So, apparently a griefing penalty system is planned that will mark people as criminals and eventually send them to prison, forcing them to do menial labor quests to be let out:
Wow. Are you fucking kidding me? I hope that I have to get CAUGHT before I go to jail and it isn't like some sort of "You have killed too many noobs. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 gold." and then I'm instantly teleported to jail... because that would drive me to quit.
Oh and can you copy/paste that post? I'm at work and haven't bothered signing up for a forum account yet and I just don't trust the computers here enough to be putting my account info in.
I can't understand how I would not enjoy this more than WoW. Maybe once i'm out of Tortage night things will be different. I always played a Rogue in WoW so things were pretty active for me with positioning and what not. I think not having that element in the game is bothering me a bit. Hopefully when I level up more there will be some unique skills and abilities that make the battles a bit different. It just feels like there is a single method for being effective in the game.
Cheap shop, hemorage, hemorage, hemorage, execute. Rinse and repeat. Maybe even throw in some slice and dice.
And Rogue is the most active class in WoW, most require 2 buttons top.
As barbarian, I'm finding I'm using most of the combos on my bar every fight, and fighting groups of enemies, its great.
But those attacks in WoW actually did something. In AoC all of the combos I am using have negligible effects the only important aspect is the direction the attack comes from. Maybe i'm doing it wrong.
Combo hits do like 2 times as much damage as basic hits. And far more than that if they crit.
and that's it. All of the attack details are superfluous aside from the direction that it comes from.
What class are you playing again? I'm a Barb, and I have two combos that I use for damage, one for stunning, one for knockback, and others that have secondary effects. This is all at level 21. I have some that debuff armor, some that remove evasion chance... you get the idea.
Assassin and DT. I
As for the go back to WoW comment I haven't played that game since the expansion was released. I never leveled beyond 40 in that game but I had a ton of character. I guess to surmise my main gripe with AOC it's that it doesn't seem like my combos really do anything. I imagine my DT will pick up some neat abilities in the future and it is a fun world to explore but why on Earth would they give you abilities that lower or raise your hate at level 10 when you can't even party with anyone?
That's just silly. This game has a ton of potential and i'm sure with a few UI mods and some more development behind the scenes it's going to be fantastic. I was just expecting more of a Elder Scrolls type of combat.
The combat in this game is thousands of times better than Elder Scrolls. Thousands. Directional swinging? Check. Directional defense? Check? Fatality animations? Check. Dodging for defense? Check.
Now, what level are your characters? The higher you go, the more combos, abilities, and everything else you get. I don't think that judging the game's combat pre-20 isn't a great idea.
EDIT: I do agree that the placement of some of the abilities is very, very strange, but you can totally party with people at level 10. You keep talking like this game is singleplayer all through Tortage, and I think that's just false.
Whiniest Man On Earth on
0
DyvionBack in Sunny Florida!!Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
I've been searching everywhere (even the dreaded youtube) for a video of Tempest of Set spell weaving in action... but I haven't found one. Does anyone know where I might be able to locate one? It will probably be harder to find one now that spellweaving has been disabled for Temepests... boohoo.
So... anyone seen one?
Dyvion on
Steam: No Safety In Life
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
Depends on the class too. With my Bear Shaman directionality is very important. Blood Flow only hits team mates in a cone in front of me, so it's important to be pointing the right way when casting and to make sure your tanks know they need to stay grouped up.
The combat in this game is thousands of times better than Elder Scrolls. Thousands. Directional swinging? Check. Directional defense? Check? Fatality animations? Check. Dodging for defense? Check.
Now, what level are your characters? The higher you go, the more combos, abilities, and everything else you get. I don't think that judging the game's combat pre-20 isn't a great idea.
EDIT: I do agree that the placement of some of the abilities is very, very strange, but you can totally party with people at level 10. You keep talking like this game is singleplayer all through Tortage, and I think that's just false.
I've been searching everywhere (even the dreaded youtube) for a video of Tempest of Set spell weaving in action... but I haven't found one. Does anyone know where I might be able to locate one? It will probably be harder to find one now that spellweaving has been disabled for Temepests... boohoo.
So... anyone seen one?
There probably isn't one since last I heard from the ToS forums, spellweaving animation was broken.
