Age of Conan

Originally posted by morpin

Originally posted by Raltar

 

Originally posted by Recant

 If I were Conan I'd order this game destroyed.   5 years they took to build this... it's Vanguard 2.0... only instead of anything resembling progress, gone is the seamless world, replaced with arbitrary instances and piss-poor game design.

Failed.

I'm gald to see that atleast a few other people feel the same way I do about this game.

 

I played in the closed beta and saw even then that the basic premise behind this game was flawed. The highly vaunted combat system seemed boring to me, leveling was tedious and the supposedly great storyline and NPC interaction didn't impress me either.

I tried to warn people about the game but everyone just accused me of being an AoC hater and quoted stuff off the AoC website about how awsome the game was going to be. Pffft. Morons. I hope they enjoy their crappy Vanguard clone.

Not a Vanguard clone. Vanguard has no instances.

I was wrong to compare it to Vanguard, although the visual style in some places is very similar - both use speedtree - making the trees look almost identical in both games - both have a certain sharpness about their graphics.  I would have to say though, that what AoC loses in instancing, it makes up for in art direction - it cannot be faulted, it's a very beautiful game.

Originally posted by boognish75

I am a bit confused about what i am reading, the game is instanced, or is it zones,

zones mean that the part of the world you go into can hold your group and others not i n your group usually up to where theres a server load in which case they will make another mirror of that zone for the ones that dont fit to go into

INSTANCE means you, your group, your raid can only enter, and there is a copy for this for everyone to do

are people getting these two things confused, because i am reading many conflicting posts about after lvl 20.

Basically, in MMOs you have two basic setups... Streaming and Zoned.

Streaming would be a MMO like WoW, or Lineage 2. Except for discreet, separate areas, the world is loaded and unloaded in real-time as you navigate through it.

For example, in WoW, you pass seamlessly from Westfall into Duskwood. There is no loading screen.

Examples of MMOs that use Zones  would be FFXI and EQ2 and, of course, AoC. The world is not loaded/unloaded in real time, but is broken up into smaller chunks that are loaded/unloaded while the player is at a "loading screen" sorta like separate maps.  The size of the zones is incidental. A zone could be an entire outdoor region spanning virtual miles. It could be the small interior of a single shop.

Instancing is built on the concept of Zones and means simply that multiple copies of a single zone can exist. It's mostly done to mitigate over-population of any given area. Once the population in any given instance reaches a maximum  # determined by the developers, a new copy or instance of that area is generated and any additional players entering that zone are loaded into that new instance.

The hub areas of Guild Wars are a great example of instancing, as are the wilderness areas. For example, in GW you have Old Ascalon, and you'll see at the top corner of the screen a drop-down list of all the "Districts" available.  Districts is basically just GW's term for instances; copies of Old Ascalon that are created as needed to accomodate more players.

By simply selecting a different "District" from the drop-down list, you are automatically moved to that new instance.

What the case seems to be in AoC is that it's a zone-based game, with each area presented as a separate map, and that all or at least most of the zones can be instanced as population requires.

Some people like instancing as, as has been argued, it keeps competition for mob spawns down and keeps the area from lagging too much. Some don't like it because it "splits up" the population and makes it seem less like one large community and can be abused by people wanting to escape certain defeat in PvP, etc. I think both sides have solid points to make.

Ultimately,it comes down to which you prefer and whether or not instancing is a "deal breaker" for you.

Really can't understand why people are getting so bent out of shape over people pointing it out.

<edited> post removed. Dang. You mods are rocking today lol

You can debate someone without resorting to immature flaming;

Hmm.. from the point of this game ever being labled an open world mmo... not true, has been said it was instanced/zoned to keep the quality of gfx high.....just cause you can't reserch a game properly before you buy... not the games fualt.

Originally posted by Recant

 

 

The point of this thread was to discredit the claims of people who said that instancing only applied to the 1-20 game.  It was misleading.  I wasn't really concerned about zoning, but obviously the two are intertwined.

To some, like yourself, this is obviously not an issue.  But to many, like myself, instancing is a deal breaker because it simply doesn't exist to the extent it does in other games.

You can call WoW names if it makes you feel better, but for people who are used to a seamless and non-instanced open world, AoC can appear like a step backward.  Obviously, this is a complete personal preference.

Blaming people's PCs is also an easy excuse, the game obviously isn't optimised that well - it's not making best use of resources for the results we're getting on screen. Not all 3D engines are born equal, and even games that use the same engine can be brought to a halt with inefficient world design.  Still, it's better than some games.

I'm just letting people know.  Everything is instanced - even the cities have multiple copies of themselves running.  But just like Counterstrike players don't care what is happening on another server, if you ignore the fact the guy you met earlier is actually where you are now, but you cant see him, because he's in an alternative reality, AoC provides entertainment for those who are forgiving.

But instancing is a PvP issue not a game issue.

The PvP aspect of Instance-Jumping is rediculous, I would hate it too, but since it is there and until it is fixed I will just stay far removed from its influence.  Seems like a simple fix too... write some line of code that says you can not instance port until say.. 30-seconds after your leave battle.  Poof, problem solved..  But how does this kill the entire game?  It doesn't even make it on to my list of grievences with the game at all.

And, as I have said ad infinitum here, I am a Asheron's Call baby, there has never been a larger more open world with less load screens in any MMO... and that was about 10-years ago now on computers that have less power than my cell phone.  But the graphics look like it too

WoW has the same problem AC did it is old and outdated.  But because it is a half decade newer than Asheron's Call, it is hitting its twilight years now and not 7-years ago.  People want something better, AoC isn't the sandbox I want, but at least it is better than WoW is.  It basically IS WoW... same restrictive class structure, same feat/skill trees, same quests, same kill minors until the boss-mob mentality, same restrictive equipment hierarchy, same ease of leveling, same flash through game mentality for end game bordem....  I wish it were so much less like that vaunted game of WoW.

I would loooove to have a seamless world that had the graphics and the real-time combat of AoC, but that isn't going to happen.  And whether we like it or not, it is a choice that has to be made.  We can stick with leggo-land WoW style gameplay or move to something a little more real-time and beautiful to look at.  We have loads of people that want something else that offers more and different options from the other old, outdated games on the market today.  And to do this we have to make sacrifices because, like it or not, some people have better equipment attached to their keyboard and a better internet connection attached to the back of their case.

But don't you think that the devs will optimize the code as the game progresses?  I do.  I will bet the number of people per instance rises fairly quickly.  You have to remember, the game launched 5-days ago.

Originally posted by Consensus
yup its terrible. but the rest of the game is so good, its only holding it back from a 9 or 10. even with its gaping flaws aoc is still way better than anything else, calling it vanguard 2 is so wrong.

Maybe it's time for us to dust off our old VG boxes and enter a seamless world? Old-school MMO style ftw!

---

Originally posted by WiccanCircle
The PvP aspect of Instance-Jumping is rediculous, I would hate it too, but since it is there and until it is fixed I will just stay far removed from its influence. Seems like a simple fix too... write some line of code that says you can not instance port until say.. 30-seconds after your leave battle. Poof, problem solved.. But how does this kill the entire game? It doesn't even make it on to my list of grievences with the game at all.

---

Amen on the bold part of your quote.

IMO, instanced zones defeats the purpose of an FFA PvP server. The concept destroys any viability of player politics.