Perfekt 10 - Warning: Long Post

[Lektronik]

At the request of Means, I am providing this list of ideas that I feel need or could be done to improve AO. I welcome serious comments to this thread. Please keep trolling and flaming to a minimum. This is a chance for the community to weigh in on more important matters of the game.

If you are a fanboy, fine. But please keep comments such as "I never get spammed but then I don't have OOC active either" to yourself.

Means, I ask that should there be any well-known fanboys commenting against FC here, to please allow them to keep their fanboy status. Even they don't like all FC has to offer, they just can't bring themselves to say it most of the time.


THIS LIST IS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER OF IMPORTANCE. IT MAY BE EDITED BY ME IF I SEE THAT SOMETHING LISTED IS TAKEN A DIFFERENT WAY THAN I ANTICIPATED. THAT SAID, IF I DID PRIORITIZE THE LIST, I WOULD LIKE TO SEE 1 AND 2 AS TOP PRIORITY.

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BEHOLD:

1) Fix /ignore on RK1. It's one thing to be spammed while trying to help noobs in OOC. It's another thing entirely to not be able to do anything about it. 3+ years of being defenseless against credit spammers makes you (FC) as guilty as they are.


2) Give us chat filters so that we can filter out spammers on our own. This would also lead to less petitions for you. Make it so that we can add keywords that we want filtered out. Text matching this would force the entire entry to be null and not visible. Thanks to Aramsunat for this idea.

Side note: The ability to right-click a name in the chat window and select "/ignore" is great. However, the whole thing is pointless to RK1 if you don't fix /ignore.


3) Fix the naming bot on RK1. It's the small things that count.


4) Please use a bit more intelligence when balancing professions. Means seems to be smarter than his predecessor but we still see problem professions being treated poorly. (Shades for example.) Stop being afraid of considerable changes to a profession.

Even if it means placing the proposed changes on the test server for a 3-5 months before acting on it...just do it. And treat professions equally. FC has a history of changing lovechild professions throughout time, perhaps in an effort to have people rolling new professions all the time. This scheme only serves to piss off the hatechilds. Scars do not heal easily (if at all) and the hate built is toward FC, not toward the hatechild profession.

5) Make the new graphics engine a priority (just under priority of suggestions 1 and 2). You are supposedly working on this major overhaul of a large portion of the game technology. It seems logical to me that this is bound to have some effect on sync, lag, and other bugs (such as the health bar bug in team windows). For good or worse, no one knows...but it seems pointless to bother with sync/lag as a serious goal until this new engine is in place.


6) Fix sync issues and lag that are due to connection and ISP related issues.


7) Stop being cruel to neutrals. Despite what the trolls think, being neutral is a decision that should be respected equally. Why should FC punish people for that decision? Are we less of a human being because we choose not to take sides in a war? Certainly not.

What does this mean for you? Well, the thing I see most holding neutrals back is a token board of equal value to the sided token boards. Give us "Token boards of Goodwill". Standard missions can be done on the pretense that they are of goodwill and not beneficial to a side in the war. Also, make certain sided buffing armors also be usable by neutrals. I'm sure there are other good examples of what can done for neutrals in these forums.


8) Stop changing small things and ignoring big things. For example, adding a 5 second lockout to the treatment terminal should not be anywhere near a priority list.


9) Give shades and keepers access to alien content in the beginner levels by means of the AI island. This can be accomplished by providing a key to use a whompa (one-time use only) in the SL noob grounds that would warp to the AI island. I would make sure there was a dialog box making noobs aware that this is only a one-time trip.


10) Shiny new items are great. But please make them look halfway decent. {Edited by Layyne: Getting your point across usually works better without the unnecessary homophobic comments.}


******
As far as the tone of this post. I'm trying to convey a neutral, but for-real tone. Please do not take anything mentioned in this post as an insult as I am not trying to make insults here.
******

[Sephiroth56]

3) Fix the naming bot on RK1. It's the small things that count.

8) Stop changing small things and ignoring big things.

Yes.

[Technogen]

1.) "fix /ignore" This should be fixed with the new right click ignore option. I'm sure means can confirm that for you.

3.) Not sure what's wrong with naming bot can you be more exact on this? I am able to change my 1st and last name.

5 and 6 they are moving over to a new host (something that's cost expensive for them to do as they have to have servers online in both places) and Enno has come back to the dev team to work on the engine. You can see this in the credits page on www.anarchy-online.com

7.) Means in the 20th FWM has addressed that he will look into balancing Neutrals a bit more.

