Age of Conan
polycounter lvl 18
No topic for this yet? I got a copy the other day and sadly my poor pc can hardly run it, but it certainly seems fun enough if totally lacking polish. I wish I could just upgrade my graphics card but I think my processor is also at fault. I'd hate to have to buy a whole new machine. But then again, Crom only provides you with a copy of the game, he doesn't give you any help running it.
Anyone else give it a go? I'm currently playing on the Tyranny pvp server. The pvp servers are pretty crazy in a wild west sort of way. You can kill anyone at any time for any reason.
Anyone else give it a go? I'm currently playing on the Tyranny pvp server. The pvp servers are pretty crazy in a wild west sort of way. You can kill anyone at any time for any reason.
Replies
So anyone have a buddy invite? (you saw that coming)
* OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
* Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz or equivalent
* RAM: 1GB
* Video card: NVIDIA Geforce 6600 or ATI Radeon 9800
* DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
* Hard drive space: 32GB
Recommended configuration (Up to 1280X960, most features on)
* OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
* Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz or equivalent
* RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2
* Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GTX or equivalent
* Video memory: 512MB
* DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
* Hard drive space: 32GB
Enjoy the blood and boobs.
Tits are moot when they're on a body that looks that laughably abysmal in motion. Animation is appalling, the lighting model is extremely dated looking, the UI teetering on the very edge of being of acceptable professional quality, and don't start me on the texturing. I just can't deal with Speedtree any more either. Fullbright camera facing sprites making up an entire forest scene? It's nauseating. Speedtree needs to just go away.
Draw distances are impressive, as are some of the distant mountain ranges and overall heightmap resolution. Fancy water shader too, but these things don't warrant the performance cost. It's very good news for me If people think this game looks good, but I suspect that people are just yearning for a fresh online experience. I'll stick with it, maybe it will get fun.
They must have made some weird decisions when it comes to asset size limits and optimizations to get up to a 32gb Install.
I'm not sure if the recent patches have fixed the performance issues or not, but it was near unplayable on my machine. Granted, this is not a gaming rig...but even at the lowest of low settings I was only grabbing 5-10fps. My girl recently upgraded her machine, quad q9300, 8800, 4 GB RAM...and she was still only able to run it at the higher medium settings, pulling about 25fps.
The combat system is awesome...I really do enjoy that. And if your PC can handle the higher settings, it's a rather beautiful game. The art department was definitely on the ball (aside from the very generic looking foliage).
From what I experienced, it's not a very social game, and there is a lot of "instanced" play that takes away that MMO "open world" feel (think GuildWars). There wasn't much to catch you within the first 20 levels, but I kept going anyhow. The worst offense is the UI....I've really never come across such a horrid UI layout.
All in all, I'd say check it out...you may like it. Personally, I kept waiting for something interesting to happen...but it never came. Some buddies at work are hooked...and I can't go a day without hearing "conan" atleast a couple dozen times. So...it must have something in there for some people....or they're just living in a fantasy where they have to justify spending $1k+ building a new rig to play it. I was hoping AoC would fill my MMO void while I waited for WAR...but it looks like I'll have to stick with TF2 until then.
It has boobs.
I have a feeling that mashing the shit out of 1, 2, and 3 will get old eventually and I'll probably quit playing. Like Geezus said, I'm waiting for some awesome shit to happen. Back in the olden days when I played WoW I'd get excited every time I saw a new area. I don't get that same feeling with Conan.
The character types are pretty awesome though. I like the choices for a mage: guys who uses demons, guy who transforms into demons, or guy who raises dead people.
Sonic is right- the specs could have been much lower with some decent art direction. I know Europeans dig their gritty realism when it comes to their rpgs, but I think something a bit more vibrant and Frazetta-esque with lower specs would have been a better product.
I think maybe later after it gets out of that "new MMO" feel and starts to work out some stuff they may have forgoten, I might invest in trying it out.
Gotta love that M rating though :P
As far as artwork is concerned, for me its kinda blah. Some things look good some things look amateur. Not necessarily because of video settings but just bad looking art direction. Things just seem flat and lifeless,....unpolished/rushed. Animations are very here and there, none seem to smoothly flow into each other. It all just keeps me from being sucked in like some other mmo's have done to me. Although I will give them huge credit on the initial quest givers all having cut scenes and voices.
The gameplay is of the same caliber as the artwork, good bits and crappy bits. Its got a refreshing combat system that is fun to use. On the other hand it makes pvp very tedious because controlling your character as well as hitting 5 or 6 number keys in the proper order all while trying to hit another player that will most likely just move out the way. It pretty much turns fights into auto-attack fests. PvE stuff is the same old stuff youve always done so far, but luckily there have been ZERO go out an find 50 sheep testicle kinda quests. Lots of kill quests and locate NPC quests, I enjoy those the most.
Controls in general feel pretty stiff and mechanical...magnified by poor animation blending. Combo buttons are VERY unresponsive. VERY VERY UNRESPONSIVE. If you need a quick heal or fast combo then sit back and enjoy the walk back to your tombstone. But in their defense if this game does make it to XBOX live it might all come together WAY better.
