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Directors letter - Gear actually worth something
openedge1
Member Posts: 2,582
The latest Game Directors letter from Craig has been posted with some really great info.
I am impressed with some of the changes, so make sure to check it out. (PS: Oh look, a GUI with attributes that actually make sense...woot!)
Comments
I love the changes to stats, and I hope they make stats matter more then gear as then people will be able to tweak and customize their character in what ways they want too. This GD letter is made of nothing but win, and that comes from someone who was very sceptic about making gear matter more. I see a real purpose of the stat gems now and hope this change will hit test live soon so I can do some testing.
Playing: Battlefield - Bad company (Xbox360) Arma2, DFO (PC)
On my radar: TSW, MO
MMO's played: SWG (pre cu/cu), WoW, AoC, WAR, DFO, Planetside
MMO's that I have tested: Lotro, L2, Aion, Ryzom
Although I agree in a MMO gear should matter, it's a double edged sword. The leet PvP crowd that thinks MMO combat should be akin to FPSs will have a fit and start making WoW comparisons.
But, PvP gear already exists specifically for the "leet". This more for the PvE crowd and how to work with the greens and blues they get.
Guess we will have to wait and see how the first Test patch goes. I personally like it.
Going to post it here to keep it under one hood and for reference:
Letter from the Game Director – February 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s that time again for a little peek into what’s coming up for Age of Conan. As mentioned last time the major part of this Producer’s Letter will focus on providing a first look at the details on the upcoming items and statistics update that will come in the next major update. With update 1.04 now live and players getting to enjoy the new content it’s the perfect time to kick-off the process of introducing the next major update.
Before I dive into RPG system changes though, a couple of things to note. We are preparing a lot of information for when the update is ready for the public test servers. This letter couldn’t possibly cover everything, and it won’t. The new gem system for example is an article all on its own, as are the balance changes that will be included in the update for every class. So those things I won’t be covering in detail in this letter, but we will be releasing detailed information over the course of the testing. So rest assured further information overload is coming! Consider this letter as an appetizer to the process that is ahead of us.
Revamping the RPG System
It’s also worth repeating why we have been working away on these changes in the first place.
After we looked at the feedback after launch we concluded that we had misjudged the importance of items and statistics to character progression. While the intention had always been to be less item-centric than other titles, we probably went a little too far in the other direction. Therefore we have set out to expand and develop the RPG system so that it offers better and more interesting character progression and customization.
So, now that the preamble is out of the way, let’s get rolling and take a peek inside the mechanics of the RPG system so you can start to understand where we are taking it. So, how best to provide an overview of the changes? At a basic level what we have done is add an additional range to the attribute budgets, this additional range comes from items and trickle down from your primary attributes. Mobs and encounters have been rebalanced to account for this increase. The end result is that items and trickle down now account for up to fifty percent (give or take a couple of percent variance here and there) of your overall budget for any given attribute. For comparison that contribution did not exceed twenty five percent before the changes, and ‘trickle down’ barely influenced it at all.
Our goal is that players in ‘average’ gear (if you will forgive the subjective nature of using the word ‘average’) will not feel a great change in the game, but will have the potential to get better by working up towards the higher end gear. Where you will notice a change is if you remove your armor and weapons and use lower level gear. The new system does incentivize keeping your gear up to date!
That’s not the end of the changes though. This is really just the ‘brief overview as it were. In order to achieve our goals in a good, solid way that gives us room for future development we also went through the attributes and statistics and made them meaningful, clearer to understand, and hopefully better laid out.
The new character statistics
The best way to demonstrate this in this first look at the new system is to go through the new character stat screens one by one and actually show you what your new character sheet looks like! The interface is now tabbed so that you can see all your stats without having to scroll down by switching between tabs. It also means they are organized in logical groupings.
Firstly please note some of the numbers displayed in the screens are not what a player would really have, and are still subject to change through testing, but I really wanted to visualize it for you as it’s better than the text alone!
So let’s take each of these in turn and explain the new attributes and stats.
On the first screen, the ‘General’ tab, you see the basics of your character. Most of this tab is self explanatory, but it does show the first of the totally new statistics – Armor. Your Armor rating is now what is used in the combat calculations to decide how much damage you avoid from a successful attack. This has replaced the old combination of resistances and invulnerabilities as the main source of mitigation of non-magic damage (we will get to magic damage shortly!). You will still see invulnerabilities offered in some buffs, in those cases those are an additional mitigation above and beyond what the outcome of your armor calculation is.
