Whelp, we’ve cancelled our AoC accounts (for now), thanks to a sweeping, and gamebreaking, change in game mechanics. I’ll probably resub in a week or so, once I get tired of playing Silent Hunter 4, because try as I may, I’m finding it difficult to go back to any other MMO’s.
But, back on subject…Â This gamebreaking change that Funcom has seen so wisely to implement, is to scale all elite mobs and bosses to the player’s level and, more recently increase the difficulty of all mobs level 70 and above.Â
The first change was made (don’t quote me on this, as I can’t find the source of this information) in order to address the issues with gold farmers. Unfortunately, the end result has been cutting off content for those who are incapable of, and/or unwilling to, find a group to do this with, as well as making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to complete the content with a group at the required level range. Not to mention that, since normal players can’t farm grey elites now either, it makes any gold seller’s job easier, as horses cost a minimum of 2 gold, which is quite a sum. Most items at level 40, when you can first ride a mount, sell to a vendor for a copper or two and some odd tin. Since in this game, 100 tin = 1 copper, 100 copper = 1 silver, and 100 silver = 1 gold, that’s quite a lot of farming you need to do in order to buy your mount within a few levels of being able to ride it. Most people I see in game don’t have a mount until around level 55. There is a thread on the Funcom general forums with over 100 posts of complaints, and well over 1000 views… Yet Funcom has seemingly seen fit to ignore this issue.
The second change was only made today and while it’s too soon to tell for sure, early rumors are saying that it’s impossible to solo at level 70 now. Can you say “Forced grouping”? I sure can.
I’m definitely starting to slack when it comes to posting, though I’d say that rerolling on a different server to take advantage of the lower population of idiots has had a slight impact on that…Â But, only 5 days later and I’m 11 levels higher than I was before, and I figured I’d take advantage of the server downtime to post (as opposed to, ya know… chores around the house?).
My wife seems to have finally settled on a class to play (HA! We’ll see about that.), and we’ve been joined by one of my friends from work. There are a few issues with him that we’re working through, since he’s used to playing WoW with a large guild and ventrilo on a PvP server… Two items that I consider unneccessary crutches. I think that he’ll come through alright in the end though, as his particular amount of bad luck can’t last forever.
Finding a new bow is my biggest problem at the moment. I’m spoiled by the extended range of my Amazon Bow (sorry, no special links like WoWhead – I’ll post a screenshot later.), which allows me to snipe with impunity. I’m still able to take some things down before they even touch me, but I don’t expect the bow will last through the 40’s. I have seen one rare bow drop on the trader that had a +3 range increase (as opposed to my +5) and I probably should have bought it, but since I’ve been running around for the last 11 levels in late 20/early 30 gear, the amount of damage increase that I will most likely see will outweigh even that bow.
There’s a lot of complaining going on in the community right now, and rightfully so – there are still a lot of issues to be ironed out. Overall though, I would have to say that this has been one of the smoothest launches I’ve been part of in a long time. Still, I really wish they would do more faster… But I’ll be patient, and wait – I’m hooked, and I know it.
It’s almost sad the amount of people in Age of Conan that think that they can take people down twice their level by themselves. Granted, I’ve done similar things (taking down a level 35 soldier type at 28; taking out a level 30 demonologist at 24…), and it’s been close almost every time, but each time I’ve picked my battleground carefully and almost always popped off a potion as soon as they started hitting me. I do have a few things on my side – better bow, probably more experience….
The latest one was some poor level 23 Herald of Xotli who decided he was going to jump me as I started to take down a boss the same level I am (25, at the moment). He charges me in demon form just as the boss is getting to me, I kill the boss, snare the HoX, pop potions and scoot to the bottom of the hill. He follows, and by the time he gets to me, I’m at half health/stamina. He proceeds to run circles around me, trying to kill me, and I just open up with my bow.
Now, there’s one thing I’ve learned about the game mechanics that seem a little broken but until they fix it… It’s going to get abused. It doesn’t seem to matter how fast you run circles around me – if I’ve got you locked as my target, my arrows are going to hit you. No if, and, or but about it. HoX drops like a sack of potatoes, and I dissapear since I’m so close to the rez shrine.
He proceeds to talk shit, so I drop him again, then resign myself to plinking him with mez shots as he tries to figure out where the hell I am. One thing I’m learning fast to do is be a ghost – strike, and be gone. He only found me once, and it was rather amusing to watch him Hellstep… right into my trap.Â
And then, of course, there’s the level 6 who thinks he’s going to backstab and kill someone level 22. <sigh> What is with people these days?
