A Discussion

[IainC]

This is going to be a long post, I'm sorry about that but I wanted to get a few things down and start a civilised discussion about the current hatestorm rolling around the server.

I want this thread to be a discussion. I'm not setting out to flame, I'm not trying to persuade anyone of anything, I'm trying to get people to think about things and open up to a proper debate. If you feel the need to throw random personal insults around then open your own 'Requiel is an <expletive of your choice>' thread and do it in there. This is a thread for grown ups.

So, the question is one I've been discussing a lot recently with various people - in the office and in the community - and haven't yet had a proper answer to.

Why do people get so worked up about AC raids?

Firstly let me make the obligatory disclaimer: I don't go on AC raids because I actually enjoy fights and sieges without players on the other side are dull. I'm not averse to taking the odd tower if I happen to be on late at night but only to try and draw out a few defenders and thereby get a fight if possible. In this thread I'll be making a lot of arguments from a devil's advocate point of view. They don't necessarily correspond to my personal view or to Goa policy - our policy is that the game is presented for players to enjoy at all times. There are no legitimate iname activities that are offlimits based on time or population criteria.

Ok, preliminaries aside I'd like to make a few points and get some discussion going about it.

Firstly AC raids are lame in my personal view. There is an easy way to take a keep and a difficult but exciting way. There's little accomplishment in taking a keep when there's no opposition. I have a lot of respect for leaders who can keep a BG together through a long and difficult siege and come out with a result. Lame however is a different thing to 'cheating' or 'griefing' as some people have suggested.

Let's look at the common reasons I see on these forums and elsewhere.

It denies choice.
This is a common objection I've seen to AC raids. People are denied the opportunity to take part in the siege by virtue of being in bed. I have to say I'm not convinced of this one. I'm sure we all miss a lot of ingame events through having to schedule inconveniences like work, school, family and so forth around our game time. I don't begrudge the people who are ingame at a time when I'm not the opportunity to play. If those people want to RvR and there are no players to fight then why should they be prevented from contributing to the realm war?
Now then let's look at the impact that has on different styles of play:
For roaming groups or solo play it may mean that a port isn't open however I don't see much more of an impact than that. A small amount of downtime between runs seems to be a trivial inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.
For keep take action and large scale RvR it encourages more keep takes and retakes which to me sounds like a good thing. Keeps and Relics changing hands regularly is vital to prevent the RvR situation from growing stale. The more that the active hotspots move around the frontiers, the better. I very often hear that the best time people ever had in RvR was shortly after NF was released and the siege action in the frontiers was pretty much nonstop. There would be keeps and towers changing places all over the frontier in all three realms and the action was pretty intense. It seems to me as though a lot of that kind of action has returned recently. Who else would agree?

Having/not having a Relic imbalances RvR.
Obviously a realm with captured Relics has an advantage however how many fights are won or lost based on the 5% bonus from a Relic woud you say? At various times over the life of this server and others, each realm has gone though periods of Relic dominance or Relic drought, people have largely got on with it and carried on as before. So many factors are involved in any given fight, the contribution from the Relics is pretty minor all told.

It demoralises the other realms and discourages people from doing it the hard way.
This one I have some sympathy with. I can see the point that if someone's worked hard and had a hard fight to take a keep, it doesn't seem fair that the work can be undone by an easy off-peak retake. To counter that I'd point out that the hard way is the fun way. If you're in a siege, you should be having fun - otherwise you would presumably choose to do something else with your time. If you have fun taking the keep, why wouldn't you have fun retaking it the next evening? Or defending for that matter? If you want to do large scale RvR then that option is still available despite the fact that other people were taking keeps at a different time to you, in fact large scale RvR becomes more likely as retake BGs are set up to reclaim keeps lost overnight, if you prefer to do your keep raiding primetime then you have lost nothing because someone else was playing the same game at off peak. Recently there have been some very successful and involving prime time raids on all realms. Any realm on this cluster has the potential to be able to raid any other realm effectively at primetime. I can see the numbers in the frontiers from all realms from a much more global perspective than simply doing /who NF, RvR population is actually more balanced than most people would think it is. In the Frontier right this moment, the Mids are outnumbering the Albs by about 4 to 3, no realm is too large to take on.

I'm concerned that this issue has become much like the old arguments about 'adding' or 'zerging'. It's grown from something that was simply considered to be a non-acheivement to something far more emotionally charged without there being any rational process taking it there. It very much seems to me that in many cases attitudes have become far more hardline to the point that actions that were dismissed as 'unsporting' previously are now elevated to a new and irrational level of active hatred and fury. I'm looking at the abuse thrown randomly around - not even at individuals but at entire realms and communities - in the threads here and frankly it concerns me that people can honestly believe this reaction is reasonable.

I am aware that some people have cited AC raids as a reason to move to other servers. I'd like to ask those people if they can explain what exactly it was about this issue that made them take that choice? I'd also be interested in hearing other reasons people may have for holding extreme negative views on the topic. Like I said at the top though, keep it civil please.

Thank you for reading.

 

[Awarkle]

Well said requiel

 

[Mey]

Hmm interesting.. Too drunk to post views now, will do later..

 

[noaim]

I think people enjoy defending aswell. At the moment, 2 of the realms never get to do that, and that is the problem. Its a thrill when ur realm gets invaded, u start up defense bg and gather defenses, retake towers to cut ports, camp em to stall th enemy, defend the lordroom etc, but u never get to do that, because u never have anything worth taking if u play midgard or hibernia, because if u do take something, its gone within 12 hours, taken when noone was online to enjoy defending.

