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Age of Conan: Internal Culture Armor and Weapons Q&A

StraddenStradden Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696

The folks at Funcom have sent us a new internally conducted Q&A where System Designer Dave Williams addresses what's coming in terms of Culture Armor and Weapons.

Funcom:

How many new recipes will there be?

Dave Williams:

There are 24 culture armor recipes. Each recipe makes three pieces of set. Thus for patch 3 we are releasing twelve 6 piece armor sets -- one set per class. There are four culture weapon recipes grouped by geography, and each weapon recipe can make 3 weapons related to that theme. There are a couple of details that I'm going to leave to discovery, that I think players will find interesting.

This is the first iteration of what is currently planned to be a more extensive system, as we want to make small incremental steps in order to both get content out to players, but also validate the direction we want to take. So for patch 3 each class will have only 1 culture armor set it may use. Each weapon type is likewise represented once amongst the culture weapons. To some degree, this first step was designed to be comparatively lightweight. We expect players to find culture weapons and armors to be compelling, and if this is sufficiently the case, that's certainly the necessary feedback to make future iterations increasingly more of a parallel advancement system within crafting that will be more about lore and proper quest driven mechanics.

Check out the Q&A.

Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com

Comments

  • milkyymilkyy Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 61

    i personally think they are steping in the right direction. i like this idea

  • AmazingAveryAmazingAvery Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188

    Good stuff, looks interesting and is definately steps in the right direction. I am sure the majority of current players will love this when it comes through. The game was screaming out for change in this area.



  • DeeweDeewe Member UncommonPosts: 1,980

    The Acheronian set looks really nice and well I really don't like the Stygian but that's a personnal view.

    What you don't see is there are still no pants for male characters, dude!

    Also, making stats matters more is good but without social clothing it drives players away from how they want their character looks like.

    Another important feature laking for character customisation is dyes.

  • AriocArioc Member Posts: 299

    As good looking as this game is, it did suffer from lack of variety in armor initally. I deffinitly think this is a step in the right direction to offer players diversity and goals.

    It's a double edged sword. The more time and detail you put into making amazing game models/wearables the more time/detail it takes to kick out more varients. That's often the downfall of high end MMO games, the pipeline produces good looking stuff but all that zbrushing and texturing takes a while. And if the wearables pipeline isn't smooth takes longer to get in-game.

    Arioc Murkwood
    Environment Artist
    Sad but true.

  • silmarilsilmaril Member Posts: 73

    Both the nice looks and the fact that crafting will be useful (which it is not at the moment) is a good step forward. Like the posted above me said, it is important to either keep the pipeline filled or make sure it is not too long. This needs to be more than a single stunt, but in fact the start of a process where good looking and useful items are delivered on a regular basis.

  • JupstoJupsto Member UncommonPosts: 2,075

     harder dungeon than onyx chambers? most of tier 1 raids is easier and more likely to drop. at least raid bosses are there all the time.

    My blog: image

  • chryseschryses Member UncommonPosts: 1,453

    I hit level 70 recently and now focusing on Crafting.  Its an ok system but I still think MMO's in general don't utilise crafting to its full potential.  The two systems that I really liked are:

    1. Vanguard - crafting pouch (AoC has as well), crafting clothes, crafting level system and you actually had to make the item manually.  So even if you had all the pieces you could still mess it up.  Plus it was still possible 6 months in to make a unique item.

    2. Earth & Beyond had a simpler system but I liked how you could find a rare item and then try and dismantle it to learn the recipe.  Most times you would lose it but if you did manage to absorb it then you had a big advantage as a crafter.  Then there was the function of repairing and making an item with higher % of quality.

    Either way both systems allowed players to be full time crafters or merchants and supply the player base.  If an  MMO has an in-depth crafting system then they will retain more players. 

    AoC as I mentioned has an ok system but I dont agree with capping crafting at certain levels.  Why not allow players to literally be full time crafters so that even at level 20 they can be making level 80 items if they put the work in.  I personally would like to see crafting halls or area in Tarantia and the resourcing areas so that it encourages grouping of people and the community. 

