Age of Conan

I just finished the level 30 destiny quest on my main and decided to post on here with my thoughts so far on the game.

AoC is by no means perfect, but funcom clearly acknowledges this. Problems for me so far are incredibly minor and include some poor collision detection with terrain, charge flat not working, a combo system that's yet to be fleshed out, a complete lack of tradeskills and crafting, and some small PvP issues. Funcom has proposed to fix the PvP, crafting, and continue adding bug fixes at least twice weekly. And how are they doing? Some people on the forums criticize the hell out of funcom for "releasing an incomplete game" or "not fixing ____ right and right away." I tend to ignore these posts, and personally feel that funcom has done a phenomenal job combing the suggestion forum and knowing exactly what problems players have with the game, as well as fixing them post haste. Considering that there are still bugged mobs and instances in WoW (which is about 5 years old), I think that funcom's responses so far have been incredible.

AoC recently had it's first in-game trial of siege warfare, which is apparently riddled with bugs. funcom quickly posted on the forums that is a priori and will be fixed as such.

More to the point, AoC is by far the most engaging, immersive, and fun MMORPG that I've played in some time. Combat, while not spectacular, keeps you on your toes while fighting, quests are fun and fair, loot is good, graphics are great, music and atmosphere is incredible, the community is mostly good (again, compared to WoW it's more than a fair contender).

I can't stress enough the amount of dedication to the players that I've seen from the Funcom staff. For once I feel like the devs really want to make the game good, and are willing to listen to those who post reasonable suggestions which gain support in the forums from reasonable people.

My only major gripe is that there's a post in suggestions (on AoC's forums) about an alternate combo system that would really enhance the game that has gone all but unseen by the devs from the look of it. It has over 500 posts and still hasn't been stickied. Hopefully the devs aren't ignoring it and they will retain their commitment to making the game greater than it already is.

You've actually seen a dev?  One of the biggest complaints is the lack of communication from Funcom.

Well maybe not one of the biggest, more like one of the hundreds and hundreds of complaints.

It's like the Chinese Water Torture Test, it's not the first bug that gets you. It's not even the 50th bug that gets you.  But sooner than later one of the bugs is going to make you quit.

You actually played the game?

And yes, the devs post on the forums via the public relations guy (and in person sometimes) all the time. People who complain about the lack of response from Funcom devs are really trolling. Either that, or they expect the devs to pay complete and utter attention to every single utterance in the game and on the forums. They expect way too much. Funcom is doing a great job rolling out patches which respond to known issues and improve the game.

Sooner or later nearly all of the bugs will be fixed. If we didn't expect the game to be buggy at launch, we should at least be understanding.

Originally posted by theguru22

You actually played the game?

And yes, the devs post on the forums via the public relations guy (and in person sometimes) all the time. People who complain about the lack of response from Funcom devs are really trolling. Either that, or they expect the devs to pay complete and utter attention to every single utterance in the game and on the forums. They expect way too much. Funcom is doing a great job rolling out patches which respond to known issues and improve the game.

Sooner or later nearly all of the bugs will be fixed. If we didn't expect the game to be buggy at launch, we should at least be understanding.

next time i'll put copies of official fora. Everyone will see and judge who can be trusted.

Originally posted by theguru22

I just finished the level 30 destiny quest on my main and decided to post on here with my thoughts so far on the game.

AoC is by no means perfect, but funcom clearly acknowledges this. Problems for me so far are incredibly minor and include some poor collision detection with terrain, charge flat not working, a combo system that's yet to be fleshed out, a complete lack of tradeskills and crafting, and some small PvP issues. Funcom has proposed to fix the PvP, crafting, and continue adding bug fixes at least twice weekly. And how are they doing? Some people on the forums criticize the hell out of funcom for "releasing an incomplete game" or "not fixing ____ right and right away." I tend to ignore these posts, and personally feel that funcom has done a phenomenal job combing the suggestion forum and knowing exactly what problems players have with the game, as well as fixing them post haste. Considering that there are still bugged mobs and instances in WoW (which is about 5 years old), I think that funcom's responses so far have been incredible.

AoC recently had it's first in-game trial of siege warfare, which is apparently riddled with bugs. funcom quickly posted on the forums that is a priori and will be fixed as such.

More to the point, AoC is by far the most engaging, immersive, and fun MMORPG that I've played in some time. Combat, while not spectacular, keeps you on your toes while fighting, quests are fun and fair, loot is good, graphics are great, music and atmosphere is incredible, the community is mostly good (again, compared to WoW it's more than a fair contender).

I can't stress enough the amount of dedication to the players that I've seen from the Funcom staff. For once I feel like the devs really want to make the game good, and are willing to listen to those who post reasonable suggestions which gain support in the forums from reasonable people.

