Age of Conan - The Launch Thread

[Ben Sones]

Since the beta thread is sort of obsolete at this point, here's a new thread for post-launch discussion.

I'll start off: I'm having fun so far, though I just started playing this morning. Pretty much all of the technical glitches from the beta) performance problems, vanishing maps, LOD popping, et al) seem to be gone, and the game is (so far) running smoothly. I'm sure I'll find some glitches eventually, though--it is an MMO, after all.

While I really like the GUI in general, and think it's as good as WoW's (or better, in some respects--the maps are awesome, for instance, and I find the quest log a lot easier to navigate), there are a few things that I'd really like to see. At the top of the list is a hotkey for jumping into parrotcam view for missile attacks. The current method of zooming in with the scroll wheel is just too slow and clunky (and there doesn't seem to be any way to speed up scroll speed). I'd use the first-person view for all ranged attacks if it were easier to activate. (On a related note: is there IS a hotkey and I've just overlooked it, please let me know!)

Melee combat: I'd be curious to hear what sort of control configuration other folks are using for melee. The game gives you a couple of different options, though I find the default setup to be somewhat clunky. Making attacks and triggering combos by clicking on the hotbar with the mouse is less than ideal, because you really wanting to be looking at the fight and not the interface. Using your left hand to make attacks by hitting the number keys is also clunky, though, because it's just too much stuff to juggle with one hand, and you have to move your hand away from the move/block keys to reach any key higher than 4 or 5.

So I've opted for my own solution: I mapped the action slots to my number pad, and I just move my hand off the mouse and onto the number pad to fight. This is actually a lot less clunky than it sounds--you don't really need to do any mouselooking in combat (not melee combat, at any rate), and the number pad puts all your action slots in easy reach. I just keep my first three fingers on the 1, 2, and 3 keys, and reach up to trigger combos. I left "0" and "." open for the extra two attack directions that you eventually learn. So far, I'm finding this to be a much better control layout for melee.

[AaronSofaer]

Using your left hand to make attacks by hitting the number keys is also clunky, though, because it's just too much stuff to juggle with one hand, and you have to move your hand away from the move/block keys to reach any key higher than 4 or 5.

1,2,3,4,5,r,f,v,t,g,b.

And then if you need still more, z,x,c and various permutations involving Shift and Ctrl.

[Soapyfrog]

I have mostly seen clipping problems. Game runs acceptably on my system which is about 8 months out of date, though I don't get to turn on all the bells and whistles.

However I am impressed with the client and server stability, 5 of us played solidly for 8 hours yesterday from the moment the servers opened without a single crash or even a hiccup.

The world is heavily instanced so this probably helps server stability. Instancing is some times taken to a ridiculous degree, like a single instanced 10x10 cell in the Tortage undervaults. Fortunately load times are pretty quick, though I don't envy necromancers who have to resummon their pets everytime they zone.

Combat in a 5 person party is extremely chaotic. I am lucky if I can land one combo, and target selection is an issue. Pretty fun though! Made it to level 12.

[idrisz]

vanishing map still happens, after you go through a few zones. still have that annoying memory leak.

grouping is really boring on non group mobs;

more news.

The Drinking Cape is only available to members of the Clan of Conan who sign up before the launch of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures.

You will need to complete a quest to meet King Conan and receive the in-game item. A reward code will be sent to the email you are signed up for. To be eligible for the reward, you must have a membership in good standing

The Drinking Cape (Bonus In-game Item) – As fitting for a mature MMO game, the Drinking Cape gives you access to free drinks in all the taverns of Hyboria. This dream-come-true outfit will never be available after the game launches, and with it you can impress friends down the road by proving your status as a pioneer player.

Ring of Acheron (Exclusive In-Game Item) – The Ring of Acheron is an exclusive in-game item which will only ever be available in the Collectors Edition. Stemming from the ancient civilization of Acheron, the ring offers special XP and stamina enhancements for players, making it a powerful companion on the brutal journey through Hyboria.

yeah for free cape

[Lorini]

Well the servers just went down for an estimated two hours, so I guess they are still working on it. How do you join up with people if they are in another instance? And yes, the default keyboard configuration is clunky. If I didn't need an ergonomic keyboard so badly, I'd go back to the Logitech gaming keyboard or even contemplate that horrible Zboard thing.

[Ben Sones]

Originally Posted by Soapyfrog

Combat in a 5 person party is extremely chaotic. I am lucky if I can land one combo, and target selection is an issue. Pretty fun though! Made it to level 12.

