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Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures: Craig Morrison Discusses "Random Encounters" in New Letter
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
With Age of Conan's Rise of the Godslayer expansion coming up in just about a week, Age of Conan Game Director Craig Morrison has delivered his latest Letter from the Game Director, which he uses to discuss one of the less talked about features of the upcoming expansion: random encounters.
Craig on Random Encounters:
The idea was a simple one - add a number of encounters that could happen randomly while the players were traveling to Khitai from Khemi. The designers wanted to highlight that it was a dangerous and lengthy journey. They wanted to add an optional route for players. In effect the player offers their services as a caravan guard to pay their own way to Khitai instead of handing over coin. Then along the way they would be pressed into service when the caravan encountered a problem.
Interesting. So how does that work? And yes, after reading below I thought "Release the Kraken!" as well.
As I mentioned above the player can offer their services as a caravan guard to pay their own way to Khitai instead of handing over coin. (You can of course just pay the caravan master his fare and travel straight to Khitai without worrying about working your way, so this feature is completely optional). What then happens is that you will be presented with one of nine scenarios that might occur along the way. The voyage to Khitai takes you past some dangerous areas, some of which Conan fans will recognize from the original stories, like the Vilayet Sea.
These encounters take place as solo instances where the player has to complete a specific task to allow the caravan (or boat) to continue on its voyage. These encounters range from protecting your boat from a Kraken, acquiring supplies from a Pirate Cove, defending the caravan from raiders or investigating a strange oasis plagued by the undead. There is an interestingly diverse set of objectives for these encounters, and you never know which one you are going to be presented with.
It should be noted that while this is certainly an interesting addition to the game, Craig points out that the feature had come close to being cut a number of times before he actually got to see it in action. On the larger issue, Craig mentions that cool ideas like the random encounters feature are shot down all the time as a result of trying to balance time and resources, given the fact there is never a shortage of ideas. Craig had basically shot this one down before seeing it in action, and he is pretty happy now that his designers convinced him otherwise. The hope, of courrse, is that you all will be as well!
Read the full letter here.
Comments
I realy must say this seem to be a nice way of making the game more fun. Not knowing whitch quest is comming uppp nexst. People will love the new expantion in many ways. Just checkout all the trailers and make upp you mind. Ore what after the lanch and read the artikkels and forums. Atm the game cost 19ponds at play.com and 30dollars at Amazon.com. Both at 2 place on preorderlist. The player are comming back just check the xfire ratings the last week.
"[Random Encounters] might not have sounded like the most compelling feature to the Producer in me when first weighed up against other resources, but, as a player…as a player it just works ... The right decision is to look at things as a player and not just a Producer ... [and] to trust in your people." -- CRAIG MORRISON
Thank God Graig replaced Gaute -- it took some time, but the Age of Conan Team, under Craig's leadership, slowly made the necessary improvements and finally polished this Game to release quality with the 1.05 patch about one year ago. Since then, patch by patch, AoC has gotten better and better -- convincing players to return to the game (like me) and new players to give it a try.
I never thought I say this about Age of Conan (because the initial marketing prior to release very nearly killed the game), but it's my experience that the hype around The RotG Expansion -- fairly laid back by FunCom this time around, but touted by experienced AoC players now playing the game and RotG on the TestLive Server) -- is truly deserved.
Well, I meant to say I completely agree with this:
I wanna come back, but I am wondering if there is a better sense of community, better story quests with voice acting and better end-gane pvp and sieges..?
i just downloaded the free trial while i wait for a response from funcom about reactivating my account. I'm loving that i can play Maxed out in dx10 now (had a crap computer when i quit about a year ago). So to Pingo, try it out.. the free trial is... well.. free!
. I got bored with it, but it was insanely better than what it was at launch, and expect another huge improvement with this expansion.
I was one of the developers of an old school Neverwinter Nights server that had a similar travel system. I doubt anyone from FunCom played on it to steal the idea, but I'm upset to see that they're doing it because when we relaunch the server for NwN2, people will accuse us of ripping off AoC.
The attack on the ship whilst travelling on board occurs in FFXI, still, at least it's a step in the right direction imo.
Pingo, I played at launch and remembered there being voice overs only in the early stages. It seems there are a lot of missions in upper levels now with voiceovers. I haven't confirmed this by reading the posts, but I think my memory is correct here.
Community was the main reason I left after launch. On my PvP server two months after launch it was barren and hardly fought anyone. On PvE (where I would actually try to do the harder missions) it was tough to find people. With server mergers it is now very well populated at least on Cimmeria and Wiccana. There was one recent change to lessen twinked ganking (lowering XP where there was big level diff), but haven't played much on the PvP server since then as my guild on Wicanna has been very active.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga