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the good, the bad, the uggly
Jakdstripper
Member RarePosts: 2,410
I played AoC and and off since launch and let me say that the lates expansion is mostly very exciting. i will get to the "mostly" later. seriously, the new zones are incredible, huge, beautifull, interesting, dangerous, exciting. many of the new quests are actually fun to do and quite innovative. the settings are breath taking and stories well written. the new factions system is exactly what AoC was missing, an awesome single player adventure that pushes people to travel all over the new maps. it definately adds incredible depth to this game something that was sadly missing. all things considered, this expansion is almost perfect.
this sadly brings me to the "almost" and "mostly" part.
the grind.
With the new factions come new faction armor which is a great idea in it's self. armors are awesome and look amazing but what's not so amazing is how much you have to grind quests, dungeons, mobs in order to ge them. now i understand taht Funcom wanted this expansion to last a wile but ....seriously, this is just silly. i'v calculated that to get 1 set of gear for one of my characters would take something like 9 months of every single day farming 4 or 5 hours of rep!!! this is just 1 set of gear from 1 of the 8 factions for only 1 of my level 80s.......
no i'm no hard core player, on the contrary i'm very casual but this sort of grind is just lame. i really can't understand how, afte making such a wanderfull expansion full of awesome ideas Funcom decides to add such a simply discouraging grind. sure, many of you will say "just dont worry about the armor", but the sad fact is that after a month or so of doing all the new quests, dungeons, zones the only thing that will keep me playing is trying to aquire some new gear. unfortunately 9 months is just silly. i'm currently playing the 10 day free "expansion" trial but i will not be resubbing when it expires. not untill they make that armor a little more accesible. this truly makes me sad because, truth be told, i love most things about the new expansion. why oh why did Funcom have to go and ruin it all with the grind?
Comments
Because they suck. It started for me back when they lied about offering a war mammoth to get people to return a while back. I returned and never got the mammoth, still kinda angry about that >:(
You got trolled hard Harold. My condolences.
Ok let me get this straight. You have already discovered all this in less than 10 days? Or have you just been listening to what OTHER people say? Do you judge your friends this way as well? Just started playing for the first time today and been reading forums and If I can be as blown away as I am now in a year...who the hell cares what endgame is like. I have never played an MMO longer than a year without switching games. But I have played em all off and on since release for the most part.
Who the hell cares what endgame is like? lmao............................
Who the hell cares what endgame is like? lmao.......... Vepgenus
NPC bashers do I think. I have no idea why. I'd rather have my breasts nailed to a tree and violated by the entire French foreign legion than do pve. Seriously where is the challenge in beating up some dumb scripted AI controlled mob. If people really wanted a challenge from raiding there is only ONE option. EQ1 - quite simply THE most difficult endgame in any MMO ever. That is a fact.
Tranca [RUS corp]
I had to blink several times to determine whether both your posts were intended ironically or not.
Time to catch some sleep for me.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Actually, in WoW PvE has proved challenging since 2004. With the addition of hardmodes and raid achievements even the latest WoW expansion proves to be quite demanding. EQ1 and AoC raiding content ... well, those are simply primitive compared to the dynamic encounters of Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel.
AoC raiding from what I've seen is ridiculously easy. I have no personal experience of WoW I am simply echoing the opinions of veteran EQ1 hardcore raiders who moved to WoW. You clearly have no idea about EQ1 if you call the mechanics primitive. Unless of course you are talking the truly ancient tank and spank encounters.
Even the old tank and spank encounters were far more interesting than AoC. Certainly on the EQ1 pvp servers. Boss at 23%...Ranger tells you, "I'm tracking multiple bogeys at 400 meters." No shitty instanced crap then. All open world pvp and bosses up for grabs. THAT would make AoC pve raids more interesting. If there were open world bosses. Especially on pvp servers.
Tranca [RUS corp]
You never tried T3 raids then, they're bugged and very hard.
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I have tried tier 1 and tier 2 AoC encounters. I cannot speak of tier 3, of course, but needless to say the first two tiers are simply horrible and primitive compared to basic WoW encounters. I would say tier 1 and tier 2 equal that of Molten Core (aka Bore) mechanics where the only thing challenging was keeping 40 people awake in the raid. On top of that, tier 1 and tier 2 raids were under construction for more than a year after launch, endless stream of bug fixes and tuning required. Even worse, when I was still playing, every patch screwed this or that encounter - i.e. when the pvp-levels patch came, Vistrix became broken (the boss reset in mid-fight), etc. So, not only does it take the Funcom team forever to properly test and fix the encounters, it also takes forever to release a new tier of raid content. How long was it before tier 3 was released - two years? I mean, what's the point of having a competitive pve guild in a game where it takes forever to release the raid content in the first place? Oh, and the lovely expansion brought about TWO raid boss encounters. The expansion boasts by being THE PvE expansion, yet only two raid bosses were released. I find it very hypocritical to announce tier 4 with the expansion and then release two majorly bugged encounters. But then again, this is Funcom - sieges working as intended much? Blizzard would rather go bankrupt than release an expansion where only TWO bosses worked.
