New World (MMORPG, Amazon Games)

[Hoax]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

At launch it was one of the worst.
They gave the best speed buff AND the longest aoe cc to the same class type, then they gave one realm the best version of those two things (i can't remember what made it better) and the other realm that class also had decent dps and the third realm fuck you. Then they had a zero diminishing returns or counterplay cc system. Class balance in general was dogshit. But then they also tried to balance the realm versions of each class as well and failed even more.

DAOC was an overrated pile and not at all fun in pvp. The golden age of DAOC pvp involved literally using bots and a second account to get all the fun buffs on you. UO, AC, SB for sure and probably EQ Zek servers were all better but didn't spoonfeed shit the way DAOC did.

[slog]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

At launch it was one of the worst.
They gave the best speed buff AND the longest aoe cc to the same class type, then they gave one realm the best version of those two things (i can't remember what made it better) and the other realm that class also had decent dps and the third realm fuck you. Then they had a zero diminishing returns or counterplay cc system. Class balance in general was dogshit. But then they also tried to balance the realm versions of each class as well and failed even more.

DAOC was an overrated pile and not at all fun in pvp. The golden age of DAOC pvp involved literally using bots and a second account to get all the fun buffs on you. UO, AC, SB for sure and probably EQ Zek servers were all better but didn't spoonfeed shit the way DAOC did.

For me, nothing will ever top "l33tn3ss" my Centaur Summon/buffbot in Shadowbane.  He was very useful, and very naked....

[Sky]

Thinking back, my favorite pvp (other than planetside) was in UO. The actual pvp was ok, kinda frustratingly stacked in the favor of pks (compounded by the notoriety system). But I found the fun in playing a completely non-combat thief. 7xGM in thief skills plus treasure hunting. I would target pk guilds and steal from them incessantly, and the build actually made for an amazing defensive build due to the way hiding worked when I was doing it (you had to waste a skill slot on GM Detect Hidden or you weren't going to find me, and not many did...at first heh).

Stealing the guild keyring of some big pk guild was probably the high point of it, I spent a week or so doing recon and setting up the heist. They had rednamers farming npcs on Bucs Den and killing any players that would make the mistake of landing there, then they would hand off loot to a bluename that would port it back to the HQ. Turns out the bluename carried a bag of stones to all guild hideouts and the keys for them.

That was some amazing emergent gameplay.

[Soulflame]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

When they introduced battlegrounds, the first PVP battleground was a shitton of fun. I think it was around level 20 or so. The realm war zones were ok, but the closed battlegrounds were the bomb. Then you leveled out of that 20-24 range and all of a sudden, the next battleground was emptier than the frontiers.

DAoC had battlegrounds? I had forgotten about those.

RvR was fun if you had at least a full group to roam around with.  It could be entertaining if you had an OP 1v1 class with enough DPS to blow up one person before you died.  I remember tooling around with heretic+sorc and that was stupid OP and fun.

RvR could also be fun if you could get enough people moving in one direction (think at least 30 for small scale, 100+ for large scale). Plus someone bringing siege weapons.  Someone brought siege weapons, right?  Right?

The PvP/PvE areas were kind of pointless.  There was some back and forth in the first area introduced, Darkness Falls? But mostly the PvE there involved raid groups large enough that could only really be countered by another raid group.  Plus you could limit or lock out the other realms on a limited basis based on... keep ownership?  Relics? The PvP/PvE area accessible in the frontier really mostly involved groups waving at each other because they really just wanted the stuff.  With occasional single group ambushes that would result in suddenly everyone embroiled in a pointless back and forth instead of farming.

[Soulflame]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

At launch it was one of the worst.
They gave the best speed buff AND the longest aoe cc to the same class type, then they gave one realm the best version of those two things (i can't remember what made it better) and the other realm that class also had decent dps and the third realm fuck you. Then they had a zero diminishing returns or counterplay cc system. Class balance in general was dogshit. But then they also tried to balance the realm versions of each class as well and failed even more.

DAOC was an overrated pile and not at all fun in pvp. The golden age of DAOC pvp involved literally using bots and a second account to get all the fun buffs on you. UO, AC, SB for sure and probably EQ Zek servers were all better but didn't spoonfeed shit the way DAOC did.

Mid was stupid overpowered at release with full duration AE stun and mezz, both of which could be re-applied with no fall-off or immunity.  Sorcs were okay with longer range AoE mezz (think 1850 vs 1500 for bard/healer) and decent speed.  Bards had an insta-mezz and the good speed.

