Sadiablo

I did mention in the thread started by iago about "What updates would you like to see?"  that maybe they could do some kind of internship where they take players or fans of the game in and let them work on it for a bit. That way the game gets some love and attention, and then after they learn how to fully patch and fix things  HCS can take them on as full employees and start giving them a paycheck. That way HCS gets free labor on the game, the players get stuff added that has needed to be put in the game for 8+ years, and other people learn how to work on the games for HCS.  

It's a win win because they dont have to take the 2 devs for the whole company off of their golden child game like eldevin or the other games that come out every couple months that nobody plays, and they are essentially building a Gothador game staff so each game will have its own team again like any good game should always have. It was a really good thread and got a lot of attention from a lot of people.. just not the ones it needed to get attention from apparently, we've been watching tumbleweeds ever since. 

I do think that the MMO genre kind of led in a large part to the decline in text based games like this or Ravenblack that were big at the time, In a way I can't say I really blame the players. 

Not that I am knocking how gothador is, or at least was at the time but Conan, Star wars , City of Heroes/Villains etc brought so many new options for other players out there that it was hard to make the transition back from nearly 3D live interaction social games with fantastic visual effects etc. 

Again, Goth has had a lot of fun times and amazing people in it, but I mean.. when you play heavy graphics intensive games and can have 50+ characters under one subscription fee, you lose a lot of your motivation to go back to click to move, text only games where you have to pay for every single character you have. 

It's a shame that there wasn't really time to do both, but a lot of games have an all or nothing pull to them where you can't play multiple games together, it's one OR the other, and so the big new flashy games stole some of Gothadors thunder, and then when HCS staff focus turned away from Goth onto other games and just.. never really came back, a lot of players had the mentality that if they weren't going to get attention or new content here, they would go where there was always new stuff. 

I do hope that one day players find their way back here though, we have been getting a few back a little at a time which is really cool. I just hope the momentum keeps up. 

You sad, self-delusional little man.

 

If by "fighting to keep hoof from killing it", you mean crying about anything that had a negative effect on your play, then you surely did.  You must remember caps locking us poor mortals when a new vial allowed us the opportunity to PvP the biggest warrior in the game.

 

Hey, they did wrong.  They still do wrong.  At time of writing, 82 are playing Gothic Ages, and Lord knows how many hundreds more were playing Gothador before the love left.  In fact, 22 are playing right now.

 

We all miss what was.  Why else would we be checking in, five years since this game had any relevance to the majority of us?  

 

Anyways, take that "trying to keep hoof" tripe with you to whatever teen thrill online game you ended up at.  You were a problem, not a solution, and you'd best wait another five years before trying again.  Maybe by then we'll all have forgotten what a cretin Morby was.

You know, I've been here since 2004 when the game launched and have seen a lot of the players come and go just like you have I am sure, and come back periodically to see how badly the game is limping along and so on. I also remember all the old players and were friends with many of them before their exodus to other games, so I am familiar with how bad certain players were or were not at the time. 

Your logic is flawed at least in regards to your comment of "If by "fighting to keep hoof from killing it", you mean crying about anything that had a negative effect on your play, then you surely did.  You must remember caps locking us poor mortals when a new vial allowed us the opportunity to PvP the biggest warrior in the game."

Why should a lvl 1k player be able to pvp down a lvl 5,10,15k or above player in the first place? The answer is.. you shouldn't. Something is seriously wrong if you can even hit a player that much bigger than you let alone kill them. Just like any mob you come across when questing, if you're lvl 1 you shouldn't be able to get into other realms and kill the same things people 5k lvls above you do. 

As far as "Whining", well that may be true of a lot of players not specifically Morbid, and there's a reason for it. HCS started to get sidetracked with Fallen Sword and other games and they gravitated away from Gothador, we were all talking to them on yahoo messenger, in emails, on the forums and not getting anywhere. So when people dont listen to you talk, you start to shout or complain or piss and moan till you get their attention finally.  And it worked, they started to realize something was wrong and pay attention to Gothador again. 

And like in any psychology experiment,  if you do something and achieve success, you are going to keep doing it. Unfortunately it doesn't work any more though, since there's only less than 100 people playing the game total probably

and never more than 20 ish online at any given time (usually less than 10 though). 

I got swatted in pvp by morbid just like everyone else, him and sephidroth... /shudder, but that doesn't make him a plague on the game, it just means I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And everything he bitched about .. well, it was stuff that hundreds of other people were bitching about too.  Sooo people obviously realized there was something wrong. 

It wasn't only 1 person complaining about only 1 thing. 

