Profile: kaheidt
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• • Damn near impossible to find a copy of the game

  • For every copy sold, 2 buddy keys are no longer needed.  What a plan!

  • Posted: 7/09/08 11:34 PM
    Age of Conan
• • Age of Conan: Conan Claims #1 PC Sales Position

  • I agree, and I know what it's to get something out into the public with some really cool features but with some obvious flaws as well.  I do a lot of hobby flash work, so I'll make a file that will let you draw in any color you'd like, move anything you draw, resize it, add some of your own animations if you want, and upload your pictures, and my friends will be like "Why can't I delete anything", and I'll say "Yea yea I haven't built that function in yet, but isn't this other stuff cool?"  Of course, I don't do that with projects that I get paid for, but I understand what you're getting at.

    In all my rants in the many posts I've made about different things in the game, I've never said that AOC failed as an MMO.  I still have hope for it, and thus I have hope in Funcom as a provider that I choose to continue to do business with.  I recognize the potential for AOC, and I probably won't leave any time soon.  But it really gets on my nerves when people just blatantly say that everyone that is whining is just a bunch of babies and they should just leave or shut up and deal with it.  A lot of those people are in the same situation as me where they DO like the game, they're just saying "Come on....... just let my group and I get through 1 instance without any grouping bugs, instance bugs, server disconnects, other various gameplay interrupts."  It's hard enough to get a decent group as it is.  You guys will have to excuse us if we seem a little over dramatic with things we say or ask for.  But at times, it can feel like you're in a sound proof bubble and the guys that you are paying to give you a good time will not listen to what you have to say.

  • Posted: 7/09/08 9:09 PM
    General Discussion
• • Age of Conan: Conan Claims #1 PC Sales Position

  • Originally posted by chrimwinster
    

    Originally posted by kaheidt
    

    Yes.... I too am one of the 700,000 that bought this game assuming it would deliver what was advertised.  As it stands right now, I am one of the 700,000 victims of a very large practical joke.

    Check out the AOC forums sometime.  It's an extensively depressing place to be.

    http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=125629

    **shiver** There's so many bugs....   sooo many.....

    Here's some of the fun you guys that aren't playing are missing.

    http://www.kevinheidt.com/AOC/rocks2.html

    http://www.kevinheidt.com/AOC/PVP-Siege.html

    http://www.kevinheidt.com/AOC/PVP-Siege-2.html

    There's also this cool thing where if you're an assassin that doesn't use mana, any mana drinks are red, meaning you can't use them.  And when you mouse over them, all it says is: "Potion: Can not wear".  And if you try to drink it, you get a message that says "Your  is required to be at least 1", which is some ass backwards way of telling you that you need to have a mana bar in order to drink this.  Oh, and by the way, the way that you know that it's a mana potion is because it's blue.  That's all you need, the color of the drink.  This gives you mana, that's all you need to know.  What?  How much mana and for how long?  Is it a mana over time drink or an instant mana recovery drink?  What??  YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW!  ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW IS THAT IT GIVES YOU MANA, OK?!!!  Jesus...

    http://www.kevinheidt.com/AOC/Potion.png

    I laugh hysterically every time I see MMORPG.com or other such game reporting avenues giving Funcom the big thumbs up for their press releases saying,

    "Hey guys AOC is doing the impossible and everyone loves us and people continue to give us money so hurray us!(pleasegodnobodyreadtheforums...pleasegodnobodyreadtheforums...)"

     

    

    
     

    Full of bugs? Hey its not perfect but a few small inventory flaws are hardly game spoiling bugs. 

    As for the forums I think they have even more negative whingers then mmorpg, I enjoy constructive criticism and opinions  but too many postees dismay me with always wanting perfection and wanting it now and never dwell on positives.

    ATB

    chrimwinster

     

    By any chance did you somehow not see the other game clips and only dedicated enough attention span to process the screenshot before making your comment?  You're absolutely right, a few small inventory  flaws are definitely not a game breaker.  However..... approaching a quest objective, then falling through the platform/mountain that it rests on, and then dying INSIDE the mountain..... that's probably something that should be checked out.