Basically Mid had very good synergy with healer + DPS with decent numbers, Alb had numbers and had to pick and choose their utility for groups, and Hibs were the playground of the other two realms with the ability to include most (all?) utility but limited their group comp.  I don't think that ever significantly changed over the lifetime of the game.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

At launch it was one of the worst.
They gave the best speed buff AND the longest aoe cc to the same class type, then they gave one realm the best version of those two things (i can't remember what made it better) and the other realm that class also had decent dps and the third realm fuck you. Then they had a zero diminishing returns or counterplay cc system. Class balance in general was dogshit. But then they also tried to balance the realm versions of each class as well and failed even more.

DAOC was an overrated pile and not at all fun in pvp. The golden age of DAOC pvp involved literally using bots and a second account to get all the fun buffs on you. UO, AC, SB for sure and probably EQ Zek servers were all better but didn't spoonfeed shit the way DAOC did.

Mid was stupid overpowered at release with full duration AE stun and mezz, both of which could be re-applied with no fall-off or immunity.  Sorcs were okay with longer range AoE mezz (think 1850 vs 1500 for bard/healer) and decent speed.  Bards had an insta-mezz and the good speed.

Basically Mid had very good synergy with healer + DPS with decent numbers, Alb had numbers and had to pick and choose their utility for groups, and Hibs were the playground of the other two realms with the ability to include most (all?) utility but limited their group comp.  I don't think that ever significantly changed over the lifetime of the game.

and then there was early EQ Illusionists who could mez (enslave basically) someone basically forever or at least until one or the other logged off. could even pass control off to another Illusionist

[Typhon]

Mid had healer AE stun and Thane AE DPS (hammers of doom), but only at start.  Shortly after the Thane hammers were nerfed to "great way to kill yourself" or "lagOmatic!HAHA!".  I'm surprised that I'm still bitter about how they fucked the Thane.  Hammers definitely needed nerfing, but ffs, give something else in compensation.

I vaguely remember battlegrounds.  I'm sort-of but with no details also remembering that there was something retarded that they did in battlegrounds that made them not fun.

[Count Nerfedalot]

So back to the perhaps not as interesting topic of New World, I've heard there is quite a bit of content gating through PvP. As in crafting and skill development quest chains require participation in PvP to complete? And this is for basic stuff like a recipe for bags, not just PvP stuff.

[Rasix]

Hard pass. Maybe this game just doesn't stream well, but it just looks like a giant mess in action. Inevitable population crashes will not help the long term viablility of that strategy.

[Soulflame]

I think I'd really rather talk some more about DAoC.

[Rasix]

My college roommate and his brother were way into it. I just didn't care for the game at all. The PVE was just so bad that I couldn't even stand being power leveled. The RVR wasn't than appealing to me either. I'm kind of surprised looking back though that I didn't at least have some extended time with this at end game. The three of us tended to play MMOs together for months on end.

I guess that means I really didn't like it. 

[Soulflame]

You weren't powerleveled the right way then.   

I started a cleric, got PL'd in PvE up to around 20 or so, then my guild said "fuckit" and off we went into the frontier.

We ran out to a keep, I manned the oil.  I think the first oil pour gained me close to 20 levels. It was absolutely hilarious. Pretty much closed out the night at nearly 50.

[Falconeer]

Hard pass. Maybe this game just doesn't stream well, but it just looks like a giant mess in action. Inevitable population crashes will not help the long term viablility of that strategy.

As far as I know nothing is gated behind PvP, only PvP stuff. I can craft bags no problem, so this is a weird rumor. Could be true, but in 45 levels I haven't found any gate whatsoever.
And no the game doesn't stream well because a lot of what makes it engaging is how you fight. The feel of it.

[HaemishM]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

When they introduced battlegrounds, the first PVP battleground was a shitton of fun. I think it was around level 20 or so. The realm war zones were ok, but the closed battlegrounds were the bomb. Then you leveled out of that 20-24 range and all of a sudden, the next battleground was emptier than the frontiers.

DAoC had battlegrounds? I had forgotten about those.

The battlegrounds came way after release. I went back after they started their "get a free level 20 character on your account" a few years after release and the battlegrounds were either new-ish or had been around for a little bit. The level 20 battleground was always full because people could just create a character and go with a little bit of gearing but then you had to level with their boring ass PVE to get into the later battlegrounds, which were completely barren.

[Triforcer]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

When they introduced battlegrounds, the first PVP battleground was a shitton of fun. I think it was around level 20 or so. The realm war zones were ok, but the closed battlegrounds were the bomb. Then you leveled out of that 20-24 range and all of a sudden, the next battleground was emptier than the frontiers.

