Got myself thinking...

[Killswitch]

I posted this in another thread (to do with "vintage" DAOC servers);

I think NF has been a totally, 100% good thing for the majority of players (who, by the way, aren't really represented on FH). Problem nowadays is everyone has friends they've played with since Euro beta and most of the older RvR guild run opted-GG because they can.

What chance did a new player in OF have? (speaking as someone who joined a long time after DAOC got started). Level to 50, get SC'd, head to ATK/MTK/HTK and spam LFG for 2 hours. Once your PUG got going, run round either ganking stealthers or getting rolled by BC/DH/NO/FC/NP or whoever.

Now at least there is the option of Tower-Humping for the majority who don't have access to these closed-circles of experienced, high-RR players. This isn't a whine, I have a great little guild with some good players and friends. I usually run solo/duo/trio and occasionally we manage 5-6 person GGs.

People complain about the lack of 8v8, but what do you want the unwashed masses to do? Form up groups of 8 from what you can find at Bled Bridge and get wiped over and over? I've seen (and tried to avoid adding on!) some good 8v8 fights involving PV/FC/Synergy over the last week or so.

Maybe, if you guys want more 8v8 fighting, you should be recruiting new players and grouping them, rather than sticking with your seven mates and whining because there are no FGs to kill. Don't forget that although the 8v8 is the fun bit, you all got your RPs from farming the RR2/RR3 zerg (which you can still find at a Tower Near You(TM).

Now, this got me thinking about why people aren't loving NF and why people are leaving (esp. on Hib). People are going to get bored of the game and leave. That's people of all Realm Ranks, not just the RR8+ people who have quit threads on Freddyshouse.

So old guilds die, new ones get formed. Guild merge, split and rebuild. What seems to be happening is that the old, high-RR players still around want to (naturally) group with other old, high-RR players they've known for a long time. What I'm wondering is whether this is causing the problems we're seeing now. The newer, low-RR players don't get chance to group with the better players for RvR. In turn, the high-RR GGs can't get enough 8v8 and leave. The average standard of players drops and more people leave.

I don't really buy the "unbalanced realms/classes" stuff. All three realms have been able to put out a balanced FG and compete 8v8 with each other at pretty much every patch afaik. Again, most casual/new/low-RR players don't have the time, resources or motivation to roll the latest FOTM class or TOA another toon. That means they get left behind when the game changes and again this leads to a lower overall standard of opposition for the high-RR guys to fight.

Does anyone actually agree with me? Or even understand me? Can anyone think of anything we can do about it? An obvious example is when Marc joined Synergy (from SS iirc). I don't know anything about the circumstances, but Synergy obviously were able to put out a good GG with a pally in, and Marc was that pally. Marc was already a good, reasonable-RR pally. If Synergy had taken an RR2/3 pally, helped him with gear and trained him up a bit, then Albion would have TWO high-RR pallies and Marc would be in a different FG.

What chances are there for people to improve their 8v8 skills when the only groups they can get have (almost) zero chance in a fight against Valravens or Synergy or FC?

Any ideas? I can't think of anything, I'm just curious as to what people think.

 

[Smilewhenyousaythat]

I don't think its anything hugely sinister - its just this is quite an old game now. And its done well - held peoples interest for a long time.

And i like NF so much more than OF. Cats worries me a littlke - the new classes are so incredibly stupid its unreal. Plus basing patches purely on the US servers - who have to be the biggest bunch of crying whining retards known to mankind.

Thought I'd stick with it for a long time. And then a friend logged me on to WoW over the weekend. Oh its good.....

 

[eggy]

Marc joined Synergy (from SS iirc). I don't know anything about the circumstances, but Synergy obviously were able to put out a good GG with a pally in, and Marc was that pally. Marc was already a good, reasonable-RR pally. If Synergy had taken an RR2/3 pally, helped him with gear and trained him up a bit, then Albion would have TWO high-RR pallies and Marc would be in a different FG.

Urm...

...we don't recruit on RR when we have to recruit, we recruit for the player and for their personality and what they bring to the guild. We have recruited much lower RR chars in the past, who are now RR6/7+. If Marc had been RR3 it would have shown his aims were not RVR based, therefore we would have had little incentive to get to know him.

Marc is a slut btw.

