The theory of the boiling frog.

[Aamer Khan]

If you have never heard this let me lay out one version...

If you put a frog into a boiling pot of water, he will immediately try to get out.

If however, you put him in warm water and slowly bring up the heat to a boil, you will get frog soup, because he got used to the temperature gradually and was lulled into blissful acceptance of something that would kill him.

For a long time, the devs have been quite successful at bringing up the heat slowly. But since the last patch, I guess they must have gotten lulled by their own tactics, and fallen asleep, because sombody slipped and turned up the heat REALLY high, REALLY fast.

I sure hope that you catch all the frogs about to jump out the pot!

[Seranthor]

Reminds me of this study I read a while back.

Lesser Primate Committee Thinking Experiment

Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the Banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result-all the apes are sprayed with cold water. Turn off the cold water. If, later, another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will try to prevent it even though no water sprays them.

Now, remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The New ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a New one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous Newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well.

Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced.

Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not?

"Because that's the way it's always been around here."

Sound familiar?

[AA0]

Too bad that theory has been proven false :P

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

There's been a lot of negativity on the boards lately, so here's a tl;dr post for everyone to enjoy from the perspective of a long-time player that has moved into the development environment of Horizons.

Ever since I started this internship at Tulga, I've suddenly been given a sharply different perspective as to how things work and specifically how things are implemented into the game. The offices are full with conversation about various topics, white boards are covered with the next big things (TM) and I'm lucky to be privy to all the internal goings-on with the company and where it is headed. I'm getting to know much of the staff personally, and I'm starting actually get into some design of my own rather than implementation and fixes. For example, internally all existing loot crystals should have been fixed, documented, described, de-typo'd, and consumed crystal effects are no longer worse than their permanent equip bonus.

Firstly, it's important to remember is that none of these people are making the kind of money that would be found in other high-tech industries. It's a general rule that no one gets into games for the money, and even with all the creativity and enjoyment that may come from developing games, much of it is long, hard work. The reason these people work in this industry is because of their love of what they do. If they didn't, they wouldn't be working in this field.

Anyway, one thing I have always picked up on is that everyone at Tulga truly wants to make the game succeed and most importantly fun. People like Amon will work 60+ hours a week, coming in on weekends, working until dark, and even working from home on their days off. Hell, I've seen the artists willingly come in on a holiday, busy working on what needs to be done.

With all the quick, sweeping, sometimes shoddy work that HAD to be done at merge to keep the game alive, much of what everyone has been busy with is cleaning up and filling in the world, no small task for such a small development team. Priorities had to be made, and there is no plan that can keep every player happy while the game pushes forward.

The biggest problem with the decisions that need to be made by the current staff is cleaning up other people's bad design. Horizons is still rife with problems in many of its gameplay aspects, the result of a ridiculously troublesome past well before release and an extremely rushed and unfinished launch. All the problems with the merge and the complete redesign of the world in less than a month have given the current staff far more work that can be reasonably accomplished. Only now, with the true core developers working together as a team are things beginning to come together.

Right now things are really starting to look up for the future of the game. Numbers are growing, big words are being used, and the very important newbie game is finally nearing completion. New tech and ideas behind the New Trismus and Lesser Aradoth changes are also beginning to come together, and much of the new ideas going into the early game can be easily modified to provide new, exciting content for the rest of the game's players.


Anyway, on to the recent nerfs.


In my non-company-related opinion, they simply needed to be done. As much as it truly sucks to see your game experience suddenly get more difficult, everything from Nadia to Tier VI resources were needed to make the game more successful in the long term. It's impossible to grow the game without making adjustments to bad design, and it's also impossible to please everyone when needed changes require making existing content more difficult or time-consuming when the players have become accustomed to something much quicker, albeit emptier. However, in time everything settles down, tempers calm, people come and go, but the game is poised for a better experience once things even out.

It all boils down to players growing spoiled by bad original design. I currently have spent over 140 hours in-game (and I don't log in idle.) I am well aware of how easy it is to simply grind or pawn whatever your favorite resource happens to be in order to purchase the tech components for any needed item. Even before I had a single school at 100, all I had to do when I needed a new suit of armor was to go dig gems for a couple hours, barter in market, then grab the rest from Nadia. Fully teched, multiple sets of equipment has become a normal thing for many players. I still feel little accomplishment in creating a new set of whatever gear I happen to feel like having made.

