The problem of fanbois
I'm going to use another game as an example of what can happen when the devs spend a bit too much time listening to fanbois. The game in question was Star Wars Galaxies which was anticipated by many to become the biggest game of its era. I was in the beta. There were some of us who pointing out that, although the game was great as a simulation of life in the Star Wars universe, it just wasn't that fun when played as a traditional MMORPG which was likely to be what the average (as in not a Star Wars fanboi) player would be looking for. Well, the fanbois convinced the devs that everything was great. Admittedly, the game did have quite strong initial sales. However, subscriptions quickly dropped off since the game actually didn't appeal that much to people who wanted to play casually and just have fun in the Star Wars universe rather than take part in a hard core simulation.
Sadly, the game could have been great if the devs had included something for all types of players from the start. There was room to keep the sim elements for those who wanted them while adding more streamlined gameplay options for the more casual players. However, this didn't happen since the devs listened to the fanbois who were telling them what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear. Thus the game was in a slow, but steady, death spiral essentially from its launch. Although the game did linger on for a few more years, the devs essentially finished the game off when they decided to implement the New Game Enhancement (NGE) changes in a misguided effort to try to fix things which ended up not really satisfying much of anyone.
So, why am I bringing up a game that shut down nearly a decade ago? It's because I'm worried that the devs of DAOC may be spending a bit to much time listening to the players who seem to somehow be convinced that everything with the game is going great even though the number of players clearly says otherwise. The DAOC fanbois probably do really like the game as it is. However, what's great for the fanbois (at least in the short term) really isn't great for the game as a whole and ultimately won't be good for them either if the game fails due to lack of revenue. In addition to maybe listening a bit less to the fanbois, I would also the encourage the devs to think about the current implementation of EC in light of what happened to SWG with the NGE.
Sadly, the game could have been great if the devs had included something for all types of players from the start. There was room to keep the sim elements for those who wanted them while adding more streamlined gameplay options for the more casual players. However, this didn't happen since the devs listened to the fanbois who were telling them what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear. Thus the game was in a slow, but steady, death spiral essentially from its launch. Although the game did linger on for a few more years, the devs essentially finished the game off when they decided to implement the New Game Enhancement (NGE) changes in a misguided effort to try to fix things which ended up not really satisfying much of anyone.
So, why am I bringing up a game that shut down nearly a decade ago? It's because I'm worried that the devs of DAOC may be spending a bit to much time listening to the players who seem to somehow be convinced that everything with the game is going great even though the number of players clearly says otherwise. The DAOC fanbois probably do really like the game as it is. However, what's great for the fanbois (at least in the short term) really isn't great for the game as a whole and ultimately won't be good for them either if the game fails due to lack of revenue. In addition to maybe listening a bit less to the fanbois, I would also the encourage the devs to think about the current implementation of EC in light of what happened to SWG with the NGE.
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Broadsword Online Games
They refuse to nerf Hib stun in sieges instead wanting people to gimp their chars by either not speccing MoC and/or go Stormlord over Convoker. They have shown they can change spells within range of keeps but Stun is all good it seems.
If you want casual this aint the place. Thats the way they like it.
The rebuttal was usually "Well, we'll take a look at it." then nothing would happen. We took it as "duly noted", as expected. These issues were in the monthly TL reports submitted by us directly to the developers. It was a good program, but the lack of insight of actually playing the game by development I think hindered our ability to be more effective.
It feels like Hib stun is more of an issue with the dwindling population. It didn't seem like much of an issue when there was enough population to offset it as far as being able to interrupt and such but with the low population it seems more of an issue when there are only a handful of people defending vs. a fg of casters ready to stun the first target they see. The power cost of group/speard heal also adds to the issue as the other realms can't just hide and heal, they need to be in LOS which puts them at a higher chance of getting attacked or interrupted.
It's been an issue for several groups of people the entirety of the game. Don't worry, your precious stunlock/mez combo classes aren't going to lose anything now. They haven't in 20 years.
I'd subscribe just to watch Mid and Alb starve Hib to the point of no RPs though. The silence would be deafening.
And stun lock requires 2 abilities; a stun and a static tempest to reset stun immunity. Both of these are available on every realm, with Mid actually having the ae stun to make it worse.
Mezz locking? I would think Alb has the advantage considering bolt range ae mezz with the extra radius? In the case of mid, they have the stun and the mezz on the same class? Wouldn't that make them better?
By the way I'm not denying that baseline stun on dps classes is very strong and one of the reason hib performs so well in keeps (that and their pbae classes are strong). But to say that for 20 years it's broken OP?
assisting classes and hkey is another animal
Stun nuke is strong. Anyone who denies that is trolling.
That being said, I don't know if you can say Broadsword hasn't tried to address it. The obelisks in keeps, the big ablative at the lord room level, etc. were all attempts to mitigate things like this. Maybe they weren't as effective as they could've been, but people can't say they haven't tried. Stun is kind of a complicated issue because 1) its value increases greatly with more players 2) its value is innately tied in the damage casters can do and how fast they can do it, which can go from low to high very easily (with debuff trains, comp pots, etc.) Frankly, I wouldn't care if they made stun spells unusable in keeps or put a debuff in keeps that reduced their duration. I don't think that's gonna fix all the issues with Hib, though... O_o
I also saw (and submitted) lots of changes to Caledonia and lots of them were implemented either during the first event or in subsequent events.
Beibhinn listens to all players via DM unless their names starts with the letters E-N-K
Broadsword Online Games
The game did not evolve to appease fanbois, otherwise it would still be popular. It evolved to become competitive which is NOT popular in the MMO community. Nearly every aspect of "casual" gameplay has been gutted and trivialized outside of RvR, which isn't casual friendly unless you zerg. The irony here is that despite the direction of making the game competitive, the pool of talented players has only decreased over time. Why? Because this game lacks content. RvR hasn't changed in 20 years and has become increasingly stale as a result. Sure, they have shuffled abilities around, introduced some new toys and gear that mimics typical MMO power creep. However, the objectives remain the same. RvR boils down to simply killing other players. This would be sufficient if the barrier to entry wasn't high, but I digress. There's a lot to be upset about in DAoC and it doesn't need to stem from a position of ignorance.
As Someone who solos over 95% of the time, Stun/Nuke and radar groups/players are the biggest problem facing the game even today! After closed and i came back here to my 60+ level 50's, the amount of things that make me want to quit again is stacked up so high that it's hard to stay playing Live. I Love the game, ALWAYS have, but logging on and getting 5k rps in 2 hours is hard to take! With all the roaming kill groups of RR 12 and 13 toons you can't hit ANYONE solo without the kill groups immediately (seemingly) porting in to just "HAPPEN to be there". This and all of the BS albatives and overpowered abilities just kill the fun completely.
Hell the ONLY way i have gotten ANY rps at all is to kill dopplegangers!
WTF happened to this GREAT game?
Edit: And PLEASE don't get me started on that Autohotkey subject!
Edit 2: there is a VERY easy way to handle the Stun Nuke problem, just change the Stun to a ROOT! See, easy fixed!