When I say in the black, I mean it is currently not losing money. I do not mean that they have recouped development costs. And you're right, if someone from FC lies, there is big trouble. Below is the quote stating that they are currently profitable. Now, you can call them liars, but the burden of proof is on you now, not them.
"For one, Ellingsen said The Secret World was now profitable. I doubt that means Funcom has recouped development costs, but it probably does mean the game is paying for itself to run, because Funcom downscaled development to suit its income."
Pale, I wouldn't bother. Not to call anyone out or anything, but have you seen there post history?
Originally posted by shadow9d9 Doesn't fix the primary problem of the game. The game was designed with a TINY amount of content that ends with a dungeon grind. Now anytime they add content they have to add voice over, which is a huge waste of time and money, and they have not changed the dungeon grind. No thanks. Flawed concept.
TINY amount of content? Sure if you just rushed from zone to zone and only do quests from the main towns youre happen to run into.
Each zone is litterly filled with hidden missions. This game actually rewards you for exploring every inch of the map.
I wonder, for example, how many people bothered going to the Light Tower in Savage Coast. Several missions there plus various missions hidden in the surrounding area there.
Or the Theme Park in the same zone. Quite a few hidden missions to be found there as well.
But yeah... if you are so conditioned by Quest hub games the last couple years and treat TSW the same way you gonna miss out a ton of content readily available in the game. /shrug
Sorry to crack those rose-tinted glasses, but TSW is a quest-hub game and it's very easy to complete every singe piece of content available in a few weeks. You don't have to go hunting for anything, the maps are logical and lead you to everything, the lore also leads you by the nose if you actualy take the time to read it. Every mission is discoverable from another, often you'll stumble across them, but eventually you'll realise if your not rushing through the game and exploring a little bit as you go, they are all very easily acessible and no real searching is required.
I finished it after about 6 weeks, every mission (apart from a few that were bugged or broken), killed all the rare spawns (those that actually exist, still laughing about the amount of time we wasted hunting rares that aren't in the game ), did all the lairs, completed all the dungeons on all levels....it's REALLY easy if your playing with a group of friends.
We didn't rush anything, ambled our way through the game, enjoyed the scenery and the awesome lore and storylines, but the content in TSW is very small and the updates are tiny, completable in a day for most avid players, a week tops for the most casual of gamers.
My sub is cancelled for the time being, at the current rate of content addition they might have a months worth of content worthy of a one-off fee in about a year-or-so, by then it'll probably be F2P anyway.
This is my gripe, FC promised YEARS of pre-planned future content before release that was ready to go, they have delievered so far a few days tops.
Great game, but it's another SWTOR, been there, done that, move on.
Oh, and by the way, the lighthouse is a linear quest hub, previous missions point you to it and the writer who resides in it.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
When I say in the black, I mean it is currently not losing money. I do not mean that they have recouped development costs. And you're right, if someone from FC lies, there is big trouble. Below is the quote stating that they are currently profitable. Now, you can call them liars, but the burden of proof is on you now, not them.
"For one, Ellingsen said The Secret World was now profitable. I doubt that means Funcom has recouped development costs, but it probably does mean the game is paying for itself to run, because Funcom downscaled development to suit its income."
Pale, I wouldn't bother. Not to call anyone out or anything, but have you seen there post history?
TSW has some of the best content out of any game - MMO or single player. Yes, I'd put some of it's missions over any RPG in quality.
There's just not alot of it and it's a pretty niche title to begin with.
The engine is pretty damn good. If they can get it rolling out for licensing everything will be peachy. AoC and TSW's graphical quality speak for themselves. (AoC's version is better though, or I should say more mature development wise.)
I like Funcom, I loved Anarchy Online. 1-20 in Tortage. The first two weeks of TSW. But it's not an MMO you play for five years. Regardless of it's fistful of really topnotch features.
This is also one of a very select handful of games that the sound (let alone music) in general I didn't mute immediately and actually forgot about entirely as I was sucked into the world.
When I say in the black, I mean it is currently not losing money. I do not mean that they have recouped development costs. And you're right, if someone from FC lies, there is big trouble. Below is the quote stating that they are currently profitable. Now, you can call them liars, but the burden of proof is on you now, not them.
"For one, Ellingsen said The Secret World was now profitable. I doubt that means Funcom has recouped development costs, but it probably does mean the game is paying for itself to run, because Funcom downscaled development to suit its income."
If Funcom told people the moon was made of cheese I actually think some here would believe them. The statements Funcom are issuing is by no way a true reflection of what is actually happening at the company. They will say everything is fine, right up until the moment they switch off the lights. They are hardly going to issue a statement 'We are in trouble' because then the industry and investors will have no faith in them. They have to be perceived as strolling on through adversity, why do think GD is making noises like 'we are warriors' 'we have our war paint on'.
When a company is in this type of situation, you don't believe what they say. You try and formulate a picture of what is happening by looking at the available evidence. Share price is not recovering, there will be some cost to Funcom of laying off half their staff. The implications of what happens with the Ex-Ceo might be far reaching if fines or some sort of financial penalty are involved, might not just impact him could impact the company as a whole. Their future release schedule is sparse, their existing library of games is thin. They have announced a switch in focus away from large scale MMO's. Brings into question what is the future of their proprietary game engine. In essence so many questions... but if Funcom say things are fine they by all means believe them, perhaps even buy some stock if you have that much faith.
When looking at history, Funcom has never shut down a game, and has always supported us gamers that are playing their game.
I have enjoyed playing Funcom games for many many years since beta AO, and have always had a subscription open with at least 1 of funcoms games. I still hope Funcom opens up a multi sub so that I could keep both AO, AoC and TSW account open at the same time.
Really looking forward to seeing these new updates going live and to keep playing and having fun in TSW!
When looking at history, Funcom has never shut down a game, and has always supported us gamers that are playing their game.
I have enjoyed playing Funcom games for many many years since beta AO, and have always had a subscription open with at least 1 of funcoms games. I still hope Funcom opens up a multi sub so that I could keep both AO, AoC and TSW account open at the same time.
Really looking forward to seeing these new updates going live and to keep playing and having fun in TSW!
This is exactly what they need to do, TSW on it's own for most players is too expensive, a FC version of SOE's Station Pass would be a great idea.
I'd buy one
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
One thing ive always respected about funcom: They stick with their games.
Now i would even go as far as relating funcom to trion in terms of work put towards their games. Problem is that with trions one example of awesome development, you have 2 funcom games where all that effort was put in making the game work right, rather than piling on content and new stuff.
This game had a good launch imo. I saw the largest issue being that they launched in the shadow of one of the most overhyped mmorpgs ive ever seen, complete with the most fanatical and active "supporters" towards that game that ive ever seen. This game was bashed ten times as hard as it would have been launching after GW...as a lot of players picked the game up at launch with the intention of dumpng and trashing it when GW came out. So imo, the game got a lot of bad press for a lot of systems that were not flawless (combat and animations) however they were never bad to begin with, just not flawless. Also the lack of content complaint from the gw2 wasnt very accurate, and funny considering the game they support.
Anyway, its good to see games earning their keep. You wont see stuff like this in a 100% free item mall game.
His investigation missions are far from grind focused. I think you are just being negative for the sake of it. Kind of a growing trend in online gaming recently sadly.
Considering he has just taken over as Game Director and only just published an open letter to the TSW community. I think it's early days to call the direction he is going to take TSW overall. But he wants to make it more commercial, more commercial in what way? To a Western audience or an Eastern audience.
Rise of the Godslayer was done with one thing in mind to give AOC an air of Eastern appeal. They took two lines from a Robert E Howard story and built and entire expansion around it just to appeal to the Koreans and the Eastern market.
This same man is now in charge of TSW. So he is going to make TSW more commercial in what way? Hunch, turn it into a grind fest go free to play and launch it in Korea. In other words follow the same trend as AOC.
Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
His investigation missions are far from grind focused. I think you are just being negative for the sake of it. Kind of a growing trend in online gaming recently sadly.
Considering he has just taken over as Game Director and only just published an open letter to the TSW community. I think it's early days to call the direction he is going to take TSW overall. But he wants to make it more commercial, more commercial in what way? To a Western audience or an Eastern audience.
