You example implies something that observers watching this thread should know: combat in this game is fun.
Its not an MMO where you lock on a target, active a skill and manage cool-downs. Nor is it a wild click-fest of button mashing. I would call it a “methodical action RPG”.
Different weapons have different types of combos. Server default is 25% friendly fire damage. Combined, these two things mean if you run into combat swinging wildly you will do lots of damage to your friends.
The result is cinematic. When a large single monster approaches, first a person with a shield will engage and take a few swings. Then they pull back or roll back, and maybe someone with a pair of daggers dives in and drops a bleed on it. Then they roll back, and someone with a 2 handed sword runs in from behind, swinging a multi-hit combat then running back once the monster turns. Then the person with the shield dives in again.
In a many versus many fight its not as orderly. We tend to split off to try and make it a series of 1 vs 1 fights, and as people finish their foe or call out for help then people will move around.
At first, combat seemed chaotic and deadly, we were doing more damage to each other than the enemies were. After a few hours of experience its got a great rhythm, is fun to watch, and is fun when we meet a new foe and try to figure out the best combos.
Well this is disappointing. My purge meter was around 75% yesterday and I logged in tonight and it reset to 0%. I’m hoping it was just today’s hot fix patch that reset it.
The hotfix did not change our purge meter. Sometimes I have seen it drop to zero and then reset itself higher an hour later.
Purge in general is a bit flaky still. There are a number of purge settings on the server config. The default setup is for a full 40 person server with high level clans. Less populated server will see less purges, unless those settings are adjusted.
We’ve seen one purge, but it was to an old base and our thrills put down the assault while I was at another base. So not. As exciting as I had hoped :-)
I turned on building decay. It was off by accident because of how I set the “no damage to buildings” setting. Decay is important for example to keep small unattached foundations from claiming a radius forever. To understand how decay works hover over things with a repair hammer. It resets when you are close to your buildings, which is good.
HOWEVER this caused some things to instantly decay. This is bad. We lost ALL temples, many crafting stations and many doors. I have replaced the doors I am aware of. I am working to replace my personal crafting stations now. I lost stuff. You will have lost stuff.
It sucks to make a change and lose progress, however we needed decay turned on. My apologies for any wasted time.
Are you all doing anything uniform for in-game communication? I can’t recall whether it has built-in voicechat ability but in lieu of that, Discord, etc?
I haven’t hit my stride yet this time around but have created a small starter base way down in the SE corner area. Time to start building some crafting stations and working on skillz. I believe someone said that this time around it’s nigh impossible to be good at everything or even a large portion. Suggestions on where I should focus my efforts at the start at least?
Ok I have spent several hours in game with a nice stone hut and crafting stations. The game plays and feels so much better then the first couple of days I played at the start of EA.
One of those red eyed rhino dog things scared the absolute hell out of me as it popped out of the ground. I had no idea they could do that at all. Not only did it startle me but I might of yelled a bit and scared my youngest daughter and wife. HAHAHAAHAH
We have seen 22 unique players come through and spend more than one hour on the server. A few more played less than an hour and left. About 75% of those 22 people are from my own gaming group, QT3 or Bay12 - the other 25% are random. There are two formal clans on the server, made up of about 14 people total, so the other 8 are unaffiliated.
14 players have spent more than 10 hours on the server in a week. We are all around level 20 to 30.
I am not aware of any griefing or antisocial behavior. There have been a few in-game incidents of hostilities, which are being dealt with in-game (honor duels, etc). Overall for a public server everyone has been “well behaved”, which I think is a function of the groups that have joined.
The server has been rock solid, zero crashes. It has a scheduled reboot every day at 4am EST. I made one admin error this week, fixing a setting that should have been enabled at the start, and thankfully I never have to change it again.
Thanks for managing the server. I’m in clan pdx, along with my son & two others.
Way too many animals, that spawn way too much. We’ve processed over 500 hides and we will have another 600 stocked up. No bark. Not sure we need anymore at this point.
So much harvesting. It’s like every time you turn around you are harvesting plants, bark, wood, stone that you hardly have any time to do any long journeys.
And I suck so hard at battle it’s pathetic. Slowly getting better, but it’s really frustrating to die so often in the beginning. I only started to improve after I remapped my dodge to my mouse instead of ALT. I am incapable of pressing alt while trying to use my keyboard.
Bark is one of the most scarce long-term resources. We use a lot for smoking fish and meat, which doesn’t always get eaten, and turns putrid, which means the bark is wasted. We are still learning how to manage our bark supplies.
I use middle mouse / mouse3 for dodge and Q for alternate attack (kick, etc). It helped me a lot.
I’m looking forward to playing this in the near future, but then I read stuff like this:
Ugh? Maybe I’m just being too knee-jerk. But if all that harvesting and crafting is a foundation for the gameplay, it doesn’t sound like barbarianism. It sounds like Minecraft. Quick, someone tell me how wrong I am before I lose interest completely!
Play it. You set your own goals. It sounds like Tman likes to harvest stuff he already has a lot of. :-) He could spend that time clubbing thralls to drag back to his camp to make slaves, or finding and exploring a cave full of hostile rockmen, or infiltrating and stealing from a camp of PCs, or learning secrets from the spirits.
Some people like to craft. Some like to build. Some like to explore. Some like to PvP. Conan caters to all.
