Age of Conan director interview pt. 2

Was there anything else in particular that jumped out at you as being noteworthy?

Craig: In terms of the other content most of what we focused on, as we discussed earlier, there were several issues the players have brought to our attention. There were a lot of changes to the combat system in today's update, making sure that the game systems and the combos are fun. We tried to make them slightly easier to use in hectic situations, without dumbing things down. We definitely didn't want to do that. We did realize that certain of the high level combos tended to be a bit volatile, some of them had five steps to them in addition to the starter. We found in PvP that meant they weren't as effective as they could have been; they actually counted against people who were relying on the damage from those combos.

We took steps to change the combat system so that it could be a little bit faster paced. The key to the Conan combat has been that it's engaging and faster-paced, it's a little bit more involved than other games in the genre. That's something we wanted to maintain and improve on. I think the combat changes we've done in this update very much focus in that area. They focus on allowing players to use the abilities that we give them in PvP, without having them be a disadvantage to pull off. We also wanted to be sure that these melee combos didn't put them at a disadvantage vs. ranged or spellcasters because of the number of steps. It's a fine balance, because we have to focus on immediacy and fun, allowing players to use their abilities without taking away the skill involvement.

That's why we have the public test server now, and feedback from this patch has been very helpful. We have players testing these changes now! If you don't have a public test environment it's very easy for players to discuss in forums what they think the systems will work like – how they think it will fail or work – but it's a lot different to actually have that visceral feedback. "I've been there, I've tried it." Even that can shape the forum discussions. It only takes one or two people to say "Actually I've been to test and it's not like that" or "It works better than you think it would on paper."

Above all, it makes for much better feedback for the designers because we can go to the test server and see how players approach the systems, see how they are adapting to the changes. That's an important part of the process. If MMO players are anything, it's ingenious. They can use new systems in ways you didn't expect them to.

We understand there were also a number of changes to Tradeskilling and PvP?

Craig: There were massive changes to tradeskills, that was something we got a lot of feedback on. At launch they felt tradeskilling was very light, they thought it didn't have enough content. This update sees a massive addition to that system. New recipes, new armor, more weapons, a greater variety of skills, a greater variety of methods for attaining skills, different resources, recipes that drop from boss monsters ... tons of stuff.

There's a whole batch of changes to improve PvP and sieging, and a lot of the raid encounters have seen improvements to make sure they're smoother and more enjoyable. We revamped The Cistern dungeon, there's a whole new boss and set of quests in there .... It's easily the largest update we've done. I'm quite proud and impressed with the team for what we've accomplished.

As a last question: when you first stepped into the role, one of the things you promised the players was that you'd be looking at itemization and how equipment affects classes. Is this update just groundwork along that path, or is this what you'd consider a first step?

Craig: I think it's definitely groundwork. Some things were already in progress before we started the itemization work, because some of it is work to address core weaknesses to the feat trees. Any changes we make now are groundwork, because going forward we can make changes to both hand-in-hand. There will be more as and when we find things that need to be changed. With class balance and class skills, of course, it's an ongoing process. It'll always be a process of evolution, and now with the Beta server it's that much easier to track these changes and get feedback.

Thanks so much for your time!

Craig: Thank you.