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Thursday, May 08, 2008
Age of Conan difficulty
Before the Fileplanet beta, Age of Conan had a PvP weekend, which included leveling up to level 6. From that event I had several reports of some classes being overpowered, for example the Tempest of Set. As I like healers, and an overpowered healer would be something new, that Tempest of Set was the first character I tried. And yes, up to level 6 he felt pretty powerful, killing some mobs with a single lightning bolt. Unfortunately the difficulty level of Age of Conan rises dramatically after the level 6. At level 8 you'll find yourself in a solo instance called the volcano, and that one is rather tough. And my Tempest of Set got stuck there, being unable to pass one group of level 8 guards, or even kill one of them before they killed him.
Next I tried the barbarian, which had more success. The barbarian being a rogue sub-class I then wanted to try a warrior class, and went for conqueror, the melee dps warrior class. AoC has a tank warrior class, but I'm not masochist enough to try that in a game with lots of soloing and PvP. The conqueror also performed well enough, although I was a bit surprised how many skills he shared with the barbarian.
I haven't tried any mage classes yet, but I already heard some complaints from people trying the pet classes: pets in AoC don't tank. If you sic your pets on an enemy, the enemy comes running for you, and isn't even trying to attack your pets. So the pets works similar to a damage-over-time spell, not like the tanking pets in WoW. That makes pet classes a lot less overpowered than in other games.
In general Age of Conan is a lot more difficult than World of Warcraft, that is you die a lot more often, even with the tougher classes. And as another measure of difficulty, you need to press a lot more buttons and button combinations than in WoW. So after a while I got tired of twisting my fingers on the keyboard, and started to use the macro keys of my G15 keyboard. That makes the game a lot easier. Which is good news for me, but bad news for PvP in general. Nobody can press button combinations as fast as a macro can, and people with a programmable keyboard like the G15 will have a huge advantage over other players in PvP.
I can see how a more difficult, and more complex to control, game can be attractive to veteran gamers. But when I think of WoW players like my wife, who is calling me in the rare cases in WoW where one has to jump and run because she can't do it, Age of Conan is definitely too difficult for the very casual players that WoW supports. That might make AoC the "better" game from a gamer point of view, but will further diminish the possible player base.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:12 AM Permanent Link
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I had difficulty in the same instance with my Tempest of Set a few days ago when I first started playing, until I discovered the beauty of consumables in AoC. Buff yourself up with some food (different types stack) and hit a healing potion (for sale dirt cheap at the NPC in night-time version of the tavern) and you'll sail through the place!
This macro thing with the G15 bothers me. Let's see if we we all have to buy one ...
# posted by 
: 8/5/08 13:01
: 8/5/08 13:01
I leveled all healing classes I could find up to 13 in beta (three kinds of 'priests' and that dark paladin kind of thing).
Priest of Mitra gets AOE knockback spell with significant damage at I think level 10 which makes it pretty easy to solo groups of 2 (usual for night-time instances).
Dark paladin has life draining as he does damage and a lot of combos which made dispatching of enemies pretty easy if less reliable than with AOE knockback.
The most difficult I found Bear Shaman -- but it also was my first, so might be because of that.
Anyway I found healing in this early game levels to be flat out disappointing and almost useless -- at best it worked as a secondary buff and you just have to finish enemy off before it does it the same to you -- a la your typical non-healing class.
I'm going to test it out when characters getting bumped to level 20 -- see if it's better. If nothing changes significantly, I'll probably try playing dark paladin thingy in retail -- at least they get heavy armour and passive drain life effects (that obviously help).
Priest of Mitra gets AOE knockback spell with significant damage at I think level 10 which makes it pretty easy to solo groups of 2 (usual for night-time instances).
Dark paladin has life draining as he does damage and a lot of combos which made dispatching of enemies pretty easy if less reliable than with AOE knockback.
The most difficult I found Bear Shaman -- but it also was my first, so might be because of that.
Anyway I found healing in this early game levels to be flat out disappointing and almost useless -- at best it worked as a secondary buff and you just have to finish enemy off before it does it the same to you -- a la your typical non-healing class.
I'm going to test it out when characters getting bumped to level 20 -- see if it's better. If nothing changes significantly, I'll probably try playing dark paladin thingy in retail -- at least they get heavy armour and passive drain life effects (that obviously help).
