The last Grab Bag is interesting. To begin with it dispels the doubts about the “Catacombs” expansion (enabled on the new ruleset servers) being dependent on ToA (which is going to be ditched):

Q: Do I need to own TOA in order to activate Catacombs on the new server?

A: On the new server, you do not need to own the TOA expansion.

I guess the time will finally obliterate the work put on ToA, which is somewhat a sad thing. Or, as Dave Rickey said:

The current Live team has their work cut out for them, and I wish them well.

And here is the important point. As I wrote elsewhere this new ruleset is questioning the work of the devs. This is why Dave “wishes well” to them. Because this whole project of the new server is basically a failure declaration. It cannot be read in any other way if not a complete failure.

Or maybe not. In fact, if you delve some more, you could be able to see a glimpse of what is the real stance of Mythic’s devs. They are still NEGATING the whole thing. They are negating that ToA was a failure, they are negating that the idea to give DAoC a new insane grind was a failure, they are negating the HOLES in the design and gameplay. This is the real reason why ToA wasn’t fixed after all this time. Because noone has ever acknowledged the problems. Noone has learnt A DAMN THING. They stand behind two similar positions: fear of being kicked out because of their failure and a constant denial of the problems in order to defend their work (and chair).

They DO NOT want to accept (or maybe cannot, because it means a crisis of their role) that they made some mistakes and that those mistakes must be considered, acknowledged and then addressed in order to let the game grow instead of sink inesorably.

In fact this is their actual stance on this whole thing:

Walt Yarbrough:
This is aimed at many of our former customers, not our current ones. Our satisfaction is high in the polls that we take of our current customers.

He thinks that their current customers love their game, love ToA, love the buffbots. He believes that the players are completely satisfied by Mythic’s offer. He does not believe that the new ruleset could appeal even to them. He does not believe that the new ruleset addresses serious problems that the game objectively has… He just thinks that all these issues are SUBJECTIVE points of view. NONE of Mythic’s work in these years has been a failure. NONE of their work is being questioned by all this. Nothing at all is being questioned, is being examined, is being acknowledged. NOTHING AT ALL IS BEING LEARNT. It’s a *denial*, complete denial of everything happening to the game.

And that stance has been now backed up directly by Sanya in the Grab Bag:

This new server type is meant for people who would otherwise not play DAOC at this time. I don’t expect that most people currently playing are going to do much more than roll on the new server out of pure curiosity. I DO expect that the people with active accounts who try the new toy will eventually go back to their “home” servers. And I hope that people who are reactivating just for this ruleset decide to stay.

This server is just an attempt to meet the needs of a niche group of players.

Listen carefully. ALL of you out there thinking that DAoC has “a few” consistent problems in the design. ALL OF YOU… You are just a fucking niche. You are a tiny, little, irrelevant annoyance. A minority of ranters who know nothing about their huge subscription base that, after being sagely polled, has been declared totally satisfied.

And remember:

Future expansions and patches will be primarily designed for the more typical servers.

Because they are so fucking stubborn that they won’t understand what is going on till the last paying player will vanish to never come back. And even then I have my doubts that they would be able to “get” it.

Thick as a brick.

More comments triggred by DAoC’s new ruleset I save from F13 that I haven’t completely covered in what I wrote below.

—

Haemosh:
As has been said before, the PROCESS of DAoC’s PVE treadmill is what makes it so grindy.

That’s the point in fact. As I define it: a problem of quality and not of quantity.

DAoC’s treadmill isn’t longer compared to other games, but it is awful for the most part (especially now with a weak community).

In this thread someone brought the example of task dungeons as a relevent improvement to the treadmill. My point is that they are exactly the opposite. They BREAK the game. They are essentially corridors with a row of immoble mobs in the middle. You whack your way through them, one by one, with about a two minutes downtime between each kill till the end where sits the exact same mob you whacked till that point, just named. You kill the named and you get rewarded with money and experience.

Now the reward is good, this is true, and it makes the treadmill shorter since you can efficently level up in solo. But this is, in fact, the “quantity” aspect of the problem. The truth is that you are really playing an unashamed version of Progressquests that puts you in a corridor with a row of mobs you need to grind to increase the size of your e-peen. There is really NOTHING ELSE. Just repeat your easy kill 20x for each mob, complete the task, get another and repeat.

This CANNOT be tolerated. It cannot be tolerated for weeks or months as it cannot be tolerated for ten minutes. It’s one of those things that give you epiphanies: what the fuck am I doing? The game cannot be THAT dumb.

And you really cannot believe that the devs could be so unashamed to add something like that to the game.

—

Nebu:
Having played this game off and on since beta, I was very excited about the new server concept initially. Then I began to consider how ranged buffs and the lack of ToA would effect RvR gameplay. Sadly, it seems that the release of NF and catacombs both relied heavily on balance currently in place with ToA. As a result, I think that these two servers will be heavily populated initially, but the problems inherent in the system will cause some huge balance issues unless Mythic is willing to address the special needs of such a server. I personally don’t see Mythic willing to redesign the game for 2 servers, so the problems with balance will simply become a game artifact that the players there will work with. The people unwilling to live with the imbalance will leave after a month or so.

That’s also what I wrote on my website. The rulesets are divergent and I don’t expect them to split the work in two in order to let the two ruleset develop.

It will be also fun to see how they’ll show the horrible design even behind Catacombs. We have now powerful classes like Vampiir planned as workarounds to the buff bot problems. Now the buffbots are being removed and those “already buffed” classes will simply be completely unbalanced.

Haemish:
I preferred questing in DAoC, but you couldn’t level exclusively with questing, and after 20 or so, there were no quests to speak of.

That’s not true. The problems were *radical*.

