I don't even think the problem is companies releasing unfinished games anymore, I mean, who doesn't do it. But that's not the point, the point is Funcom blantantly lied out of their ass about the state of the game, the features, and etc.

Originally posted by Mordria

Originally posted by neya

Here are the facts:

Age of Conan is intended to be released on the Xbox; if you were not aware of this; check out the article on this very site. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/feature/1958

Want to know why your Age of Conan runs terrible on your computer?

It's because the game is cross platform designed.  In other words; tailoring the game to Xbox hardware is much easier than tailoring to PC hardware as the specifications for each idividual PC varies wildly.

Valve ran into problems with cross-platfrom when developing Team Fortress 2.

See page 20 of this article: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

The above article was a presentation given by Valve; on page 20  you can clearly see that some of the known big issues with cross-platform gaming "Out of Memory" Error. Sound familiar??

Want to know why your Age of Conan is instanced?

To address the problem with cross-platforms and the memory loads the game zones are split (Instanced) to accomodate the varying memory loads on the different platforms.

Want to know why your Age of Conan Emotes have the /e command and the emote list?

Not all Xbox gamers will invest in a keyboard and mouse for their system; therefore they have to make the emote system accessible through use of a joypad; thats why you see the list of emotes and thats why you as a PC gamer have to type the /e before executing an emote to bypass this list.

Spent a fortune on a PC System but getting low FPS?

Isn't it strange that you get higher FPS on High graphical settings and lower FPS on Low graphical settings? It's because of the cross-platform issues with the game engine and how it manages memory, textures; so on and so forth.

I really don't need to go on.  This presentation from Valve which was delivered to the Game developers Conference 2008: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

I think the above presentation highlights all of the issues currently being experienced by Funcom on Age of Conan; and all because the game is cross-platform.

So yes you may be a fan, yes you may hate the game.  The truth is; your beta testing a game so that it can launch to Xbox.

 

 

The game runs fine on my system.

instancing -  it's zoned and instances only spawn if the zone goes over X amount.

/e??? lol  I don't even know what you're talking about there. In every mmo I've played I've had to type a /something to do an emote.

Clearly I should just take my PC  outside and shoot it.

Have you ever played an mmo?

Woot!!! Good for you that it runs fine on your system...  Have a cookie.

But it does run like crap on a lot and I do mean a lot of other peoples systems.

Have you never had a game run poorly on your system?

<modedit>

Originally posted by neya

Here are the facts:

Age of Conan is intended to be released on the Xbox; if you were not aware of this; check out the article on this very site. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/feature/1958

Want to know why your Age of Conan runs terrible on your computer?

It's because the game is cross platform designed.  In other words; tailoring the game to Xbox hardware is much easier than tailoring to PC hardware as the specifications for each idividual PC varies wildly.

Valve ran into problems with cross-platfrom when developing Team Fortress 2.

See page 20 of this article: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

The above article was a presentation given by Valve; on page 20  you can clearly see that some of the known big issues with cross-platform gaming "Out of Memory" Error. Sound familiar??

Want to know why your Age of Conan is instanced?

To address the problem with cross-platforms and the memory loads the game zones are split (Instanced) to accomodate the varying memory loads on the different platforms.

Want to know why your Age of Conan Emotes have the /e command and the emote list?

Not all Xbox gamers will invest in a keyboard and mouse for their system; therefore they have to make the emote system accessible through use of a joypad; thats why you see the list of emotes and thats why you as a PC gamer have to type the /e before executing an emote to bypass this list.

Spent a fortune on a PC System but getting low FPS?

Isn't it strange that you get higher FPS on High graphical settings and lower FPS on Low graphical settings? It's because of the cross-platform issues with the game engine and how it manages memory, textures; so on and so forth.

I really don't need to go on.  This presentation from Valve which was delivered to the Game developers Conference 2008: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

I think the above presentation highlights all of the issues currently being experienced by Funcom on Age of Conan; and all because the game is cross-platform.

So yes you may be a fan, yes you may hate the game.  The truth is; your beta testing a game so that it can launch to Xbox.

