Do you want more depth to DaoC?

[Killgorde]

I see a lot of guys get to level 50 do a bit of RvR then get switched off and start counting the days/months/years to the next great online gaming experience (I exclude Karam from this group as he is just a twat ). With me it's a dream that Speedball online keeps faith with the original Bitmap program, but then I'm just a sad old bastard. I do feel that the end game in DaoC very unsatisfactory in certain respects, and particularly lacking in any tangible purpose. There are only so many times you can take the same relic or kill the same enemy/uber mobs before it no longer represents a challenge. Sure there are things on the near or distant horizon to perk up interest (PvP, Shrouded Isles, Spell/Alchemy Crafting), but I don't see any of these fundamentally altering the current state of affairs. By this I mean adding substantial depth to keep the hard-care fraternity from switching to the next game that comes out just for a change of scenery if nothing else. What keeps me playing is the friends and enemies <coughs> I have made, and not much else. Is this as it should be? I do envy the dedicated role-playing guys inasmuch as they have a great environment within which to strut their stuff, but as to the rest of us? (And before anyone says that DaoC is a dedicated RP game so what the hell am I talking about, I would ask them to check the server populations on Percival and Guinevere and ask themselves if Mythic could survive on those guys alone). I do confess to looking forward to PvP release on EU as it represents a challenge with a different gaming dynamic, but having studied some of the larger guilds in the US PvP arena, I get the impression a lot of them are stagnating after achieving what they originally set out to. That state of affairs is maybe 4-6 months away for us on EU as PvP is yet to be launched.

All the bollocks I have just written brings me in a roundabout way to an area which I believe (given minimal adjustment on the part of Mythic from my guild's own in-game experimentation) would substantially enhance the longevity of the game for a lot of the old-timers.

There were mutterings in the past about "Guild Houses" - a way of giving your guild an individuality and it's members a common sense of purpose of something visual to work towards. In the PvP format this would possibly be of benefit - a kind of "our pad looks great and yours sucks" type of red rag to your enemies. On RvR servers,though, you wouldnt have the ability to show off your accomplishents to your enemies because of the zone restrictions.

That said, there is a facility that currently exists within the game to satisfy this potential - but it a) has been kept very quiet by Mythic - I have struggled to find any information anywhere on it - and b) is flawed. We are all aware that guilds can claim keeps. How many of you are aware that you can give your higher level weapons and armour to the guards of the keep that you have claimed? And that once given they actually change the appearance of the guard? Try offering a guard a 10.5 dps weapon or AF60 jerkin and he will tell you to piss off. Offer him a Gold Alloy Sword and a Dragon-Etched suit of armour and within 20 minutes (it seems to take a few minutes for the server info to update on armour skins) you have a loyal servant who will scare the bejesus out of any Infil scouting your keep. And obviously dyeable to whatever colour you wish. Grab an unwanted item from the vault and try it...it works. (Check the nice Prince Bow out the Lord at Fens is currently sporting as an example).

Now for the bad news. When he dies he loses whatever equipment you have given him. Bit of a bugger that. And an expensive one if you take a keep's full complement into account and the cost of upgrading all the guards. So a complete waste of time, you may think.

Not, I believe, if Mythic actually did some fine tuning. We can all, I think, safely agree that in general keep-taking is a doddle. You want DF access - go roll Beno or DC over (actually all Alb keeps on Excalibur are a doddle 95% of the time ) and you get it. If the equipment invested by the home realm reappeared on its keep guards when they respawned after a failed attempt or the keep was recovered from enemy hands the facility which currently exists (the programmer at Mythic who inserted the code was probably saked for showing initiative, and its existence hushed up ) would not be a complete waste of time. And keeps would be harder to roll over...depending on how much investment the home realm actually put into each keeps defence's equipment. Another idea may be to change the DF access format to the realm that holds most Battleground keeps, which would give the levelling peeps some sense of worth and achievement - after all, DF is more pitched at their level than the level 50's, and it appeals to my sense of humour to have the high levels grovelling and pleading to their realms "Noobs" to get them DF access so they can do a Legion raid (Only an idea - no flames on this one please ).

