State of the Game - 1month fresh Eden Player
Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2025 8:08 am
Firstly, I'll start with the good. I'll also try to be as concise as possible.
Good:
A lot of QoL changes here are amazing. The leveling speed is great, and the gearing is great. If you have the time, you can lvl and template a toon VERY quickly, which is nice. I was never one for twinking, and I think twinking ruins a gaming experience in one so heavily focused on PvP, such as this game, so good job on that. Devs focus is to clearly bum rush people to lvl 50 and have them participate in RvR in the frontiers. Cool, I like that. All of the Discord linked systems, being able to buy everything from the website without going to the damn Housing 10/10, absolutely recommend. Adding in additional classes that other freeshards didn't offer is also awesome! There are a lot of amazing things that have been done here. Thank you for all of the hard work you guys have put into the game. This is about the end of where my good is, and I'll move into how this good has made for an incredibly terrible experience in the end-game.
Bad:
Convexly, not allowing people to twink in BG's, bum rushing them to 50 at rr1l8 or 2l0 is, well, bad. Like, terrible. I've tried to xp off, and only lvl via killing people, still not enough to get you where you need to be to actually compete in RvR. General RvR experience for basically any new solo lvl 50 player is as follows: "Oh man! So awesome, I just got my Temp done, time to go have some fun in the frontiers!" *proceeds to nearest NF town, buffs, grabs a quest, and heads out the relic gate to the closest Dock* Dies from 5 rr8+ stealthers right outside of the relic gate. "Huh.. okay. Let's try porting somewhere else to get to a dock to go do one of these quests!" *ports across the frontiers to a different CK and repeats the process* Dies from 7 ranged stealthers after taking 3 steps from CK. Well, fine, guess I will go back and PvE! *Attempts to do things people in LFG are looking to do* Gets kicked for not being "good enough" or not enough RA's/RP's. Now, I will say, this has been a way less common thing here than on other freeshards, but it has happened on more than one occasion. So good job here, Eden peoples! Now, before any of you come in here and start with your jibber jabber about, "jUsT jOiN a GrOuP~hurhurdurdur" I do. I often join the big RvR BG's and surf, or join small man groups to try and get some RP's, most of them are quickly shut down by Hibs. Solo missions? Not gonna happen unless you play at incredibly arbitrary times of the evening/day when the population of the game is in flux between the players of the world, and even then. You're probably going to run into a stealther. Or 10. LOOKING AT YOUR ALBS THAT ALWAYS CAMP GLEN AND OTHER DOCKS WITH 15 GOD DAMN SCOUTS AND MINI'S AND INFS AND CRAP! Speaking of solo. This "solo" community is something else. Quick af to complain about someone adding into their fight, but when they need help, they're screaming at you and calling you a newb. Make. Up. Your. Mind. Also, I'm sorry, but when did it become okay to sit and watch other members of your realm that are in the aforementioned bracket of being lvl 50, rr1-3, getting absolutely roflstomped by a group of stealthers that aren't touching you (for whatever reason no X-Realming here tho), and then you talk shit to the person that got rolfstomped? Ok. Last rant about stealthers, since it's clear you guys don't really like them or want them in game. Don't allow them to group, and if they do, give them a negative multiplier. If they kill someone more than 3 lvls below them, give them a relic icon on the mini-map. I have met maybe 3 people that play a Stealther NOT to just troll people. Cause a majority of you are just sitting in places, killing lowbies, picking of peoples speed in NF and then running away and stealthing, or just griefing for the sake of griefing. You can say what you want, about my stuborness, but I have been camped in DF by the same SB for over 4hrs just trying to kill 1 mob. It made me go Midgard JUST so I didn't have to deal with them. I was lvl 38 at the time, btw. But yeah man, PvP! Something absolutely needs to be done to even out the numbers of people that want to play each realm. Albion is scraping at corpses for people, Midgard has people, but no one can compete with Hibernia. At any given point in time, in the frontiers Hibernia typically outnumbers Albion 5-10:1, and Midgard 3-5:1. New players, like myself, have 0 incentive to participate in any kind of RvR activities, including zerg ones cause the RP's are absolute dogshit in a big ass BG. Spend 6hrs in a BG cruising the frontiers, capped 5 relics, healed for MILLIONS of HP, which btw... that was incredibly umm... interesting.. the decision to not give healers RP's for healing. Now hardly anyone wants to play a pure healer since they have to sit there and get 100rp ticks every 30mins or w.e it is while the people that can even ROOT are getting full kill rp credit. Make it make sense. Mid has an INSANE lack of people playing healers cause they get shit for RP's. Locks get free spreadheal AND can nuke with the best of them to get all them tasty RP's. But like, any Mid will tell you, a Good Healer, like a Bard and Mini, is the cornerstone of any good group. But there is no incentive to play them other than to be wanted, and you get to watch other people get RR's at a rate incredibly disproportionate to yourself. This could all be just an S3 thing, I don't know, I have only been playing on Eden for about a month. When Phoenix tanked, I couldn't do another freeshard for a while.
