Age of Conan anniversary contest prizes include lifetime subscriptions
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Contests, Forums, News items
We mentioned an Age of Conan event in passing recently but we’d like to point out a bit more about the AoC Anniversary Contest, “Find the King’s Seals“. It’s an easter egg hunt of sorts, where players are given a list of game sites which contain silver seals. There are 25 silver seals to be found for each language (English, French, and German, although only 10 for Spanish), which are collected in the form of codes, found among the Age of Conan articles on the various MMO sites.
Funcom states: “There is also one golden seal hidden somewhere on one of the listed webpages. If you also manage to find that one together with the 25 silver seals for your language, you get the chance to win the grand prize… a lifetime subscription to Age of Conan.” If you’re interested in entering the contest, you’ve got until midnight (Central European Time) on May 31st. You can see the full Age of Conan Anniversary Contest rules and prize listings on the game’s official forums.
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Having fun in Conan’s homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age! |
Age of Conan anniversary contest prizes include lifetime subscriptions originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 27 May 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Testlive 1.04 Patch Notes Preview - Ten Ton Hammer
Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures Update 1.04 will soon be making its way to the Testlive forums. Haven, a QA Tester for Funcom, recently posted a detailed preview of the coming update. While this means the update is still a good time away from being implemented on the Live servers, it does offer a good look at some of what will be coming to the game soon.
Please Note: **These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live**
Update Notes for Update 1.04
**These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live**
NEW!
* Dx10 in included in this update! Please be aware that not all areas have been completely optimized to work with Dx10, and some areas may still require further development.
* Cradle of Decay - Level 43 group instance, accessed through Field of the Dead
* Xibaluku - Level 80 group instance
* The Slaughterhouse Cellar - Level 80 single player instance
* Players can now desocket/delete gems in their items by opening the info view of the item and using the shift-rightclick menu on a gem. Desocketing will require a potion crafted by an alchemist. The recipe for this item drops in Xibaluku.
GENERAL
* All areas should now support multiple players zoning at once.
* Food and mana/stamina drink can no longer be used while you already have a buff of the same type running. If you want to change your food/drink-buffs you will need to manually cancel them.
* Alt-tab problems should be fixed now.
* An issue causing server lag spikes has been remedied.
* You will no longer briefly see yourself from inside your head when going from first person view into dialog view.
* The emote relaxed_lean will no longer cause the camera to shake slightly.
* Many server performance fixes were done.
* Fixed the female sitting animation.
* Added some new emotes: Adjust, cough, fart, picknose, and sneeze.
* Added cinematic camera movement when you are killed.
* More than 200 male and female social animations have been polished.
* When creating a new character, the random server chosen will match the client language if possible.
COMBAT
* Tab targeting will no longer target dead players, as requested.
* Characters will now make less noise while using Hiding ability.
* Defensive Stance for all Soldier classes have been put on the level as the Guardian starting at a base for 7%. With Improved Defensive Stance you can gain up to 10%.
* Defensive Stance will now also mitigate magical damage.
* Added stealth fatality animations. Now players will have a chance of doing a fatality on human enemies whenever they attack them from the stealth/sneak-hiding mode.
* The level up animation will no longer play while in combat mode.
* Two handed blunt weapons will no longer sound like blades when being drawn/sheathed.
* The Feared animation should now play correctly when you are feared.
* Players will no longer get stuck in the knockbacked state if they get feared during it.
* A small (1s) cooldown has been added to the Hide ability when it successfully activates. This will prevent a player from entering then immediately exiting Hide state if they were to press the button twice.
* Some pets will now be immune to crowd control effects. This includes: Pitch Pots, Living Firestorm, Living Thunderstorm, Blood Pit, Idol of Set, and Cyclone of Set.
* Fixed an issue where characters could be knocked back under geometry.
* When being knocked off a ledge or similar, the player will now land as if falling, and no longer be able to slide around on his back while getting up.
* You can no longer enter spellweaving when climbing or swimming. If you are hiding or crouching and enter spellweaving, you will leave that state immediately.
* Spells on your shortcut bar will gray out when you cannot cast spells in the state you are in (stunned, feared, charmed ).
* Fixed a bug that caused aborted multihit attacks to not show (client side only) the cooldown of the combo, if the combo would not have hit anything.
