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."

Simple explanation

[greg1104]

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

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"

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.

Re:Simple explanation

[Original Replica]

Breast resizing is used to balance the the FLGWTYRLLT* bonus so male and female characters level at the same rate.

*Free Loot from Guys Who Think You Really Look Like That

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.

Re:

[montyzooooma]

I mean really - how many female barbarian warriors have ever existed - and could they ever go toe to toe with their male counterparts?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica [wikipedia.org]

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:

[nschubach]

I know you were being funny, but the only thing they offer that's even remotely unique is the combat and it's not even that unique. I think DDO did combat a little better than the typical click to auto-attack and spam spells/skills.

It's your typical quest grind to max level where you are forced to participate in PVP or raids to pass time. Damn, I'm so sick of MMOs.

Re:

[montyzooooma]

The funny thing is the grind to max level at 80 isn't that hard. It can reputedly be done in 5-10 days of solid play without abusing any bugs or quickfixes. I'm an extremely casual player and I've made level 40 in less than two weeks. When I played WOW it took me about 8 months to get to level 30 of the then level 60 level cap. And yes I am THAT casual, maybe an hour 2-3 nights during the week and some decent 3-5 hour sessions at the weekend.

Hey now

[Renderer of Evil]

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

Re:

[MindlessAutomata]

Here, I can give you that for free:

(WARNING!!!)

http://image.nuclearmayhem.com/happyfunsmile.jpg [nuclearmayhem.com]

Re:

[nschubach]

He did warn you... and thought it bears striking resemblance to every description I've heard, I don't think that's Mr. Christ.

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

Humble Suggestion

[unsigned integer]

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=254 [vgcats.com]

Perhaps these bugs are by design

Re:

[PaganRitual]

Why does everyone automatically assume that I know those two?

(Also, I like to fart in the tub.)

DPS

[spyrochaete]

I play the game and have heard the rumours but have not tested. However, damage is calculated as DPS (damage per second) in this game, so wouldn't a slow-swinging she-hulk simply do more damage with each swing?

It's true though - the game is rather unfinished. I'm going to unsubscribe when my 30 free days are up and perhaps I'll come back in 6 months. It just doesn't pay to get in on the ground floor with an MMO.

P.s., female characters wear only a g-string under their armour. :) Topless Playboy bunny hops abound. It truly is a fantasy wonderland.

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:

[Timothy Brownawell]

hmm... what would it take to get people to (repeatedly) switch to a new character after they get to the highest level?

Re:

[TheLinuxSRC]

Perma-death. If your character dies, you start over.

Re:

[Sponge Bath]

A shiny new badge like in Call of Duty 4.
My friend said "Give up my cool weapons for a badge? No way!".
Me: "but it's so precious and shiny..."

Re:

[NeoSkandranon]

Lots of people do that in WOW out of boredom or to explore another class or profession. But, at that point, they likely have a guild whos members are providing equipment, so even though there are lower level players lots of them are "supported" and don't purchase lower level goods.

Re:

[zlexiss]

what would it take to get people to (repeatedly) switch to a new character after they get to the highest level?

Aging? You start losing stats after the character gets too old. Been done in RPG's before.

Re:

[nschubach]

That's the most realistic solution I've found. The other is not making it a race to max level before the game begins.

Re:

[Gideon Fubar]

sadly, this would be far more exploitable than the current system. As soon as the first base-stat exploit hits, there'll be people running around with unsigned stats.

I shouldn't have to tell you that this would be game-breakingly bad.

Re:

[spyrochaete]

You're on the right track, and that's why I bought AoC a couple of weeks after launch. I didn't want to be intimidated by 3 million people spouting jargon and acronyms I didn't recognize. However, the game is so buggy and unfinished that much of the knowledge I amass is moot shortly thereafter. For example, most of the character attribute points do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING right now.

I'm wagering that 6 months is the sweet spot. The game box will probably be cheaper by then, and the real game-quashing bugs

Re:

[Tridus]

I had the same problem with it. I'm willing to live with running into walls of max level players if it means the game that I play is actually finished.

What they released is beta-quality, at best.

Re:DPS

[bishiraver]

That's because the power curve of the game moved as the game matured, and settled at 60, then 70 or whatever. 80% of the characters are utilizing 20% of the level range, if even that.