Point of this giant wall of text is this, nothing has been done to get new players to play and stay and focused on what the Devs want them to focus on. RvR. More often than not, when I log into Alb or Mid, it's a more enjoyable use of my play time to go and have some fun with friends in TG, or HoH, actually get something done in the game with the play time I have instead of dying for 6hrs straight no more than 50ft from a god damned relic gate most of the time. Fuck off stealthers, seriously. I hope they remove every single stealth class from the game, and just remove stealth from Mini's.
Proc Rates are also absolutely wild to me. I don't know if it's RR related, or what, but I can't tell you how many times I will fight someone and every swing of my weapon is a proc. Heal proc, Abla proc, then their weapons have proc'd 19 debuffs on me, and I'm now swinging my 1h sword like a 119yo. Me? HA! I have to pull 10 mobs to see 4 procs out of my armor, and THEN engage in combat cause otherwise, I'm not getting procs. Maybe it's just my luck. Even when I played a Friar, my shit would barely proc. I also seem to get resisted way more than I ever did on Live or any other freeshard. People parrying my side and back styles. Resisting instant casts with a .11% resist chance on a REGULAR basis, enough so that I just went Aug/Mend cause F trying to CC. And no, wasn't SoS or any kind of invul to CC, because my follow up would land, but instants, ha! Block/Parry/Evade chances. Uhh, what? I know I ain't the only one that has faught a VW, Friar, Sneaks, etc, and struggled to land a single hit. Parry, Block, Evade, miss - whatever, rates are insane in RvR. I'm capped block in RvR, and I will have to figure out a way to make a spreadsheet for it, but even with MoB9, Defense Myths, etc. 50s/50sh, I'll have people get through my shield np. BM, Merc, Stealthers, etc - I may hit them? But I have also spent entire fights just trying to land a numb or a slam without hitting shit.
How to fix?
Where am I going with all of this? RR. RR is where I'm going with this. You guys absolutely cannot throw people out into the frontiers like this. I'm all for what you're wanting to do here, but give us SOMETHING to get caught up in. CV is a great BG to do it in. Hell, put it in Leirvik, and make the Leirvik RR cap 4l5 or 5l0 for all I care. But new players need some kind of way to get RR quickly, to whatever set rank you approve of, so that we can actually do stuff. Not everyone has been playing since S1, running with Pilz, and is now a RR9 whatever. Saw a BG the other day with him in it that more NAMED people from an opposing realm than I have ever seen in my life. Is Mid and other realms the same? I only ever saw Prack on Alb, and I don't know if I ever saw anyone named on Mid, but maybe I just always missed them. Hib? Seems like 7/10 people are high enough RR to show their name in the frontiers. What does this do to a new player? Makes them go Hib. Because the path of least resistance will always be favored.
How to fix RR?
1) Probably hella unpopular opinion, BUT, SHARED REALM RANK LVLS ACROSS ALL TOONS ON YOUR REALM. We already have it for tradeskills, this gives people the freedom to build RR and play toons that they want, or that their group(s) need, and not lose any progress on a character that they may actually want to be playing, but can't, because of x-reasons. This can cap, too. Cap it at like RR5 or something. If you've earned RR5 on any toon, any subsequent lvl 50 toons will also be rr5. We can all agree RR5 is a much better starting point for anyone, new, old, complete scrub, whatever - than RR2l0 and a fully templated character. A lot of them don't even have purge or any kind of Det/Charge, hell, even make those kinds of things mandatory as a part of the RR5 "Template." And then give us a few points to play with to do whatever we want.
2) Pick a base RR every newly dinged lvl 50 should be, and they should get it upon dinging lvl 50. Nothing more to say here. 3l0, 3l5, 4l5, 4l1, whatever. Make this based off of the median that everyone is on the shard or something? IDK. I know the overall RR cap is lower atm.
3) Players under a certain RR threshold get increased RP gains, similar to the above, set a threshold, make it accelerated to that threshold.
4) Create a BG that you HAVE to be lvl50 and UNDER a certain RR to join. Provide RR catchup missions and quests similar to those in the frontiers to get people more familiar with the systems being used in the frontiers. Even with reading and people trying to explain it to me, the mission systems can be confusing to new players, and expecting a veteran to always hand hold through everything gets old to the veterans quick. Implement the above stipulations, still a win win. People PvP, people learn their class, the systems they will have in the frontiers, and most of all, the ability to feel like they're competing.