* Characters will no longer slide when moving immediately after performing a basic attack using bows, crossbows, and throwing weapons.
* Fixed the line-of-sight bug on tab targeting that made you unable to tab correctly to your next target.
* Dead entities will no longer be auto-targeted when your character faces them.
* Male characters will no longer twist their wrists unnaturally when firing crossbows.
CLASSES
Assassin
* Curse of the Lotus will now snare victims by 50% for the duration of the fear effect.
* Death’s Gaze has a new casting animation.
Barbarian
* Updated the description text of the Impale feat to more clearly reflect the function.
* The description text for the feat Finishing Blow should now be more accurate.
Conqueror
* Added new particle effects to the ‘Blessed Conquest’ ability.
* Updated the description of To the Death to reflect its current functionality.
Dark Templar
* Devourer’s Might will now increase the damage of Soul for our Feast I and Leech Life I.
* Epic armors have been adjusted to a darker color to better fit the feel of the class.
Demonologist
* Added new particle effects to the ‘Planar Shift’ spells.
Herald of Xotli
* The cost of Hell Strikes I has been lowered to 8.3% from 8.8% of your base stamina.
* Reduced the cost of Body and Spirit Wrack II from 16.2% to 15.8% of your base stamina.
* Reduced the cost of Burn to Death from 10.8% to 10.4%.
* All ranks of the Molten Steel Slash combo will now animate and execute slightly faster.
* Added new particle effects to the ‘Phoenix Cloak’ spells.
Necromancer
* All Necromancer pets should now play a “spawn animation” when they are first summoned.
Priest of Mitra
* Added new particle effects to the ‘Hand of Mitra’ and ‘Soul of Mitra’ spells.
Ranger
* Mezz Shots will now play the correct animations for bows and crossbows.
Tempest of Set
* Spell - Thundering Command has been renamed to ‘Spell - Thundering Voice.’
* Added new particle effects to the ‘Serpent Transmutation’ spell.
* Blood Mana’s displayed cooldown timer has been corrected, and adjusted to be more easily readable.
* Storm Field’s base critical hit chance has been increased for all ranks.
* Epic Tempest of Set Pole Arms now add magical Tap Stamina instead of physical.
* Storm Crown/Throne/Regalia has been changed so that you will no longer inflict damage while you have Shield of the Risen running, so that you don’t lose that protection. People in your team will also stop inflicting the pulsing damage if you have Shield of the Risen running. Additionally, people in your team that have Shield of the Risen will not pulse the AOE damage while they have Shield of the Risen running. You should now no longer lose Shield of the Risen while you have Storm Crown active.GUI
* When you change your settings and the confirmation dialog box is open, you will now no longer be able to make any changes until you press Yes or No.
* Fixed a bug where clicking a link in a chat window would sometimes activate text input for that chat window.
* Only shift+leftclick now works for getting player info in chat. Rightclick still opens menu where player info can be selected.
* All options in video/advanced should have a tooltip (when they are not disabled).
* You can now disable buff icon minimizing! Option is found in Interface Options.
* You should no longer stop running when opening the map (when using the mouse to move). If you have the map open and want to start running, you should not click on the map!
* Remapping hotkeys using ALT and CTRL should work properly again.
* Buffs on other characters should now show the correct time remaining when you target the character after the buff has started counting down.
* Keybindings on the shortcuts now are more readable. Long shortcuts are truncated, and long combinations will be indicated by a “+”.
* When you fail to teleport to the same instance as your team, you now get a proper error message.
* Player tooltips will no longer show through other windows (such as the tradepost or bank ui).
* NPC base damage type will now be shown in chat text.
* Resizing in windowed mode will no longer cut off the bottom of the screen.
* Updated and corrected the map for Khopshef.
* Remapping should now work as intended. The order of ALT,SHIFT and CTRL does not matter (e.g. ALT+SHIFT = SHIFT+ALT)
* The buff view will no longer report 1 extra unit when the time displayed is exactly what the time really is. (1:00:00 will no longer report as 2h, while 1:00:01 still does).
* Shift + click to loot is now following the same rules as normal looting.
* Potion effects - Chilled, On Fire, and Charged now have new icons.
