11, 2008, 03:34:45 PM

Having said that, I do wonder about the travel. It's a pain, but that seems intended. Gryphons and ringways and PoP books are great and all, but they really make the world smaller.

Drowning yourself in a small pool of water, hopping off a cliff, or running to a huge pack of mobs in order to transport to a different rez pad doesn't make the world any bigger.  Plus, it's just silly.

Sometimes you don't even really save any time by doing it.  I just don't like having to run everywhere manually all of the time. 

Quote
I recall another diku that launched about fourteen months ago. It was nothing special, just your average diku, decent polish and a smooth launch. It had functioning loot, crafting (while a bit incomplete), even endgame instances with bosses that required some diku'esque strategy and even a working damn raid. Point being, a functioning western diku was released that while it may not have been to the tastes of everyone, it worked and it worked, relatively speaking, well. That game received a total panning by many people around here, despite its many actual qualities. (Hey, a working MMO, whattaya know?) Yet some people are sitting here hyping a total fucking wreck of a game to the skies based on pure potential and a new flavour of mindless button mashing. I'm not arguing whether you're having fun. I'm arguing whether the game is as awesome as you're telling yourselves it is.

LOTRO was really boring at a base level.  People don't get excited or really even enjoy, "nothing special".
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 03:39:50 PM by Rasix »

-Rasix
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Reply #159 on: June 11, 2008, 03:36:05 PM

Even with the walking, leveling in AoC is still faster than uhhmmmm, anything else.

It is, it's superfast. Thats why endgame content is extremely crucial compared to what it was in WoW / other MMOs on release where leveling for a casual guy can take 2-4 months. At least 20-30 days played. However I honestly don't know the amount of endgame content in AoC, but I am highly surprised at the lack of content in the mid-level range, so it gives me little will to level up completely. Standing around in a town and crafting stuff ain't my idea of fun. I just wanna behead suckers and kill epic bosses.

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Reply #160 on: June 11, 2008, 03:37:28 PM

Having said that, I do wonder about the travel. It's a pain, but that seems intended. Gryphons and ringways and PoP books are great and all, but they really make the world smaller.

Drowning yourself in a small pool of water, hopping off a cliff, or running to a huge pack of mobs in order to transport to a different rez pad doesn't make the world any bigger.  Plus, it's just silly.

Sometimes you don't even really save any time by doing it.  I just don't like having to run everywhere manually all of the time. 

I die all the time just to travel. I have received so many /lol whispers due to leaping of random cliffs and places. On a sidenote, I will put this in the Tip of the Day thread : If you die to travel fast, you get the Death Penalty. That one is removed once you deliver a quest  Ohhhhh, I see.

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Reply #161 on: June 11, 2008, 03:42:16 PM


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Abelian75
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Reply #162 on: June 11, 2008, 04:18:40 PM

I die all the time just to travel. I have received so many /lol whispers due to leaping of random cliffs and places. On a sidenote, I will put this in the Tip of the Day thread : If you die to travel fast, you get the Death Penalty. That one is removed once you deliver a quest  Ohhhhh, I see.

Yeah, I did a pretty big eye-roll once I discovered this.  It's like it's INTENDED that you to die in order to go turn in your quests.
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Reply #163 on: June 11, 2008, 04:19:33 PM

Yep. But damn does the game look good while you're doing it.

I recall another diku that launched about fourteen months ago. It was nothing special, just your average diku, decent polish and a smooth launch. It had functioning loot, crafting (while a bit incomplete), even endgame instances with bosses that required some diku'esque strategy and even a working damn raid. Point being, a functioning western diku was released that while it may not have been to the tastes of everyone, it worked and it worked, relatively speaking, well. That game received a total panning by many people around here, despite its many actual qualities. (Hey, a working MMO, whattaya know?) Yet some people are sitting here hyping a total fucking wreck of a game to the skies based on pure potential and a new flavour of mindless button mashing. I'm not arguing whether you're having fun. I'm arguing whether the game is as awesome as you're telling yourselves it is.

I said this somewhere else but can't remember and am too lazy to find it. But basically, AoC is broken in the sort of ways that make for interesting discussion. We feel like we're "part" of something, a game that's broken, but still playable and in which we feel like we can achieve something. It's the SWG vibe. Secondarily, it's broken in ways we can exploit so that when things are fixed, we'll be ahead of the curve. Because we figured it out and exploited it.

LoTRO's basic problem was that it was entirely contrived. There's nothing particularly special about it. It's just a well-executed game, which isn't good enough to spawn fervent fanboism and mocking bystanders you get as a sort of free PR for a new game. It's just not interesting enough to talk about. This means less meta, less "other game" from Tazel's thread. But I suspect they're more a victim of timing than anything else, because:

WoW was also contrived, linear, and very well executed, but came with something of a built-in audience (Game IP > regular IP by default), after years of trainwrecks and ho-hums, and from a company almost everyone either really likes or at least respects.
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Reply #164 on: June 11, 2008, 04:28:28 PM

Half of you are saying it needs to be smaller with more polish, the other half saying it needs more content. Those are mutually exclusive.

