Your Voice - Answered Questions

[Morteia]

Welcome to the Answers thread for "Your Voice"! Each month we will post the questions and answers to the previous month's inquiries here for all to read!

Now, before we get to the answers, there are some guidelines to follow and some rules that we have to make clear.

On the first of the month, a new thread titled “Your Voice – Month” will be posted in the General Discussion and Free-to-Play forums. These threads will be open and the community can post questions they want asked of the developers.

You guys/gals/barbarians are able to submit questions from the 1st of the month until 16:00 GMT/12:00 EDT of the 15th of the month. At 16:00 GMT/12:00 EDT this thread will be closed, and 5 questions will be chosen. As much as we want to be able to bring all of the questions you have asked to the developers, they simply do not have the time to answer every question a player may have.

If we see a question that is being asked repeatedly, we will attempt to get it answered, but please understand that we can only answer so much about certain things!

Once the questions are chosen, we will be contacting the appropriate developers to get them answered! As we get answers we will post them accordingly between the 16th and the end of the month. Once the month has ended, the questions and answers will be moved to this thread for all to see and enjoy. Please be sure to check this thread before you post, as your question may already have an answer!

Links to Previous Months

May
June

On the first of the next month the old thread will be deleted, a new thread will be created, and the wonderful process will begin all over again! See you each month and we hope that you enjoy this as much as we enjoy doing it!

[Morteia]

These questions were answered by Game Director Joel Bylos!


1. Is the dragonspine sepulcher of wyrm encounter due to be fixed or at least when we will be told that it is 'working as intended'?

I believe it has been.


2. When is the HoX revamp coming? Is it gonna be released between the big content update?

I think I have said this before, but there has been no information provided to the current team about the HoX revamp. It hasn't been prioritised at all.


3. How will existing recipes, done quests and resources be converted into the new system?

They will be wiped and you will need to begin crafting again from scratch.


4. Will players be able to do and craft the same things they can now and just get a change of system with more depth and options...or will it be a complete relaunch?

Complete relaunch.


5. Now that the Unchained Minigames are coming, what will happen to PvP levels, gear and rewards in general? Will there be any form of personal progression in that regard?

PvP progression will still exist as it does today. Unchained adds the option for it not to matter, it doesn't remove it. If this question is intended to ask "Will I progress by doing unchained PvP?", yes we will find a way to accommodate progression of some form there.


6. How possible is it to get Secret World's appearance system over here?

Not possible at all. There was a massive split made in the code for that. (Plus I prefer the Conan system myself).


7. Are you going to consider implementing character appearance change? For example, a place to get your hair cut or change your character’s appearance.

It's a helluva lot of work in AoC. We were denied that when we did the expansion as it was so much work (hence we made consumables for doing it). So we currently don't have plans for it.


8. Any plan to introduce something similar to TSW's chronicle for Age of Conan, where PVP and PVE statistic could be tracked?

This is possible. I'd prefer we get the tag system (Acheivement and lore) ported into AoC first as we can use that to send information to Chronicle. And I need to make an offering to the gods who maintain Chronicle to spend some time making it for AoC.


9. Will there be more aa's?

Yes, there will be.


10. Will you integrate social gear the way its in tsw so it doest take any inventory space?

That's just smoke and mirrors. Each clothing item is an item in TSW as well. We just choose to represent it in a list. We can talk about expanding the inventory space in AoC.


11. Will there ever be pve&pvp achievements system?

My magic 8-ball says that this is highly likely.


12. Will you add more detailed and meaningful stats for PVP (for example. heals/kills/overal dmg/killing blows/assist/flag carrier ext) and use those stats to show players involvment in minigames? Also, would it be possible to give xp based on those statistics?

I have asked the guys to look into porting the scoreboard system from TSW to AoC. We cannot however, base rewards on those stats without significant additional work (and we don't do it in TSW).


13. Have the rest of the class revamps (casters) been taken off the table for the time being? Or are they currently in the works still? And if it’s still in the works is there any timeline available?

No timeline on these. The systems team have a lot to catch up on before they can revamp classes.


