AoC Update

[Flight]

Has anything changed with the loot system, since a few months after release ? Worst loot system in any MMO other than CoX. Really, how not to do it.

[Tual]

Nope it's still fucked, but after this weeks patch the new itemization and stat system should hit the test-server, so a fix is incoming.

[Hatorade]

A very large maybe but I might check it out again when they do the above. Maybe my DT will be worth a shit.

[Tingteng]

I enjoyed the latest email I got from funcom. It involved this update news.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

I'm generally a big fan of letting threads on games that have proven to be pieces of shit that nobody's interested in like AoC, Warhammer Online, etc. die out around here, but this is mildly interesting and relevant: Funcom CFO resigns following $23.3m loss // News

Even though AoC was a joke, I don't have any sort of visceral hatred of FunCom like many of us have towards shitty, sleazy companies like Mythic and SoE. Anarchy Online was an amazing experience, for example (I still listen to the soundtrack daily), and if they'd just re-do that as a different sci-fi type game with all new lore - perhaps in the mold of Mass Effect - and got rid of that ridiculous "50,000 years in the future, where you use I-beams to fight" crap, I'd be right in line to hand them more of my money.

[Darph]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

I'm generally a big fan of letting threads on games that have proven to be pieces of shit that nobody's interested in like AoC, Warhammer Online, etc. die out around here, but this is mildly interesting and relevant: Funcom CFO resigns following $23.3m loss // News

Even though AoC was a joke, I don't have any sort of visceral hatred of FunCom like many of us have towards shitty, sleazy companies like Mythic and SoE. Anarchy Online was an amazing experience, for example (I still listen to the soundtrack daily), and if they'd just re-do that as a different sci-fi type game with all new lore - perhaps in the mold of Mass Effect - and got rid of that ridiculous "50,000 years in the future, where you use I-beams to fight" crap, I'd be right in line to hand them more of my money.

SoE and Mythic aren't anymore "sleezy" than any other company.

To be successful in this genre you need the right people in the right place with enough power to make change.

Blizzard gets this, other companies don't seem to.

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

Even though AoC was a joke, I don't have any sort of visceral hatred of FunCom like many of us have towards shitty, sleazy companies like Mythic and SoE.

I also do not hate Funcom... okay they are notorious liars and I would never trust that kind of company with payment informations ever again, but I wouldnt call it hate.

[Etruscus]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

I'm generally a big fan of letting threads on games that have proven to be pieces of shit that nobody's interested in like AoC, Warhammer Online, etc. die out around here, but this is mildly interesting and relevant: Funcom CFO resigns following $23.3m loss // News

Even though AoC was a joke, I don't have any sort of visceral hatred of FunCom like many of us have towards shitty, sleazy companies like Mythic and SoE. Anarchy Online was an amazing experience, for example (I still listen to the soundtrack daily), and if they'd just re-do that as a different sci-fi type game with all new lore - perhaps in the mold of Mass Effect - and got rid of that ridiculous "50,000 years in the future, where you use I-beams to fight" crap, I'd be right in line to hand them more of my money.

wow, you got a lot wrong in this one post.

[Toxxulian]

I actually really enjoyed playing this game, i got three characters to the mid 50s and my main character which was a hox to 76. Didn't really have to do much grinding, not any more then any other mmo i've played. Also, this was back when the game was first released, i haven't gone back since the changes. I enjoyed playing AoC more then i liked playing WAR, I couldn't even get past T3 in WAR.

The thing that i loved most about this game was the soundtrack. If you have a chance, listen to some of it on itunes. I listen to it almost every day, it's the best game soundtrack I've ever heard.

[Skrigg]

Game Director announces Stat and Gear revamp preview

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

It’s that time again for a little peek into what’s coming up for Age of Conan. As mentioned last time the major part of this Producer’s Letter will focus on providing a first look at the details on the upcoming items and statistics update that will come in the next major update. With update 1.04 now live and players getting to enjoy the new content it’s the perfect time to kick-off the process of introducing the next major update.