Ah, but you say you can upgrade the keep to level 10 when you claim it. Does anyone actually know what exact increase in the level of defence each upgrade gives? I assure you GOA have no idea, judging by the half-hearted and nonsensical response I got when I posed the question to RightNow a couple of months back. I dread to think what their answer would be if I asked for the base stats (dps on weapons and af of armour) on NPC guards actually is. When I find a willing high-level crafter in game we will find out the hard way by seeing at what point the item you are offering is better than the one they are wearing (in which case they accept it) to see what level they are set at. Needless to say the keep lord has no use for epic armour

It's only my opinion, but with the facility already in place (albeit in need of some minor reprogramming on the part of Mythic), the above would give those of us who are looking for more depth from the game to extend its longevity something worthwhile to get excited about. When you get the call it would be kinda nice to know that guard on the second floor of the Lord tower is making a valiant effort to kick some ass with that uber sword you kindly gave him a couple of weeks back while you were sharing a pint at the local tavern. Kinda like adopting an animal at the local zoo for want of a better comparison

Mythic are putting a great deal of effort into Shrouded Isles, which may be great for the levellers, but isn't exactly a ball-grabber for all the level 50's out there who aren't particularly enthusiastic about rolling another class and joining the exp treadmill again, but just want to have fun with their existing chars after all the graft they have already put in.

And then again, maybe I'm just talking out of my arse, as usual

/Salutes

 

[Flimgoblin]

to cut a long response short...
yes

that'd be cool! pet-guards.

Adopt a bowman, give him a 99% qual duskwood and some bright pink armour

maybe send that into the feedback on the camelotherald?

never know it might get there

 

[old.Revz]

Do people want more depth? Yes.

Is it too late to add it now? Probably.

There are a lot of people like me who have cut their losses and quit. When shrouded isles comes out it might help for a while but I don't really want to keep on playing a lacklustre game on the offchance things will get better 3-4 months down the line. There are too many other things out there to try instead of spending a lot of time twiddling your fingers and waiting for Mythic to get things right. They had their chance, it has been a good game for 6 months but that is about as much life as the game has in it.

 

[SlaynFintaine]

People give up on daoc after hitting 50 because of the nature of RvR fighting. What actually makes people lose interest is that it's so hard to get hold of a rewarding RvR fight.

How often do you get to stand off with 7 of your friends against 8 members of an enemy realm, and truly test your tactics and teamwork? Sadly this is hardly ever, when it comes to RvR you are going to have to put up with the reality that the majority of fights take place involving forces of 5-6 fg's. This pushes you into 2 options: a) join up with your own realm's zerg force, b) get a small group and try to tip-toe around emain until you find a similar small force or are swarmed by 40+ people.

This happens because there are so little options in rvr conflict, it happens because everyone is drawn to emain for RvR. The solution would be providing more variations and perhaps some truly interesting rvr zones(not just hills, trees, paths... but walkways, ruins, tunnels, maybe even places to do limited teleports accross the zone). This would provide more levels of cover and opportunity for tactics amongst small groups, as it isn't just a bit open field where you have to avoid a zerg force who you know will be all over the choke points in Emain.

The other solution would be to have some areas which artificially control combat, by having some means of making sure the numbers of each force are roughly equal.

I think the above kind of sums up what is the actual factor which makes the game go a little stale once you hit level 50 and are left with just-RvR. I don't think eye-candy like player-owned houses or fiddling around with keep guards would actually change it that much.



Slayn.

 

[aethtemplar]

I think your idea is a good one. I did know about the giving gear to guards, but I never practised it precisely because I don't see any point wasting gear which disappears the moment the guard is killed. Problem is, if it didn't disappear, then all the guards would soon be encumbered with gear, and no-one else would ever be able to give them any. There'd have to be some sort of time limit - say a real-life month or whatever.

I think there's two ways of attaining depth. One is to create a social network which is complex and interesting enough to keep you entertained when the actual "game" part is done (ie, no more levels to achieve, all keeps taken etc). That's partly what roleplaying is about, although it's possible to do this without roleplaying. The second, and it's a method which I think UO struck gold with, is the ability to allow a player to make permanent changes to the game environment. Housing, whether player or guild, is the most obvious of these. But there are other ways - give a player a horse which he has to feed/stable or it dies/runs away, and the player will keep returning. Establish some sort of in-game "political" system with guilds/individuals being able to officially adopt/alter/rule/tax towns etc, (imagine the town Criers announcing that XX Guild rules Ludlow, and that guild recieves an adjustable tax from all sales within the town) again on time-limited basis, and you have some more interest.