Rise of the Godslayer was done with one thing in mind to give AOC an air of Eastern appeal. They took two lines from a Robert E Howard story and built and entire expansion around it just to appeal to the Koreans and the Eastern market.
This same man is now in charge of TSW. So he is going to make TSW more commercial in what way? Hunch, turn it into a grind fest go free to play and launch it in Korea. In other words follow the same trend as AOC.
Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
I appreciated you got out of your way to open an account here and post.
But you really just have to ignore Fallenlords, as he has been on a vendetta against Funcom ever since he posted here, even openly admited it countless times, that he is on a crusade against you guys until the day the company shutdown. Only then he will be satisfied.
So it's better you response to people here that actually are constructive and have a more sane healthy mind. As fallenlords is just downright scary in everything he posts.
I can understand, that if you lost someone you loved to a company bad practices (like deliberately poluting rivers with heavy chemicals, that caused seriously health problems for people and even have people die), that you start a crusade to get the company shut down.
But seriously....demonstrating this kind of behaviour against a gaming company. A company that creates games for our entertainment and has done no harm to anyone. That is just scary beyond any doubt.
When I say in the black, I mean it is currently not losing money. I do not mean that they have recouped development costs. And you're right, if someone from FC lies, there is big trouble. Below is the quote stating that they are currently profitable. Now, you can call them liars, but the burden of proof is on you now, not them.
"For one, Ellingsen said The Secret World was now profitable. I doubt that means Funcom has recouped development costs, but it probably does mean the game is paying for itself to run, because Funcom downscaled development to suit its income."
If Funcom told people the moon was made of cheese I actually think some here would believe them. The statements Funcom are issuing is by no way a true reflection of what is actually happening at the company. They will say everything is fine, right up until the moment they switch off the lights. They are hardly going to issue a statement 'We are in trouble' because then the industry and investors will have no faith in them. They have to be perceived as strolling on through adversity, why do think GD is making noises like 'we are warriors' 'we have our war paint on'.
When a company is in this type of situation, you don't believe what they say. You try and formulate a picture of what is happening by looking at the available evidence. Share price is not recovering, there will be some cost to Funcom of laying off half their staff. The implications of what happens with the Ex-Ceo might be far reaching if fines or some sort of financial penalty are involved, might not just impact him could impact the company as a whole. Their future release schedule is sparse, their existing library of games is thin. They have announced a switch in focus away from large scale MMO's. Brings into question what is the future of their proprietary game engine. In essence so many questions... but if Funcom say things are fine they by all means believe them, perhaps even buy some stock if you have that much faith.
I'll end my comments here, but you have no idea what you are talking about. You make false, baseless statements with almost no foundation in reality. You have no evidence to support your comments. It's just hate and that's all.
Originally posted by nusquam Originally posted by fallenlordsOriginally posted by MaelwyddHis investigation missions are far from grind focused. I think you are just being negative for the sake of it. Kind of a growing trend in online gaming recently sadly.
Considering he has just taken over as Game Director and only just published an open letter to the TSW community. I think it's early days to call the direction he is going to take TSW overall. But he wants to make it more commercial, more commercial in what way? To a Western audience or an Eastern audience.Rise of the Godslayer was done with one thing in mind to give AOC an air of Eastern appeal. They took two lines from a Robert E Howard story and built and entire expansion around it just to appeal to the Koreans and the Eastern market. This same man is now in charge of TSW. So he is going to make TSW more commercial in what way? Hunch, turn it into a grind fest go free to play and launch it in Korea. In other words follow the same trend as AOC.Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
Thanks for posting, its the equivalent of the voice of god speaking from above lol.
As a fan of the company and products, it reaffirms that employees that take these measures still have souls and have not become 'suits' or think they are too good to have transparency with there customers. well that's least how I feel.
All the best on your current projects,
Nith.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
Gaute gets a lot of blame for various things, according to Funcom the guy left due to not liking the direction AOC was being taken. According to you the direction AOC was taking was by design of Gaute. You want to expand on that seeing as you are now being so open to the public.
As for what Howard wrote, a lot is dependant on which versions of the stories you read. There are a lot of versions. You had next to no references on Khitai, which again is why the choice for the expansion is a little strange ... whoever made the decision. The main reference with Yag-Kosha and The Tower of the Elephant was one of Howards more bizarre stories. In essence this was Conan meets ET. On top of which as a Conan fan you think riding Wolves and Tigers fitted into the world of AOC. Gaute may have decided the course of the expansion, the end product was your doing. Next to no testing, poor release, 32bit client memory error/leak, crashing when changing zone. When I asked for a refund because I couldn't play the game, I got told 'Funcom don't do refunds' here have some free game time, for a game I couldn't play... No you have nothing to answer for ...Just imagine if you had appeased this one customer at the time as a company I wouldn't be here now...a lesson in customer service if ever there was one.
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
Well that is a nice admision, you introduce grind instead of content by design. I look forward to seeing what you do with TSW.
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Excuses, excuses. as a customer who cares about the internal struggles of Funcom. You moved to Montreal for what reason, probably tax breaks. The Age of Conan supporters were left with a grindy game while you sorted yourselves out.
This is my point with regards to Funcom, you care about yourselves. You don't care about the players, you don't listen to the players and in essence dictate policy with next to no flexibility.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
I realise you are probably not fully responsible for business decisions, but that's a little too easy. You went free to play in Korea with AOC, at the same time keeping the subs in the West. Stating as a company you would not be going free to play with AOC in the Western market. So when the expansion was being made you had no designs on a free to play model? Yeah right. Just like now TSW is tooled up to go free to play at the drop of a hat, yet you have no plans.
That AOC expansion had a feel of free to play about it right from the start. Am I suppose to believe that the free to play stuff was retrofitted into the expansion after the event... hmm don't buy it.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
I am rational just don't believe anything your company says, because I have heard a lot of reheotric from Funcom over the years that has turned out to be quite false... still waiting on my 360 verison of Conan and TSW. You might be a good egg I don't know, you might lead TSW out of the wilderness and into the promise land. But I doubt it.
AOC was a great game around 1.5/1.6 level... I loved it. Somebody slowly runined it, you had a large hand in that. So while I appreciate you commenting and putting things 'straight' I don't actually hold your company in much regard. Over the years there has been a lot of misinformation fed to us from Funcom. If your goals are to address that balance and put things straight, then fair play to you. I hope you are the dawning of a new era in the history of Funcom.
Meh..AoC 1-20 was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. The music in the game at launch added a lot of immersion, and the characters were fun to play...that and the game was/is beautiful. Ultimately, bugged and then lack of content made me stop playing, but it was a fun few months..wish it had been years.
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
Well that is a nice admision, you introduce grind instead of content by design. I look forward to seeing what you do with TSW.
Did you even read what Nusquam said here? They were planning on starting with the expansion being grindy UNTIL they had fixed exploits (Funcom doesn't ban exploiters, sadly). After the game had run a short time they were going to reduce the grind a lot, that didn't go as planned as the whole company basically moved from Oslo to Canada (and Nusquam was pulled from one prosject to another).
Now, I did stop playing AoC when the expansion came, partially because I was tired of the game and partially because it took 3-4 minutes to load the expansion areas (running windows xp 32 bit).
I do wonder why I play MMO's a bit though, when I find games like http://www.ftlgame.com/ really fun.
I don't know about you guys but, I am still having loads of fun with TSW. The PVE quests in this game beats all other MMOs in my opinion. Glad to see that funcom is getting back on track .
Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
Gaute gets a lot of blame for various things, according to Funcom the guy left due to not liking the direction AOC was being taken. According to you the direction AOC was taking was by design of Gaute. You want to expand on that seeing as you are now being so open to the public
It's really quite simple. Gaute said there were "elements he was dissatisfied with." In the game he was Game Director for. He never said anything about the direction it was going. Feel free to fact check that.
To expand upon that, an expansion team was formed that I was not a part of for several months before I was brought onto the team as Lead Designer. They had been working from a vision document that was originally written by Gaute.
As for what Howard wrote, a lot is dependant on which versions of the stories you read.