Its also 10% bonus

Edit: Prolly depends on who u talk to if the relic bonus makes a big difference too. I liked it when albs had all 6 relics because it was more albs out then, much more fg´s and thus much more rp´s for our grp, but I can see a stealther disagree with me that its good for albs to have all relics.

Edit2: I really think that GOA should be a bit more responsible for doing primetime raids as events aswell. It keeps people happy, and if people are happy they keep playing, so it should be in ur best interest to in some way encourage people to hold em, and even hold em urself, and assist people holding em in whatever ways u can.

 

[Garok]

Guess its the problem with all servers, were the vast majority are from one time zone. I returned from a break to play US classic for other reasons rather than due to AC raids. One thing is apparent on US though due to haveing a wide range of players from all over the globe there is no such thing as AC raids, people are always online 24/7.

Ive no idea what the contractual arrangements are between GoA and Mythic but clustering the English cluster with their US coutner parts is probably the most streight forward way to ensure there are always defenders online. For every other option there is pretty much gonna be some down side too some of the player base (time locked relics etc).

No idea if the same problem is faced on the German and French clusters though with the amount of players on them I guess its less of a problem.

 

[Raven]

I am aware that some people have cited AC raids as a reason to move to other servers. I'd like to ask those people if they can explain what exactly it was about this issue that made them take that choice? I'd also be interested in hearing other reasons people may have for holding extreme negative views on the topic. Like I said at the top though, keep it civil please.

well...As you are aware hib is under populated, and always has been, for us to get a proper relic zerg going takes a lot of organisation, when we do succeed its a huge boost for the realm and bring all the different communities together. To have all the hard work destroyed when nobody is on to defend (most of us work these days) is a massive kick in the teeth to the realm as a whole.

Goa handled the whole TT situation very badly, where before you had stated it was fine to lower the level of a keep and then turn round and suspend people for doing it was wrong, you should have issued a warning and if necessary force the keep back up to ten. GOA crossed the line between running the server and being part of server life.

regardless i think its far to late to do anything about it now, most of the people i know that have left are fully equipped/ml10 etc and having a good time on other servers and wont be coming back. personally i plan to dip in now and again to solo on hero, now that i am fully kitted out on my skald.

i agree, can we keep the flames out of this thread

 

[Fatload BoysDoCry]

What Raven said, your also a year too late with this post and the handling of the TT situation was a public relations nightmare. You listed the 3 reasons why most people feel AC raids are poor and without wanting this to seem like a flame i feel this post is purely here to try and claw back some of the loyalty you lost in the TT situation.

 

[Maeloch]

Peeps have always done it, guess what's different lately is it's not an occasional thing that happens when peeps of one realm get bored but a grp of albs who make a career out of it.

 

[Influenza]

I wrote a huge page about why i rarely log onto cluster and my laptop decided to press the back button for some reason

So heres the short answer

Lack of seige action during my playing hours (6pm-11.30pm) , i enjoyed keep/tower action and i cannot remember the last time i defended anything because there seems to be a mentality of waiting till everyones logged off before attacking anything.

Being outnumbered 2 to 1 in anything we try as a realm.

Lack of motivation to try anything , take a relic prime time , goto bed knowing it wont be there in the morning even though the enemy has enough people to take it back primetime but they dont bother cos guards are easier to kill , so denying me the fun of defending it.

Ive went back to my 1st ever guild who now play on the european classic cluster and ive been involved in some really fun sieges where people just havent stayed in a keep till the enemy have logged but they actually attack keeps while people are online.

 

[IainC]

Raven and Fatload.
It's not my intention to dredge up an issue that we've been over multiple times in various places already. Everything I want to say on that topic is in the relevant threads and in the RightNow conversation I had with Sharkith.

What I'm trying to do is inject some perspective and get a proper discussion going where people can show the reasons they may have for their strong views on either side of the fence. I'm concerned that people are more interested in furthering division rather than trying to put forward a reasoned argument for their opinions. Whichever line you happen to hold to, there's little to be gained from simply antagonising the rest of the community.

 

[Digi]

What Raven said, your also a year too late with this post and the handling of the TT situation was a public relations nightmare. You listed the 3 reasons why most people feel AC raids are poor and without wanting this to seem like a flame i feel this post is purely here to try and claw back some of the loyalty you lost in the TT situation.

Well he make's this post now When Alb getting the shit so to speak ? .....what realm dose he play on joke aside whats new ? It allways been like this, Read what ever you like into FH but dont forget that this is FH and 95% of what said on here is shit and i sure 90% of the player Dont even think befor they post with hot heads. I got a cold at the moment so if what i said dont come across its me and not your reading.

 

[Kinetix]

Good point Requiel...but who is gonna defend relics when others are at work? or at school? or in other shifts at work? or with is girlfriend? or without net? or... i could go on forever.

Mids/hibs complain about albs doing while they were sleeping, sure i agree. Now albs are complaining cause you take relics while they are at work etc etc etc.
The proof was taken today, mids tryed to take hibs relic at ren and faild cause albs were actually there to defend.

Yeah its not fair to hibs, its not fair to mids, its not fair for albs. Everyone has his point of view, there will always be some1 complaining nothing can be done at it.

My point is since NF came out, RvR as been going down imho. Sure it has brought new nice stuff but the keeps ports and towers really hurt the game.

