Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I know we are going to have leader boards and all. But sitting outside a dungeoun waiting for people come do it seems like real cool way to meet people. Lot different experience when people have to go to dungeoun first they have to know were it is and we have to wait for every one to be ready. So that gives us a little bit more time to socialize, hand out potions if you want to, discuss strategy, check to make sure gear is not broken. Lots of little things that make for player interaction. That players get robbed off with instant que.
Insant que is like que get to dungeoun tank starts pulling and all the sudden at end of dungeoun. Does not even require player interaction.
So promise to never put Instant que ever in the game is best way to make friends.
TLDR~ PvP, arenas and seldomly dungeons.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
I do!
Bam, friendship made, good job dev team!
Of course the most difficult part is the spirit binding. If you want a quality friend then the spirit bound to the body construct must be powerful enough to be useful but not so powerful as to be dangerous, but you get it right you have a valuable friend who is always there for you.
Now for dungeon companions you have to be careful of your choices. If you do not know them personally then you often get "friends" who are more trouble than they are worth. The "Leroy Jenkins" kind of trouble has now passed into meme, but their are also those who show up at the last minute who are unprepared for the task ahead and thus become a resource drain for those who came prepared. Then their is the itinerant collector whose only reason seems to be to collect as much stuff as his/her pack can carry. The list goes on, but I digress. In the end it comes down to "trust" - and when you are going in to a dungeon it's to late when they have already stabbed you in the back and taken off with your left arm.
You get in a group, work well together, and then you end up playing together for hours. Before everyone goes to bed you accept/drop an invite so you can group up later, and it goes from there.
I don't know if I could say I have a favorite way of making new friends, but it is always fun whether your just there a few minutes (let's just say hours here, heh 😉) or all day adventuring. I think my favorite way would just have to be doing main quests with them and leveling as fast as I can with them. One or the other of us will eventually want to fall asleep and then rinse, log, repeat.
Making friends in game is actually a skill just in real life so could make a video or website on game Etiquette
mentioned this before.
Think things like pet battles and mini games to play other players might help. Be pretty cool to play game of checkers with freinds.
One way to unify the server is to make a common enemy like figting the undead or some evil dragon or some epic event.
Professions is one way that players interact and possibly make friends, if more player interaction was put in game then people would likely make more friends. Obviosly there are already dungeouns and raids and toons can set up shops so that helps a lot. Maybe the there could be trading card games in game. Reall no ideas come to mind but there should be special effort to encourage player interaction without making people like are being forced to do it.
If you put some humor in the game you would set the tone so people do not take game to seriously and be little more light hearted.
But I think the most memorable is when I was called out in zone chat: "You still play this game?" He vaguely remembered me from somewhere and we chatted about the state of the game. Then we were friends, and currently my closest friend within gaming. He's a programmer who worked as a game dev in the past and neither of us clearly remember how we originally met, but we suspect it was through theory crafting and dueling on a test server years before the callout in zone.
Cickers Very obvious when some one is clicking cause there are pauses in animationsand look extra choppy. So if you could encourage toons to refer this toons to certian websites. Even people that use two button mouse and click on some abilities can effectively raid if shown how. Not recommended but it is possible with litte bit of work. Do not feel need to go in great detail to show the exact set up for some one using a mouse with two buttons on side and mouse wheel with standard key board.
People that stand in the fire. There could be some target dummy that puts area of effect underneath them that can be used as a training tool.
So lets you could have and entire server that had decent set up as far key bindings go and that did not stand in the fire. Well that would make for a pretty friendly server.
Seen lots of clickers removed from group. People can get away with it in PvE even raids Just would not recmmend for lets say trying to be best guild in raids on a server.
Healers are a real fickle group. Guess they feel under appreciated sometimes just leave. So if you had support class appreciation week and encourage toons to thank healers that would help. Guessing sometimes they feel like they are doing a thankless job. I would sometimes play support role and do pretty good job at it and sometimes people would take note and say something about it. Makes a differnence. Could tell you a lot of funny, but true healer stories.......But just as an example there was a really good group and healers ,three in a row in fact just leave because they felt they were not to involved then we could wipe in more difficult area of dungeoun. So we had to be extra nice to our fourth healer so he or she would not leave.
So just better to be nice to healers in general.
