All Posts by Vetarnias

As much as I like your ideas, I think you're not sufficiently taking into account the possibility of players wrecking the system.

Fishing vessels?  Sure, but what use would they have when everybody is concerns over PvP?  (I'm thinking of all those useless ships now in the game, you know, Desperation rafts and the like, which serve absolutely NO purpose whatsoever).

Smaller games in the tavern?  Good idea; just take a look at the wonders it's doing for Puzzle Pirates.

Huge maps, craftable economy, etc: Entirely agreed with you.

I hope they can turn the game around, but as long as there is no meat around the PvP bone, with a hardcore community attempting to drive everyone else away, I'm afraid things will continue to go downhill.  Sadly, I think the game will not survive the year.

Port governance: The devs have talked about it, but it's very vague and probably in the very distant future.  They originally envisioned it as a doubloon sink, though, which raises a number of concerns.  If players are intended to waste money on it, they'd better get something worthwhile in return. But then, if they do get some amount of control, how could abuse be kept in check?  They will have to think about this before implementing anything.

Please don't laugh, but I actually think Puzzle Pirates is the best pirate game I ever played.  Such a weird design, but at the same time much deeper than one would think at first glance.  And totally absorbing, too.

If you're limiting things to single-player games, I haven't played many of them, but I would say that Port Royale beats Sid Meier's Pirates.  It's mostly  an economic game, with god-awful graphics, but the mechanics are flawless and the game even more open-ended than Meier's.  Apparently they made a sequel, which I never played.

Roberts is the European server in theory, but I know it has a much more diverse geographical base than that.

Rackham is supposedly the "hardcore" PvP server, with a balanced population.  I played there, but can't say much good about it.  It has a very pronounced elitist attitude (at least on the French side) which gradually led to my disinterest in the game (my sub just expired).

Antigua is supposedly the roleplaying "carebear" server (that's how the Rackhamites call it anyway), but it has one obnoxious French "hardcore" society, apparently so annoying they are alienating even their own side.

Blackbeard is dying, with players and sometimes entire societies discussing transferring out.  From the start, it suffered from an excess of British and Pirate players, and some British players were notorious cheaters who caused a large chunk of the French playing there to quit.  Nowadays, the French and Spanish are essentially dead, and the British are suffering.  Pirates just won the map, despite having all the game mechanics stacked around them.  That's because the French and Spanish, do not have enough people to defend their ports, and even the British lost some to them.

It's not really SoE's fault here.  FLS has complete control over any aspect of the game, and SoE only handles billing and promotion.

Updates are about once a month.  Sometimes they add new content, but most of the time it's just tweaking skills and classes. Release 1.5 will add insurance to soften the blow of ship loss.  The core mechanics of the game still require major work, if you ask me.

You could ask for a buddy key.  I believe there is a thread to this effect.

Originally posted by Duilyon

So I have always been interested in this game but I hear there are some serious problems with the game so I have kept my distance. But now I decided to maybe get the game but I have some questions about it first.

 

1) what are the classes? How do they work? Are they all combat classes? Are there classes for ships and players?

 

2) How do proffesions work? How does the economy affect the overall game?

 

3) How is pvp? are there battle grounds? Can you take over ports? Is there like land pvp and ship pvp?

 

 

4) how are the quests designed? Are they fun?

5) What is the level cap? Is it hard to reach it?

 

6) are there instances?

7) how is the sword fighting? any fun?

8) how big is the world?

1) Nationals (British, French, Spanish) have Freetraders, Naval Officers and Privateers.  Pirates have Cutthroats and Buccaneers (sort of a pirate freetrader class).  I can't comment about the pirate side, having never played it, but Freetraders have no ostensible advantage in trading since everybody's a crafter.  There are some class-specific ships, such as ships of the line for Naval Officers, which have the greatest firepower in the game.  As the game stands right now, the purpose of every class is to go PvP.