Requiel: on OF when a realm was underpopulated they could make a "sneak" attack on other realm keep with very low numbers and have keeps to defend them selfs. Now with this 4 towers needed to port it unbalences the game since you cant ex: port beno when boldiam is taken or one of beno towers is taken. So the underpopulated realm has to walk/boat ( sometimes with non balenced group) just to get killed by 3/4/5/6 fgs of the other realm just near keep (if they reach there)

Finally: If a realm is under a large raid from another realm and are in less numbers theyr situation goes from bad to worse since every single tower will be camped and they cant get that precious port.
Even while attempting to get that port they will probably get zerged by several fgs.

Please comment on that

 

[joap]

...
There are no legitimate iname activities that are offlimits based on time or population criteria.
...

I am not sure i agree.

Taking a relic from a shrine requires 2 FGs to stand in it if i'm not mistaken, less than that and it will not come down.

 

[Gamah]

A game where servers are open 24 hours a day is not safe from people doing things at night. Unfortunately it is unsocialble whatever way you look at it, this kind of AC'ing and general disrespect for play styles has led to the downfall of the server.

I have often thought that the servers downfall was its population and the lack of respect everyone had for anyone else.

 

[Cadelin]

Why do people get so worked up about AC raids?

I think you are looking at this too generally when alot of the reasons for the anger are caused by specific circumstances. I also disagree with some of your reasoning.

DaoC is a game, not a war. (And even in wars they have rules of engagement). As a multiplayer game it requires multiple players and they would all like to have a chance to win. In general people won't play with a dis-advantage the whole time. As well as the 10% damage the relic provides it will also change the population balance giving those with the advantage even more of an advantage.

It is also alot easier to defend. Organising 40+ people with the correct seige equipement etc is incredibly hard work. Getting 40 people to camp a keep is trivial and the end result (in terms of the action/rp) is in general no different.


So now onto the specifics of why AC raiding has caused so much anger on cluster.
1) The largest (most populated) realm AC raided against the smallest realm.
2) They did it several times.
3) They rely on it as a tactic. They don't defend their own relics because they can AC them back, it is much more important to defend the captured relic that is harder to AC back.
4) They don't even try to do prime time raids.
5) The population on this server IS alot less than NF was originally designed for. Everybody like an occasional seige fight but most people don't want to spend their entire time around them. While the AC raiding is going on there will be more seige takes during prime time and this does get boring.

 

[Aiteal]

Havent been on many relic raids tbh
Just ones organised by Gear and Mastade(sp?)

But it was always fun taking your duties (if thats not too loaded a term) in the raid seriously, if you were given an objective by the raid leader, whether it be fool's bowing down doors as a ranger, clearing walls as a shade/vamp, driving a ram or healing/rezzing.

It was good to put the overall plan ahead of whatever RP's could be earned and sticking to your objective no matter what else.

Watching the BG chat, and seeing it all come together despite the best efforts of the opponents to thwart you is satisfying, it instills a little pride in your realm and a sense of pride in your realmmates.

You feel you have earned that extra 10% or 20% melee/spell damage, because as a realm you overcame your opponents primetime, through a combination of planning thanks to the raid leader and cohesion on the part of your realm mates.

Earned is the operative word here.

Logging on to find that your relics have been taken in the middle of the night time and time again leaves a very bad taste in your mouth.

After a while you just think feck it, I'm not going out there to donate RP's to the sorc zerg that spring up every time it happens.

Now people say its a 24hr game.
Which is true.

However the cluster does not have the necessary numbers or players in different timezones to make it a 24hr game.

It has those that play at "primetime" and a certain section who are a little more "nocturnal" to put it kindly.

By moving to US servers, I feel I am actually playing on a 24hr server, sure it has more players on at certain times, but unlike the cluster, if a few full groups decide to go relic raiding at stupid o'clock they will have to work for their reward and encounter a little more than a few NPC guards who don't have the necessary AI to organise a piss up in a brewery.


edit:
I should probably add that I don't blame Alb as a realm for this, just certain players, others like Elbeek have been very vocal in condemning these raids, realising its not good for the cluster to shit where you eat

if you pardon my french (not a dig at the french sorc honest )

 

[-*-Lothlorion-*-]

Raven and Fatload.
It's not my intention to dredge up an issue that we've been over multiple times in various places already. Everything I want to say on that topic is in the relevant threads and in the RightNow conversation I had with Sharkith.

What I'm trying to do is inject some perspective and get a proper discussion going where people can show the reasons they may have for their strong views on either side of the fence. I'm concerned that people are more interested in furthering division rather than trying to put forward a reasoned argument for their opinions. Whichever line you happen to hold to, there's little to be gained from simply antagonising the rest of the community.

I still think these guys have a point which is valid in this thread though. There was a cry for help by some alb players (TT) that thought not only what there realm done was wrong, lame or however you want to put it, but instead GOA punish the people that thought by doing the right thing by the community as a whole.

Anyway my views on AC raids … As a hib we really do struggle now to compete in rvr, I don’t mean 1 on 1 or even 8 v 8.
I mean as a realm, this is not anyone’s fault, as a hib we have had to adapt to many different play styles over the years, its nothing to do with not having the right people to lead raids ect its just not having the people…. I read what you said about people should be enjoying a primetime raid ect and sure its great fun.
… but (and I can only speak for me) all the enthusiasm is kicked straight out of me if I spend 3-4 maybe 5 hours helping my realm to achieve taking a relic, only to wake up the next morning to see that’s its been AC…..
Its like spending time cooking a nice meal, A fry up, sausages, eggs, beans ect... serve it up and oooh I need a shit.. Pop up stairs only to find when you return the dog has eaten it what’s your first reaction…. Where’s that fooling dog???? Am I right ?? so I guess it’s a natural reaction that people use this forum to vent there frustration.
What is worse, we are seeing people leave because of it… You only have to look at some of the last posts about AC raids to see how passionate people are… now that’s where GOA have us over a barrel… we love this game… and we don’t want it to die, but when we see the actions of a few upset so many and we as a community ask for help .. And have the door slammed shut in our faces….. yes it hurts... we get upset and even more frustrated.