Fantasyrogue on
0
DyvionBack in Sunny Florida!!Registered Userregular
I've been searching everywhere (even the dreaded youtube) for a video of Tempest of Set spell weaving in action... but I haven't found one. Does anyone know where I might be able to locate one? It will probably be harder to find one now that spellweaving has been disabled for Temepests... boohoo.
So... anyone seen one?
There probably isn't one since last I heard from the ToS forums, spellweaving animation was broken.
Argh. This makes me cry.
Dyvion on
Steam: No Safety In Life
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
I've been searching everywhere (even the dreaded youtube) for a video of Tempest of Set spell weaving in action... but I haven't found one. Does anyone know where I might be able to locate one? It will probably be harder to find one now that spellweaving has been disabled for Temepests... boohoo.
So... anyone seen one?
There probably isn't one since last I heard from the ToS forums, spellweaving animation was broken.
Argh. This makes me cry.
So will getting past the level 40 range. There's only 2 zones worst of quests, both of which only get you ~3 levels.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
About the combat -
I played WoW extensively and was very heavy into PVP and class intricacies. The big difference I think so far (I havent leveled anything very deep in AoC yet but this judgement is based on early levels) is that WoW was much more giving in the unique tools department with early levels. They gave you stuff to fiddle with extremely early. While most of it was useless, it was nice to have those unique options. AoC seems to ease you into new stuff very slowly.
For instance that rogue in WoW example. Sure you could use like 2 skills to kill stuff. But you had tons of options to experiment with to either try and find something more efficient for you, or to get out of jams, or to take on multiple guys for crazy pulls ect. In AoC you dont start out with much. You are giving the ability with most classes to take on multiple mobs only with wide swining melee or small AOE spells. Thats about it. Sure there is a lot of choice making, but your options are limited outside of directions and shields.
AoC is also what I call a very stiff and slow combat engine style. WoW was very face paced and free. It makes people feel more limited with stuff like that.
And finally, any new game is going to feel crappy compared to something you probobly knew inside and out. That lack of knowledge really takes its toll, but its better to look at it like you have a lot to learn, and much to improve upon.
Once a lot of people get experience with classes over 50ish and can provide a ton of input, it will start to flesh out more. I know for one talent trees are completely useless to me because in AoC they all seem to mostly affect direct skills or offer new ones, and much of this is hard to judge without knowing what you will have at your disposal or what most of those augmented skills do before.
So I created a ranger, and enjoyed it somewhat (first character) got to Tortage, then decided to try my other pick (Bear Shaman) to see how I liked it (I didn't). However I noticed the second time through the starting stuff that I missed a ton of items. Not sure how random they are but my bear shaman found a bow/arrows, more armor, etc, whereas my ranger found almost nothing (just a bit of armor and of course the sword from the slaver).
Should I start my ranger over again and get all the stuff or will I find a bow and other good stuff as soon as I start playing in Tortage?
All of that stuff isn't random, Mike. You can pick it up with your Ranger.
Speaking of that, I just played a Ranger. First person targeting is HORRIBLE for combo shots, because it just fires the shot in the location where you started the combo. Since you're presumably going to open up with a shot on a target far away, if they move at ALL, you miss the combo. What the hell, Funcom?
AoC is also what I call a very stiff and slow combat engine style. WoW was very face paced and free. It makes people feel more limited with stuff like that.
I wanted to address this specifically. I thought the AoC combat was very stiff until I made one little change in the options- I turned off auto-facing. It's under Interface, and when you turn that off, your character doesn't try to turn towards whichever is your target... this makes it so much easier to spread your damage out when fighting multiple dudes, not to mention when you're trying to move backwards to get them to bunch up.
Seriously... if you haven't done this, try it. It makes combat so much better.
As for the guy above asking about the randomness of the initial area... don't worry about it. There's a lot of random stuff in there and some characters will find whole armor sets while others will get nothing. But ultimately? As soon as you get into Tortage you should, instead of veering right into the Thirsty Dog, head left where there is an armor vendor and a weapon vendor. Sell everything you've found (except food maybe), and buy a full set of armor and a weapon. It's all cheap and will make the early quests so much easier.
Edit to clarify: There are certain things that are not random... like the scimitar from the slaver, the dagger off that demon guy, etc. But again, the weapon you can buy off a vendor is just as good if not better.
So, I needed to update my graphics card anyways, and I'm willing to do it for this game. My question is though, I don't have a dual-core processor or anything, what I have is an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ 2.4Ghz.