Yeah no offence, but I spent almost 4 years of my life reading all the versions of the stories - but our mandate from Conan inc was to use a particular set, the Del Rey published versions.
There are a lot of versions. You had next to no references on Khitai, which again is why the choice for the expansion is a little strange ... whoever made the decision. The main reference with Yag-Kosha and The Tower of the Elephant was one of Howards more bizarre stories. In essence this was Conan meets ET. On top of which as a Conan fan you think riding Wolves and Tigers fitted into the world of AOC. Gaute may have decided the course of the expansion, the end product was your doing.
It being one of Howards weirder stories doesn't change anything. As for Vaghasan (not tigers and never referenced in the game as tigers) and the wolves, feel free to brush up on the in-game lore. We explained both their presence and how it all worked. The entire storyline was also run by various Howard scholars. I even did an interiew on The Cimmerian about it. I do find it odd that anyone could object to exotic mounts when Conan has been confronted with flying demon camels in one story.
Next to no testing, poor release, 32bit client memory error/leak, crashing when changing zone. When I asked for a refund because I couldn't play the game, I got told 'Funcom don't do refunds' here have some free game time, for a game I couldn't play... No you have nothing to answer for ...Just imagine if you had appeased this one customer at the time as a company I wouldn't be here now...a lesson in customer service if ever there was one.
If over 8 months in beta is not enough testing for you, there is little I can offer to placate you. I had a very strong relationship with the beta testers, just like I did with the beta testers for TSW. I also submitted weekly lists of the top 10 issues with the expansion. Unsuprisingly, tech was the number one point on that list for months. We had most of our coders working on it. We also had iron clad default deadlines with our Korean partners. When the stability was deemed good enough, the expansion was deemed release worthy. Release date was *never* the decision of the Lead Designer.
I apologize for your customer service woes, but again, this is hardly relevant to your original post casting aspersions on my ability to design and lead a project. I don't run the customer service area of the company, but you will note that if you head over to the TSW forums, there are plenty of positive customer service experiences. Could you admit that it might have gotten better over the past few years?
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
Well that is a nice admision, you introduce grind instead of content by design. I look forward to seeing what you do with TSW.
So if the required faction points was lower, there would have been more content? Your reasoning is flawed. Read what I wrote again.
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Excuses, excuses. as a customer who cares about the internal struggles of Funcom. You moved to Montreal for what reason, probably tax breaks. The Age of Conan supporters were left with a grindy game while you sorted yourselves out.
This is my point with regards to Funcom, you care about yourselves. You don't care about the players, you don't listen to the players and in essence dictate policy with next to no flexibility.
Ah see I am not really making excuses, I am explaining the situation which led to your perception. I didn't apologize for it.
I'll ignore the melodramatic "Funcom doesn't care about players" stuff if you don't mind. Funcom is not a person. It is a company made up of individuals. I care about the players, and so do the rest of the design team. I'm sure the accountants don't and the chef in the cafeteria doesn't - but they are also a part of Funcom. It's essentially a meaningless statement.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
I realise you are probably not fully responsible for business decisions, but that's a little too easy. You went free to play in Korea with AOC, at the same time keeping the subs in the West. Stating as a company you would not be going free to play with AOC in the Western market. So when the expansion was being made you had no designs on a free to play model? Yeah right. Just like now TSW is tooled up to go free to play at the drop of a hat, yet you have no plans.
Yes, our Korean Partners, Neowiz, made Age of Conan free-to-play in the east. They used their own store and had their own setup. The AoC F2P you see today is something entirely different. And yes, when I left AoC for TSW after Godslayer, there had been zero design plans around making the game F2P. You don't have to believe me, but at least admit that I know a lot more about the internal processes of our projects (and company) than you do.
That AOC expansion had a feel of free to play about it right from the start. Am I suppose to believe that the free to play stuff was retrofitted into the expansion after the event... hmm don't buy it.
I'm sorry but your "feelings" are irrelevant. You can choose to not believe anything I say (and you've made it quite clear you won't) but again, one of us possesses knowledge and one of us is guessing at best.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
I am rational just don't believe anything your company says, because I have heard a lot of reheotric from Funcom over the years that has turned out to be quite false... still waiting on my 360 verison of Conan and TSW. You might be a good egg I don't know, you might lead TSW out of the wilderness and into the promise land. But I doubt it.
Well again, there was a 360 port of the engine worked on for a long time. And then it was stopped because the memory requirements of Dreamworld exceeded what modern consoles with shared VRAM could handle.
I agree with you that marketing probably jumped the gun in announcing those versions. Ragnar set the record straight on TSW a long time before launch, however. I think it is a bit harsh to hold a grudge for an announcement that was retracted. Your call though.
AOC was a great game around 1.5/1.6 level... I loved it. Somebody slowly runined it, you had a large hand in that. So while I appreciate you commenting and putting things 'straight' I don't actually hold your company in much regard. Over the years there has been a lot of misinformation fed to us from Funcom. If your goals are to address that balance and put things straight, then fair play to you. I hope you are the dawning of a new era in the history of Funcom.
Well, if you used to love it and you feel I had a large hand in ruining that, you might also consider that I had a large hand in the game that you loved in 1.5/1.6. The game went in a direction you didn't like, and I understand that can be frustrating. But at the end of the day, nobody makes decisions that everyone agrees with. And players are incredibly conflicted in what they want and how they want it.
As for "misinformation" it really does depend on things. As with the 360 example, for all intents and purposes people were employed to work on a 360 port. Does that mean Funcom lied when they announced it? And when it fell through, it means things had changed after the announcement. Then the announcement becomes "misinformation" but there was no attempt to mislead people purposely. On TSW we were very wary of "overselling" the game, and you have to admit that we promised nothing in the game that we didn't deliver (to varying degrees of success).
My point is that companies change, grow and evolve over time.TSW is *not* AoC - and the needs of TSW are not the same needs that Rise of the Godslayer had.
Anyway, let me end this now. I don't think we should continue to argue about this as you have made your standpoint clear and I hope I have made mine clear.
Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
Gaute gets a lot of blame for various things, according to Funcom the guy left due to not liking the direction AOC was being taken. According to you the direction AOC was taking was by design of Gaute. You want to expand on that seeing as you are now being so open to the public
It's really quite simple. Gaute said there were "elements he was dissatisfied with." In the game he was Game Director for. He never said anything about the direction it was going. Feel free to fact check that.
To expand upon that, an expansion team was formed that I was not a part of for several months before I was brought onto the team as Lead Designer. They had been working from a vision document that was originally written by Gaute.
As for what Howard wrote, a lot is dependant on which versions of the stories you read.
Yeah no offence, but I spent almost 4 years of my life reading all the versions of the stories - but our mandate from Conan inc was to use a particular set, the Del Rey published versions.
There are a lot of versions. You had next to no references on Khitai, which again is why the choice for the expansion is a little strange ... whoever made the decision. The main reference with Yag-Kosha and The Tower of the Elephant was one of Howards more bizarre stories. In essence this was Conan meets ET. On top of which as a Conan fan you think riding Wolves and Tigers fitted into the world of AOC. Gaute may have decided the course of the expansion, the end product was your doing.
It being one of Howards weirder stories doesn't change anything. As for Vaghasan (not tigers and never referenced in the game as tigers) and the wolves, feel free to brush up on the in-game lore. We explained both their presence and how it all worked. The entire storyline was also run by various Howard scholars. I even did an interiew on The Cimmerian about it. I do find it odd that anyone could object to exotic mounts when Conan has been confronted with flying demon camels in one story.
Next to no testing, poor release, 32bit client memory error/leak, crashing when changing zone. When I asked for a refund because I couldn't play the game, I got told 'Funcom don't do refunds' here have some free game time, for a game I couldn't play... No you have nothing to answer for ...Just imagine if you had appeased this one customer at the time as a company I wouldn't be here now...a lesson in customer service if ever there was one.
If over 8 months in beta is not enough testing for you, there is little I can offer to placate you. I had a very strong relationship with the beta testers, just like I did with the beta testers for TSW. I also submitted weekly lists of the top 10 issues with the expansion. Unsuprisingly, tech was the number one point on that list for months. We had most of our coders working on it. We also had iron clad default deadlines with our Korean partners. When the stability was deemed good enough, the expansion was deemed release worthy. Release date was *never* the decision of the Lead Designer.