The fix for it, of course, is to somehow keep the power curve a distributed bell curve with a majority of the people being average. There are many ways to fix this, but the problem is coming up with a solution that won't piss the ever loving hell out of everyone who plays the game. One way would be to make the "heritage" of the character important, where you gather stuff for your line of characters instead of for your single one.. but the flip side of that is each character you make can permanently die.

It's the big conundrum so many MMOs face as they age. And nobody has put something out there to fix it. Except maybe - maybe - Eve, where corporations are bigger than anything else in the game, and the game is about, well... looking at spreadsheets.

Re:

[nschubach]

One of the more creative ideas I've heard, but how do you avoid people following HOWTOs on building a character the way they are best needed? For instance. If you somehow had to complete objectives in order to achieve a certain skill or trait, those objectives would be recorded and repeated by thousands of people the next day in their ultimate race to the max level. If you make it random, or difficult to figure out, people will cry that they missed the opportunity to get their character the cake baking s

Re:

[lgw]

Give everyone the HOWTOs in the game. I'm always annoyed that I have to search all the character class forums and sit down with a spreadsheet to get an MMO character that doesn't suck, because the designers either hide the important info from me, or simply don't know. The latter case is particlarly sad (Mythic, I'm looking at you here).

Re:

[robosmurf]

Well, to a certain extent FFXI attempted this.

As each character can level multiple jobs (classes) then there is a reason to be in low level areas.

Also, there are a number of areas that are level capped (you temporarily de-level when entering). This is an interesting idea, but seems to annoy many people.

Also, FFXI hasn't changed the level cap in years, so most of the recent content IS tailored around the high level players.

Re:

[bishiraver]

Yah, but FFXI was one of the worst grinding games out there. With the proposed system, you could get to 'average' level / power in a matter of days, not in a matter of years like with FFXI. Plus, there would have to be some skill involved -- I remember playing FFXI a few years ago and literally falling asleep at my computer while our group pulled stuff in some desert or another. I woke up a half hour later with my group congratulating me on how well I did.

We had all gone up half a level.

We had spent fou

Re:

[Incoherent07]

Actually, low level trade goods in WoW are only going up in price, especially on older servers; the only people buying are people who already have 70s to finance their alts. My most recent alt was the first in awhile to actually have enough money for a mount at 40, simply by selling crap you get from mining.

Re:

[Fozzyuw]

Similarly, there's no value in low-level trade goods, like there once was

Er... you're not playing the WoW I'm playing. Actually, the reverse is true. Low-level goods and items are drastically higher in cost than they can reasonably purchased by new players at those levels.

This is do to primarily to the inflation of money injected into the economy with daily quests. It's very easy to farm money for any level 70, and as such, they transfer that money to alts. Not wanting to spend endless hours leveling up trade skills (again), they just purchase the trade goods off the A

Re:

[murdocj]

Actually, it's a major advantage to new low level players, because they can sell the stuff they harvest for good money (e.g. for buying their level 40 mount). Low level players do NOT need to buy equipment on the AH. They get plenty of good stuff via drops / quest rewards. My characters have almost never bought gear on the AH, certainly not at the low levels.

Re:

[zippthorne]

Not really. They can sell stuff they harvest, which is good if they enjoy harvesting. If the crafting game is what's fun for them, they can't really access it until they're at an advanced level.

It's simply not cost effective, since they can't dump their grind-goods even for the cost of the non-farmed components.

It's a bit disingenuous to say that this is a recent development however. The nature of the crafting XP system means that the raw materials are almost always more valuable than the finished goods,

Re:

[MaskedSlacker]

Correction: Its an advantage to min/maxing low level players aware that they can finance themselves with 2 gathering professions. It is a major disadvantage to any wanting to play a roleplaying game where their character fills a role. OTOH WoW isn't really an RPG any more.

Re:

[lgw]

Maybe "gathering" is the role they wanted to play? Bah, min/maxing is the only fun part of these games to begin with.

Anyway, WTF is a "gathering profession" - I've never played WoW, but it looked like you be swinging a sword or casting a spell or somesuch, not be a haircutter/dancer like that fantastically stupid SWG game.