Edit: LOTRO is just a worse WOW. The only reason to play it is if you like the lore. It has no other selling point. It got exactly the amount of interest it deserved.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 04:29:59 PM by Margalis »

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Reply #165 on: June 11, 2008, 04:47:41 PM

I think I'm saying both, actually.

AoC has way too many classes. Each class has too many disparate abilities, the abilities are too spread out, and they're not explained anywhere. Every class should have a purpose and offer unique gameplay mechanics as well as dependencies with other classes while still being capable of soloing. It also has too many meaningless bear uterus collection quests. This is 2008; I don't want to collect uteruses. I've had plenty, really, I'm full, couldn't take one more. Each and every quest should have at least one unique scripted element that makes the player go "hey, that was neat". Killing 50 picts and poop-scooping their livers doesn't do it for me.

As for too little content, well there we come into the brick wall at 40. It's a major problem, but they're promised to address it later on this month. Tortage is another spot where they fell down, but it's easily fixed by an auto-level to 20 with green items checkbox.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 04:49:15 PM by sam, an eggplant »
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Reply #166 on: June 11, 2008, 04:59:55 PM

Half of you are saying it needs to be smaller with more polish, the other half saying it needs more content. Those are mutually exclusive.

I don't think anyone actually thinks it needs to be smaller.  Certainly people think it needs more polish, and also people think it needs more content.  Those aren't really mutually exclusive, it's just not easy to say how they could have done that, since it probably comes down to management/development processes and budget and such.  It's certainly not an impossible thing to accomplish, though it may have been impossible for them.

Re: People quitting over zone lines and such, it's probably true that few people quit in disgust over such things, but I wouldn't be surprised if people just fail to be engaged in the game because of it, even if they don't consciously recognize the zoning as the cause (or one of a set of causes).  It's not always as simple as there being just one big thing that caused you to quit a game.  And indeed, for many people it's not a matter of something driving them to quit at all, but rather a collection of awesome things that, against all odds, cause them to subscribe.  And the way they handled zoning could be the lack of that one extra awesome thing that caused people to decide to buy/subscribe.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 05:13:05 PM by Abelian75 »
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Reply #167 on: June 11, 2008, 05:03:35 PM

I have to ask sam, but have you been reading all the quest dialogue?

While there are alot of quests that involve killing people and taking shit, the explanations behind them are pretty damn good in many cases, and alot of the quests have had me rolling. (taking the shirts from bums in tortage was great)

Darniaq hit my point right on the head, I've never heard anyone list unrealistic fences as zone lines as a game-breaking issue.

The instancing is done poorly in some places, public dungeons suck, and long respawns in any public instance are a horrible idea.

My problem lies with comments like "It feels like a single player game because of the awful instancing", followed directly by "fucking goldfarmers camp everything and it's ruining my game!"

Which makes even less sense once you actually go kill a few of these bosses that drop blues, and realize they're almost all bind on pickup.

--Complain about broken instances (pyramid, anyone?), complain about half of the feats not working, and all of the descriptions being fucked, complain that crafting is completely broken, guild cities are pointless and serve no purpose, complain that there is absolutely -zero- balance, but for fucks sake, don't just make shit up.
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Reply #168 on: June 11, 2008, 05:30:38 PM

We've discovered that Jarnis isn't getting paid for his views, but have we worked out who the hell at AoC is giving Nerf money? Please stop. Fix the game instead, don't pay some fuckwit to yell shit at people who disagree with him on a forum.

Half of you are saying it needs to be smaller with more polish, the other half saying it needs more content. Those are mutually exclusive.

Not necessarily. Cut the world in half, delay some systems for a expansion pack, slow down the leveling rate. Take the time you have from not putting every single idea you have into the game into polishing the content you have earlier on. Polish up everything!

If you have 10 shitty things that are no fun and bugged to heck people will say "shitty content, we need more good stuff!" while if you have 5 things that are great and work well people will play the heck out of them and love it.
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Reply #169 on: June 11, 2008, 05:59:31 PM

99.9% of all internet arguments are due to people not understanding someone else's point. The other 0.1% is arguing over madeup statistics  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

There are too many classes. This has plagued other games and will again. When even companies with bottomless pits of cash don't tackle more than 10 classes, you really need to step back and wonder why the hell not. Unless you've got a team of insane statisticians creating Mother's Perfect Blend of interacting skills, and then just picking pieces of it out for individual templates, don't bother (well, and because you should just dive into a skills-based game anyway wink)

More classes just means you'll eventually be focusing on fewer of the most active ones, which became active because the players sought the ones that actually work.