At the moment, DAoC is enough for me, although I do wish they'd get their arses in gear on guild housing, but I can see that unless there's more ways to alter the game environment, the lifespan will be more limited than Mythic/GOA would hope.

 

[Brannor McThife]

I have to agree with Gideon. GOA can't do anything but give us events of some or another kind. Only Mythic can change the code, and as I have discussed elsewhere, it's all down to money. They simply won't take the time to make changes that don't have a high ROI (Return on Investment). Giving us the use of the 9 and 0 for instance. Or larger packs. Or...or...or. All of these do not generate more cash. I also believe that it is too late for many things to change. I have now taken to playing other games on the weekend, with the occasional stint of DAoC, but like the rest of my guild, we're waiting for something new to attract our attention.

Were NWN a MMORPG, hell, it'd be awesome. The graphics are stunning, the spell effects really nice, and the amount of variations in armour design and little things like multiple voice and action emotes, adds flavour to the game. The fact that quests are what it's all about. Hack 'n Slash, sure, but it's the quests that make it. Just a pity that it's not for large numbers of players.

Anyway, back to the topic. If you'd asked me this 6 months ago, I'd have jumped around like a rabit on 'roids yelling "yes! YES!!", but now, I'll just say, "Yeah, would be nice, but it'll never happen."

-G

 

[old.Kladen]

wow i dont think many people knew you could give your equipment to the guards. nice way to get rid of them telamon scimiters

if they ever put housing into the game it would put a whole lot of depth into the game and put something in the house that would make peopel stay in there otherwise houses would always be deserted (like X2 crafting gains in your home)

im sure everyone would like more depth in the game and all of the roleplayers. hard to make this happen though

 

[Killgorde]

Err...fellas?

I think some of you are missing the point of this thread. It is dealing with the here and now and something which as far as I can see would only take a minor tweak on the part of the programers to make reality. The memory retention of the equiment supplied to guards at 21 keeps for the home realms for say a month (degradation is a good idea) would hardly be a challenge to Mythic. It's small beer and they are half way there without maybe even realising it.

Let's have a reality check. There's no point going on about guild housing. That's pipe-dreaming. Shrouded Isles (the new engine aside) is a marketing exercise pitched at attracting new customers before the launch of SWG, rather than keeping the salty old dogs interested - otherwise the housing issue (which Mythic themselves hinted at many months back) would probably be a reality very soon. I am suggesting something that would make RvR more entertaining to a lot of players who have been around the block without knocking the Mythic profit margins for six.

 

[old.Revz]

You need to give holding a keep some point beyond seeing a nice flag outside otherwise no one would ever use these ideas. In addition to which equipping guards would need to give them a seriously better fighting chance than they have at the moment to be worth it. They don't have the mind of a player and so would tend to get owned by any seriously thought out attack unless they were much harder than a player to kill.

For instance...

Let guild members gain RP from enemies killed by guards of their claimed keep. You could have a flag that would be settable on any rank to enable it and you would basically split the RP gained by your guards as they defend the keep from the enemy amongst all members online at the time. This would mean there is a point to defending your keep because it can be a source of RP for you (which is a lot of the reason people RvR).

You could then assign the keep lord a RP worth based on how much that keep had earnt since the last time it was taken (perhaps with some modifier based on how long it had been claimed as well - those keeps that stay claimed for 20 odd days would be tasty targets). When the enemy attack and capture that keep the lord would be worth that many RP split between the people who kill him.

With those two changes you have incentives to hold keeps and equip them well, on top of incentives to capture keeps that haven't been taken in a while (they are worth a lot of RP). I imagine that would heat up the frontier a lot in places that don't see much action.

 

[daphatfriar]

I think what we need is a sort of Quake 3 type mod sort of thing once a week on the test server. 8 v 8 v 8 ctf on BG with the flag starting off on the central keep would be an absolute hoot on a saturday night after a few beers This is just an example I think the test server is ideal for this.

