The Other Side of the Looking Glass - February 14, 2006

**NRK1** · 02/14/2006 22:16:23

Can't believe im payin' 15$ a month and we're getting this. Watch when CR2.0 comes out it's gonna still have to be tweaked, ( not enough people test on QA ), and this is just gonna cause a drag on the whole story. Now we have no splinter-orgs to look forward to so basically no progression in story for the people who follow different paths. Why couldn't you guys just tell us no when we asked about new organizations. All we got was "can't answer future content questions." a simple no could've prevented this. Share the love with SOE my !@#!#

NRK1
HvCFT Nexus
Pluribus Neo

Message Edited by NRK1 on 02-14-200610:16 PM

narrakan · 02/14/2006 22:21:55

I agree with Kshana. At least let us flag as E Pluribus Neo/Cypherites/Niobe. This is just some friggin' bull**bleep**.
And yeah NRK1, share the love with SOE my friggin' ***!

Message Edited by narrakan on 02-14-200610:21 PM

{SoG}Esky · 02/14/2006 23:02:22

I think one of the things that is on most player's minds is:

What have we received since launch that has been worth a year's worth of subscriptions?
----
Pandora's Box is basically the only really chance for content.

Critical missions are cool and all, but not much happens in them, and we really aren't getting anwhere in the story. The cinematics have been sub-bogey (of course, that's not your fault) and this last cinematic was a spark, but if we don't see that all the time, please just give up on those cinematics.

Gear is fickle, and there is no economy or market to drive an item system. The game is far too small, and had too rough of a life so far. Reaching the max level means nothing aside from PvP. Really, that is one of two goals to promote leveling. We need something to keep us busy all the time, and we simply don't have it. As much as people want events and story...this requires the waiting game so we can have it. We need content...and truck loads of it. If you guys read the forums, like you state you do, you know we've been itching for stuff to do for the longest time. Is it possible to tell us what is coming after CR2.0? No little vague hints and subtle changes and possibilites for future meetings at the dev tables, we want know what is coming. This game isn't doing well enough to play the surprise game anymore.

Combat Revamp is cool and all, but I honestly hope the devs would not be so short sighted to think that would keep the community here / attract new players by calling it conent. What are we going to do with CR2.0 once it gets released? PvP? Well, that'll last a month maybe. The way I see the changes in the game as is: MxO has been out for a year, and it is just now getting those fundamental MMO foundations that should be plenty covered in beta.

The sort of events have been pretty limited, and unsatisfying on the whole. The event coming up may or may not be great, but experience shows us that we have been let down far too often, and the more time goes by, the more xmagx is right. It may be the craziest event ever...but the fact is...what after that? The game returns to its stale and unplayable nature.
---

I think it's agreed...this game has been stale for too long, and the whole "can't tell, future release" thing isn't cutting it anymore... Maybe a year ago. We need to know if we are going to GET something in the near future. But ya know what? We won't hear this, because that means SOE would be telling us, "It's ok if you all want to cancel for the next 4 months while we get something together."

Basically...hang on if you want to...but the ride isn't gettin any smoother. Been here since 03, and would love to see this game pull outta the rut...but...come on...anything?

Message Edited by {SoG}Esky on 02-15-200601:02 AM

iRomav

One thought I had was perhaps an NPC for each of these organizations could be set up somewhere in the city. These contacts could patch you through to Shimada, Anome or Veil, and then perhaps they could be treated as bonus missions. Maybe 1 critical mission for each of the new organizations per mission pack?

This way the roleplayers and anyone could feel like they're actually working for these orgs too, and the workload wouldn't be overly much more than it already is. Creating 18 missions per pack rather than 15 isn't overly much more...

This would allow for the storyline to be presented from the point of view of these other organizations too.

Having the ability to flag as these organizations would be an added bonus too. I'd personally love to see 6 sides in pvp.

**nubious81**

im actaully not diapointed by this i ddint think the orgs would come out for a while anyway right now the devs r working on cr2.0 and then after that rarerabit said they r gonna be working on the 1 year event which i think is gonna be a big hit its gonna take a while for them to make the new orgs cause first u gota start writing in new missions for each org too which takes time as well

**PBlade**

*Sigh*

I guess I shudda known it.

Still, thanks for clarifying.

Mustang

Not surprised at all.

I knew all along that the new organizations would never be avaliable for us to play in. Just didn't have the heart to break it to people. In retrospect, maybe I should have so this wouldn't have come as such a crushing shock. Then again, I doubt you guys would have believed me. SMILEY

Ah, well. Life goes on.

**EndlessVoid**

I've always said people should have the option of flagging "neutral". That alone would be a decent option for Cypherites and such. Maybe something can be worked out, though. It would be nice to see suggestions as to what to do. Positive thinking is always better than throwing blame about.