8.) Fixing the small things needs to be done and are much easier to do. Odds are if its a big thing its not as easy to fix as it appears to be.

9.) I 100% agree.

10.) I uh... not even sure what to say about that, it seems to be a personal preference on the weaponry look, I personally dont see anything "gay" about the weapons.

*edit*

And as Seph said, make up your mind :P

Second edit

To save you time from hunting all over AO's site because I'm sure you're bound to complain that it's not at the top of the page. A Link to AO's Credits. Programmers: Enno Rehling, Sjur Helland, Michael Bentsen

[Lektronik]

*edit*

And as Seph said, make up your mind :P

I figured someone would comment on that. However, if they fix /ignore it should more than likely fix the name bot as well as the issue I believe is with the character id on both accounts. So technically the name bot isn't a "small thing" but I was just trying to be nice.

As far as name bot being broken and you not having any problems. If your toon is over 3 years old, then you probably won't have problems. But any toon created after that character id problem 3 years ago will not be able to get name changes by the bot. This of course seems to only apply to RK1. RK2 and 3 do not have the negative character id problem that RK1 has.

[Ayria]

Yes.

Lol, me thinks that counts as a self own.

[Technogen]

I figured someone would comment on that. However, if they fix /ignore it should more than likely fix the name bot as well as the issue I believe is with the character id on both accounts. So technically the name bot isn't a "small thing" but I was just trying to be nice.

As far as name bot being broken and you not having any problems. If your toon is over 3 years old, then you probably won't have problems. But any toon created after that character id problem 3 years ago will not be able to get name changes by the bot. This of course seems to only apply to RK1. RK2 and 3 do not have the negative character id problem that RK1 has.

Then yes, its been fixed.

That aside, you didn't list any of the "Big things" could you give some examples please.

[Lektronik]

Then yes, its been fixed.

That aside, you didn't list any of the "Big things" could you give some examples please.

I consider being harassed by credit spammers/emo kids and having nothing that I can do about it a "big thing". I consider sync issues a big thing. I consider poor treatment of certain professions and sides a big thing.

When I'm running around in borealis being spammed like mad by credit spammers and I read that they add a 5 second lockout timer to a treatment terminal when they've had /ignore broken for 3 years and they don't even bother to take a self-initiative to deal with the spam...I consider that a big thing.

That said, if they are fixing /ignore in the next patch...GREAT!!

Just keep in mind how long it took to get this fixed.

[boggengie]

The problem with /ignore isn't something that a coder could fix in hours or even days, in fact, truly fixing it, by changing the integer type, is probably impossible without a whole lot of code rewriting. The char IDs are going to be used all over the code, everything from chat, lft, zoning, char creation, city shop terminals, etc, etc, etc.

The change to surgery clinics(which aren't meant for buffing anyway) probably took little time. Likely Means had to put it on the list, a coder said "it's doable", and implemented it in an afternoon, final testing on testserver again would be less than a day.

They just don't compare. A massive rewrite of code that's embedded throughout the game, would probably be more work than the game engine rewrite. As coders find workarounds that make thing like /ignore work, expect fixes, but don't expect them fast.
on credit spamming, I think it would be better to implement a way to automatically kick the spammers, 1. use filters to catch the easy ones, both on keywords, and the once a minute spam pattern.
2. Put in a bot for us to forward spams to, besides petitioning, where enough reports result in automatic kicking of the spammer. Yes this could be abused, but the logs could be reviewed once a day or something, and people reporting non spammers could be subject to suspension or something.
This wouldn't let you ignore the emo kids any easier, but it would help not having new players flooded with spams and quitting before they even know /ignore exists.

[lazarus]

so perfekt, you have a neut shade?

[pharmguy]

i cant give a new character and first or last name on RK2 so something is wrong with it and i did /bug to report it a couple weeks ago. Though i can change some of my other characters names.

[ninor]

moved to extra 10 thread

[Ocene]

1) Fix /ignore on RK1. It's one thing to be spammed while trying to help noobs in OOC. It's another thing entirely to not be able to do anything about it. 3+ years of being defenseless against credit spammers makes you (FC) as guilty as they are.

Hmm.. ok.

2) Give us chat filters so that we can filter out spammers on our own. This would also lead to less petitions for you. Make it so that we can add keywords that we want filtered out. Text matching this would force the entire entry to be null and not visible. Thanks to Aramsunat for this idea.

Side note: The ability to right-click a name in the chat window and select "/ignore" is great. However, the whole thing is pointless to RK1 if you don't fix /ignore.

