All Posts by gestalt11

Originally posted by Enigma

I like Bioware just the way they do things. Based on their track record we do not need to tell them what to do. Thats like you telling Blizzard what to do with Diablo 3, etc.

Besides, I am a beta to launch SWG Veteran. I played until the NGE.  The NGE was the final straw for me; with the emphasis on "FINAL STRAW."  Meaning: I already had issues with SWG LONG before the NGE or the CU was even release.

I remember every Tom, Dick, and Harry owning 3 rancors and having them inside the Cantina. I remember the long lines of Doc buff because it was IMPOSSIBLE to solo without quadrupling your stats (or even more....like 8 times stacking your life, sta, mind, etc). Combat was very broken.

I remember running everywhere for a half a year. It was ok at first but then it just got old. I remember having to pay for the space expansion (something that should have been free from the beginning).  I remember everyone being "afk" grinding away for the holocubes telling what the next step was to be a jedi because 80% of the server wanted to be a godly buffed up class.

I remember them taking away the perma death because people started to complain about it. I remember the smugglers being absolutely worthless (still are), I remember the Droid Engineers being bugged for over a year and had a celebration when they got fixed a year later (they even gave you a forum skin option of the droids for their official forums when the update was released).

I remember the credit dupe crises. (An Fwg5 blaster with the same stats went from 550 credits to 175,000 credits overnight). Only the honest players were truly left out.  I remember when the CSRs of SWG banned EVERYONE that had a dupe credit on their account (whether they knew it or not).  I remember several exodus out of SWG way before the NGE (one when FFXI came out, another when Horizons came out ...yes...people left over Horizons, and when the Matrix came out).  This game was hemmoraging before NGE

Pre NGE had their own share of problems wayyyy before the NGE.

And thus it is made plain why no one pays an ounce of attention to the SWG refugee kooks.  Notice I did not say "SWG Veteran".  Enigma here is an SWG veteran, no one can say he is not.  But he is not a refugee kook.  He tells it like it is/was.

Fact is SWG had tons of problems and not all of them were bugs.  I have personally exploited many use based system.  They are known to cause AFK grinding.  There is a reason they are barely used anymore.  Yet if the kooks had there way Bioware would be making a use based skill system.  Well I like skills and do not like tied down classes, but I still understand that used based leveling is most likely not a great solution. 

Yet the SWG kooks act like it was the best of all possible worlds (yes that is a Voltaire reference).  The normal SWG vets act like anyone else.  The SWG kooks go around and make a tons of noise and everyone just thinks they are kooks living in la la land ignoring the things everyone else recognizes.

But having the combo still do the special effect when you terminate them but no have them trigger a cooldown is a good change.

Afterall who doesn't want permanent free stun lock?

Well I agree with the OP that the SWG refugees will go ape-poop.  But there really are not tons of them and I would say a large number of people think they are kooks.  Especially since they think a game that tons of problems and used system with known problems (like use based leveling) was somehow perfect.

In the end it will be a small number of people making a lot of noise and no one will really give them much credence.

Originally posted by MMO-Maniac

Does this mean you can stun-lock, or knockdown forevah, the ape king?

That way he can't bladestorm you to death, maybe?

Yep this was the fix for that problem, people are just freaking out and whining for no reason ;)

Originally posted by metalhead980

I just hope is a skill based system and not some hold me by the hand Class system that WoW uses.

KOTR I and II were class/prestige class based d20 system.  So most likely KOTORO will be class based.

If I am honest with myself I really will enjoy the cries of misery from the SWG refugees.  Even though I would prefer a non-class based system as well.  Not that I think use based advancement systems are good.  They aren't good.  But I do not like tightly tied down class system.  And I especially dislike system that tell you what you can and can't use. Oh no something is made of leather, it is magically repellled from my flesh.  Even D&D moved past that idea with 3rd edition.   Man MMORPGs can be so backwards.

In the case of AoC they didn't release with well balanced classes. 

So if you can't have quality maybe you should go for quantity.   So maybe they shouldn't have cut em

For WAR if will depend.  If they actually release with a good amount of balance.  Then it will have been the right decision.

But very few games have released with well balanced classes for PvP.

Originally posted by markyturnip

Originally posted by urbanmonkey

Do YOU trust Funcom? I surely don't and by the looks of it, they have no idea what they want or where they are going.

 

Trust is not the issue.

The issue is: are you enjoying yourself?

If you don't, highlight the issues you face, hope they will be fixed, or leave.

If you are, highlight the issues you would like to see improved, and stay.

Not sure what all this 'trust' yada yada is about.

Simple choice - do you judge this to be a service worth paying for or not. The answer is an individual choice.