Quote from: lamaros
If you have 10 shitty things that are no fun and bugged to heck people will say "shitty content, we need more good stuff!" while if you have 5 things that are great and work well people will play the heck out of them and love it.
AoC at least prioritized the right way, and looks to have sold enough boxes to at least pay the up front investment. If they lose players now, they nix some jobs, and everything that needs to get done to fix the game takes longer to get done. But they're still alive.
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Reply #170 on: June 11, 2008, 06:04:14 PM

Quote from: lamaros
If you have 10 shitty things that are no fun and bugged to heck people will say "shitty content, we need more good stuff!" while if you have 5 things that are great and work well people will play the heck out of them and love it.
AoC at least prioritized the right way, and looks to have sold enough boxes to at least pay the up front investment. If they lose players now, they nix some jobs, and everything that needs to get done to fix the game takes longer to get done. But they're still alive.

Honestly, not really. When it comes to 'making the game better' it's not a choice between that and marketing. They could have done fewer classes, fewer poorly implemented features, more content, slower leveling, etc and STILL have done just as well in sales and such. And they would have had better word of mouth, more people likely to stick with the game, less people shitty about bugs.
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Reply #171 on: June 11, 2008, 06:09:02 PM

Here's my thoughts. Travel is long because they need to slow you down--WOW does this too. The world is actually very small in number of camps and zones, which is why you have to go to the same places again and again but to kill different foozles each time again to slow you down. The result of that is that you kill all the foozles, not just the ones you need to kill, which is why it needs to be instanced to hell and beyond. (One or two instances of a zone is one thing 4-10 is something quite different.)

The last thing the world needs is to be smaller.

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Reply #172 on: June 11, 2008, 06:09:41 PM

it has a broken level 40-80 (roughly) game

This is getting annoying. As it's not true.
The only part it's actually really lacking content is the 45 - 60. After Noble District and before Atzel's and Thunder River. Field of the Dead could be a good place to level up to 50 but somehow it feels not dense enough, and the dungeon, which is super cool, is too small. Eiglophian Mountains need serious enriching and what the game basically lacks in that level range is an alternative zone to go XPing. Something that happens at 60, when you can choose between two cool places (TR and AA).

The thing is, for some reason which could be the extreme difficulty of "elite" mobs, dungeons aren't appealing here as they were in other games, so in said level range you are supposed to wet your feet with Sanctum - Cistern - Main System. But that seldom happens because you've been spoiled by the solo friendliness of the first 40 levels and have turned in a whiny sucker who couldn't tie his/her laces unless they were easily soloable. "Whaaaaa do I really have to group and go complete those 15 quests who would give me a fuckton of XP and equip in a nasty hard dungeon?! but I don't want to....! This is SO broken!"

I admit (again) that the overland zones supposed to host people for those 15-20 levels could get some more content, but there's nothing LESS TRUE than saying there's no content after level 40. It's not true, not true not true and again not true. So stop it ok?

Plus, whatever the flaws were in your 40 - 50, they get redeemed when you get to 60, and nothing is wrong from that point on (save for itemization, but that's another story, broken since level 1). This game has lots of quests, at every level, beautifully crafted zones, a handful of dungeons, a couple raid zones (which are unused anyway because there are not enough level 80) but the legend of the lacking content lives on. People complain because they have to grind a little here and there, and even if it's fast and possibly less dull than any other MMO before it's still OMG! Grind! Donì't want any of it!
Please, tell me a MMORPG where you are not supposed to ever grind. You know what? LotRO is possibly the only one, and that wasn't such a succesful formula after all.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here: what IS content in the first place?

Too many complain about the lack of content at higher levels because "a friend" told them so or because "it is written everywhere". I ask you all to honestly reach the content-lacking part of the game, spend some time looking around the zones you are in and what they are offering, maybe compare that with what other games offer when your characters are mid-high level and THEN come back with evidences.

Bottom line: there's a huge difference between "it's not WoW" and "there's no content after level 40".



P.S: Suomi (Finland) is like that. You can talk shit about it, but have you been there? I did, and despite what Jarnis could say, it's a wonderful Country with a shitload of content. I love it.

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Reply #173 on: June 11, 2008, 06:23:31 PM



I think that really says everything.
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Reply #174 on: June 11, 2008, 06:34:30 PM

This is getting annoying. As it's not true.

That may well be true (and is certainly a good point to make), but in answer to your question of why the hell people are saying such a thing, I can personally answer that once I saw the pyramid dungeon it killed my faith in the content from that point onward and, having heard some rumblings of having nothing to do post-40 (and having already spent a couple levels doing grey quests), I just decided not to play any further for a couple months (instead I have run several alts through tortage).  It may be incorrect that the content is unfinished from that point on, but that impression was given SOMEHOW, and whatever caused that impression is a problem.

They really, really should not have left that pyramid dungeon in the game at launch.  I got an absolutely awful impression from that place.  Oh yeah, and that treasury of the ancients place where I climbed a wall and fell through the world and died.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2008, 06:39:52 PM by Abelian75 »
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