2) Apart from what I mentioned in #1, professions really have no difference between them.  Ship loss is the only way to sustain the economy, but of late the societies (PotBS's term for guiids) tend to produce everything in-house and the economic players have mostly been driven off the game by a combination of market collapse (due to said in-house production), lack of a genuine trader class, and the superiority complex of the hardcore PvP crowd which considers everyone else (either PvE or econ) as their inferiors.  Recent comments by devs may or may not keep said crowd in its place, so caveat lector.

3) I never PvP'd much, but if you know anything about the game you must have heard of the rampant ganking, i.e. optimized 6-ship squads attacking lowbies just for kicks.  Any complaint of people using such tactics will give you a retort that "a lowbie could be someone else's alt carrying lineship bundles", which is a valid complaint considering how those giving you that response are probably those using the tactic anyway.  The devs have promised to clamp down on that, but to be honest, regardless of good intentions, I don't think this will amount to much.  Not with what is left of the player base and with the game mechanics already in place.

All the PvP (unless you choose to have yourself flagged for PvP everywhere on the map) takes place inside red circles after players create unrest in some ports.

You can take over ports, but that's all there is to it.  No port governance (though the devs have something on the backburner for this), and worse still, when one of the factions gets a certain number of points, all ports revert to their original nations.  In the case of pirate ports, the situation is worse: They revert back to pirates in 2 days, and when pirates take a national port, it's also reverting back to that nation in two days.  Hence the general attitude for nationals is to not show up to port battles against pirates because it's uselessly risking perfectly good ships to do so.

Until recently, port battles were the purview of a small elite which relentlessly asked everyone else to decline your own invitation so it would get its own ships in the battle. (Besides, anything below a level-50 ship is basically useless anyway.) But nowadays, some factions have problems putting together a full complement of 24 ships.  So you're stuck with two less-than-ideal scenarios: a full 24 where more experienced players ask you to pass, or less than 24 ships where all those who choose to attend are basically going to their deaths.

PvP on land exists strictly in the context of port battles, and only if certain conditions are met.  I myself have never seen a single case of land-based PvP in five months' play, but I know it exists.

4) I think I have counted 3 basic quest types: a) Sink stuff, with or without NPC (or player) allies, with or without ships to protect.; b) blockade running / get to the exit point; c) defend or take a fort; d) land missions, which will ask you either to retrieve an item, free a captive or free foes.  All these take place in instances.  In addition, you have one extended story line, and a few other quests which vary from the mold mentioned above.  The writing of missions is good and imaginative, but it seems mostly in place to make the routine pattern of missions easier to swallow.

Most of the game involves an unhealthy amount of grind on the open sea, and until recently players would make their money taking missions, failing them while farming the ships, cancelling it, and taking it again.  Places such as Bridgetown and Santo Domingo were crawling with people just for that reason.

5) Level cap is 50.  I heard someone dedicated enough could achieve it in a couple of months at a leisurely pace.  I myself have made it to 45 in five months, but that's because I tired of levelling.  Furthermore, the amount of XP for sinking ships in missions (which is in addition to the amount of XP you get for completing the quest) is cut in half, which tends to make levelling longer.

6) Instances are everywhere. Every battle at sea is an instance, so is every mission.

7) Avatar combat (or "avcom") is considered one of the weakest points of the game, because it was tacked on late in its development.  To be honest, I have seen worse, even though it's mostly button mashing with little strategy involved (but hey, Age of Conan is just as bad on this front, if you ask me).

8) The world map takes about 45 minutes from end to end (hence the battle instancing), which is also a weak point of the game.  The map isn't large enough to sustain a healthy PvP environment separated by distance, and the red circles make it worse.  Furthermore, it takes away from realism and basically throws out any need for logistical considerations (such as "if sailing from Grenville to Bartica takes 6 hours in all, what am I shipping this week?  right now it might take 20 minutes with favourable winds).  On top of that, ships don't need supplies, and immediately repair themselves to full capacity after a battle instance -- I've seen better realism in, of all places, Puzzle Pirates.  Cities are cookie-cutter (maybe 5 or 6 patterns in all, except for capitals), though it does not really matter, because there is no sense of exploration in this game (another major problem).

