Where does the Future of DAoC Lie?

[-Lonewolf-]

Well we all know about Shrouded Isles and the new lands and new Gfx but where does the future of DAoC really lie?

I mean essentially in a year or so most people would have reached Realm Rank 10 with their main characters the Shrouded Isles I believe will just be like Darkness Falls when it first arrived all amazing and wow and then nothing boring and uneventful

This is not a negative look at DAoC I was just curious at what people would like to see within realistic boundaries don't want any major "OH I WANT LVL 100 POSSIBLE!" etc etc unrealistic claims just what people think needs to be implemented to keep the longevity of the game going

Games such as Everquest have continually churned out updates and new lands to keep people happy is this the way forward?

Or is improving the current game needed?

Any suggestions would be appreciated

 

[old.mattshanes]

Certainly make the lvs go to a 100 maybe,put animals in rvr maybe like ride on horses?hehe ,add more dungeons and make the realms bigger.

 

[Flimgoblin]

I imagine they'll keep putting in more content...

it's a fact of life that people will do everything and move on... it's community that keeps most people playing (and levelling their 90th alt to 50 or whatever )

Hopefully they'll make RvR more involved along with all the new stuff (siege towers! I want siege towers!!)

 

[Envenom2]

erm lets get a few things straight Everquest/Uo has more depth more everything all daoc is lvl ur char to 50 get ya epic armour rvr for a few months then realise how shallow the game is.

Daoc is just an online run of the mill hack and slash

 

[Novamir]

well of course for you envenom

other people tend to play it because they like the people in guild chat. or they like to organise things, or be a part of things (eg raids etc). or some people enjoy helping others level up.

there's lots of stuff to do if you actually enjoy being a part of the community.

 

[Gabrial]

Originally posted by Envenom2

Daoc is just an online run of the mill hack and slash

Ah but it can change! UO is not without problems - combat is shite, groups are near non-existant unless guilded, and I've seen even more of the old "Oi! Im hunting here" attitude there than on DAOC.

The crafting system could do with some more focus - with spellcrafting it should be pretty good. Personal horses (or something like that) would be nice but anything to cut down travelling time would be appreciated!

Siege towers - I like that idea! Greek fire would be good, as would something to discourage the Zerg and encourage more skirmish type fighting.

They could also do with overhauling the BG so that more 25-29 and 30-34 are encouraged to go along.

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Originally posted by old.mattshanes
put animals in rvr maybe like ride on horses?

I was just thinking about that the other day

My Luwikeen riding a faerie beetle into battle -
I would give up teh wed twactor(tm) for that.

 

[darbey]

Hmm US DAOC has been out over a year now and last time i looked there were only 2 rr10 people in any server. Think it will take more than ayear for more than a handful to make it here.

 

[blain]

The skills system needs an overhaul to make it more in depth.
Quests also are in need of a rethink. Run to here, gank this mob, take this item, run to here just doesn't cut it.
How about dynamic quests or group quests.

 

[Alrindel]

As far as gameplay goes, DAoC is finished and has been for months. There will be tweaks to the zones, to the classes, to the mobs, with little bits and pieces of content added here and there, but basically what you have now is the completed game - Mythic is not going to embark on any revolutionary development that would require extensive overhauling of the game engine.

Mythic never intended DAoC to be a revolutionary magical immersive next generation MMORPG - it was intended to be an incremental improvement to Everquest with better graphics and a better implementation of PVP, albiet with less "world content" to explore. It has been - and continues to be - a great success, while everybody waits for the next generation of MMORPGs to arrive. Including Mythic, who have already started on theirs, Imperator.

Hey, maybe there will even be a DAoC II some day.

 

[Gabrial]

Originally posted by blain

How about dynamic quests or group quests.

Groups quests are a nice idea.

Combat system is very good as it is I think, well, for small scale combat anyway - much better than things like UO. If the new graphics engine fixes the large scale RvR issues it would be excellent.

One thing I think would really help (someone mentioned this before) would be a teleporter from most major towns to Sauvage or Snowdonia so people can get to the fronteer quickly if its under attack. You would still need to wait for the teleport at the the keep but it takes ages to ride a horse from Cornwall to Sauvage!

 

[bewal]

They need to put in more crafting skills and make you able to do your own resource gathering, in frontiers mines mayby?

Also you need to have some point for rvr, like gaining access to other lands home area for limited number of people or.... running back and forth in emain is not much fun after year, they just need to make a point to get people fight all over. Mayby add a Lawless Land where all races can actually take cities and hold ground, have a dueling pit for events, seabattles... (unrealistic but still)

 

[old.Nol]

IMO DAOC is a step up from UO, I find UO boring, I am past sprite layer gfx, and the UO 3D gfx suck hind tit. This is my opinion, if you like UO, stick to it. I do however look forward to EQ2...

