Returning Player Feedback (Rant?)

Dear BS Team,

I really worry on the way things head in DAoC right now.

I already made some feedback on a few posts, but ain't sure if BS even saw, or had any interest in it.

I've played the game since SI release god knows how long ago. During that time I mostly been active not counting some minor off times, up until new DF patch that made me quit alongside with IRL things.

I think in the current state of DAoC it really ain't worth returning to, because if you have missed the last years you probably have really bad time trying to catch up.

With the huge inflation on plats, most classes need 600-1000p+ templates. I guess we can kind of see that. Most of old ways we used to farm simply doesn't work, with this inflation, mob drops (gold, scales, aurulites etc) you will likely never get enough to temp even one character. I got used to temp like 4-5 chars I fancy, a returning player kind of lucky if he can dream of one budget template, if hes aint getting HUGE help from somone (guild, friends).

I myself at least could temp 1, so I consider myself lucky (got plats from old times), however I know theres quiet a few struggle, and quit before.

Problem is, the power level of new templates makes them kind of mandatory, if anyone expect to get anywhere decent result, because templess toons mostly free RP to anyone with it, who doesn't plan to Zerg all his time. Also, this game is OLD. The players with High RR aren't that uncommon, but rather common. Starting new is quiet hard considering the RR differences between players already. Probably this worth some discussion also.

Now, I wouldn't really bother to QQ around, because I somewhat had the feeling that BS gets that this is an issue. Theres just too much plat in the system, and anyone want to compete is really hard now. I am happy that Traveling Merchants came back, even tho their item prices I still think is way too expensive to any new/returning player. Because some of the items are mandatory in a decent template, they should be just around all the time, while lowering the item costs. I welcome the idea of BP items in new patch. I was really glad that MAYBE thing's turn around, and prices will finally drop to an achieveable level in the future.

Then this new Midsummer quest line came out. Oh how wrong was I. I really thought BS gets these issues that drive away any player considering to return, or play DAoC. We just created another very nice item that can probably sell for 300p+ later on. Dare anyone to get close to it.

For this I might add, even getting it is the LEAST ammount of fun I have ever had playing most likely any game in my entire history. I hate it so much I just wan't to throw my Credit Card onto my screen really, and just buy them right away for huge cash instead of going close to it. If this is the plan, I do understand everything. I did try to get this ring on all realm, because it will be unobtainable later, but I just gave up on it. Even in Zerg I spent 4-5 hours some day to get a few kill on my untemped characters other realms.

DAoC isn't a new game, I doubt most of playerbase today ain't have family, or job to do. Instead they can camp a castle full of High RR stealthers hoping to get some kill if any Zergs decide to even go close to it for their whole free times, mostly without any success. Guess if ppl unable to obtain it in time, they can just get it for 300p+ or maybe 2 years down the line in Traveling Merchants for 125P. I won't say its not doable, it is, already got one, but wasting all my free time on trying, without having any fun for weeks, just ain't worth to anyone I think, certainly not for me.

I really did believe things might change in a positive manner, but I really feel like this isn't a sign that it won't become much worse down the line.

Carol, John, please for the sake of anyone who wish to rejoin DAoC, make it more new player friendly, stop this itemization madness.

For RvR related (solo/small man/8v8/zerg) issues I just leave up to other players to discuss on other topics. :)

Gav

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Comments

  • And another one is gone. But according to the player base, 1 account doesn't matter.

    @Gavner Do you think that making these items for templates being obtainable by a single group would make a difference in your experience? i.e. if you could do Cursed 1-8 with only a single group.
  • Staticc wrote: »
    And another one is gone. But according to the player base, 1 account doesn't matter.

    @Gavner Do you think that making these items for templates being obtainable by a single group would make a difference in your experience? i.e. if you could do Cursed 1-8 with only a single group.

    I honestly feel that would help tremendously. But also players greed has taken over, Ive heard people saying they have all these toons plat capped with their bags ands vault full of deeds.....so why do you need 600p for some gloves? I get it you did the raid, earned them as well as your plat. Don't be so greedy, seel them cheaper. Will help get more people out in a template.
  • @Staticc Making it more obtainable surely helps, of course. However I really do think that this inflation hurts on the long run. Don't think it wouldn't help, but a solo person could farm efficently since the beginning of the game for some plats too to achieve something. Most of games today support being able to solo gets you somewhere at least. I feel like without help, a solo player probably wouldn't achieve anything regardless how hard he tries. I also farmed pick-up quest in NF for a while, made a few plats, but far less then to write home about. Quest rewards, mob gold dropp, farmable currency dropp haven't been touched in years. Yet prices go up and up, I think this alone hurts anyone trying to catch up. Problem is, making it easier I think might also end up in other items getting even more expensive (lookind at GMoV and his friends).
  • Thanks for the feed back Gav, Natrually an increase is the product/making it easier to obtain would help balance the market because when a person weighs the time spent to obtain and item vs. cost to purchase instantly, the BG's take a long time to run, if done at a difficulty level of a single group, then more people could run it, and it could be done more on a whim like currently 9/10 is done, but for the whole raid. That, over time, should lower the cost of the super high end items, for example gloves. Now I'm not saying that would drop it in half, but most gloves on hib go for roughly 200-250p, if it dropped to 125-150p, that is still quite a bit, now scale that across set pieces the same way and now you have a total template savings of a few hundred plat, thus making it easier to get a reasonable template to compete in RvR with.
  • edited August 2018 PM
    @Staticc I agree that it might dropp the prices, but since limited availability items do exist (mostly with great stats or procs), I think they would just become even more desireable and expensive, since most of currently playing players already sitting on tons of plats. Then we just make other items unobtainable to anyone catching up. We need to stop creating items like that. I think it's an issue already that we say 125p items (that are quiet needed) are reasonable. They are not. Since release the ammount of gold dropped, obtained by quests didn't change much, I can't find any amazing items go for 200p+ reasonable. Maybe items with different looks, e.g. cosmetic changes would be acceptable I think.

