[GM]Nerf hib or this server will die

[Israfel]

I'm trying to get good at everything I try or like. That's it. I'm not using the time spent as an excuse to be mediocre. You could play 1 hour per day and be good if you tried instead of waiting for the world to do it for you.

That'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...

So 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.
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.

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.

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

[Fin / Valar]

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.

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

I don't know if OF could be a solution, generally I prefer NF but they should remove the water-fight here, that 3d axis is awful, really. Anyway I agree with you that, on a game so old, one should be facilitated to play, not hindered. Phoenix was great also because I was able to get to lvl50 in maybe 12 toons, between Mid and Alb (and a never used 50 Animist) and could have them all templated and ready to use. So I could try stealthers, find the difference between a Scout (OP af on Phoenix) and Hunter, try Skald and Minstrel, Thane healer sham, 2 BD 1 for PvP and 1 for farming and so on....
Here you cannot do this, unless you are some kind of lifeless guy that can stay on Daoc 12hrs a day, because you can almost easily get to 50 but when it comes to endgame PvE and template.....well it's hell on heart. I play since launch, with my casual time yes but it's not so small time dedicated to Eden, and I was just able to get 3 lvl50 toons (RM, BD, Skald) and just ONE of them, the RM, is templated. Now I'm trying to build a generic caster template to share between RM and BD and, even if I already have most of the needed stuff, I will need at least another SH raid to be able to complete it without wasting lots of plats to buy items directly from players merchants.

So, to sum up my points: this server is not casual friendly because the time spent on it makes a lot of difference when it comes to template, because of TOA bonuses and other stuff that reflects on the performance of the toon, starting from a similar player skill level.
Then, some choices have been really weird, and many of them went in the direction of Hibernia with few or unconsistent reasons to do so (we give bards root because yes.... lol). And now we see that the RP gain is quite totally in favor of Hibernia, the most high RRs are all Hibs, the TLWRP are all Hibs (and someone even said that they now are Mids... negating reality). Just have a look at the Herald and tell me if that situation could be considered normal.....

Adding all these factors together got us to the point where the population is about halved and the almost absolute majority of play-style is zerging against empty keeps and solo/small dailies are camped by the FOTM bard/whatever duo or other clearly OP toons (skalds, minst, necros, friars) or stealthzergs....