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My comments in blue

 

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


Jumping about, really?


Jumping is the one movement that should always interupt what your doing wether your in melee or casting. I know there are a number of games where you can jump around like your on a pogo stick and still attack but that does not make it a desirable game mechanic, just my personal opinion but I hate it.

 

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Need real PVP!! Dreams.

played too much wow and their clones.

 

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He's probably not the only one that prefers soft interrupts like WoW but many people, like myself, prefer the hard interrupt system. The friend who actually introduced me to DAOC 10 years ago just came back a couple weekends ago after playing WoW, Rift, etc. and it was a real learning curve for him even though he played DAOC and played it well for 5 or 6 years.

It makes the game much more about spacing and paying attention to what's going on than a caster just running into the middle of the fight and mashing buttons. I'm not going to try to equate skill to this because it's all button mashing after a fashion but I feel like the combat dynamic of DAOC is much better because of the added awareness needed when playing different class archetypes.

It is a very different system but I feel it's one that's superior.

 

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Yes, many people do prefer the hard interrupt system. That does not equate to most, however. I'm not going to say which one MOST people prefer because I do not know. I have a good idea that it's a soft interrupt system such as wow, but I have no data to back that up, only deductive reasoning.

First, you have to accept the fact that most players are not good...or even what I would consider average. Most players are simply bad. For the inturrupt system, you have to ask yourself which is going to be more frustrating for those bad players to deal with: being completely locked down (hard interrupts) or casting slower (soft interrupts)? I think it's pretty clear that MOST bad players would prefer the soft system, because lets keep it real: Being frustrated is NOT fun. This is why people complain about shields in their present implementation too. Nobody likes not hitting. It just frustrates people and frustrated people aren't having fun. People not having fun, cancel and go do something else.

So really it's not about what you, or I may prefer. It's about what the masses may prefer and the masses do not want a DAoC clone. What might be feasible is a DAoC LIKE game incorporating game mechanics that the masses MIGHT appeal to, that would leave we, the daoc players a decent game that has enough players and servers to be an enjoyable experience.

The deal is with a game company, it's more important to make a game that makes money then it is to make a GOOD game. A perfect example of this is WoW. I do not think it's a GOOD game, but it certainly makes money hand over fist. What it does, it does well, even though there is very little I actually like about it. Why is it successful? They cater to bad players. Those guys can log on and play wow for a few hours and log off having not been frustrated by game mechanics or dealing with a class that's too hard for them to play.

So really, a game designer has to make a game that appeals to the masses, then make it as good as they can. It HAS to be successful (because the bottom line is all about the Benjamins), and to do that you need to find out what a majority of people want in a game, then build your game around that. If you get too stubborn in your "vision" players may not like the game, and they wont play it or they'll move on to something else.

So really, any DAoC 2 would need to look FORWARD not back, and figure out what game mechanics the masses like and which they don't. Then you shove those mechanics into a 3 realm RvR enviornment, where you don't HAVE to participate in the RvR if you don't want to (because a lot of people simply do not like pvp style combat). 3 realms is really why DAoC is so good, not so much every thing else. You do that in a game that's relatively intuitive and easy to pick up and you have a winner. I won't say what those are because there isn't a perfect system and I doubt MY version of perfect would be the same as the masses...but those masses are where the money is, and where the money is, a game company should follow.

 

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i didnt read the rest of your wall of text.. but this part caught my attention..

an Average is around the middle of a scale of evaluation ...

so if one one side you have good, and one on side you have bad... and in the middle the "average" ...

the goods and bads would be the exceptions... the average would be what most players would be...

maybe you just choose the wrong word... most players would be average...

that doesnt mean that the majority of the players(the average) would have the median skill level

average skill level would be the majority...
median skill level would be in the direct center of skill level...

 

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And that's why I qualified it with the phrase "what I would consider". As soon as I said median, many readers would have tuned out not knowing exactly what I was talking about, especially considering it was in a wall of text. Everyone understands the general concept of average, perhaps not so much median. I deliberately chose the wrong term, then qualified it going for something I hoped would be easy for most casual posters to understand.

 

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I agree with much of what you posted but some of it I would slightly disagree or take a somewhat different slant on.


I do not think that WoWs success has a lot to do with the interrupt system (it may, but I am not so sure). A huge percentage of MMO players are PvE centric and the hard interrupt system at DAoC does not really cause much frustration for the PvE centric players that are fighting mobs.


There are some MMO players that leave DAoC just because of the interrupt mechanics but of those that mention “hard interrupts” as their reason for leaving, there could also be other factors that contributed.


I totally agree with your comment about players not wanting to be frustrated and in that comment is the key to it all. Players want to have fun. Players do not want to spend their game time writing the same feedback about the same problems over and over and over. Players want to just play and have fun.


