f13.net

...and made a non-TOA, no buffbot server? (http://www.camelotherald.com/more/2048.shtml)

Apparently so. I'm actually pretty impressed they finally got it together on this issue. As per usual though the changes are too late to pull me back.

I'm tempted.

Sad, ain't it?

Too little, too late.

Now if they had allowed character transfers (obviously minus ML's and TOA gear) to that server I might have resubscribed.  I don't think I could ever level another character to 50 in that game though.

Apparently Catacombs makes it much easier.






Yeah I don't believe that either.

It does make it easier, but not more fun.

Imagine CoH-style instances without the variety of mission objectives, the cool locales, or the fun (Pull 1, kill, rest, rinse, lather, repeat ad nauseum).

Props to Mythic for trying, but without more variety, I see no reason to grind on their treadmill with CoH available.

If nothing else I'll be keeping a closer eye on their next expansion now.  I'm tempted to resubscribe just to reward them for actually listening to the customers in the vain hope that other companies might start doing the same.  I don't like a lot of the things they've done with the game, but I'd rather see them trying to win customers back this way instead of just saying fuck it and moving forward.

Of course if they offer up a free week trial for former players shortly after the new server is up, then I'd really give them a chance.

Does it support Catacombs? They don't really say. If it does I'll go pick up Catacombs and start playing again. ToA ruined DAoC for me.

I was really excited about this too, as I used to play DAoC prior to TOA and thought PvP to be pretty fun.

However, all of my friends who still play tell me this new server won't be any good. They say that ideally it makes a ton of sense and sounds great, it's too late for the game to change. According to them, all PvP has been balanced around ToA loot, Master Level abilities, and the assumption that anyone seriously PvPing will have access to a buffbot.

They gave examples such as without a Group Cure (only available as a ML ability I guess), other classes become ridiculously overpowered and so forth. I didn't really press them for details past the initial crushed hope.

I do.  Without ToA there's 50% less treadmill while getting set for RvR.  PvE in DAoC sucks and those playing the game for that reason should expect to be underwhelmed.  What Mythic does reasonably well is RvR.  With catacombs and a good group, level 50 should be attainable pretty fast.  This means that a group of friends could be in NF running a group in a week or two. 

The downside of this new server is that it will create some horrible class/realm imbalances.  For example, I'd expect Hibernia to have the majority of players when these 2 new servers go live (rangers and vampiirs will be rampant).  I also expect that the current RA system will create some interesting situations in the absence of ToA abilities to offset them.

As one of the few remaining people on the planet that plays and enjoys this game, I am interested in seeing how it shapes up.  I already see some major problems unless Mythic puts some thought into how they will fully implement the server.  Let's hope that the delay in implementation is being used to avoid any catastrophies.  Camelot is already bleeding subscribers.  A mistake with these two new servers could destroy their hopes for ever increasing their subscriiption numbers again. 

That's true but in Catacombs there are some zones that are definitely breathtaking. Unmatched in every other mmorpg out there. The gameplay is still sucky though.

This is also true. The fact is that these two ruleset are divergent. I really wonder how Mythic is planning to balance the game from now on because they'll screw up either way.

They should have solved those gameplay problems in the same way they should have made ToA playable and fun. Instead they decided to withdraw completely. This stance will only bring more and more problems in the long distance. I guess they are aware of this..

Btw, you *really* expect those servers to be playable? It's obvious that they'll be completely swamped as they release them. And their success will also aggravates directly the population issues on the standard servers. Basically a real success equals to a complete collapse (aside a big failure for the designers).

Wow.  They're basically repealing an expansion.  Has that been done before?  I know that some private UO shards took steps backwards expansion-wise, but has any developer ever done it?

I don't know, but I think I'd be willing to play Star Wars again if they repealed the half-assed Combat Upgrade.

Mythic has always listened to the players.  But Mythic's ability or williness to act on the player concerns is better measured on geological terms.

the only thing missing from this new rule set is anti-zerg measures.

Yes I'm afraid Catacombs was their first expansion that did not bring even a temporary increase in subscribers, since it was up against WoW and EQ2.  It was not a bad expansion, but the timing was terrible.  If they had released it a year earlier instead of ToA, it could have been a big hit. 

Gotta give them credit for doing something revolutionary, and they might win back my subscription with this move.  I do predict a massive glut of self-buffing Vampiirs, and I would greatly enjoy rolling up a Midgard toon specced to destroy them.

Mmm... Vikings...

Don't tempt me guys, I need my money in the coming months.

But on the other hand, I never made it past level 19 in my 4 months of playing.

Then again, if there were battlegrounds ...

Damm you. I might actually resubscribe.

Lets try to remember:

1.  The punishing newbie economy.
2.  The repetitive gameplay.
3.  The other DAoC players. (http://vnboards.ign.com/DAoC_General_Board/b5176/)

Reading the topics on that board and clicking on one thread gave me an aneurim.

Now I can't see properly and the left side of my body feels strangely numb and unresponsive ...

But at least I dodged the bullet that is DAoC.

Off to the ambulance I go.

Doesn't Catacombs state on the box that it requires both previous expansions?

Hmmmm, at first blush, this does sound good. However...

The Battlegrounds at level 20 were packed when I played last, and mostly because many people were using /level 20 to get a BG-ready character in quick for some PVP. With /level 20 disabled, most of the BG's including the very popular level 20 one will be deserted, because everyone will just level up to 50.

I cannot do the leveling up to 50. I just can't.

I understand completely. 

The new server will also lack the /level command making the grind even more punitive.  For a game with a PvP endgame, they really made the price of admission to "teh fun" high.  The saving grace of the new server would be 1) Catacombs making the PvE treadmill less steep, 2) No ML's, 3) No Artifact obtaining, 4) No artifact leveling, 5) no scroll farming.  Sadly, I think that all of this may be overcome by the concerns I had above (realm balance, active ra's, class imbalances, etc.)

On a side note, there's is another significant reason why people congregate in the BG's; it takes significantly less knowledge of game mechanics to compete there.  Yes, DAoC is a level based game.  I'll tell you that it does require a bit of timing and strategy to be optimally effective.  It's not twitch, but there are many subtlties in the game mechanics that allow for a skilled player to have a slight advantage over a nonskilled player with identical levels/equipment/realm ranks.  A well constructed group of low realm rank players can beat a group of higher realm rank players if they use all of their tools well.  The system sets the odds against them, but it is possible to beat the odds with solid gameplay.  Does it happen often, no.  But it is possible.