The biggest problem we have such a weak player economy is that there is a cap to any technique component that can be sold, and that cap has always been Nadia. Even with the pawnbroker changes it has always been easier to just grind coin for components. This is not healthy for the game. Such a design is encouraging everything dull, boring, and un-fun that is grinding coin. On the other side, many adventurers don't see a market in gathering most technique components because few are willing to buy for prices that actually make the time spent gathering those components worthwhile.

Tier VI is another issue that's been coming up. Again, let me say that nerfs to things suck. Long ago it was announced that the developers need to make the existing current in the game better before trying to expand tier VI items and resources to the same level as tier V. This is a real slap to the face for players already with multiple hundreds in many schools, but even if everything were dropped in favor of a shoddy tier VI implementation, what would happen 6 months after the changes? We'd be in the same spot, players demanding a further push for content, begging for tier VII. Except now, the mid-level game is still dull and empty, and the hoard of new players coming in wouldn't even make it to the high-end game.

Tier VI resources were never meant to be plentiful or on-par with the lower tiers. Given the limits of the development staff, the best tier VI can offer is what we already have in-game with some minor additions (like other tier-6 processing forms). Stretching out what is already in place and assigning value to the highest of the high-end is a part of making the game successful in future months and years. In general, some things are just easy to the point that players just don't care. Back before we had ANY tier VI processing forms aside from transmutation, tier VI structures were a sight to behold. Now that the Cenotaph event is behind us we have most of the tier VI resource forms, and those once-godly structures are becoming less and less valuable to players. They're moving towards being just another standard building that exists in nearly every player town you visit.

I wish it were possible to simply “turn on” the same level of content we now have for Lesser Aradoth and New Trismus, but now that I've actually worked for the company almost two weeks I'm getting a hard-earned lesson in the sheer volume of work that is required in making quality new content.

All I can really respond with is that all the recent changes effecting some of the elder population is something that needs to be done to make a better overall game for players, is not a problem of the designers wanting to screw players over, and many of these changes have had such an impact because they should have been made months ago.

All content in Horizons is relative. As a player you are presented a process that takes an arbitrary amount of your time to complete. The amount of time required is determined by the developers, and as players you simply conform to whatever design aspect is created. One key factor in how much value an accomplishment means to a player comes from the time invested. It's this value that measures how much other players are “awed” by the accomplishments of their peers. Without this value, we descend into the problem of people not feeling special when they accomplish some piece of very high-end content.

