..TOA is ruining the game it sucks and whatever.
That Frontiers will kill off DAoC, especially the new RA system.
TOA is nice.
I don't know where all thise bullshit comes from, people saying it's the death to the casual gamer, it's gonna mess up RvR, people dont have time to do all the stuff etc.
TOA bought very few, important things.
1) Above all, new bonus types, cast speed, duration, melee damage, etc, which can only be found from TOA drops.
2) Artifacts, items that level up in specific conditions, giving them more utility, effects and procs etc.
3) Master Levels, lot's of questing, lots of zerging, to gain additional abilities.
Out of all of these, #3 is the most time consuming, by far. Of course everything depends on how you do it, if you want to say you are going to level your artifact solo as a mage using only staff melee on greens, then that might take longer, but using a bit of sense and work, MLs will be the most time consuming, AND difficult to do for the time-restricted, since most zergs are at set times, and run for hours which not all will commit to.
Funnily enough, #3 is not even that important. It will help, of course, who wouldnt want a bunch of additional abilities to help them out in RvR for free? But it is by no means neccessary. Most ML lines contain something of use for roaming RvR, but again, it's not going to be something that will fundamentally make or break the game for most people that play daoc, considering that many that frequent these forums, as well as go RvR, are not in set guilds/groups and the like. Tank lines have some cool funky stuff they can use, I think they have it worst if they want to stay competitive, especially if they dont have the time required to do MLs. Bodyguard comes at ML8, which is pretty close to 10, considering ML9 and 10 are a breeze. Mages get pretty much useless stuff, mostly camping/defending/attacking position tools. Support get perfecter, which again is mostly camping/defending/attacking position tools. A few more funny things in a few funny lines, again, nothing make/break, just obstacles.
#1 and #2 on the list are by far more important than MLs, and by far the most easier to obtain and xp for the 'casual' player of DAoC.
Get some friends/people, meet up at a set time, kill arti mob, xp arti.
Simple as that.
And it will be artifacts and their charges, drop items and their TOA bonuses that will make more impact on roaming RvR than most MLs.
Frontiers will be even better.
The new RA system, although very surprising and a bit disappointing, is understandable, and promising.
At the moment you have a general, 'cookiecutter' type RA spec for almost every class in DAoC - shield tanks get MoB4/5, purge, PF etc, anyone that can get det should take it to 4/5, every caster gets MoC, a few levels of WP and MoM, support get a few levels of WH, their class specific RA and so on and so forth.
It's very bland.
Frontiers will make people more unique and more specific in their role. This might not be a good thing, especially for lesser populated servers/realms, since there will be a lack of certain RA specced classes, but overall, it will become like speccing your class at 50 - you wont be able to choose from every ability you have access to, giving you an entire plethora of tools to do your job, but you will have to focus more on what you actually want to do now.
30 points for the highest tier of active RAs, most of which are only really viable and useful for roaming RvR at those levels.. think of it.. I'm rr10+, and I can pick 3 abilities at their highest tier, and some points left over.
Then there's the passives with 5 levels and at a total cost of 34 points, you gotta pick and choose wisely.
Look at the new RA chart, and try to figure something out for your class, and see what you come up with depending on the amount of points you currently have. No doubt you are going to lose a LOT of abilities, but you will notice that you become more powerful in what you do choose to spec with.
Getting MoC? You wont have to wait 30mins for your 15mins of fame anymore, it's going to be on a much lower timer for a reduced amount of dmg output, but for longer.
Tanks, will you go the det 5 route again? Or go with the new purge level? You can't get PF anymore, that's restricted to three classes, but if you go for det5/purge 3, then will you have enough to be effective in guarding with your reduced level of moblock?
It's going to be very interesting, people will be more focused in their role, and not just a generalised type of game that you play.
The only thing that worries me is that with (seemingly) a bigger lack of interest in the game from many people, and with each and every patch/expansion from Mythic giving heavy support and pushes to encourage larger battles - will there be enough to actually sustain this vision that they are putting out?
I cannot see how many of the things they seem to want us to enjoy doing in Frontiers can be achieved without much, much larger active RvR populations (at the very least, Hib/Exc).
I hope I'm wrong in the last respect, but it's something that's been troubling me for some time, and I haven't seen anything from Mythic to address that so far.
