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Going back to development, How could this game been made better? What changes would need to be made
MMOExposed
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in ArcheAge
Going back to development, How could this game been made better? What changes would need to be made to do so?
Talking pre-Trion World's hands on the Archeage development.
What would need to be changed to have been a better game on world wide release?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
It's always difficult to have a true 'world wide' game as different cultures have different mindsets. Even between two countries that speak the same language their are cultural differences, for example UK and US. Before you cry BS on this I should point out that I am a Brit who has been living in the US for the last 14 years. Believe me there are many differences.
As to Archeage, you would need to change the way the Koreans perceive the west so they could make a game that is more 'west centric' but to do that they risk alienating their domestic players as it would no longer be a Korean, or Asian, game.
Simply put, there is little they can do to bridge the cultural gap.
(EDIT for spelling)
Pull out of the West
I don't run a mmo company my self, don't know how much does it cost keep it going, and how much profit going take to make the game last more then a year to keep support it.
But there some stuff that should not happen, like bad coding and long support to get to people fast even if takes a week per ticket.
So right now one and the other need each other to fix the problem but looks like going take them very long time.
1. hacking/botting fixes.
2. subscription only
3. removal of the Labor Point system. it isn't needed as everything has a growth timer to limit the amount of most resources and even then, crafting requires some items that come from drops/loot and is limited thusly.
4. Land ownership quantity limits so more people can own land. nobody "needs" 5+ plots of land on one server.
5. snap-to for house/farm placements so no one can place an 8x8 smack in the middle of an opening near 20x12 and take it all up so no one else can build in hopes that a neighbor will stop paying their lands so he can drop a 16x16...
6. some actual work done on pirating and adding benefits for it.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Actually Archeage was a hit in Japan and Russia got the F2P version, thus the western version, and most of the complaints about the game were things added/changed by said conversion. AA has since hemorrhaged players in Japan, I am one of them, quit last week.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
This. And for the love of god add some PvE freaking loot tables. Add some PvE challenge solo or duo. At least pretend to care about PvE. Make certain mobs drop certain items, rare spawns etc... No reason a game with sandbox elements can't have challenging/interesting PvE.
1. Implement an actual demolition system instead of just having the land "free up" after a demo. A brief (30 second) auction for the existing structure should work fine. When land-grabbers have to put real market-value money down, most will be discouraged from over-reaching. Having the most lucrative activity in the game be labor-free and rig-dependent can't possibly be what they intended.
2. "horizontal progression" with high-level MOB AI would be cool, so that the monsters you roll by on all your trade runs would become relevant again.
3. Obviously double-down on server-side exploit prevention. (This is harder than the average internet poster assumes, because all MMO's are vulnerable, competitive sandboxes just make the exploits extremely visible because nearly every winner implies a loser.)
4. Add some variety to the daily gilda quests.
In the end, it's still a great game. The Trade Pack is the MMO invention of the half-decade and all the transportation content is top-notch and refreshingly new. Hopefully other sandboxes will learn from its successes and failures.
1. for certain hacks in archeage now, there is no fix and no man able to fix them on this planet, sadly.
2. it was tried and already failed. plus subscription is the model with the higher failure ratio in the west, not suggested
3. labor points are the only thing that make possible game like archeage to exist, remove them as the game is now will only lead to an amount so big of game breaking actions that is ridicule just to thinking of it, aside of the problems that will arise with alt-armies and bot-armies, if people cannot list atleast five of these gamebreaking problems, then labor points are actually helping you.
4. the more lands you own greater the amount of taxes you must pay, taxes grow geometrically, not arithmetically, well almost. the logarithm is not favorable
5. see number 3. another gamebreaking problem would arise. better having plot wars trust me
6. as far I understood, pirating is not a game's faction. is a punishment.
Mainly this, especially the first 4, as well as massive amounts of bug / exploit fixes.
1. You are clearly not a programmer.
2. it failed in South Korea, it succeeded in Japan. They were lied to and were told they had to westernize the game to make it succeed and THAT is why it failed in Russia and now here. And games that fail at being a sub fail because they SUCK and no other reason then that.
3. Don't give me none of your BS. I played the game when it was a sub and it gave far MORE LP (25/15) and had fewer LP sinks in it all while having FEWER components needed for crafting and the economy was not flooded, in fact it still barely even existed because of the points I made. The LP system is a moronic system that took away from one of the games best features, in fact, it made it a punishment and was also the single most complained about aspect of the game right next to botting and hacking.
4. Tax certs are easy as Eff to get and land is far too important a feature in this game to allow the current system. It helped to feed its failure.
5. You gave a cop-out response because you had nothing real to say.
6. Do you even play this game?
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Much is wrong in this statement... AA isn't failing because the game "sucks" AA is seeing troubles here because it's business model is unfavorable. Secondly "sucks" says nothing about any game's real issues.To be brutally honest "sucks" is a juvenile descriptor, it describes nothing, it is pure laziness as well as subjective. It also in essence says a game that can live on a sub can't "suck" which again is subjective.. Every game sucks to someone... There are plenty of reasons why games fail at retaining a subscription model, most of which have nothing to do with a game actually "sucking" in its overall execution, in most cases it's a matter of longevity as well as value per dollar spent.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
2. it failed in South Korea, it succeeded in Japan. They were lied to and were told they had to westernize the game to make it succeed and THAT is why it failed in Russia and now here. And games that fail at being a sub fail because they SUCK and no other reason then that.
3. Don't give me none of your BS. I played the game when it was a sub and it gave far MORE LP (25/15) and had fewer LP sinks in it all while having FEWER components needed for crafting and the economy was not flooded, in fact it still barely even existed because of the points I made. The LP system is a moronic system that took away from one of the games best features, in fact, it made it a punishment and was also the single most complained about aspect of the game right next to botting and hacking.