It’s late and what im trying to say is yes the game is a 24hour game, but some things are not right and should not be able to do at certain times... for example respawn timer on an artie… I would think that the whole Idea of the respawn timer is that if the mob just repoped once it died everyone would have the artie and it would be to easy….. See where im going with this one just lock the relics down at non primetime, much more fun for the majority of the community.

 

[Vodkafairy]

1) NF relicraids aren't as much fun as OF ones used to be. It takes too long to take a keep, magic damage has gone through the roof after ToA, catacombs classes have added strong but "lame" classes to the siege scene, the keeps are too big and towers are just a waste of time.

Opening a relic gate is just so insanely much effort it takes way more planning, initiative and cooperation to succeed. Not by definition a bad thing, but there should be people getting paid to take a leadership role tbh. It was a mistake to expect there will always be someone in the community that stands up and takes the lead.

ToA bonuses, masterlevels and NF ra's have made it much harder to "farm noobs", to put it bluntly. This removed a large part of the FG scene from siegefights, removed the ace pbae-bomb teams we had in all realms.

All of the ensured that numbers mean everything, and even the best of groups could hardly do anything in zergfights anymore. It was just f8-nuke x membersofthezerg versus f8-nuke x membersoftheenemyzerg. (Boring)

2) The "magic of daoc" fades over time. At start everything was new and exciting, relicraids were a great thing and every realm had its leaders and alliances. A relic under siege meant everyone rushed there to defend.

Nowadays it's not so much about the magic, but more about the competitive rvr and the continuously repeating process of doing rvr runs, making some rps, logging. Everyone has seen everything already, the "main thing" in daoc shifts from "aiding the realm" to every player or small group of players doing their own thing. Read: start of the fg vs fg community, soloer vs soloer community, fu you add, fu you zerg, fu leetist, jada jada.

Part of the "magic" that has faded is the bombsquads that quit, leaders of the realms that quit - not sure if it's any use blaming anyone or anything for this, but it was bad for daoc.

3) Polarisation (guess its called like that) leads to everyone making and protecting their own playstyle, maintaining their own small group of players, doing their own thing. That, and the population gets smaller and smaller due to various reasons, ToA prolly being the biggest one.

One group of players only plays late at night for whichever reasons (im sure they are valid), gets bored because there is no opposition whatsoever, they start taking keeps, get a relic.

The realm whose relic just has been captured has to retake every single fucking tower and keep, probably during a time where it will be defended.

The effort of retaking ones own frontier is just obscene, it takes so, so long, and it's nowhere near as fun as it used to be in OF. People don't want to take keeps every single fucking time. In OF there was a choice to retake keeps, in NF you simply have to or the traveling time is sick, and the action too scarce to find anything to fight after a huge walk.

A succesful relicraid in OF depended on the capture of 1-3 keeps, a fight at the relic temple, and sometimes one more at the milegate in the home frontier.

A successful relicraid in NF depends on the capture of 3 keeps, at the very least 8 towers (4 for instaport, 2 closest towers for the other 2 keeps), one more fight at the relic wall and/or relic temple. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

---

NF + ToA killed the oldschool relicraids as we knew it, polarisation of the dwindling community lead to people not giving a shit about their own realm or anyone else for that matter, hence being disrespectful (goes for the "leetist", the "roleplayers", the "ac'ers", everyone).

Prolly best if I rewrite it all but I cba. Would give a solution to the problem but in my opinion its simply too late for that. There is no such thing as spirit of the realm before, the magic of daoc is as good as gone, NF is most likely here to stay, end of story.

People nowadays play for the fun of killing others in rvr and the company of their friends. The focus of daoc's development should be to allow several playstyles to coexist without hurting eachother, and changing NF so keeps and towers don't play as much a dominant role as they do now, and lastly hire people who constantly organise events for the masses, be it pve or rvr.

Instead, they give us taurens. Woopidoo.

---

edit- forgot to mention, relics overpower a realm so much its obscene. it doesn't have that much impact in like fg vs fg, but in small skirmishes and especially solo fights its just not fun. what you get is loads of people whining but little to no people actually doing something about it. = stalemate where there is only whine.

 

[Erulin]

First of all, let me state that I've never been on a AC raid as :

1) I think sleeping is alot more fun then getting up early.
2) I work (well, heavy verbe but I pretend I'm working at least when the boss is around )
3) I couldn't care less who has the relics.

-----------------------

The last time I was in RvR during an AC raid I was playing my SB and I had a hell of alot of fun screwing up their AC raid. With 4 (that I know of) Mids we foiled the plans of a full guild group... great fun...

That said, I think alb players that have either mids or hibs on the other server in the cluster and look down on/flame albion AC raiders don't have a legg to stand on. IF you are so against it, log of your albs and log on your hib/mid and kick the snot out of the raids. Otherwise you have no right to comment on the raiders or to get angry over it imho.

Having played midgard for the largest part of the last 6 months I have to agree with Requil that everytime there was an AC raid (by 1 fg) there were more then enough players online in Midgard to stop it. But on doing /who all it seemed to me that hardly anyone could be bothered even trying to stop it.

