Age of Conan's combat being reworked

By Oli Welsh Published 20 October, 2008

New director stripping back combos.

Age of Conan's new director Craig Morrison has offered a full preview of the game's substantial-looking next update on the official forums.

The headline features of this - the player-versus-player Notoriety system and a crafting overhaul - we already know about.

But Morrison also went into detail on a drastic change to the game's combat system that he's been fooling around with on the test servers.

As well as a adjusting immunities to crowd control skills (you will automatically break stuns, fears, roots, snares and charms when you lose a certain amount of health), Age of Conan's combo attacks for melee and ranged classes are being drastically stripped back.

Combos will now have fewer steps across the board, be much quicker to execute, and deal less damage. This is in an effort to reduce the huge damage spikes they currently cause, and to halt the player practice of dealing the first attacks into thin air in order to land one final, devastating blow. There will also be a reduction in damage if you do the latter.

"This just didn't feel quite right, and we felt that we needed to adjust the system to provide the right reward for executing your combos effectively, while also ensuring they aren't cumbersome to pull in PVP," Morrison said.

"We have also received feedback that too many combos were too long to perform, where players felt that hitting directional keys was dominating the game-play more than it should," he added. "Reducing the number of steps on the longer combos should hopefully rectify this feeling."

For more on the state of Age of Conan, read our re-review, and look out for Craig Morrison exercising his right to reply in an interview later this week.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Salaman #1 3 years ago

    COMBO ME DO!

    eurhm....

    First?

  • ZuluHero #2 3 years ago

    i dunno if this is a good idea - the combo's are something that really sets it apart from the crowd, and positioning is key.

  • Goffee #3 3 years ago

    Conan gets heavily featured in a Series 2 episode of Big Bang Theory where Penny gets hooked on it - sounds like its worth a try (and better than BBT's constant use of Halo)

  • viper_h #4 3 years ago

    No amount of patching's gonna keep this turkey floating.

    Die. Die a slow painful death!

  • iokthemonkey #5 3 years ago

    sounds like its worth a try

    ---

    Don't believe the hype - it's not.
    Edited by 1 at 20/10/08 @ 10:18

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #6 3 years ago

    So bascally there stripping out everything the game was advertised for down to a basic MMO front as most of the advertised content either didn't work or never exstisted in the first place - thank god Turbine and Mythic learnt from past mistakes, Funcom havn't sadly...

    If you sack up the 'new features and changes' it's pritty much a given that it's a total rewrite of the game - perhaps they'll do an eve and in a few years time it will be a quality product brought out of this mess, but it's the case of will it last that long to be able to do it?

  • ZuluHero #7 3 years ago

    The first 20 levels are a joy. All fully voiced and engaging. The switching between day and night elements works really well. And all class stories are interwoven - meaning you fill in the complete story the more classes you play. This is the first time i've seen this in an mmo and im surprised it works as well as it does (after all this is an MMO we are talking about - not a engaging single player narrative game)

    Its a shame it all goes downhill once you get to the mainland.

  • Darkjinxter #8 3 years ago

    Oh no.
    The one thing that doesn't need changing in AoC is the combat mechanics, to revamp this will likely mean a dumbing down and we'll end up with WoW type whack-a-mole combat.

  • actionfitz #9 3 years ago

    I'll say again...
    do they really think that any amount of changes are going to overcome the lack of consumer confidence in this game?
    They have a mountain of ill-will from former players to counter. many of whom are either back playing wow and enjoying the 3.02 patch changes and the halloween content or Playing WAR and lapping up the hugely enjoyable RvR (which delivers what AoC said it was aiming for right out of the box)...