 

[old.Trine Aquavit]

I reckon they need to look at an RvR expansion. New frontier zones, reasons for RvRing, spread out the zerg, etc. RvR is the thing that sets DAOC apart from EQ/UO/AC and it's the only thing that will keep the hook. With the SI gfx engine it will get even better.

Make more varied frontier zones, have more reasons to RvR in those zones and continue to work on RvR balance and you'll have an 'end game' as good as anything on the market.

Perhaps they could take a leaf out of ShadowBane's book and have a zone where realms can build stuff that the other realms can destroy?

Basically, look at all the game-modes in FPS and RTS games and see how they can be incorporated into DAOC's RvR. It has huge potential.

 

[Gabrial]

I agree - RvR has huge potential but I for one would love to see the Zerg culture fade aaway and be replaced with more small-scale skirmishes.

Like the idea of building stuff up. How about having to pay for guards to come and hold keeps for your realm? Could even pay to train them to make tougher guards.

 

[Whoodoo_RD]

What about a new realm, say the egyptians for example.

Teleports aint a good idea, if your in malm or cornwall or whatever and get the call to arms, suicide and return to a close bind point. Stop being lazy.

Adding to the realms IMO is the only way, new maps for all levels, not just like Malmohus, where its pretty much 40+ zone, but new places / towns / npcs etc for all levels to play in.

Also introduce more random elements. ATM sites like alakazham and warcry give you all the answers to quests, not very quest like when u know the answers. Move mobs about, give diferent locations.

Also more things for "team" groups to do. Like larger seige weapons that take a whole group to carry and put together. Trojon horses, fire towers, ladders....things used in real combat and castle raids in them days.

Guild houses and personal horses. Yes, the game could use a more personal touch. Perhaps if the houses were built in the frontiers, and guilds would have to repair and extend them eventually into keeps, using materials dropped from mobs of ALL levels.

As for BGs. What about tournament arenas. A place where say 1 group or 1 player can fight against another in a ring. Perhaps where they are stripped of all buffs and +'s from armour, RA's and weapons, just raw fighting. Spectating allowed of course (like the gladiator arena's)

Level 100....nah, grey ganking is a prob now, what happens when u get a hand ful of peeps level 100.....normal ppl who only play for like 3-4 hours daily, wont stand a chance in RvR and therefore will kill that aspect of the game. Keep it real.

I suppose to sum it all up, take a look at the eras we are based in, look at their lifestyles, their battle tactics and try and put a lil more randomness in too.

Also, an official "suggestion box" on the main webby would be nice. OK, its open to spam, but worth a shot. But would be nice to see some real feed back for Mythic / GOA rather than the normal "notrightnow" automated response.

Campaigns too....lets have some, so far they been squat. This is the definition of campaign:

n.
1. A series of military operations undertaken to achieve a large-scale objective during a war:
2.An operation or series of operations energetically pursued to accomplish a purpose

intr.v. cam·paigned, cam·paign·ing, cam·paigns
To engage in an operation planned to achieve a certain goal

Can you really say this resembles what you call them? I think the word "Shambles" is more apt.

Also, I have seen the US getting players more involved in theings, like atm they have a comp to win beta testing for SI, all you gotta go is write an instruction manual for your char. What do we get, nout.

TBH (yes the flaming goes on ), GOA dont really talk to us, and thats what would make this a lil more interesting long term.

Theres more but RSI is setting in....

 

[Gabrial]

Originally posted by Whoodoo_RD
Teleports aint a good idea, if your in malm or cornwall or whatever and get the call to arms, suicide and return to a close bind point. Stop being lazy.

Umm. Its not lazy cause I dont want to spend 20-30 minutes running from one end of the world to another is it? By the time I get there its likely to be too late. As for the idea of suicide - I'm not likely to spend an hour getting some xp just to suicide and loose it all so I can go the fronteer and defend a castle am I? What im suggesting is a teleported that costs 10 gold or something to use - could even limit it so its only usable by that char once a day or something.

The trouble with a campaign is letting everyone get involved (not just all the high levels or people that read external sources like web sites)

 

[Whoodoo_RD]

Originally posted by Envenom2
erm lets get a few things straight Everquest/Uo has more depth more everything all daoc is lvl ur char to 50 get ya epic armour rvr for a few months then realise how shallow the game is.

Daoc is just an online run of the mill hack and slash

Two questions to you:
1) Why bother playing if its that bad to you? Sod off back to UO if you think its that grim!
2) Do you have many / any friends in game you talk to, have fun with, meet in RL (if you have one)?

