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Combat Overview
Age of Conan does not have indirect combat. When you click, you will swing. This is not a turn-based game, although there is difference in weapon speed and spell speed, so you can't win by punching buttons faster than your opponent. You have to be careful, move about, and think quickly to survive. Combat will also have a sort of "soft lock" system that will help keep you orientated toward your main target while doing evasive actions or moving around.
Real Combat
Real combat is a revolutionary multi point melee system. The unique aspect of this system is that you swing your weapon where you direct it. This system will let the players direct, and combine the swings of their weapon to create fancy, brutal and effective slashes and thrusts, or combine them in combos or special attacks that do additional damage.
It is based on six directions, or ways, of attacking an opponent with a sword. First, you can hack down against the head. Second, you can slash diagonally down from the right, while the third is slashing the same way from the left. Fourth, you can thrust against the torso. Fifth, you can slash diagonally up from the left, and sixth, you can slash diagonally up from the right. The point here is that these directions lend themselves naturally to being strung together in combinations. These combos unlock additional damage and faster combat, if done well.
"Real Combat" is easy to learn, and allows for a very different experience to both the slow studious nature of RPG combat and the ‘twitch’ nature of a first person shooter. When you pick it up the first time you might not even notice it as you happily slash and thrust away. With experience you might see certain attacks swinging better together. As you learn to string it into combos you become a dancing machine of brutal death. The same multipoint system is true for ranged combat and spell casting. In both cases the Real Combat engine allows you to string hits or spells together to form new fantastic effects.
The Real Combat will also work with mounted combat.
Combos
There's a marked difference between "special moves" and "combos" in Age of Conan. Combos will be the only way of dealing additional damage in battle. By stringing attacks together normal attacks, they will convert to combo moves, doing additional damage, adding negative effects to the opponent or yielding beneficial bonuses. This also works in ranged and magical combat.
Player vs. Player
PvP will be available to your character if you want to participate, and will have no permanent penalties. The fighting system is pretty much the same for PvP and PvE. The main difference is that in PvP your level is boosted to the closest tier point and you can use your special PvP levels and abilities to win.
There are four different categories for PvP. They are one-on-one PvP traditionally found in arenas, massive battles, team based "mini-games", and “Drunken Brawling”.
Massive Battles
This features Guilds protecting the structures, walls, towers etc; they have built in certain PvP areas. Here the different player sides (at least the defenders) will be able to employ guards to help with the fight.
Mini-Games
Here, the players are fighting king of the hill, capture the flag and other types of team-oriented mini-games. To facilitate a "just" system in PvP games like these, we have included an auto-leveling feature where the players are divided into four different tiers; each 20 levels are grouped together. Each tier enables the player to auto-level to the highest level in it.
Drunken Brawling
This is a fun, free-for-all system (specifically only found in bars) where players do not fight with their normal level, but rather with a system where how drunk you are defines how hard you hit, and to which degree you hit.
Except for the brawling, all PvP kills will give PvP knowledge that slowly trains you in the game's 20 PvP levels. These gives you access to certain PvP-only feats, empowering abilities that can only be used in PvP situations
Formation Combat
This is a completely new, aspect of multiplayer game play. In Conan you can for the first time not only have a formation, but be in direct control of both your character, NPC’s, and other players.
Players learn different types of formations through feats. Each formation has a distinct look, set of benefits and special attacks and moves. The formation leader controls the location of the players in it, by assigning them to a location. Within the formation, each player has like a "rubber circle" he may move freely within, orient herself and follow. The player can at any time leave the formation. If a certain amount of players leave the formation, through death, volunteering to disband or being kicked, the formation breaks.
The leader of the formation can decide on different formations and the degree of freedom the various players and NPC’s can have within the formation. The formation also serves as a cooperative travel system, yielding beneficial effects to the team as the collision of the formation itself protect the members at the rear. Formations yield beneficial bonuses to members, and offer a new type of depth to a RPG. In some cases it will be essential to pick the right formation to survive.
Siege Combat
As a player you can cooperate with other players in building cities, with walls, towers and keeps, protecting softer targets like houses, inns and merchants. In the same regions you will have the forces of evil like the Picts not only building their own city, like a real-life Real Time Strategy AI, but with the ability to mount sieges against your city. With ample warning you must return home to protect the walls of your city against enemy catapults and hordes of monsters swarming through the breaches.
Yes, the only true way to combat this oncoming evil is to gang up with your friends and take the battle to their walls. Lay siege to their towers, blow them up and see the vermin scream for mercy when your catapults sing their merry song of death and destruction. Naturally, mercy is unheard of in the Hyborian time. A swift death would be the extent of friendliness offered by (or to) your foes. Massive battles hide almost any form of cruelty or chivalry.
There are 3 distinct forms of siege combat. Two are found in the PvE environment.
In one you will defend your village, city, or castle against a rush of monster opponents. In the other you can take the battle to their village, and crush them in an RTS style of game play. The third is the PvP Border Kingdom battles. The "Border Kingdoms" were always a constant place of battle, skirmishes and war in the books and Conan visited these areas on numerous occasions before he settled down as King. Now, as King, he has let it be known, that anyone proclaiming one of these areas part of "Greater Aquillonia" will be rewarded with a title at his court. This means that several court-based individuals will sponsor forays into Border Kingdoms with the goal of setting up a castle to control an area in Conan's name. |
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