Next up we have the Combat stats page that shows your new combat stats, both as a rating, which is what item bonuses will add to, as well as what that equates to as a percentage chance (or the percentage increase as appropriate). All of these new stats will have explanatory tool tips and we think moving to using ratings makes the system clearer and easier for you to gauge the relative worth of items.
Next we have the ‘Physical’ tab that lists your health and stamina regens and taps clearly.
Then we have the ‘Magical’ tab that displays your magic related skills, bonus spell damage and the next of the new statistics – your protections. These effectively replace the old resistance percentages and are displayed both as a rating (which again, is what appears on the item bonuses) and as the translated percentage that shows you how much damage that potentially mitigates.
Lastly we have the PVP tab that shows your PVP achievements and rankings as well as your PVP specific stats. Here as well you will now find the new PVP version of Armor and Protection that will be offered on PVP items.
Attributes and what they mean!
So what do the main attributes do now? As I mentioned above we have significantly changed how these attributes ‘trickle down’ into your actual performance. This should make the addition of stats in these areas much more visible. You will find that these are now a deal more important than before and now confer the following bonuses to your character:
Every one point of Strength
Every one point of Intelligence
Every one point of Constitution
Every one point of Dexterity
Every one point of Wisdom
Just the beginning…
In addition we have worked to make the item stats display better in the GUI and make the comparison of items better.
This is really just a teaser for the information that is to come. These changes have also allowed us to look at each of the classes and make changes to feat trees, skills and spells. Some of these changes were necessary due to the changes above (like the new Armor system) some for balance concerns and adjustments. A lot more information in this vein will be released as we prepare the update for the public test servers. In addition there is also a complete new gem system for crafting items that I haven’t touched on here that will also be revealed soon.
The items themselves, in particular those at high levels have received a lot of individual attention and tweaking to get the most benefit out of the system.
So as you can see there will be a lot to talk about over the coming weeks and months, which I expect, will start right about now!
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director
Not long now till test!!!
The game was launch ready once all the bug were fixed back in Sep. Stop with the trolling already. Just because people need to feel "uber" doesn't mean the game wasn't launch ready for not satisfying the want. The majority of people that bought the game for PvP reasons actually like the idea that hamster gear grind wheel ins't required to be good at PvP. Hopefully, the changes don't make it required. If you think the ideas behind the system are good, which they are because we have to keep the PvEers happy, but think that it could be taken to far and ruin the PvP game look at this thread
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=168405
sign it if you agree.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
This kind of info gets me all excited for AoC again. The sad news is, that i will probably be on TL for way too long(like 1.04) and still break stuff.
Very nice changes there. I'm looking forward to seeing them on testlive once I get my account back up. I quit because of school if anyone cares. =P
The game was launch ready once all the bug were fixed back in Sep.
In September you say? Well that sounds like a solid gaming experience considering it was released and May--but Im sure FC compensated all those players who were foolish enough to stick around for those 4-5 months to finance their Bata-testing
Here's what's going to happen: (Mark my words)
By next Christmas when they finally release the patch live, and have basically ignored all the "bugs" listed in the PTR forums, you are going to experience a mass exodus (that will remind you of August 2008) in AoC for a few reasons:
Going by FC's proven track record of patching excellence, them playing with the stats is the equivalent of setting a house on fire---FC Overhauling the stats is the equivalent of turning the gas on in the house for a week and tossing a lit match inside-BOOOM! It will be a train wreck, but very entertaining to watch. To this day, with the stats being the way they are--AoC players have no clue what a lot of them do, or what they mean, but they'll tell you it doesn't matter, because it's a skill based game So as of now people don't really care about the stats enough to flip out over their questionable state.
By Christmas, the MMORPG market will have quite a different complexion. Guild Wars 2 comes to mind. At this point AoC is simply pacifying people without better choices to choose from. (Trust me when I say that GW2 (ArenaNet) are licking their chops staring at AoC like prison meat--think the final scene of "There Will Be Blood."). Although I think there are way better choices right now (EvE for PvP, and LotRO for PvE)-but those games aren't for everybody, so I digress.
And as pointed out, the "Child-Army" of AoC has been convinced that the game is skill based (is it safe to say 75%of the population?--because if these players were more gear oriented they would have split a long time ago). Those people will flip out and leave for a game that implemented gear correctly (or closer to correctly) the first time.
Of course this is assuming that the game hasn't been destroyed by DX10 and everyone being lagged to Holy-Hell. The excuse ahead of time "well you just can't properly test on the PTR because there isn't enough people" (So, therefore AoC's Test Realm is merely a ornament) I doubt people will care about the same old lame excuses when they have some fresh choices on the market.