I am just as guilty of this as the others but there seemed to be an feeling of complacency (sp?) "oooo, their goes (insert guildname) again... whine whine, nag nag. /hit crafting button or /pull redcaps" This attitude I find worse then the AC raiding itself.
-----------------------

Having played all the realms over the last 5 years I can say I played in each of them during relic drought periods and guess what... I did survive, as did the realm, as did the game. The 10% isn't all that big of an advantage. If you kill someone in 3 casts instead of 2, that's not a big difference.

Holding on to relics shouldn't be the end goal imho, getting the relic in and of itself should be.

-----------------------

What's the difference between taking a relic at 5 am when people sleep and taking one at 1 pm ? I mean, other then those already retired, at 1 pm most are either in school or at work.

-----------------------

Personaly, I think the bad air about AC clock raiding and the raiding itself are only the symptom and not the desease. Lets face it, even without them the population would decline after 5 years. New players are very rare these days. Starting out now, when all those that have been around for ages have hit high RR's/tons of alts, must be frustrating. A none PVP game probably won't suffer from this, but without a good friendbase you'll die over and over to high RR groups.

The bad air floating around can't be all that attractive to new players either. And lets face it (not a whine) with next gen graphics in other games DAoC isn't that attractive compared to them. I know, I still think DAoC is still the best MMoRPG around but how many new players will stick around long enough to actualy notice ?

Making the game more attractive to new players would be a good start. And I mean this both for GOA and for us, the long time players.

For GOA : the freebie levels for underpopulated realms aren't cutting it. It maybe time to find new ways of attracting new players to certain realms and the game itself.

For the players : Leaving for another server/quitting doesn't help at all. Following your friends who leave because of AC raiding and then blaming the AC raids is wrong.

People who left yet keep posting things like : 'come join us on Avalon' / 'move to US we'll help you' are only making things worse for the people that actualy stay.

Getting way to long and late so I'll just go to bed (runs off to set the alarm clock... for work, for work )

 

[Andrilyn]

People get angry about things which they can't do anything against, it's human nature.
Combine that with the fact that people are selfish (they lose out on fun) and you got yourself a 45+ page whine thread going.
It's people like that which need to learn that the servers are open 24/7 and that if you're in bed or at work or doing some shopping that there can be changes in the game where they got no influence on.

Personally I think the whines have come from the already heavy decline of the server population long before the whole "relic raid FH drama soap" was released and people are using this as a scapegoat to moan/whine about a thing they dislike or a community dislikes (some people have no own opinion and are very vulnerable to outside influences).
For instance I left the UK cluster not because of relic raids or anything but because of the population decline that was already going on shortly after the UK server cluster (Excalibur-Prydwen).

Clustering more and more servers won't fix anything, you will get clashes between communities and it will be like a drug that will give you a boost for a short duration but makes you feel utterly shit after a while.
The only solution I see is try and somehow make it a RvR game again instead of a 8v8 1v1 or whatever game, this however won't ever happen and the community will stay devided between groups of people with different midsets and different goals.
New people also won't hit these clusters to make up for the decline as nobody is going to buy a five year old game so from that point of view I understand the clustering that GOA has done but it's nothing more than a band-aid.

 

[Pirkel]

I agree with Andrilyn here. The declining population happens anyway, regardless of AC raids. If it wasn't this people would come up with some other reason, but over time they will leave anyway.

People who claim they are leaving over AC raids are either lying, clueless or at least very out of touch with their feelings. They were going to leave anyway and citing some reason they saw a lot of others mention adds a little spice to it.

AC raids are lame, no argument from me. But if anyone actually stopped playing this game because of them I am not sure this game will miss them horribly. Daoc has been a 24 hour game since release over 5 years ago. There have always been people playing at odd hours, gaining huge advantages because of it. I remember OF Emain at non primetime rp's were a lot easier to acquire... are people who took "advantage" of that lame as well? Where do we draw the line?

My confidence in the community is at an all time low so I don't think this will stay civilized very long but lots of respect to Requiel for trying to start a grown up discussion about something that is keeping the community busy. I look forward to many future posts like it: Adding/not adding, Solo zones, people from all realms sharing the same irc/vent channels, lajftap = overpowered etc.

 

[Zede]

Its quite funny really, after moving to Avalon - you see the game in a totally different perspective. The only reason why AC raids are even a heated topic on uk cluster is the lack of numbers. With more people, AC raids simply dont matter, as even at silly'oclock theres still 100s in the frontiers.

So long as their are people to defend, its not an AC raid, its just a different bunch of people who for what ever reason play at night.

So why is the pop so low ? For the grp of players I play with atm and quite a few others - it was TT incident. We all would have kept playing here, but in an act of solidarity we moved with the others - and tbh we dont regret it. I honestly feel like im now playing a different game on Avalon.

Learning German aint so bad, I knew no German what so ever and I am doing fine. Clustering with a DE server would be a good idea - if only mythic/goa could come up with so sort of interface/translation tool - something i dont know what. If a vote was done tomorrow "would you cluster with a german server" the answer..hmm well all that have moved would vote "yes" all still here more than likely "no" A close call probably.

It would be worth it - nearly 3000 ppl on Avalon prime time is a sight to behold, every night someone in vent goes " omg look at XXX amount of albs/mids" i'd never seen 500 ppl in 1 fight - I have now.

I was a true fg vs fg player - and had been for years. Now I zerg, zerg & zerg, and you know what - im lovin it !!

 

[wittor]

I don't think most people left because of the AC's. They left simply because of the low population.