A "knock out" competition 1v1 on tanks (no buffs except your own allowed) all comers taken so u can fight your Realm mates as well. Could be expanded into a league system eventually
Could do similar things for casters etc.

Launching 100 or so high lvl stealthers at once onto BG and playing last man standing would be hilarious as well.

Just some simple ideas put the fun back into the game.

And just for one night perhaps we could all talk to each other in there for a while would make the whole thing more sociable too. Nice to able to congratulate other players on a good skillfull fight well fought (or saying lucky git get you next time lol)

Enough already the more time I sit here typing the more fun things I can think of to do

 

[cjkaceBM]

I agree that claiming keeps is a pointless exercise, unless you are RP farming with your guild.

A good idea, that makes it the responsibility of the realm to look after their keeps.

What always confused me was the way that RvR was first implemented.

Why do 2 realms have to port into 1 others frontier?
By that I mean why do we not all port into 1 frontier?
When you walk through Ligen gates why not then port into the frontier?
Instead of the two TKs behind the Milegates why not have all the frontiers linked together with only 1 passing spot?

For example.

Remove TKs from Emain.
Remove the dividing hill between Alb and Mid Milegates.
Block up one milegate so only one entrance into the 'pass'
Do the same thing for each realm.

Then you would have the situation that every realm has to 'port' to enter the same frontier, and then run to their milegate for any chance of getting some RvR action. It would also increase the value of the merchant keeps as a safe spot, and there would be very little enemy milegate 'camping' simply because your back would be vulnerable to an attack from many directions.

Then again I'm probly talking shite too

 

[Danya]

I believe the reason for porting is so you only have one realm's texture set loaded at a time... I could be wrong here though.
It would be better if there was one big frontier and to get to the enemy keeps you just ran out of your border keeps and kept running till you got there.

 

[Tranquil-]

To solve the texture thing you could just use a normal zoning like when you enter your realms capital.

 

[old.chesnor]

I can't see that the solution to the boredom of post-50 life in daoc is arming guards with player items. For most, keep taking is a chore or a necessary evil in order to open DF. The first X keep raids/defences I did were fun, but I soon got bored. Got bored zerging in Emain very quickly. Got bored zerging elsewhere. Got bored exping in Malmohus, got bored levelling in Hibernia, got bored levelling full stop. Enjoyed skirmishing, but got zerged. Zerg or be zerged...bah.

There is no fix to the post 50 game. At 50 its all over. All you can do is gain RP (like the exp grind, but even more futile) to get better RA so you can be even better at getting RP to get more RA so you can be even better at getting RP to get more RA ad infintum..

Mythic had a buisness model for this game. Imagine the meeting...

'Guys, how long do you think the average player subscribes to a MMORPG'

'Oooh...around six moths'

'OK, go design me a game where it takes six months to achieve the highest level for Mr.Average, charge £6 a month for subs and in a year we will be rich beyond our wildest dreams!!!!!'

And they are...

 

[j0ker]

!!!!!!

u gave a prince bow to a Lord !!!!!

u have any idea how long I been tryin to get my hands on one of them

pause to think of your little scout friends b4 u do something as rash next time

nice post btw

 

[Khalen]

Nice text Killgorde...

RvR isn't amusing most of the times and since RvR is all you can do at 50 (and no i'm not gonna lvl another alt to 50 because I have 2 already) it's pretty boring. I'm just waiting for PvP to show up and see if I can have some fun there because it will be new to most players and so new things to try out..

But we will see...

 

[Blood]

Originally posted by old.Revz
You need to give holding a keep some point beyond seeing a nice flag outside otherwise no one would ever use these ideas. In addition to which equipping guards would need to give them a seriously better fighting chance than they have at the moment to be worth it. They don't have the mind of a player and so would tend to get owned by any seriously thought out attack unless they were much harder than a player to kill.

For instance...

Let guild members gain RP from enemies killed by guards of their claimed keep. You could have a flag that would be settable on any rank to enable it and you would basically split the RP gained by your guards as they defend the keep from the enemy amongst all members online at the time. This would mean there is a point to defending your keep because it can be a source of RP for you (which is a lot of the reason people RvR).

