How to walk a tightrope without falling off...

[Tryagain]

Rainbow from the bottom of my little unenligthened heart...

A BLOODY MEN

Well said.

[Shaw Moking]

"Another player and I smashed 3 blight anchors near the marble and yew fields.Â** Watched the broken WA forces flee in terror and the blighted resource fields spawn clean nodes once the blighted nodes were mined away."

now THIS is what I have been waiting for.

...'just give me a reason, for me to get even...'
- Winnebago Deal.

[Fhrain]

"Another player and I smashed 3 blight anchors near the marble and yew fields. Watched the broken WA forces flee in terror and the blighted resource fields spawn clean nodes once the blighted nodes were mined away."

now THIS is what I have been waiting for.

...'just give me a reason, for me to get even...'
- Winnebago Deal.

Time to hunt bro, bring yer axe and I`ll get the Strike Team ^^

[Aamer Khan]

Let me clarify a few things here.

( takes off Herald hat, pulls off gauntlets )

First off, Vito... I respect what you say as a friend. I also believe that you may have misunderstood my intent. I created this character 348 days ago and have been ingame 136 days 9 hours total. Yes, I've seen it all too. Have been affected by everything that happens either personally or because it affected my guild members. I have lost well over 50 members because of these problems. Some of these losses were very painful to me and left a mark. To think I'm not aware is to judge me as a blind follower of the AE gospel. You should ask Amon or even David if I like everything they do. We are indeed loosing player base, we are in a precarious place. Will acknowledgement of these problems in a board post actually serve to make the player base feel better or worse? Do you think that AE is unaware of the problems?

Much like AA0 said, I do not "worhip" AE... Just like the game and want to see it succeed. Lamenting about it's remaining problems only gives those that are bitter a way to vent. Try... your not unenlightened, just one sided. Rainbow .... I agree that players are leaving. It has me worried too. But things are OUT of balance. If we as the player base, continue to maintain "balance" and keep harping on the negatives, are we going to make the new players want to continue to play or run away screaming? AE needs to make money to keep the game going. They are the ones working the code. They KNOW what needs to be fixed. New players on the other hand, come here to find other players that share their enthusiasm. Do you believe they are helped to stay by having problems they are totally unaware of forced into view for the sake of "balance"?

And before you say the new players NEED to be informed, let me ask you ... Were YOU fully informed when you started? Didn't others let you figure out some of these things on your own? And do you view each and every "problem" this game has exactly like everyone else? An example is the health bar issue... it affects some and not others. This is important to know, especially if your a high level player... Never heard of a newbie having that problem. But if I were to go on and on about it on the boards, complaining how AE really screwed up and this must be fixed NOW, you think new players would not believe it affects them too? ( even though it doesn't )

In my first post I clearly outlined why AE does what they do. I dont care what happend the first 9 months. What is happening now, however belated, is what keeps me here and lets me have fun. I am trying to help new players choose for themselves, not force a view.

If tryagain is representative of the entire player base ... we are in trouble.

( puts Herald hat back on... )

[Vito]

I have been a fan of this game since the date of release. The concept is solid and the screamers and flamers that demanded delivery of each and every thing show on the game box to me were screaming to hear themselves scream.

Perhaps everyone has a limit to patience and mine has come. I have many friends in this game that will be sorely missed. I do agree that venting here serves no useful purpose and will refrain from doing so in the future.

You see there is no WoW or EQ2 for me as I have no interest in either. My love is for THIS game and noone wants it to succeed more than I do! I sincerely hope it does and brings the dynamic gaming experience that each and every player so richly deserves.

[Kulamata]

Aamer I am generally sympathetic to the points raised in your original post. However, slowing down the game to retain players was either a terrible idea, or terribly executed. Or both.

I know monumental efforts to improve the game have been made by AE, in order to retain and attract players. And in general, the changes were made according to plan, without too many errors.

Since players are leaving, the only conclusion is that theplan was misguided. And I am very sorry that that is so.