- Void

[CoZ]LostProphet

I like to think that I practice what I preach - that is, not complaining too loudly about problems and asking for pie-in-the-sky ideas because I know that you guys don't have a massive team and unlimited budget.

But I'm disappointed.

IMO, there was no need to make the "No org split" announcement on the original timeline for the game, whereby we would be running through it at a rapid pace, and we'd be on what, Chapter 10/11 by now.

However we're almost a year in, and only on Chapter 4. If we continue at this rate it'll take another TWO YEARS to get to the end of the first 'year' of story.
Everything is moving slowly and thus our perceptions of what is going on are being distorted.

Morpheus was killed something like six months ago and half the players have totally forgotten him, which wasn't intended.
Cypherites started showing up what, three months ago? Four?

In all that time, players have been working overtime trying to second guess the plot, as you'd expect. But there's SO long between installments that we - apparently - end up making up totally unworkable ideas, which seem plausible, given the timescales involved.

Not having a Cypherite org would have been fine, given the fact that we'd have covered their rise to power and fall from grace in three or so fast-paced months.

But having us wait around has left us assuming that the orgs would be joinable. The thing is, we've ALL known for a long time now that the 'chapter a month' thing was never gonna happen, and when that was realised, that is when the announcement should've been made. It's not like it wasn't obvious we thought it was going to happen, we've been postulating about a Zion split ever since Morpheus bit the bullet, or whatever happened.

The players are ahead of the game in some respects, and the criticals often give out information that we've known for a long time.
Originally the criticals were the highlight of my gaming month, but I just did the first Zion critical and couldn't care less.
*Go to safe, get disk, upload disk, go to place, kill Masked attackers, go to other place, find a Neo-ite who dies without telling me something I don't already know*

The Combat Revision will be good, and will hopefully attract more players into the game. But the storyline is what keeps us here, and yet I find myself both caring less and less about what happens, and even forgetting what has happened in the past.
The latest event with LESIG characters showing up as soldiers ... I just didn't know what that was even about for a while.

Seems the only people that do have a decent clue anymore are those that can afford to spend hours on end in the game doing, apparently, very little, because there's sod all to do at Level 50, and god knows I've tried to make it interesting.
We were once one of the largest factions in the game, and now I see maybe six maximum people jacked in, which makes me very sad.

I don't want to beat up on you guys because I appreciate that there are only so many hours in the day but ... things are not going well right now.
And I think that Organo raises an excellent point, in that whilst we appreciate the amount of player contact you guys (Rarebit, Walrus, NoRepro, etc) give us, sometimes (oftentimes) it seems like you're the ONLY ones there.

**Rarebit**

All good points. Thank you, Prophet.

**Aquatium.**

Well I was also looking forward to a bit of chnage in the organisations, but like some ppl seeing the logistics of it seemed, well unrealistic, but with the current storyline, it held hope that it might happen...

Im sure the Devs are more than aware what new orgs would have brought to us... expansion, being the key word, and as mentioned even without having to add more crits etc, if there was an option to choose to divide zion factions into 2 then that would help greatly in that.... I hope if anything something they can consider, zion the biggest org by far, has the biggest issues, not all of us agree on what we represent...you have those who follow niobe completly, those who are going renegade, and then those who are somewhere in the middle.. allow us to divide in the respect would haev made it much more interesting and added content in itself that we could work with.

What we dont know if how the "core" of the system works in allowing this....if it all possible, see what can be done, the spilt could still be both zion, and even run the same crits, but outside those you make a choice....

Anyway getting back on track, CR 2 looks to be moving on nicely, and i know once that hits live, will keep many people busy learning it over agian, sure thats fustrating for some, but will make things more lively.

We all need a live event too SMILEY

[CoZ]LostProphet

Heh, thanks for not chewing me out SMILEY

I was going to make a suggestion (more of a peace offering idea) but I'm sure it is:
a) Against company policy
b) Likely to placate the playerbase and yet upset the impatient ones

You have a production schedule which you try and run to, I was going to suggest, how about revealing a few choice tidbits of what to expect over 2006?

But I suppose that would do more harm than good SMILEY

We have production schedules here (of course, slightly more short term) but we can only give customers solid facts once we have assurance from our suppliers that the dates will be met. I guess it's harder for game development because you can never foresee the problems that will come up in future.

PyRo_X1

I am more of a moderate on this issue, agreeing with some of the opinions (such as the fact that they released the news about these "new Orgs" hazardously late, although I had no expectation of joining them anyways, but nonetheless), and disagreeing with others (that the Dev Team are a bunch of "idiots and money-grabbers"; I'd say no one has the right to judge like that).

But the point of my hook in this water is a very paradoxical observation I have seen. Namely my surprise that there are so many skeptics/etc even among many of the "most dedicated, longest-lasting" players; I recognize many of you from past days.

