level command and grinding in daoc

[Icebreaker]

Over the past few Years i have followed the Newbies abit.Everyone knows leveling a Character is easy for people who played the Game for a while.But new Players don't have it that easy.No clue where to go, No Money to buy funky lowbie Equipment, etc, no other people to play with.

And with all the Addons aka Artifact hunting, ML Rais, CL's, scing chars etc you need alot more time to get your Char ready for rvr.For me it wasn't a problem really. Daoc came out > leveling to 50, get rog items, rvr...SI came out, get some nice items, sc, rvr..etc.Now you have to do it all at once.

What i want from Daoc is making xping to 50 easier then it is allready.With the addons it is time consuming enough.Not for me but for the Newbies.

1. First of all remove the /level command
2. Improve the XP alot. Especially from level40-50. Should be the same as level 30-40
3. Make it more like a Singleplayer Game including the Epic Armour Quest. A Storyline you can follow up to level50 with really good xp/items for every step you have done.

Iam writing this because i have a rl friend who tried DAOC with us 2 years ago then stopped for some reason.A few months back he tried it again without telling me and he couldn't really get into it.He said there was noone to play with and most important he didn't knew what he should do apart from killing mobs over and over and doing some stupid lowbie Quests with lots of text.Playing an MMORPG alone is boring. Playing DAOC to 50 alone is just shit.

The Tutorial shows how it should be all the Way to 50!

 

[Bugz]

The PVE in WoW is really something GoA need to look at.

More quests than you can handle; professions that can be up'd as you level etc;

 

[Kaun_IA]

i kinda agree.... need to make lvling to 50 more intresting
then id concider doing it solo myself.. atm i mostly pl myself to 45 and then do some quests and bit of exp solo and get 50

 

[evzy]

I don't think there are many people who would disagree - I couldnt decide between levelling a toon on DAOC again or trying WoW - have tried WoW and must admit I doubt I would ever bother with the DAOC grind again - mobs are more fun to kill in WoW with their variances, much more to do quest wise etc - levelling seems so much better thought out (and dont get me started on things like better camera, targetting etc). DAOC can't compete on this anymore and I doubt it will ever change in the future as it would probably take a massive rebuild to make the levelling process more fun / more to do etc, and with DAOC on its last? legs and probably not attracting many new players at this stage - why redevelop things for newbies when they are more interested in keeping the high end players now - new expansions usally cater for lvl 50's not lvl 1's - they make money off their existing playerbase and keep them entertained for a few more months at a time - and thats what I imagine the business plan to be at this later stage - keep the existing players happy as opposed to trying to bring new ones in (which would be infinately harder to do).

Tell your friend to come back - its fun killling 298497292 mobs in a row that hardly do anything different from the last 108949872 he killed. Its not grinding..its a erm...very large very top secret quest he is on !

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Theres more to this than simply "make it soooo easy". For starters, us old schooler did it all the hard way, but we found m8s to help us out or to group with, /level killed that and even more so powerleveling, which is the biggest thorn in any games side.

Its not that hard now to get to 50, instances have made life much easier, kill tasking is a doddle, and free levels are great. Questing is something Mythic have done little about, GOA could have, but instead made their quests like the times crossword, where the morning consumption of a dictionary and a daily enima of thesorus(s) is required. WoWs quest are better, their PvE is to a degree too, but still these games are made by making friends, which in the good ol days we did during the leveling bit.

TBH its all too little too late, removing the /level now would solve nothing, people with 50s would just take their cookie cutter PBer to moderna or whereever and produce another capped toon in a few days. New players dont have it anyway, so how will its removal help them? It cant.

All this babble about the /level is incidental, so lets just forget it.

Questing needs a severe revamp, but whos going to do it now, the sad thing is Mythics involvement with WAR means thats where any new ideas for DAoC will go now, and our beloved games development will be reduced to new zones and bling, with content minimised, just look at the last few patches, full of toon tweaks, damage adjustment, and little in the way of new content. We had no freebie addon this year, and the next addon is more....bling again, along with the last 2 failed ones, cata is dead and we all got our horses the first day and went "wow" at the king for 5 minutes.

The new epic quests are soloable, they are instanced too, and the prizes are not too bad compared to the old ones. This is at the end of the day a multiplayer game, and grouping should be encouraged, not held back. New players should have incentives to join guilds, groups etc, make friends to help them upon their quests and leveling.

