AOC - General Information

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

wtf are they thinking?

The Ramblings of a Bildo: AoC Closed Beta - Worlds Different Than Open Beta

http://bildos.blogspot.com/2008/05/aoc-closed-beta-worlds-different-than.html

I want to know what the fuck he is thinking, because the clients are the same. I use one client for both open and closed beta. Simply changing the config file to point at the right servers confirms this. It's a few MB patch to switch but nothing significant.

[Ashes Emberblade]

That's two different bloggers, and it's a 50mb patch difference between the two clients, with completely different version numbers.

[Draegan]

Well before tech testing and open beta, I was able to log in without patching the game, by just running the aoc.exe. There are difference.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

That's two different bloggers, and it's a 50mb patch difference between the two clients, with completely different version numbers.

Yeah, you are right. One is one day older. GB is 5_02 and Open is 5_01.

[Kodylan]

The 5/2 client definitely performs better than the 5/1 client, but I'm honestly curious why they didn't patch Open Beta too.

[woqqqa]

An interesting post I ran across a few minutes ago, before it was edited:

Funcom, shame on you. You should have learned your lesson from Anarchy Online's launch. You have a sea of competition out there with solid, fun gameplay mechanics and huge worlds, not to mention the korean-style free-to-play paradigm gaining popularity even in western MMO markets.

Even with 4GB of RAM in our systems that meet or exceed minimum requirements, the "stalling" as Gaute calls it is horrific. White Sands? Borderline unplayable at 4GB RAM (totally unplayable at 2GB RAM). Underhalls? Completely, abjectly unplayable at 4GB RAM. I could go on with other examples but these two should suffice. Note that this is even running with the default LOW graphics and careful diligence to not mess with other settings and also to clean up old possibly corrupted local shadow cache files.

I'm a CB tester and frankly I don't give a **** about NDA anymore. It's not like you didn't have plenty of feedback and bug reports in a fair amount of detail long before the open beta started. At the very least you could have optimized the areas in Tortage to work "good enough" to give a positive impression to the open beta players, but nope.

No MMO has the luxury of releasing a game with these types of performance issues, let alone the luxury of letting these types of performance issues affect a marketing preview beta. No, it's not a stress test... You've had plenty of those in the CB environment already. This is the marketing push we're in now.

I particularly enjoy this double-talk from Gaute:

"Some people call it “lagging”. Some people call it “hanging”. We have named it “stalling” internally, so that is what I am going to call it. This is the experience where the client hangs for some fraction of a second up to some seconds. This is, almost without exception, run-time compilation of shaders (a shader is “slang” for code running on the graphics card). This is a known issue, we have identified where we need to fix things, and we are working on a solution." As a general beta tester, you've been feeding us a different line in the GB environment. I call bull**** on this.

Another stunning quote from Gaute:

"Your client running out of memory happens gradually, especially from zoning. By restarting the client, you should be fine for some time depending on your system. We have a host of fixes for this on its way to you, and we aim to update this in a day or two. Every time the client crashes, we get a message that helps us better understand the issue. What you are doing is terrific work that will enable us to fix this!"

Again, this is a different line than we were fed in GB. Now and only now are you guys actually admitting that you've got issues that you haven't yet really figured out!. As opposed to the internal message we've been getting for weeks and weeks now, which is "guys, you're on special debugger clients on servers loaded with debuggers and really, everything is good and you'll see at launch, etc."

Less hype, more honesty, and more willingness to *not ship a game till it's ready*. Also, you shot yourself in the foot with the aggressive system requirements. You should never have allowed any feature to be added to the game if it would have required more than 2GB of memory to run at reasonable performance levels.

This doesn't seem to bode well for AoC. What the hell is it with MMOs using high-end engines anyway? That's just asking for trouble.

[Ritkhan]

PVP in this game seems very awkward to far. Makes WoWs PVP seem like a professional sport in terms of playability.

The targeting is awful. Being able to react to opponents abilities seems impossible or pointless. Animations are terrible and crude so you don’t even know if you’re attacking your target or not. Seems to lack any semblance of polish.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

AoC definitely has its problems, but those posts above filled with hate are just complete bullshit. I have an average-plus system with 2GB of RAM and this thing runs quite well (both Open and Closed beta clients - although Closed is definitely better) with everything on "High". That "unplayable" shit is such an obvious, bald-faced lie that I wonder if it isn't some Blizzard PR rep posting that garbage.

And you whiny fucks (here, on Official Forums, and in the game chat) that can't do your auto-invis "stealth" horseshit and stun-lock somebody to death are making my day a feast of tears. Quit your fucking whining and learn to play the damn game, or stay away. PvP and PvE combat are a ton different than WoW - which we're all very used to, of course - and if you're not going to put forth any effort to learn to play a new way, nobody here wants to listen to your crap.

Whereas it was instantly obvious that Vanguard, for example, was designed and implemented by a bunch of brain-dead, MMORPG newbie idiots with no work ethic or sense of pride whatsoever, AoC is completely different. It's immediately plain that these people are professionals, thought things out and had some pride in their work. Hell, they even have "water ripple rings" around every single bottle lodged in the sand at the beaches! This game is filled with little details like that which tend to give a paying customer (i.e., me) some confidence that FunCom has their shit together.

