New DAoC expansion - with Horses

[HRose]

WoW is probably almost there, but it looks like they are taking their first steps down the mudflation/catasseriffic trail.

I say let 'em quit!  They are a minority anyway, if a vocal one.

I suppose it's too late for DAOC.

I share the same fear for WoW.

And your perception of DAoC may be wrong. I'm not sure the catasses are a minority right now.

What I believe is that this isn't fun for anyone. Catasses included. But that's an heresy.

[Soln]

HORSES! And only after 3 years of promising them. I remember Jacobs first big address at the end of 2001, saying that horses and houses would be in soon-ish. It's about time.

Frankly, there is so much good about DAoC, but it's just all overwhelming crushed by the need to level, then the need to level artifacts, then the need to level master levels and blah de blah blah. It's the only MMOG I've ever resubbed to. Level 20-24 battlegrounds were pure butter. Everything after that was a boring ordeal of looking at my Exp. bar and thinking of how much fun the RVR would be. And that was after the free xp. and xp. for PVP was added.

It takes too long to level, and MMOG's with any sort of competition has shown that if it goes to 11, 10 will not do. Thus, everyone in RVR is at 11, while I'm stuck grinding through 5.

spot on.  It's the worst grind I've ever known (other than Jedi, and earning that now feels like Herpes, or whatever is the STD that makes your dick fall off).  I always liked how well Mythic communicated and ran its hosts, but ultimately someone in Design there is way too conservative and always falls on the side of making everything they offer longer by the yard.  Mythic is in some serious denial if they believe they are going to get "new" players because the whole end-game for DAoC is PvP, and there ain't no one in the low-levels BG's and you can't enjoy any raids unless >45 level.  No will survive a full and honest grind to lvl50 in DAoC -- been there, tried it, impossible.

[AOFanboi]

Pshah, it's still just "pants-asy".

*Goes back to killing Merovignian and Zion operatives for the Machines*

[Furiously]

I did notice the $29.99 sticker on the thousands of matrix boxes at my local software store - another $20 off and I might pick one up.

[HRose]

I can assure you that the problems you are seeing from the outside aren't the problems you'll notice if actually playing the game.

The slow levelling pace is definitely not the problem right now. It's the radical problems in the gameplay to make the experience dull and boring. Even the PvP endgame is nowhere fun right now due to the dynamics of the combat.

If you have the interest to start again I suggest to pick up the Catacombs expansion and download the two optional patches. You'll notice that the problem is what you DO to level. The gameplay itself. Not that the treadmill is slow.

[Hoax]

I did notice the $29.99 sticker on the thousands of matrix boxes at my local software store - another $20 off and I might pick one up.

They sent me a long email about a huge weekend long event involving Vampire and Warewolf exiles and all kinds of craziness.  So far they've followed through with their "we're going to have an actual storyline" promise.  It sounded fairly cool but I'm not going to go to the game boards and try to verify if it was fun.

[Soln]

I can assure you that the problems you are seeing from the outside aren't the problems you'll notice if actually playing the game.

The slow levelling pace is definitely not the problem right now. It's the radical problems in the gameplay to make the experience dull and boring. Even the PvP endgame is nowhere fun right now due to the dynamics of the combat.

If you have the interest to start again I suggest to pick up the Catacombs expansion and download the two optional patches. You'll notice that the problem is what you DO to level. The gameplay itself. Not that the treadmill is slow.

I dont understand -- is it still a micro-grind or not?  Or is it fairly constant to 50 over a few weeks, it just takes a PhD to get there?

[AlteredOne]

I dont understand -- is it still a micro-grind or not?  Or is it fairly constant to 50 over a few weeks, it just takes a PhD to get there?

Honestly from 1 to 50 goes very fast with Catacombs.  Take the Vampiir for example, lots of people report getting to 50 in about 3 days /played, without any twinking.  But there are two problems despite the new accelerated leveling speed. 

Number one, as Hrose says, it is deadly boring soloing your way from 1-50.  You will simply be clicking the same buttons in the same order, as you repetitively pull one thing after another.  Not much variety, not much plot. 

