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AoC: Age of Conan Update

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  • AoC: Age of Conan Update

    Age of Conan, an upcoming PvP MMO (still in development) started their beta process about 2 months ago. The game is due out in October of 2007.

    For the few of you that have been keeping an eye on this game, here's a tiny bit of info they posted on their community forums.

    URL for Full Forum Thread

    For those of you that are lazy, I've quoted the good stuff:

    The first thing we did was to tear down the norm of the combat system in MMOs. Out with the watch-the-hotkey-bar combat. Nothing wrong with it, except we wanted more location, direction, distance and hands on player skill to matter! In a Conan game combat must be more than a means to an end (to kill, gain exp) – it must be super-fun in itself. I am happy to say – we are finally close to this.

    We didn’t need to pull the solution completely out of our own a***es though. Plenty of good fighting games out there -- especially on the console. And then the multi-direction hit system was born. BTW, have we told you we’ve reduced the number of directions from 6 to 5? More on that that later. To make distance, orientation and player skill matter we had to enforce some other changes too. Characters and monsters have collision. 50 characters won’t stack on top of each other in a raid all hitting the main boss. You must plan and choose. It helps being able to fight with a spear, halberd or ranged weapons though! I’m sure you can stack close to 20 welled planned melee fighters around a boss.

    This is all about the feeling, the experience of combat. You feel those skulls imploding. You experience the joy of battle stepping around using speed and control to gut your opponents.

    Secondly we wanted to make quests more than a collection of experience boosters. We wanted to present fewer, but better written, quests with more meaning. I am not saying that we have revolutionary quests, world changing events or massive pict invasions during every quest (well, perhaps a few ;p), and the majority is true and tested game mechanics. We just present it better. Close up multiple-choice dialogue, often with voice – all beautifully grounded in Hyborian lore. Fewer, but with feeling and meaning, is my slogan.

    Thirdly, we decided to make crafting quest driven instead of grind driven. It seems like a bad idea sometimes, I know. Many hundred quests to create – but what the heck. Just to make crafting a story, a journey and not work – it is worth it.

    Four: Let us put creativity into spellcasting. Few things are as boring as being forced to only one thing (like healing) just because you want to hold a supportive role in a team! You should be able to support without repeating yourself endlessly. Spellweaving, cone heals and area heals were born. You must think, place yourself with tactics, and watch more than the health bars in your team GUI to survive as a team.

    Five: Integrate and make PvP important. Nothing is as non-repetitive and fun as PvP. That is it. A new type of server was also coined: RPVP. (Role Playing Player versus Player). This is true Conan – eternal strife! Killing your friends is never out of character Wink

    Finally – something that will let me play with my bachelor friends – an apprentice/master system. Letting me become an apprentice will let me access some of their level content, allowing me to at least have a minor role in their teams.
    I'll be the first to say I'm on the fence about this "update" they've provided. Part of me is really psyched that they're finally addressing many of the problems that current MMOs possess. Another part of me (I like to call him Realistic Dave) realizes that a traditional part of MMO marketing is promising big and often times falling quite short.

    Let's take an in-depth look at the 5 things the quote address:

    1. Combat

    The two things that really popped out at me is that first of all, they wanted player skill to matter and secondly, they wanted combat to be fun and enjoyable. I know, I know, it sure sounds obvious, but you'll be surprised that many games (especially MMOs) do not take player skill into account nor do they try to keep combat fun and interesting. (spam a nuke key sound familiar?)

    They're also trying to be creative and think outside the box in designing their combat system, as well has possessing collison and other factors that can affect your combat.

    I hesitate to embrace these promises they're providing because first of all I don't know if they can fulfill expectations and secondly, I don't know if it's good for the game.

    Collison for example, is often not included in MMOs because of technical reasons. If you're asking me to choose between locking up/lagging versus no collison system... ummm ya, I'll choose the latter. I really hope they can balance technical feasibility with what they're trying to provide. Making combat complex is good and all, but there comes a point where the taxation upon the server/system becomes too great to justify.

    If WoW has taught the MMO industry anything, it's that polish matters. Polish, Polish, Polish! Do it, and you'll go far, even if your game is crappy.

    Another promise they provide (that I hesitate to embrace) is their commitment to having player skill matter. Sounds good on paper, but in the history of MMOs, few games hold true to that commitment.

