Asherons Call: Ken Karl on Macroing

Thanks for the list

A recap of current things on Macroing (and no, I am not going to debate them further here, I just wanted to reiterate what I have said before)

1. The Macro/3rd Party/XP Chain Survey is on its way. We hope to have it live by early April

2. Macroing is not against the Code of Conduct (reguardless of how much you wish to read into it).

3. We are actively investigating how to eliminate the easy and lack of risk in Macros.

4. We are looking at both the list of locations you have provide and trying to find ways to "reduce the lack of risk to macroing and perching". This means, no one, macroing or not, should be able to be at a lucrative XP spots, and kill at no risk to themselves. As I have said.. if you macro, expect to die a lot and not have an overwelming benefit for it (though yes I know that is not the case right now).

5. We are NOT going to ban for macroing.

6. Once we have the survey results back, we will decide if and when a different approach happens. We make no guarantees about any changes.

If we change approaches for AC1, it will be along the lines of a real fix. We feel there are many outside the box ideas that have never been explored because they are "complicated". Well, complicated or not, if there is an issue or something broke, you owe it to customers to FIX the problem, not just put a bandaid on the problem and hope the "perception of a fix" will satisfy people

Now this is all premature. We are going to do the poll and also take into account what is needed for the design integrity of the game.

I know me writing this will instantly turn this into a macro flame thread... But I will not be actively monitoring it. I have read MANY threads on MANY boards and at this point, its safe to say I have read most every viewpoint.

Now is the time to figure out what what the next steps to this issue should be for MMPs. My beliefs are, if this truely is an issue that needs to be solve, banning and blocking alt-tabbing are not the proper approaches. EVERY game has this happening... Even those who take these steps... Changing the perception of whether it happens or not is one way to deal with it.. and it will work.. we just feel its more important to not just deal with perception... but to actually fix the problem. Not to say these ideas are completely ruled out if we decide to chagne things, we just want to make sure we do not take the easy way out for ease.

An outside-the-box solution is out there and we need to take the time to find it. Much like everything else in game development has evolved, so should this.

The re-assuring thing is, on this board, I have started to see people understand more our thoughts on this issue. Its not a simple "just pretend it doesnt exist response". Nor do we believe just because something has been a certain way for 2+ years, that we should re-evaluate it (look at a lot of the other changes we have been doing over the past few months)

Everyone on the AC Franchise is dedicated to making the best, player friendly game out there. This means having hard conversations about even harder issues. This may mean changes to AC1 or AC2. We are never afraid to change a dynamic in our game if its deemed for the betterment of the product and the players. Its deciding how and when to do said changes that sometimes takes more thought.

Thanks to everyone for listening to my long-winded explaination. As I said, do not expect me to reply further to the issue at this time.

Ken