Age of Conan review

[greektony]

fanboi alert, fanboi alert

[kalniel]

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Josh.

Here you are, why did you buy a PS3?, because the xbox360 has bugs.....

What else is bad about the xbox360....

TiG

LOL!! the 360 problem appears to not have a proper solution to it plus its a HARDWARE ISSUE not a SOFTWARE issue which can EASILY be changed by a couple of lines of code if you are realy a software developer as you say you are.

only a noob would compare a hardware bug to a software bug nice deraling the topic though.

and who is a fanboy? im not. if i was i would not have both a ps3 and a 360 i buy whatever i feel is best for my needs. im still awaiting what is bad about aoc in terms of gameplay. does the combat suck? is lvling up bad? graphics bad? fun factor none existent? what is bad besides a few bugs that can be ironed out along the way? whos to say the final version will still have these bugs. wait till it comes out before you judge it.

[TiG]

I'm trying to make a point that you seem unable to grasp. Bugs in a game are no less important than hardware faults. It spoils the experience and makes the person look for something else. You looked for a ps3, other people will look for a different mmorpg.

If a MMORPG is buggy people will not play it, the WoW forums go insane if the servers crash for an hour, or go nuts if a patch affects their character. I'm trying to make you understand that AOC needs to be bug free for release to be able to achieve anything.

As for de-railing the thread, maybe I should have made my point in more detail. I've played the game and cannot get over the issues it has, if i'm playing a game and putting a lot of time in, I can't deal with bugs, slow load times etc etc.

The last game that was this bad on release was Pacific Fighters, or Masters of Orion 3. MOO3 I even took back to the shop and demanded my money back on the ground of it not being fit for purpose it was that bad.

But maybe i'm over stressing the point, my personal point is its too buggy to even contemplate recommending it to anyone. Infact its the fact that its buggy that has even got me to post.

TiG


A couple of lines of code is a huge understatement.

[beanbandit]

At least the good thing with an MMORPG is that you can usually assume that the sustained revenue will enable them to keep polishing the product in the future, so you can wait and buy the game at a later date when it meets the standards you're after. Or if it doesn't, don't - I know I won't

Sustained revenue if things go well. If you release a bug ridden MMO then people won't keep playing past the first month, bang goes the sustained revenue. AoC has enough bugs to put me off. Reading ingame chat shows that there are lots of people having issues, some don't, but when you see people putting specs up and saying its not smooth, its jerking around, then thats enough for some people.

[beanbandit]

only a noob would compare a hardware bug to a software bug nice deraling the topic though.

Did Josh just call TiG a noob? Now i've seen everything

[TiG]

double post...

[TiG]

If you can’t build an MMORPG, just buy one! | The Greenskin

Tobold's MMORPG Blog: Impossible, or just never done right?

Some interesting reading there....

Star wars Galaxy had a very very good system base to work on, it was fairly fun to do and made allot of sense. What it lacked was polish and finish, even many many patches on (before the NGE crap) it was still not finished and what I would call ready to release.

IF SWG can't make it with an unfinished MMORPG, I'm fairly certain AOC won't.

As to what else is bad about AOC, nothing much, nothing that allows me to get to the point of being able to like it though. Its the same as RFOnline, which i played, great concept, good interesting fights, OMG it was buggy, text frames being all over the shop. Nothing right, badly translated in the port from japanese.

Concepts, background IP, stable servers and software and good gameplay is what makes an MMORPG for me. AOC doesn't really even have the background IP from my own experience. I still think WAR is the only thing that has a chance to compete in the recent release schedule, and even then i'm not sure it will take WoW's crown.

TiG

[acrobat]

Here's my opinion/review of this game. I've been in Beta for a while.

I basically spent my entire time in this game, flip flopping from, "This game is good!" to, "Hmm this is a real mess".

