Age of Conan
- Thread starter Nonagon
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conflictingideas
First time out of the vault
the game came out yesterday, my friend's had it since Sunday (apparently you actually got it early if you pre-ordered), and i can say that i mostly enjoyed my three hours or so with the game.
i didn't spend too much time with character creation (again, on a friend's computer, it's not like i'd actually be able to keep the character), but i had a pretty interesting class that was some sort of warrior/black magic hybrid called a Herald of Xotli. the game's pretty fast-paced for an MMO, and i'd like to spend more time with it (the guest passes don't seem to be working for now), but it's hard to tell how long the appeal will last.
gameplay-wise, the UI and progression is almost completely identical to WoW, but with a slightly more interactive combat system. instead of an auto-attack, you pick the direction of your attack, and there are spells and combos with cooldowns. the combos will require one or more button presses to successfully complete, and if the combo lands a killing blow, you're treated to a gory finishing move, such as a decapitation or impalement, depending on the combo. there is also a defense system, which would've been of more use to me if my class could use shields, in which you pick the regions you want guarded or heavily guarded (with a 3-point distribution), and your attackers will have to attack the unguarded region(s) in order to land a critical hit.
all in all, it was pretty fun, but it got repetitive, like all MMOs, and the player-vs-player mechanic got pretty frustrating. basically, once you leave a city, PvP is completely free game, you can attack anyone you want at whatever time. there aren't any factions or races that you can't attack. this became especially annoying in the second questing zone, in which people who were level 20 would just hang out at the respawn point and just kill anyone who popped up. there doesn't seem to be much gained from this, either, unless you find entertainment in people shouting at you to fuck off. there's no noticeable exp, and you can't loot player corpses. other than that, though, it's all just a slightly improved WoW. i hear that there's a pretty involved guild mechanic, though, where you build cities for your guild and go to war with others. that sounds like it can be a lot of fun, but i have yet to actually see it.
i didn't spend too much time with character creation (again, on a friend's computer, it's not like i'd actually be able to keep the character), but i had a pretty interesting class that was some sort of warrior/black magic hybrid called a Herald of Xotli. the game's pretty fast-paced for an MMO, and i'd like to spend more time with it (the guest passes don't seem to be working for now), but it's hard to tell how long the appeal will last.
gameplay-wise, the UI and progression is almost completely identical to WoW, but with a slightly more interactive combat system. instead of an auto-attack, you pick the direction of your attack, and there are spells and combos with cooldowns. the combos will require one or more button presses to successfully complete, and if the combo lands a killing blow, you're treated to a gory finishing move, such as a decapitation or impalement, depending on the combo. there is also a defense system, which would've been of more use to me if my class could use shields, in which you pick the regions you want guarded or heavily guarded (with a 3-point distribution), and your attackers will have to attack the unguarded region(s) in order to land a critical hit.
all in all, it was pretty fun, but it got repetitive, like all MMOs, and the player-vs-player mechanic got pretty frustrating. basically, once you leave a city, PvP is completely free game, you can attack anyone you want at whatever time. there aren't any factions or races that you can't attack. this became especially annoying in the second questing zone, in which people who were level 20 would just hang out at the respawn point and just kill anyone who popped up. there doesn't seem to be much gained from this, either, unless you find entertainment in people shouting at you to fuck off. there's no noticeable exp, and you can't loot player corpses. other than that, though, it's all just a slightly improved WoW. i hear that there's a pretty involved guild mechanic, though, where you build cities for your guild and go to war with others. that sounds like it can be a lot of fun, but i have yet to actually see it.
-Snip-
I really don't understand the parallels of this game and WoW asides from the fact that its an MMORPG. The combat system is revolutionary and the PVP system is amazing.
I've fought so long and hard for a MMORPG that allows open PVP. Being an assassin myself, it makes for a very interesting experience. All be it, I always play Robbin Hood and save the lowbies from gankers. It ends up becoming a good bit of my pass time.
