Might be a good place to start really. The key is making sure that the maximium amount of people have fun rather then the elite minimum. When the masses get farmed, the find something else like WoW to play where they don't get farmed all night long...and the rest of us are left with *crickets*

 

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No you dont. You liking someone does not constitute a majority of people liking it. You must think an awful lot of your opinion.

 

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Really don't think Mythic will even care about this. Your wasting time with it instead of playing DAOC1.

 

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While you describe what EA tends to do and you describe how EA sometimes runs its business, a truly successful business does not operate with the premise, “Their job is to squeeze as much money out of us while investing as little as possible to continue to do it.” Failing businesses often tend to follow that paradigm but not most successful ones.


Making a profit is part of the workings of any good business but a good business also caters to the needs of the customer. If a business is managed efficiently, limits waste, keeps the employees reasonably happy and well trained and provides a service the customers find valuable enough that the customer is happy to pay substantial sums of money to obtain the product/service, that is a successful business model.


Mythic on the other hand followed your model of squeezing as much out of the customer while: spending as little as possible to provide player friendly features, spending as little as possible fixing old bugs, spending as little as possible etc. . . Looking at Mythic using your business model we now see the results of what could have been one of the more popular MMOs in history.


Mythic followed your model and Mythic failed.


EA on the other hand dumped huge amounts of money onto MJ’s lap to assist MJ in finishing WAR. So EA does not always follow your concept of how businesses operate.


Unfortunately EA does not seem to understand the MMO customer and EA does not understand that DAoC is not dieing but was killed. It would seem that when EA does not understand why something is failing they tend to fall back on a default of using your paradigm and milking things to death.



That is a great sound bite but it is often used as an excuse, spouted by MMO developers when they decide to take the easy route and ignore work that needs to be done.


It is true that no game is ever perfect, but DAoC is so tremendously problem riddled that the above sound bite is not a good fit. DAoC has so many stupid bugs, needs so many features updated, is so eclectic in its hodgepodge current state that DAoC has shifted from a brilliantly developed game with huge potential into a dieing game.





Many players once loved DAoC. DAoC was twisted to cater to the MINORITY and DAoC was neglected. Both of those things contributed to the demise of DAoC.



There is some truth in the above but . . .


“To make DAoC or a successor truly work, you have to cater to the” majority, not the minority. Catering to the minority has driven DAoC to the brink of oblivion. Also, among the majority there will be both the good player and “the bad player”. It is not just the minority that has bad players.


One thing that most of the existing minority players totally fail to comprehend is that if Mythic catered to the majority (catered to the typical MMO player) then DAoC would be thriving and all players would be having more fun then they have now.



The above is somewhat true and I mostly agree.


Players do not mind dieing, well they do not like it but they understand it. What player hate, players hate dieing to what almost seems like god-mode powers that the enemy may have. Give a player a bow and arrow and then put that player up against others that have M1A1 tanks and those with the bow and arrow will quickly depart the game. Most players that die to superior skill can accept their loss/death/defeat, but most players hate dieing to overpowered abilities/trinkets/buttons/timers/etc . . . .


One reason that TOA was so “suctastic”, because it contributed to the elitism. TOA totally upset the balance of power, which was something purposefully done by Mythic in an attempt to sell expansion packs. It was not just TOA that Mythic used to pander to the players dark side, Mythic used every expansion pack in that way.





I would disagree and agree with parts of the above comment. I agree that game developers should not cater to the elite but they also should not cater to the zerg.


Many players that zerg are not in the zerg by choice. They would rather not zerg. Catering to what most players would rather not do, that is not the way to save DAoC or DAoCs successor.


Back before SI, and for a short time after SI, a level 45-48 player could show up to a portal ceremony and be invited to a group without ever spamming LFG. That is not the game we have today.


Many that zerg today are not even in a group, or they get a group after moving in with the zerg and spam LFG over and over and over and over. . . . ad nauseam. Developers catering to that which many players hate, that is not the way to build a great subscription base.


The zerg has its place in the game, as does the elite 8-man group, as do many other play styles. To build a successful successor to DAoC, many different play styles need to be considered and many different play styles need to have their place in the game.


Today’s DAoC has been twisted to cater to a very limited play style; others that are not part of the minority/limited play style have formed their own bastardized play styles in an attempt to remain a part of the game.

 

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A DAoC 2 won't be DAoC 1 and that's what people really want. The boat sailed, unlikely there will ever be another one.

Wow blast from the past. You led so many zergs on your cleric!