My understanding is that melee fighters don't have to target at all. Targeting just shows you target info (like defense allocation); but you hit whoever is in the range of your swing. I'll target someone for my first attack, to see where they have their defenses, but after that I just fight. If you turn and attack someone new, you automatically aquire them as a target anyway.

Make sure you turn off auto-facing, though. There's no need for it, and it just gets in the way in a fight.

[RobotPants]

At the left top corner of the minimap, near where it says what time of day it is, there's a little dropdown menu that allows you to change the instance you're in.

And yeah, the servers are down for a couple hours right now, but I'm pretty impressed with how smoothly the early access part of the launch has gone. Game runs really well and I haven't crashed yet. Well, it still brings up an error from time to time after exiting the game saying it's "no longer responding", but nothing's happened during gameplay yet. Gorgeous game, too.

[Ben Sones]

Quick question: According to the Field Guide (which is pretty handy, albeit a bit cumbersome to navigate), there should be a Thief-style stealth gem that tells you how well you are hiding. Uhm... where is it? Because I don't see the damn thing anywhere in my interface.

[Royal Fool]

Originally Posted by Ben Sones

Quick question: According to the Field Guide (which is pretty handy, albeit a bit cumbersome to navigate), there should be a Thief-style stealth gem that tells you how well you are hiding. Uhm... where is it? Because I don't see the damn thing anywhere in my interface.

Right under the minimap, it glows when you're in a bright area and goes dark when you're in shadows.

I don't think it's the best place for such an indicator, however; should rather be right above the hotkey ability bar so that it's more in the center if the screen.

[JackBurton]

Is there a way to get this digitally?

[idrisz]

server is gonna be down til 2pm pst now, they just updated the page..

I'm sad.

Must get 40.....

Tom why didin't join the working stiff when I sent you an invite, it's just a temporary guild on zug at moment.

[TheWombat]

It's a good launch, so far, and I'm enjoying it. My gripes/wishlist:

Mouse button binding. Right now, you can't bind buttons, and worse, you can't unbind them. The side button on my G5 is perma-bound now to autorun, but it's what I use as a Vent button for my secondary Vent channels (my wife uses it for her primary channel). Running forward every time you talk is nasty, and many, many people in OOC have complained about the same thing. FunCom! It's 2008! Mice have more than two buttons!

Instance identification. There seems to be no easy way to tell which instance of a zone you are actually in. With, today, their being like 50+ instances of Tortage on Cimmeria at one time, that kinda is important. About all you can do is have everyone in your group all select the same instance and meet there. It works, but it's silly.

Interface. I'll agree with Ben that many parts of the interface work well. There are areas though that annoy me. I want freely movable elements--all of the UI elements. I want XML modifiable UI elements (hell, they may be modifiable, I dunno). I want keyboard mappings for the slots to the left of the 1-0 hotbar, which currently do not seem mappable. I would love an option to have the tags/names for group members to be always on. And is there a macro ability? Should be if there isn't.

Pets. Right now they kinda blow. Necro, I'm told, gets a non-tank pet first, when they really need one. My Demonologist's familiar is totally, utterly useless for any purpose other than inducing lag. The pet commands are obeyed only spasmodically, and the pet interface is hardly idea. Oh, and the pets despawn when zoning. Yummy.

Zoning. I realize there's little to nothing that will ever be done about the constant zoning, but on a PvP server it's annoying to have one entry point to a zone which will be constantly camped. Ditto with zoning in/rezzing after death. I'm not a fan of immunity, but better design of the system in some fashion so that there's at least a small buffer period might be worthwhile to look at.

Mostly, though, I like it. I've tried three characters since Early Access launched (a Dark Templar, a Demo, and a Barbarian), and in beta I also tried a Herald and a Conqueror and a Ranger. I like them all for different reasons. I'm still waiting to see how well grouping really works; we tried some three person groups with a tank, DPS, and healing, and it was ok, but none of us were really comfortable with the interface and system yet, and it took us a while to get in the same instance, etc.

[Lurb]

Originally Posted by JackBurton

Is there a way to get this digitally?

That and are all servers reachable regardless of region à la PotBS or do I need to smuggle a US version in order to play with my mates in Cimmeria?

[Qessinge]

Originally Posted by JackBurton

Is there a way to get this digitally?

doesnt appear so - however on the bright side kane & lynch is available on the eidos e-store!

[Tankero]

If you get the torrent, you're not pirating this particular game, as having the game on its own doesn't provide you with the requisite key to activate an account. Or am I mistaken?