* Loot options has a submenu - one tab with personal preferences which will be used when your character creates a team, and another tab which shows the current team’s loot options.
* New Loot options : one setting for loot powerlevel (below which loot is auto-distributed), and one personal setting to pass on items below a given powerlevel.
GUILDS
* Guild cities with barracks now receive straw dummies on which to practice their form.
* The guild message of the day will now show in green with a tag in front of it to make it stand out from the regular chat text.
* Even if you spam guild invites, only one window will be open.
* When you receive a guild invitation you will always see who is inviting you, by name.
* Using an NPC to teleport to your guild city will now place you in a more appropriate location.
* You are no longer able to build two of the same building even if they are initiated at the same time.
ITEMS
* Treasure Chests throughout Hyboria have been improved and filled with more stuff!
* The Winterbrew potion now correctly boosts Cold-based spell damage, as opposed to Fire.
* Gold Tooth now stacks in stacks of 100, and the price has been adjusted slightly.
* New valuables have been introduced to replace the white quality equipment that drops from humanoid NPCs.
* Cloak of Champions is now searchable in the Tradepost.
* Darfari items have been distributed to more Darfari npcs.
* It should not be possible to trade non-tradeable items anymore.
MOUNTS
* Quick Dismount will no longer go on cooldown when activated while riding a Mammoth or Rhino, as this ability does not function with these mounts.
* Characters should no longer pop below the ground momentarily when dismounting in combat.
* Weapons should now appear sooner in the hands of mounted characters who perform attacks without first entering combat mode.
* You should not loop the mount/dismount/stagger animation anymore on observer clients (or your own).
* Characters should no longer experience rubber-band issues when being thrown off their horse.
* You cannot be staggered off your horse while mounting/dismounting anymore.
* The death animations for dying while moving forward when mounted should now work properly, and resurrecting other players who have died this way should be easier.
* Players should no longer be able to use their mount’s special abilities while stunned.
* Cape animations have been adjusted so they no longer intersect with horses while mounted.
* The speed of draw/sheathe animations while mounted has been increased.
* Fixed male animations for drawing/sheathing crossbows while mounted.
* When entering a zone where your mount is prohibited, your mount buff is removed, along with its effects.
NPC/MOBS
* NPCs that deliver a killing blow with any of their combos should now have a chance to proc a fatality on their victim.
* Mounted NPCs should now play their attack animations correctly.
* Dark Beasts will now recover more quickly from knockbacks.
* All NPCs of the ‘Ranger’ class will now play a unique combo-animation when executing their combos.
* Three rival mercenary groups have begun camping in the Cimmerian end of the Border Kingdoms.
* Amphitheatre of Karutonia: It is now no longer possible to provoke infinite spawns from the summoning portal.
* Amphitheatre of Karutonia: Fixed the collision around the Frostfather.
* Amphitheatre of Karutonia: Tigers should no longer stick out of their cages.
* Black Ring Citadel: Seruah now has two new spells. Adds should no longer evade when they can’t reach their target. Fixed a bug where Ripped From Within triggered when it was not supposed to.
* Black Ring Citadel: Changed the name of Chatha’s root spell to “Unnatural Atrophy”. It now targets a random soldier within range.
* Black Ring Citadel: Added a particle effect when Chatha changes into demon form.
* Black Ring Citadel: Fixed a bug that wouldn’t let Chatha change into demon form.
* Black Ring Citadel: Renamed Chatha’s single target knockback in phase 2 to “Savage Toss”.
* Black Ring Citadel: Reduced the power of the Strength in Numbers spell.Visualized the source of the buff with a particle effect.
* Black Ring Citadel: Sabazios’ adds now do poison damage.
* Border Range: Fixed an issue that caused some Dark Beasts to slide around in a static pose while walking back to their original position.
* Ice Dragon Cave: Chill Crawler Shadowbearers now have casting animations.
* Ghanatan Wardogs no longer drop human heads.
* Kheshatta: Chenzira now offers the same merchandise as the other Master Food and Drink vendors.
* Kyllikki: Kyllikki’s minions should now wait a short period after spawning before they attack players.
* Old Tarantia: Lordana has been slightly moved to make her quest indicators more visible.