Well, Tranca, ask any highly competitive pve guild in WoW (Ensidia, Paragon, Method, Premonition, etc.) about EQ1 and older MMOs, I'm sure they will unanimously concur that WoW's encounters are the most complex and challenging in any MMO. Sure, the older MMOs (even vanilla WoW) had a more epic feeling to it - world encounters, major grind that required the efforts of whole guilds (Ahn Qiraji event anyone?), people had to cooperate in order to gather certain mats (TBC raids required massive amounts of shadow and nature-resistance gear, for example), armour, weapons for the encounters, etc. Mind you, I am talking about encounters themeselves, i. e. how 25 people need to coordinate their actions and fulfil their roles in order to beat a boss; how many abilities and phases a boss has, etc.
I'm curious, when did you last play AoC and those T1's and T2's? And I highly doubt you tried the new dungeons of the expansion. If you say you did and you're saying that those are simpler than the WoW ones, then I'm going to call you a liar.
Instances are here to stay, they have been since they were introduced with MMO's like EQ2 and WoW and they filled a need.
About bosses in the open, I thought the Khitai regions had several in the open world. I thought one those epic bosses that were shown in the Khitai videos was one that could be found in the open world.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I don't really consider 6-man dungeons a raid content. They're nice, I'm sure, and have challenging encounters, especially whardmodes, but I was referring to the real raid content. And I would like to try these new 6 mans, but the problem is they're too elitist, too exclusive, guilds hiding secrets how to unlock hardmodes and guild-runs only ... come on, at least follow the WoW model where most of the pve content is accessible to ANYONE. I really can't be arsed to be in a raiding guild in AoC too just to see 6 mans dungeons. Last time I wanted a level 80 6-man dungeon, I waited for more than an hour for a full group before we realised we can't find a second tank. In WoW with cross-realm pve I wait for about 5-10 mins max to get a dungeon going, so farewell AoC. Yes, 5-mans in WotLK are dumbed down to oblivion, everyone still farming them with the latest gear, so it's even more ridiculous, but at least it's accessible to anyone, plus some of the heroics and achievements associated with them were quite challenging at the beginning of the latest WoW expansion (nothing compared to TBC, of course, but still). That is why there are hardmode 10 man or 25 man encounters, and so everyone has access to endgame pve stuff, and even the more organized, hardcore raiders have a challenge.
Please, don't get me started on Vistrix, Kylikki, Yakhmar and BRC encounters - simply horrible designs, mostly just tank and spank with some good old add control. The fact that it took them two years to get BRC working properly is a testament enough that it's simply fail. Even if there are a few encounters there that require more subtlety than tank and spank, it is in my opinion not worthy to wait forever to make them bug-free and properly tuned. From what I saw, these new 6 mans have more complex encounters than tier 1 and 2 combined.
They are, I absolutely agree on that. The Khitain dungeons are complexer and more varied than all of what the T1's and T2's have to offer, and personally I'm hoping this upward trend in dungeon design will continue in AoC, but I'm hoping to see more of this and even better in The Secret World.
About WoW's dungeon finder, I wouldn't mind that something sortlike will be implemented with AoC, at least with the minigames but also with the end level dungeons. I hate though what it did to the community in WoW, making assholes having even more freedom and leeway to behave like assholes and antisocials.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
T3 raids are challenging, bugged, but not well designed. You can't just roll with a pug into T3 and hope to clear that content, I've been up to boss #5 in Thoth Amons tower. After a while of beating your head against the same wall (boss) due to poor design the enjoyment factor does go down somewhat, still if your looking for a challenge join a guild that does T3 content.
25 people raids in WoW ? - EQ1 Citadel of Anguish. 48 people, all coordinated, each with their role. Single mistake = wipe. No ventrillo. Yes you needed 48 people, it was simply not doable with less. I think it took six months to figure out how to do the final boss. And that was across all servers. But as I said I have no idea about WoW so I really cannot comment on it. I do doubt however that any boss encounter in WoW remained unbeaten for 6 months.
I can't comment on T3 AoC. I only did T1 and T2, and only when forced to. Complete yawnfest. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt 8 years ago type boring. Perhaps they didn't really focus on pve raids initially, since AoC was marketed largely as a pvp-centric game.
Tranca [RUS corp]
I raided in EQ1 and it was fairly easy compared to WoW (and even some tougher bosses in AoC).
EQ1 raiding took coordination, but being honest here that was the hardest part. They also brought mostly warriors and clerics... clerics just went in order using their complete heals and warriors well.. warriors mashed 1 or 2 buttons (litterally all they had besides autoattack) and made sure the mob didn't get "pushed" into a bad spot.
Not hard.
Not having ventrillo is really a silly point to make. Some guilds in WoW used text only. Besides you're arguing the technology made it harder.. the game's difficulty is a separate point.
Even the post kitty on the moon expac.. the raid fights were meh. Boss dots everyone in a certain area and the dot drains your mana. if your mana goes lower than a certain % everyone blows up.
Pretty sure WoW has fights 10x harder than that.
Don't get me wrong EQ1 was fun for a time, but it by no means was harder than WoW. It's not even a contest. (and I dislike WoW because it's boring of all things).
PS- i agree on the pvp > pve comment... but AoC's pvp is really lacking.
PS2 - edit the reason why EQ1 raiding progressed slower wasn't the difficulty (even at the time).. it was because of the mechanic in place that you lost your gear if you died. In WoW the fights are much harder, but if you can spam attempts you learn much faster. In EQ1 it was hard to spam attempts.. so a lot of EQ1's difficulty actually came from the primitive mechanics. It wasn't really a difficult mechanic I would actually say it was a stupid and primitive one.