I apologize for your customer service woes, but again, this is hardly relevant to your original post casting aspersions on my ability to design and lead a project. I don't run the customer service area of the company, but you will note that if you head over to the TSW forums, there are plenty of positive customer service experiences. Could you admit that it might have gotten better over the past few years?
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
Well that is a nice admision, you introduce grind instead of content by design. I look forward to seeing what you do with TSW.
So if the required faction points was lower, there would have been more content? Your reasoning is flawed. Read what I wrote again.
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Excuses, excuses. as a customer who cares about the internal struggles of Funcom. You moved to Montreal for what reason, probably tax breaks. The Age of Conan supporters were left with a grindy game while you sorted yourselves out.
This is my point with regards to Funcom, you care about yourselves. You don't care about the players, you don't listen to the players and in essence dictate policy with next to no flexibility.
Ah see I am not really making excuses, I am explaining the situation which led to your perception. I didn't apologize for it.
I'll ignore the melodramatic "Funcom doesn't care about players" stuff if you don't mind. Funcom is not a person. It is a company made up of individuals. I care about the players, and so do the rest of the design team. I'm sure the accountants don't and the chef in the cafeteria doesn't - but they are also a part of Funcom. It's essentially a meaningless statement.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
I realise you are probably not fully responsible for business decisions, but that's a little too easy. You went free to play in Korea with AOC, at the same time keeping the subs in the West. Stating as a company you would not be going free to play with AOC in the Western market. So when the expansion was being made you had no designs on a free to play model? Yeah right. Just like now TSW is tooled up to go free to play at the drop of a hat, yet you have no plans.
Yes, our Korean Partners, Neowiz, made Age of Conan free-to-play in the east. They used their own store and had their own setup. The AoC F2P you see today is something entirely different. And yes, when I left AoC for TSW after Godslayer, there had been zero design plans around making the game F2P. You don't have to believe me, but at least admit that I know a lot more about the internal processes of our projects (and company) than you do.
That AOC expansion had a feel of free to play about it right from the start. Am I suppose to believe that the free to play stuff was retrofitted into the expansion after the event... hmm don't buy it.
I'm sorry but your "feelings" are irrelevant. You can choose to not believe anything I say (and you've made it quite clear you won't) but again, one of us possesses knowledge and one of us is guessing at best.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
I am rational just don't believe anything your company says, because I have heard a lot of reheotric from Funcom over the years that has turned out to be quite false... still waiting on my 360 verison of Conan and TSW. You might be a good egg I don't know, you might lead TSW out of the wilderness and into the promise land. But I doubt it.
Well again, there was a 360 port of the engine worked on for a long time. And then it was stopped because the memory requirements of Dreamworld exceeded what modern consoles with shared VRAM could handle.
I agree with you that marketing probably jumped the gun in announcing those versions. Ragnar set the record straight on TSW a long time before launch, however. I think it is a bit harsh to hold a grudge for an announcement that was retracted. Your call though.
AOC was a great game around 1.5/1.6 level... I loved it. Somebody slowly runined it, you had a large hand in that. So while I appreciate you commenting and putting things 'straight' I don't actually hold your company in much regard. Over the years there has been a lot of misinformation fed to us from Funcom. If your goals are to address that balance and put things straight, then fair play to you. I hope you are the dawning of a new era in the history of Funcom.
Well, if you used to love it and you feel I had a large hand in ruining that, you might also consider that I had a large hand in the game that you loved in 1.5/1.6. The game went in a direction you didn't like, and I understand that can be frustrating. But at the end of the day, nobody makes decisions that everyone agrees with. And players are incredibly conflicted in what they want and how they want it.
As for "misinformation" it really does depend on things. As with the 360 example, for all intents and purposes people were employed to work on a 360 port. Does that mean Funcom lied when they announced it? And when it fell through, it means things had changed after the announcement. Then the announcement becomes "misinformation" but there was no attempt to mislead people purposely. On TSW we were very wary of "overselling" the game, and you have to admit that we promised nothing in the game that we didn't deliver (to varying degrees of success).
My point is that companies change, grow and evolve over time.TSW is *not* AoC - and the needs of TSW are not the same needs that Rise of the Godslayer had.
Anyway, let me end this now. I don't think we should continue to argue about this as you have made your standpoint clear and I hope I have made mine clear.
Thanks for posting, Joel. It really says a lot about how much passion you have for your work when you're willing to talk about it outside of company-sanctioned interviews, forums, PR material, etc. It's something I think needs to happen more in the industry, though I can certainly see why all the red tape prevents that.
Folks, responding to the trolls (you know who they are) is a waste of time -- they have an axe to grind and have made it their life's purpose to slam funcom (yeah, I know...). They cannot be reasoned with, and are only here to bait. You're best hitting that block/ignore link and moving on to constructive talk with people who actually care about TSW.
I am a TSW lifer, and I look forward to what you guys are doing. You are the only gaming company that even attempts to try anything new at all, and for that I applaude you, even though a lot of it is met with ridicule. Some things you hit out of the park and somethings wont go over well. As long as you continue to shoot for the stars, keep up the good work. Please dont settle for WOWifying to attract some nawsayers, and I have seen you dont.
Is there any plans for a Funcom Pass? That would rock!
Thanks, Joel, for posting -- there are quite a few fans of the game here, despite a couple of persistent trolls. The game is coming along beautifully, and doing what I can to let friends know about it. Everyone I know that has tried it has come away impressed and willing to sub. Was on today and, despite getting my butt kicked by a couple of missions, loving the challenge. It's hard enough to be intriguing but not so difficult as to walk away in frustration. The setting, storylines and general feel of the game are great. Thanks for the hard work everyone over there is doing.
It's really quite simple. Gaute said there were "elements he was dissatisfied with." In the game he was Game Director for. He never said anything about the direction it was going. Feel free to fact check that.
To expand upon that, an expansion team was formed that I was not a part of for several months before I was brought onto the team as Lead Designer. They had been working from a vision document that was originally written by Gaute.
The new Game Director had no input into the direction things were being taken. Between you all it was decided to continue to follow the path of a disillusioned man. A game he quit because he was dissatisfied with certain elements. It had nothing to do with the turmoil you as a company was in at the time. The 20million loss. I notice Gaute has never said too much about this nor has it ever been mentioned, to my recolection, which elements he was dissatisfied with. Did you fix those?
Yeah no offence, but I spent almost 4 years of my life reading all the versions of the stories - but our mandate from Conan inc was to use a particular set, the Del Rey published versions.
Right or wrong I don't get the impression you are a Conan fan. You appear to be somebody that had to do research for a project. Fair enough you can learn to love something, but it raises more questions. If you are so versed in the Howard stories why did Age of Conan end up being Age of Harry Potter? I will check out the 'Del Ray' published versions.Perhaps then I might be a bit more forgiving.
It being one of Howards weirder stories doesn't change anything. As for Vaghasan (not tigers and never referenced in the game as tigers) and the wolves, feel free to brush up on the in-game lore. We explained both their presence and how it all worked. The entire storyline was also run by various Howard scholars. I even did an interiew on The Cimmerian about it. I do find it odd that anyone could object to exotic mounts when Conan has been confronted with flying demon camels in one story.
Who are the Howard scholars for reference? The issue I had with Age of Conan, was an issue a lot of people had. The game should of been about steel on steel combat. The fantastical was always an element in Conan stories, but an element not a major part. You took fantastical elements and tried to make them everyday Hyborian occurrences. Exotic mounts belonged in WoW not AOC. Pets and minions, get out of here...
If over 8 months in beta is not enough testing for you, there is little I can offer to placate you. I had a very strong relationship with the beta testers, just like I did with the beta testers for TSW. I also submitted weekly lists of the top 10 issues with the expansion. Unsuprisingly, tech was the number one point on that list for months. We had most of our coders working on it. We also had iron clad default deadlines with our Korean partners. When the stability was deemed good enough, the expansion was deemed release worthy. Release date was *never* the decision of the Lead Designer.