5) Make RvR easier to get templated from. If your focus is RvR, a new player has spent their entire lvling journey through the BG's acquiring BP's to buy gear, and then all of the sudden at lvl 50, I have to do these quests, raid, get currency, convert the currency, buy my gear, then run into the above frustrations, wtf is the point? Also, you guys have the ability, every single BG should have a gear vendor. Stopping when it does is dumb, and y'all know it's dumb. Or it has been orchestrated that way. Which is also dumb. Know what happens to a lot of new players? They spend a lot of time getting Molvik Gear, thinking that because it's the last set of gear from a PVP BATTLEGROUND, that they'll be good for a little bit. But then to some degree, they're not even okay in Leirvik, and definitely not okay in CV, and 1000000% not okay in NF. But they gots the best vendor pvp gear possible! And then they see the Bounty Vendors with not even full sets of gear and go.. "Huh.. so like.. I could have NOT spent all of those points in Molvik and gotten 1 piece of gear from here? After 50 lvls of quests and grinding in the BG's, the MOST BP's I have ever had was ~2100. Most people will tell you to buy speed and a boat, that's 1500 of your BP's gone. Leaving 600 for nothing. Padding if you want. Also, why is padding relegated to RR? Just flex a symbol? Seems a silly thing to have as a flex symbol of all things, especially with all of the obnoxious wings people have running around. The armor graphics for this game are incredible. Still better than most games to this day. Locking them behind RR5 to look like they do on Live is questionable. Something else could be given as a reward for the RR's, and y'all know it.
6) Least popular opinion of all, regular RP resets. Or balances to even the playing field. One of those balances? Widen the relic gates. Put more guards in, something. Devs, I know you look at this game, and the community and health therein, and I know you see what I'm talking about here. No one realm should be able to fend off as hard as they do. The width of these gates is one of the problems.
7) Make relic caps reward insanely more RP's than they do now proportionate to the realm rank of the person. Know what sucks? Going on an epic fuckin mission that takes 1.5 hours to get a relic, get on a boat, dodge boat bombers, take a millions years oaring through the Irish Sea, running back an object of PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER OF THE ENEMY REALM! Waiting 10 minutes for people to GET to the spot the relic is getting capped at, and then getting... .3 bubs of RR xp at RR2. For a lot of newer people, this entire event is brought up as like the most epic culmination of PvP to ever happen. Relic Raids are STILL talked about in WoW and many other MMO's. But I got .3 bubs of RP? Ok. Cool. For lower realm ranks, like when Gildara, Wintyr, or any of the Hib PvE Leaders (I do not know any of you, cause I haven't rolled Hib on Eden) hear this call to action, they should flock to it for the promise of getting an entire Realm Rank, or 1/2 of a Realm Rank on the way up to a designated RR. Otherwise, no one cares. We had 200+ mids in Hibland the other night, and were held off by Hibs, because well.. what's the point really? We could fight for 3 hours to push through, sure? But why? What's the reward in the long run for doing that? Another relic capture count? Can't tell you how many people I see avoiding this entire thing because it's just not worth it to them. Make the most exciting thing in RvR worth more than grief and bragging rights.
8) Healers need RP's from Healing. Otherwise, why even have a healing class and expect them to RvR and Heal instead of whatever they wanna do?
9) RA group balance "buff" - What do I mean here? Well, want it to not matter than people in your group are RR3 and lvl50? Group them with a higher RR person, and they get a boon, based off of the missing boons that other people have to make them "feel" more competitive. Someone in your group have Det9? Guess what buddy, you do now, too. Can also use this to build crazier groups since everyone wouldn't be focused on having to build the same shit initially just to attempt to be competitive. Also makes it so that there can be more of a focus on 8-man, and small man play. Allows for more creative setups, and for everyone to not have to go through the bullshit of getting their defensive RA's first before being able to do anything.
10) Last suggestion here, losely ties into the above. Set minimum RA Rank to whatever is needed for minimum defensive stuff in RvR. LW1, Purge 2, Det6 (not gonna ask for 9 in this scenario), AoM4, Charge - all of these should be provided and the minimum RR achieved from this granted. OR make some of these passives, and have us finish out the rest of their respective effects through RR acquisition.
Not everyone started playing this when y'all released, and while no one that HAS been should be punished, unless you want this game turning out like other freeshards, something needs to be done to give new players a boost and actually want to keep playing the game instead of rage logging when they can't do shit.