My question is whether it would be worth actually upgrading my graphics card a significant amount so that it's somewhat playable (I'm playing on low setting right now with my 7100 GeForce) or is my processor going to hold me back to the extent that it won't matter that much?
I played WoW extensively and was very heavy into PVP and class intricacies. The big difference I think so far (I havent leveled anything very deep in AoC yet but this judgement is based on early levels) is that WoW was much more giving in the unique tools department with early levels. They gave you stuff to fiddle with extremely early. While most of it was useless, it was nice to have those unique options. AoC seems to ease you into new stuff very slowly.
For instance that rogue in WoW example. Sure you could use like 2 skills to kill stuff. But you had tons of options to experiment with to either try and find something more efficient for you, or to get out of jams, or to take on multiple guys for crazy pulls ect. In AoC you dont start out with much. You are giving the ability with most classes to take on multiple mobs only with wide swining melee or small AOE spells. Thats about it. Sure there is a lot of choice making, but your options are limited outside of directions and shields.
AoC is also what I call a very stiff and slow combat engine style. WoW was very face paced and free. It makes people feel more limited with stuff like that.
And finally, any new game is going to feel crappy compared to something you probobly knew inside and out. That lack of knowledge really takes its toll, but its better to look at it like you have a lot to learn, and much to improve upon.
Once a lot of people get experience with classes over 50ish and can provide a ton of input, it will start to flesh out more. I know for one talent trees are completely useless to me because in AoC they all seem to mostly affect direct skills or offer new ones, and much of this is hard to judge without knowing what you will have at your disposal or what most of those augmented skills do before.
Many of the talent descriptions seem to be very vague/poorly worded, as well. Makes it extremely difficult to choose.
Like the Renewal improvement feat, for example. It says it adds to the damage bonus on Renewal, although Renewal does not have a damage bonus to begin with. Likewise, it doesn't tell you that it's +10% damge with each point in the talent, leading to a +50% damage increase with your next swing at max feat level. That would've been useful to know, not that I didn't put points in it anyway.
What gets to me is that some of the trees seem to be...confused. The Wrath tree on Bear Shaman begins with a skill that makes our healing skill way better, while the one in the Spirits tree gives a short damage increase after using the same skill. Part of the problem may be that I'm trying to tie one or the other into a flat "one's healing, one's damage" mindset, but it still seems odd to separate the abilities in that way.
So... All AoC does is crash for me while going at 10 FPS on my above mediocre computer.
I think Funcom is starting to lose the battle with my patience. I'm having fun playing when it works, but it's getting annoying not being able to run through various zones due to crashing.
So, I needed to update my graphics card anyways, and I'm willing to do it for this game. My question is though, I don't have a dual-core processor or anything, what I have is an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ 2.4Ghz.
My question is whether it would be worth actually upgrading my graphics card a significant amount so that it's somewhat playable (I'm playing on low setting right now with my 7100 GeForce) or is my processor going to hold me back to the extent that it won't matter that much?
Graphics cards are always a great upgrade when it comes to games, because graphics are usually what slows you down. Certainly your processor can hold you back, but more often it's video and memory that are bigger bottlenecks.
If you have a PCI-E slot on your motherboard, you couldn't go wrong with updating to an Gforce 8800 GT or something in that neighborhood. You should also have, at the minimum, 2GB of memory.
My dreams were shattered today, I saw my friend who's a demonologist with his succubus pet out. I immediately loggedout and created a new demonologist just to find out the female I created gets a male counterpart. LAME
So, I needed to update my graphics card anyways, and I'm willing to do it for this game. My question is though, I don't have a dual-core processor or anything, what I have is an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ 2.4Ghz.
My question is whether it would be worth actually upgrading my graphics card a significant amount so that it's somewhat playable (I'm playing on low setting right now with my 7100 GeForce) or is my processor going to hold me back to the extent that it won't matter that much?
I have a similar processor, 3 gigs of RAM, and a 8800GT and I can get up to 60FPS in some areas. I average 30-40. This is with a mix of medium/high settings. Upgrade!
I have two characters: a 28 Barbarian (Reaver) and a 10 Conqueror. I thought they might be too similar, but one allows me to charge into battle and rip people apart and look at all of the bodies surrounding me when I have one ounce of health left. The other allows me to sneak in, stab a guy in the back and lop his head off while I imagine what the guy standing next to him is thinking.