Mythic’s problem is with overall player frustration.


The Blizzard WoW forums have a tiny percentage of complaints when compared to the complaints from DAoC players on the VN boards. Back when DAoC only had 250k subs the amount of DAoC players that were angry with the game and posting about their dissatisfaction on the VN boards is about the same as the number of WoW players that are angry and complaining on the WoW boards today, and WoW has over 10 million subs. Of all the complaints on the VN DAoC boards only a tiny percentage were/are about hard interrupts.


While many players loved the game of DAoC many DAoC players are/were furious with Mythic, furious with how Mythic dealt with problems, furious with how Mythic pandered to players dark side and coded balance upsetting OP garbage into Xpacs just to sell more Xpacs and then Mythic waiting excessive periods of time to adjust that which everyone knew needed adjustment, frustrated with how Xpacs were launched with huge and obvious bugs (bugs reported during testing), etc.


The problem with DAoC is the HUGE list of things Mythic did that frustrated players. Also, Mythic often lied to players about why Mythic would not change something that needed changing. Mythic ignored obvious bugs and responding to players that pointed out obvious bugs with “Please be specific. Without accurate and specific information we are unable to locate and duplicate the problem” when the player was specific and the bug was/is obvious to any and all players that actually play the game.


Games should be fun and while DAoC has a fun factor, Mythic has done a very good job (an exceptional job) of ticking off players.


WoW is popular because even though there are problems with the game, Blizzard has spent a lot of time working on old bugs and Blizzard spends a lot of time adding player friendly features (horses, speedy flying mounts, mail, porting to join groups, players that can open ports the group can use, auction house, feature filled UI, a huge list of player stats and accomplishments, an easy way to form groups for a dungeon raid, etc. . . . ).


A year after Win98 was no longer supported Blizzard made a change to the game updater and the change caused Win98 users to be unable to update the game. About 100 players, 100 out of 5 million, posted on the WoW boards about having trouble. Blizzard said that while they would look into it, Win98 was not supported. The next day Blizzard posted (paraphrased) “after pulling an old computer out of storage and after finding someone that still had a Win98 install disk, Blizzard found the problem that Win98 users were experiencing and Blizzard would be making a change to the updater so Win98 users could once again update the game. Win98 users are notified that this is a temp fix and in the future WoW may not function with Win98. Blizzard recommends that all Win98 users update to a supported OS”. The point of the above, even though many may think that Blizzard is evil, they went above and beyond for a very tiny number of their players. They could have just said, “Win 98 is not supported. Update your OS.”


Players of DAoC begged for stacking pots and were told that it could not be coded, and then GAO coded barrels.

Players of DAoC had to beg for years and years for a mount/horse but were told it could not be coded, even though almost from day one all the parts of a player-controlled horse existed in the game code.

Players of DAoC have been begging for mail for . . . EVER. Mail should be something that is fairly easy to code and integrate into the game.

Players report obvious bugs, bugs that cause many frustrating game problems, and Mythic tells players that “we are looking into it” but years and years and years later nothing is done.

Players wanted to dual in housing areas and were told that “the code for battling/fighting in housing did not exist so it was not as if Mythic could flip a switch and allow fighting in housing areas” . . . then some players found a hole to get into the enemy housing area and they proceeded to kill CMs, kill horse ticket merchants and kill any players they ran across. So much for “the code for battling/fighting in housing did not exist. . .” (While dueling in housing is not a game changer, Mythic lying about it is a problem.)


More frustration happened when each Xpac pushed old world areas toward obsolescence. Huge percentages of MMO players are PvE centric and yet with each Xpac Mythic implemented, when Mythic did not update the old world drop tables and did not update the old world quest, Mythic all but destroyed huge old world PvE areas. Yes the areas still existed but aside from sightseeing there was no reason for players to ever go into most of the old world areas.


There is also the frustration MMO players have with the stupid DAoC Min/Max problem. Players do not need huge OP items/gear/abilities to get the player excited to purchase an Xpac. Players will spend hours and hours designing the perfect template to squeak out every point. Instead of Mythic putting in marginally better gear in the Xpacs, with total disregard for how it would destroy balance Mythic put greatly OP gear/items/abilities/etc and OP characters into every Xpac (adding to player anger and frustration).


The list could go on and on and on and on . . . .and that is the huge problem with the game. The list of things Mythic did to frustrate the player is HUGE (Obscenely HUGE).


It is spot on that a big problem with DAoC is player frustration.


The typical player is PvE centric and while WoW is not perfect, Blizzard does a good job of limiting the frustration of the PvE centric player and WoW does a good job of giving players many features that make play fun.


Mythic seemed (seems) to enjoy ticking off players.

 

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