AOC - General Information

[Bobleclair]

Originally Posted by Elerion

My interest in the game is in the 80 content.

By 80 content you mean "pwning lowbie with your high lvl char"? because else i fail to see what is the 80 content in this game currently.

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

So I pre-ordered and got in the early start(took 18 hours or so for my credit card to be charged), and I am in full blown over excitement mode for a pvp game other than WoW. I'm sure I'll be let down horribly but it's always fun looking forward to a new game. I have a couple of questions if anyone can answer them who is in the beta.

A) Voice chat. Is it built in, is it good, etc. No built in VC

B) Any suggestions for a duo to level up together? Planning on going PVE since my partner doesn't like to be ganked reading quest text, but we'll definitely pvp too. Bear Shaman and Conq.

C) Is healing as jacked as it sounds? I know a longtime cleric from EQ who is thinking about playing but who hates the idea of nothing but HoTs and 1 burst heal every 60 seconds. Yes its burst and HoT mainly.
D) Anything different from other mmos a jaded veteran might assume incorrectly or miss? Lack of auto attack can be tedious
Thanks.

G

see above

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by Hatorade

Yeah PVP sieges are going to make or break this game for the end game folks and 48vs48 is weak.

Yes. Should have been 18v18.

Whos going to run a good 60 man guild? Any halfdecent pvp guild will have to base their pvp around merc (being one, hiring ppl) or alliances.

[Pyros]

Hatorade about DTs, their dps will probably stay where it is. With a book(or relic or whatever the name is) instead of a shield, you can pull some good dmg out. Also you can't really base your opinion about drains at low level. Every now and then you get additional feats or skills that increase the draining even more. When you end up with perma 25% drain that can spike to 35%, it is a lot, however you look at it. Obviously the 4% or whatever you get at lvl 12 don't help too much though.

Not saying the DT don't need buffs, but it'll come with the general soldier buffs, if that, considering they have the highest hp and highest knockback resistance.



Gilgamel:
A) No voice chat ingame.
B) The usual tank+healer, or anything really, AoC is a solo game, so any kind of duo works. Avoid stuff like ranger+necro though. Not very good classes so a duo of 2 bad classes would be pretty awful. Might change before release.
C) Healing is not very fun, if you like being entirely focused on healing. If you like dpsing too, it's fine, but yeah if you're a fan of pure healers, the game is bad for that.
D) It has boobies.



As for 48vs48 sieges, that was so expected I wasn't surprised at all. Anyone who believed it'd be 200vs200 like they announced months ago was either retarded, a fanboy or a retarded fanboy.

[Tuco]

Originally Posted by Inconsiderable

Yes. Should have been 18v18.

Whos going to run a good 60 man guild? Any halfdecent pvp guild will have to base their pvp around merc (being one, hiring ppl) or alliances.

The guilds that dominated servers in DAoC and SB beg to differ.

[Gilgamel]

I don't think I would miss boobies Pyros, no matter how sorry a representation they are.

My main concern after reading up on it a little bit is that if you are not in a big guild you will essentially be left out of any massive pvp. I love the battleground types as well(CTF and all that) but nothing is like a huge castle assault and I would wager there's going to be plenty of anti-social solo pvpers to fill the needed mercenary slots any guild powerful enough to build a battle keep would have.

One thing I have also noticed is that from the videos online in the minigame pvp setups there seems to be a severe lack of your typical ranger potshotters. That class must really be in bad shape.

[Inconsiderable]

Fundamentals of zergology

[Tuco]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

I don't think I would miss boobies Pyros, no matter how sorry a representation they are.

My main concern after reading up on it a little bit is that if you are not in a big guild you will essentially be left out of any massive pvp. I love the battleground types as well(CTF and all that) but nothing is like a huge castle assault and I would wager there's going to be plenty of anti-social solo pvpers to fill the needed mercenary slots any guild powerful enough to build a battle keep would have.

One thing I have also noticed is that from the videos online in the minigame pvp setups there seems to be a severe lack of your typical ranger potshotters. That class must really be in bad shape.

I think it makes sense that if you're not in a big guild, you won't be included in the big guild PVP.

And, if Funcom keeps to the 48person per side cap on a siege, there will be much fewer mercs because a lot of the old PVP guilds like mine already have enough to field 48 people on a siege.

Then again if there's 8 keeps per server and each can be sieges every 3 days, that's like 16 sieges per week. So unless you're on the next Archimonde server you'll get some chance to have a bunch of unorganized players trying to take a keep. If that's what you want.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

I don't think I would miss boobies Pyros, no matter how sorry a representation they are.