I can accept bugs, I mean software development is not an exact science. But where Funcom lacked was in acknowledgement of bugs, in any sort of bug reference/booking system. In any sort of ETA for a fix, or even a statement that things wouldn't be fixed. There was a whole host of vagueness in this area. People reporting bugs that had been seen on test servers, making there way into final release. I also don't accept bugs becoming 'features' because a company can not be bothered to fix them.
Who deemed the expansion release worthy? When it launched it was crashing for everybody when changing zone. That is your version of release worthy. It introduced a memory error to the 32 bit client. If you company had been resident in the UK I would of reported you to Trading Standards for providing goods not suitable for purpose. The dev team didn't even come up with a fix for the 32bit client memory issue at the time, a player found a workaround and posted it. The fix from Funcom was upgrade to a 64bit client ... and this software had been tested!
I apologize for your customer service woes, but again, this is hardly relevant to your original post casting aspersions on my ability to design and lead a project. I don't run the customer service area of the company, but you will note that if you head over to the TSW forums, there are plenty of positive customer service experiences. Could you admit that it might have gotten better over the past few years?
I am casting aspersions on your whole company, not singling you out. Yeah things might have got better, but that wouldn't be too hard. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.Overall I didn't have an issue with customer services, you see they were fine. It was the policy that was being dictated to them I had issue with.
So if the required faction points was lower, there would have been more content? Your reasoning is flawed. Read what I wrote again.
I don't understand that point at all. You had tested this expansion according to you, yet you expected people to exploit the content. So much so that you built in a grind, to slow them down. I am saying there should have been more content, than introduced grind.
Ah see I am not really making excuses, I am explaining the situation which led to your perception. I didn't apologize for it.
I'll ignore the melodramatic "Funcom doesn't care about players" stuff if you don't mind. Funcom is not a person. It is a company made up of individuals. I care about the players, and so do the rest of the design team. I'm sure the accountants don't and the chef in the cafeteria doesn't - but they are also a part of Funcom. It's essentially a meaningless statement.
Right so here you are trying to portray an image of an open caring 'Funcom' the business entity. So you would say that the customer is king in Funcom land then? All my time playing AOC it never appeared that this caring entity was bothered about it's user base at all. They had a policy of banning anybody from their forum that said anything negative about the game. The fans of the game always used one word when it came to AOC, 'potential' the fans saw what you as a business entity never did. But you didn't listen, instead you introduced tons of fluff that nobody cared about.
Yes, our Korean Partners, Neowiz, made Age of Conan free-to-play in the east. They used their own store and had their own setup. The AoC F2P you see today is something entirely different. And yes, when I left AoC for TSW after Godslayer, there had been zero design plans around making the game F2P. You don't have to believe me, but at least admit that I know a lot more about the internal processes of our projects (and company) than you do.
Yeah I admit you know more than me, but I also think you are representing your company. They pay your salary, they don't pay me anything. In fact I have given them money in the past. So which side of the fence we are, I think has a mark on what can be said. You would probably be on a disciplinary charge if you brought your company into disrepute. Funcom owns you to all intents and purposes. While I appreciate your candor now, this sort of open dialogue should of been happening years ago.
I'm sorry but your "feelings" are irrelevant. You can choose to not believe anything I say (and you've made it quite clear you won't) but again, one of us possesses knowledge and one of us is guessing at best.
Again one of us works for Funcom and is paid a salary. I agree I will never know the truth behind a lot of things. But lets just say recent events at Funcom involving senior management seem to cast a less than glowing light on the culture at Funcom.
Well again, there was a 360 port of the engine worked on for a long time. And then it was stopped because the memory requirements of Dreamworld exceeded what modern consoles with shared VRAM could handle.
I agree with you that marketing probably jumped the gun in announcing those versions. Ragnar set the record straight on TSW a long time before launch, however. I think it is a bit harsh to hold a grudge for an announcement that was retracted. Your call though.
It wasn't a long time before launch, we discussed it on this forum. Again we were never given a proper reason. We surmisedthat it was a problem with your game engine. Yes it was wrong to announce a release platform before you can deliver. Look at Bethesda, they are seeing repercussions with Dishonored on PS3 because of their failure to deliver the Skryrim DLC to that platform. Customers are fickle, customers hold grudges. I was sold on TSW being a 360 release in all your literature up until the point Ragnar pulled it. I don't hold a grudge that it wasn't delivered but what I would of liked to have been told is the true reason.Transparency is the wordand not just when it suits Funcom.
Well, if you used to love it and you feel I had a large hand in ruining that, you might also consider that I had a large hand in the game that you loved in 1.5/1.6. The game went in a direction you didn't like, and I understand that can be frustrating. But at the end of the day, nobody makes decisions that everyone agrees with. And players are incredibly conflicted in what they want and how they want it.
Did you ever read the forums, to my recollection people were pretty in tune about the direction they wanted the game to go in overall. It was Funcom who decided to take it their own direction. Lets not forget some AOC functionality hadn't worked since launch. If anything people wanted what they had been promised and more PVP. Funcom for some reason turned it into a PVE game, rather than going to the trouble of sorting out things like class balance.
As for "misinformation" it really does depend on things. As with the 360 example, for all intents and purposes people were employed to work on a 360 port. Does that mean Funcom lied when they announced it? And when it fell through, it means things had changed after the announcement. Then the announcement becomes "misinformation" but there was no attempt to mislead people purposely. On TSW we were very wary of "overselling" the game, and you have to admit that we promised nothing in the game that we didn't deliver (to varying degrees of success).
No I think it's about transparency. If somebody had said with regards to the 360 port, the real reason I would have been more accepting of that. But instead we are left to surmise why it has been dropped, if it was ever on the cards in the first place. You announced the same for AOC as well, so a bit of a pattern forming. As for overselling TSW, that is not a problem Funcom has overall. If anything you need to shoot your marketing department. There was a serious lack of promotion for TSW which I imagine was reflected in your sale figures.
My point is that companies change, grow and evolve over time.TSW is *not* AoC - and the needs of TSW are not the same needs that Rise of the Godslayer had.
I agree, but history has an odd way of repeating itself. Unless you learn lessons from the past. If anybody should know this it's Funcom.
Anyway, let me end this now. I don't think we should continue to argue about this as you have made your standpoint clear and I hope I have made mine clear.
And here I thought we were having an open/honest dialogue. You disappoint me. Anyway I wish you luck I really do. So TSW is not going free to play 'anytime soon' you know when I spoke about vaguenes. It would be nice as a parting gesture to this dialogue to get some clarity on this point. For potential customers. What does 'anytime soon' actually mean? 3 months, 6 months, 12 months ... Good luck with TSW, I think you are going to need it.
The new Game Director had no input into the direction things were being taken. Between you all it was decided to continue to follow the path of a disillusioned man. A game he quit because he was dissatisfied with certain elements. It had nothing to do with the turmoil you as a company was in at the time. The 20million loss. I notice Gaute has never said too much about this nor has it ever been mentioned, to my recolection, which elements he was dissatisfied with. Did you fix those?
I never saw anything from Gaute outlining what he thought was wrong with the game. Perhaps he provided it to Craig? Keep in mind that I was simply a designer at that point - I was not in management meetings.
Yeah no offence, but I spent almost 4 years of my life reading all the versions of the stories - but our mandate from Conan inc was to use a particular set, the Del Rey published versions.
Right or wrong I don't get the impression you are a Conan fan. You appear to be somebody that had to do research for a project. Fair enough you can learn to love something, but it raises more questions. If you are so versed in the Howard stories why did Age of Conan end up being Age of Harry Potter? I will check out the 'Del Ray' published versions.Perhaps then I might be a bit more forgiving.
Your impressions are again irrelevant. I am a Conan fan, and I still reread the stories for inspiration even though I am no longer actively working on the project. You can believe me or not.
Your second question should be posed to the man who set the direction for the project. There were plenty of internal discussions about exactly that topic, with people well versed in the lore actively arguing against the magic system. A company is made up of individuals, as I mentioned earlier.
