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January 09 Game Director released
Tarka
Member Posts: 1,662
http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=107996
Now that the server merges are complete and the new communities start to come together, in some cases alongside new allies, in others against new foes, I wanted to take some time out and talk a little about what’s coming up in the immediate future.
This starts with the next major game update, and with it some great new game-play and a host of new game-play updates and new features. The update is currently available on the test servers and we’ve been making good progress on getting it polished up and ready for the live environment.
I have enjoyed playing through the new Xibaluku dungeon with the dev team over the last few weeks and I wanted to share a little more in terms of what you can expect to see coming your way when this dungeon hits the live servers. Xibaluku is a six person instance for level 80 players found in Thunder River. That much we have already said in previous information, so more importantly – what does it play like?
With Xibaluku we have challenged the developers to make the dungeon an even more dynamic, interactive and challenging encounter for players that will stand up well to replay. I think the game-play we introduced with Ymir’s Pass in the previous update cycle raised the bar in terms of the fun factor of the new content and we wanted to take it even further with this dungeon.
Xibaluku contains up to a dozen boss encounters, some are essential to progress, some are completely optional but all have been designed to try and provide a really dynamic and changing experience in the dungeon. Some of the bosses may even appear with different abilities or in different forms across different visits! I also say ‘up to’ a dozen because not all the bosses may appear on any given single play through, some are rotated in and out, and there are even two very different end encounters in the dungeon. Which end boss you get will depend on factors relating to your progress through the dungeon itself (and no, I’m not going to provide any spoilers here as to what those factors are!).
Many of the encounters take the game-play challenge up a notch and require you to not just consider the boss itself, but also to consider the environment around you, and even to perform other challenging, even platform style, actions during the boss fight. I think the team has done a fantastic job on focusing keenly on the fun factor in this dungeon and I am really looking forward to what you all make of it!
Another major change that’s on the horizon with the next update that I wanted to mention in this letter are the new PVP resources. This new game mechanic means that after this update PVP Battlekeeps must be made from special resources harvested in the Border Kingdoms themselves. Open world PVP is a game element that many of you have said you enjoy, but we wanted to introduce more reasons for you to take the fight to the open spaces of the Border Kingdoms and give you meaningful resources to fight over. Want to restrict an opposing guild from building up their resources, and head off a challenge? Now you have the ability to do so! We will be keeping a close eye on how this element plays out and are prepared to continue to tweak and adjust the resources and their locations as we continue testing. We firmly believe that continually looking to add more meaningful goals for PVP is very important and we will continue to work on this area of the game over future updates!
Open world PVP is also only one flavor of the PVP available and we are also taking steps to make sure that the instanced PVP battles are also more accessible. The next update will bring with it a better sign-up process that should allow people to find games more frequently.
That’s just a few of the new changes and features that will be introduced with the new update. Remember you can check out the test servers for full details of what’s coming up, including full provisional update notes on the test server forum.
Last, but by no means least, the Direct X10 version is also starting to shape up nicely. While we aren’t going to allow it hold back the deployment of the rest of the update we are hard at work ensuring that we concentrate on optimizing the DX10 features and making sure it’s ready to launch as soon as possible. A huge thanks to everyone who has given us excellent feedback from the test server, it really does make this stage of the process much easier.
In my next letter we start to cover the upcoming item and statistic changes in a lot more detail. As soon as the latest update is live the attention will move to introducing you to the nature of these changes and how they will affect the game. All the core work is now done internally and we are currently working on converting all the existing items to the new system. We hope to move the items and statistics update to the test servers as soon as possible after the upcoming update is released to live.
So that’s about it for this update. Thank you all again for continuing to make Hyboria an exciting and dynamic world!
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director
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Personally I think its a good move to split the release of the Directx10 update away from Patch 4. Yeah Dx10 needs work, but it shouldn't hold all the other parts of the update back.
Xibaluku sounds MUCH bigger than first anticipated, and much more complex. Which is kinda cool.
Comments
Makes me very very optimistic
Too bad they didn't have this guy in charge at launch. Maybe then things would have gone better for Age of Conan.