When you boil down all the tier VI buildings out there, they constitute little more than a slightly larger model compared to tier V, and a marginal increase in functionality that is never absolutely needed for a player to enjoy the functionality of the structure. Nothing in the tier VI range is required for a player to enjoy the game, and by design such structures are meant to be extremely difficult feats of dedication and skill. Leaving tier VI construction as yet another easily accomplished feat undermines on of the special aspects of the game that is accomplishing something permanent that stays behind when you log out.

~~~

To summarize, things look very different from the other side. These people are professionals, and it is inherent to every MMO that has ever existed that people become upset at decisions made by the developer staff, no matter how good or bad they may be at their jobs. We're not “boiling the frog” here, it's business as usual for any game out there. Slight reductions in the effectiveness of mining travertine, a resource that for the longest time had to be transmuted, isn't what I would consider a game-ending change. Neither is Nadia, the biggest proponent of coin grind and stifled player-to-player trading ever in Horizons.

It's sad to see old players leave, and the growing cynicism before they cancel has always been heartbreaking to me as a player. However, this process is unavoidable in the greater scheme of things, and no matter what game you play you see the exact same behavior, always. The only advice I can give to old players growing tired with the game is to try making a new character and take it in a different direction than your main. There's enough content in the lower levels now that elders re-experiencing Horizons will find a completely new game in New Trismus and Lesser Aradoth. Who knows, maybe by the time you make it through all the lowbie areas some of the exciting new bits of content in the pipeline will already have been pushed to live.

I mean seriously, there are about 80 changes in the latest patch notes, an overwhelming number of them completely positive, ripe with new things like flying cargo disks (a player request for some time) and the ever-useful cargo-disk homing device on your map.

[Lumineux]

Yeah, lots of stuff was messed up and had/has to be fixed. I think everyone knows that.

But, I'd be lot happier if I understood how 17 mithril golems in 30 minutes fits into the design and idea of fun. Or of an MMORPG.

Or how the single player game that tier 6 is now, is a "group effort". Or if I had some inkling that there would ever be a nice reward to match the monumental efort. Hell, that there would be a reward, period.

But we don't know these things. So all it looks like from out here is that the game is steadily being slowed down, to try and suck more money out of us. Forgive me for being cynical.

[Seranthor]

Hal`cyon,

I respect your opinion that you believe that things 'had to be done'. So I'll ask you for a factual representation of it, How 'successful' will this game become if TG alienates the vast majority of the masses to the point they cancel and move on?

[snickel]

I am yet far from processing tierVI resources. Yet I am concerned with old players who get frustrated by the recent changes.

Even if all these changes should make sense in the long run (which I cannot know, for I'm no expert in game balance or -economy) at least one thing has been handled shockingly bad.

And that's selling the changes to the old player base.

If you want to take a bone away from a dog and don't want to get bitten you best offer it a steak instead -- and hand it over.

Many changes that have been introduced, are nice -- I have seen dragons almost go into a narcistic trance over their new and fashionable cargo disks -- but that doesn't outweigh the shock of the recent crafting changes.

And the nagging suspicion that more unwelcome changes are to come.

Where is the beef? What further changes are planned that make high-level crafting even more enjoyable than it was before the changes? Thats what you have to tell us.

Because when all is said and done, people stay because they have fun.

Gives us an indication of the crafting fun that is to come our ways, to the crafters of all levels. Give us something grand to expect.

[Peaches]

There's been a lot of negativity on the boards lately, so here's a tl;dr post for everyone to enjoy from the perspective of a long-time player that has moved into the development environment of Horizons.

Ever since I started this internship at Tulga, I've suddenly been given a sharply different perspective as to how things work and specifically how things are implemented into the game. The offices are full with conversation about various topics, white boards are covered with the next big things (TM) and I'm lucky to be privy to all the internal goings-on with the company and where it is headed. I'm getting to know much of the staff personally, and I'm starting actually get into some design of my own rather than implementation and fixes. For example, internally all existing loot crystals should have been fixed, documented, described, de-typo'd, and consumed crystal effects are no longer worse than their permanent equip bonus.

Firstly, it's important to remember is that none of these people are making the kind of money that would be found in other high-tech industries. It's a general rule that no one gets into games for the money, and even with all the creativity and enjoyment that may come from developing games, much of it is long, hard work. The reason these people work in this industry is because of their love of what they do. If they didn't, they wouldn't be working in this field.

Anyway, one thing I have always picked up on is that everyone at Tulga truly wants to make the game succeed and most importantly fun. People like Amon will work 60+ hours a week, coming in on weekends, working until dark, and even working from home on their days off. Hell, I've seen the artists willingly come in on a holiday, busy working on what needs to be done.

With all the quick, sweeping, sometimes shoddy work that HAD to be done at merge to keep the game alive, much of what everyone has been busy with is cleaning up and filling in the world, no small task for such a small development team. Priorities had to be made, and there is no plan that can keep every player happy while the game pushes forward.