Who are the Howard scholars for reference? The issue I had with Age of Conan, was an issue a lot of people had. The game should of been about steel on steel combat. The fantastical was always an element in Conan stories, but an element not a major part. You took fantastical elements and tried to make them everyday Hyborian occurrences. Exotic mounts belonged in WoW not AOC. Pets and minions, get out of here...
Al Harron and I had a long email exchange regarding the expansion storyline and I made a several changes based on his feedback.
However, every single Conan story involves fantastic elements. They are in fact at the core of every single one of the stories. That is a part of what makes the adventures of Conan so incredibly compelling - the sense of the weird hovering just out of sight.
There are examples of exotic mounts, pets and minions in the stories. I understand why you think they were overused, it's the same discussion regarding everybody being the "hero" in an MMO.
I can accept bugs, I mean software development is not an exact science. But where Funcom lacked was in acknowledgement of bugs, in any sort of bug reference/booking system. In any sort of ETA for a fix, or even a statement that things wouldn't be fixed. There was a whole host of vagueness in this area. People reporting bugs that had been seen on test servers, making there way into final release. I also don't accept bugs becoming 'features' because a company can not be bothered to fix them.
You really need to prove what you say here. I have been reading these same comments for *years* and they are pretty much baseless. The beta forums for Godslayer have been closed for a while, but again, go to the testlive forums for TSW. There are dev answers, comments and estimates in a lot of the issue threads.
Sometimes bugs appeared fixed internally and then reappear on the live servers. (We've had this on The Secret World with the Gear Manager bug and it is driving the coders insane). Nobody wants this to happen.
Who deemed the expansion release worthy? When it launched it was crashing for everybody when changing zone. That is your version of release worthy. It introduced a memory error to the 32 bit client. If you company had been resident in the UK I would of reported you to Trading Standards for providing goods not suitable for purpose. The dev team didn't even come up with a fix for the 32bit client memory issue at the time, a player found a workaround and posted it. The fix from Funcom was upgrade to a 64bit client ... and this software had been tested!
A lot of people are involved in deeming a product release ready. QA, Operations, Management, Development. In the case of Godslayer, all of the right boxes seemed to have been ticked.
Yes, this software had been tested on the beta servers for 8 months. Client crashes and errors are regrettable. The expansion playfields had a larger memory footprint than the other playfields and it caused problems on live servers. It was not easily spotted in the beta, because we didn't have servers running 6 instances of different playfields.
You have every right to be annoyed about it. But it has been fixed. And our testing routines were changed. I would recommend anyone playing a Dreamworld game to run it on a 64-bit system as 32-bit just doesn't cut it with the memory footprint. But 32-bit is still a min spec because it does run.
I am casting aspersions on your whole company, not singling you out. Yeah things might have got better, but that wouldn't be too hard. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.Overall I didn't have an issue with customer services, you see they were fine. It was the policy that was being dictated to them I had issue with.
No you literally did call me out personally. Check your earlier post re: Joel Bylos, korean grindfest yada yada.
I don't understand that point at all. You had tested this expansion according to you, yet you expected people to exploit the content. So much so that you built in a grind, to slow them down. I am saying there should have been more content, than introduced grind.
Yes, and I am saying that we upped numbers which would not have changed the overall amount of content in the game. Here is the thing - players always follow the path of least resistance. That means as soon as one person finds a way to exploit, everyone is doing it 2 days later. Players always exploit. It's a sad fact that years in this industry have proven to me time and time again.
We put in safeguards to ensure the exploiting in Godslayer would not be rampant - and took longer to remove those safeguards than anticipated. It really shouldn't be harder to understand than that.
Right so here you are trying to portray an image of an open caring 'Funcom' the business entity. So you would say that the customer is king in Funcom land then? All my time playing AOC it never appeared that this caring entity was bothered about it's user base at all. They had a policy of banning anybody from their forum that said anything negative about the game. The fans of the game always used one word when it came to AOC, 'potential' the fans saw what you as a business entity never did. But you didn't listen, instead you introduced tons of fluff that nobody cared about.
Yeah, this is another one of those urban legends. Proof that Funcom banned people who were negative, rather than people who broke the forum terms of service would be great.
As for ignoring players - no. As I said earlier, you cannot please all segments of a player base and someone always gets left out. Then it becomes the hyperbolic "ignoring the playerbase" but that just isn't correct. It's your perception, rather than a truth on any level.
Yeah I admit you know more than me, but I also think you are representing your company. They pay your salary, they don't pay me anything. In fact I have given them money in the past. So which side of the fence we are, I think has a mark on what can be said. You would probably be on a disciplinary charge if you brought your company into disrepute. Funcom owns you to all intents and purposes. While I appreciate your candor now, this sort of open dialogue should of been happening years ago.
So don't hold me hostage to the mistakes of the past. Be open to the discussion. I can't change the past. I can only change things going forward.
Again one of us works for Funcom and is paid a salary. I agree I will never know the truth behind a lot of things. But lets just say recent events at Funcom involving senior management seem to cast a less than glowing light on the culture at Funcom.
Well, unfortunately I can't comment on this in any way as it involves legal stuff.
It wasn't a long time before launch, we discussed it on this forum. Again we were never given a proper reason. We surmisedthat it was a problem with your game engine. Yes it was wrong to announce a release platform before you can deliver. Look at Bethesda, they are seeing repercussions with Dishonored on PS3 because of their failure to deliver the Skryrim DLC to that platform. Customers are fickle, customers hold grudges. I was sold on TSW being a 360 release in all your literature up until the point Ragnar pulled it. I don't hold a grudge that it wasn't delivered but what I would of liked to have been told is the true reason.Transparency is the wordand not just when it suits Funcom.
Well over a year before launch Ragnar said that the PC version of TSW was the focus and if we did a 360 version it would be a very different game. Feel free to fact check that:
Did you ever read the forums, to my recollection people were pretty in tune aout the direction they wanted the game to go in overall. It was Funcom who decided to take it their own direction. Lets not forget some AOC functionality hadn't worked since launch. If anything people wanted what they had been promised and more PVP. Funcom for some reason turned it into a PVE game, rather than going to the trouble of sorting out things like class balance.
Your recollection is again, just your perception. Funcom did not turn it into a PvE game, it always had elements of both since launch. Classes have all been completely revamped at least once since launch in an attempt to bring them into line. PvP was added, as was planty of PvE.
And yes, I read the forums. I do this on every project I work on to use it as a compass for understanding the direction the player base is swinging. Keep in mind that forums really are a very small percentage of players, and playerbase wide surveys usually show with much more accuracy the wishes of the majority.
No I think it's about transparency. If somebody had said with regards to the 360 port, the real reason I would have been more accepting of that. But instead we are left to surmise why it has been dropped, if it was ever on the cards in the first place. You announced the same for AOC as well, so a bit of a pattern forming. As for overselling TSW, that is not a problem Funcom has overall. If anything you need to shoot your marketing department. There was a serious lack of promotion for TSW which I imagine was reflected in your sale figures.
And I have explained it, both the why it was announced (and that I agree with you it was too early) and the reason it was dropped. There is really nothing more I can offer on this topic.
I agree, but history has an odd way of repeating itself. Unless you learn lessons from the past. If anybody should know this it's Funcom.
My points and indeed this discussion have always been about that. The Secret World is proof in many respects that we learned lessons from the past. Now we have a different set of lessons to learn.
This is natural for any gaming company - hell even Blizzard have plenty to learn from each product they release.
And here I thought we were having an open/honest dialogue. You disappoint me. Anyway I wish you luck I really do.
No offence but I am the one being open and honest here. You are just questioning my points. But I appreciate the good wishes at least
So TSW is not going free to play 'anytime soon' you know when I spoke about vaguenes. It would be nice as a parting gesture to this dialogue to get some clarity on this point. For potential customers. What does 'anytime soon' actually mean? 3 months, 6 months, 12 months ... Good luck with TSW, I think you are going to need it.
Again, I can only speak for what I know. F2P could happen in any of those timeframes and it wouldn't invalidate the fact that the only meetings I have been in to discuss it have ended with "not anytime soon."
It goes back to the misinformation example - things could change rapidly. Will you call me a liar if they do, or will you accept that I don't have a crystal ball and that decisions in a company are made on many levels and not all of them involving the development team?