To begin with you couldn’t know where to get them. You had to visit a spoiler site to understand what you could do since in the game you could just click on EVERY NPC in the game world and NOT EVEN KNOW if the quest was appropriate for your level. There was NO con system. You couldn’t know if you could complete the quest alone or if you needed a full group.

All this becomes recursive in a system simply *inaccessible*. Noone was questing, so it was impossible to build up a group to complete your goals. The rewards were always awful and the quests required HUGE downtimes by constantly riding horses. Most of those quests offer that exact gameplay: run around endlessly trying to figure out imprecise informations (that required spoiler sites in order to not waste REAL HOURS) and kill sporadically a few targets that were inevitably too hard to solo.

As I wrote many times, the questing in DAoC was a BURDEN. You did that only when absolutely FORCED, like in the case of extremely powerful items you needed for the endgame.

Lounge:
Why is it more fun to do a quest where you kill 50 foozles to collect 10 widgets then go back to Angry Dwarf 12 for Hammer of bashing 3? Also what are the /played of the people hitting 60 in wow?

Because WoW is often seen superficially and trivialized when there’s a complexity under the hood. The fact is that too many times its accessibility is confused with a lack of depth (which exists, for example in the PvP).

I passed the whole 55-60 range by trying to figure out the quests in BRD. Those are five levels, the longest in the game and by running (and not completing) just ONE instance. I was actually “lucky” to be able to join groups where I was systematically the most expert. I proceeded by little step, doing something more each day and finding out what was behind the next corner and how to face it. The fact that the game is designed wonderfully is proven by the actual mechanics. Once I knew what to expect it was way easier to face it and move onward. So it wasn’t just repeating the same kill over and over and over for hours. Instead it was a learning experience, a progressive conquest, constantly renovating and enclosed by smaller steps in the form of the quests that allowed me to not simply restart from zero each time (one of the flaws of Guild Wars).

Figuring out those quests isn’t easy. Especially if you don’t get powerleveled or just join raids to trivialize the experience. The game is HARD. It requires competence in the sense you need to know how to play. It’s not just relative to how much you know your class but, especially, the knowledge you have of that precise place.

To date those runs through BRD have been the most rich and fun experience I’ve EVER had in a (PvE) game. And that’s just one small example of what is available in the game that isn’t “reheated food”.

—

Nebu:
HRose: I see the PvE in DAoC as nothing more than the price of admission to RvR. It’s not fun nor is it interesting. Aside from CoH where the PvE was fun for about a week due to its fast pace, no MMOG has interesting PvE. PvE to me is killing a mob to get better gear to kill a mob with more hit points to get better gear… etc. It gets old fast.

From Dave Rickey’s interview, which is really worth-reading:

Dave Rickey:
After about 4 months of that, I became convinced that we needed to focus on improving and expanding our RvR game, as our unique competitive advantage. PvE wasn’t why our players were coming, and too long of a treadmill on the way to RvR was losing us a lot of them. This put my “malcontent” status at a whole new level, rather than pushing for 1 or 2 new positions, a few days of programmer time, or the reorganization of a half-dozen people, I was essentially saying that the entire strategic direction for the ongoing development of the game had to change, and since TOA (with a total PvE focus and a new levelling system to be stacked on top of the old) was scheduled to come out in 7 months, the change had to happen right *then* if we were to put anything else on the shelves that Christmas.

[…]

At an analytical level, TOA was an attempt to make Camelot more like EverQuest 1. Hugely complicated multi-step quests to earn “Master Levels”, that required the cooperative efforts of large numbers of people, doing them over and over again, and a new set of items that were bigger, better, and more shiny to collect. It was the antithesis of what I thought Camelot needed at that stage, as it added yet another treadmill that players would have to climb before they could be competitive in RvR.

Nebu:
For my $$$ I want to log on and hunt other players. The encounters are more varied and the tactics more interesting. My personal conclusion was that I had to come to grips with the fact I have to grind a treadmill for a week in able to do that.

Firstly, I believe that DAoC shouldn’t ditch its PvE. I strongly believe that it IS possible to make it fun and not a burden. That’s why I hate “/level 20”, those unacceptable task dungeons and that stupid “free level” mechanic.

Those are, exactly like the new ruleset, ways to DODGE the problems. To avoid to face them. Nothing will improve if you do not SOLVE or at least TRY to address the problems. There’s a serious need of acknowledgment even before they start moving a finger.

“The PvE sucks, so no PvE”, I do not accept that. That’s seconding a problem, not solving it. When “Wish” was turned toward the GM driven content the exuse brought by the devs was: “we tried to go in the PvP direction but it wasn’t fun”.

OF COURSE it’s not fun. Because to make good things you need to work on them and expand their potential. The quality or the “fun” in general doesn’t fall from the sky, you need to hunt for it. So I don’t accept that DAoC has to become “just PvP” because PvE isn’t fun. It should instead START to work in order to offer something interesting. Because they definitely have the resources to do so.

The second point is about the battlegrounds. They are a WONDERFUL idea. They allow you to do just PvP from day 1 till the last. But even here the idea is ruined by an awful implementation. Most of these BGs are devoid of players. Most of the times they are PACKED with stealthers behind siege equipment to one-shot you constantly. At best you find super twinked players where again you can just watch and feed them with points.

Even here there’s A LOT to do. There’s the need to cut out the twinking at the roots as a mechanic, there’s the need to draw the population of the BGS from ALL the servers in order to keep them populated at all times, there’s the need to SEVERELY NERF the siege engines, there’s the need to make the economy accessible again for the casual player, there’s the need to ease the accessibility to good equipment, there’s the need to balance the classes specifically for PvP at the low levels. AND SO ON.

But it’s dodging all these issues that brings nothing to the game. In fact this new ruleset is again a withdrawal from solving the problems. A workaround.