 

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Dark Age of Camelot Remastered


1. A Postal System (mailbox). To be able to mail things to your other characters would save alot of time and pain.

Relying on other players to make a trade is too risky. No need for an Auction House though.

The Housing System and Merchants work great.

2. A UI that's more user friendly with lots of utilitys and features.

3. A Looting System simular to the one used in WoW & WaR.

4. A Party/WarBand Grouping System simular to the one used in WaR.

http://img201.imageshack.us/f/featuresi.jpg/

5. A Layout Editor so the UI can be tweeked to the players gaming style.

6. Have combat interupts, but with only a 1sec reset as opposed to the 3sec reset we have now.

7. A 15plat mount should move alot faster than a 1plat mount. Max price mounts should go faster than Speed of the Realm and Sprint.

8. Being able to jump about and have instant responce time while fighting would help greatly.

9. Have a Rez-Sickness for PvE, but not for any type of RvR.

10. No speed difference between PvE zones and RvR zones or in and out of combat.

11. No battlegrounds past max level and no instance battlegrounds at all.

12. Path of Conflict (RvR), Catacombs (1-50), and Task Dungeons (1-50).

13. Instance Dungeons with a minimum and maximum level restriction.

1. Levels (15-20) group of (8) Leveling Experience Increased

2. Levels (25-30) group of (8) Leveling Experience Increased

3. Levels (35-40) group of (8) Leveling Experience Increased

Quest for each dungeon awards you with a gear set for your class.

14. Epic Quests 1-9. Have Epic Quest (9) at level 45 for final gear set.

15. Aurulite and Seals are to be used to purchace accessories only.

16. Trials of Atlantas for Master Level Encounters and Raids.

17. A templating system to personalize your character's armor and weapons.

18. Guild Heraldry can be displayed on Cloak and Shields. All cloaks are to be hooded.

19. All armor and weapons are able to be dyed any color.

20. Have 3 engame RvR zones, DF, LAB and NF.

21. No Minotaur as a playable race and the class Mauler given to Midgard to even the class numbers.

22. A mouseover system so you can tell what class, level or type of object is in the distance.

23. A level system insted of con or all friendlies should have same color title regardless of level.


Some of which is the same, but much is needed to be added and altered.

This is or the next DAOC or to remaster this one.


Yes I know the bugs and lag needs to be fixed above all else. ( )

 

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I agree with much of what you said, even though you seemed to disagree with me. When I said that the minority should be catered to, it was a typo...that's simply bad business. You have to cater to the majority of players pure and simple, and that majority was never the "elite" in the heydey of DAoC.

Now you ask yourself what the majority of players are, and the answer is, well bad players. THAT is what you have to cater to...because if you don't they'll find something else to do, and you lose money. That's what I meant by catering to the zerg. The bottom line is, you could take 90% of the players in this game into a rr13 completely optimized toon, build a completely optimized group and they'd still get spanked by the organized 8 mans out there, and it would happen repeatedly.

Is that surprising? No. Is it fair? Yes, those guys are winning on skill. Is it good for the game? No, it isn't because the minority really don't stand a chance. End game 8v8 has turned into a profession...it's so complicated as to when to use timers, when to drop that etc that people should be paid for doing it.

The elite like it this way, because they are good at it. Your average player is not. The average player doesn't want more buttons to push. They work all day, come home and want to spend a few hours playing a game, not working a second job that they don't get paid for.

Solo is the same if not worse. You make a mistake solo, and you release...if you aren't out there getting stomped into the ground by 8mans and small mans...which will be frustrating for the causal, bad player.

So if 8 man is out, and smallman/solo is out for the casual or bad player, what's that leave? Zergs.

Now if you want to cater to multiple play styles, you're going to have to dumb things down like they were in the old days, which a lot of people won't like. Unlike most games (which are more successful btw) DAoC does require some skill to be competitive. You can't have "perfect setups" or "perfect templates" or "perfect specs". In the old OF days, we built groups around a sorc and two clerics.

In my 8 man, it was Jinju on sorc, Acailys and myself on cleric. Then we filled the other 5 slots with people we knew, if we could, or people LFG if we didn't have people on we knew. Acailys and I were both smiters in those days...and nobody ran buffbots back then. I had 9 enhance, Ac had 12 enhance...so we were mostly an unbuffed group. We'd get roflstomped running that these days, but back then when nobody knew better? Hell, we raped face. it was a simpler time, simpler game, and simpler tactics. That's what we have to get back to IMO if you want to make a game that's appealing to more then just the elite crowd

 

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Interesting post. Spot on. I agree.

 

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Well put CrzyHawk.
I think You are 100% right.