    edit: ty for your feedback also. :)
    Post edited by Gavner on
  • They need to lower prices on merchants and leave them up full time... that will suck plat out of the game and help regulate prices... I have a few toons templated but I am limited cause I don't wanna buy plat to get things like mov..... mov should be able to do all the time if you gonna make a item that strong.... or beef the /use on some items and it would make them not needed as bad and help with template cost
  • This is the thread that brings up what I personally think is he real downfall of this game. It’s not zergs or 8 mans, or even the 2fg’s of stealther zergs. It’s the ridiculousness of getting “rvr ready”. They took one time sink which was leveling and made it doable in like 6 hours and made a new time sink which is gear.

    Maybe it’s really a BS employee spamming region all day selling plat for extra cash lol
  • The merchants should definitely be up full time. I recently came back as well right before the merchants dropped, and thought id be able to get a few things.....2 things 300p=(. Now I have around 80 to finish a toon, unless I buy some
  • Having returned to ywain a month ago after goofing around on gatheris for 3 years, while being busy with kids IRL so no time for RvR, i find it incredibly sad to see my 8 templated chars on Hib, 6 on Alb and 8 on Mid on ywain ( just on the 2 accounts open atm) that i templated for around 3 years ago, being worth absolutely nothing, not worth anything in RvR and if i sold all the items across all realms and transfered the plat to 1 realm i might be able to afford 1/3 a new item.......

    OW, DF, Cursed.... kill quests and burn them with fire ( Ok dont but listen ).....low population game where most people want to RvR cause its what DAoC is great at compard to other mmo's, along with its combat system of interupts and so on, you get the picture, thise quests are not smart imo. Put all old dragon items on the dragon merchant down to 100 - 200 scales...slap cursed stuff on there for 400 - 600 scales or so per piece, let people have options....if you want to grind solo for 8 hours to get scales for 1 piece then do that, want to farm it in a group then do that or want to quest for it then do that.

    Make some farmable mobs for aurulite's that dosnt 2 shoot anything that looks at them wrong ( returning players in epic amor or old temps ? )...... lower aurulite item price of current items and put OW items on a aurulite merchant....again options for solo / group / quest / zerg......things will take longer solo, but go alot faster the quest / group route, get your items the way you like.

    DF, RvR quest items, put them all up for BP's......when season for the event comes around put up quests as normal with the option of item or ½ the BP as reward....

    Imo different roads to getting to the same goal, tho some roads might be longer and take longer time is a great option for returning players and alt templating... sure some people with more plats then chars to hold them might get grumpy for a while, but what do they need more plats for anyway ?

    ToA was chopped, killed, butchered, sliced and burned to pieces and ash, because there wasnt enough people doing it back then, so it was hard to get when the population was 20 times bigger, why do it all again with such a small population, ToA now gives you the option to do things the way you can manage so you can get out to RvR, do the same for the rest please, if i wanted to quest and raid i would have joined a game that did that and not the worlds best RvR game that i loved since 2001 when my Avalonian wizard ran in to camelot for the first time.

    This will only get harder for new and returning players the more time that pass, less people doing it all, more plat inflation, things need to change unless you just want a month's sub from people that then turn around and run for the hills.

    I got 2 months left on my sub, if some news isnt released by then about a way to mend this mess i'll be running for the hills after 17+ years here across 8 accounts.
  • I kind of agree. We dashed out ToA, and Dragon items to be obtainable with alternate currency. We even gave option for people to farm them with quests, zerg, or just by killing stuff or BP. We did this because the population made it hard to obtain them at times, so currency was a smart move. I feel like we took those good ideas, throw them away like never existed, and turned back on them just to revive the worst parts of the game, with the additional horrible inflation. We should at least learn from pasts mistakes, even more the solutions that have worked already. I just wish to see those ideas come back to life. :)
  • @BurkleyRIP I know we don't agree on much, but maybe, just maybe, can you and I get close on a theory that the chinese plat farms are a subsidiary of Broadsword? Something along those lines?
  • I agree. Either no one at BS pays attention to the guy spamming relic towns all day literally selling plat, or they have a rogue csr making extra cash or something. Someone even mentions selling plat on a message board and they get banned, someone spams it all day in the actual game and nothing is done.
  • edited August 2018 PM
    I am just loving this post and everything else that people have to say in regards to it. So many wonderful ideas and my exact thoughts over the past 2 years. I remember when I came back and astral armor was the top of the line and you could either do raids for it or buy it for 100-200p and the rest of your template might be 80p total. And even at that, if you couldn't afford housing prices you could alwasys wait for merchants.