There are major performance problems, but they are avoidable, and unlike Vanguard's Beta, I don't have as many doubts of them setting it straight quickly. To be brutally honest, many of the people with performance problems are stubbornly/stupidly trying to run the game with maximum settings, and then complaining about the performance, without helping themselves by just lowering stuff down. They are also not understanding the fact that the game is about 20-40 gig which is ENORMOUS, and you really HAVE to defrag your hard disk when you installed something that big. Also, people say, "But it won't get better because it's already gone gold... So this beta is how the full game will be" But that's not true. The beta has all kinds of debuggers running in the background which bogs down PC's, and none of that will exist in the full game. The version they sent to be pressed to disk, is also evidently a much more fleshed out version of the game, and it is based on a previous build which was more stable. You also have to remember that a while ago, they did a 4.5 gig patch in beta, and there will no doubt be patches on release day that will really tidy things up. I also find the performance is absolutely perfect with everything maxed, except the shader. If I am using 2.0, it's smooth as silk. If I use 3.0, it hitches all over the place. I read on the forum that it's a recognised bug, so basically I think they will fix it eventually.

As for none performance bugs, I've seen a fair few, but I personally haven't had a single bad one - until yesterday when I had a graphics issue which caused the game to crash. But that will be fixed in no time.

Unlike other Beta's I've been in, this one gets patched regularly, and the patches are good. There have been more patches in the last week in AOC, than Vanguard had in about 4 months.

I'm still deciding whether I love the game and will buy it, or not. As I said, i change my mind almost daily. But what I've decided so far, is that I can ignore any performance problems. I can run the game with either shader 3 and lower the other settings, or run it with shader 2 and crank all the other settings. The game environment looks better than any other other MMORPG out there at that point. It does vary from location to location though. Sometimes it looks a bit mediocre, but some scenes look as good as Crysis, and that isn't an exaggeration. So basically, I know I can play the game smoothly if I tweak the settings, and yet it still looks good.

As for the gameplay, I've also decided that the quests are great, the zones are good, and that generally it's a fun game, and offers as good or better than all the other MMORPG's. The first errr.. stage, of the game has the quality of a single player RPG like NWN/NWN2/Morrowind/Oblivion/The Witcher/Whatever. The quests are spoken to you and the story is really good and it feels very personal and hand crafted. The zones are more linear than the semi-seamless worlds of Vanguard and WoW, but the plus side is that they are far more detailed, and they are also plenty big enough (imo) to be fun and do the job. Even in some newbie zones, they are bigger than EQ's newbie zones, and EQ was my "first love" in MMORPG's.

I don't know what the end game content is like, so I have to give them the benefit of the doubt on that. But to me, it sounds a lot better than any other game. It has the "tank n' spank" raid bosses like WoW and most other games. But it also has the sieges which are more akin to Shadowbane/DAOC. And yet it still has the mini game PVP like WoW, with arenas and capture the flag type games and stuff.

So basically I'm happy with everything, and here comes the but.. and it's a huge but.

The combat really disappointed me. The combat in this game was meant to be it's main feature. It's the thing I've heard talked about and being hyped up for around 4 years now. Basically how it works is this... It's exactly the same as all other MMORPG's you've played, where you click your hotkeys to trigger various abilities/spells, but there are 4 main new features that you won't have seen before. They are:

1) The ability to manually block. You hold down a key, and your character manually blocks attacks. It works kind of like Oblivion in that you aren't completely immune like that, but you take reduced damage. Nice little feature.

2) Everyone can "shield" themselves from any angle, (without an actual shield). So similar to X-Wing vs Tie Fighter or something, you can basically set up your character to protect him/herself from the front, the left, the right, and the back. They are depicted by little bracket type things around your character. So you hold Control, and the brackets appear to show you where you are shielding. At default, it's 1 little bracket on all sides - so evenly balanced. You can then press Control 1, 2 ,3 or 4, and set them to be all at one angle. So if you are fighting something head on for example, you can press Control2, and all the shielding goes to the front which will reduce your damage taken from front attacks. The MOB's can also do this.

3) You then have directional attacks, instead of auto attack. So when you fight a mob, you target it as usual, but instead of hitting auto attack, you hit one of 3 directional attacks. A left swing, a right swing, or a forward swing with your weapons. So you do these based on where the enemy is putting it's "shields". The mob (and other players) switch this around so you have to make sure you are hitting the none defended area ideally. Otherwise you find yourself doing less damage.

4) You can dodge manually. Similar to Unreal Tournament, you can double tap left, forward, right, or backwards, and your character will jump in that direction. In the same way as the manual block, you aren't completely immune like that, but it gives you a defence bonus for a moment.


