Vault Network Boards - my thoughts on how daoc can be improved in its current condition.

while people have been wanting a daoc II and there are many posts related to that over the years, having resubbed for some time now i thought i'd share my views on how daoc could be improved into a better game than it is currently. i'm not for changing horses when the one i'm on is still doing well! here are my thoughts, it may be long for some.

playerbase; the casual and hardcore gamer;

over the years with multiple expansions and an aging game we've seen the game changeand the population dwindle. theories aside, this is always a primary concern with any mmo; less players makes for less fun in a mmo setting, and the perception that the game is dying or even dead altogether making new players less inclined to start up in such an old game. so the real issue here is attracting old and new players to repopulate the servers. now that the servers are mostly combined into one giant server, this should be much more easy to achieve. ten new players means at least nine on ywain, where before ten new players may mean 2 on X server, 3 on Y, and 5 on Z. so getting a few hundred people means a lot more now as the servers are consolidated.

casual gamers are the target audience for any mmo. casual gamers make up most of the mmo playerbase and as they don't play as frequently as hardcore gamers, it takes them longer to progress into a game and "finish" it, bore themselves with lack of content and things to do, ect, resulting in more revenue. however casual gamers are also the most fickle- they are more prone to give up or quit a game if they aren't having fun, seem to be making good progress, ect. daoc needs to cater to the casual gamers while not leaving their die hard playerbase, the hardcore gamers, out in the streets. there must be a balance between difficulty and challenge with a means to advance effectively and smoothly, making casual players able to compete with hardcore gamers and get to experience the best daoc has to offer without investing their entire weekend and evenings to do it.

in general i believe some changes need to be made to update the game and also to target the more casual playerbase as well as the hardcore gamers, such as but not limited to;

cutting down the instances popularity; having instances is good from a technical point of view and development of the game but it also kills the feeling of a big world and community sense. the amount of instances these days in daoc is staggering and cuts down on the size of the played world by players. this needs to be addressed by increasing the amount of experience gain in the "old lands" as some call it, or original lands, adding kill quests in those places, or other such ideas to make it worthwhile to fight there instead of task dungeons, aurulite dungeons, battlegrounds, ect.

increase quest experience in relation to mob kill experience grinding; right now the experience one gets from quests over-all is lower than grinding for the same amount of time spent on completing the quests. experience for completing quests, as well as monetary and item rewards, needs to be increased significantly to encourage players to take part in them. quests get the player involved into the storyline of daoc and helps to immerse the player into the world of daoc, while also giving them meaningful character progression, so as not to make them feel they are wasting time.

an over-all experience decrease; progressing levels is becoming trivial in this game with players claiming to be able to grind from 1-50 solo in a matter of a weekend if that. while level progression should advance smoothly and players should feel that progress is being made, leveling should take more time than it does now. players need to learn their character, having time to develop them in both armor, weapons, coin, and time to explore different places with the same level requirements, getting to know the lands in their realm and experiencing as much of it as possible.

battleground changes; personal opinion, i think the battlegrounds in their current state hurt the game. players shouldn't be encouraged to live in battlegrounds and task dungeons as they level up to 50 by that being the fastest way outside of powerleveling to level in the game. the aurulite quests are great in the battlegrounds, but cut the experience reward down significantly, as well as taking the bonus experience from killing mobs in an RvR zone in the battlegrounds out. increase the experience from player kills instead. as well, consider reinstating the /level 20 option for players with a level 50 character already so that the thidranki battlegrounds are more populated, which is when new players will really get their first taste of daoc rvr in a larger scale and we want it to be a positive one!

respec cost decrease; please decrease the amount of coin it costs to buy respecs for trainers. new players make mistakes or decide they don't like the way their character is advancing and want to change course- allow them to more easily. most won't know about the other various ways they can be able to get respecs, so make it easy at the trainer.

more live events; live events bring a community sense to them. increasing live events will help interaction with people in the game and draw realms together more. be creative in live events, have a powerful monster arise in a location in a realm and wreak havoc and call the realm to defeat him, or undead suddenly appear and a new limited quest to solve the problem of it. give a significant and/or unique reward for doing so. again, be creative and more frequent in these things. it makes the game feel updated and fresh, not stagnant.

discouraging cross realming; my personal opinion is that the timer needs to be increased to prevent and discourage crossrealming to the extent of 1-2 hours with the servers all merged together. realm pride and loyalty is needed more, and more effort needs to be put into this.

creating a new (preferably smaller) frontier; the frontier needs a fresh look. update it either with a more retro feel or something new, or maybe a mix.

focusing on more PvE content and updating the old. a good mmo is an mmo with solid PvE content. new quests, perhaps getting rid of some old quests that aren't done much, updating monsters or adding some new ones in, all go a long way into giving daoc a more fresh and active feel to it. we don't need more land necessarily, just alter the land already in place! especially the more original and old lands that are largely being neglected and unvisited now.

adding a unqiue race to each realm; small expansion, help to generate more attention to the game and increase its diversity. NOT one race for all realms, but one unique to each realm.

decreasing crowd control durations at lower levels; lets use thidranki for example, the amount of crowd control and its duration to what people have to combat it with is not on par. it is not fun to be mezmerised for over 30 seconds in thidranki, especially whole groups at a time, with limited to no way of dispelling the crowd control. consider lowering the scaling of crowd control durations on all crowd control in the game so that sub 25 level durations are more in line with the lack of ability to combat crowd control.

including lord seals; taking a keep needs to be more rewarding, especially in the battlegrounds. include a seal drop to all members who took a keep, that being those inside the keep upon capture, from the lord upon the lords death. items purchased with the seals should be unique and only attainable through taking keeps and obtaining the seals, and scale according to the level of the lord and level of the players, and purchasable in the respective battlegrounds, or boarder keeps to the frontiers. this will encourage more sieges of keeps over-all in the game.

revisiting the classes- some classes need to be refined, balanced in relation to other classes of its type, or altered some. i won't give out specifics here, but a general revisitation may be in order. perhaps the addition of a new unique class or two for each realm!

thank you for reading, and i hope the wonderful people at mythic will take a look at this and consider these and what other ideas people include here!

happy cameloting everyone!