This time I really will end this. If you want to continue the dialogue, I invite you to send me a PM on the official forums (same username).
Overall I am grateful for the response it was insightful. Perception though is a two way thing, perceptions as a developer can be a lot different to that of a player. Worlds apart even.
Comments
Pale, I wouldn't bother. Not to call anyone out or anything, but have you seen there post history?
Sorry to crack those rose-tinted glasses, but TSW is a quest-hub game and it's very easy to complete every singe piece of content available in a few weeks. You don't have to go hunting for anything, the maps are logical and lead you to everything, the lore also leads you by the nose if you actualy take the time to read it. Every mission is discoverable from another, often you'll stumble across them, but eventually you'll realise if your not rushing through the game and exploring a little bit as you go, they are all very easily acessible and no real searching is required.
I finished it after about 6 weeks, every mission (apart from a few that were bugged or broken), killed all the rare spawns (those that actually exist, still laughing about the amount of time we wasted hunting rares that aren't in the game
), did all the lairs, completed all the dungeons on all levels....it's REALLY easy if your playing with a group of friends.
We didn't rush anything, ambled our way through the game, enjoyed the scenery and the awesome lore and storylines, but the content in TSW is very small and the updates are tiny, completable in a day for most avid players, a week tops for the most casual of gamers.
My sub is cancelled for the time being, at the current rate of content addition they might have a months worth of content worthy of a one-off fee in about a year-or-so, by then it'll probably be F2P anyway.
This is my gripe, FC promised YEARS of pre-planned future content before release that was ready to go, they have delievered so far a few days tops.
Great game, but it's another SWTOR, been there, done that, move on.
Oh, and by the way, the lighthouse is a linear quest hub, previous missions point you to it and the writer who resides in it.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
You're right. I should have checked, first.
TSW has some of the best content out of any game - MMO or single player. Yes, I'd put some of it's missions over any RPG in quality.
There's just not alot of it and it's a pretty niche title to begin with.
The engine is pretty damn good. If they can get it rolling out for licensing everything will be peachy. AoC and TSW's graphical quality speak for themselves. (AoC's version is better though, or I should say more mature development wise.)
I like Funcom, I loved Anarchy Online. 1-20 in Tortage. The first two weeks of TSW. But it's not an MMO you play for five years. Regardless of it's fistful of really topnotch features.
This is also one of a very select handful of games that the sound (let alone music) in general I didn't mute immediately and actually forgot about entirely as I was sucked into the world.
When looking at history, Funcom has never shut down a game, and has always supported us gamers that are playing their game.
I have enjoyed playing Funcom games for many many years since beta AO, and have always had a subscription open with at least 1 of funcoms games. I still hope Funcom opens up a multi sub so that I could keep both AO, AoC and TSW account open at the same time.
Really looking forward to seeing these new updates going live and to keep playing and having fun in TSW!
This is exactly what they need to do, TSW on it's own for most players is too expensive, a FC version of SOE's Station Pass would be a great idea.
I'd buy one
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
One thing ive always respected about funcom: They stick with their games.
Now i would even go as far as relating funcom to trion in terms of work put towards their games. Problem is that with trions one example of awesome development, you have 2 funcom games where all that effort was put in making the game work right, rather than piling on content and new stuff.
This game had a good launch imo. I saw the largest issue being that they launched in the shadow of one of the most overhyped mmorpgs ive ever seen, complete with the most fanatical and active "supporters" towards that game that ive ever seen. This game was bashed ten times as hard as it would have been launching after GW...as a lot of players picked the game up at launch with the intention of dumpng and trashing it when GW came out. So imo, the game got a lot of bad press for a lot of systems that were not flawless (combat and animations) however they were never bad to begin with, just not flawless. Also the lack of content complaint from the gw2 wasnt very accurate, and funny considering the game they support.
Anyway, its good to see games earning their keep. You wont see stuff like this in a 100% free item mall game.
Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
I appreciated you got out of your way to open an account here and post.
But you really just have to ignore Fallenlords, as he has been on a vendetta against Funcom ever since he posted here, even openly admited it countless times, that he is on a crusade against you guys until the day the company shutdown. Only then he will be satisfied.
So it's better you response to people here that actually are constructive and have a more sane healthy mind. As fallenlords is just downright scary in everything he posts.
I can understand, that if you lost someone you loved to a company bad practices (like deliberately poluting rivers with heavy chemicals, that caused seriously health problems for people and even have people die), that you start a crusade to get the company shut down.
But seriously....demonstrating this kind of behaviour against a gaming company. A company that creates games for our entertainment and has done no harm to anyone. That is just scary beyond any doubt.
I'll end my comments here, but you have no idea what you are talking about. You make false, baseless statements with almost no foundation in reality. You have no evidence to support your comments. It's just hate and that's all.
End of story.
Sigh...I hate having to go to external forums to defend myself, but honestly, I think I'd rather clear the air. Even though, Fallenlords, I have never seen you post a constructive or positive thing. So this is more for other people who might have questions about decisions made in the past.
1) The location of the expansion for AoC was mandated by the Game Director. Who was actually Gaute. Who had decided it way before launch. So Khitai was not my choice as a REH fan. It was however, what I was told to make.
My job was finding a way to actually tie the story to the lore. And yes, Robert E Howard wrote about 10 lines about Khitai in all of his stories. You'll find everything he ever wrote represented in the expansion. Because I cared, and I went the extra mile to make sure that the setting fit with the little information we had.
2) The grind in the expansion was a precaution, because AoC players were always finding ways to exploit the crap out of the content. So we figured we would build in the grind, and then reduce it quickly once our systems proved leakproof. And guess what happened?
We launched the Xpac, most of the AoC team moved to Montreal and I was moved to TSW. In a period of turmoil like that, it took them a lot longer to fix the grind than was planned. It has been fixed though, which it is interesting that you don't mention.
Oh and selling the game in Korea (going F2P on Conan was done like a year after I had left the project) e.t.c. You do realize Lead Designers don't make business decisions right? Deals like that are mandated from above.
So for rational people out there, hopefully I have set a few minds at ease.
Thanks for posting, its the equivalent of the voice of god speaking from above lol.
As a fan of the company and products, it reaffirms that employees that take these measures still have souls and have not become 'suits' or think they are too good to have transparency with there customers. well that's least how I feel.
All the best on your current projects,
Nith.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Did you even read what Nusquam said here? They were planning on starting with the expansion being grindy UNTIL they had fixed exploits (Funcom doesn't ban exploiters, sadly). After the game had run a short time they were going to reduce the grind a lot, that didn't go as planned as the whole company basically moved from Oslo to Canada (and Nusquam was pulled from one prosject to another).
Now, I did stop playing AoC when the expansion came, partially because I was tired of the game and partially because it took 3-4 minutes to load the expansion areas (running windows xp 32 bit).
I do wonder why I play MMO's a bit though, when I find games like http://www.ftlgame.com/ really fun.
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
It's really quite simple. Gaute said there were "elements he was dissatisfied with." In the game he was Game Director for. He never said anything about the direction it was going. Feel free to fact check that.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/09/17/producer-and-game-director-for-age-of-conan-resigns-from-funcom/
To expand upon that, an expansion team was formed that I was not a part of for several months before I was brought onto the team as Lead Designer. They had been working from a vision document that was originally written by Gaute.
Yeah no offence, but I spent almost 4 years of my life reading all the versions of the stories - but our mandate from Conan inc was to use a particular set, the Del Rey published versions.
It being one of Howards weirder stories doesn't change anything. As for Vaghasan (not tigers and never referenced in the game as tigers) and the wolves, feel free to brush up on the in-game lore. We explained both their presence and how it all worked. The entire storyline was also run by various Howard scholars. I even did an interiew on The Cimmerian about it. I do find it odd that anyone could object to exotic mounts when Conan has been confronted with flying demon camels in one story.
If over 8 months in beta is not enough testing for you, there is little I can offer to placate you. I had a very strong relationship with the beta testers, just like I did with the beta testers for TSW. I also submitted weekly lists of the top 10 issues with the expansion. Unsuprisingly, tech was the number one point on that list for months. We had most of our coders working on it. We also had iron clad default deadlines with our Korean partners. When the stability was deemed good enough, the expansion was deemed release worthy. Release date was *never* the decision of the Lead Designer.