    The most glaring issue is obviously the "zerg" issue. This issue is further compounded by the fact that this is a sieging game where "zerg" armies can completely eclipse the factor known as "player skill." I suppose you can make the argument that corralling a herd of apes together to fight together is skill, but I will disagree. It will be interesting to see how they address some of this stuff.

    2.Questing

    Ummm ya. I can't really say anything about the questing information they've provided. Fewer, but more detailed and immersive quests? GG! I really don't think you can change the system WoW popularized to gain much more approval from the gaming public.

    Someone is either going to enjoy reading and immersing themselves in the quest, or they're not. There's nothing you can really do about it. I personally think this is a wasted effort, but hey, if they can make quest grinding less of a grind, and more of a novella, more power to them, I'll look forward to it.

    3.Crafting

    So instead of a repetitive grind to level your crafting skills, you now grind quests to level your crafting skills? Grind is grind, and grind = bad.

    Personally, I think the whole concept of crafting in MMOs is flawed because it is nothing more than a time sink. The amount of time varies from game to game, but in the end, every single crafting system I know of (except for maybe one or two) involves you doing pointless shit over and over so you can make some "stuff" later on. Unless they can make these "quests" of theirs fun (which I doubt), they're just trying to make the crafting grind sound palatable.

    Look, the fact of the matter is, crafting is a means to an end. Hardcore powergamers out there will find some botting system or hack to maximize their crafting. The no life 24/7 gamers out there will manually maximize their crafting and try to convince themselves it was time well spent. The only group of gamers that lose out are the casual ones. (The market segment every MMO is trying to target and suck in!)

    Why don't these brilliant MMO developers realize crafting "leveling" is stupid. Everyone should be capable of crafting any and everything. The actual process of making the item can be tweaked into a mini-game of some sort.

    It's not really a mind blowing concept. It'll eliminate the grind, and it'll make player skill matter (even in crafting!). I rather see development resources be spent in designing a crafting "process" that's fun and skill driven instead of writing up pointless quests that maybe 1% of the gamers will actually read and pay attention to. But I digress.

    4.Spell-weaving

    Sounds really interesting and good. The technical issues pop back into mind. Can they make this complex spell weaving system work without compromising the actual gameplay?

    5.Role Play PvP

    God, I'm not even going to address this issue. Worst expenditure of resources ever.

    6.Apprentice/Master System

    FINALLY! Someone gets it! People play massive MULTIPLAYER games to play with their friends. The inherent flaw of a level system is that it creates an artifical boundary that prevents people from playing together.

    It is absolutely stupid to have a leveling system that basically says "hey, if your friend is level 500, and you're level 1, you're going to have to do some boring and stupid shit for 5 billion hours before you can play with your friend? ok ok?"

    Some games already realize this and have systems in place that does not let someone's level range determine who they can play with, the more people realize it, the better it will be.

    So, in conclusion...

    Interesting update.


  • #2
    I've got my eye on you.

    Comment


    • #3
      Dear Relistic Dave,
      No one has ever done crafting, mellee vs caster, or generalized PvP right. What qualifies Frenchy based Funcom to do it? The Euro mental supremacy over everyone else? Which was clearly shown in their first project (AO) and it's enormous success? Seriously...

      I think that the problem with Dev's is that they aren't just regular gamers. They're all either famers who play to get shineys/reputation or total burnouts that play games to "beat" them.

      I try to keep my hopes up but it's hard when every new game promises me all kinds of new stuff and delivers with EQ all over again. New monsters, new items, new races, new classes, new world, new level grind, and absolutely nothing to keep me around other than the joy I get from killing trash talking retards (which FYI: I can do in any game no matter how bad it is).

      PS: Henry makes all updates good!

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: AoC: Age of Conan Update

        Umm ya....funcom couldnt create a MMO to save their lives. I seriously doubt conan will be anything close to a "revolutionary" pvp game.

        but on the bright side at least we have a roleplaying pvp server! CAUSE GOSH GOLLY THATS WHATS IMPORTANT TO ME.

        P.S. Oh joy! crafting is quest driven. Whew, now I can only hope these long and extremely boring quests ( as they said they cut down quests in number but increased length) will allow the creation of godly items thus creating a completely uneven playing field for people to showcase their "player skill", or as I like to call it... fight one person with 6.

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        • #5
          i'm more excited about warhammer.

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