Before I dive into RPG system changes though, a couple of things to note. We are preparing a lot of information for when the update is ready for the public test servers. This letter couldn’t possibly cover everything, and it won’t. The new gem system for example is an article all on its own, as are the balance changes that will be included in the update for every class. So those things I won’t be covering in detail in this letter, but we will be releasing detailed information over the course of the testing. So rest assured further information overload is coming! Consider this letter as an appetizer to the process that is ahead of us.

Revamping the RPG System

It’s also worth repeating why we have been working away on these changes in the first place.

After we looked at the feedback after launch we concluded that we had misjudged the importance of items and statistics to character progression. While the intention had always been to be less item-centric than other titles, we probably went a little too far in the other direction. Therefore we have set out to expand and develop the RPG system so that it offers better and more interesting character progression and customization.

So, now that the preamble is out of the way, let’s get rolling and take a peek inside the mechanics of the RPG system so you can start to understand where we are taking it. So, how best to provide an overview of the changes? At a basic level what we have done is add an additional range to the attribute budgets, this additional range comes from items and trickle down from your primary attributes. Mobs and encounters have been rebalanced to account for this increase. The end result is that items and trickle down now account for up to fifty percent (give or take a couple of percent variance here and there) of your overall budget for any given attribute. For comparison that contribution did not exceed twenty five percent before the changes, and ‘trickle down’ barely influenced it at all.

Our goal is that players in ‘average’ gear (if you will forgive the subjective nature of using the word ‘average’) will not feel a great change in the game, but will have the potential to get better by working up towards the higher end gear. Where you will notice a change is if you remove your armor and weapons and use lower level gear. The new system does incentivize keeping your gear up to date!

That’s not the end of the changes though. This is really just the ‘brief overview as it were. In order to achieve our goals in a good, solid way that gives us room for future development we also went through the attributes and statistics and made them meaningful, clearer to understand, and hopefully better laid out.

The new character statistics

The best way to demonstrate this in this first look at the new system is to go through the new character stat screens one by one and actually show you what your new character sheet looks like! The interface is now tabbed so that you can see all your stats without having to scroll down by switching between tabs. It also means they are organized in logical groupings.

Firstly please note some of the numbers displayed in the screens are not what a player would really have, and are still subject to change through testing, but I really wanted to visualize it for you as it’s better than the text alone!

So let’s take each of these in turn and explain the new attributes and stats.

GUI_01.jpg On the first screen, the ‘General’ tab, you see the basics of your character. Most of this tab is self explanatory, but it does show the first of the totally new statistics – Armor. Your Armor rating is now what is used in the combat calculations to decide how much damage you avoid from a successful attack. This has replaced the old combination of resistances and invulnerabilities as the main source of mitigation of non-magic damage (we will get to magic damage shortly!). You will still see invulnerabilities offered in some buffs, in those cases those are an additional mitigation above and beyond what the outcome of your armor calculation is.

GUI_02.jpg Next up we have the Combat stats page that shows your new combat stats, both as a rating, which is what item bonuses will add to, as well as what that equates to as a percentage chance (or the percentage increase as appropriate). All of these new stats will have explanatory tool tips and we think moving to using ratings makes the system clearer and easier for you to gauge the relative worth of items.

GUI_03.jpg Next we have the ‘Physical’ tab that lists your health and stamina regens and taps clearly.

GUI_04.jpg Then we have the ‘Magical’ tab that displays your magic related skills, bonus spell damage and the next of the new statistics – your protections. These effectively replace the old resistance percentages and are displayed both as a rating (which again, is what appears on the item bonuses) and as the translated percentage that shows you how much damage that potentially mitigates.

GUI_PVP.jpg Lastly we have the PVP tab that shows your PVP achievements and rankings as well as your PVP specific stats. Here as well you will now find the new PVP version of Armor and Protection that will be offered on PVP items.

Attributes and what they mean!