[Phillip]

Aamer,

as much as i like for HZ to strive, sometimes i can't help but think about this: what if next week, i come on this board, to find a thread by DB that it is game over?

then i thought of the things that's justifiable reasons for the shut down and, well, they hold their weight.

it's like being on the wrong side, knowing you're going to get beaten, and just hanging on.

[Helcat]

Repeating:

Players are currently leaving for one reason only:


There are new products out, and adventurers crave
the adrenaline rush of a 'fresh' world to play in.


It really is as simple as that.

[Helcat]

This is a rough time for AE for that simple reason.
You have EQII and WoW offering a fresh new
experience, and nothing substantial to look
forward to in Horizons until Ancient RoP and the
raising ofthe level cap, which if current rumour holds
true, won't be until after the New Year.

[Rainbow]

Aamer, I play on Unity and tonight as I looked up at your tight rope walking man with Uncle Tom Cobbley and all balanced precariously on his shoulders and saw him do a big wobble.

I wondered actually if maybe he was trying to carry too many folk and his load was too big to bear.

I saw that others in the audience got a bit cheesed off by his continual wobbling and left the big top grumbling as they went that he wasn't that good and that the tight rope man in the next circus didn't wobble half as much so must be a lot better.

And even if the Europeans had all posted threads tonight blooming with roses and rainbows, the new player trying to access the game this evening would have thought they were either all bonkers or all fibbers.

Yes, I did read the good and bad thoughts on Horizons when I considered buying it. There were extremes of both and neither swayed me to buy or not buy the game, but armed me either with excitement of what I may expect, or knowledge of the bugs that may affect me.

I hope that there is still time and that there will be enough finances to give us what I believe that we both wish for...... a functional and enjoyable game of Horizons.

Rainbow

[Pharcellus]

Everyone has their own take on the situation. Some are all positive, some are all negative, many are somewhere in-between. Generally, you can take the extremes and simply distill out their irrelevancies, but generally everyone has a reason for saying what they do, good or bad.

I tend to be close to the all-negative camp. Why? Because I am a firm believer in the principle "stupid should hurt". When someone makes bad choices that they KNEW were bad, then they deserve everything they get that is bad. That is what gives them the most incentive to NOT REPEAT THEM. Also, ignoring commonly-known and widely-accepted conventional wisdom is tantamount to stupidity, but in reality is still only ignorance. However, I still treat it similarly, because we are all taught in childhood to learn from others' mistakes and NOT REPEAT THEM.

That said, I do give credit where it is due, but not all of the "credit" I give is verbal. Thus, even though I do give verbal thanks and kudos when something is done correctly or well, I do spend a lot of my time harping on something or other. However, I still pay for two accounts (want to pay for three, but since "Add CDkey to Account" is no longer an option, I can't), and that is my nonverbal support. I pay to help their livelihoods, EVEN THOUGH I am still whipping them in public. In all truth, that subscription fee is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than all the words typed by all the fanbois in the forums. That's my support for what they have done right.

There is the problem of having to test your product using beta testers who will feel that you owe them something beyond the normal customer... ( even though they are not "customers" because they have never paid a dime )

I was a beta tester, but I NEVER felt like they "owed" me anything. Quite the opposite; I owed THEM to help make the game better. I hope I held up my end of the bargain (I and my good RL friends submitted a couple hundred bug reports together). However, as a long-standing paying customer, they owe me plenty.

80 feet up, the spotlight shows one man walking the tightrope with a long pole in his hands. On his shoulders, is another man, with a woman on each arm, on top of them is three children. The one in the middle is juggling. The one on the bottom is talking th ethe crowd below and is informing them of their progress, and what it takes to walk tightropes. ( this is what AE is doing now )

You forgot to mention that the kid juggling has already dropped all but one of the balls, two of the kids and one of the adults has been dropped already (layoffs), and the guy on the bottom has been telling the audience that this is all normal and that tigers, elephants, and flaming torch jugglers will be added by the time he gets to the other side (and has been saying so since before he stepped out onto the tightrope). Further, while in the middle of his act, two aerial acrobats swung in out of the blue and attached stabilizing safety wires to him to keep him from falling off the rope completely.

