If you were suddenly uprooted and flown in a secret FUNCOM helicopter to a remote and secret location, told that you had 6 months to rehab the game or DIE, what would you do? I think 6 months is about as long as this game can last in current state, so have at it: How would you change the direction the game is headed, as I think we can all agree its not headed in a good one at this point.  What EXACTLY would be the areas you would focus on and why?

Be a specific as you feel you need to be as I am up to reading a WALL of text if it suggests reasonable things or even the wildest hair-brained schemes ever.  I wonder if maybe some of the responses here might fall under the eyes of someone at funcom?  We can only hope.... So what would YOU do, given complete control ? -

I'd open up a pre-cu server :).

I would be putting in applications somewhere else instead of staining my history with this. 

Create an Iron Man suit akin to the first incarnation of the suit in the Iron Man movie, and blast my way the hell out of wherever I was.

Focus on The Secret World.

Quit and find a job with a reputable company.

With Funcoms current reputation Secret World is going to have a tough go at it. There is no way I will ever consider playing another game made by Funcom.

I'd make sure the stuff the box says is in the game, is really in there.

Smart-alec's abound : Seriously, how would you like to the see the game change? What would you make your priorities? Malicke, you are still playing right? Whats going through your head everyday as the glaring issues that remain undressed?

I don't think Funcom as a company can possibly survive even if someone was flown in there and had an 'easy' button from staples and could program everything they wanted instantly.

Putting aside the fact that funcom is going out of business soon,  here is what I would do

Forget dx10.  High end graphics are what caused a lot of your problems to begin with.

1.  Fix seiging, dungeons, skills and stats.  Make everything that is in the game work properly.  Forget new content except for the rest of the pvp patches for a few months.

2.  Once the stabilization is done (probably November).. offer 3 months 'free returns' for any player who bought the game already.  You now have the game the way it should have been at launch, you are going to need word-of-mouth to get new players to try the game.   Just fixing the game isn't enough at this point, you are going to have to let players play it for free to prove to them the game is fixed.  Players, at this point, are not going to resubscribe to AOC unless they see first hand the changes.

Warhammer is a very 'average' game that is going to have a lot of problems in a few weeks because of server imbalance.  Let players become dienchanted with Warhammer, then offer them free time to return to AOC.

If they fix everything currently in AOC, it will be able to hold 200k subscribers which is enough to keep the realms occupied and make seiging fun.

Originally posted by arkady09

Smart-alec's abound : Seriously, how would you like to the see the game change? What would you make your priorities? Malicke, you are still playing right? Whats going through your head everyday as the glaring issues that remain undressed?

Seriously I think there are a loooot of issues that need fixing. Might as well focus on The Secret World!

Very easy fix:  Sell the game to SOE and blame them

A lot of good ideas here. Giving the game to SOE and putting the blame on them is my favorite so far, as it has the best chance of actually working.

I'm suprised that nobody has said "Just shut the game down, give everyone a refund and file for bankruptcy!" because that would probably be the only action Funcom could take at this point which wouldn't result in every member of their staff being hated (by both players and share holders alike) for all eternity as a result of AoC.

But I guess if I'm trapped in a cave somewhere with a gun to my head and someone demands to know what needs to be done to "fix" AoC, this would be my recommended course of action:

1. Make the game subscription free with some limitations, similar to what they did with AO. This should atleast quell some of the hatred for the game.

2. Fire everyone at Funcom who is employed in any kind of "public relations" role. There should be no more barriers between the developers and the players. The developers need to know exactly what is wrong with the game and they need to get this information straight from the players, not a corporate middle man.

3. Fix bugs first and get all the features that were promised at launch into the game and working properly.

4. Offer FREE character transfers to select servers in order to increase population. Meanwhile begin work on a plan to merge the least populated servers in some way that will minimize the damage to guilds on those servers (IE, make sure they don't lose their cities and battle keeps during the merge if at all possible).

5. Start working on adding new content and improving existing content.

6. Pray.

Sadly there is not much you could do right now - the dmg has already been done.   And its not fair to paying custimors to keep changing the basics of a game every few months - just because it wasn't ready on launchday.