—

Yegolev:
If I were going to start in DAoC at max level for RvR, maybe I’d rather play CounterStrike? You know, something not based on phat lewt, otherwise I’m just grinding for equipment anyway. Today I’m getting sleepy just thinking about a grind.

But the point is that PvP in a persistent environment is able to offer A LOT MORE. This is in fact what is happening to all the successful FPS. The deathmatches, today, are considered obsolate and all the design and the development is leaning toward more complex and interactive environments. This is why we have vehicles, large environments, semi persistent and tactical elements. And so on. This is why we have “onslaught” and “assault” modes instead of deathmatches and CTF, this is why the next Unreal Tournament is going to bundle them in an even more complex “battleground”.

The point is that mmorpgs have AN ADVANTAGE on this field that is completely WASTED. Noone is doing anything at all.

This is a genre that “is supposed” to move faster than everything else out there. That should push out “innovation” at a daily rate. Instead it’s severely lagging as the worst console game. Look around and you’ll see that the innovation is coming from everywhere BUT the mmorpgs.

—

Haemish:
BUT… the /level 20 did show one thing. None of the other battlegrounds is/was as populated at the level 20-24 battleground, mainly from people using /level 20 to quickly get a PVP-enabled character. And those battles were damn fun. Once they put in gold and experience, as well as realm points being gained from PVP, I never leveled by PVE until I had capped out my realm points for that BG. I got new items from the marketplace in the housing zones. At that point, the game didn’t exist for me outside of that same zone, and it was the most fun I had in DAoC ever, counting both times I subscribed.

I agree on that. But these are two different beasts and both need work. The PvE needs work to be attractive, not to be just as quick as possible in order to forget it. It needs value.

On the other side I believe that to give the possibility to advance completely through PvP is good for the game. I always suggested this and I supported them when they decided to go in that direction. A choice is always a good thing to have. So you can choose to do some PvE and PvP mixed, or just PvE, or just PvP.

“/level 20” just broke the community and jumpstarted the trend of super twinked characters. I found always hard to do anything in the BG exactly because I didn’t have a chance to compete due to those balance problems.

Again, with the introduction of BGs from level 1 to 45, there is no need anymore for commands used to jump levels (like the “free level” idiocy) because there is finally something worthy and interesting to do. But this is only a potential because the reality is WAY different. Most of the BGs are empty and have the serious issues that I listed above. So without a direct work this choice isn’t really a choice available for everyone.

It’s from day 1 that DAoC has accessibility problems. In the design, the ruleset and the gameplay. Games like WoW have been hugely successful exactly because they eased the accessibility (good UI, controls and so on till every tiny detail that has been defined as “polish”).

And if someone remembers I was the FIRST to suggest to hand out premade characters at level 45, way before Guild Wars. On these boards, in fact.

But my idea wasn’t to systematically give the possibility to the players to jump all that experience and break the game for the new players. My idea (that I still consider worth a try) was to bundle in each expansion pack like “Catacombs” a key code. You use the key code and you can pull out a maxed character. Just one.

That would allow EVERY player to see how the game works at the latter levels and enjoy the best it has to offer. At the same time it doesn’t break the community at the low levels that is CRUCIAL to keep the game healthy. “/level 20” was a superficial workaround that I believe damaged the game way more than the benefits it brought.

While some players would have loved a truly “nostalgic server” without the new frontier zones, new classes and spellcrafting, the plan Mythic decided to follow is to launch two new server with an “alternate” ruleset around the middle of July.

The three relevant differences are:
– Removal of the /level 20 command (which was allowing the elder players with already a maxed out character to start another one bypassing the first twenty levels)
– Removal of the “Trial of Atlantis” expansions with the exception of the new races (which was the “catass” and less accessible part of the game that everyone finished to hate)
– Removal of the possibility to take advantage of buffs outside a group (buffs will be group and ranged based, removing directly the possibility to use external buffbots)

These changes are enough to trigger discussion threads on all the main forums I follow (and that I have to systematically troll, it seems) and in general the feedback from current and former players has been positive. The problem is that some aspects are different than how they appear and what is happening is interesting to consider from different perspectives instead of a superficial glance. This is one of the comments I wrote:

—
…try something new? Where?

These new servers add nothing at all. They remove:

– They remove a whole expansion
– They remove the possibility tu use buffs outside a group
– They remove the possibility to use the /evel 20 command that directly destroys the community at the lower levels.

Believe me, there is NO DIRECTION from Mythic here. There is NO WILL to experiment and NO deliberate choice. What happened is that they are simply trying to give the players what they asked for so long. It’s two years that they blame “Trials of Atlantis” and unfair mechanics like the buffbots and the /level 20, now Mythic decided to feed them with what they asked and see how it goes.

What they offer here is simply a bandaid (in fact none of those points is a “solution” but it is actualy a withdrawal from addressing those problems). A workaround to glaring problems in the game at a radical level that they are too scared to address properly.

Now the point is that a large part of the players is drooling over those workarounds because it’s better than nothing. Better than ignoring those broken mechanics altogether.

What will happen isn’t that positive. The two servers will be SWAMPED by players and I really do not expect them to be playable as they launch. I’m not sure how Mythic doesn’t see these issues coming. At the same time this will damage even more the population on the “standard” servers, making them even less playable and accessible (both already consistent problems).

All this means something different than offering a service that the players are asking. It means that the design of those parts failed big time and Mythic was unable/too scared to fix. They are removing a whole expansion. Imho, this definitely isn’t normal and would require some serious thought.

What happens here should question the stance Mythic maintained in these years, and not simply second the desires of the players as the most natural thing in the world.

—
The first problem is directly in the words of Walt Yarbourgh:

Yes, this is aimed at many of our former customers, not our current ones. Our satisfaction is high in the polls that we take of our current customers.

