STATE OF ALTEIL, JAN 2010

[InigoMontoya]

Good old S&G. Nice.

Edit: S&G = Simon and Garfunkel.

[fargone]

No if GMs give up just cuz forums is full of rage then that's just weaksauce. And they aren't doing their jobs.

Apparently, you completely misunderstood my post.


Ginnazoh, beautiful use of a beautiful song. I know I am old, cos I love Simon and Garfunkle.

[Demongod]

No if GMs give up just cuz forums is full of rage then that's just weaksauce. And they aren't doing their jobs.

Well do you want the GMs to reply, or do you want to just hop aboard the RAAAAAAAAAAGE train and spew it all over the forums?

It seems in my 2-week ban way back when, the forums, rather than calm down, got far worse.

Tell me something, raging people...ever visited the Alteil US team? I have. They're very nice people, and in my opinion, they're doing as much as they can. But as I've said before, their hands are really tied. Most of the major decisions have to be approved by the JO's. So rather than trashing Logress and the crew, as well as the people that approve the final decisions over in Japan, why not try to make the forums a bit more inviting?

[Peralisc2]

No if GMs give up just cuz forums is full of rage then that's just weaksauce. And they aren't doing their jobs.

It's funny how fast they adress their own concerns (payment options for example). But fail to adress the most demanded ones(card balance). -.-

Whatever affects their income-system or them in a bad way, gets quick fix + quick response. Anything else can wait.


alteil.jp 's fault for sure!

[Multi]

It seems in my 2-week ban way back when, the forums, rather than calm down, got far worse.
...why not try to make the forums a bit more inviting?

While you were gone, the forums were extremely peaceful actually, with a lot less thread spam and almost no derailment. Hypocrisy much?

Why did this thread get dredged up anyways? Logress isn't going to swoop in and post a revised "state of alteil" or anything.

[Harion]

i quit late last year (or early this year; after set 5 release i think)
i just realized that power creep was getting worse plus they aren't transparent with their pack rates
i also realized that no matter how beautiful the game of Alteil is, it can't outweigh bad management

after i compared Alteil with its rival (UR, which i also play) I realize that money for money, i'll get much more from UR
plus, i don't get all this RAGE like I did in Alteil
grinding is also easier in UR
packs are cheaper, and i can actually put aside a monthly budget for UR (their lowest shop minimum is 3 euros)
and pack rates aren't this horrendous. rares are guaranteed the bigger you buy. you also don't get doubles in packs.

albeit, Alteil is WAY BETTER as a game, both graphics-wise and gameplay
but really, who needs that when you can't even win 50% of your matches because of serious issues in many OP cards

but what really made me quit was the fact that Alteil doesn't load on my PC
yep. apparently, my internet connection is not fast enough to accommodate Alteil
it just goes on loading forever
whenever I try to go into a battle this would display forever

Don't have any connectivity issues with UR though. so I switched.

i just came back on this forum coz i still retained Alteil emails
was interested in seeing if the game got better or got worse

GMs are leaving... well... i'll let you decide

[AngelicDeath]

Posting during Logress's vacation might not elicit a swift reply but its been bothering me for a long time now (Jan 2010 to be exact) that our release schedule, to me, seems abit too slow.

I realize that we just had a complete overhaul of 42 cards and that it took considerable time and effort to accomplish that feat with the forums constantly ablaze with how OP elite fencer and the falkow crew were. However, that said we seem to be on a full set release every 6 months with an small EX set in between at the 3 month mark give or take. I am not advocating that we catch up to our Alteil 2 counterpart but when viewing their release rate we are actually falling further and further behind.

I for one would be all for quarterly set releases with EX in between or at minimal 3 set releases per year. Seeing as how new set releases are certain to bring in an influx of cashflow, albeit for a small window of time, why the abrupt slowdown when compared to Alteil 2? Do we have different purchasing patterns than they?

Just curious and hoping for a speedier release rate,
cheers,
john
aka Angelicdeath

[Zanador]

While i'm certainly not the one you aimed these questions at, let me share the things i know while we are waiting:

At the begining, the release rate of new sets were quite fast, 3-4 months at most. I think Set1 (and the begining of the game) was in june, then Set 2 came in autumn, and Set3 on Christmas. This was due to the fact that the game needed a lot bigger cardpool to provide options and to take a shape. Actually Set 4 and 5 was still out at the same rate, with only a little bit of delay due to technical reasons. After this, came a lots of "backstage" updates, the whole system, website and everything was reworked in order to make new skills and features possible (engaging for 2 turns, lasting effects and such were not possible before as far as i know, but this was the time they introduced the observer mode and replays too).

So, Set 6 officially got delayed in order to give the GMs enough time to work on these upgrades. There was a thread somewhere about this, where the players on the forum basically agreed with the GMs that our cardpool is big enough for the moment, and instead of more hurried releases, we all would like new features, balancing, more shopping options and such.
Same with Set 7, so what we have now, the 6 month/set is not the normal pace they were planning to release new cards. Logress kept saying that 3-4 months was the intended period, and i dont remember him changing this statement since then.

Basically i suppose once the features mentioned in this topic and other urgent things are taken care of, they will change the pace back to normal, because what we have now is a bit too slow for everyone (as i recall Logress said that he thinks one reason behind all the flame about balance on the forum is the fact that the set5-set6 imbalance was left alone for so long. in the normal flow of events, after a new set, the meta needs about 1 month to settle completly, then comes an EX release to stir things up a bit, then in 2 months another set to wash it away completly. this time the storm had about 8 months to rage).


