Current state of the game

[Rathothis]

To be honest I really appreciate a lot the new work new team ha produced during last 1-2 years.

A good part of that job is about the PvP side of the game ...

My next hopes are for PvP Tier 4 and new premade and ranking systems.. let's see what King Conan reserve for us

I don't think that most people here have a personal gripe with the current devs. Cirith did a great job reaching out to the community, and I'm sure he and Pyzerius are doing all they can with the limited resources available to them. Still, the value we have been getting for our sub money has been quite poor ever since resources were fully shifted to TSW after RotGS release - and the hard work of two guys, which we all appreciate, is going to change very little in this regard.

As to PvP, sadly it's a bit late FC do something for this side of the game, but I guess it's better late than never. I still find it unfortunate that they scrapped the idea of Unchained minis. Hope they will at least lessen the grind to current PvP gear when they introduce PvP Tier 4. T1 is now easy enough to get, but if they widen the power gap again they should really make T2 and T3 easier to obtain than they are now.

[Aylis]

Just want to say i agree fully with the OP. He nailed alot of things.

I also think that the current incarnation of the funcom aoc team is great (so far). They need more resources though.

And Sugar nailed down a community problem with soooo many ppl asking for AA/exp in there group. You know if you cant find ppl for your group maybe just maybe taking that new guy spending time training him and you will get that new member of your group. No more going to global. Wouldn't that be a nice thing????

It just seems ppl would rather spend time bitching about no one to group with rather then trying out newbies and getting that new guy up to speed so they have a regular group mate.

New players come to this game wanting to play and are shut out of groups and raids. Is anyone really surprised they go back to wow or gw2 or whatever.

Many raids are like this as well.. no time to train the new ppl cuz heaven forbid we wipe.

[MashMash]

Interesting. I agree with a fair bit of what you posted, but the colourblind thing has me puzzled. What about other impairments then? Visual, physical, auditory? Surely you can't build a game to account for every customers possible physical (or even mental I guess) impairment/issue. Or if you do, which groups gets preference, and why?

[ConanLogan]

2. The community is toxic, deriding the game and Funcom, turning new players off from the game. Trolls like Schtunk and Raeleigh are allowed free reign in NPH.

You cannot compare Schtunk and Raeleigh, no way. Actually Raeleigh does the complete opposite of what you accuse him of - he is actually HELPING a lot of new players to the game with extraordinary patience. This is no joke, its 100% truth, I know it. So forgive Rae his random rantings on the chats.

[Khaletohep]

Interesting. I agree with a fair bit of what you posted, but the colourblind thing has me puzzled. What about other impairments then? Visual, physical, auditory? Surely you can't build a game to account for every customers possible physical (or even mental I guess) impairment/issue. Or if you do, which groups gets preference, and why?

Valid question. Several answers to that:

- Color blindness is really common. Wikipedia says about 8% of the male population have some kind of color blindness. There're not nearly that many seriously hearing impaired people in the community, I assume.
In personal experience, two of my three longer lasting pen and paper groups had a color blind player. Color blindness is of relatively little concern and hard to notice in daily life, so that you rarely notice that some people would call "green" what others call "red". But there's a pretty great percentage of people that actually have that.

- As far as I know, there actually are no encounters in AoC relying on hearing. I even turn the game sound off in groups/raids as to better understand people in voicechat.
The fact that MMOs are relatively independent from hearing is a pretty great thing in my opinion. I used to play another MMO with a hearing impaired player. In real life, I'd probably never gotten to do something with him - an MMO allowed us to play with no barrier whatsoever. As he was - as I found out later - pretty annoyed of being shut out of many activities in the "real", hearing world, that was a great thing in my opinion. The internet is something of a big equalizer in that regard - or at least it can be.

- Avoiding color based puzzles is really, really easy. Just switch to recognizing forms or positions instead of colors. Adjusting a computer game to a blind person would be quite an epic feat, and probably more than can be expected of a commercial enterprise. But something that is just arbitrary - basing a puzzle on colors instead of forms, positions or sth else - is just mean or thoughtless.

- There are, as far as I know, little barriers to online gaming for most other disabilities or impairments. You can game pretty fine as long as eyes and two hands are working, and most (though not all, of course) people have command of that.
Slow reflexes, low manual dexterity and so on come to mind, but that is hard to compensate completely in a computer game, as they're kind of aiming at comparing exactly that. If you'd switch to more brain-thing focussed mechanics, the stupid people would complain, and well, there's not much fun in argueing with stupid people, so better stick to complaining about a lack of skill in people with big hands... oh, I'm getting silly here.

- Just for clarity: I'm not sure if color blindness can even be called an impairment. As far as I get it, color blindness can come with a somewhat sharper vision, and the high prevalence suggests that not being able to tell red from green (as good as others) doesn't give much of a evolutionary disadvantage or maybe even a benefit. Dogs (to make a somewhat weird comparison) live pretty fine without apparently much color vision at all. And other animals see more colors than us puny humans - and still, we kicked their @sses in an evolutionary sense.

- In conclusion, I'd say no, one cannot make a game for suitable for every taste, compensating for every human weakness or impairment. But one can avoid arbitrary barriers, just as we don't put stairs in the middle of a sidewalk just to mess with people in a wheelchair. And color based puzzles are, in my opinion, an example of such an arbitrary, easy to avoid barrier.

[Kurt2013]

When it comes to puzzles you can also be creative. There does not have to be the heavy reliance on particles (or to keep with above poster, one element/sense).

If for example a puzzle becomes easier the more extras you enable (like shapes and locations, helped out with various effects and even sound effects) it will work. If the same puzzle requires full effects to even notice there is a puzzle...it is a fail.

In addition good puzzles and challenges have more than one way to a solution (which does not have to be the same outcome or solution even!).