This already shows how wrong is the perception he has of the game and the playerbase. I’m rather sure that it’s nowhere useful to read the results of the polls in that way. I rather believe that the current subscribers like what they play, but that they are also enduring the problems. Those problems exist and are not a subjective perception. The fact that there are satisfied customers doesn’t mean that they approve directly everything Mythic is doing in the game. This is why I consider that comment completely off-track. It’s a huge mistake to consider these new servers appealing just for former players. They are appealing for everyone simply because they finally do something about some of the radical problems that the game has and that Mythic never cared to solve.

As I wrote above the new ruleset isn’t going to solve anything. It simply attests a design failure that Mythic is still refusing to acknowledge completely. The removal of consistent parts of the game (instead of fixing them and make them fun) is a denial of those problems even if still a way to second the playerbase. The position isn’t moved, they aren’t admitting that some parts of the design are flawed and would need an aggressive rework, so they feed us an “alternate ruleset” that is supposed to alleviate some gripes. If you read some of the defenses that the players write about the buffbots and the other broken features you’ll see how all their reasons are coming from consequences of radical problems. For examples the buffbots “cannot” be removed because the game has been balanced with them in mind. Absolutely true but this doesn’t justifies the existence of the buffbots, it just shift the attention to the REAL problem. Which should be addressed instead of being seconded or ignored. Again another example is that buffbots are required to not make the PvE in solo too slow and boring. But it’s another justification of a consequence of a real problem: the fact that the game needs a reconsideration of the downtimes (health and mana regeneration while not in combat). In a similar way the /level 20 command is absolutely required (along with the “free levels” idotic mechanic) in order to ease an awful treadmill. But again the problem is not that the treadmill is slow per se. But that it is DULL. It’s dull for an hour as it can be dull for a week. The problem isn’t again in its length, but in its direct gameplay.

What I’m saying is that DAoC is surely a game with its own merits as well as serious problems in the gameplay. Mythic has always refused to address those problems aggressively and the game has kept lagging and persisting in those mistakes. The point is that seconding the playerbase or heaping workarounds is again exactly what Big Bartle described. Instead of letting the game grow and improve you cut its legs. In the short term all those solutions will offer a sensible benefit but in the long distance the game will pay the price of this dodging approach and will sink more and more till it will be time to hide the skeleton and replace it with “new shiney” under a new name and a new flagship (DAoC 2: Warhammer). Bandaids always work temporarily but they do not heal anything and are typical of a superficial approach. Again it’s all about “choices”. What works in the short term isn’t always good even in the long term.

Each of those design points would deserve a deep analysis. The problems of the buffbots cannot get solved by making them group/range based simply because the true origin of the problem is deeper:

HRose:
The problem with buffbots isn’t the mechanic of the buffs, it’s about the design of the classes.

World of Warcraft has demonstrated that you can design fun classes all around, without specific roles that just suck like a character that is specialized on buffs and does exclusively that. What sucks in DAoC and other games with a similar approach is that your character does just *one thing*. And the gameplay of some specific classes like buffbots and healers just sucks.

In WoW you cannot build a buffbot because there isn’t a class that can buff you with everything available in the game. There is no class with such an horrible role. To get buffed completely you’d need at least a priest, a druid, a paladin and a warlock.

The “buffs” aren’t anymore the specific role of a character that is supposed to just sit on its ass and, maybe, throw a weak heal (due to specialization issues) every few minutes. Instead they become a mechanic shared between all the classes.

That’s the real point. In DAoC there are basic design holes like the role of healers and the enforced specialization (in order to brag the number of different classes you can play) that Mythic never cared to address.

The ranged/group buffs are a workaround to a problem they do not plan to solve.

Darniaq:
I’ve always agreed with you about DAoC’s overall design. The fact it attained and retained so many players is, to me, one part timing and one part good company relations. The game itself is some of the worse parts of EQ except for those players that know the game so well they know what to avoid.

The reason I said it’s in “maintenance mode” is exactly as you wrote. There is no concerted effort to solve the core problems with the game. Maybe there never was. Maybe they think everything’s fine.

I’ve been arguing a similar point for some time. I think Blizzard made a brilliant move by limiting the number of classes. EQ2 and SWG like DAoC and EQlive before them got into some sort of wierd overdesign mode where the developers thought more classes were better.

Not so. More classes just means more balance headaches at best, or marginalized classes at worst. They inevitably become super-specialized, and in ways that become boring for most players. Darwinized playstyles emerge. If a class/template is boring to play but deemed a requirement, it will be bot’ed. The developers can get pissed and ban players and cajole them and pay them off and invent new servers all they want, but they’re fighting a losing battle.

Don’t make boring classes. Anyone with a conscious can identify boring classes. Your players will. Better to do so before launch though.

Having a few classes that can do many things is better than having a zillion classes that can only do one.

The last point is that aside all these considerations there is also the problem about how the game will be maintained from now on. The two ruleset are divergent. It isn’t possible to balance the PvP of both with generic patches and I really don’t think that Mythic is going to double their work to let these two rulesets continue on opposite paths. Mythic designers know what they are doing? It seems that the whole idea of the poll just cornered them and now they are going to screw it no matter what they choose.

The idea to use alternate rulesets to fix important gameplay problems simply cannot be justified. While this reaction is better than nothing I believe that it will bring along many other problems, making the game progressively harder to manage. Exactly because this isn’t a good path to pursue.

By the way, in the case I have time to play I’ll resubscribe for the occasion (I canceled again recently after the announce of Warhammer). The brand new servers along with the removal of the “/level 20” command and the new work on the guild system could help to let a community develop. Aside the gameplay problems this is the most serious issue of the game. The only players left are in closed guilds and it’s basically impossible to enjoy the game casually and find people to group with. The game is silent, very silent. As always the most important part of a game is the community and this is the real reason why I’m interested on the new servers. Before the gameplay changes.

