QoL Changes

[RussellAdams]

Agreed - but this is a server where even normal mob spawns don't exist in favor of forcing us into BGs - when most the time people want the perfect comp, few can communicate let alone type at or read group chat, and usually one realm is 3 to 1 and farms everyone else. Not fun at all. So, pve mob spawns as they were back when which could really help give another option beyond nameless red dots on a big map or forced to feed enemy realmers in a bg. This is a dead horse topic, so I wasted everyone's time typing this. Just amazes me that this is still a thing.

[Idi]

What you seem to want is some sort of instant-gratification/satisfaction on all sorts of stuff.

Dude rights a well thought out reasonable post about many of the same things I've discussed with players in-game and all you get out of it is that he wants "instant-gratification"?

That's a you issue that you just made up in your own head.

[Sprouty]

What you seem to want is some sort of instant-gratification/satisfaction on all sorts of stuff.

Dude rights a well thought out reasonable post about many of the same things I've discussed with players in-game and all you get out of it is that he wants "instant-gratification"?

That's a you issue that you just made up in your own head.

Maybe, I did not mean it as disrespectful reply, but "not needing to do the dragon", "why do we need to do quest X,Y or Z", "unlimited respecs / dual-specs", 200% RPs read to me as just that. Same for "speed leech" (Croc-Ring) in BG, as it reduces the need for a speed-class, allowing access to more powerful classes in the group.

Sure, some valid points are there (e.g. Hastener in all town) but the rest to me sounds just as a 'shortcut' to the end (of the) game.

[Idi]

Maybe, I did not mean it as disrespectful reply

Fair enough.

The bottom line is that the dude is a passionate player, as are most of us still rocking this 20 year old game. He made points that we brought up during the BETA of S1, and that were not addressed. He also brought up points that wer unique, such as the currency issues. All his points are valid and come from a players perspective, and while I don't agree with all of them, I appreciate the fact that he took the time to provide the feedback, unlike so many others that just quit and leave, essentially ending the server.

I enjoy the hell out of this game, as do you, and so many others, and all most of us want is to make the game better, so we can keep playing, and attract new players.

[Rtha]

1. Why is there a loss when you exchange currencies back and forth (Exchange NPC) you've farmed yourself that can't even be traded? Worst thing that could happen would be more players enjoying gear for their chars and lowering the bar for new players to get into temping.

To prevent stock trading. Without a fee there is potential to break the economy.

2. Why are there multiple currencies at all? Just make one and let people buy whatever they want with that.

So people do the content. Sobekite and Bountypoints exist as a direct "omni"-currency, feel free to do that. Sobekite is very efficient.

3. Why is Gold/Plat not included as currency to convert?

So people do the content. Separating economies also ensures that should one collapse/inflate, the other is untouched. Safety measure.

4. Why are those special merchants spread across the whole realm? 95% of areas are dead anyways, just clump them together and eliminate boring travel time.

DAoC is an open world game, not a hub game. The more teleporting or stacking of important NPCs happens, the smaller the world will feel. This has a direct impact on how one feels about the game. The world being ultimately convenient is not always best.

5. Why are respec stones and limited respecs still a thing? Just let us respec and dual-spec as we like. I want to experiment and not be punished for trying something new.

Economy sink. You can test things for free on PTR. Click the launcher and hit up, down, left, right, on the arrow keys.

6. Why do I still need to complete an questline to buy {insert mob} stuff? E.g.: If I kill Gole but haven't done mini's, I can't buy items from the merch. Than's confusing and annoying.

I can't share your feelings on this being confusing. It is a mechanic used in a vast amount of MMOs and even single player RPGs. DAoC has many faction mechanics. There are NF quests that give tokens for credit to bypass the PvE raids/quests.

7. Why are colors from merchants in towns still costing gold? Just make crafted only colors from housing cost money and let people have fun coloring like they want without empty pockets from new players.

Starting to think you're just ranting about not grasping the economy? Ask other players how to make money please. When things cost no money, the economy dies.

8. Why isn't everyone Realm-Enhanced 24/7 in PvE areas? Make the 'losing-buffs-on-death-mechanic' BG/RvR-exclusive.

Others will answer this for you.

9. Why do I need to search for a hastener or why are there areas without one? Just make every Village, Town or whatever in non-RvR speeding up people.