It's going to be a huge challenge for Craig to get back those 500k players who quit during the first months. We'll see if he's up to it.
I agree it would have been good to get Craig in at least 2 to 3 months earlier. But I do not agree that Craig would have been better leading the development than Gaute. Gautes crazy ambition levels and twisted mind took this game to the technical level it is today. It's unique, it's different and it has a good technical fundament to build on.
I agree it would have been good to get Craig in at least 2 to 3 months earlier. But I do not agree that Craig would have been better leading the development than Gaute. Gautes crazy ambition levels and twisted mind took this game to the technical level it is today. It's unique, it's different and it has a good technical fundament to build on.
I disagree. I think Gaute was bad for Age of Conan. Sure he had ideas but anyone can have ideas. I can say: "...Next I want hundreds of these huge flying dragon mounts and epic battles in the sky!..". The problem is that somebody has to design my crazy ideas.
Developers at Funcom just didn't have the time or the skills to create all those crazy ideas that Gaute had. With less innovation and better project management they would have done much better. Remember Drunken Brawling? They probably wasted hundreds of manhours with that and now it's gone for good.
Also Age of Conan is not that unique if you think about it. It's pretty much like wow but with better graphics and different combat system. And this new combat system is not that great either. A lot of players think it's slow and many probably quit the game because of it.
Age of Conan could have been great if Funcom had been a little less ambitious.
I agree it would have been good to get Craig in at least 2 to 3 months earlier. But I do not agree that Craig would have been better leading the development than Gaute. Gautes crazy ambition levels and twisted mind took this game to the technical level it is today. It's unique, it's different and it has a good technical fundament to build on.
I disagree. I think Gaute was bad for Age of Conan. Sure he had ideas but anyone can have ideas. I can say: "...Next I want hundreds of these huge flying dragon mounts and epic battles in the sky!..". The problem is that somebody has to design my crazy ideas.
Developers at Funcom just didn't have the time or the skills to create all those crazy ideas that Gaute had. With less innovation and better project management they would have done much better. Remember Drunken Brawling? They probably wasted hundreds of manhours with that and now it's gone for good.
Also Age of Conan is not that unique if you think about it. It's pretty much like wow but with better graphics and different combat system. And this new combat system is not that great either. A lot of players think it's slow and many probably quit the game because of it.
Age of Conan could have been great if Funcom had been a little less ambitious.
some people will complain about everything. The combat is faster paced than WoW. I have to pay attention and keep an eye out or else I'll die. I think the problem is that it made them think...and thinking is the last thing some people want to do.
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Guys! I'm hopelessly lost in a mountain of mole hills! Them damn moles!
I agree it would have been good to get Craig in at least 2 to 3 months earlier. But I do not agree that Craig would have been better leading the development than Gaute. Gautes crazy ambition levels and twisted mind took this game to the technical level it is today. It's unique, it's different and it has a good technical fundament to build on.
I disagree. I think Gaute was bad for Age of Conan. Sure he had ideas but anyone can have ideas. I can say: "...Next I want hundreds of these huge flying dragon mounts and epic battles in the sky!..". The problem is that somebody has to design my crazy ideas.
Developers at Funcom just didn't have the time or the skills to create all those crazy ideas that Gaute had. With less innovation and better project management they would have done much better. Remember Drunken Brawling? They probably wasted hundreds of manhours with that and now it's gone for good.
Also Age of Conan is not that unique if you think about it. It's pretty much like wow but with better graphics and different combat system. And this new combat system is not that great either. A lot of players think it's slow and many probably quit the game because of it.
Age of Conan could have been great if Funcom had been a little less ambitious.
some people will complain about everything. The combat is faster paced than WoW. I have to pay attention and keep an eye out or else I'll die. I think the problem is that it made them think...and thinking is the last thing some people want to do.
Thinking was not the problem. I think most players would really love to see a combat system where you have to think.
In my opinion the combat system in Age of Conan is more like mindless button smashing than a system where you have to think. After a couple of hours with one character you will remember all the moves and there is no need to think just smash those buttons. The system is just too easy.
All of my RL friends were also disappointed with the melee combat system in Age of Conan. They all expected something new and amazing that would need a lot of skill. Instead we got something that at first looks fresh but gets quickly really boring.