No buffbots, no twink characters, no powerlevelling and an economy not completely inaccessible and inflated. For some time it could be fun.

—
In the meantime Lum poked the fun on me, disproving what I wrote some time ago. It seems that the new player models added with the “Catacombs” expansions are, in fact, available to everyone for free through an optional patch and already bundled (along with the new tutorials and town art) in the free trial client. So it’s true that this time they are going to show to the former customers that could come back to check the new servers the best profile of the game. Instead of an obsolete and limited client as it happened till not long ago. Good choice.

He’s “sorry” to be that blunt but I’m sure he enjoyed that quite a bit :)

Yesterday Mythic released a new chunk of notes about the most interesting features among those planned for this patch: an UI for guild management, carryable banners on the battlefield and a “social panel” directly ripped off WoW.

I don’t feel the need into the details because I already commented everything. It’s just the exact same pattern reapplied and all my considerations are valid for all the new additions. Even for this reiteration we have more and more stacking bonuses, more stolen ideas from WoW and more insane moneysinks. I do not like this approach to the design but at least this time there slightly more gameplay involved in the form of the carryable banners… even if based again on bonuses.

The other positive note is that this time the presentation of these new features isn’t awful as in the past, so everything should be accessible and usable without the player being forced to learn and read the patch notes (take it as a rule: if a player need to read the patch notes to know about a feature or its precise use -> the feature is broken and must be redone).

I don’t comment in detail the guild mission system because, while the principles are good, the implementation sucks badly. The grind in PvP is slightly more acceptable than PvE but this doesn’t hide the fact that Mythic’s designers are unable to offer interesting forms of gameplay. Grinding missions to gain more pointless bonuses isn’t involving nor helps to achieve the purposes listed:

The purpose of the Guild RvR Missions system is to build a sense of unity within the guild by encouraging guild members to work together with each other to achieve common goals. Accomplishing Guild RvR Missions provides meaningful rewards to the guild as a whole.

“God forbid some depth in the PvP system, let’s just play spreadsheets.”

That’s probably the essence of the new patch that just reached the test server after a little more than a month of gestation. This time the focus is on some new features related to the guild system as I was anticipating here. In particular they left out from this first iteration all the most relevant features (the carryable banners and a dedicated UI) to implement a merit system that on a first approach sounds similar to the one patched in EQ2 a few months ago.

So I start to read the lengthy patch notes (Mythic is developing a talent into making them longer and longer evein if actually with very little content, but at least they are precise). And I scroll, I scroll, I scroll. The merit system sounds nice and it definitely adds something important to the game in the exact same way I commented (and praised) when it was EQ2 to add some depth and purpose to the guilds. It’s simply one of the most underveloped parts in these game and one with the most potential not only because it adds a depth to the system, but because it’s directly a retention system of the subscribers.

From a side it helps a lot the players to integrate into the community of the game. Which is becoming a huge problems in this genre, completely underestimated right now when instead should be between the very first priorities. From the other side it allows the player to chase a communal goal, to work together toward something. To provide a context to a victory that will make the victory itself way more rewarding, and the process to achieve it more compelling. Because it’s right there the strength of the whole genre. To make the players really feel part of something and achieve something more than just a “personal grind of power” that single player games can deliver more naturally and with less problems.

Something that has been my pet peeve for a long time and that I discussed recently here:

Players like to “win”. Yeah. But they like even more if a victory has a context, a purpose. If they have a role within a world. If their presence has a meaning.

The problem is that all these considerations didn’t find their way into the actual system that Mythic patched. I began to read from the start and there is a rather long description of the mechanic of a process. Now, the mechanics do not sound too bad even if I have some doubts (the system seems “fixed”. It means that a guild can keep earning points to spend only till they have the possibility to grind a trreadmill. So there’s absolutely no re-usability and it becomes just an limited event to grind and forget. The problems I underline here are already at the origin of what I’ll say below) but it’s the nature of the process to represent the problem. A process has a meaning only depending on where it leads. On what is the purpose. So I scroll, I scroll and scroll more to find where exactly all those mechanics are bringing and finally I find it:

– Guilds can spend their guild merit points to get up to five merit bonuses.

– The bonuses available to be granted to a guild are:
Master Level Experience Bonus – 20%
Craft Haste Bonus – 5%
Artifact Experience Bonus – 5%
Realm Point Bonus – 2%
PvE Experience Bonus – 5%

If you play the game I believe that you already have understood everything and I do not have to add anything. For the others I’ll simply say that between all those bonuses the only one remotely interesting for an actual player is the Realm Point Bonus.

Two-fucking-percent. A player already high in the rank ladder (meaning that he already dedicated to the game A LOT of time), lets say rank 6, will need 62500 points to go from 6L0 to the next step, 6L1. This new bonus will be equal to… 1250 points. Now these points are the total needed to move from a rank to another. This is something that does not happen every day. If you are a catass you’ll have to play for weeks, if you are a normal player it’s a matter of months. So those 1250 points will be “spread” on a rather long time span.

More precisely. A single kill in the frontiers while in a full group will give you, roughly, 200 points. This means that after having achieved this new bonus you’ll get…

202 points instead of 200. OMFG, that’s SWEET!

Now I really do not know who is coming out with these ideas. In ToA (the hated expansion that will get suppressed soon) there was a new skill (not stackable) that gives 1% to hit bonus. One percent. Please explain me how these sort of bonuses can affect the gameplay. I’m SURE that Mythic didn’t even bother TO CODE IT. A 1% bonus to hit is so irrelevant that its whole gameplay consists of having the icon blinking on screen and nothing else. It’s a fucking UI BONUS, completely irrelevant for the gameplay. Yes, the players will continue to use it anyway. Partly because they are desperately trying to convince themselves that the skill they worked to unblock has actually an use, partly because they believe it IS working. But the truth is that the ability could be just a goodamn gimmick and NOONE will ever be able to figure out that it is not working as expected. The code could be broken or disabled since day one, but the players will never know about this. Simply because it’s so irrelevant that it has absolutely no use. It works better as a “suggestion”. It’s really THE moral buff. A jedi mindtrick.