14. Are you thinking about creating "legendary items"?

We might be.


15. What is your attitude about implementation of DX11 for Age of Conan?

We don't have any render coders to work on it.

[Morteia]

These questions were answered by Game Director Joel Bylos!


1. When are the network fixes coming? For some EU players its kind of hard to raid under these conditions.

They are on Testlive so it is a matter of helping us out by testing and providing feedback.


2. Will there be free server transfers as is customary following these merges?

Perhaps, though it will be PvP -> PvE only as everything else will be merged.


3. What happened to the Follower of Asura program? Does it still exist? I never see any ingame.

It was stopped last year, I believe, after the first downsizing and before I was on the project. Resources in CS were too thin to support it if I recall correctly.


4. Joel mentioned voice acting would be added in using the extra time the voice actors on TSW had, is this still happening?

Has already happened and more to come. We will try to do more visible characters first Caravan masters and wagoneers and then expand on that.


5. New AA feats have also been mentioned. Will there be new ones?

Yes.


6. Are you planning anything to coincide with the new Conan movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger?

If I can get the script and still have enough time to design something.


7. Will the achievement/lore system from TSW be added into AoC?

Yes.


8. Will a ranking system similar to TSW's Chronicle be added to AoC?

Possibly. That is a resource external to my team, so I have to grovel.


9. You gonna implement GLOBAL CHAT from TSW ?

TSW has no global chat. Intentionally. Because of AoC global chat


10. How do you decide on which part of the lore an expansion pack will be place ? Like why eastern Khitai, or Turan ? Is it just brain-storming from the creative guys or is there other people involved in the decision (Like marketing or something)?

Khitai was picked by Gaute - well before I was in charge of the project. Of course, I think with that goal management were able to negotiate the Korean contract so it was a smart business call as well as providing a different style for the game.

The original Khitai design actually had the expansion starting in Zamora (Arenjun) and players dealing with the aftermath of the events of Tower of the Elephant. Which lead across the Vilayet and eventually to Khitai. That was too ambitious and we were told to focus on one culture from an art production perspective. So we just did the Khitai bit (and snuck in some Hyrkanian stuff.)

For Turan and Dragonspine, I wasn't actually on the team, so I don't know how they decided.


11. Can we hope for content which would require a relative amount of investment (such as new mechanism like player housing or PVE siege) or will it rather be more revamp, optimization and content that can be build on existing mechanism ? Both option are good, I just want to know where the game goes.

We need to think cheap with the reduced team size, so we will do bang for buck things. This means revamp and optimizations - but also features like Achievements and Lore which use existing spaces to create new gameplay.

Player housing is expensive and though it keeps coming up, it would take a lot of time.


12. How's Joel's new baby doing and what’s her name? (congrats, btw)

She is good and we named her Zoey. Mostly sleeping, shitting and eating, as babies do.


13. What is your price? There is this charity thing, ppl pay a ton of money to have dinner with some special dude, the money goes to charity. Joel, whats your price to have dinner with you ?

No idea. If people really want to have dinner with me we should just organize a party in Oslo. I'll get drunk and say way too much about things I shouldn't.


14. Will Conan ever venture outside of his throne room?

Yes. Dun dun dun…


15. What is the status of the other Dragonspine 6 mans?

Two are done, one is waiting on animation dependencies.


16. What is the status of the Palace of Cetriss raid?

Needs world art, monster art and animation. The design is done.


17. We're 1/2 way through 2013 and indeed the Dragon's Spine content appears to be on its way suggesting that it could be complete by December/January; what kind of plans are underway for the next adventure pack?

We will move to a more Issue based setup like TSW, with more frequent content updates that contain a few quests, solo or group dungeon e.t.c.


18. Will there ever be any new classes implemented into this game?

Highly unlikely. 12 classes is a already a lot.


19. Will there ever be a new expansion pack for this game?

On the scale of Khitai? Not very likely unless the player base expands massively (I want that to happen!)


20. Do you intend to sell us more vanity dolls, more specs and more inventory?

Yes. It’s something we do intend on doing