As anticipated, this year Mythic brought only Warhammer to the show (E3) and left DAoC behind. That the great majority of the resources were moved to the new project is undeniable and obvious. I just wish they would openly admit it and plan the future of both games accordingly, instead of continuing to answer with half-lies and badly concealed resignation.
The trend is also obvious (a year ago they had the launch of the classic servers to invert the progressive downward trend, this year nothing will stop it). No, it’s not the game being old. It’s just the commitment being shifted to Warhammer, with DAoC obviously suffering from a conservative development that just aims to continue to push it forward till it lasts.
DAoC is already dead, and it started to die when Mythic began working on Imperator. I could try to analyze the game design and development to point out where things aren’t working and how they could improve, but at this point it’s just pointless (as it always was) so I’ll avoid to waste my time mourning.
Instead I’m still interesting to write a few words about the upcoming stuff. Despite the absence from the E3, some details were still leaked about the upcoming expansion:
What they would say is that the new expansion, which will be officially announced soon, has one new race and one new class. Anyone, from any realm, can unlock the class on an account by account basis and then make characters using it. The race comes free with the expansion.
They plan to launch the expansion on their 5 year anniversary later this year.
The official announce is expected for June but the expectations about the announce are really low, I think. This expansion will hardly have “something to say”. Nor it will add much to the game.
For all things that could be tried in an expansion they just decided to go with something rabidly innovative: one new race and one new class. After the huge creative effort to produce that idea they couldn’t be bothered with all the balance problems that could arise, so the wonderful solution: we’ll make the race and class available to all three realms so that there’s only the bare minimum to balance and we’ll avoid all the complaints.
Instead on the forums people are complaining because they see this as lazy work. A demonstration that not much can be expected for this game if not what’s barely necessary as an excuse to kick it forward foe a few more months while Warhammer is being worked on.
It’s unclear if the long delayed rework of the tradeskills will be part of this expansion or if it will come staggered through the live patches. What we know is that both the expansion and the bigger changes on the tradeskills will arrive this fall. And that these changes won’t be anything groundbreaking.
From my point of view another new class is ALREADY WAY TOO MUCH. They aren’t lazy there, just stupid. I really don’t know who feels the need for another class. At this point I really wonder if it’s the case that Mythic wastes even more resources on this sort of stuff. I don’t think the players are asking this, nor I think it will help the game.
You don’t have any good idea for the expansion that is viable with the resources you have available? Ok, don’t do one. There’s so much to do, if the group is small better organize it to make some worthwhile, precise changes on the core points instead of wasting them on stuff that adds nothing and even risks to fuck up the game even more.
Or maybe NOT doing a patch would be already too innovative for Mythic?
Anyway, with the upcoming patch (1.84) they are also focusing on the bolts:
They also plan to focus in on bolts. There is a lot of talk about them and Mythic worries they’re not being used as intended and are having a detrimental effect on RvR. As it finally reached the top of their balance heap, they’re thinking of changing it so bolts only fail when cast on someone already involved in hand-to-hand melee combat. They want them to be an opening gambit, a long range RvR strike. They’re not supposed to be used close up. However, some view them as too hard to use and, as such, refinements must be made.
This is more interesting because I’m going to watch how they’ll solve this, and then I’ll mock them because I can already see the lame direction where they are moving.
It’s true that right now the crossbows are unusable and worthless. The controls are horribly designed. To fire a bolt you need to press the appropriate hotkey, stand completely still for 5 seconds or so (loading the crossbow) and then you’ll be able to fire the bolt, still if you don’t move. On top of this the bolts can miss like a normal arrow. It’s quite obvious that these controls are clunky and it’s really hard to find a situation where the crossbow is worth using. So yes, there’s a problem.
From the few words I quoted, Mythic is looking into the mechanic. Their goals are:
– make them an “opening gambit”, reducing the miss rate
– avoid them being used in melee
Now those two goals hint to a lame solution that they used on the fireballs. An absurd mechanic that I’m sure everyone who played DAoC still remembers and that just MAKES NO SENSE: if you fire a fireball at a target not engaged in combat, the fireball hits and deals damage. If the fireball is fired at a target engaged in combat, it misses.
I don’t know. That’s really a stupid mechanic for a fireball. It’s already deluding the fact that a FIREBALL doesn’t do AOE damage as in every other game that makes sense. You know, the single-target typical magic attack is not a fireball, but the magic arrow. On top of this there’s the fact that you have to check if your target is in combat or not, or the fireball will be uneffective.
It’s rather obvious how stupid and not consistent this mechanic is. It’s just BAD DESIGN all around. It doesn’t make sense, it’s counterintuitive and genre breaking. It has all the possible flaws all at once. What happens now? That they are going to “fix” the bolts (another broken mechanic on its own, as explained) by porting to them the way the fireballs work.
Great plan there.
And I’m writing this because these changes are still being designed. I’m putting my hands forward here and we’ll see how they’ll change this.
Now here’s my point of view.
There are bows and crossbows. There must be some traits that differentiate them and the VERY FIRST THING you have to consider when you design the implementation of these objects in the game is about identifying those traits so that you can replicate them in the game.
Roughly:
– a bow shoots faster but it is less precise
– a crossbow has long reload times but it’s much more precise
Here we have already a basic mechanic that can be easily ported to any game, DAoC included. Not only. It is also consistent with those two goals that Mythic defined above. The crossbows should be more precise (so more probability to hit than a bow) but slow to load (so not really usable if you are in melee).
See? It’s not that complicated. What is left to do is to examine how the crossbows work in the current game (described above) and plan the concrete changes. Which are just two rather trivial modifications to the current system:
1- Preload. The possibility to load a bolt on the crossbow and keep it readied to be fired at any moment and till the character keeps the crossbow equipped.
2- Change the to-hit mechanic. Flat rate 95% “to hit” if the character is standing still when the bolt is being fired, progressively reduced with the running speed down to a minimum of 50%.
That’s all.
Those two simple changes achieve prefectly the goals that Mythic set. They are balanced in the game and are also consistent mechanics with how a crossbow is supposed to work and how people expect it to work in a game. Without the need of the lame solution that makes the bolt miss if your target is engaged in melee.
With those changes the crossbow will REALLY become an “opening gambit” for the tank classes, because they would be able to load the bolt and then fire it later. At the same time the long reload times (cannot reload if you are interrupted) would make it impossible to use a crossbow if the character is engaged in melee. Which is what makes sense in a situation like that.
Take this as another design challenge.
Want to bet that Mythic’s solution will be much worse than mine? I even gave them the advantage of the forewarning ;)
EDIT: I later discovered to have misunderstood the whole thing. Mythic isn’t talking about crossbows but about fireballs (and that quote from mmorpg.com tricked me with its mistakes).
If, as announced, they remove the in-combat check on the fireballs/bolts, then it is all good. It should have been like this from the very beginning and I passed a full year arguing with Therrik (former Wizzy TL) about this.
If it’s too overpowering just rise the recast timers and add a minimum range. I expect to hear complaints from the players, though.