"We didn't want those subscriptions anyway".

at the end of the day, "tight communities" are primarly composed of what?

Newbies who love Tortrage?

No lol. 90% of a tight community will be composed of veterans who have all reached end game content because it takes time to create a community, or if one exists already, to be integrated into it.

If

a) Funcom DOES what tight commmunities and is not simply trolling (omg?)

b) what I said above is true (tight communities are made up of veterans, not newbies)

Then why not focus a little more on giving those veterans some end game content instead of xp potions to level alts?

Ask yourselves why so many guilds disbanded and left AoC?

Then ask yourself why so many members are planning to come back on expansion day?

1. Because they love the game (which is why they will come back)

but

2. because they are bored stiff due to no content and frustrated at class imbalances (which is why they left for now)

fix it and you still have a chance IMO.

And by content, I don't just mean a 6 man dungeon (which I admit is fun if you like pve).

Originally posted by FC-Famine

Originally posted by Darth_Osor

Originally posted by arenasb

Way to take their quotes out of context.

 

It's a question and answer...nothing is out of context.  Not only that, the COMMUNITY MANAGER basically stands behind the statement in that very thread.

What a joke.  Those people at Funcom really don't have a clue, do they?  No wonder they think server pops are fine, despite players telling them there is a problem.  Tight knit communities are what guilds and friends lists are for.  Oh well, they got their wish on the low pops.

 

Since when did "tight" mean just small? I would rather think the opposite if I was bringing things to that extreme. Maybe like "Oh man, they want to jam as much people in the server as they possibly can so no one can move and the server racks EXPLODE into millions of pieces!"

 

It's good to want a tight community where the chances of knowing the people you run by or interact with on the forums are people you know. That has nothing to do with wanting the population to reduce or wishing a less massively MMO. I think it's the opposite with wanting a massively feel coupled with a greater community feel in the sense people actually bond together more than other games.

Nonethless, that's me! 

Almost by definition, tight=small.  Maybe you have 50 friends IRL, but how many are you tight with...6?  The larger a community, the less tight it will be, because no one has the time or inclination to become tight with everybody, even if they wanted to.

MMO communities need to be large, and people can and will become tight with people they choose to become tight with, via guilds and friends lists, not people you are trying to force them to become tight with because there aren't any other options because of such a small pool of people to pick from.

Given all the instancing in your game, overpopulation of a server isn't an issue.  Also, if you think the community in your game is good because it is smaller, you should read Global sometime.

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Originally posted by FC-Famine

Originally posted by Darth_Osor

Originally posted by arenasb

Way to take their quotes out of context.

 

It's a question and answer...nothing is out of context.  Not only that, the COMMUNITY MANAGER basically stands behind the statement in that very thread.

What a joke.  Those people at Funcom really don't have a clue, do they?  No wonder they think server pops are fine, despite players telling them there is a problem.  Tight knit communities are what guilds and friends lists are for.  Oh well, they got their wish on the low pops.

 

Since when did "tight" mean just small? I would rather think the opposite if I was bringing things to that extreme. Maybe like "Oh man, they want to jam as much people in the server as they possibly can so no one can move and the server racks EXPLODE into millions of pieces!"

 

It's good to want a tight community where the chances of knowing the people you run by or interact with on the forums are people you know. That has nothing to do with wanting the population to reduce or wishing a less massively MMO. I think it's the opposite with wanting a massively feel coupled with a greater community feel in the sense people actually bond together more than other games.

Nonethless, that's me! 

You got a lot of balls there Famine. Since when has community building been a priority of Funcom's or the AOC dev team? Were that the case would they not have been much wiser offering free server transfers months before they did forced server merges, after the vast majority of players who would play the game ever, had already left?

Do share with us the logic of how "tight" communities are created by servers which implode because there are more hours of the day when you can't get a group going than when you can?

Tight communities, are created when you have veterns who stick with the game while welcoming new players because the game is growing and not an MMO representation of the titanic about 2 hours after it hit an iceberg.

Thanks for the compliment! Since when has the team been about community building? Well since we've had a community team of course. Community is a very important factor of any online game really. Some believe it's the glue that holds everything together in the good and bad times. I tend to agree because no matter what, a good community can hold the fort down.

