The Farstrider Scout

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.

I haven’t posted in a while, and for good reason.

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:  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.

     “Attention all radios this net, attention all radios this net, this is MOC with a weather advisory.  We have lightning within 5 nautical miles, I repeat, lightning within 5 nautical miles.  All radios please respond with name and callsign, MOC out.”

Those words, preceeded by a loud two tone jingle, are all it takes to send the flightline into a frenzy.  But the interesting thing is, the guys on the line tend to know better than the guys from weather (who are probably secluded away in some windowless building), because for at least ten minutes prior to the call…  if we get one…  people are calling and asking about it.  As if we’re going to hold back information.

Oh, and by the way, I’ve got a new job.  No longer shall I hand out tools!  I work at the Maintenance Operations Control now, and that voice on the radio was me.  Two thunderstorms rolled through today, and I’d completely forgotten the shit storm that occurs.  People running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  Seriously, people.  Get a grip.

and up… and down…  Otherwise known as “Bunny-hopping“.  More prevelant in the FPS world, it’s also beginning to invade MMO’s, and it’s annoying. 

RPG players, if you’re doing it, it doesn’t do anything for you(with the exception of Age of Conan) except make you look stupid.

FPS players, if you’re doing it…  Not only do you look stupid, it’s a pretty cheap tacic.  I can pretty much gurantee that any soldier on the battlefield will not be jumping around like a jackrabbit because either A) He’ll get tired very quickly, or B)  He’ll be tired, and then dead.  Not that that argument holds any water… but still.  (Edit:  One exception to this rule – the Tribes series (Starsiege: Tribes, Tribes 2, & Tribes: Vengeance (to a lesser extent)  all rely on a form of this tactic, called “skiing“, which is a legitimate and accepted tactic within the Tribes community.)

Please.

Stop.

Think of the children.

Guild Wars recently celebrated it’s three-year anniversary…  And three years ago, my wife and I started the Prophecies campaign with our characters – Rudi Caldera, a Mesmer/Ranger, and Inina Silkenthorn*, a Necromancer/Ranger.  In those 3 years, 3 more expansion packs have been released – Factions and Nightfall, both stand-alone expansion packs, and Eye of the North.  We’ve played a multitude of characters, always falling short of completing even one of the campaigns.

In Prophecies, one of the biggest steps is completing the trials of Ascension…  And now, after THREE FLIPPING YEARS, we’ve done it. 

Maybe not with our original characters, as I was playing Eran Caldera, a Ranger/Paragon.  It’s been a long, rough road for us, and it probably won’t be any easier as we push towards the goal of completing that campain, but that’s one HUGE roadblock out of our way.

*(Note:  While Rudi was the character that I started out with, and remained my main character for a long time, Inina may not actually have been the first of my wife’s characters… But out of those characters, if memory serves me correctly, it is the only one left that was started when the game came out.)

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. 

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…  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.

Despite Sheru’s predictions of… well, the end of the world, I guess, updating Wordpress to the latest version went without a hitch. Overall, nothing much on the outside has changed, aside from the banner, but inside it’s almost a whole new interface for me to relearn. Whee! It’s pretty simple still though, so shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The banner is an idea that has been rolling around in my head for quite some time now. It still retains some of the look of the original WoW banner, but it’s definitely what I wanted. I have to thank my sister for that (who, on a side note, should probably update her site… and get off of Tripod ), as she did most of the work, taking over the project from me when I approached her for suggestions. Which I totally appreciate. Image editing has never really been my forte.

There are a few things about the banner that need tweaking, and I’ve got the main file for that so it shouldn’t be hard. Frankly, for me, the hardest part was pressing the screen shot button at the right time. I think I took around 30-40 shots in total, just for 5 games. Out of those, COH was probably the hardest, since I knew the exact look I wanted to accomplish… I just kept hitting the button too soon. EvE was the easiest, since I resused a screenshot… WoW was simplified by Sheru letting me fill her with arrows. You can probably expect to see something out of LoTRO and AoC as well… And I may just start cycling images out depending what I play, or write up a randomizing script so that it’s different every time people visit. Endless possibilities.

And, for inquiring minds who aren’t completely sure what’s what with the banner, from left to right:

World of Warcraft – Arvelen

City of Heroes – Planestraveller

Hellgate: London – Cirr

EvE Online – Dereth Renner/Indomitable Odds

Guild Wars – Eran Caldera

I’m going to be updating WordPress tomorrow or Friday, as it’s long overdue.  I’ve made backups, but if something catastrophic happens and the site goes down… 

DON’T PANIC.

My host has backups as well, so it shouldn’t be too painful.  I hope.

In any case, you’ll see a change or two here and there that are long overdue as well.

Lately there’s been a lot of discussion about cars at work…  And I’ve gotten dragged into it.  I’m not really much of a car buff, but I do like to go fast.  One thing I’m definitely interested in is autocross.  My wife used to run with a ‘86 Honda Civic up in New York several years ago, and her talking about it got me interested in it in the first place…  But with the talk at work, I’ve been researching in earnest to find out what I can.  Granted, an ‘04 Saturn ION II isnt’ the greatest vehicle to run in – definitely not going to win any prizes there, but the ‘95 Saab 900 SE Turbo that I want isn’t going to be showing up on my doorstep any time soon.  At least not unless I win the lottery or something.

In any case, this weekend, a couple co-workers and I drove out to the South Georgia Motorsports Park, since they were holding a “test and tune” event.    I was originally supposed to go up against someone else from work who also drove a Saturn, albeit non-stock, but he ended up bowing out, as his ignition system got stuck in the “run” position a few weeks ago, but I went and drove anyway.  I ran twice, ending up next to a 3rd generation Ford Mustang, and I of course wouldn’t have won anything…  But ultimately, I was racing for me, and me alone.  Here’s how I ended up doing:

Run #1                                                               Run #2

R/T (reaction time) …  0.815                         0.589

60′ marker            …  2.571                         2.592

330′ marker          …  7.149                         7.190

1/8 mi. marker       …  10.907                       10.918

MPH                    …  65.54                         66.10

1000′ marker         …  14.118                       14.105

1/4 mi. marker       …  16.822                       16.782

MPH                     …  83.25                        84.38

I ended up spinning my tires off the start both times, which probably could have been avoided, and probably would have cut the run down…  Meh.  In any case, the next autocross event in the area is on June 15th, so I’ll probably be going then.