One hundred posts! This blog has gotten farther than I originally expected when I started it 200 days ago. I’m not really holding to the “post per day” dogma that I had been holding to when I started, but it’s still worked out. In any case, I figured I’d make this post more about what I originally wanted to do with this blog when I stopped playing WoW, so here we go…
The Ranger class in Age of Conan is starting to play out somewhat like the Hunter from WoW – easy to play, difficult to master. Many of the same tricks hold true, while others don’t, and new ones emerge. Stealth plays a key component to success as a ranger, moreso in PvP than PvE. It’s quite possible to attack someone from stealth and kill them before they either get away or figure out where you’re at. Right now though, I’m just going to go over one of the basics.
Ranged skills for rangers are broken down into two categories, bows, and crossbows. Most of the skills apply to both weapons, but there are a select few that apply to one and not the other. There are advantages and disadvantages to each weapon – bows fire faster, but don’t have the knockback power of a crossbow… But crossbows take a long time to load and fire, so much that a bow user could have gotten off 2-3 shots before the crossbow user could fire again. Since I’m primarily a bow user, I’m going to cover those skills first, up to level 30.
Bleeding Puncture I – This arrow strike penetrates and passes through the enemy. The resulting puncutre wound bleeds heavily causing damage for a short time.
Bleeding Puncture is the first bow skill you get, once you hit level 5. It hits for slightly more than your normal bow strike, and immediately applies a bleed DOT that does 5 damage per tick. With a 10 second cooldown, and nothing else to use, you’ll be switching to melee pretty quickly if you want to survive at that level.
Pin Down I & II – A well placed arrow shaft that slows the target’s movement.
First available at level 7, with an upgrade at 20 (and probably more down the line), this is simply your basic snare. The best application of this in PvE is usually as a follow-up immediately following your first attack from stealth, ensuring that once the mezz breaks, they won’t be moving very fast, giving you time to get more shots off before they reach melee range. It can also be very useful in ensuring targets don’t get away as well. In PvP, it’s probably best not to use this right away since it has a long 30 second cooldown. See what your target is going to do – if he’s running away, wait to fire it off unless he’s at the very edge of your bow range, but if he’s running towards you, you’ll probably want to use it immediately. If he’s just milling about like a chicken with his head cut off… Well, just fill him with arrows and put him out of his misery. The snare duration can also be increased later down the line by spending feat points in the Sharpshooter tree.
 Salvo I & II – The ranger pulls a number of arrows from their quiver and puts them all to their bowstring, firing them at the same time to produce a hail of arrows.
The tooltip on this is horribly misleading, giving the user the impression that they’re performing something out of “Robin Hood: Men in Tights“. What really happens is simply a rapid fire effect with the ranger pulling out three arrows, one at a time, and firing them off as rapidly as possible. First available at level 10, with a 12 second cooldown, this can quickly become the ranger’s most used attack. The only downsides are the two combo follow up attacks needed to get this off, and the fact that crossbow users don’t get it.
Armor Ripper I – The head of this arrow is designed to tear apart any armor it strikes, from plate armor to monstrously tough hides.
Your next new bow attack doesn’t come until level 15, but it’s definitely a heavy hitter, though a 45 second cooldown crimps it’s usage, understandably though, for the sake of game balance. While the exact amount isn’t clear, this attack negates part of, or all of, a target’s armor, making this a prime skill to use in the first few shots, as it will greatly effect the amount of damage you do for the next few seconds.
Crippling Snipe I – This craftily placed precise shot is intended to reduce a target’s attacking capacity. For example, it is aimed at a human’s sword arm, or a great gorilla’s shoulder muscles to weaken it’s thundering blows.
Counterpart to Armor Ripper, this heavy hitting attack first appears at level 28, with a 30 second cooldown. Again, the exact amount isn’t clear, but this negates your target’s attack power. If you’re being beat on, this is definitly a shot you want to get off, but the sheer amount of damage that it provides at that level makes this worthwhile enough. Combined with the Focused Fire feat and Armor Ripper, you can take down an NPC of your same level with only 4-5 shots fired, many times before they even reach you.
I’ll be covering more in the coming days/weeks as I learn more about the game, such as melee skills, feats, and whatever tricks I can come up with.