 

I haven't played the game, but want to comment on the false assumptions from this post.

AoC had initial intentions of being XBox 360 and PC.  What you don't seem to understnad the development tools, and architecture between the XBox 360 and the PC are virtually idential with the exception of using a controller in design and DVD based loading.

The XBox 360 is running Windows XPx64 with a croos implementation of DX9 and DX10 features.

So developing for both the PC and XBox 360 is fairly seamless and would not result in errors like out of memory, etc.

Now if the game was designed for the PS3 and PC,then you have major differences in development.

(For newbies, go look up even XNA, it develops games for both the XBox 360 and PC seamlessly.)
 

The reason? The XBox 360 is running Windows and uses DirectX technologies, JUST LIKE A PC.

In fact the reason gaming has done well on the XBox 360 isthe same developmwent and optimzations work on both the PC and 360, unlike the horrid PS3 development platform that is very foreign to PC gaming, and is still having tons of development platform issues.

(Many of the XBox 360 technologies are at the heart of Vista from the waythe OS handles theGPU(WDDM) to RAM virtualization and DX10 features and the push for NVidia and ATI to move to unified shaders - again unlike the PS3 that has a slow non-unfied shader NVidia Geforce 7800 with peformance closer toa 7600. - Meaning most laptops from 2005 have more graphica power than a PS3.)

Im a amazed at how much time people are willing to invest on trashing this game. Its like your angry because your experiance was the ultimate and if you are feeling down you need to spread your anger. If the game sucks I dont need you to let me know about it, I would of already found out for myself. The fact is this daily rant on how bad AoC is comical. Get lives people or invest your time in helping the community rather then tear it down. AoC is the new world and accept it or move on.

Originally posted by EbonHawk

Originally posted by Mordria

Originally posted by neya

Here are the facts:

Age of Conan is intended to be released on the Xbox; if you were not aware of this; check out the article on this very site. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/feature/1958

Want to know why your Age of Conan runs terrible on your computer?

It's because the game is cross platform designed.  In other words; tailoring the game to Xbox hardware is much easier than tailoring to PC hardware as the specifications for each idividual PC varies wildly.

Valve ran into problems with cross-platfrom when developing Team Fortress 2.

See page 20 of this article: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

The above article was a presentation given by Valve; on page 20  you can clearly see that some of the known big issues with cross-platform gaming "Out of Memory" Error. Sound familiar??

Want to know why your Age of Conan is instanced?

To address the problem with cross-platforms and the memory loads the game zones are split (Instanced) to accomodate the varying memory loads on the different platforms.

Want to know why your Age of Conan Emotes have the /e command and the emote list?

Not all Xbox gamers will invest in a keyboard and mouse for their system; therefore they have to make the emote system accessible through use of a joypad; thats why you see the list of emotes and thats why you as a PC gamer have to type the /e before executing an emote to bypass this list.

Spent a fortune on a PC System but getting low FPS?

Isn't it strange that you get higher FPS on High graphical settings and lower FPS on Low graphical settings? It's because of the cross-platform issues with the game engine and how it manages memory, textures; so on and so forth.

I really don't need to go on.  This presentation from Valve which was delivered to the Game developers Conference 2008: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

I think the above presentation highlights all of the issues currently being experienced by Funcom on Age of Conan; and all because the game is cross-platform.

So yes you may be a fan, yes you may hate the game.  The truth is; your beta testing a game so that it can launch to Xbox.

 

 

The game runs fine on my system.

instancing -  it's zoned and instances only spawn if the zone goes over X amount.

/e??? lol  I don't even know what you're talking about there. In every mmo I've played I've had to type a /something to do an emote.

Clearly I should just take my PC  outside and shoot it.

Have you ever played an mmo?

 

Woot!!! Good for you that it runs fine on your system...  Have a cookie.

But it does run like crap on a lot and I do mean a lot of other peoples systems.

Have you never had a game run poorly on your system?