I have SI and ToA. So, it wouldn't be a problem running it with the other expansion. Just wondering if they'll have it enabled on the server.

From what I understand, Catacombs is a go on that server.

Fuck, I should be expecting a call any day now from my catass, ex-avid DAoC player friend trying to convince me that we should start playing again on that server.  This is something a lot of disgruntled DAoC players have been looking for, it's just a matter on whether or not Mythic burned up all of their good will with these people.

I think I'd take him up on it if he leveled my character for me.   I'm not sure I can stomach hearing that spiggarn sound ever again.

Yeah spiggarns sound like gnomes trying to get off everytime they attack you.

I never really played catacombs, but helped my wife in mapping some of the zones for the strategy guide (she mainly was fixing existing fubared maps, which is why most are so ugly in the guide) and the zone design was fucking HORRIBLE in catacombs.

For example, each side had an underground forest type map.  There were two different types of stalagtites/mites and they were just copied and pasted all over the zone.  The exterior walls were also just a small wall segment copied and pasted around the four perimeters of these VERY rectangular zones.

There was a weird fiery dungeon that looked kinda neat at first, cool effect in the 'sky' around these floating platforms... until you see 2-3 platforms and realize that again the entire zone is copied and pasted.  Right down to the cracks in the steps of the ruined buildings.

I have no idea how good the gameplay was, but the zone design was the worst I have ever seen in a MMOG EVER.  Hell the RANDOM CoH instances looked better and were less repetitive.  Laziest zone building ever in catacombs.

same here x 3 my old accounts.  Sad but true.  Who wants to spend that much time online doing the same thing over and over again?

Since I really don't know much about DAoC, can someone explain why removing an expansion (TOA) is a good thing?  Was it that big of a clusterfuck?

And while we are asking question, how and why does the catacombs expansion shortens "the grind" ?

Not so much a clusterfuck as a massive PvE timesink which was not intended to effect RvR (PvP) at all, but managed to become required playing because, as we all know, if you build it, they will min/max. ;)

The expansion is not being removed, per se.  Its still there, with its races and classes and areas.  What's being removed are the uber-trials which ate massive quantities of time and shat out pvp-mandatory loot.

1. Instanced task dungeons with a nice exp bonus for completion.  They are also doable solo or duo.

2. Dungeon instances within classic world dungeons (2 reach dungeon).  The experience bonus scales with group size meaning that a full group of 8 gets the largest bonus and mobs scale with the level of the players in the group.  These instances also drop aurulite which is much like the seals you found in Darkness Falls.  The equipment you can buy with aurulite has higher quality and utility than that in DF.

3. More quests per level. Faster quests to run.  Quests grant much more experience.  Ex: At level 46 you can find 5-8 quests taking 10 mins or so to  complete with each rewarding some coin and a bubble or so of experience.

4. New classes.  Some of them are very good solo and do not require a buff bot for rapid leveling (i.e. Vampiir).

Summary:  More areas to farm with less competition for those areas.  The best equipment is still mostly found in ToA, but the average piece of gear in Cats is better.  There is also a lot of new gear with PvE bonuses making your character even more able to kill things on the grind to 50.

On top of all that, Mythic added major xp bonuses for underpopulated realms, along with a /freelevel feature that gives a free level every 3 days (5 days on highly populated servers), every time you earn a level.  The freelevel thing really comes in handy if you're a true casual player who likes to ding once or twice a week.  I got a Catacombs character from 1 to 50 in about 3.5 days /played, which is really tiny compared to most xp grind games.  That was using a combination of quests, free levels, guild xp groups, and xp kill tasks.  Honestly, even the 1-20 grind in GuildWars takes a day or so of /played time. 

With Catacombs and various bonuses, Mythic really has reduced the xp grind massively.  The problem was the huge forced grouping ToA grind that began after you reached 50.

I agree completely.  Getting a toon to 50 now is much easier than getting to the endgame of the other popular mmog's.  The problem in the past was that getting to 50 was merely the beginning of the treadmill with ML's and artifacts/template gear.  With the removal of ToA, the majority of the grind is gone. 

Sadly the grind from 1-50 is still a dull, mindless affair.  It's a shame that some "dues" always have to be paid to get to the fun part of GAMES.

Ok I get it now.

Plane of Time!

I hate you guys so much.

Now I am even more tempted to try it out again. If my  usual guild  (http://www.shadowclan.org) starts playing on that server, I think I might be buying that fucking box.

Did I mention that I hate you ? Yes ? Good.

Just a few observations from a long-time DAoC player:

1. XP Grind -- The grind is a small shadow of what it was in the game's first year or so of existence.  Free levels are on a timer between 2 and 7 days,  camp bonuses (a bonus amount of xp for how long since the last time a mob was killed/camped, essentially) worth as much as 50% of the regular xp from the mob, outpost/keep xp bonuses,  Catacombs quests and instances.

With a reasonable soloer,  non-botted or twinked, you can hit 40ish in a couple of days played counting lots of battlegrounds time.  (Sorceror, enchanter, catacombs classes, bolter/spec nuker, etc)

The only place the grind really kicks in is the mid to high 40s.  You can no longer solo your way to a new level in an hour or two,  you've probably completed most available quests, etc.

2. Noob economy -- There have been quite a few pretty big changes since year 1.  Darkness Falls,  and the new aurulite giving instances and dungeons in catacombs, provide you with pretty good level equivalent gear.

The gold reward for pvp in the battlegrounds is actually VERY good. (1-4 gold a kill, even in thidranki, the lowest level bg)  No, you won't get rich from it,  but you won't be a pauper scrimping money to buy non-green con armor.

Cash from instances is pretty reasonable.  My vamp on a regular server is 48.  Managed to save a few plat in the 3ish days played so far between instances, battlegrounds, etc,  and usuing aurulite dungeons to get armor/weaps/items.

3.  Balance -- Hmmm.  I'm not sure how this will go.  Obviously,  some abilities and classes will come back with the elimination of MLs (aoe disease classes, for instance).  Stealthers look like they'll be tower/wall humping all the time.  Hybrids and self-buffing classes are substantially boosted.  (Friar, champion, thane [sic], hunter, ranger, vamp, heretic)  Look out for the /afed DI bot....