 

[Killswitch]

Never thought it was anything sinister. It is what it is, friends wanting to play a game together and/or people wanting to compete and win in a game. Both of these things are natural and normal.

Just wondering what will happen to <insert other MMORPG name here> when these teams of highly-experienced and motivated players go there, team up and decide they want to be the best. Will we have the same problem in <insert other MMORPG name here> when people realise that PvE is easy and there's no challenge in PvP.

If people want challenge, 8v8 and an end to the tower-humping, flame-chasing zerg, we can do that on DAOC. We're at a stage now where RR7 players can (and do) get called noobs. I don't have a single RR5 character with all my toons RPs combined!!!

People can't complain about the zerging lowbies and the lack of 8v8 when they know damn well that they could farm any 1 or 2 FGs they come across, unless it's another 'known' RvR group.

I hope there is some way of fixing this, because this is going to be a problem in EVERY mmorpg and I'd imagine it will follow people to WoW and to any other game that comes along. Maybe RL is the only escape I hate that place...

 

[gravedigger]

its not really NF peeps like its that ToA crap they hate and quit

cous believe it or not rvr and ofc artifacts etc... r lot more pve (i meant it in a good way fyi not a while or smt) and rvr in NF is 2 much focussed on MLs etc with all those speedwarp crap and whatever


it could be alot better when it should dissapear but we all know its not so we live with it and try 2 move on

those MLs i can understand but i know everyones agree when i say it is ok if you wanna get it for 1 lvl 50 char but when you got several (like i do) it is shit do to tem over and over again cous its get boring and always take lots of peeps and numbers 2 get anyway


the MLs could be lot more fun if it could be done entirely with 1 fg or smt cous you can it do with friends etc and now you need zergs 2 finish it and lot of peeps cba 2 do tem all/either cous some got rl things etc... why they cant attend like some of my friends

i still think if you focus and dont give up when you go rvr with a new char you can only gain from it , i know i do it and look at me (personla i think its ok)

 

[Killswitch]

Urm...

...we don't recruit on RR when we have to recruit, we recruit for the player and for their personality and what they bring to the guild. We have recruited much lower RR chars in the past, who are now RR6/7+. If Marc had been RR3 it would have shown his aims were not RVR based, therefore we would have had little incentive to get to know him.

Marc is a slut btw.

Maybe it was a bad example. How do you prove you're RvR-focused though? If you based it purely on the number of times you got killed in NF, then I'd be up there with the best of them! If you based it on LRP, I'd say my highest ever (100,000) is respectable but unspectacular. Presumably you prove it by running regularly in RvR and getting noticed. My point is that you can't do that very easily nowadays, since you can play your way up to RR7 and still get abuse for being a n00b.

I suppose you can put this down as a whine. How can I improve my sorc skills if I spend all my time;

a) Tower-Humping, mezzing and adding

or

b) Roaming and getting steamrollered by FGs of high-RRs with Purge3, Charge3 and MoCcing demezzers?

As I mentioned earlier, it could be that I'm tired and not thinking straight. Thing is I don't want to go to WoW, I do want to RvR and I do want to get better. It's just a very hostile environment for newer players and very hard to establish yourself, especially when someone can just buy an RR8 toon from Ebay and get on with it.

 

[eggy]

Form a group of like-minded people, fight from low RR and become decent?

My point was, if Marc was RR3 after playing paladin as his main, even without set GGs before, there would be something wrong. Being highish RR proves it's one of your aims in the game.

Aim number 1 is have fun tho, and if I could only tell you what Marc did during a Nged take the other week...lol

 

[Killswitch]

Form a group of like-minded people, fight from low RR and become decent?

My point was, if Marc was RR3 after playing paladin as his main, even without set GGs before, there would be something wrong. Being highish RR proves it's one of your aims in the game.

Aim number 1 is have fun tho, and if I could only tell you what Marc did during a Nged take the other week...lol

Hehe

Sounds like a plan. I'm lucky in that I have a nice group of people in Free Spirit who want to RvR and are, in the main, as bad as me at it!! (for now, anyway).

On a personal note, could Fujiwara and Korgon PLEASE leave me alone I'm having nightmares about being gang-banged by twin trolls (which isn't altogether a bad thing, I suppose) but I'm sick of those 2 killing me!