IMO remove the ability to PL, make it so that you cant earn a bean if you are not 8-10 levels from the ones grouped with you, I did once before suggest a % but that doesnt make sense on reflection, as a level 7 should be able to group with a 10 and so on.

Give better low level rewards, update the quest items across the board, give rewards for helping others, give small rp amounts for frontier based quests for low levels, rps for lowbies explroing enemy areas for xxx time...theres more but you see where Im going.

 

[Kari]

I don't think there are many people who would disagree - I couldnt decide between levelling a toon on DAOC again or trying WoW - have tried WoW and must admit I doubt I would ever bother with the DAOC grind again - mobs are more fun to kill in WoW with their variances, much more to do quest wise etc - levelling seems so much better thought out (and dont get me started on things like better camera, targetting etc).

To be fair the grind is very much still there with WoW - when I originally played it I was outlevelled by most of the people I knew playing it & ended up soloing most of the time. I gave up a little after level 40.

It's just one of those things with current mmorpg's, there's always a grind, whether directly visible in mob grind a la DAoC, or indirectly through questing as in WoW.

 

[evzy]

I agree Kari but the levelling in WoW has more variants than DAOC and seems more "fun" if you like, I just feel levelling in DAOC is pretty boring - I pretty much levelled my last toon myself without bothering to PL and to be honest I was bored as hell doing it - and it only helped that I had cash to fund power pots, better armour etc to help myself that made it less frustrating - New players wont even have this advantage unless they get into a good guild etc...

Its all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMED !!

 

[Steffan-]

Don't find WoW xp'ing fun at all, it's just the same old all the way, get quest, go somewhere, talk to someone, kill/deliver something, rinse and repeat. Worst thing is that it takes freaking ages to get places in WoW, and when you have seen it all once, there's nothing new under the sun really.

 

[Kuhan]

The PVE in WoW is really something GoA need to look at.

More quests than you can handle; professions that can be up'd as you level etc;

GoA cant do change anything or introduce new things all they do is translate the US patches into EU languages.

 

[Svartmetall]

The PVE in WoW is really something GoA need to look at.

More quests than you can handle; professions that can be up'd as you level etc;

/whisper
GOA didn't make DAOC, Mythic did.

But yes, I would say that overall WoW's PvE > DAOC's PvE.

 

[Kami]

They need to rethink most of DAOC if they're going to save it from gradually dying away in the next couple of years. Its possible for a game to keep going if they get it right, games dont have to continually come out with new addons if the existing ones are good, UO didn't throw out addon after addon then when it did, oddly the game started dying because they kept getting it slightly wrong (then really wrong later).

I'd like to come back but it's unlikely in the current game that I'd ever play past Thidranki, I don't have the time to solo to 50 etc and lets face it the game isn't really multi player until your in RVR and even then the term multiplayer is only loosely applicable. What Whoodoo says makes sense but really we need PL to be abolished and the removal of the /level command. Either that or GOA/Mythic introduce some form of purchasing characters which start at a certain level with gold/equipment (I'm thinking of the advanced char purchase you could do on UO years after I left).

 

[Bugz]

/whisper
GOA didn't make DAOC, Mythic did.

But yes, I would say that overall WoW's PvE > DAOC's PvE.

Well, my comments were mainly based for Warhammer.

DAoC is pretty much dead in terms of the time spent in it. Mythic don't want to spend time rebuilding the pve system to keep the current user base happy and perhaps bring in a small revenue of people.

Instead, they want to concentrate on Warhammer and learn from mistakes of DAoC etc.

 

[Lamp]

Maybe DAOC has just run its course and had its day. There's no point closing the door after the horse has bolted. Time perhaps to close the book.

 

[GReaper]

Once Mythic moved the main focus away from levelling to 50 and put more emphasis into master levels and artifacts it left fewer existing players to group with lowbies. Someone who is new to the game may want to roll a Druid, but how are they going to level it with nobody else to group with?

Maybe Mythic should add some other fixes to keep the game going so new people might actually group up. Changing the exp formula so you gain the same amount of exp per mob regardless of how many people you group up. A yellow con mob may be worth 1 million to a solo player, it could be worth 1 million to a full group.

I'm not sure of the best solution, but new people levelling has been "broken" for ages - it needs sorting.