And number two, once you hit 50, you will realize that the real grind has not even begun.  Everybody knows that the Trials of Atlantis expansion added 10 hellish "master levels" after 50, each of which takes a large raid to accomplish.  And all of the hardcore RvR players swear by "artifacts," which are items that must themselves be levelled.

The real "micro-grind" happens *after* you hit 50, and that is what really kills any pretense of casual friendliness.

[stray]

I dont understand -- is it still a micro-grind or not? Or is it fairly constant to 50 over a few weeks, it just takes a PhD to get there?

Honestly from 1 to 50 goes very fast with Catacombs. Take the Vampiir for example, lots of people report getting to 50 in about 3 days /played, without any twinking. But there are two problems despite the new accelerated leveling speed.

Number one, as Hrose says, it is deadly boring soloing your way from 1-50. You will simply be clicking the same buttons in the same order, as you repetitively pull one thing after another. Not much variety, not much plot.

And number two, once you hit 50, you will realize that the real grind has not even begun. Everybody knows that the Trials of Atlantis expansion added 10 hellish "master levels" after 50, each of which takes a large raid to accomplish. And all of the hardcore RvR players swear by "artifacts," which are items that must themselves be levelled.

The real "micro-grind" happens *after* you hit 50, and that is what really kills any pretense of casual friendliness.

And what if I don't want to play a "Vampir"? Am I just heaping grind upon grind on to myself then?

Seriously though, it's not necessarily the grind I have the biggest problem with in that game. It's the majority of classes, and the worthlessness thereof.

[HRose]

The problem is rather complex and it's not easy to explain in a few lines. I wrote something like a review of Catacombs here but it's a bit too long and dispersive even if I discuss some general problem of the game.

The levelling isn't the problem because it's the part that was tweaked the most. This is nowhere the game of three years ago and it's actually faster than WoW.

There's also to say that now you have CHOICES. You can level in private corridors where you have to slay a row of 30 mobs waiting in a line (i'm not joking), you can level completely in PvP along the various battlegrounds. You can level doing the quests in Catacombs.

DAoC is still badly planned on many aspects. One is the class system. So you can expect to solo efficiently in a few cases and not at all in other cases. The very FIRST thing you'll notice isn't that the experience is slow. But that the downtimes and the actual combat is painful. You'll have to sit for long periods after each kill so you'll be bored as hell after a few minutes but not because of the actual treadmill but because of the gameplay itself.

The other problem is about the community. Now that the world is large, with the various possibilities and instances, it is very hard to log in and find easily mates to do something. So yes, you can level through PvP. IN THEORY. You have to make sure that you can actually find opponents and that you are able to win. Haemish, the last time, didn't leave the game because it was SLOW. He left because he couldn't find peoples in the battlegrounds, so he was basically stuck at grinding the PvE (which noone tolerates anymore).

The excessive downtimes make the game like a chore after the first five mobs you kill. The more you level the more the downtimes will increase. So it's not like if killing five mobs to kill is "too much" but it's HOW you kill them. The novelty of the gameplay fades rather quickly.

Along the way there are many, many problems that will become obvious. The early BGs are ridiculous. You can find only stealthed players behind siege weapons that one-shot kill you as you run by. So, again, there are (fun) possibilities in theory, but the reality is different.

The same for the endgame. In theory is great. In the practice you'll notice all the glaring problems: damage scale gone out of the roof, extremely annoying interrupts, buffbots, organized ganking /assist groups, difficulty in finding casual parties to join and so on... At the end it's not playable as you'd expect.

I gathered a list of changes that the game strongly needs but Mythic has always kept a conservative approach. They keep tweaking the details but they do not address the more serious gameplay issues. They can shorten the experience between the levels even more, give out free levels as they are doing but that will do *nothing* against the problems of the actual gameplay.

So that's where the problems are. The game has still potential but it's ruined if those problem at the base aren't addressed.

[eldaec]

The list of changes I'd like is shorter...

Just halve the amount of xp required in 1-50.

Double the group bonus xp, because the overhead of group management outweighs the current advantages of a group by a massive amount.

Make alternative instanced sources of artifacts available. Or just put in new, 1fg instanced encounters that reward players with new artifacts. Note when deisgning such encounters that hanging about waiting for a spawn timer is not an enjoyable mechanic.