The biggest problem with the decisions that need to be made by the current staff is cleaning up other people's bad design. Horizons is still rife with problems in many of its gameplay aspects, the result of a ridiculously troublesome past well before release and an extremely rushed and unfinished launch. All the problems with the merge and the complete redesign of the world in less than a month have given the current staff far more work that can be reasonably accomplished. Only now, with the true core developers working together as a team are things beginning to come together.

Right now things are really starting to look up for the future of the game. Numbers are growing, big words are being used, and the very important newbie game is finally nearing completion. New tech and ideas behind the New Trismus and Lesser Aradoth changes are also beginning to come together, and much of the new ideas going into the early game can be easily modified to provide new, exciting content for the rest of the game's players.


Anyway, on to the recent nerfs.


In my non-company-related opinion, they simply needed to be done. As much as it truly sucks to see your game experience suddenly get more difficult, everything from Nadia to Tier VI resources were needed to make the game more successful in the long term. It's impossible to grow the game without making adjustments to bad design, and it's also impossible to please everyone when needed changes require making existing content more difficult or time-consuming when the players have become accustomed to something much quicker, albeit emptier. However, in time everything settles down, tempers calm, people come and go, but the game is poised for a better experience once things even out.

It all boils down to players growing spoiled by bad original design. I currently have spent over 140 hours in-game (and I don't log in idle.) I am well aware of how easy it is to simply grind or pawn whatever your favorite resource happens to be in order to purchase the tech components for any needed item. Even before I had a single school at 100, all I had to do when I needed a new suit of armor was to go dig gems for a couple hours, barter in market, then grab the rest from Nadia. Fully teched, multiple sets of equipment has become a normal thing for many players. I still feel little accomplishment in creating a new set of whatever gear I happen to feel like having made.

The biggest problem we have such a weak player economy is that there is a cap to any technique component that can be sold, and that cap has always been Nadia. Even with the pawnbroker changes it has always been easier to just grind coin for components. This is not healthy for the game. Such a design is encouraging everything dull, boring, and un-fun that is grinding coin. On the other side, many adventurers don't see a market in gathering most technique components because few are willing to buy for prices that actually make the time spent gathering those components worthwhile.

Tier VI is another issue that's been coming up. Again, let me say that nerfs to things suck. Long ago it was announced that the developers need to make the existing current in the game better before trying to expand tier VI items and resources to the same level as tier V. This is a real slap to the face for players already with multiple hundreds in many schools, but even if everything were dropped in favor of a shoddy tier VI implementation, what would happen 6 months after the changes? We'd be in the same spot, players demanding a further push for content, begging for tier VII. Except now, the mid-level game is still dull and empty, and the hoard of new players coming in wouldn't even make it to the high-end game.

Tier VI resources were never meant to be plentiful or on-par with the lower tiers. Given the limits of the development staff, the best tier VI can offer is what we already have in-game with some minor additions (like other tier-6 processing forms). Stretching out what is already in place and assigning value to the highest of the high-end is a part of making the game successful in future months and years. In general, some things are just easy to the point that players just don't care. Back before we had ANY tier VI processing forms aside from transmutation, tier VI structures were a sight to behold. Now that the Cenotaph event is behind us we have most of the tier VI resource forms, and those once-godly structures are becoming less and less valuable to players. They're moving towards being just another standard building that exists in nearly every player town you visit.

I wish it were possible to simply “turn on� the same level of content we now have for Lesser Aradoth and New Trismus, but now that I've actually worked for the company almost two weeks I'm getting a hard-earned lesson in the sheer volume of work that is required in making quality new content.

All I can really respond with is that all the recent changes effecting some of the elder population is something that needs to be done to make a better overall game for players, is not a problem of the designers wanting to screw players over, and many of these changes have had such an impact because they should have been made months ago.

All content in Horizons is relative. As a player you are presented a process that takes an arbitrary amount of your time to complete. The amount of time required is determined by the developers, and as players you simply conform to whatever design aspect is created. One key factor in how much value an accomplishment means to a player comes from the time invested. It's this value that measures how much other players are “awed� by the accomplishments of their peers. Without this value, we descend into the problem of people not feeling special when they accomplish some piece of very high-end content.

When you boil down all the tier VI buildings out there, they constitute little more than a slightly larger model compared to tier V, and a marginal increase in functionality that is never absolutely needed for a player to enjoy the functionality of the structure. Nothing in the tier VI range is required for a player to enjoy the game, and by design such structures are meant to be extremely difficult feats of dedication and skill. Leaving tier VI construction as yet another easily accomplished feat undermines on of the special aspects of the game that is accomplishing something permanent that stays behind when you log out.