 

[Raven]

wow pve isnt that much better than daocs tbh, except rather than just sitting at a camp pulling mobs you are moving about whether killing mobs for a quest, gathering trade goods or whatever. you always seem to have a goal that isnt just grind another 100 mobs to ding.
i am hoping War is like wow in some ways but daoc in others, daoc is far to old to be changed it would be pointless from a financial point of view as the player base is so low, there isnt really much they can do to bring in many new players, people just have to accept that its pretty much dead, it never had a massive following in the first place compared to the likes of WoW. DAOC 2 - english servers WoW - 50+ english servers.
I think if they listen to the customers rather than make mistake after mistake War will really take off, it needs to mix daocs good pvp with good pve. they also need to get class balance right, ofc its far easier in WoW as you have the same classes on each "realm" but the way daoc is atm, and has been since it started you have had OP classes and mythic just dont seem to understand why they are are OP or care that much anyway.

 

[GReaper]

DAoC was fine until Mythic kept adding things which kept on extending the goal of characters.

Once the playerbase was forced into concentrating on their existing characters to advance them it causes a reduction in people casually levelling alts. This wouldn't be too bad if all classes could reach level 45+ solo, but it isn't realistic for the majority of classes!

If new players can't reach the end goal of the game (to be ready for RvR), then they won't stay around for long.

 

[Lamp]

I'd like to come back but it's unlikely in the current game that I'd ever play past Thidranki, I don't have the time to solo to 50 etc and lets face it the game isn't really multi player until your in RVR and even then the term multiplayer is only loosely applicable.

Agree

I'll never come back to DAOC. I don't have 2 good enough PC's to play the game on and I am not paying for 2 accounts just so I can roll a BB or PBAOEr to assist the level slog. Getting to 50 is one thing. ML's are a pain in the arse. Getting artis is a fucking nightmare. 3 scrolls plus the actual arti and then people are charging like 40 plat for em a time. ToA ruined DAOC. And then you gotta get to RR5 before you can go to NF. How the fuck you supposed to get RR5 ? Everyone running around in RVR is like RR8 and no one wants a RR2 in their group without FoP or FoH. And you're dog meat if you come across either enemy realm.

For me, I'm holding out for WAR and a new super duper PC next year.

DAOC is a dying animal. It won't be long before its put down in Europe with only a small US team running the servers.

DAOC was fantastic the first 2 years it came out. Levelling 50 at Trees / Worms in Lyonesse and having soooo much LOLs in groups was the best. Now the game is full of muppets.

 

[Varmuus]

Let's straighten things up

I don't have 2 good enough PC's to play the game on and I am not paying for 2 accounts just so I can roll a BB or PBAOEr to assist the level slog.

Aye, buffs are thing you really must have to compete. Luckily there's plenty of BB's and therefore you can almost everytime get buffs if you tend to run solo. You just need to ask for buffs There really are some nice people who give you buffs if you just ask them nicely

Doing PvE is another case, thought. trying to solo up to 50 will be pain, but how about asking to join some friendly guild which would help? You can, ofc, go the hard way unguilded, but I think it's not worth it.

Getting to 50 is one thing.

Nah, leveling is so easy. There are plenty of leveling groups, guild or public organized. And doing levels with some1 is piss easy. Duo's work out fine. It's really not that big obstacle.

ML's are a pain in the arse.

Plenty of rushes are organized time after time. So not a big deal there either.

Getting artis is a fucking nightmare. 3 scrolls plus the actual arti and then people are charging like 40 plat for em a time. ToA ruined DAOC.

How long did you say you have been gone? Now you only need the scrolls, which drop rates have been inreased so much that even handless retard like me can farm them. And the price of the scrolls have come down lots. Artis are now handed to you automatically from the NPC's when you give em the book in arbiters hall. So no need to buy that anymore.

And artis get xp now everywhere. That's a big improvement too.

And then you gotta get to RR5 before you can go to NF. How the fuck you supposed to get RR5 ? Everyone running around in RVR is like RR8 and no one wants a RR2 in their group without FoP or FoH. And you're dog meat if you come across either enemy realm.

Battlegrounds is your magical mantra here. By battlegrounds you can get to RR5 these days (Leirvik and Cathal valley). IMO there's action time after time, but it can be quite slow too. And if you notice you're already lvl50 and have no RP's, PUG's are running occasionally. And ofc, you can always be the proactive part in mass and start building group.

 

[Lamp]

How long did you say you have been gone? Now you only need the scrolls, which drop rates have been inreased so much that even handless retard like me can farm them. And the price of the scrolls have come down lots. Artis are now handed to you automatically from the NPC's when you give em the book in arbiters hall. So no need to buy that anymore.

I stopped playing 6-12 months before that patch came out.

