Age of Conan Game Director Craig Morrison has posted a letter to the community detailing upcoming changes to the game, specifically the items and statistics update and its implications.

It’s that time again for a little peek into what’s coming up for Age of Conan. As mentioned last time the major part of this Director’s Letter will focus on providing a first look at the details on the upcoming items and statistics update that will come in the next major update. With update 1.04 now live and players getting to enjoy the new content it’s the perfect time to kick-off the process of introducing the next major update.

Before I dive into RPG system changes though, a couple of things to note. We are preparing a lot of information for when the update is ready for the public test servers. This letter couldn’t possibly cover everything, and it won’t. The new gem system for example is an article all on its own, as are the balance changes that will be included in the update for every class. So those things I won’t be covering in detail in this letter, but we will be releasing detailed information over the course of the testing. So rest assured further information overload is coming! Consider this letter as an appetizer to the process that is ahead of us.

Read more about Age of Conan's Items and Statistics Update.

I personally feel this is a shame, i enjoyed the PvP of this game not being decided by gear and stats, but some people just couldn't drop their conditioning. *sigh*

This seems like a good compromise, and looks to address some long standing issues people had. As long as they keep that "Diablo" feel of Pve combat (speed and amounts of mobs, something else that threw people off that are used to fighting one mob for 5 minutes ) and keep the PvP still in the hands of the player, and not arbitrary stats and escalation. Should be a fine game.

Wow its about time.  The reason I left this game to go back to LotrO is because there is a simply nothing to do in the game.  Gear in the game is absolutely worthless, so what does that mean?

Crafting is completely the biggest joke in the game,  why would u craft armors and weapons or jewelry or gems if they dont do anything? 

The only crafting that seems to have meaning because it does not pertain to gear is Archetects who build guild cities,  but guess what guys, guild cities do nothing at all, they are deserted waste lands,  the only function they serve are a meeting point for a raid or seige.  You can use Tarantia for that.

Hunting for sets of armor is fun the first set you get, mainly because the dungeons and instances are so well made and awesome.  But once you get that first set of armor in SOBS after grinding it out for 3 days (50 runs),  you say, "this has not improved my grind ability or anything at all?" 

Theres also the stupid skill systems,  theres a tab where u get skill points and get to lvl things up like stealth, run speed, regen rates, endurance, climbing, ect. each only get a 1% increase every 100 points. u get about 20-30 per lvl.  More then half of these skills are completely broken and not effective.  My stealth was maxxed out do 600 points and at lvl 60 a lvl 20 or even lower mob can spot me from far away.  It was completely bogus in terms of pve.  Maybe it only works in pvp? I am not sure but thats just one skill,  how about climbing?  how about perception?  There many more i cant think of because i didnt even use them they were so ridiculous. The ones i stated i actually lvled up and tried out.

With these broken systems and nothing to do but quest and quest and the occasional pvp minigames (b4 merges)  I also world pvp'd on cimmeria but that was even turned off when i joined a honourable guild.  THERES NOTHING TO DO. ITS BORING AND REPETITIVE.  Im still pissed off i bought a dx10 machine and it doesnt run in dx10 yet.  The only thing that cept me coming back on was because i owned the PvP minigames so bad and dont get me wrong, the combat is addictive and feels amazing to Fatalitie someone and chop the players head off.  But I feel everything in MMO's these days gets repetitive... Thank you LotrO for fishing and meaningfull very long time consuming crafting that is fun and unique. 

All I can say is Great job for the new Directer.  He is really trying to save the game and he knows where to focus.

I wish the team over at Fun Com good luck on fixing AoC as the game still needs some serious work.

Needed this badly, the gems got nerfed last fall and they have been worthless since, it will be nice to finally have a use for that crafting ability again. Also I have thought the gear in the game needed to have some more affect on the players stats more than it did. The way it was, there really wasnt any reason to get better gear, it didn't make that much of a difference, now there is a reason. This will undoubtably bring the argument that a player with less skill and better gear will win the fight everytime. I doubt they will go that far, but this will be better. The gear should make a difference, perhaps not the difference in a fight, but the player with better equipment should have an advantage.

