"State of the Game" - Mark Jacobs, instanced RvR and more

A

Aoln

Guest
http://www.camelotherald.com/more/1857.shtml

Here's the next installation of the regular "state of the game" address from Mythic's President and CEO:

Folks,




It’s the week before Christmas and all through the ‘Nets, all the creatures are stirring including their pets. With a land that is dark, and a world made for war throw in a place made forever, there is no room for snores. There’s excitement and mirth, laughter and beer, in the end though what counts, Mythic’s still here. We’ve worked and we’ve slaved, and we’ve delivered our best, now the next question from you is “What are you giving us next???”

So, holiday rhymes aside, what the heck am I talking about? Well, the last six weeks has seen the release of two of the most anticipated and expensive, MMORPGs to date along with the release of our next, but certainly not last, expansion pack Catacombs. These games were built to crush the competition but they will not succeed. Yes, we have lost subscribers but we aren’t hiding and we certainly aren’t running from the competition. As I’ve always preached, competition is good for the industry and good for the soul (even if it is a little hard at times). So, what are we going to ensure that DAoC continues to be one of the top US MMORPGs? Simple, we are going to continue to improve it. Catacombs injected a new graphics engine that puts the game right up there or ahead of anything else on the market. Our instanced areas and other changes have made the game easier than ever to play and succeed in than ever before. New classes and new areas have added new depth to an already deep world. And, best of all, the Catacombs launch was the cleanest launch of all time from our perspective (least downtime, fewest bugs, fewest customer support calls, etc.) and we have set the standard (again) for the launch of a product. However, that is not good enough and over the next few months, here are some of the presents that players will find under their Mythic trees. Matt will be giving out more details on all these things tomorrow.

First, we are going to be adding a lot more options for customization of your characters. What we’ve done is great, but we want to be even better. So look for an ongoing effort to make a diverse world even more diverse.

Second, as always Mythic has been listening to its player base and we know that on some servers, the lack of a large number of players engaged in RvR at any one point in time can be an issue. Because DAoC is both a PvE and RvR game, we are particularly vulnerable to downturns in the population of a server. So, we have been thinking and trying to come up with a good solution. While we could do something like a server merge, we wanted to come up with something better since even a “simple” merge has a host of problems associated with it. Well, it has taken a bit but we have come up with something that is even better. Thus, we introduce server clustering. Without going into too much details, what this means is that players will have a lot more friends and enemies in RvR, but not change the home server’s community unless the players seek to do so. We believe this will make for even better RvR without any of the problems associated with server merges and players leaving their communities. We are the first to ever do this in the industry and we hope that you will enjoy it.

The third present is Instanced RvR areas. This is one of the most requested features by our players and, as always, we have been listening. Adding iRvR to our game takes it to an entirely different level and the stuff that we are working on for it I think will surprise you.

As required by lawyers everywhere, the usual disclaimer that this letter is a guide as to what we hope to do during this period and not as a guarantee of any kind. I always hate saying this but that’s what lawyers are for, to make us say things that we hate.

So, that is a quick State of the Game from here. We’re gearing up to celebrate a great year, full of things that went right, some things that went wrong and some things that apparently can’t make up their mind (you know some things are just that way!). From all of us at Mythic, a Happy Holidays and we thank the community for its continued support and patronage of DAoC!

Mark

oooeeer? =o
 
A

Aoln

Guest
Yeah but imo its too late and who knows if it will even be successful :eek:
 

frogster

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
405
So basically they are considering merging/clustering/sharing NF RvR zones? Or atleast thats how i read it. Sounds cool :eek:
 

Fana

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
2,181
Hmm

Clustered servers must mean that they intend for several (or at least 2)servers to share rvr zones. Pretty good concept actually.