I can see where you going with that and by that logic that means mega-giants like World of Warcraft would have very tight communities simply because they have a lot of veterans and new players. Yet when it comes down to it, the amount of servers and influx of new players may actually hinder the effort to form tight communities even by a server-by-server basis. Which in itself is sort of like remembering everyone on the train when you're in a big city like NYC. Everytime you get on the train I bet there are always new faces even if those faces are veterans of the city for 30 years.

In general it's hard to say what really makes a tight community but it's good when it happens. Being able to come back to a game where people actually remember you and you can jump back into the flow is a good thing. Developing ways to make characters even the players reputation themselves have more meaning or value is all the better in many ways.

Further merges and server closures would result in more bad press. Funcom would rather have stragglers strectched across a dozen servers and boast that they are promoting "tight knit communities" than merge remaining players into an appropiate number of servers.

AoC could likely be reduced down to 3 or 4 servers but the headlines would not be flattering.

Originally posted by FC-Famine

Originally posted by LordBonezy

 

 

 

You got a lot of balls there Famine.

 

Thanks for the compliment! Since when has the team been about community building? Well since we've had a community team of course. Community is a very important factor of any online game really. Some believe it's the glue that holds everything together in the good and bad times. I tend to agree because no matter what, a good community can hold the fort down.

I can see where you going with that and by that logic that means mega-giants like World of Warcraft would have very tight communities simply because they have a lot of veterans and new players. Yet when it comes down to it, the amount of servers and influx of new players may actually hinder the effort to form tight communities even by a server-by-server basis. Which in itself is sort of like remembering everyone on the train when you're in a big city like NYC. Everytime you get on the train I bet there are always new faces even if those faces are veterans of the city for 30 years.

In general it's hard to say what really makes a tight community but it's good when it happens. Being able to come back to a game where people actually remember you and you can jump back into the flow is a good thing. Developing ways to make characters even the players reputation themselves have more meaning or value is all the better in many ways.

 

Oh sure it's a compliment...until you have to go shopping for a Speedo or go horseback riding. :)

So you are saying that AoC is NOT the train in NYC, but rather a small hamlet out in New Hampire. Where everybody knows everybody else's business because there are only 8 people who reside there, and all 8 of them ride the AoC train to Hyboria.

Well that is tight-knit indeed!

This is the most honest passage Ive seen from FC in awhile.

Im impressed! :)

Oh the spinning...

Famine are you sure your account isn't taken over by Erling Ellingsen?

Going for a "tight" community in an MMORPG is just bad business. What you need is plenty of people so your players can pick who they like and bond with them, not force them to try to bond with every single person on their very low populated server. It would seem to me that you guys at FC are using the word "tight" to spin the fact, that you can't increase the population, so you try to find a way to say it's cool to have low populations.

It doesn't quite compute for me folks. I understand the need for community, that is of course the reason that we play a multiplayer game, but communities need two things to work.

Cooperation and Competition.

Shooting for a low population on each server is a recipe for disaster, because the players who are looking to cooperate with another group of 5 players to run a 6 man dungeon can't find that group more often than not when populations are "tight". Nor can they find the competition that an 80 level game with dozens of playfields while there are less than handful of players at each level online. There is a magic range which is probably between 4 and 5 320-400 online total which is the number of players on average you need to have at each level to maintain a healthy ability for players to cooperate and compete. This is aside from all the mechanics of the game which already restrict when players can do what, such as RAID lockouts and Siege Scheduling, the need to be in Guild A or B to do a siege, or to be at a certain level to do a particular playfield.

Bottom line is that none of the servers have that magic number of population anymore, and are in steady decay. There is another number beyond which a server such as the now merged Haunmaunn server imploded. This is about 1-2 so anywhere from 80-160 players online on the entire server. Once a community becomes this "tight" it rapidly declines because community fails, cooperation is impossible, economy is impossible to create or utilize, and competition is found concentrated ONLY in the same places over and over. White Sands Island, Tortage Underhalls, Keshetta. There is a serious mechanical error to having the type of PVP on whitesands and in the underhalls which doesn't foster community whatsoever early on that drives new players from the game.

But I guess that is a benefit to you guys at Funcom aye Famine, aye Avery, Aye Craig? Who need 96% of a playerbase anyway we only want the 4% who are willing to put up with "tight" engineered communities. Yeah good luck with guys.