So it all sounds good right? The problem is that to me it's a bit gimmicky, and it's not really revolutionary. It is new... but it's not going to blow anyone's mind. Especially if you have played single player RPG's and action games that have more real time combat anyway. So basically, it's better than anything else out there today in the MMORPG market, but only a bit better. One of my main issues, is that the combat is so fast. So unlike EQ/EQ2/Vanguard/ and even WoW to an extent, the battles don't last a minute or more. So you aren't really thinking about what you are doing, and there isn't really much in the way of tactics or strategy. The fights are all over in about 15-20 seconds, and that doesn't even change much in the higher levels.

So dodging isn't especially cool or useful. Time spent dodging is wasted time really, because in the couple of seconds it takes to jump backwards and take slightly less damage on an attack, you could have pressed one of your hotkeys instead, and done a huge nuke or a huge melee attack. Blocking and shielding is the same really. Most people seem to just leave the shields alone, so they are evenly spread (or they just put them all forwards). And the focus in fights, is doing as much damage as fast as possible, and hoping the target dies before you do.

This annoyed the hell out of me at first. Because it's verging on mindless compared to my favourite MMO's of the past. But after a while, you start to just accept the fact that it just isn't like other MMO's. It's more like an action game, and the short fights are more about learning a really good routine for yourself, and then practising until you can do it fast and without being distracted. So to me at least, it ends up feeling more like Super Streetfighter 2 Turbo, or Mortal Combat, or Tekken or something. You jump into the fight, you do your combos and get your attacks in, and that's that. It ends up being good fun. But I would have to say that I'd have preferred it to be slower paced and more thoughtful.

But the game then becomes more about the addictive quality. You are constantly doing quests, and getting new gear and new spells and new abilities and new feats from your feat tree (like the talent tree in WoW), so you are constantly motivated to keep playing, and that's what keeps people happy and playing.

Here comes the major but though (finally)..... All these new combat things... they only apply to the melee classes So my first class was a 'HOX', and he seems to be mainly melee, but with some magic ability. It was fun, because I am using all this new stuff like dodging around, and hitting stuff manually, and yet I still had the occasional nuke spell. It was better than what I'm used to, thanks to the manual stuff, but perhaps a bit weak when you consider the overall skills/spells you have - compared to some other games. But then I made a Necromancer which is what I usually like to play in RPG's.

That change alone nearly caused me to delete the (free...) game, and stop playing. The major flaw is that your spells hit based on resistances like in other games, so the whole shielding aspect is irrelevant to a caster. You can't move while casting spells.. So being able to block or dodge is basically useless to a caster because the time spent dodging is wasted, when in that time you could have fired off 2 nukes... And you dont do any melee... so the new feature of the directional attacks is none existent for a caster too.

So basically it ends up having nothing new at all, compared to other games. But then with the major downside, that with 20 second fights, all you are doing is spamming your few best nukes, or few best DoT's, and that's that... It's a world away from the games I loved in the past (EQ etc), where you would be casting a spell that takes 3 seconds to cast, and during that time you would be thinking hard about what to cast next.. Should I root a nearby mob to stop it from chasing the cleric? Should I use my big dot on this monster because my dot is mana efficient? Should I nuke the mob because it needs to die fast? Should I lifetap because I'm injured? Should I cast snare now on the injured mob so it doesn't run away? You basically have none of that in this game, because it's little more than 1, 2, 3, 3, (is he dead yet?!?!!?) 3, 3, whew.

By level 13, I was bored with it and I wanted to quit, and it dawned on me that another part of the problem, was that I had bugger all spells. At 13, I had 13 spells. And half of those were buffs, and some of the others were redundant due to there being better spells of the same type. So basically all I had, was 2 nukes, 2 dots, and that was pretty much it. I then looked up what my Necro had in EQ at that point... and there was about 48 spells.. No contest. And that is a 10 year old game now.

