f13.net

There's a new poll:

(http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/storeroom/daoc-repository/daoc-poll.jpg)

My comments are you-know-where (and you don't want me to paste them here), but I'm interested in more opinions.

The last time the discussion we had here about the classic servers was that it would be rather hard for Mythic to really support different and contrasting rulesets. These new servers furtherly stretch that issue.

I think the idea of the Evolution Server holds promise.  I imagine they've discarded some old assumptions and the freedom to break free from past implementations seems best.

That said if economy is another half-assed excuse for guild mules I'm not interested.

24 retweaked classes is too much of a waste of time for an MMOG that old. That said, it's put up or shut up time at Mythic whatwith Squeenix looming over the RVR subgenre.

Well, yes. That's not even an argument, there is no match. The point is whether they do the Evolution thing or not, the other two servers are just retarded.

One allows a zerg to invade a (deserted) realm to kill a level 5 player passing by. Everyone in PvE is in the instances, outside you really find a few newbies passing by and I don't see how invading a server could be remotely fun if not to grief.

The other is just DAoC with the faults of WoW's PvP. I pass time criticize how badly WoW's PvP sucks and I find rather amusing that now I see WoW's PvP suggested for DAoC. It would be just plain stupid.

So what's interesting is obviously the last two options. Evolution, or nothing.

What do you mean by "old", that there are dated technical elements?  Or simply that the freshness date expired?  I'd expect new artwork with the revamp.  Though of course my expectation could be ass...


Golly gee you're right.  Here's a cookie.

(http://www.snl-e.salk.edu/fun/Frisbee%202000-02-05/cookie-fight.jpg)

I mean "old" as in "stick a fork in it, it's done."

Ah ok.  That's so much more logical and reasonable.

 :roll:

it's a toss up between dedicating resources to retaining veterans or potentially allowing harm to the experience of new players (homeland zerg).  Looks like they are leaning to retain existing players.

We here prefer Evolutions because we generally agree that DAoC is totally fucked, and Evolutions is the most drastic.  The actual playerbase may have other ideas.

Ahh, and I always thought I was way too jaded. You guys are refreshing ;p

Designing new classes and a new combat system for som especialty servers?  If you are going to do all that, just make a new game.

Shame they didn't throw out something crazy like capping account hours per week on the new server.

Where is the "Instant LVL 50 No Crowd Control Homeland Invasion" server? Oh, that's right, without the crack induced leveling lifesuck no one would play on it. Is there no market for fantasy Planetside (granted there's little market for Planetside original either so...)?

Yeah, that's where I was. The Homeland Invasion server sounds like fun, but it would end up being about as popular after a while as the full-on PVP servers they did. Roof-ganking casters and retardedness would abound.

Battleground servers seems like a total waste of time, especially if you don't make the leveling curve a shitton shorter. The Battlegrounds are damn fine fun, but with only classic leveling zones, which are slow and not that interesting anymore, and no frontiers, it's really a one-trick pony. I like the Frontiers AND the Battlegrounds.

Evolution sounds like an entirely new game. Which may be a good excuse to test things out for Warhammer, much like Luclin was a shitty test for EQ2's engine and LDON was a test for EQ2's instancing. It sounds like a shitton of work for something that just may not pay off at all. Give me an instant level 50 server with fast travel options and maybe I'd think about returning. Not really, but it'd certainly be more interesting than these options.

Actually.. and I am speaking from a position of complete and under ignorance since I have not played DAOC for a year or so... but to make both the PvP and PvE game interesting, cap player level at the minimum needed for a group to take down a level 50 PvE mob, so what.. 36th.

The early BG's were fun since no one was capping on inflated items.  I really really hate how obsolete the world becomes when 90% of the content is grey and useless...

the BG's only had 2 purposes:

1) to get player's ready for Frontier RvR, and
2) to get lowbie (i.e. <50) players some fucking PvP fun, since RvR is the end game

I personally loved BG's and always regretted getting booted out once I finished a level since the higher you go, the less people spend time in BG's.  There's this wasteland around 30 (pre-Catacombs for me at least) where the assraping grind forces players to spend more time trying to level to reach 50 and less time in any fun BG.  You're forced to spend more time grinding to eventually have more PvP fun because you realize there's suddently very few people anymore in your BG because they themselves also have to spend more time grinding out a level in the expectation of having PvP fun at 50 or at least the next BG level... which of course leads to more attrition because people correctly ask, "why am I grinding to have fun later when I should be able to now?..."   Old argument, sorry.

Because it's a game that is all things to all people!  Everyone is happy!