If this was a normal single player game that might be the case.  But its not.  A game like AoC has major parts of the game perpetually up in the air.  Things like class balancing and new content.  For a clearly unfinished product like AoC its even more important.

If you do not at least have a modicum of some sort of sense of reliability from the company charging you a subscription you should seriously consider cancelling. 

Originally posted by Azure77

If you have access to legal docments like a community college or jail cell , you could drown Funcom in paper work. Its how I beat medicade , when I had my stroke , the US government has endless money but you put enough of fight people back down.

  You dont need a legal degree to file the papers , you can file in small claims and federal court through a free legal aid. Though Funcom as much they did "wrong" dont deserve that ,  you as a customer had access to information about the beta , and state of the game through internet.

  While Funcom did a poor job , there is no legal grounds for filing anything , you could flood them with discovery , make them talk , even hassle them legally but in the end you ll lose , probly end up paying for it. Or going to jail.

    I think the best bet is to let it go and move on. You gonna find most of these games are gonna cut features by release due to demands of publishers , you either gonna have to live with it or find new genre or use f2p games.

Assuming nothing particularly bad came out of discovery of course.

Originally posted by bverji

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Elsabolts
........

 

SOE choose to release the game, knowing it was unfinished in order to gain money for very little investment. That is why it's SOE's fault. Seriously why is that so hard to follow. Reguardless of rather SOE mad the game or not, they chose to publish its release when the game should been simply dropped (which is what an ethical publisher would of done). Then Sigil could of either choosen to continue to work on it, self publish by download, or find a new publisher.

Yes it is very hard to understand that because it makes no sense.

SOE had no control of development they were not responsible for the release.  Why various people insist on thinking SOE is omnipotent and controls all things it is associated with is beyond me.

You are assigning power to SOE that it did not have.  You are simply wrong.  Sigil were the ones who released the game not SOE. 

How can you possibly believe that SOE is the one who controls whether a game they did not make and whose funding they did not control was released?

It is preposterous.

Originally posted by M1sf1t

Let's face it Hellgate was crap. Also having a MMO style subscription for it when the game itself was crap at launch and it was just a basic hack and slash game ala Diablo2 was not a smart move. Oh well only the best survive and thrive in this industry. NEXT !

I don't agree Hellgate wasn't crap.  I never understood why they thought they could get subs.  And it was a bit too generic and the online part had bugs but at its core is was a pretty good game.

NetDevil is the Developer.

Codemasters is the publisher.  Ie. they are funding things.

The original Jumpgate was developed by Netdevil and published by 3DO.  3DO went bankrupt 1 month after Jumpgate was released.

What does all this mean?  I am not real sure.  But i doubt that it means that Jumpgate evolution should be lumped into some nebulous "Codemasters Games" category where all are disqualified since a large portion of it is based upon Jumpgate classic

Although I have heard that Codemsaters has handled some MMORPG stuff pretty poorly in Europe.

Originally posted by xaldraxius

I'm fully convinced after playing AoC for nearly two months that FunCom is run by a bunch of trained monkeys...and not well trained ones at that.

While I agree with this, taking people off the other game would do no good.  Doing so would actually show them to be completely retarded monkeys rather than poorly trained monkeys.

Actually after a brief look at Wikipedia, Soe did not buy VG until 4 months after launch.  Although I do remember that people knew stuff was in the works for about a month previously, so say  three months.

I am pretty sure Brad baiscally completely disappeared right around month 1 though.  And the various leaks about the real situation at Sigil were coming out at that time as well.

As far as what SOE was responisble for:

In May 2006 Sigil reacquired the marketing rights to Vanguard from Microsoft and announced that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) would become the co-publishers of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Sigil maintained full control of development, funding, intellectual property rights, and in-game customer service (GM and Guide programs). Although SOE was responsible chiefly for marketing, publication, distribution, subscription services and maintenance of game servers, some of the SOE's game designers and artists did participate directly in the Vanguard's development.

So SOE had no control or input into developemnt except to lend some art telent.  They did not obtain any control until 4 months after release.  They were not the in charge of funding.

The only thing SOE did was declines to give BMQ an ass-ton of extra money that they had no repsonibility to give and no reason to gamble.   If someone wants to claim that means the bad release is SOE's fault then go ahead and do so.  I won't argue with that, its not worth my time.

Originally posted by SignusM

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Elsabolts

I believe because of the Hype by Funcom they new there game was not gonna be what was promised and decided to take advantage of that. Because of this i believe they will pay a bigger price.

 

I would agree with this, so in that sense they have a worse release.  But all in all VG still had a worse release.

