Age of Conan's Update 5 has been highly anticipated by players, bringing with it, amongst other things, important changes to the item and statistics systems. In this internal Q&A developer Jarle Snertingdalen reveals details on the update.

Question:

How will the items and statistics changes make a difference for the average player?

Jarle Snertingdalen:

First of all I truly believe that players will be a lot more excited about getting new items and building their character with a combination of items and feats. The new set of statistics is more interesting to follow and improve on.

The items and the characteristics GUI will make more sense to the average player than they do on live at the moment. We have invested a lot of time to make the statistics and the systems more transparent and easier to understand for the user. There is a lot more information available to the player in update 5, and all the information is well explained.

Read Exclusive Internal Update 5 Q&A

Keep the Good work GUYS!!!

AoC Rlz.

I'm thinking of giving Update 5 a go once it goes live, if it lives up to my expectations I may have to start playing it on a regular basis again.

Yeah, I have not played AoC since September.  I'm very tempted to renew my sub.

 Going back after 1.05 launches is pointless. 

All this item system revamp has done is:

Make PvE harder since a huge portion of mechanics have changed.

Taunt is on a 90 second timer

Hit / Miss system is in with the best raiding gear only giving +5% to hit

Everything has been consolidated to central stats. No more stamina regen stats, etc.

This new system has not changed how badly one sided PvP is between casters and melee.

Several feats have been nerfed and/or changed making strong classes stronger and weaker classes more weak.

MItigation from spell damage is non-existant on all but the highest rank of PvP gear.

Gem slots in equipment have been reduced from 3 down to 2 or even 1 slot. Funcom think this is balance.

nerfed health regeneration in general trees means casters need fewer spells to kill melee.

This patch has done nothing to reduce the amount of cheating and hacking that goes on in this game.

AoCBuddy users are everywhere.

People wait by popular quest-giver NPC's, so once someone engages that NPC they attack that someone; bugging (locking) them into the conversation with no way to get out. Free kills via exploit.

The list goes on.

All this patch is doing is making the system easier for the developers to implement gear stats. It does nothing else. It only makes things worse for the player. After 2 months on the test server I realized the direction the game is going, and after 6 months of paid subs I cancelled. I haven't been happier since.

If you were thinking of going back let me warn you here. It isn't worth the $15 to see if the game has gotten better. The past year has allowed the worst elements of that game to fester and grow. 

Cannot wait for patch myself but you raise some interesting points there.

I suppose two good gems are better then three poor ones but what happens to all the existing three gem items?

Getting rid of 0.02 invulnerabilities has got to be a good thing ))

I just wish in a future update there will be small group instances/dungeons in the game .

ATB

Chrimmer

Originally posted by Frittison

 Going back after 1.05 launches is pointless. 

All this item system revamp has done is:

Make PvE harder since a huge portion of mechanics have changed.

Taunt is on a 90 second timer

Hit / Miss system is in with the best raiding gear only giving +5% to hit

Everything has been consolidated to central stats. No more stamina regen stats, etc.

This new system has not changed how badly one sided PvP is between casters and melee.

Several feats have been nerfed and/or changed making strong classes stronger and weaker classes more weak.

MItigation from spell damage is non-existant on all but the highest rank of PvP gear.

Gem slots in equipment have been reduced from 3 down to 2 or even 1 slot. Funcom think this is balance.

nerfed health regeneration in general trees means casters need fewer spells to kill melee.

This patch has done nothing to reduce the amount of cheating and hacking that goes on in this game.

AoCBuddy users are everywhere.

People wait by popular quest-giver NPC's, so once someone engages that NPC they attack that someone; bugging (locking) them into the conversation with no way to get out. Free kills via exploit.

The list goes on.

 

All this patch is doing is making the system easier for the developers to implement gear stats. It does nothing else. It only makes things worse for the player. After 2 months on the test server I realized the direction the game is going, and after 6 months of paid subs I cancelled. I haven't been happier since.

 

If you were thinking of going back let me warn you here. It isn't worth the $15 to see if the game has gotten better. The past year has allowed the worst elements of that game to fester and grow. 

 

Warning duly noted and put into file 13.

Now ignoring those that think most of us haven't got a brain cell to rub together we shall ofc use the Free Trial to see what update 5 brings in regards to the loot system, was sick to death of the crap system and was pleased as punch they went with a more gear centric approach.

For a moment there i thought I was reading a thread about Darkfall!

Nice to see the competition is doing nicely.

heh people telling me its only Darkfall that has too many problems and I kept telling them every MMo is liek that. heh nice to be right.

I'm late with this reply (hey, it's summer time LOL).

I know this doesn't matter to most, but I would really like to see Age of Conan offer some -- ANY -- variety in how equipment looks -- not so much on the "green" drop items, but it would be nice to see some differentiation in how quest reward items look on my avatar?  My Ranger is almost 50 and except for the "texture" variation (which you really have to look closely to detect), all her medium armour looks pretty much the same.  Quests items should LOOK different/better than the "green" drops, IMO.  Also, I'd like to see more cloaks.  They seem virtually non-existent --  except for the "Drinking Cape," the first cloak drop/reward I've seen was in the Pyramid (or 30's) and that cloak, even with the revamped itemization, still has stats largely useful to casters.

I'm thinking of dropping the game again when my recent 90-day renewal expires in a month or so -- we'll see how it goes and I'll be paying close attention to news of AoC's upcoming retail expansion.