Fist de Yuma - January 19, 2004

This and That While most people understand the new changes will be good in the long run most are affected badly in the short run. Those with an open mind accept the changes and adapt accordingly. Others are not so happy. My "Goodbye to those who must leave" last week poked a little fun at their expense. This week I have posts by Gharuvy and Evoker II that will help explain why this change is necessary. I also have a post by Drunken Madman about the proper response to a disaster and how wonderful people in this game are. Living in an interconnected world As you might guess I spend a lot of time in front of MS Word. I'll spend hours writing about something each day. I open and close files constantly. The other day everything slowed to a crawl. Word would open but it would take minutes instead of seconds. Then the entire system started getting slower and slower. Soon I was having problems getting into AC. I immediately suspected Norton Anti-Virus as being the culprit. I shut down Norton and everything returned to normal. After the next reboot it was still fixed and I forgot about it. Today I found out the reason in a free newsletter I get. Fred Langa has a newsletter that give out tips, reports and news dealing with computers. There are a few times where it helped me find an answer to a problem. This time it was more of an explanation than a problem fix. I have a feeling that others who read this column might have had the same problem and would like to know the reason. It goes to show how we live in an interconnected world. Thanks, Joshua, and all the other readers who wrote about this. This is actually a security problem: Verisign couldn't handle the load on its servers as millions of PC sought to update an expired certificate list. Norton AntiVirus, among many other apps, relies on that list to help ensure that its patches are authentic. When NAV couldn't get the updated list, it stalled, bringing the default "scan on open" operations in Word and Excel to a halt. The race is on I needed a sing key for a trade I'm making. I thought I had 10 sings but only had 9. I had just done an all-nighter with Fist's Armorer to get him to 115. That meant he no longer has lock pick. I decided to take Fist de Mage to the Plains until I got a Sing. I lucked out and had a Vrindi drop one in the first 15 minutes. I was just running out the buff after that. As I hit a major intersection near the center Plains bowl I found a Dark Inferno! Now Fist has been looking for the Scroll of Dark Rain for some time now. This was the first Dark Inferno I had seen with any of my players in over a year. Of course it was the one player who cannot use the scroll that finds the Dark Inferno. I decided to run Fist there. It was worth the effort even if there is only a one in four chance of the scroll dropping. I knew it was going to be iffy. If the land block reset I would lose it. Unfortunately Fist is on the same account as Fist de Mage. That meant I would have to log off Mage and risk the land block resetting. I figured I would log back Mage every few minutes or so while running Fist there. Fortunately Fist was already buffed and in armor. I ported to the Ladies island, took the North Dires portal and then the Rim portal to get close. I stopped at the first safe spot to load back Mage. I knew I was only minutes away. The Dark Inferno was still there. I loaded back Fist and made the rest of the run. In hindsight I should have just gone ahead and killed the Dark Inferno with Mage at that point. The body would only last 4 minutes so it would be tight but I think I would have made it. As it was I likely missed by seconds. I got Fist there and the spawn had reset. Of course there was a good chance the block resetting would have cleaned up the body. I could not be sure if having Mage kill it would have worked. I'll get the darn scroll in time but it is looking like a long time. Not the way to do it The DT people have a legitimate gripe. They want a new server and feel they deserve it. After all, there have already been two NPK servers made and now a third is being created. DT is having severe lag problems. Many feel that the cheaters have won on DT and killing off the main cheats means on one will ever be able to compete against them. The DT people feel that PK has been neglected. The steps taken to balance PK have mostly not worked. Mages still dominate and a melee without a high life skill might as well just type /die if in a fight with someone who does. Rather than address these issues in a thoughtful manner the DT people did what they always do, create havoc and hate. While there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed with PK most of the problems on DT are self-created. There are not many people playing on DT. It being a harsh world is only a fraction of the problem. The DT people have felt that keeping people out is one of their main goals. They do all they can do drive anyone new away. It is not just name-calling or a 200lv camping the starter towns. It is a general atmosphere of hate and rejection towards anyone new. Even long time DT players are called names if the started anywhere but DT. This is especially bad during the times when DT could gain the most new recruits. When the NPK servers have problems many players would head to DT to see what it is like. This was an opportunity for the DT people so show how much fun their server can be. Instead they did there level best to drive them away and make anyone who did not get the hint miserable. Few adults want to spend a day with children cursing them out. Few want to feel hatred and intolerance for the crime of being a new DT player. No one wants to get laughed at because they get killed by