Like him or not, Morbid had/has a lot of friends and because of that while he was playing  a lot of them were too, so there was more people active in the game. And when he left a lot of other people did (coincidentally or not) so in some ways he was really helping the game. Most people will agree to that, and not just former cultmates.

I know this has been an issue for years, but .. can you guys fix it so that it doesn't shift you out of shadow form when you switch characters at least?

I do agree that if you spellcast or goof off with your character after you hit the shadowform button you should cancel it. But,  to not even be able to switch characters without cancelling it is a bit much.  What if I park my character somewhere  and hit shadow form to keep me from being killed or robbed blind but then since I am done for the day with that character I can't even switch onto another character and keep playing the game without popping back out of shadows. That isn't performing any character actions, spending any ap or even talking, you are not doing anything whatsoever  so there is no reason for you to cancel your shadow form since you arent actually performing an action, your account is, you arent. 

Pls fix?

Is there anything that can be done about these?

I know there aren't a lot of people on the HCS staff and all, but 3+ weeks before response /resolution is atrocious. 

Perhaps if more attention was put into the games currently available instead of diverting already paper thin resources off into even more directions for new games every 2 months.. this wouldn't be such an issue. 

Current customers shouldn't be ignored to make room for new potential customers.

That's just trading customers off, pushing old customers out the door to let new ones into the empty room for a couple months before they get shoved out to make room for a few new people. 

What's wrong with maintaining your current customer base?  Keep what you have and build on that, progressively get more and more. This constant shuffling and trading one group for another to stop.

It's leading to games being neglected for 8-10 years at a time (Gothador) , 1-3 yrs (Fallen Sword)

people leaving constantly,  (Gothador use to have nearly 100k players, now you are down to less than 100, ask yourself why)

Things are broken and not being fixed, new things that were suppose to be introduced 10 years ago never were. The games haven't been updated whatsoever, and the only player base that is growing is the pool of dissatisfied players.

People aren't asking for anything unrealistic or unreasonable either. 

They just want promised features added (lets face it guys, you have had 10 years to get around to it)

They want broken things fixed, 

They want an updated model to play with, it's old and dusty and stale now because nothing has been done with it in nearly a decade. 

Show us a little love,  HCS staff periodically makes a thread asking players what they want to see coming up, we post 10 pages of GOOD suggestions and the ways to implement them. And then not 1 single suggestion gets put into the game. 

Why ask for suggestions if you don't really want to hear them or do anything with them? 

Maybe either, don't ask us for suggestions in the first place... or if you do ask us for them, actually do something with the suggestions?

They aren't logged into their accounts unless they are planning on replying, Not really sure why it would be different for the FS forums. But we have had a lot of spam bots all over the HCS forums lately so that may be it. 

<3 Amon Amarth

Welcome to the community.  Iago started this suggestion thread a while back and it had a lot of very good ideas that are gathering dust and cobwebs from being abandoned. Be a Gent and take a peek?

http://forums.hunted...e=3#entry876872

does iago even work here any more?

I don't think anybody does to be honest, from the lack of updates or any communication. There's probably a brick holding a switch in place keeping the game running and a room with more spider webs than the cave Frodo got stuck in

It's interesting, they have time to do eldevin and every other one of the 15 games they have, but ask them to spend 5 min for Gothador to do something and you have to wait a year. During which the only activity is the automated (and therefore not requiring any time or attention) Lotto draw. 

Gothador gets totally forgotten about for 6-12 months at a time. But every few days some other platform game like the different battle games or Eldevin or whatever gets an update and the time and attention that any good parent gives to their pride and joy. 

Gothador seems more like a burden they just don't want to have anything to do with, like the kid you drop off on a church doorstep and hope that nobody knows it's yours so that you can forget about it and pretend it never happened. 

Gotta love it, this is the game that gave them a name and reputation in the first place and yet people have to beg, threaten, get downright hostile in disgust and frustration to even be noticed. 

I just wish that they could ever be inspired to do something to breathe life back into the game or get it off its dying legs. 

Or if they finally got to the point that they say :" Ok, this is just a headache that isn't worth it any more. Every time I think about doing something Gothador related it fills me with dread instead of any sort of excitement or enthusiasm"

They would just turn it over to someone else that does want to maintain it or add to it. That way it can carry on and grow/evolve and keep going. 

This is a case of just shoving it in a closet and forgetting about it.  They should either keep up with it, or give it to someone else that will love it and show it some love and attention. It isn't doing anyone any favors sitting in the closet and being forgotten about/neglected. 