Anyway, Old Frontier relic raids and keep takes were much more fun. When someone attacked the relic keep or a relic zerg was spotted then the word spread over the alliance and everyone flew off to the Relic keep and tried to defend, it was so much more fun and a whole different experience then now with the NF relics and I went to plenty of keep and relic takes with my Infil in Old Frontiers.

Honestly I went to one NF relic raid and it is simply not the same, its boring and to long, same with keep takes, did two and got bored of it on the UK Cluster. But now I'm playing on US and I went to a few keep takes just for the sake of it and to my own suprise I found it really fun. Simply because the server peaks 2k+ players so you really get a huge battle between the enemy realms.

Yesterday we were roaming in Albion with our full group and suddenly we started to feel huge incoming lag and it was like 4fg+ Hibs on stick that passed our hib fg, few minutes later that hib zerg faced like 3fg Mids and suddenly like 3 fg albs or more came aswell and it was a huge fight so when we saw the big fight we decided to join in on the fight with our fg and it was a really great fight ( note: this was NOT a keep take, it was in the open field between 2 keeps ).
Last time that I saw so many fg stick to eachother and so much action on the UK cluster was in Old Frontiers.

Now atleast we ( Revolver ) have a server with 2k people on it and we can decide if we want to 8vs8 in Agramon or join the BG and go zerg a keep because we know there will be shit loads of people there to defend which make it a good battle and also AC's don't exist on a 2k server because there are several people online in the night aswell who can defend.
Revolver rerolled because of the low population and if Avalon was in english then we would roll there instead of US but Hnoss was already on US also.

People say New Frontiers is bad but thats not totally true, its bad on a low populated server thats true. When I join the zerg on US I enjoy New Frontiers simply because it only works with a high populated server in my eyes and there is room for 8vs8 in Agramon atleast on my cluster.

I'm sure that the rest of Revolver thinks the same about it like I do, we stood for 8vs8 on the UK cluster but on US we do both of it, if we feel to zerg something we just do it because it can be fun on a 2k server, mostly we start out with a small group and join the zerg till more people log on so we can make a fg and then we go to Agramon or where ever the 8vs8 is going on.

Like I said in the start the AC's have nothing to do with it, its the low population and NF being big so you need a high population to make it work imo. The people that I know who rerolled to high populated servers such as Avalon or US and got fully done with everything are not regreting it for a minute and they don't plan to come back to the UK Cluster simply because of the low population problem.

EDIT: Damn triple posts lol, FH being slow!

 

[Arethir]

A long post, that requires an even longer answer.

There are no rules against AC'ing, and we all know this. But rules can be changed. We are paying GoA to give us a game that we enjoy playing, so our opinions should (imo) be the direct guidelines for how they should design the rules of this game.
When GoA can not supply a good set of rules, and refuse to listen to suggestions people send them, or even try to discover what the majority of the population thinks of these issues, this will lead to some people quitting the game, and alot of hatred and fury as you so nicely put it amongst the remaining players. This hatred and fury may burst out against people who do not deserve it, be it albs, warlocks, adders etc.

Alot of us have memories of the past, of times we have had in this game. Some of the greatest memories you may end up with from this game, is the large-scale Relic Raids, going prime-time with huge epic battles between litterally hundreds of players. These experiences are the reasons some of us play this game. We want to re-live them. With the current relic situation, and the population of the server, this is very unlikely to happen.

There's a long list of why people don't like AC'ers. You have yourself listed some of the more common ones, but you have also tried arguing against these examples, with arguements that imo does not hold ground.
It denies choice.
People are denied the opportunity to take part in the siege. This really makes alot more difference than what you try to display it as. The only reason I am playing this game, and not some other roleplaying game, is because I can achieve goals. I can level, get stronger, improve my skill, get rps, RA's, tools for RvR, great equipment etc. I can achieve something from my playtime, that I can take advantage of the next time I log on, making me even stronger.
Taking a relic, is a great goal. It has a purpose. To bring glory to the realm you play in, to have major epic battles, with huge sieges and alot of fun. But without actually getting the relic, the whole point of this is gone. The way the relic situation is atm, there may aswell be no relics in the game, and you can simply give the realm of albion an added damage bonus. The goal you achieved from taking this relic, is of no significance, as you know it will be retaken during your sleep, and there is nothing you can do about it.
You are trying to take this away, by saying you always miss out on something. Well, a relic raid is not "something". A relic raid means alot more to the players than a common bridge-camp, fg vs fg fight, 1 vs 1 fight, ML raid, CS-spawn, or whatever you might have fun with in this game. A relic you were there to capture, you want to be able to defend it, and to hold it. To feel you have made a difference. Because of yours and alot of other peoples actions that night, you have now achieved even greater strength for not only your character, but for your whole realm. Just as you gain RR's, you gain extra powers, and this is one of them. Ofcourse you want a hand in how this relic moves on. You want the opportunity, which is not something to dismiss.
Being a part of the fg community, I can tell you, boating is booring. If it can be avoided, it will be avoided. If by avoiding it, you will have to log for the day and hope for better luck tomorrow, this might be an option. For a fg, if you take the boat to another shore, and die instantly to a zerg or to a stronger fg, and this happens over and over, you will simply get boored of the long rebuff, boat time and waiting, only to end up dead with no profit, and log. More down-time makes a huge difference (to me).
Afaik, keeps and towers has always been jumping hands. the only difference is that now they're jumping hands very much without any actual sieging and fights between players. And a major reason for taking these keeps and towers for the players currently doing it, is simply to piss other players off. It's being done in anger and fury. Just have a look at Kagato's thread, and the picture of him /ruding the mids. I'm sure pissing mids off made his day. However I have a feeling more people got upset than happy about his actions.
Playing any of the chars listed in my signature in fg RvR, I can tell you that 10% damage actually do make a difference. Countless times have I hit the BG, slam or heal in just the moment seeing my targets health being on only 1-5% health. If the enemies had 10% damage add, or I didn't have that 10% extra heal, the person could of died, and the fight could of been twisted around, making us loose. This doesn't happen alot, but it does accur. Also, there's a reason people put 10% damage add in their templates. If 10% was nothing, why would anyone bother with it. Because it matters. I'm not saying it's the most important thing in a fight, I'm just saying it makes a difference.
However, I must say, this is imo the weakest of the statements. Relics shifting hands can be fun and challenging. Fighting against someone you usually kill, that now has a 10% damage bonus, can be a nice challenge.