That's what they're doing -

http://www.warhammeronlineforum.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1991

Key point is - "4) The game will be RvR-centric, focused on the ongoing battles between three separate groups (more information on these groups down the road). "

I thought he was upset that people made fun of Mythic trying to DAOC-ize everything they touch. This doesn't help him any.

Oh, and it's funny that they are already planning adding races in future expansions. I hoped the 2 ton purple ape that is WoW was going to stop people from saying stupid shit like that.

"While we want to do almost all the other races (except Halflings, who are a race best served over a net at about 100MPH), we don’t want to overreach right from the beginning."

You should overreach. You should if you want people to drop WoW to try out your game.

Evolution is too much work for too little benefit.

Battleground server + new battleground maps would be enough to get me to rescribe.

I don't get the whole Evolution idea.  Why not just announce DAOC 2.0?

Also bring back smite clerics, jerkoffs.

Let's say they do the Evolution system.

Given that player owned horses are, if I recall, still not in the game and had been promised since beta...

Players could expect DAoC: Evolution when?

A way to port a character to the new server is something I suggested. So I agree. My idea was to launch two servers. One in a clean state and one where it's possible to use a single-use code to level up a character instantly.

They just doubled the experience from level 1 to 20 and despite the PvE is now Pure Grind in Task Dungeons you can really ding 50 in a few days. So it's just a matter of enduring the process. The perception of DAoC at the moment is different from its actual state.

Fast travel options are already available too. You can insta-port pretty much everywhere and through Catacombs you can access quickly the classic zones. With the addition of the mounts in two weeks this will really be a non-issue.

Last I played, the grind barely began at 50.  Do you still need 4 or 5 fully leveled artifacts, a buffbot, master level abilities, and about 5 realm ranks worth of abilities to expect to reasonably compete?

No, the "classic" servers recently launched erased ToA. You need to farm some money to get decent crafted/spellcrafted equipment or do the redone (badly) epic quests to have half-decent armor. Then it's all about realm points and ranks. Buffbots are also removed.

In two weeks they will release the next expansion as an online download that will add questable epic weapons. And minor skills in the form of "champion levels". Hopefully nothing to "farm".

You're not even remotely jaded. You're a hopeful fruitcup that stalks devs, blogs and forums while falling prey to the coherent.

I'm fascinated by the level of change being proposed. Even EQ1 only added instancing and *gasp* removed hell levels. At it's core, the things that changed did so over a seven year period in a long progression of FoTM crap.

But making a special rules server with completely new, and still too numerous classes? Uea, only reason I can see there is as Heamish said: the installed based of players who'd be paying to beta Warhammer.

Not a bad racket really, but I consider DAoC a footnote now anyway.

Well, there isn't any magic number for the classes and I think nine can be okay.

What breaks DAoC is not the number of classes but the insane number of specialization within each. If they open all the spec paths for each class they can still obtain decent all-around roles.

While i've always thought that the DAOC classes and game mechanics were in need of serious redesigning, having 8 redesigned classes per realm is going to be nothing more than the same old - you're still going to end up playing a highly-specialized character who must find the perfect fit with 7 other highly-specialized classes. 

If Mythic can inject versatility in every class along with slowing down combat, the game could be promising as the tactical, teamwork-based pvp combat we've all been craving for.

Hmm.

I think if I had time for any MMO right now it would probably be DAoC.  The PvP I played (pre-ToA) is still better than anything else I've seen.  I much prefer it ot the gankfest of WoW.

I had some really fun experiences out on the battlegrounds.   But I'm not sure that having battlegrounds-only would make a good game as it would just promote large battleground zergs and part of the charm of the battlegrounds was that they usually had 10-15 people a side on them.  Now instanced battlegrounds would be fun, even if that is WoW'ish.  I just like DAoC's character/combat system better.  Evolution sounds interesting.  They have the full machinery of an MMO in place, why not tweak the ruleset and see what happens.  The homeland invasion seems the least interesting of the three.  It could be ok but I think that realm imbalances, etc. would prevent it from really accomplishing that much.  If I were going to play I'd probably just go to the classic servers though.

But DAoC plays to my prejudices -- while it may have been harder to balance, I loved the spec system.  I'm a number whore and I love being able to think a lot about a character and what I want to do with them.  I love coming up with character "builds" that are non-standard/FotM but still work well.  Stuff like that.  Neither WoW's talent system nor EQ2's traits did much for me.  Talents in WoW are dumbed down D2 IMO.  At least EQ2 had a lot of classes and some interesting niche classes that were under-used but still effective and interesting (to me anyway).  If WoW could have used D2's "level" system and done it justice I probably would be a WoW fanboi right now despite the vanilla and boring nature of every other bit of content.