PvE:
1) /level 50 should definitely be a thing in the current state. If any implementations are done to increase RP gains or whatever, sure, turn it off. Don't want a bunch of people just making toons, /level 50 and getting their RR5 abilities or whatever, doing shit, puting their gear in the bank, deleting, and doing it again. But now? You're basically sending people out into NF at lvl 50 and 1l1. Sooo... why are you making people go through the leveling process to begin with? New players need people to blah blah blah? Know what happens to new players? They get steam rolled by pre-made groups of people wanting to play new classes, since this server was very clearly designed to force people into lvling in the BG's and NF zones. It's not even a competition. Not even for CL xp at lvl 50. CL5 dungeon mobs give almost 1/2 the xp a yellow/oj mob in NF gives for CL xp. Can solo grind Deserters and net better xp solo than solo any place else I have found, as a Non-Friar. Problem? Always camped. Roaming groups just killing people killing deserters, and stealthers. Why force us to lvl all over again every single time? I did it once at a highly accelerated rate, what's a command after doing it?
2) NF/BG/RvR Missions should net more currency and should give credit for the raids needed in a lot of templates. Leave the option for people to still do the PvE stuff that want to do it. Draco and Phoenix are aggressively boring encounters mechanic wise, but you're fighting constellations, and beams of light to save the multiverse. It's awesome. You can buy ML completion credit with BP's and glass on Live, why can't we here? You want us to RvR, yet force us to PvE to RvR, but don't net the best stuff from RvR? Wild to me. I get it's an MMO, and there's a lot to do, but your focus here is pretty obvious. Help us help you?
3) Add more ports. You know exactly where on every realm. Please. It would make for all of the non-sensical traveling you want us to do for gearing PvE to RvR much less of a pain. Every single dungeon, raid, and major quest hub should have a porter.
4) Bring PvE quest experience and travel up to be commensurate with Des runs in BG's. The world of DAoC is beautiful. We all have screenshots in our folders and on floppy's of sunsets in Pennine, or snowfalls in Raum, dancing faeries in Tir Na Nog - I RARELY see anyone doing the "Insert_Name_Here Exploration Quests" Not only that, they're all over creation. Unless you're playing a class with speed, it's gonna be a bad time. Period. The paths designed for the mobs are like a 2yo was given a crayon and was like, "Alright, honey, now draw me a picture!" and at the apex of every criss-cross on the picture, those were the mobs chosen. I'm sure this wasn't y'all fault, but just my feedback on it. Jacobs did it, and we're paying for it.
5) PvE has no point, other than an inconvenience, and a trite to deal with. Make it mean something. Give us BP/RP scrolls for doing TG, Galla, etc. We already have to do it for gear for RvR, so like.. Help us out? Just add in a 1realm point scroll to every epic dungeon, SH, and DF - cap it to something like RR4 or RR5, whatever. I don't want people to PvE and be good at RvR, but just have a leg up in the fight.
6) Take another look at Mob scaling. Again, with some of the above feedback, why do I also then have to gather multiple groups of people to do PvE quests to get gear that I need to do RvR, that I will most likely end up soloing in cause I'm not a desired class? Scaling, especially on some of the later higher end quests is nuckin futs. Not sure if intended this way, but yeah, it gets bad. No, I don't want to solo TG and the Epic Dragons, but provide in some kind of workaround for those that don't have a lot of play time, but still choose to spend our free time here on this wonderful freeshard you've given us, still give us a length quest chain to follow, with everything being able to be completed in 1 group. Dragon death(s) included. ToA is also insanely scaled. I think I see the intent here, but like.. why on some of these encounters? Staff of the God is so fucked up because of the changes. Other encounters can be solo'd by a Friar but are a struggle for a full group. I think a majority of the players are happy with the cosmetic stuff, and we don't necessarily want the actual Artifact Equipment, but vanity is King.
7) Epic Quest Locations: ...really? I mean, I get it. I do. But really? The NF ones are almost always camped by stealthers or roaming groups that are only there for the sole purpose of killing people doing those quests. Also, see my above comments, RvR is the focus - but doing all of this PvE in RvR areas without any kind of buffer or protection from griefers is... questionable. Every Frontier should contain all 3 mobs. The design of the quest was to teach people the frontiers. As it sits now, all the quest does for a lot of people is make them ragequit until they have the courage to log back in and ask for help for 2hrs to get it done. Also, their locations. All leaving them in these locations does is request griefing to be done.
8) Realm Speed thinger needs its cast time reduced by like.. a lot. A lot a lot.