* Poitain: The Abyssal Lich should now properly follow players during combat.
* Spider Cavern: A Rare Delicacy - The mushrooms are now correctly placed.
* Thunder River: General Lupercus’ dialog now matches his voiceover.
* Thunder River: A new merchant has been placed in the Thunder River Palisades.
* Tortage: Underhalls - Askia is now working as intended in epic and normal mode.
* Villa Camillus: Deformed Creation and Twisted Magus will now drop proper loot.
* Wild Lands: Viterion and Avitus, the teleport NPCs, are now moved away from each other.
* Wild Lands: Fixed some issues with mobs roaming inside geometry.
* Wild Lands: The bears have been moved a bit south of the Wild Plains rez point.
* Wild Lands: The Tortured Man has left the Wild Lands.
* Wild Lands: Keyx is now correctly placed.
* Yakhmar: Reduced Yakhmar’s Wyrmlings magical and poison damage reduction. Increased the time between spawns of Yakhmar’s Wyrmling.
* Yakhmar: Yakhmar now displays a buff when lullaby can trigger.PVP/ MASSIVE PVP
PvP Minigames
* The new minigame signup interface shows the four different minigames players can sign up for. It shows how many players are currently signed up for that particular minigame (players in the same tier as the player, regardless of apprenticeship), as well as allows players to sign up for any of the possible minigames (whichever starts first).
* Annihilate Opposing Team: You will no longer get the capture message if you walk into the north or south quarter before the match starts.
* Annihilate Opposing Team: The healing point in the middle of the playfield will again heal anyone that stands on top of it.
* Annihilate Opposing Team: The health of the resurrection totem was increased.
* Capture the Skull: Renamed the Flag to Skull.
* Capture the Skull: Decreased the amount of skull captures to win from 5 to 3.
* When one of the sides leaves the minigame, this will no longer always result in a tie.
* More than 11 players in a minigame will no longer expand the gui erroneously - the overlay will hide instead.
PvP Notoriety
* Murderer Pathfinders should no longer give you two identical travel options.
* Removed all cooldowns and added some XP to all Redemption quests.
* You or your pets will not splash damage neutral npcs anymore.
* Being killed will not remove the killer from diminishing returns.
* When being attacked in PvP, a player will no longer receive the criminal buff for attacking his opponent’s healer, regardless of the level of the healer.
* The criminal buff will no longer be refreshed by attacking a low level opponent and then switching to a higher level target.
* Resource items will now have a chance of dropping in PvP. These will be PvP Resource items (a new mechanic introduced in Update 1.04). More info to follow…
* PvP droppable resources are now marked as such in their mouseover tooltip.
Massive PvP
* Siege participants should no longer unnecessarily get teleported out.
* The Massive PvP tab can now be opened without being in a guild and without being on the Massive PvP playfield.
* The ballista wont play an explosion particle on each player near the impact any more. The impact visual effect has been changed to be more appropriate for a ballista impact. This should improve performance during sieges.
* Two Wayfarers of Asura have decided to observe the conflict in the Cimmerian end of the Border Kingdoms.
* The losing guild in a siege battle will no longer be able to immediately build a keep anymore.
* The winner of a siege battle should always be reported correctly.
* While participating in a siege, the defending players will now have a red cloak and the attackers will have a blue cloak, for the duration of the battle.
* The PvP area marker should now always appear on the map, as intended. The minimap will show the name of the guild that owns a Battlekeep, and when the next window of vulnerability is.
* The Catapult and Trebuchet particle effect was updated so that it does not play a particle effect on every player that gets hit by the explosion.
* If a player leaves a group during Massive PvP they now have 60 seconds to find a new group. This should make it easier for players to organize players between the two different raids.
* You can no longer interact with NPCs of a Massive PVP City after you lose it to another guild.
QUESTS
* Many grammatical errors and waypoints have been corrected for quests worldwide.
* Several new transition quests for level 40 players have been added. Talk to Peison in Old Tarantia, Mmnemnes in Khemi, Conohmer in Conarch, Gern in Lacheish Plains, Thesilea in Poitain, or Dhumib in Purple Lotus.
* Atzel’s Approach: Kidnapping and Torture - The palisades now have a shorter cooldown.