Conquerors really come into their own in the 30s, PVP-wise. I got in a friendly little match with one today, and his heavy armor really helped stop me from hurting him much. Barbarians are fucking fantastic. I can't imagine that I will like another class more, but I'm going to try, because I see a LOT of barbs around, and I like playing something a little off the beaten path sometimes.
Guardian: Haven't heard much.
Conquerer: Pretty awesome. Good DPS for a supposed tank class. Are they tough?
Dark Templar: Tough, very hard to kill, low DPS
Barbarian: Fun as hell
Assassin: A little more fragile, but capable of nastiness out of stealth
Ranger: Mixed, seem good in PvP. Some annoying abilities though.
Tempest of Set: Some have trouble, most seem to be nuking and AoEing with abandon.
Priest of Mitra: haven't heard much
Bear Shaman: Need some work. DPS is pitiful, and seem to be difficult to play at 20 or so
Demonologist: Haven't heard much from them
Herald of Xotli: Fun and cool, but maybe lacking in pvp
Necromancer: everyone seems to get bored and fed up really quickly
Game runs like shit even on low settings. Between the performance and stability issues and shitty interface, I'm having a hard time enjoying the game.
And instanced interiors for the fucking loss.
And when I say the interface is shitty, I'm talking about things like the options menu, and even moreso, the minimap. Goddamn useless is what that is. If I'm zoomed out too far I can't make heads or tails of the icons. If I'm zoomed in far enough to see the icons, I usually can't tell which forking path I should take to reach my destination. Minimap w/ lots of browns and oranges that has icons that are mostly orange and grey
Also, why the hell is my character colliding with what looks like practically flat surfaces? I applaud them trying to include more collision, but when I'm running through town and collide with another character only to have my character stick or teleport to the side a little, or I have to back up and walk around a rock that's only protruding the ground slightly, what's the point?
So, beneath the extremely poor performance, tedious interface, and hard to ignore world collision problems, I see an awesome game that I hope is patched out at least somewhat before my 30 days is up.
Grizzly_Addams on
0
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
edited May 2008
You guys who claim performing horrible... I dont know how you can say so. I am running bare minimum requirements, I have pretty much everything but NPC distance on the lowest setting possible. Game runs ok for me, it looks like some freakish ass accident, but it runs. I cant imagine a more powerful machine realy having issues with this.
I got a ToS to 10 tonight. They are quite fun for me. I have a half decent heal now, so I can do double or more pulls and actually survive a bit. But man, do I do a lot of damage to large numbers of doods.
I just don't feel a need to advance my character(bear shaman/tempest) none of the upcoming skills/spells look very fun, the vast majority of them are just higher ranks of my current skills. The spells I have are a aoe stun, HoT, weak aoe heal and big heal. So I basically have the play style of a lvl10 druid in WoW with no spells to look forward to at all.
I wish I could look down the feat tree and find something worth leveling for but it's either vague or something lame like +0.2% dmg to a straight dmg combo. Do I really want to spend hours leveling to get that? Where is the fun stuff to level for like 'nature's swiftness' or moonkin? It just seems like all the spells and talents were thought up of at the last minute because they needed something to fill it up.
It's been a long time since I played WoW but I remember when I was first leveling with my brother we always had something to look forward to in the next 2-3 levels, even if it was just another level of frost bolt we felt like it would really help. We always felt like we had to play a bit more to get that next big thing.
Despite what I just read about an apparent lack of skills to look forward to (if that is true) I would still like to advance and see the later zones of the game and sweet armor you can get. So the question is, is the entire game fucking grass and rocks and hills or am I going to see some real cool shit?
I just don't feel a need to advance my character(bear shaman/tempest) none of the upcoming skills/spells look very fun, the vast majority of them are just higher ranks of my current skills. The spells I have are a aoe stun, HoT, weak aoe heal and big heal. So I basically have the play style of a lvl10 druid in WoW with no spells to look forward to at all.
I wish I could look down the feat tree and find something worth leveling for but it's either vague or something lame like +0.2% dmg to a straight dmg combo. Do I really want to spend hours leveling to get that? Where is the fun stuff to level for like 'nature's swiftness' or moonkin? It just seems like all the spells and talents were thought up of at the last minute because they needed something to fill it up.
It's been a long time since I played WoW but I remember when I was first leveling with my brother we always had something to look forward to in the next 2-3 levels, even if it was just another level of frost bolt we felt like it would really help. We always felt like we had to play a bit more to get that next big thing.