You could then assign the keep lord a RP worth based on how much that keep had earnt since the last time it was taken (perhaps with some modifier based on how long it had been claimed as well - those keeps that stay claimed for 20 odd days would be tasty targets). When the enemy attack and capture that keep the lord would be worth that many RP split between the people who kill him.

With those two changes you have incentives to hold keeps and equip them well, on top of incentives to capture keeps that haven't been taken in a while (they are worth a lot of RP). I imagine that would heat up the frontier a lot in places that don't see much action.

1. messages when guards are killed (introduced in 1.54)
2. insta teleport from your bindstone to the lordroom in your guild keep (not planned)
3. xp bonus in the same zone as guild keep (not planned)
4. increase bonuses from guild keep the longer it have been claimed (stolen from jup)
5. increase number/strength of guards at keeps the more time it have changed hands the last 14 days?

thats just off the top of my head.. they have 80 people employed at mythic, its amazing that they cant come up with more in just 1 hour brainstorm

 

[Killgorde]

Originally posted by j0ker
!!!!!!

u gave a prince bow to a Lord !!!!!

u have any idea how long I been tryin to get my hands on one of them

pause to think of your little scout friends b4 u do something as rash next time

Oops..soz m8

The GA 2H he was wearing looked pretty cool as well btw

 

[old.Revz]

Originally posted by old.Blood|Prydwen


1. messages when guards are killed (introduced in 1.54)
2. insta teleport from your bindstone to the lordroom in your guild keep (not planned)
3. xp bonus in the same zone as guild keep (not planned)
4. increase bonuses from guild keep the longer it have been claimed (stolen from jup)
5. increase number/strength of guards at keeps the more time it have changed hands the last 14 days?

thats just off the top of my head.. they have 80 people employed at mythic, its amazing that they cant come up with more in just 1 hour brainstorm

I was talking with Danyan after I made that post and between the two of us we came up with literally hundreds of ideas for making keeps useful. To throw a couple more out :

1. Have it so that you can upgrade the keep in more diverse ways that are actually visible from outside so people can tell roughly what they are attacking. Perhaps go so far as implement a "tech-tree" like Starcraft where some upgrades are dependent on you having others. I would love to buy "boiling oil" for 100 BP to defend the gatehouse from attackers
2. Make it so you can upgrade the number of patrols and perhaps the information they send back. As you say Mythic are going to put in death reports but it would be nice to add a "scout" upgrade to your keep whereby each patrol sent you back info on enemies in their area before they got killed. This way you have a chance to defend your expensive keep before it is raided. Make the size and number of patrols proportional to the cost.
3. Have a seperate channel for keep information (like guild chat is seperate from alliance chat etc.) and have your keep report back into this when it is under attack.
4. Let you upgrade the keep by having a forge and crafting merchants in it. Perhaps this costs cash rather than BP but I can't tell you how popular it would be if you could claim a keep and pay to have your own merchants/forges spawn there.
5. Implement a vault system in a claimed keep whereby you pass in gear to it and the Lord distributes it to the guards. This way guards getting killed does not mean they lose the items, you lose the vault if you lose the keep so you have some incentive to hold onto it.
6. Have the keep guards named so in your information channel it says "Keep guard Henry has slain Blood in mortal combat!". If you could actually pass items to individual guards that showed up on them as well it would further tie you into the keep actually meaning something as you saw your favourite guards slaying enemies with the stuff you gave them.
7. Make keeps generate RP for the enemies they kill (as I said above).
8. When you upgrade a keep to the maximum level the guards should be orange/red con to level 50. Currently you can solo a patrol without breaking a sweat, this is wrong if keeps are to mean anything. They should be a big barrier to progress through a frontier not a blip on the monitor.
9. Horse routes through the frontier to your keeps? Or perhaps teleports there as you say. Maybe only allow horse rides to be made to keeps that are claimed to give incentive for actually taking them.

 

[old.Akirai]

(Check the nice Prince Bow out the Lord at Fens is currently sporting as an example).

Killed him tonight
tough doors u had mate

 

[SilverHood]

spent 6 months getting to 50.... been 50 a week and I'm already bored

All I can do is RvR, RvR, an occasional hunt, or help a guilde

RvR is always zergs unless I'm with guild....