* Castle of King Conan: Fixed looping dialog in the conversation with Pallantides.
* Kheshatta: Tarantian Armorsmith - Quest reward items updated to accommodate every classes’ needs.
* Khopshef: Destiny Quest 30, The Phoenix of the South - The goals for the first part of the quest have been clarified. The player will now be required first to gather all the lotus, then to place it on the altar. The cutscene will play only at this stage.
* Khopshef: Redemption Quest, Path of Venom - Scorpions updating the quest are found throughout the play area, removing the necessity of a goal marker radius.
* Khopshef: Redemption Quest, Ruthlessness - The 30 heads are now properly removed when the heads are put on the Stone.
* Khopshef: Redemption Quest - Redeemer Drak will from now on allow Stygians to redeem themselves in Khopshef - if they want to.
* Poitain: Chastising the Spirit Children - Fixed quest so spirit stones will no longer disappear before they should.
* Purple Lotus Swamp: Followers of a Crocodile God - The pendants will no longer disappear before they should.
* Purple Lotus Swamp: Healing the Wounds of the Swamp - Replaced a goal reference to ‘Oasis Water’ with the correct ‘Moss’.
* Thunder River: Keeping the Land Safe - Removed the waypoint, as it covered half the playfield.
* Tortage: Destiny Quest Soldier, Awakening III - Some visuals have been added to the cutscene Arrested by Guards.
* Wild Lands: Hidden Treasures - Trade has been reduced to 15 items, as intended.
* Wild Lands: A Vote’s Worth - Quest is no longer shareable.
* Wild Lands: Melis Root flowers will no longer float off the ground.
* Wild Lands: The Demon in the Tree - This quest now works as intended.
* Ymir’s Pass: Heart of Atali - Increased the powerlevel of the necklace reward, and increased the variety of neck-item options.
* Ymir’s Pass: Gaze of Crom - The progress bar for laying the Rabbit Snare, and the snare itself, will now have the appropriate name. You will now receive a more logical quest reward.
* Ymir’s Pass: The Twisted Skein - Renamed the Ancient Dagger quest reward to Preternatural Dagger.
* Ymir’s Pass: The Calm Before the Storm - Removed a waymarker that only led to confusion.
TRADEPOST
* Searches now allow - and ‘ and `
TRADESKILLS
* The minimap will now update a resource node’s icon if it is being used by a player.
* The result items of tradeskill recipes now display a stack size if they produce more than one item.
* You should now always see the correct “Tradeskills” category for quests in your quest journal.
* Black Soulstaff, Mottled Cane, and Stygian Deathcoil Vesture recipes items should teach you the correct recipes.
* When removing/unlearning tradeskills, other feats/spells will not be affected anymore.
* Chopping wood should now take the same amount of time as other harvesting skills.
* If you unlearn a tradeskill, the cooldown will always be removed.
* New Woodcutter recipes are now dropping from the following bosses: Vanir Shaman, Diabolist Aino, Metir-Phumon, Occultist Codril-Kau, Crazed Troglodyte Chief, and Atzel General.
* Gemcutting: You should now always have your quest update, without zoning first, after creating a gem. You should also always be able to create gems without zoning first.
* Weaponsmith: Moonsteel Steel Dart goal name is now Moonsteel Throwing Knife.
* Fixed an issue that was causing base, culture and alchemist recipes to drop less than the intended rates.”
* Inventory icons for dropped recipes have been upgraded.
* Cleaned up a few minor cases where alchemy mats removed in update 3 were dropping when they shouldn’t have.
* Fixed dropped rates of some tradeskill resources that were dropping too frequently.
* Some recipes were not properly requiring the following resources: “Ebony Venom” “Tincture of Bergamot” “Tincture of Mint.” The correct recipes now require these materials.
* A new recipe is now dropping in Xibaluku. It allows alchemists to craft a potion that players may use to dissolve socketed gems, destroying the gem but freeing the slot.
WORLD DESIGN
* Many small adjustments to decrease the chance of getting stuck on collision have been done worldwide.
* Fixed a few cases where the player could get snagged on collision mesh edges.
* The water in now back in Wild Lands of Zelata.
* Atzel’s Approach: Some climbing areas have been improved.
