Excellent points in the discussion, I would assert that as a former casual that your point about getting better 1-2 hours a day is crucial. The server will die quickly under NF because it will never facilitate the experience you describe. Instead it breeds the current state of things which is boring ass fk caster zergs smashing into each other because not only are there incentives but for a casual thats the path of least resistance.Megrim wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 12:04 amSo what is the difference to other mmorpgs or daoc servers? If you play much you will get rewarded. Even if you don ´t play good you will have more benefits than a good casual player that plays 1-2 hours after work for example as you just need more time to gather rps but have it available.Fin / Valar wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 3:58 pmThat's what I said. It's not a matter of being bad or good, on a game so old. Anyone can get a more than decent skill level, the difference is the time spent to grind stuff and RRs, and time availability is not a skill. Here if you have time and will to grind you'll go on top, if you don't have it you stay on bottom, no matter the skill level when your DDs land for 300 dmgs and enemies' ones more than 400 dmgs...
You might have some difference on the very top as there are players that have skill and much time to spend into the game. The Gap between players is getting bigger the longer these servers are lasting, on Eden this will be no big point, as there will be a reset after a while.
It might be relative easy here to do zerging and keep/tower raids and swim with the mass, on the other hand if that would not being possible, you would have less population as not every daoc player is a decent elitist player or prefers doing 8vs8. The backbone of every server are the casual players that mainly login after work and/or familiy live in the EU Prime for 1-2 hours, if there is no action or gameplay to have some fun, they just logout and/or leave the server which result to a bleeding out server soon, because daoc is related to a big playerbase.
Remember the fall of Uthgard? They made everything harder in the sequel and did not listen to their main casual playerbase that criticised these plans. Who wants or can afford to spend weeks in these days for a 20+ year old game to get a lvl. 50 char then getting steamrolled by set guild groups, that powerleveled to 50, temped and just waited for the casual cattle appearing in front of the classic frontier keep to be farmed?
If you want a daoc server that will last for some time, you need to adjust it to the main playerbase, elite players can adjust their gameplay a bit, the casual ones not so much as they are mainly restricted in their limited time to play. Imho eden is a good and balanced server, even if some ppl say Hib might be OP , maybe Hib got some love in the years of daoc, as they have been the under populated realm and see, Hibernia has less players here too.
Only thing devs could be blamed for imho is, that some later patches are not having a good decission and seem to be quickshots, same is of the quality of patches as they often have some bugs, making gameplay worse. Imho, it might have been a better choice to main focus on bugfixing first and less on bringing in changes and additional content.
OF is an RvR lake where zergs happen but are quickly determined to be inefficient in terms of earning RPs. Thus casuals choosing the path of least resistance will naturally pug up an 8m/small and get to it like the rest of em. Unless you are obstinate to improving, or mayb smokeweedeveryday, I would guess 85%--90% of people will be getting a little better and havin fun.
I come from an uneventful casual stealther/zergsurfing caster retail experience, only when Phoenix launched with QOL changes that allowed me to level cap, temp, and rank a couple different chars and experience some evenly matched 8v8 or smallman. Most fun I ever had playing the game, played different roles in groups, kinda developed my own playstyle and ended up loving my Warrior. Fought against all the big boys, DD, PK, couple good alb groups and got absolutely obliterated by them.. until I didnt and was able to deliver some satisfying 2h 900+dmg smackdown to those high rr hibs. Id call it a complete experience, I was a total noob, pugged hard and got better, made friends, good memories good times. I srsly got the feels that everyone on that server was just havin a great time happy to be there.
Would play again, would play forever =D