Last night I killed a ganker 4 times over again. Unfortunately, there is not that big of a death penalty to detour that ganker from continuing his or her raid on what ever area... then again, there is not that big of death penalty for anyone.
I've fought so long and hard for a MMORPG that allows open PVP. Being an assassin myself, it makes for a very interesting experience. All be it, I always play Robbin Hood and save the lowbies from gankers. It ends up becoming a good bit of my pass time.
Last night I killed a ganker 4 times over again. Unfortunately, there is not that big of a death penalty to detour that ganker from continuing his or her raid on what ever area... then again, there is not that big of death penalty for anyone.
conflictingideas
First time out of the vault
Maphusio said:
i personally don't think the combat is entirely "revolutionary", but the reason why i'd compare it to WoW is because all of the quests fall into a very similar formula that is just like WoW. That, and the UI is almost 100% identical. i think it's a very polished game, but they clearly took what they thought was good from WoW, which would appear to be nearly everything, and added more in the areas that were bare, such as combat, PvP, and a cinematic approach to storytelling. the classes also seem like they're a little bit more interesting, i finally reached level 12 with my class and can now turn into a demon for a small amount of time, buffing my attack and defense as well as casting a fire spell in all directions.
as far as the PvP, there's no reward or penalty, but there's apparently going to be a PvP-only experience level that will unlock exclusive equipment. the only death penalties i ever noticed were from a monster or NPC killing you, which reduces a lot of your stats, and can be removed either by waiting it out for half an hour or finding your tombstone (at the location of your death) and removing it from the ground.
oh yeah, and there are still some bugs running wild in the game. my friend's character managed to spawn in a place that doesn't exist on the map (???) and was pretty much lost into the void under the sand. he will either have to wait for the bug to be fixed or create a new character. and the guest passes still aren't ready to use.
conflictingideas said:
Now that I have played a little more, I think I do now see some parallels between the two. The bug your friend found sounds similar to what some other folk have been experiencing. Speaking of odd areas that don't exist on the map... There are quite a few of those. Look at the island next to White Sands, thats either the main island or there is another island that must be very void of anything at all.
I hit 40 of the weekend and finally got to do some group content. There are some things that really bother me about the game. Skill and feat (basically talent) descriptions are terrible and there are lots of broken quests, which suck because you end up spending a bunch of time trying to do it before you realize it is impossible.
The havest system for trade resources is also pretty bad. There are fixed locations for resources and every time you havest them they visually decrease in health by 10%. If it has less than 10% you can't harvest it any more so what you end up with is 100 different people running around in circles hoping to find an unharvested node which isn't marked on your map.
Beyond those complaints, the game is actually pretty good and launch has been realitivly smooth. I am finally getting to the point where I feel my class is some what interesting (I am a Dark Templar, which is a main tank, usually pretty boring) and it felt really good to be an intergel part of a group dungeon.
To illistrate how combat is differnt in conan, I'll just explain how a fight would go in the dungeon.
Our group was a healer, high damage melee, and me as the main tank. Pulls almost always consisted of two mobs. I'd attack or body pull one and drop my taunt. Once I use my taunt ability I have to attack upper left and then upper right to complete the combo. This costs stamina which is most commonly regenerated with potions, which are extremely cheap.
During the fight I would switch between mobs to keep trying to taunt them. When I had them both on me, the light tank would position himself so he could hit both mobs. This is the second major difference between Conan combat and other combat. Any attack can hit more than one mob. The down side of this, however, is that he does so much more damage than me that he'd pull the mobs off often.
Meanwhile, the healer's job was to make sure our heal over times were refershed. The third major way Conan differs is that all the heals are HOTs. While everyone baulked at this system originally, our healer points out that this lets him do a lot more in combat than he could in other games. He'd throw on a hot and do damage until it was time to throw on another hot.
When fights would go on particularly long, I'd pop my ability that hits me for 1/4 my health but gives everyone in the group enough health, stamina, and mana back to do more combos or cast more spells.