Hmmm.. ok. Shouldn't this somehow be merged with suggestion number 1? How can 2 suggestions out of 10 be about filtering and spamming. Condense your proposal in 1, and suggest something else here.
I mean, the game has deeper issues than what goes on in OOC.

3) Fix the naming bot on RK1. It's the small things that count.

How is this a gaming issue.

4) Please use a bit more intelligence when balancing professions. Means seems to be smarter than his predecessor but we still see problem professions being treated poorly. (Shades for example.) Stop being afraid of considerable changes to a profession.

Even if it means placing the proposed changes on the test server for a 3-5 months before acting on it...just do it. And treat professions equally. FC has a history of changing lovechild professions throughout time, perhaps in an effort to have people rolling new professions all the time. This scheme only serves to piss off the hatechilds. Scars do not heal easily (if at all) and the hate built is toward FC, not toward the hatechild profession.

You should remain generic and not give examples, cause even if you do, it's just one among many. For many people Shades are not treated poorly, everyone and their moms on RK2 is rolling trox shades for BS and duelling.

5) Make the new graphics engine a priority (just under priority of suggestions 1 and 2). You are supposedly working on this major overhaul of a large portion of the game technology. It seems logical to me that this is bound to have some effect on sync, lag, and other bugs (such as the health bar bug in team windows). For good or worse, no one knows...but it seems pointless to bother with sync/lag as a serious goal until this new engine is in place.

YES!

6) Fix sync issues and lag that are due to connection and ISP related issues.

Yep.

7) Stop being cruel to neutrals. Despite what the trolls think, being neutral is a decision that should be respected equally. Why should FC punish people for that decision? Are we less of a human being because we choose not to take sides in a war? Certainly not.

What does this mean for you? Well, the thing I see most holding neutrals back is a token board of equal value to the sided token boards. Give us "Token boards of Goodwill". Standard missions can be done on the pretense that they are of goodwill and not beneficial to a side in the war. Also, make certain sided buffing armors also be usable by neutrals. I'm sure there are other good examples of what can done for neutrals in these forums.

Sure, why not. I have nothing against Neuts getting some gear. However, Neutrals willing to fight should have their own entrance in BS. All of this hypocrisy about choosing a side at will ain't good.

8) Stop changing small things and ignoring big things. For example, adding a 5 second lockout to the treatment terminal should not be anywhere near a priority list.

You just said in bullet number 3 that it's the small things that count.

What surprises me, is that out of 10 suggestions for change, you just wasted one on something like that.

9) Give shades and keepers access to alien content in the beginner levels by means of the AI island. This can be accomplished by providing a key to use a whompa (one-time use only) in the SL noob grounds that would warp to the AI island. I would make sure there was a dialog box making noobs aware that this is only a one-time trip.

This is not bad, but it's not complete. There's no real AI content between level 151, and level 179. And no, LE mishes are not what I would consider AI content.
I'd like to see a Arid Rift/S10 like location provided for those levels.

10) Shiny new items are great. But please make them look halfway decent. There are too many dildos in-game at the moment. And poor shades, they get chopsticks in one hand and a canopener in the other. Tell the designers that if they choose to be gay so be it (not saying that any of them are) but that gays are a minority and most of us do not like big macho trox running around in tutus and dildos. We'll respect their decision, they respect ours. Majority rules though. Their designs should reflect science fiction and sleek design. Not bright blue sticks with a bulb on the end and not rotating showerheads....as an example.

How is this a game suggestion? Looks more like a shade whine about the skin of a weapon.

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I'm quite disappointed by this list.

Seems to me that you had a unique opportunity to make a point to the game director, but failed to raise the right issues. Issues should not be about the color or the shape of your neut shade's weapon. Or, who cares about the treatment lab being locked to 5 secs (actually Keepers do, but real issue is that the cost of their nanos should be substantially reduced).

I was hoping to see more global suggestions, suggestions that have a positive impact on the game experience for everybody.

For example: make Notum Wars more appealing to people, with less waiting, more fighting and fun.
Or, create several themes for Battlestations.
Or, fix some basic game mechanics as it's seriously imbalancing TL5.
Or, provide true alternatives for some professions in terms of weapons. Introduce new alternatives such as flamethrowers, and true Grenades, heavy weapons. Fix AS, or other specials so they are equally viable, adjust defenses in concequence, etc.
Or, allow control profs to have a much stronger control on their pets. Increase pet defenses, HP, and pathing, and make them a lot more resistant to debuffs.
Or, fix the insane runspeed that people get, a TL5 with 3K RS is just insane.


etc.

[zartosht]

Seems to me that you had a unique opportunity to make a point to the game director, but failed to raise the right issues.