[Twobit Whore]

The beta forums are full of people using decent to great machines who are finding the game unplayable. But hey, it's your computer. You just need a next gen memory bus system and something blah blah according to Brad.. here is a $3k machine that will run it great!!

I find it 'playable' most of the time on full high (including high res textures, full shadows, bloom enabled), 2xAA, 1680x1050 res with 2GB of RAM but other times it just comes to a stop... and it's not in an intense area, it's in the first area that I have been across a dozen times. If that happened more than rarely I would likely call it unplayable too and it's likely that is what many may be experiencing.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

The beta forums are full of people using decent to great machines who are finding the game unplayable. But hey, it's your computer. You just need a next gen memory bus system and something blah blah according to Brad.. here is a $3k machine that will run it great!!

I find it 'playable' most of the time on full high (including high res textures, full shadows, bloom enabled), 2xAA, 1680x1050 res with 2GB of RAM but other times it just comes to a stop... and it's not in an intense area, it's in the first area that I have been across a dozen times. If that happened more than rarely I would likely call it unplayable too and it's likely that is what many may be experiencing.

Memory leak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That is your problem, and everybody else who's bitching about "full stops", etc. This is a curable problem, and I'm sure they're working their asses off on fixing it. The whole game shouldn't be condemned because of this one little issue.

Learn to exit and re-load the damn game every couple of hours and you'll not have any more such problems. Oh, and shut off that 4GB porn download and your virus checker, etc. in the background. And when you enter a new area in-game, do a slow 360-degree turn to get the textures all loaded and the shaders all compiled. Long-time 3-D gamers know this shit.

[Zerai]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

Learn to exit and re-load the damn game every couple of hours and you'll not have any more such problems. Oh, and shut off that 4GB porn download and your virus checker, etc. in the background. And when you enter a new area in-game, do a slow 360-degree turn to get the textures all loaded and the shaders all compiled. Long-time 3-D gamers know this shit.

Hah. What is this..1995?

[Kharza-kzad]

Compliling shaders on the fly is crazy. I can't imagine why they would do this. Vanguard did it too, and it was the cause of most of it's problems.

I really believe that the smooth loading of resources should be the first thing perfected, and then the rest built around it. I'm no fan of warcraft but they do this very well (though to be fair you could probably fit every texture in westfall into the space of a few conan asset's normal maps)

[kedwyn]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

Memory leak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That is your problem, and everybody else who's bitching about "full stops", etc. This is a curable problem, and I'm sure they're working their asses off on fixing it. The whole game shouldn't be condemned because of this one little issue.

Learn to exit and re-load the damn game every couple of hours and you'll not have any more such problems. Oh, and shut off that 4GB porn download and your virus checker, etc. in the background. And when you enter a new area in-game, do a slow 360-degree turn to get the textures all loaded and the shaders all compiled. Long-time 3-D gamers know this shit.

Wow so when Vanguard had a memory leak and asset loading hitching it was a real problem. For AOC you just have to reload every couple of hours and suck it up?

Makes total sense given the source.


AOC has the exact same technical issues Vanguard had at release. The big difference between the two is:

Vanguard actually had a huge world that has, tons of quests / dungeons so you could level alts and not repeat the same areas. Not true with Conan.

Conan's lore is better

Conan's world is pretty but significantly limiting, more like a train on the tracks than an open world. I'd equate it more to a F11 game than anything else there isn't much exploration or options.

Vanguard also had a better class system, much better abilities. Conan classes are very Meh even past the 20's.

Conan loot sucks IMO. The information provide on the tool tips on loot also could be better.

Conan has fatalities which are cool for the first few times you see them. After that its just another move.

AOC has a much easier leveling curve at release than Vanguard did at release, this would be an advantage but fact is the game is fucking ridiculously easy. Easier than WoW in many respects. Not a good thing considering the replay options suck.

AOC has better graphics which is to be expected being a year later.




Its a wash. The technical issues are going to keep a lot of people from enjoying what little game is there. Once they get to the 30's there is even less available. People will burn out quickly IMO.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

Memory leak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That is your problem, and everybody else who's bitching about "full stops", etc. This is a curable problem, and I'm sure they're working their asses off on fixing it. The whole game shouldn't be condemned because of this one little issue.

Learn to exit and re-load the damn game every couple of hours and you'll not have any more such problems. Oh, and shut off that 4GB porn download and your virus checker, etc. in the background. And when you enter a new area in-game, do a slow 360-degree turn to get the textures all loaded and the shaders all compiled. Long-time 3-D gamers know this shit.

Memory leaks have killed many a game before and will kill many more to come.

And I have been PC gaming for 20 years. I know how to streamline my machine for running demanding apps, thanks.

Part of me wants to think you are just being 'grumpy' for fun and part of me is afraid you really are that stupid.

[Bankok]

Originally Posted by Bixxby

Did these people not realize WoW had such a huge success in part to its open beta that was actually playable and smooth and uh..fun?

Maybe it was the different servers or something, but WoW's open beta wasn't smooth either for me and my friends, loot lag was anywhere from 5 secs to 2 minutes. Blizzard then gave the old "We know, but thats why were testing it so we don't have these problems at release", which of course it still did, was 6 months later when they took down the servers in droves for 24-48 hours until loot lag was completely fixed at least on Doomhammer.