What teh fark
anyways if that is him, he working with them again?
I voted on yes for armor and weapons (highly doubt KRU has any experiance with that) and no was a tough choice between major bug fixes, and class balancing, because they have failed miserably at both, they should stop.

Yes, that username really is David.

I voted for a major bug fix.

His post/poll really took me by suprise too.

Is he really back?

horly shiesta, is he working with KRU now??

He appears from time to time randomly.

Nah I severely doubt he's back, he's passionate about roleplaying and an experienced MMO developer. My bet is he's working on his own project and/or is interested in what an MMO community prioritises.

It makes sense that if you come to PDA to do research on what MMO players like from their devs, you're gonna relate your question to KRU.

Calm down people!

I voted:

Keep: Major Balance Improvement
Give up: New armour/weapon - KRU have certainly satisfied us with a lot of these recently.

fixed.

Why don't you fix your signature while you're at it.

I voted for major class balance.

Everything else we have enough of, or are stupid updates.
Bug fixes would be okay, but I think major class balance would improve the game the most.

The thing I asked to stop was...uh...I forget. Either pets/hairstyles.


Of course, new quests, hunting "zones," armors, bug fixes, and class balance would probably ALL be loved by thhe greater portion of the game.

and what would that be, other then the website comin soon, its all pretty accurate.
Dave should post here and explain his actions :P

I think the implied meaning was that it should read 'Lioko>Nexonkoreas (sic) so called...'

EDIT: Yeah good point though. He can't just ninja us and bugger off, god.

Well, Nexon Korea actually has graphic artists, DA team says they do, yet they produce nothing.

DA Team's sprite artists ARE Nexon Korea.

yea, technically, but i emailed them before about fixing the magus chonical (the hat is off by 1 pixel, not that hard to fix) and they replied with "our sprite artists are too busy with other projects" or something along those lines, they imply that they have sprite/graphic artists, so im just saying i own them in that area. (Nexon korea too)

Major Class Balance is, at this stage, a nigh impossible feat. They would have to rewind DA by a few years, undo some of the items/weapons/armour/skills that they have, basically make an entirely different game.

DA can't be balanced any more.

"Our sprite artists" doesn't say who their sprite artists are, nor that they are actually members of Kru Interactive. This is the second time you've shown that you can't understand English well enough to use the ticket system effectively.

A new server with different set of skills/spells would be nice (AKA shadows, but not as broken)


I said it implies that they have sprite artists, this was when they said they were "a new company" that was seperate from Nexon Korea, I assume possesive words such as "our" means that its theirs and not someone elses, when they said they where no longer with Nexon.

I guess I'm just an old, old, old gamer... Story above all else. Events is what I voted for. Reason to do the mindless grind of making N=N+1. And I agree with Lioko, given how every time they've tried to "balance" things it's only gotten worse, they should stop that.

"New Pets" versus "New Items"... What's the difference? A pet can be the most powerful weapon in the game if they want... The only difference I see is not having to bother with balancing the power of a pet with other weapons/pets... Ah well.

And yes, it does look like a poll for what an MMORPG should do in general, not Dark Ages in specific. But that won't work, since KRU doesn't run things like Blizzard who doesn't run things like Square/Enix, who doesn't run things like... heh. What KRU's done in past greatly influences what the players want to see in future.

I voted for new quest over class balance. I think class balance is pretty much impossible to begin with, so constantly complaining about the pluses and minuses of things is pointless. You know what you're getting into when you make a pure rogue. :)

It's also kind of pointless to vote for a major bug fix. If there was a huge bug that affected a large majority of the players, then it would be foolish for the company not to fix it. They would lose too many customers. Maybe it's just me, but bugs/the game mechanics don't belong in the same categories as all the other comparatively shallow things. If the game doesn't work, who cares about all the other stuff? *rambles*

I would easily give up a new hairstyle. We already have a ton of hairstyles and the new helmets look neat and our characters' hair will most likely be covered up.

I have never give up hope on new pets. One day a smoldy will be mine, oh yes.

A possessive doesn't denote singular possession, though. "My school" doesn't mean that it is my school alone. It simply refers to the place I go to for education.

Agreed, balance between classes seems a bit risky (they are pretty balanced already I think, maybe some monk and rogue updates).