This whole business whereby Means singles out players that are extremely vocal, aggressive and insulting and offers them to name things after them (after they have apologized) or makes them the spokesperson of the entire community is very disturbing.

First, it sends the wrong message about their initial behavior. Second, it undermines the established and regular communication channels and those taking part in them, thereby creating uncertainty about what the priorities are. Third, it is unfair to a lot of other players and posters who have made numerous, regular and constructive suggestions and contributions. Fourth, there is no consistency since a fellow engineer got hammered for the same behavior that got others to fame.

The ambiance created by our GD's fire-posting is also weird. You never know if he is going to come and praise you, flame you or even worse ignore you. Yes since he posts so much, not having a reply by Means can be perceived as the ultimate negative (edit: guess who is never going to be replied to now!).

A leader can be cool but he should know to keep some distance as well.

On the positive side, at least we know that he is reading the forums.

[kickboxer74]

This whole business whereby Means singles out players that are extremely vocal, aggressive and insulting and offers them to name things after them (after they have apologized) or makes them the spokesperson of the entire community is very disturbing.

Not at all, IMHO. Means & Co listens to all and I think they are reasonable enough to filter out the nonsense, no matter how high you shout or how low you may whisper your suggestions.

Look at it as psychology lesson 1a, a schoolbook example, rather.

* If you have a noisy kid that disturbs the rest of the pupils and the teacher's lesson in a primary school class, this is one good way of taking care of the "problem".

While sitting in his chair in the class room, the noisy kid will be shouting smart remarks, pulling the girls in the hair and keep disturbing while the teacher is standing by the master's desk/pulpit asking general questions to class.

But, if you take the noisy kid from his chair, let him stand all alone by the pulpit in front of the class and the teacher will ask questions directly to the "distubing kid", you will in many cases see that the bad mood and agressiveness very often disappears. The kid's bad behaviour is often, not always, turned around into something better. Sure the answers you get may not always be the smartest, but the kid at least isn't disturbing the class to the same extent as before...

However, I'm not talking directly about the OP now, but about the psychological phenomenon.

Class dismissed.

[Lektronik]

Hmm.. ok.


Hmmm.. ok. Shouldn't this somehow be merged with suggestion number 1? How can 2 suggestions out of 10 be about filtering and spamming. Condense your proposal in 1, and suggest something else here.
I mean, the game has deeper issues than what goes on in OOC.

Suggestion 1 deals with a broken /ignore system that allows for harassment that extends beyond credit spam. Suggestion 2 provides a way to deal with spam specifically. These are 2 different suggestions.

How is this a gaming issue.

Isn't it a part of the game? Seems like that in itself would make it a gaming issue.

You should remain generic and not give examples, cause even if you do, it's just one among many. For many people Shades are not treated poorly, everyone and their moms on RK2 is rolling trox shades for BS and duelling.

I was remaining generic. Providing examples does not make me biased toward specific professions. I personally do not have a shade. I don't want one for reasons other than because of how they are treated.

Sure, why not. I have nothing against Neuts getting some gear. However, Neutrals willing to fight should have their own entrance in BS. All of this hypocrisy about choosing a side at will ain't good.

I can agree with this.

You just said in bullet number 3 that it's the small things that count.

I love how everyone points that out because it shows they failed to read the forth post down.

The naming bot is not a small issue. It's tied in with the /ignore problem. It is a minor inconvenience but a big issue.

How is this a game suggestion? Looks more like a shade whine about the skin of a weapon.

Shades have weapons resembling a rotating showerhead? And a stick with a bulb on the end...that's agents is it not?

You are trying to make it seem as if I'm partial to shades but I do not have one nor do I care for one. For dd, I have a soldier and an MA. I'm very content with my MA over a shade.

I'm quite disappointed by this list.

Seems to me that you had a unique opportunity to make a point to the game director, but failed to raise the right issues.

I raised issues that I felt were broken and needed fixing as well as issues that would improve the atmosphere of the game. I'm sorry that you do not approve. You are welcome to create your own "Ocene10" list if you like...no one is holding you back.

[Lektronik]

This whole business whereby Means singles out players that are extremely vocal, aggressive and insulting and offers them to name things after them (after they have apologized) or makes them the spokesperson of the entire community is very disturbing.

First, it sends the wrong message about their initial behavior. Second, it undermines the established and regular communication channels and those taking part in them, thereby creating uncertainty about what the priorities are. Third, it is unfair to a lot of other players and posters who have made numerous, regular and constructive suggestions and contributions. Fourth, there is no consistency since a fellow engineer got hammered for the same behavior that got others to fame.