My Bear Shaman is 52 right now and let me tell you you get a lot of new stuff along the way and I can only assume it's the same for other classes. First of all if you looked forward to new ranks of spells in WoW you should be looking forward to new combo ranks in Conan 10x more. Getting a new rank of a good combo gives you a huge damage jump.
Looking at feats, going down the wrath tree you have plenty of awesome ones. Battle Roar is pretty useful but I guess it's now worth getting excited to get. Rupture makes Crush Armor amazing burst damage, especially if combined with Empowered Renewal from the Spirit tree (+50% damage on the hit that triggers renewal). A little further down you get the real game changing ones with Ursine Rush, a charge ability (only put 1 point in it the DoT is negligible ), and Weight of the World which makes your next attacks snare the enemy and do a TON more damage. I haven't tried getting a crush armor off with empowered renewal and weight of the world yet but I assume it would one shot just about anything.
I think you have plenty to look forward to leveling in Conan but you do get most of your fundamental abilities in the first 25-30 levels. I think this is actually a good thing because you can get used to the play style of the class rather than leveling one way and then switching your play style entirely at 80.
And for Grizzly Addams: if you want to see some different terrain go to one of the different kingdoms. There are three zones for 20-30, one in each of the kingdoms your race can be from.
So, I'm feeling very dissatisfied. The combat, which is all "new and innovative and actiony" while it is somewhat fun, also feels to me somewhat like a sham of an innovation. Someone in the OOC said "I like that it's not just "hit button, watch attack, hit button, watch attack, mob dies." but that's exactly what it is. I may react a bit more, but I did the same thing counterspelling and knowing when to put up spells and such in WoW.
And the interface is terrible. I mean, alot of problems are surely going to be fixed up in patches and such, as it is new. But man. I'm feeling very frustrated with alot of it.
It's probably cause I just tried for like an hour to find this damn treasury to get the phoenix medallion and can't find the damn thing. heh.
any dark templars (past 20) who can tell me if they're enjoying their class?
I hear rumours it's only mediocre in PvP and slow to level in PvE. So could someone clear it up for me?
I was partied with a DT last night that said he was having an absolute blast.
Just got 26 last night, lovin it. Their DPS might be kind of low, but their survivability is very high and there's virtually zero downtime. I can take on a group of one or two lower level mobs, 3-5 of em, and immediately be ready to take on another group the same size. Same can be said for a group of 3 equal level mobs, or 2 one higher up. Still in medium armor too. I took down a level 26 boss mob at level 23, staying at 80% or more HP the entire fight.
One of my favorite parts about this class is how easy it is to be an awesome group member. I don't really change my solo strategy, yet everyone else is getting the sweet heals and extra unholy damage on their hits automatically. Long term buffs (Aura's last 4 hours, Covenants and Drain Life are 1 hour) make my job easy with extra healing available via A Soul For Our Feast.
On the topic of Soul for Our Feast, how much more wtfawesome can you get? A bleeding, still beating heart appears over my head while skulls come up above any enemies in front of me. Then all of their mouthes open simultaneously and a dark torrent of what can only be blood and pure evil pours down.
I really like their feats as well, looking forward to getting deeper into the Desecration tree. They suck up Stam like a mofo, but there are talents to deal with that. They can also transmute HP into Stam every 10 seconds. Good for sprinting.
I posted this in the Character Screenshot thread already, but I wanted to do this in here, too, because it's just too awesome.
The Black Knight: Have at you! King Arthur: You're indeed brave sir knight, but the fight is mine. The Black Knight: Oh, had enough, aye? King Arthur: Look you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left. The Black Knight: Yes I have. King Arthur: Look! The Black Knight: Just a flesh wound.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
Game runs like shit even on low settings. Between the performance and stability issues and shitty interface, I'm having a hard time enjoying the game.
And instanced interiors for the fucking loss.
And when I say the interface is shitty, I'm talking about things like the options menu, and even moreso, the minimap. Goddamn useless is what that is. If I'm zoomed out too far I can't make heads or tails of the icons. If I'm zoomed in far enough to see the icons, I usually can't tell which forking path I should take to reach my destination. Minimap w/ lots of browns and oranges that has icons that are mostly orange and grey
Also, why the hell is my character colliding with what looks like practically flat surfaces? I applaud them trying to include more collision, but when I'm running through town and collide with another character only to have my character stick or teleport to the side a little, or I have to back up and walk around a rock that's only protruding the ground slightly, what's the point?