Hope this helps, and sorry for the rather negative outlook.

Originally posted by Cymdai

Funcom, though generally good about handling exploiters, can't/won't ban those guilds, period.

The membership alone is probably around 400-700 people.

Plus, while I don't support leniency on exploiting/exploiters, no company would ever sacrifice that much money a month to make their player base happy.

It's the sad truth of the industry.

Yeah, but what will happen when those exploiting guilds start attacking guilds playing by the rules -- and winning as a result of the exploiting?

I saw the result of that in Pirates of the Burning Sea.  The British flipped three French ports at once using an exploit, which resulted in three simultaneous port battles.  The French had enough people to just fight one battle, which they won, but could not defend the two other ports.  The problem with all this is that the British not only used the exploit after the developers identified it as such (and unwisely described its process, as though someone still ignored how it was done), and a few days before a scheduled patch would solve the matter.  The French faction took to the forums to get the devs to return the ports.  The dev excuse to not give the ports back?  "But the port battles were won honestly."  No kidding.

A large chunk of the French faction cancelled right there and never looked back.  And the exploiting British were the first to leave that game for the Age of Conan open beta.  I wonder where they are playing now.

My guess is that the devs will take action against the exploiters when they are more trouble than they are worth -- i.e. when the exploiters start driving more subscriptions away than what they keep bringing to Funcom.

Same scenario all the time, though.  They always act too late.  Besides, if such guilds start playing the blackmail game with you, threatening to quit if they can't have the run of the server, their way, how committed are they really to your game anyway? 

Originally posted by Cymdai

Well, you tell me which is worse.

The fact that all the guilds were using different exploits..

or

...the fact that both sides know all the exploits so well, that they can readily call out and identify each other for using them.

Sigh.

(Cue that scene in "The Sting" where Paul Newman and Robert Shaw both cheat heavily at poker.)

Ah, but they are "Teh Hardcorez".  They're leeter than you, and therefore are allowed to cheat if it can make them teh ûberleetz of teh universe.

Honestly, if I tire of MMO gaming, it probably will be because of all those hardcore gamers and their leet guilds who move from game to game (insert my usual crime syndicate analogy here), and who treat anyone unwilling or incapable (no difference to them) to indulge in their full-time gaming regimen as their inferior. 

For all AoC's faults, I will praise it for one thing: its two server types, so the PvE servers can be spared the sociopathic stupidity of the hardcore.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

5) I need to purchase Basic Riding in order to get my Mammoths/Rhinos special abilities UPDATE 16.06.2008: Issue resolved If you don't plan on purchasing Basic Riding for any other purposes, I would advise you to save your money. You were meant to get these abilities automatically when claiming your pre-order mount, without having to purchase either Basic Riding or Advanced Riding, and just as intended this will be the case once the respective bug-fix goes Live. Consequently, players whom have purchased Basic Riding already will have to do another /claim after the patch introducing these changes in order to get the respective abilities back on their Ability page; and players who aren't meant to have access to these skills (i.e. players without pre-order mounts) will find them removed from their Ability page.

__________________ Svein Erik "Sharum" Jenset Striketeam Lead: BCC Design Funcom Oslo AS

I have said it before and I will say it again, giving away for free something as outrageously expensive in-game, and as advantageous to those who own one, as a mount to people who pre-ordered the game is a swift kick in the nether regions of anyone who bought the game retail on official launch day or later.  It is all too reminiscent of some of those two-tiered games which were essentially "free"... if you were content to play with second-rate stuff or willing to grind ten times as much as those who could get anything they wanted simply by drawing out the piece of plastic.

For a game I'm paying $15/month, just as much as the next guy, just to be able to play it, this is unacceptable.