I'd look for Mythic to treat these servers like the full PvP servers.....  No real special rules changes or exceptions made.


 

Sadly the ideal thing for this game would be for all the players to forget how to rvr and how to level quickly. Because the most fun thing ever in DAoC was when nobody really knew what the hell they were doing and level 20 was high enough for RvR.

That, combined with no ToA (or fixed toa, toa wouldn't be that hard to fix, just correct the damn drop, arti-xp,  and quest-mob-spawn rates) and no Buffbots would be perfect.

However, that can't be done, so props to Mythic for fixing the game to the greatest degree possible.

Ultimately I doubt it will bring me back because....

1) The dumbasses at the EU DAoC setup probably won't set up an equivalent server.
2) 1-50 doesn't appeal even with catacombs.
3) Even at 50 and in RvR I rather feel I've done everything in DAoC. An improvement to RvR by removing buffbots  doesn't justify the resub alone.

But if I were still in game it would definitely have extended my stay.

Well at first, DAoC was considered "EQ done right" not necessarily "That RvR game."  Over time the people looking for a more rounded RPG experience left; the only ones that stuck around were the "level up quickly and kill people" variety.

If the server was No ToA + free blowjobs daily from hot femme korean chick/18/irl, I still wouldn't play.

That grind makes the Star Wars combat upgrade look like one of the best ideas ever.

I'd rather play the EQII newbie isle over and over again.

DAoC still is EQ done better. It's just that we now have EQ (http://www.coh.com) done (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com) even (http://www.everquest2.com) better (http://http://www.playonline.com/ff11/index.shtml). So RvR is kind of important as the only positive distinguishing feature.

Sounds like with Catacombs the grind isn't that bad, and I wouldn't be surprised to see /level go in after the server has been up a while.  I don't know, if enough people here are willing to give it a shot I might join in.  I don't know, it kind of feels like trying to decide whether or not to get back together with an ex-girlfriend.  Sure, maybe she's changed a bit since the last time I saw her, but all those bad memories are still there...

From experience:

She hasn't changed and you're still her #1 sucker for thinking she has.  She'll still lie, mess around behind your back,l be as whiny and high-maintence as before, and you'll still wind-up hating  her after a few months.  The only thing you have to look forward to is once again cursing bitterly and looking like an even bigger idiot for thinking things would be different the second time around.

DAoC was the first MMO I played seriously.  I still have warm feelings towards Mythic for being small and providing good mechanics like RvR stats online, but I quit after SI.  The grind was too fun-prohibitive.  And sadly, while there may be easier ways to level now, I think the main showstopper is that there's just not enough people playing to make it worthwhile.  Even when I was playing I guess at the height of popularity it was thin (hated those fucking horse rides from Cammie to Cornwall only to find nobody at the goblin trees to group with.  And that was nearly the whole zone+).

I am reactivating, and I will let you know how those issues play out.  Anecdotally from my old DAOC guild, there is a lot of interest in giving this a shot.  If the two new servers really do draw back a lot of cancelled subscribers, they should be easily the most populated of the bunch.  And if they don't win players back, they will just cannibalize the existing servers, piss off the hardcore ToA catassers, and really nail that MMO coffin shut.

Personally I'm betting they will win a fair number of players back, and DAOC will have a long career as the premier boutique RvR MMO.

There are other RvR games?

The new servers will be crammed for a while,  but the people who've been playing all along will largely go back to regular servers I think.  Mostly,  why start over with a clean slate if you've played all along and have done most of the ToA/rvr/etc etc junk already?

This is what we saw when Mythic instituted /level 30 for the extremely underpopulated servers.  It just filled up the lvl 30-35 (Caledonia at the time) with visitors who wanted to insta level and hit the bgs.  Almost no one stuck around for the higher levels.

For my part....  I've played for about 3 years now.  I had 1 lvl 50 up until the big xp changes last summer, that made leveling a breeze.  ToA isn't too big an issue for me at this point,  and I'd be throwing away an almost RR 6 champ,  some good bg toons,  some fun 50 classes,  and a bunch of people I know.

I think this is perfect for people that want to come back and play around with the game again, though.  I'd love to see Mythic either institute occasional server wipes on a few servers like this,  or set a timetable where they launched a "fresh start" server every now and then.

Ziggy is snarky tonight.....

My bet is that they will be totally swamped. But really beyond what you can portray.

After some time the situation will ease up but I believe that the two servers will have a steady and large population when compared to the others.

Which is bad either way since this will kill even more the population on the other servers.

So it turns out that to install Catacombs, you have to have already purchased and installed ToA.  That seems particularly galling for people who are being drawn back only because there will be a server that strips out most of ToA.

Given a choice between "grind it out old-style" or "buy two more expansions, one of which gives you only races," I will choose "City of Heroes."

<shill>

The free trial (http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/downloads/), which doesn't require a game purchase to continue play, includes the original game, Shrouded Isles, New Frontiers, and the Catacombs game engine (basically, every feature of the expansion save the new zones and dungeons.)

Admittedly, you'll probably want the new zones since that's currently the quickest place for casual players to level up. There's a combo box coming soon which includes everything, including TOA and Catacombs. At the moment, yes, you would have to buy Catacombs and DAOC Platinum (the only other version on the market, which includes everything except Catacombs) if you wanted all zones in the game.

</shill>

Yeah, its not the Catacombs engine that I would want Catacombs for.  I would pay $30.00 or so for that if it came with a free month and was available as the new servers launched.  Considering how well-versed players are in leveling up, if it comes out even a month or so after the servers go up, the newbie zones could be deserted again.

You might have heard of the other one. (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/)

Two sides does not an RvR make.

Two realms versus each other. How much more RVR can you be?

Oh right, three realms in a free-for-all slapfight for the Holy Tater Tot.

Yup.

Two sides versus eachother is just.....ya know....a war. Not even an interesting war. But rather good vs good since neither will admit to being evil.

It's all about the tatertots. Yea. It's all about the tatertots. Yea.

You've lost it. Of course its RvR. Hell, DAOC is RvRvR. And Puzzle Pirates is ARRRRR!

Well that explains why it didn't expand the MMORPG playerbase.

So, SW:G is RvR also?

The only game I'd really grant RvR to would be Matrix.

Heh.