    Now, you can't solo and grind for gold like you could when i can back (aka pictish weapons) and you can't afford any new items and can't stand the pathetic raids that nobody has time for or can even get through with bugs/LDs. And on top of it all like OP said the gear has gotten so OP that there is absolutely no other substitute.

    I used to love seeing different templates with unique items and artifacts but now every template iis OW helm, Curse gloves, Loyalty cloak, GMoV, Skull or Harbinger, Band of the Dream Conq, ch9 set, OW ring

    So much hate towards Broadsword for dicking us and I love it
    Post edited by Armagedden on
  • BurkleyRIP wrote: »
    I agree. Either no one at BS pays attention to the guy spamming relic towns all day literally selling plat, or they have a rogue csr making extra cash or something. Someone even mentions selling plat on a message board and they get banned, someone spams it all day in the actual game and nothing is done.

    This is untrue, our CSR's are constantly banning these guys and they are not us or a rogue CSR. They are just persistent, and our CSR's will keep handling them. Please don't spread false assumptions as facts, it does no one any good.

    Remember 1.125 brings in RvR currency earning bp's to create the items you need yourself. I know 1.125 is delayed more than anyone thought or expected, but we are working hard on getting it out there.
    DAoC Community Lead
    Broadsword Online Games
  • @Carol_Broadsword

    Hello Carol,

    Thank you for your reply! Of course I personally can't wait the news on 1.25, however it also worries me. Can we get some more light on the possible costs, items they will have, etc?

    I kind of fear that it will solve one problem to create another (if you leave out items, like new the ring, GMoV etc). AFAIK they going to be self bound items, which is nice, but that will make non-self bound items gain even more value and inflation if people stop farming them, especially if they won't be included in the new system. Printing more limited availability items with amazing stats just counterinterracts with anything planned for 1.25.

    Also, probably the lovely pick boxes up quest going to get farmed like mad, making lesser itemized players suffer once again. Thats just a hunch tho.

    Since we do not have any details, it's hard to give accurate feedback. However I kind of fear on the things I've mentioned, hope you figure it out.
  • It'll go to Pend first so everyone can see what's involved and try it out, and we can adjust based on feedback from there :)

    We've also adjustments to the ruined areas coming. I can't give any further details just yet, I'm afraid.
    DAoC Community Lead
    Broadsword Online Games
  • edited August 2018 PM
    @Carol_Broadsword

    I really look forward to it!

    Since the game wasn't even designed to hold the ammount of plats some people (and truth be told farmers) sitting on, this will be a long waited, and significant patch for many of us.

    Considering some new plat sink options that doesn't interact with game itself (cosmetic items, mounts, or even /bank size increase type of services) would be a bad idea for trying to remove the ammount of currency in game right now? It moderately worked with the current BP thropys reducing 10+ years of saveups.

    Thanks! :)
    Post edited by Gavner on
  • I was being sarcastic about the csr making some side cash...

    Those guys spamming selling plat are annoying though :)
  • edited August 2018 PM
    Remember 1.125 brings in RvR currency earning bp's to create the items you need yourself. I know 1.125 is delayed more than anyone thought or expected, but we are working hard on getting it out there.

    Glad to see that your doing something.

    However i kind of fear this wont solve much, as i wrote in my post above i like the idea of multiple ways to achieve the same goal.

    Now you got the options of quests not many do any more and you gotta pray someone does them in your window of playtime, or you can find a way to make gigantic piles of plat, old items that lost all value isnt a option for returning players, then you can do the same quests that isnt done much more to pick items you dont need to sell, or you can of course farm plats with mobs droping around 1,5G per mob average, depending on where you go, you will only need to kill some 650 000 mobs for a template for 1 char.

    While the introduction of items for BP's is a step in the right direction, i really doubt that putting people in epic kings gear or old returning templates, against rr10+ players in perfect templates, templates made by the stupidly strong new items thats the problem for returning and new players in the first place, will solve anything.

    Why not use old currencies like scales, aurulite and so on, alongside BP's ?

    Post edited by Vrisslar on
  • @Carol_Broadsword You have no idea how much attention just got put on your comment now. We have been waiting for months to hear anything about 1.125 and see the current event go into place, its just feels like its kind of w/e attitude when we literally hear nothing, and see other projects getting pushed out. There is a very real lack of comms from you guys about anything really. 4 questions in a grab bag every other week too answer specifics about how resists are tiered or inconsistant set pieces is not info on anything that you guys are working on. Don't get me wrong, there is a place for those questions as well, I referenced and still reference those a lot with my questions, But the karrote seems to be so far out front that we can't see it to know its there.

    Also, its hard to convey a joke on a forum like this, but, if Burkley and I can both have a laugh about that, with as much as we don't agree on anything, then anyone thats reads these with any kind of consistancy should get that joke.
  • Staticc wrote: »
    @Carol_Broadsword You have no idea how much attention just got put on your comment now. We have been waiting for months to hear anything about 1.125 and see the current event go into place, its just feels like its kind of w/e attitude when we literally hear nothing, and see other projects getting pushed out. There is a very real lack of comms from you guys about anything really. 4 questions in a grab bag every other week too answer specifics about how resists are tiered or inconsistant set pieces is not info on anything that you guys are working on. Don't get me wrong, there is a place for those questions as well, I referenced and still reference those a lot with my questions, But the karrote seems to be so far out front that we can't see it to know its there.

