Arche Age

[Fabricated]

Man, that client-side stuff happens to an awful lot of Korean MMOs. I don't get it; if you're developing something in South Korea where the country is pretty much wired for fast ethernet speeds or higher why offload anything to the client when latency (at least there) is no object?

[tmp]

Man, that client-side stuff happens to an awful lot of Korean MMOs. I don't get it; if you're developing something in South Korea where the country is pretty much wired for fast ethernet speeds or higher why offload anything to the client when latency (at least there) is no object?

I get a feeling at this point lot of that comes down to ignorance and/or not giving a damn by whoever codes the stuff.

Part of it may be they are trying to reduce the load servers get from all the players running around and doing things, but lot of decisions they make can't be really explained by that, while the ignorance/not giving a damn explains them pretty well.

[Stormwaltz]

I wonder if there might be an element of sociology involved.

In the US, we assume that if any opening is left to cheat and exploit, of course people will cheat and exploit to better themselves, and "our bad" for leaving a way for that to happen. It's a uniquely American attitude of "anything not explicitly outlawed must be okay, so I will do it, and fuck you if you don't, loser - you deserve it."

In Korea, there seems to be more an attitude of, "we're not going to go out of our way to make this airtight, but if you abuse our trust, we will shun you," kick you out of the community and take away everything you hold dear in game. And maybe the threat of banning means more in a country where people invest more heavily in their MMG of choice, and where punitive levels of grind and "everyone in the guild must be here" PVP are accepted parts of game design.

But I'm slightly drunk, so maybe I'm just being stupid.

[tmp]

That's just "greener grass on the other side", I think. Info about exploits in the games usually comes from the Korean version where they are discovered and abused first, so it doesn't look to me like it's something they shouldn't take into account.

Even if it was a cultural thing that's not excuse when you know your game will be also published in other regions where you know they will look for every loophole and exploit, so precautions should be taken from get-go. Not doing so is just dumb -- most recent, truly facepalming instance of it I saw was in interview with Dark Souls 2 dev, who asked if they did something to prevent hacking that'd happened with their previous title basically said, "well, no, we just hope players will behave honourably (this time)". Doing the same thing and expecting different results... well, you know what they say about that.

[Trippy]

I wonder if there might be an element of sociology involved.

In the US, we assume that if any opening is left to cheat and exploit, of course people will cheat and exploit to better themselves, and "our bad" for leaving a way for that to happen. It's a uniquely American attitude of "anything not explicitly outlawed must be okay, so I will do it, and fuck you if you don't, loser - you deserve it."

In Korea, there seems to be more an attitude of, "we're not going to go out of our way to make this airtight, but if you abuse our trust, we will shun you," kick you out of the community and take away everything you hold dear in game. And maybe the threat of banning means more in a country where people invest more heavily in their MMG of choice, and where punitive levels of grind and "everyone in the guild must be here" PVP are accepted parts of game design.

But I'm slightly drunk, so maybe I'm just being stupid.

It's the other way around. It's the Asian games that have the janky anti-cheat programs bundled that fuck up your system once they are installed. That's because the developers know their players will chest.

[Simond]

Oh my God why did nobody mention this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ga3s0n1O8

 

[palmer_eldritch]

Oh my God why did nobody mention this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ga3s0n1O8

 

You can apparently make good money by writing out the scores (there's an in-game mechanism for doing this) and selling them to wannabe musicians.

[palmer_eldritch]

I made a film that gives a taste of naval combat in the game. It shows a 20 minute naval battle between two rival guilds. Lots of boarding boats, blowing up boats with cannons and similar stuff.

Marvel at my lousy PvP skills and watch me target the enemy boat instead of enemy players in this film!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjqpLJbFvw

[WayAbvPar]

Oh my God why did nobody mention this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ga3s0n1O8

 

Mama Cass looks a lot better than I remember.

[Abalieno]

I made a film that gives a taste of naval combat in the game. It shows a 20 minute naval battle between two rival guilds. Lots of boarding boats, blowing up boats with cannons and similar stuff.

Marvel at my lousy PvP skills and watch me target the enemy boat instead of enemy players in this film!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjqpLJbFvw

Ew, graphic wise it looks on the level of DAoC/Everquest 1. I know the game can look pretty, but in that particular scenario it really feels like we are back 10 years.

[LC]

Ew, graphic wise it looks on the level of DAoC/Everquest 1. I know the game can look pretty, but in that particular scenario it really feels like we are back 10 years.

I have to ask if you are blind in two eyes.

[Abalieno]

I said 10 years, not 15.

[palmer_eldritch]

Ew, graphic wise it looks on the level of DAoC/Everquest 1. I know the game can look pretty, but in that particular scenario it really feels like we are back 10 years.