I'm most likely going to go back to Tactical Ops one of these days

at least my skill has an effect on how I can play the game, and i can't get mezzed ther either

 

[cplcarrot]

well personally, I enjoy RvR but I agree with killgorde on the points, however isnt the fundamental problem the switch in the game style from PvE to RvR?

Eg (my experience of albion excal).

Pure greed drives at least 50% of players. PvE is all about how much xp u can get and how quickly. after 50 loooooong levels of doing this, peoples mindset gets fixed,and they dont lose the greed when they get to RvR.

We all remember how much fun we had levelling when we were lowbies (the chat, the fun, the banter) and I dont think its cos it was faster. Its because people set the target of level 50 for RvR and become increasingly selfish. Then we get into RvR and the mindset doesnt change. We have no real banter, chat, teamwork or fun. because greed again.

people get to RvR and dont drop the xp mentality, its still all about how many more figures u have in RP than your peers.

Thats wrong IMO, it should be about taking a keep holding it as your group, building seige equipment, having banter and then waiting for the action OR working as a team and working together to patrol! albs cant control mezz for shit and work like a herd of buffalo .

All that happens in albion, as killgorde shows, is alb keeps fall and the greedy peeps think, I will ignore that and run from AMG to MMG try get more RP and then continue until tired or bored.

Im not sure the problem is with the game engine, maybe just the mentality of the majority of players. IMO what is the point in getting to RvR and playing only for RP? whats the aim? when u RR10, whats your next aim gonna be? can u look back and say u had fun?

To finish, maybe the objective should be:

to work as a team, build an effective guild full of friendly fun and entusiastic players, who work to improve the status of the guild as a whole! not with RP but by owning a keep and holding it, having a good time and enjoying it.

I think there is a lot of potential in this game for tactics and teamplay already, it isnt mythics fault that we have a bunch of "uber" arrogant nerds playing who care more about self status than teamwork or fun factor.

Im sure if u told one guy that if he went to the same location eg from amg to mount collery, he would get 1K RP that he wouldnt run there forward and back until he hit max!

Las

 

[Tranquil-]

Read that mans post. It should be in the Eula.
Atleast the version of it that's in this thread.

 

[old.Eynar_Vega]

I agree completely with you m8. Personally I found out about being able to give equipment to guards the hard way, meaning I just tried it out of curiosity and lost a runic manslayer

Another nice little twist would maybe be if keep guards would consist out of all available classes of the realm they belong to for example. It would be far more enjoyable to fight guards with clerics, minstrels, enchanter, etc among them, wouldn't it?

 

[Flimgoblin]

From the camelot herald (kinda answers a tiny bit of part 1 of gideon's list)

It says in the patch notes: "When your guild owns an outpost and a guard is slain at your outpost, you now receive a print via guildchat channel." Here's how that works in practice:

Taken from a log on the Warcry boards:

17:43:43] @@[Guild] [A Champion Commander from your outpost has been killed with 10 enemies in the area! ]
[17:43:58] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]
[17:44:18] @@[Guild] [A Guardian from your outpost has been killed with 37 enemies in the area! ]
[17:44:30] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 41 enemies in the area! ]
[17:44:50] @@[Guild] [A Guardian from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]
[17:45:01] @@[Guild] [A Guardian from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]
[17:45:10] @@[Guild] [A Champion Commander from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]
[17:45:54] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 35 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:02] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:09] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:09] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:37] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:37] @@[Guild] [Chieftain Crimthainn from your outpost has been killed with 44 enemies in the area! ]

As a great big block of text, it looks confusing. How can the number of enemies be spiking up and down like that? It can, if the NPCs that are dying are not in the same place.

The above log describes the following sequence:

[17:43:43] @@[Guild] [A Champion Commander from your outpost has been killed with 10 enemies in the area! ]
[17:43:58] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]

A patrol was killed. It is not certain that it was a patrol, but given the low numbers of "enemies" near the dead NPCs and the "Champion Commander" who is usually on a patrol, it is likely that the fight was on the road somewhere.

[17:44:18] @@[Guild] [A Guardian from your outpost has been killed with 37 enemies in the area! ]
[17:44:30] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 41 enemies in the area! ]

Guards near the fort are falling. There are many people nearby, indicating a full on keep raid in progress.