    Also, its hard to convey a joke on a forum like this, but, if Burkley and I can both have a laugh about that, with as much as we don't agree on anything, then anyone thats reads these with any kind of consistancy should get that joke.

    This
  • @Gavner - Thanks for your well written post. You bring to light many of the issues surrounding Daoc and new players/returning players to the game. We want you guys! We need you guys! So hearing this, makes me feel like we need to do more to encourage players to come back. The uphill battle just to get 'rvr ready' is not player friendly in the least.

    I am simply amazed from all the comments, suggestions put forth in this post, that the thing that is picked up on and responded to, is the least useless comment (though funny!) Appeasement, so much fun!
  • @Jak this is a good discussion, please keep it going, but I felt that needed to be addressed before rumours run wild. It wasn't meant to be an answer or the only thing we care about in this thread. Please continue, we are listening.
    DAoC Community Lead
    Broadsword Online Games
  • I bring the best out apparently :)
  • This is probably one of the best threads I've read on the official forum.

    Returning players. Their experiences over the last month+, what they've encountered, what difficulties they've experienced, how does their in-game play compare to other's who've been active for the last 5+ years is absolutely critical to DAoC.

    These are the people we need to hear from and listen to. If they can't be convinced to stay, the population bleed will continue.

    4-5 years ago I was worried when the population in NF would barely break 1k total characters across all three realms. Fast-forward to 2018 and I'd be ecstatic to log in with that volume of players.

    I've given up on the false hope that in 2018 and onward this game will see a resurgence of brand new players. I had to accept that irregardless of the issues that plague knowledgeable gamers like myself, the learning curve is so asymptotic I would be impressed if brand new players were able to stay for more than a few weeks at best. Ideas like launching DAoC on Steam are most likely not going to happen (it's been 'greenlighted' since 2015).

    That being said there are probably a couple thousand accounts (guesstimating) out there from people who've left between 2010-2018. Realistically these accounts should be the target for a population re-growth. Convince the older players with, who may have more times in their lives, a reason to re-activate.

  • I completely agree, really focus on returning players and why they originally left, try to remedy it and then make it easier for them to get rvr ready when they do return so they stay longer than 1 sub
  • Disclaimer: I didnt read the whole thread (might to it at a later point)


    I left January 2017 the last time and thought I'd give it a try. Currently I dont even see a reason to use the remaining 10 days on my account. Yesterday I had more fun playing Doom 2 than playing daoc (sad, isnt it?)

    Why?
    -1) Bugs, that I encountered (and reported) on several occasions (even after fixing them temporary for myself) are still the very first I see when I log back in after 1,5 years. Instead of making all those shiny new OW/Curse stuff (I rarely did OW, never did Curse) I'd focus more on fixing bugs.
    -2) There is no feeling of achieving something. Everything is made so easy (ML, CL, Level, RPs, Equipment), that there is no such thing as "I have accomplished something!". No sadisfaction. It feels more like "There were free candy laying around and I picked it up".
    -3) I'm not in the mood to retemplate all the time, cause of one or two items. It's also very cumbersome to do that ingame. Just compare it with the "Fitting"-screen in Eve online. That's like an "ingame spellcraft calculator with all items available". And you can share them ingame with a click! (i know of daocutils.com - but i'm not that cloud-type-guy)
    -4) Redoing qbars and specs all the time. There is no reason for a forced respec, that literally destroys your whole qbar (i made an ahk-script to help me backup&restore those and even normalize them - lessened the pain). They introduced a "/respec mythic" for that reason, so forced respecs arn't neccessary anymore. If I just wanna log in and play around in the battlegrounds, I really dont care if I got that one new fancy ability. Let me do it, when _I_ have time for it, not force me to do it on the next login - not sure, if they still do this and I dont want to turn this into an even longer "Wall of text" ,-)

    (3) is also the reason, why i mainly stay in the Battlegrounds (Leivrik & CV), but they are ghost towns most of the time or in a very fragile balance (if one side/group gets too strong/large, the other side will log out)

    Basic tasks like transfering money from one character to another can be a challenge for people without a 2nd account . Would help, if you could deposit money into a CM for example


    The "Welcome"-present also didnt help:
    Bought a 1mo GTC on origin and got quoted 12,99€ on the checkout. Accepted & bought just to see 13,18€ charged on my creditcard (in my EA account there is still 12,99€ listed). Contacted EA --> "but we only charged 12,99€" (sure ...) - contacted Broadsword (cause EA is their payment provider, _they_ have to fix it with them) and they only told me to contact EA even thought I have included in my mail, that I already spoke to EA.
    Not going to risk my account getting banned by telling my bank to charge back the 0,19€


    Something, that broadsword can hardly fix:
    I'm not the "solo-pro", i'm playing mmos for the socal experience. Noone left, that I knew. Everybody is rolling alts over the place (cause it's so easy --> see (2)), so even if you find new friends, they might never play that alt-char again, so you have no chance re-find them ingame again.
    I'm guilty of rolling tons of alts too - only checked the level 39 , 49.5 and 50s on my account: total of 136 chars :blush:
  • Daoc is like meth, peeps are hooked you'll come and go as the fix is needed
  • edited August 2018 PM
    I am torn on this. Part of what always made DAoC so great to me was that it was never easy mode. It took time to get to 50, get a template, and then way more time to get a decent RR. They have made the game WAY faster than it ever was in the past. You can now get to 50 in a weekend. You can get cl15 and ml10 in no time, and with bugganes and the population bonuses you get rr's faster than ever. So letd stop acting like the game is even close to the same time sink it used to be.

