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• • Expansion - AOC players will pay for the fixes

  • Originally posted by Battlekruse
    

    Originally posted by protoroc
    

    Originally posted by Kryziz
    

    This company at one time had a good track record, now I will never buy a product from them again, bye bye funcom....

     

    Since when?

    AO Launch - failure, massive bugs

    AO: Shadowlands Launch - failure, half of the zones in SL werent even accessable.

    AO: Alien Invasion Launch- failure, player shops not implemented into game til at least 3 months later

    AO: Lost Eden - IDK, gave up on this game after AI, I'm sure half the features were broken at launch.

    Dreamfall - One of Funcom's best gaming efforts (never played The Longest Journey) was incomplete, all that story to end up with the protagonist in a coma and none of the plot lines concluded.

    Funcom consistantly releases unfinished products, AOC is just par for the course.

    
     

    I have seen games end with missing pieces before but the Dreamfall ending is a bundle of loose threads that leaves players with a very bad and bitter taste. The Longest Journey was fantastic and the wait for a sequel seemed worthwhile. But what a major disappointment when it finally came. Although the gameplay was fine and the overall storyline held attention, it seems that the non-ending was developed simply so players would look forward to a few more years of waiting for another sequel. If they had promoted this as part two of three parts, players would have been prepared for the MAJOR let down. SHAME on the developers for this ploy. If it's not a ploy, then what began as a promising plot was brutally destroyed by the end of it all.

    
     

    Meh. Most people I've spoken to and commentary I've read are people saying "Man so many cliff-hangers... I hope it's not as long a wait for Dreamfall's sequel as it was between TLJ and Dreamfall".
    
    Yours, and the person you're quoting are the first two people I'm aware of that are taking it as some horrible "ploy" or something.

    Again... the story is going to be continued. That has been known for a while now.

     

  • Posted: 7/23/08 11:50 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Expansion - AOC players will pay for the fixes

  • Originally posted by protoroc
    

    Originally posted by Kryziz
    

    This company at one time had a good track record, now I will never buy a product from them again, bye bye funcom....

     

    Dreamfall - One of Funcom's best gaming efforts (never played The Longest Journey) was incomplete, all that story to end up with the protagonist in a coma and none of the plot lines concluded.

    It wasn't "incomplete". You're being a bit disinenguous here. None of the plot lines were concluded because Dreamfall isn't the end of the story. 

    I mean, the cliff-hangers were pretty obvious.
    
    - Who/what killed the White Dragon?
    - What's the deal with Brian Westhouse; what's his true role in all this?
    - Is April Ryan really dead?
    - What's the deal with Faith and Zoe... is there something more to that?
    - What role does WATI Corp still have to play, if any?
    
    I'm sure there's more.. but those are all plot-lines that, to me and others anyway, make it obvious that there's going to be a continuation.
    
    There's going to be a third part continuing, possibly concluding, the story. This has been pretty well known for a while now.
    
    Ragnar Tornquist, the writer/creator of TLJ and Dreamfall has stated that he has every intention of continuing it, but that it likely wouldn't be 'til after AoC's development was complete (then still a couple years away) and resources were freed up.

    So... who knows when it will be be. But it will be.

  • Posted: 7/23/08 11:35 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Is SE losing focus in FFXI?

  • Hi all,

    I'm a long-time fan/player of FFXI, having started at the NA PC launch.

    In the the time since then, FFXI has grown by leaps and bounds. I think it's safe to say that anyone who has played the game and reached the higher level content would agree... the game is massive.

    Lately, though, I'm wondering if that's been a blessing or a curse.

    I had a conversation with a friend last night who has also played since launch (started the day after me, actually) and he brought up something that I hadn't considered, but when I thought about it, made sense.

    He said, basically, that with all the content SE's added - Assault, Salvage, Einherjar, Campaign, Nyzul Isle (technically Assault, but very different), BCNMs, ISNMs, ZNMs, KSNMs, Limbus, Sky, Sea, HNMs, and on and on... On top of the story arcs for FFXI, Zilart, CoP, ToAU and now WoTG... not to mention farming, crafting, leveling, harvesting, digging, etc... it makes the game feel like it's spreading the content, and hence,  the players a bit too thin.

    To sum it up in his words, "The game is starting to feel like SE has lost their focus".

    To put it another way... It's almost the exact opposite problem other MMOs have of "not enough content"; too many people with too little to do. In FFXI, it's more a problem of "too many different activities with not enough people to do them all". With all the different activities, players find themselves being part of different linkshells with scheduled days/evenings to do their "runs"... for Sky, Dynamis, Assault, and so forth. As a result, many players find it difficult to find people to do other activities - like story arc missions and so forth.

    It's really manifesting in a way that my friend, myself and others I know are finding very disturbing...

    The most recent and, it seems, biggest wrench in the gears is Campaign Battle.

    It's a brilliant concept. Go into the past to the time of the Crystal War that set the stage for the game in the first place, take part in the different story arcs and, via Campaign Battle, take part in the battles against the beastmen for control over different areas.

    Where it's a problem is that it has become a "free ticket" for many players to level up without risk - or without actually *playing*.

