Age of Conan's combat being reworked

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.