    There's "game has only been out for just over a month be patient and give it some time" flaws, and then there's "geez must have been bring your child to work day" flaws.  I'm no game designer, but in all honesty, how hard can it be to make a building that won't end up with you falling through the floor?  I'm sure there's a whole boat load of considerations that go along with something like a building... but come on.  Are you telling me that all throughout the alpha, beta, and QC testing there wasn't a single person that decided to take a stroll up that building to see if it was ok?

    Then there's the bugs that you definitely can't use the "it just released" excuse for, because they were introduced as a result of after-release update patches.  Like the whole crafted-item-with-a-gem fiasco.  When the game released, you couldn't even cut gems, because there weren't any.  Then they started to drop, and people started to play around with them and do their little gem crafting, but it turned out that it was useless anyways, because you couldn't put it in any of your crafted armor or weapons in order to give them a stats buff.  So THEN you released an update that would allow you to put the gems into the armor/weapons.  Well that's good news, right? 

    WRONG!

    Turns out someone dropped the ball when it came to actually having the gem and the weapon linked together and able to be referenced at the same time from the RDB file.  So now when you hovered your mouse over your combined masterpiece in order to view the combined wep stats with the gem buff, instead of the game going "hey random database file, give me the name and numbers for weapon model X000111 (dagger) plus the name and added bonus for generic item model X010101 (citrine)" and having the RDB file go "Ok here ya go *ka-ching*", you instead have the game going "H3Y RDB FILE, GIVE ME YOUR CITDAGGERRINE X00X0011101110 OK?"  And then the RDB file goes "WHAT?WHAT IS THAT!  I've never even heard of that!  Is it new?  Oh God... what to do, what to do"  The end result of the whole trainwreck is that your client crashes every single time you mouse over the damn thing.

    But wait, there's more!  I know... you're thinking "No way.... how could this POSSIBLY get worse!"  Well... I'll tell you.

    So it turned out that the whole client crashing thing every time you moused over the gemmed item wasn't a 100% of the time kind of issue.  There was actually a teeeeeny tiny spot on the weapon icon, way down in the bottom right corner, that you could click and drag the icon from your inventory without prompting the popup tooltip for it, thereby allowing you to destroy it, or bank it, or mail it, whatever.  Which is great, right?  Not really, because that safe area was actually about 5 X 5 pixels in size, and you could only use that spot to drag the item if the item was in your inventory.  So yes, for those people that didn't find out about the issue before they had gone through the process of adding a gem to a weapon, but still had the weapon sitting in their inventory because every time they tried to touch it they crashed, it was a way for them to get RID of the item and end their headache. 

    But then you had people like me, who were one of the first people to put gems in weapons, so the issue wasn't widespread common knowledge at that point.  Then, on top of that first mover luck, I had the wonderful bad luck of actually managing to click on the exact spot that you needed to in order to move the weapon THE FIRST TIME I CLICKED ON IT.  So needless to say, I equipped the weapon that I had created, and at that point had not experienced the issue first hand, didn't even know it existed.

    So when did I finally learn about the issue, whether by word of mouth or by having my own client crash?  Well, at this point in the story, I'd like to point out that my character is an Assassin, which means I dual wield daggers as my primary weapons, and shoot a crossbow with quarrels as my secondary.  The weapon that I had made was a crossbow, because at that point I had already had some decent daggers and couldn't craft anything better.  So now I have a crossbow time bomb sitting in my secondary weapon slot that I have no idea is going to cause me trouble.  So I'm in a PVP battle with some caster that I jumped, and I hit him pretty damned hard a couple times, and he starts running away.  Casters don't need stam, and assassins do, so sprinting after a caster that is also sprinting doesn't usually end well.  So instead, I switch to my crossbow to finish him off as he moves away.

    Boom.  Crash.  I curse, I click all the necessary "don't send" error prompts, and I restart the game.  I come back on, only to find that even though the game crashed, my assassin was able to successfully swap the crossbow to the primary weapon position.

    Let me say that one more time, 1 to make this post even longer, and 2 so we can all really kind of focus on exactly what the words mean in terms of my gameplay situation in AOC at that very moment.