You'd agree why , Unless you didn't know about Brad's 7 year plan ? Brad hyped the hell out of VG maybe even more so than funcom was guilty of .

Yes that is true.  But fortunately for VG all the blame goes on BMQ (well except for crazy people who blame SOE).

 

I am not trying to say  they both didn't partake of the same poison.  But due to certain details and change of ownership the attachment of blame is different.

 

And to be clear this sort of stuff this hyping to the point of lying and then not delivering it is poison.  It will eat away at a company's products.  The thing with VG is the non-crazies know that SOE just bought the game and that all the BS was on Sigil.  And many people blame Brad for what went on at Sigil.  So since Brad is gone and Sigil is no more and SOE has made real strides in trying to improve the game.  That poison is in a much lower dosage.

Very very false information here, mostly. The failure of Vanguards launch was mostly on SOE. Brad, was start raving mad, and the code for the game was done, and redone, poorly. BUT, SOE pushed the game out KNOWING it wasn't complete and killed a game that had limitless potential with the engine it was running.

As for whats going on now, SOE bought Sigil, and fired a few people. That's it. They're not fixing the game. Sigil is. The Vanguard thats having a second coming now is all because of the hard work of the SIGIL employees. 

 

Now Funcom, they released a crappy overhyped game and the entire company lied, not just one lunatic. They deleted posts, they left their NDA up the entire beta, they lied lied lied lied lied. Then they super polished one tiny section of the game just to save some face. At least Vanguard released with a full world that was fairly stabl

So let's get this straight.  Vanguard was originally published by Microsoft, not SOE.  After years of poor progress and mismanagment Microsoft drops it and takes a $30 million loss.

BMQ then shops around until he connes his old friend Smedley into investing in the VG.  They reach an agreement where SOE is not the publisher but only the Co-publisher with no input into development.  This agreement basically gives SOE the responiiblity of managing the hardware and give Sigil some further funding.

The craziness and mismanagment at Sigil goes on.  According to Smedly, tkae that for what its worth, he did not realize how badly off the state of the game. 

Soe declines to spend more money on something MS already dropped like a frigging rock and continue its history of mismanagement.  And further SOE has NO input on development so has no hope of VG actually being well managed.

And the state of VG's is all SOE's fault?

I underatnd that people hate SOE, that is fine.  But given the known history and timeline of Vanguard's development.  Are you really sure you want to persist in this?  I ask that because this really is not a matter of opinion, there is too much known about what went on for just flat out opinion.

You are basically saying that its SOE's fault that VG came out so bad because they should have acted like incompetent idiots.  That is simply unsupportable.

In fact buying vanguard was a rather stupid move.  They should have let Sigil go down the drain from a business point of view and cut their not so bad losses.  Rumor has it Smed was pretty pissed when he realized what he had actually bought.  If they had done that they wouldn't have lost nearly the amount of money Microsoft lost on the game.

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Elsabolts

I believe because of the Hype by Funcom they new there game was not gonna be what was promised and decided to take advantage of that. Because of this i believe they will pay a bigger price.

 

I would agree with this, so in that sense they have a worse release.  But all in all VG still had a worse release.

You'd agree why , Unless you didn't know about Brad's 7 year plan ? Brad hyped the hell out of VG maybe even more so than funcom was guilty of .

Yes that is true.  But fortunately for VG all the blame goes on BMQ (well except for crazy people who blame SOE).

 

I am not trying to say  they both didn't partake of the same poison.  But due to certain details and change of ownership the attachment of blame is different.

 

And to be clear this sort of stuff this hyping to the point of lying and then not delivering it is poison.  It will eat away at a company's products.  The thing with VG is the non-crazies know that SOE just bought the game and that all the BS was on Sigil.  And many people blame Brad for what went on at Sigil.  So since Brad is gone and Sigil is no more and SOE has made real strides in trying to improve the game.  That poison is in a much lower dosage.

Now may be be a different scenario for VG , But I was referring to the launch . If SOE have been able to turn the ship upright at the least props to them , because that would've been no short order.

I'm not sure what to tell you since I think VG had a much worse launch. 

But for this social aspect in particular the stigma of the initial launch is not really as attached to VG anymore.  Not like it was in the first week when Sigil was still the only major player and SOE was just running the servers.  And if I remember right SOE bought VG outright within about 1 month.  So the special case of the VG transfer to SOE and the blame shift was happening within what I would call the initial release time frame (say 1-2 months)

But in hindsight we now can say that stigma from launch did not turn out as bad.  Whereas the stigma on AoC will most likely not abate since the compnay as a whole is blamed and ownership will most likely not transfer.  Especially with the history of AO.