* Black Ring Citadel: The entrance door should now properly open after wiping at Ahazu-Zagam.
* Khopshef Province: The collision of the temple floor has been fixed. Players should no longer sink into the ground.
* Old Tarantia: Removed excess collision between the PvP vendors.
* Old Tarantia: When a player enter Old Tarantia from the Outflow Tunnels they will end up on a more logical place.
* Thunder River: Placed new discoverable resurrection points.
* Removed an invisible wall in the Inn in the Wild Lands.
Funcom implements PvP XP rollback in Age of Conan
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Events, in-game, Exploits, Forums, Game mechanics, PvP
Funcom has sent a clear message to the number of Age of Conan players who’ve been exploiting a flaw in the PvP XP system: START OVER. Oliver ‘Tarib’ Kunz, Senior Community Manager for Age of Conan, addressed Funcom’s recent decision to roll back the experience gained by some players who unfairly saw a meteoric rise in gains, as confirmed in a player-by-player investigation.
Kunz stated, “We have then taken what we consider to be appropriate action against those players by reducing their PvP Levels to what they were before it was possible to take advantage of this flaw and removing all PvP Gear.” Of course, Kunz says, Funcom is open to discussing the removal of experience and gear from those who believe they were unfairly targeted, and have stated that if they’ve misidentified an exploiter, the character(s) in question will be restored to their former status.
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Having fun in Conan’s homeland? Make sure to check out all of our previous Age of Conan coverage, and stick with Massively for more news from the Hyborian Age! |
Funcom implements PvP XP rollback in Age of Conan originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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PvP Concerns Addressed - Ten Ton Hammer
There have been a few problems with PvP XP from Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures latest PvP patch and some unscrupulous players have taken advantage of it by exploiting and gaining extra PvP experience. Some of the community has become concerned that Funcom may roll back their PvP experience, so Funcom’s Senior Community Manager Oliver ‘Tarib’ Kunz cleared up what Funcom may do relating to this.
Since today’s update corrected an exploit for the PvP consequence mechanic, players have been asking about the plans to “punish” players who possibly exploited the system before the fix. We are aware that some players indeed gained PvP experience in a very fast manner. However not all of the players raising fast in the PvP ranks exploited the mechanic and we don’t have any automatic guaranteed foolproof way to determine the exploiters from the honest players. The only ‘fast and dirty’ approach would be to roll back everyone’s PvP XP to what it was before last week’s update.
But this would mean that many thousand players would have lost what they worked hard for to gain. Not only players with PvP level 4 or 5 but also those players who just made it to level 1 or 2 or 3. We can’t punish the vast majority for an issue with one mechanic a few players have decided to exploit so we decided to not roll back PvP XP. We will however keep on investigating single cases and take action where needed. This is, as you will understand, a time consuming and difficult task.
We will of course keep you up to date about any news in that regard. But as of now, we do not consider a PvP XP rollback to be the right course of action.
Siege Mount Availability Discussion - Ten Ton Hammer
Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures siege mounts have been getting a lot of discussion on the official forums lately. In the thread "Pre order mounts and their future?" started on the Official AoC Forums by Nolf asks the question about siege mounts being made available to the community that did not receive one with a preorder. Funcom’s Svein Erik “Sharum” Jenset dropped in to respond and let the community know that there might be siege mounts available in the future.
We might make an attempt at “making everyone happy” by adding new Siege Mounts to the game and letting the War Mammoth and Killer Rhino remain pre-order exclusives. Who knows what the future might hold :>
Not everyone was happy about this statement and some went as far as to accuse Funcom for lying about making preorder siege mounts exclusive to preorders only. While I recall the look of the preorders being said to be exclusive, I don’t recall hearing the actual siege mounts as being exclusive. I’m pretty sure from the beginning of the siege mount discussion that Funcom stated there would be other siege mounts in the game, even though they have yet to make it in. Svein Erik “Sharum” Jenset
responded to one such post in this thread to try and set the record strait.
We never promised anyone that, through pre-ordering, they would gain access to a type/class of mounts that would be unavailable to everyone else; on the contrary we (even me personally) have said time and time again that while we have no direct plans to make the Killer Rhino and War Mammoth available to people that didn’t pre-order we’ve been playing with the idea of making other types of siege mounts available to the public.