It demoralises the other realms and discourages people from doing it the hard way.
If you have fun taking the keep, why wouldn't you have fun retaking it the next evening?
Again, you loose the achievement. There's no gain in doing it. The feeling of progress stops, and you get nowhere. You could just aswell be playing some other game where you get no progress then.

AC'ing is being dismissed as 'unsporting'. I don't really know how to reply to this. Yes, we do have opinions. Taking an action like AC'ing a relic on the behalf of the whole of your realm, is not something I appreciate. I would like to be doing it the 'hard' and 'fun' way as you put it. However lately I've grown weary of siege battles inside keeps, because of the classes and abilties people have these days. There's no epic battles anymore, just insta pwn. And even if these relics are taken just to try and drag some enemies out and get a good siege battle, you must understand that enemies gets boored of constantly trying to retake the relic, from a realm that now has damage add bonuses. And in addition they will most likely have a long walk to do, or a very long boat trip, before they can get there. And when you insta die then, it doesn't encourage you to keep on doing it.

Tedious Ten moving server was a direct consequence of the actions GoA made against the actions we decided to take. If you read any post we made before this incident, you will see we are most happy with the RvR going on, and that we have no plans whatsoever of going to another server. We even go as far as saying we would rather quit than reroll. However when GoA decided to give our sorc (Sollers/Bram) a 5 day ban for the action, we decided it was enough. After all the flaming and extremely stupid follow-up actions taken by certain albs on the cluster, we decided this was not a place to stay, and so did alot of other guilds, and we moved.
Though ofc, the server having a low population and there being few enemy fgs to fight, helped alot in making our decition aswell, though none as much as the new one that occured at this point. The stupidity we found in some players actions and words. We simply could not stand being a part of this community any longer. And reading the latest posts on this forums, I am very certain we made the correct choice. Still the same people saying the same things. They have their way of playing, it didn't match ours.

Hope this is good enough answer to your post. It may not be as well constructed as I would like it to, but atleast it answers all the questions and statements in the post you made. Even though there are numerous more reasons as to why people don't like AC raids. In any realm.

 

[Asha]

Davy you can't blame the low population on low population

 

[Asha]

Why do people get so worked up about AC raids?

Because it defeats the point of a MMORPG realm vs. realm game totally.

How is it not greifing? Albion realm by and large don't WANT the AC raiders to do it. Yet, they have no way to stop it. That is greifing to me. The few deciding for the many that their realm will AC raid and then taunting people who dare to complain.

AC raids don't encourage activity in the frontier after the 3rd 4th 5th 6th time.

The problem is that you can effect the game world by interacting with other players and teamwork during the day only to have your work erased in the night. That isn't fun the 365th time it happens. You basically have no effect on the game world, which is frustrating. Who wants to spend hours doing something that will not last?

I didn't move clusters, but my account runs out in a couple weeks and I won't renew I have almost always played Albion and I just don't have fun playing it anymore, especially because I am on USA time so the only thing going on when I log in is my realm AC raiding. Lately I have been playing mid sometimes, but not seriously. Albion is just so lame, and most of the people who I have played with over the years don't enjoy the attitude and have quit or moved.

I don't think the AC raiding killed the cluster, but it was the last straw for many players that I know quit or changed cluster... Also as the population gets smaller and smaller and smaller, AC relic raids become lamer and lamer. There is often literally less than 10 people on Midgard and the Albs are PvE'ing keep after keep. When the cluster had a healthier population, then a few defenders were at least around. Now there is just no one on - seriously. The irony is that Albion is supposed to be the land of knights and lords and ladies and ... honor.

Honestly, I think the lack of new players due to lack of English/Nordic/Dutch advertising is to blame.

Cadelin summed up the current situation perfectly.


The game in general I find funny now. In the old days you had to have ppl who knew the way around the frontier, now we have maps. In the old days you had to talk to ppl to find out about enemy attacks, now we have maps with fires. In the old days you depended on your alliances to scream if their keeps were getting attacked... now... we have maps. And ports. It takes all the mystery out of it for me. Arranged meetings for 8vs8 never felt good to me. Either I have outgrown daoc or it's outgrown me. I don't know which.

I don't know why this has hit the english servers harder than the Germans. Someone should do a study on it ^^. My guess is advertising.

 

[wittor]

Davy you can't blame the low population on low population

I didnt... I just said why I and Revolver rerolled and I'm sure more people rerolled because of the server dropping in numbers ( IE 1300 ppl and that is low pop when we left ) and dunno how much the server pop is atm but i guess its not above 1k and it will get worst and my point was that we didn't leave because of the AC's.