I voted for this though, because I want to see balance within classes. Pures need more things to distinguish themselves from subs. Pures need some pure-only hunting areas/(skills/spells)/items/armors (maybe stores/towns/quests).

Also max-stat spells like warriors got should be given to other classes as well.


Kodi-sama

They are not balanced. They are far from balanced. They will never be balanced, because at this stage it is impossible.

I can't even begin to imagine the amount of bitching a pure-only hunting area would incur. Oh, wait, yes I can... A lot.

Don't LoD have pet Rock Cobblers? If so, wouldn't they be a simple code conversion? Hmm...'simple' and 'code conversion' should not really be used in the same sentence.

Anyway, I voted FOR a roleplay interface. Personally I think roleplay is something barely covered in comparison with other elements in DA and would certainly like to see more ways in which to roleplay. Although, I would love Pure Monks to be balanced a huge amount too, all classes for that matter. Hell, not even balanced, just Pure Monks are so vastly unbalanced compared to every other path in my view. Every path has something unique about them that makes them of some value in a hunt, monks are just there as a weaker alternative if a Warrior can't be found.

I voted AGAINST a new hairstyle. Yes, some new styles would be cool to extend character variation, but not even close to a priority compared to any of the other things on the list.

I think we should have another large-scale player influenced event like the Light/Dark Wars, done better this time. Although, on second thoughts, it'd be so horribly ruined by overpowered players that for everyone else it wouldn't be fun.

In the .DAT files, there is a pet rock cobbler, green widow and a funny oversized chicken. Haven't seen any others to memory though.

They phailed at runing this game, with a PH also

I voted the norm but quests, roleplaying, and bug fixes were pretty close.

Interesting. I really hope that he's back and working for KRU.

In response to his poll...pets are -very- useless in DA the way they're implemented.

As far as the balance issue goes, I'm sure most players would agree that balance is great until their favorite class is weakened. Game developers should definitely try to "take away" from players as little as possible while adding as much as possible.

Until the playerbase can accept a pure rogue or pure monk beating a weist or monk/war in a duel or in hunting ability, balance isn't going to be very easy. Personally, I'd love see different classes have different uses in different areas. For example, if they could distinguish the way a monk bashes from the way a warrior bashes and then have areas tailored to each class, I really think that'd improve gameplay.

I voted for the "quest" option. Like parane, I think we need an epic scale event balanced in a way that different classes/player levels can all participate and benefit.

Again, I -really- hope Dave is working for Kru, but somehow I suspect he's simply curious about the way DA's playerbase thinks.

I thought about something like that this morning as I got ready for work. I think it would be neat to have a quest where an Aisling from each circle needs to participate on a team. The quest wouldn't be a Hulk smash! affair, but a combination of riddles, teamwork, overall problem-solving, and storyline promotion.

I was actually thinking of some sort of Survivoresque gauntlet where people had to work together to achieve a goal. The quest would reward teamwork and critical thinking instead of kill kill kill. The reward from the quest would be better than some lame bouquet of flowers.

So like veltain/canals without the killing? It might work. Andor trials are the closest example I can think of.

Thank you for your input. The poll replies are insightful. I'm curious about some of the priorities. Of course I think any of them are worthwhile features. Because time and talent are limited resources, though, it makes most sense to focus on the most demanded features.

I'm just doing an informal poll. Although I am not working at Kru right now (I currently design board games for TableStar Games http://www.tablestargames.com ), I was recently talking with the president of Kru about this topic. So, I thought I would ask you, the experts.

A poll is not a perfect source of information, especially since the respondents are self-selected. So there is a bias between what the polltakers want and what the general population of Dark Ages wants as a whole. Yet, in any case, I think such things are worthy use of Planet DA's robust feature set.

In this thread, I sense a mixture of interest, creativity, and bitterness (e.g., Albatross, Zemfira, and Vodkashooter, respectively). While you may have feel all three, please bear in mind that Kru is doing the best they can to meet your needs. Sometimes mistakes are made or priorities are overlooked. The best you can do to make sure your most important needs are met is to focus on the #1 current issue (for the whole customer base) and offer clear and well-researched analysis of the problem and its solution. And remember the people at Kru are people too.

By the way, this week I was at Fimbulwinter's (sp?) literature class. I was impressed. It was well-attended, fun, and in-character. I never thought the college would be used so creatively. The kindled aisling spark in that class warmed my heart.