    For those not familiar with it, in Campaign Battle, you obtain what's called an "Allied Tag" (or Allied something... lol I think it's "tag"). So long as you have that tag active, you can participate in campaign without fear of losing xp if you die. You are rewarded xp at the end of the campaign battle based on your contribution, be it fighting or healing/raising/buffing. So... it's really a "win/win" for the players.

    The first bit of trouble that came about was that players immediately began power-leveling their characters to 75, often gaining 10-20 levels, or more, in the process. There's a couple downsides to this:
    
    A: More people leveling solely through campaign = less people available for normal xp parties.
    B: In campaign, your skill levels do not increase. So if you start Campaign at level 60 and do only that until level 75, your skills are still where they were at level 60. So now you have 15 levels of skill-ups to make up for. A "sacrifice" many are willing to make, in the name of leveling faster.

    That in itself is bad enough... But it's taken a turn for the even worse lately..

    People have found that if they sub Bard with any job, the can simply get their Allied Tag, stay by the NPC that assigns it and do nothing but buff themselves and others for the entire campaign battle. They never have to get close to a mob... At the end, they receive xp... for doing, basically, nothing.

    Only on rare occasion will mobs come over to that spot to kill them. When that happens, no big deal, they raise each other... which means even more xp for them at the end, for raising a fallen comrade. I'm seeing characters in their *20s* out there now, standing by the NPC, doing their thing. A level 20 has no business anywhere near a Campaign Battle if they're looking to actually participate, which of course, they're not.

    So.. on top of leaving fewer people available for normal xp parties, these people aren't even helping in Campaign, where it is often needed.

    It's an obvious abuse of the system and most people agree that SE is eventually going to have to do something about it. Because it is, in short, slowly killing the game.

    This comes back to SE losing focus. Their goal for FFXI from the start was to have a game that was focused primarily on teamwork and group effort to succeed. Among other examples of things they've done, Campaign itself seems to be enabling players to completely by-pass and undermine that focus.

    Too Many Activities + Ways For People To Level Without Partying = Fewer people available for actual xp parties and other group-oriented activities = FFXI losing what most people came to love it for.

    Thoughts?

  • Posted: 7/22/08 12:16 PM
    Final Fantasy XI
• • Will you buy the expansion?

  • Originally posted by dougmysticey
    

    Originally posted by bigtime102
    

    LOL buy an expansion for a pay to play game? So what are you exactly paying for monthly? I thought it was for updates and new content, but I guess you gotta buy that too, hmmm... suckers.

    
     

    This is a silly statement. Let me see, WOW is going on its second expansion to buy. EQ had, what, 10 of em, LOTRO has Moria coming out. Not sure how many renditions of Lineage 2 there are, Phantasy Star has had a couple I think, City of Heroes had...uhm, city of Villians, DAOC had at least 2-3 expansions to buy.

     There's only one rendition :).

    NC Soft does not charge for Lineage 2's "expansions". In fact, Lineage 2 has never had anything resembling a retail expansion since its launch.
    
    What L2 gets are major content updates, aka "Chronicles" or now "Chaotic Throne" updates, which include new areas, mobs, quests, gear, etc... but those are not charged for; they're included in the monthly sub fee.

    What you're seeing is NC Soft occasionally "re-releasing" the game on retail shelves to attract new players. These come with all updates from the most current (as of the retail release) going back to Chronicle 1. Existing players don't have to buy anything new to get all the updates.

     

  • Posted: 7/21/08 10:07 PM
    Age of Conan
• • Do you think AoC is doing a good job?

  • Originally posted by Die_Scream
    

    Funcom is not capable of making a polished product. They have neither the programming talent, leadership, or ideas to improve the game. This is evident from the piss poor patches, which they delay by the way to "test" them.

    They spend a good deal of time squelching dissent, covering their butts, and making excuses for failing at almost every aspect of the game.

    AoC would have been a good game in the hands of a competent dev team, but IMO it's future is just another "coulda been" MMO which will survive with merged servers and a dedicated fanboy base. Some people love crap, but that's life. Too bad the player base as a whole won't send a message with teeth (no subs) to FC, but some will always support bad games.

    I believe the less people play in a session, the less they will notice these things though.

     

    While I still read the forums sometimes, I vowed to never post here again (for reasons I won't go into here  - but it has nothing to do with the posters; that's all I'll say), I do actually want to partially defend Funcom on something...
    
    Their performance in the MMO dept is certainly questionable. I don't know how they could run a MMO like Anarchy Online (a very fun MMO in its own right, with an extraordinarily deep character customization system) for as long as they have and have the quantity of issues they're being widely (not just here) panned for with AoC.
    
    However, they're not a totally incompetent company.  "The Longest Journey" and its sequel, "Dreamfall", both Funcom titles, are solid, fun and, frankly, brilliant games that have each won a boat-load of awards and accolades. I would highly recommend them both to anyone who appreciates a good adventure game, without hesitation.

    What's going on with FC in the MMO genre, however... no idea.

    Anyway... That's all I wanted to say :)

  • Posted: 7/20/08 11:38 PM
    Age of Conan