Age of Conan Early Access started last weekend, and the game released earlier this week. Since then, I’ve levelled one character to 19, one to 10, and another one is inching it’s way to 20. The first one was on Wiccana, the “unofficial” RP-PVE server. They still haven’t put an official one in yet. The other two are on Cimmeria, the first RP-PvP server. All three are rangers.
Why did I make two of the same class on the same server you might ask? Well, I’ve been having difficulty deciding which of two races – Cimmerian or Stygian to play. Neither one has much of a backstory yet, though the Stygian is a bit more concrete in my mind.  To put things in perspective, you could probably say that the Cimmerian, Brennak, would lean somewhere between Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral, while the Stygian, Serithar, would lean somewhere between Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil, partly based on the results from this test. Here are some screenshots from the character select screen:
We’ve learned that playing on a FFA PvP server isn’t all as bad as we thought it was going to be. Since every area is instanced, in the same way that all the cities/towns/outposts are in Guild Wars, it’s very easy to just switch instances if you’re being ganked. The community has banded together somewhat against the hardcore gankers as well, and from what I’ve heard, there’s a list of KOS guilds on the forums. Another benefit is that the people who seem to just randomly attack anyone many times make the mistake of not paying attention to WHO they’re attacking… Or severely underestimate their target… and get what’s coming to them. I had a level 16 character attack me as soon as I de-stealthed to loot something. I promptly caught him in my trap, filled him with arrows until he got free, then disemboweled him with my sword. (No kidding – fatality blow, wish I had gotten a screen shot.)
One thing that I hadn’t mentioned before is that AoC has a different loot system than most RPG’s. Once you kill a mob, and it drops a bag or chest of loot, it’s locked in to you or your group until it’s looted, or for a certain amount of time, and then it becomes open to everyone. This is extremely nice because many times people will just leave bags of stuff laying around. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
All in all, it’s turning out to be a really good release, despite the fact that Funcom severely underestimated the amount of intrest in the game (much like Blizzard did with WoW’s release). They’ve been adding servers almost daily, and it’s obvious they’re doing their best to pull damage control and fix any problems quickly. I think things can only go uphill from here.
Quick side note on the site:Â I've installed Askimet (finally)
so I should have less spam to deal with, and I added my Xfire
mini profile to "The Writer" page.
The open (Fileplanet) beta for Age of Conan closed last night with a bang, as Funcom took their servers, changed the ruleset to FFA PVP, boosted all characters level 2 and above that had been created before Saturday to level 20, and dumped them in their respective racial starting areas… And just let mayhem regin supreme. My only regret is that I didn’t take any screenshots.
They updated the client, and it seemed to run smoother than before, but with it came a slew of other issues. Pressing escape to get the the main menu generated an exception for at least the first time with each launch of the game. Bridges were broken, allowing people to try and run across, only to fall into the water… Or down a cliff… Or into a river of lava… Water was broken in many areas, allowing players to run along the riverbeds, beneath the water surface, hidden from anyone above. Invisible walls blocked passage to zone gates, resources, and mobs. Lack of walls or barriers allowed players to get behind zone gates. Blood was back in, but nipples were still out, but not on the paperdoll images…
My initial thoughts on boosting my characters was that it really did pay off to have played long enough to complete what you could in the single-player storyline and hit 13. The ranger that I did so with ended up having a few more feat points than my other two, which I hadn’t really touched. To me, this smacks of future gameplay faults yet to come.
But ultimately, what mattered most, I think, was my computer. Zoning out of the major cities, the only safe zones in the world, was akin to having a death wish. Outside the gates, at every zoning point, at every rez shrine, inside the doors of every tavern, sat a band of bloodthirsty savages, just waiting for some poor sap who’s character would finish loading into the world before it finished loading on their screen. Fortunately, I didn’t have this issue, and was able to immediately hide when I needed to. Others weren’t so lucky.
Stealth is clearly a big issue that needs to be addressed as well. In AoC, ANYONE can “hide”, provided they put a few points into the skill – 25-50 seemed sufficient during the PvP beta. And yesterday, you were foolish not too. Standing out in the open would find yourself quickly surrounded by all manner of characters, eager for the kill. You could be out in an open field, with no one around, as I was in one of the resource gathering areas, and all of a sudden a ranger could appear to fill you with arrows… And there wasn’t anything you could do about it. Maxing out the Perception skill seemed to do little for me, aside from reveal the location of tanks that didn’t have the points to spend in Hide.
