Yeah, that idea has come ... about 22 years ago when I played other games. It may be time for Turbine to get off their dead butts and FINALLY implement it.


I hope they do, it very well may get me back to playing again. God knows the other elements that other games that they are ripping off (ie Pets) isn't. But who knows when they will be able to do it. I mean Frelorn is on the boards asking "What kind of masks we want", as if that is supposed to be "content".


As petty as this sounds, it was because of Frelorn asking that stupid question, that broke my back and directly cause me to unsub my accounts. Turbine is worrying about "holiday masks" when they have MAJOR GAME MECHANIC PROBLEMS starring them in the face. Talk about not seeing the forrest through the trees.


Well, unless Turbine has hired about 5 or 6 Devs and about that many or double +Envoys, I wouldn't expect to see a major redo of "Questing for XPs" and doing what is needed to kill off UCMing (ie +Envoys doing sweeps and bans that STICK), I wouldn't look for it any time soon.

Last time I checked, there were no graphic MORPGs 22 years ago. Straight line RPGs with an 'ending' do have a quest line you could follow to the end. MORPGs don't have an 'end', and the genre has been evolving.


Holiday masks are a Festivus tradition going way back, and a proper part of this season. AC is a world, not a game. Maintaining the story line and traditions of the world are as important to the game as adding new dungeons.


You like to use inflammatory words like 'rip off', completely ignoring the fact that these are things players have been asking for for years. It is much more telling to me that Turbine is spending the time and money to evolve AC as new techniques and dynamics are discovered. Turbine has been the innovator in a LOT of areas, they don't need to be one in every area.

This thread just reminds me to send a Thankyou Note to turbine for creating DT. It seems like almost all of the exploiting, griefing, whining, UCMing idiots out there are attracted to that server to be with others of their kind... leaving those of us who would like to play the game as the developers intended, with servers of our own. If someone created a game called Script 'n Kill it would be like crack to these people. Well, maybe not...they wouldnt have a way to cheat themselves into an advantage. IRC used to be the domain for this, but I guess most of these guys dont have the talent to actually write scripts, and have to UCM the places real players hunt to get their jollies.


I commend the LT developers for at least taking the icing off this cake.


Cheaters make me sick.

Rename the plugin!

After talking with Replex, Spies is being removed until we address the admin detection issue.

 

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Spies will have its admin detection functionality crippled. I will be removing the sound alert when an admin is detected, but leaving in the text output. That way the only way they will see the alert is if they are infact at the PC, e.g.: Not UCMing. Users of spies will now only see [Spies] Detected Admin: Grael. for instance, in chat.


This change will be released in the next version, due out within 2 weeks.

Who said anything about graphic MORPGs? Both stand alone games and MUDs have been giving experience points for completing quests for years.


People act as if graphic MORPGs are "awesomely new" technology. They aren't. They are in effect a thing that has taken 2 ideas "Online play" (which goes back to the days of CompuServe) and "RPGs" (which were just graphical extensions of MUDs, which were just computer adaptations of "pencile and paper" games) and "nailed them together". If you want an "old" MMORPG, how in 1994, 16 years ago? Taewool Entertainment.


As for the mask issue. Like I said, if they want to add them, fine. But until Turbine hires more Devs and +Envoys, they will be adding them AT THE EXPENSE of meaningful content (ie Quests), which is where I jumped in this conversation.


Turbine has been given enough ideas from their player base as to what they should do. Even if they quadrupled their staff, it would take about a year to implement them all. As it stands now, with their current staff, they will never get them done. So the idea of not fixing a CORE ISSUE that has been talked since BEFORE the whole "XP Chain" issue (which Turbine "fixed" ... not really, they just nerfed it and lost about 1/4 their player base) about 2 or 3 years ago.


This idea isn't "new" and it is a long time in coming ... EVEN IF Turbine "wises up" and actually announces it, much less actually implements it. After all, we all see how long it took them to come up with the Expansion Pack ... 6 months of ZERO PATCHES ... and cutting out the "Elder System".