MMO's need a combat system where you can block and parry in real time just like in single player games. But I guess a system like that is impossible with todays server technology.
I agree it would have been good to get Craig in at least 2 to 3 months earlier. But I do not agree that Craig would have been better leading the development than Gaute. Gautes crazy ambition levels and twisted mind took this game to the technical level it is today. It's unique, it's different and it has a good technical fundament to build on.
I disagree. I think Gaute was bad for Age of Conan. Sure he had ideas but anyone can have ideas. I can say: "...Next I want hundreds of these huge flying dragon mounts and epic battles in the sky!..". The problem is that somebody has to design my crazy ideas.
Developers at Funcom just didn't have the time or the skills to create all those crazy ideas that Gaute had. With less innovation and better project management they would have done much better. Remember Drunken Brawling? They probably wasted hundreds of manhours with that and now it's gone for good.
Also Age of Conan is not that unique if you think about it. It's pretty much like wow but with better graphics and different combat system. And this new combat system is not that great either. A lot of players think it's slow and many probably quit the game because of it.
Age of Conan could have been great if Funcom had been a little less ambitious.
some people will complain about everything. The combat is faster paced than WoW. I have to pay attention and keep an eye out or else I'll die. I think the problem is that it made them think...and thinking is the last thing some people want to do.
Thinking was not the problem. I think most players would really love to see a combat system where you have to think.
In my opinion the combat system in Age of Conan is more like mindless button smashing than a system where you have to think. After a couple of hours with one character you will remember all the moves and there is no need to think just smash those buttons. The system is just too easy.
All of my RL friends were also disappointed with the melee combat system in Age of Conan. They all expected something new and amazing that would need a lot of skill. Instead we got something that at first looks fresh but gets quickly really boring.
MMO's need a combat system where you can block and parry in real time just like in single player games. But I guess a system like that is impossible with todays server technology.
Sorry, the more I se of your posts the more I want to eat pasta. All over the place AoCs combat system is praised and the combat system was 100% Gautes idea and implementation. You see thats the thing Gaute would have these complete out of the box ideas (I am sure you can have too), but here is the difference he had the balls, ambitions and drive to go after them... Through fire and water... and sometimes those ideas landed like Jezuz after a 40 day high, while others fell on the face. This is the way new technology is developed. By new technology I don't mean "hey lets call these quests that just keep respawning ever 30 min for Public Quests!!! Yeeaahhh great idea", I mean inventions that totally change the basics of the game. So what Craig have done now is to cut away what landed on the face and tweeked the fun part to something even funner and here's the best part... Craig is a master in speccing out fun gaming dynamics and systems. I think he is even better in this than Gaute.
Now when did you last play AoC?
I agree it would have been good to get Craig in at least 2 to 3 months earlier. But I do not agree that Craig would have been better leading the development than Gaute. Gautes crazy ambition levels and twisted mind took this game to the technical level it is today. It's unique, it's different and it has a good technical fundament to build on.
I disagree. I think Gaute was bad for Age of Conan. Sure he had ideas but anyone can have ideas. I can say: "...Next I want hundreds of these huge flying dragon mounts and epic battles in the sky!..". The problem is that somebody has to design my crazy ideas.
Developers at Funcom just didn't have the time or the skills to create all those crazy ideas that Gaute had. With less innovation and better project management they would have done much better. Remember Drunken Brawling? They probably wasted hundreds of manhours with that and now it's gone for good.
Also Age of Conan is not that unique if you think about it. It's pretty much like wow but with better graphics and different combat system. And this new combat system is not that great either. A lot of players think it's slow and many probably quit the game because of it.
Age of Conan could have been great if Funcom had been a little less ambitious.
some people will complain about everything. The combat is faster paced than WoW. I have to pay attention and keep an eye out or else I'll die. I think the problem is that it made them think...and thinking is the last thing some people want to do.
AND, the females in AoC have lovely huge jugs bouncing when you jump. WOW, thats just childish in comparison.
The thread title is oddly worded, it gives the impression Morrison was 'let go' like Godager was. Fix it maybe?