AOC - General Discussion II

[Tolanin]

Originally Posted by Rhym

I won't ever again be playing MMO's for 12 hours straight like I used to in EQ and WoW but the 15ish hours I log onto AoC per week with friends suits me perfectly. It's not surprising all the jaded fucks who play these games until burn out the moment they release don't enjoy it. They don't enjoy anything. They're all disgruntled and bitter and would fucking find something to complain about the day they won the lottery, but oh well.

you are denying that aoc has completely broken pve, a pvp siege system that has very little rewards and barely functions and definitely not in the way described in the manuel and that the game has absolutely no personal pvp system? I guess you are just posting from the fanboi handbook tho.

[Sythrak]

Agreed. I can be overly critical of a game because of years of experience with various MMO's and their shenanigans, but you've got to be blind not to see the glaring problems with this MMO over game mechanics and bugs. Their core feature they hyped so much over, pvp, was not even tested in beta longer than a month. All it included was making a FFA server and throwing players into it. That was a red flag right there. No siege testing, no pvp ruleset testing, nada.

It's really funny to watch though how the same person can give glowing reviews, then as they get 55+ their opinion drops sharply.

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

I'm an ex-AoC player (80 ToS, played beta, blah blah), so take this with a grain of salt, but don't you think these last few pages are indicative of a "This won't turn it around for Vanguard" moment for this game? Besides the 50,000 other bugs and stupid things wrong with Vanguard, when people saw other players making vast sums of money from hacks, bugs, exploits, etc., they pretty much universally bailed from that game.
----snip----

You make some good points. First, the Funcom people put a positive spin on things because that's the approach their management has told them to take. Most gaming companies do the same thing. Heck, most companies do this. That has nothing to do with anything. It's up to reviewers and players, i.e., us to be honest. Most aren't. They either say the game is perfect, which is silly, or that it is an unplayable terrible mess that you won't get any fun out of. Also, false.

I'll offer my opinion as someone who has a level 80 TOS and Guardian.

You seem to be upset about the exploration aspect. Unfortunately, no MMO post EQ has really captured that for me. Almost all cut and paste. AOC at least looks stunning, even if the world is not huge.

You hit 80 and were bored. Has your guild done any raids or PVP? Did you work on your guild cities? A buddy of mine complained that AOC was boring, and resubbed to WOW last week. All he does in WOW is arena's and dailies over and over. That's pretty much all he was doing before he bought AOC. This kind of baffles me.

Everytime I log into AOC I'm fighting. Travel is fun on Cimmeria and there's a lot of guild fights going on. I guess a lot of that is due to the people on the server and the PVP. I'm still doing the raid game and trying to equip my character and progress which is possible, if certainly buggy. I do agree Funcom needs to hire some heavy hitters with their new cash and start rolling out endgame content asafp, especially since even casuals are getting up there.

I think adding content and fleshing out the game throughout the leveling curve will happen. The Black Castle changes are great, but it's kind of sucky the best dungeon in the game is for level 34 players.

I agree with you on the economy. I beta tested Vanguard and it was unplayable, severely broken, and exploit city. That was all fixable. What killed it on release for the future was the farming, economy degradation, and the casuals hearing this and either cancelling, or like me not touching retail.

AOC is better in the game is playable and stable, but there are some big issues. None of the issues is bigger than the exploiting. Funcom has banned a few exploiters. They need to find and ban everyone screwing up the economy, period or they'll wreck the game. If they don't, even the people who really enjoy the game will probably leave. I certainly will.

I haven't had any issues with the GM/CS staff, since if something is broken, I bug it and wait. Once in a great while my game will freeze for a minute, and send me a message about the error, but not crash. It's nothing like Shadowbane where my group would engage another and I'd immediately get the SB.EXE error.

I'm not sure how AOC will turn out, and I can understand why some want to leave since a lot of the things that will make or break the game are still vaporware. All I know is it's still fun for me. That won't matter if the economy is wrecked by cheaters. I'll be gone if that isn't addressed.