Halve the amount of xp required to level an artifact.

Reduce the spawn timers on every ML or artifact mob in ToA by *at least* 75%. For ML mobs other than end-of-dungeon bosses where loot distribution might be an issue, the absolute maximum on a timer should be 5 minutes. For dungeon bosses we could stretch to half an hour. If this encourages loot farming, move the loot onto a non-ML mob for christssake.

Remove the pointless and annoying requirement to do the x.10 ML steps last.

Range on buff effectiveness please.

[Abel]

Remove the pointless and annoying requirement to do the x.10 ML steps last.

Didn't they change that already ?

Anyhow, lvls 1-49 are so pointless now.  They could as well scrap it entirely and let everyone create lvl 50s instantly and change the PvE game into just a "get the shiny". That would enable them also to scrap all those useless empty Classic and SI zones.

[Pococurante]

CoH and WoW remove any doubt from my mind I'd ever go back to the EQx, DAOC, etc of the world.  Though I'd love player-run server versions of the latter products - RunUO and DOL are the cat's pajamas.

[eldaec]

Remove the pointless and annoying requirement to do the x.10 ML steps last.

Didn't they change that already ?

Not as far as I know. They did make it so that you can do x.10 of a ML you aren't at yet, so long as you have completed x.1-9. For instance an ML4 person can do ML 6.1-9 and then complete ML6.10, then as soon as you complete ML5, you would get ML6 (assuming you have enough MLxp).

Oh, one more thing to add.

Minimum ML limits on entering dungeons (effectively preventing low ML chars completing high ML steps when an opportunity arises) are a stupid idea. I can see why you might put these limits on for a short time after launch, just to force a slow reveal of content. But they should automatically open to everyone once a certain number of characters in a realm reach a specific ML.

[Paelos]

Remove the pointless and annoying requirement to do the x.10 ML steps last.

Didn't they change that already ?

Not as far as I know. They did make it so that you can do x.10 of a ML you aren't at yet, so long as you have completed x.1-9. For instance an ML4 person can do ML 6.1-9 and then complete ML6.10, then as soon as you complete ML5, you would get ML6 (assuming you have enough MLxp).

Oh, one more thing to add.

Minimum ML limits on entering dungeons (effectively preventing low ML chars completing high ML steps when an opportunity arises) are a stupid idea. I can see why you might put these limits on for a short time after launch, just to force a slow reveal of content. But they should automatically open to everyone once a certain number of characters in a realm reach a specific ML.

The scary part is, with the reminders of the ML talk, I have a bad feeling that WoW is going to attempt a similar type of thing with Hero Classes.

[Abel]

Not as far as I know. They did make it so that you can do x.10 of a ML you aren't at yet, so long as you have completed x.1-9.

Ah yes, think you're right.

I'm not playing anymore either but from following the forums the ToA threadmill has been seriously reduced though. Most MLs have been tweaked to the point you can rush through them pretty fast, ml and artifact xp are pretty easy to get. The threadmill is far less frustrating then it used to be.

Apparently the major problem nowadays is getting your hands on the the good artifacts and unlocking them. Rather unsurprisingly farmers are camping the good ones 24/7 and then sell them for big money. I've read about prices of up to 80p (!) for an artifact which is frankly insane.Then on top of that you need the notes to unlock them which sometimes can get really expensive too ...

ToA has actually some great design and, very oddly, some insanely crappy design at the same time (hello ml 2.10 and entire ml 3).

[AOFanboi]

They sent me a long email about a huge weekend long event involving Vampire and Warewolf exiles and all kinds of craziness.  So far they've followed through with their "we're going to have an actual storyline" promise.  It sounded fairly cool but I'm not going to go to the game boards and try to verify if it was fun.

They're there, and the "wooden stakes" (for vampires), "silver bullets" (for werewolves) and "holy water" (succubi) drop from low-level mobs and can be sold on the player market for a lot of $Information (which, along with using ! as a thousands separator) is MxO's irritating name for money. And you need a lot of money, since leveling your character is insufficient, you also need to level around half your skills for money.