Just about everything i read on this site in reference to DAOC is about the grind or the boring pve gameplay.  What kills me is people who jock wow in the same thread considering that 90% of the quests are the exact same quest and that the grind is damn near as long.  Wack 20 foozles and get me 20 whatsits and i'll give you the super dagger of foozle killing.  Not saying daoc is great pve gameplay but its not that different from wow...

None of them are that different, no one ever claimed otherwise. But the visceral feedback and the virtual speed of WoW (how it feels, not how it is behind the character on the spreadsheet) makes it MUCH MUCH MUCH more bearable. It's just like CoH, those early levels, before you get used to all the skills seem fast because OMFG SHINEY. Then it....slows..........to............a.................halt.

I think it comes down to bubble progress.  If you make the bubble increments small so that you are constantly filling them then its a fun game.  If takes you days and days to fill a bubble then its a boring game.

It's that simple.  Now make me some bubblequest, damnnit!

As has been said before, the PROCESS of DAoC's PVE treadmill is what makes it so grindy. It's just not any fun unless you are with a fun group of people, and even then, it's too much of the same thing (pull, mez, kill, med, rinse, repeat) over and over again to be fun. WoW or CoH, while still somewhat grindy, is a much more fun process. It also takes less time, though CoH being a shorter curve is debatable.

That's the point in fact. As I define it: a problem of quality and not of quantity.

DAoC's treadmill isn't longer compared to other games, but it is awful for the most part (especially now with a weak community).

In this thread someone brought the example of task dungeons as a relevent improvement to the treadmill. My point is that they are exactly the opposite. They BREAK the game. They are essentially corridors with a row of immoble mobs (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/storeroom/daoc-repository/cat-des03.gif) in the middle. You whack your way through them, one by one, with about a two minutes downtime between each kill till the end where sits the exact same mob you whacked till that point, just named. You kill the named and you get rewarded with money and experience.

Now the reward is good, this is true, and it makes the treadmill shorter since you can efficently level up in solo. But this is, in fact, the "quantity" aspect of the problem. The truth is that you are really playing an unashamed version of Progressquests that puts you in a corridor with a row of mobs you need to grind to increase the size of your e-peen. There is really NOTHING ELSE. Just repeat your easy kill 20x for each mob, complete the task, get another and repeat.

This CANNOT be tolerated. It cannot be tolerated for weeks or months as it cannot be tolerated for ten minutes. It's one of those things that give you epiphanies: what the fuck am I doing? The game cannot be THAT dumb.

And you really cannot believe that the devs could be so unashamed to add something like that to the game.

I just dont see it i guess... 

Why is it more fun to do a quest where you kill 50 foozles to collect 10 widgets then go back to Angry Dwarf 12 for Hammer of bashing 3?  Also what are the /played of the people hitting 60 in wow?  I question how much shorter the cap really is... I know i hit 35ish in 7 or 8 days played whereas my first daoc char capped out 50 in 20 with later char's hitting in 5 or less...

(note: this is less in defence of daoc than a wtf is so great about wow)

Having played this game off and on since beta, I was very excited about the new server concept initially.  Then I began to consider how ranged buffs and the lack of ToA would effect RvR gameplay.  Sadly, it seems that the release of NF and catacombs both relied heavily on balance currently in place with ToA.   As a result, I think that these two servers will be heavily populated initially, but the problems inherent in the system will cause some huge balance issues unless Mythic is willing to address the special needs of such a server.  I personally don't see Mythic willing to redesign the game for 2 servers, so the problems with balance will simply become a game artifact that the players there will work with.  The people unwilling to live with the imbalance will leave after a month or so.

If you do roll a toon there, expect to see a) mostly hibs: with many of them playing vamps and rangers b) a lower midgard population that you even see now, and c) a large number of sorcerers running around with a DI bot strapped to their ass... ok, you already see that now.

I'm happy to entertain a discussion on the finer points of all this.  I just didn't want to go into all that detail on a forum where most people could care less about this game.

Quests provide context. Context provides some modicum of story. I preferred questing in DAoC, but you couldn't level exclusively with questing, and after 20 or so, there were no quests to speak of.

They took away kill tasks at 20, which i thought was dumb. I can't remember if they added them back.

HRose: I see the PvE in DAoC as nothing more than the price of admission to RvR.  It's not fun nor is it interesting.  Aside from CoH where the PvE was fun for about a week due to its fast pace, no MMOG has interesting PvE.  PvE to me is killing a mob to get better gear to kill a mob with more hit points to get better gear... etc.  It gets old fast.

For my $$$ I want to log on and hunt other players.  The encounters are more varied and the tactics more interesting.  My personal conclusion was that I had to come to grips with the fact I have to grind a treadmill for a week in able to do that.  I think the problem that DAoC has is that the barrier to entry into the endgame is what's limiting their subscription rates. I really have found that the PvE there is just about as boring as in any other game.  WoW has "better" PvE in that you get a better treat every time you push the button.  DAoC caters to more of the delayed gratification crowd.  

I wonder what would happen if DAoC opened a /level 40 or /level 50 server.  Imagine being able to log on and spend a couple days obtaining gear before being able to RvR.  Perhaps some of you GW folks could address this.  Do you typically start with a PvP ready toon or do you find it worthwhile to grind one up so that you can more readily tailor it for PvP?  There's some psychology in there that would be interesting to discuss.

I've played every major MMOG released to date and always return to DAoC.  The others were fun for a while, but they lack the depth and type of endgame that I enjoy best.  I think this goes back to the thread in the Development thread: As soon as you get a clear picture of the endgame, that's the point where you make your commitment to long term retention.  Well that and the social hook.

There are quests after level 20, but the problem is that they are spread far across levels. What I mean is that you need to level to continue your questing rather than questing to gain levels. The questing to gain levels is a better system (see WoW). I can't tell you how horrible it feels to go to continue your quest and be told to come back when you are more powerful. Very disappointing and disheartening. Nothing like being told to go grind some levels before you can have some more fun. ;)

The pschology is zero investment in your avatar, and thus easily walking away from a subscription based game, shooting profits in the foot. It works for GW because of the no sub model.

I disagree.  I think there is a sub model for guild wars.  They have just disguised the subscription fee in their expansions. It's a similar money scheme to what we have seen in the past, they have just painted the horse another color. (i.e. avatar investment will encourage players to obtain more and more expansions)

In GW, starting with a PVP level 20 toon is fun in short bursts, IF you get good groupmates. But you'll have a lot more choices in character creation if you've ground at least one character out.