Humbly yours,

David

Dave is so cool.

That was a pretty interesting/reassuring post, dave.

Speaking for myself, I find the current DATeam a bit difficult to judge sometimes. It's not right to say they're ignoring the players (because I know they're not) but it does sometimes feel like they're ignoring the (sometimes rather simple) issues.

Working with limited resources is always about prioritization. And the point where most players get frustrated is when the priorities of the GD's don't seem to match their own priorities. In that respect, this is a near perfect poll.

In truth though, some of the real issues need to be looked at a bit more deeply, which is why I'm hoping that game dev chat ends up working.

If you were excited to see that the college was being used creatively in one class, be happy to know that the Mileth college is actually being used more recently than it has been in its first 50 Deoches. There are many wonderful teachers and a wealth of knowledge to be shared from the old generation to the new generation of Aislings.

Attending classes are now important, because it's your only chance to be nobly recognized . Rather than having a "contest" system, Aislings are free to submit a piece of work to noble judges if they have recieved 5 educated marks. So, it pretty much forces people to become involved if they wish to advance further in that direction of Dark Ages.

Glad to see you around again, Dave.

And class quality seems to have improved since a noble was denounced when she abused it. :)

Fascinating. What a remarkable improvement! I was also happily overwhelmed at the volume on many of the boards in the college.

By the way, that reminds me of a Dark Ages in-character wiki I've been meaning to ask about ...

David

What exactly is meant by "a new roleplaying interface"?

Yeah, I'd like to know that too. I think for something as deep as roleplaying, player feedback would be good rather than guessing or trying to predict what would or would not work or be wanted by the roleplaying population.

"New roleplaying interface" would probably be something like religion or politics.

I got to meet him once , it was a dream come true :P
sil


god I'm such a nerd at heart

Perhaps the long-wished-for Wizard Academy?

voted for balance and against new hairstyles.
altough I agree that most time kru screws up more than fixing anything, it doesn't mean that I'm not taking the risk. a lot of changes were done and undone, what if they try something new and undone later? it will probably pass just as a bug.

and hairstyles? seriously, what the [filtered]?
we have what? 20 hairstyles and 20 colors? that gives us 400 combinations?
wasting time in new hairstyles is ridiculous, why not fix the hair color problem or do something about the ugly champ band?

oh, and I don't know Dave or what he wants by doing this, so I'm not all wet because of a couple of posts, but I think it would be nice to have someone that cared a little more to what we need instead of just creating new areas and new items.

I vote for balance. It's not hard to make pure monk's skill more powerful and give pure rogues 1line df/asgall or some easy -simple- [filtered] like that. No need to waste time thinking of new spells that don't exist.

We have (I'm guessing) 80 hair styles for each sex, and about 30 hair colors. This may seem like a lot of customization but in reality, it isn't. Most hair styles are not particularly appealing. (How many characters do you see with the 'noob' hairstyles?)

whats wrong with the "noob" styles! they're classics!

what we really should have is the skull post/banner haircut
anyone remember what I'm talkin about? I remember seeing it in someone's portrait...but his name eludes me at the moment...peppinanird?
sil

Last time I saw KansasKid he had that [filtered]ing nasty combover with mutton chop combination. :/

You ARE right though, and it's mostly a problem with the males, that at least 80% of the hairstyles are ugly as sin.

And the only "buzzed" hair cut look has some retarded crap sticking out of their head.

I used that hairstyle on all my characters because no one else uses it.

I know this has NOTHING to do with the topic.. but frankly I just have to know. Dave did you play the character Damiel? :)

If so.. you need to come back, even if you don't work for Kru, whoever Damiel was was amazing and had great impacts on DarkAges.. frankly gave a lot of players like me hope for the future of DarkAges when times were grim for me.

I think Damiel got purged and is now owned by someone else.

Someone setup a poll for david vs. anyone for president of the world... I know who I'm voting for!!!

I think it would be a safe bet to say we all want you back at KRU david. I think I not only speak for myself, but for others as well, when I say we'd probably gladly pay double our current monthly payments to make your salary if you did come back. (assuming you aren't still getting paid riddiculous .com wages)

Anywho, we do miss you. Come back and save us all! We miss having someone who speaks decent english to yell at when things go haywire...


Sincerely,

Enkypter, Wandering Priest of Sgrios