~~~

To summarize, things look very different from the other side. These people are professionals, and it is inherent to every MMO that has ever existed that people become upset at decisions made by the developer staff, no matter how good or bad they may be at their jobs. We're not “boiling the frog� here, it's business as usual for any game out there. Slight reductions in the effectiveness of mining travertine, a resource that for the longest time had to be transmuted, isn't what I would consider a game-ending change. Neither is Nadia, the biggest proponent of coin grind and stifled player-to-player trading ever in Horizons.

It's sad to see old players leave, and the growing cynicism before they cancel has always been heartbreaking to me as a player. However, this process is unavoidable in the greater scheme of things, and no matter what game you play you see the exact same behavior, always. The only advice I can give to old players growing tired with the game is to try making a new character and take it in a different direction than your main. There's enough content in the lower levels now that elders re-experiencing Horizons will find a completely new game in New Trismus and Lesser Aradoth. Who knows, maybe by the time you make it through all the lowbie areas some of the exciting new bits of content in the pipeline will already have been pushed to live.

I mean seriously, there are about 80 changes in the latest patch notes, an overwhelming number of them completely positive, ripe with new things like flying cargo disks (a player request for some time) and the ever-useful cargo-disk homing device on your map.

Excellent Post, thank you kindly. It makes all the sense in the world to me now. Ya, our virtual world.

Thank you again!

[Justa Mirage]

Frankly, I see a wide split on varied opinions here...

I will try to make this brief and has already been pointed out by others:

I find some things wrong with the way things are going. They don't affect me that much because I still have "lower level" characters that are being played and are having slight issues with this new aggro stuff.

What it IS affecting are the vetran players whom are trying to get things like Tier V techs and Tier VI resources. I watched the guild chat as our best dragons were having a difficult time finishing the AROP due to this instant aggro of mobs from far away on an island that is already deadly enough.

My dragon went to fight some arbotus, and I will be damned if every one of them distant-aggroed on the two of us grouped. We had to watch how close we got... but in the end we no longer needed "Dragon's reach" or "prime bolt" to get a mob... or 2 .... or 3.... or OMG RUN! (it must be my deoderant I am wearing). Same with gathering some granite from Drift Point... I mean really... it was like they were standing in an aggro line... I would get one killed and another one would aggro (this random, out of the blue chance happens too often me thinks) and now you have "adds" you didn't want.

We have become the frogs.... but there is a difference... TG didn't turn up the heat to cook us... they turned off the heat... and now all the frogs are complaining that they are no longer comfortable with the changes.

Players were so used to the "I WIN" button for the most part that now, when the highest tiered and teched stuff in the game is now "Nadia or bust" and it will cause many death points to get that coveted teched item... then this is how the game "SHOULD" have been...

If you play PnP AD&D you can't just walk into a store and buy a "Staff of the Magi" off the shelf, or the eye of Veckna (or his hand)... but we have been lead down a primrose path of easy pickings and now the "end game" high end stuff is "difficult to obtain"

This could be good or bad... (mostly bad) as you are going to alienate the vetran hard core playing base of the game. For new players, they will grow up not knowing how hard it was.

Another post had a dragon complaining that there was no bi-ped anvils available for scalecrafting in a certain area of mahagra.. to be reminded that in days of the past, Dragons could not use anvils at all... and could only use the 2 dragon scale forges in the game or the trainer isles for making scales.

From day 1 to this day.... we have molded and shaped the game into "make it easier for us" to offset the constant lag and "missing" features the client has. It is true... we whine, we complain, and we get things that make the game much easier. Now the game is harder...

We lost an entire guild due to the 25, 50, 75 nerf to crafters... that was resinded to 10,20,30... but all of a sudden all of the crafters in Istaria forgot how to make what they had been making. No lore to back it up, nothing... just... You can't do that anymore....

"words of though from a rambling saris"

[Foxfire]

I'll agree with what I think is the thrust of snickel's message here:

The hand that taketh away must also giveth, if it doesn't want to get biteth.

I've been with this games since 6 months pre-go live. What's that, 3 years now? I've casually worked my way to having recently made all 5 of my biped construction schools to level 100, and finished collecting all my master resource forms (minus blighted board, still looking there) because I tried the transmutation route on expert buildings and found it boring. So I figured I'd get as efficient as I could before I really tackled the experts. So here it is, a year later from plan inception, I have good jewelry, good crafting armor, schools leveld. All in good faith that the T6 crafting world would probably get better, or at least stay the same. After all, there's still no master spool forms or resources (minus bonuse).