Answered previously

10. Why is the Hastener-Buff only lasting 10min? Make that 1000min like the buffs. You lose it in combat anyways.

Yeah, you are just ranting at this point

11. Why is LW1, Endu pots and perma-sprint still a thing? Just make everyone sprint 24/7 per default, increase endu regen and call it a day. Everyone is perma-sprinting after level 30 anyways. But endu-pots are another mechanic to mess with, many people forget about it and it's super annoying for the whole group/BG.

Play high level DAoC in 2v2/5v5/8v8 DAoC as a melee and you will change your opinion.

12. Why is speed from speed classes not shared with the whole BG when in range? If a random group that just formed in a BG has no speed class, they must rely on BP speed pots (which not everyone has), which is annoying and not user friendly.

There is an Artifact for that. Support the release for Artifacts and this wish will come true.

13. Why is there no porter to leave/enter areas where we have to walk like 10min? Any modern game lets you just port. We still run out of dungeons or to quest areas for ages.

Answered previously.

14. Why do I still have to wait for lvl 20 to get a mount? Just throw that into every new chars inventory.

I'm starting to think you don't understand the RPG part of MMORPG. Unlocking things as one goes is part of that.

15. Why are the solo drop rates (Salv mats/RoG's) in Eden so absolutely and completely out of touch with people that just want to solo-experience their favorite game from their past at their own pace?

You might be farming at the wrong spots. People are doing 4 plat per hour on even archer classes. This is not the cap.

16. Why does craftig still takes ages to max out and doesn't provide any XP? It would motivate people to get into crafting more. We have done it. In the past. 20+ times. It's still nearly the same as 2004. Why? More people with professions would benefit us all.

17. Why is it so demanding to catch up with RP's? A simple solution could factor in the higest and lowest RR on the server across all realms and add a multiplicative factor to your gained RP's based on the Rank you are. Example: You're RR2L9 and you'd gain 3.75x the RP's from anything that you do compared to the max RR char on the server.

You get more RPs for killing high RR players, and a 50% bonus on kills for being 20 levels below the cap.

We have limited RR anyways, why not try to make everyone equal in strength that skill and not time spent is the relevant factor in PvP? I'd guess that less than 10% of the players experience RR7/8+ in a season anyways. Make us have RP's and RA's and maybe soft reset that for the next season.

RR progression is a core part of DAoC.

All of these points are my own, but I think these can be answered this way without insider knowledge.

[Rtha]

Agreed - but this is a server where even normal mob spawns don't exist in favor of forcing us into BGs - when most the time people want the perfect comp, few can communicate let alone type at or read group chat, and usually one realm is 3 to 1 and farms everyone else. Not fun at all. So, pve mob spawns as they were back when which could really help give another option beyond nameless red dots on a big map or forced to feed enemy realmers in a bg. This is a dead horse topic, so I wasted everyone's time typing this. Just amazes me that this is still a thing.

Mob camps are 1:1 exactly what they are on live right now (except for DF, which is heavily buffed here). You can go there and do screenshots to compare.

[RussellAdams]

Agreed - but this is a server where even normal mob spawns don't exist in favor of forcing us into BGs - when most the time people want the perfect comp, few can communicate let alone type at or read group chat, and usually one realm is 3 to 1 and farms everyone else. Not fun at all. So, pve mob spawns as they were back when which could really help give another option beyond nameless red dots on a big map or forced to feed enemy realmers in a bg. This is a dead horse topic, so I wasted everyone's time typing this. Just amazes me that this is still a thing.

Mob camps are 1:1 exactly what they are on live right now (except for DF, which is heavily buffed here). You can go there and do screenshots to compare.

Alright - TL';DR Eden is my favorite overall daoc iteration so far. Seasons 1 and 2. End game has a lot of options and the team works for free/tirelessly to implement.

But, for the leveling experience, a deep dive on other pve/frontier mob groupings and relooking at incentivizing otherwise apathetic players toward inviting full groups/rogues/diversified classes, should be a natural progression for this server. QoL for leveling goes a long way, especially on those days your realm is being farmed and you just can't solo all those pve red dots without wishing you could buy 75-100+ gold tinderboxes.
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A fair attention span required for the next part:

I went through a bit of live today, with my first thought on the orcs near Caer Diogel (the huge spawns by the beach) being vacant. I see on live they cleared that as well as on Eden - to prevent a popular farming locale, I suppose. So, that matches.

End game is well done, over all, considering massive repeats of X raid, but all but Sobekite are accessible by most (which is fair, imho). Also, live is trash, you know it, we all know it, lol. So, thank you for Eden as this is overall the best iteration (even with the lacking pve incentives and grouping issues plaguing the game).