Unless Turbine has been working on this system, with total secrecy, for the past 6 months, I wouldn't expect to see it for at LEAST 6 more months, if ever.


But hey, I'd love to be proven wrong. I'd love to see people get XPs for running the Focusing Stone at level 250 and not feel like they have "wasted 200 million an hour by helping a n00b get his stone". I'm talking a system to reward (REAL REWARDS, not 5 million XPs for an hours worth of questing for a level 100 character) that includes all the old quests out there, because if they just do it for "new quests", the 2 or 3 quests per month that Turbine has been cranking out, won't mean squat.

"Who said anything about graphic MORPGs? Both stand alone games and MUDs have been giving experience points for completing quests for years."


Oh...if we're allowed to compare a MORPG to any kind of game, then AC really sucks, lots of ladders but I haven't seen a single chute! How can a game possibly be any good unless it has both chutes and ladders?


For what it's worth, the very first release of AC ALSO gave out experience points for completing quests. The question is NOT should it give out experience points, but what should the balance of experience from questing and experience from hunting be? Very few standalone games ever gave experience for general hunting, and in early AC times that was considered the primary means of keeping players active with something to do while in game. As time has passed, the downsides of that dynamic has appeared, and Turbine has slowly been ramping up quests to where they can be a much larger percentage of xp earned.


What we push for here is simply an expansion of that.


Oh...and from PAX, and maybe in a weekly update, Turbine IS hiring customer support reps and another engineer for AC.


Oh, and no, I would never expect a level 200 to make decent xp (for his level) for helping someone doing the focusing stone quest. Quest rewards would need to be balance on a risk/reward system that is level appropriate. It doesn't have to be worked on in secret for six months, a revamping of a number of existing quests can start this process and it can continue as time goes on.

In regards to a level 200 making decent xp for helping someone do the focus stone quest:


I don't think a level 200 should be allowed to participate in the focus stone quest. That, to me, represents one aspect of the game that is fundamentaly wrong. People should be challenged, challenging quests make the game much more enjoyable. Even if you die and lose everything, the best fun I've ever had was struggling to get back to my body to retrieve items lost. I really hope that some day Turbine realizes the importance of challenging players on all levels. And not giving them an easy way out.


Now I realize also that it's totally subjective. Some might argue that you don't have to have help to do certain quests...and I agree, fully. But even having the choice of having help, or "cheating", just makes it easier to give in and let yourself be helped by breezing you through a quest like that.

 

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G,


You and I both agree on alot of things ...


We both agree that characters should advance via quests rather than "sitting in 1 spot and having a macro play the game for you".

We both agree that Turbine is short staffed, and needs to hire people to do the above.

We both agree that Turbine is the one who needs to do the work to achieve the above goals.

We both agree that Turbine needs to get rid of UCMing and the people that do it.


I think we can agree that since Turbine pushed the level cap out to 275, that getting to that cap requires ALOT of experience points.


What we don't agree on is "how to get there", and here is where were differ. I am looking at it from a "way that people are" point of view (aka Human ... or at least Gamer ... nature).


Turbine needs to "correct the character advancement without needing to resort to UCMing" problem BEFORE they (or others) "pull the plug" on UCMing. Turbine has "allowed" UCMing to go on for far too long to just do it and not expect any repercussions. The last time they did that, they lost THOUSANDS of players (ie the "XP Chains". That loss of thousands of players caused Turbine to not put as many resources into the game as we BOTH would like, thus compounding the problem we have now. Turbine NEEDS to "bite the bullet" and do ALL the questsl, not just future ones, BEFORE (I can't stress that word enought, so I will say it again ... BEFORE) they get rid of UCMing.


UCMing is just a reaction to the mind numbing grind, it isn't the CAUSE of it.


If you don't let people advance their characters by PLAYING, they will advance their characters via another method (in this case, UCMing) -OR- they will quit the game for a game that does let them advance without the grind.


Either way, it hurts the game.


I honestly don't know any other way to say it than that. People are sick of paying $13 or $26 a month for "promises" from Turbine. That is why there are about 70 to 300 people on a server per night, instead of 2000-4000.