The big picture

[Seranthor]

So tell us exaulted one when do YOU feel that CNFs should get the rest of their forms?, please give me a specifc time frame so that I may conform to your schedule and place it on my calendar to see if it has been accomplished, or if it has again been shoved out of the way like so many other times before in order to accomodate the newest 'miracle change'.

[Senkeleron Fell]

I think it should happen in August, like they said it would.

[Seranthor]

So is it acceptable with you to start pinging on them come say 01Sept05 if its not done? Or should they have to wait another 20 months for what they have been deserving of since release?

I'll say this to you, and to anyone else that feels I'm just an irracasible old grump, I wasn't like this when I first started playing HZ more than a year ago, I was all gung ho and nothing AE at the time did could dampen that spiritBUT slowly one by one all the people I came here from EQ1 with gradually left, I would have left also but there was this nagging problem of I was hooked on HZ.

I dont deny that I still am hooked, but at this juncture in time I can not and will not encourage anyone that I know to play HZ, hell I wont even admit to them I play HZ. I tell them I am still playing Age of Empires. For those that feel I should support HZ in anything and everything they do I'm sorry I can not and will not until which time I feel HZ is moving in an upward direction. To be completely honest I would rather not have any new players come into the game that are going to leave with a bad impression, I would rather have things working they way they should and bring in new players then and ones that will stay and bring others.

IF you want my renewed vocal support to encourage more people to become addicted to HZthen its time to at least hear what I and others like me have to say instead of dismissing us out of hand for not agreeing with the government (read: management). I can do one of the following in closing:

1) I can continue to push for meaningful change of HZ, whether it is concurrent or opposite that of those that are rabid TG backers.

2) I can quietly walk away and continue my fight backing the rebels and remaining silent publicly.

3) or after appropriate changes in mindset of certain persons, certain changes in the game and its mechanics I can actually support very vociferiously HZ.

What I chose can only be determined by those in power and the supporters of the government. Its time to decide if you want everyone supporting you; a few very vocals supporting you and verbally attacking the dissenters or if you want no one supporting you.

[Senkeleron Fell]

No, I have patience, I'll just wait, like I will wait for the crafting fixes. I enjoy the game.

I wonder if they work on the principle of "The squeeky wheel gets the grease" or "The nail that sticks out gets hammered in" ?

[Seranthor]

No what?... its not acceptable to take up the fight again?... or are we to let them continue to bleed out and slowly quit until there are no more left, although if you waited until then just deleting the class would be the easiest option, dont you agree?

[gusi]

...just deleting the class would be the easiest option, dont you agree?

I agree :). Or at least disabling it until it's "fixed", to stop the non-stop freaking whining about it.

[Seranthor]

Lol Gusi, you'll note I didn't bring it up and I've been rather uncommonly silent about it since the design preview was posted... :)

[kengar]

Are you even remotely suggesting that Confectioners are NOT entitled to have the rest of their TIER 3 forms?, are you even remotely suggesting they are NOT entitled to their Expert food forms?, Mind you before you answer you should find me at least ONE other class that is missing them, THEN answer the question.

I'll take that challenge. Tinkerer. Not one expert gadget formula. No mithril sunscopes, no fabricators of whatever they decide should be expert level fabricators. Nowhere near as bad as the confectioner situation, however.

So, to answer the question, I certainly think they should have their jman and expert forms, though entitled is a strong word.

However, I believe the point that was being made is that different people are passionate about different things. Even when they're passionate about the same thing, it's often in drastically different directions.

I've avoided games where the economy was broken before I became passionate about it, so it's reasonable that some people may stay away from Horizons precisely because it's so trivial to become a multicrafter, given the way things are now, that they'll never find a market.

For the record, there's only two reasons I prefer the dev-proposed change to crafting to your proposed change (level limits on tools). First, I have a full vault already. Telling me that I need a different pair of smelting tongs for jeweler, blacksmith, or weaponcraft (because all of those are at significantly different levels) means I'm gonna need a mule just to hold all my tools.