Well, the carpet has been rudely yanked out from under me, and I don't see a replacing vision. I wandered out to the Thornwood yesterday, pretty sure I was the only one out there. There were 2 trees and 5 Treants. And 30 minutes later there was nothing but 2 trees, since I can't transmute that stuff. No group even close to required to exhaust those resources.

It would have taken me a couple years to finish the way things were, and I would have slowly trudged through it, getting great satisfaction along the way. At the moment, I'm just discouraged. I hate going out to empty fields. I'll probably bounce back after a while and work on my long neglected dragon, but it's not what I wanted to be doing.

Add eye candy (like gilding them in gold or something) to the expert shops that require insane resources. Require double the requirements for a +100 building. But don't make resources an empty chase, I'd rather battle the overwhelming raging sea for one drop of essence than chase the wind for ten.

[tramsan]

Peaches, I have hereby decided that you may no longer use the quote button ever again.

[Helcat]

Good post, Hal. I think I'm more turned off by all the
recent negativity than I am by any of the perceived
"nerfs." Nice to have a little real-world perspective
amidst all the melodrama.

Hang in there gang. Things will look brighter again soon.

[Aamer Khan]

Thank you Hal, for that well thought out and presented response.

It may suprise you to know that most of what you said has been thought to be true, by most of us that are making and posting in these threads. It would have been nice to hear this AS the changes were being decided and implemented.

And your totally right that the Nadia adjustment does not really hurt the Vets at all. I'm totally for seeing her leave all together. Yes, removing many of the mobs from the t5 spawns is a slap to the vets, but really we all have out teched gear already. ( and if we don't what is wrong you us!!! )

But even you admit that it will have the effect of driving off vets, and that this is unavoidable. This alone validates the fears that many have. I guess you're right, that it's just part of any MMO to replace players through the life of the game.

The hardest part to swallow, is that most of us vets are still having fun, and still had things to do. Many of the changes have basically stopped that. Maybe in a couple years, the elders will have their game. In the mean time, we are all supposed to re-roll... correct?

[Kulamata]

Certainly a very nicely written piece. It reflects the genuine concern and dedication of the development group. It also accurately depicts the bush, twig, and grass blade view of the forest.

The embedded assumption, that is not questioned, is that more grind is the measure of more effort and more accomplishment. That the game is improved by now requiring 10,000 mind-numbing repetitions of a simple act for less reward than was previously had for only 7,000 repetitions.

I doubt very much that players are opposed to more reward for more time, or balancing by adding around the supposedly overpowered feature; it is the constant negative approach to "improvement". As said before, you do not add to the game by subtraction.

It does NOT have to be this way; during the time when Chris T was involved, the changes were positive indeed, and the game's business prospects changed for the better. Dragons could go out, and wholeheartedly proclaim Hz a far better game, with a responsive dev group committed to improvements. And they did. And so too with the new players' experience. The new players' comments are very heartening. Both sets of changes additive, both genuine improvements, both justly resulting in increased success for Tulga. And as the Peter Beagle quests evolve and are introduced, I certainly expect similar results.

So, changes can be progressive, and it is the progressive changes that have turned things around.

As a result of the current regressive changes, will crafters go out and spread the good word, as the dragons did? It doesn't seem likely.

[Helcat]

Too bad that theory has been proven false :P

*shakes fist*

Curse you AA0 !!!!!!!!!!!