This bonus to the Realm Points comes exactly from the same concept. It’s so irrelevant that it CANNOT BE MEASURED. It’s another fake feature with zero use aside being another “bait”. Another “let’s pretend”. It’s a roleplay skill.

But what is broken in this system isn’t just that. It’s the whole implementation to be completely useless:

The whole game seems captive of this bonuses greed. Mythic really cannot have an idea that doesn’t depend on a bonus, a malus or a timesink. There’s *nothing else* in their design, they are predictable. Everything has an infinite number of bonuses stacking and messing with each other at an insane degree. Characters have bonuses, skills give bonuses, group leaders give bonuses, locations have specific bonuses, keeps give bonuses, the realm population sets bonuses, owning keeps and relics give bonuses and now even the guilds give you fucking bonuses. STOP IT! Where the fuck is this going? What’s the point of the game if noone can even remotely figure out which bonuses are active or not?

I mean, a server could spend right now 80% of the processing power CALCULATING BONUSES. Who’s having fun in this? Lum?

No, really. Jokes aside. This is a ZERO-GAMEPLAY system. It’s not the player to play here, nor it is the guild. This system offers gameplay EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE SERVER (and its math calculations). It’s really Lum the center of the fun here, while he tries to code the system. Once he is done what is left is just another exquisitely passive system. The players will keep playing as always till the guild will magically earn Yet Another bonus. Who is interested in Yet Another pointless bonus? How is it fun? What’s the impact on the gameplay?

Is this all? No, I left the best part for the end:

The bonus provided to the guild by the merit point system lasts 24 hours.

A 2% BONUS FOR 24 HOURS! It’s true! I’m not making up all this, I SWEAR!

I just come from yesterday pointing out the most retarded between all the retarded ideas in the implementation of WoW’s Battlegrounds due to an irrelevant bonus but this “merit system” on DAoC breaks again EVERY RECORD (and in Blizzard’s case it was just a bug).

The bonus could be active just *forever* and it will still be simply irrelevant. But no. It’s even active for just 24 hours. Fucking hilarious.

This basically concludes my comments. There are only a few other parts worth consideration. One is directly ripped off WoW. The respec:

– Players can now purchase a single line respec anywhere in the game world by using the “/respec buy” command. Using “/respec buy” will only allow the player to buy a single line respec if they do not already have one.

– In their lifetime, players are eligible for nine discounted single line respecs, and unlimited single line respecs at full cost. The full cost scales based upon the player’s level. For example, the first time a level 50 player purchases a single line respec, it will cost 2 platinum; and the ninth time will cost 43 platinum; with the tenth and final cost of 50 platinum. A level 10 player will be able to purchase respecs for much, much less. (Note that we will post a chart detailing the costs of single line respecs for every level and tier before 1.76 goes live.)

So they copy once again WoW but they forget to notice why WoW works and why DAoC doesn’t. Again they only copy half the system and the result is simply awful.

There are two parts missing. One is the fact that in WoW it’s an NPC to offer you the possibility to respec, the other is that the cost of this respect make sense and it’s not completely out of scale like the ridiculous version implemented in DAoC. Just for an idea those 50 platinum are roughly equal to 5000 gold in WoW and I don’t think I have to comment further.

About the first part of the problem I can say that it’s another Mythic-classic. Noone cares about the accessibility. They implement everything through obscure command line commands that you can be aware of only if you read attentively the patch notes. Now tell me how many players read carefully *every line* written in the patch notes and how many will actually remember what they read and all the new /commands they introduce with each patch for more than a few days. Yes, 2% like the bonus above: irrelevant. We are back to the accessibility level of a MUD. Reading player guides in order to find out the exact command that allows you to do something. Or at least if you are even aware that the fuction actually exists.

This is Yet Another obscure command that isn’t referenced anywhere. Again the only way to play the game is to use resources out-of-game simply because the game itself is unable to make itself accessible to the players.

Again Mythic copies WoW and leaves out all the basic points. Even when they copy, they do it badly. Not only to not add anything to it. But make it worse.

And finally a last good feature that the players are claiming from more than a year and that has been denied till today:

Durability loss has now been removed from artifacts. Once repaired at a smith, all artifacts will be reset to full durability and will no longer lose durability.

ABOUT FUCKING TIME. And NO, this is definitely not enough.

I want to know why this change arrives just now. Who the fuck was responsible of this? What are the reasons behind the previous system? Why it has changed now?

(btw, considering the trend, I expect the repair costs for the artifacts to be out of scale as well – EDIT – I was right. Ahahahah!)

EDIT- Oh, I was forgetting. I do not comment the fixes and tweaks to the classes but this time I’ll do an exception:

Theurgist/Wizard

– We have added two group damage add spells to the Path of Earth base line. The spells are available at the following levels:

35 Earthen Rage – 7.9 dps
45 Earthen Fury – 10.0 dps

And I’m really perplexed. Look here. The wizards have the exact same spell. Already:

44 Greater Earthen Fury Friend 3.0s/10 minutes/0s 1000 range Bonus: Damages target for listed damage/Damage: 10.0 DPS

Yeah, they are identic. The only difference is that one is a group buff while the other is single-target but there’s no difference in the final output.

I’ll never figure out the sense of this.

Mythic temporizes some more by pushing out another poll, this time open to everyone.