    That takes us to templates. For the record, I thought adding in these items with heal procs/charges with set bonuses was a bad idea. In a 15+ year old game people don't want to be retemplating all of their toons. However, they are in the game now and if you removed them or altered them it would piss off even more people. I do agree that curse is a pain to do since you need a good sized bg to complete it. I believe OW was the same when it first came out. If they toned cursed down to being able to do it with 6-8 people it would help a ton, just as OW is not difficult to do now. I also think 1.125 will help when you can use bp's to get an item you need.

    Now, I would like to add that when @Gavner says he and new players can't earn plat that they are wrong. The reason the economy is the way it is, is because of how easy it is to earn plat. I also played pre-SI through the start of Cata, as well as 4 years on Vold, and in 18 months here as a solo I bet I have earned 4 times as much plat as I did if we combined all my plat from both servers together. Now I will admit that it was easier to template then because most of your gear could be crafted gear and you would do fine. Now you may only have 1-2 pieces of crafted gear at most.
    Post edited by RonELuvv on
  • If you want a feeling of accomplishment, trying doing 1-10 Cursed in one sitting without shooting yourself.
  • edited August 2018 PM
    To me this got nothing to do with hard, but how boring it is.

    Making plats during the last 18 months while being part of the initial rush of people zerging quests for high value items daily, dosnt really compare with returning to the game 8 - 12 months after the initial rush, when your lucky if you find a group going every 14 days during your time zone and play time, then you get in a BG with people all knowing what to do and where to go rushing everything with no explenation of anything, if a quest dosnt update your left hanging for the next 14 - 28 days until you find a new group. But im happy for you RonELuvv, its nice to have plats and a template, sadly my experience of returning 1,5 month ago dosnt compare to the way things was when you returned 18 months ago.

    Without cursed and OW the options to making plats that i have found are the RvR pickup box quests, first of all ZzZzZzZzZ, secondly 95% of the time the spots are camped by rr10+ players in perfect items, while your running around there in either epic or old temps, your getting killed before you get any of them to 50% trying to beat through the heal proc spams, free IP on gloves and crap. So basicly your feeding them free RP while trying to get items / plat to be able to compete.

    If the sense of accomplisment thats being talked about is getting run over while clicking boxes, or running mobs over in PvE with a zerg, while the biggest challenge your going to find while doing that is avoiding bugs and trying to find something that fits your time zone and play time on a low population game, while you hope and pray that you dont get your ass kicked from the group, cause a guild m8 logs on, or you being without knowledge on the quests cause its your first time and by that will slow them down, on quests they just want to be over with fast cause they have done them 10+ times and dont have time to help you. Then i dont know what to say anymore.....

    Getting cursed items by scales, bounty points, quests or buying the items directly by plats, what difference does it make other then giving people more options to reaching the same goal ? Yes this might have the sideeffect of killing quest BG's, but to me that would just prove that none want to do them. ( Scales never killed dragon kills tho )
    Farming scales to buy items, farming plats to buy scales or farming plats to buy the items directly, just give people more options for how to do things, for me personly id rather, as an example, pay 500 scales per item and farm them solo / small man / fg, then i will sit around picking my nose while waiting for that magic day when a cursed group are at the right time, cause until then my RvR options are limited to being stuck to a zerg leader and i rather cancel then do that every night.

    Other then that i will always have the option to farm 650 000 PvE mobs at roughly 1,5 G per mob to get a template for 1 char, getting 50 at release didnt even require that unless ofc you where killing green's, if i group up and the G's are split it will only take longer.

    If there are a way of getting plats without sitting with a thumb up my butt waiting for 14 days for a group, or getting run over by perfectly templated chars in RvR where i got no chance to fight back, im open to suggestions.

    Even in ToA, that alot of people hated, ToA that got nerfed to hell, even in that ToA if you couldnt find a group and was on your own, you always had the option to go farm scrolls to earn plat for items ( yes i spend ALOT of time farming Mad tales 2 of 3 and others ), sure you couldnt buy ML's, but finding a BG and zerging ML steps wasnt a huge issue when the server pop on a bad night was 1000+, compared to finding a BG for quests on a server that on a good night are lucky to reach 700.
    Honestly tho for most classes missing ML's for a while wasnt a big deal, however missing thise new items and your pretty much screwed and on zerg duty while you wait.....thise items are MUST haves.

    Mythirians in Lab, you always had lesser and average versions you could easy get solo / small man, they would do the job and maybe earn you some plats.

    Having been back for 1,5 month and not having 1 RvR ready char yet, im sorry but thats not for me, i can sit and look at a discord chat scrolling by without paying, thats pretty much what DAoC have been so far.

