I’m not going to cover the most of the key points (best to just watch the VOD in full) except to note that Khrolan on several occasions acknowledged they own these issues and that he takes full responsibility. So I have to give props to him for that. And I have to give Gamigo in general, props for trying. This is not the community management teams fault and the ire should not be directed at them. With that said though, my patience with anyone/team who was previously associated with Trion, is on thin ice (speaking as a former Devilian player who also played ArcheAge on the side). This isn’t Khrolan’s first dance since he and his team, handled several launches (with various iterations) of ArcheAge since 2014 when they were at Trion. All of my ire is directed at the production and technical teams and XLGAMES.
When asked about WHY it took them so long to come to the conclusion that the ArchePass needed to be disabled, Khrolan said he doesn’t have a good defense for that; that it was about getting input from all the “stake holders”. Listening to this, I’m just shaking my head. This is them (the former Trion team now at Gamigo AND XLGAMES) operating with the same mentality; treating it like the free to play version when it comes to management. The core of ArcheAge was never designed as a buy to play game. It’s deeply rooted in cash shop designs with its core game systems. Extricating those items into other parts of the game has to be play tested extensively. That requires a different QA approach and production timeline. So it’s been pretty much the standard “hair on fire” approach though where the damage control took too long (when some of us including myself, were advocating for taking the system offline much earlier once the repetitive missions was able to be replicated).
Progression will be saved (so that if/when the pass is reactivated, there won’t be a detrimental impact). So it’s going to be blind objectives from the player point of view (that’s a hell of a lot of data that is going to be logged and archived on the backend though) and since so much of things that are needed for progress is part of the free track, XLGAMES proposed putting a static amount of Diligence coins on marketplace that players will be able to purchase for free so that they can acquire labor recharges or expansion scrolls (the Diligence shop remains available). Details of that (like how many coins, the cadence of their availability) will be coming next week. This only widens the gap for players that chose not to take advantage of the bugged missions. I seriously don’t know what to say at this point.
The question regarding how the ArchePass will change was responded to as being too early to discuss that now. This I agree with since the entire system needs to be reviewed and looked at in the context of the core game loop. What exists now is a heavily modified version of the login dailies system that is tacked on. Because of that, it just does not flow well with the core game play. And this is where the challenges comes into play; who is going to pay for redesigning this system? The ArchePass was part of their monetization for the game (the option to use credits to purchase the Premium pass versus in-game gold). See the problem here?
For those who took advantage of the bug, gold is no longer a big issue even with the gold sinks involved with progressing Hiram gear. The 10 gold NPC cost may seem a little once someone has been playing at end game for awhile; but the game has various gold sinks where if this much gold hadn’t been injected into the first week of the servers from the bugs, it would still make you think about using gold for the pass or maybe just purchasing it with credits.
He didn’t really directly address the low level kill quest missions (where you could simply kill low hitpoint objects) where the entire tier was completed where those players now have a large labor pool (from recharges via the vocational track) to draw on. While labor (a core mechanic that is a limited resource which requires the player to have to make decisions on what tasks to prioritize) pretty much translates into XP and gold (by performing labor related tasks), it has an impact to the effect where a player can do all the tasks they need to go and not having to wisely choose (widening the gap).
As he mentioned, server wipes are not feasible. Which of course leads to the interim solution with the wacked economies on most servers (except the maybe the most recent NA one that was opened on the 20th). Missing the forest for the trees, he covers how gold has tended to normalize over time (which is fair but doesn’t address the labor pool that some folks now have from recharges) and expects that part to eventually work itself out over several months. In the mean time, they are monitoring the state of servers (especially the newer ones that were less impacted) but they also have no plans at this time to open up new ones.
The issue with queue times is something that I naturally want to touch on. Khrolan mentions the commitment that many have to a particular server (friends, guilds, communities, desire to be on a high population server) and that even with their primary tool (of enabling restrictions on character creation), that people are persistent. They’ve tried to balance the restrictions with the ensuing queues that would result by having character creation unlocked. There is still the point where a server cannot handle all of the players who want to play on that server (no shit sherlock) so they’ve encouraged people to maybe move to the other lesser populated/newer servers (which is a conundrum at this point; more on that below).
Khrolan addressed the AFK kick timer and acknowledge there are players who are finding ways around it. He notes they really haven’t taken action on that in the past but that things are now at a point where they are THINKING about it. Thinking/considering….. seriously, this is why the motto around ArcheAge is exploit early, and exploit often. They need to just go in and do it; document all of the characters AFK seated in the jury rooms, all of the ones running in circles on Mirage Island, and prioritizing player reports of characters running around in circles/against a wall (ping the ones without the away tag to see if they respond), and temporarily suspend those folks for a week as a starter (and increase the time by a week for each subsequent infraction). Zero tolerance my foot….
As for “their encouraging” players to consider some of the newer servers they launched, that would be fine IF we could actually do that. We’re currently capped at two character slots and most folks have them occupied. Deleting a level 30 and higher character has a 7-day wait period until that slot frees up so they need to remove that restriction for those of us who want to re-roll on another server or provide the option to purchase at least one character slot pronto.