The result is more than obvious. Mythic knows already what the players will choose. I’ve already given my opinions, the title was “DAoC’s surveys the playerbase, asks the wrong questions”, and it doesn’t change now.

In particular my option isn’t there. We have a:
“I am happy with the currently available server types and would prefer Mythic work on the existing servers.”
But we do not have the proper version:
“I am NOT happy with the currently available server types but would prefer Mythic work on the existing servers.”

Because that’s where is the juice. The game needs work, just not that type of pointless, demagogic work.

This time I’m going to vote this last option anyway. I want something to be done against the buffbots (not the range idea, though) but I find really stupid to remove a whole expansion. The game needs a lot of work but not to remove parts of the game, but to fix and integrate them properly, exactly the opposite of that option. The “realm invasion” ruleset is also so stupid that they probably put together just to fill that option.

So what? Let’s temporize some more.

I snagged and somewhat organized comments here and there from the boards. As a follow-up of this news.

—
It seems that my suggestion to look at Darniaq’s idea (“Class Blending” to offer progression above the level caps that doesn’t completely suck) was actually followed, or better, anticipated. This is how the “Champion Levels” are supposed to work:

– By visiting the king of the realm the players will start the journey through the “Champion Levels”.
– While on this journey the experience points coming from PvE and RvR (and both from new specific quests and RvR tasks) will represent the progress through these “Champion Levels”.
– These points will unblock five levels and as many specialization points.
– These five specialization points can then be spent between various “Champion” paths.
– The player will be able to choose if to spend all five points in just one path or spread them around.
– Each level will grant slightly more health/endurance/mana, depending on the class.
– Each path will grant the use of new skills/spells/abilities.
– The paths/skills are based on the starting archetypes but the player will have access only to the archetypes that aren’t at the origin of the character class.
– Finally the characters will become officially “Champions” and gain access to the “royal armory” where they’ll probably get the “Champion Weapon” quest-line along access to vendors (“purchase respec stones, unique weapon dyes, and other stuff”).

Basically this system is supposed to accomplish the exact same goal that ToA missed: open up, broaden the possibilities of each class without just stacking the powers.

In this case the design, from the few elements we have, has more hopes to center the objective. The fact that each class will gain powers directly coming from another is near to Darniaq’s idea of “Class Blending” and it basically works as a fix to one of the basic problems of the game that we already discussed:

I’ve been arguing a similar point for some time. I think Blizzard made a brilliant move by limiting the number of classes. EQ2 and SWG like DAoC and EQlive before them got into some sort of wierd overdesign mode where the developers thought more classes were better.

Not so. More classes just means more balance headaches at best, or marginalized classes at worst. They inevitably become super-specialized, and in ways that become boring for most players. Darwinized playstyles emerge. If a class/template is boring to play but deemed a requirement, it will be bot’ed. The developers can get pissed and ban players and cajole them and pay them off and invent new servers all they want, but they’re fighting a losing battle.

Don’t make boring classes. Anyone with a conscious can identify boring classes. Your players will. Better to do so before launch though.

Having a few classes that can do many things is better than having a zillion classes that can only do one.

The design principles on which these “Champion Levels” are based seem solid. Let’s hope that they do not screw the whole thing along the development because even ToA had wonderful premises that collapsed along the way thanks an awful planning and broken design.

But noone can spot the fun on this? Mythic resumed “precasting” from the old Ultima Online with the last Catacombs. Now what they do? They resume the tank mage! Now I wonder if their implementation of the Realm Invasion servers (I know, it won’t happen. But still..) will be close to the pre-Trammel age.

About the “Champion Quests”, quoting:
– “Champion Quests. These are going to be in 3 phases, presently undetermined as to how it is going to be separated. But will be able to be started at Level 30. The 2nd phase may be at Level 40 with Phase 3 being the Champion Levels at L50.”

About the “Champion Levels”, quoting:
– “Champion Levels. These will additional abilities that you will be able to get, but not as powerful as ML’s. Each Champion Level will give like a 50 HP increase or and increase to Power. etc… small things but will give the ability to work on Subclasses. Subclasses are being able to get abilities not normally available to you as a specific archtype. Example: A paladin would be able to get a low level Caster DD, or a Caster could spec in slash and be able to wear and use a sword. etc… certain things WILL NOT be allowed according to Mythic. Stealth, Speed, CC, Climb Walls, and several others will not be able to be Subclassed into. Completing each Champion Level will give one point to put into a subclass culminating to a total of 5 CL points. Titles will also be available at the completion of the Champion levels. Completing all CL’s will lead to getting the Champion weapon.”

About the “Champion Weapons”, quoting:
– “Champion weps-class specific, and there will be weps for each type that your class can use, bards and minstrels will have the option of champion instruments, Valks can get a sword or spear, 1 hander or 2 hander sword , etc. You will be able to trade in a champion wep whenever you want, if you happen to respec your character for example.”

About the Horses, quoting:
– “Horses-personal horses will be about as fast as skald/bard/minstrel speed, they *may* be useable in the frontiers, but not for combat. They are summoned like a puppy, and if you are attacked, you are knocked off the horse and it is unsummoned.”

“Completing CL’s and other undefined quests, will unlock different abilities of the horse. Saddlebags will be available for additional storage. There is also a plan to be able to name your own horse.”

“The basic horses will be available without buying the expansion.”

My comment -> From what I read it seems that the graphic quality and the animations look decent but I’m actually worried about the controls. If they develop this without building a specific system and just by putting the character on speed 5 and with an horse below the ass, it will be another screwup like the boats were in ToA: bugged, annoying, unusable.

About the new PvE zones/content, quoting:
– “Like the previous ones the new expansion brings new PvE contents dedicated this time for players of quite high levels (30 to 50). Indeed, the realms will call for their best inhabitants to deal with a rebellion which aim is to overthrow the sovereigns. No one knows who leads the plot and adventurers will thus have to unmask the enemy, find his territory and invade him to put an end to the threat. The invasion of this territory will not be simple and many epic battles will certainly come.