All-in-all, I think you guys have done a pretty great job here. EA doesn't deserve any of our money at this point. So as far as I'm concerned, you're doing the Lord's work here providing this to us free of charge. Obviously, I do have some thoughts on the current state of things, especially as a new player to Eden, but not to DAoC. Thanks for reading this, Devs! If you had the time. Hopefully this wall of text didn't crit your eyes too hard. <3
Good:
A lot of QoL changes here are amazing. The leveling speed is great, and the gearing is great. If you have the time, you can lvl and template a toon VERY quickly, which is nice. I was never one for twinking, and I think twinking ruins a gaming experience in one so heavily focused on PvP, such as this game, so good job on that. Devs focus is to clearly bum rush people to lvl 50 and have them participate in RvR in the frontiers. Cool, I like that. All of the Discord linked systems, being able to buy everything from the website without going to the damn Housing 10/10, absolutely recommend. Adding in additional classes that other freeshards didn't offer is also awesome! There are a lot of amazing things that have been done here. Thank you for all of the hard work you guys have put into the game. This is about the end of where my good is, and I'll move into how this good has made for an incredibly terrible experience in the end-game.
Bad:
Convexly, not allowing people to twink in BG's, bum rushing them to 50 at rr1l8 or 2l0 is, well, bad. Like, terrible. I've tried to xp off, and only lvl via killing people, still not enough to get you where you need to be to actually compete in RvR. General RvR experience for basically any new solo lvl 50 player is as follows: "Oh man! So awesome, I just got my Temp done, time to go have some fun in the frontiers!" *proceeds to nearest NF town, buffs, grabs a quest, and heads out the relic gate to the closest Dock* Dies from 5 rr8+ stealthers right outside of the relic gate. "Huh.. okay. Let's try porting somewhere else to get to a dock to go do one of these quests!" *ports across the frontiers to a different CK and repeats the process* Dies from 7 ranged stealthers after taking 3 steps from CK. Well, fine, guess I will go back and PvE! *Attempts to do things people in LFG are looking to do* Gets kicked for not being "good enough" or not enough RA's/RP's. Now, I will say, this has been a way less common thing here than on other freeshards, but it has happened on more than one occasion. So good job here, Eden peoples! Now, before any of you come in here and start with your jibber jabber about, "jUsT jOiN a GrOuP~hurhurdurdur" I do. I often join the big RvR BG's and surf, or join small man groups to try and get some RP's, most of them are quickly shut down by Hibs. Solo missions? Not gonna happen unless you play at incredibly arbitrary times of the evening/day when the population of the game is in flux between the players of the world, and even then. You're probably going to run into a stealther. Or 10. LOOKING AT YOUR ALBS THAT ALWAYS CAMP GLEN AND OTHER DOCKS WITH 15 GOD DAMN SCOUTS AND MINI'S AND INFS AND CRAP! Speaking of solo. This "solo" community is something else. Quick af to complain about someone adding into their fight, but when they need help, they're screaming at you and calling you a newb. Make. Up. Your. Mind. Also, I'm sorry, but when did it become okay to sit and watch other members of your realm that are in the aforementioned bracket of being lvl 50, rr1-3, getting absolutely roflstomped by a group of stealthers that aren't touching you (for whatever reason no X-Realming here tho), and then you talk shit to the person that got rolfstomped? Ok. Last rant about stealthers, since it's clear you guys don't really like them or want them in game. Don't allow them to group, and if they do, give them a negative multiplier. If they kill someone more than 3 lvls below them, give them a relic icon on the mini-map. I have met maybe 3 people that play a Stealther NOT to just troll people. Cause a majority of you are just sitting in places, killing lowbies, picking of peoples speed in NF and then running away and stealthing, or just griefing for the sake of griefing. You can say what you want, about my stuborness, but I have been camped in DF by the same SB for over 4hrs just trying to kill 1 mob. It made me go Midgard JUST so I didn't have to deal with them. I was lvl 38 at the time, btw. But yeah man, PvP! Something absolutely needs to be done to even out the numbers of people that want to play each realm. Albion is scraping at corpses for people, Midgard has people, but no one can compete with Hibernia. At any given point in time, in the frontiers Hibernia typically outnumbers Albion 5-10:1, and Midgard 3-5:1. New players, like myself, have 0 incentive to participate in any kind of RvR activities, including zerg ones cause the RP's are absolute dogshit in a big ass BG. Spend 6hrs in a BG cruising the frontiers, capped 5 relics, healed for MILLIONS of HP, which btw... that was incredibly umm... interesting.. the decision to not give healers RP's for healing. Now hardly anyone wants to play a pure healer since they have to sit there and get 100rp ticks every 30mins or w.e it is while the people that can even ROOT are getting full kill rp credit. Make it make sense. Mid has an INSANE lack of people playing healers cause they get shit for RP's. Locks get free spreadheal AND can nuke with the best of them to get all them tasty RP's. But like, any Mid will tell you, a Good Healer, like a Bard and Mini, is the cornerstone of any good group. But there is no incentive to play them other than to be wanted, and you get to watch other people get RR's at a rate incredibly disproportionate to yourself. This could all be just an S3 thing, I don't know, I have only been playing on Eden for about a month. When Phoenix tanked, I couldn't do another freeshard for a while.