That being said, now that I have lessened my ignorance of the 1:1 mob camps and expounded on this server's good graces (as you stated correctly and apologies for assuming)...I guess the real issue then is what are our leveling options?

Speaking of anecdotes, people will always brag about their 1-40 or 1-50 in x hours groups. This is wonderful and I've had a taste of this but it's really rare for N. Americans to get this going as mostly Euros have this type of organization (*go to LFG/Guild and scroll through the 3 a.m.ish 1-40 + Euro time groups - good job, though).

So, how about the average experience where you look at your screen, realizing you aren't getting an invite for a BG? Or that BG is just farm food for your realm? What then?

1. We are forced to either follow nameless red dots on a map (I learned to look at each dot 1 at a time as I clicked each new quest, so I could get a sense of what was where)....that very often need a specific pattern to complete solo as they might be grape or red mobs (*which happens far too often for various reasons).

2. There is no pve incentive as with previous server iterations. It was really fun to have xp grind spots and elements of the game supporting this QoL experience. Also, for pvp pve, even with the higher reward and risk of death (random skalds, minstrels, etc), it was hella fun to go out into local frontiers and exp on mobs. We definitely do not have that here.

3. Referring again to the BG experience, which is the main selling point for leveling here, the BGs are terrible - and awesome all at once. You see, if you do get an invite (of course no rogues...right since we still don't know how to properly incentivize players to invite stealth players) on a visible class, there really is no meaningful incentive to fill the group other than a better shot at dealing with an enemy zerg. Someone in a random pug the other day brought up the tiny bonus you get for different classes...if this is even a thing no one seems to care. No one invited a scout at that moment, let me tell you, lol. But that's just rogues - how about everyone else? It comes down to avoiding the zerg, trying to race the zerg to deserters, or building your own zerg if the folks on your realm in that particular BG are listening. The fact that you can take 1 hour or 5 to get 3-4 levels in a BG is a horrible thing to try to predict. It can be fantastic when you are lucky the odds favor your BG realm, or total trash. I've had mostly trash this week, but I do know that when people are on point and logging in, it's great.

To be fair, the weakness of any pvp game has always been when you are outgunned and people just start logging. If there are 2-3 FGs of mids, for example, as there have been in near every BG, and, if the mids are smart enough to BG group (and they are and have been), then trying to get your own three groups of 4 people together on the same page on say, Alb, is horrible. The point is, BGs aren't at all balanced and once that happens, everyone else is fodder. To worsen matters, daoc has always been about group optimization because there are so many little things needed: speed, CC, heals, and the dps to get stuff down before the zerg incs you and farms your group.

People get bummed when they are consistently on the receiving end. There's no incentive to stay, no visible or meaningful bonus to XP/RPs, when we are outnumbered 3 to 1. They log/rage quit, or switch to their mains. There you are at the portal keep /region Any slots for... since LFRVR doesn't seem to hardly do squat. Other than anti-class prejudice, nothing to keep folks in the BG once the farming starts is the inherent weakness of this game.

Summing up, overall, good end game. You can BG zerg, jump in a raid, try to get someone to farm glass/arti skins, do small man, 8 man, KOTH, etc.


But the initial LEVELING user experience is so random that you never know if it's going to be a bad or decent day as a player. I guess complaint here is we either mostly solo pve red dots, or get stuck in being BG farmed. You cannot solo 99% of the time without x archers blowing your face off at their convenience (though someone will always pop in here and talk about how they soloed their minstrel 1-49 in a BG but this is anectdotal).

To improve this experience (down the road?):

1. Create measurable incentives for folks to make a full group. Remember that 1 server where you got bonuses for that?
2. For player friendliness, create measurable incentives for folks to invite different classes, and give a rogue boost. Would it hurt to say give 20% xp to a 7 man team if slot 8 was a rogue class other than minstrel? Of course not. If you reward groups meaningfully for class diversity, then it seems everyone's got a play date.
3. While frontier xp quests are really good - I rarely see anyone go for it - probably in part due to needing a maxed speed class and 50s farming your level 28s, lol. Though, on those 'other' servers, I do recall people going out and following massive mob spawns in groups with HIGH respawn rates. The pvp griefers will have fun smashing us levelers, but the levelers might (as they did on a few other servers) love this as an alternative to the forced BG experience.


Thank you. Dead horse beaten effectively.