Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
u18's AoC review
u18bu2sa0k
Member Posts: 144
Hello,
and welcome to my early Review of Age of Conan:Rise of the godslayer.
i will not cover anything new here,just my personal view of the game.
Game status: 2.0.1 (RotGS)
Character creation:There is a nice amount of pre made faces,hairstyles,beards,body and face paintings,which can be further customized a little bit with sliders for your liking.
Sadly the game suffers from a decent amount of clipping issues on characters (hair is sticking through helmet,bald spots poping on head,displaced eye lashes,facepainting covering the eyes etc.)
these issues come and go,some got fixed by a patch some broke with next,nothing gamebreaking but if you like to spend time to customize your carachter this can be annoying.
Classes/Races:There are 4 races: Cimmerian,Aqulonian,Stygian and Khitan(with expansion) all of the races are human.Your Race choice will determine your Look and Class Choices.
There are 12 unique classes
for background and description of classes - http://community.ageofconan.com/ (official site)
for detailed info about skills/combos/feats - http://aoc.yg.com/ (fan site)
Classes are constantly going through changes and revamps,they are filling thier role and the playstyle of each is unique but the balance is something that needs improvement.
Combat :Age of conan has a suprisingly enjoyable combat system,there is no autoattack in this game.Instead there are 5 directional attacks (3 for casters) which you execute with your keyboard.This alongside with combos/skills you gain that you can use with the proper combination of directional attacks leads to a very challenging and fun combat.
Mobs and players have 3 'shields' (or id rather call it:where they suspect the attack is coming... yeah the shield is shorter...),this is by default defending all your sides (front,righ and left) means 1 shield is located each side.This feature has not much use in PvE (imo.) directional attacks from mobs are rather random.
In PvP you can chose to defend all of your sides equally or position them depending on what class you face(f.e: 2 shields Right one shield Left but this will leave your Front without shield)By learning the high DPS skills of your oponent and positioning your shields in that direction where that actual combo/skill hits can reduce the damage majorly.
Positioning in this game is very important,not only that your enemy will more likely miss a couple of hits if you are strafing around them but attacking from behind causes to deal more damage.Double tapping your movement keys will also give you short buffs (f.e. fast tapping D twice will result in your character dodging right and gaining a short evasion buff)
This is one of the parts where the game really shines and i was not able to detect any annoyances.
PvE,PvP:Since the expansion AoC is offering nice amount of PvE content,The quests range from delivery to more complex interactions with objects and mobslaying (nothing new).If you bother to read the quests (since they are in a form of dialog) are quite interesting,they captured the Habits and Personalities of people in Hyboria very well.
imo. PvP is where this game has its seeds of potential.Life on a PvP server is cruel (just like Hyboria whoo?) especially if you are new to the game,there are not much restrictions to it.You can pretty much kill everyone on sight and be rewarded with PvP exp,you can get only few times PvPxp from a single player / day but that wont stop the abusive nature of players to keep killing you if you are returning to that spot (move along,or invite another player into your group and revenge).
If you kill a much lower level player then you,you will get criminal status and murder points,criminal status is a short-med long debuff,that restricts you from talking with NPCs and guards will not help you on the road or in cities if you got attacked.After you acquire 100 murder points you will become a murder,guards will attack you on sight,this can be reduced by killing higher level mobs or other murder status players.
This PvP system is not forgiving nor fair,but i had dozens of small group or solo PvP fights driven by emotions and totally forgetting what was i doing there(ah yeah,questing) if you ask me this is totally fitting the Lore of the game.
if you got ticked off by this i strongly suggest trying PvE server before giving up on this game.
The World: is divided by zones which are connected,some are larger some are smaller,Khitai zones are Huge.For some players this is the turning point,i would like it to be one big persistent world to,but it doesnt bother me.The games advanced graphics and the combat system that needs low latency enviroment,maybe this led them to zoned design decision.
The Enviroment is gritty,bloody and brutal,everything feels so dirty ,animalistic, yet suprisingly human.
From high mountains to hot deserts through undead forests and spiderweb covered caves,you will find a lot of unique places.
GraphicsPerformanceBugs:AoC has one of the most advanced graphics in a MMORPG,very detailed textures,models,animations,particle effects.Its really refreshing to watch and play.
The performance is something that needs to be worked on,a lot.Its totaly playable,the problem comes when there are many players in action on screen it just suddenly hits the FPS so badly that you will be in disadvantage if you keep playing on with everything turned on.Sadly that doesnt always help.Most of the graphic enhancements are not causing performance drop on modern hardware,so it doesnt matter (or very little) if you play on HIGH or Low you will suffer from FPS drops.Ocasional crashes on exit since 1.7, which will make your game freeze a bit if you dont repair broken data (option in game launcher) after a crash.But nothing major that makes the game unplayable rather some minor annoyances
Sieges are still crashing sometimes.