I would not really consider myself a long-time, faithful player as I see some others (I was in Beta since Nov. 2004, but left after it was over, joining Live only since Oct. 2005), but the notion that our most faithful playerbase looks to be losing this faith, falling apart as I perceive it, is disheartening. Sure, I am making a broad comment that doesn't necessarily apply to each person, but that is just what it seems like.

Porphy

[CoZ]LostProphet wrote:
I like to think that I practice what I preach - that is, not complaining too loudly about problems and asking for pie-in-the-sky ideas because I know that you guys don't have a massive team and unlimited budget.

But I'm disappointed.

IMO, there was no need to make the "No org split" announcement on the original timeline for the game, whereby we would be running through it at a rapid pace, and we'd be on what, Chapter 10/11 by now.

However we're almost a year in, and only on Chapter 4. If we continue at this rate it'll take another TWO YEARS to get to the end of the first 'year' of story.
Everything is moving slowly and thus our perceptions of what is going on are being distorted.

Morpheus was killed something like six months ago and half the players have totally forgotten him, which wasn't intended.
Cypherites started showing up what, three months ago? Four?

In all that time, players have been working overtime trying to second guess the plot, as you'd expect. But there's SO long between installments that we - apparently - end up making up totally unworkable ideas, which seem plausible, given the timescales involved.

Not having a Cypherite org would have been fine, given the fact that we'd have covered their rise to power and fall from grace in three or so fast-paced months.

But having us wait around has left us assuming that the orgs would be joinable. The thing is, we've ALL known for a long time now that the 'chapter a month' thing was never gonna happen, and when that was realised, that is when the announcement should've been made. It's not like it wasn't obvious we thought it was going to happen, we've been postulating about a Zion split ever since Morpheus bit the bullet, or whatever happened.

The players are ahead of the game in some respects, and the criticals often give out information that we've known for a long time.
Originally the criticals were the highlight of my gaming month, but I just did the first Zion critical and couldn't care less.
*Go to safe, get disk, upload disk, go to place, kill Masked attackers, go to other place, find a Neo-ite who dies without telling me something I don't already know*

The Combat Revision will be good, and will hopefully attract more players into the game. But the storyline is what keeps us here, and yet I find myself both caring less and less about what happens, and even forgetting what has happened in the past.
The latest event with LESIG characters showing up as soldiers ... I just didn't know what that was even about for a while.

Seems the only people that do have a decent clue anymore are those that can afford to spend hours on end in the game doing, apparently, very little, because there's sod all to do at Level 50, and god knows I've tried to make it interesting.
We were once one of the largest factions in the game, and now I see maybe six maximum people jacked in, which makes me very sad.

I don't want to beat up on you guys because I appreciate that there are only so many hours in the day but ... things are not going well right now.
And I think that Organo raises an excellent point, in that whilst we appreciate the amount of player contact you guys (Rarebit, Walrus, NoRepro, etc) give us, sometimes (oftentimes) it seems like you're the ONLY ones there.

Very good words... well said. Comparing how I felt about 1 year ago when I first jacked in and now... there is nearly nothing left. I'm kida really sad :smileysad:
It's not the game itself that interested me, that made me buy MxO and see how the story unfolds. It was the movies, the story, philosophies.. but all I see now is focusing on a CR that is IMO absolutely unnessesary. You can't sell a new combat system as content.. it simply doesn't work and more and more people quiting just prove this. Nearly every time I convince myself to give the EP Server I try the population is LOW! Shouldn't this ring a bell? Working on CR2 in times like these is like playing in the water while the world around you burns like hell. Don't get me wrong, there might be some good aspects in the new system but this isn't what this game needs! It was already said above.. it took 1 YEAR to just tell us "No, it's not gonna happen"!? For Hell, no.
Rarebit, I estimate and appreciate that you give us the answers and a view to what's going on tho you know and maybe can understand how we act and react. Thank you.

Xpedite 01 · 02/15/2006 01:57:04

"I know you're all excited about the impending storyline that seems to point at a new splinter Org. However, at this time, there are no plans to implement new player Organizations in The Matrix Online. Given the intricacies of Organization mechanics and the extra content these Orgs would require, we're not prepared to tackle that issue."

take from "The other side of the looking glass" 2/14/06

I read this and throught that this should be brought to attention asap...

Saying that there are no NEW organisation and specific organisations... what the hell are the Cypherites and EPN and Niobe's new org actually going to be here for...... A little extra content to get people talking by the looks of things..... Of this article is suggesting that Zion, Merovingian and Machines will be the only organisations continued for the next steps through the story.... I have to say this is a HUGE dissapointement..

"we're not prepared to tackle that issue." hmmm SoE arent able to tackle that issue, and carry on the story as it should be heading... I thought that's why we were here? Apparently we are just here to PVP or something...

What a joke

Xpedite

Message Edited by Xpedite 01 on 02-15-200601:57 AM