If this is a taste of what we’re to expect on the RP-PvP servers (as there are only going to be two types – RP-PvP, and PvE), us roleplayers are going to have a difficult time. Granted, I like the idea of FFA PvP on a roleplaying server – it makes things more realistic, can heighten immersion, and hearkens back to the days when UO was much younger.Â
If that’s what the developers are going for, that’s great, but sadly those days are long over, and there is a different breed of gamer behind the keyboard now, especially now that Blizzard broadened the playing field with World of Warcraft. But that playing field is now rife with idiots, assholes, and scum of the earth. You know them – they’re the ones that will camp your body endlessly, attack you on sight, unprovoked, and do their best to make you miserable… Just because they can.
UO didn’t have loading screens to kill you whenever you zoned.
UO had it’s problems with PKs…Â But with the PKs came the Anti-PK’s, bands of players formed specifically to hunt down those that killed with wanton abandon.
UO eventually ended up splitting it’s shards, so that there were those that had FFA PvP, and those that didn’t.
If there is only one thing that Blizzard has ever done right with WoW, it would be their flagging system for the PvE servers. Consentual PvP is almost a must these days, I think. I’ll admit that I’m one of the camp that feels that FFA PvP belongs in a game where that is the focus, be it FPS, TPS, RPG, hybrid, etc. But I also understand that there are those that enjoy the thrill of trying (key word there) to level a character on a PvP server, and that’s what a pure PvP server is for. PURE. Not RP-PvP.
There is a lot of speculation as to what Funcom will do in response to the input from this weekend, ranging from “They’re witholding information, and there will be a RP-PvE server on release.” to “They’ll realize their mistake, and a few months after release, they’ll open up a RP-PvE server.” In the end, all we can do is hope for the best.
The AoC Gamespot PvP beta started yesterday, and as of this afternoon, apparently the NDA has come down…. Which means I can spout off all I want about the game until it goes back up tomorrow. Don’t ask me how that works.
During the tech test, I only managed to make it as far as the first city, and level 5 or 6. In the PvP beta, which my wife managed to get us a key for, you can do the beginning area all the way up to the point where you would enter the area before the first city, and then you get teleported elsewhere, boosted to level 20, and given a stack of gear. You’re stuck there, with nothing to do but look around, and of course, join PvP games.
For initial observations with PvE, I’m going to have to say that I like it. Even though I start out without a bow, and was unable to get one (You start out with a broken oar), combat seems to flow easily enough, and it’s not very complex. Once I hit level 5, I was able to dump skill points into categories – Bandage, Climb, and Hide – and got my first class specific abilities. It might be different classes, but I really don’t know, as I haven’t played anything else.
PvP, however, is a completely different story. So far, it’s battlegrounds only, and there are two types – CTF, with three maps; Team Deathmatch, with one map. The fortunate thing is that everyone is stuck with equivalent gear, so it’s a level playing field gear-wise, unlike WoW. Skill and class balance are really the only factor here….  And class balance is borked. I haven’t really had much time to play, since we’re essentially sharing the account, but so far, there are a few classes that stand out as being overpowered. Rangers are apparently hugely overpowered, as evidenced by this video from Keen and Graev:
Also, it doesn’t seem to flow quite as smoothly as PvE combat did, or even the way PvP did in WoW. The one CTF map that I played was laid out more like a map out of Unreal Tournament or Quake than anything that I’ve previously experienced in RPG’s. But, as I’ve said, I haven’t been able to play much, so we’ll see.
I had the opportunity to participate in the Age of Conan tech test yesterday immediately following the house rewiring (Yay! No more wireless!). Unfortunately, the NDA is still up, so I can’t say much, but I think it’s safe to say this: It looks promising, and the play time that was allotted went by entirely too fast. Rumor has it that the NDA will be coming down soon, so I’ll spout off more when that happens.
We finally finished moving out of the old house yesterday, with 2 trailer loads of trash. I’m so glad it’s over, since it really kind of marks a new beginning for us. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of boxes left to unpack, but the difference this time is that they’re out in the garage, and not inside cluttering life up and dragging us down. Those two trailer loads was a big weight lifted from our shoulders as well. We’ll just have to commit to some sort of schedule of unpacking, but we’re probably going to slow down a bit and recover. I know of at least one box that I need to get in to ASAP for work related material though, and only a small idea of where it is.
I also took the time to check one of my less-frequently used email accounts, and discovered that I had been accepted into the Age of Conan beta! It’s downloading right now, and should be done shortly before I get home from work, though I don’t think I’ll be able to play until the next stress test.