My main concern after reading up on it a little bit is that if you are not in a big guild you will essentially be left out of any massive pvp. I love the battleground types as well(CTF and all that) but nothing is like a huge castle assault and I would wager there's going to be plenty of anti-social solo pvpers to fill the needed mercenary slots any guild powerful enough to build a battle keep would have.

One thing I have also noticed is that from the videos online in the minigame pvp setups there seems to be a severe lack of your typical ranger potshotters. That class must really be in bad shape.

Actually rangers aren't bad in low level, so you should see some in videos, but yeah they got nerfed 3times in a row now, with very marginal buffs inbetween. Maybe at very high lvl with itemization they're decent(for example they nerfed the range because they can get bows with +5range later on).
Still look like a crappy class to me, but well I guess some might enjoy it.

As for big guilds, since sieges will be instanced yeah I guess you might need a big guild, but all this crap isn't finalized imo so who knows for now. Like every game though, you usually want a decent sized guild to participate in the end game content. While in some you could solo and enjoy yourself, it was mostly pking and ganking. The days of UO where you could destroy full guilds with 4people are long gone, sadly ^^.

[Gilgamel]

Originally Posted by Tuco

I think it makes sense that if you're not in a big guild, you won't be included in the big guild PVP.

And, if Funcom keeps to the 48person per side cap on a siege, there will be much fewer mercs because a lot of the old PVP guilds like mine already have enough to field 48 people on a siege.

Sure, I understand that completely, and if we hang around I'm sure we'll join a "raiding" guild in AoC just like in every other game. But one thing this game needs is something like RvR in DAOC. If one of your major selling points is massive pvp I don't think only allowing 1% of your player base to participate is going to fly. I don't see why a game like AoC wouldn't at the very least rip off thid and give the unwashed masses a place to at least have some semblance of massive pvp.

[Lewstelamon]

Originally Posted by Tuco

About the sieges:



So it looks like it's going to be 48v48, and the devs are throwing up smoke.

So it looks like the sieges are going to be another Alterac Valley minigame. So much for large scale open warfare?

Bleh if thats the case maybe I won't play after all, I've been really hoping for something that actually has somewhat meaningful open world pvp, not more instanced pvp

[Elerion]

48v48 sounds awesome for gameplay reasons. It might actually be fun to do the actual fighting.

On the other hand, a much larger cap would be better for interesting politics.

I guess at some point you have to balance between EVE (amazing politics, utterly shitty battle gameplay) and this (single medium sized guilds capable of standing ground forever regardless of politics, but hopefully fun gameplay).

With luck, they'll be able to double these numbers eventually. I'm just really glad they aren't ignoring technical limitations and make sieges unplayable. Poor foresight in making an engine incapable of pulling off what they boasted though.


EDIT: Server size needs to be considered also. With 8 keeps and weekly sieges, that's 768 people involved in sieges every week. Double it, and you have 1500. How big would a server have to be to support something like that? At what point do you end up with a static siege game because everyone big enough to take a keep has one? If guilds/alliances on average number twice as many players as is needed to defend the keep, the current system would let 800 people own a keep. That's far more people than most WoW servers have raiding T6 zones.

[krinkled]

Originally Posted by Gilgamel

One thing I have also noticed is that from the videos online in the minigame pvp setups there seems to be a severe lack of your typical ranger potshotters. That class must really be in bad shape.

Finally a game where Ranger archetype aren't OP. (They are probably going to get some buffs though so an investment in leveling a ranger now would pay off later.)


And giving everyone stealth is great imo.

Nice to see a game where ranger/scout/rogue are not the only classes that can gank.

[krinkled]

Originally Posted by Elerion

48v48 sounds awesome for gameplay reasons. It might actually be fun to do the actual fighting.

On the other hand, a much larger cap would be better for interesting politics.

I guess at some point you have to balance between EVE (amazing politics, utterly shitty battle gameplay) and this (single medium sized guilds capable of standing ground forever regardless of politics, but hopefully fun gameplay).

With luck, they'll be able to double these numbers eventually. I'm just really glad they aren't ignoring technical limitations and make sieges unplayable. Poor foresight in making an engine incapable of pulling off what they boasted though.

Agreed, I would like to see 100v100 and its not at all beyond the realm of possibility that this could be implemented to play just as well as 48v48 after some refinements/optimizations.

[Schatze]

Since NDA is basically not being enforced, what's guard like in high level PVP?

In general at high levels? Is the added armor even needed, or should I roll a conq for higher DPS?