Group Finder can be a wonderful tool for gameplay, but it does rob social impact from the player. When a player can just click a button and get into a dungeon with 3-5 other players that they'll never see again...chances are low that they'll make any lasting impressions. On the other hand, if the player needs to spend a few minutes assembling a group, and venturing out to the dungeon, leading to spending a bit of time chatting with their groupmates along the way-They might get to know them a bit more. Typically a groupfinder group will just immediately charge into battle, giving no one any time to talk. If you do talk, you aren't fighting, so you're not useful to the rushed feel that this tool usually brings.
Global Chat tends to just flood the chatbox with too much chatter. Overactive chat can lead to a lot of people just turning it off since keeping up with it is a full time activity. If you keep things local, especially in a game like AOC where you'll be based out of a node, you'll start to recognize the local players a lot more easily. A balance needs to be found here so that you can actually find groups for content if you're in a less populated node. Perhaps linking vassal chats to their parent node's chat or something along those lines. I also think it could be a nice touch to have local chat be a separate tab from your home node chat so even while you're out exploring, you could keep up with your town.
And that sort of bleeds into guilds. Many games tend to make guilds a progression system instead of a social function. This leads to guilds with hundreds of members that do not know each other, with very few of them actually communicating. While I like giving guilds a system of progression, but when it becomes essential to pump as many players as possible at those goals to remain a viable guild, the sense of community is shattered. I tend to bond better with smaller guilds, but it sucks when you lose out on guild perks just because you're a smaller group.
Making friends can be a very rewarding experience in an MMO and it comes with a natural common ground for anyone you meet in game: You both love playing the game! This facilitates conversation by itself as long as the players are given a chance to chat without being flooded out into essential silence. Sad to say, the more "Quality of Life" improvements you give the player, the more social opportunities they tend to lose.
Edit: Also just wanted to add that, although it's a bit more of a niche playerbase, roleplaying is a GREAT way to make friends. I have some long lasting friendships from my RP days in SWTOR, and it is almost always a great experience when you're just starting out. The communities around this are generally accepting as long as you're not a total tool.
However, I will make acquaintances. The way I typically do that is through systematic LFG dungeons/raids. I tend to be the random guy that has decent skill, but isn't in any guild. I like being matched with others of similar skill for a challenge. This is the best way for me to form a bond with someone.
PK'ing may work for some, but for me if you're willing to waste my time when I'm trying to quest of farm or progress in any manner, you're not the kind of person I want to befriend. It shows a total and utter disrespect for fellow players who are just trying to have fun in their own way.
I feel like having opt-in social things to do with other players may be fun - like tavern games, dicing, cards, horse races, etc. These would allow players to participate - maybe even gamble a bit of coin - and create a fun, competitive atmosphere without the need for violence to be forced upon anyone.
These types of games could be instanced into nodes, or tavern/inn owners could invest money in gaming tables to allow patrons to host patrons who want to gamble, or it could be a system where they have to pay extra tax to the node to allow gambling in their establishments. Doing this would give players a reason to visit player-created buildings as well, building a real sense of community and ownership of the world we're all working toward. There are many, many ways to expand upon this idea, and if people are interested I'll give more details that I've thought about in regards to this.
Plus there could be other categories and features like last logged in. And if every one were given the option to put a little message. Like doing 3v3 or mainly do dungeouns or raids. In lol there is an option to customize the part were it says online offline in que to whatever you want.
In wow there was option to put a note by freind but not was hidden so we should be given the optiont show them all if we wanted, If you are going to put that feature in the game.
AoC has shown a desire to break the mold and while many of the ideas of dungeoning and battlegrounds and random encounters with others are well-established in the MMO field - and are a great way to meet folks and make friends - I'd love to see a developer explore other means of player interaction.
Sometimes in a game - just like in life - you need a break from the grind and want to do something different that's still useful. Mini games offer an often ignored opportunity for this type of interaction between players.
We'll see ya for the next Dev Discussion, and feel free to keep posting your thoughts here in the meantime!
But I'd have to say when i am going out of my way to meet people i head on over to the newbie zones. Find someone looking for a group/friend/lvling buddy. Then give em something to get a headstart and show em the ropes.
- Frufire
One way to find good game buddies is just go in a chat channel and say looking for positive people to play with. Now while skill can be aquired over time. It is much harder to have a person go from negative to postive or personality change. So just better to go with freindly people over all.