[Kunikos]

Torrenting it is still not legal.

[Rich4757]

Originally Posted by TheWombat

It's a good launch, so far, and I'm enjoying it. My gripes/wishlist:

Mouse button binding. Right now, you can't bind buttons, and worse, you can't unbind them. The side button on my G5 is perma-bound now to autorun, but it's what I use as a Vent button for my secondary Vent channels (my wife uses it for her primary channel). Running forward every time you talk is nasty, and many, many people in OOC have complained about the same thing. FunCom! It's 2008! Mice have more than two buttons!

I'm pretty sure you can use the logitech Mouse and Keyboard settings application to assign a keystroke to any button on the mouse. For instance I made my thumb button on my G7 the "X" keystroke and since the game has "X" assigned to Active Block when I hit my thumb button now it now does the active block instead of Auto Run. By the way WoW auto defaults the thumb button to Auto Run as well.

[JackBurton]

Originally Posted by Qessinge

doesnt appear so - however on the bright side kane & lynch is available on the eidos e-store!

How about this...can you DL the patcher? And will that downloadn the full game for you? Assuming you have a valad key...

[Tankero]

Originally Posted by Kunikos

Torrenting it is still not legal.

Actually, if you look at the digital distribution that they had going, it was a torrent wrapped in a "proprietary" filetype that torrent clients could (or can) handle. Ergo, you're using the option that they themselves offered, hence you cannot be breaking any law by doing so.

[TomChick]

Originally Posted by idrisz

Tom why didin't join the working stiff when I sent you an invite, it's just a temporary guild on zug at moment.

That was you guys? I figured I was just being spammed with a random guild invite. Plus, I'm not sure I want the words "Working Stiffs" floating over my head. :)

Frankly, I'm bored with the game, mainly because the vanilla MMO model doesn't do a lot for me. This is a clunky world, characterized by pretty much every MMO convention you can imagine, but minus the polish of WoW or the grace of LOTRO. It can't help that playing a demonologist seems to consist entirely of pressing the Fires of Gehenna button. I messed around with a melee class in the beta, so that's probably the way to go.

-Tom

[idrisz]

Originally Posted by TomChick

That was you guys? I figured I was just being spammed with a random guild invite. Plus, I'm not sure I want the words "Working Stiffs" floating over my head. :)

Frankly, I'm bored with the game, mainly because the vanilla MMO model doesn't do a lot for me. This is a clunky world, characterized by pretty much every MMO convention you can imagine, but minus the polish of WoW or the grace of LOTRO. It can't help that playing a demonologist seems to consist entirely of pressing the Fires of Gehenna button. I messed around with a melee class in the beta, so that's probably the way to go.

-Tom

yeah melee class is way more fun, anyways if you join, you would have at rank of Trollop along with rest of the whores.

[Tankero]

Originally Posted by TomChick

Frankly, I'm bored with the game, mainly because the vanilla MMO model doesn't do a lot for me. This is a clunky world, characterized by pretty much every MMO convention you can imagine, but minus the polish of WoW or the grace of LOTRO. It can't help that playing a demonologist seems to consist entirely of pressing the Fires of Gehenna button. I messed around with a melee class in the beta, so that's probably the way to go.

-Tom

I disagree. The impression I've gotten so far for the few measly levels that I've done is that it is much closer to an RPG game than the other MMOs out there, if only because of the dialogues with the NPCs. I feel the world is much more consistent with itself rather than disjointed as is the case with WoW.

[TheWombat]

Originally Posted by Rich4757

I'm pretty sure you can use the logitech Mouse and Keyboard settings application to assign a keystroke to any button on the mouse. For instance I made my thumb button on my G7 the "X" keystroke and since the game has "X" assigned to Active Block when I hit my thumb button now it now does the active block instead of Auto Run. By the way WoW auto defaults the thumb button to Auto Run as well.

That I haven't tried. In WoW it was easy to unbind the mouse buttons, unlike in AoC. Maybe I can give that shot.

[TheWombat]

I'm really interested in the world beyond Tortage, which I am profoundly, deeply sick of at the moment. I do think melee stuff is better implemented right now, but the Demonologist, once you get your root at I think 10, becomes more interesting--though it's still basically your classic DPS mage.