I nearly quit but the fact that it's free kept me playing. Luckiy, in the levels beyond that, you get a few more spells and it starts feeling a little bit more fun, because like I described above, it becomes a bit faced paced streetfighter-ish, and I started getting in to it. Also, the class is majorly lacking in some ways. There is no root, no snare, no fear, no lifetap etc... so that was part of the reason I was really disappointed. Some of those things will never appear I think, because it's just different.... But some of those things are intended, and only aren't there now because it's broken or missing. It will make a big difference. For example, with no root or snare or stun... you are a puny cloth caster, and yet you have to stand toe to toe with attackers and hope you can nuke them to death before you die.. Very odd and fast and frantic. One of the spells has a small root effect though, and that spell isn't working. So when that works and a few others, things will seem better. Also, there is a big feature called Spellweaving that everyone is talking about, and I have no idea what it is, but everyone is really excited, and that is due on release day. So that will improve things too.

So basically, I'm still playing the game, and I am quite hooked, and I love everything, except the combat which I'm a bit 50/50 about. So on release day, I would have to just choose another class, or cross my fingers and hope they have (and will continue to) fix up the caster classes. It's not perfect, but I would definitely rather play it to WoW or any other MMORPG.

I won't make any major conclusions. Hopefully you can draw your own from that book I just wrote and hopefully it helps someone decide if they are going to set up a monthly sub and then dedicate their time to playing this.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

lol im gunna have to make a cup of coffe to read that

[acrobat]

Hope it's worth the read

I've been reading about this game for around 4 years now, and I'm a big MMORPG fan, so this game was quite a big deal to me - which is why I typed so much.

I missed bits out too because I didn't want the post to become unreadable big

But there is a couple of other things I missed out like the singleplayer/multiplayer and instancing which I could briefly explain I suppose. Basically a large portion of the first 20 levels is split, so part single player and part multiplayer. But they have done it in such a way that you don't really feel like you are going offline, and the chat channels never change, so it just doesn't feel any different (to me..).

Also, many places in the game (both indoors and outdoor) are "instanced" so you are alone or with your group in there. Some people think that makes it less of an "Massively Multiplayer" experience, and more of a Guild Wars type experience. I'm still only mid level so far, but I haven't felt that at all, and I can say that for a fact, it's nothing like Guild Wars at all in that respect. Unlike Pirates of the Burning Sea and Hellgate:London, a lot of the time you are running around in a zone with dozens of other people, and everyone is fighting stuff and doing quests. So in that way, it is really no different at all, to the likes of EQ or EQ2 or even WoW. You may never get over a hundred or so people in the exact same zone, but it still feels like a massive multiplayer world.

In POTBS and Hellgate, you only see people in the "hub" areas where you do your buying/selling and stuff. As soon as you go into a combat area in those games, they became private instances and it did feel very lonely and restricted. That is not the same in AOC. In AOC, most of the adventure grounds I've been to so far, have all been bustling with players, running around and fighting stuff.


The only issues I have with this game, are that the combat could be a lot better for casters, and that it lacks about a month's worth of polish and bug fixing. But it is still 2 weeks off, and at the current rate of patching, that stuff will be better on release day. Then we just have to hope the improvement continues. I'm confident it will get really good eventually.

The only other thing is that level 1-20 has to be repeated when you do new characters, and unlike some MMORPG's (WoW/EQ/Vanguard/etc?), there aren't unique starting areas. So if you are the kind of person who never settles on a character, and likes to try them all - this could be an issue for you. The 1-20 step is fantastic, but still, doing it several times? Hmm. Personally I'm the opposite. I like to make a class and take it ot high level and master it. And I usually like to make another two, maybe three characters spread over a long period. So for me it would be ok. For some, it could be an issue. But again, that may change. Many people are requesting some kind of boost for new characters once you've done that once.

p.s. my god.. after all that I still haven't really mentioned PVP/class balance and spell effects and stuff I'll skip that unless anyone asks.
p.p.s: I can't help myself.. have to say that when I said the graphics are ok above, I was talking about environment specifically. The spell effects are really poor. That's the kind of thing that can easily be tweaked though, and I hope it is asap.

[kalniel]

What's PVP, class balance and spell effects like?

