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Why would anyone buy another game from FUNCOM?
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Combo skipping was an exploit that affected AOC pvp mechanics since launch...
To this day, they have not managed to fix it..
A True Master who Knows his own limit...
I intend to get The Secret World from Funcom mostly because it's not Fantasy nor some silly wacked out Futuristic game.
It's one of those games that deals with what we've all heard and know about myths, legends, and conspiracies.
The problem with the AOC launch wasn't just that it was buggy. It was how much the developers lied to the beta testers and manipulated things to hide the fact that they clearly knew the game wasn't ready
1. The media was limited to being able to play the first 20 levels. After release, it was clear that the level of polish to the first 20 levels was far superiour to the rest of the game. They put all their effort into that one small section of the game that the media was allowed to play.
2. Open beta testers (those allowed to talk about the game) were similarly limited to those first 20 levels, which meant that everything they were saying about polish was exaggerated.
3. Close beta testers (of which I was one)... we were allowed to play most of the game. We were ASSURED.. on many many occasions that another patch was coming the day before launch that would bring up the quality and polish of the game from level 20+. One dev actually said that the 'polish update' would make levels 20-40 actually more polished than Tortage. This of course was a lie, since to this date there is still a drastic drop-off in quality after lvl 20. We were also repeatedly reminded that we were only allowed to talk about the first 20 levels. We were also told that the pvp system was finished, but it wouldn't be implemented on the beta servers, only activitated once the game went live. Of course, there never was a pvp system. Only after the game launched did they even begin working on it. It took 2 years after launch for the pvp system to actually be implemented (and required you to purchase an expansion).
The problem isn't that AOC was buggy and unpolished. The problem is the lengths the developers went to lie to player (expecially beta testers) shortly before launch.
I'm all for giving people a second chance (or in funcom's case a third chance). But the fact is that nobody should purchase the game based on they hype coming from the devs, or comments from a limited beta version. Wait until the game is launched and judge it based on what players with full access and with the ability to actually talk about the game say.
I just won't be buying a funcom game until 3+ months after release.
I'll definitely be gunning for the beta of TSW,to see if its truly worth my money....
Funcom is still on my shady list.
the game has an actually interesting concept, no more LEVELS! Skill based advancement like darkfall. I'm interested but like anyone whos smart... will beta test even if it means 5$ down payment at Gamestop to get a key.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
Becuase thats about how long it took them to get that game on its feet...a year.
The up an coming pvp patch will make mini games totally random...a new mini game match and a 'sound' when you get the access to the mini game....great pvp update by FC but almost 2 years too late...will i buy another fc game, never....never....never. I dont care about the concept as the concept of AoC was awesome and even the combat system is the best but come on...anyone who played aoc will not this company has no idea about pvp....at all and their new direction in pve is total grind (look at aoc expansion it was just a pure grind fest requiring hours and hours of exploiting or months and months of grinding).
Funcom in my opinion are just behind Cryptic in my list of dubious mmo companys.
Never again will i buy a product from then without doing some reseach on the game in question.
They will have to prove to me first that there game is worth buying, also they need to deal with people who use exploits in there games which in AoC they never did.
Uh, thats kind of something you should do for games from ANY company, especially mmos.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
I dissagree Warmaster670, i have browsed Steam many times and bought games on impulse, also many of these games became firm favourites of mine.
But
I was taken in by the lies from Funcom with AoC also i saw first hand the exploits that people used in the early life of the game, there were many posts on there forums about the exploits but nothing was ever done.
its your money, if you want to guess if you like the game or not is up to you, but then don't come crying you are deceived by buying a crappy game.
First, people will buy it because the market *sucks* right now and if they time it right or get lucky it will be the best of bad options around the time it launches.
Second, if the past 2-3 yrs have taught us anything about the MMORPG market it is that most of the consumers are utter sheep who will repeatedly swallow any line of BS that the companies care to toss out and keep forking over money.
There really isnt a game I wont buy. So the question really isnt "why would you buy a game from that publisher or developer", but why would anyone be optimistic about another Funcom or Cryptic title, for example.
anarchy online is a great game and i still play it
You can always tell when you're talking to people who don't play anything but MMOs. Tunnel vision ftl.
Yes, they goofed with AoC. However, they listened to their players and turned the game around into what it is today.