[17:44:50] @@[Guild] [A Guardian from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]
[17:45:01] @@[Guild] [A Guardian from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]
[17:45:10] @@[Guild] [A Champion Commander from your outpost has been killed with 9 enemies in the area! ]

A 2nd patrol was killed. Again, the number of enemies is very low, indicating that this battle wasn't near a cluster of people. And of course, there's our Commander there.

[17:45:54] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 35 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:02] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:09] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:09] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:37] @@[Guild] [A Ranger from your outpost has been killed with 43 enemies in the area! ]
[17:46:37] @@[Guild] [Chieftain Crimthainn from your outpost has been killed with 44 enemies in the area! ]

The archers and chieftain at the fort have been killed. Again, high numbers indicate a keep raid in progress, and the death of the Chieftain at the end clinches it.

 

[VidX]

Now that's nice.

Means that you can instantly tell the size of the attacking force.

For example (using Hibs) if we are defending Crim with 40 people against 60 Albs, then we get a message saying that a CC from Bolg (claimed by our guild) was killed with 7 enemies in the area, then we only need to get 1 full group to Bolg asap, rather than waiting for scout reports to tell the number of attackers, so as to defend it and leave enough at Crim to defend it properly.

Nice little addition

As for the weapons for guards, imagine a keep defended by guards carrying nice big DF Diamond LW hammers (black with red particle effects) and the Lord with a nice 100% quality Duskwood Great Recurve (35% bonus) and a nice Prince drop with AoE proc

 

[Flimgoblin]

"Message from the front sir, the troops report Benowyc has fallen to the Martians."

oh hang on, mixing my games there

Quite right that all those scouts on the walls could learn to count finally

 

[Jorillian]

could add this for good measure....

[17:43:43] Jorillian moves towards the nearest stable
[17:44:30] Jorillian buys a ticket and rides to sauvage
[17:46:37] Jorillian mumbles 'Oh well' to himself
[17:46:45] Jorillian jumps the horse and returns to lyonesse

 

[Whoodoo_RD]

Who needs spys now eh? Again, Mythic providing a lil too much info there, on relic raids youll know numbers instantly, and be able to assess the amount of def you'll need easily. RR got hard in the patch with the uber guards, but worse now those uber guards can head count us all during their remarkably short lifetime. (pls note this probably incudes all stealthed and out of range ppl) Whats the point of /anon for avoiding spies?

I agree with Killgordes post, and many of the others within. Seems to me tho the crux of the matter is we need more player / NCP interaction, and some random too would be nice.

Being able to equip guards, upgrade keeps ( I like the idea of the boiling oil btw) and getting the general NCP population to talk to us, by dishing out more quests, items or whatever would make more fun.

ATM at 50 the only fun you can have is in a group slaying mobs for drops or RvR zerging / keep taking. As a lot of peeps pointed out, this gets tedious, so what about more solo things to do. Kill tasks, gathering stuff to improve keeps - like wood from willows etc. Or even the ability to invite a guard into your grp and have him follow you like a pet. Whereas you control a patrol round the frontiers.

As for the idea about RvR and having a sort of team based session, how about a BG for level 50 only, but only 1 or 2 groups from each realm may enter at any time. This would give ppl a chance to test out differeing grp combinations, and improve your RvR combat in the normal frontiers.

One thing I think the 3 frontiers lack is amubsh spots. As an example of what i mean, its so easy to cross any frontier, if your in 1fg, you can breeze all the mobs, hack patrols down way too easy. Take Malmohus for example, getting to H or lair is very hard solo, but can even be difficult for 1fg if the bafs are bad enough. You have to negate the zone wall a long way to reach your goal, and sometimes use precision timing to make the leap past H. The frontiers should be the same IMO.

I hear they are making the Ice Giant in Odin's Gate major agro to anyone, therefore elimianting one possible route for us all. But why stop there.

Anyway, just my pennies worth, but nice to see a lot of positive ideas here, whos gonna spam them to Mythic?

 

[Whoodoo_RD]

Originally posted by Fingoniel
Quite right that all those scouts on the walls could learn to count finally

And invent the celular phone too?