Second, I LIKE the idea of knowing that someone that has leveled jeweler has actually made jewelry. The idea that someone can grind to lvl 100 jeweler without ever making a piece of jewelry is just wrong. Yes, your change makes it so that doing it just by smelting is the slow way to do it, but it doesn't change the fact that people would be leveling jeweler off of smelting XP just because they're already maxed out in their main metalworking classes and someone wants a lower tier whatever.

[Senkeleron Fell]

There is an exact example of what I was commenting on. No matter how good and necessary a change is, it will have fanatic supporters on one side and haters on the other side. No single small change is going to draw anyone new to Horizons. It is the combination of the small changes that improves the game. Only something huge, like a new client with no lag, would have a chance of doing that by itself. But the game has to make some small evolutionary steps or all the long time players leave. The balance is in the hands of the developers. There seem to be alot of people on both sides of the crafting changes, but neither camp seems to be persuading anyone from the opposing camp to change sides. Arguments like "It will not draw any new players to the game" aren't really useful and can be said for any change.

[Seranthor]

Ok Kengar, lets look at your tinkerer example... can you make any of the following for experience as a t5 tinkerer?

mithril tools,
yew tools,
marble tools,
t5 transmutation,
ironsilk cargo,
t5 cargo disks,
t5 earthenware,

at the present time they ONLY have a few Jman food forms and their expert earthenware forms for experience options.

I mean you may like their plan as it is, I can and will repeat it has fatal flaws in its current state that can be seen by anyone that is really paying attention and that it will NOT prevent the 'bootstrapping' that its purported to be one of the reasons for its implementation. but thats OK, when it does come to frution the intelligent among the masses will disect it and take full advantage of its gaping flaws.

[Crazyfingers]

Calm down Seranthor! We are all agreeing that we want a better game. The game has flaws, has been managed poorly, it has manyproblems, but not all businesses are a huge success out of the gate.

I think many folks that still play and many that have left but still dig horizons want to see sweeping changes. There is another crowd, imho, that think a few tweaks here and there is all the game needs.And again imho the developers have listened to them far to long. I am part of the first crowd. To me dragon lairs, tweaking mithril, confectioner class are all minor problems that wont have much affect. Big changes are needed. The ones I stated above. Its really a matter of priorities to me. I have waited not so patiently on ARoP and dragon lairs becuase I feel others deem it important. Once those are done, they better start working on making the game fun and challenging. The development of Dragon lairs has ******** good possibilities of bringing in Dungeons and other fun stuff. Great.

Quite frankly I dont really care much for crafting, I like to battle. But crafting is a huge drawing point of Horizons. If improving crafting helps bring in more subscribers and money, I'm all for it. Maybe then they can spend some time on the adventure side. Loot tables, rares, dungeons crawls and the undead hoards!

I am willing to give David Bowman one last shot. Bring the game back to life by December. After december if the game isnt any better I will quit. But for now there really is no reason for me to rant and rave. Its best to just throw out ideas to help them out.

Only 1 out of 10 business succeed. Mainly because management doesnt understand what its market is looking for. As players we should keep posting what we are looking for.

The future looks bright.

NimKhazad

[Crazyfingers]

You know...

If you really want the Big Picture, there's only one person who can see all of it, and that's David Bowman himself. You can read my wife's post about our visit to Tulga and read the dev chat from Order to see bits and peices of it.

To that I can add that, from what he said, this was never an idea that was supposed to be "complete" in a year. The Big Picture spans at least 10 years. It see's the gradual development of a world constantly moving forward and never looking back. It's more than just a new expansion every six months changing a world slightly--It's breathing life into a game and giving it spirit and soul, by allowing it to live and change.

You spend 15 minutes talking to the man, and you might be able to catch a month of the Big Picture, maybe...that is if what he's talking about doesn't take you off on a tangeant so far, that an hour later, you realize that you still only have a small part of that month of the Big Picture.

One of the great things about this game is that you don't have to speculate on what that picture is, you can ask and be answered. [img]/Web/emoticons/emotion-1.gif[/img]

Hey Tokoz, this is a flat out lie.

And yes I can prove it.

NimKhazad

[Crazyfingers]

really curious to see the excuse for this one heh.