Beyond thta however, they're also behind Anarchy Online, which I heard good things about, and more importantly, they're the creative minds behind the Longest Journey and Dreamfall, which are both simply amazing games. I would buy the game on Dreamfall's merits alone, as it's one of my favorite games ever.
There's so much to like about the Secret World. Art direction, setting, what we've seen of the game play so far. I'll definitely be trying the game.
Question :Why would anyone buy another game from FUNCOM?
Opinionated Answer: Consumer confidence simply put. <--
yes you have your fans and your haters and your sides and the like, but people remember one such thing.
the experience.
You have those that were around of the days when AO was around, and those that were around when AOC launched.
and on both games Funcom dropped the ball. proof of that is when talking about AO or AOC outside the comfort circles of certain forums, people will give you literal mixed reviews ranging from decent to histerical laughter.
Now on a more personel level as far as why others, including myself will not look at another funcom game either or a while or at all is their way they handle their business.
I wont bring AO in ths mix since i have not played it, however, i will bring up Age of Conan i was in launch.
The biggest thing i saw from AOC that was a let down to me was not the game itself, but the way Funcom let the development team and headmaster would make several promises that they fail to keep.
Drunken brawling , House of Crom, Pvp towers, Alliance battle keeps, blood token system, the flip flopping yet "eventually" implemented DX 10.
of all the no show announcements, the biggest one that i can think of that turned peoples stomachs is this:
AOC in the past:
(never before seen sieges, pvp core, etc etc)
http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&func_id=2535&table=CONTENT (PVP evolved and the resources they placed on it)
AOC in the now: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2841647&postcount=38 (aoc was never been a pvp focused game)
make up your own decision, call the consumer base disgruntled, suckers, idiots for assuming aoc is something advertised and have be gravely misinterpreted from the combat system, and other dev response's pre launch talking about wanting to add in fighting game mechanics(which they let rot and die by the way)
The bottom line being, Funcom lost those set of constumers, and seem very much content on stayin the course of having AOC being another been there done that kind of mmo.
they lost the majority of their pvp community, including their RP community , another source of mis management.
AOC of this day is now tagged as a PVE game.
but back to the point.
I personally do not hate funcom, i think they are a decent company, but their actions have proven to me that the companies balls are held tight by their investors (or whoever holds the money to help them develop), and also that they have a chronic behavior of making promises that they cant deliver on due to lack of planning of ahead.
When i look at The Secret World regardless what ever team of devs that have it, i ask myself:
1. what incentive is their for a rp community to be in that kind of game, will they do better than AOC or just perform another bait and switch; letting cannibalized retention run it's course ( See: Cimmeria Rp-PVP server as reference)
2. what incentive is their for pvp? .. from the get go, you can say craig is right, perhaps scapegoating the world designers of placing quest givers in open world areas on pvp servers, real smart idea, but annything goes (see mmorpg staff member MikeB on quest giver griefing)
3. on pvp, what incentive is there for balance, will the game be flexible enough so that pvpers do not end up being at the mercy of pver's or vice versa when class changes/game changes are made? (see AOC's shut down of whitesands of pvp...on a PVP SERVER. & see AOC's class revamps of any class mainly towards tanks unable to aggro, or spell casters with stamina issues)
4. again, TSW will be from a completely different group..but one must ask, how much influence do they have in controlling their own development, and have they paid enough attention with games like AO and AOC to at least, for funcom's sake to not only have a botch launch, or flip flop promises, to make a solid game?
I plan on playing AOC some where between February and May, then after that im cutting ties with the game to move to SWTOR. in closing, if Funcom makes it the norm to practices these methods of overpromising and underdelivering, then people will go to the extent of underposting in their forums and overlooking their games.
I had a good time in Anarchy online and AoC even tho i did not stay very long. some people are looking for marriage with their MMOs others for one night stands. each to his own
They're not out to get you, you know. It's just a bunch of guys in an office making a computer game, financed by a bunch of people they have to convice to keep the office going, the toilets working, the electricity bills paid, etc., etc.
In a realistic context, Funcom are one of the better, more adventurous developers out there. You might say "AoC was broken". No, Mortal Onlie is an example of truly "broken". But even then I wouldn't say Star Vault are bad people out to get me, and I'd rather cheer them on and encourage them than make them out to be devils.
AO was innovative, deep and a lot of fun for a lot of people. AoC was innovative, shallow, but had great visceral melee gameplay and was a lot of fun for a lot of peope. Their single player adventure games garnered great kudos in their day.