Instanced RvR zones will rock if they get it right. Im thinking Guildwars here, with mission type scenarios where you actually have to accomplish something more than just kill the opposition, and also pure grp vs grp arena combat. This could really breath new life into rvr, and would likely bring back tons of hardcore rvr players. I know i would love this anyway :)
 

Tesla Monkor

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 1, 2004
Messages
1,452
Perhaps something where one realm's team has to accomplish a task in some time, while a team from the other realm has to prevent them from doing so. DAOC meets UT2004.

Realm-Vs-Realm zone clustering would help for the RvR aspects of the game, but it doesn't help realms with low populations with their PvE problems. Still, it's a step in the right direction. At least they now acknowledge the existance of the problem. :)
 

Light

Loyal Freddie
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
692
won't hold my breath - they made NF sound cool and most people thought it would rock... guess what :(

clustering them together ofc will mean more people in rvr but does not address the issues of why people are leaving, basically because they find NF rvr boring, it really is just keep fight after keep fight iv'e almost lost interest too....

One major change that is required I think is to remove all types of porting in the frontiers. This is one of the biggest problems, all people do is look at the map, see flames and port to nearest keep - there is no roaming anymore and hardly any fights take place not at a keep or at a dock. Whats the point in all the new landmass and areas to fight when no-one needs to travel anymore, really .. planetside type action is not what most of the players asked for :<

Maybe also remove the fights showing on the warmap - if u want to know where things are happening use the various communication channels.

Maybe with these 2 changes NF would be a bit more like OF, but with bigger and better areas to roam and fight in, and ofc keeps to take as you wished (just as we used to).
 

Dangart

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Sep 21, 2004
Messages
223
Next patch the warmap gets "nerfed" the fights on warmap gets lagged, and smaller fights(think that includes a fgvsfg fight) never shows at all.
 

Poon

One of Freddy's beloved
Joined
Jan 7, 2004
Messages
324
Will come rather late for alot of people i think but some good ideas.

The guy going on about listening to the players though is a total fucking mock.

And log into WOW fed you cockpeice
 

Fedaykin

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
1,103
Poon said:
Will come rather late for alot of people i think but some good ideas.

The guy going on about listening to the players though is a total fucking mock.

And log into WOW fed you cockpeice


haha silly boi
 

Ilum

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Jan 21, 2004
Messages
1,774
Don't think it's ever too late...anyone will come back to DaoC if they find the right formula. Can't really say I've seen them on the right track so far - and the subscription numbers speak for themselves. However, if they manage to improve DaoC, it won't be too late.

It's not like you won't be moaning and threatening to cancel your WoW subs either! :p
 

Vasconcelos

Part of the furniture
Joined
Dec 26, 2003
Messages
4,022
Well at least it gives you time to try other mmorpg's PvP (like CoH or WoW) and make your choice, coz i doubt we will see this in Euroland before summer 2005...
 

Comos

Loyal Freddie
Joined
May 4, 2004
Messages
937
I want some more info on this iRVR thing, but I guess that's coming soon. I just hope it won't be like guildwars fg vs fg arena thing... I immediately felt like playing counter-strike when doing that...
 

Morchaoron

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
2,714
Comos said:
I want some more info on this iRVR thing, but I guess that's coming soon. I just hope it won't be like guildwars fg vs fg arena thing... I immediately felt like playing counter-strike when doing that...

well there i those who ONLY want fg vs fg fights so it should be good for them :rolleyes:
 

cHodAX

I am a FH squatter
Joined
Jan 7, 2004
Messages
19,742
Positive news, making different ways of playing RvR is good for everyone, you can pick the way you want to play and choice is never a bad thing. Will it be enough to bring me back? I doubt it but never say never, Catacombs has many redeeming features but I am very concerned that class balance is about to become even worse. Mythic also seem contented with the handful of Master Level abilities and Artifacts that are obsenely overpowered, that bothers me greatly as artifacts/ML's are one of the biggest turnoffs in DAoC for me right now. RvR used to be damn good fun and it wasn't that hard to at least compete but now there just seems to be far to many 'I Win' buttons.

