So what would it take?

[Velat]

To give Horizons a boost? Is it possible to get a new engine? Or those extra pockets that WOW has to help with the lag roblem? And if so, what kind of down time, or how big of a staff do they need to do this? Considering Horzions funding and Staff are they even capable of it right now?

Can they take something out that we dont need in game to help it?

Does anyone have any ideas? Not that they will probably happen, I would like to see what everyone thinks, especially all you smarties out there that know more about this stuff than me.


[li]

[Crazyfingers]

More Dwarf chicks

NimK

[Goriax]

I'm sure they know exactly.

But if I could hazard a guess, I'd say enough extra subcribers so they could get a few more devs.

[Vizharan]

My hazard guess would have to go to a few million in donations from...the..somewhere. Coulden't hurt = )

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

Prolly gonna see more advertising and marketing once dragon lairs roll live and reach stability. If you ask me there is no quick, easy, simple way to improve the game's financial status. Best case scenerio we'll hopefully see more of the slow, steady growth that has been happening for the past few months. With more subs comes more income, more money for advertising and promotions, more money for new artists and such, and hopefully ending up with a steadily growing game. All the work with the client has been improving steadily. I don't think we'll see a sudden "omg300FPSinTazoon" or anything but it's been getting better overall. Most of what needs to be done with the client is just a huge amount of work, and marginal improvements over time is still not that bad. Who knows what might happen in the future. (I really don't know[:(])

From Amadan's rantings it sounds like the Fall Festival is going to "totally rock," and Manga's been working on some projects hinted at a few times. As long as nothing earth-shattering happens Horizons should be set for some more growth with the new content that's about to come out.

[PJ]

Two words: End Game

enough said

[Ophelea]

To give Horizons a boost? Is it possible to get a new engine? Or those extra pockets that WOW has to help with the lag roblem? And if so, what kind of down time, or how big of a staff do they need to do this? Considering Horzions funding and Staff are they even capable of it right now?

Can they take something out that we dont need in game to help it?

Does anyone have any ideas? Not that they will probably happen, I would like to see what everyone thinks, especially all you smarties out there that know more about this stuff than me.

[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-60.gif[/img]

I've got two interviews coming up that are with Client Engineers...i.e. people working on the Engine.

This is good news I think?

And I don't know if you've noticed but they've got ads EVERYWHERE right now. So, I think that's in place.

Time I think is what it needs. Money wouldn't hurt. Loyalty helps...but then, any game (even WoW) needs that.

Just my $.02

[BKBanzai]

All the work with the client has been improving steadily.

I would say this was true until the patch that brought AROP to live shards....That was what? 2, 3 weeks ago?

The large patch previous had made a very big improvement on memory leak. Unfortunately, whatever they did in the AROP patch made Bristugo laggier than hell and the memory leak/lag seems almost as bad as it was when they put in the patch improve the world cache and instead made porting a living hell.

Whatever fix you did to memory leak, put it back, because it sure seems like it's gone again.

The one common theme I see from new or returning subscribers is performance. And it's sad to see some new player saying in a public channel that they are going to need to upgrade their computer (or get a new one) so they can play this game.

Most new subscribers won't go to those kinds of lengths to play a game....not when they can play the other MMORPGs out there without these types of problems.

[Landowyn]

Two words: End Game

enough said

Horsefeathers.

This game needs new subscribers, not all the old malcontents that quit long ago and hang around to gab about everything that's wrong with the game, resub and quit again..

The game needs to be more interesting for people going from 1-100, not the multiple multiple-100 players, as in quests for people at levels 20, 25, 30, etc. And interesting story based quests like some of those I ompleted during my 3 months in WOW and said "Wow" when they were done. For crafters and for adventurers.

In other words, the game needs to be fun for the everyone, just not the old hangers-on.

[Phillip]

the old hangers-on deserve something after all this time. an endgame isn't far fetched of a request.

from what i can see is them redoing of t1-t5, revisions, redrawing the same stuff, pointing towards getting new subs than anything else.

[imported_tjl]

what would it take... hmmmm

piles and piles of money, and tons of time. two things they have very little of right now.

they have been perpetually mired in bug fixes (even the same bugs more than once) for over two years now, which is one reason progress is so slow. and it doesn't help that they are short handed either. considering the circumstances, I think they are doing about as good as they can right now. and there is definate progress.

[imported_Twelvebagger]

One word:

Loot.

enough said.