My only major gripe is that there's a post in suggestions (on AoC's forums) about an alternate combo system that would really enhance the game that has gone all but unseen by the devs from the look of it. It has over 500 posts and still hasn't been stickied. Hopefully the devs aren't ignoring it and they will retain their commitment to making the game greater than it already is.

When you buy a car..do you go back to the store 2 times a week to buy the rest of the components missing? weel, tyres, seats, stereo etc? no...

You might go to the store 1 time a month to buy better components, better tyres, seat coverts, better stereo, put new headlights etc..

Age of conan is so early beta that needs 2 patches a week..and still is missing promissed features..., god...in the day i bought the game i had to install a 800 mega patch...

Without talking of game size and instancing, and huge amount of linear play...the game is not ready to be sold to the public...but still people spend money on a early beta game?

You are saying to all mmo devs in the world..release beta games into the market..because we pay you to test them for a whole year..

It surprises me how out of date most of the people slamming on AoC are becoming.  Funcom has staff regularly on their forums addressing issues.  As soon as something happens Funcom addresses it.  They are slammed by petitions right now because of people petitioning the dumbest crap you can imagine, but the one time I filed a petition to talk to them about spawn camping a GM showed up in about 14 minutes.  I thought he was a boss so I ran from him and he made fun of me.  He was an awesome guy. 

ALL MMO's release with stuff unfinished and unpolished.  This is common knowledge, and a ton of people wait to play thim until 1-3 months after release.  My best friend won't even play an MMO until 6 months after release because he wants the economy and bugs to become stable.  That's fine if you want to complain about it, but come on...  Just don't play for a few months.  The bugs get fixed faster when it's released anyway, and the game gets more balanced so it's like a win win situation.  Instead of waiting 6 months for the polish and fixes for a better release you can wait 3 while we who actually like the game help to flesh it out. 

here lets take a look at their forums and decide.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=93936

Or how about a player review.  This was taken directly from the AoC Forums.

All right. My turn. As my 30-day "trial" period comes to a close, as with many players, the time to decide whether to subscribe for the first $15 month rapidly approaches, and I'm sure Funcom is waiting anxiously for that first round of subscriptions to charge through, so I feel this thread is important to them. That's why I'm writing this now.

Many of us are now evaluating the game at a deeper level, deciding on the things that all gamers consider when they pay a monthly fee for a new game, consciously or not: if we want to make a commitment to the endgame, figuring out whether the game is a good financial investment, and calculating if certain key improvements will come within that first paid month. I think it's safe to say that we've given the game an honest chance at this point to judge properly whether AoC is worthy of the additional investment. For me, it is not, and I'll give you my reasons why.

I think a recent and disturbing trend in both games and film is to cater to every possible customer, with too much emphasis on incredibly fast action and expensive eye candy. I think this sums up AoC rather nicely, and as it has been testified to on this board, many people enjoy this (and that's why this type of art perpetuates). However, I think this sort of creation comes at too huge a cost. For films, the cost is often plot, characterization, and even acting. For AoC, the cost is poor design fundamentals, usability, and quality assurance. There is a good game somewhere in the history of AoC design, but it was picked apart and diluted by some unknown force, which I can only assume comes in the form of a greedy publisher, poor leadership and vision, or poor experience with titles from the last two decades of video games, the playing of which could have better prepared the design team for what mistakes not to repeat.

Obviously, World of Warcraft is a behemoth of a game that interferes with everything else in the industry, whether it be aspects of its gameplay or its successful business model, all of which its followers and competitiors either try too hard to emulate, or try too hard to avoid. As with everything, balance is key. Funcom and future MMO developers owe it to themselves to find the fundamentals that make games like WoW so successful, and then build from those and create something special.

Funcom's primary offense in this regard is not learning from WoW's incredibly good user interface system. AoC's UI is clunky, confusing at times, and especially ugly. It's really rough to have to say that a UI killed my game experience, but in this case I think it may very well have. To put this in perspective, this is despite wonderful 3D graphics that I spend much more time looking at in the course of a gaming session. I refuse to exaggerate any points made in this review, despite my strong feelings on this particular point, but this is the honest truth. The inventory/bag system and presentation is archaic and plain, which is in stark contrast to the rest of the screen. The item icons are really strange and primitive, and the spell icons are too busy and indistinct (many are not recognizable at a glance). There is a gross lack of on-screen buttons by level 20 for all of the skills and spells you want to try out, and no way to add more to the screen without resorting to potentially unstable UI mods.