[Uther Blade]

To summarize, things look very different from the other side. These people are professionals, and it is inherent to every MMO that has ever existed that people become upset at decisions made by the developer staff, no matter how good or bad they may be at their jobs. We're not “boiling the frog� here, it's business as usual for any game out there. Slight reductions in the effectiveness of mining travertine, a resource that for the longest time had to be transmuted, isn't what I would consider a game-ending change. Neither is Nadia, the biggest proponent of coin grind and stifled player-to-player trading ever in Horizons

Slight reductions? Over 100 resourses slightly reduced to 6? hhmm

It's sad to see old players leave, and the growing cynicism before they cancel has always been heartbreaking to me as a player. However, this process is unavoidable in the greater scheme of things, and no matter what game you play you see the exact same behavior, always. The only advice I can give to old players growing tired with the game is to try making a new character and take it in a different direction than your main. There's enough content in the lower levels now that elders re-experiencing Horizons will find a completely new game in New Trismus and Lesser Aradoth. Who knows, maybe by the time you make it through all the lowbie areas some of the exciting new bits of content in the pipeline will already have been pushed to live.

Archebold use to say all the time in game..

I'm here to the end

He was the games biggest defender thru it all.. He never complained.. he made a request... You elude to whinning and compaining.. Arch did this by just flat quiting... Many of us have/are taking advantage of the new content with new toons. But have over 140hrs of strait forward playtime and hundreds of dollars paid to play our "main" toons. We don't want to re-experience some of the old stuff we did before... ie the trials of the gifted, Balit's quest or Kion Militia

I mean seriously, there are about 80 changes in the latest patch notes, an overwhelming number of them completely positive, ripe with new things like flying cargo disks (a player request for some time) and the ever-useful cargo-disk homing device on your map.

This isn't feed back about that. Flying disks and marked on map? a BIG thank you
Hal?.. you said a lot of good stuff.. but you are detracting from the heart of the matter.

If tier VI buildings are suppose to be a marvel?.. then maybe they should have capped availability of the building to the size of the plot?.. or the amount on of expert buildings on any given plot? They can't.. tier VI can not/should not be made a discriminating factor to the Core player base the Veteran player. Tier VI buildings are not a wonder of the world to marvelled at.. they are a goal for all crafters to achieve.. not a carrot to be dangled. It is called progression, or from a business side?.. Retention.

The goal of the Devs is to make a game that succeeds, that requires customer service.. this is a customer service issue, the core of this business is customer service not content. Meet our needs too, not just newbs.

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

Hal`cyon,

I respect your opinion that you believe that things 'had to be done'. So I'll ask you for a factual representation of it, How 'successful' will this game become if TG alienates the vast majority of the masses to the point they cancel and move on?

You of all people should know that this isn't the first time there has been a change to the game that made a lot of people upset. We've had the pawnbroker changes, the mithril alloy change, and my good friend the primary skill debate. Just like those changes, after about a month or so people stop caring, get used to the new system, and continue playing as we patch out new content and try our best to make the game better.

Again, there's nothing new to what's going on here. Even with all the outcry with the mithril and pawnbroker nerf the game has continued to grow, and we've managed a rediculous retention rate for new players at over 50%.

Elder players aren't being forgotton by the staff, it's rediculous to turn your back on your most experienced, dedicated subscribers. One of the biggest changes, Nadia, is in no way targeted at elder players. All tiers of players are going to be encouraged to hunt for their (completely optional and luxurious) components now. If anything a huge money-making opportunity for high-end players will open up in hunting low-tier components and selling them on Aidan or Millicent.

The game has been through a huge amount of bad in the past, and everyone on the dev staff works their ****** off to try and get everything fixed and improved. For every change perceived as a nerf in the patchnotes is accompanied by 20 new improvements. More good things are on the way too, and nearly all of them can be applied to high-level players.

There really isn't more I can say outside of "this is nothing new in the world of MMOs." The recent changes aren't even that devastating as people make them out to be. Very few people seriously undertake tier VI construction (not like it's impossible now anyway, it's going to get easier as the other tier VI resources are introduced.) And now everything on Nadia can be found in the game world. Over time people will get used to these changes, and a better market for technique components will be allowed to grow.

[Varraven]

In the mean time, we are all supposed to re-roll... correct?

I don't think this is what is meant, and I would most certainly hope and think that this is NOT what is intended. Any company that would throw this at its players can just go jump in a lake. I don't spend hour upon hour developing my character(s) only to reroll every time something, some change comes along that really affects my like of the game, or the fun I'm having. That's when I decide for myself if I will continue paying for my subscription, fun or no fun.