All in all, the opening letter that Craig wrote was a white flag of surrender. They have mis-developed this game in ways that boggle the mind--and have continued to do so with siege warfare, and guards on PvP servers (so don't give me that AoC is under new management BS). Now they are talking about overhauling the very core of any MMORPG (*the stats), which has also been terribly mishandled ...and now there are so many band-aids flying around the room it looks like the "Mummy fell into in a Cuisine-Art on the high setting."
...but hey but it has nice graphics
Nice to know they are listening. I am looking forwrd to playijng it again someday.
I miss DAoC
Go preach your religion somewhere else. You'll probably be better crying doom in some other released games.
So you are saying that because Craig is getting his team to improve on the flawed itemisation, the whole game will go to hell because the players won't be able to handle the transition of having getting used to items almost not mattering to almost mattering (25% increase in item stats and balancing)?
I mean, I guess your concern is whether or not players will react negatively to changing a core aspect of the game, which is understandable. But when the core aspect at hand is almost considered flawed, and given that Craig has already sucessfully revamped the combo system (another core element), for what reason do you have to think that it will go *that* bad this time?
I liked the ending of your post btw. "But hey, it has nice graphics."
That was pretty cool. You should do that more often.
Btw, I'm sorry if I missed some really good points in your post, seeing as I had a tough time finding words in your sentences that were not trolling or out-of-your-ass guessing.
It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.
So you are saying that because Craig is getting his team to improve on the flawed itemisation, the whole game will go to hell because the players won't be able to handle the transition of having getting used to items almost not mattering to almost mattering (25% increase in item stats and balancing)?
I mean, I guess your concern is whether or not players will react negatively to changing a core aspect of the game, which is understandable. But when the core aspect at hand is almost considered flawed, and given that Craig has already sucessfully revamped the combo system (another core element), for what reason do you have to think that it will go *that* bad this time?
I liked the ending of your post btw. "But hey, it has nice graphics."
That was pretty cool. You should do that more often.
Btw, I'm sorry if I missed some really good points in your post, seeing as I had a tough time finding words in your sentences that were not trolling or out-of-your-ass guessing.
Well thast one thing FC is good at. Keeping its players/investors guessing so I guess you did pick up sometjing from his post.
So you are saying that because Craig is getting his team to improve on the flawed itemisation, the whole game will go to hell because the players won't be able to handle the transition of having getting used to items almost not mattering to almost mattering (25% increase in item stats and balancing)?
I mean, I guess your concern is whether or not players will react negatively to changing a core aspect of the game, which is understandable. But when the core aspect at hand is almost considered flawed, and given that Craig has already sucessfully revamped the combo system (another core element), for what reason do you have to think that it will go *that* bad this time?
I liked the ending of your post btw. "But hey, it has nice graphics."
That was pretty cool. You should do that more often.
Btw, I'm sorry if I missed some really good points in your post, seeing as I had a tough time finding words in your sentences that were not trolling or out-of-your-ass guessing.
Pretty much agree here with you Deadman. Some people don't understand that some area's with guard are not designed for PvP around them. Hence the PvP resource drops in a particular large area addition. It is not Funcom's fault for players not reading, understands mechanics. Whether players agree with them or not is not the case it is whether you understand and in this case it is painfully obvious he just doesn't get it.
So you are saying that because Craig is getting his team to improve on the flawed itemisation, the whole game will go to hell because the players won't be able to handle the transition of having getting used to items almost not mattering to almost mattering (25% increase in item stats and balancing)?
I mean, I guess your concern is whether or not players will react negatively to changing a core aspect of the game, which is understandable. But when the core aspect at hand is almost considered flawed, and given that Craig has already sucessfully revamped the combo system (another core element), for what reason do you have to think that it will go *that* bad this time?
I liked the ending of your post btw. "But hey, it has nice graphics."
That was pretty cool. You should do that more often.
Btw, I'm sorry if I missed some really good points in your post, seeing as I had a tough time finding words in your sentences that were not trolling or out-of-your-ass guessing.
Pretty much agree here with you Deadman. Some people don't understand that some area's with guard are not designed for PvP around them. Hence the PvP resource drops in a particular large area addition. It is not Funcom's fault for players not reading, understands mechanics. Whether players agree with them or not is not the case it is whether you understand and in this case it is painfully obvious he just doesn't get it.
Well what I understand is to Overhaul the stats is basically redesigning everything in the game except the graphic and music----its pretty simple.
If that isn't a sign of total incompedence in gaming making--Im not sure what else is? AoC and FC will be looked on in history as "Comedic Relief," for the rest of the industry to enjoy.