Point of this giant wall of text is this, nothing has been done to get new players to play and stay and focused on what the Devs want them to focus on. RvR. More often than not, when I log into Alb or Mid, it's a more enjoyable use of my play time to go and have some fun with friends in TG, or HoH, actually get something done in the game with the play time I have instead of dying for 6hrs straight no more than 50ft from a god damned relic gate most of the time. Fuck off stealthers, seriously. I hope they remove every single stealth class from the game, and just remove stealth from Mini's.
Proc Rates are also absolutely wild to me. I don't know if it's RR related, or what, but I can't tell you how many times I will fight someone and every swing of my weapon is a proc. Heal proc, Abla proc, then their weapons have proc'd 19 debuffs on me, and I'm now swinging my 1h sword like a 119yo. Me? HA! I have to pull 10 mobs to see 4 procs out of my armor, and THEN engage in combat cause otherwise, I'm not getting procs. Maybe it's just my luck. Even when I played a Friar, my shit would barely proc. I also seem to get resisted way more than I ever did on Live or any other freeshard. People parrying my side and back styles. Resisting instant casts with a .11% resist chance on a REGULAR basis, enough so that I just went Aug/Mend cause F trying to CC. And no, wasn't SoS or any kind of invul to CC, because my follow up would land, but instants, ha! Block/Parry/Evade chances. Uhh, what? I know I ain't the only one that has faught a VW, Friar, Sneaks, etc, and struggled to land a single hit. Parry, Block, Evade, miss - whatever, rates are insane in RvR. I'm capped block in RvR, and I will have to figure out a way to make a spreadsheet for it, but even with MoB9, Defense Myths, etc. 50s/50sh, I'll have people get through my shield np. BM, Merc, Stealthers, etc - I may hit them? But I have also spent entire fights just trying to land a numb or a slam without hitting shit.
How to fix?
Where am I going with all of this? RR. RR is where I'm going with this. You guys absolutely cannot throw people out into the frontiers like this. I'm all for what you're wanting to do here, but give us SOMETHING to get caught up in. CV is a great BG to do it in. Hell, put it in Leirvik, and make the Leirvik RR cap 4l5 or 5l0 for all I care. But new players need some kind of way to get RR quickly, to whatever set rank you approve of, so that we can actually do stuff. Not everyone has been playing since S1, running with Pilz, and is now a RR9 whatever. Saw a BG the other day with him in it that more NAMED people from an opposing realm than I have ever seen in my life. Is Mid and other realms the same? I only ever saw Prack on Alb, and I don't know if I ever saw anyone named on Mid, but maybe I just always missed them. Hib? Seems like 7/10 people are high enough RR to show their name in the frontiers. What does this do to a new player? Makes them go Hib. Because the path of least resistance will always be favored.
How to fix RR?
1) Probably hella unpopular opinion, BUT, SHARED REALM RANK LVLS ACROSS ALL TOONS ON YOUR REALM. We already have it for tradeskills, this gives people the freedom to build RR and play toons that they want, or that their group(s) need, and not lose any progress on a character that they may actually want to be playing, but can't, because of x-reasons. This can cap, too. Cap it at like RR5 or something. If you've earned RR5 on any toon, any subsequent lvl 50 toons will also be rr5. We can all agree RR5 is a much better starting point for anyone, new, old, complete scrub, whatever - than RR2l0 and a fully templated character. A lot of them don't even have purge or any kind of Det/Charge, hell, even make those kinds of things mandatory as a part of the RR5 "Template." And then give us a few points to play with to do whatever we want.
2) Pick a base RR every newly dinged lvl 50 should be, and they should get it upon dinging lvl 50. Nothing more to say here. 3l0, 3l5, 4l5, 4l1, whatever. Make this based off of the median that everyone is on the shard or something? IDK. I know the overall RR cap is lower atm.
3) Players under a certain RR threshold get increased RP gains, similar to the above, set a threshold, make it accelerated to that threshold.
4) Create a BG that you HAVE to be lvl50 and UNDER a certain RR to join. Provide RR catchup missions and quests similar to those in the frontiers to get people more familiar with the systems being used in the frontiers. Even with reading and people trying to explain it to me, the mission systems can be confusing to new players, and expecting a veteran to always hand hold through everything gets old to the veterans quick. Implement the above stipulations, still a win win. People PvP, people learn their class, the systems they will have in the frontiers, and most of all, the ability to feel like they're competing.