Overall, I look forward to the future of DAoC.. it could have been done a lot sooner tho
That Frontiers will kill off DAoC, especially the new RA system.
TOA is nice.
I don't know where all thise bullshit comes from, people saying it's the death to the casual gamer, it's gonna mess up RvR, people dont have time to do all the stuff etc.
TOA bought very few, important things.
1) Above all, new bonus types, cast speed, duration, melee damage, etc, which can only be found from TOA drops.
2) Artifacts, items that level up in specific conditions, giving them more utility, effects and procs etc.
3) Master Levels, lot's of questing, lots of zerging, to gain additional abilities.
Out of all of these, #3 is the most time consuming, by far. Of course everything depends on how you do it, if you want to say you are going to level your artifact solo as a mage using only staff melee on greens, then that might take longer, but using a bit of sense and work, MLs will be the most time consuming, AND difficult to do for the time-restricted, since most zergs are at set times, and run for hours which not all will commit to.
Funnily enough, #3 is not even that important. It will help, of course, who wouldnt want a bunch of additional abilities to help them out in RvR for free? But it is by no means neccessary. Most ML lines contain something of use for roaming RvR, but again, it's not going to be something that will fundamentally make or break the game for most people that play daoc, considering that many that frequent these forums, as well as go RvR, are not in set guilds/groups and the like. Tank lines have some cool funky stuff they can use, I think they have it worst if they want to stay competitive, especially if they dont have the time required to do MLs. Bodyguard comes at ML8, which is pretty close to 10, considering ML9 and 10 are a breeze. Mages get pretty much useless stuff, mostly camping/defending/attacking position tools. Support get perfecter, which again is mostly camping/defending/attacking position tools. A few more funny things in a few funny lines, again, nothing make/break, just obstacles.
#1 and #2 on the list are by far more important than MLs, and by far the most easier to obtain and xp for the 'casual' player of DAoC.
Get some friends/people, meet up at a set time, kill arti mob, xp arti.
Simple as that.
And it will be artifacts and their charges, drop items and their TOA bonuses that will make more impact on roaming RvR than most MLs.
Frontiers will be even better.
The new RA system, although very surprising and a bit disappointing, is understandable, and promising.
At the moment you have a general, 'cookiecutter' type RA spec for almost every class in DAoC - shield tanks get MoB4/5, purge, PF etc, anyone that can get det should take it to 4/5, every caster gets MoC, a few levels of WP and MoM, support get a few levels of WH, their class specific RA and so on and so forth.
It's very bland.
Frontiers will make people more unique and more specific in their role. This might not be a good thing, especially for lesser populated servers/realms, since there will be a lack of certain RA specced classes, but overall, it will become like speccing your class at 50 - you wont be able to choose from every ability you have access to, giving you an entire plethora of tools to do your job, but you will have to focus more on what you actually want to do now.
30 points for the highest tier of active RAs, most of which are only really viable and useful for roaming RvR at those levels.. think of it.. I'm rr10+, and I can pick 3 abilities at their highest tier, and some points left over.
Then there's the passives with 5 levels and at a total cost of 34 points, you gotta pick and choose wisely.
Look at the new RA chart, and try to figure something out for your class, and see what you come up with depending on the amount of points you currently have. No doubt you are going to lose a LOT of abilities, but you will notice that you become more powerful in what you do choose to spec with.
Getting MoC? You wont have to wait 30mins for your 15mins of fame anymore, it's going to be on a much lower timer for a reduced amount of dmg output, but for longer.
Tanks, will you go the det 5 route again? Or go with the new purge level? You can't get PF anymore, that's restricted to three classes, but if you go for det5/purge 3, then will you have enough to be effective in guarding with your reduced level of moblock?
It's going to be very interesting, people will be more focused in their role, and not just a generalised type of game that you play.
The only thing that worries me is that with (seemingly) a bigger lack of interest in the game from many people, and with each and every patch/expansion from Mythic giving heavy support and pushes to encourage larger battles - will there be enough to actually sustain this vision that they are putting out?
I cannot see how many of the things they seem to want us to enjoy doing in Frontiers can be achieved without much, much larger active RvR populations (at the very least, Hib/Exc).
I hope I'm wrong in the last respect, but it's something that's been troubling me for some time, and I haven't seen anything from Mythic to address that so far.
Overall, I look forward to the future of DAoC.. it could have been done a lot sooner tho