I would say that the $ from Gothador still helps feed the other games so it should get the same attention as the other games, but as it is.. I have a suspicion that there are only even a handful of subscribers any more because nobody wants to pay $ to be ignored and forgotten about. So the majority of ppl are unsubscribed and just hang out around the lotto tent building up UsP for when and if the day ever comes that gothador becomes a viable game again and they have some sort of reason to actually use the UsP for something.

While I am very happy for you guys in regards to being able to put new content out and mentor other companies, I have to say that doing all those things is actually a bit disappointing.

I understand from a marketing standpoint, the more new stuff you put out the more money you can make and more you get your name out there circulating (in theory)

That being said, I also understand from a marketing standpoint that you have to have a stable product that people perceive as reliable and interesting first. Otherwise it doesn't matter how much new material you throw out there, if people don't like what you already have (or what you already have is nothing but problems) they aren't going to care what's coming out next. 

All they are going to remember is their frustration and dissatisfaction at the prior material.

You may be drawing in a new crowd with games like Eldevin and Crystal Reign and Tank battles,  but you are also forcing your older crowd out the door. You have to keep in mind that without Gothador, there would be no Fallen sword to be getting 75% of your attention these days, and no Eldevin or Tank battles or Crystal Reign or any other game that soak up the other 24 and 3/4% of your time..... leaving only 1/4 of all of your project/production/resource time devoted to Gothador. 

You know, Gothador? The Game you had first? That brought you in tens of thousands of players and made you essentially overnight success, and therefore gave you the money and notariety(sp?) to even launch Fallen sword in the first place? Without Gothador there would have been no Fallen Sword. 

You wouldn't have had the money to make it, and nobody would have known who you were to want to play it. 

People went to Fallen Sword because they thought "Hey!, these are the same people that made Gothador and I LOVE that, let's give it a try!"

The only reason people have stuck with Fallen Sword however is because it's the only game you actually show even a miniscule amount of attention to between Gothador and Fallen Sword. 

[[The only updates we get for months at a time is the weekly lotto, and even that's automated. It isn't manually supervised by anyone in specific. If it were, you guys would notice that there are streaks where the same person wins 2-3x out of every months worth of drawings. Not always first prize no, but they can win 1st on one week and then 3rd another, nothing the next week, 2nd place the week after that.. Rinse and repeat. Lot's of people play and the same people (generally speaking) win over and over again on the same characters, and we are SUPPOSE to only have 1 vote per character right?]]

I understand that you can't give Gothador full animations or cgi or anything that would step on the toes of the "Golden Child" /Fallen sword, or Eldevin or whatever because if you update Gothador to be much more than a text based game  then you have a game that steps on the toes of your other ones and there ends up not being any reason to have one of them in theory. 

That being said, if you would like to keep the ever dwindling handful of players you do still have instead of pushing them to other game designers, and maybe even bring a few back for the sake of nostalgia or hell.. even bring in a few new players, there really needs to be some changes. 

For example, 

Please fix what you have before making something new. Quality over Quantity here HCS. Gothador has a lot of bugs and things that need fixed and updated since it's been nearly obsolete for the better part of a decade. 

Update things to be relevant and start taking a more active approach in the game, show SOME interest in it. If the people that made the game don't have any interest and can't spend the time to be a part of it why should anyone else?. It's  a MONEY MAKER for you, and if you can't be bothered with it.. why should I be bothered to SPEND MONEY on it?

Also, add something new to it. a few new icons for things maybe, new spells or recipes for things, a new reason to actually go in zones and do anything other than rot away in your characters cult squares. 

Fix the "Top Rated" section to include the new (several years old) tiers of character races, and actually finish character tiers. A lot of people said that certain Races have more tiers than others which is a big imbalance and detractor to actually play certain race/class combinations. 

People are so bored they are making mages loaded with attack power and warrior stats, and vice versa. 

(while this is funny I admit) it points out that people are so mind numbingly bored they aren't developing their characters in a progressive way to be relevant to the dwindling content available.  They are just goofing off with their characters more or less trying to find some reason to actually stay in the game. They are making their own fun because HCS isn't making fun things for them.. which is the point of being a game designer correct?

Also, make an information resource. Every single one of the ppl that still play this game (100 now probably compared to the nearly 100,000 that it use to be?) wants this. The forums are not even remotely adequate, The book of Wisdom is gone, Gothaguide is a bigger nightmare than a hotel full of clowns with pet spiders and there is little to no information actually in game going from quest to quest as to where to go next or what to do etc in a lot of situations. 

This HAS to change, or people are going to continue leaving simply out of frustration and disgust. 