So, beneath the extremely poor performance, tedious interface, and hard to ignore world collision problems, I see an awesome game that I hope is patched out at least somewhat before my 30 days is up
.
Grizzly FFS do you have the latest nvidia 175.16 whql driver?
My friend has a rig that is a carbon copy of yours (Abit motherboard) and has 30-60 frames on HIGH.
Unfortunately not. For those that don't know, the Rebel's Dagger you get as a reward once you complete Tortage is in the physical shape of a bow. It's quite weird having it hanging there and swinging it at people. :P
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
Posts
Wow. Are you fucking kidding me? I hope that I have to get CAUGHT before I go to jail and it isn't like some sort of "You have killed too many noobs. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200 gold." and then I'm instantly teleported to jail... because that would drive me to quit.
Oh and can you copy/paste that post? I'm at work and haven't bothered signing up for a forum account yet and I just don't trust the computers here enough to be putting my account info in.
Player bounties. Bounty hunters. Prison!!!! Please let all of that happen.
Assassin and DT. I
As for the go back to WoW comment I haven't played that game since the expansion was released. I never leveled beyond 40 in that game but I had a ton of character. I guess to surmise my main gripe with AOC it's that it doesn't seem like my combos really do anything. I imagine my DT will pick up some neat abilities in the future and it is a fun world to explore but why on Earth would they give you abilities that lower or raise your hate at level 10 when you can't even party with anyone?
That's just silly. This game has a ton of potential and i'm sure with a few UI mods and some more development behind the scenes it's going to be fantastic. I was just expecting more of a Elder Scrolls type of combat.
Now, what level are your characters? The higher you go, the more combos, abilities, and everything else you get. I don't think that judging the game's combat pre-20 isn't a great idea.
EDIT: I do agree that the placement of some of the abilities is very, very strange, but you can totally party with people at level 10. You keep talking like this game is singleplayer all through Tortage, and I think that's just false.
So... anyone seen one?
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
This combat is alot more fun than WoW's.
BOTP'd hard on this.
There probably isn't one since last I heard from the ToS forums, spellweaving animation was broken.
Argh. This makes me cry.
PSN: Dyvion -- Eternal: Dyvion+9393 -- Genshin Impact: Dyvion
So will getting past the level 40 range. There's only 2 zones worst of quests, both of which only get you ~3 levels.
Mothafuckin' beatdown!
I played WoW extensively and was very heavy into PVP and class intricacies. The big difference I think so far (I havent leveled anything very deep in AoC yet but this judgement is based on early levels) is that WoW was much more giving in the unique tools department with early levels. They gave you stuff to fiddle with extremely early. While most of it was useless, it was nice to have those unique options. AoC seems to ease you into new stuff very slowly.
For instance that rogue in WoW example. Sure you could use like 2 skills to kill stuff. But you had tons of options to experiment with to either try and find something more efficient for you, or to get out of jams, or to take on multiple guys for crazy pulls ect. In AoC you dont start out with much. You are giving the ability with most classes to take on multiple mobs only with wide swining melee or small AOE spells. Thats about it. Sure there is a lot of choice making, but your options are limited outside of directions and shields.
AoC is also what I call a very stiff and slow combat engine style. WoW was very face paced and free. It makes people feel more limited with stuff like that.
And finally, any new game is going to feel crappy compared to something you probobly knew inside and out. That lack of knowledge really takes its toll, but its better to look at it like you have a lot to learn, and much to improve upon.
Once a lot of people get experience with classes over 50ish and can provide a ton of input, it will start to flesh out more. I know for one talent trees are completely useless to me because in AoC they all seem to mostly affect direct skills or offer new ones, and much of this is hard to judge without knowing what you will have at your disposal or what most of those augmented skills do before.
Should I start my ranger over again and get all the stuff or will I find a bow and other good stuff as soon as I start playing in Tortage?
Speaking of that, I just played a Ranger. First person targeting is HORRIBLE for combo shots, because it just fires the shot in the location where you started the combo. Since you're presumably going to open up with a shot on a target far away, if they move at ALL, you miss the combo. What the hell, Funcom?
