166 replies to this topic

[1035921191]

Very bad idea this royally sucks... now we have too many people.... on the channels... gonna take way to long to do things.. more time than it's worth to keep playing... open up the other channels.. sucks to go to every channel and find that with monster you need is being camped.....

[tabernacle]

When I am leveling my FS Priest, it's nice to see an Assassin walking by. I can ask him/her to join me and do quests together. This is an MMO. There should be more people wandering around. If you want a nice quiet place to kill monsters, play a single player game. Not trying be a jerk here, but really? This isn't that bad.

The way I see it is that, like the real world, MMO world should also have its metropolitan and rural areas. So if you want to go for random encounters, you can go to the metropolitan regions. If you want to be alone and have some private time (like enjoying landscape while chatting with your guildies or other people), you can go to the rural areas. The party searcher would be like the Internet: it allows you to search candidates of interest regardless of population density.

Right now, this change, appears to be making everything more compact. Is this a good thing? Well, it's like asking should the whole world be urbanized. City mayors will tell you "yes this is the best thing since sliced bread" and natural conservatives would tell you "hell no this is an awful idea".

I'm more inclined to think 20 is fine as it is. (If it ain't broken, don't fix it.) And if there is actually a problem that needs fixing but the CM can't tell us, time your deployment properly. Is this really a good time to do this right after the heated debate last night?

[Elysion]

They just keep doing stupid things. This is actually amazing. I wonder what they will do next.

[SumPsychoChic]

Am I missing the anger here, most MMOs don't even have channels to hop between if someone is killing the mob you want. You start on a new server with new characters or you just wait it out.

Not sure where you all are getting your anger from on this one, sorry.

[ihasbrain]

Am I missing the anger here, most MMOs don't even have channels to hop between if someone is killing the mob you want. You start on a new server with new characters or you just wait it out.

Not sure where you all are getting your anger from on this one, sorry.

It's get angry day

you're just not hip enough for it, sorry

[tabernacle]

Yea I guess. If the lag is unbearable, people will stop playing.

That does say something about the wisdom behind this decision too.

[Elysion]

Am I missing the anger here, most MMOs don't even have channels to hop between if someone is killing the mob you want. You start on a new server with new characters or you just wait it out.

Not sure where you all are getting your anger from on this one, sorry.

Not a good comparison. Most mmos dont require you to farm world bosses for basic equipment. They either dont have such things at all, have it be the high end stuff, or have it be tradeable so it can be sold.Goblin leader weapons are what every single person who hits 50 needs to get. So thats one reason to have these channels.Another is a lot of people have 'home channels', and over half of these are now gone. People are displaced.Lastly, it was fine how it was. Nobody ever said 'there are too many channels'. Making changes like this for no good reason is just a bad sign, one of many bad signs they've been putting out lately.

[Billeh]

Am I missing the anger here, most MMOs don't even have channels to hop between if someone is killing the mob you want. You start on a new server with new characters or you just wait it out.

Not sure where you all are getting your anger from on this one, sorry.

Do you have a lvl 50 char? Have you tried farming the mentioned mobs pre-patch? Notice how excessively they're camped on all 20 channels? Can you imagine how worse it'll be now?

Seems pretty obvious what the problem is tbh. I don't care enough to get outraged myself but I completely understand where the frustration is coming from.

[YumeNoHikari]

Am I missing the anger here, most MMOs don't even have channels to hop between if someone is killing the mob you want. You start on a new server with new characters or you just wait it out.

Not sure where you all are getting your anger from on this one, sorry.

Lots of tech- and business-clueless folks on F2P games, I suppose. They don't get that running 20 channels (which probably maps to at least one server per channel per zone) at less than 10% capacity is a poor use of resources and doesn't actually improve things for the users.

[tabernacle]

The real business case for a F2P game is that, what does the distribution of the income look like? If it's 20% of the population paying for 80% of the income, then the only real business case here is to look at where these 20% of the population spend most of their time and ensuring that they do not get disadvantaged by this decision.