So what do the main attributes do now? As I mentioned above we have significantly changed how these attributes ‘trickle down’ into your actual performance. This should make the addition of stats in these areas much more visible. You will find that these are now a deal more important than before and now confer the following bonuses to your character:


Every one point of Strength

* Increases Combat rating when using melee weapons (except daggers) by 3
* Increases Armor by 2
* Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
* Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15
* Increases Stamina by 2
* Increases OOC health regen by 0.15

Every one point of Intelligence

* Increases Spelldamage with 0.3 per hit for spells with Intelligence attribute (mage spells)
* Increases Mana points by 3
* Increases Natural mana regeneration by 0.07
* Increases OOC mana regneration by 0.38
* Increases Protection from Electrical/Fire/Cold magic by 0.5

Every one point of Constitution

* Increases Health points by a number depending on class, roughly 5-8
* Increases Stamina points by 2
* Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
* Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15
* Increases OOC health regen by 0.15

Every one point of Dexterity

* Increases Evade rating by 0.5
* Increases Stamina points by 2
* Increases Combat rating with ranged weapons and daggers by 3
* Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
* Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15

Every one point of Wisdom

* Increases Spelldamage with 0.3 per hit for spells with Wisdom attribute (priest spells)
* Increases Mana points by 3
* Increases Natural mana regeneration by 0.07
* Increases OOC mana regneration by 0.38
* Increases Protection from Holy/Unholy magic by 0.5


Just the beginning…

In addition we have worked to make the item stats display better in the GUI and make the comparison of items better.

This is really just a teaser for the information that is to come. These changes have also allowed us to look at each of the classes and make changes to feat trees, skills and spells. Some of these changes were necessary due to the changes above (like the new Armor system) some for balance concerns and adjustments. A lot more information in this vein will be released as we prepare the update for the public test servers. In addition there is also a complete new gem system for crafting items that I haven’t touched on here that will also be revealed soon.

The items themselves, in particular those at high levels have received a lot of individual attention and tweaking to get the most benefit out of the system.

So as you can see there will be a lot to talk about over the coming weeks and months, which I expect, will start right about now!
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director

Recently resubbed for fun and the game has come a long way, gear and stats being basically worthless as well as the tight lip on what stats actually did was one of my major grievances. So this looks promising.

[Draegan]

This is the one game I always wanted to come back to but I still avoid to this day. I've resubbed to almost all the major MMOs except WAR and AOC. I have zero interest in going back to WAR but AOC? I had fun with the game but it was so broken. I'll keep on waiting.

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Skrigg

Game Director announces Stat and Gear revamp preview

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

It’s that time again for a little peek into what’s coming up for Age of Conan. As mentioned last time the major part of this Producer’s Letter will focus on providing a first look at the details on the upcoming items and statistics update that will come in the next major update. With update 1.04 now live and players getting to enjoy the new content it’s the perfect time to kick-off the process of introducing the next major update.

Before I dive into RPG system changes though, a couple of things to note. We are preparing a lot of information for when the update is ready for the public test servers. This letter couldn’t possibly cover everything, and it won’t. The new gem system for example is an article all on its own, as are the balance changes that will be included in the update for every class. So those things I won’t be covering in detail in this letter, but we will be releasing detailed information over the course of the testing. So rest assured further information overload is coming! Consider this letter as an appetizer to the process that is ahead of us.

Revamping the RPG System

It’s also worth repeating why we have been working away on these changes in the first place.

After we looked at the feedback after launch we concluded that we had misjudged the importance of items and statistics to character progression. While the intention had always been to be less item-centric than other titles, we probably went a little too far in the other direction. Therefore we have set out to expand and develop the RPG system so that it offers better and more interesting character progression and customization.

So, now that the preamble is out of the way, let’s get rolling and take a peek inside the mechanics of the RPG system so you can start to understand where we are taking it. So, how best to provide an overview of the changes? At a basic level what we have done is add an additional range to the attribute budgets, this additional range comes from items and trickle down from your primary attributes. Mobs and encounters have been rebalanced to account for this increase. The end result is that items and trickle down now account for up to fifty percent (give or take a couple of percent variance here and there) of your overall budget for any given attribute. For comparison that contribution did not exceed twenty five percent before the changes, and ‘trickle down’ barely influenced it at all.