someone 150 levels above them. No one wants to find they are unable to even stock supplies because of jerks who hate anyone new. At this point the lack of numbers prevent a new PK server. Rather than try and understand this from and intellectual point of view they strike out. The last developers chat was a classic example. For those not hitting the boards the DT players deliberately attacked the developer's chat. They created insulting names and spammed the developers and IRC in general. They create strings of text that would disrupt the IRC channel. They logged on and off to in order to overload the server. The result was the chat had to be stopped in the middle so the techs could combat the attacks. What was worse was the VN DT board was used to organize this attack! Not one of the threads posting attack tactics and code strings was deleted or even locked. If I was in charge the Mods there would be fired. All this attack really did was make people angry. I'm guessing they felt that the squeaky wheel get the grease. What they forget is it is also the first wheel replaced. While the developers were nice about this in public they had to be seething in private. If I were them I would shut down DT completely. It is not worth the headache. With the servers being moved many will be tempted to try out DT. If DT's players had half a brain they would welcome them. They could help them with advice if nothing else. They could explain the pitfalls of DT and direct them to an allegiance that would best fit their skills. This attitude would have the effect of drawing people to DT. As the server filled there would be legitimate pressure to make a new PK only server. Turbine would have little choice but to create one. It is guaranteed that the exact opposite will happen. There will be players who will anticipate others creating a PPL on DT. They will camp the outside with high levels and inside the starter dungeon with highly buffed killers. No one new will have any chance at all. Most players know better than to go to DT by now. Instead I read about players going to one of the other NPK servers and fighting as PKL. They have level rules and structure. In other words they are having fun, fun that is denied them on DT. So this attitude will keep the DT numbers low. The changes in pass-up will make it even harder for new players and DT's numbers will drop even more. Low numbers mean no new server, possibility forever. It is even possible that the numbers will drop so badly that Turbine will be forced wipe and make it NPK. Turbine has to go where their investment will do the most good for the most people. DT's players will have no one to blame but themselves. Gentlemen, it is about numbers. If you have them you can demand. If you don't then you have no say and your childish pranks will only make it worse. Guest writer; Gharuvy One underlying fact of every MMOG I have played (AC, AC2, EQ, DAoC, and now Horizons) is that there is a clear directly proportional relationship between the general playerbase level and content demand. When the average player is low level, there is a low demand for content. Think about it before you start slobbering at the mouth thinking I am some tool. If EVERYONE is low level, the Devs can concentrate on content aimed at a very tight range of levels. This is in essence the best position for a developer to be in. With every introduction of new content, ALL players benefit. In theory, if this relationship remains true throughout the lifespan of a MMOG, the Devs can consistently "pace" the playerbase with appropriate content levelwise and throw those players that lag behind a bone every now and then and in theory all levels should have adequate content. Now this is idealistic since it doesn't account for the hardcore gamers which will quickly outpace the "average Joe" player. However, the fact that you have to put in time is a natural deterrent for this type of gaming. It doesn't stop everyone, but it does stop most by the shear fact that most people can not devote 5+ hours a day to a video game. Given this, say for example if 50% of your playerbase is at a relatively "average" level, that gives you 25% lagging behind, and 25% ahead via hardcore gaming. This is still a great place for a Dev Team to be in. Reason being, by focusing on the "middle" levels you are still in essence creating content for 75% of your players: 50% level appropriate and 25% as a "future enticements" that is easily reached either by small increases in time playing immediately (single sessions) or just eventuality of playing over a longer duration (lifespan). Now lets look at this model with chains, You have 5 classes of players versus the 3 mentioned above: Laggers, Average Joes, Hardcores, Chainers, and Power Chainers. This radically shifts the level scheme to the high end, since now you have in essence three out of five classes of players, which will rapidly outpace the rest of the players and content. Now in order for the Devs to create content that is level appropriate for the majority of the players, they have to focus in on the very high levels instead of the middle levels. And that's great, except for it provides HUGE incentive to everyone to reach those high levels to see the new content. The paradigm before was that even with average playing a lagger would get to the Average Joe content. This is no longer the case with the chains. A lagger who refuses to chain will NEVER see the high level content. The Average Joe who refuses to chain will not see the new content since the difference in chaining XP vs just average playing XP is really something akin to the steep curve of exponential growth. The only people who get new content in theory will be the highest of levels. Now of