A few high level epic zones will also appear and will also be the place for group quests. They will of course ask you to venture in the adventure wings for some parts of these quests – giving to each one the occasion to become the hero of the adventure.”

“The next expansion will be based on each realms (Hib, Mid, Alb) is being “attacked” from within and is having his thone threatened. Players will talk to the king to start the process.”

“There will be 3 new zones total. One in each Realm. The concept art was not really shown for those zones and nothing really was stated as to where they were going to be. What was stated was that the zone will be where the 3rd phase of the Champion Levels will be.
There will also be an addition/change to each capital city. The King will be there… not sure specifically where, but will be there. The “doors that go nowhere” in Cammy Castle were mentioned and the devs got a strange look in their eyes when they were asked about them. They were very elusive about more on those doors.”

This can also hint that the graphic of the capital cities interiors will receive an update as it happened shortly after “Catacombs” with the exteriors.

—
There are also less optimistic news. It seems that the live development will slow down consistently. Only two patches (1.76 – 1.77) are planned before the release of this expansion at the end of the year. One in June and another in September. Quoting again:

1.76
– An update to the Guild Interface. Making guild management more accessible.

– Instituing a merit system. This will have several aspects, but will be a good way to try to keep people in a guild.

– Guild Banners. Usable in RvR. This was very interesting. Each banner has a different ability (ie. with it Abs buff, mez reduction, etc..) Only one banner can be in RvR/Guild at a time. However, if the banner holder dies, the banner falls to the ground and an enemy realm will be able to pick it up and take it back to their guild house and display it like a trophy. The specifics on how long the banner stays in one place before it can be picked up have not been difined yet, but were being worked.

– Guild Missions. Much like RvR missions, but guild specific.

– Guild Dues. A system to pay guild dues. Not much was discussed about this.

1.77
This update will be giving Classic Camelot a much needed rework. Specifics that were mentioned were updates to Epic Quests and Epic Armor. Making it worth wearing and doing the quests for. Updates to Classic high level areas. Updates to the dungeons. etc… Specifics were sketchy but lots of good things were discussed.

– Epics. The big downer on the Epics was that one would have to redo the epic quests from the beginning to get the new updated armor. However, the quests are being reworked so that everyone would be doing the same final quests for the armor.

– Many individual class bugs were discussed, too many to list, however, not many were new bugs not stated in TL reports.

– Talk about reducing the repair timer on razed towers was mentioned, and other thought on RvR. Some far fetched, some not so far fetched.

And finally another, long awaited, design fix:
“The devs are in the early stages of looking at a revamp of the durability/decay system for irreplaceable items, like the new epic armors (look for them in september), the champion weps, and artifacts. No details, but the implication seemed to be you wouldn’t have to worry nearly as much about durability loss on those items.”

At last. Three years to fix that stupid system.

—
All these infos are coming from the players present at the “Camelot Roundtable” that Mythic held in Washington D.C. this last weekend. From the sound of it, it seems that the development is still gliding on the surface and only marginally addressing the real problems of the game. If this is the roadmap till the expansion I cannot do anything but shake my head. That isn’t what the game needs. What’s in the patches and in the expansion isn’t bad, but it still should come after the basic level is fixed.

I see Mythic repeating the same mistakes of ToA. Developing content without planning and building the basement in advance.

As every year Mythic is going to release another expansion even if noone feels the need of one (because the game needs serious attention elsewhere than adding arbitrarily more stuff). Target date is October or December as always. Let’s see what we have:

– Mounts. Probably just horses. It seems that they’ll be customizable to an extent.
– Champion Levels. Like the dreaded Master Levels (quest based), but supposedly doable with single groups and both in RvR and PvE. Five levels in total. Each level adds health, endurance, mana plus points to spend on brand new skills. Similar to the normal levelling but quest-centered.
– Champoin weapons. A last quest to deliver leet weapons with sparkling effects like if Christmas.

Obviously I’m unimpressed (even if this will probably be just a part of the content of the expansion) but also not deluded. I wasn’t expecting anything different, sadly. As I said it seems Mythic grew completely blind toward their game and this limited feature list confirms my doubts. I guess with these “Champion Levels” they are trying to anticipate WoW’s Hero system that may go live around the same period (but for free).

As a returning player I care less than zero about this stuff. What matters for the quality of the game and its health isn’t the addition of more plug-ins. DAoC has its quality and its potential in what is already in the game and that seriously needs work. If this work doesn’t happen or is delayed again, the game won’t go anywhere. This is why everything depends on what they are able to do with the live content. If they start to address more aggressively the problems, they can hope to arrive to the launch of the expansion with a solid game. If this doesn’t happen everything will simply continue to crumble.

The biggest mistake with ToA that caused the whole expansion to collapse was to plan the content without having the tools and a good base on top of which to build. So that content just become terribly frustrating and umplayable. A mix of horrible design and bad planning. The same happened for the boat system that still today it’s the most bug-ridden, jerky and unintuitive part of the whole game. Again because it was created on a system that wasn’t suitable. If Mythic doesn’t get the priorities of the game straight this won’t be anything but another clusterfuck.

On the bright side it seems there will be some work on the guild system as part of the live content. They’ll probably add a dedicated UI for it and carryable banners to provide bonuses in PvP as previously hinted (bah, another of my ideas fleeing).

But again this won’t add anything if the core problems will keep getting ignored and dismissed.

(I also suggest Mythic to give at glance to one of Darniaq’s ideas if they are searching for inspiration that doesn’t suck)

EDIT: Official spoilers were released on the European website.

EDIT-2: Follow-up here.