Originally posted by Aguitha

I just send a PM to the mod who lock this thread, saying that the reaon he gave to lock the thread is beyond stupid.  Locking threads of peoples for posting constructive cristism is called COMMUNISM in my book.

The right end of the spectrum is just as guilty of this.

Seems like I was spared this fate so far.  Maybe my blessing was to have been answered to by an actual Funcom employee and not a volunteer minion.

Maybe calling their potential course of action in advance just stayed their hand.  Honestly, I don't know.

Originally posted by chaintm

I am not a player of the game thou after all the beta reviews I thought better and glad I did. However they do have a right to do what they want in their game and on their boards. Every ELU out there states in some type of lingo "You accept they have the right to terminate your account/access etc at any given time for any reason" While you could attempt to fight that in court, no one has won and I doubt anyone would in these cases. It was lawyers to begin with who write them up. Not saying that makes it perfect, but as a consumer you where warned prior to accepting the final purchase (IE entering in the key code).

Sucks, but life isn't fair and in the end who really cares, word get's out about a game and most games that die a fast death did so on their own making. Good games that have complaints against them still thrive. IE EQ2.

Please note that I am not disputing their right to censor their boards the way they do.  Tomorrow, they could come up with a ban on the letter E and I can't say I would care.

The problem with what they are doing, as I think I have explained clearly, is that it creates a climate of suspicion on their boards, and that once the word about censorship gets out (as it did here), not only does your censorship become meaningless, but it gives a certain impression of the game, i.e. that it must be awful if it requires such heavy-handed tactics.

What they are doing goes against the greater good of the game, regardless of its merits and shortcomings.

Would you not agree that my original comment was as respectful as could be?  That its only crime was to raise a subject that was verboten?

Result: Locked in half an hour. And Famine's explanation at the bottom of the thread just before he locked it is the ultimate cop-out (" As this is really a question of moderation to another thread, I will close the thread.")

I seem to have received no ticket, though.

I certainly hope they realize that this approach to moderation is very detrimental to their game.

Not bad... locked in less than 30 minutes, but by no less than Famine himself.  At least he took the time to type something out.

forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.phpWithin a few seconds, I will post this on the AoC forums:

----------------------

To the board moderators:

I feel this is a topic I must bring up, even if by so doing I am exposing myself to a violation of these or those terms: the heavy-handed censorship of these forums by moderators.

It is not only that a seemingly perfectly acceptable discussion of the shortcomings of this game and of Funcom's previous major undertaking, Anarchy Online, should be clamped down, but that the reasons invoked remain hopelessly vague, namely "encouraging to cancelling your accounts, and violating the Terms of Agreement, the EULA, and the Rules of Conduct".  Yet if we go over that thread, we would be hard pressed to find any example of a comment even approaching a lack of civility similar to what can be read on perfectly open threads on these same forums on a regular basis.  Furthermore, the charges remain hopelessly vague, making it impossible to judge for ourselves whether the lockdown was warranted.  In its current state, unfortunately, this all sounds like "everything but the kitchen sink." 

It is not apparent to me, for instance, where the EULA, which as most such documents is concerned with matters of privacy, intellectual property and liabilities, might have been violated. As for "encouraging to cancelling your accounts", this could be extended to any negative criticism of the game, regardless of how it is expressed or how justified it is.  (I must say I find nothing particularly wrong with the conversation in that thread -- that Anarchy Online had a rocky start is common knowledge.)

Then there is this other moderator lockdown post on another thread discussing board censorship. (Please note that I have posted in neither of them and only became aware of them recently.) The original post in that thread is abusive, yet the lockdown does not target how the matter is expressed, but rather that the matter is being raised in the first place.  The moderator cited the Social Guidelines verbatim:

Moderation is not ever a topic for open forum. If you have any questions or feedback on moderation it should be addressed to the community manager or the specific moderator via private message.