So in that sense AoC is doing "worse".  Its not really saying all that much, because the reason AoC is doing worse is because Brad basically imploded.  That sounds backwards but humans are funny creatures.

That implosion had a huge affect on the vanbois and a lot of the hate turned into that strange sense of disconnected fascination of a train wreck.  And the implosion itself happened close enough to release to be part of the first iteration.  It was like a forest fire, it looks really bad and in some ways is really bad, but it actually helps new trees grow.

The only way AoC could escape the stigma it has created for itself is some sort of cataclysm.  So I guess I am saying because VG had that cataclysm it came out better in that regard.  Which may sound really strange, but c'est la vie.

But whatever VG still was considerably worse it was no DnL but that wasn't even a release that was a forfeit

Originally posted by shukes33

Whi is DX10 so important? excuse me for not being a techie! but the game runs fine for me without it, so is there any reason i need it to run DX10?

Same here only 56 so not played any large scale pvp.

pvp rewards should be a priority. no point otherwise.

drunken brawling could be fun if they added it :).

other than that is anything "broken" as some claim? i havent experienced anything broken other than minor bugs. though i agree new content should be high on thier list too.

Tech-wise DX10 provides a number lightiing improvments and some other things as well but the lighting is one of the major things.  This is actually a fairly Big Deal as far as looks, especially in places like a forest.

Promise wise DX10 requires a Vista which is not only a different OS than people people have but Vista combined with AoC high demands means you probably need 4GB of ram and many people would probably seriously consider upgrading their computer.  So reneging on this promise very almost no warning had serious consequences for those people whom it affected.

DX10 is not necessary, but it does have it nice points.  For those people who are either habitual early adopters or really wanted to see the kind of graphics DX10 would pop they essentially got bent over and well you know the rest. 

Did everyone spend major money to upgrade their system? No.  But some people did and there were some decent reasons to want DX10.  And those people who did got Charlie Brown'ed by Funcom.

Here I will hold the football for you, just kick it *wink* *wink*

Personally I would not have upgraded my system for DX10 but I certainly see how some people would since they rate graphics higher than I do in importance.  They got screwed and really for no good reason except to maintain the hype that AoC was more revolutionary than it was.  AoC let them make expenisive purchases based upon their repeated promises to avoid bad press.

Certainly DX10 is a expensive investment that many people would not have done but DX10 does provide noticeable and unqiue lighting improvements which a subtle but powerful affect on ascetics.  So its not like some graphics upgrade where you say "Er there is no difference between 40 FPS and 60FPS you just want tot  turn it up to 11, Nigel".  And after all AoC is the steak of the MMORPG world.

I gave it a C too, but I knew a lot of people would go for whatever extreme was available

Originally posted by Malickiebloo

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Elsabolts

I believe because of the Hype by Funcom they new there game was not gonna be what was promised and decided to take advantage of that. Because of this i believe they will pay a bigger price.

 

I would agree with this, so in that sense they have a worse release.  But all in all VG still had a worse release.

You'd agree why , Unless you didn't know about Brad's 7 year plan ? Brad hyped the hell out of VG maybe even more so than funcom was guilty of .

Yes that is true.  But fortunately for VG all the blame goes on BMQ (well except for crazy people who blame SOE).

I am not trying to say  they both didn't partake of the same poison.  But due to certain details and change of ownership the attachment of blame is different.

And to be clear this sort of stuff this hyping to the point of lying and then not delivering it is poison.  It will eat away at a company's products.  The thing with VG is the non-crazies know that SOE just bought the game and that all the BS was on Sigil.  And many people blame Brad for what went on at Sigil.  So since Brad is gone and Sigil is no more and SOE has made real strides in trying to improve the game.  That poison is in a much lower dosage.

Originally posted by Elsabolts

I believe because of the Hype by Funcom they new there game was not gonna be what was promised and decided to take advantage of that. Because of this i believe they will pay a bigger price.

I would agree with this, so in that sense they have a worse release.  But all in all VG still had a worse release.

Originally posted by Ascension08

I don't like AoC but I'll defend it here. AoC is very polished and fun for a while, namely about the first half of the game. The bugs are there but Funcom seems to be patching them rather quickly. Though Funcom management, in all areas, is a little lacking, the game itself had a pretty stable launch considering all the false hype. Vanguard...was worse.

Seriously, come on people.  Funcom may be dishonest/poorly managed and AoC may have significant problems.  But Tortage alone makes it a much better release than Vanguard. like 30 or more poeple voting for AoC being worse.  Even if you like Vanguard as a game you gotta give it to AoC.  To be sure that is faint praise, but come on