 

[tookha]

I'm having nightmares about being gang-banged by twin trolls (which isn't altogether a bad thing, I suppose)

 

[Fana]

I think what we need, in mid anyway, is less guilds. People are more willing to group with guildies generally, even if they know that the guildies arent the best players. So with less and larger guilds there would be more guildgroups formed and sustained (you dont disband from your guildies after 1 or 2 failed runs, you stick it out, and slowly you become better). Ideally there would be maybe half the number of guilds we have in mid today, so that each guild had the capacity to form guildgroups every evening if it so desired. Atm many guilds sport only 2-3 people on at primetime with a few noteable exceptions (red shadows, fom etc).

Also, if the Uber guilds end up in a situation where only a few people play still, their members often talk to other smaller uberguilds and then form a new uberguild with those players, which will then also decline in players after a while, and then the process repeats itself. Now in an ideal world these experienced players would, instead of making a new uberguild with other high rr experienced players, go and join a less rvr experienced guild, that still has members that would like to rvr, and impart their wisdom on them, helping them to build up strong rvr skills by bolstering their new not-so-uber guilds rvr grps, so that we got more uber players Ofc, this is not something that is likely to happen, since those players, as you say, dont see much of each other, and therefore dont form relationships.

 

[Killswitch]

Don't quote me out of context!

 

[Thorwyn]

The mechanism of a player base dividing up in terms of experience (and - consequently - causing problems for inexperienced players to catch up) is not a DAoC-only thing. It´s happening in all other games as well, just the effects aren´t as drastic as they appear to be in DAoC because DAoC is a time=success game rather than just a skillbased game, which means that even being skilled and experienced might not be enough for a casual player to compete at high levels because you´re lacking the time to get those high RR stats and Artis and templates.
However, that´s not a problem, because people tend to find other people of similar skill and interests and form new groups and guilds to grow up together. Although being able to learn from experienced high RR groups is a nice thing, it´s not a requirement to be a member of those groups in order to increase your own skill. A chessplayer doesn´t need to play in a team with Kasparov. It´s enough to learn from watching his games. Same goes for any FPS game... you don´t need to play against the pro´s, just watching their tactics and games is enough.
What this game needs is people who´re motivated enough to just make things happen and start new guilds/groups and don´t expect the community to carry their butts all the way. Yes, there are many guilds out there, but I dare say that 90% of those guilds aren´t even aware of what they´re good for. It sounds like a contradiction, but in fact it isn´t. THIS is, IMO, the main problem: Fragmentation. People seem to be unable to join a guild and actually be part of it. Instead, the tendency is to either join a large, well known guild and go the easy way (i.e. expect the large guild to carry them through) or form their own guild and be a GM (and expect to gather a certain ammount of peons around themselves, who´re willing to carry them all the way). Just like every 15 year old has his very own 5-member CS Clan, 1 leader, 4 High Officers.

 

[Marc]

Aim number 1 is have fun tho, and if I could only tell you what Marc did during a Nged take the other week...lol

rofl never again

 

[censi]

I think daoc is more fun than its ever been...

I lov being able to port to the action spots or jump on a boat.

anything has to be better than the treck to emain.

Im not into all the keep taking stuff as a stealther. I think they do need to address the lack of FG rvr though.

 

[Geuin]

Never thought it was anything sinister. It is what it is, friends wanting to play a game together and/or people wanting to compete and win in a game. Both of these things are natural and normal.

Very true.

What chances are there for people to improve their 8v8 skills when the only groups they can get have (almost) zero chance in a fight against Valravens or Synergy or FC?

Should be a 40/60 chanse against Synergy tbh

 

[Konah]

What chances are there for people to improve their 8v8 skills

we were all low rr once. hi rr ra´s help ofc but if u put together a decent grp full of ppl who _want to_ rvr then you should enjoy the fights u win and shrug off the ones u lose, but learn from them.

realise what works and what doesnt. nf rvr is very different from all previous rvr, due to the ra´s and rr5 abilities available, use them. eventually u will beat most, but perhaps not all thats out there. if u lose who cares, as long as it was a good fight

 

[Vindicator]

I can see what your saying killswitch and I think some of what you are saying is being missed or at least misinterpreted.

What I got from your post was.

- You find it hard to compete against rr7+ opponents.

- You find it difficult to get realm points and this therefore leads back to point one.

- It's nearly impossible to break into a good group or bunch of people that play alot of RvR because they dont know you and are not willing to give you a chance as they dont see you in RvR much and are not high RR. This making them think your not serious about RvR when infact its the opposite.