course the Devs can't let this happen, so they split their time between Low, Middle, and High content and satisfy neither class of people. The uberz complain that there is nothing new, the middle complain that there is nothing new, but they see the dangling carrot of the high level content they have yet to see, so they have incentive to chain or powergame to get to those levels. The laggers usually just give up in disgust at the lack of dev focus as well as content and the hopelessness that they will never see the content unless they chain. The ultimate outcome of this is that everyone ends up at the highest levels and there is no one left in the lower levels or the middle levels. This is the current state of AC. Anyone who didn't want to chain either quit or eventually gave in. Yes there are a few exceptions, but the majority have followed this pattern. The new content aimed at the higher levels is used to "fellow-level" the few middle level players left to the high levels (think a level 50-75 player in a VOD Fellow: They do not remain level 50-75 for long). This whole process is what you will see people calling, "The artificial increase for high level content due to chains" since that "uber XP" content would have never been implemented (at least not in the time frame by which it was) for the middle levels to utilize to bypass the middle levels entirely. Once everyone is high level you have to start Monty Hauling and giving them BFGs to keep them happy. They have skills and abilities that the game was never designed to handle. The monsters in essence have to go into an Arms Race with the players in order to even be challenging. Think of it like this: If the average high level player does 400 equivalent damage in a "turn" (since each class strikes at different speed you have to look at a unit of time) to a monster with 10,000 health, is it any different if the same player does 40 damage to a monster with 1000 health? or 4 damage to a 100 health monster? In theory no, but it reality yes since if the highest of level characters are doing 4 damage, what do you have the low level players doing? 0.4 damage? How would that make you feel, "Little John does 0.4 slashing damage to drudge stalker!" And so monsters with 1,000,000,000,000 health are introduced because that new CB Sword does 1,000 damage per turn, etc... Its stupid, and is a direct result of chaining; i.e. Valley of Death. Even worse is the high level chainers start wanting places they can go without what they call noobies (which consist most likely of players who have actually played the game longer than they have) and the Devs toss in Level 100+ dungeons. That was just a horrible move on the devs part. As if chains weren't already providing enough incentive for people to powergame/chain past the middle content, now they were being told you will NEVER experience this content until you hit a certain level which in all essence would take people years to do if not for exploiting the chaining system. Now think about the game if people progress in a relatively even patter as presented in the 1st scenario. You please the vast majority of the players with a narrow focus of content. You will always have the powergamers who will out-level the others, but these are the players who would do so NO MATTER WHAT THE DEV TEAM does. The LAST thing you want to do is cater to these people!!! And yet, the second scenario forces the dev team to cater to them since the highest of level players includes the majority of players. Some people would say, "well what is wrong with that? You are still pleasing the "majority" of the players?" The problem is that the content that was added over the course of two years is now completely irrelevant to the game and everything needs to be "retooled" to be more level appropriate, sound familiar? But also now, that same content that was designed for the middle and low levels is gone. This only emphasizes, either chain/powerlevel or get the hell out. And people do just that, they get the hell out. AC has followed this pattern to the "T". Continually allowing chaining to raise the bar so far out of the low-end players reach that they quit. This hurts the game not helps since it also encourages no new growth as why would a new player want to start a game where everyone is already so far above them they can never catch up unless they "cheat" and in addition what little "noobie" content is left is slowly being taken away to feed the demand for the chainers? The second scenario, which is roughly parallel to AC1s progression leads to frustration for everyone. Frustration to those casual gamer who so far behind they quit because they will never "catch up", frustration and envy to the average player who can't reach the new content, but constantly is reminded that it is there and available if only they chain. And the highest level of players who are so uber, that the new content aimed at them is the same as the old with just a few extra orders of magnitude of health points. This post doesn't even cover the effects of Chains and the resulting extreme high levels on PvP and PvM Balance. Guest Writer; Drunken Madman Great people Well... I was speechless the other night, but you know me I have plenty to say. I'm not going to get too in-depth on when, where or WHY. But these two really surprised me. The other night 4 of my corpse was left in a dungeon. On those bodies were all my majors, bows and armor. When I logged in the other night I had nothing in my packs, I dropped soo much that I actually lost an empty pack on one of the bodies. Without a second thought I went to my chests and started trying to piece together some armor to wear and a bow to use. I'm far from rich. I owned one tinkered up suit of armor and it was lost. I owned one tinkered up AR bow and it was lost. I owned one Major Coord Helm and it was lost. To make a long story short, I was hurtin pretty bad. But unlike most, I didn't make ready my retirement speech. I just looked at it like I was going to have to rebuild. