First, they have fixed helmets. You can now see them. They finally have flying mounts that are player owned. There is now an anti-hitching...thing...that steadies the framerate incredibly well. I mean, if the framerate is low anyway, it will still be low, but it won't dip into the single digits every time you rotate your character (as it did before). In my case, now that my P4 is cranked up from 3.2Ghz to just shy of 3.8Ghz, that framerate is a bit higher than it was before, of my own accord. However, I can also run textures at very high settings, put the draw distance as far as the eye can see, and max out the tree quality distance (a horrible option which distorts trees that are farther off for the sake of saving FPS; my setting used to be at 40% a year ago). And...I can *GASP* turn shadows on! And all this can be yours at the cost of looking at a framerate of 35 FPS.
But their humanoid wolf race STILL DOESN'T HAVE TAIL ANIMATION. Still no tails.
Now, this extra trial came at a somewhat detrimental time. I'm still playing (and enjoying) Age of Conan. For the novelty of it, I started playing Anarchy Online again (because it's a Funcom game). I still fire up Guild Wars about once a week, because I'm going to get a character to level 20 if it hurts. All of this, and then I find out Vanguard doesn't suck anymore and I get a free month of it. I'm never, ever, ever, EVAR going to finish Neverwinter Nights 2 at this rate.
Regardless of all that, I must still sing Age of Conan's praises, because I said I would, and because I actually want to do that. Contrary to what I said about continuing my Silent Hill series analysis.
Last post, I discussed the game's technical flaws. While some of those flaws still persist, the game itself is still a great concept.
For those who have not heard of Age of Conan's "revolutionary" gameplay, it works kind of like this: Launch directional attacks based on where the enemy's shields are not. Sounds basic enough, but it's bloody near revolutionary in an MMO, for it requires that one PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS GOING ON (I'm looking at you, EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI). Essentially, every Unfortunately, the MMO precedent was set a long time ago, and it was mostly a bad one. You have a "hotbar" on which you place skills, spells, and items. You click the skill you wish to execute. You wait until you need it again. You click it again. All the while, your character is on auto-attack, dealing damage-per-second (DPS) based on your gear and a virtual dice roll. In some games, you can let the auto-attack do its thing while you run off to make a sandwich. Age of Conan has defeated this style of play with its "one click, one hit" style of play.
I think MMOs finally just caught up with single player games.
Anyway, essentially every character has three "shields" that it can assign, in any combination, to its front, left, or right sides. Players are included, although few seem to take advantage of it (because it requires an incredible amount of micro management skills). Keys 1, 2, and 3 are attack upper left, attack middle/front, and attack upper right, respectively. At some later level, Q and E turn into attack lower left and attack lower right. Essentially, you see where enemies' shields are placed, and you swing elsewhere. Swinging at 1 shield does normal damage, 0 does extra damage, and 2 and 3 mitigate the damage a significant amount.
Is there a hotbar? Of course, there's a hotbar. However, skills work differently. Some skills you just activate and they do something. However, there are very few for my character. The vast majority of the skills are called combos. You click/press the skill on your hotbar, and then you are presented with a list of directional attacks to execute. The final one in the chain is the most important, as it is the most powerful, and the directional damage still applies. So if an enemy has its middle unprotected, I would want to do a combo in which the final attack is aimed at the
middle. This requires one to think ahead a few steps and know your combos well. Enemies react realistically to attack directions, as well, so you can bet that you'll usually only get a few shots in on any unprotected side. This also helps when trying to pull a certain combo and do maximum damage. Currently, I don't have any worthwhile combos that end in a left attack, so I usually swing left a few times early in a fight to get the middle or right sides unprotected. Plus, when you kill an enemy with a combo, you have a chance of triggering a fatality sequence, during which you dismember, decapitate, or otherwise destroy your foe in a gruesome manner. Afterward, you gain a bonus to stamina and health regeneration. And they look really cool (aftermath of one such fatality is pictured right).The setting is pretty grisly. The world of Conan the Cimmerian is a brutal world in which a well-placed blade can be considered a ticket to wealth and glory. It is a place in which drinking takes place in excess, followed by any sort of pleasures the mind could fathom. It is a world in which good and evil gods compete for the peoples' allegiance, while the demons of the latter kind freely roam the countryside. Most importantly, it is a place which doesn't require its inhabitants to grind levels on rabbits and other harmless wildlife for hours on end. When are other MMO developers going to learn that we are tired of fighting rabbits, crabs, bats, rats, worms, and snakes? Even if they do exactly the same attacks, demons are much cooler to kill than rabbits. Really, now, do you think 9 million people would be running instances four times a week on World of Warcraft if the bosses at the end were...prey animals that just happen to do dragonlike damage? Nay, in the first five character levels of Age of Conan, you will fight murderers, witch shamans, slave masters, and at least two different types of demons (only a little bit of embellishment...the two types of demons in this case are "big" and "small").
Yes, I think the combat system is much better than that of any other MMO. There is a place in my heart for the "hands off" gameplay styles of FFXI and Anarchy Online, but I've been wanting a little "action game" in my MMOs for a long time. Heck, even Phantasy Star Online did that for me for a little while (although it isn't really an MMO).
I guess that's enough for now. I wanted to type more, but it's getting long winded and probably boring, so I'll save my future exploits in Age of Conan for future posts. For now, a picture on high settings and 2X anti-aliasing.