Another small detail i'd like to add: i dont know if you have bought cards or not, or how much, but either way, for free players, time is money, so the longer the delay between sets, the more chance we have to collect cards from the given set. Speeding things up too much would make the free players to fall hopelessly behind, so yeah, releases should be faster, but like everything else: its a bit tricky.

[AngelicDeath]

Hi zanador,

Your analysis is probably correct. I have been playing and purchasing cards since set 2. i think 3-4 months with Ex in between would be perfect. I sympathize with the free players but honestly it takes money to make this game go. if you plan on playing or free then you had better plan on not having the majority of the cards.

I pay more for variety than anything else and switch my decks every 2 days or so to try something newer. I was just watching the trend of Set :5 Aug 25 2009, EX5: Nov 24 2009, Set 6: Dec 21 2009, EX6 Apr 9 2010, Set 7 June 21 2010.

It just seemed abit too slow when i compare to the alteil 2 release rates. Hopefully, when they complete the other stuff we can get back on track with our releases and EX. Hope you're right and we can get back on track so to speak.
cheers,
john

[garcia1000]

Soon-to-be Q3 bump!

-Napoleon – Hopefully first quarter. Napoleon is another mini-game like Mirage Master that goes alongside Alteil. Unlike Lavato Heroes, this one is a lot less work for us. Basically, as an alternate way to earn Fight Money, you can play the traditional card game, Napoleon (I’m not going to recount the rules here, Wikipedia is your friend), with your Alteil buddies. Of course, there’s some Alteil art and other Alteil-style surprises thrown in, but that’s basically it. Nothing huge, but it might also draw some other casual players to the site and it does have the added bonus of being a team game, so for once you can actually do something as a team in Alteil.

-Organized Play – Second Quarter or summer. This year has taught me two things, Organized Play needs to happen, and no one here has the time it takes to deal with it properly. Right now my tentative plan is to try to get an Organized Play Intern, maybe paid in Gran at first and hopefully money later, who could handle it (living in NY not required (although it could help), but I think I’ll have to require living in the US). There will be prize support, but no programmer support until all the other projects on this list are done (meaning we’ll be making do with the training arena). Although, on the plus side I did figure out a kludge that would let us do random packs in the Tournament Arena, but where you get to keep the higher-rarity cards. It should work a little like a Magic Tournament that way.

I wonder if those tournaments count?

-Premium Features – First quarter. Premium Features include match Replays and more Card File slots. I believe there is also an increase in the available length of things like friend mail and chat, too. The idea is to have benefits available that do not translate into a direct game advantage, like buying cards. The plan is to give them to paying players, and also free players will be able to access them for a limited time. The exact details we don’t have complete control over, because this is a feature we’re porting over from the Japanese game (although we can tweak some things, so for those of you who read Japanese, don’t expect it to be exactly the same as theirs).

-Beginner’s Packs – Throughout the year. The numbers on these were really good, not necessarily in terms of profit, but in terms of spreading out the spending over more users. We’ll definitely be doing more of them this year (yeah, yeah, they’ll include Skeleton Warrior this time). I’m not sure about permanent, but they’ll be up for long stretches and probably taken down when there is the possibility of being out-dated in the near future. After the Set 6 Gold Boxes come down we’ll run the numbers on that, and if they’re as good as I think they were, you’ll be seeing them again, too. I’m also planning to try and crunch numbers for my next shop experiment, probably Gold Packs.

-Lupos’ Watchdog – Mostly done, not yet implemented. It may surprise you that while we’ve been working on EX 5, Set 6 and all our contests, we (by “we”, I mean Lupos and Edgar) have not exactly been sitting on our backsides in the development area. As I’ve said before, the main game module is not exactly something we can just monkey around with whenever we want. We have tools for adding stuff to the shop and adding cards and all that, but the main game module is complicated, finicky, and runs entirely in processor-heavy Flash, so you don’t want to add anything to it unless you really, really mean it. But it turns out that most of the things we want to do involve stuff in the actual game.

-Achievement System – 1st or 2nd Quarter. So what does Lupos’ magic program mean for you? Well, imagine one of the things it looks for is when you get, say a 5 game win streak for the first time. Imagine the mail it sends says “Achievement Unlocked: 5 game streak.” And imagine the other code it runs was some script to give you a reward, say a few Point Cards. That would be an Achievement System, and it’s one of our top priorities for next year

Like, sort of? It was started and then fell off the planet

-Project X – So, from now on Project X is “whatever’s next.” As of now that’s not set in stone, but I’m pretty sure I want it to be something that takes advantage of our great content to make “more game” for lower level and free players. As many people have pointed out, a lot of our players have no contact with 90% of our cards, (except when they’re desperately trying to find a way to stop them.) I’ve been going through the suggestions in the forum, and something like a limited “File Rental” system might be good. I also like the Mini-boss idea, but in reverse.

-Project “Sun and Moon” – This is our second secret project, which is NOT directly part of the game. So if all you care about it is getting more out of the gameplay, this is not something to worry about. Still, it’s a cooperative project between the Alteil team and our parent company, Media Blasters, and if it comes together (it probably has a 25% chance of being completed at this stage) I think it’s something all Alteil fans will like.