<modedit>

I have to agree with Neya on most points regarding AOC and the 360, but i dont agree with the "/e" command theory seeing that coh/cov has been using "/e" commands for emotes for as long as ive been playing.

personally I understand the whole cross-platforming appeal but its not an easy thing to do since no system even if made by the same company(i.e. Xbox 360 and windows pc's). if companies really want to reach the console people aswell as the pc people the best thing is to do what EQ did back in the day. making a separate game for their console( Sony that is). Sure it would be fun to find a seamless way for both platformers and pc folk alike to mingle but lets face it that's the impossible journey unless every pc was made with the exact same specs. It's not so much that consoles are the problem the truth is that pc's are because no two pc's are alike where as consoles are alike in majority of ways.

I thought the idea of everquest online adventures being the PlayStation's own personal MMORPG made it that much better simply because it staid to the same basis as its pc counterpart while at the same time breaking console owners into the EQ and in some cases the MMORPG world. But companies will continue to try their best to make a MMO game cross-platform because the players keep wishing for it. But trust me on this it will be a long time before its perfected so don't expect greatness, always keep a bit of judging till you see it yourself or you'll be disappointed everytime.

I also believe that console gamers and pc gamers should stick together as gamers but not go looking for that amazing MMORPG or just any MMO to cross-platform perfectly the first time. I'm sure age of Conan will improve over time just be patient and hope for the best. The only game to cross-platform and survive the battle was Final Fantasy XI. Altho it should be noted that it didn't get there without a few hitches along the way.

One day we may see that breakthrough but till then be patient and just try to get through all the glitchy laggy screen punching hair pulling strain that some people will experience.

Originally posted by jinxit

Originally posted by EbonHawk

Originally posted by Mordria

Originally posted by neya

Here are the facts:

Age of Conan is intended to be released on the Xbox; if you were not aware of this; check out the article on this very site. http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/feature/1958

Want to know why your Age of Conan runs terrible on your computer?

It's because the game is cross platform designed.  In other words; tailoring the game to Xbox hardware is much easier than tailoring to PC hardware as the specifications for each idividual PC varies wildly.

Valve ran into problems with cross-platfrom when developing Team Fortress 2.

See page 20 of this article: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

The above article was a presentation given by Valve; on page 20  you can clearly see that some of the known big issues with cross-platform gaming "Out of Memory" Error. Sound familiar??

Want to know why your Age of Conan is instanced?

To address the problem with cross-platforms and the memory loads the game zones are split (Instanced) to accomodate the varying memory loads on the different platforms.

Want to know why your Age of Conan Emotes have the /e command and the emote list?

Not all Xbox gamers will invest in a keyboard and mouse for their system; therefore they have to make the emote system accessible through use of a joypad; thats why you see the list of emotes and thats why you as a PC gamer have to type the /e before executing an emote to bypass this list.

Spent a fortune on a PC System but getting low FPS?

Isn't it strange that you get higher FPS on High graphical settings and lower FPS on Low graphical settings? It's because of the cross-platform issues with the game engine and how it manages memory, textures; so on and so forth.

I really don't need to go on.  This presentation from Valve which was delivered to the Game developers Conference 2008: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2008/GDC2008_CrossPlatformDevelopment.pdf

I think the above presentation highlights all of the issues currently being experienced by Funcom on Age of Conan; and all because the game is cross-platform.

So yes you may be a fan, yes you may hate the game.  The truth is; your beta testing a game so that it can launch to Xbox.

 

 

The game runs fine on my system.

instancing -  it's zoned and instances only spawn if the zone goes over X amount.

/e??? lol  I don't even know what you're talking about there. In every mmo I've played I've had to type a /something to do an emote.

Clearly I should just take my PC  outside and shoot it.

Have you ever played an mmo?

 

Woot!!! Good for you that it runs fine on your system...  Have a cookie.

But it does run like crap on a lot and I do mean a lot of other peoples systems.

Have you never had a game run poorly on your system?

<modedit>

 

I have to agree with Neya on most points regarding AOC and the 360, but i dont agree with the "/e" command theory seeing that coh/cov has been using "/e" commands for emotes for as long as ive been playing.

/e is for the people who will play AOC on the 360 with a keyboard and people without it will use the emote list I guess is what they were trying to say.......... But EQ2 has the same thing a /e and  a list but its not on a console.