4. Tax certs are easy as Eff to get and land is far too important a feature in this game to allow the current system. It helped to feed its failure.
5. You gave a cop-out response because you had nothing real to say.
6. Do you even play this game?
1. I am.
2. look! p2p archeage is not failed in the country where p2p model perform its best in the world! do you even made a research on japanese market? also state your criterias for the "failed status" and "suck status" otherwise your words carry no meanings
3. "I played the game when it was a sub" < we can start here. noticed any difference with the actual version? if yes, provide the list of five
4: more houses> less plants in the wild> less thieves> less jury> less pirates> less dangers> less thrill> make stuff is easier> aka boring> don't forget is a gvg game! also prolly 116% deflation cap often hit> people would complains anyway> more houses lead to problems unless some design changes, also see:5
5.archeage is designed around sub series of catalan, resources spawned, lp, plots, the crafting rng, the amount of golds generated, and more, all is deeply tied. I'm not 100% sure but calculation for now are pretty solid in this way. is enough cop-out? or you can follow me?
6.yup ojisan
people tipically offer solutions they think are good, but the vast majority of times is just that their incompetence does not let them see the negative sides and sometimes disastrous sides that such changes would entail. granted that such solutions are technically applicable, they often aren't.
it's completely normal, if people were able to realize it with consistency all would be game designers
1. The crafting is really dull and outdated . get materials ,click and watch bar fill up .
FF14 was heading in the right direction with their crafting .
I would like a mix of FF14 Crafting and SWG type crafting .
2. Remove gold from the game and make it trade based . Say trade 10 gold ore for 50 logs etc ,
no gold means less bot spam hopefully.
Just 2 of many things I would do.
Seems to me every patch is 1 step foward in some features and 2 steps backwards in others.
I didnt play AA when released but played in RU pre 1.0 and it was better in some major features.
I dont understand the version we are playing atm, 1.2 with 1.7 features, If XLGames/Trion are implement 1.7 features here, why not launch a equal version like in Korea, wasnt better to patch and control? If AA was the exactly same version worldwide im sure the bugs/exploits control was more easy since it seems is tottaly XLGames dependence.
- ArcheAge need a big patch to solve some annoying problems, a more serious management and maybe the Trions control over the game should be revised, there are some problems hapening right now and the wait to XLGames patch it is to long. Example: the flowers exploit, we need to wait few months to XLGames take care of it, Trion should have the power to temporary remove the item from game untill a patch come from XLGames.
- The loot table should back to pre 1.0 with constante gear drop from mobs and make the instances itens breakable to archeum, we need more archeum on economy, we have to deal with the rng in crafting so at least make the acess to mats more easy.
- Landgrab like it is atm needs to stop in some way, rules must be adjust to make it more balance. Here i admit, its the Hackers/cheaters paradise. Theres very good ideas all over the official forum, like "a player cant place a propriety if have other one to finish building in his account".
- Patrons LP regen should be equal on / off, since the launch i found this implementation really stupid, no sence at all.
And we need competente and active GMs 24h in game. If Trion dont have the power to solve some minor bug that create big problems, then suport the players 24h a day to minimize the damage and the abuse of exploits.
Lets see what future patchs will bring to AA, love the concept and even with all this problems still love the game, i just wich future patchs come and solve the major issues.
1. No, you are not. Anyone that learned any programming code created after COBOL knows that it can be fixed.
2. Either your translation tool is failing you or you need to brush up on your English because that first part made no sense. As to your second part, the INDUSTRY sets the criteria. Player population in South Korea was so low the company wasn't making a profit there and the profit that was coming out of Japan wasn't enough to keep the game afloat. A company does NOT alter their game for different market 2 years after release if the game was not a success. White knight all you want, reality is against you.
3. Gibberish, you didn't translate it well.
4. bad game design > fewer players > fewer plants in the wild > less thieves >less jury >less pirates > less dangers > less thrill > aka boring > the few players remaining complaining > even more leave the game. rinse repeat for every single market. Again, reality and you aren't getting along.
5. And all of it was greatly CHANGED with the F2P conversion...the game was built around a subscription model and the servers had a set population cap around the games original design, something they didn't care about after the conversion which is why the game is a cluster fizuk now.
6. I aint your grandpa, baka.
People will white knight anything no matter the situation. It doesn't matter that the population of a game is low in every market, the game is good and must be defended at all costs. Negative? there is no negative, make any changes and THAT is a negative! God save the Queen!
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
-They should have been 100% committed to making AA a sandbox from level 1.
-They should have learned from Korean launch/beta easily avoid the whole land debacle
-Game desperately needed more races. Three races, two of which looked the same, does not cut it in any fantasy market
-Gearing up should be more about skill and less about winning the lottery
-Combat is too "done to death asiany" They needed to really make their mark here but failed miserably
-AA is the worst of examples of how F2P can ruin a game. Don't go F2P if you don't know how to squish bots and gold spammers.
-Balance was of little concern to the devs, every pvp'er uses shadowplay for instance.
-Labor point system is horrendous. Gathering is annoying enough without having to worry about having enough points to go cut a tree down after you find it. Even using the gear you already earned takes labor points? I want to meet the mouth breather that created this system so i can punch him in the face.
i am afraid they can't change the biggest problem of Archeage. The whiney gimme gimme generation of western game "players".
If all these things were done i might consider coming back. Auroria I can't speak to, since I left right before it was released.
Oh yeah, and this as well. It seems more prevalent in AA than any other game I've played.