[acrobat]

lol

I haven't experienced much PVP so most of my info about that is based on what I've seen and read on the forums. But basically, it's very fast, and has some imbalances. (Big surprise there ). You basically have to pile in fast, and do as much damage per second as possible and hope they die before you. So the classes who are a bit low in DPS, tend to get killed too easily. There are some exceptions though, like healers who, if they can kite the other player around, can out last the other player. Although all this changes with each patch and each tweak. And considering my class is missing some spells, and some of them don't work.. then no doubt this will all change so much.

My main concern about PVP is that they only seem to have one server and it is full on FFA (free for all PVP) So level 80's killing level 25's etc... and then corpse camping them while shouting LAWL etc.. No rules at all. Some people like that, most people hate it. They are also talking about a FFA Role Play server, which will be the same thing no doubt. So I have to hope that they make some PVP servers with proper rulesets too.

Personally, I'll just play on the none PVP servers, because there is enough PVP on that by the sounds of it. Mini games (Capture the flag type games etc) and sieges and stuff all sound great.


As for spell effects, they are terrible imo. Compared to EQ, EQ2, WoW, Vanguard, in fact, every MMORPG I've ever played, the spell effects are either none existent or terrible. I am hoping they are mostly place holder effects for beta, and come release day, they will be all singing all dancing. But you never know with this stuff... It's a big deal to me too. I didn't buy an 8800GTX to see spell effects that look like a bloke throwing a ciggy at someone. In fact, even that would be an improvement because it would at least have some particle effects. I have a frost nuke that you cast and you see absolutely nothing, and then when it lands, all you get is a little spikey blue shape on the target. A lot of them have no, or very bad sound effects with them too. And some of them have no animation.. So my character stands perfectly still and yet he is casting a spell. So yeah, I really hope they fix that.

----
One other feature I forgot to mention which is quite nice, is that there is full collision between all players and mobs. So in a dungeon, you can basically play cleverly and have your tanks stand together to block a corridor. So the mobs will not be able to get past them, and you'll therefore be protecting the healers and casters. This can be used a lot and adds an element that no other game has, as far as I know.

[Agent]

If this does go gold in 2-3 weeks before its ready and stable it will flop. Its no where near ready. A buggy game at release will kill it off before its got a chance.

TiG

WoW on release was one of the most buggy games I've ever played. That still seems to be managing though

To be fair, in between the typos, Josh does have a point - it's quite common to put up an old build for an open beta. If you are wanting to test server load and/or gameplay balance then you are primarily interested in stability, not visual polish. So you put out your most stable and most thoroughly tested build regardless of whether you have a more recent build that might look better - the lack of testing your recent fixes makes it too risky.

But that doesn't change the point that the game is still in beta and thus any reviews are going to be slightly inaccurate. Triply so for a MMORPG where reviewing the game outside of it's native environment of annoying brats, griefers, n00bs and the like doesn't represent the gaming experience one might reasonably expect. No, any review should firmly be classed as preview until at least a month or two past launch.

There is no advantage in doing this on a MMO though. While I know a fair number of games have reduced graphics in a beta/demo due to download restrictions, this has no reflection on the actual code base its built on for any games engine I can think of (or worked with).

Putting out old code in a MMO to test the game is just silly.

Did Josh just call TiG a noob? Now i've seen everything

Shocking, isn't it

[hejkin]

OB is coming

[acrobat]

I've come to a conclusion finally I did tell you I flip flopped daily This is a breach of the NDA but as I made a huge post that was kind of none conclusive (I think?), I think it's only fair that I make a conclusive one now. If a mod wants to remove this, please feel free. Don't do it on my behalf though. If you do I could just change it to be my general opinion or something.

I've been playing it all night since I posted that post. It's now nearly 7am. I just know now that it's not for me, and probably not for most people either. There are things I like, but there's just too much wrong. I'll uninstall it now and free up some space.

I really hated my class (I think I explained this), and by about 13 I would have quit the game if it wasn't for the fact that it's free. But to be absolutely sure I've soldiered on. From 10 to 20 I barely got more than a couple of spells. The combat is just too fast and too spammy, and the lack of spells isn't even an issue when it works like that. I really enjoyed the personal "Destiny" quest, but came to an anti climatic conclusion at level 20, where I killed a single bloke by pressing, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3. (Or maybe just two threes). My class got a bunch of Rank2 spells rather than new stuff. I was also tired of that same newbie area that I had been forced to stay in for 20 levels. It was nice to about 13, then they dragged it out and I got fed up. It's ok to do once, but I don't think I could cope with doing that all over again with a second character... Never mind a few new characters.