And if it turns out these 20% ended up spending most of their time in higher level areas (like Blessing Road), and you are reducing server capacity by 40% so that the remaining 80% of the population clashes with the top 20%. Does this make any business sense to you?

In another words, does a 10% saving in utility now justify for the risk of losing in income several months later?

Edited by tabernacle, 05 June 2013 - 10:59 AM.

[wusselwu]

now we cant farm ori for zeny so have have to buy more cash. thats my point... i dont like it. you are hyperbolizing it :/

[Nereida]

Am I missing the anger here, most MMOs don't even have channels to hop between if someone is killing the mob you want. You start on a new server with new characters or you just wait it out.

Not sure where you all are getting your anger from on this one, sorry.

Firstly, it's another aggravation in a very tense day, moreso because there was no warning before the fact.

Secondly, from a player point of view, it's a change for worse. There's no benefit but there is a lot of loss.

[AmiiMii]

Alot of loss indeed. i wish this channel change wouldn't of happened. All the players should end up creating a compromise suggestion thread to bring back the other channels.

[SumPsychoChic]

Firstly, it's another aggravation in a very tense day, moreso because there was no warning before the fact.

Secondly, from a player point of view, it's a change for worse. There's no benefit but there is a lot of loss.

Yes, true on the anger tense day, I understand that part and a warning would have been nice.

However, I can see some of the better. It's better to lower channels now and keep the game running for longer. It's F2P, meaning that the only money they get to run is from people who choose to pay. Having channels with one 2-3 green bars, is not good for business. Anyone should know that, it's easy to understand that.

Yes, mobs will be harder, but thats just going to be the fact of life. Mobs harder or no game at all in the long run. Unless those of you who want to have more channels pay lots of money to get them.

And I'm not just trying to take WP's side. I was just as angry with the nerfs last night that actually didn't happen because of the anger, but this one I understand.

[sephiroso]

Yes, true on the anger tense day, I understand that part and a warning would have been nice.

However, I can see some of the better. It's better to lower channels now and keep the game running for longer. It's F2P, meaning that the only money they get to run is from people who choose to pay. Having channels with one 2-3 green bars, is not good for business. Anyone should know that, it's easy to understand that.

Yes, mobs will be harder, but thats just going to be the fact of life. Mobs harder or no game at all in the long run. Unless those of you who want to have more channels pay lots of money to get them.

And I'm not just trying to take WP's side. I was just as angry with the nerfs last night that actually didn't happen because of the anger, but this one I understand.

You're completely right SumPsychoChic in that it is better to lower channels when clearly for most of the day a good many of them weren't even half full. But i'll stand by my previous statement that this was the worst possible time they could have done this. It's such a stupid decision to have done this literally while people still are reeling with hate from the founder title and costume thing last night. They should have waited at the very least a couple weeks and this would have blown under the radar much smoother than this.

[Rockyx]

Awww why? Channel 14 was my lucky channel where I always got good drops. Booooo!

[SumPsychoChic]

You're completely right SumPsychoChic in that it is better to lower channels when clearly for most of the day a good many of them weren't even half full. But i'll stand by my previous statement that this was the worst possible time they could have done this. It's such a stupid decision to have done this literally while people still are reeling with hate from the founder title and costume thing last night. They should have waited at the very least a couple weeks and this would have blown under the radar much smoother than this.

Yes, I will completely agree with this. Some warning or waiting until less anger would have been better.

[AmiiMii]

Jimmies - a plenty - are rustled.

[tabernacle]

I think the long term difference (between 20 vs 12 channels) is that either things go well and income continues to flow in, so WP can buy new content from Gravity. Or, the plan doesn't go as planned, income gets reduced and we sit on stalling content longer.