But... What would I try to do ?

First off.  I would build up a game that rewards you for advancing your character.  AOC does not atm.  Best ways of doing this is.

a)  Make armors and stats more desiarable part of Lvling

b)  GIve great rewards to ppl for teaming up.

c)  Create a game that is not driven by gold drops but by items and other rewards (including orginal mount)

d) Make a solid endgame content with visible goals that are still fair in terms of time and effort spent.

e)  Make a guild system and player city system that actually rewards the whole guild for taking part in the diffrent content ingame.  Do pvp to gain new special guild ranks and look of your own city to make it more live.  Make a PVE loot awailable in high end raiding to make your cities become more powerfull both in terms of buildings, items, mounts, and looks of items. 

f)  Make it desirable for other players to visit other player cities.  In other words.  Make cities become alive.  This can be done by selling special disireable items in the cities (Guild will benefit in terms of gold.

All in all - What I would do is to try to do EXACTLY oposite to what all other MMOs are doing.  I would try to bring PVErs and PVPers closer to each other.  Making it so that both parties benefit greatly for working together even tho they dont like the other way of playing to much.  AOC had a chance to do this but failed terribly.  They split PVP and PVE up to totally diffrent game - just like WOW did. 

Strongest guild on any sever should have both PVE and PVP players that build up the guild.  It doesn't have to be the same players doing both since that would be very time demanding.  But it would still be possible if ppl dont have any life anyway.

Now to the real problems of this all...  The classes and their abilites...  Sadly they are simply not up to any standard of beeing acceptable for be able to create this kinda gaming world.  PVP focus has now made pretty much all archbuilds work exactly the same - making PVE raiding content both dull and plain boring.  And like said before - the game simply can not at this stage change anything more in terms of classes since they have already pissed half of the ppl with the nerfs/buffs already....

So sadly - AOC has in my eyes been doomed to endless solo content / PVP oriented pointless character and guild advancing system that everyone - other than few fanboys will not enjoy for more than 1 month at the time.  The rest of the content will not get anyone hooked beyond that.

And then to the main conserne that is the fact that AOC is build for XBOX - not for PC gaming.  This means that player interaction in the game will ALWAYS be at the minimum and will in the end doom the game to just another single player game.  There can never be a real comunity in a MMO where ppl dont have the ways to interact.   XBOX controls DONT offer this and therefore turn ppl into the same lvl of comunicating as Apes or dogs. 

1. Rework the Combo system to be fun instead of tedious.

2. Make sieges easily accessible to the casual player.

solution:  Allow guilds to recruit conscripts for their sieges with a global Q.

3. Add sex and bar brawling to the game.  Make prostitute a playable class that gives "buffs" in exchange for currency.

4. Add some sort of achievement system similar to WAR's ToK.

5. Make the stats on the gear more intuitive and have them affect game play more.

6. Make sure the risk/rewards for pvp make sense and that they encourage guilds and solo players to engage in pvp.

Format the servers, sell off the servers and get a job in BK/McDonalds.....

If I were the New Dev..... hmmmm.

I guess an established list of things im not allowed to do would be required first. With FC as the publisher and having a liscense for Conan things could be very restricted.

I'll assume that PvP xp is the route they decided it must go and are unwilling to change so what to do there. I'm also going to assume Diminishing Returns are a no begotiation item as well.

PvP Xp

Make it so the Diminishing return is level and number based.

Level based.

6&7 lvl's above 175xp

5 lvl's above 160xp

4 lvl's above 150xp

3 lvl's above 140xp

2 lvl's above 130xp

1 lvl above 120xp

Same lvl = 100 xp

1 lvl below = 90 xp

2 lvl below = 80xp

3 lvl below = 70 xp

4 lvl's below = 60 xp

5 lvl's below = 50 xp

6 & 7 levels below will yield 40xp

from this dimishing returns would kick in as normal. After 5th kill 0 xp from that person till the next day.

The percentage lost each time should be around 20% loss per consecative kill in a given day rounded up the nearest whole number.  