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't doing this with a smile on my face. I was pretty upset about it all. Anyways... after gathering my armor and bow I started buffing and I get a message from Luminescent asking me to meet in marketplace. When I got there, Luminescent loaded me down with a lot of my gear that I thought was lost, then assured me that Little Lore had some of the rest. Shortly later Little Lore showed up and gave me MORE of the items I had lost. They even gave me the pyreal scarab that dropped on one of the last bodies. They asked me if I was still missing anything, I told them a few items and a little bit later they came up with those and returned them. The items I dropped were very nice items. Prepatch 420+ amuli, Major Coord helm etc etc..... I'm sure many people would love to get their hands on my gear especially the ones that are inscribed. Mars-Hill... These two great people deserve much recognition for the act of kindness they have demonstrated under your name. I am indebt. Yes, there were a few Majors and bows that didn't get returned. But I am sure it was not because of these two not trying to recover. A few people told me once the bodies disappeared there were a few people pickin through them. But what I got back was awesome. I didn't expect anything. I know I would have done the same thing as these two. I also know there are a lot of people who wouldn't. Thank you Luminescent and Little Lore. I appreciate your kindness. Guest Writer; Evoker II First I want to say I'm not posting this as a flame to those upset with the changes. I know this news is very hard for many to swallow, especially being so sudden. The purpose of this post is to help some understand why and also to serve as a reminder of WHY we play the game and HOW we PLAYED the game. Often when things are put into a different perspective the view can be asymmetrical. Lets take a trip back to 2 years ago shall we. I'm sure most of the players on these boards were present then and can recall back to the times where a whole 3 million xp an hour was considered to be uber. We all remember don't we before Sing Caul came, before Apheus Lassel came, before Asherons Isle came and even before that one patch where Plat golems were spawning all over the dires. We remember having one area where the "High levels" would congregate and hunt for their most precious xp. Aerlinthe Island.... I know cause I was one of them. I would often gather vassals and grand vassals and guildmates and form big fellowships to hunt the Isle. We had an ABSOLUTE blast doing it to. Now we all remember the magic number everyone was trying to hit as far as xp per hour. The big 5 Mill!!!! Boy that was a lot of xp wasn't it??? However, how sad it is that now days if your not doing that by yourself your perceived as doing something wrong. So here we are today Jan 13th 2004. How times have changed and pretty damn good if you ask me. So in only 1.5 - 2 years time the magic number for peaking xp in a fellowship has gone from 5 mill to...... Hmmm 35 MILLION PER HOUR. Seven times the old mark from years ago. With the introduction of the Rainment dungeons and Apheus Lassel we the players have been raking in the xp and that other word "Pass up". I have a few questions now. Now what did we do as players to deserve such a boost in xp, or the way around what didn't the devs do to feel they needed to increase the xp drastically? Next question. If Turbine played it a little differently (smarter) and introduced these changes earlier during or before the patch's when Rainment dungeon were introduced or Apheus Lassel. Before we got the HUGE boost to fellowship xp. Would you be as upset as you are now? Answer those sincerely to yourself and I think you'll feel better about the changes. After all, Turbine has made a big investment by purchasing the AC franchise. They plan on being here "For a long time". For the future good of this game it's in their best interest to slow down the game and preserve what's made the game what it is. The best customers to them are the ones that stick around and actually enjoy the game. Not the ones that powergame thru all the content, not the ones that devalue the allegiance system which is unsurpassed by any game out there. The only issue with the changes are the trade/ tinker toons imo. However, the issue is very minor and to be honest, seriously, how many "Uber" Tinker tradesmule must one allegiance have? It's not like we don't have any max tinkers around, Hell we already have maxed tinkers that work for FREE!!!!! So if you don't like slapping a bow onto your Trade mule and hunting him a bit then there's other methods to leveling. Some have to tone down the uberness and snap back into reality, which has been staring back at them the last 24 hrs. Are you playing this game for fun or for grandeur? Do you really want to play this game or not? Are you playing this game for your reasons or for someone else's? Funny thing is if AC started out with this system, we would've had a better game and avoided all of those flame fests. People are a bit spoiled now and need to realize what this game is about. In summary Turbine has nerfed chains and xp as a whole. But we've had our fair share of xp in the years leading to now. Everyone who's played a fair amount of time has a 126+ or near. So lets give them a break and let them work on improving the game and making it awesome. You know well a lot is on the horizon with AC1.