Ive made a load of good m8s in game, met a few in RL, had a few laffs at a variety of ppl, even learnt the odd swe / dan / fin / ger / french / span / dutch / russian etc etc words.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Most updates are based heavily around game mechanics tweaks and changes. If you look closely at the various updates, there is very little in the way of actual new content. 1 patch in 3 seems to deliver new areas to explore/see/do etc. Nice though to get a few patches in one go so we do get a load of stuff that our American cousins have tested for us.

The problem with adding new RvR areas is that you can spread it out so that it is TOO big, and you spend most of your time actually running around looking for enemies to engage. Remember that non-speed buffed characters/groups take a long time to get anywhere (yes, I know about hasteners). One of the things that makes battlegrounds successful is you know you are getting knee deep in action very quickly.

Because of this I would do one main thing and not even bother justifying it with logic:


Change the layouts of all three frontiers in one fell swoop. Effectively you have a new game in one go.


Then I'd change the locations of bottlenecks, place some new towers close to each other so potentially you could have siege battles going on with heavily defended towers. I'd also have guard towers here and there throughout the frontiers that are not outposts but can be taken and used strategically either as staging areas or sites for impromptu battles. No NPC guards at these places unless a guild takes one over and spends some bounty points.

The ability to build wooden guard towers (as well as siege towers) in the frontier would be nice too. Have crafters of various disciplines get together and build one near a fort and suddenly keep takes will have a whole new dimension. Build a tower near a milegate that lets you see over it.
Have a timer on the tower so that it decays after a few hours.

I'd have NPC armies occasionally laying siege to forts at random too complete with siege weapons (not relic keeps though). This way you could actually have keeps being taken and belonging to NO realms occasionally. If you manage to destroy the army they drop siege components you can then use.

It would be nice to be able to hire NPC mercenaries with guild bounty points for the odd assault, though that has the potential for abuse in RvR probably so I'm not sure about this.

The ability to buy and ride your own horse is an obvious one.

I'd put new horse routes in various places as has been pointed out by other peeps in other threads.

I'd damn logic and put the ability to teleport around the realm in. NOT frontiers, but certainly in realm.

New LOW level dungeons. In Midgard there is only Nisse's lair. Cursed Tomb is empty all the time because its a pain to get to. A lot of focus goes on the end game, because we have a lot of lvl50s floating around now, often the new players and peeps starting alts are forgotten about.

I'd totally revise the lfg system as well - refine it so that you can choose the radius your lfg flag works on and have it work across zones. Peeps will travel if a group is forming.

Cash: On your first character, I'd have it start with 5s. No cash on further chars so you can't abuse it to gain money unfairly by swapping cash between new chars you create constantly. When you're new to the game this really would be a godsend. I don't know anyone who hasn't scraped for their first armour and weapons (apart from beggars) and made mistakes and found themselves really struggling.

These are off the top of my head without getting into character class related improvements

 

[lairiodd]

The problem with giving a bonus to the side which does well in rvr is that you get the old powerful get even more powerful syndrom. Like on some servers the side with the most population gets and hold all relics with no possibility of losing them (barring off peak time raids) and if they lose one they get them back quite easily.

What would be cool is if they put in more frontier zones and made is so there was a front line based on the keeps you hold. This could be accomplished by making guards (both patrols and keep defense) in zones depend on how many keeps are held in neighbouring zones.

For example if you are in a zone where your side controls one keep and an enemy controls the other, then the keep guards would be normal strength, but if you control both keeps in the current zone, and both keeps in 3/4 of the neighbouring zones then your guards would be made a lot stronger stronger. Maybe add 2 levels to the all guards if both keeps in the current zone are held and 0.5 of a level (rounded down) for every keep in neighbouring zones that are held. This would make it hard to take keeps deep behind enemy lines (where all keeps nearby are under friendly control)

Combine that with a bonus the closer you are to your homeland, and you get a situation where power is autobalanced by the server. If a realm is over powered they will push back the other 2 realms, but as they push them back they lose the distance to homeland bonus and the weaker sides get more bonus. In other words you have a situation where pushing the enemy back actually weakens your side, but gives you gloating rights. (would that be enough ? )

What you could also do is remove one of the pks in emain/odin/hadrian's and replace the other with a capturable one, then link the frontiers together by a large number of common frontier zones (where the scenery changes from green near emain to snow near odins (maybe put in watered areas ... maybe they do it for SI ). And have capturable pk's sprinkled around the new frontier. These keeps would benefit from the boosted guards if in friendly territory rule so most realms would be able to have at least one pk near the front line (maybe make them have stronger guards to begin with too ... so you would need to take all surrounding keeps before trying for a pk). Maybe even put bind stones in them ... maybe if you release to a keep that has been captured then you go to the portal border keep of your realm. Also, maybe put a few new relic keeps out in the new frontier . (and make relic bonuses depend on distance to relic keep to encourage people to move the relics to the more vunerable relic keeps nearer the frontline)

Alot of people have been proposing a border invasion server, but you could get the same effects if you add more frontier zones and make it very difficult for enemies to get into what is the current frontier zones. Like having mids at ligen would be unheard of.