Im so glad I didnt waste my money on this game. I was really excited about it at first but then decided to wait a bit and see if I wanted to buy it after launch cuz Ive had bad esperiences with pre ordering.  Ended up this is not the game I was looking for.

Originally posted by Goldknyght

Im a amazed at how much time people are willing to invest on trashing this game. Its like your angry because your experiance was the ultimate and if you are feeling down you need to spread your anger. If the game sucks I dont need you to let me know about it, I would of already found out for myself. The fact is this daily rant on how bad AoC is comical. Get lives people or invest your time in helping the community rather then tear it down. AoC is the new world and accept it or move on.

cuz its a free world (for the most part) an we are allowed to voice our pissed off opinions. if i play a game, use a product, or anything else and its not what its supposed to be (broke, or just down right not worth the money i paid) yeah *IM* going to say something. im not going to leave it up to someone else to voice my opinion for me who may or may not get it right. if no one said anything it would look like the games/other products have nothing wrong with them. if only 5 people say something about a game.. then it just seems like nothing is really wrong with it. if 50,000 people say something.. yeah then its probably got something wrong with it. im a father and lets say if i buy my son a toy and he chokes to death on it when it was suposed to be a safe product your damn right im going to say something to the company who made it, the community, news, whatever. aoc and games may not be life or death situations but the principle is the same, nothing gets changed for the better if everyone just sits quietly saying nothing. by the way im sure we would have less pissed off posts here if FC wasnt CENCORING its players on aoc fourms. but thats another pissed off arguement entirely.

Originally posted by Gameloading

I'm sorry, but I don't see any proof at all.

Age of Conan is not build for the Xbox, it's build for the PC and dumbed down for the Xbox360 later on in the form of a port. If Age of Conan was build with the 360 in mind it would

- Be released prior or simultaneously with the PC version

- The client would be much, much smaller.Age of Conan is 30gb, the vast majority of Xbox360 owners have a 20gb hard drive.

Actually the game was designed from the ground up for Xbox.  Hence the reason for the so called revolutionary combat....it's simply a way for Xbox users to interface with an MMO combat system without the need for as many buttons as a keyboard - biggest lie in MMO history.

Also the PC version was dumbed down for Xbox from the start not later, allowing for a simple port.

Of note, I don't blame Funcom for anything beyond ignoring a few class bugs. I expected more from the way they'd spoken about the state of the game up to launch, but it's not really suprising that it's in the state it is in or that it will take so long to feature-complete it.

After all, every other MMO company has taken us for a ride, and Funcom don't exactly had the pedigree of producing quality at launch.

Life sucks, get over it.

i am sooo tired of people blaming cross platforming for games being terrible. So what this game was developed for both PC and 360. BIG DEAL. Did everyone forget that one of the most popular and longest lasting MMOs was developed for PC and PS2 (FFXI anyone?) later they even added 360 to that list. that game has always run great, and while it may not be a graphical marvel anymore, its still a good looking game. Maybe its just because Square knows what they are doing. I haven't played Vanguard, dont plan on playing, but the OP needs to find a different reason for its woes. FFXI proves to us that the cross-platforming thing isn't it.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by neya

So yes you may be a fan, yes you may hate the game.  The truth is; your beta testing a game so that it can launch to Xbox.

 

 

Here are the facts.  Get used to it, the lure of easy money has a very strong appeal.  Making an MMORPG that is popular cross-platform is the dream of every Game development house out there today, (yes even Blizzard) and companies will continue to experiment to try and pull it off.

Trouble with experiments is there always are a lot more failures than successes.

 

 

So far there has only been one cross platform MMO...FFXI. It was highly successful and continues to be.

AoC isn't cross platform yet.

AoC is a victim of poor design, surprise - Funcom. Honestly, what did you expect? The last MMO these guys launched made Vanguard look polished and bugfree

Originally posted by quaiky

First if you did really read the valve document then you would have found out that the memory troubles are usually happening on the console in the cross platform developement. for a pc you can easily set a min requirement of 1 gb ram, and recommended  of 2gb, but on a console you only have limited ram with no way of upgrade (512 mb combined system&gfx ram for xbox 360). also if pc runs out of ram the os starts swapping data from ram to harddisk so the pc doesn't crash, while a console will just crash.