[Pharcellus]

"Loot" is most likely not going to be the end-all do-all panacea for the game's ills for it to be the sole cure.

In fact, I daresay that adding loot of the kind which is most oft-requested will result in as many people leaving as it will attract (or at least in the same order of magnitude).

(anticipating the obligatory vacuous Phillip post about "lootphobes"...[D])

[BKBanzai]

New players to the game need to play/stick around long enough to determine there's a lack of loot (which has gotten better, btw, with the set items, just nothing for lower levels). To get them to stay long enough to discover this, they need to not quit because of the immediately obvious....performance issues.

To easy to just start the game and right away determine that they don't need to be paying comparable prices to WoW/EQ2 and other MMORPGs that don't have warping mobs, warping group members, group members racing off into the distance and then someone dying because you go haring off after where they are not, memory leak, town lag, arrow screw ups, etc.

[Milandra]

Some of the things written over here reminds me an old topic.

I just wish we could hear a few things about how all it's going on.

Performances and maintenance issues (over Europe).
Once they'll be fixed,Horizons will definitly reach the top

[Dragoniade]

One word:
Loot.
enough said.

Loot won't solve the second half of the game: crafting.
Less senseless nerf like the metal nerf and the introduction of item decay would give some spice to the gaming

[Illi]

Item decay is old and tired.Every game has that. I was excited by the fact there would be no armor breakage etc. Crafting is diverse enough without item decay, that would totally ruin it for some.

[Fireclaw]

New players to the game need to play/stick around long enough to determine there's a lack of loot (which has gotten better, btw, with the set items, just nothing for lower levels). To get them to stay long enough to discover this, they need to not quit because of the immediately obvious....performance issues.

To easy to just start the game and right away determine that they don't need to be paying comparable prices to WoW/EQ2 and other MMORPGs that don't have warping mobs, warping group members, group members racing off into the distance and then someone dying because you go haring off after where they are not, memory leak, town lag, arrow screw ups, etc.

Agreed. And while the set items are a start, they are very very few compared to the thousands of pieces of interesting loot available in other games such as WoW.

Also, it should be noted that there are zero set items for dragons.

[Phillip]

"Loot" is most likely not going to be the end-all do-all panacea for the game's ills for it to be the sole cure.

In fact, I daresay that adding loot of the kind which is most oft-requested will result in as many people leaving as it will attract (or at least in the same order of magnitude)."

it will help since the lack of loot and abundance of crafting didn't help any. loot isn't the sole cure.

for HZ, perhaps God is.

or maybe not.

[Tzael]

Personally when I think of things that will bring a breath of fresh air to the game, I try to conceive ideas that are not outwith the capabilities ofthe technology and that won't require more than a couple of weeks of programmer time. The best ideas are those that don't tie any of the devs up for long, but provide a noticable element of fun for the players.

Couple of examples to demonstrate what I'm getting at. In my sig you'll see a link titled 'Something for everyone' which links to a topic in the suggestions forum about introducing a consumable that can be collected, provides a useful benefit, and players can potentially turn these items into better versions. The concept now exists in a basic form, in that we now have trinkets through to tablets. I'm not saying that my suggestion got them into the game, nevertheless these consumables that were introduced were in the spirit of my suggestion post. Now all it needs is for one of the devs to take half a day or however long is required in order to make formulas that allow crafters to 'repair' trinkets and the higher tier alternatives, so that (as an example) 3 blighted trinkets can be repaired into one cursed trinket, 3 cursed trinkets can be repaired into one tarnished trinket, and so on. This would basically put an end to people deleting / pawning all the lesser ones, and provide a worthwhile commodity for trading purposes.

Second example is in reference to the other link in my sig, the one about removing monotony from crafting. In reality it's more about getting past this business where every crafter can make identical goods. If you read it, consider skipping past the bit about building up formula quality, just focus on the bit about players being able to influence the quality (and therefore the statistics) on the items they create. Instead of someone making a piece of mithril scalemail armour with +100 armour on it, they'd create a piece of armour that ends up with a quality percentage on it, which is determined by player skill and a little bit of randomness. That percentage would then influence the armour value, with the potential for exceptional pieces of craftsmanship with > 100% quality.

I'm not saying these ideas are the answer to your question Velat. What I'm saying is that good ideas that help disguise the grind in a game and don't impede too much on developer time are what we should be looking at. I look on it as ways of breaking the grind, all mmorpgs have grind, some are better at hiding it than others.