Re:

[MaskedSlacker]

Gathering = Mining, herb gathering, skinning Gathering supplies. As for your silly statement that min/maxing is the only fun part, that's your opinion. I play rpgs to play characters in a role. To live in that character. WoW fails at that miserably. Even on roleplaying servers.

Re:

[Chris Burke]

This is do to primarily to the inflation of money injected into the economy with daily quests. It's very easy to farm money for any level 70, and as such, they transfer that money to alts. Not wanting to spend endless hours leveling up trade skills (again), they just purchase the trade goods off the Auction House, and they're willing to spend 5g-10g for a stack of 20 wool cloth, to save them 20 mins farming it.

Likewise, some nice class stat green items are selling for several gold for levels in the teens. H

Re:

[Lehk228]

it's been over a year so things may have changed a lot since i played, but all the real money i made in WoW was made using the auctioneer addon, speculating on goods around patch time and sniping undervalued items who's auctions ended at low population times.


i never broke level 35 and always had more gold than my brother who was level 60, then again by the time i started doing that i had bored of the PvP and PvE aspects of the game and was almost exclusively playing it as a MMO version of DopeWar.

Re:

[menace3society]

I think what you mean to say is to allow someone else to get in the game early and work up to high levels, and then buy his account off of him so you don't have to waste your time killing squirrels or whatever.

Re:

[Bloodoflethe]

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

Frankly, that's BS. All these people need is some attention and guidance. That is, in other words a guild that actually cares about their development in the game. I personally trained some newbies (husband and wife) in instancing. The husband took to it pretty well and I taught him higher level tactics that over half of the raiding guilds never seem to achieve. His wife, more of an artist than a statistician and tactician, was also able to keep up and do well, in fact.
We picked up a few more of the s

Re:

[Omestes]

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.

Amen, I started WoW about 2 weeks after launch, the early game was pretty fun, finding your market niche, playing the AH, exploring new instances with fellow newbs. I played my ally druid to 60, and promptly quit (school, and the fact that Raiding sucks) shortly after they opened Silithus

Re:

[Fluffeh]

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.

Yes and no, getting in at the ground level while there are a lot of bugs can be annoying for certain things, but very very beneficial for others.

Perfect example: If you got into crafting early in EverQuest II, you could have been lucky enough to use a lovely little crafting loop where you bought a few items from a NPC, crafted some goods and then sold your crafted goods back to the same vendor for a decent profit level. Outcome: Free easy cash. Subsequently these type of "bugs" are weeded out and follow

Re:DPS (is not the issue)

[Scorpinox]

DPS is not the issue here. The game has many "procs" (each hit has a %chance of adding an effect like poison or extra damage), so after 30 seconds the genders may be doing the same "damage" but the males will have more procs than females.

Also, the game uses combos which require several regular attacks to initiate, a male will be able to fire off combos faster than females, many of which debuff or do additional damage that higher "damage per hit" will not make up for.

topless bunny hoppers

[Shivetya]

when I saw that in game and listened to my friends experience with this game all I could think of is, were the developers so desperate to get sales that they had to have boobies?

I guess if you can't compete on gameplay and product resorting to the gutter will get you some quick cash. What an abysmal way to get players.

Re:

[evilkasper]

Never read any of the Conan books, or comics have you? Naked flesh is a central theme in the heavy metal fantasy style of the game.

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 [wikipedia.org]

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.

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:

[deroby]

Hear, hear.

Although I wouldn't make it a requirement to be able to have a character being able to run around fully naked, on the contrary some (clean =) underwear is fine by me : less polygons wasted on something I'm not interested in anyway (**).
It's a matter of priorities I guess, I rather see people spend some time on customizing their facial looks than having to decide whether to go for a B, C or D cup. Worse, assuming the -if ever present- genitals would be customizable too it's going to be heaps of st

Re:

[Rui del-Negro]

Going around naked would get old soon. Part of the reason why people wear clothes, even in places where it's warm enough not to, is to show off their unique / expensive clothes, and through them their status. And besides, it would mean no armour bonuses, possibly a health loss in cold regions (if the game models weather realistically), possibly undesirable reactions from NPCs or other players (making fun, refusing to deal with, etc.), and so on.