This is EXACTLY what I was getting at.  Players are willing to invest some time in a treadmill if they feel that they are properly rewarded for that time in the endgame.

The real question is one of marketing and psychology: How long can you drag the treadmill out without losing subscribers along the way.  Obviously, we know the answer was too long in the case of DAoC.

That's also what I wrote on my website. The rulesets are divergent and I don't expect them to split the work in two in order to let the two ruleset develop.

It will be also fun to see how they'll show the horrible design even behind Catacombs. We have now powerful classes like Vampiir planned as workarounds to the buff bot problems. Now the buffbots are being removed and those "already buffed" classes will simply be completely unbalanced.

That's not true. The problems were *radical*.

To begin with you couldn't know where to get them. You had to visit a spoiler site to understand what you could do since in the game you could just click on EVERY NPC in the game world and NOT EVEN KNOW if the quest was appropriate for your level. There was NO Con system, you couldn't know if you could complete the quest alone or if you needed a full group.

All this becomes recursive in a system simply *inaccessible*. Noone was questing, so it was impossible to build up a group to complete your goals. The reward were always awful and the quests required HUGE downtimes by riding horses constantly. Most of those quests offer that exact gameplay: run around endlessly trying to figure out imprecise informations (that required spoiler sites in order to not waste REAL HOURS) and kill sporadically a few targets that were inevitably impossible to solo.

As I wrote many times, the questing in DAoC was a BURDEN. You did that only when absolutely FORCED, like in the case of extremely powerful items you needed for the endgame.

Because WoW is often seen superficially and trivialized when there's a complexity under the hood. The fact is that too many times its accessibility is confused in a lack of depth (which exists, for example in the PvP).

I passed the whole 55-60 range by trying to figure out the quests in BRD. Those are five levels, the longest in the game and ny running (and not completing) just ONE instance. I was actually "lucky" to be able to join groups where I was systematically the most expert. I proceeded by little step, doing something more each day and finding out what was behind the next corner and how to face it. The fact that the game is designed WONDERFULLY is proven by the actual mechanics. Once I knew what to expect it was way easier to face it and move onward. So it wasn't just repeating the same kill over and over and over for hours. Instead it was a learning experience, constantly renovating and limited by smaller steps in the form of the quests.

Figuring out those quests isn't easy. Especially if you don't get powerleveled or just join raids to trivialize the experience. The game is HARD. It requires competence in the sense you need to know how to play. It's not just relative to how much you know your class but, especially, how much you know that precise place.

To date those runs through BRD have been the most rich and fun experience I've EVER had in a (PvE) game. And that's just one small example of what is available in the game that isn't "reheated food".

If I were going to start in DAoC at max level for RvR, maybe I'd rather play CounterStrike?  You know, something not based on phat lewt, otherwise I'm just grinding for equipment anyway.  Today I'm getting sleepy just thinking about a grind.

The thing these devs don't get is that the grind doesn't have to suck ass.  Last time I played DAoC, I spent lots and lots of time killing spores with a valewalker.  Boooriiiing.  Let me do something else when I get bored.  Pack more shiny trinkets into their corpses or something.  Make crafting less like working in a Cambodian sweatshop.  Is there any reason to perform any of these tasks SO MANY TIMES?  If then end goal is RvR, please let people get there instead of crippling their soul with life-devouring PvE.

Maybe RvR was worth all that effort but I never found out.  The grind basically filled out the cancellation form for me.

I was a 50 Blademaster with Legendary Weaponcrafting. The thought of doing it from square one again makes me wake up screaming.

From Dave Rickey's interview (http://www.corpnews.com/node/76), which is really worth-reading:

Firstly, I believe that DAoC shouldn't ditch its PvE. I strongly believe that it IS possible to make it fun and not a burden. That's why I HATE "/level 20" and those unacceptable task dungeons.

Those are, exactly like the new ruleset, ways to DODGE the problems. Nothing will improve if you do not SOLVE or at least TRY to address the problems.

"The PvE sucks, so no PvE" I do not accept that. That's secnding a problem not solving it. When "Wish" was turned toward the GM content the exuse brought by the devs was: "we tried to go in the PvP direction but it wasn't fun".

OF COURSE it's not fun. Because to make good things you need to work on them and expand their potential. The quality or the "fun" in general don't fall from the sky, you need to hunt for it. So I don't accept that DAoC has to become just PvP because PvE isn't fun. It should instead START to work in order to offer something interesting. Because they definitely have the resources.

The second point is about the battlegrounds. They are a WONDERFUL idea. They allow you to do just PvP from day 1 till the last. But even here the idea is ruined by an awful implementation. Most of these BGs are devoid of players. Most of the times they are PACKED with stealthers behind siege equipment to one-shot you constantly. At best you find super twinked players where again you can just watch and feed them with points.

Even here there's A LOT to do. There's the need to cut out the twinking as a mechanic at the roots, there's the need to draw the population of the BGS from ALL the servers in order to keep them populated, there's the need to SEVERELY NERF the siege engines, there's the need to make the economy accessible again for the casual player, there's the need to ease the accessibility to good equipment, there's the need to balance the classes specifically for PvP at the low levels. AND SO ON.

But it's dodging all these issues that brings nothing to the game. In fact this new ruleset is again a withdrawal from solving the problems. A workaround.

But the point is that PvP in a persistent environment is able to offer A LOT MORE. This is in fact what is happening to all the successful FPS. The deathmatches, today, are considered obsolate and all the design and the development is leaning toward more complex and interactive environments. This is why we have vehicles, large environments, semi persistent and tactical elements. And so on. This is why we have "onslaught" and "assault" modes instead of deathmatches and CTF, this is why the next Unreal Tournament is going to bundle them in an even more complex "battleground".

The point is that mmorpgs have AN ADVANTAGE on this field that is completely WASTED. Noone is doing anything at all.

This is a genre that "is supposed" to move faster than everything else out there. That should push out "innovation" at a daily rate. Instead it's severely lagging as the worst console game. Look around and you'll see that the innovation is coming from everywhere BUT the mmorpgs.

You know... if someone could generate a PvE experience that actually improved our PvP skills along the way, well... that world be worthwhile.  The problem I see in the current implementation is that after you've killed a mob 10x, you really have a feel for its mechanics.  If there were a way that they could implement PvE that required you to utilize every one of your abilities to its potential, then it may make a good tutorial for the endgame.  Killing 1000's of mobs really does little to make oyu a better player. It's all about tolerance.

