Age of Conan Forum » General Discussion » Funcom admits to wanting low populations?

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.

 I don't see a closed-knit community as a bad thing, not matter the size of the population.

The problem I see is how to acieve it? Someone mentioned FFXI. Just because it forced you into grouping didn't make that more enjoyable to be in because it was easier for you to be with like-minded people.

Every mmo dev out there wishes for their game's community to be friendly, tight, and care-free.

I'd also like to win the lottery...

Even way back in EQ1 days, you found all sorts of players, those liked, hated, easily forgotten. Because you hung around those you liked and remembered does not indicate the % of those you disliked being there also, and they were.

You can't expect a game to  change a community, and a community can only change if the participants actively partake in that change. Small can be better, and if a company is willing to sacrifice income from a lower population server, then it had better make sure the game is enjoyable and accessible for all lvls to play.

-my two cents  

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

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.

If the only rebuttle  you can make is a personal attack then I Thank you for supporting my statement.  DX 10 on box,  free lvl 50 for trying again, with no fine print,  The 4 PvP promises that did not make it in game, Funcom released a beta version of a game and used many methods to push sales.

As the  "age of conan advocate" you post all this positive information about AoC and month after month the population has went down and patches have disappointed the playerbase by being slow and lacing substance and after a year of these supposed miracle patches a lot of people are convinced to retry the game and that laugh all the way to the cancelation screen ;p

So the good news is I have been correct much more often then Funcom and I don't intentionaly try to mislead new players, I don't have to...this game drives away people for being poorly designed and boring.  The server populations and financial reports, which we now to be a low number and always a shrinking number back me up every time.

With such low populations instancing is even more of a hinderance to AoC than it was at launch, I think Funcom needs to admit defeat and make this CORPG free to play much along the same lines as Guild Wars. As AoC is really little more than a GW beta test with extra features that are broken.

Funcom should just turn this game into a F2P game with a cash shop and be done with it. The game will never attract enough people to have the MMORPG feeling.

What it has is pretty gfx and thats it. So dump the subscription model and turn it into a multiplayer game, rather than a massively multiplayer game, and be done with it. The heavy instancing and fragmented world, probably due to their heavy GFX engine not suitable for an MMORPG, already has that effect on the game anyway.

AoC is a failure. Admit defeat and move one, best thing Funcom can do.

Originally posted by Xerith

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 respect your view...............but you are one of those few who like the game as it is.
I was talking about the other 70% who left already.

I understand that repeating the same storyline in tortage can be annoying if you reroll often, but my theory was that the whole game should have been like Tortage............end game included, where new stories were addedd to keep the player entertained, so you didn't have to reroll 20 times because you get bored with the end game.

The point of MMORPGs is not to reroll a new character.........the more you reroll the more a MMORPG suxx, because it means the end game is kinda boring, and it shouldn't

Bioware SWTOR will show Funcom what AoC could have been if they actually finished the game with the same standards as the Tortage bit.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

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.

lol please, if you are getting what they are trying to put across, shed some light on my immature, impolite and ignorant soul :)

Originally posted by Iplaytoomuch

It's just damage control because they are losing subscriptions. They just lost mine because I went to Fallen Earth (btw Funcom go see how crafting is done in Fallen Earth and take notes).

Everyone knows it's high subscription numbers that keep MMO's alive and fun. This "close knit community" might sound good on theory but in reality it sucks because you can't find groups and have to solo all the content.

Yeah when AOC has has a downward slope since release and a year later 3 of 4 people stop playing within a couple of months...they need some damage control.

Tyranny is  the most populated and those on that server point out there are not enough players. so after the low quality game drove many away I can see the low populations driving the last few fans off.

Also, when it comes to the expansion....I wouldn't expect many players new or old to start playing AoC do to the state of this game atm.  People have to buy a box from Funcom and people remember the last time that happened, 20% of what is stated will likely make it into the game but there is no substance to this expansion anyway.

the thing is, even if people DO come back for the pvp patch for instance, or the expansion, do they actually have the hardware to handle it?

Recent patch made many people come online, guess what happened? Zones crashing and huge lags...

---

Originally posted by Agricola1
With such low populations instancing is even more of a hinderance to AoC than it was at launch, I think Funcom needs to admit defeat and make this CORPG free to play much along the same lines as Guild Wars. As AoC is really little more than a GW beta test with extra features that are broken.

---

Originally posted by Agricola1

With such low populations instancing is even more of a hinderance to AoC than it was at launch, I think Funcom needs to admit defeat and make this CORPG free to play much along the same lines as Guild Wars. As AoC is really little more than a GW beta test with extra features that are broken.

You and Yamota both hit the nail on the head about this game.  The design is not a desirable one on too many levels for as many people as they hoped to like this game.  And add to that the features that have not and may never get fixed and you have a sure recipe for a F2P game.

It's no coincidence folks that the last mmo this company put out went that way.  I just wonder when people will realize that to this point this company does not have a handle on making good mmo's atleast out of the gate.

Right now the thing I think that hurt this game the most is marketing.  It's just incompetent to have the huge amount of marketing for a game as broke and unentertaining as they put out.  And from that there are going to be either intelligent or paranoid people (depending on your point of view) out there who will learn not to trust your word.

I tend to think those people are intelligent because if you can spend ten million on al the hype we saw I'd think common sense tells you it's better to spend that entire ten million to make sure your game is fun and stable from the start since that is the only thing that can make you money.