B
Brannor McThife
Guest
Ok, now for a decent comparison. 
The graphics, although awesome, means that your system, however powerful, will come to a screeching halt as soon as you have 30-40 people near each other. Forget Relic Raid size armies, that'd just never happen in AC2.
One thing I really like, and many others I know that have played from DAoC, is the skins. Armour skins, weapon skins, shield skins. Just so much variety; probably adds to the lag issues. I can't say how much I like seeing huge varieties of weapons and particle effects.
Ok. "Fellowships", or groups as we know them. 9 People, not 8, not 10, but 9. Guess they think they're like LotR or something, go figure. You can set the loot/XP thing when you create it, and it shows the XP split in the table. But this split ignores your level if you are within 5 levels of the leader. So a Level 49 can group with a level 44, but they get EQUAL shares of XP.
Now, another issue, is their version of kill tasks, known as incursions. These have minimum levels, like the well know "Fetich Spawn Incursion". Basically, these work that you find a special creature with a little key over the top of it, in this case, a "Bound Fetich Spawn", kill it, and receive the Incursion quest where you have 1 hour to kill 10 of them. Different incursions require different numbers of creatures. Basically, a Level 50, can powerlevel a level 19 (minimum level for Fetich Incursion) by having the level 19 sit ANYWHERE on the same continent. Which is just silly, since a Fetich Spawn Incursion, gives 63,000 XP, which is level 19-21, and 21-23, 24-25.5, etc. Absurb.
What is nice, is that you know exactly how much HP you have, how much damage you do, how much HP the creature has, etc.
Another nice thing, is that you can, with time, try out lots of various setups on your way to 50. I have tried various attacks and found I didn't like them, so I untrained them and trained something else. But, from what I've heard, once you hit 50, you're pretty much set at that.
Now, my biggest disappointment, and something I wasn't aware of until it happened. Once, when levelling my infil on Prydwen, a certain well known cleric was starting a mincer. He joined our group, and basically did the battery act, but we needed him to be backup mezzer, he refused, so we kicked him. He then brought his level 50 alt around and started to slaughter the spawn, over and over, including anything we tried to pull. We asked him to stop, he wouldn't, so we (notice WE) reported him and he got a warning. Problem solved.
Now, in AC2 a few days back, I was in a group with 4 others. The XP split was hitting us two high level people a little, due to the above mentioned split, as we had 3 people near our lower limit. A total stranger arrives and asks to join, the others tell him we are full and I told him it was just that we didn't want the XP to be come even worse, otherwise myself and the other person would leave. He starts lecturing me about rather having fun and that if you aren't 9, you should invite anyone that needs a fellowship. Um. Ya. Anyway, he logged out, and as he did, I told the group, that I'd bet he is going to log in a level 50. As predicted, he did. He brought this big dragon with and started to kill anything, even saying that we'd get no XP cause he's going to do so. I go to the "Request Assistance" and figure, since they have ingame support, they'll help us out quick and we'll get back to killing and having our fun. 5 minutes later, I get a response from the Admin that he is fully within his right to do just that.uke:
Apparently, in AC2, there is no such thing as killstealing, nor is it against the rules to deliberately drag mobs onto other people. So, if a little kiddie wanted to throw a tantrum, he can easily go sit in the lowest dungeon, and kill everything and anything that other people try attack, and the admins will do NOTHING about it. Isn't that fun?
That, unfortunately means that I probably won't buy AC2. The fact that someone else can have "fun", by actively ruining my game without the admins doing anything is absurd.
Tonight, at around 19H00 the "fellowship" chat system stopped working. WTF?! You simply couldn't talk to your own group.
You could use the normal chat, but with a normal chat that has like a 200 meter range, you can imagine the spam between groups. Also, there is no chatgroup system. You have /cg which is a global chat, /cr which is a region chat, normal speech, and /f for fellowship. Wierd. Anyway, it took them 4 hours to realise the problem and do a "fix".
Soloing is actually fun, since it becomes a challenge for some classes. Also, the different attack styles for a ranger with the bow are nice. The speech of many bipedal creatures is nice to. But as I said, with all those sounds and graphics, it's no surprise that people get a LOT of lag when another group enters range.
So all in all, a nice game for PvE, the engine needs a lot of work, and they need to seriously rewrite their Code of Conduct. Not to mention speed up their official forum.
Would I buy the game? Maybe, if they fixed the Code of Conduct and improved the speed of the gfx engine to allow more tweaking.