PvE as a competency exam may be a good idea, but spoiler sites would render it ineffective after the first few people had passed.  There has got to be a way to make PvE interesting to us non-PvE types.  For now the challenge only lies in killing things that others have said were impossible to kill that way.  Even that loses its luster fast.  

Actually, the leveling from 1-20 was the most fun leveling for me in DAoC, because they had lots of quests and there were some that were actually decent. It was also fast, and you generally get stuff every level.

BUT... the /level 20 did show one thing. None of the other battlegrounds is/was as populated at the level 20-24 battleground, mainly from people using /level 20 to quickly get a PVP-enabled character. And those battles were damn fun. Once they put in gold and experience, as well as realm points being gained from PVP, I never leveled by PVE until I had capped out my realm points for that BG. I got new items from the marketplace in the housing zones. At that point, the game didn't exist for me outside of that same zone, and it was the most fun I had in DAoC ever, counting both times I subscribed.

Not only was there very little wrong with the fundamentals of DAoC PVP, it WAS the competitive advantage. But it really is killed by the long treadmill required to effectively PVP. If there was a DAoC server that made you a level 50 with skill points enough to trick out a template and jump right into the frontiers, with the only upgrades in items coming from the market place clustered together from all the other servers, where the only advancement was in realm ranks, I'd play that. It would be fun.

Which is why the Guild Wars level 20 PVP toons are fun, because I don't have to go through bullshit to have fun.

Guild Wars did a lot of what you guys are suggesting for pve.

They made it so that it is hard to get through if you play like dumbasses, enemy mobs are set up with the same skills and classes as players, mobs regen/hp/energy works exactly like it does for players, they do require things like all targeting the single mob, and killing the priest to stop the two miniute rez cycle, and holding the hill practice, and capture/hold the five flags simultaneously, and so on. You never have to camp a spawn point. Ever. Everyone moans because they have to help less good players through this.

I agree on that. But these are two different beasts and both need work. The PvE needs work to be attractive, not to be just as quick as possible in order to forget it. It needs value.

On the other side I believe that to give the possibility to advance completely through PvP is good for the game. I always suggested this and I supported them when they decided to go in that direction. A choice is always a good thing to have. So you can choose to do some PvE and PvP mixed, or just PvE, or just PvP.

"/level 20" just broke the community and jumpstarted the trend of super twinked characters. I found always hard to do anything in the BG exactly because I didn't have a chance to compete due to those balance problems.

Again, with the introduction of BGs from level 1 to 45, there is no need anymore for commands used to jump levels (like the "free level" idiocy) because there is finally something worthy and interesting to do. But this is only a potential because the reality is WAY different. Most of the BGs are empty and have the serious issues that I listed above. So without a direct work this choice isn't really a choice available for everyone.

It's from day 1 that DAoC has accessibility problems. In the design, the ruleset and the gameplay. Games like WoW have been hugely successful exactly because they eased the accessibility (good UI, controls and so on till every tiny detail that has been defined as "polish" (http://www.brokentoys.org/?p=6757)).

And if someone remembers I was the FIRST to suggest to hand out premade characters at level 45. On these boards, in fact.

But my idea wasn't to systematically give the possibility to the players to jump all that experience and break the game for the new players. My idea (that I still consider worth a try) was to bundle in each expansion pack like "Catacombs" a key code. You use the key code and you can pull out a maxed character. Just one.

That would allow EVERY player to see how the game works at the latter levels and enjoy the best it has to offer. At the same time it doesn't break the community at the low levels that is CRUCIAL to keep the game healthy. "/level 20" was a superficial workaround that I believe damaged the game way more than the benefits it brought.

Keep in mind I'm now talking in hypotheticals, that are beyond the scope of the interview:

I wouldn't say that a complete abandonment of PvE would be a good idea for any game.  Very few MMO players want to PvP *all* the time, non-stop, and I think this is why totally PvP games like WW2O or Planetside have limited appeal.  Many like it as a sideline, to greater or lesser degrees.  And most of those want the ability to say "I am *not* getting ganked today, I'll just whack mobs."

But when you have a long treadmill, most of your PvE content is just filler.  If it wasn't intended as such, it will be after the 100th time the players see it.  If you have only a certain amount of manpower to devote to building content, and you need a lot of filler to satisfy the demands of the treadmill, then you're going to have to produce less *good*, interesting, novel content, and you're going to use up the attractiveness of what you build through sheer player fatigue.

So I would say that what I would be a proponent of would be shorter treadmills, more use of AI-based content creation tools for the filler, and where content is being hand-built that content is high-quality, well thought out, and highly polished.  Spending a great deal of time and effort building minor variations on what you've already got, in order to fill out an extended treadmill, not my idea of a great plan.

Then if you add in that your PvP game requires your players to be within shouting distance of the top of the treadmill, telling large numbers of them that already achieved that stage and are now happily PvP'ing that they have to climb another treadmill to stay competitive is even less my idea of a great plan.  Especially since it may give them an impression of a nightmare "infinite hallway", feeling that every time they do reach the end, you're just going to move the goalposts again.

--Dave

The major attraction of bgs is the one that no one mentions:  The reason it's fun is the overachiever min/maxxers are all in the end game.

In bgs,  you generally don't run into organized CHARACTER min/maxxed groups with dedicated healers, mezzers, and dps machines.  Occasionally,  you see one and they will completely rip through 2-3 times their numbers of opponents.  Most players are there with a "fun" class, there isn't a whole lot of organization,  very little mezz and heals.

Twinking isn't particularly advantageous unless you solo.

With insta level 45 or 50 characters and no-ToA/uber items,  the gank groups would still drive off the casuals or force them to run in a zerg to rvr. 

If anything,  this points out the major flaw in DAoC:  Too much specialization of character/class abilities.  The organized rvr/gank guilds can tweak the class mix until they reap huge economies of scale that a pick-up player can't match.

The day I realized this, was the day I stopped looking for group v. group rvr.  No matter what items, MLs, or realm abilities you get you're still going to die because your mezzer sucks and your lone healer is afk smoking (if they knew how to play the class at all in the first place).  There was still some good fun in the end game with either the zerg vs zerg (evenly matched, especially in major keep takes/invasion/relic raid situations) and small groups in unused zones (OF mid land was good,  NF alb land is generally decent).