What a sour little man...

Tryagain, you get booted from the midgets union?

Which is a fine example of ad hominem, if I do say so myself. Can't accept that people have differing and valid opinions that are contrary to your own, so you have to resort to attacking them. How, exactly, does that help validate your take on things?

I thought it was Tulga games now anyway that the offices have been relocated and all former employees of AE have had their identities changed.

Tulga doesn't own Horizons yet. In fact, they took the Horizons logo and link off of their "website", because it hasn't passed court muster yet (ie, it was premature).

Tryagain, there is a difference between looking on the good positive side of things, and just focussing on the bad things like you are.

The first few months, I don't think anybody could figure out what the hell AE was doing. Lets take a look at the last 3 months and see what has happened to the game, the engine and such.
There is massive server improvement, much more stable and lag free now compared to before. The client fps are better and CTDs are generally less with the exception of a few specific issues. The game play is much more complete, you can not say that isn't a massive change.

AE might have screwed around the first 9 months, but in the last 3 there have been massive improvements coming out at an incredible rate for just a small team of devs.

1) There has been more server downtime in the last 3 months than in all the previous 9 months combined.
2) My fps has not improved reliably, and the memory mismanagement issue kills the game performance much faster than it had in the past.
3) CTDs have been rampant for months. Trade window, plot construction, porting crashes; you name it. MANY more crashed since the merger than before.
4) Complete? In what way? I don't see it. Quests are still missing/broken, endgame is still not there. The only thing that has been added is more high-level content and massive boosts to XP output that allows people to level to cap in weeks instead of months. I'd argue that the game is LESS complete for one that fact alone, let alone for Monks, Dragons, etc.

I can't go for the "massive improvements" qualification myself, and there have been MASSIVE problems introduced as a result of most of the changes.

You also forget that a lot of the stuff that has been coming out since June was already in the pipe and needed to be finished. Yes, they have put out a lot of changes, but a lot of what they put out has been shallow in terms of its quality, and needs quite a bit of "adjustment" still.

Your post is completely negative, you focus only on whats wrong and nothing that is right or going well. You are a troll.

Like focusing on what is wrong invalidates what is said. Get real. I'll just lump you with Aamer in the "can't debate without resorting to personal attacks group". Woops! You are already there, my mistake! [:P]

To think I'm not aware is to judge me as a blind follower of the AE gospel. You should ask Amon or even David if I like everything they do. We are indeed loosing player base, we are in a precarious place. Will acknowledgement of these problems in a board post actually serve to make the player base feel better or worse? Do you think that AE is unaware of the problems?

As a "Shard Herald", and see you post in recognition and support of the positive on one hand, then chastise and name-call someone else who posts in recognition of the negative PAINTS you as a "blind follower of the AE gospel". That's what a zealot does. It is not a balanced view of things at all. The fact that there are those who recognize the bad and are willing to be brave enough to post about it makes me feel better, since I KNOW FOR A FACT that AE IS unaware of many of the problems, even when they are posted to the support site and to the forums, even today.

"Yes men" serve little to no purpose; they don't get problems fixed, and the zealots among them actually can prevent problems from getting fixed. Fact of life in business.

Much like AA0 said, I do not "worhip" AE... Just like the game and want to see it succeed. Lamenting about it's remaining problems only gives those that are bitter a way to vent.

I don't worship AE, I like the game, and want to see it succeed. Why would you consider my take on things any less valid than yours, especially enough to call someone names over it? Sure, at times I vent; other times, I repeat something until it is fixed, because I KNOW that often it is the only way it gets fixed. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, or the hammer.

Try... your not unenlightened, just one sided. Rainbow .... I agree that players are leaving. It has me worried too.