As for Deaths this should be put on some sort of Diminishing loss scale similar to the diminishing return system but extended out to about 10 kills from same person.

Mini Games

If at all possible make them cross server mini games.

Add rewards such as pvp only items such as potions, food, scrolls for a certain buff that can only be used once. As well as PvP xp but a max of 100 per participant and a team reward of an pvp xp scroll worth 500 pvp xp. The team would have to lot/random roll  at the end of the match. Winner would recive the scroll but would not be eligable for another pvp xp scroll for 24 hours. No diminishing returns for Mini games.  There should also be a limit to the number of Mini games you may do in a day, maybe 5.

Siege's

For succesfuly sieging an enemy guild you would recieve a PvP xp bonus of  3000 pvp xp divided among the number of people in your siege party rounded down. That would be 62 pvp xp a piece with 48 players.

Gems

The way they were before nerf but no stacking of the same type per piece of armor. In other words you may only apply a gem with a specific buff to a piece of armor once. It would even be feasable to leave the gems as they were but put a serious cap on the bonuses you get for PvP battles and remain as they were for PvE.

PvP Gear

Give it a durribilty counter. Each time you are hit theres a 10% chance you lose a durrability point. The actual ammount of counters is something that would have to be discussed in length and take into consideration all factors. As it lost durrability counters it could lose a bit of effectiveness. This would keep players trying to get more. 

Crafting

Allow for customization to some extent atleast appearance wise. Colours, design ect. By design I mean let stygian crafters create stygian style armor and Cimarian crafters create Cimarian style armor ect. This would go along way to help itemization. They may have the exact same stats but they would atleast look completely different. Also allow for the creation of social clothing and items.

PvE

Increase xp recieved while in group and lower xp recieved while solo to help promote Grouping.

Thats all just off the top of my head. Mainly I guess I would sit down with the community and have a pow wow. While this doesn't seem feesable sometimes I think it could be done by selecting a group of 20 players semi randomly and having a forum style char with them about certain issue's. Take people from different level ranges, races, classes from PvE and PvP and give the community atleast some kind of voice. Take issue's discussed between the players and the Devs this way and poll the community and give them a place to discuss it among themselve's , then the devs go back and look at the feed back and make there decission. At this point in time it couldn't hurt but atleast has a chance to help.

Another Idea  to help bring back some of the players lost may be to add events held durring the weekends such as for PvP servers Tournaments. Have a pvp level requirement and an entry fee and have some exclusive item rewards some practical some not all fun or PvE servers Have special mob spawns for fun that may have special items practical and non practical.

Onion, any comments?

Sorry I mean Orionman.....

First step: Fire the bunch of fuckups that is called funcom management.

Buy a 38 cal. revolver put 5 bullets in it, spin the cylinder put the gun to my head and pull the trigger if it did not go off i would submitt my resignation then go home.

Originally posted by Raltar

I'm suprised that nobody has said "Just shut the game down, give everyone a refund and file for bankruptcy!" because that would probably be the only action Funcom could take at this point which wouldn't result in every member of their staff being hated (by both players and share holders alike) for all eternity as a result of AoC.

I was going to say it, but you beat me.

I just wish I was off the dead server I'm on so I can play!

"If you were the NEW Game Director what would you do? "

Run. Fast.

Originally posted by arkady09

If you were suddenly uprooted and flown in a secret FUNCOM helicopter to a remote and secret location, told that you had 6 months to rehab the game or DIE, what would you do?

Leave Funcom immediately and hide in Mexico.

* First assign new people to plan management.

* Bring in coaches that are willing to learn away what honesty means and how it will win in the end.

* Fix all the game bugs, remove useless stuff, add useful stuff instead.

* Make PvE and PvP interesting.

* Hire someone who knows everything about the "middle way" balance to classes.

* DO it right the first time.

The management is by far the most crusial thing that needs to be fixed. Everthing else depends on it. They need professional, creative, non ego, new thinking, advaita/non duality thinking developers and planners. Those are rare, but if you find such a staff, you wont build the basic core wrong in the first time. AoC needs a miracle to be successful, however with some small fixes it could be decent at best.