I'm pretty tempted to resub for this new server, but if Mythic really wants to attract the "casual gamer" back and not cannibalize their current server pops, they're going to have to take it one step further and remove realm abilities(but keep titles for recognition).

Without doing so, the game dynamics will not change much from a power-gaming few dominating the server, just without the PVE grind.  I played DOAC from the beginning, and the paradigm shift from "RvR" to "8v8" was brought on by the introduction of realm abilities.  What's the f%^ing point of rewarding good players/groups the abilities to more easily roll over the less-skilled?  In keeping RA's, within 6 months...the server will look no different from any other.  At least with TOA, if I couldn't get into or form the "perfect" 8-man group, I could go farm for scrolls.

In thinking of it,  I think Mythic would be better off with a TOA-enabled/no RA server ruleset.  TOA was actually great in all the new raid content, IMHO. 

When I resubbed DAOC a year ago(on a small RP server where your rep was everything, so being unknown meant you were nothing), what I found the most fun was that hardly any ML raid led by whatever big-swinging-dick-guild turned you down, so you could get in and enjoy a night of action.  But try to get into RvR, and if you didn't have the RR's or the right guild, you would sit on your ass and do nothing.   RA's, overall, are way more powerful than ML's.  Realm points are best earned in 8 man groups, and thus encourage exclusiveness and selfishness.  Having played on a small, competitive server, the intra-realm rules against "ass-jamming" and the politics of engagement ruined it for me.  I think I hated more people on my realm than the ones I was supposed to fight against.

None of that was really the case where you were actually had to work together to take or defend keeps, the kind of stuff that was supposed to define RVR, and the game.  But doing so didn't earn you realm points efficiently and optimally.  That wouldn' have mattered until Realm Abilities were introduced.    Now, the selfish players and guilds who looked to themselves, and not towards cooperative play, were made more powerful.  From there, DAOC went downhill.

I played UO:Siege Perilous until they fundamentally changed the game with AOS.  For a long, long time, my friends and I had maxed out characters and we were able to log on and fight without having to worry about keeping up with the Jonses.  What made it different from Counterstrike was being in a world.

It wasn't about being on a map and fighting another, numbers balanced team.  We liked to cruise through different "turf", looking for the "owners" of said turf.  We might find an even fight, or we might run into 5 times as many people.  The unknown factor made it fun.  When you mow through a group of 12 fully developed characters with 3 well coordinated people, it's loads of fun =P

I have to agree that there is some wisdom in this statement.  I play DAoC most days and during that time I RvR almost exclusively.  There are days, however, where I like to take a mindless break and PvE while chatting with people.  I do this maybe once every week to two weeks and it really helps keep the game fresh.  Though the high end PvE game is more like playing a slot machine than it is fun and engaging combat, it can still be a nice break from the intensity of RvR.


[cough] ToA [/cough]

All this talk about DAoC's RVR reminds me of how good WoW's battleground instancing could have been, and just how badly myopic the design of those things actually turned out. Queues? WTF? PVE Quests that give really lucrative rewards in the middle of a PVP battlefield? WTFX2?

The level 20 battlegrounds in DAoC was some of the best PVP I've seen in MMORPG's, including Shadowbane, before Guild Wars came out. And it has something over Guild Wars in that it's not numbers restricted and there's a good siege game involved as well as just field battles. As an untwinked, reached level 20 through PVE with some crafting character, I never really saw much of a problem with twinked characters. The only real issues I ever had was with the preponderence of buffbots and the absolute ownage of the entire zone that a well coordinated group of 8 could pull off. The buffbots is an issue that's already been discussed to death, and the coordinated groups are ALWAYS going to own over solo/pickup groups, because that's the way things are. That's what strategy and tactics is all about. If they COULDN'T WTFPWNBBQ 9 out of 10 times, something would be wrong with the game.

The biggest detriment to DAoC's PVP? FUCKING CROWD CONTROL. It broke RVR from the day of release, and everything they've done since to weaken it has still never made the difference that removing CC would in fun factor. Guild Wars does not have this problem, and is better for it. It has its own problems, of course.

Realm abilities don't need to be removed, just controlled. They shouldn't add more power, they should add more flexibility. The true genuis of the battlegrounds was in the tight level ranges, which just goes to show that levels in PVP equals bad.

This exactly was what drove me from the game.  I endured the shallow quests, the pathetic excuse for a crafting system, and tiny zones full of wide aggro radius critters to enjoy RvR.  Just to find myself turned into a salt piller and one-shotted.  DAOC was the last sub I maintained to "invest" in a game to "encourage them".

I know they've corrected a lot of things.  But with WoW and CoH demonstrating all the past assumptions were incorrect I just can't bring myself to spend my money with the earlier service providers.  Branding is at least as much of a problem as much as a plus.

That a well-coordinated group WTFPWNs 9 times out of 10 is precisely what this new server should NOT be about.  There's already every other server for just that kind of play.  As long as RA's/RR's exist, the end game is really not going to change much(dominating gank groups farming RP's and getting stronger) from the other servers.

And yes, crowd control is and has always been whack.  But instead of finding solutions and balancing things out, Mythic released band-aids and expansions that contained solutions(group cure disease/cure nearsight as an ML ability).  The band-aids have gotten so bad as to turn some classes into an absolute mess of hotkey bars(bard/skald/paladin resist chants).  Starting fresh with a non-TOA server is a way of testing the game out by controlling the variables(no TOA abilities and items), because the game should be balanced at every level, instead of patched up by realm and master abilities.

For example, how would I balance crowd-control?  First, modify spell interruption mechanics to allow casters a chance to get spells off in close combat.  Then, get rid of all area-effect crowd control.  Now, you can adjust the timers of single-timer CC's(to maybe 30 seconds max in RVR), cap the maximum number of simultaneously mezzed targets at one time by a caster, and possibly get rid of immunities.  With that, you'll no longer need to have RA's such as purge balancing crowd-control out.  (Actually, these are the crowd-control mechanics of WoW...guess I should stay there.)

Ok I haven't played DAOC in a long while but it does seem to me most encounters were over so fast that 30 seconds is 27.5 seconds too long.  I realize you're talking single-target effects with a chance to fail but I'd still push the timer down to no more than ten seconds with a qualititative chance to break calculated every two seconds between.