I do wonder though; Fires of Gehenna is so much better than the other damage spells early on, it makes the rest somewhat useless. The lightning bolt thingy is really only good if you specialize in Havoc, and go around with the lightning buff up, but you have three fire spells to that one lightning DD spell at first, so fire seems the best early game specialization. And the other fire spell, the streams of fire or what not, seems pretty silly, given the rapid recharge of Gehenna. The Demo is very frail, too, even when you get your Mark of Dagon and the Set mage armor spell thingy.

Originally Posted by TomChick

That was you guys? I figured I was just being spammed with a random guild invite. Plus, I'm not sure I want the words "Working Stiffs" floating over my head. :)

Frankly, I'm bored with the game, mainly because the vanilla MMO model doesn't do a lot for me. This is a clunky world, characterized by pretty much every MMO convention you can imagine, but minus the polish of WoW or the grace of LOTRO. It can't help that playing a demonologist seems to consist entirely of pressing the Fires of Gehenna button. I messed around with a melee class in the beta, so that's probably the way to go.

-Tom

[TomChick]

Originally Posted by Tankero

The impression I've gotten so far for the few measly levels that I've done is that it is much closer to an RPG game than the other MMOs out there, if only because of the dialogues with the NPCs.

I might see your point if I'd run into a single dialogue that had any effect whatsoever on gameplay, character advancement, or storyline. At this point, the dialogues are an annoying formality, like WoW's quest text, but with a separate camera view and spread over multiple screens. You'd think they'd at least have some effect in the private instanced stuff.

I think it was Jason who told me that if you're a female character, you can skip a step during an early instanced quest by substituting your own blood for the prostitute's. Nope. No such luck. This is Mass Effect with the storyline on rails, but dialogue choices still mysteriously present, as if the average RPG player might be fooled by simply having to press buttons.

And, yeah, get me the heck out of Tortuga already. At this point, I'm holding out for the possibility of the game world getting more interesting somewhere out there.

-Tom

[GuildBoss]

Originally Posted by Rich4757

I'm pretty sure you can use the logitech Mouse and Keyboard settings application to assign a keystroke to any button on the mouse. For instance I made my thumb button on my G7 the "X" keystroke and since the game has "X" assigned to Active Block when I hit my thumb button now it now does the active block instead of Auto Run. By the way WoW auto defaults the thumb button to Auto Run as well.

Yeppers. I have those two buttons set to keystrokes "j" and "k", respectively, and simply map in-game controls to those keys and it works perfectly.

[idrisz]

Originally Posted by TomChick

I think it was Jason who told me that if you're a female character, you can skip a step during an early instanced quest by substituting your own blood for the prostitute's. Nope. No such luck. This is Mass Effect with the storyline on rails, but dialogue choices still mysteriously present, as if the average RPG player might be fooled by simply having to press buttons.

-Tom

that was me!!!

anyways, but if you weren't female, you miss such awesome lines like "Are you sure, you not a whore?? you do have amnesia!!!"

it be so funny if your optional replies is "Well, there is only 1 way to find out".

[PeterGinsberg]

I'm going to give it more time, but I'm mostly unimpressed so far.

I *do* like the combat system, even if it a little minigame-y. The fact that I have to think about position and attack angle makes regular fights more engaging than a regular MMO.

But otherwise it really does feel by the numbers MMO, a less polished WoW with 75% more boobies.

The visual clunkiness is probably not helping my impressions any. My impending upgrade should fix this, but right now I have terrible load lag, NPCs appearing 1-2 minutes after the rest of the zone, generally weak framerate, etc.

I figure I can't really judge though until I get over level 10 and get my character's real abilities unlocked.

[TomChick]

Ah, sorry, Mr. Z. Credit where credit's due. Yeah, that was funny. But you know what was funnier: the cutscene where I stealthily replace the virgin's blood with the whore's blood and then watch the ritual from a hiding place. The entire time, my stupid demon familiar is standing around in the middle of the cutscene, with his big-ass wings getting in the way of everything.

The demonologist gets a spell that shrinks his pet. As near as I can tell, the only reason for this spell is because the stupid demon is so big that his wings are constantly getting in the way of cutscenes. Oh, look, it's a cutscene of my character talking to a wacky character in Tortuga, only I can't see anything other than a close-up of my demon's wing texture.

Not that I'm missing much. I'd had many cutscenes that consisted of dialogue with someone's knee or chest.

-Tom

[TomChick]

Originally Posted by malph

I figure I can't really judge though until I get over level 10 and get my character's real abilities unlocked.

You're going to be sorely disappointed. If you take a closer look at the "real ability" trees, you'll see that it's no different from the talent system in WoW. For the most part, you're just applying minor tweaks.

-Tom