For F2P games, they are abundant, they rely on unpredictable cash flow and they need periodic new contents (not just new cosmetic) to keep the cash flow flowing in. So reducing channel would keep the expense low but run the risk of reducing cash flow in medium term. In the long term, what makes the difference would be new contents, and that would depend on whether or not WP is profitable enough to purchase new contents.

Where do you find the money to purchase new contents? From the medium cash flow, of course. See how this is one big circle now?

Edited by tabernacle, 05 June 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[Bufkus]

Guys, stop complaining about fewer channels leading to less boss camping.

The reality is that they only did this because the population has been declining, so with fewer players in the camped areas, you should still be able to get some farming in as usual.

[Varunax]

Channels 1~12 were the most populated channels and the rest were really just channels used to farm some bosses. This change makes sense. I actually didn't understand why they had 20 channels in the first place. Most games only have around 3 channels on average.

For those complaining that it's ruining the game... all it does is make it a bit harder to obtain boss titles that are lurking on the open fields. The majority of the time spent in this game is farming in instanced dungeons.

[tabernacle]

It's about distribution of wealth. Assuming drop rate doesn't change. There used to be 20 slots you can use to farm valuable items. Now 40% of those slots got eliminated. Result: more competition. That's well understood.

Suppose we relax the assumption that drop rate does change and it goes up. So the same person camping a boss with the same amount of time would receive more loots on average. The problem now becomes the wealth is now becoming more concentrated in a handful of players and make it easier for them to monopolize / oligopolize a certain market segment.

I believe the 2nd scenario is far more risky because when Scenario 1 occurs (which I believe it will), the natural reaction of the GM would be to tweak the drop rates up to keep people happy. Then we run into the 2nd scenario (uneven distribution of wealth) which encourages bot users and RMT (both are against Terms of Service and increase workload for the GM).

TL ; DR. It's not about people complaining. This change would have some medium term effect that when we attempt to fix them, would trigger more problem. So it maybe better off not to tweak the channel number in the first place.

[Vanillarox]

It's about distribution of wealth. Assuming drop rate doesn't change. There used to be 20 slots you can use to farm valuable items. Now 40% of those slots got eliminated. Result: more competition. That's well understood.

Suppose we relax the assumption that drop rate does change and it goes up. So the same person camping a boss with the same amount of time would receive more loots on average. The problem now becomes the wealth is now becoming more concentrated in a handful of players and make it easier for them to monopolize / oligopolize a certain market segment.

I believe the 2nd scenario is far more risky because when Scenario 1 occurs (which I believe it will), the natural reaction of the GM would be to tweak the drop rates up to keep people happy. Then we run into the 2nd scenario (uneven distribution of wealth) which encourages bot users and RMT (both are against Terms of Service and increase workload for the GM).

TL ; DR. It's not about people complaining. This change would have some medium term effect that when we attempt to fix them, would trigger more problem. So it maybe better off not to tweak the channel number in the first place.

I don't understand your logic. Go farm in instance if you want matts that badly. I don't see how keeping channels at 20 addresses any problem you've pointed out. Heck, why not raise the numbers? People seem to believe that more channels are magically better. It's not really. It's more of a load on their servers and for what? Underpopulated channels? Our server isn't that big yet. We don't need 20 channels. Aside from Channel 1 - 4, I've never personally a channel go into the red zone more than a few times.

So I don't see how 20 channels eliminates the medium term effect you've described.

[Varunax]

They could have added another 20 channels and people would complain. No matter what they do people will complain. Why?

Well... psychology has proven over and over that people just don't like change no matter what it is. :/

[OxBLaurens]

They could have added another 20 channels and people would complain. No matter what they do people will complain. Why?

Well... psychology has proven over and over that people just don't like change no matter what it is. :/

Yeah this community is pretty gross, I pity the CMs.

"OH MY GOD I CANT FARM GOBLIN LEADER ANYMORE THIS SUCKS"

Get over it already.