Age of Conan - Page 28

arieste · 01-23-2008, 08:28 AM

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Originally Posted by Kookynotes

it is true that testers are playing outdated versions of the game. As far as graphical elements go, they seem to be about 90% done, AI just needs to be tweeked here and there, but like I was saying they keep changing how the combat system works so who knows what the final system is going to be. Itemization is always never close to done in beta, but from what I have seen already it will be top notch.

The UI also has me very concearned. It's limited in beta only 1 hotbar available, still having to use your spell/ability book to get buffs up and whatnot because their just isn't enough hotbar space available. (I've been told by a dev that multiple hotbars will be in game though) Generally the UI is just too simplistic, I like simple and I def don't want to see something like AO, but some options would be nice because I would hate to see a plethera of mods needed to play effectively.

My biggest problem with AOC is this change in the combat system. It worries me that a cry from the beta testers possibly made that change due to it's unfamiliararity. If they changed it for technical reasons we will never know even as beta testers. FC is very tight lipped about why they are doing anything which makes me think someone hasn't put a lot of this code in stone.

A huge part of their original "player base" formed in late 05' all wanted a new combat system to learn, something appealing to adult venue and difficult to master. It looks just like any other MMO out there now... just some hotbars to hit. Even though in theory the combat rose is just a modified hotbar the original version of it was very difficult to get combos out of. It also gave you a perspective of what you were doing in conjunction with the mob. I fear that with the combat rose now gone your revellance to your avatars position to the mob will make no difference short of having to be behind or on the side of a mob like we have here in eq2.

In conclusion I think "we" the player base are our own worst enemies and FC is allowing us to do it. They need to stick with their vision and quit bowing down to the whines of players that want to make the game familiar.

thanks for the infos

arieste · 01-23-2008, 02:39 PM

from today's article on MMORPG.com:

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Raids

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Before I get ahead of myself, maybe we should spend a little bit of time talking about raids:

The folks at Funcom have told us that there will be 8 raids at launch with somewhere around 19 raid encounters (bosses) between them. These raids are intended for characters who have passed the level 80 barrier and are looking for something new.

Conan’s raids will be divided into three tiers. Tier One raids have no restrictions to entry, which in order to access any of the Tier Two raids, you will have had to complete at least one of the Tier One raids. Tier Three, as I understand it, is the most restricted of all, requiring players to have completed all of the Tier Two raids before they can enter.

Raids are designed for groups of 24, and are estimated to take somewhere between two and three hours to complete.

That isn’t to say though that the game won’t have smaller group instances for characters of lower level, but the hardcore raids are meant for the top of the heap.

City Building

City building in Age of Conan is a large-scale group application of crafting and building gameplay, allowing guilds of no less than 30 members to work together to build a permanent city for themselves.

These cities will allow the builders a surprising amount of leeway in what buildings go where. The only building that must be constructed in a specific spot is the Keep. While the building lots have already been chosen, which buildings go where is up to the players themselves.

Guild members of guilds who have built a city will have the ability to teleport themselves home to make the city easier to access.

Siegeing

There are two kinds of player-run city in the game. The crafted villages that we talked about above, and the kind that will keep major guilds fighting each other for land. The PvP village.

For those who can remember back to the Games Convention in Leipzig last year, the guys at Funcom unveiled a new feature: Siege PvP. You can check out the video of that presentation here.

In a nutshell, I find that the best way to think of the Siege PvP is to think about playing an RTS. In an RTS, you almost invariably end up staging at least one major attack on the stronghold of your enemy. He defends it, while you use your armies to attack. Now, imagine if each of those units on your RTS map were controlled by an individual player, filling a number of roles from working a siege engine to defending the engines of destruction from attacking defenders to using your Mammoth to knock down the walls.

The objective of Siege PvP combat for the attacking force is to take the opposing team’s Keep, which is located at the heart of the PvP city. There are two layers of walls between the attackers and their objective, not to mention any number of players on the side of the defending guild (including mercenaries) who might stand in the way.

The objective for the defending force is pretty self-explanatory. Keep the attacking force from defeating your keep. Obviously though, this task isn’t as open-ended as a real siege, and a time limit of 90 minutes is placed on the battle. If the defenders can hold off the attackers for at least that long, they win the battle.

Reading the details of this set-up does bring a few questions to mind. Most notably in how a guild could possibly have their PvP city defended 24 hours a day. In real life, places like that would have 24/7 defenders, but in the world of MMOs, where many people work a 9-5, how will your town be defended when your level 80 Barbarian leader is reading inter-office memos? Simple, battles over PvP cities will be arranged in advance, and will only be attackable during specific hours of the day.

Kimzar · 01-23-2008, 03:19 PM

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Originally Posted by arieste

hyped up? what hype? I been waiting for this game for a couple of years and talk about it a lot, and about 90% of people i talk to have no clue it even exists.

if it wasn't for me being a die hard AO fan, i probably wouldn't know AoC exists either.

the hype of Vanguard was coming mainly from Brad McQuaid who's "i made EQ1 therefore I am god and my game will be the second coming of MMOs" shpiel seemed to get all the EQ1 fanbois wet in the panties. There are quite a few fans of AO, but nowhere near EQ1 and there are as many haters as fans.

The developer approach has also been completely different for AoC and Vanguard, where vanguard right up to a month prior to release kept saying "Yes, we will have everything, for everyone", AoC devs have always been honest with saying "this won't make it in, this won't be in on launch, these are the priorities, etc, etc."

If you go back and read DEV posts on AoC forums for the past year or more, you will see 0 bragging or overpromises.