-G
The graphics, although awesome, means that your system, however powerful, will come to a screeching halt as soon as you have 30-40 people near each other. Forget Relic Raid size armies, that'd just never happen in AC2.
One thing I really like, and many others I know that have played from DAoC, is the skins. Armour skins, weapon skins, shield skins. Just so much variety; probably adds to the lag issues. I can't say how much I like seeing huge varieties of weapons and particle effects.
Ok. "Fellowships", or groups as we know them. 9 People, not 8, not 10, but 9. Guess they think they're like LotR or something, go figure. You can set the loot/XP thing when you create it, and it shows the XP split in the table. But this split ignores your level if you are within 5 levels of the leader. So a Level 49 can group with a level 44, but they get EQUAL shares of XP.
Now, another issue, is their version of kill tasks, known as incursions. These have minimum levels, like the well know "Fetich Spawn Incursion". Basically, these work that you find a special creature with a little key over the top of it, in this case, a "Bound Fetich Spawn", kill it, and receive the Incursion quest where you have 1 hour to kill 10 of them. Different incursions require different numbers of creatures. Basically, a Level 50, can powerlevel a level 19 (minimum level for Fetich Incursion) by having the level 19 sit ANYWHERE on the same continent. Which is just silly, since a Fetich Spawn Incursion, gives 63,000 XP, which is level 19-21, and 21-23, 24-25.5, etc. Absurb.
What is nice, is that you know exactly how much HP you have, how much damage you do, how much HP the creature has, etc.
Another nice thing, is that you can, with time, try out lots of various setups on your way to 50. I have tried various attacks and found I didn't like them, so I untrained them and trained something else. But, from what I've heard, once you hit 50, you're pretty much set at that.
Now, my biggest disappointment, and something I wasn't aware of until it happened. Once, when levelling my infil on Prydwen, a certain well known cleric was starting a mincer. He joined our group, and basically did the battery act, but we needed him to be backup mezzer, he refused, so we kicked him. He then brought his level 50 alt around and started to slaughter the spawn, over and over, including anything we tried to pull. We asked him to stop, he wouldn't, so we (notice WE) reported him and he got a warning. Problem solved.
Now, in AC2 a few days back, I was in a group with 4 others. The XP split was hitting us two high level people a little, due to the above mentioned split, as we had 3 people near our lower limit. A total stranger arrives and asks to join, the others tell him we are full and I told him it was just that we didn't want the XP to be come even worse, otherwise myself and the other person would leave. He starts lecturing me about rather having fun and that if you aren't 9, you should invite anyone that needs a fellowship. Um. Ya. Anyway, he logged out, and as he did, I told the group, that I'd bet he is going to log in a level 50. As predicted, he did. He brought this big dragon with and started to kill anything, even saying that we'd get no XP cause he's going to do so. I go to the "Request Assistance" and figure, since they have ingame support, they'll help us out quick and we'll get back to killing and having our fun. 5 minutes later, I get a response from the Admin that he is fully within his right to do just that.
uke: Apparently, in AC2, there is no such thing as killstealing, nor is it against the rules to deliberately drag mobs onto other people. So, if a little kiddie wanted to throw a tantrum, he can easily go sit in the lowest dungeon, and kill everything and anything that other people try attack, and the admins will do NOTHING about it. Isn't that fun?
That, unfortunately means that I probably won't buy AC2. The fact that someone else can have "fun", by actively ruining my game without the admins doing anything is absurd.
Tonight, at around 19H00 the "fellowship" chat system stopped working. WTF?! You simply couldn't talk to your own group.
You could use the normal chat, but with a normal chat that has like a 200 meter range, you can imagine the spam between groups. Also, there is no chatgroup system. You have /cg which is a global chat, /cr which is a region chat, normal speech, and /f for fellowship. Wierd. Anyway, it took them 4 hours to realise the problem and do a "fix".
Soloing is actually fun, since it becomes a challenge for some classes. Also, the different attack styles for a ranger with the bow are nice. The speech of many bipedal creatures is nice to. But as I said, with all those sounds and graphics, it's no surprise that people get a LOT of lag when another group enters range.
So all in all, a nice game for PvE, the engine needs a lot of work, and they need to seriously rewrite their Code of Conduct. Not to mention speed up their official forum.
Would I buy the game? Maybe, if they fixed the Code of Conduct and improved the speed of the gfx engine to allow more tweaking.
-G