    All good directions though and I am glad they are at least giving this some attention. 

  • darkcoud9darkcoud9 Member UncommonPosts: 126

    All they need to do is implement dyes in the game like guild wars where you can change the colour of your armour etc, then even new players starting the game can look different than the next new player. I havent played this game for about three months now but one thing i found very annoying was most armour in the game looked the same.

    Im still following the game closely and have 2 lvl 80 toons parked in cimmeria, once funcom fix the game i will try it again.

    ------------------------------

    image

  • DataDayDataDay Member UncommonPosts: 1,538
    Originally posted by AmazingAvery


    Good stuff, looks interesting and is definately steps in the right direction. I am sure the majority of current players will love this when it comes through. The game was screaming out for change in this area.

     

    Im sorry but its a bit too LITTLE and a bit too LATE. They cannot recover the game by doing something like a 6 piece culture set. There needs to be something massive, huge, game changing involved and quite frankly, funcom does not have the capability to do it. It took me a while to realize, but they will use whatever tricks they can to do minimal work with the intent to keep people subbed.  They are not professional enough to run an mmorpg, nor have the right intentions.  I will never trust this company again, and many feel the same way. IF they were smart they would put their money where their mouth is, do something massive, like fix the entire damn game, and do what SOE did with Vanguard. Reactivate all past subs for 1-2 months free to show their old customers what they have done to fix the game.

    Even then there is still the problem of trust, which Funcom has totally flushed down the toilet.

  • doho7744doho7744 Member Posts: 31

    I can not believe you use trust and Sony in the same sentence.  Irregardless, this is a good start.  There still needs to be more content for end level and something needs to be done with the drops to desktop.

  • AmazingAveryAmazingAvery Age of Conan AdvocateMember UncommonPosts: 7,188
    Originally posted by Rabenwolf

    Originally posted by AmazingAvery


    Good stuff, looks interesting and is definately steps in the right direction. I am sure the majority of current players will love this when it comes through. The game was screaming out for change in this area.

     

    Im sorry but its a bit too LITTLE and a bit too LATE. They cannot recover the game by doing something like a 6 piece culture set. There needs to be something massive, huge, game changing involved and quite frankly, funcom does not have the capability to do it. It took me a while to realize, but they will use whatever tricks they can to do minimal work with the intent to keep people subbed.  They are not professional enough to run an mmorpg, nor have the right intentions.  I will never trust this company again, and many feel the same way. IF they were smart they would put their money where their mouth is, do something massive, like fix the entire damn game, and do what SOE did with Vanguard. Reactivate all past subs for 1-2 months free to show their old customers what they have done to fix the game.

    Even then there is still the problem of trust, which Funcom has totally flushed down the toilet.



     

    It's a little more than a 6 piece armor set (12 x 6 pieces). There is however, 6 pages of updates for patch 3 coming through. I think it was Richard Garriot who said there are more people introduced into mmo's every year than leave it. If FC were so unprofessional AO wouldn't have been going 7 years.

    Recent updates indicate that they will offer FREE time to people when they feel its ready (most likely within the next 4 months imo) Don't trust them fine, but they have the approach of when its done its done now, rather than rushing stuff out, including admittance of release issues coupled with a decent short term roadmap.

    You know what the 2 things people say are borked most. DX10 (enhanced for on the box) and Sieges. We I can siege since August at decent rates with accepting minimal bugs and have a blast. As for DX10 its coming, and it better shape then it would of been if at release and im happy about that. Never experienced game breaking bugs apart from being booted out of siege zone in July and lag spikes, neither happened again after the first 6 weeks.

    Not saying people haven't had issues as its obvious there was enough to piss people including myself, right off. Todays game is different (not perfect) and the direction they are now taking is the correct one, kinda annoying when people go around with 'outdated' experiences without elaborating.



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