Age of Conan

Well, two of the initial selling points are now out the window.

In the new patch

Gear will give roughly twice the stats as it did before.  Meaning gear will have a much bigger influence on who wins.

Combos are being dumbed-down.  Most combos are going down to 1 button, some 2.

While everyone complained in WOW about 'everything' being dictated by who has the better gear (which isn't necessarily true).. the other side of the coin was in AOC.. your gear meant absolutely nothing, which took away a main area of player progression and made it hard to add 'rewards' for doing certain things.

Combat was supposed to be 'complex'.  The problem was that it was also unwieldy.  AOC combat will now be more in line with WOW where I      Sinister Strike, Slice n Dice, Sinister Srike, Eviscerate.

While I think its better than the current combat and gear system, it did not have to be buffed or nerfed. It could be improved in a better way. Why do every MMO have to look the same? Most MMO are just trying to be another World of Warcraft look alike. WoW is far from perfect, and still the best MMO companies can do is try to copy WoW.

Wheres the passion, the fire, the creativity and flow in 2008? Are MMO companies just going to do as the movies companies do these days, copying hollywood movies success? Hope not..

Originally posted by Azrile

Well, two of the initial selling points are now out the window.

In the new patch

Gear will give roughly twice the stats as it did before.  Meaning gear will have a much bigger influence on who wins.

Combos are being dumbed-down.  Most combos are going down to 1 button, some 2.

While everyone complained in WOW about 'everything' being dictated by who has the better gear (which isn't necessarily true).. the other side of the coin was in AOC.. your gear meant absolutely nothing, which took away a main area of player progression and made it hard to add 'rewards' for doing certain things.

Combat was supposed to be 'complex'.  The problem was that it was also unwieldy.  AOC combat will now be more in line with WOW where I      Sinister Strike, Slice n Dice, Sinister Srike, Eviscerate.

Now this does sound good!! one of my biggest issues after content and being broken was I hated the combos at higher lvls.  I loved the directional things but hitting 4 -5 button combos esp when they were kinda laggy and it was easy for them to miss a key, well it was just frustrating.  Combat being fast one missed combo and it was game over.

where did you read that combos were being dumbed down. i dont see that in the notes. Are you adding stuff?

People were already using G15 and whatnot of keyboards to make difficult combos into easymode macro, as if there never were anything like it.

So in my book that's not a bad move at all, even though i didn't have such a keyboard and luckily enough had a very goody mouse with lots of buttons to make the combos NP (when you get the extra set of attack directions) but the fact having to make 4 "normal attacks" before it triggered the real attack, was always a little silly imo.

Gear having more stats, GREAT, now it actually matters whether you are naked or not.

Originally posted by jadan2000

where did you read that combos were being dumbed down. i dont see that in the notes. Are you adding stuff?

Haha the combos can hardly go down any further. Just more and more influence from WoW kiddies on the market. The game when it hit closed beta had 8 directional attacks, but the l33t WoW kiddie raider guilds couldn't handle game mechanics that actually had you think about something, so they nerfed it to 3. 

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Originally posted by Azrile

Well, two of the initial selling points are now out the window.
In the new patch
Gear will give roughly twice the stats as it did before.  Meaning gear will have a much bigger influence on who wins.
Combos are being dumbed-down.  Most combos are going down to 1 button, some 2.
While everyone complained in WOW about 'everything' being dictated by who has the better gear (which isn't necessarily true).. the other side of the coin was in AOC.. your gear meant absolutely nothing, which took away a main area of player progression and made it hard to add 'rewards' for doing certain things.
Combat was supposed to be 'complex'.  The problem was that it was also unwieldy.  AOC combat will now be more in line with WOW where I      Sinister Strike, Slice n Dice, Sinister Srike, Eviscerate.

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We do understand that concern, and we aren't talking about making the game quite as item centric as some others on the market, but we do feel that it requires attention as progression is key for many people in an MMO setting, and the current system just doesn't support the progression of stats sufficiently to provide any substantial motivation for acquiring rewards. We will be aiming for it to be more meaningful for sure, but not a 'you can't do normal game-play without item X' type of scenario. Items should matter more than they currently do, and that is what we are working towards.

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The world is not black and white.
 

Originally posted by Azrile

Well, two of the initial selling points are now out the window.

In the new patch

Gear will give roughly twice the stats as it did before.  Meaning gear will have a much bigger influence on who wins.

Combos are being dumbed-down.  Most combos are going down to 1 button, some 2.

While everyone complained in WOW about 'everything' being dictated by who has the better gear (which isn't necessarily true).. the other side of the coin was in AOC.. your gear meant absolutely nothing, which took away a main area of player progression and made it hard to add 'rewards' for doing certain things.

Combat was supposed to be 'complex'.  The problem was that it was also unwieldy.  AOC combat will now be more in line with WOW where I      Sinister Strike, Slice n Dice, Sinister Srike, Eviscerate.

Some of the early Conan gear had +0.1 and +0.2 gear which made no difference. Even later the plus stats were too low. It is tough to walk a fine line from having PvP combat being about skill vs gear. I dont think these changes will make Conan comparable to the carrot on a stick / Pavlov experiment that is WoW.

Page one, first sentence of the MMO Developers Handbook reads:

"If at first your game does not succeed, change your lead producer and make the game more like WoW"

VG did exactly the same thing with PhaThom and his WoWifying ideas