The graphics are messed up in that film. There's some sort of memory leak with the DX11 version of the game which can lead to textures vanishing if you play for a long period. But it's still a nice illustration of naval combat in the game, as you can't create that sort of experience to order. Most of our naval fights involve us killing and stealing from other groups pretty quickly, and then blowing up their boats. Not boasting, as anyone who watches the film will see that it certainly isn't down to any PvP skill on my part.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I said 10 years, not 15.

You also said DAOC/Everquest 1 thus, I assume, the picture from EQ1, not EQ2, which would still look like ass compared to AA, just with fewer zits.

[tmp]

I have to ask if you are blind in two eyes.

Yeah, seriously. That's some serious case of rose-coloured daoc/everquest graphics prowess memories.

I suspect that video is running at lower fidelity options for the sake of better framerate because PVP, too.

[Falconeer]

Archeage will launch with an advanced, more balanced, more sandboxy patch known as 1.2.

ArcheAge to Launch with Patch 1.2!

If you've been following ArcheAge , you may have heard about a game update simply called Patch 1.0.

Initially released in Korea, this update has been the source of no small amount of concern from our ArcheAge community since we announced the game was coming to North America and Europe. Upon seeing the behavior of the patch's changes in the wild, the game's developer, XLGames, agreed that ArcheAge's balance and feel had shifted in an unintentional direction. Behind the scenes, we've been carefully following public feedback over the past few months, and had a chance to exhaustively test out the update on our own internal servers. While there are a number of gameplay improvements, we agree with their conclusion.

Both Trion Worlds and XLGames are eager to maintain the game's sandbox nature. Our mutual, overriding goal has always been to release the best quality, most fun experience possible. Toward that end, members of our ArcheAge Team visited XLGames this past week to discuss Patch 1.0. Together, we've forged the best possible path to launch for Trion Worlds' version of ArcheAge.

We're thrilled to announce that both Trion Worlds and XLGames have agreed that it's best for us go live with Patch 1.2's amazing improvements when we launch with English, French, and German languages in 2014. Launching with Patch 1.2 is a challenge as it adds over 70,000 words to translate. Since we want a complete English translation before introducing a larger audience to the game, this does mean that our Beta schedule has shifted by a few weeks. That means that we can't announce a specific date for the first Beta right now, but we wanted to get the great news about the game itself out as early as possible.

[March]

There's a lot of (blatant) dodging in that statement... what sucked about 1.0 and what's so miraculous about 1.2?

Anyone know?

[Falconeer]

They mention these things as improvements coming with 1.2. You can reverse engineer these changes to figure out what was supposedly wrong before. But I am sure Palmer Eldritch will be able to give us the dirty details.

Patch 1.2 also introduces a host of exciting improvements on its own, including increased experience per Labor Point spent, a searchable crafting folio that works with recipe or ingredient names, significantly reduced (from Patch 1.0) glider turbulence on the high sea, and the ability to earn experience from crafting with maxed-out professions and participating in PvP during a war. Additionally, the Marketplace (in-game store) will be available before Beta begins and we'll grant testers sufficient currency to test it out.

[Stormwaltz]

Apparently 1.0 ripped out a very deep crafting system.

So what exactly happened? I'll let KeksX, the author of the aforementioned review, explain. "Crafting in ArcheAge is a really controversial topic. In CBT3 (or 4? I forget), the crafting was really different," he wrote. "There was great item decay, synthesis and all that funsie stuff for hardcore crafters. But because of exactly that, Jake Song and his company decided to put it out. They replaced it with a system that has RNG and not that much item decay anymore; also the item synthesis is out."

Song addressed the controversy directly via his Twitter account late last year. "Most users didn't like the system except hardcore crafters. So we removed it. Sorry," he wrote.

Source: Massively

(Unfortunately, the site that's the original source of Massively's synopsis is currently down.)

[Draegan]

There's a lot of (blatant) dodging in that statement... what sucked about 1.0 and what's so miraculous about 1.2?

Anyone know?

Read this: http://www.reddit.com/r/archeage/comments/23dw47/controversy_with_archeage_patch_10/

Large detailed list of the shitty updates XLGames put in, and how they fixed them and how Hartsman tweaks them for the US release.

[WayAbvPar]

I am glad to see Hartman in there mixing it up. It makes me feel like he as decent grasp on things and is listening to concerns.

[palmer_eldritch]

Basically the Korean developers, XLGames, seemed to panic or something and gave the game a drastic NGE-style patch which downgraded things like farming, crafting and trading and made daily quests far more important. In other words, they made the game less sandboxy and more themeparky.

Then they undid most of this with later patches.

Most western ArcheAge fans are upset at any hint of the game becoming less sandboxy, because the sandbox element is the whole reason they want to play this game and not some other game.

So Trion are saying, "don't worry because we are skipping that horrible mistake and going straight to the later patch, and we've also had that later patch tweaked a bit to make it even cooler".

[March]

I'm tempted to give this a fling... I unistalled both TESO and Wildstar in Beta - so I don't have a new shiney to play with.  On the one hand, seems like a really bad use of $150, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure I'll give this a try at launch - so, hey, only a marginal loss if it sucks, and a potential win if its good.