    I have been with DAoC since its release in EU, i have 8 accounts, 4 EU 4 US, since release in EU i have always had atleast 2 active accounts with the exception of the first 6 months of 2018, i have never complained before not even about ToA, if this is how i feel returning to Ywain after having spend 3 years on Gatheris goofing around cause i had kids, then i would absolutely hate being a new player, no amount of removing Task dungeons and /level, will fix how many of them will feel when hitting 50 and going out to RvR for the first time in their epic armor they got from the king just to get run over, they just found out that the epic in epic armor stands for epic fail your cannon fodder.
    After this they find out that they have to go through this mess, with no option of doing any sort of progess on their own while they wait for a group/ BG to zerg a quest that most likely will bug up on them. With all the mmo's out there offering solo / small man / group / raid options where 30 mins of play will make them feel some sort of progress however small it might be, i really doubt many will stick with DAoC.
    Currently DAoC seems to be for old grumpy farts with more plats then they got chars to hold, currently i seem to have the grumpy part perfected just lack the plats.

    Im not saying give everything away easy and free, im saying give some way to progress toward the perfect template other then sitting around with my thumb up my butt waiting on a BG, i guess this is finaly after 17+ years killing my DAoC fun and addiction, many people might enjoy the way things are and i wish you best of luck with the game.

    Wall of text none is probably gonna read, but atleast how i feel and see it is out there lol, if you read it then thanks for listening to my frustration.
    Post edited by Vrisslar on
  • edited August 2018 PM
    I started back around a month and a half ago and just got my old accounts back 3-4 weeks ago. I resubbed 3 old accounts and the 2 week trial. Then I realized that I could use NONE of my characters to any extent at all unless I ran OW/Curse campaigns. It's taken a month to get through 4 of the 6 campaigns I need just for THREE of the toons I'm interested in playing. Only one has finished both campaigns.

    I still have tons of characters sitting around on the archived Ector/Lamorak/Gareth servers that I'll likely never touch simply because there is no way to reasonably catch 20+ OW/Curse raids that those that do not live in a Euro time zone can expect to catch. The 160 plat or so I had on those accounts is worth less than 1/3 of a template for ONE toon.

    I've always loved alts and DAoC was an alt friendly game for the most part. Go do some relaxing Solo grinding, or box a PL with 2-3 accounts and go farm some gear sell it for plat to buy the 2-3 hard to get pieces you need for a template and just log a crafter (or further back in time crafterS) and make the rest.

    Now you can either run Curse/OW (GL catching one of those thats happens on a weekend or 6-11pm weekdays), run around in NNNF or whatever they call it now clicking plants/rocks while dying to zergs/stealth groups every 10-15 minutes who you can't fight back against due to no temp and probably being champ 5 while waiting on ow/curse, or farm auru... which REQUIRES you to have done all the BG only curse crap...

    Sooo other than log out let's make a returning player check list of what you can actually do while "playing" DAoC.

    Click plants.
    Click crates.
    Click rubble.
    Die to stealthers. Lots of stealthers.
    Kill thousands of Dopples.
    Get farmed by macro groups in DF.
    Level an alt in battlegrounds (by running to towers mostly) so you can... errm... wait on Curse/OW even more?

    ... Yep that's the full list.

    Compare that to gem farming champ dungeons, old Auru farming, Salvaging, running TD's, running Darkspire with guild, repeatable gold reward/champ xp quests that gave reasonable for the time money, PL'ing friends, actually enjoy an active BG like Thid used to be?

    Too much of the game is entirely rooted in doing 2 BG quests chains. Neither of which is particularly interesting or well coded. Characters constantly miss parts of quests due to DC'ing. Hell you can't even farm Auru unless you already did the BG parts of Curse so even solo farming isn't an option. Speaking of auru who in the world thought it was a smart idea to limit solo pve farming to watching 3 NPC's kill from 30-50k HP mobs for hours? Soooo much fun when playing a pet class spec when you can't even use the pet you specced for as well.... It's like playing Pokemon if there was only 3 pokemon.

    Anywho enough of a rank.. long story short I canceled 3 of the 4 accounts and just pop the other one on every couple of days to see if anyone plays to run those boring "checkbox I can play my toon" quests during US hours this week or not.

    Suggestion? Reopen TD's/Auru dungeons and have them reward Aurulite comparable to the 2k you can get every 3-5 minutes killing Gruppchef. Have ALL OW 1-10/Curse 1-8 items be purchasable with aurulite.

    OW/Curse are as terrible an idea as Planar flagging was in EQ, and makes all the say mistakes ToA did MINUS any real content.

    Remove OW/Curse as a requirement to play your game, and bring back solo/small group content.
    BAM your game is fixed.

    Are you hiring?
    Post edited by Jhaerik on
  • edited August 2018 PM
    AND FYI solo content aimed at getting RvR ready should NOT be in RvR zones.

    That my friends is putting the cart before the horse. Very very few people enjoy dying constantly to RR10+ tempted nightshades on their half naked RR 2-3 toons. I'm sure the stealthers enjoy the free RP but hell let them fight the other temped people out there, not the 0 challenge to kill guys who don't have 5-6k effective health after procs/timers/charges.

    It's not a matter of skill it's a matter of math. His numbers are bigger than your numbers so until you bring the two closer together it's not a fight. We don't have featherweight vs heavyweight boxing matches for a reason.