5) Make RvR easier to get templated from. If your focus is RvR, a new player has spent their entire lvling journey through the BG's acquiring BP's to buy gear, and then all of the sudden at lvl 50, I have to do these quests, raid, get currency, convert the currency, buy my gear, then run into the above frustrations, wtf is the point? Also, you guys have the ability, every single BG should have a gear vendor. Stopping when it does is dumb, and y'all know it's dumb. Or it has been orchestrated that way. Which is also dumb. Know what happens to a lot of new players? They spend a lot of time getting Molvik Gear, thinking that because it's the last set of gear from a PVP BATTLEGROUND, that they'll be good for a little bit. But then to some degree, they're not even okay in Leirvik, and definitely not okay in CV, and 1000000% not okay in NF. But they gots the best vendor pvp gear possible! And then they see the Bounty Vendors with not even full sets of gear and go.. "Huh.. so like.. I could have NOT spent all of those points in Molvik and gotten 1 piece of gear from here? After 50 lvls of quests and grinding in the BG's, the MOST BP's I have ever had was ~2100. Most people will tell you to buy speed and a boat, that's 1500 of your BP's gone. Leaving 600 for nothing. Padding if you want. Also, why is padding relegated to RR? Just flex a symbol? Seems a silly thing to have as a flex symbol of all things, especially with all of the obnoxious wings people have running around. The armor graphics for this game are incredible. Still better than most games to this day. Locking them behind RR5 to look like they do on Live is questionable. Something else could be given as a reward for the RR's, and y'all know it.
6) Least popular opinion of all, regular RP resets. Or balances to even the playing field. One of those balances? Widen the relic gates. Put more guards in, something. Devs, I know you look at this game, and the community and health therein, and I know you see what I'm talking about here. No one realm should be able to fend off as hard as they do. The width of these gates is one of the problems.
7) Make relic caps reward insanely more RP's than they do now proportionate to the realm rank of the person. Know what sucks? Going on an epic fuckin mission that takes 1.5 hours to get a relic, get on a boat, dodge boat bombers, take a millions years oaring through the Irish Sea, running back an object of PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER OF THE ENEMY REALM! Waiting 10 minutes for people to GET to the spot the relic is getting capped at, and then getting... .3 bubs of RR xp at RR2. For a lot of newer people, this entire event is brought up as like the most epic culmination of PvP to ever happen. Relic Raids are STILL talked about in WoW and many other MMO's. But I got .3 bubs of RP? Ok. Cool. For lower realm ranks, like when Gildara, Wintyr, or any of the Hib PvE Leaders (I do not know any of you, cause I haven't rolled Hib on Eden) hear this call to action, they should flock to it for the promise of getting an entire Realm Rank, or 1/2 of a Realm Rank on the way up to a designated RR. Otherwise, no one cares. We had 200+ mids in Hibland the other night, and were held off by Hibs, because well.. what's the point really? We could fight for 3 hours to push through, sure? But why? What's the reward in the long run for doing that? Another relic capture count? Can't tell you how many people I see avoiding this entire thing because it's just not worth it to them. Make the most exciting thing in RvR worth more than grief and bragging rights.
8) Healers need RP's from Healing. Otherwise, why even have a healing class and expect them to RvR and Heal instead of whatever they wanna do?
9) RA group balance "buff" - What do I mean here? Well, want it to not matter than people in your group are RR3 and lvl50? Group them with a higher RR person, and they get a boon, based off of the missing boons that other people have to make them "feel" more competitive. Someone in your group have Det9? Guess what buddy, you do now, too. Can also use this to build crazier groups since everyone wouldn't be focused on having to build the same shit initially just to attempt to be competitive. Also makes it so that there can be more of a focus on 8-man, and small man play. Allows for more creative setups, and for everyone to not have to go through the bullshit of getting their defensive RA's first before being able to do anything.
10) Last suggestion here, losely ties into the above. Set minimum RA Rank to whatever is needed for minimum defensive stuff in RvR. LW1, Purge 2, Det6 (not gonna ask for 9 in this scenario), AoM4, Charge - all of these should be provided and the minimum RR achieved from this granted. OR make some of these passives, and have us finish out the rest of their respective effects through RR acquisition.
Not everyone started playing this when y'all released, and while no one that HAS been should be punished, unless you want this game turning out like other freeshards, something needs to be done to give new players a boost and actually want to keep playing the game instead of rage logging when they can't do shit.