Example, in EQ2 I had a high level Fury. Well, about a year ago they "nerfed" the crap out of that class and there was NO FUN whatsoever left, in my opinion, to that class. So -- I rerolled Troubador. I played -- and had fun -- lots of fun. I worked my way back up to the same level as my Fury had been, and what did SoE do? They nerfed the $hit out of that class. What I had found to be fun, and the sole reasons I played the class, were completely taken away. I decided then and there that I was not going to hand any more money over to a company that cared so little about its players to take every ounce of fun away, more than once. (I was not alone in my feelings there.)

Fun is, whether anybody likes it or not, a huge factor for any MMORPG. I'd strongly suggest that this always be considered when making ANY change.

[Seranthor]

You of all people should know that this isn't the first time there has been a change to the game that made a lot of people upset. We've had the pawnbroker changes, the mithril alloy change, and my good friend the primary skill debate.

Quite true, TG has this habit of making changes before thinking about how they will truly affect their playerbase.

Just like those changes, after about a month or so people stop caring, get used to the new system, and continue playing as we patch out new content and try our best to make the game better.

Again, there's nothing new to what's going on here. Even with all the outcry with the mithril and pawnbroker nerf the game has continued to grow, and we've managed a rediculous retention rate for new players at over 50%.

Somehow I question the 'growth' proclaimed and the claimed retention rate. Growth using what baseline? from the absolute edge of bankruptcy? or where? We most definately have NOT grown compared to when I started playing in April 2004.

Elder players aren't being forgotton by the staff, it's rediculous to turn your back on your most experienced, dedicated subscribers.

Forgotten? Probably not because we make too much noise. Ignored? Dismissed out of hand? That I and many others are starting to believe strongly. I agree that its ridiculous for TG to turn their backs on the vets, doesn't mean that it doesnt and isn't happening. Lip Service in many cases does in fact constitute turning your back on folks.

One of the biggest changes, Nadia, is in no way targeted at elder players.

No its targeted at anyone that wants teched items. Frankly its pure arrogance to break the fix without addressing the original issue, but hey, what do I know.

All tiers of players are going to be encouraged to hunt for their (completely optional and luxurious) components now. If anything a huge money-making opportunity for high-end players will open up in hunting low-tier components and selling them on Aidan or Millicent.

You mean yet another way to widen the divide between the haves and havenots? Again it feeds the elitist arrogance of the haves and discourages the havenots.

The game has been through a huge amount of bad in the past, and everyone on the dev staff works their ****** off to try and get everything fixed and improved. For every change perceived as a nerf in the patchnotes is accompanied by 20 new improvements.

I and many of the others do not question the dedication of the devs, we are questioning their logic and judgement. Tell me something, if you have 20 days of sun and on the 21st day you have a horrible thunderstorm roll in and the accompanying tornado rips your house apart are you going to remember the 20 previous sunny days? What do you tell the adjuster when he comes 'Wow I guess that its good I had those 20 previous sunny days, thank you sir may I have another tornado'.

More good things are on the way too, and nearly all of them can be applied to high-level players.

Words mean nothing in the HZ world, actions are where its at. Too often we've had someone try and blow sunshine up our &*^% and its turned out to be nothing.

There really isn't more I can say outside of "this is nothing new in the world of MMOs." The recent changes aren't even that devastating as people make them out to be. Very few people seriously undertake tier VI construction (not like it's impossible now anyway, it's going to get easier as the other tier VI resources are introduced.)

I'm glad you have that kind of faith, but faith alone doesn't feed the bulldog.

And now everything on Nadia can be found in the game world. Over time people will get used to these changes, and a better market for technique components will be allowed to grow.

I'm glad you feel there is nothing wrong with the situation, but my friend you ARE in the minority on this.

[Lumineux]

Wait, techs are "optional and luxurious" now?


What was all that a while back where higher level mobs were all scaled up to "match players abilities in teched-out gear."

Oh, right. Hunting 20 levels below you (Variable, depending on which unbalanced class you pick) was probibly the intended design.


EDIT: I'm not particularly angry about Nadia, other than the previously mentioned fact that she was effectivly "removed" without fixing what she was brought in to patch in the first place.