Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
with toa i think the artifact encounters were a great addition. you get a group of friends, kill a boss mob, get cool gear, people want this. but the master levels were a bit over the top. from the beginning they should have been similar to the champ levels, do the quest or grind out the xp, your choice. and most of the content should have been designed around the idea that one group could complete the encounter. it is at times hard enough to get 8 people together much less a bg. you want the new levels/abilities available to a majority of the player base. but now at the same time i remember when killing the dragon took a bg and this was indeed cool, a dragon raid didnt happen everyday and was never a guarantee you would kill it. leave the biggest badest mob that hard, just make the gear match the difficulty, if you want the extra edge of the primo gear you put in the work, but you can do just fine with gear you get with a group. i admit this can be hard to balance but other games are doing it, and they have large populations. and yes, for some reason people love quests, i am not one of those people but there are alot of them out there. make the xp for quests higher, and add cool gear as rewards. i know i will get flamed, whatever, but this is how other big name games run and they are full of players, if you want rvr to survive you need a player base, get em in the game then get em in the frontier.
-----signature-----
Badnagen, Chendader, Ethnad,Ruperict, and variations of those names
Last Standing Member of Duillag Bane and Order of Esus
Origionally Hib Nimue, R.I.P. http://gimpchimp.etilader.com/s.php?u=reverendelton
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
poenadare posted:
jhonto posted: TOA had my wife and I literally screaming at the top of our lungs at the sheer stupidity of our realm mates when trying to complete the various tasks. ... TOA made us both HATE our realm mates. There were a few people there that I would love to have been able to reach through the internet and throttle to death for their continued stupidity.
My family's exact experience.
However, not a few years before my family was playing EQ and the exact same thing could be said of Fear Plane raids, etc. Few quit EQ over it. In fact, Sony continued to pump out expansions that required grueling raids. People still ate it up.
There should have been dual tracks to ToA rewards from the beginning. And, I shudder to say it, there should have been more ToA-like expansions every two years.
Ah but then I quit EQ when DAOC came out because it offered solutions to so many things that had annoyed me in EQ at the time. However, I never did the mass raids - and likely never would have.
I actually enjoyed doing the big raids here in DAOC - say 100 people or so hitting Tuscaran Glacier (in the days before battlegroups mind you) or down in the depths of DF - but there was a difference with those: failure didn't very often rest on the actions of one individual. The huge groups of groups could often compensate for a real disaster and survive a total wipe for instance (healers leave group and log, relog in a few mins and start trying to rez etc. Sometimes 1 timely healer was all it took), but in TOA it was often the actions of 1 individual that could cost the entire group. I admit I hated the concept of TOA right from the start so that also provides some bias to me (I am in a myth based fantasy realm of the early middle ages, no wait, what are these Egyptians and people from frikkin Atlantis doing here?. It ignored all the atmosphere of the game developed to that point. True, Shrouded Isles eroded that but it was bearable. TOA positively took a dump on it).
I also don't play WOW because I know the endgame there is also a lot of high end raids, or just tootling around in endless battlegrounds. Not interested.
This game coined the term "End Game", and developed it as a concept in my opinion. EQ probably has some prior art, but this game did a lot for the concept that an MMO was 2 games for most people: leveling up in PvE and then whatever you do at the end. We have a good game at the end - or we did prior to NF at any rate, now I am not so sure.
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
jhonto posted: And that is why our playerbase is so sucktastically small. PvE players are the VAST MAJORITY of all MMO players, PvP players are a tiny percentage by comparison. Get rid of the (at one point) excellent PvE gameplay in this game and you drive off all the players who gave us a great population in the old days. Sure, some of those people also RvRed, being members in both groups, but a lot have left because PvE has been trivialized, and there was no longer a reason to enjoy playing the game.
You can pve in dozens of MMOs. The market is absolutely flooded with MMOs that are pve-centric.
DAOC has one thing that is different than other games...RvR...not pvp but RvR. And the number of people who do competitive multiplayer is in the millions.
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
I'll bet if you did every quest in the game and tuned in all the XP items along the way, you could get 50 without killing a single mob (that wasn't for a quest or XP item drop).