    My assassin was able to successfully swap the crossbow to the primary weapon position.

    Some of you may be scratching your heads at this point going "So?"  Let me help you catch up to the rest of us.  My character is an assassin.  He's a low armor high damage class that uses dexterity to make lightning fast strikes with his two daggers, and depends on his ability to evade his enemy in order to counteract the fact that his armor is basically a couple of curtains.  Ask me how many combos, attacks, feats, or whatever my assassin has that can be executed when he has is crossbow out.  Zero.  What is currently in my primary weapon spot at this point in time?  A crossbow, which I have zero attacks for.  What is the error that causes the client to crash in relation to a gemmed weapon?  Trying to match a garbled up mess of a model ID with an entry in the RDB files in order to display all the text that goes with it; the name, the damage, the range, the gem buff, the gem name....  How does this get displayed?  As a tooooooltip riiight.

    And what does AOC do any time you mouse over a piece of armor or a weapon?????  It brings up the tooltip for THAT weapon in ADDITION to bringing the tooltip for your currently equiped weapon so that you may compare the two.  "But kaheidt!  You said it was the tooltip that made the client crash!  Wouldn't that mean...."  Yes.... it means that until I could somehow get that crossbow out of my primary weapon spot, I couldn't hover over any weapons what so ever without crashing.  Switching my primary and my secondary again caused it to crash AND was unsuccessful in getting the items actually switched.  And of course GMs are wayyyy to busy reprimanding people that use the N word to help someone like me.

    So what did our hero, the assassin, do in terms of exciting AOC gameplay at this point?  He ran around with his slow ass crossbow in which his only combat options were to either shoot left, straight, or right, and would stop at a distance from a mob that was 2 levels lower than him, fired, and then proceeded to not be able to move while he was reloading/getting punched in the face.  Meanwhile, if I DID manage to kill something and actually get some loot, I couldn't see what stats any of the weapons had, because it would mean my game would go bubye.  So I was selling loot to a vendor for 5 copper that I'm hoping isn't actually a green that can be sold to a player for 3 silver, or something I should actually hang on to.  All the while, I generally remained around position 87 in the queue for a GM.  I ended up just having to be a useless assassin running around like a moron until they finally released the patch that fixes the crash issue. 

    By the way, the patch that DID fix the issue was actually their second attempt.  The first attempt was quickly followed by another edit from the moderator going "UPDATE: THIS ISSUE IS NOT YET RESOLVED.  OUR DEVELOPMENT TEAM IS LOOKING INTO IT AND WILL HAVE IT FIXED BY NEXT PATCH."  Testing?  No?  Ok.  And then when it finally WAS fixed, the whole thing was for chuckles anyways since the added bonus stats weren't actually being accounted for with the weapon or armor.  It just looked pretty.  Only to the person that owned it, because if you traded it, sold it, or even linked it, the gem and all it's glory disappeared and nobody could see what you did.  I believe that's actually still an issue today.

    The real final nut buster in the whole scenario was when I did petition a GM for help, this is the response that I got from the petition handling script.

    http://www.kevinheidt.com/Bomboy.jpg

    Take a reaaaal close look at where they say I should go if I still need some help.

     

    To sum this all up, I can see how you, chrimwinster, would think that I and the many others on the official forums are simply whining because we want perfection, and that we never ever focus on the positive side of things.  I mean, everything I just described is very minor, not game spoiling, right?  There's actually no solid reasons what so ever for anyone to be discouraged with the way AOC has been handled up to this point.  I mean, come on, this 5 year old game has only been out for a month, things are bound to go wrong.  There's so much to think about with an MMO, you can't possibly expect the devs to take the time to test every single little update they are putting out by crafting an item, cutting a gem, putting the two together, and then seeing what the tooltip says.  Do you have any idea how long that would take?  Think of all the combinations they would have to test!  I mean.... you can put gems in both crafted weapons AND crafted armor.  That's four items in all they would need to come up with for the test.  First they have to get to level 40 so they can get the copper.... then they have to have enough money for the hilts, then they have to farm the leather, then they have to farm a couple of gems, then they have to spend time crafting each individual piece even before they can think about putting the gems in the items!  It's just NOT POSSIBLE.  Face it, MMOs are going to have issues, and a crashing client is NOT a game spoiler, so deal with it.
    