One thing I liked about Shadowbane? They had abilities that would let you break crowd control spells on yourself.

They didn't work all the time, but they had them.

Shadowbane also has some limited group crowd control breakers as well.

Shadowbane also had sb.exe

That's the ultimate form of crowd control.  Keeps the crowds away from your game.

Crowd control is a pain in the ass, but....  We saw what happens when you have no CC.  The OF tank /assist trains,  which had virtual CC immunity due to RAs,  would gut casters almost as fast as they could target them.  I think Mythic is just fucked here.  They can't fix CC because of the problems ("glass cannon") having no CC at all would cause.

Essentially,  fix CC and you'd have to overhaul all your caster/support classes.  

This server addition might have meant something to me 2+ years ago when I finally gave up on DAoC in frustration and rage.  Now?  I've got better games.  Guild Wars PvP is more fun than DAoC RvR and doesn't require the 2 hour setup to get started.  And the best part is that I didn't have to PvE for a YEAR before I could play it.

All interest I ever had in DAoC died long, long ago.  Mythic will never have my money again unless they come up with a Free Blowjob Server.  And even then, I'd have to have every single one of my DAoC friends convince me.

Free blowjob services from every single one of your DAoC friends?

Nothing wrong with that of course.  Just sayin'.

That, or they could just flick the collision detection switch to 'on'.

The solution was ML abilities such Bodyguard/Grapple and Phase Shift.  Without collision detection, Bodyguard was as good as it gets.  But even without those ML abilities, uninterruptable single-target CC(which I mentioned earlier) without the various bandaid immunities should be enough to thwart the /assist train.

Mythic allowed problems to compound on top of one another, which is why the game is such a patched-up kludge today.

I would have switched to this server a year ago, and been elated over it had it been released when ToA was released.  Now, though, it's just too late for me, the train has already left the station.

I agree to an extent. In my ideal mmorpg most of the PvE happens "somewhere else" even if there are parts of it strongly tied with PvP. But at the same time I love what happened in WoW. I love how PvE melts with PvP in a cohesive world and I love a lot more this model than the one in DAoC where the PvP is always "external" and all the lore revolves around an "invasion" that never actually happens.

There are parts of PvE that are necessary to give PvP a depth. Even DAoC could have used more development in the scope and ambition of its PvP by adding to it more activites that aren't just fighting and killing all the time. So a simulation of other mechanics that are integrated with the combat. But not just combat.

These games with a "world" component should start to put aside the full focus on just the combat mechanics and explore new forms of interaction.

I strongly believe that should be the content to define the treadmill, and not the opposite. So firstly you look at what you have available and then figure out the pace it can support. More content available = possibility to stretch the treadmill. I mean, first you plan the content before you even start to think at the container (which is exactly what even Jeff Freeman wrote (http://mythical.blogspot.com/2004/11/content-driven-development.html)). And I believe that WoW reached a perfect balance here, with content in excess to even support a degree of variation for the alts.

Instead I completely disagree on the AI. I consider that path completely pointless and irrelevant for this genre. Mmorpgs do not need to implement AI. A slightly more scripted system could already do EVERYTHING you need and look like generations above what is already available. It would be already a dream to have some complex encounters where the monsters follow simple schedules and basic tactics that can be learnt. The fact is that here I have my own strong theory.

PvE is "authorship". It's the possibility to tell a story imagined by someone. It's a direct form of communication that goes from an "artist" to an audience. This is why it's stupid to suppose that your players will create the content themselves. There's a need of quality here, something that only a dedicated writer paid to do so will be able to deliver. So, as in a book, a movie, or similar things, all the control must be in the hands of the dev. Good PvE will never be randomly generated and will never be based on AI. Good PvE needs history, it needs personality, persistence. It cannot be contingent, it cannot vary, it cannot adapt. Everything that is vaguely relative is going to fail in PvE because what the players want is something fixed, something that has an interesting story to tell. In that precise point in the space and in that precise moment. It's the concept of "identity" opposed to "contingent". Identity as something that cannot change and that cannot be elsewhere.

This is why the players love when a zone isn't built randomly as in SWG but carefully handcrafted in all its details. This is why they learn how to pull, how each single encounter works and must be tackled. It's all about mini-puzzles, or the act of "chunking" as Raph Koster would define it. If the lesson to learn goes directly out of control and isn't predictable to an extent, it will become simply frustrating and look absolutely generic, a-specific, relative, not tied to the history and life of THAT particular place.

(Reference (http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/489))
Here I can be an heretic but I disagree on an even more unpopular topic. ToA didn't fail because it had more required content to go through. Players LOVE content and they LOVE when you give them something more to advance, new places to discover and so on. EverQuest was successful for a reason and this shouldn't be ignored (as Anyuzer wrote in his critics to you). An enriching experience is ALWAYS positive, no matter how long it is. Again it's not the "length" of quantity of the treadmill to be the REAL issues, but its quality.

The real problem of ToA was and still is today its *accessibility*. And the same happens with the criticized endgame in WoW. What the players refuse and push back is exactly what they cannot effectively experience. Both the problem of accessibility and the boringness of repetition.

ALL of ToA content is planned to not be easily accessible. Often through insane grinds that are completely unacceptable. The point isn't that the players don't want to go through ToA to be able to compete again in PvP, the point is that going through that is way too hard, demanding and boring. It's not accessible for everyone. It's a process of selection that not everyone can endure. So, again, not always accessible and desirable.

Going back to DAOC from WoW is going to be weird.  On one hand, DAOC's fucked-up combat mechanics, shit for balance, and  ancient UI ( /qbind? WTF, where was the documentation for that?) pale in comparison to WoW - where healing classes can be tons of fun and aren't completely helpless bitches.  But WoW's honor system and battlegrounds are simply saccharine, boring bullshit.  I've been playing much less since the honor system debut and it's a sentiment shared by many.  Whether or not you had a "good" week isn't decided until every Tuesday, where you may or may not go up a rank, depending on voodoo calculations.  One week, I didn't go up at all despite a fair amount of PvP and CP and being at a middle rank(so I really wasn't at a ceiling), and I didn't bother PvPing afterwards.  I simply saw no point.  It's been more fun seeing how fast I can decay.  I get better gear from MC raids anyways.  Taking keeps and relics may seem fun again - because I'll know the end result when I log.