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Boring character development?
Pynda
Member UncommonPosts: 856
I just got the latest newsletter from Funcom, and had to say how disappointed I was to read this drivel. Listen to these moron devs brag on how character development in AOC will be nothing more than the simplified, class based generic garbage we've been getting over and over again ever since WoW was released.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
The basic attributes strength, dexterity, constitution, wisdom and intelligence are automatically raised for you as you level up...Whenever you gain a new level you get a small amount of points that you can distribute freely between these different skills. They do not increase through use...You will notice that you do not improve weapon skills. You do not have to improve any skills to hit any harder...There is (only) one general tree specific to your archetype (Soldier, Mage, Priest or Rogue) and two trees specific to your class...We dont want to make it so that you feel like you are less effective because you trained a certain series of feats (that you have a chance to make any good/bad choices - Pynda)...We are putting a tremendous amount of effort into making character development in Age of Conan something...easy to understand.
It astounds me how devs can fail to realize that some of us actually take pleasure in carefully developing a unique character in the MMORPG's we play - even if we do occasionally make a mistake along the way. And that simply adding a spurt of blood to every single weapon swing we make, or seeing cartoon tits in game is going to be a satisfactory alternative to endless grinding.
Comments
Yep, its sad.
But people like us are the the "outcasts" of MMOs.
We have to settle for all the other good features AoC will have.
its because children cry a lot louder than intelligent people. And devs listen to the loudest voices.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
I can understand their reasoning, because in Anarchy Online it was very hard to to fully understand skill point distribution, and that made it hard for new players and made PvP balance much harder. I'll choose PvP balance over customization.
Nonetheless, I would like it to be a little more comlicated, but different feats and skills should still allows for some interesting customization.
Some games are SUPPOSED to be harder and more complex than others. Especially if they are targetted to adults that can use a computer. Games don't HAVE to be created for people having trouble hitting two bricks against each other all the time. Most people that played AO had no trouble AT ALL creating a fun and diverse character with their character system. None at all.
But hey, if you had trouble with it, then of COUSE normal people should play more simpler games. it would be awful if completly normal people of average intelligence ever had a CHALLENGE playing a game. Its soooo much more fun if everything is free, and handed to you, prefferably if the character can be completly levelled as well, that would be AWESOME!
*snicker* They can drop that mature rating now.... I truly believed Funcom could stick to their idea to make real games for real people. But of course they too had to aim for the really small kids.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
I think your making a bit too much fuss out of this, one you can still make plenty of diverse characters with the skill tree, i think what they are trying to say is they want to make balance between the 3 tree's so no one is penalized for going one way or another.
Remeber in WoW where warriors all had to bs MS spec otherwise they sucked? I think the devs are saying no matter which way you go(as in tree) you will be effective, but that doesnt mean some builds wont be better then others, just the gap wont be as large therefore it will still rely largely on player skill which is another big part of the game.
Plus everything is a work in progress so relax.
Overrated. I think Funcom does the right thing.
Customization is to make you feel well in your role/class. Add something you like, support you in something you feel weak.
As soon as the build > class things start to go wrong. Powerguilds will tell you how to build or kick you from guild. Groups wont accept you, because your build is "weak". Min/Max crap. Not to mention the problems that could arise if someone finds out about a build that ruins any balance. This is a PvP game after all...
The power should come from your weapon and how you are able to move (use your combos).
At least that how i look a at a brutal game.
I do not see anything wrong with stats being auto managed. I've played countless mmorpgs and judging by my experience its most of the time quite pointless letting players distribute points. Since most of the time classes benefit only from so many stats and most players will go for 100% efficiency thus eliminating the whole point behind it and "freedom of choice". Certainly at first it seems fun experimenting with stats but later when most efficient builds are found its all the matter of knowing or not ("ZOMG u hav teh 50 in AGI but u shud hav put 99 n rest into STR. You suxxor!!!111onetwothree. Leaves party" )
And its not dumbing down it just avoids things like 1000000 people flaming what is best stats distribution for class X and why noone wants them in their party since their vital Y stat is 2 less than "l33t" players suggest it should be. Not like you have many choices in the end do you ?