It is really sad to see Funcom and Famine clutching at straws. Admit it already, you screwed up big time.

You want a tight knit community? Try FFXI, a very old game but if you played it for a year or 2 you knew a lot of people and most likely made a name for yourself. All this on world servers that have an average of 4-5k players online at any given hour of the day. You had friends all over the world.

How you ask? Simple, because FFXI encourages social interaction. It nurtures the craving for recognition most of us have. Either by becoming a well known crafter, a great leader for experience parties and missions/quests, a helpful player in general or just by being nice and friendly with everyone.

Keeping population low is surely not going to help create a tight knit community and you know it.

Does this mean when the expansion releases, you guys don't want me or others like me to come back? I mean I don't want to be apart of ruining your small tight knit community. :P

"I think there is some confusion in that most people are thinking a tight or close knit community needs to be small. You can have a lot of players while still maintaining a good community.

Our goal is always to have a strong community as that will always help gameplay regardless of the size of your server. Having a ton of players doesn't always ensure you will be able to find a group but being part of a helpful guild or having a good community on you server will go a long way in making any MMO more engaging" -Senek Community Coordinator from the official forums

I'm pretty sure that people get the idea that their game design intends a low population because that is what it says in the write up "low enough" and I think the fact that Funcom has done nothing to actually drive populations in any direction but down also reinforces that idea.

Evidently their entire company is devoid of logic, especially when he says that it doesn't ensure that you will be able to find a group. Players have universally reported that it is harder to find a group when there are not enough players online, such as off peak times, or the months leading up to the last round of server merges.

Obviously there are no guarantees with more people but stop and think, is it even possible for players to group once population levels are so tight that mini-games don't work, and when you can't find resources on the market because nobody is harvesting them, or when you cant get a group going because everybody is so tight knit not logging on because of the mechanics situation that you decide like hundreds of thousands of others, to not log in and cancel your sub. Hmmmmmm yea sounds like they got that whole logic thing under wraps at Funcom.

This smell bullshit.

AoC has been built to be the WoW killer, not to have a tight smaller community.
So lets not change the rules now.
The reason why AoC is not a WoW killer is mainly because Funcom doesn't give a shit about the comunity.

Funcom released a game half done (until lvl 20), with no PvP rules, sieges not working, no PvE after lvl 20, client crushing every half an hour or so, just to mention few issues.
But worse of all, you lied to your customers (unforgiveable)
All the community in Beta said you should have waited few more months before releasing that lump of pixels............but what do we know.

Famine........can you tell your friends at Funcom that AoC should have been like the Tortage bit (all of it), not just the first 20 lvl.
After 2 years they still don't get it.
You had an original idea but didn't take advantage (the storyline thingy).......now Bioware stole it from you and they gonna get the rewards.
Shame.

You are still in time though, that is if the developers finally wake up and pull their heads off their arse.
Without the storyline element throughout the whole game, AoC will always be an average game, no matter how much crap you add to it.

If I had the same experience of Tortage throughout the whole game, I would come back to AoC.
Until then it is just a waste of time whatever you do, I am afraid.

Originally posted by ste2000

This smell bullshit.

AoC has been built to be the WoW killer, not to have a tight smaller community.
So lets not change the rules now.
The reason why AoC is not a WoW killer is mainly because Funcom doesn't give a shit about the comunity.

Funcom released a game half done (until lvl 20), with no PvP rules, sieges not working, no PvE after lvl 20, client crushing every half an hour or so, just to mention few issues.
But worse of all, you lied to your customers (unforgiveable)
All the community in Beta said you should have waited few more months before releasing that lump of pixels............but what do we know.

Famine........can you tell your friends at Funcom that AoC should have been like the Tortage bit (all of it), not just the first 20 lvl.
After 2 years they still don't get it.
You had an original idea but didn't take advantage (the storyline thingy).......now Bioware stole it from you and they gonna get the rewards.
Shame.

You are still in time though, that is if the developers finally wake up and pull their heads off their arse.
Without the storyline element throughout the whole game, AoC will always be an average game, no matter how much crap you add to it.