-----signature-----
[3:23:33 PM] Bogle: i like playing wow i dont have to worry about positioning or if theres people on me or casting any other spell other than a heal
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
TheTrueObelus posted:
jhonto posted: And that is why our playerbase is so sucktastically small. PvE players are the VAST MAJORITY of all MMO players, PvP players are a tiny percentage by comparison. Get rid of the (at one point) excellent PvE gameplay in this game and you drive off all the players who gave us a great population in the old days. Sure, some of those people also RvRed, being members in both groups, but a lot have left because PvE has been trivialized, and there was no longer a reason to enjoy playing the game.
You can pve in dozens of MMOs. The market is absolutely flooded with MMOs that are pve-centric.
DAOC has one thing that is different than other games...RvR...not pvp but RvR. And the number of people who do competitive multiplayer is in the millions.
I realize that you can PvE in multiple games, I have played many of them, they also usually feature some form of PvP because they want to engage both types of player (Lord of the Rings Online has its Monster Play for instance, despite 95% of the game being PvE). The PvP in say City of Heroes is IMHO terrible. The Monster play in LOTRO is bearable but not that well developed. The PvP in WOW is from what I hear, not particularly interesting although obviously it does interest some people. The RvR here was fantastic up until NF (although it had lots of problems too) and is still the best available IMHO, despite its current problems.
I wasn't arguing that one or another is better. You have missed the point I think - only a small portion of the player base for MMOs plays PvP. Its not the same crowd that plays FPS, its not the same style of gameplay by a long stretch. If you want an MMO to have a substantial population who pay a substantial amount of money in subscription fees to the company, so that the company will have sufficient funds to do expansions, you need the PvE crowd. Period.
We lost the PvE crowd because the developers turned this into a game that is really only oriented towards the PvP/RvR side. That is a recipe for FAIL, and the game has followed suit. Instead of making the PvE side so easy you can level a 50 in what 9 hrs or so someone said, they should have kept it the same, made us work for our high level characters, mad the rewards for doing so worthwhile (instead of trivializing them). If the PvE was worth engaging in, then there would be more people playing this game.
Now I realize lots of people are here for the RvR and thats it, they hate PvE. For them this is probably perfect. For the VAST majority of players it isn't, whether or not the Pro-PvP types understand that or not. I don't personally like PvE all that much, its rather tedious most of the time, but I recognize that for many people who play MMOs PvE is their preferred gameplay style, and PvP is either something they avoid, or participate in only from time to time. I have said this many times and the standard response is something along the lines of "PvE is stoopid" with no more to back it up than the narrow minded opinion of the poster
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
jhonto posted:
TheTrueObelus posted:
jhonto posted: And that is why our playerbase is so sucktastically small. PvE players are the VAST MAJORITY of all MMO players, PvP players are a tiny percentage by comparison. Get rid of the (at one point) excellent PvE gameplay in this game and you drive off all the players who gave us a great population in the old days. Sure, some of those people also RvRed, being members in both groups, but a lot have left because PvE has been trivialized, and there was no longer a reason to enjoy playing the game.
You can pve in dozens of MMOs. The market is absolutely flooded with MMOs that are pve-centric.
DAOC has one thing that is different than other games...RvR...not pvp but RvR. And the number of people who do competitive multiplayer is in the millions.
I realize that you can PvE in multiple games, I have played many of them, they also usually feature some form of PvP because they want to engage both types of player (Lord of the Rings Online has its Monster Play for instance, despite 95% of the game being PvE). The PvP in say City of Heroes is IMHO terrible. The Monster play in LOTRO is bearable but not that well developed. The PvP in WOW is from what I hear, not particularly interesting although obviously it does interest some people. The RvR here was fantastic up until NF (although it had lots of problems too) and is still the best available IMHO, despite its current problems.
I wasn't arguing that one or another is better. You have missed the point I think - only a small portion of the player base for MMOs plays PvP. Its not the same crowd that plays FPS, its not the same style of gameplay by a long stretch. If you want an MMO to have a substantial population who pay a substantial amount of money in subscription fees to the company, so that the company will have sufficient funds to do expansions, you need the PvE crowd. Period.