Our goal is that players in ‘average’ gear (if you will forgive the subjective nature of using the word ‘average’) will not feel a great change in the game, but will have the potential to get better by working up towards the higher end gear. Where you will notice a change is if you remove your armor and weapons and use lower level gear. The new system does incentivize keeping your gear up to date!

That’s not the end of the changes though. This is really just the ‘brief overview as it were. In order to achieve our goals in a good, solid way that gives us room for future development we also went through the attributes and statistics and made them meaningful, clearer to understand, and hopefully better laid out.

The new character statistics

The best way to demonstrate this in this first look at the new system is to go through the new character stat screens one by one and actually show you what your new character sheet looks like! The interface is now tabbed so that you can see all your stats without having to scroll down by switching between tabs. It also means they are organized in logical groupings.

Firstly please note some of the numbers displayed in the screens are not what a player would really have, and are still subject to change through testing, but I really wanted to visualize it for you as it’s better than the text alone!

So let’s take each of these in turn and explain the new attributes and stats.

GUI_01.jpg On the first screen, the ‘General’ tab, you see the basics of your character. Most of this tab is self explanatory, but it does show the first of the totally new statistics – Armor. Your Armor rating is now what is used in the combat calculations to decide how much damage you avoid from a successful attack. This has replaced the old combination of resistances and invulnerabilities as the main source of mitigation of non-magic damage (we will get to magic damage shortly!). You will still see invulnerabilities offered in some buffs, in those cases those are an additional mitigation above and beyond what the outcome of your armor calculation is.

GUI_02.jpg Next up we have the Combat stats page that shows your new combat stats, both as a rating, which is what item bonuses will add to, as well as what that equates to as a percentage chance (or the percentage increase as appropriate). All of these new stats will have explanatory tool tips and we think moving to using ratings makes the system clearer and easier for you to gauge the relative worth of items.

GUI_03.jpg Next we have the ‘Physical’ tab that lists your health and stamina regens and taps clearly.

GUI_04.jpg Then we have the ‘Magical’ tab that displays your magic related skills, bonus spell damage and the next of the new statistics – your protections. These effectively replace the old resistance percentages and are displayed both as a rating (which again, is what appears on the item bonuses) and as the translated percentage that shows you how much damage that potentially mitigates.

GUI_PVP.jpg Lastly we have the PVP tab that shows your PVP achievements and rankings as well as your PVP specific stats. Here as well you will now find the new PVP version of Armor and Protection that will be offered on PVP items.

Attributes and what they mean!

So what do the main attributes do now? As I mentioned above we have significantly changed how these attributes ‘trickle down’ into your actual performance. This should make the addition of stats in these areas much more visible. You will find that these are now a deal more important than before and now confer the following bonuses to your character:


Every one point of Strength

* Increases Combat rating when using melee weapons (except daggers) by 3
* Increases Armor by 2
* Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
* Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15
* Increases Stamina by 2
* Increases OOC health regen by 0.15

Every one point of Intelligence

* Increases Spelldamage with 0.3 per hit for spells with Intelligence attribute (mage spells)
* Increases Mana points by 3
* Increases Natural mana regeneration by 0.07
* Increases OOC mana regneration by 0.38
* Increases Protection from Electrical/Fire/Cold magic by 0.5

Every one point of Constitution

* Increases Health points by a number depending on class, roughly 5-8
* Increases Stamina points by 2
* Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
* Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15
* Increases OOC health regen by 0.15

Every one point of Dexterity

* Increases Evade rating by 0.5
* Increases Stamina points by 2
* Increases Combat rating with ranged weapons and daggers by 3
* Increases Natural stamina regeneration by 0.05
* Increases OOC stamina regeneration by 0.15

Every one point of Wisdom

* Increases Spelldamage with 0.3 per hit for spells with Wisdom attribute (priest spells)
* Increases Mana points by 3
* Increases Natural mana regeneration by 0.07
* Increases OOC mana regneration by 0.38
* Increases Protection from Holy/Unholy magic by 0.5


Just the beginning…

In addition we have worked to make the item stats display better in the GUI and make the comparison of items better.