Anyway, I hope it works out for them. DAoC deserves to finally end up a great game one day, the basic premise that the game was built on kicks arse but sadly the current implmentation of those original ideas has really taken the game back a few steps in terms of the fun factor. Lets hope they look around at other MMORPG's and take some ideas from them, then incorperate them into DAoC whilst removing some of the less desirable parts, then they may finally end up with something very special instead of just being a game with great potential as it has been for the last 3 years.
 

knighthood

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 3, 2004
Messages
1,812
hold on, if they cluster servers together ... wont that just mean albion will bring 4000 albs instead of 2000 ??

and what about hibs ? 500odd hib/excal + the 4hib/pyd , sounds fair to me :D
 

Vaar

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 23, 2004
Messages
118
WTF?

Here I am writing the longest rant in history about my complete "vision" of the never happening DaoC2, I more or less finish my rough draft, and now Mythic has stolen "my" idea for RvR... Ztrange. Indeed:)

This is cut from something I wrote last week about Logistics:
*********

""Logistic in the game:

DaoC2 needs a bit of Pve, a bit Zerg(keepfights) and a bit FG possiblillities to be the game we love.

-I suggest a solution where PvE in in your homeservers realm as now. In the mentioned zones (edit... That is described in another section of my design).

-Keepfights and relic control is also done on a home server vs the local server opposition. Semi Large frontier. I suggest only 3 keeps pr realm (all 3 are relickeeps), With Magic, Melee and HP bonus relics. Holding all three of a kind of relic, weakens that given relic keep alot (Say 50%'ish). DaoC2 will have 4 "must-take-to-have-a-chance-at-relic-keep" towers to keep some consitancy of current design. Number of towers determines DF-control.

-The “addon” is a open server solution to which a group can port to from homeserver choosen from a serverlist (showing current pop on server pr realm). GL-chooses server to port to, and rest of groups will have to accept. You will only be able to group with ppl from your homeserver/realm, to keep some community feeling. There are no BG/CG's on combatservers. Buff stays the same (edit again, I also altered the buff concept)

Here “logic” would be somewhat different. Max cap of players on each server. Say max 64’ish from each realm on any given Combat server. Zonesize medium, and no keeps as such. Several semi-safe (fair number of fastpopping realm NPC's) startingpoints for each realm when you die and /rel, and a separate unatackable area for first time login (Think DF-stairs with 3 exits). Gains on combatserver is consistent with gians in home server. If you get 2k rp’s on an expedition you can visit you homeserver trainer to get realmabillities. Home relicbonuses do not count on a combatserver ofc.

I even would suggest a dualisation with some few combatservers open only for those below a certain RR-> think RR5. To give the latecommers a chance to compete on slightly more even ground.

The realm comming out on top measured by RP’s pr player (with a lower limit on the ones measuered ala 10k/week) on the combatservers, gives a small advantage to the worldwide realm as a whole. Thinking in line of a opening a bonus PvE zone or smth. Not MUCH of a reward, but def something. Heck Maybe a monument in each city showing wether or not you are the best. Small ugly Bronze statue with pigeonshit on, Medium unpolished silver sculpture and Huge Golden shimmering DaoC piece or smth:)

A possibillity is to go all "ARENA", where 8 players can go up against 8 from others servers in an instanced zone. To differ the options of how to RvR is a good one IMO. The instanced RvR will in effect be a "low" RP-zone since it prolly will take quite some time to arrange a clash with opposing groups, so if implemented correctly this possibly can function as a pure LeEt thingy..."
**********
.... Hmm. I may just start a phone service named "Vaar the Phsyco" or was it psyKICK...

We will ofc have to wait a couple of months to get spoilers on how this is going to be implemented. But mythics vision sounds nice. Wonder if anyones still playing when N-NF hits next christmas...
 