DAoC had battlegrounds? I had forgotten about those.

The battlegrounds came way after release. I went back after they started their "get a free level 20 character on your account" a few years after release and the battlegrounds were either new-ish or had been around for a little bit. The level 20 battleground was always full because people could just create a character and go with a little bit of gearing but then you had to level with their boring ass PVE to get into the later battlegrounds, which were completely barren.

I bought DaoC at luanch, created a character in Hibernia.  Hibernia consisted of one hill with brown frogs on it, and a sign that read "IOU one realm".  Could never get to the actual PvP.

Also, New World sucks. 

[Rendakor]

So back to the perhaps not as interesting topic of New World, I've heard there is quite a bit of content gating through PvP. As in crafting and skill development quest chains require participation in PvP to complete? And this is for basic stuff like a recipe for bags, not just PvP stuff.

You have to do faction quests to make bags (more specifically, to buy one of the materials), but there are PVE or PVP quests available. Have made several bags, done zero PVP. No idea what the skill quests even are.

[Soulflame]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

When they introduced battlegrounds, the first PVP battleground was a shitton of fun. I think it was around level 20 or so. The realm war zones were ok, but the closed battlegrounds were the bomb. Then you leveled out of that 20-24 range and all of a sudden, the next battleground was emptier than the frontiers.

DAoC had battlegrounds? I had forgotten about those.

The battlegrounds came way after release. I went back after they started their "get a free level 20 character on your account" a few years after release and the battlegrounds were either new-ish or had been around for a little bit. The level 20 battleground was always full because people could just create a character and go with a little bit of gearing but then you had to level with their boring ass PVE to get into the later battlegrounds, which were completely barren.

I bought DaoC at luanch, created a character in Hibernia.  Hibernia consisted of one hill with brown frogs on it, and a sign that read "IOU one realm".  Could never get to the actual PvP.

Also, New World sucks.  

Don't forget a dragon that was more difficult than the alb/mid dragon for a long long time.

[Falconeer]

What's hurting the game a bit is the fact that they locked up a lot of servers and you can't create new characters there. So if you have friends who joined later specifically to play together, and for example I have four of them, they can't play with you. A server transfer token should arrive soon, but it has been a week now and patience is growing thin. Some will give up.

[slog]

So Amazon just tried to make a Wow clone?  If it has good battlegrounds I might give it a whirl...

[Riggswolfe]

So Amazon just tried to make a Wow clone?  If it has good battlegrounds I might give it a whirl...

Welcome to the discussion from weeks ago?

[Falconeer]

It's a WoW clone if WoW had good combat, good crafting, and little content.

If you walk into this thinking it's a WoW clone you'll refund it in 4 minutes.

[Count Nerfedalot]

It's a WoW clone if WoW had good combat, good crafting, and little content.

If you walk into this thinking it's a WoW clone you'll refund it in 4 minutes.

This may just be the best review you've ever written Falc 

[Hoax]

Nothing about this is remotely WoW.

Its the first serious attempt at cashing in on survival (rust, ark, minecraft etc) game structure as a MMO. Except it started as the west's first for real pvp MMO in forever. Then it became whatever it is now. Which is a bit of a mess.

Much of the design underpinnings only make sense from a pvp perspective (e.g. no mounts) but pvp has be re-relegated somewhere along the way in design to borderline tacked on. Its an optional system (welcome back pvp flagging!) but there isn't much to the game beyond it and even the world pvp systems (SB timed sieges meet instanced max participants Battleground) are completely undercooked and lacking.

Also one of the worst quest design games in a decade or three shouldn't ever be compared to WoW.

[eldaec]

I'm trying to remember if Dark Age of Camelot PvP was at all fun.

When they introduced battlegrounds, the first PVP battleground was a shitton of fun. I think it was around level 20 or so. The realm war zones were ok, but the closed battlegrounds were the bomb. Then you leveled out of that 20-24 range and all of a sudden, the next battleground was emptier than the frontiers.

DAoC had battlegrounds? I had forgotten about those.

The battlegrounds came way after release. I went back after they started their "get a free level 20 character on your account" a few years after release and the battlegrounds were either new-ish or had been around for a little bit. The level 20 battleground was always full because people could just create a character and go with a little bit of gearing but then you had to level with their boring ass PVE to get into the later battlegrounds, which were completely barren.

I bought DaoC at luanch, created a character in Hibernia.  Hibernia consisted of one hill with brown frogs on it, and a sign that read "IOU one realm".  Could never get to the actual PvP.

Also, New World sucks. 

