As I finished patching the test client I found a new poll, I didn’t notice it mentioned on the Herald. Odd:

Let’s see:
– “New lands to explore” – No, the world is already deserted as it is. No need for more wasted space when 95% of the content is unused or has lost its role in the game.
– “New dungeons and boss monsters” – No, see above. Even the dungeons are completely deserted or unused. Or devoid of an actual purpose.
– “New races” – Well, at least this wouldn’t be a game-breaking point as those above. I don’t really feel the need for this, though. Maybe new and more unique animations would be better to justify more lag. New models too since the meshes on the heads are still looking awful (or bugged).
– “New classes” – Oh my god, please no. The opposite: consolidate the specializations into full-featured classes.
– “More ways to earn Realm Points” – Yes, falling from the sky. No, really. This one was stupid.
– “More BattleGrounds” – Yeah, because they aren’t already deserted enough. We need more empty space to waste.
– “More areas to fight in RvR” – Who the hell wrote this poll? Has he ever played this game?
– “More abilities to use in RvR” – It depends.

This is poll was stupid. I hope DAoC can offer more that wasted space and new classes that will take years to fit and balance. The game’s possibilities are REALLY not limited to that. It’s really deluding to see devs asking for ideas that are solely limited to “more of the same” fluff when the possibilities are instead *infinite*. This game has so much more to say. Something that ADDS and complements what’s there already. Not just pointless extensions of the same. Noone wants the game even more stretched than how it is already if there isn’t solid DESIGN below. Ideas with a purpose and a role in the game. Not just excuses to keep the dev team busy.

It’s time that this game goes to untap more its own potential and use better its resources. Adding more worthless content as it happened for the past expansions isn’t going to be useful for everyone, in particular when there are other games that can offer that type of mudflated content with greater polish and depth. In fact DAoC would definitely need a reorganization, not another stretch when the fabric of the game is already thin and vulnerable. I’d hate to see those resources wasted even more on a type of development that doesn’t fit this game.

I also do not think that this form of demagogy through polls is going to help the game. The players, massively polled like that, erasing the level of the discussion, cannot suggest new ideas. DAoC needs to move onward. Not backwards. You cannot continue to copy a model that worked in the past in the hope that it can still work today. The game needs a direction, not a “return”. This game has already wasted too much dev work to develop content that noone is using.

Learn from Eve-Online (which hit 95k of subscribers and not far from surpassing DAoC’s peak of contemporary users worldwide). Or rehire Dave Rickey.

Now about the patch. Thls last “fragment” is less interesting than the previous because it’s reserved more to the “bugfixing”, tweaking and completing the work started with the previous patches than adding meat. Since the changes are minimal, in particular about the classes, I won’t comment them. There isn’t anything deep that depends on design. These just depend on a careful balance that is possible only through lots of testing. It can only come after the design.

Other notes that are more relevant are about the fix to one bug that was one of the hugest gripes of the community in the last months:

– Line of sight issues have been improved for all towers in New Frontiers. This fix also addresses many of the ‘cast through walls’ issues that Bainshees had on towers.

Oddly enough I didn’t see anyone celebrating. This is one fix that should be worth the whole patch after all the complaints from the players. It’s between the best changes on this patch.

Then the gravestones (that the players leave to litter the place as they die) received a graphic restyle. I logged in to see these because I always appreciate when the game is reworked and refined. But in this case I didn’t like them. They are bigger and the white marble makes them too intrusive. They look too much “kitsch”. I wish the artists didn’t change the style because now they are really ugly to see around. The old version was much less disturbing and more similar to stones, making them fit well with the environment instead of clashing with it. But then who will you ever find that goes on a lenghty commentary about gravestones in a game?

And finally a card game. I went to check this one too. Of course I wish a card game had actually, you know, cards. With artwork and everything. Instead, but as expected, the card game is just about a dialogue with an NPC. You buy a “token” (1 gold) and then use it to select three cards/options from three decks. The first deck has three cards, the other two are bigger. You win prizes depending on how many cards you “match” for each deck. The prizes range from fluff (“roleplay” items you can equip like mugs or flowers) to various types of currency (gold and the coins used by the merchants in Catacombs and Darkness Falls). And even respec stones (I’m not sure about this one).

This patch also adds a timeout for inactive characters at the border keeps that will affect the buffbots. They said that this change was intended to reduce the lag but I don’t see the difference if these buffbots sit at the destination keeps instead of at the border ones. It is more coherent, though, since it forces the players to move them out of a “secure” space and into keeps that can be attacked.

I also don’t see how this system can actually affect someone in the practice since it triggers after 30 minutes and then gives a warning for another 15 minutes. Plenty of time (45 mins) to move the buffbot a little to circumvent the timeout. You also usually need a rebuff way more often than that.

There are many other smaller changes aimed to complete the work that started with the previous patch fragments.

Overall the patch is good but also feels near completition. Many players rant because the class changes didn’t meet the expectations. As I commented in the previous occasions the class changes in this patch differ from those in the previous one about the “heavy tanks” and came more in the form of tweaks and adjustments than new gameplay patterns that add or transform the game. I didn’t comment these exactly because they were more a result of a balancing work that is always redundant more than a result of design.

So I’m not surprised if the players expected some more, in particular if you consider that these changes arrive after very long periods, and after your class is examined it will take a huge amount of time till you’ll see more changes (since the number of classes to examine is so high).