[Amnesiac]

To Tuco and others that gave me some 411 on rolling up a toon...Tried this about a month ago, but computer was just not AoC calibre I guess. Gonna fire this up one more time atm on a little beefier laptop. If this doesn't work I will probably look to pick up a new desktop this week.

Definitely back in a gaming mood after a few years off...hopefully this lights the fire again. On a funky strain too, so if this gave can't grab my interests in this disposition then it probably never will...I'm sure there are still lots of "gaming breaking" issues but it looks pretty so I'll give it a whirl.

Still gonna try for a necro named Amnesiac on Deathwhisper...plz advise if there is a bumpin server or if there is any dominant necro race so my baked ass doesnt have to read a tutorial.

Just inserted disk 2 so I will let this one run then run for some munchies while patch DLs...hoping to be on (and actually able to run the game this time) by midnight EST if anyone if leveling a noob time around that timeframe hit me up.

[Radek-SiN]

I play AOC as many others have mentioned because there isn't anything better. They are really having issues with all the stat modifications on items and generally balancing the game out. Anyone seen the latest +dmg rangers insta gibbing everyone? Word on the street is WAR isn't much better either. It's DAOC + Warhammer Universe + WoW Graphics. They claim to be upgrading graphics for release but I doubt they can truely get rid of everything they cloned off wow like spell effects and armor.

I'm waiting, being patient hoping for Funcom to deliver us with a reason to play the game. I still login once every day or so and to defend our battle keep but that PVP patch they promised around end of june/early july better come damn soon.

[Desx]

Glad i never got into AoC. sounds bad.

[Tolanin]

vg is suposed to get new char models in august, this could really turn it around for vanguard.

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Tolanin

vg is suposed to get new char models in august, this could really turn it around for vanguard.

The only thing that'd turn it around is if it were shut down, character wiped, renamed, revamped, simplified, mass marketed, and sold cheap.

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by Gecko

The only thing that'd turn it around is if it were shut down, character wiped, renamed, revamped, simplified, mass marketed, and sold cheap.

*by a different team

[Qhue]

AOC has some of the best art direction and amazing design concepts I've seen in a game. On my machine it ran ultra smooth even with essentially infinite rendering distance and gave you a real sense of immersion that just does not exist with other games.

However despite the success of the game from a visual / animation standpoint the gameplay is just really lacking and does so for no discernable good reason.

So much of the game is just broken from a design standpoint and broken in ways that ANYONE can see within seconds of inspection. It really makes you wonder what the heck people were thinking or indeed if they were thinking when they made some of their decisions.

As a result we are seeing people leave the game in droves. I can't speak for the global server load but I can say that among my pre-AOC friends from other games 7/10 have cancelled their accounts and I suspect at least one other person has as well but I havent seen them online or in forums within the past week+ to be sure. Of those who are left, and among the guild, the numbers who log in have dramatically shrunk in the face of buggy content and lackluster and horribly bugged / imbalanced PVP content. This may not be the case for everyone but among the people who I have met / see the stark reality is that this title is being dropped faster than anything ever before.

Consumers of MMORPGs have been burned too many times and as a population are no longer at all forgiving or tolerant of bad titles.

I think Warhammer can learn a lot from this initially successful but now botched attempt at launching an incomplete and poorly thought-out title. The older idea of release it now and fix it with patching seems to no longer apply..

[Vehn]

well be thankful they didn't release last October as they were once originally scheduled to...

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Qhue

Consumers of MMORPGs have been burned too many times and as a population are no longer at all forgiving or tolerant of bad titles.

I think Warhammer can learn a lot from this initially successful but now botched attempt at launching an incomplete and poorly thought-out title. The older idea of release it now and fix it with patching seems to no longer apply..

imo the lessons are:

1. hammer out class balance during beta. This is the most important thing you can do in beta, making sure no class is massively OP or underpowered, in PVE and PVP, AT ALL LEVELS OF THE GAME. Its really, really, really fucking hard to do, which is why its better to launch with fewer classes.