The UI is a mess right now, they have a lot of work ahead of them to get it all cleaned up. I think all the fancy programmer bits are functional to an extent, but dam is it unintuitive. Theres buttons surrounding my entire screen which is just bad layout.
All the zoning is very Guild Warsish and Final Fantasyish. It comes with ups and downs. The game feels more just like an online RPG that you get ganked every once and a while in. It makes for fast leveling and good FPS but where teh fuck is everyone?
NO BARRENS CHAT.
What am I gonna do without barrens chat?
As far as the game running poorly on medium and Low, I would actually suggest you run it on High and then turn off shadows and Anti-aliasing. Oddly enough, the game runs way smoother on High than low and medium. I don't know why but it does.
someone was talking about it actually being more taxing on the system to be run on lower settings. weird huh?
Guess I'll load it on my PC next week and see how it goes. This laptop handles all other games pretty well.
Getting owned by server maintenance during Australian peak times is gay and right now I'm getting some seriously weird lag where it is just impossible to play. It kicked in on Friday night and haven't been able to play since.
I'm enjoying this game a whole lot more than WoW, and will probably subscribe after my 30 days. Only if these bugs are resolved!
-caseyjones
Edit: Playing as Caseyjones on Bloodspire PvP
I then switched it to the high default, and tweaked settings in advanced mode and was able to run it at 30-40 fps.
Things like character shadows and water reflections and the fake caustics really killed my gpu, so turning them off but keeping the rest of the settings up high was a good combo for me.
-caseyjones
The game itself was entertaining althouigh it does have more of the feel of an RPG that just happens to be online rather than a pure MMO. I like that but for MMO fans it may not be what you are looking for.
Basicly it looks like they took on way to much in to short a development period. The bigest issue is that it looks like they started creating content before the actual engine was finished.
The 'innovative' combat system, that is supposed to keep me more interested in the fight, is boring, repetitive, and frustrating. I will second the VERY VERY VERY UNRESPONSIVE combo buttons. I would gladly trade in innovation for ye olde auto attack, and proper special attacks when I actually hit the button.
The graphics are really hit and miss. There are times and places where I think, holy shit, this is gorgeous! And then I turn the corner and wonder how I just teleported to EQ.
Speedtree. . .ah, good old speedtree. I've been struggling with it at work for a year or so, and I can never figure out if it's helpful or harmful. I have to say, in the forest, even though everything is camera facing, I really don't notice it unless I'm looking for it. And overall I think it works quite well.
Daz, I'm curious what you think they should be doing instead for a forest as dense as they want/have?
The animations, and voice overs are atrocious, but I actually enjoy the cut scene dialog trees, that DOES actually keep me more interested in what they have to say than standard text box does.
I'm still amazed that an MMO is making me play single player for hours and hours. I'm also amazed that an MMO can have such shitty grouping technology.
And after all of that, I'm still left with the question. . . "When will this start being fun?"
I have a 512 mb Nvidia card in my laptop and 2 gig of RAM, it plays many many games out now, I played TF2 most recently on it and never had any issues. But, even if it isn't a laptop just looking at the support forum you can see how flakey the launch is. 32 gig install with several gig patch at launch? I'm also not looking for running it well just running it playable on low low low settings.
Honestly, If density is your only criteria, I guess Speedtree is your only option. But if you actually want to create a compelling, good looking forest, and so have other criteria like perhaps want your trees to have some character, and want foliage that actually looks like its in the scene, then model that stuff. It's not the camera facing rotation effect that *really* bothers me, irksome though it is, so much as the fact that none of that shit looks lit and integrated into the scene.
I agree, modeling the trees by hand could look a lot better. But the trade off of the time it takes to get it there, and the performance hit that a much higher poly tree would have, tend to dissuade companies from building them by hand.
I think hand made trees work well in sparse environments, but it's difficult to use them in large numbers, such as in a dense forest/jungle.
http://kotaku.com/5012325/age-of-conan-girls-get-accidental-boob-job
The main thing that causes confusion is that when you run out of video ram it only loads diffuse (and at low res sometimes). Thats why you get better performance at high but the game looks flat. Turn down to medium and pay attention to walls and stuff, you propably can notice they have have parallax and spec maps now instead of plain diffuse.
512mb vram is too little for this game, im gonna upgrade to 1024mb card when the high end ones come out (the two-in-one 1024mb cards actually only use 512mb in mirror).
FC should explain the options better and what happens and why, right now it causes a lot of confusion and a lot of people think the game looks like shit even at high.
Funcom = FAIL!
-caseyjones
that aside its pretty fun I like the combination of solo / mmo play, Ive started a necro and reading the forums today it looks like Ive chosen the crappest class in AoC. Ah well ... luckily its still early days
The forums are full of crybabies specially from classes that were totally
imba and now got few nerfs so they cant push singe button all day long
and win everything.
xD I was going to reroll a Dark Templar today....
APologies to Per, I probably havent set the game up properly and it was running on default which set everything on low and looks like a pigs ass
Why the heck would you compare any game to Second Life?
Their lighting model is a major weakness. There's rarely a sense of any directional light at all.
Seems like the most fun to be had is from griefing:
[ame]