Maybe.. cycle the staff at HCS around so you don't have to hire new people (which shouldn't be a problem to be doing honestly) and so you don't have to take people from 1 team to the other. 

For example,  while Fallen Sword is up and running fine, take a group of HCS people and focus on nothing but Gothador, fix, update, fine tune things. Get future updates set up and put to the side so that they are done and ready, and when you want or need to do something new to the game all you have to do is activate/program it in/launch it on live servers or whatever.  Then cycle off to Tank battles or Eldevin or something, when that's all hotfixed, patched, updated and you're done with that for the moment cycle back around to Fallen sword and Gothador. 

That way something is always being worked on and everyone feels like they are getting attention at least periodically if nothing else, there's always progress but there is a break in between things. 

One game gets worked on for a couple months, then the next one down the line etc. While 1 game isn't worked on nobody throws a fit because they are still exploring the new content, when they get to where its just about time for them to finish it up, you guys are back to that game and adding new stuff. 

It gives people time to experience new content, while you guys are busy working on other stuff and then when things aren't new any more for anyone, it's their games turn again and they get more stuff. 

Please, Please, Please take some of these suggestions or hell.. some of anyones suggestions to heart and show a little love to Gothador, not just Fallen Sword or whatever else. 

Best suggestion of all....... Actually implement any of these suggestions that were asked for in the first place. !!

I think you can balance Tactical/practical and gender related.  I wouldn't say go the way of Age of Conan with your cleavage looking like it can do most of the fighting for you since it is as exposed as whatever weapons you are using, but there can still be a balance where you can look at armor and tell right away if it's a male wearing it or a female. 

There should be different gear sets for things, it's the same problem that has been plaguing gothador since 2005-2008 when it was essentially deserted by the staff as well as 75% of the players due to lack of content and upgrades etc.  Mages and warriors wear the same exact gear, male and female armor started to look exactly the same as well.  Neither of those should happen. 

Magic users do not need to wear the same exact gear as warriors, it doesn't work. Gandalf wouldnt wear plate armor and Conan wouldn't wear cloth tunics and robes.  Gear should suit the class and gender of the person wearing them. 

And while yes, I agree that Warrior females shouldn't necessarily be running around in bikini and pastie armor.. historically and fantasy wise, female armor has ALWAYS looked differently than male armor because their physique/anatomy is different the majority of the time. Torso wise as well as with the lower half of the body. 

Cookie cutter armor (stat wise) and armor wise doesn't always work. 

So having a little bit more variety could be nice. But that may be a work in progress, the game did just launch quite recently so it may be on their to-do list 

I think you can balance Tactical/practical and gender related.  I wouldn't say go the way of Age of Conan with your cleavage looking like it can do most of the fighting for you since it is as exposed as whatever weapons you are using, but there can still be a balance where you can look at armor and tell right away if it's a male wearing it or a female. 

There should be different gear sets for things, it's the same problem that has been plaguing gothador since 2005-2008 when it was essentially deserted by the staff as well as 75% of the players due to lack of content and upgrades etc.  Mages and warriors wear the same exact gear, male and female armor started to look exactly the same as well.  Neither of those should happen. 

Magic users do not need to wear the same exact gear as warriors, it doesn't work. Gandalf wouldnt wear plate armor and Conan wouldn't wear cloth tunics and robes.  Gear should suit the class and gender of the person wearing them. 

And while yes, I agree that Warrior females shouldn't necessarily be running around in bikini and pastie armor.. historically and fantasy wise, female armor has ALWAYS looked differently than male armor because their physique/anatomy is different the majority of the time. Torso wise as well as with the lower half of the body. 

Cookie cutter armor (stat wise) and armor wise doesn't always work. 

So having a little bit more variety could be nice. But that may be a work in progress, the game did just launch quite recently so it may be on their to-do list 

I still think the development roadmap idea would be great,  it gives you guys a list of issues to reference and try to prioritize for the game and  it gives the  player base an idea of what if anything you guys are working on and let's us have a vague sense of direction with things. It helps us have some  idea of  what is being worked on and when we can see it in the game if at all. 

Plus it gives us a list where we can let you guys know what WE think is the most needed which helps the  players feel listened to and happy. Happy customers = more players, more players = happy cows

Show the level requirements on item in game you can buy. For example :  You find an item on the TN that looks super, you really want it and buy the item. As soon as it hits your inventory though, you notice you need to be a specific level way above what you are.  If you could see the required level for the item before you buy it .. You may not have, or at least not yet and you would have gotten something you could use at the moment.  This is something the game has been able to use for years.