Yes on pc's aoc still crash with out of memory error, but mostly thats happening on stadard 32bit windows, where windows limits every program to utilise a maximum of 2gb ram, you can change that with a bootoption to allow 3gb per program too.

Now the big question why is the game using more than 2gb ram on systems where it should not be allowed to use more than that? The answer is most likely a memory leak, they exist in every bigger application/game with dynamic memory management especially when the programm is new, with time most of them will get fixed but completely removing all memory leaks from a big software is nearly impossible.

 

why are instancing and zoning needed?

First Zoning and Instancing are different things (these things get mixed up too often here and on other forums) that often apear together, but could also be used without each other.

Zoning is simply splitting the world in small parts to reduce resource needs by only having to keep track of the current zone the character is in. Basically nearly every mmo is zoned, only some try to hide it like wow where the game loads the next zone in the background when you get close to the zoneborder. Vanguard works the same way as wow but there it did not work out as smooth as in wow cause the amount of data to be loaded is bigger so the background load is not finishing in time usually and gameplay usually stops short during the loading. Wow also used some other tricks like the small passages between the zones that don't let you see far ahead usually so that you don't notice that you cannot see whats hapening in the next zone to give you the illusion of a seemless world.

Instancing is allowing the game to duplicate zones for individual players/groups or also in case that a zone gets overfilled. nearly every mmo today uses instancing for special story instances/instanced group dungeons/raid instances. For the singleplayer/group ones it is usually used for storytelling aspects, in raiddungeons it is usually used to allow all players access to the raids based on special timescales (to limit the influx of the good raiditems without allowing some guilds to permacamp & get a lock on some mobs).

Also there is the additional way of instancing that aoc & Eq2 use to balance load, once a zone has too many players in it it will create a identical copy and split up people between these.  This gives the developers the advantage that they betetr can controll how many playercharacters are in a zone at same time and so they can balance as an example polygon count of that zone based on that number, additionally a limited number of players in each zone also allows to balance respawn timers around that number, and avoid to have to use dynamic spawn timers based on actual number of players in the zone.

So in my opinnion zoning is mostly negative if its not done in background (but its nearly impossible to avoid it without limiting the graphics) while on the other side i see both positive and negative sides of instancing. (and i think only very few players would really want a mmo completely without instanced dungons /raids, while the opinnions on the open world instancing are more negative).

Just as final summary even without the xbox version coming out the devs would not have had a chance at creating aoc with same graphics without zoning & instancing. If they had decided not to use these techniques the characters would have been a lot less detailed, and the zones probably too.

Let it be quaiky, neya is a  ...
 

I think I understand what you're trying to suggest...

AoC is only optimized for the one setup, while things like the "Low" settings aren't tweaked, because they don't care; the only audience that matters is the Xbox 360 crowd? Is that about right?

It's an interesting hypothesis, but I don't think I've seen enough proof. You'd need a hard-line coder to come in, dissect the coding of the game, and give a statement on it... which I don't see happening any time soon.

Also, there have been immensely successful cross-platform titles before. Final Fantasy 11 was one of my favorite MMORPG's ever, and it originated on the PS2, and worked it's way to PC. At no point did I eve felt that SE didn't want me playing their game either.

Originally posted by neya

or perhaps we as PC gamers need to start being more reserved when it comes to purchasing just launched titles.

I think that is indeed a key solution. I don't even buy most single player games before the first round of patches is released. Gives you time to read the reviews and to watch the price drop. Of course if everyone waited, there would be no reviews or patches in the first place. But hey, let's not worry about that just yet ;)

Can we stop blaming consoles for the crappy design of games? .. Fact is that both PS3 and Xbox 360 are a powerful pieces of hardware, and while they are not on par with the top of the crop PCs, they are way  ahead the usual mid-range gamind desktop. It is a hardware capable of running stuff better than many PCs out there. They also have 100+ gig hard drives and a plethora of control hardware outside the gamepad.