But if I have a big quest coming up, I definitely want to be ab

Re:

[Danny Rathjens]

AoC was developed by Funcom, a company based in Norway. Europeans do not have the silly obsession over breasts that we repressed americans do. :) (I won't even go down the road of the hypocritical lack of objection to the violent aspects of the game giving it its M rating such as the ability to decapitate people with blood spattering everywhere and whatnot)

Subscription question.

[antdude]

Does one require credit card to to play 30 days trial? I'd like to check out the game, but I don't want to give the company my paymeny information before my trial expires.

Re:

[antdude]

Ugh, thanks. That stinks.

Re:

[dwye]

> P.s., female characters wear only a g-string under their armour. :)
> Topless Playboy bunny hops abound. It truly is a fantasy wonderland.

Well, Robert E. Howard didn't write Conan at the highest level of sophistication, either, as his target readership was mostly teenage boys (no cracks relating to his possible homosexuality, here), to this is entirely appropriate.

Now, to be politically correct, male characters would have to go about in fur jockstraps, as well.

Well, whatever keeps the players out of

Bug?

[computerman413]

Are we sure it's a bug, and not just the work of some sexist programmer?

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.

Re:

[VanillaBabies]

This might because AoC was touted as "the" WoW killer and has been a)buggy and b) disappointing. Personally i was wholly disappointed and the unpolished feel from issues such as the one mentioned certainly didn't help.

Re:

[wattrlz]

I'm pretty sure there was a time back when things weren't released until all or most of the known bugs were dealt with. It was a while ago, so it's possible I just confabulated the memory. Back when if you bought something you got a thing and not just a limited license to access the current state of whatever it was you thought you had bought.

Age of...?

[oahazmatt]

AoC Bug Penalizes Female Characters?

That's a rather amusing headline if you read AoC as Age of Consent.

Re:

[MaskedSlacker]

Then it would have to read AoC Bug Rewards Female Characters. Such as when female teachers molest male students. Niiice.

Re:

[Fluffeh]

Perhaps I am getting too old, but every time I see AoC, I keep thinking that someone typo'ed when they meant to type in DAOC [darkageofcamelot.com].

My brain happily refuses to acknowledge Age of Conan even though a few of my good mates talk nothing else MMO besides this (and the "good old days" spent playing every MMO going all the way back to Ultima Online [uo.com])

Communication Issue...

[TheSubAtomic]

This was probably just a side effect of bad communication. The graphics devs probably didn't know to make the attack animation the same speed as the males. The variable attack speed based upon animation speed is a good idea, they just executed it poorly. Just like most of the stuff in the game thus far. It'll probably be fixed very shortly. inb4 sexism lawsuits

Re:

[BlackSnake112]

It is a feature not a bug. The programmers where thinking of the slow motion Bay Watch running when programming female characters movements.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Female characters should be weaker

[bugnuts]

It's also a well-established fact that you DIE when a barbarian sneaks up on you, stuns and knocks you down, then lops your head from your shoulders.

Stupid hollywood... if not for them, we'd all pay $15/mo to stay dead. How dare they make a game where they're not simulating reality?

Re:

[moderatorrater]

LOL, first of all, the only reason this is flamebait is cultural, not physical/biological.

Second of all, the characters you play in MMOs are going to be the exceptions to the rule, so having strong women that are great at fighting makes sense.

Re:

[MaskedSlacker]

Actually the physical strength differences between men and women that are not the result of different lifestyles (men doing more manual labor thus using and developing muscle strength more) are fairly small. Differing skeletal structures is one real difference. Grip strength (according to my physical anthropology professor anywa) is another. That being said, there is a rather large margin between male and female weightlifting olympic records (when comparing same weight classes) as high as 30%.

Re:

[moderatorrater]

the physical strength differences between men and women that are not the result of different lifestyles (men doing more manual labor thus using and developing muscle strength more) are fairly small...there is a rather large margin between male and female weightlifting olympic records (when comparing same weight classes) as high as 30%

I believe you rebutted your own comment. Doesn't that pretty much show that the difference is biological rather than lifestyle? I'm stronger than my wife by a reasonably large margin, and she has a more physical job than I do. In other words, my experience doesn't back that up at all.

He's got a point, though.

