Good Core Game, Nice Graphic Lack of Content

Krasnij

Hi to Everyone interested in my personal opinion about AOC,

First of all, its a real nice game, the first 20 lvls are really exciting, new skills, quests all around you, a pirate city  and so on, The whole destiny quest system is  nice done and kept me in the game. After leaving Tortage i found myself in Khemi which i found nice too, Tarantia is a blast to look at, these huge City is amazing. After doing the first instance i thought that grp play is nice too. Made my way to lvl 40 and then fields of death.. only 1 region for lvl 40-50? noble disctrict had a lot of bugged quests.. the arena wasnt playable. They fixed it now. but i outlvled the patch...  and now i am a sitting duck with lvl 50, tempest of seth, a litllte bit tired of questless grinding, having no Instances to play. tried to grp wiht other ppl but there is no content for that,

What Conan needs is more content, nice done instances , a working crafting system, and it would be a really great game, now its good, combat is fun, mage/priest classes are a lot of fun, melee is nice to watch too. but it lacks content, Maybe ill take a look at it again in half a year, hope its all finished then and i can enjoy endgame...

have fun

kras

Zippy

I have to strongly disagree.  AoC has lots of flash but little substance.  The core mechanics of the game combat, classes and crafting are terrible.

Most MMO combat requires one to hit a hotkey to execute an attack.  AoC requires one to hit a hotkey followed by 3-5 directional arrows.  Essentially what that means is using a normal attack requires one to hit 4-6 buttons rather than one and wait 5-10 seconds extra before moving on to using another ability.  While the combat system works well at lvl 10 it does not scale well to level 80.  It just becomes tedious and it takes away thought and skill from combat.  These mechanics show themselves in group play.  AoC combat and classes do not seem to be designed for group play.  The system works much better solo. I can only imagine how bad the combat system is in raid play.  It looks like a nightmare.  To make matters worse besides feats there are few to no new skills past lvl 15.  Classes are very simple compared to most MMOs with very abilities, attacks and spells.

There simply is not much to do in combat and there is little room for skilled players to distinguish themselves form average or poor players.  This is not to say everything about the combat system is bad.  The importance of positioning is very well done as is the use line of sight.  The animations are also very well done and seem to add weight to your weapon making combat feel more immersive. 

Adding in the lack of skills per class to the tedious limited combat mechanics and AoC combat becomes likely the most simple and unskilled combat of any MMO ever released. Which makes sense as AoC is being targeted at new MMO players, console players, Kiddies with excess hormones and casual players.

Now what I said above may seem like an attack on AoC it should not be viewed as such. We all look for different things in games.  One may want more complexity one may want simple.  SImple is not bad especially if its well done.   AoC is simply a fluff game for casual players and people looking for a part time game.  At some point they will add and polish content and the game from 1-80 will likely be as good as  the 1-20 Tortage experience. There is a certain atmosphere  and barbaric edge in the lower levels that is very well done.  Most people will admit even if they do not like the game it is high on the fun factor in the lower levels and there is no reason they cannot do the same for higher levels even if the combat system does become repetitve. while it can be argued that  AoC is essentially a Diablo sort of hack and slash game that requires little thought or skill.  Is that a bad thing?  Not if its a well made game.  AoC improved dramatically the last 2 months of beta until release and it appears to have sold more than enough boxes for Funcom to continue developing the game.  But regardless of whether one likes the game design in AoC it is hard to argue that the core of the game is good as the combat system is repetitive, inflexible and requires little thought or attention.

There are things they can do to fix the combat system like getting rid of the directional arrows in melee combat and adding many many abilities for each class.  But that is something that is not realistic and would require redesigning a large part of the game.

Distopia

Originally posted by Zippy


I have to strongly disagree.  AoC has lots of flash but little substance.  The core mechanics of the game combat, classes and crafting are terrible.
Most MMO combat requires one to hit a hotkey to execute an attack.  AoC requires one to hit a hotkey followed by 3-5 directional arrows.  Essentially what that means is using a normal attack requires one to hit 4-6 buttons rather than one and wait 5-10 seconds extra before moving on to using another ability.  While the combat system works well at lvl 10 it does not scale well to level 80.  It just becomes tedious and it takes away thought and skill from combat.  These mechanics show themselves in group play.  AoC combat and classes do not seem to be designed for group play.  The system works much better solo. I can only imagine how bad the combat system is in raid play.  It looks like a nightmare.  To make matters worse besides feats there are few to no new skills past lvl 15.  Classes are very simple compared to most MMOs with very abilities, attacks and spells.
There simply is not much to do in combat and there is little room for skilled players to distinguish themselves form average or poor players.  This is not to say everything about the combat system is bad.  The importance of positioning is very well done as is the use line of sight.  The animations are also very well done and seem to add weight to your weapon making combat feel more immersive
There are things they can do to fix the combat system like getting rid of the directional arrows in melee combat and adding many many abilities for each class.  But that is something that is not realistic and would require redesigning a large part of the game.

I have to disagree with your opinion about the combat , As far as where skill comes into play and the comparisons between other games combat systems . I really don't see where anymore player skill comes into play within a traditional MMO  formula . Essentially there  is little  difference outside of lack of an auto attack .Which your directional keys replace  .You may have less abilities and skills to work with than say within EQ2 or other traditional MMOs .However  most mmos give you a crap load of skills/abilities throughtout the leveling process that in the end just become useless ,offering nothing but clutter to your abilities sheet.

I agree that it does seem that AOC is geared more for the fan of say Guild Wars and other simplified versions of the genre . Which lies more in the fact that developers foolishly believe that those who want PVP based games desire a less complex experience.

As far as redesigning combat goes , I really don't think any company is going to make that mistake again .

Bullvied

   The game seems to lack in alot of areas ,but no major mmo released didn't lack in alot of areas when released.If you can name me one then don't do so unless you researce and also tell me how many patches and updates the game has had since launch.Why would a finished game need updates and patches?

   I taking it that since the game isn't a icon clking wow clone that makes it a unskilled combat system.Dont get me wrong.I havent found an in game combat system i liked since pre-cu SWG, but even that wasn't really that skill based.Skill based combat games aren't popular with younger kids.Thats one of the reasons wow is so popular.