[colorurple]I agree with you. Mythic twisted the game so that it caters to the PvP/RvR centric player. Mythic need not have killed the PvE. The game could have had great PvE and unique RvR/PvP. RvR/PvP centric players will put up with some PvE but PvE centric players will not put up with rotten and pointless PvE.
One challenge that both Mythic and the PvP/RvR centric crowd suffer from, they think the percentage of PvP/RvR centric players is tremendously grater than it is. They often have the titanic syndrome too. That is where they love the dramatic feel of a sinking ship and think it is just a wonderful sensation and should be enhanced and improved upon as much as possible. They often ignore the idea that once the ship actually finishes sinking, their fun is completely gone. They often do not see how the game needs PvE money if Mythic is to have enough money to keep the RvR/PvP part of the game alive. The mutual exclusivity often seems to escape them.
[/color]
We lost the PvE crowd because the developers turned this into a game that is really only oriented towards the PvP/RvR side. That is a recipe for FAIL, and the game has followed suit. Instead of making the PvE side so easy you can level a 50 in what 9 hrs or so someone said, they should have kept it the same, made us work for our high level characters, mad the rewards for doing so worthwhile (instead of trivializing them). If the PvE was worth engaging in, then there would be more people playing this game.
[colorurple]I agree that the PvE needed to be challenging and a bit difficult, but the PvE in the game had many problems. One of the greatest was the time sitting to regen. I once ran a test where I took an archer and timed how long the archer was in combat, from first arrow nocked to the moment of sitting, and tracked the time from the moment of sitting to the moment of standing again. I found that it was typical for the sitting to be about 3 times the time spent in combat. For every 5 min fighting you would spend 15 min sitting doing nothing.
Players come to games like DAoC to play, not to sit contemplating their belly button fuzz. The problem with leveling (the grind) in the game was mostly the stupid time sitting doing nothing but when players kept yelling about the stupid grind, Mythic did not have the insight to see the real problem and instead of adding a bit more fun to the existing PvE or instead of adding things to the game that would increase the speed of regen, like food, Mythic eventually killed all PvE and just made leveling so extremely easy the PvE became mostly pointless. Easy mode leveling may please the crowd that loves easy mode but it helped kill the game.[/color]
Now I realize lots of people are here for the RvR and thats it, they hate PvE. For them this is probably perfect. For the VAST majority of players it isn't, whether or not the Pro-PvP types understand that or not. I don't personally like PvE all that much, its rather tedious most of the time, but I recognize that for many people who play MMOs PvE is their preferred gameplay style, and PvP is either something they avoid, or participate in only from time to time. I have said this many times and the standard response is something along the lines of "PvE is stoopid" with no more to back it up than the narrow minded opinion of the poster
[colorurple] Well said. I agree. [/color]
-----signature-----
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is.
Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can,
and keep moving. - Ulysses S. Grant
Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
jhonto posted: ...
good points.
I recall quite a few PvE players had a positive experience in RvR when we had big armies zerging around. There was a big "fun" element for players who weren't hardcore twitch players. We need to seduce those kinds of players back.
-----signature-----
What kind of god would admit to creating us?
-- Pyrrho the Skeptic
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
poenadare posted:
jhonto posted: ...
good points.
I recall quite a few PvE players had a positive experience in RvR when we had big armies zerging around. There was a big "fun" element for players who weren't hardcore twitch players. We need to seduce those kinds of players back.
you cant...
the saying is too little too late...
DAoC already has such a horrible reputation for PVE content that even if mythic were to reverse alot of the changes, and add new content... most people would dismiss any news of the changes and never look into the game again...
i know, no matter what happens at this point, i'll never play again.
becuse even if they add content or change things... i'll just be expecting them to nerf it later when the PVP/RVR crowd started whining.
DAoC is years past being able to have a promising outlook on the future.
Date Posted:1/1/00 12:00amSubject:
Can you quest your way to 50?
MMO Lesson: Players say they want things easy so they can get to the good bit, the reality is they will actually treasure their achievements more if it takes considerable effort to achieve it.
