AoC Bug Penalizes Female Characters?

Massively is reporting that there may be an unintended (according to FunCom) bug in the new MMO Age of Conan that would cause female characters to do significantly less damage over time. It seems that as the initial "shiny factor" wears off for the new darling MMO, the bugs and complaints just continue to pile up resulting in a fair bit of buyer's remorse. "In the meantime, some ingenious players have provided fixes along the lines of the 'unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed' trick. Poster Dnotice even provides evidence that variation in listed attack speed may be down to the gender of the first character you log in when starting AoC, and not the gender of the character you may be playing at the time. Curiouser and curiouser: although the listed speed can be altered by changing the first character's gender, the actual animation speed apparently can't."

Comments

Simple explanation

[greg1104]

Obviously this is because the female characters are off-balance due to their breasts shrinking.

Re:Simple explanation

[IBBoard]

I love the update quote about that:

Funcom has responded to the complaints ... The team is "working on a fix for this and your breasts should be back to normal soon."

Re:Simple explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've seen, that is for very large values of "normal"

Re:Simple explanation

[ultramk]

Stuff like this is why it's a matter of time before AoC goes tits-up.

What? What did I say?

Re:Simple explanation

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

While I understand that your tongue was firmly in cheek, there may be some truth to this. The only mmorpg that I play currently is Two Moons, where to be an archer, one must also be female. I constantly get invitations to join guilds, trade, etc. Not for a moment do I attribute this to my gaming skills, which are meager at best. No, I'm not undervaluing what I personally bring to the table. I'm old and chit - so my reflexes are slow. I play from my laptop, which puts me at a display and reaction disadvantage. But my character has t&a. Exactly the same t&a as every other female archer, which makes it even funnier. It's just a continuation of the old irc warez channel trick of formulating a female personna so that peop0le would share freely. In most cases, I could garner op status within a week, unlike my male persona which had contributed to the channels for months or years. So....if there is a penalty to female characters - perhaps there should be. In 2Moons, there is an advantage to being an archer - ranged weapons with pushback rock at lower levels. But I digress.... The question isn't really whether there should be certain penalties against male or female genders, it's how those penalties play out in game play. If social interaction plays a significant part, then penalize the females on strength and the males on charisma (or whatever you want to call it.) I'm not even sure the playing field should be level anyway. I mean really - how many female barbarian warriors have ever existed - and could they ever go toe to toe with their male counterparts? Make deception and sexual manipulation part of the game play if you want it to mimic real life.

Hey now

[Renderer of Evil]

Some people pay good money to see bugs penalize female characters.

Other gender bonuses to offset?

[bornyesterday]

Has anyone checked to see if there is a gender bonus for female characters who have tailoring or cooking professions?

Re:Other gender bonuses to offset?

[berashith]

only while they are not wearing shoes

Actually, it's made up elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The women do a tremendous amount of psychological damage over time.

Another game another bug

[sparhawktn]

You know games have bugs, a lot of them, and people aways act surprised every time comes to light. Why is it then that people always buy something the day it his the selves then complain when it is broken, I know it shouldn't be broken, but more times that not there is an issue that needs to be addressed when you first load up the game and have to download a huge patch just to start playing the game.

Age of...?

[oahazmatt]

AoC Bug Penalizes Female Characters? That's a rather amusing headline if you read AoC as Age of Consent.

Re:DPS

[merreborn]

It just doesn't pay to get in on the ground floor with an MMO.

There's also a disadvantage to getting in too late, though. Newcomers to WoW are increasingly finding that it's very hard to find people to run low-level instances with, and as a result, when they finally *do* catch up with everyone else at level 70, they don't have the instance-running skills they need to successfully contribute to end-game instance runs.

Similarly, there's no value in low-level trade goods, like there once was. Back around launch, you could make serious bank sewing low level packs to other players, etc. These days, it's next to impossible to find buyers for anything you craft until you get up to higher levels.

For the optimal MMO experience, you want to get in while there are still plenty of new players coming in so you'll have people of the same level to quest, hunt and trade with, but after the major bugs have been worked out.

Re: Female attack speed and mount movement speed

[Eowaennor]

Those issues were already fixed on Monday...

unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed trick

[gblackwo]

Everyone knows you run faster with a knife.

The Full Scoop

[Scorpinox]

I've been following this bug since it was first made apparent by some female assassins. At first we thought it was limited to the assassin class, but they were just the first to notice it, it turns out ALL classes who dual weild weapons are affected by the gender bug.

Here is a youtube video which clearly showcases the difference:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=k-C4z-pTrII&feature=related

Players who were in the beta of the game say (while breaking their NDA sadly) that this bug was in the beta for months, but was never addressed.

Funcom's response as of over a week ago was along the lines of "We'll look into it, they should be the same speed". There has been no communication on the bug since then.

I think it's great that this bug is getting mainstream attention now, it's a very serious imbalance that Funcom needs to take responsibility of.

Objoke

[Dogtanian]

From what I've seen, that is for very large values of "normal" Large breasts *are* normal on the average Slashdotter. Unfortunately, the average Slashdotter is also male.

Grow up

[Rui del-Negro]

How is showing a perfectly normal part of the human body "resorting to the gutter"?

It never ceases to amaze me how some people (or some societies) look at a movie or game where dozens of people get shot or hacked into pieces, and are offended by... a nipple.

But only if it's a female nipple; male nipples are fine (although those have no purpose other than sexual arousal). Probably because men won't take shit about not being allowed to go shirtless when they want to.

Personally I think any game where characters have undetachable underwear is simple pandering to pseudo-moralistic puritan pricks.

Re:topless bunny hoppers

[sesshomaru]

Yes, it goes all the way back to his Weird Tales debut in the 1930's with covers by Margaret Brundige:

Wikipedia: Margaret Brundage

I mean, there's a reason why H. P. Lovecraft (notorious prude) would tear the covers off the magazine where many of his best stories appeared, to quote Wikipedia:

Brundage's art frequently featured damsels in distress in various states of full or partial nudity; her whipping scenes were especially noteworthy and controversial. Her sensual images usually illustrated scenes from the pieces chosen by editor Farnsworth Wright as cover stories; her work was so popular among readers that some WT writers, like Seabury Quinn, cannily included scenes in their stories that would make good Brundage covers.

So.. there you have it... you'd think people would've been able to tell this from the Conan movies, though. Or maybe... those are also too old fashioned now. I feel old.

Re:unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed tr

[svnt]

"unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed"

That's what she said.

What is best in AoC?

[residieu]

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the female characters.