Gabe.

DAoC suffered from the design philosophy that imagined that more classes = better.  When you put "This game has X classes!!!" on the box, where X is some large number, potential players imagine that the gameplay must be deep and robust to support so many approaches to combat.  But of course the breadth of gameplay was no better than EQ (perhaps worse).  So each class had to be a one-trick pony. 

Anyone who ever tried to play an Albion Cleric saw the effect of this.  If the Smite Cleric line was even somewhat viable, the Wizards were useless.  One class accidently got through beta with more than one viable spec, and the result was to make a whole other class obsolete.  So the Smite line was nerfed, Clerics were told to shut up and heal, and things moved on.

I'm not a number whore but I do like to map out a character not just mechanically but the backstory.  The problem in DAOC though is that by the time one crafts an interesting character one usually has fallen outside the "acceptable" build to get into groups.  Outside of one's own guild of friends anyway.  Besides the crappy excuse for Crafting the other thing that drove me away from DAOC was I got tired of people telling me my Druid was "wrong", e.g. "don't mess up our strategy with your classes' stupid pets, DOT's and CC."  That didn't leave much for a Druid to do... (this was pre-TOA)

My mileage varied... ;)

I'd like a classic server without stick or follow, ie, one that really removes buffbots.

Na, even in their hay day Smite Cleric, couldn't compete with mages in a group setting.  What Smite Clerics did do was promote a style of play that was group independent.  That's what got everyone's panties in bunch.  When people see Cleric they think "Cleric equal group bitch".  They get in a huff when you don't want be to their lapdog.  Not really their fault that the game was designed to require clerics and clerics are in short supply, but its asinine to expect others to conform to your expectations. Of course, no one gets in a huff when the other classes get to solo.  I had 2 clerics heal and smite, i really like having the 2 styles play available to me. 

Also after Clerics were told to shut up and heal, the Clerics were still in very short supply because most of the smite clerics moved on to other classes or games.  You can't force people to play a style they don't want to play.

As someone who recently has returned to the DAoC fold after about a 2 year layoff, this survey came as a shock and a dissapointment.  The Classic Servers (and in particular, Gareth) are really where it's at right now in DAoC.  With the new server rules, no ToA, and the (new to me) Catacombs expansion DAoC is now as good and vibrant an MMO as I've ever played and the PvP (err, RvR) is better than ever at all levels of the game.  But even through my (H)rose-colored glasses I can see that it isn't going to last long; the numbers are falling all across the board despite a brief rally.  It reeks of desperation that Mythic now wants to offer MORE new servers and it reeks of desperation from the player base that they're overwhelmingly supportive of an "Evolutionary" model (with all new BALANCED classes?) when there's been no disclosure as to what if any thought Mythic's put into it other than floating this balloon.

That being said, I'll quickly echo some of the points HRose mentioned; that getting to 50 is very quick and nearly painless with the new servers and especially Catacombs, getting around the realm is also quick once you learn the ropes, anyone can aquire very good items without a lot of bother and those who must be most uber can still skiil up or seek out the master crafters.

But yeah, basically Mythic ought to quit kidding themselves and deluding their fanbase and just hurry up and work on DAoC 2 or Warhammer or whatever comes NEXT.  The Classic servers are GOOD... but don't get cocky, kid.

I have to echo several of the statements above.  I've been playing DAoC pretty consistently since beta and found the "Classic" servers to be a huge improvement in the game.  The cost of entrance into "teh fun" or the endgame has been reduced to 7 days of pretty committed play.  I started a level 1 character and was level 50, equipped with very good gear, and RvR ready in 1 week.  Leveling is faster.  Travel is faster.  RvR is better.  The new servers are as solid a pvp experience as you can find in an mmog.  Perfect, no.

Having said that, the honeymoon period for these servers is already wearing off and populations are on the decline.  The Lamorak "classic" server was once at capacity (3500 players online) every evening to the point that it often took 5-10 mins to log on.  Today the primetime population hovers near 1800.  I think this is part of the motivation for this poll.  The classic rule set decreased the entry cost to the endgame but did little to correct many well-known class/realm imbalances.  Once people got a taste for RvR without the bells & whistles of ToA, these differences became more apparent. 

Of the choices offered in the poll, there are really only two that are viable: Evolution or not responding. 

Home invasion would be fun for a few weeks.  With the impending domination of one realm, it would soon become tiring and people would return to their habit of rp farming with little concern for realm takeovers.  Couple to this the complaints about "gray ganking" and I think you have a recipe for failure. 

The BG option is interesting but satisfies the desires of too small a player base. 