    I don't think the BP changes are going to help ANYTHING either. Lets be real other than running in a 70 man zerg without gear you aren't going to do anything worthwhile in the frontiers. So that just takes us right back to needing gear to get gear.

    DAoC was always a game about pve'ing til RvR ready them smashing faces.

    Let's make DAoC great again and build a wall between PvE and RvR. Let's cast off the bonds of socialism and make the individual count. (#DaocBgPvESucks)
    Post edited by Jhaerik on
  • This thread should be sticky'd if that's possible.

    These are probably the most important constructive criticism being shared at the moment.

    Like I said previously, we need to give these guys a reason to stay subbed and a 2019 outlook for anything useful to happen is not going to help.
  • Im currently just lvling alts for plats/something to do. Came back aboujt a month ago after 2 year lay off. The toons I played aren't completely outdated they do have so OW , but none of curse. And finding a curse raid during my playtime AND in the realm I wish to play is very difficult. I did one the other day in a different realm just to do it lol, and it took 3 hours .....so yea im just gonna lvl alts till I get bored and unsub probably.
  • First of all I am really glad this topic started a nice and constructive conversation.

    Since Im on holiday I wont write a book from phone. :)

    However I agree with @Jhaerik and @Vrisslar .

    As I also stated my worries on BP (get geared to get gear, bp quests heavily camped etc) for a starting player it can be very hard if not balanced right, and no additional quests or ways to get BP.

    It might be a wild idea but adding BP to currency exchanger or similar might have lots of benefits. Alternative ways to get most of gear as you like, offer players with too much BP to use it even more ways. However it won't be easy to balance, and also might need review of currently existing BP quests.

    I might be not back for a year but so far anyone arguing about easy plat earnings never gave a valid way to me. I made most plat with SC and box quests (gets really boring after a while, especially with the rr10+ toons often farming me in epic armor rr1-3 back then)

    Still this didnt make any reasonable ammount so far. In my time zones raids simply very rare to contribute, also bugged out on last OW ive tried. We even tried to duo OW but managed to do till chap 6 so far so at least we got some 1p items :neutral:

    Also agree that anytime i managed to get close to a raid it was very confusing, everyone whos familiar with it rushing and without saying what to do wasnt a nice experiance. I get that for many that been around for 18 months its easy, and may find enough raid and already not needing items gets them plat, but it seems majority returning recently doesnt feel like that.

    If daoc ever goes for free to play that has been teased for a while, it better fix issues before (even the inflation), until we really need to make it look convincing for the many players around who left it.
  • edited August 2018 PM
    Just missed the latest OW raid due to literally a 15 minute heads up.
    Wouldn't be so bad if people would actually use the the damn calendar and give at least a 24 hour heads up. We aren't 18 anymore there are things in life that need to be done and most of us can't stay glued to a Discord 12 hours day without ever looking away.

    I mean there is no reason to stay logged into the game with nothing to do so best we got is checking in from time to time to see if anyone is going to run OW/Curse...
    Post edited by Jhaerik on
  • To sum it up for BS, it seems most, if not all of the recent returning players posting have stated that the biggest obstacle is gear. Pointless BG campaigns with a population this low(and getting lower by the day) are killing the game in a perpetual downward spiral. Now I applaud your efforts with the upcoming bp system, but I don’t think that’s the answer. It seems too overly complicated and still requires you to RVR to get the bps, as I’m sure you won’t be making the items very affordable with bps.

    I like the suggestions of making soloable farmable aurulite and let the items be aurulite purchasable. Makes you still have to work for it, but it’s still attainable at your own pace and at your own time. Plus allows you to be able to run it with optimal farming toons and be able to gear out all of your others. Unlike the proposed bp system which I believe are untradable, which doesn’t help those with little to no bps, aka the group of people you should be looking to target for returning, which are the people who have cancelled long ago. Most wont be returning with many bps. My older toons that are rr5ish only have 20-30k bps, and I’m sure that won’t buy much, if anything at all with the proposed bp system.
  • I think the most important point being repeatedly brought up is the "hard to get and absolutely necessary to compete in RvR" gear... and with only 1 way to get it. I remember when I first started playing this game was right after the Dragonslayer stuff came out. I remember farming scales 1 at a time to get my scales to buy my gear but honestly I enjoyed it because I could log in and do it for 30mins at a time and actually get somewhere.

    I also loved farming aurulite by myself when I was bored. Now I have to rely on other people in a low populated game to band together to do buggy raids.

    Oh and back before OW/curse you didn't need to "newest" and most powerful items to compete so it was OK if you didn't have the time to farm everything you could at least still play and have fun...

    Also for the record I just want to say I think that % heal bonus should be taken away from all armor procs and /uses and only apply to heal pots and casted spell heals. Because once again thanks to OP gear creep I can get 22% heal bonus on any melee toon where it was once impossible and I can have that 22% heal bonus with 5/6 armor pieces having a 230 heal proc on them. Where is the logic?
  • They traded ablative stacking for ridiculous heal procs
  • edited August 2018 PM
    It also ruined the balance of lower damage melee.

    Hell my old temped thane is actually better off NOT attacking with his one hander. It actually just heals people. LOL.

    101 Str + 10% damage/speed/style with 39+16 Sword and swinging at a stealth effectively heals the guy if I have bad luck. So much fun seeing 80-120 damage hits after ablatives with the entire style proc damage absorbed only to have them heal for 280+ when I hit them....