As for the classes choice i do smell EQ here rather than WoW. I would certainly like a "sandbox" style RPG there in the market (sweet memories of pre CUSWG
), but as practice shows developing such product is a tedious and time consuming process that requires alot of time and resources and might not pay up in the long run. So only the richest of the companies may allow such luxuries as "sandbox" in hopes of hitting that $jackpot$ "and all with the off chance to score too".
Don't take me wrong im not happy with the way things go in modern mmorpg market. But face the reality... games are meant to entertain us... yes. But on the other hand they are made to earn money. And trust me the way things are in modern business there is little place for experiments. Old school gamers are a dying breed.
Lets just hope that there will be bold undertakings in the future. Just relax and accept that AoC is not one of them. Doesn't mean it won't be fun. It just won't be entirely the way you wanted it to be.
Eugam,
You are right. Why do you think these guilds are jockeying for position and getting into beta. It isn't like they are really looking for bugs. They want to know how the game plays so they can put their guild in position to try to claim the top spot on the server. They want to be in position to control the economy on their servers. They want to know the combat systems so they are tops in PvP. They really don't care about exploits and bugs. Sure, you'll have the occasional player in a guild that might report bugs, but let's not pretend people in beta really care to test. No, they want the leg up on their competition.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
So your stats increase automatically and aren't manually distributed. Whats the big deal with that? Most MMOGs work this way. I don't personally care if my str, dex, int, etc gets upped automatically with my leveling. Especially considering your Skills and your Feats are dynamically chose and improved. I'd imagine Skills works somewhat similar to the Skills in Anarchy Online. Everyone has a pool of skills, across the board, not based on class. But what skills you want to raise and what ones you might ignore is up to you and your class does change how easily certain skills can be raised, or what their eventual cap may be.
Feats are set into tree's, kinda like Talents in their layout, but more intricate. I think one of the reasons WoW has such a problem with 'this is this class's best build, this one sucks, you go with this, your gimped' is because the trees are very 'generic' in design. Every Warrior that wants to tank in WoW has the same selections to make. As the tree's are 'inverted' and the choices reduce as you go down them. With AoC, each tree also has sub-trees within them. That = a lot more choice.
Also, according to the devs, Feats don't impact your character like Talents do. In WoW talents (and gear) is everything. A Warrior without the proper Protection talents just cannot tank, no matter what shield he might be using or how good a tank he might be. With AoC's Feats, they won't impact you to nearly the same extent. For example, none of the priest classes Feats increase their ability to heal. For this reason no priest classes have to worry about 'speccing Healing' and being an utter gimp for anything else. Your ability to heal will be based off your skills as a player, not some 'all or nothing' talent build. That's fantastic. I cant wait for them to reveal some of the classes Feat trees.
If anything I don't think anyone should worry about character customization not being a big part of AoC. Funcom is known for the complexity of their games. I can see that AoC won't be remotely as complex as AO was, and have more of an 'easy to learn, difficult to master' mantra. AO really never hit it huge because of it's complexity. For every person who loved that complexity, there were 10 people who would try a froob account or a free trial and leave within days simply because it was so much to learn. AoC is going to learn from this for sure, I can see already. But I still expect the game to be quite complex and the character advancement systems quite intricate. More so then many other MMOGs these days to be sure.
Generally in a thread like this its obvious that an open ended skill based system like UO is what the OP wants to not have "boring character developement" since attribute distribution is only a small part of what makes up your character in Conan I don't really see it as being boring.
Combat, Control, Class Distinction Designer for Age of Conan
community.ageofconan.com
agreed. i'd hate to think that attribute distribution would be the "exciting" part of character development.
While character advancement is important, as if it feels hollow then it ruins some of the achievement feeling of the game, really gameplay is paramount, and for me whats most important is if the act of playing is enjoyable.
Combat, Control, Class Distinction Designer for Age of Conan
community.ageofconan.com
Very sad, this reminds me of something the lead for the BioWare MMO said in referring to lessons learned from WoW, “too many choices can be crippling”. And that was coming from BioWare!!!!! Just think about that for a minute.
If I am playing an RPG this first and most important thing to me is character customization. If everyone is going to be the same you might as was play a first person shooter, at least you’ll have a better combat experience.
This is why I keep coming back to CoX, fantastic character customization. Every skill point counts. And I always plan out builds in advance.