2. there are 4 basic styles of leveling - solo quest, solo grind, private group grind (instance), public group grind (overworld). One style should not provide an overwhelming advantage over the other. Its fine if group grinding is 20% faster than solo, but it shouldn't be 100% or 200% faster. ALL STYLES SHOULD BE VIABLE FROM LEVEL 10-. You can't let people group grind to level 50 then force them to quest, or quest to level 50 then force them to grind. Obviously anything you can do to make people enjoy leveling slowly is very helpful to your bottom line.

3. minimal but fully working end-game. Be very, very clear about what your game is launching with at end-game and what you are going to patch in. Its ok if you have 0 raids and only a handful of public/private instances and minimal PVP system, you just need to tell everyone this up front, tell them your plans and when you plan to patch it in. People will level slower and take more time if they know there is nothing to do right now at end-game, but if everyone thinks end-game is kinda there they will rush to it.

4. 4-6 months before launch, realistically set your internal expectations. The last few months of MMO dev should be polish and balance, not new stuff. Keep dev staff working on new stuff if you like, but it should be for post-release patches, not release day.

5. Expect exploiters and figure out ways to cut their kneecaps off quickly. Every MMO needs a warden, that lets you update detection code on a daily basis without patching. Every MMO needs 1-2 staff members whose job it is just to visit hacking sites, find the latest hacks, and figure out ways to stop it. Every MMO needs to protect its internal client data and always assume the client process is a lying bastard who steals candy from babies. You need a security person to review every checkin during development to make sure there aren't giant holes, and you need your testers to constantly be looking for exploits. Any beta tester who finds more than X exploits should get a free month of gametime after launch, you will find most of your exploits quickly that way. After launch, ban first and ask questions later. Yes some people will get angry they got banned, and some may be innocent (but not if your tools are good), but its better to send a message that you will tolerate no cheating.

[Lalala]

The gold spamming and gold exploiters are the most annoying thing for me so far in all MMOs I've played.

But I don't see a simple way to solve that, it seems there will always be exploiters (and sadly, people to buy gold, since they are needed for gold spammers to exist) unless to make money irrelevant, but that take out a good part of your MMO.

[Dashal]

They can release and fix/add but if they start out in too deep a hole it will never catch up in time. AOC released a graphically excellent game and good gameplay to about 1/3rd of the way in.

But beyond that they have too many bugs, terrible UI (IMO), bad functionality all around. This is on top of the issues any MMO will have with class balance, end game content and exploiters.

So really the lesson is get as much done as you possibly can, and I think AoC did, they just ran out of time.

I dont want to bash AoC here though, I think they made a very good game. I enjoy it still at level 46. They didnt cut n paste WoW, they tried to be innovative with combat, the graphics are amazing, it's a good stage for PvP. Mounted combat. Siege, granted is not refined very well but hey it's mostly there!

So I say good effort, seems to have run out of time. No idea who is at fault there, if anyone.

[melicant]

I've been taking my time in AOC (level 79, a few alts sub-20), and despite a few minor bugs I've had a really enjoyable time in AOC so far. I started with a fairly large group of MMORPG veterans that mostly either:

A. Power gamed to 80 and now log in every few days to farm resources or do random pvp. They are generally bored, but probably wouldn't be if there was more than a handful in the guild at level 80 and there was a reason to pvp. None of them have quit, but they don't log in that often and are waiting for the pvp patch.

B. Quit before level 30 because they just didn't like it. A lot quit before level 20, which kind of surprised me because 1-20 was done pretty well IMO.

Every single person that quit was sub-50. Out of the dozen or so that quit, 8-10 didn't even make it out of tortage. A lot of them thought the 1-20 content was horrible for some reason, and a lot of them quit based on what they heard the end game was like... all of which they read on the forums or heard from the people that rushed to 80. Word of mouth is what got Conan so many early subs, and word of mouth is what's going to kill it unless they do something fast for the players that rushed to 80, and for the casuals that are now experiencing the 60-80 content.