If Mythic wants to keep any new players, and perhaps bring back some old ones, they need to find a way to give level 50's a "molvik" kind of RvR experience. The Lab is nowhere freakin close to Molvik as far as game play, no is Cathal Valley, the only BG or RvR area anywhere without a "central" keep.


Casual players need to be separated from the hardcore. Nobody thinks its a good idea for NFL teams to play college teams, or Canadian football teams, or high school teams. I've heard over and over again that the "uber" just want "good fights." If that's the case, give them the other hardcore uber players to fight and give the RR5 and under casual players something like Molvik to play. The "uber" whine because they want sheep to slaughter, not "good fights."


How much effort would it take to turn any of the lower BG's into a level 50 RvR area with a RR5 cap? If DAOC's money/dev cost is the issue, then I'm handing them the solution. They regularly have held live events in Cathal (which is not a "real" BG-no central keep like all the other BGs), why not make a level 50 BG and rotate it through all the different BG maps or something like that?


Catering to the NF love-in crowd is a recipe for the death of DAOC, a death which has been ongoing for years. The battlegrounds still show signs of life and they cater to the same type of player that is currently feeding WOW millions of dollars. If Mythic were really a business and could peel their lips off the buttocks of the ubermensch type player in NF they might be able to keep the servers up for years longer than they will be at the current rate of decline/stagnation. They can do this by catering to the many and not the few: translation-give casual players an option that is NOT todays typical gaming experience in NF or the exploit fest known as Lab.

Wow! This kind of thinking is very prevalent but it couldn't be more off-target.
It's funny to me that you define "casual" players are basically what you see them as,
but not what they are. And it just blows me away that people think mythic is catering
to the hardcore crowd! Nothing could be further from the truth!

Besides the false premise which you seem to view the "casual" player on,
you further miss a simple law of game design: Anything they do to help the casual player,
will help the hardcore player more. You cannot escape that dynamic!
It will be in every game, every time.

Even the battlegrounds, which you hold as an ideal representation of the casual player
is filled with "hardcore" players who have capped skills/attribtutes/resists/
and the best armor weapons possible for the level range all precisely so they can
slaughter the sheep -aka- the casual player!

Even if they gave a BG to RR5+, you would still have people who
stop their toons at RR4L9 just to slaughter the sheep there!
Why do you think that wouldn't happen when it's clearly happening in Thid and Molvik?

You guys are not looking at the true reality:
A: Mythic has a design intent they want to keep - namely that NF is the end game.
B: Every action mythic takes is geared toward the casual player -within the design intent.
C: Most casual players want to create multiple characters, get the good gear, and achieve high RR.

In light of those intentions, Mythic has done an excellent job of creating balance.
You may not like getting killed by RR12s. But the real problem here is that
you are not getting a good group to challenge them.

I play the solo game, and have for a good time now (years). But even though my latest
project is only RR4, I regularly beat Valks, Vamps, and other classes that are double, even triple
my RR. Why? Because at some point, skill and timing enters the equation. And you can never
count out the RNG going in your favor from time to time.

But the same thing happened when I used to 8man. I was never the best,
but our PUG's could still beat higher RR groups when we got the jump on them,
which I quickly learned was a matter of choosing the higher ground and knowing
where to catch people.

My point is that by and large, RR is just a number. Sure, some classes are ridiculously powerful
at high RR - but they've earned that. And you're wrong to simply look at the numbers and assume
there is an imbalance. You can still succeed as a new player in this game, you just have to try.

I do agree that this 9 year old game is not conducive to brand new players, in the sense that the low
level community is all but gone. And that is part of the OP's point. But short of vast numbers
of subscribers returning to the game (not a reality), how are you going to fix that?

You can't fix that, so Mythic did the next best thing: Allow them to level quickly,
get gear quickly, and climb RR fast. It takes so little time to get to RR5 nowadays.

You just have to spend more time playing the game than complaining about it.

 

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G'day,
I run a Linux Users Group and found that casual and hard core users are mutually exclusive - you cannot cater to one without disenfranchising the other. The compromise was to make 1st half of meetings tutorials and the 2nd half tech/geek. But this didn't work either - the hard core types didn't want to help the newbies. So I created two different entities - a Users Group and a Linux Community. This works well as the geeks can do their geeky stuff while the newbs/casuals learn how to. But this won't work either in a MMO....

Mythic has gone the compromise solution which doesn't quite make everyone happy - but it kinda works; but if they continue to cater for the casuals then the hard core will become switched off. Mythic need to understand that the majority of their (remaining) subscriptions are hard core players. I don't want DAOC to turn into another WoW. Apart from a number of class issues I think DAOC caters for most player types.

Cheers
Finglor