State of the Game: Pre-Things!
On September 17, my boss and I met up with MasangSoft and together managed an ACE Online Tournament / Player Meetup. While the tournament was a success and we learned who our first NA ACE Online representative is for the ACE World Tournament in Busan, South Korea, I took this time to directly speak to my MasangSoft contacts and talk about ACE Online. What transpired is the main topic of interest in this discussion.
My first question was about gear balance: are you aware of it, what are you planning on doing about it and when can we expect changes? I'm going to paraphrase what they've said, but my contacts did allow me to tell you this: They are aware of the situation, they do plan to rebalance the gears, and the gear balancing transition will begin starting Episode 4.1. The reason that they are leaving it to when we receive Episode 4.1 is because they are very busy putting finishing touches on IF3 and concluding development on Episode 4. We can expect to receive IF3 for testing around the late 2nd-3rd week of October, and may be receiving early Episode 4 content for extensive testing as early as the 3rd-4th week of November. They stressed the fact that they know there is some overpowered A Gear equipment and skills, however they want to take the time to make sure the balance is fair when they make their corrections. The last thing they want to do is have another situation where one gear has an obvious advantage over other gears, therefore they will release Episode 4.0 first, then work the next episode with a focus on rebalancing the gears. My expectation is that SubaGames will have ACE Online Episode 4.0 by January 2012, if not February 2012. However, that is a tentative date.
Over the next few months, we at SubaGames will be doing a couple of events and initiatives to tide you guys over while waiting for IF3, then waiting for Episode 4. Very soon, possibly today, we will announce 3 new Web Missions, in addition to the current Web Missions. These missions will be implemented as early as this upcoming Friday. In addition, near the end of the Regional Championship, I will be announcing the details for my next big event (to be done on the Area 525 server): ACE Online Decathlon event! Teams of 3 will be competing in 10 separate events, each worth a certain amount of points. The team with the most amount of points after 10 events will win the grand prize! Full details at the time of official announcement. Also, after Episode 4 has been released, we will be implemented my first in a series of paid-entry ACE Online Area 525 Tournaments. The first of these paid-entry tournaments will be 3v3 matches with preset gears, and each player pays around 10,000 Suba Points for entry. The grand prize for the first place team will be a combination of a cash prize, Suba Points and in game items. We hope to be doing a lot of these kinds of tournaments, as there is an emphasis more on skill, but the excitement of cash prizes as well as items for your main server character.
Outside of specific events, we will also be implementing several over-time events. Very soon, leading up to IF3, we will be instituting a continuous login event. Each consecutive day that you log in, the more and better items you get. This will most likely lead up until IF3, then once we patch IF3 into ACE Online, we will follow up with an EXP Rate increase of x2-x4, depending on your feedback, for a few weeks. This will be implemented during the 18 Happy Hours a day, and we may increase the WP rate during WP Happy Hours.
We are also working on a new referral system in which each ACE player can link their friends/family/workmates etc. to the ACE Online website using a unique referral code at the end of the link (example: "ace.subagames.com/reflink?=xxxxxxxxxx", unique to each account). It is in its very early stages, however we can confirm that there will be a requirement of X amount of hours of gameplay within the first 30 days of activation, and the first new player referred will earn the original player a combination of in game cash shop and regular items, as well as more free stuff after an additional 5 referred. We would also be checking ip logs to make sure nobody would be cheating our system.
With ALL of that said, I'd like to hear more feedback from ACE Online players of old and new. ACE Online is now being managed by myself as senior Project Manager, with GM TantalusBandit as co-Project Manager, and one of the most important things to us is player feedback and suggestions. Therefore, we want to hear what you want us at SubaGames to do more of over the coming months. In addition, if you have any questions or concerns about what we plan to do that I just mentioned in this thread, feel free to voice your opinion. I'll be heading home around 18:30 server time, but once I get home around 20:00 server time I will continue to interact with you all in this thread.
Originally Posted by [GM]EchoSaviour