The problem is that all the gangs - from the lowly level 1 street trash to the ass-kicking demon-like ass-kickers of Kickass - are supposed to be exiles, like the Merovignian (who is one of the three factions with Zion and the Machines). But I got the impression from the movies that the exiles were relatively few in number? In the game they are like everywhere.

But how can you not love a game that calls a flashlight "Concealment Countermeasure Device"? It does steal a whole lot from City of Heroes though.

[HaemishM]

The other problem is about the community. Now that the world is large, with the various possibilities and instances, it is very hard to log in and find easily mates to do something. So yes, you can level through PvP. IN THEORY. You have to make sure that you can actually find opponents and that you are able to win. Haemish, the last time, didn't leave the game because it was SLOW. He left because he couldn't find peoples in the battlegrounds, so he was basically stuck at grinding the PvE (which noone tolerates anymore).

Actually, I like the gameplay. As a scout the last time through, I enjoyed it. But I don't enjoy it for long periods. The PVE is not boring because of what you do, but what the mobs do and how long it takes to get any new abilities. 1-20 was fine. Once I hit battlegrounds that were populated (20-24 were populated thanks to the number of /level 20 characters available), I had a blast and the gameplay was solid. But there was way too much of the other needed, the boring PVE, that took way to long to make it worthwhile. The gameplay in PVE would have been fine if I only had to endure about 1/4 of it to make a viable PVP character. Speeding up the treadmill helped, but I don't really enjoy much PVE for long, no matter how good it is. Even CoH begins to wear on me at times.

I left because in order to find populated battlegrounds, I had to endure a LOT more levelling, a process that was already taking too long as it was.

[AlteredOne]

Remove the pointless and annoying requirement to do the x.10 ML steps last.

Didn't they change that already ?

Actually, I can confirm that they DID change that, probably a month ago.  You can do any step 10 of any ML, in any order.  However, some ML dungeons do still have prerequisites to enter. They also added a cool feature where the battlegroup leader on a ML raid can grant credit to anybody in the BG for any step the BG has completed.  This helps tremendously when people go linkdead or whatever.  If these changes had been made in December 2003, a lot of people might have not quit over ToA. Now it's great, but it feels like too little too late.

It is undeniable that ML raids have become more tolerable, but it is correct that artifact camping is insane.  Certain players just farm these things 24/7 and sell them.  It's especially stupid, because the game already tracks if a person has already completed each artifact encounter.  It would be relatively trivial to add code saying "If player has credit for encounter X already, do not allow them to receive another copy of artifact X."  But instead, you have some players who run 4 accounts, and systematically pharm the encounters every time the spawn on their 12-hour cycle or whatever.   It's insane and prevents legitimate players from having any shot at getting these items, unless they are willing to pay the monopoly prices charged by the uber leet pharmers.

[Jayce]

Am I the only one who keeps misreading the topic as "- with Hroses"?

Dammit, now I can't stop seeing the topic like that.

[naum]

Are people still playing this game?

Good Gates, the bar is set pretty low…

[Yegolev]

They're there, and the "wooden stakes" (for vampires), "silver bullets" (for werewolves) and "holy water" (succubi)

What?  Mmmm... pass.

[HaemishM]

Are people still playing this game?

Good Gates, the bar is set pretty low…

This is MMOG's, the business equivalent of the fucking Limbo. Try to keep up.

[Trippy]

It is undeniable that ML raids have become more tolerable, but it is correct that artifact camping is insane.  Certain players just farm these things 24/7 and sell them.

Excuse my ignorance but why are these artifact thingies tradeable?

[HRose]

Excuse my ignorance but why are these artifact thingies tradeable?

To use an artifact you have:

1- Get credit for the encounter (one time thing) and get the artifact itself (you have to win loot)
2- Farm/buy the three scrolls (more or less rare drops from specific types of mobs) to activate it
3- Level it by farming some more

Only when the artifact is active it becomes non-tredeable (also, due to the "smart" decay system in DAoC once the artifact cannot be repaired anymore it's destroyed and you cannot get a new one).

Those scrolls are now the center of the whole economy of the game. I think I can pull a rule from this:
"If something becomes important for the economy in a game, it means it sucks"

[eldaec]

Should point out that you have to be an extreme rvr catass to completely wear an artifact out assuming you have done a modicum of research into decay rates and ideal repair points.