Which way are F13 alpha testers trending... win or suck or draw?

[Druzil]

So I was really excited for this game way back on page 1 (so like ~3-4 years ago?) and I admit I have not followed it close enough since then.  I remember some people posting a few videos specifically of a bunch of players basically building a castle from scratch including building the walls and carrying materials to the builders etc.  Is that still even in this game?  Every time I fire up twitch streams for this it's people doing standard MMO quests, leveling and fighting monsters.   Am I just not giving it enough of a chance or has this game totally done a 180?

[sam, an eggplant]

pay to prey

I'm catching up to the thread late and picked up on this-- you coined a brilliant phrase here! I hope it catches on.

[palmer_eldritch]

I am playing the alpha and enjoying it. Admittedly I was always a bit of a fanboy for this.

I produced a lengthy review which I think shows you a lot of aspects of the game beyond questing, including farming, land ownership (owning a castle and defending it), piracy, trading and a bit more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b05621xpAds

Yes, building houses, boats and castles is still very much in the game.

Building a castle means owning a region and there are currently only four regions in the game that can be owned by players. So most guilds are never going to own a region/build a castle.  However, it's certainly in the game, and so is the ability of rival guilds to attack your castle. By the way, if one guild owns land then that doesn't stop other people making use of the land, including building their own farms and houses on it. It does however mean that home-owners are paying their taxes to the guild that owns the land, not to NPCs as they do in other parts of the world.

On paying for Alpha access, be aware that beta will start in July (probably). Beta access won't be 24/7 - they will have events lasting a few days at a time. But if you're just curious to try the game out, you could buy beta access at a much lower price (although this is a game that requires a bit of time to get into).

[Draegan]

This game will primarily rely on other people playing the game in a sandbox feature. There isn't much depth to the game otherwise. They need to balance the game to incentvise pvp and player interaction.

[Stormwaltz]

They need to balance the game to incentvise pvp and player interaction.

They need to choose one - they can be SB/Darkfall, or they can be UO/SWG.

EDIT: I think the unusual level of excitement about this in NA comes from people expecting the latter. But I could be very wrong about that, since I happen to be one of them.

[WayAbvPar]

If they could make it SB/UO they would scratch my itch perfectly.

[Lantyssa]

Definitely in the UO/SWG crowd myself.  I really doubt Hartsman would think there's a huge market for sandox PvP, but then maybe I'm hoping.

[Hoax]

SB/SWG sounds pretty good to me.

[Scold]

They need to balance the game to incentvise pvp and player interaction.

They need to choose one - they can be SB/Darkfall, or they can be UO/SWG.

EDIT: I think the unusual level of excitement about this in NA comes from people expecting the latter. But I could be very wrong about that, since I happen to be one of them.

I'm definitely in the 'the more like Darkfall the better' camp. Ideally, any restrictions on who I kill should be organic (i.e. who do I fear pissing off?), not hard-coded. Most of the people I'm planning to guild with are similarly not here to bake bread. My hope is that even if the newbie experience is fairly sheltered, most of the late game revolves around wrecking people's shit and trying not to get wrecked in return (all-world PvP with consequences for winning and losing, not just arena PvP).

[LC]

So Trion are saying, "don't worry because we are skipping that horrible mistake and going straight to the later patch, and we've also had that later patch tweaked a bit to make it even cooler".

I can say that it did not do enough. The 1.2 patch has been horrible when compared to the earlier version so far. It seems like they had two goals in mind. The first one was to strip away as much sandbox as possible and replace it with themepark. The second was to make everything more labor intensive so that players have to purchase labor potions from the cash shop. Even as a subscriber/patron you will burn through the small amount of labor you get each day in 30 minutes - 1 hour. I'm sure someone will come up with the average cost per minute of gameplay after they reveal the cash shop prices.

[palmer_eldritch]

So Trion are saying, "don't worry because we are skipping that horrible mistake and going straight to the later patch, and we've also had that later patch tweaked a bit to make it even cooler".

I can say that it did not do enough. The 1.2 patch has been horrible when compared to the earlier version so far. It seems like they had two goals in mind. The first one was to strip away as much sandbox as possible and replace it with themepark. The second was to make everything more labor intensive so that players have to purchase labor potions from the cash shop. Even as a subscriber/patron you will burn through the small amount of labor you get each day in 30 minutes - 1 hour. I'm sure someone will come up with the average cost per minute of gameplay after they reveal the cash shop prices.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the game in its current state. I think Trion are planning more tweeks so I guess we just have to hope they fix it...

[Njal]

It depends what you're crafting. You can do a lot of resource gathering with 5k labour. Other things like making stuff burn labour really fast. In general I like the patch but it could use a fair amount of tweaking. In particular I don't really like having to buy basic crafting mats from player traders or doing trade runs themselves. Buying more advanced stuff sure but they really put a crimp in the supply line atm.