Man i really feel sorry for this game,it took the dev team too long to get it right.I knew from the beginning,it did not have enough for me to play it.After many months later,i finally tried it and it is not a bad game now.IMO is it still could be taken a lot further and this new update is a good choice and a smart choice,but also IMO it is too late to save the game.

I hope other games and the people that worked on this game have learned by their mistakes,so that future games get released properly and complete.Although there are many gamers, my self included that prefer content over an item centric game, anyone with common sense ,knows the majority are item centric players.Heck i see players paying ridiculous amounts of game currency for just minor things or that +1 item that is barely better than the non +1,no questions players are driven by numbers and items.

AOC went so far in the opposite direction it caught even my eye.I remember getting items that had stats like .01 or .02 i was like wtf ,is this a joke.

I also believe Raiding is a joke,it is not raiding that drives players it is the items/rewards.You could make an entirely different game as AOC intended with good rewards,while also staying away from the very superficial approach witch is Raiding.If you need to worry about end game,then the rest of your game failed,or you designed the game,so players ONLY worry about end game.

There is still so many grey areas in developement,that developers can do different and still achieve a fanbase,the most important are items/stats/customization .These  ARE the three main worries Devs should be looking at ,NOT PVP ..NOT RAIDING.Devs need to quit looking at marketing ideas,quit listening to clueless players and look at what really drives the games.It is not cheap graphics ,it is not great graphics,it is not great quests nor bad quests,it is not solo play,it is not group play[albeit that should be the reason you play mmo's]...again it is items/stats/customization.

This is all good news and Sillirrion is doing a great job

atm i am lvl 17 and i like the game so far

 The game is broing to me. It doesn't give me exacly what I want. I am on level 43 trying to make it fun but it just gets more boring, so I finally just deicded to quit. I am glad you like it though, lots of people do, I guess it's just not my style.

I think this sounds pretty fair and good. I just hope they don't take it to far in terms of what you need to keep up with in your continuing quest to stay "up to date". I know for me from 20 on I wore various items all around my level for the most part but I mixed and matched things for looks as well. So different slots of my character weren't always filled with the best I might have had simply because I liked the way my character looked with this item or that.

I guess I don't want this update to go to the point where I can't do this anymore. I want to be effective of course soloing and grouping but, for me at least, it is just as important to like the way my character looks. I mean isn't that the other reason people in these games (whatever the genre) want "stuff"? Not just for stats.

I don't need uber... but I do need some flexibility.
 

EDIT: I have been pleased with the way this guy is running the show. I think he is on the right track.

This is what happens when you concentrate on graphics rather than substance.

Pretty textures do not a good game make.

Leveling right now and this game is my best MMO experience so fare. I give it a pretty good score up there in fact. Also content is really up now after patch 1.04. Good stuff.

 hmm

i like these changes and i do think craig does an excelent job but umhhh...

as a hardliner i have to ask

why is this called the new RPG System ?????

do roleplayers have to be told now from game directors that RPG stands for "a list of statistics you char has" instead of ROLE PLAYING ??

I enjoyed the leveling in this game far more than any other MMO I've played, they really made it a lot of fun. I quit once I started getting close to the end of the content though but have decided to pick it up again.

I know they've added new content and I'm excited, I really liked the game... I just wish it was finished when they released it because it might have been sucessful if they had.

Oh no.

Here we go down the phawlewt road again. Quite why Craig Morrison sees this new 'rpg' system as an improvement is baffling. Why not go skill based like Darkfall, surely this is the way 'forward' in MMOs.

Soon, no doubt, my Barbarian will be sporting huge glowing shoulderpads.

Originally posted by craynlon

 hmm

 

i like these changes and i do think craig does an excelent job but umhhh...

as a hardliner i have to ask

why is this called the new RPG System ?????

do roleplayers have to be told now from game directors that RPG stands for "a list of statistics you char has" instead of ROLE PLAYING ??

RPG stands for RolePlaying Game. You are correct. But the term RPG is used ALSO for the whole system.

The RPG system is the stats, atrributes, etc. 

The RPG system is basically your whole character progression system. Be it levels with all it's attributes in a level based MMO or Skillpoints and all it's attributes in a more Sandbox like MMO.

Originally posted by Darkjinxter

Soon, no doubt, my Barbarian will be sporting huge glowing shoulderpads.