Yea I read that '12 lessons in a post-wow market' thingy from Bioware myself and I was taken aback by at least 4 of said 'lessons.' Particularly the 'players don't really want choice, just the illusion of it.' Though frankly in my opinion in the last 5 odd years Bioware games have indeed been increasingly less about choices and more about feeding you content. I hate to say it, but their games have become increasingly dumbed-down for a market that seems increasingly unable to make up their minds in their games about anything. If Bioware takes what was said in that article to heart, and they are actively TRYING to beat WoW at it's own game, all it's going to get us is a simplistic, hand-holding carebear experience that in the end bites off it's own feet. I found that entire article pompous to the extreme.
CoX is definitely one of the better MMOGs out there when it comes to character advancement systems. The creation system alone is fantastic. But the advancement systems offer a plethora of deep choices. Especially with Inventions in the game now.
But you know what other MMOG is one of the better when it comes to character choice and advancement systems? Anarchy Online. While it could be argued that AO's character advancement boarders on 'needlessly complex' that complexity and open endedness allows you to build a character that can be vastly different from another of the same class. For it's time as well the character creation system blew everything else away. I mean you had height adjustment, a dozen 'heads' per race. It was certainly far more intricate then EQ or DAoC.
For that reason, I trust Funcom to not hold my hand through every little choice, and offer no choices that might really impact my character strongly one way or another. I know the biggest reason for the delay was to make the game more accessable apparently, and easier to learn. But that 'difficult to master' part is important to me. Real variety and real choice is also very important to me. I trust Funcom to deliver on that part.
I think people are going to be dissapointed when they hear about any feature that isn't original. Change is wanted badly.
The more customization you have in a PvP dominated game, the more effort the developers have to put into balancing each kind of class. One of the most important things players are stressing in PvP games is balance between classes, so as a developer, it is in there best intrest to keep customization low so that they can better acheive balance between the classes.
Im not trying to advocate less customization in games because I for one believe that everyone should have there own unique character that seperates them from everyone else, but If I had to choose between customizatoin and balance, balance would win. We would have less griefers and better gameplay.
Shadowbane has great customization. I have made hundreds of characters, all very different. Sure it was hard to balance. But in the end, it makes for a much better game.
But all the recent and upcoming MMORPG's see it differently. Most are sticking to the basic classes with two variations to them.
Sorry if I missed this anywhere, but what if we don't like what we spent our attribute points on? Is there a way to reset them?
|Mortal Online|Gnostaria|
Well, in all fairness, AOC is taking the path well-traveled. Class based, little customization of character attributes, pre-defined roles etc...... and some folks yearn for the days when character development was a bit more open...and prone to mistakes.
But, that's not the design path Funcom chose for AOC.... and we'll just have to wait until next spring to see how enjoyable playing AOC really is.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
WTF?
three skill trees per class? where have i seen that before? ooh i can't remeber *cough* WoW*cough*
man that pisses me off. inescapable wow cloning going on everwhere!
i can totally see Aoc's battle plan for sub victory over wow, and war.
wow=wow
war=wow+advanced pvp
AoC=wow -fantasy races+advanced pvp+titties = >all other wow clones todate.
wtg Aoc!!
*begins to pray that darkfall may actually exist... and is as they say.*
Since when does one small aspect of a game that is similar to another make it a clone of another? This game doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to WoW.
|Mortal Online|Gnostaria|
yeah I must admit I was hoping the Developers would take a risk and try to create their own fun system. I hope its pretty interesting and they allow me to allocate points to my various skills (like in Mass Effect) at the very least. I really enjoy having control of my character
I wish they wouldn't restrict character development so much in MMORPGs they like a DEcade behind single player RPGs. Heck, even Final Fantasy 13 is a sort of freeform character development.
but for some reason when Devs port these concepts over to MMORPG they all of a sudden find the need to simplify things for the masses becuase they want to draw in a new crowd thats never played MMORPGs before
I think everyone is gonna play Conan for the new features like Sieging, PVP oriented server, and hopefully twitchy combat.
Since when does one small aspect of a game that is similar to another make it a clone of another? This game doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to WoW.
since when is character creation one small aspect of a PVP Role Playing Game?!?!it's HUGE! it's a deal breaker man!
Completely off topic here. But I think that what they were talking about in this section was the fact that there are a lot of choices in WoW, but really only a few are ever used (cookie cutter, min/max, whatever you want to call it) because they are the "best". This is the illusion that the article is talking about I believe.
The rest of your post, I completely agree with!
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."