* Do not post threads questioning moderation. Such threads will be removed
* If a topic is closed or removed do not, under any circumstances, re-post the same topic or material. If you have any questions as to why a thread was closed or removed please contact the moderator via private message.

Similarly, in another thread where people were wondering why the posts of people announcing they were quitting the game disappeared, a moderator commented that:

These types of posts are against the rules of the forums and as a result they are removed. Really it does not serve a useful purpose as you are given a chance to enumerate your reasons directly.

The boards are a place to discuss general knowledge/issues not a personal issue.

This worries and bothers me.  I am all for discussing matters in civility, but this unfortunately strongly indicates that no line is being drawn between respectful, civil complaints and abusive tirades against everything and everyone, and that everything merely mentioning the censorship question on these boards is immediately deemed "out of bounds".

Unfortunately, such a heavy-handed approach by moderators of these boards is bound to get mentioned on other gaming discussion sites on the Internet, and by censoring these boards of negative matters and also of any mention of censorship, as I perfectly understand it is your right to do, you are merely opening yourselves to criticism which, in the end, has nothing to do with Age of Conan.  In fact, this might drive away existing or potential customers, no matter how great the game might be, because of the impression that the censorship is in place to hide something from people wanting to try the game. 

You need not resort to such tactics; the game's shortcomings -- and all games have -- will be mentioned elsewhere, on gaming sites, etc.  People quitting (who may or may not be helpful in their comments, despite what that moderator wrote) will make their voices heard on other sites. Therefore, the censorship on these boards is not only useless to block such criticism, it might go against the greater interest of your game because of reasons mentioned above.  Furthermore, it just creates a festering climate of suspicion on these boards, hampering the development of a community on which all MMO games thrive.

I hope you will come to the conclusion that the current approach to board moderation is counter-intuitive, especially since Funcom has already been noted for its alleged lacunae in matters relating to customer relations.  Hence, it is to be hoped that the censorship measures currently in place will be relaxed.

Thank you.

-------------------------

Let's see how it goes.

The thread: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=99201

Last time I checked, the economy on my server (Rackham) was pretty much dead.

Societies produce everything in-house if they can.  And market demand has dried up as well.  Not a good time to play the economy, I fear.

"Thread locked for encouraging to cancelling your accounts, and violating the Terms of Agreement, the EULA, and the Rules of Conduct."

No kidding.  And what were they basically saying?  "AO had a shitty launch", "AoC is nowhere near finished" and "Funcom has crappy customer service".

That's not exactly news to anyone, nor is it what you might call "encouraging to cancelling your accounts" (what weird English).  The conversation was civil as well, so what "rules of conduct" is the thread breaking exactly?  And while we're at it, he's invoking both the Terms of Agreement and the EULA -- which parts exactly?  Especially for the EULA which by and large deals with copyright and liability matters -- nothing even dealing with that got discussed.

But there's worse: another thread denouncing the censorship got locked, not for vulgarity, but for violating the Social Guidelines, more specifically:

"Moderation is not ever a topic for open forum. If you have any questions or feedback on moderation it should be addressed to the community manager or the specific moderator via private message.

* Do not post threads questioning moderation. Such threads will be removed
* If a topic is closed or removed do not, under any circumstances, re-post the same topic or material. If you have any questions as to why a thread was closed or removed please contact the moderator via private message."

Not ever a topic for open forum?  No matter how civil or justified the conversation?

It's things like this, where you're not only facing censorship for being negative but can't even mention the censorship itself, that you know something is wrong.

Originally posted by Death1942

i dont know why economies in games are so hard to implement well but Funcom has failed to bring a decent one into AoC.  they can fix it (and they will) and i hope they do it by doubling the money drops or reducing the green drops (thus increasing the price...its called supply and demand...ask your local economist).

as for the sexism/racism thing...i dont think the comic books had any affect on it.  i have read a few conan books and i think the game has transfered the world of Howard over quite nicely.  to be honest there isnt enough racism currently.  in the books each