- It is difficult to find 8 equally minded people who all get along and have their toons toa'd out with the right combination of class's to be able to compete against other enemy realm counter parts.

- It's too much effort for a semi-casual player to get their toa up along with decent RR and be known by fellow RvR'ers in your realm. While being nearly all but impossible for you to reroll a character and go through the whole toa grind again as the groups / circles you are trying to get into are simply not doing toa again because they dont need to.

Well the fact is unless your play alot in both RvR and getting your gear up in PvE which is like a preresquite for RvR and are very lucky to be the one class a certain group needs then its near impossible to get some decent RvR done. The thing with this is, the situation gets stale over time and people quit so then the 'circles' or clichs get open and new people get brought in. Waiting for such time and being the right position to get in to said circles is a matter of timing and luck.

Personally I never really got to do alot of FG figthing, based on what regular fg'ers would consider enough I imagine. I was serious about RvR and preffered FG while I was playing enough at the time but their simply was never a solid FG up at any one time and the then current FG"s just werent interested in testing anybody out. I'm sure their are ppl in my guild and a few others who could vouch I could play very decent in FG fights with pretty much any character I played but as the game developed and my life went on I found my self too far behind to be at the level to compete and not enough time to sink into it to even play catch up . Oh the thoughts of a free rr6 fully toa'd ML'd charac would be something special but thats just not how the game works and wouldnt be right anyway.

Well sorry for ranting on abit their and I hope some of what I said is understood and I helped clarify some of your points.

 

[Wiro]

Wow m8 you got yourself thinking, that's great!

 

[Marc]

^^

Theres always one that has to act the fool

 

[Divinia]

there is no "high-rr fg players" whos still playing that is worth to mention in the same sentence as good.

 

[poky]

I gotta say though that the amount of fg vs fg fights has increased alot lately..

That being said, its not the experienced guilds that should "teach" less experienced players how to play.. They will have to learn that themselves.

 

[eggy]

I gotta say though that the amount of fg vs fg fights has increased alot lately..

That being said, its not the experienced guilds that should "teach" less experienced players how to play.. They will have to learn that themselves.

I agree, fg guilds should 'inspire' others to form decent full group rvr setups; however the whinine 'leet' school kids ruin this by whining on the forums about each other. Respect your opponents, and everyone would be a lot more fulfilled.

 

[rvn]

I don't really buy the "unbalanced realms/classes" stuff.

and you are a reaver?

reavers right now are probably the most unbalanced classes in the game right now, competeing with the most unbalanced classes in daoc, it can even compete chain aoe stun back in the old days

anyway, fg vs fg the class differance is usually less differance because you have teamwork wich makes up most there, ofcourse grp setup, but i think all three realms right now can make decent fg's and be able to compete.

zerg vs zerg is another story tho, teamwork matters less, i have yet to see a zerg act "smart", theone who has the best classes here and numbers usually wins + whoever has relics (there are a few exeptions).

in time some unexperienced "zerglings" will get bored of just farming rps and just running about killing everything with numbers, and then they will maybe try get some fg action.

toa is also an additional hinder for ppl to bother not to zerg.

 

[Flimgoblin]

we were all low rr once. hi rr ra´s help ofc but if u put together a decent grp full of ppl who _want to_ rvr then you should enjoy the fights u win and shrug off the ones u lose, but learn from them.

very true - but remember your enemies weren't all RR8+ back when you were low RR... it is a bit of an uphill struggle for a newer group/guild.

 

[Vodkafairy]

very true - but remember your enemies weren't all RR8+ back when you were low RR... it is a bit of an uphill struggle for a newer group/guild.

if you don't like challenges you don't deserve ranks anyway

 

[Rigga Mortice]

and you are a reaver?

reavers right now are probably the most unbalanced classes in the game right now, competeing with the most unbalanced classes in daoc, it can even compete chain aoe stun back in the old days

to be fair, its hard to pick an alb class that Killswitch or his fiancee hasn't got to level 50, ML10 and with full complement of arti's nerf being FOTM 12 months of the year :wub:

 

[waok`whips]

lol rvn at your comment about reaver... funny.