I am both PC and console player, and I can say that some of the control solutions of the consoles are way ahead because of lack of available keys, they are forced to develop context commands and key combinations and alot of them are very intuitive and many times let you be more involved with the game and less with the controls.  Think of it this way - whenever they think of the new thing for you to do on PC, they throw in more keys (just look how the AOC combat system evolved - it was actually way more console-friendly in the initial stage than it is after the changes about a year ago). Whenever the console programes think of more things for you to do, they have to find a way to squeeze it in on the very limited number of gamepad keys. That leads to them having to figure out alternative approaches instead of just throwing in more keys and thus ends up being more innovative.

Mouse is way more accurate though.

AOC has some crappy mechanics because they made some stupid design decisions, and also were unable to optimise alot of things, it is not the console problem.

Originally posted by Moodah

Can we stop blaming consoles for the crappy design of games? .. Fact is that both PS3 and Xbox 360 are a powerful pieces of hardware, and while they are not on par with the top of the crop PCs, they are way  ahead the usual mid-range gamind desktop. It is a hardware capable of running stuff better than many PCs out there. They also have 100+ gig hard drives and a plethora of control hardware outside the gamepad.

I am both PC and console player, and I can say that some of the control solutions of the consoles are way ahead because of lack of available keys, they are forced to develop context commands and key combinations and alot of them are very intuitive and many times let you be more involved with the game and less with the controls.  Think of it this way - whenever they think of the new thing for you to do on PC, they throw in more keys (just look how the AOC combat system evolved - it was actually way more console-friendly in the initial stage than it is after the changes about a year ago). Whenever the console programes think of more things for you to do, they have to find a way to squeeze it in on the very limited number of gamepad keys. That leads to them having to figure out alternative approaches instead of just throwing in more keys and thus ends up being more innovative.

Mouse is way more accurate though.

AOC has some crappy mechanics because they made some stupid design decisions, and also were unable to optimise alot of things, it is not the console problem.

The problem is when they make cross-platform games, its usually dumbed down for the PC because of the limitations of the console. If it was developed just on the PC it would most likely be better, but it won't make them as much money.  Remember the sequal to Deus Ex ? Garbage because it was cross platfomed with the X-Box. Also whats stopping you plugging a USB keyboard in your console, thats what I do.

Originally posted by Nihilx

Originally posted by neya

or perhaps we as PC gamers need to start being more reserved when it comes to purchasing just launched titles.

 

I think that is indeed a key solution. I don't even buy most single player games before the first round of patches is released. Gives you time to read the reviews and to watch the price drop. Of course if everyone waited, there would be no reviews or patches in the first place. But hey, let's not worry about that just yet ;)

Actually, I think this would ultimately just force developers to hold off releasing games until they were significantly more complete and bug-free than the latest round of MMORPG releases have been.  Better for everyone actually.

Originally posted by spinach8puff

While the cross-platforming thing does make some sense it really doesn't matter at this point. Just look at the AoC forums on here and their main site. Most people have already figured out that the game as a whole was released too early and for the most part is a big let down under its current status. Give it 6 months to a year and all the gripes you and other people have will hopefully be taken care of.

I'm not sure why people keep making new threads on here about all of the problems with AoC. It's been a month since the game was first released. The vast majority of problems were figured out in the first two weeks. Stop kicking a dead horse.

Agree but 6 months to a year most of us will be looking forward to other games if not playing other games by then. First impressions mean everything.

Originally posted by Gameloading

I'm sorry, but I don't see any proof at all.

Age of Conan is not build for the Xbox, it's build for the PC and dumbed down for the Xbox360 later on in the form of a port. If Age of Conan was build with the 360 in mind it would

- Be released prior or simultaneously with the PC version

- The client would be much, much smaller.Age of Conan is 30gb, the vast majority of Xbox360 owners have a 20gb hard drive.

Exacly

There is one more details.

The idea AoC has been tested in PCs for the 360 is pure non sense.

No one would test a game for a closed system as the 360 using  an open system like a PC.

A console game doesnt need to ( and will not ) be testet in a system with a myriad of variations...

...