In regards to the Bear Shaman's healing and healing in general:
LINKY
As for Macro-ing. I'm fairly certain it'll become useless or next to it when in PvP because people will be moving around so much and movement cancels combo chains.
In fact, even without macros it's VERY hard to pull off some of the longer combos in PvP. I suspect a lot of people will initially think it gives them an edge, and then only use macros for PvE when the realize it doesn't.
LINKY
As for Macro-ing. I'm fairly certain it'll become useless or next to it when in PvP because people will be moving around so much and movement cancels combo chains.
In fact, even without macros it's VERY hard to pull off some of the longer combos in PvP. I suspect a lot of people will initially think it gives them an edge, and then only use macros for PvE when the realize it doesn't.
Guild Wars combat is "harder" than World of Warcraft but that hasn't stopped GW building a large following.
@Anonymous, sadly the "harder" difficulty level in GW hasn't filtered out the "nubs" as you affectionately term them.It is a sad fact of gaming life that a person's ability to pull off complicated sequences of keystrokes is entirely unrelated to their level of maturity and basic human decency.
@Anonymous, sadly the "harder" difficulty level in GW hasn't filtered out the "nubs" as you affectionately term them.It is a sad fact of gaming life that a person's ability to pull off complicated sequences of keystrokes is entirely unrelated to their level of maturity and basic human decency.
"Harder = Less nubs"
I suppose this is referring to a person's ability to spam keys at a rate that would make a meth-fueled Speedy Gonzalez jealous. If that is what you mean by noobs.
If, as we all suspect, the community is what really gives an MMO longevity, this is an ominous sign for Conan. I'm not the only one who typically views comments like this as eletist. People who pride themselves as able to play with elite skills and eschew the company of those less skilled tend to be those with eletist attitudes and social skills that are...lacking. These are the players who are most apt to yell insults in battleground channels or initiate "Barrens chat" conversations. They rarely offer helpful advice to less skilled players and often just say "l2p"
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've often found the lesser skilled players in WoW to be those who are older, have a family, and can't dedicate 40+ hours to a game. They tend to be more mature, friendly, and helpful. It is that player base that keeps people in the game - the "social hook".
The above might all just be hyperbole, but it's just an opinion.
mm
I suppose this is referring to a person's ability to spam keys at a rate that would make a meth-fueled Speedy Gonzalez jealous. If that is what you mean by noobs.
If, as we all suspect, the community is what really gives an MMO longevity, this is an ominous sign for Conan. I'm not the only one who typically views comments like this as eletist. People who pride themselves as able to play with elite skills and eschew the company of those less skilled tend to be those with eletist attitudes and social skills that are...lacking. These are the players who are most apt to yell insults in battleground channels or initiate "Barrens chat" conversations. They rarely offer helpful advice to less skilled players and often just say "l2p"
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've often found the lesser skilled players in WoW to be those who are older, have a family, and can't dedicate 40+ hours to a game. They tend to be more mature, friendly, and helpful. It is that player base that keeps people in the game - the "social hook".
The above might all just be hyperbole, but it's just an opinion.
mm
# posted by : 8/5/08 15:42
: 8/5/08 15:42
Unfortunately, while Harder = Less nubs, it also means Less of everyone else.
And with the significantly smaller target audiences with high-end computers, an added difficulty would only reduce your player base.
If you want to make money, you have to cater to the nubs. The fact is, that there are more subscriptions coming from nubs than from us.
And with the significantly smaller target audiences with high-end computers, an added difficulty would only reduce your player base.
If you want to make money, you have to cater to the nubs. The fact is, that there are more subscriptions coming from nubs than from us.
I don't understand why people feel the need to macro in this game. I don't even see how it would be helpful at all in PvP, where it's really difficult to land a combo (and sometimes completing a combo actually leaves you in a more vulnerable position as opposed to bailing out early).
Look, there's hard, not-so-hard, easy and flat out drinking-your-tea-and-eating-subway-while-you-raid easy.
While I think the later can be performed by most of the world's population, I do wonder about how much skill is spent on the tea drinking and avoiding mustard stains from the sub. =P
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While I think the later can be performed by most of the world's population, I do wonder about how much skill is spent on the tea drinking and avoiding mustard stains from the sub. =P
# posted by : 9/5/08 11:10
: 9/5/08 11:10<< Home