Khrolan said they have no plans of removing the existing restrictions at this time though but are removing the queue for those who want to get in to do a character deletion. He also did not cover the unlocking of another character slot. Yep, you seriously cannot make this stuff up. I know I am not the only one willing to delete a character just to free up at least one character slot so that I can get started elsewhere right now. I know they don’t want players abusing the rewards system (where players constantly create and delete lower level characters) but here’s the solution to that; enable a restriction on recreating a character on that same server for 7 days if you delete a level 30 or higher character. Yeah, I know it is something XLGAMES would need to code and they would need to test (again, better planning of contingencies before even announcing Unchained where you proactively try to cover as many fire starting issues as possible, is why I have minimal faith in these former Trion folks being able to handle this; gave them the benefit of the doubt but this is my fault for thinking they would do any better).
Regarding server transfers, Khrolan noted that the service was disabled with the 5.5 release due to a collision that occured because of changes made in that service and the changes with their login server backend. Due to all the other ongoing fires they are trying to deal with, they haven’t had the time to work on this (but is something they still want to eventually enable). This again is another head shaking moment… this is something they should have been working on as a priority prior to launching 6.0 and especially Unchained since having that addressed and in place, would’ve served as one of their contingencies. Why are these former Trion folks still working on this game when they’ve proven time and time again that they are more effective at setting the house on fire than actually preventing the fire from starting to begin with?
Once they do have something operational, the plan is to have a one way transfer (from high to low population) while also having to take into consideration, the fact that some of those lower population servers may have started later. But there is also the issue of the gold and labor recharge from the buggy ArchePass that complicates matters. Regardless, this is another thing (after the fact) that is now on the growing list of priorities. Plus by the time they actually have a working solution, the progression will have changed (not to mention some will just quit out of disgust).
Tied into the queues are the grace periods (again, this should’ve been priority and in place before this was even green lighted as a production build). Having this in place would’ve helped to alleviate some of the launch week load on the infrastructure. The build is at least a week or two out though. Unchained was supposed to be their chance to get things more right but nope, the same lack of foresight mistakes. This is what happens when you rush stuff out and don’t put in the time to get the important things correct the first time. You end up paying more in the long tun. This is why I mentioned it would have been better off that they delay the launch once they ended up delaying the name reservations.
After leaving SV, I’ve been involved in contingency planning when I worked in IT managing mission critical systems and services to know that what can go wrong, will go wrong. So you test and have levels of contingencies that take into account potential failures that could occur even with a proactive approach. These former Trion personnel have proven they are more reactive in this area resulting in them trying to put out fires with a broken spray bottle. I wrongly thought (from how the PTS was managing the public load) Unchained would be manageable for them but nope.
Considering the damage done on the original launch servers, I’m actually not too keen on them enabling actual character transfers (even if one way) at this time because I don’t think they will be able to effectively deal with the inflated gold and labor pools that some folks will have. Plus there is going to be a wave of trolls who will have their own ulterior motives in trying to influence those decisions.
New servers also aren’t on the table since they are making that decision based on the actual number of playing players. They don’t want a situation where they open up another server and it ends up being empty (requiring more drastic measures like merges in the future). This is a fair point but he also pretty much tipped his hand that the influx (and thus purchases of the game) are flattening out. As I mentioned, I cannot recommend this game at this time (changed my mind on that last part; I can’t recommend it period so long as there are former Trion staff handling it – I would’ve given this a wider degree of latitude and have a more apologetic tone if it were a completely new team).
One important decision they made is deciding to offer a second claim of packs (whatever was originally purchased) that can be applied on another character. Yes, this is a decent goodwill gesture BUT it also shows they do have the ability to make these available to more than one character. Again, I get their rationale for having had a history of these being claimable by only one character (you then have to spend additional money to spruce up your other characters). The credits portion could be decoupled such that the entire claim process could be made account wide for the digital bonuses (like titles, badges, and cosmetics). It’s not done however because it cuts into part of the monetization when it comes to the cosmetic items.
Again, not proactively managing contingencies better or deciding to delay the launch and do a real beta test, is costing them after the fact since they have to grant additional credits. I don’t view this as compensation either since it’s not about compensation; it’s about not having a game that already has it’s economy and resource system so borked this early on. Dealing with these fires on a live service costs personnel hours. More engineering time and possibly additional expenses could be involved with fixing the ArchePass system (and while it is offline, they lose whatever monetization they had associated with it since I am presuming they eventually had plans to expand the existing premium pass).
This additional grant plus bringing the one way transfer into service, is what they are hinging on to relieve some of the load. Khrolan was also realistic in stating that it would take at least two weeks for this to happen. By that time, part of the load may alleviate itself. Part of this is sadly comedic because it was avoidable. These are supposed to be seasoned “professionals” but they were making amateur level decisions before this was even publicly announced (since those decisions are manifesting itself in these launch issues).
Myself, I just want off of Wynn because the bugs have been heavily abused on this server while the lifting of the restrictions on character creation (with no restriction on East faction creation) has only made it even more difficult with finding a 16×16 plot (even the contested zones I could not find an open spot) since there’s a lot of squatters (I see a lot of east players trekking to the west housing zones for example) that have strategically placed 8×8’s, that are blocking out a lot of land. And since some players have a large labor pool to draw on, there is no issue with how much property they can snap up and pay the taxes on.
Since this is at least two weeks off, I have to contemplate deleting my lower level alt which will allow me to at least get one character a week earlier on another server before they enable the transfer service. If this team weren’t so incompetent, I would just purchase a basic pack to get started on an alt now (any additional money spent is only going to fund this incompetence though so that decision was an easy hard pass).
