Topic: Age of Conan (Read 7341 times)

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TF2 is kind of an iffy example, I think, because it really seems like one of the few online FPS with things like classes and strategy and other shit that adds dimension to the gameplay.  But the point was that online FPS aren't really doing anything crazily out of the ordinary to keep people playing that MMOs aren't, so I don't really know what you think should be "applied to this particular genre."

Gameplay mechanics, this incessant need to "work" for something that's supposed to be a game during one's free time for fun. At some point developers lost sight of what a game is supposed to be.

People keep sinking time into MMO's because of a need to get gear to stay competitive, but couldn't you just remove the time sink to get straight to the part people want to play?

Unlockable and different (not superior) items are fine, but nobody should have a distinct advantage over someone simply because he wasted more of his time collecting 30 rat's nails, or some such nonsense. They should have the advantage because they practiced and became good at the game. Furthermore, to achieve unlockable material one should enjoy the journey, you can take the hardcore approach to it too; but you could also take the regular play approach. Maybe I'm just bad at writing these things on the fly.
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The thing with these other online games though is that they don't have that monthly fee.   You pay for them once then play it whenever you feel like.  The developer really does not care how long you play it after you pay them that initial payment.  Adding a monthly fee changes everything, because now there needs to be enough content to make people play long enough each month to justify paying $15 to play it.
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Gameplay mechanics, this incessant need to "work" for something that's supposed to be a game during one's free time for fun. At some point developers lost sight of what a game is supposed to be.

People keep sinking time into MMO's because of a need to get gear to stay competitive, but couldn't you just remove the time sink to get straight to the part people want to play?

Unlockable and different (not superior) items are fine, but nobody should have a distinct advantage over someone simply because he wasted more of his time collecting 30 rat's nails, or some such nonsense. They should have the advantage because they practiced and became good at the game. Furthermore, to achieve unlockable material one should enjoy the journey, you can take the hardcore approach to it too; but you could also take the regular play approach. Maybe I'm just bad at writing these things on the fly.
uh.. why? because you dont like it? like 340 bajillion people play and enjoy wow, so im pretty sure the method works. being better than other people is something a lot of people enjoy.

i dunno if ill be getting this, knowing my mmo-addicted blood i probably will buy it and play it for a month then quit, but we'll see. i just dont feel hyped for mmos anymore after the shit that was vanguard.
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How about a game keeps people paying because it's... I don't know...

Fun?



let me know how long something stays fun and why people would keep paying for it after the first couple of months when there is nothing to do.

i'll be waiting.

edit:
ps guild wars basically did exactly what you said except they added to add (optional) grind because people were quitting from nothing to do. and its not even a monthly p2p game.
Last Edit: May 03, 2008, 01:58:41 pm by handsome lamb
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If the stuff you do in, let's say WoW, weren't fun, people wouldn't do them no matter how much there is that stuff or how much they keep adding.

WoW is fun. And so are many other MMORPGs. Maybe not for you. If WoW wasn't fun there wouldn't be almost 10 million people paying for it monthly.

+ Can we get back on topic please? The topic is Age of Conan, not MMORPGs in general.
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If the stuff you do in, let's say WoW, weren't fun, people wouldn't do them no matter how much there is that stuff or how much they keep adding.

WoW is fun. And so are many other MMORPGs. Maybe not for you. If WoW wasn't fun there wouldn't be almost 10 million people paying for it monthly.

+ Can we get back on topic please? The topic is Age of Conan, not MMORPGs in general.

will you play it verne?

way to tell someone to be on topic when you're off topic!!!
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will you play it verne?

way to tell someone to be on topic when you're off topic!!!

LOL

Yeah, I had a post up there at the top part of the page. Everyone seems to be at least trying out AoC, can't stay out of the fun if it indeed turns to be fun.
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LOL

Yeah, I had a post up there at the top part of the page. Everyone seems to be at least trying out AoC, can't stay out of the fun if it indeed turns to be fun.

I could've sworn that you never posted in this thread before but I guess I was wrong. Sorry.

But anyway I'm probably getting the CE and that comes with 5 guest passes which I may or may not give to people I know.
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uh.. why? because you dont like it? like 340 bajillion people play and enjoy wow, so im pretty sure the method works. being better than other people is something a lot of people enjoy.

Plenty of people are pretty dissatisfied with what WoW's become. In an effort to make the game into an e-sport, the development team forgot to add new content to pvp; and with the advent of easy to get epics; the raiding crowd is sad because someone out there might have the same hat as them! It's not just my opinion, but it's the opinion who actually really really like this genre despite it's short commings; but are far too addicted to the MMO's to leave until something else good / comparable comes out. (Apparently the thought of just LEAVING never occurred to these people).

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i dunno if ill be getting this, knowing my mmo-addicted blood i probably will buy it and play it for a month then quit, but we'll see. i just dont feel hyped for mmos anymore after the shit that was vanguard.

Funcom... Wasn't this the same team that made Anarchy Online?






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edit:
ps guild wars basically did exactly what you said except they added to add (optional) grind because people were quitting from nothing to do. and its not even a monthly p2p game.

The free to play style would probably be the optimal model for a game such as this. Have a multiplayer campaign where you can earn little niche items in adventure style dungeons and have pvp on the outside; I don't know - I haven't given this whole thing substantial thought.
Last Edit: May 03, 2008, 06:00:40 pm by NightBlade
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Plenty of people are pretty dissatisfied with what WoW's become. In an effort to make the game into an e-sport, the development team forgot to add new content to pvp; and with the advent of easy to get epics; the raiding crowd is sad because someone out there might have the same hat as them! It's not just my opinion, but it's the opinion who actually really really like this genre despite it's short commings; but are far too addicted to the MMO's to leave until something else good / comparable comes out. (Apparently the thought of just LEAVING never occurred to these people).

because they still like the game even though they complain.

you won't see much of a hit on the WoW population really because a big reason why people play those games are because all the people they know does.