Evolution: I see some good with the bad.

Good:
a) 8 classes per realm means that balance should be more readily attained with fewer overpowered or dead classes.   
b) With only 8 classes it should be easier to find a group for those without a dedicated team to run with.
c) Fixing the current cc system is a must.  Take stun for example.  Noone enjoys standing there unable to react while being pummeled to death. 
d) New classes may give a fresh face to the game.  Whether this face has any staying power is another matter.

The Meh:
a) With only 8 classes the game will be quite bland.  Less diversity.
b) Can we trust Mythic to truely balance the realms.  One of the biggest problems in game isn't that each realm doesn't have access to the same abilities, it's that they are placed inequitably on classes within the realm.  Which class gets which ability will have a profound affect on realm balance. I'm a little less than optimistic on their ability to balance the realms while maintaining a different feel between realms.
c) RvR tweaks?  The NF "tweak" brough in some good with some bad.  Towers/keeps really demonstrate some of the more notable realm imbalances.  I'm interested in what they are after here.  The RA system is also in need of a serious overhaul. 

Overall, I'd be interested in seeing what they would come up with for the Evolution idea.  I'd likely reroll and play there just to see what it's all about.  I have to say that as much as I enjoy this game, that this seems like a last attempt to rally the troops.  I think that DAoC has gone about as far as it can and has now been relegated to a nostalgic niche.  I'll probably hang onto this game much like many of the UO diehards held onto UO, but I can see the writing on the wall.  Numbers will continue to decline. 

I'm no fanboi of this title.  I'm just at a loss for a better fantasy-based pvp experience.

The point is that I (and I guess other players) am sick of jumping from server to server. I want to settle down in one and enjoy it. And I want the problems of the game solved on THAT server.

The classic servers solved some, there's still a VERY LONG list to go. The list is long because Mythic did almost nothing for all this time and always preferred to work around the issues without directly address them with some courage (see buffbots, instants, CC and so on. All problems acknowleged but never solved because of the fear to alienate the already shrinking playerbase). In fact I believe the playerbase is shrinking *because* Mythic never really cared to solve those problems and right now there are too many of them to realistically hope to fix most of them (hence the comment that the game is done and must be replaced with sequels).

What I do not want is to have new "evolution" servers solving another few problems and then after a few more months an "Evolution 2" server to solve some more and so on. This is utterly stupid.

I don't want a million of rulesets. I want a good game with devs not scared about learning from mistakes and solve them aggressively.

Mythic told me that in order to have some problems fixed I had to leave the standard servers to join the classic servers. Now they tell me that in order to fix some more problems I have to leave the classic servers to join the Evolution servers. I'm sick of this. The "evolution" of a mmorpg should be mandatory. Not optional.

I would accept to jump again, but only if what I'm "buying" is an evolutionary *process*, not more broken servers with problems never to be addressed if not through furtherly branching (and shattering) the game, the playerbase and their development resources.

*raises hand*

Buffbots and ToA did it to me.

Games get old and fade away.  Much as I enjoyed the time I played there, DAoC is in its sunset years and no amount of tinkering (or even new rulesets) is going to change that.  At best they'll stem the tide and maybe some old subscribers will come back, buy an expansion, and sub for a month or two. 

This is current thinking and practice, but I don't think it need be the reality.  Starcraft, Diablo 2 and CS should be enough proof that folks will play the same game for a long period of time after the dev's have moved on, if the price is right.  Course, these games are free.  I think that games like DAOC shoud be asking are, "At what cash-point does it become worthwhile to a player to keep an account open to play occasionally?"  And also, "At what cash per account point does it pay for admin services, server fees, etc"?  Would I play $5 a month to keep an account active?  I might if they gave me a deal on a full year (say $40), allowing me to occasionally pop in and out.

I might if the game had a seaon (say three months), a conclusion (after three months a winner was declared and starting conditions reset) and season-long objectives (a total-war game that focused on land aquisition and build-the-army type game play sounds cool).

I'm not going to apologize, but I am ashamed of the book that is to follow

Build the Army
Example: season starts with everyone at level 1 and no intra-realm access, all pvp occurs in frontiers/battlegrounds.  Character play time is capped at 3 hours per day for the next two weeks, which should be sufficient to get a char to level 50.

At this point total war ensues and guilds pick their keeps (guilds with highest realm point totals pick first until all keeps are picked, biggest guild will most likely choose the capital).  All players in guilds (and the unguilded) that don't have a keep are unguilded and auto-enrolled into guilds that have keeps (alogrythym should try to equally-staff guilds with people, and equally staff guilds with realm points).