 

[raid]

As someone who doesn't participate in the relic/keep rvr at all, I couldn't care less whether a relic raid was prime time or AC, just the end result matters. I would very much prefer having neutral relics, but its something I can't do much about.

The whole issue has just blown out of proportion. If people _really_ set up alarm clock or stay up late just to "take the relics and make arthur proud", let them. Maybe make a nice FH flame thread for work days entertainment but thats it.

People use the AC raids or TT incident as reason for leaving to other servers, but I'm quite sure the ultimate reason was something else.

 

[kirennia]

Personally I absolutely love albion, had never been happier with a character before rolling my heretic and had an ultimate goal of at the very least hitting realm rank 10 before leaving the cluster. I've zerged, I've soloed (a little ), played in FGs, organised many an event and honestly did not want to leave the server but I pretty much have now.

This is a game about realms but ultimately, for each realm to carry on playing, they need to continue to have fun. I'm an alb so by default, the relics should have never effected me negatively but personally I did not want them.

The thing is, for hibernia to take a relic, these days they will ultimately need to mass every single person they can get, have a bulletproof plan, make sure nobody knows about it and have at the VERY least 100 people so that the Alb zerg doesn't just steam roll over them everytime a flame comes onto the war map. Such organisation can take a very long time to get together and plan, would consist of hours of work beating back albs and then maybe one in five times could result in a relic. Then 16 albs come along at 4am and take it back in 2 hours.....

I don't care if I'm an alb and I'm 'winning' by the albs AC raiding, this is completely unfair. There comes a point after this happening several times over and over again when you just say sod this, I've had enough.

Whatever you said, when we (tedious ten) decided to lower the level of the keep in protest against this atrocity of war (Surely in wars different factions have feuds?) we wholeheartedly thought what we did was within the code of conduct. It was previously quoted by GoA staff themselves that lowering the level of a keep is not against the code of conduct and we thought that by simply making a stand, we could at least show that not every alb endorses these actions:

https://forums.freddyshouse.com/showthread.php?t=210962

Does this not prove that the majority of the population agreed with us?

People say we would have left anyway but I can honestly say, hand on heart that when logging on that night, I had absolutely no intentions of leaving the english cluster. If I recall correctly, sollers and rushed both said that there was no way they'd reroll, daemyr said he didn't wanna start another guild without them and there was no sodding way the rest of us would have left what we'd considered a perfectly good guild for the sake of a fresh start away from perfectly good action.

Following the bannings, many left because they knew the actions were unjust. Yes you have the right to terminate accounts, take items away, delete characters, do whatever the hell you want with characters but we are all customers and when an action like this takes place, people tend to rally together.

The cluster is not dead, there have just been a load of people leaving. Well certain people have simply said 'good riddance' and one person even told us all to 'foad' on here one night but was never banned for it even after being reported and the posts all deleted. Basically we were all hung out to dry and that's why those that have been forced out of the server and angry and have been complaining about AC raids...

Because of the way they're designed, the way several hours of work by 100 people can be undone by 16 in just a few and because we're given absolutely no chance to do anything about it.

Well some people got what they asked for anyway. Saying they don't care if we leave and such, well it doesn't really matter because we're now happy and most probably will be for quite some time. I hope they find the same peace they've been looking for.

118 ACCOUNTS are now active in our alliance on mid/avalon, one of 2 ex-excal/pryd alliances of people, all english speaking.

 

[Kagato]

Requiel - I can see where your coming from, and to a degree I agree, AC raids are lame, I knew full well the one I did was lame when I did it, it was partially one of the reasons why I did it, as Arethir correctly pointed out here:

It's being done in anger and fury. Just have a look at Kagato's thread, and the picture of him /ruding the mids. I'm sure pissing mids off made his day. However I have a feeling more people got upset than happy about his actions.

Pissing of the enemy was the whole point, it was my main goal, I admit I only expected to piss them of by damaging the door and killing anyone who came out of it until I got over whelmed, but opportunity allowed me to do even greater damage then I anticipated.

Ever since the whole renaris level lowering incident I had been waiting for an opportunity to lash out and do something equally lame back, and I got it, and it was satisfying, I make no apologies for it.

The problem we have now, and im as much guilty for this as anyone else, is that AC raids are no longer simply about the relics. They have become weapons of anger. Its not just about getting the relic, they are being done precisely to demoralise the enemy or simply for the garunteed back lash on these very forums. It allows people to point the finger and say hahah ! you deserve that for the raid you did on xx/xx/xx. And this puts us into a vicious circle that is unlikely to ever break without some restructuring of new frontiers.

How many BG's have you been in where the main comments coming through the channels during the relic raid are all about the whine thats going to appear on FH or about how much fun they are going to have taunting on here? Those gloats normally out number the small excitment people have over the prospective damage bonuses.

As Requiel said in his first post, I don't think anyone can honestly get that worked up over 5% damage.

When you work out all the huge factors, timers and ra's that come into a fight, 5% or even 10% extra damage is not in the majority of cases going to change the outcome. It would have to be a very very close fight for you to honestly be able to say a relic made you win it.

As I stated in another thread recently, people take relics way to seriously, specially in this day and age of the game when most people play across different realms on the same cluster.
What happens in this game when I log off I do not care about, the entire map could turn blue or green at 4 am and I wouldn't care so long as im not in there to see it.
I didn't always think this way, but now I realise theres things far more important both in game and out to care about 5%, and alot of people here getting all bent out of shape would do well to try thinking the same way.