Poor Funcom
So you are saying that because Craig is getting his team to improve on the flawed itemisation, the whole game will go to hell because the players won't be able to handle the transition of having getting used to items almost not mattering to almost mattering (25% increase in item stats and balancing)?
I mean, I guess your concern is whether or not players will react negatively to changing a core aspect of the game, which is understandable. But when the core aspect at hand is almost considered flawed, and given that Craig has already sucessfully revamped the combo system (another core element), for what reason do you have to think that it will go *that* bad this time?
I liked the ending of your post btw. "But hey, it has nice graphics."
That was pretty cool. You should do that more often.
Btw, I'm sorry if I missed some really good points in your post, seeing as I had a tough time finding words in your sentences that were not trolling or out-of-your-ass guessing.
Pretty much agree here with you Deadman. Some people don't understand that some area's with guard are not designed for PvP around them. Hence the PvP resource drops in a particular large area addition. It is not Funcom's fault for players not reading, understands mechanics. Whether players agree with them or not is not the case it is whether you understand and in this case it is painfully obvious he just doesn't get it.
Well what I understand is to Overhaul the stats is basically redesigning everything in the game except the graphic and music----its pretty simple.
If that isn't a sign of total incompedence in gaming making--Im not sure what else is? AoC and FC will be looked on in history as "Comedic Relief," for the rest of the industry to enjoy.
Poor Funcom
Good thing about Eve Online is that you dont actually play it,you just pick a skill and it trains itself,leaving plenty of time to pop over to the AoC forums to make completely baseless ill informed posts.
Gaming since 1985 and still going strong.
Who knows what kind of changes patch 1.5 will bring with this overhaul. It will be interesting to see the responses on the forums. A returning player, even the subscribed ones, will might as well restart their whole characters, meaning start from level 1, at least that is what I will do if I ever return. Stats will play such a major role from then on that people praising the game for not being gear dependent will simply be forced to shut their mouths. Not being gear dependent and stats not having an important role as they do in WoW are actually two things that convinced masses of players to join the game and once in their life fight with skill, and not with stats. But of course, this was just a foolish view, since the game that has linear progress and at the same time not having gear-dependent gameplay means that its endgame is almost totally devoid of content and motivation.
On the one hand, I am pleased by the fact that the current state of useless and stupid statistics and monotonous gear will be remedied, players will now have further motivation to participate in raids and pvp activities, and that is always a good thing for an MMO. However, this also means that AoC is becoming more and more streamlined with WoW and for an MMO player like me this brings no motivation to actually permanently move from WoW to AoC, since AoC brings and it will bring nothing basically new, besides prettier graphics and mature content.
Well its sort of nice but it doesnt really matter that much if everyone still look exactly the same unless they begin to farm for class gear at lvl 80.
Get rid of the popato sacks first and add armors from lvl 40 to 80 that actually look hyborian and then make the stats mean something.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
Hehe, yeah, I remember my HoX having been forced to wear a potato sack (literally, this is not a joke) for like 10 or more levels. I finally got some better-looking armor, but then that had to be replaced by a pinkish kilt
But you weren''t forced to wear the potato sack at all. The 'stats' on the sack were at best minimal. You could've worn better looking lower level gear without losing out on the uber stats that other MMOs place on items.
Of course now we can all look forward to shiny uber shoulderpads FTW
But you weren''t forced to wear the potato sack at all. The 'stats' on the sack were at best minimal. You could've worn better looking lower level gear without losing out on the uber stats that other MMOs place on items.
Of course now we can all look forward to shiny uber shoulderpads FTW
In that case I suggest that Funcom replace the generic looking armors with the lvl 20-40 cultural armor skins from lvl 40 to 80 as a temporary meassure.
There is no way I am going back to AoC if my toons must wear the generic armor again.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
But you weren''t forced to wear the potato sack at all. The 'stats' on the sack were at best minimal. You could've worn better looking lower level gear without losing out on the uber stats that other MMOs place on items.
Of course now we can all look forward to shiny uber shoulderpads FTW
In that case I suggest that Funcom replace the generic looking armors with the lvl 20-40 cultural armor skins from lvl 40 to 80 as a temporary meassure.
There is no way I am going back to AoC if my toons must wear the generic armor again.
In order to not wear generic armor, you have to work for good looking armor in the epic versions of the different instances. Like I have said in some other post, this is flawed, seeing as working for armor with shitty stats (but good loks) isn't something people really care to be doing, when they can just get the generic armor with about the same stats anyways. Which is the main problem the next patch is going to address.
It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.