For me, it was (1) the nightmare of getting artis and the stupid cost of them, and (2) the difficulty of getting a template together that were nails in the coffin for me.

Sometimes I think about coming back, but reading what ppl say just remind me how unpopulated the game in Europe is now, and the sheer amount of time its going to take a player with no BB or PL toon to get 1-50, ML10, CL5, RR5, and a fully capped template. Yuk. Bring on WAR

 

[knighthood]

I managed to do 40-47 in 2 days just with a variety of quests and tasks. In fact, after 46, u can get quests which send u to sauvage to click on 1 guy and get 1.4 bubs lol. its the 20-40 , or 1-40 thats so bad.

After 40 i think its too easy to lvl now

 

[Lamp]

The thought of having to spend 46-50 in AC chills my blood.

 

[Darzil]

The thought of having to spend 46-50 in AC chills my blood.

Or you can do catacombs quests, albion commander quests. The following isn't unusual for me these days :

46-47 : 2hours questing
47-48 : Free level
48-49 : 2 hours questing
49-50 : 2.5 hours questing

I'm currently investigating whether you can just quest from 44, or whether there are only enough soloable quests to quest from 46.

Darzil

 

[RS|Phil]

Yay another level thread.

 

[Nightrider]

-remove /level
-have group level restriction. If a groupmember is 10 levels higher then you, then you dont get exp.
-The amount of exp needed to level from 1-30 today, should bring you all the way to 50.

 

[Meduza]

If new players can't reach the end goal of the game (to be ready for RvR), then they won't stay around for long.

This is so true it hurts.

But as others said: Atm Mythic are just trying to keep their playerbase till Warhammer Online comes out. Then I'm sure (or at least I hope) that they have learned the lesson

 

[scorge]

This is so true it hurts.

But as others said: Atm Mythic are just trying to keep their playerbase till Warhammer Online comes out. Then I'm sure (or at least I hope) that they have learned the lesson

I went to Games workshop game day last sunday and they had a WAR stand there where you could play it. At the moment it looks like a hybrid WOW/DAOC mix for PVE anyway, which seemed good. Will have to see how the end game pans out with RvR.

 

[RS|Phil]

I personally hope they've gone the olde MMO route of not letting you see exactly how stats and resists, caps, bonuses etc etc work. Half the problem with DAoC is that everyone knows they need a "template" to be an equal in RvR and feel like second class citizens if they don't have the perfect suit.

Back in the olden days of RPGs and early MMOs it was things like "Halberd of Might" or "Katana of Vanquishing" and "Greater Fire Arrows" or "Breaches of Defense". Hell, even back when DF was new the best thing you could get was a diamond suit and you didn't really know why

I'd prefer it to go that route again but I'm a bit cynical since it's the Americans who're making it and they're very into stats etc.

 

[Lamp]

I personally hope they've gone the olde MMO route of not letting you see exactly how stats and resists, caps, bonuses etc etc work. Half the problem with DAoC is that everyone knows they need a "template" to be an equal in RvR and feel like second class citizens if they don't have the perfect suit.

Back in the olden days of RPGs and early MMOs it was things like "Halberd of Might" or "Katana of Vanquishing" and "Greater Fire Arrows" or "Breaches of Defense". Hell, even back when DF was new the best thing you could get was a diamond suit and you didn't really know why

I'd prefer it to go that route again but I'm a bit cynical since it's the Americans who're making it and they're very into stats etc.

 

[evzy]

The tihng is - its too much to play DAOC now unless you are hardcore, play every day and can play weekends - I have played DAOC 4-5yrs and I play evenings - mostly after 10pm - I still havent got a toon past ml5 , havent got past cl2 and really gave up trying as I would actually have to interupt RL and sometimes for several hours just to get a ML or something - nah ...thats where it all went wrong for everyone other than the hardcore. New players have not realistically got a hope of getting anywhere in DAOC even if they played solid for months on end, the problem is ML rush's and CL ones are fewer and further between now the population is dropping, Mythic are going to throw even more CL grind in with the new expansion - I pretty much have decided I am not even going to waste my cash on it now tbh unless it turns out to be spectacular - if its just a grind expansion they aint getting a bean out of me...

DAOC will never ever have grouping like it used to, and thats where the downfall of part of the fun is, ok there is RvR but people turn against that due to the high RR's etc about - can stll have fun imo, but thats all there is now , levelling is a solo player game these days

 

[Lamp]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to evzy again.

sooo true

Gone are the innocent fun n00b days of DAOC