Posted on the boards in the impossible hope to receive some feedback and archiving here.
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This is what DAoC should become, how it should move and develop and what, as “Just Another Player”, I’d like to see. It’s actually a draft of something more detailed but I decided to see if I’m able to receive some feedback before considering if to put more work into it. I’d like to read some critics in order to discover what’s wrong in these ideas, someone pointing to me where they fail or where they aren’t as good as they seem to me.
A follow up focusing on different details here.
And forgive my crappy english, it is still my second language.. ;p
PvE
– Move the quest/content team to reconsider, realm by realm all the quests in the classic game -> Updating the quest mechanics where needed, reducing pointless, endless fetch patterns, isolating and reinforcing the fun mechanics, removing what is unneeded, adjusting the rewards to be valuable and interesting with the rest of the game (and for low-level PvP). Reconsider the distribution of the monsters. Study EACH zone with a design approach aimed to give a specific purpose and an actual, concrete use to each “Point of Interest” on each zone. Erase the idea of mudflation and obsolete content and reconsider all these parts (in progressive stages, like from leve 1 to 5 of each realm, then from 6 to 10 and so on, till everything is consequentially covered) in order to give back a sense and use to *all* the parts of the game. Each zone should have 4-5 “PoI”s with a specific, unique purpose in the overall structure of the game.
– In particular: Redesign all the quests for the epic armors. Redesign the kits so that they have bonuses up to date with the rest of the content. Add to each full set new bonuses *unique* for these armors and that no other item in the game will provide.
– Instance ToA’s ML content to be doable with a single group (everything, from step one to the last) -> Tune *UP* the difficulty so that it will be HARD to complete each level with that group. As an example the ML1 part1, consisting on a 1vs1 encounter in an arena underwater, should be redesigned from zero to become an 8vs8 arena, with no possible intervention from outside. Remove the constitution loss on death if the death happens during a ML trial. Add a /release point *within* the instance (maybe as a small dungeon to clean to find your way back to the actual ML missions) porting there the players automatically and without needing them to actually bind there.
– Redesign the scrolls to activate the artifacts of the game so that they become rewards from *direct quests* -> Each of the three scrolls to activate an artifact should come from a quest that will point the player to rediscover a part of the *classic* world (new named monsters could be added to the classic game for this purpose). All these quests *must be soloable* but requiring 5-6 steps each (no farming). Some of these steps should require the use of player crafted components.
– Redesign the artifacts’ bonuses so that *each level* offers a new skill, or a power-up to a previous one.
– Allow the artifacts to gain experience without specific requirements (PvP and PvE equally balanced over average time spent). Boost the experience up if the player is in a full group.
– Add a quest to restore the use of an artifact after it loses all its durability (example: kill Legion in DF). Apply the same mechanic for every quest item in the game.
RvR
– Reconsider (reduce by a very good margin) the damage of siege engines in all the Battlegrounds.
– Fix the Tower Razing mechanic to disable also its *function* (the tower cannot be conquered and remains “neutral” till the repairing process is over) while the tower is repairing.
– Continue to monitor, consider and potentiate the RvR missions in order to add dynamism, purpose and spread the players uniformly around the zones. Add competitive missions (one goal – three different groups coming each from each realm to fight over it) to work as “matchmaking” services for single players and groups.
– Address directly the population unbalance (this point is too long to explain, my idea is to cap the total upgrades to the keeps to a fixed pool. Each realm will have to decide if to upgrade one keep only to the maximum, or many but all at low levels and so on). This in order to open up possibilities to smaller realms so that they will be able to compete with hit&run tactics. Taking advantage of the weaknesses of the bigger realms (chatoic zergs, confusion, lack of organization, visibility).
– Redesign completely how interrupts, stuns and immunity timers work -> The interrupts shouldn’t break an action but just put it “on hold”. So without requiring the player to keep spamming a key. The spell should trigger as (if) there’s a right moment to cast it. The spell should remain in the queue till the spell is successfully casted or the player interrupts it directly. Stuns should never last longer than 5 seconds, mezz should never last longer than 15, immunity timers should last a fixed amount of time (like 15 sec) without a variation or special cases. When an immunity timer is active it should show a specific blinking icon.
– Redesign the healer classes on *all the three realms* as follows ->
* Adjust the specialization factor from 1.0 to 1.5 (in order to grant them the access to different roles instead of becoming buff or heal bots).
* Redesign the buffs mechanic, the caster will be able to mantain only a maximum of 2 buffs on each player. Adjust the concentration values accordingly (sensibly reducing the pool).
* Redesign the three resist spells as just one spell working in an Area of Effect without timer (as long as the caster is on range the protection will be active).
* Two same-type casters cannot buff the same player (to not dodge the 2 buffs cap).
– Reduce/reconsider/adjust and rebalance the damage in PvP. Do not touch the hitpoints, just scale up the defenses and the damage down all over the table and with a regular scheme to uniformly affect each class without differences (so that the system won’t need a redesign from zero).
– Remove the red “names” above the heads of stealthed enemies.
– Disable /face /stick /follow on enemy targets (mobs and enemy players).
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This is also what I consider broken in the game right now and what I believe should be high-priority. I believe a new server with a new ruleset is just a “cheap” solution to simply continue to ignore the problems while throwing a cookie to the players. It won’t help the game as it didn’t help to add /level 20, the free levels, and the bonuses to the smaller realms.