I've seen people even on AoC forums claim that the developers are lying about this or that, but honestly, if you look back to two years ago to the game that was being promised, that is exactly the game that is being delivered. Aside from minor changes such as removal of certain class, the vision for the game hasn't changed at all.

But maybe i just see things this way because I'm a fan of the company rather than the game. I coudln't care less that they are making Conan or Hyboria, as long as Funcom's making it, i tend to think it's in good hands. Until experience shows me otherwise (the way it did for legions of Brad McQuaid fans), I'll expect good things.

TBH much off the same can be say of Vanguard. if you had played Eqlive you wouldn't herd or bother to read it was hyped for its audience...

AOC well you lacking half the info publish about it. its HYped and Bragged about they just wise engthe to do tath shit in Norweigen... Mostly the lack of bragging in US is just because they dont know how do to it..

The game gone be pushed pushed, Launched unfinished, broken, and Unplayable whores the vanguard. then there gonna be GM and CSR that's don't even speak English and are only online by nigth (US time)

arieste · 01-23-2008, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kimzar

then there gonna be GM and CSR that's don't even speak English and are only online by nigth (US time)

Their last MMO had great support. I remember logging in for the first time and being met by a live guide who was just hanging out in the newbie area and helping people.

Through more than 3 years of playing AO, support was generally very good, there were always live GMs and ARKs available that actually showed up and solved problems. None of this "use the web and get answer 3 days later by email" shit that SOE is doing and none of this " i don't have the power to help you". Once in a while you got a newbie ARK, but you could just get them to talk to a senior if they didn't know or couldn't do it. They all spoke excellent english and knew a lot about the game. When you talk to SOE customer service, I don't think they even know how to play EQ2.

I also know someone that used to work for FC as an ARK and they had set hours scheduled, so different time periods would be covered.

Broomhilde · 01-23-2008, 04:47 PM

In my AO "froob" account, I was greeted by a GM the first day in the game. He introduced himself and let me know if I ever needed help he was there to assist me. Funcom's CS has proven to be reliable.

I'm hearing that they got rid of the "druid" class in AOC and merged it with the Priest. How will people that love the druid feel about this?

arieste · 01-23-2008, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Broomhilde

In my AO "froob" account, I was greeted by a GM the first day in the game. He introduced himself and let me know if I ever needed help he was there to assist me. Funcom's CS has proven to be reliable.

I'm hearing that they got rid of the "druid" class in AOC and merged it with the Priest. How will people that love the druid feel about this?

btw, this has resulted in teh coolest sounding class name in AoC. Instead of Druid of Storm and Scion of Set, you now have Tempest of Set.

from TTH article from couple of days ago:

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I think our brand of healing is a lot more fun. I’ve actually been working on the Priest of Mitra recently, and I’ve been revamping their feat tree. So I’ve been playing pretty extensively with the Priest of Mitra, and it’s really fun! I’m finding that I can do damage and healing at the same time, which makes me a bit more versatile to my group other than just spamming heals.

However, the theme for the two major healers in the game – the Priest of Mitra and the Tempest of Set – will be different. The Tempest of Set does better healing by doing more damage. The Priest of Mitra is the opposite; she does better damage by doing more healing.

They kind of have an inverted orientation, but it’s the same end result where they have to juggle both at the same time. For example, the Tempest of Set has this ability where every time he nukes, he has a chance of casting a heal for no mana. Every time he nukes he also has the chance of putting a buff on himself that will make his next heal more powerful. Finally, he has a chance to make the targets of his team heal pulse AoE damage and things like that. The Tempest is definitely very offensively oriented; he starts the fight with damage and ends it with healing.

The Priest of Mitra really increases his damage potential by setting up a solid healing base. I was working on a specialized feat recently where each target you hit with a cone heal grants you a stacking buff on yourself that increases your holy damage. Or there’s another where every tick of healing from one of your spells gives you the chance of allowing your next damage spell to be cast for free. Like I said, they’re really focused on getting a solid healing set-up in their group before doing the nuking.

The Bear Shaman is obviously different than both of these two, because he’s melee focused. Unlike the other two healers, the Bear Shaman’s team heal procs from melee hits. It’s a very interesting class, and it will be interesting to see how former healers from other games react to our healing classes.

arieste · 01-23-2008, 07:08 PM

buncha videos by this guy... no idea how he got to spend time with AoC developers including game director at their offices, but hey... he got it on film:

Stage6 · Age of Conan New 'Keep' Info*-*Video and Download*·*AcolyteAvery

the siege one is good.

Stinkfinger · 01-24-2008, 11:18 AM

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Originally Posted by Sarahlit

a Good chunk of ligo content was still broken when the game went live, and decent, howling maw, and abyss isn't finished (i got mission to instances to zones that arent open), But DG did do good fixing up 95% ish of the game content from may to live for the content before ligo.

Anyways the AOC delay doesn't matter really to me, cause the more the polish the game is going get the better. tho the official boards the user base went into cry mode

The Aoc forums is full of that talk,,,It cracks me up,,becuase where do you draw the line??

You know if they delayed it a year, that would give them a year to make it better, more complete.

What about 2 years? the video cards then will be much better, and be able to do more,,,and by then they can add much more depth,,,

wait,,,delay it 3 years,,,,,then we will really have a game!

Sorry I dont buy that arugment for a second, If your a big time company and your putting out a world class video game and you say you will release it in OCT take pre orders,,,,,you get that game ready,,,,if you dont,,,,you suck,,,peroid.

Lamil · 01-24-2008, 12:26 PM

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Originally Posted by Stinkfinger

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,,,peroid.

at least you used a period somewhere.

Jubilee · 01-24-2008, 02:14 PM

This game is approaching Vanguard status.. it seems like its in rough shape. But I've only been able to play it a few hours.