Since when does better and logical attrubutes change the appearance of your armor and items? 

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by Darkjinxter

Soon, no doubt, my Barbarian will be sporting huge glowing shoulderpads.

 

Since when does better and logical attrubutes change the appearance of your armor and items? 

Since soon.
I follows that now Mr. Morrison is advocating an 'RPG' system based around loot stats that he will then move on to making the appearance of the uber loot obvious to those around the proud bearer of said loot.
Shiny, glowy, shoulderpads will be born in AoC.....we'll be saying WOOT.

Fiery, icy, glowy swords and axes will swish in the night.

If that doesn't happen I'll eat my tasset.

I just quit the game again after retrying it for 3 days.   Yep took only 3 days to quit this game again.  Why ?  There is NO loot in that game.   What i like in a MMO is that with each kill to have a chance to get something useful, something you can use to upgrade your character.

In this game you get nothing but crap, useless items 99.9999% of the time.   Itemization is also fubar, you get new gears doing quests but the stats boost on them is so ridiculous, it's not noticeable.   Yeah i got a new piece of gear boosting a stats by 0.05%  I'M UBER NOW....

Originally posted by Aguitha

I just quit the game again after retrying it for 3 days.   Yep took only 3 days to quit this game again.  Why ?  There is NO loot in that game.   What i like in a MMO is that with each kill to have a chance to get something useful, something you can use to upgrade your character.

In this game you get nothing but crap, useless items 99.9999% of the time.   Itemization is also fubar, you get new gears doing quests but the stats boost on them is so ridiculous, it's not noticeable.   Yeah i got a new piece of gear boosting a stats by 0.05%  I'M UBER NOW....

Ahh ...can you read Aguitha? or did you just skip  the entire article so you could post something negative?

Exactly, all people do is post negative crap around here. Does anyone ever notice that on the main page? All the threads are just negative, negative, negative. One new game after another is ripped apart on this website.

whaaaa ?

So the "item" fix is actually adding trizillion new stats to the old stats that were in the game before ?   Seriously?  --- And they are getting payed for 3 months doing this ? .... Rofl...

Hmmm - lets seee... "Its to much effort to change all the items and to rethink the system.  lets see... put mana regen under this and that and then... int under mana regen and stamina and... Hmm....   YES this looks great"  I post it now to the comunity and say we have been hard at work changing the items and stats.

Seriously... There is no hope ...  120 PPL have been working on this for the past month ?  Who are you trying to fool? This is pathetic...

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

Exactly, all people do is post negative crap around here. Does anyone ever notice that on the main page? All the threads are just negative, negative, negative. One new game after another is ripped apart on this website.

Bad games are ripped apart yes... Dont blame the posters for posting about the state of the new MMORPGs that have been reased in the past 8 months...  They deserve every part of the negative crap.  

MMORPG games are no longer created for just 100 nerds that have no life.  PPL actually expect these games to deliver now.  Quite abit of the new MMOs out have not in ANY way been ready for release but have instead been focusing on ripping ppl off with pre-order deals without actually showing their game. 

Maybe its time that the MMO genre finds new ways to release their games.   Like ... Free zones to start with to allow ppl to test - then you buy the FINISHED PRODUCT in the box or download it.  ATM this current system is dmging the entire genre with crappy releases. 

As much as I hate complaining I think people have a right to complain about this game. I really like it, but it was pretty bad when it first got released. I mean really, getting killed by exploiters and glitches is just annoying. So yeah, those of us who bought the game on release day didn't get our money's worth.

However I really hate people who just repeat themselves and other's over and over again. If you have nothing novel to say just keep your mouth shut. Oh, and if you have an observation that is rediculous same thing... I'm looking at you Frobner. Have you even been reading about what they've done recently?

The game was a mess and some people are still bitter about that which is understandable, but look at the alternatives and tell me they're better with a straight face. WoW? Too easy, very boring. WAR? If that's your thing alright, but I don't think it's better. LoTRO? Oh yay! WoW in Tolkien's world! Too easy again. Darkfall... UGH!

MMO's are in a bad situation, I find this game to be fun where other's bore me but I'm still not paying for an unfinished product. If I don't see enough I like during my 30 days back I'm quitting again.

    As I know,this is a good game,I like it so much.