    Enjoy the read.

  • Posted: 7/09/08 8:04 PM
    General Discussion
• • Is this game actuly fun?

  • I agree with the previous poster.  I enjoy it.  Is it the best MMO since sliced bread, not by any means.  But it keeps me entertained which is exactly what games are designed to do.  Whether it meets my expectations for an MMO this day and age, that's a completely different story.  It all depends on what you are willing to accept in terms of where AOC is currently a month and a half after launch and 5 years after development began.  Any Joe Shmoe can start playing the game and have a great time, and become addicted to the innovate aspects that AOC has to offer, but that stuff can only contradict the many downfalls of AOC/Funcom by so much and for so long.

    That's why it's so tough for a lot of people that haven't experienced AOC yet to understand why we (current players) say the things we say and why there is a general cloud of negativity floating around the forums.  The game is fun, otherwise we wouldn't still be playing.  But there are lots of bugs that pop up, some game breaking, and some that are just annoying. 

    For example, sometimes when I first attack a mob, he will sprint away from me in the opposite direction, cut to the right, and then approach me from the side, forming sort of a triangular path, when he was originally standing right next to me.  Sometimes this brings other mobs, sometimes he can't make the connection to me and he resets his position and hp and everything.  There was another time where a group of us were fighting 1 of 3 bosses, while another group was fighting another one of the bosses a good 3 clicks away or so, close enough that I could see the battle but far enough that I couldn't target any of them.  All of a sudden, the boss that they are fighting just randomly sprints off from their battle and comes over to wail on us.  Well... two elite bosses was too much for my poor group, and we wiped and never finished the quest, too demoralized to regroup.  The other group couldn't come and save us because the boss they were fighting ran through about 8 mobs to get to us, and 8 elite mobs on a single group is doom.

    There's also the issue, and I think even the most fanatic fanboy can agree to this, with Funcom not being top notch when it comes to customer relations and communicating expected changes, reasons for the changes, responses to the many issues being brought up in the forums, and reasonable PR in terms of missing promises such as buddy keys.  Again, this is something that will affect every person differently in terms of how frustrated they get, if at all, with this situation, and how much weight it carries in determining if they will continue to play.

    There's also key gameplay issues such as class unbalances, gaps of content between levels to avoid endless grinding, the crafting system being a forced level to tier advancement (some of the craftings are useless, most if not all are not nearly as fun as other MMOs IMO), guild cities being bugged and allowing people to fall through buildings are not go up stairs as well as not having any NPCs other than the trader OR guild buffs for the buildings, yada yada. 

    I could give you more, but the purpose of this is not necessarily to discourage you, but to make you aware that most of the negative things you hear are coming from frustration that has acrued over time because of lack of response from Funcom, bad patches that cause more issues or were missing items and need emergency patches the next day, important aspects of the game not getting the immediate attention they deserve...   Basically it's just things that are saying "Ok, we know that this game just came out, and we've been patient so far for over a month and a half... now it's time to deliver on the things we were expecting when we bought the game."

    The game is good, and the game is fun, I recommend you try it, and I wish the trial stuff was in place so you could check it out.  But be forewarned that you WILL come across things that I've mentioned above that will force you to weigh the pros and cons just like everyone else you see here.  You'll like the game, but for how long is something that you need to figure out for yourself.  Maybe by the time you start playing and a month and a half goes by, Funcom will deliver on a lot of stuff and pick up the pace and things will be hunkydory.  I think that would be awesome, as I would love to see AOC succeed. 

    Endpost okthanksbye.

     

    EDIT: by the time I posted this monster, someone else had already posted.  I was agreeing with Praxis:

    Originally posted by Praxus
    

    Sure its fun and there is group content. But if you're not enjoying it then maybe its not for you.

  • Posted: 7/09/08 8:31 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Is this game actuly fun?

  • Be a tank or a healer or you won't get a group.

  • Posted: 7/09/08 12:06 AM
    Age of Conan