It is a big difference, if things are just harder (but doable) or if there is lockout per design (example is the shining loot box. with disabled particles you can still find and pickup loot, but it is harder to spot. one example for a bad solution here would have been to make the loot boxes themselves particles and invisible for disabled particles). So i agree, it might not be possible to make games appealing to everyone, but it is possible to create games with as few lockouts or unnecessary punishments as possible.

[Tony82]

2. Trolls like Schtunk and Raeleigh are allowed free reign in NPH.

lol+1

/10 chars

[etrym]

I'm a returning player and after playing for a few weeks i feel no motivation to keep playing the game. The game is just a grind fest.
All you do is repeating the same content over and over and over and over just to get enough rares to get a piece of armor or a weapon and a little AA. then rinse and repeat for the next piece of armor or AA.
Then if you are determined enough to do this for everything you can get through solo content then you still lack the xp needed to be considered into a HM/UC or raid.
So for new or returning players, unless you're lucky and find that one guild thats super interested in teaching noobs the mechanics your stranded in solo aoc.
And even if you are so lucky and find that guild you just moved from solo grind to K6 grind. Because the armor pieces you cant buy of course only drops in certain dungeons so you have to repeat the same quests again over and over and over and over and over and over.

This is not my idea of fun and not worth paying for.
And i dont know where to put the blame because its just the "chicken and the egg" aoc-style.
FC designed this game to be a grind fest and players respond with grinding as effective as possible by demanding aa, gear, exp.
So in short: in order to be a part of the grind you need aa, gear, exp, and in order to get aa, gear, exp you need to already be a part of the grind.

Not easy for new or returning players, eh?

[Boesch]

I recently returned and was pretty disappointed in the overall experience but to be fair I don't see what Funcom can really do. The whole idea of 24 person raids to me is just outright painful.

-T4 has been absolutely done to death and the characters I want to play are completed equipped. The adventure of progress is loooong since done as is those last few carrots of gear that you wanted to finish character xyz off.
-24 person raids are a frustration to me because as people get geared on their main characters they swap to lesser characters, likely less well played and frequently act as gear sponges.
-Raid quality reduces as enthusiasm decreases and mains swap to alts swap to alt-alts swap to 'guy in greens you never saw before in your life'.
-Gear disputes drain your soul.
-24 people is so many to manage that the actual fights are pretty easy, it's just a matter of herding cats and getting people not to do outrageously stupid actions.
-In the end, you realise it is a very shallow gear grind and call it quits.

I just can't get excited by it. The thought of T5 seemed great but I look forwards a little bit and see the same rubbishy loot arguments, who can get in the raid arguments, who is geared arguments, then a very long pointless endeavour to get gear for no real purpose. Eh. As you can see, I'm done with raiding.

So 6 mans. I like them. They are a little more 'intimate' and far more social to me. I did all the unchained dungeons and they were easy but it immediately dawned on me that the random chance of getting what I wanted was an absolute, utter nightmare. If you want those hate accessories? Get lucky or do the dungeons until you hate them. No thanks. Someone commented earlier that they see T4 people failing in these things - well... yeah. So many people in full T4 outright -suck- at the game and were carried every second of the way. I mean just are complete rubbish. If you see a guild and think that person must be good because of their association? Nah. It doesn't work that way. There are awesome people in all places and there are complete sponges in every one too.

Playstyle is stagnant too. There's no new abilities, no new AA's, nothing for how long? If you love to play a particular class you have long since exhausted every possible way of playing it, every possible specification or AA set up. Balance occurs at a stupefyingly slow rate with DTs still being ridiculous years later. Cirith strikes me as an awesome Dev that wants to make things work but it has just gone on for so very long I think most people have lost their belief. Funcom could go a long way by adding in some new level 80 abilities for each class and let people actually do new stuff with their characters rather than new content. Gear progression has essentially been at a stand still since T4 and gear itself is really not that creative. The progression is almost entirely linear (except for soldiers to mix and match) and the range of attributes that are desirable are really, really small. There's a best set and then there's a heap that are 99% pointless.

So what can Funcom do to interest me? New content, preferably not raid content, and definitely content where I don't have to repeat it 500 times just to get what I want. New AAs, new abilities, new something for people to aim for and experiment with. Or at least rebalance AAs because in almost every case there's just the one you take and everything else has no value. Basically this isn't possible because they don't have the resources to even make new things (they can unchain stuff and that's about it) let alone even dream of making stuff as quickly as we the consumer can play and complete.

[AngryBarb]

I'm a returning player and after playing for a few weeks i feel no motivation to keep playing the game. The game is just a grind fest.
All you do is repeating the same content over and over and over and over just to get enough rares to get a piece of armor or a weapon and a little AA. then rinse and repeat for the next piece of armor or AA.
Then if you are determined enough to do this for everything you can get through solo content then you still lack the xp needed to be considered into a HM/UC or raid.
So for new or returning players, unless you're lucky and find that one guild thats super interested in teaching noobs the mechanics your stranded in solo aoc.
And even if you are so lucky and find that guild you just moved from solo grind to K6 grind. Because the armor pieces you cant buy of course only drops in certain dungeons so you have to repeat the same quests again over and over and over and over and over and over.

This is not my idea of fun and not worth paying for.
And i dont know where to put the blame because its just the "chicken and the egg" aoc-style.
FC designed this game to be a grind fest and players respond with grinding as effective as possible by demanding aa, gear, exp.
So in short: in order to be a part of the grind you need aa, gear, exp, and in order to get aa, gear, exp you need to already be a part of the grind.

Not easy for new or returning players, eh?

Each K6 armor set is 8 pieces. You can buy 5 of those for tokens and gold ofc. But maybe you expected things to be totally free?