Daic suffered from the ridiculous belief of the era that pve time sinks were terribly important. But I still think the realm war was the best implementation of any kind of community pvp war in the genre.

I'm counting eve as a different genre, rightly or wrongly.

[Rendakor]

Nothing about this is remotely WoW.

Its the first serious attempt at cashing in on survival (rust, ark, minecraft etc) game structure as a MMO. Except it started as the west's first for real pvp MMO in forever. Then it became whatever it is now. Which is a bit of a mess.

Much of the design underpinnings only make sense from a pvp perspective (e.g. no mounts) but pvp has be re-relegated somewhere along the way in design to borderline tacked on. Its an optional system (welcome back pvp flagging!) but there isn't much to the game beyond it and even the world pvp systems (SB timed sieges meet instanced max participants Battleground) are completely undercooked and lacking.

Also one of the worst quest design games in a decade or three shouldn't ever be compared to WoW.

Nothing about New World at launch has anything in common with a survival game. I don't know if that is something that existed previously (or was talked about in design docs but ultimately scrapped), but there's no kind of hunger mechanic, no building, no day/night cycles where things get more difficult... I honestly don't even understand the comparison.

[Trippy]

Hoax is talking about what the game originally was, not what it is now. There was no hunger/thirst mechanic, from what I understand, but you could build settlements originally. So like Rust, Conan, etc. you would get together with friends and other like-minded individuals, gather resources, and build out a settlement that you would have to defend from other players. And the game still has the resource gathering and item crafting focus that survival-style games have.

[Falconeer]

Whatever were the survival roots of the game are completely gone and only left behind what turned out to be one of the winning aspects of the game: crafting and even more so gathering, are extremely satisfying. To me, this is the most pleasant gathering ever in a MMO.

[Trippy]

No, the game still has aspects of its original design in it. Hoax mentioned mounts. I mentioned some additional ones here:

I understand Amazon wanting to broaden the appeal of the game. The problem is the game still has many of the original design decisions that only make sense in that context including things like free-for-all looting even in PvE (e.g. I can loot / skin somebody else's kill immediately with no timer to wait for), extremely limited fast travel, no mounts, and settlement-specific (non-global) storage.

Another one to add to the list is the (server) laggy faction wars. That's not an easy problem to fix and it's probably not really a fault of the original design -- it's more that the original design was team-based PvP where small(ish) teams of people would fight PvP battles over player-built settlements and territories rather than the large-scale faction wars the game evolved into so they didn't have that server-lag issue originally.

[Tairnyn]

The echoing sound when you are mining is very satisfying. On the other hand, there are only two types of mobs I've encountered: animals and different colored zombies.

[Falconeer]

That's one of the game's biggest sins: the lack of variety in mobs and locations. You can see that they put a little more effort at the higher levels but it's definitely too little. If the last zone they added is an indication of what's coming (Ebonscale Reach, level 55+) then the future looks cool, but it's undeniable that fighting a rotation of the same 5 mobs for over 50 levels is mindumbingly bad.

[Cadaverine]

So, apparently, there is an exploit that has been found wherein you can play in windowed mode, and moving the window around will essentially pause the game, so any incoming damage is stopped in the queue, etc.  Also, the game is client authoritative, so it won't be too long before someone figures out how to dump, or block incoming packets, so none of the queued damage, etc. gets' processed when you stop moving the window.

I remember there being something similar in DAoC which allowed people to jump up to areas they normally couldn't like in Darkness Falls, enabling them to get into enemy realms if I am remembering correctly.

[Trippy]

I'm curious now, though, how hard it will be to decrypt / reverse engineer the format of the data traffic between the client and server. There are tons of way to exploit that, especially in a PvP game, if that can be figured out. In EverQuest in the (very) old days somebody figured out how to decode the NPC and player positional data in the networking data. The data being sent was for the entire zone, not just a radius around where your player was and with a bit to Unix technical knowledge you could get that data to display on a zone map showing the positions of mobs and players. Good times.

[Trippy]

Supposedly this is "fixed" now? Some people are saying you get disconnected now if you do this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/qazt5d/video_proof_that_new_world_is_client/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/qazt5d/comment/hh70ku5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

[Ashamanchill]

Nope. They be lying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLtLxTahSjo&ab_channel=JoshStrifeHayes

This video was published at about 2130 CT time, and all of the issues are still there.

[Ashamanchill]

I remember there being something similar in DAoC which allowed people to jump up to areas they normally couldn't like in Darkness Falls, enabling them to get into enemy realms if I am remembering correctly.

Yup. Like, I wanted to be right, about my thesis about this MMO not learning a thing from the past, but this is a little on the nose.