Radix

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 13, 2004
Messages
157
I smell desperation with a spin :p

I dont think mythic even know what balance is, Im sure the most requested thing is class/realm balance but they still ignore it.

Cluster sound nice but it doesnt stop population decline, when the decline is balance related. Just a temporarely "fix" that doesnt fix anything.
 

Rookiescot

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 16, 2004
Messages
816
Sounds to me like Mythic now starting to feel a bit of pressure due to the release of other games.
In that statement the CEO is obviously trying to counter some of the biggest player base whines which they never bothered their arse with before but now suddenly they are coming out with statements like "listens to the player base.....".
If they had listened to the player base then they wouldnt be in the position they are in now.
And that line about other games being released that try and "crush" the opposition ..... is that ment to instill some form of loyalty in the current player base?
Are we supposed to suddenly feel like "freedom fighters" against the tyrranical "mega corporations" releasing these games?
Every decision Mythic makes has as its highest priority revenue. (re. buffbot accounts....player time sink-hole expansions/trade-skills ...etc).
Mythic are not a charity and I aint saying they should be.
Two phrases come to mind having read that statement from Mythics CEO.
1. Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
2. Kettle calling the pot black.
 

old.Whoodoo

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Dec 24, 2003
Messages
3,646
Yet again the cynics of FH hit the boards shouting "too little - too late"! LOL, its going to be so funny seeing you all come back here once again and eat humble pie like you all did when SWG came out.

Dispite the rantings about WoW, SWG, Eve etc, I see so many old names reappearing on here and in game saying "i got bored". Those games are new, its a novelty and at first your drawn to its twinkly lights like moths to the flame.

Again Mythic / GOA post up promising news about an aspect of the game and the sounds of rattles hitting the floor echo. But the changes proposed are always one for the better of the game, and normally when they arrive you all go "coo coo luv it!", as you did with SI, TOA and NF. Before their launch its "OMG they gonna feck the game up!" after its "I wtfpwn with my xxx". Get over yourselves and wait and see before shooting ideas down eh.

Vaar, great ideas m8, keep it up and hope Mythic listen.
 

MesS°

One of Freddy's beloved
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
858
Gimme some of the stuff ur on Rookiescot, the only whine that has been constant in a 3 years are class balance, and DAoC is the best game out there in regards to that... As it is now every realm has its FOTMs, with Hib having the advantage, but laggin the numbers...

The FGvFG whines have only become a "big" problem since NF...
Try seeing beyound the latest 1-2 patches if possible...
 

Thor666

Loyal Freddie
Joined
Nov 2, 2004
Messages
52
1: If u have played any game with classes with different abilities u will know that these will NEVER be equally powerful. Some will be better RvR, some pve. Some will even seem better at both (Some would say Barb in diablo2).
This doesnt matter since a good player can play ALL classes and be succesful in doing it. So if u think ur class stinks, learn how to play it.

2: Clustering of RvR sounds very cool, and since the # of hibs/mid to each alb, on Both pryd and excal is almost the same, it wont make a difference, there will just be more rvr action...

3: The problem with low # of people in PvE isnt that important, since u can solo a char to 50, and solo many artis and scrolls etc..
The bad thing about it is that albs for instance, will have more people doing PvE since they have a higher population, thus being able to gather more people, questing ML's or harder artis easier than other realms..
 

Rookiescot

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 16, 2004
Messages
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MesS° said:
Gimme some of the stuff ur on Rookiescot, the only whine that has been constant in a 3 years are class balance, and DAoC is the best game out there in regards to that... As it is now every realm has its FOTMs, with Hib having the advantage, but laggin the numbers...QUOTE]

Shit mate thats absolutly priceless.
Three times I've read it and I'm still laughing.

And Whoodoo.... nothing like a nice generalisation to prove a point eh?
I have never raved about any game.
I have never played SWG.
I have never had to come back here and eat humble pie.
I have however posted that it is my hope that the competition will cause DAoC to become a better game.
 

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