I apologize for your customer service woes, but again, this is hardly relevant to your original post casting aspersions on my ability to design and lead a project. I don't run the customer service area of the company, but you will note that if you head over to the TSW forums, there are plenty of positive customer service experiences. Could you admit that it might have gotten better over the past few years?
So if the required faction points was lower, there would have been more content? Your reasoning is flawed. Read what I wrote again.
Ah see I am not really making excuses, I am explaining the situation which led to your perception. I didn't apologize for it.
I'll ignore the melodramatic "Funcom doesn't care about players" stuff if you don't mind. Funcom is not a person. It is a company made up of individuals. I care about the players, and so do the rest of the design team. I'm sure the accountants don't and the chef in the cafeteria doesn't - but they are also a part of Funcom. It's essentially a meaningless statement.
Yes, our Korean Partners, Neowiz, made Age of Conan free-to-play in the east. They used their own store and had their own setup. The AoC F2P you see today is something entirely different. And yes, when I left AoC for TSW after Godslayer, there had been zero design plans around making the game F2P. You don't have to believe me, but at least admit that I know a lot more about the internal processes of our projects (and company) than you do.
I'm sorry but your "feelings" are irrelevant. You can choose to not believe anything I say (and you've made it quite clear you won't) but again, one of us possesses knowledge and one of us is guessing at best.
Well again, there was a 360 port of the engine worked on for a long time. And then it was stopped because the memory requirements of Dreamworld exceeded what modern consoles with shared VRAM could handle.
I agree with you that marketing probably jumped the gun in announcing those versions. Ragnar set the record straight on TSW a long time before launch, however. I think it is a bit harsh to hold a grudge for an announcement that was retracted. Your call though.
Well, if you used to love it and you feel I had a large hand in ruining that, you might also consider that I had a large hand in the game that you loved in 1.5/1.6. The game went in a direction you didn't like, and I understand that can be frustrating. But at the end of the day, nobody makes decisions that everyone agrees with. And players are incredibly conflicted in what they want and how they want it.
As for "misinformation" it really does depend on things. As with the 360 example, for all intents and purposes people were employed to work on a 360 port. Does that mean Funcom lied when they announced it? And when it fell through, it means things had changed after the announcement. Then the announcement becomes "misinformation" but there was no attempt to mislead people purposely. On TSW we were very wary of "overselling" the game, and you have to admit that we promised nothing in the game that we didn't deliver (to varying degrees of success).
My point is that companies change, grow and evolve over time.TSW is *not* AoC - and the needs of TSW are not the same needs that Rise of the Godslayer had.
Anyway, let me end this now. I don't think we should continue to argue about this as you have made your standpoint clear and I hope I have made mine clear.
Thanks for posting, Joel. It really says a lot about how much passion you have for your work when you're willing to talk about it outside of company-sanctioned interviews, forums, PR material, etc. It's something I think needs to happen more in the industry, though I can certainly see why all the red tape prevents that.
ty for your post Mr. Funcom
I am a TSW lifer, and I look forward to what you guys are doing. You are the only gaming company that even attempts to try anything new at all, and for that I applaude you, even though a lot of it is met with ridicule. Some things you hit out of the park and somethings wont go over well. As long as you continue to shoot for the stars, keep up the good work. Please dont settle for WOWifying to attract some nawsayers, and I have seen you dont.
Is there any plans for a Funcom Pass? That would rock!
I never saw anything from Gaute outlining what he thought was wrong with the game. Perhaps he provided it to Craig? Keep in mind that I was simply a designer at that point - I was not in management meetings.
Your impressions are again irrelevant. I am a Conan fan, and I still reread the stories for inspiration even though I am no longer actively working on the project. You can believe me or not.
Your second question should be posed to the man who set the direction for the project. There were plenty of internal discussions about exactly that topic, with people well versed in the lore actively arguing against the magic system. A company is made up of individuals, as I mentioned earlier.
Al Harron and I had a long email exchange regarding the expansion storyline and I made a several changes based on his feedback.
However, every single Conan story involves fantastic elements. They are in fact at the core of every single one of the stories. That is a part of what makes the adventures of Conan so incredibly compelling - the sense of the weird hovering just out of sight.
There are examples of exotic mounts, pets and minions in the stories. I understand why you think they were overused, it's the same discussion regarding everybody being the "hero" in an MMO.
You really need to prove what you say here. I have been reading these same comments for *years* and they are pretty much baseless. The beta forums for Godslayer have been closed for a while, but again, go to the testlive forums for TSW. There are dev answers, comments and estimates in a lot of the issue threads.
Sometimes bugs appeared fixed internally and then reappear on the live servers. (We've had this on The Secret World with the Gear Manager bug and it is driving the coders insane). Nobody wants this to happen.
A lot of people are involved in deeming a product release ready. QA, Operations, Management, Development. In the case of Godslayer, all of the right boxes seemed to have been ticked.
Yes, this software had been tested on the beta servers for 8 months. Client crashes and errors are regrettable. The expansion playfields had a larger memory footprint than the other playfields and it caused problems on live servers. It was not easily spotted in the beta, because we didn't have servers running 6 instances of different playfields.
You have every right to be annoyed about it. But it has been fixed. And our testing routines were changed. I would recommend anyone playing a Dreamworld game to run it on a 64-bit system as 32-bit just doesn't cut it with the memory footprint. But 32-bit is still a min spec because it does run.
No you literally did call me out personally. Check your earlier post re: Joel Bylos, korean grindfest yada yada.
Yes, and I am saying that we upped numbers which would not have changed the overall amount of content in the game. Here is the thing - players always follow the path of least resistance. That means as soon as one person finds a way to exploit, everyone is doing it 2 days later. Players always exploit. It's a sad fact that years in this industry have proven to me time and time again.
We put in safeguards to ensure the exploiting in Godslayer would not be rampant - and took longer to remove those safeguards than anticipated. It really shouldn't be harder to understand than that.
Yeah, this is another one of those urban legends. Proof that Funcom banned people who were negative, rather than people who broke the forum terms of service would be great.
As for ignoring players - no. As I said earlier, you cannot please all segments of a player base and someone always gets left out. Then it becomes the hyperbolic "ignoring the playerbase" but that just isn't correct. It's your perception, rather than a truth on any level.
So don't hold me hostage to the mistakes of the past. Be open to the discussion. I can't change the past. I can only change things going forward.
Well, unfortunately I can't comment on this in any way as it involves legal stuff.
Well over a year before launch Ragnar said that the PC version of TSW was the focus and if we did a 360 version it would be a very different game. Feel free to fact check that:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-04-07-funcom-secret-world-different-on-console
Your recollection is again, just your perception. Funcom did not turn it into a PvE game, it always had elements of both since launch. Classes have all been completely revamped at least once since launch in an attempt to bring them into line. PvP was added, as was planty of PvE.
And yes, I read the forums. I do this on every project I work on to use it as a compass for understanding the direction the player base is swinging. Keep in mind that forums really are a very small percentage of players, and playerbase wide surveys usually show with much more accuracy the wishes of the majority.
And I have explained it, both the why it was announced (and that I agree with you it was too early) and the reason it was dropped. There is really nothing more I can offer on this topic.
My points and indeed this discussion have always been about that. The Secret World is proof in many respects that we learned lessons from the past. Now we have a different set of lessons to learn.
This is natural for any gaming company - hell even Blizzard have plenty to learn from each product they release.
No offence but I am the one being open and honest here. You are just questioning my points. But I appreciate the good wishes at least
Again, I can only speak for what I know. F2P could happen in any of those timeframes and it wouldn't invalidate the fact that the only meetings I have been in to discuss it have ended with "not anytime soon."
It goes back to the misinformation example - things could change rapidly. Will you call me a liar if they do, or will you accept that I don't have a crystal ball and that decisions in a company are made on many levels and not all of them involving the development team?
This time I really will end this. If you want to continue the dialogue, I invite you to send me a PM on the official forums (same username).