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Funcom... Wasn't this the same team that made Anarchy Online?

Yeah.
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because they still like the game even though they complain.

When I hear things like "This game has gone to shit since BC" to every person I talked to (Guarding a tower, talking in town) I kind of have my doubts. I can see newer players not becoming so bored with the game; however.

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you won't see much of a hit on the WoW population really because a big reason why people play those games are because all the people they know does.

If anything, maybe the developers for the game will actually have to do something instead of introducing Rep Grind #42 in the new area controlled by the order of the animal farm against the great scourge of the generic undead; where you can earn fabulous epics in the span of weeks of grinding only to not give a crap after you finally get them.

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who the fuck cares about epics its called itemization, as these games progress items of a higher rank becomes easier to get, and the next rank becomes THE BIG THING. Legendaries are the new epics, and you'll probably start to see that in WotLK way more.
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who the fuck cares about epics its called itemization, as these games progress items of a higher rank becomes easier to get, and the next rank becomes THE BIG THING. Legendaries are the new epics, and you'll probably start to see that in WotLK way more.

Hey DN, I noticed your post really had nothing to do with Age of Conan. Would you mind posting a bit more on topic?
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who the fuck cares about epics its called itemization, as these games progress items of a higher rank becomes easier to get, and the next rank becomes THE BIG THING. Legendaries are the new epics, and you'll probably start to see that in WotLK way more.

Once again you miss the point entirely. Being that grog or mog has asked us nicely; how about we stay on topic?

If you want to upload videos or give your impressions of the beta; I'd like to see that. Always looking for more information to make an informed decision about whether or not to even give the game a shot.
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Btw guys, this is sort of an AoC topic, not a complain about an entire genre topic.

That being said, I started getting bad FPS spikes in Tortage on the beta, which put me off playing it.  Apparently the beta client is pretty badly optimized and is running a lot of debugger code in the back ground.  Despite that I find Bear Shaman and Ranger to be fun.
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Hey DN, I noticed your post really had nothing to do with Age of Conan. Would you mind posting a bit more on topic?

ok

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If anything, maybe the developers for the game will actually have to do something instead of introducing Rep Grind #42 in the new area controlled by the order of the animal farm against the great scourge of the generic undead; where you can earn fabulous epics in the span of weeks of grinding only to not give a crap after you finally get them.

still going to happen except instead of grinding for rep you're gonna grind for something else that means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

the only difference is this game has a different combat system where you don't auto attack constantly.

it's the way the genre is

you have some exceptions (Guild Wars) but no one plays them (Guild Wars has only 5 million sales, across 4 games, assuming some people have multiple accounts, thats ~1 million players, which is a very small population for an mmo)

no one buys into those because there's little to do

the people who play these games like grind, and AoC will have it.

the only other (successful) non-grindy game is Shadowbane, which AoC is similar to in that you can build towns. But Shadowbane is old and no one plays it anymore, and even it had grind.

*eagerly prays for a 3d shadowbane*

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That being said, I started getting bad FPS spikes in Tortage on the beta, which put me off playing it.  Apparently the beta client is pretty badly optimized and is running a lot of debugger code in the back ground.  Despite that I find Bear Shaman and Ranger to be fun.

have they said if the beta client has been compressed or not, i really am hoping that the actual full game client isn't seriously 20GBs or whatever
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The whole running your own town thing is what's got me hooked for now. I'll probably give it a go but I'm not sure if there will be enough to keep me interested.

The problem little gimmicks like that get me and my friends hooked, but then we run into the snag where you can't really enjoy yourself in a MMO if your guild is you and your 9 casual chums.
Last Edit: May 03, 2008, 09:49:45 pm by Ash
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vanguard had player run towns, btw. well, it was one of the promised features. im not sure if anyone actually did it, though.

i wonder if they did.
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If the stuff you do in, let's say WoW, weren't fun, people wouldn't do them no matter how much there is that stuff or how much they keep adding.

WoW is fun. And so are many other MMORPGs. Maybe not for you. If WoW wasn't fun there wouldn't be almost 10 million people paying for it monthly.

+ Can we get back on topic please? The topic is Age of Conan, not MMORPGs in general.
hey i just noticed this!  i think you're too deep into wow to be objective.  people don't always play wow because it's fun.  i know because i did serious raiding for a while when bc came out!  i would say, and i think this is the case for most people, that a large portion of wow is spent not having any fun whatsoever, but rather just working towards something that you want, which may or may not be fun, depending on the person.  you're wrong on a fundamental level here, because people DO keep playing a game that isn't especially fun (you cannot play something like a GOOD PLATFORMER or some example of just quintessentially fun gameplay and say it's the same as an mmo.  fun in the traditional sense of the word barely applies at all to the genre) if it means they get some sort of gratification out of it.  the gratification isn't that it's fun, it's that you get your ego stroked for being the best, or above average, or better than other people, or whatever.

there's also the component where you play with people you like, which might be fun, but i hardly think it's fair to credit the GAME for being fun when really it's fundamentally repetitive and tedious and the only thing that makes it fun is being around people you like.  that's like giving a job credit for being fun because you like your coworkers when the job sucks.  so yeah i don't think it's too accurate to say that people only play it because it's actively fun.  it's fun for a while and then after that, INVOLVEMENT is just a much easier way to keep people playing.
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Tis why I think WAR might beat out AoC since from what I have read, WAR has low grind and is more about PvP with large RvR.
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