..and you're not one-sided? [:|]

But things are OUT of balance. If we as the player base, continue to maintain "balance" and keep harping on the negatives, are we going to make the new players want to continue to play or run away screaming? AE needs to make money to keep the game going. They are the ones working the code. They KNOW what needs to be fixed. New players on the other hand, come here to find other players that share their enthusiasm. Do you believe they are helped to stay by having problems they are totally unaware of forced into view for the sake of "balance"?

No one I know of has ever based their decision to stay OR leave the game based on what is said by ANYONE, positive or negative, in the forums. You don't give much credit to people who make their choice based on the gameplay itself. Granted, someone who is curious about the game coming to the forums to see how it is may be influenced, but that would be like blaming movie critics for the success/failure of some movies. It is not a significant contributor in the "bigger picture".

If tryagain is representative of the entire player base ... we are in trouble.

No one person is representative of an entire playerbase. Thank the heavens for that.

Players are currently leaving for one reason only:

There are new products out, and adventurers crave
the adrenaline rush of a 'fresh' world to play in.

It really is as simple as that.

No, it is never "as really simple as that". Friends and guildmates in the game have quit recently for many different reasons; that I know for a fact.

[ThunderZtorm]

The European tightrope walker seems to have stepped a bit beside the rope in the last few days..

A lot of people seems to be unable or unwilling to watch him fall down and break something. Actually, the european circus arena is almost empty the few hours a day it's open for spectators..

[Xante]

Nice said Pharcellus :)

I would like to add the following ...

Yes the game isn`t anywhere near perfect .. But in the end I think we all do understand that mistakes (bugs) will be in a game or will occur And I am sure that many players will have sympathy for it .... but the problem why the frustration and by some probabely anger is becomeing stronger and stronger is in the LACK OF COMMUNICATIONS....

What happens on the shards (Unity for me)? No idea ..
Why are we so often online ? No idea...
Where is the World Master ? No Idea ...
When will the vault become small again ? No idea (till I read a post from nords that DB siad on IRC it is tuesday)
Which Patch will we receive when ? No idea ...
Are the programmers busy with fixing the high priority problems ? No Idea ...
What are the High priority things for the moment for them ? No Idea ...
When Will harvest event take place ? No idea ...

Personnally I think that AE and GN really need to start thinking that not only the make the game good or let it survive, the players do too... just the same that he players can`t do a thing without the programmers/devs... it is a relationship.. but in my opinion I do not see a relationship for the moment ..

Why has luca not posted a thing for almost 2 weeks ? Yes he can be on holiday or ill... but i am sure that he is not the only one at GN .. No communication at all and that while the game has crashed several times .. not just for a half hour or so (for which I would have sympathy) but for up to 12h !!!
For such big issues with the game, the players do not get any infortmation nor explenation (if it was possible to give) nor any excuses...


I really would like to see that somehow AE & GN (and who knows the staff here can help us with it) to increase the communication between programmers and playerbase. It does not take much .. even if it is only to put for example the contents of patches for unity in the news section a bit in advance .... it is a simple start for GN and AE. And I am sure that with small steps they undertake to communicate with the playerbase, more people will be more constructive towards themand play the game with much more sympathy if something does go wrong

but without seeing steps from them regarding communication, I think there will be less and less sympathy when things do go wrong ..

[Helcat]

No, it is never "as really simple as that". Friends and guildmates in the game have quit recently for many different reasons; that I know for a fact.

Well, of course Maltavorn, there will always be a
scattered sampling of players who leave for other
reasons, real life issues, etc...

but to denythe fundamentalreason players leave ANY
established game -- to seek the adrenaline rush of a
'fresher' gaming experience elsewhere --suggests a
personal agenda. <shrugs>

And yes, it is often 'as simple in that' in life... and in gaming.
One can ascribe an infinite number of secondary or
tertiery reasons why certain people might leave Horizons,
but the simple, fundamental truth explains it quite well.

[Dangit NotAChance]

We done?

good. We all feel better? Good.


Fair warning. to those who have created multiple forums accounts just to troll and cause arguements, its grounds for getting banned from the boards.


I now return you to your regularly scheduled sludgefest.