Or just asked someone in your guild 'at what condition % should I repair x?'.

[Trippy]

To use an artifact you have:

1- Get credit for the encounter (one time thing) and get the artifact itself (you have to win loot)
2- Farm/buy the three scrolls (more or less rare drops from specific types of mobs) to activate it
3- Level it by farming some more

Thanks, I understand the problem now and why so many people dislike ToA.

[stray]

3- Level it by farming some more

  Wtf?

[AlteredOne]

3- Level it by farming some more

  Wtf?

Yes, about a month ago, I got my first couple of artifacts, just to see what it was like.  I spent about 2 evenings with a guild group in a dungeon where these things get xp (they only gain xp in certain places).  After probably 6 hours, my artifacts were about level 2.5 out of 10.

I swear, I only reactivated because my wife wanted to try Catacombs! 

[HRose]

The fun thing is how easy these problems are to solve and, still, they do nothing if not after months and years of rants and complaints.

I guess it makes too much sense to allow the artifacts to be levelled in PvP and I'm also sure that they'll patch this ...someday.

[Johny Cee]

The fun thing is how easy these problems are to solve and, still, they do nothing if not after months and years of rants and complaints.

I guess it makes too much sense to allow the artifacts to be levelled in PvP and I'm also sure that they'll patch this ...someday.

The artifacts ARE leveled in pvp.

[HRose]

The artifacts ARE leveled in pvp.

Are you sure? If it's true it happened recently.

[Johny Cee]

The artifacts ARE leveled in pvp.

Are you sure? If it's true it happened recently.

Positive.  One of the first arty xp changes Mythic made was making all artifacts gain xp from rvr, about the same time xp from killing an enemy player was massively bumped.  I remember on Test this caused some glitches, as people leveled artifacts all the way on relatively few kills.

The problem with ToA bonuses and artifacts is that you really need to be geared out before rvr.  Otherwise, artifacts are just items with shitty bonuses.

As for getting the artifacts....  Artifact campers aren't a problem.  Basically, the routine is to get credit with an artifact raid that hits up to a couple dozen artifacts,  and then buy the artifact from a farmer or keep going and try to get lucky with the lotto.

The real breakdown with artifacts:

1. Certain artifacts are in high demand,  because they are pretty much useful for all classes.  Guard of Valor, Maddening Scalars,  Malice Axe (for melees), Tartaros Gift (for casters), Shades of Mist are pretty much mandatory.  This spikes the demand for certain artifacts and scrolls,  while alot of others are just ignored.

I'd recommend that other artifacts be bumped to spread out the demand in scrolls.

2. Certain scrolls are fucking pains to get.  Guard of Valor, Regarding Shades, Tart Gift, Scalars......  low drop rates from red con mobs.

Scroll drop rates for some of the rare scrolls needs to be further bumped.

3. Items.  Everyone is chasing a few certain low drop items,  since those are the only things that work in temps to come close to maxing your stats and bonuses.  There's a great deal of pent up demand on items that can't even be reliably farmed.

Items, especially old world and SI, need to be bumped.

And Haemish:  I think I remember you were on Alb/Pel.  Pel has since been clustered,  and most of the bgs have a fair amount of activity.  Cept for Wilton (30-34).  That's still a deadzone.

The 20-24 bg has big numbers (20-40 on the hib side, equal or greater numbers of albs)
The 25-29 is much lighter, but has around 6-10 hibs at any time.
We won't talk about the 30-34 sargasso.....
35-39 has good numbers and fights.  Probably 15-30 hibs, same on alb side.
40-44 as well.

Before clustering,  only Thidranki (20-24) and Molvik (35-39) had any people.

[stray]

My mind just crapped out halfway through your post, Johnny. If it's that much trouble for me to even read about it, then it most definitely, sure as hell doesn't belong in a video game.

[eldaec]

The artifacts ARE leveled in pvp.

Are you sure? If it's true it happened recently.

Always been the case - but in pvp the process is so incredibly slow you'll never notice it happening.

And you don't get the pvp xp multiplier for artifact xp.