This is really just a teaser for the information that is to come. These changes have also allowed us to look at each of the classes and make changes to feat trees, skills and spells. Some of these changes were necessary due to the changes above (like the new Armor system) some for balance concerns and adjustments. A lot more information in this vein will be released as we prepare the update for the public test servers. In addition there is also a complete new gem system for crafting items that I haven’t touched on here that will also be revealed soon.

The items themselves, in particular those at high levels have received a lot of individual attention and tweaking to get the most benefit out of the system.

So as you can see there will be a lot to talk about over the coming weeks and months, which I expect, will start right about now!
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director

Recently resubbed for fun and the game has come a long way, gear and stats being basically worthless as well as the tight lip on what stats actually did was one of my major grievances. So this looks promising.

I agree its a big step in the right direction, but the guy doesn't seem to understand players disappointments with the whole item system.

It absolutely wasn't that people were unhappy with how little stats affected performance (nobody knew how they affected us), it was the small variety of loot, that hardly changed from class to class. The linear progression of stats on items, as levels increased. The fact that rare weapons did the same damage as weapons of the same level that might be white or drop as trash.

If they are honest a lot of these decisions were made with console kiddies in mind.


It just bewilders me how Funcom could make so many fundamental mistakes in class and loot design. Allowing the healer class (ToS) to out DPS the pure dps caster class (Demonologist) by giving the healer long casting, higher damage spells, with %dmg inrcease and crit on demand and not giving the DPS class crit on demand.


In my opinion, this could still be a very good MMO, but it needs fundamental changes, not just rebalancing or stats made more important.

If that post is the extent of their changes to the item system it falls far short of what is needed.

[Occido]

Has this patch gone into play yet? or still on the server?

Was thinking of giving this a try again.

[Syringed]

Nope, it hasn't. What has gone into effect is DX10-test on the live servers. I resubbed to see how DX10-test is and it requires a small bit of work to get functioning. If you got a strong enough PC to have DX10's full effects on, it makes AoC one of, if not, the prettiest MMO out there to look at.

While a lot of things have improved in AoC like Ymir's Pass being added with lots of quests for the 55-66 level range, more dungeons, less bugs, and other fixes; A lot of major problems are still present from launch like quests drying up when you hit 75+, priests doing stupid amounts of damage compared to most DPS classes, casters are still massively OP'ed compared to melee in PVP, Dark Templars still suck, no raid "smart loot" (Enjoy waiting months on your chest piece to drop) and many more!

Another bunch of major problems I find is players in global chat, especially on PVP servers, will freely use racial slurs and hacking programs like AoC buddy or geometry exploits and the GMs seem to do NOTHING about it. I mean, dropping the N word or any other racial slur in public chat is usually a hard warning or an auto-ban in most MMOs but in AoC, I see the same players in PVP servers spam them after being spawn camped and they're still back day after day. Same deal with people using obvious botting programs and such.

Before someone asks if there are even GMs left to let this go on, yes, there are GMs and they're very fast in answering petitions unlike most MMOs I've played. They even fix quest problems and "stuck" issues quite fast. They just don't seem to do jack shit about exploiters and racist chat which gives me the impression Funcom is really fucking desperate about holding onto whatever subscribers they have left no matter what kinds of players they are.

I'll probably let me subscription run out again unless this itemization patch is the fucking money. DX10-test may make AoC the best looking MMO out there right now but Funcom is still technically 4-5 patches away from having a decent MMO. The new director doesn't seem to suck quite as hard as Gaute did and Funcom is mastering the art of doing patches that don't break more than they fix for AoC unlike their previous team.

[Inconsiderable]

Originally Posted by Flight

It just bewilders me how Funcom could make so many fundamental mistakes in class and loot design. Allowing the healer class (ToS) to out DPS the pure dps caster class (Demonologist) by giving the healer long casting, higher damage spells, with %dmg inrcease and crit on demand and not giving the DPS class crit on demand.

What? At least in PvP this worked as intended with Daemonologist having far higher DPS and better burst if crit. And as you take about LS this should also apply to PvE.