I wanted to address this specifically. I thought the AoC combat was very stiff until I made one little change in the options- I turned off auto-facing. It's under Interface, and when you turn that off, your character doesn't try to turn towards whichever is your target... this makes it so much easier to spread your damage out when fighting multiple dudes, not to mention when you're trying to move backwards to get them to bunch up.
Seriously... if you haven't done this, try it. It makes combat so much better.
As for the guy above asking about the randomness of the initial area... don't worry about it. There's a lot of random stuff in there and some characters will find whole armor sets while others will get nothing. But ultimately? As soon as you get into Tortage you should, instead of veering right into the Thirsty Dog, head left where there is an armor vendor and a weapon vendor. Sell everything you've found (except food maybe), and buy a full set of armor and a weapon. It's all cheap and will make the early quests so much easier.
Edit to clarify: There are certain things that are not random... like the scimitar from the slaver, the dagger off that demon guy, etc. But again, the weapon you can buy off a vendor is just as good if not better.
My question is whether it would be worth actually upgrading my graphics card a significant amount so that it's somewhat playable (I'm playing on low setting right now with my 7100 GeForce) or is my processor going to hold me back to the extent that it won't matter that much?
Many of the talent descriptions seem to be very vague/poorly worded, as well. Makes it extremely difficult to choose.
Like the Renewal improvement feat, for example. It says it adds to the damage bonus on Renewal, although Renewal does not have a damage bonus to begin with. Likewise, it doesn't tell you that it's +10% damge with each point in the talent, leading to a +50% damage increase with your next swing at max feat level. That would've been useful to know, not that I didn't put points in it anyway.
What gets to me is that some of the trees seem to be...confused. The Wrath tree on Bear Shaman begins with a skill that makes our healing skill way better, while the one in the Spirits tree gives a short damage increase after using the same skill. Part of the problem may be that I'm trying to tie one or the other into a flat "one's healing, one's damage" mindset, but it still seems odd to separate the abilities in that way.
I think Funcom is starting to lose the battle with my patience. I'm having fun playing when it works, but it's getting annoying not being able to run through various zones due to crashing.
smooth as this launch is, this game could have used a solid 6 months to iron out the major problems
Graphics cards are always a great upgrade when it comes to games, because graphics are usually what slows you down. Certainly your processor can hold you back, but more often it's video and memory that are bigger bottlenecks.
If you have a PCI-E slot on your motherboard, you couldn't go wrong with updating to an Gforce 8800 GT or something in that neighborhood. You should also have, at the minimum, 2GB of memory.
I have a similar processor, 3 gigs of RAM, and a 8800GT and I can get up to 60FPS in some areas. I average 30-40. This is with a mix of medium/high settings. Upgrade!
Guardian: Haven't heard much.
Conquerer: Pretty awesome. Good DPS for a supposed tank class. Are they tough?
Dark Templar: Tough, very hard to kill, low DPS
Barbarian: Fun as hell
Assassin: A little more fragile, but capable of nastiness out of stealth
Ranger: Mixed, seem good in PvP. Some annoying abilities though.
Tempest of Set: Some have trouble, most seem to be nuking and AoEing with abandon.
Priest of Mitra: haven't heard much
Bear Shaman: Need some work. DPS is pitiful, and seem to be difficult to play at 20 or so
Demonologist: Haven't heard much from them
Herald of Xotli: Fun and cool, but maybe lacking in pvp
Necromancer: everyone seems to get bored and fed up really quickly
Game runs like shit even on low settings. Between the performance and stability issues and shitty interface, I'm having a hard time enjoying the game.
And instanced interiors for the fucking loss.
And when I say the interface is shitty, I'm talking about things like the options menu, and even moreso, the minimap. Goddamn useless is what that is. If I'm zoomed out too far I can't make heads or tails of the icons. If I'm zoomed in far enough to see the icons, I usually can't tell which forking path I should take to reach my destination. Minimap w/ lots of browns and oranges that has icons that are mostly orange and grey
Also, why the hell is my character colliding with what looks like practically flat surfaces? I applaud them trying to include more collision, but when I'm running through town and collide with another character only to have my character stick or teleport to the side a little, or I have to back up and walk around a rock that's only protruding the ground slightly, what's the point?
So, beneath the extremely poor performance, tedious interface, and hard to ignore world collision problems, I see an awesome game that I hope is patched out at least somewhat before my 30 days is up.