YOU ARE BAITING MR BOWMAN!

heh

at least my nose didnt grow 8 foot long

NimKhazad

[Kerech]

I believe subscriber total is higher then it ever has been. So were gaining more then were losing.

Jayne

There's no way that's true. Maybe it's higher than it has been in the last year or something, but ever? Right after release, there were 9 (?) servers, most of which were running at capacity every night. There were 300+ login queues, no plots for sale anywhere, etc. Players were begging for additional servers.

Now there are 3 servers, no login queues, plots for sale all over the place and you can play for a couple of hours without even seeing another player, depending on where you are in the world.

[AA0]

I think David Bowman does understand a lot of what the people want, but there is a lot of things you are completely ignorant on and you have to accept that too.

Do you think it is wise for the devs to waste their time building things on a foundation that is about to collapse? There are certain things which need to be repaired, balanced, debugged before all the changes we want can come. Want t6 material? How can they even think of putting t6 in when the classes are so screwed up? So a balance/fix will have to come before. But how can they balance a school when they don't even have all their proper equipment (or in case of crafting, forms) in to balance them? Thats one more step before that one goal can be met, and it goes on and on.

Right now in IRC David has the name David-footprintmodifications; he is altering the footprints of decorative items for plots so we can have fun, be creative and not so limited. Its something the game needs for the fluff, I think a load of people will be cheering when its done as well. A step in the right direction, I think, and he is giving us what we want. While the designers and coders fix the broken systems, he is trying to make the game a little nicer for everyone.

[LaughingOtter]

[img]/Web/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Jayne wrote: I believe subscriber total is higher then it ever has been. So were gaining more then were losing.

JayneThere's no way that's true. Maybe it's higher than it has been in the last year or something, but ever?

Probably not ever, agreed. David did indicate that the number of subscribers did rise in August, however. I expect that Jayne was referring to this growth.

[Fireclaw]

I think things like the crafter changes are relatively minor. They may irritate some of the die-hard crafters, but new players aren't going to care. What they will care about are the major problems with Horizons, which I see as:

1. poor client performance
2. lack of adventurer loot
3. lack of endgame

The awful client performance detracts immensely from the immersion in the game. With other games you feel immersed in beautiful and fast graphics. If a player is immersed in Horizons, its often in spite of and not because of the graphics. First impressions are very important. Not only do they tend to stick with us, but many players will quit immediately if their first impression is too bad. Unfortunately, Horizon's client performance gives new players an instant highly negative impression. Horizons has run with its awful performance since the beginning and though it has improved, it has never improved even close to an acceptable level. Even worse, my computer was upgraded significantly since Hz came out and I still have not seen any real improvement in Hz, though other games improved tremendously. Given how there seems to be almost no progress visible to the players in improving the client I think its safe to assume that the developers are unwilling or unable to make the improvement that is needed... at least in any reasonable timeframe.

Lack of any real adventurer loot is another concern. Looking at the majority of people who play MMOs, most would probably rather adventure than craft. By purposely not having any real adventurer loot, the adventurer players uninterested in crafting are going to get bored fast. Once they get bored, they'll leave and play something else.

Lack of endgame is a significant concern for those who stay long enough to get to high level. Horizons gives those in the endgame no purpose. There are no raid encounters like in other games. There's no real war with the Withered Aegis. Enemies are static apart from the occasional dev controlled attack. There's no pvp (I hate pvp myself, but its something some people like to do in endgame), there's barely any rare elite loot to grind for (a few uniques and sets for bipeds, but NOTHING at all for dragons).

Horizons came out with massive technical problems in its client which to this date have not shown any significant improvement. Meanwhile, the competition has not been standing still, but has been releasing new and technically polished products such as WoW. Even if all of Horizon's client performance problems were miraculously fixed today and the game suddenly ran at 40 fps everywhere (as opposed to 5 fps now), the pool of potential new players is drastically smaller because the graphics already are dated and will only continue to get more dated. After one has seen detailed modern graphics, dated graphics themselves detract from the immersion and discourage players from trying the game. Graphics are a moving target. Aiming for where that target was 2 years ago will still miss the target.