Game Director Letter - June 2013

[smacpro]

prospect of more unchained dungeons and revamped loot table sounds good.

but im very unsatisfied with bringing more aa's before doing revamps.
been waiting for years for necro&hox revamp, and whole rogue classes need some love too given soldiers&healers outshine in every pve aspect all rogues, also the shamefull degrade wich was done to ranger class now most boring class ingame.
and lets not forget the much needed tweaks to dt & guard to fix dt's dependancy on vom and total impossibility for juggernaut tree be usable in pvp or have any decent dps in pve.

i would sugest instead of bring more aa's do revamps/tweaks first then or at same time bring more aa's wich are also needed for broadening play styles for all classes.

this needs to be underlined and given highest priority!!!!!

1)not all AA Abilies are usefull,balanced and some are a waist of points ( i remember asking myself did that guy who created AA Abilities ever play a class in aoc)

2)Ranger needs to be changed back it was way more fun and interesting before revamp!! today its upper lower attack + use spell nothing else............ sad story

3)sin was also more interesting before revamp that facestab miasma whirlwind stealthattack makes me sad

Joel just look on forum (old and new one) and you will see alot posts about useless unbalanced and op AA Abilities, class mechanics
regards

[Kurt2013]

Oh I don't blame you. The last guy in charge (who shall be not named) sold us the idea that SDS + crafting is coming in december of 2012. He knew what was ready and he had to know that half of the game doesn't support crafting system. It was around the time when many of us were buying 1 years subs.

In real world it's called "consumer fraud"
In here it's "game development 101"

Yes, better take your time to think the crafting revamp through thoroughly and not release it too early. But don't forget to keep the community informed over official channels (not third party interviews) for two obvious reasons:

- crafting is too important to allow it to be a "fail" now
- more time till revamp also means more time to finish what people started at the old system (here the info part is essential)
- more time will reduce the "fail" probability ...probably

[gcustoms]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

To the achievements (wtf is this? xbox?)
and to more aa's (that's not class development)

But what will happen to same-name toons when the merges come?
I Have Gcustoms on DW and Gcustoms on Fury will one have to change? or will I be able to xfer before having to change? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

[Halfdead]

Please get the unchained dungeons on TL this week, need something to do.

[Lurvi]

Achievments in AoC? What utter joke. We don't need that kind of generic filling for AoC. Great thing about AoC is how massive and pristine things are. We want to venture into the great unknown. Not hunt achievments like it's a game for xbox.

How about fixing and adding things that matter to the game. Very disappointed yet again, Joel...

Only thing I like is more AAs. Hopefully you can change some of the useless AAs too, like the 20+ all stats one, among many other.

[Misiuggah]

Achievements can be pretty easy to add and some people like that stuff. Especially if you have 12x80, farm T3-T4 since months and have nothing more in PvE to achieve...

I'm looking forward for Lore hunting - FC has great writers and TSW lore entries are totally badass!

[yuisoku]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

To the achievements (wtf is this? xbox?)
and to more aa's (that's not class development)

10 chars....

[Prima]

Uh. LOVE the idea of an achievements system.

First of all, it's hypocritical to be against achievements by principle. Every reward in an MMORPG is just a badge, no more, no less. You'll realize this the day the next expansion comes along and overnight you're replacing your T4 gear with greens. Tier4 drops don't say you won the game; they say you won the roll on a certain raid boss.

Once you think of everything as just a badge, then a big, varied achievement system (and TSW's isn't bad, with everything from kill counts to lore-hunting to exploration to dungeon accomplishments) can make an MMORPG a hundred times deeper. You go from Tier4 gear being the only set of goals in the game to having scores of reasons to play.

Think of it this way: Achievements are rewards that aren't gear. That means that:

• they can be used to incentivize content without unbalancing the game with more tiers of gear: doing more PVP (or trying new maps, etc.), running lowbie dungeons, using less-popular zones (like the resource zones after crafting revamp), etc.
• Yet at the same time, if you don't like achievements, you can ignore them without hurting your ability to do well in other content!

Win-win.

For veterans, achievements can turn ignored content into major play centers. I know a lot of "vets" who haven't even seen half the dungeons in the game; if an achievement system was driving groups there, it's as if Funcom just launched a bunch of new dungeons overnight. At the same time, for newcomers, achievements attract a whole different (and massive) class of players that don't currently have much to do in AoC (besides maybe vanity hunting). City of Heroes had whole communities and sites devoted exclusively to "badge-hunting"; that'd be great for AoC.

So, massive thumbs-up.

[konungr]

Achievements are a good thing, gives people something to do once they are done raiding. It's kinda like when the vanity tab first came out and everyone started doing all the old dungeons and such to get what they wanted.

[Lurvi]

First of all, it's hypocritical to be against achievements by principle.

No.

I don't play to get badges. I play for the gameplay, to explore, to hunt for, the unique action and social aspect of the game.

You are wrong to say achievments don't affect me if I don't wanna bother with them. They add spoilers to the game, and turn something awesome into pretty mundane. Whenever I achieve something in the game I want to feel accomplishment and joy myself, not have the game tell me "yay, you did this, great!" This gives me a feeling it's something everyone else did or will do. Nothing special! This is how I feel about it.

First time I saw achievments was in TF2, and I gotta say I was abit amused at first... until you realise everyone will be farming for them. Farm for proof you did something? How about play the game for good reasons, not have the game tell me what to do.

Why use resources to add achievments when they instead could revamp Onyx Chambers, or put some more finesse to the crafting changes. Give oldworld items specialized and unique setbonuses?
What, do you think Caravan Raiders Hideout will become a popular instance now when there's achievments to kill the prince and have the recipie drop?
Is it good gameplay to actively try force a 4k bigheal crit, cause you saw some friend unlock it as a hidden achievment?

Are they even aware how much work it'll be if they want to do it properly, something like this has to be done properly at this stage.

Maybe I already saw it all in this game, so my views are broken in this matter...
I already speedkilled Necropolis in 1 pillar. Speedkilling be one of the few achievments I would care for. I'd be without.
In any game I feel achievments are a waste of time and only fluff content for noobs to please shallowly.