I got a ToS to 10 tonight. They are quite fun for me. I have a half decent heal now, so I can do double or more pulls and actually survive a bit. But man, do I do a lot of damage to large numbers of doods.
I wish I could look down the feat tree and find something worth leveling for but it's either vague or something lame like +0.2% dmg to a straight dmg combo. Do I really want to spend hours leveling to get that? Where is the fun stuff to level for like 'nature's swiftness' or moonkin? It just seems like all the spells and talents were thought up of at the last minute because they needed something to fill it up.
It's been a long time since I played WoW but I remember when I was first leveling with my brother we always had something to look forward to in the next 2-3 levels, even if it was just another level of frost bolt we felt like it would really help. We always felt like we had to play a bit more to get that next big thing.
My Bear Shaman is 52 right now and let me tell you you get a lot of new stuff along the way and I can only assume it's the same for other classes. First of all if you looked forward to new ranks of spells in WoW you should be looking forward to new combo ranks in Conan 10x more. Getting a new rank of a good combo gives you a huge damage jump.
Looking at feats, going down the wrath tree you have plenty of awesome ones. Battle Roar is pretty useful but I guess it's now worth getting excited to get. Rupture makes Crush Armor amazing burst damage, especially if combined with Empowered Renewal from the Spirit tree (+50% damage on the hit that triggers renewal). A little further down you get the real game changing ones with Ursine Rush, a charge ability (only put 1 point in it the DoT is negligible ), and Weight of the World which makes your next attacks snare the enemy and do a TON more damage. I haven't tried getting a crush armor off with empowered renewal and weight of the world yet but I assume it would one shot just about anything.
I think you have plenty to look forward to leveling in Conan but you do get most of your fundamental abilities in the first 25-30 levels. I think this is actually a good thing because you can get used to the play style of the class rather than leveling one way and then switching your play style entirely at 80.
And for Grizzly Addams: if you want to see some different terrain go to one of the different kingdoms. There are three zones for 20-30, one in each of the kingdoms your race can be from.
And the interface is terrible. I mean, alot of problems are surely going to be fixed up in patches and such, as it is new. But man. I'm feeling very frustrated with alot of it.
It's probably cause I just tried for like an hour to find this damn treasury to get the phoenix medallion and can't find the damn thing. heh.
Just got 26 last night, lovin it. Their DPS might be kind of low, but their survivability is very high and there's virtually zero downtime. I can take on a group of one or two lower level mobs, 3-5 of em, and immediately be ready to take on another group the same size. Same can be said for a group of 3 equal level mobs, or 2 one higher up. Still in medium armor too. I took down a level 26 boss mob at level 23, staying at 80% or more HP the entire fight.
One of my favorite parts about this class is how easy it is to be an awesome group member. I don't really change my solo strategy, yet everyone else is getting the sweet heals and extra unholy damage on their hits automatically. Long term buffs (Aura's last 4 hours, Covenants and Drain Life are 1 hour) make my job easy with extra healing available via A Soul For Our Feast.
On the topic of Soul for Our Feast, how much more wtfawesome can you get? A bleeding, still beating heart appears over my head while skulls come up above any enemies in front of me. Then all of their mouthes open simultaneously and a dark torrent of what can only be blood and pure evil pours down.
I really like their feats as well, looking forward to getting deeper into the Desecration tree. They suck up Stam like a mofo, but there are talents to deal with that. They can also transmute HP into Stam every 10 seconds. Good for sprinting.
The Black Knight: Have at you!
King Arthur: You're indeed brave sir knight, but the fight is mine.
The Black Knight: Oh, had enough, aye?
King Arthur: Look you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left.
The Black Knight: Yes I have.
King Arthur: Look!
The Black Knight: Just a flesh wound.
Aniki!
He still can bite the heck outta of those damn picts. X)
Roleplayers around sign up for a US RP-PVE server (Europe got theirs already! - more choices for the same price can't hurt):
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=11615
Grizzlyadams posted:
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Grizzly FFS do you have the latest nvidia 175.16 whql driver?
My friend has a rig that is a carbon copy of yours (Abit motherboard) and has 30-60 frames on HIGH.
Brother that's either a virus, old drivers, both?
Unfortunately not. For those that don't know, the Rebel's Dagger you get as a reward once you complete Tortage is in the physical shape of a bow. It's quite weird having it hanging there and swinging it at people. :P