Reavers have been one of the most balanced classes of the game since SI, perfect balance of weaknesses and strengths, only albion had failed too realise this until NF, albion tend too go by 'word of mouth' and not 'tried and tested', which is why they still get steam rolled by hibs/mids and whine on FH.

When your in a gg, you can control the people in the group, they listen too you.. when your in a random group, there are conflicts of opinions of whether too add or not, too leech rps so to say.

Well, it's very hard too tell a group of randoms not too add/leech, because if you tell them not too, they will normally say something like 'I pay my subs, I'm doing nothing wrong' and run off w/o /stick, your group dies, people get frustrated, people disband, OR if you add, you get <insert elistst fotm guild here> someone pm'ing you asking why you add? It frustrates you, but you know your right, then you have too justify your actions, then you feel guilty, so basically you feel guilty and you also look bad, and you also take the stick for adding.. something that is in favor of the CoC.

Solo/Duo, alot less problems in my opinion, alot less rps, but you don't get stick from elitists or whinners.

 

[Tilda]

I see where your comming from, and how it must be hard for you.

I'd suggest roaming solo on your sorc to "practice" as it were. Once you start getting a bit of kill spam when you mez the odd duo/trio and kill them all, people will start thinking.
secondly, if high RR players wont group you, group them. Theres plenty of times i've been sitting around in CS, or failing to solo due to fgs about, when a group would have been good fun.
Don't be afraid to ask other players in your group for criticism, but be ready to take that criticism. If they say your mez sucked, think about it, were you afk, was it a lucky jump, did you have the wrong qbar, did you mis-click and target that grave.
The best way a group can improve is regular RvR, with the same people, with all of them constructivley criticising each other. They may have seen things you didn't etc. If you have a problem where something happened and you nor your group members knew how to deal with it, ask someone else (Konah normally has an oppinion on these matters ) me, some other high RR'er etc etc.

Ok, you dont have to expect to beat synergy, or LA or groove etc, because you are low RR, if you do, good for you
Often when I get invited to a group people do the craziest things.
The driver of a group should tell people where to port, they should stick and go where he goes. Grouping dosnt work if one of you i afk, or decides to go defend a keep etc.

Team work matters a lot, voice coms can help this, use them
Once you have your fg of people ready, roam around, dont please dont, camp bled bridge, or one of beno bridges. Leave that for the non elite ()
Sure you can roam around odins, or HW or emain, or anywhere you think there might be action, but sitting on a bridge a) will get you loads of stealther adds and b) usually get you crap fights and rp's.

Respect your enemies and your realm mates. Now you have elevated yourself to the "l33t fg" position, if you see another l33t fg fighting, dont add unless it looks like they're getting zerged. Hopefully they'll show the same respect back and you all end up having more fun.
Fighting at bridges, just to say it again is bad, there are adds on all sides and that sucks.
Its worth noting that its probably acceptable to add on a fight vs 1fg hibs and 1fg mids.
I can't think of much else to say, but, vs Kogons group, get a nice mez, pet the BD/SM, then get your sorcs/mercs/whatever to take down their zerks before healers come out of mez. If healers purge, get sorc to focus on interupts and then take down zerks. (just my opinion, ive only played a sorc a couple of times )
Just to check, you do have ToA right, like a full setup that for sorc caps dex, con, cast speed, range, duration and resist piercing?

Stick with it, im sure you'll get there!
Good luck

Tilda

 

[Tilda]

Solo/Duo, alot less problems in my opinion, alot less rps, but you don't get stick from elitists or whinners.

1) Reavers are ballanced!
2) Solo dosnt have to be less RP's. During the day time when there are no fg's about its often worth more rp's to solo and kill stuff than to make a fg and zerg all the other soloers/duo-ers.

Tilda

 

[[SS]Gamblor]

Being highish RR proves it's one of your aims in the game.

Aim number 1 is have fun tho, and if I could only tell you what Marc did during a Nged take the other week...lol

the highr rr part i dont' agree with. What happens if you've picked a class that just wasn't seen as a good grp char untill a patch comes out withs ome lviing, so your rr2, the patch comes out , you know your class very well, and then you go looking from a nice grp , however according to that statement, they dont' really want to farm the breh0rn zerg.

and as for what marc got up to , if it's anything like what him and a scout where doing during my lvl 50 epic back int he day it will be well worth a read . ( they kept dueling while doing the epic , even during the guidl photo they kept slamming each other)