[wattrlz]

While I can't make any judgments on the relative combat-efficacy of men and women based solely on gender, but it's a well documented fact that game devs do have sexist attitudes towards female characters. Back when I used to play FPS it was almost universally understood that female avatars were smaller targets and moved more quickly. Generally female characters have less realistic proportions (and far more polygons) than their male counterparts. Not that I'm complaining, but I think it's silly to take for

Re:

[dave562]

I think anyone who practices Wing Chun will point out some serious flaws in your logic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng_Mui

Re:

[dunkelfalke]

you want to prove reality by a fictional character?

i seriously doubt that a woman of old china could be a serious fighter, given the chinese practize of foot binding [wikipedia.org]

That's utter BS

[Chris Burke]

but the reality is that even if most athletic women went up against a normal, decently in shape man, they would get badly hurt in one-on-one fighting.

That's just plain bullshit.

If the average woman went up against the average man, then the man would probably win.

If the best woman went up against the best man, then the man would probably win.

If the best woman went up against the average man, the average man would get his sorry ass handed to him and would have to hire the Mossad to help him find the remains

Naive question...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Aren't there advantages both ways?

For example: Men probably have more upper body strength, and more muscle period because of testosterone. Women have a lower center of gravity, and an easy target (balls) with which to completely disable the man.

I don't really know, as I'm not enough into martial arts -- just guessing.

Re:

[Chris Burke]

Aren't there advantages both ways?

For example: Men probably have more upper body strength, and more muscle period because of testosterone. Women have a lower center of gravity, and an easy target (balls) with which to completely disable the man.

Yeah, there are advantages that go both ways. I couldn't say they necessarily balance out. The lower center of gravity is very helpful, yes. Also in a lot of cases being smaller is an advantage because it means you are faster. In some styles where speed is emphas

Re:

[PakProtector]

Somebody needs to go take basic college anatomy and physiology classes.

Re:Female characters should be weaker

[zippthorne]

Every guy you meet produces and uses his own steroids. Women, not so much. I suppose you could say it's cultural...

Re:

[shawn(at)fsu]

Not sure why this one is labeled FlameBait. Sadly I have no mod points to fix it.

Re:

[Hubbell]

A friend of mine teaches women's self defense classes. He (my friend) taught his student's that they WILL lose if they try to fight an attacker unless they get the element of surprise in a strike to the balls, throat, or eyes. Either they attack those 3 vital points with utter desperation and ferocity, nearly any male attacker (who is more than likely going to be much larger mass/size wise) is going to fucking own them, for lack of a better term. It's simple physics, a 200lb man needs only swing his arm

Re:Female characters should be weaker

[Chris Burke]

A friend of mine teaches women's self defense classes. He (my friend) taught his student's that they WILL lose if they try to fight an attacker unless they get the element of surprise in a strike to the balls, throat, or eyes.

Yes, that's very good advice for a self defense class, where the idea is to teach a woman how to defend herself from an attacker, and the attacker isn't going to wait until she's a 5th degree black belt before assaulting her. Most women taking the course aren't trying to become bad-ass warriors, they're trying to make it harder for some dude to rape them.

I mean really, for the vast majority of cases the best self defense advice is simply "kick em in the nuts and run like hell". When your goal isn't to win UFC, that's all you need, especially if you don't want to limit your students to those women who actually have the potential to be fighters.

It's simple physics, a 200lb man needs only swing his arm clothesline style to take out nearly any woman he would attack.

Unless you're assuming a 90lb waif trembling because she hasn't eaten in two days, that's pretty funny. If we're assuming a woman who is in shape, unless this ridiculous clothesline swing actually connects with a fist to the head, it's not going to do much.

I'm 5'11, 190lbs, and I've had girls I know who are all I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR and take karate/self defense classes say they are just as strong as a man/can take one. Every single one ended on the ground with me mounting them quite effortlessly. All the karate and self defense shit you learn means shit when it's the equivalent of a mac truck running over a motorcycle.

Person Taking Karate Thinks They Are Bigger Badass Than They Really Are, I think would be the Onion headline for that amazing story.

If "all the karate and self defense" doesn't mean shit when some mere 190lb dude is coming at you, then you didn't learn shit, and that's probably a terrible class. Karate might be a bad choice, since it's a very direct style. Judo would be perfect, it's a style designed around using your opponent's momentum against them, and a "mac truck" has a lot of momentum. But really, just about every style deals with methods of redirecting an attacker who is larger and stronger. These girls you beat up on just didn't know crap about that, so they lost.