So got to finally leave the tutorial type 1-20 stage, and see the big wide world. Unfortunately, it's not big and it's not wide. The place you land at is small, and your personal destiny quest has come to a grinding halt. The quest is now only continuable at level 30... So I looked around and found a bunch of quest NPC's and the dialogue no longer exists for those guys. They have no facial expressions, and they don't even say, "Greetings" when you click them. So they may as well all be consolidated onto a noticeboard. All the quests are boring FedEx quests, and you would have to do 10 levels of that until the little perosnal quest kicks off again.

Anyway I got bored and I went onto the forum and I read a thread from a bunch of people in the 40's. One guy who was another caster class called a Demonologist, explained his feelings. They were exactly the same as mine from 1-20, so I was keen to see what he said about the steps beyond that. He said this:

I decided to spend less time leveling and more time exploring, I had just taken a look at the world map and noticed that it had 8 "adventure" zones, 3 "crafting/city" zones, and the border kingdoms. At level 23 I journeyed through all 8 of these zones as far as I was able without getting 1-shotted before I could sprint through groups of mobs. They are not as large as everyone might want you to believe, though they are very detailed. I noticed in my questing that there is an illusion of these zones being large due to how cyclical the quests are, and how they have you running back and forth across the zone regularly.

After seeing the "overworld", we'll call it, since I obviously didn't get to go into every instance out there, I went back to the grind, going from 23-30 in a short amount of time. In the entire course of that process I only received spells at level 25 and 30, both of them giving me one unique spell and a few rank 2 upgrades. The two unique spells I received were buffs, and so weren't anything I really noticed. I did gain two feat spells at level 30, but they are both situational (Agonizing Jolts used at the start of a fight, Living Thunderstorm which...was just one big letdown, though I would assume at least the "model" of the storm is a placeholder).

The actual process of leveling from 20-30 was mostly running back and forth doing shopping lists of mundane kill x of y, kill <insert_bounty_target>, or collect random object from camp. When it came time to kill things, I had two options - one, use my single-target lightning nuke and throw in my fast-casting lightning nuke whenever it was up, or spam my lightning AOE. Both resulted in a DPS race between myself and whatever I was fighting. Root was mostly useless because it would break on first damage, though I did notice it also resulted in an unbreakable snare that I would use to kite more difficult enemies around...while still spamming my single target nukes or my AOE.

I was rather disturbed to learn that, in truth, my AOE spells were dealing more damage overall, though they had a -slightly- slower casting time. I would say it would have been more effective to use them in all situations if I wasn't accustomed to single-target nuking in previous games.

PvP was a travesty. It always came down to who jumped who, regardless of level difference. If I jumped someone with a root, I won...after spamming them with lightning 10 times over. If they jumped me with a spell or got me in melee, I went down in 2 or 3 hits. There was little else to it, mostly because there were few alternatives I have available in combat, strategically speaking.

Itemization is, of course, still not in the game. Why, I do not know, but I will leave it to Funcom that they know what they are doing. Maybe itemization will fix the pvp issues? Maybe itemization will make me feel like doing the quests are worthwhile because I will get something other than useless items that don't upgrade or I can't even use, and random potions?

Oh, I should mention the Destiny Quest! Yes, this lovely quest finally continued at level 30. I went back to the appropriate NPC, who sent me out to Khopshef where I quickly ran into a cave, killed off a boss mob, and then returned to receive a reward of a new ring and a permanent boost to my choice of +spellpower, +mana, or +mana regen (which was a nice twist, I will say). The destiny quest then came to a startling halt once more, and does not continue until apparently...level 50. Yes, the wonderful overarching storyline from Tortage is out of the picture for another 20 levels.

He was then agreed with by a bunch of other higher level people

Oh well. Some may really like this game, but I won't bother with it. It would take a lot of work for me to want to play really. I am happy just playing single player games. I won't pay to play something like this unless it's really great, and this definitely isn't that. Roll on Spore, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, Alone in the Dark, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. Etc..