 

[liste]

one way to discourage the zerk a bit, would be to change the current botlenecks.

Battlegrounds has semi-bottlenecks as well. the Bridges. these are strategic points, important for troop movement. It is however possible to go around em, trading off your faster speed. You are fairly endangered in the water, unless you are a stealther

Make the milegates important to hold, but make it possible to go around.

This will have the effect, that a zerg would have to split up if they wanted to keep someone trapped, effectively making the army smaller. if they stay together, they lose the advantage of the wall, since the enemy could just as well hit them in the back.

Also, it would make it a whole lot easier for solo'ers / smaller groups, to actually get past the milegate.

 

[-Lonewolf-]

Still recommend two milegates to each part of the milegate system it can be easily implemented and lead to a far more enjoyable RvR system

 

[klavrynd]

As far as the EQ/UO comparison. UO has alot more content and depth because nearly everything is possible (that and korean baba whirlers). EQ on the other hand is plainly boring and when i moved from eq to daoc i felt like daoc's level grind was alot less then the eq one.

A thing i had in mind is a new battleground with a limited number of people in it. Something the size of the bg's where you can port 3* 2-3-4 full groups in at a time to ensure even fights.

It would however have no keep in the middle but random little towers spread across the country and maybe even some tunnels ( £5 someone mentions that this is gonna look like a cs map )

 

[Wend]

Originally posted by liste
Make the milegates important to hold, but make it possible to go around.

One important reason for having milegates (or rather a single choke point) is to make it hard for a relic runner to return a stolen relic to their home frontier.

 

[ChillyDawg]

Its gonna look like a CS map


Dawg

 

[nume]

Originally posted by Novamir
other people tend to play it because they like the people in guild chat. or they like to organise things, or be a part of things (eg raids etc). or some people enjoy helping others level up.

Damn right. I announced my leaving DAoC as soon as subs were to run out a little while back (joined Earth&Beyond). I ended up reversing my decision after only 2weeks lol. It's those annoyingly nice guildies in DAoC I knew I'd miss

 

[Archeon]

I would like to see....

1. All the frontier zones re-designed, mainly to make everyone relearn the map but also to draw more people away from emain and into other places. sombody already said you spread out the people there are less zergs

2. more tactical siege stuff, siege towers would indeed kick ass but to be practical you'd need point 3 to be implemented

3. make forts harder to take, at the moment you can take a fort with 2fg possibly less, and they don't all have to be lvl 50! i mean come on. make forts less throw-away and make them a challenge to take

4. Once a relic raid starts only X ammount of people can enter the relic keep, once cap has been reached the gatekeepers don't work. this would stop people ammasing forces inside and zerging out destroying any force (which is the main reason so many people are petrified of openly organising relic raids, in my opinion)

5. allow for large scale RvR, i don't mean like zergs i mean like proper tactical epic battles with 100's of people on both sides. strictly speaking this would be possible but at the moment the lag would just make this horrible

6. ADD WHITE AS A DYE!! i'm a healer, i'd rather go around in pure white i'd look even cooler than i currently do. even if it would make me an insanly obvious target, we have greens and browns for emain and hadrians camoflage why not white for odins?

7. more frameless stuff, at the moment i simply refuse to wear my epic helm and have settled on a nice af98 studded ones instead. i'd really love to see a lot more functions put in like lowering and raising your cloaks hood. half cloaks, cloaks that have been cut and look like multipe ribbons flowing off your back, hell even a certain kind of cloak that changes your hair to make it look long. anything that would allow you to look unique (right now you can spot a healer a mile away from the armour, the small shield and the small hammer. you don't mess with people that carry 2h weaponary when your along and not a stealther and all casters carry sticks) basically more customability.

8. more interesting quests, preferably ones with a little more than

"run to X" (X being as far away from your current position as possible)
"kill X"
"come back to me"
<your awarded XP>
<your award item>
<your awarded coin>
"come back in 5 lvl's"
(repeat untill driven insane)

i think thats just about it, most people will pick at a few of these idea no doubt saying it would unbalence the game. and if you think it will plz say most of these are off the top of my head and i havn't put a whole lot of thought into them