And I, for one, am looking forward to The Secret World. In fact I'm getting more and more stoked about it. I'll try and get into the beta, get it early, etc., etc.
But I won't be thinking it's going to be god's gift to me, to suddenly make my life better and shower me with petals of pure pleasure from a rainbow-filled sky.
Being an MMO, it is guaranteed to have some problems, but being Funcom, it's also guaranteed to have some fun. Being an experienced gamer, if I like the context, the lore, etc., I'll be willing to put up with the problems up to the point they outweigh the fun, for me. No drama, no fuss, no hysteria.
Hype is hype; an experienced gamer learns to read between the lines wrt hype and to have realistic expectations, that are seldom not met.
I see both sides of this argument but the problem is, we as CUSTOMERS should never have a game dev sell us a game with the express intent of fixing it in the future...
Thats just BS, PC game devs should be held to a standard of at the very least, console game devs in and that they should be required to sell a complete and working game. If you bought a game for your 360 and pop it in and it doesnt work you would be raising hades demanding your money back.
You pop in a PC game that doesnt work and you are like well give em time maybe they will fix it eventually.
Sadly thats the mentality of most gamers, game devs have been bending us over for so long you have come to accept it as the way it should be, when in truth any game dev that releases a broken pos game should be run outta business, hopefully losing everything they have in the process. Ya know why?? Because if that was what happened when game devs released crappy games they would stop releasing crappy games.
If a game needs 2 more years for a game dev to make it run right then by God they should delay release for 2 more years like some of the industry does.
Oh and here comes the excuse but oh those poor game devs, they are so broke they already pissed away the $10 million they had to start the project so the players should now pay for it to be finished... yea right, maybe they should work in the real world like the rest of us, if they don't meet thier project for the budget they are given then they pay the rest out of thier pockets( borrow against projected profits), or they find other investors just like any other product in the world does.
But noooo because gamers are such total and complete suckers that will buy anything you hype right and wrap in a pretty wrapper, they continue to sell us crap.
This is a billion dollar industry with incredible profits, the customers should never be expected to or asked to pay for anything but the best possible game that the dev studios can give us.
I doubt any well-known developer or publisher has ever intended to put out crap, or to release unfinished games. Shit happens, things don't always go according to plan. And especially with something as complex as an MMO - they're just very, very hard to make.
Any MMO coming out at all, even in a shakey condition, is nearly a miracle.
However, I would say that developers should look at the corporate culture of other developers - there are some developers who are more consistent at producing AAA material with fewer bugs (e.g. Valve, BioWare, Blizzard), maybe other developers could look at how those more consistently AAA businesses run on a day-to-day basis.
But none of the problems we moan about here have much to do with lack of talent, or creativity, or intentions, or lack of trying.
I'd be willing to bet my life that almost everybody working at a professional level in this type of industry is pretty damn smart and creative and well-intentioned. I base this on extrapolation from the music industry that I'm involved in - pretty much everybody at a professional level could do as good a job as anyone else, the big hits are more down to luck and better business practices than anything else. Again, like sports - all high level sportsfolks are very close to each other in talents and skills, sometimes it's just a bad hair day that has one getting a gold and another coming in the middle of the pack.
That's not to excuse crap - if it's bad it's bad, everybody knows it. Of course we should vocalise the standards we want. But it doesn't do any good to make out that it's the result of some sinister, cynical conspiracy if a game is crap. (Oblique reference to TSW hehe
)
I would have no problem buying another funcom game. They make mistakes, but thats cause they are willing to try out new things. I am not impressed with the new generation of exactly the same game as last generation with brand new irrelevancies *cough* rift *cough*
I played AoC at launch, and put up with all the problems. I quit at server merges and now I've went back and I'm enjoying things alot more. The combat is better then the traditional mmo (imho) but still not as good as I would like, so I am really hoping that there will be a developer that is willing to change up things a bit and try something new.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
I would gladly buy another game from them since they have the ability to make up for their failures. And since alot of other companys do not release anything better, but dont manage to reduce the damage over time, ...
I got AoC and its been a big disappointment to me but it got better over time and now its one of the best mmos on the market. Sure they have ups and downs,downs,downs but once they got a grip on it, it realy improoves.
Uhh, I don't think you could call a game as heavily lienar limited and instanced as AoC an MMO. 30 people per zone? Uh no. One of the best? How? It literally has no hooks/things to set it aside from other MMOs. In fact it's even simpler than most.