    Mind you that same attack would hit a target dummy for 400+.....

    If that doesn't show how silly gear has gotten... nothing does.
    Post edited by Jhaerik on
  • edited August 2018 PM
    Maybe its because im not in one of thise new fancy templates yet on any of my chars, however thise % HoT procs and /uses + RA IP + gloves /use IP + 280 Heal procs seem really silly, then you got abla on top, its like your trying to beat down 3 -4 HP bars....
    Abla stacking wasnt great either, all this chance based healing tho, are far worse imo and i dont think it was a great idea to make more % based HoT's on the really high HP's chars got thise days.
    Post edited by Vrisslar on
  • Honestly this discussion has pretty much convinced me to cancel the last account as well.

    Spent the best part of a month trying to catch OW/Curse raids during my play time to little success. I don't much see the point in paying for a game I can't play because I'm stuck behind the "have you done Curse/OW" gate.

    Anyway I'll check back in at some point to see if they removed/fixed this crap. I'm just beyond sick of constantly checking Discord/calendar to see if anyone is doing anything.
  • edited August 2018 PM
    Just to play devils advocate here, OW is not a problem. That can easily be done with 8 or less. I helped my buddy get through it on his shade and although we started out with around 10, by the 3rd step we were down to 6 of us. Me on warden, a nightshade, and 4 rangers. We finished all of it except OW10. It's Curse that is the problem. Steps 5-8 (minus 6) require a bg to do and if you aren't on when those bg's run you are screwed.
    Post edited by RonELuvv on
  • edited August 2018 PM
    How many of those 6 remaining players was in 3 year old temps or free kings gear and low rr as many returning / new players will be ?

    The times i tried so far people dont seem to want to do it with less then a FG and prefer more.

    For a returning player in old gear or for a new player that get 50 in 8 hours with solo quests now in epic armor, that got 0 or 1 person in game that they know, finding 6 other players or a BG for OW seem to be the same **** task, no matter how you twist and turn it.

    The fact remains that until you get cursed and OW out of the way, you got 1 option to progress toward your template, box pickup quest in RvR while you get run over by perfectly templated high rr people you cant put a dent in to, with your old gear or epic gear.
    The options for your play time until you have a new template is pretty much....1 get run over picking up boxes ...... 2 sit around LFG for OW or cursed....... 3 join and stick a zerg in RvR if one are going during your play time, hoping to leech some PR BP and cash.
    Im sorry but that isnt very good options to me, id rather trade all of this for release grindy xp to 50 or old ToA, cause atleast you could still make progress when you had no group.

    If people can point me to other options id be happy to try them, so far tho im just getting closer and closer to uninstall.

    Edit:
    Personaly i like hard and challenging games, i dont mind grinding, i enjoy grouping. That said tho fighting stuff i got no chance to beat ( RvR), or sitting at a roadblock ( OW / Cursed ) waiting for 7 others to come help me over that roadblock with nothing else to do then just sit and stare at the roadblock while i wait for weeks is just boring.
    Post edited by Vrisslar on
  • Went out in full kings gear on a rr5 inf for **** and gigs and let’s say it ended faster than I thought it would.
  • @Vrisslar - all of us were in kings gear templates or old templates. OW is not hard to form up and do with less than a fg. Now I do agree 100% with you on Curse.
  • edited August 2018 PM
    How hard it might be, i guess will depend alot on at what time you got your play time at, and how much time you can get uninterupted.

    Again i just dont understand, why some sort of solo / duo progress shouldnt be possible for short play sessions, like it have always been in some form in the past.
    Im not sure why there are resistance against giving people more options to get templated, and get more players in to RvR.
    None here are asking for free stuff, all people seem to be asking for are alternative ways, solo / duo / group farming 500 or more scales per item per player, will still require more work then zerging cursed, it will just give another way for short play sessions for people that cant make it to cursed BG's, to progress. ( Same goes for OW and a currency there )

    Currently with no templated char in the new gear, if i got a 1 or 2 hour play window i might as well not log in, that wasnt an issue before OW/cursed and the new must have items.

    I guess after 17 years my favorite MMO have suddenly changed, so much that i should just give up and leave, any of the recent returning players in this thread, seem to all complain about the same issues and only the already established players, with enough plat, seem to enjoy the current system.
    I guess DAoC dont need any more players, so around 1,5 month left on sub and im out.
    Post edited by Vrisslar on
  • I just unsubbed my 2 accounts. The 6 month renewal is in a few days and after literally having little to no fun in rvr, minus switching to alb to be massively outnumbered on the last couple of weeks, there just isn’t a reason to continue to pay money.

    No reason to defend against hero during the day with the way Hibs can just take keeps at will. Solo is boring me to death since you can’t find much that’s not either some **** unbalanced class like a vamp or traveling in groups of 5+. 8 man doesn’t really seem like a fit for me either. Hopefully population will pick up after the summer, and fun can be had again. Unfortunately with patches being delayed and delayed, I don’t see it happening.
  • edited August 2018 PM
    I guess talking with our feet is all we can really do about it.

    [edited]
    Or other options that I might have just gotten unbanned from.... Woot.
    Post edited by Driralin on
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