When a keep is taken, that guild is despawned, half it's players going to the enemy realm, half being absorbed into the defending realm (players respawn from the new capital) - thus building the army of the conquering realm.  The keep now belongs to the conquering guild (which makes it more resilient to being conquered).

Each realm has a certain number of npc defenders, initially these defenders are spread thinly throughout the keeps, but as more and more keeps are taken, npcs are assigned to the reaming keeps, making the remaining keeps more difficult to take over time.

Long and rambling to follow
I think the evolution idea is decent if, at the same time, they balance the entire equation. The entire equation being cost per account, server population and developer/designer support.  Figure out how many players per server are required to provide a decent RvR experience, what the anticpated player retention is, what those servers cost, what the desired profit base is, and set billing to that number.  If the player base shrinks, consolidate servers.

Accept the fact that more classes results in more work, possibly without real benefit (as others here have mentioned).  Decide how many roles an RvR game needs, and create enough classes to fill those roles with a certain amount of overlap.  Specialist classes, in my opinion, are the devil.  Specialist classes restult in groups that need specialist classes, and hybrids that are always either too good, or not good enough.  Just make hybrids.

What roles does DAOC need?  Lets just say melee damage dealer, ranged damage dealer, healing/buffing, shield tank, travel/auras and intelligence (radar and debuffing).  If every class is a hybrid that encompesses two class roles, it's possible that a group of three could have every class role represented.  Let's try to reduce the amount of class tweaking and say that each realm has 5 classes.  A group of 8 should have more then enough of everyone to provide a decent mix of roles.

I didn't include stealth in the required class roles because it's stupid in games like this.  If DAOC had supply lines, or things to steal, or assasination, it might make sense... it doesn't, it's about group versus group warfare, please stop the madness.

DAOC currently doesn't have an intelligence class, but radar software is readily available and already fulfills this role.  Lets just add it as an ability to the debuffing class role so we can stop the talk about who is and who isn't a radar-using cheaty whore.  Additionally this class will figure out a defender's posture (melee/spell), and the type of auras that a bard is running so that the group can make tactical choices on how to proceed.

Shield tank picks a group mate to defend, and sets a posture (melee or spell defensive), posture has a recharge of 5 mins.  Make the defend ability beefy enough that attacking the tank first is a decent tactic (unless the tank is in the wrong posture).

Travel should be effected by terrain.  Hibernians are good in forest, Albion in plains, Midgard in mountains.  Roads should give a travel boost, especially to those with travel powers, possibly hard to code, but allows for interesting flanking tactics.  Aura's should be twistable.  Good bards in EQ were pretty impressive, no reason not to reward people for being good players

A realm ability system that doesn't create haves/have nots, but gives flavor/choices and access to ablilities that are dual edged or access to abilities that are strategic.
Flavor example - a class that is a melee damage/tank could get access to a travel ability (not as fast, and no group component at lowest investment).
Convenience - access to a portal system
Dual edged example - tank chooses an ability that increases his defense versus smashing, but this decreases his defense against slashing (he might make this choice if he frequently groups with an aura-class that increased a slashing defense song).
Strategic - crafting, or higher end crafting.  Knowledge/ability with seige weapons, etc.

If they aren't developed constantly, of course they do.

That's not a rule, just the direct consequence of a development process Mythic (and other companies) chose.

What gets old and fades away is the constant support to the game and the active, creative development. It's the immobility that kills a mmorpg. They get old and start to slowly die as they renounce to move.

Mythic isn't giving up, they're diverting resources to Warhammer Online.  Somewhere along the line they probably made a rational decision about investing in a new product vs extending an old one.  Maybe continuing to support DAoC would be profitable but would it be as profitable as a new title? (especially when you're talking about implementing a totally new ruleset)

There's just no way I'd go back to DAOC after all this time, but I do plan to follow the Warhammer development rather closely.

Has anyone considered that the new "Evolution Server" may be a nice testing ground for future ideas pertaining to Warhammer? 

I was wondering why Mythic would dedicate the resources to revamp a game that's on the decline.  Then it occurred to me that this may be a nice opportunity to test some concepts in an old engine that may be applicable to the new game (i.e. balance, cc, etc.).  I'm not suggesting a direct comparison, but this might serve as a think tank of sorts to test game mechanics on a somewhat pvp experienced community.

Discuss.

/shrug

That was exactly my take on it.  Struck me as a smart approach and completely inline with how I interpret Jacob's business sense.

Bolding mine. I put that one out there already. If they actually go through with the Evolution server idea and DON'T use it as a test bed for Warhammer ideas, they are fucking insane.

My apologies for missing that.  Consider my post a simple statement of agreement.