De-centralizing the interface to either side of the screen was probably a bad idea, as it dilutes information and can be confusing. Many people didn't even know there was a "Feat Points Available" text box in the middle of the screen when looking at the feats interface. While this may have seemed like a cool and different (read: innovative) way to arrange the menus and info screens, it really suffers in more important areas like practicality, communicating important information efficiently, and being easy to use. Interfacing with merchants and traders is also poorly designed. While I like the way the quests appear on the minimap, the quest menu itself is also lacking a certain...accuracy. Again, splitting the information to either side of the screen makes information harder to process, and was a bad idea overall.

On top of this, the social aspects of the UI (chat, guild, friends, searching for players and groups) are all equally as bad and hard to use and customize. My first experience with the Friends List was adding a friend whose info didn't ever update as he leveled up or went on and offline. Usability, practicality, efficiency. A good UI is supposed to convey information fast and accurately, and AoC's fails to do this on just about every possible level. Even the damage numbers popping up over my target's head were tiny and hard to read, and lacked contrast even at high resolutions.

I think AoC didn't benefit from the kind of early reviews it needed: bad ones. Especially internal ones. I'm particularly frustrated with the game reviews I read early on that advertised AoC as a groundbreaking, intuitive, and fun game to play without also pointing out its obvious flaws. AoC has elements that few early reviews mentioned at any length, for example, the fact that the game feels about 60% complete, and that many obvious elements of the game were missing or broken at release. Game critics (and internal testers, and beta testers) owe us (and Funcom) that much. The result is a game that sells rather well based on hype and A-list game review sites, but ends up disappointing a great many gamers.

AoC has two things that I feel are truly special: its graphics, and its combo system. The graphics don't need any detailed comment except that I think, with the exception of character models and armor variety, it is A+ for an MMO.

The combo system is definitely a good thing. It's a thing you can build an entire combat system around, perfect it, and build into a great setting. That said, I think it missed the mark. Combos are slow and lethargic (as is the rest of the combat system, and input-game reaction time) and only available to melee classes. I think a better approach would've been to make the combo system a central design, and build all twelve character classes around it. Instead, we have melee classes with the interesting (and occasionally strategic) arrow combos and then caster classes that are every bit as monotonous as a WoW caster in that you press one button to cast a spell. Combos could've been a universal feature. Why only give the innovation to 60% of the choices a player can make, and not 100%?

I also have to tell you that I played a necromancer for 32 levels and had to stop at one point and think really hard about what the designers must've been thinking when certain aspects of the class were put into writing, or into numbers. Before the last couple of patches (which includes the last five years of design, all private and public testing), it was really mind-boggling how rather arbitrary the class felt as I continued to level up. I had several spells for which a new rank was double the mana but increased by a fractional amount of damage. I can only imagine what the spreadsheet for necromancer spell ranks, their effects, and their mana costs looked like in the design room. There is a basic QA process that had to have gone on over those numbers at some point, and it seems to have been overlooked until after release when the paying players reported it back to you. On top of this there were nonfunctional or poorly designed feats (not unique to the necromancer by any means). In other words, glaring errors are inexcusable, considering the resources at your disposal in making a game like this, and while this doesn't necessarily impact my desire to play the game in the future, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth for the amount of respect you have for your customers, and the integrity of your design team.

In conclusion, while the game is not finished enough to warrant my monthly subscription, it does warrant watching future patch notes and forums for the time when the game gets closer to that polished gem the developers want it to be. It would suck to be stuck with a $50 paperweight here on my desk... so I hope that $50 I paid up front will allow the game to develop to where I can get my money's worth later on. I just can't help but thinking how many mistakes and faux pas could have been avoided entirely, especially considering the amount of man-hours and money that went into this project. It's clear to me that a great deal of effort went into making this the most visually attractive MMO on the market, and in that regard (not excusing the ugly UI), Funcom succeeded.

So here are the "what ifs": What if Funcom had learned more from the mistakes, and also the successes, of past MMOs? What if Funcom had spent more resources on quality assurance and internal testing?

I'll keep my eyes on AoC in the coming months and see what they can muster in terms of balancing classes, fixing bugs, overhauling the UI, and adding more endgame and PvP content. I imagine as they near the Xbox release date, many things will be different, and I'll come back to re-evaluate. Unfortunately, though, this is not a game I can motivate myself to continue paying to play into July.

Out of 10:

Visual: 9
Audio: 9
Gameplay: 7
Usability: 3

Polish: 3
Community: 7
Tech Support: 5

AoC as an art (graphics, music, interface, story, setting): 7
AoC as a design (fundamentals, philosophy, gameplay, content): 3

Funcom QA effort pre-release: 3
Funcom QA effort post-release: 9 (I can't help but think this is related directly to available budget.)

Overall: A solid 5, with an easy 7 or 8 in the coming months as the game continues its development.