One other option would be to NOT include other siege mounts, of any kind, in the game; which could easily be viewed as disruptive to game balance. Furthermore, should we implement other siege mounts but make them more powerful those that pre-ordered would most likely feel cheated.
So, as it was intentionally and as it it still is, our plans involve releasing further types of siege mounts into the game in the future; and doing so without disrupting the game balance. The Killer Rhino and War Mammoth will still be exclusive in their appearance, and as such should depict anyone mounted on one as someone who pre-ordered the game.
- You can read and participate in the thread here.
- Do you have something to add on this subject? Tell us here.
Alchemy Resource Concerns Addressed on Testlive - Ten Ton Hammer
Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures crafting system is in the process of getting its own update along with all the other changes. However, with any update there can sometimes be some controversy surrounding some necessary changes. This week the controversy is surrounding the choice to remove or change some crafting materials used in Alchemy. Funcom Developer, Dave “Ilaliya” Williams dropped in on the Testlive forums to explain the decision that was made regarding these items.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to address this. Feedback is always welcome, and certainly testlive is the right forum.
Part of achieving the resource reduction goal was determining which mats are kept (and remapped to existing recipes), and which mats are cut (either in the short or long term). For any arbitrary resource out there, one will naturally find some number of players collecting them for whatever reason. And this is certainly the case. But choices had to be made, and no matter what the specific changes are, some players would inevitably find themselves sitting on several stacks of ‘dead’ mats when it was said and done. Again, achieving a great reduction was vital to moving forward with the alchemy profession, and indeed crafting as a whole.
There were many, many factors that went into the determination of which resources fall into which bucket. One of the considerations was which mats ought to be deliberately reserved for future use. When the time comes to release new potions which do things other than buff health/stam/mana (this will be after new item budgets go live per Silirrion’s post) the intention is to re-release ‘dead’ mats where appropriate. So while they will be removed from loot tables and recipes, they will not be deleted from inventories. That decision was specifically made in order to not wipe away the hard work of players, something we take very seriously.
Also, I’d like to say that alchemy resources now (on testlive) have more utility in general. By this I mean they are be used to varying degrees by other professions, just as alchemists using the new metallurgy recipes will be utilizing mining and prospecting resources. You mention the market economy, and it’s certainly the case that’s something we’re analyzing. Thus one of the major goals for this change was picking resources that were maximally appropriate for use by multiple professions, in terms of the specifics of how they are obtained (think: lots of data-mining) but also what makes sense within the context of the game world.
In big picture terms, what we are doing is laying the groundwork to make crafting more relevant. Previously where professions where either utterly dependent on one another or in complete isolation, the goal moving forward is to create synergies that lead to meaningful player choices. The underpinnings being resources in some form or another.
- Read the full thread on the Testlive Forums.
- Discuss this decision on our forums.
Famine Addresses Gem Concerns at Ten Ton Hammer
Funcom’s US Community Manager Glen "Famine" Swan recently posted a message to address some of the concerns players have been voicing about the current gem changes on the Test Live servers.
As many of you have already seen the latest changes to the gems are currently being tested on test live. We have been acutely aware of the feedback of the imbalances provided by the gems in their original incarnation and have been at work behind the scenes to redesign and modify how gems work so that they offer more utility but don’t imbalance the game, in particular in PVP, as they can currently. We had hoped to have these changes completed before it was necessary to also take intermediate action in order to level the playing field in PVP as it were.
Unfortunately we have seen that an intermediate step is required, and has in fact has been called for through the feedback and forums from the majority of people responding on the topic. To this end we have had the items designers reduce the efficiency of the gems significantly so that they won’t have the effect they have today. We want to assure people however that we are also aware that we don’t see this as the final solution; it is very much a ‘quick fix’ to the situation to immediately improve the PVP playability in the game.
This was especially important given the introduction of the new PVP progression system will come at the same time. There will be a more comprehensive review and rework of the gem system coming, but we had to nail a few additional things down first in particular with the other stats and abilities available in gem slots so that they have a greater bearing on your character development. That is simply something that we didn’t want to rush so this intermediate step is being taken in the short term to help improve the playability until such time as the revamp is available on the live servers.
Thank you
- Source