For an actually skilled woman, which I readily grant tends to be a rarer thing than for men, your 5'11" 190lb as ain't even close to a "mac truck". I have personally witnessed such a woman drop a 6'6" 250+ man who bench pressed 400lbs like he was a sack of potatoes. And he himself could do a little better than clothesline swings and mad bull charges.

It's fair to say that on average women have less strength and less mass, and therefore the physics wins out. That's what your friend's self defense class advice is based upon, and it is sound advice. But your general statement that a woman can't beat a man unless she's ridiculously strong, or the man is drunk, is silly and wrong.

Re:

[Hubbell]

9 times out of a 10 the average man (not skinny geek or pencil pusher) can take out the average woman. As for the clothesline comment I made, it's simple physics again. A larger man can swing his arm and if it connects either the woman goes down or she braced herself which means his hand is now on her. Unless she knows judo/grappling techniques, and barring this guy never wrestling/playfighting in his entire life especially as a child, it's over unless she manages a shot to one of the 3 weakpoints (balls

Re:

[Chris Burke]

Look, when you're talking about the "average" woman and the "average" man, of course the observation that the average woman isn't as strong as the average man is true. The "average" man could beat up the "average" woman, yeah, especially since the "average" woman has no training. Big surprise there.

But you can't apply the average to any particular example, and it's not nearly as automatically lopsided as you contend. You're claiming that unless the woman is extremely skilled, and the man has never so muc

Re:

[Codifex Maximus]

Chris Burke said:
"It's fair to say that on average women have less strength and less mass, and therefore the physics wins out. That's what your friend's self defense class advice is based upon, and it is sound advice. But your general statement that a woman can't beat a man unless she's ridiculously strong, or the man is drunk, is silly and wrong."

I agree. Strength and Mass are important as you say. But do not forget the command and control - The Brain. It is the brain, and not strength/mass, that rules

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.

Re:

[electricbern]

No. You run faster with scissors.

Re:unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed tr

[svnt]

"unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed"

That's what she said.

Re:unsheath your weapon to fix your mount speed tr

[geekoid]

How else could you slit the throats of 1000 warriors in one night?

Obviously the AoC developers learned...

[obijuanvaldez]

what is best in life [youtube.com].

Fixed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, fixed. I made a female character to test the bug, only to find out it was already fixed.

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.

Shiney factor?

[Fozzyuw]

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.

Formally know as "the honeymoon period", this is just par for the course for all MMO's as well as human behavior for a lot of things (including marriage apparently, as the name suggests). AoC isn't really any different than any other MMO I've seen, including WoW, which suffered greatly from server crashes and lag issues in the first 2 weeks that prompted them to give time credit to all accounts. I think I have 8 days of "free" time to play beyond the "free" first month.

The only MMO I've played at launch that I recall having the least issues was LOTRO. However, they had plenty of server issues and quest bugs as well. Just a lot less than I've seen normally. WoW's problems stemmed mostly from unprecedented demand.

Re:

[Ikar_rb]

Honestly, AoC had a *remarkably* smooth launch on the "server stability" end of things. One of the smoothest I've ever seen. There is a lot of things which remain unfinished, but then again there have been a TON of things enhanced in WoW since launch. My major complaints about AoC include: "Feats" i.e. wow talents descriptions are utterly useless, to the point that a person cannot make reasonable intelligent decisions about which ones to pick based on their descriptions. Not to mention there are numerou

Re:

[Skuld-Chan]

The thing about WoW is its probably the most polished mmo I've ever played - even ones that have had a long time to mature (like EQ or Lineage).

What is best in AoC?

[residieu]

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

Newsflash

[analog_line]

Our top story today, a brand new MMO has lots of bugs at launch.

In other news, government scientists announce stunning findings, gravity causes objects to collide with the earth, the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, and fire hurts you if you put your hand in it.

Re:

[Jarnis]

Well, it *should* be big news. The status quo should be that a game is released when it's ready and polished.

It's a sad world when it's shocking to find a new MMO to be actually bug-free and polished...