The Digital Continuum: Conan's little quirks

I've been enjoying my time with Age of Conan, but to be honest there are some design choices -- mostly related to the user interface -- that truly confuse me. I'm forced to decide between scratching my head or pulling my hair out. Although I don't want to tempt fate, so I think leaving my hair intact is probably the best choice.

So here's an example: Did you know about both skill points and feat points? I'm sure a lot of you have discovered at least one of these, especially since the feats have their own tab to click within the user interface. But I'm willing to bet that many of you didn't discover skills right away. The big problem is that there's nothing on the screen to jump out and inform you that some super-important new skill points or feat points are in need of assigning. When did this design document get accidentally knocked off the meeting room table and into the garbage?

Considering that skill points allow you to make use of all kinds of important abilities -- such as stealth, spell concentration or climbing -- it seems very odd that the player isn't made highly aware of them as soon as they're available. Funcom, you need to tickle our naughty bits or something when we get these auspiciously important skill points. Hell, I didn't even discover them until a friend of mine mentioned their existence and even that friend had only randomly discovered them to begin with.

While I do love the visual design of Age of Conan's UI (user interface) it's got some serious flaws. Every time I open my inventory window the character equipment window is also yanked into view and that gets old fast. It becomes especially irritating when I'm trying to use the auction house. Of course I can see why Funcom made the windows this way: it reduces the amount of button clutter on their UI. What I don't understand is why they would honestly care about this in a game that's definitely not aimed at casual players. Maybe they're designing ahead of time for the console version, but they wouldn't be shoehorning the console UI into the PC version anyhow. Also, the kind of gamers that are playing AoC must certainly be able to handle seven or eight buttons instead of just five.

Then there are little peculiar things like the click-able graphic that appears when you reach level five. Once clicked you are informed that you've reached the fifth level, but to what end? My guess is that this is merely a leftover from when AoC had a different way of choosing your class. Still, it does server as an example of the oddities prevalent throughout the game.

My whole point in this exercise at being picky is that a lot of little nuisances eventually add up to being one big nuisance. As I level my way through the game I find myself slowly hating these tiny things more and more. It is one of my greatest hopes that these quirks are ironed out within the first couple of months, otherwise I'm sure to find that a vein on my forehead is beginning to pulse in a seemingly satanic beat.