It was honestly fun. Getting the process down of lineing up mobs for the damage classes and memorizing my combos will keep this game interesting and tactical for a while. Up until this weekend though, I really felt the game was pretty borning. This weekend gave me hope for the rest of the game and PVP.
The havest system for trade resources is also pretty bad. There are fixed locations for resources and every time you havest them they visually decrease in health by 10%. If it has less than 10% you can't harvest it any more so what you end up with is 100 different people running around in circles hoping to find an unharvested node which isn't marked on your map.
Beyond those complaints, the game is actually pretty good and launch has been realitivly smooth. I am finally getting to the point where I feel my class is some what interesting (I am a Dark Templar, which is a main tank, usually pretty boring) and it felt really good to be an intergel part of a group dungeon.
To illistrate how combat is differnt in conan, I'll just explain how a fight would go in the dungeon.
Our group was a healer, high damage melee, and me as the main tank. Pulls almost always consisted of two mobs. I'd attack or body pull one and drop my taunt. Once I use my taunt ability I have to attack upper left and then upper right to complete the combo. This costs stamina which is most commonly regenerated with potions, which are extremely cheap.
During the fight I would switch between mobs to keep trying to taunt them. When I had them both on me, the light tank would position himself so he could hit both mobs. This is the second major difference between Conan combat and other combat. Any attack can hit more than one mob. The down side of this, however, is that he does so much more damage than me that he'd pull the mobs off often.
Meanwhile, the healer's job was to make sure our heal over times were refershed. The third major way Conan differs is that all the heals are HOTs. While everyone baulked at this system originally, our healer points out that this lets him do a lot more in combat than he could in other games. He'd throw on a hot and do damage until it was time to throw on another hot.
When fights would go on particularly long, I'd pop my ability that hits me for 1/4 my health but gives everyone in the group enough health, stamina, and mana back to do more combos or cast more spells.
It was honestly fun. Getting the process down of lineing up mobs for the damage classes and memorizing my combos will keep this game interesting and tactical for a while. Up until this weekend though, I really felt the game was pretty borning. This weekend gave me hope for the rest of the game and PVP.
zioburosky13
Vault Senior Citizen
The Vault Dweller
always looking for water.
THAT ALONE is making me consider playing this game...to think he's doing that not even as a part of a battle, but just for fun is awesome!
Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
well, that's how Tomb Raider came about. there was an early version where the boob parameters were altered, the marketing boys got hold of that copy and forbade the dev team to change the boobs back to normal...zioburosky13 said:
PS: you can do the same in V:tM-B btw. i believe the parameter is called "money". nice sense of humour at Troika.
lulz were hadLoxley said:
conflictingideas
First time out of the vault
that resource harvesting sounds like a clusterfuck, and to me brings back nothing but bad memories of Final Fantasy XI, which is nothing short of one of the worst games i've ever spent time on.
T
TorontoReign
Guest
Loxley said:
Hilarious!
I have been playing AOC for a few days now and I can honestly say that it is fucking awesome. All I hear on OOC chat is how much better AOC is than WOW. I personally wouldn't know myself because I never played WOW,but I just thought I would put that out there.
The PvP penalties are nonexistent at the moment I admit,but they will add in a penalty system at some time.All I keep hearing is how well AOC launched and I agree there aren't that many game breaking bugs in the game.Yes some quests are broken,it happens.They are fixing them and they will continue to update until all the kinks are out of the game.
The combat is so much more complicated than WOW,not only because of the combo and directional system,but also because every player is a natural barrier. You cant run through someone like in some MMO's. This will play a crucial role in the Guild battles to come. It is a shame that some people will not play AOC because they hear it is a WOW clone. It really differentiates itself enough I believe.
I have been hearing complaints from people about the system specs. Boofuckingoo. Upgrade. It's 2008 not 1999. Just because you can play WOW with a office computer doesn't make it better. I barely met the system specs,but I had more ram and I have the game on High settings minus a few tweaks ,and I hardly ever lag.
Besides...the video above fucking rocks and you should buy the game because of it.