PvE:
1) /level 50 should definitely be a thing in the current state. If any implementations are done to increase RP gains or whatever, sure, turn it off. Don't want a bunch of people just making toons, /level 50 and getting their RR5 abilities or whatever, doing shit, puting their gear in the bank, deleting, and doing it again. But now? You're basically sending people out into NF at lvl 50 and 1l1. Sooo... why are you making people go through the leveling process to begin with? New players need people to blah blah blah? Know what happens to new players? They get steam rolled by pre-made groups of people wanting to play new classes, since this server was very clearly designed to force people into lvling in the BG's and NF zones. It's not even a competition. Not even for CL xp at lvl 50. CL5 dungeon mobs give almost 1/2 the xp a yellow/oj mob in NF gives for CL xp. Can solo grind Deserters and net better xp solo than solo any place else I have found, as a Non-Friar. Problem? Always camped. Roaming groups just killing people killing deserters, and stealthers. Why force us to lvl all over again every single time? I did it once at a highly accelerated rate, what's a command after doing it?
2) NF/BG/RvR Missions should net more currency and should give credit for the raids needed in a lot of templates. Leave the option for people to still do the PvE stuff that want to do it. Draco and Phoenix are aggressively boring encounters mechanic wise, but you're fighting constellations, and beams of light to save the multiverse. It's awesome. You can buy ML completion credit with BP's and glass on Live, why can't we here? You want us to RvR, yet force us to PvE to RvR, but don't net the best stuff from RvR? Wild to me. I get it's an MMO, and there's a lot to do, but your focus here is pretty obvious. Help us help you?
3) Add more ports. You know exactly where on every realm. Please. It would make for all of the non-sensical traveling you want us to do for gearing PvE to RvR much less of a pain. Every single dungeon, raid, and major quest hub should have a porter.
4) Bring PvE quest experience and travel up to be commensurate with Des runs in BG's. The world of DAoC is beautiful. We all have screenshots in our folders and on floppy's of sunsets in Pennine, or snowfalls in Raum, dancing faeries in Tir Na Nog - I RARELY see anyone doing the "Insert_Name_Here Exploration Quests" Not only that, they're all over creation. Unless you're playing a class with speed, it's gonna be a bad time. Period. The paths designed for the mobs are like a 2yo was given a crayon and was like, "Alright, honey, now draw me a picture!" and at the apex of every criss-cross on the picture, those were the mobs chosen. I'm sure this wasn't y'all fault, but just my feedback on it. Jacobs did it, and we're paying for it.
5) PvE has no point, other than an inconvenience, and a trite to deal with. Make it mean something. Give us BP/RP scrolls for doing TG, Galla, etc. We already have to do it for gear for RvR, so like.. Help us out? Just add in a 1realm point scroll to every epic dungeon, SH, and DF - cap it to something like RR4 or RR5, whatever. I don't want people to PvE and be good at RvR, but just have a leg up in the fight.
6) Take another look at Mob scaling. Again, with some of the above feedback, why do I also then have to gather multiple groups of people to do PvE quests to get gear that I need to do RvR, that I will most likely end up soloing in cause I'm not a desired class? Scaling, especially on some of the later higher end quests is nuckin futs. Not sure if intended this way, but yeah, it gets bad. No, I don't want to solo TG and the Epic Dragons, but provide in some kind of workaround for those that don't have a lot of play time, but still choose to spend our free time here on this wonderful freeshard you've given us, still give us a length quest chain to follow, with everything being able to be completed in 1 group. Dragon death(s) included. ToA is also insanely scaled. I think I see the intent here, but like.. why on some of these encounters? Staff of the God is so fucked up because of the changes. Other encounters can be solo'd by a Friar but are a struggle for a full group. I think a majority of the players are happy with the cosmetic stuff, and we don't necessarily want the actual Artifact Equipment, but vanity is King.
7) Epic Quest Locations: ...really? I mean, I get it. I do. But really? The NF ones are almost always camped by stealthers or roaming groups that are only there for the sole purpose of killing people doing those quests. Also, see my above comments, RvR is the focus - but doing all of this PvE in RvR areas without any kind of buffer or protection from griefers is... questionable. Every Frontier should contain all 3 mobs. The design of the quest was to teach people the frontiers. As it sits now, all the quest does for a lot of people is make them ragequit until they have the courage to log back in and ask for help for 2hrs to get it done. Also, their locations. All leaving them in these locations does is request griefing to be done.
8) Realm Speed thinger needs its cast time reduced by like.. a lot. A lot a lot.
All-in-all, I think you guys have done a pretty great job here. EA doesn't deserve any of our money at this point. So as far as I'm concerned, you're doing the Lord's work here providing this to us free of charge. Obviously, I do have some thoughts on the current state of things, especially as a new player to Eden, but not to DAoC. Thanks for reading this, Devs! If you had the time. Hopefully this wall of text didn't crit your eyes too hard. <3