The ambiance created by our GD's fire-posting is also weird. You never know if he is going to come and praise you, flame you or even worse ignore you. Yes since he posts so much, not having a reply by Means can be perceived as the ultimate negative (edit: guess who is never going to be replied to now!).

A leader can be cool but he should know to keep some distance as well.

On the positive side, at least we know that he is reading the forums.

I definitely understand your concern. He does need to be careful with his communications because he is the game director. However, I feel that his request of me was appropriate. He's trying to find out what is buggin me, even if there was an ulterior motive. He said I could PM this to him instead of putting it on the forums if I like but I chose to post here.

I wanted community involvement because my voice alone can't be heard in a sea of others.

As long as he keeps insults away from those not asking for it he should be ok. Being active in the forum community I think is a big plus for him.

[Aeliniyah]

About your topic number1, the ignore function. I don't really get it how that is such a big deal. I've played AO for a little over 3 years only, but during that time i've used ignore function twice i think. That "huge" problem with cred spammers some people seem to have has never bothered me either. I guess i have some automatic ignore function integrated in my eyes or something but i have no difficulties whatsoever to skip a few lines of text when i see some "buy credz naww" type of crap in ooc or shopping. And yes i have both OOC and shopping 1-50 enabled at all times. Some times in borealis or other crowded areas that gets a bit annoying, but it still doesn't bother me enough to even ignore the spammer. And since means allready said that in the future we'll be able to right-click ignore straight from chat, that fixes it already imho.

Usually the people who claim that they have 200+ people on ignore etc are actually the kind of ***holes that i might consider ignoring myself. Usually if you are polite in teams and to other people in general there's no need to ignore anyone anyway. And on the other hand if you treat everyone like a pile of crap and are generally annoying and whiny, i'm sure other people will react to you the same way. Sometimes it's good to look in the mirror too.

Oh well, i do agree that if you ignore someone, that person should stay ignored untill you unignore him. So if that function is really borked it should be fixed. But anyway i don't see it as gamebreaking thing at all. It's one of the small things imho. And that extends to any functions in a game. If there is some function that doesn't work like intended, it should get fixed.

About your other points, i mostly agree. And i certainly agree that the sync issues and lag should be a high priority, right after the new engine, which should be priority number one!

[Lektronik]

About your topic number1, the ignore function. I don't really get it how that is such a big deal. I've played AO for a little over 3 years only, but during that time i've used ignore function twice i think.

Usually the people who claim that they have 200+ people on ignore etc are actually the kind of ***holes that i might consider ignoring myself.

On the same thought as that, usually the same people who claim to have played for several years but only found the need to use /ignore twice (as an example - not a direct attack at you) are the same people who let people run over them without defending themselves.

I personally don't use /ignore a whole lot but I have found the need to use it a whole lot more than twice. When I do /ignore someone it's because they were an absolute and intentional a$$hat that was doing some very serious harassment to me/my teammates/orgmates.

When I ignore these people, I want them permanently ignored because they are literal scum.

[nijushio]

...

For example: make Notum Wars more appealing to people, with less waiting, more fighting and fun.
Or, create several themes for Battlestations.
Or, fix some basic game mechanics as it's seriously imbalancing TL5.
Or, provide true alternatives for some professions in terms of weapons. Introduce new alternatives such as flamethrowers, and true Grenades, heavy weapons. Fix AS, or other specials so they are equally viable, adjust defenses in concequence, etc.
Or, allow control profs to have a much stronger control on their pets. Increase pet defenses, HP, and pathing, and make them a lot more resistant to debuffs.
Or, fix the insane runspeed that people get, a TL5 with 3K RS is just insane.

etc.

Bump

Tara/TL7 Towers not changing sides for ages, something wrong there.
More viable weapon options, there shouldn't be a single best weapon per prof. Also i'd like to see the shop buyable newbie guns actually not being utter crap. When i was a new player it was very dissapointing to learn all guns i had saved up for were really useless. They should be at least 30%-50% as good as the really good weapons.

Theres so many interesting guns which also have really impressive tracers and effects never being used. Just equip some Sparkling Freedom Arms or Khemo Techs and shoot some leets to see what i mean

[shadowgod]

8) Stop changing small things and ignoring big things. For example, adding a 5 second lockout to the treatment terminal should not be anywhere near a priority list.

i'm always amused when people say things like this. it shows lack of "big picture" thinking.

even your example is a great example of this. that small thing, along with a lot of other small things, added up to one huge issue in the game, thats being/been fixed.