Most bugs since launch got fixed,some are left,some new got introduced.Mostly just minor things,mobs that you cant hit and are not moving(rare),missing text,etc.
Verdict:At the end of the day,its playable,its fun,its a good game.
can it be better?always.
but they are working on it non-stop, the expansion is the proof.
thanks for reading.
Comments
This is a great system that Funcom took from other games like Lineage 2; unfortunately they failed to implement it properly and only made a mindless ganking system out of it.
The system in missing the 2nd half, where it should also flag you as a criminal when you kill someone who doesn't fight back (unless you are killing someone from another clan your clan is at war with, in that case you would of course not be flagged even if he doesn't fight back).
It is really sad to see that Funcom missed the opportunity to make something geat. Instead of having a great pvp game we have a gank fest.
To be fair there isn't a single PvP game I can think of that has got rid of good old fashioned Ganking, if there is PvP allowed you get ganking, and depending on it's popularity depends on the amount of gankers/victims in-game.
So unless Funcom suddenly found the answer that has eluded all PvP games ie get rid of high players abusing lowbies, then I would ahve to say it's suffering the same issues everyone else is.
Of course there will always be ganking in pvp games.
But less ganking is better than constant ganking, isn't it?
If the system was implemented properly we would have more fun with people getting together to hunt down the criminals and the murderers. People would get together and help each other out for memorable moments.
But what do we have now? A gankfest.
And the developers are not going to change this, we have already raised this issue with them on the test server forums. They say that ganking encourages more pvp... according to them removing the ganking would allow for less pvp.
So, for Funcom : PVP = ganking. They missed the boat completely.
AoC is a good PVE game, but if you want PVP it is better to look elsewhere.
There are PvE servers for a reason, avoid the ganking and PvP on your own terms.
I've been playing AoC since pre-launch no breaks i've been here for two years now. The best decision I made was xferring from Cimmeria to Wiccana, being able to enjoy the new content of Khitai without having to worry about roaming gank squads has been very refreshing.
I do agree with you, but again it's a case of buyer beware when you enter a PvP server/game, your going to get your arse handed to you if your playing the wrong class, playing solo, new to the game, low lvl or just plain bad luck.
For example I played a little WoW the other day, started a new class and went to Splintertree Post to carry on questing, I was on a PvP server, I was lvl 26, as I was questing 2 lvl 80 Alliance characters ride upto me, dismount and BAM 1 shot me and then ride off.
Yet WoW is immensely popular, yet the PvP is horribly one sided in alot of situations, is Funcom doing anything different to Blizzard in regards to PvP, yes it's brought in a system to "Try" and bring some meaning to killing outside your lvl range, Blizzard hasn't bothered in the slightest, gank all you want it doesn't mean a damn thing other than to annoy low lvl players, at least Funcom has tried to bring a mechanic into the game to try and resolve issues, some PvP games just don't even do that much.
Yes the system needs to be looked at, they all do, I certainly don't have any solutions that won't be exploited, because lets face it, nearly every solution out there has been exploited in favour of the ganker.
Now I'm a carebear at heart yet I find myself playing most MMO's on the PvP server, why? easy really as it adds an element of danger, if I get ganked I live with it and add them to my KOS list for when I become equal lvl or better equiped, fortunate for me I have alot of patience and a very long fuse, unlike a friend of mine who goes through keyboards like there is no tomorrow
I still think WAR had the best idea with the chickens and chaos chickens.
If high level players entered lowbie or mid zones they'd be instantly trasformed into a chicken, unable to do much but die.
When the game was new and the population high, you'd still easily find fairly large PvP anywhere from 60-100 players in an RvR lake.
On the PvP realms you'd always have 5 on 5 or some such PvP going on around PQ's and shared quest areas.
But you NEVER saw high level ganking, and it was glorious.
Not a bad review, but didn't touch much on the new content.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Yeah, i havent played much of the expansion yet.
When can you go to the new Khitai zones?? I will buy the expansion if I can go there after Tortage. Else no, the old content after Tortage is just so boring.
5 new HUGE Khitai zones are open,
1 of them is for 20-40 other 4 are endgame content for lvl 80s.
If you are Khitan then you will go to the new area right off. If you are another race, go to Khemi and take the caravan to the new area.
Thanks for the info! I'm installing AoC right now !
Resubbed with a bunch of friends, enjoying it a lot. It's changed a lot since the beginning so glad I can come back, always wanted to play the game but the launch owned me.