If I had the same experience of Tortage throughout the whole game, I would come back to AoC.
Until then it is just a waste of time whatever you do, I am afraid.

 

I actually feel the opposite about this, and if I may be so bold, so does a large portion of the community that is playing. A huge complaint on the AoC boards and a request that has been asked for time and again is the ability to completely skip Tortage on your alts and have a level 20 character from the onset. I can only see this issue being made worse if the entire game was a forced linear experience which would in essence make it just like Guild Wars, and lets face it, Guild Wars was mostly known for its PvP. If Guild Wars had been a P2P MMO with a much more lack luster PvP and the same PvE, I bet you it would not have done nearly as well as it did.

Complete story driven gameplay is fun, in a single player game, not an mmo where you have to bring alts through and experience the same story over and over which becomes no different than playing say a Final Fantasy game over and over back to back.

Funcom made a lot of poor choices at its launch and it then sat on those poor choices and took to long to respond and correct them, which is what caused a lot of players to leave at the start. I quit at the beginning of the year, and just recently rejoined and I am having a lot of fun. Funcom seems to be at least trying to go in the right direction, although they are still a little slow to respond to issues.

The expansion is either going to make or break this game. If Funcom has truely listened to peoples complaints over time and has taken the steps to address them in the expansion, then it could possibly serve as a reviving of the game and help restore faith in those that had lost it while getting some new people who are curious about the expansion to try the game. However if they took none of the suggestions seriously, and repeat the mistakes that they made at the beginning of AoC, then it will break this game and drive it further down into the ground.

 Very interresting thread here. So-called "trolls and fanbois" seem to agree. Funcom should take notice. I hope Famine has passed this on internally. 

how can you not agree?

lol seriously, it's not like there is much room for debate.

A MMORPG needs to be populated, end of story. Otherwise, it's not a MMORPG.

Funcom are trying to exercise damage limitation , but in reality they just dig themselves a deeper hole. Its a pity , since I wanted AoC to be successful in its own right , and between it and Aion , it gives a choice for players of different ideals they want from a game. The way AoC is going , by christmas then......................

edit: spell error

Funcom is once again spining the truth but I don't think Funcom knows  what to do next.

 have a hard time believing that Funcom knows how bad their game is as they probably never played it but I know for sure Funcom knows how bad the game is doing so they should know better than to spin that stuff.  ALso, Funcom for reasons unknown to mankind, can't  the quality of AoC, but they can fix other stuff like merge servers. If people are on dead servers in a dying game they are likely to quit and since 3 of 4 players stoped playing in the lastfew months and servers were already empty 3 months ago.....can they really aford for anyone to quit?

The lack of care is great,,,,after the expansion fails don't bet on server mergers bet on server closures ;p

Originally posted by finaticd

Funcom is once again spining the truth but I don't think Funcom knows  what to do next.

 

 have a hard time believing that Funcom knows how bad their game is as they probably never played it but I know for sure Funcom knows how bad the game is doing so they should know better than to spin that stuff.  ALso, Funcom for reasons unknown to mankind, can't  the quality of AoC, but they can fix other stuff like merge servers. If people are on dead servers in a dying game they are likely to quit and since 3 of 4 players stoped playing in the lastfew months and servers were already empty 3 months ago.....can they really aford for anyone to quit?

 

The lack of care is great,,,,after the expansion fails don't bet on server mergers bet on server closures ;p

 

 

 

That made me laugh thanks. Comes across like a 5 yr old telling his teacher the "other kid did this and did this and did that and so I am righ nur nur"

Make believe...

The only parts that makes sense in my eyes, I'll reply to. That is if people are on a dead server then either they will re-roll or quit so either way just like the majority of mmo's out there. 2nd part is - for the last 14 months you have been saying fail and the game is still here.

Originally posted by SirPaco

how can you not agree?

 

lol seriously, it's not like there is much room for debate.

 

A MMORPG needs to be populated, end of story. Otherwise, it's not a MMORPG.

I think the actual quote was has been floating around a while now. I remember reading it the first time and it was brought up here in 2007. Basically people kinda understood that they were trying to say that a close knit community is what they want to accomplish - I think it is worded wrong but I do "get" what is trying to be put across.

Well they are right in a way. I did recognize names as I only saw the same 10 or so people during my entire time last month.