-1 here specially after not being able to defend relics in our own zone due to lag.

NA time is a ghost town unfortunately and I think it will only get worse.

jeff_daoj wrote:NA time is a ghost town unfortunately and I think it will only get worse.

It is & it sucks. I hope it can get saved before people lose interest

I am constantly discussing this fact with friends/guildmates.

I am on West Coast time and literally sub 1k and you cannot find anyone to fight. The only time i can play euro prime time is the weekends. Even then sometimes its hard to find fights as a stealther/small man.

I think an AMAZING change that would go a long way would be to increase frontier experience by some ridiculous amount. It should be the NUMBER 1 SPOT to level bar none. The risk of leveling in the frontiers should lead to massive rewards. It has to be so much that even getting steam rolled by higher level characters you would still find the exp worth it.

Increase the experience by 2x or 3x out in RvR zones. This helps people level quicker, it encourages people to spread out into the frontiers, it encourages low levels to learn to pvp, it will cause a massive spike in pvp. My guess also is that once 8 mans start roaming... counter 8 mans roam as well. Just like the crafting in xcal has caused PvP and was one of the best changes for this server.

This change also doesnt impact the regular population. Don't like getting wiped a bunch? Level like normal at a grindy speed. This would encourage even during off times people to be out in the frontier leveling because when the big 8 mans arent roaming you might be able to sneak in some group exp.

There is a reason to have a slow exp rate. You learn your class. You meet your realm mates and its fun to level in a group. I am against fast leveling which is common in many mmo. The only thing i would change is the dumb auto train and maybe a dual spec for the players who don't like to twink. You could bind it to a certain rr rank.

@Berondir I agree that you need to experience SOME to learn your class. But sitting for weeks at lyn barfog pulling the same mobs with the same MDPS setups is not "learning". You learn by PvPing. No mob is going to teach you that.

This is not leveling, this is GRINDING.

I think loss rate on retention is prob around 15-20%. Its not getting better the game play is getting worse...leveling from scratch at this point is a joke. Finding groups is hard as hell in hib.


Problems aren't being addressed.

You also can't tell me that hibs have almost as many as albs, and definitely not as many as midgard... i did /who's on leveling zones etc and hib did a good job of getting people out for todays event. My prediction based on data is that hib has hte highest retention issue % followed by Midgard.

Hittings wrote:I think loss rate on retention is prob around 15-20%. Its not getting better the game play is getting worse...leveling from scratch at this point is a joke. Finding groups is hard as hell in hib.


Problems aren't being addressed.

You also can't tell me that hibs have almost as many as albs, and definitely not as many as midgard... i did /who's on leveling zones etc and hib did a good job of getting people out for todays event. My prediction based on data is that hib has hte highest retention issue % followed by Midgard.

If we just look at level 50s, Albs and Hibs ARE quite even. Mids have about 1.4 x that. Of course many of those Albs and Hibs don't RvR and a large % of the Mids do.

See http://www.incguild.com/herald

Right now there are: Alb - 1,244 lev 50s, Hib - 1,247 lev 50s, and Mid - 1,690 lev 50s.

Laje wrote:@Berondir I agree that you need to experience SOME to learn your class. But sitting for weeks at lyn barfog pulling the same mobs with the same MDPS setups is not "learning". You learn by PvPing. No mob is going to teach you that.

This is not leveling, this is GRINDING.

hitting 12121212 tab 121212 tab 1212121 tab for 100 hours at the same spot totally makes you an expert, without it you cant compete in rvr

jeff_daoj wrote:NA time is a ghost town unfortunately and I think it will only get worse.

My group is all in the 45-49 range but holy God have we hit a wall. We're in the "home stretch" but this is really really bad and definitely demoralizing. We're even playing way more than we normally would but there's no denying the fact people are quitting because the leveling. If you can't play almost every night and for large chunks of time it's not even worth trying.

Pretty absurd and obnoxious that you can have a chunk of 2-3 hours to play and when you factor in travel time, competing with other groups because no SI, and God forbid if you wipe, you're not even gonna be close of half a level. And if you can only play a couple nights a week 45-50 is gonna take a month!

Keith Johnson wrote: If you can't play almost every night and for large chunks of time it's not even worth trying.

This is a big issue that I think is ignored to this today by most designers in the gaming industry. Goals must be able to be attained by the user in small steps, otherwise you alienate a large segment of the population completely unnecessarily.

Edit: I don't know exactly how to solve this in DAoC without introducing elements that hurt other areas. If you look at what the causes are, I think they are 1) LFG time 2) Travel time 3) Experience rate

LFG time could probably be done with a better LFG system, and travel time could be solved by porters, though this would hurt the grandness of the realm, I think. People would no longer travel, or take horses, but simply teleport around. Experience rate could be tampered with to make it perhaps easier on solo, or on groups, but that's always a difficult balance to get right (or I suppose an entire reduction along the whole curve might make getting individual levels more do-able)

Well I have not personally experienced any sharp decline in Hib, still lots of groups and people lfg, at least in the XP areas of the game. I myself have not started RvR, so I cant tell you about that. Our discord server helps a lot too.
That being said, measures to make the game more approachable for casuals would be nice for everyone. Getting to 50 is a real bad (although classic) grind. Lots of people I played and talked with tell me about their kids needing pickup from school or wife being mad abut playing and all the other stuff you didnt have on your mind when you were 18. I quite understand that those people have difficulty pushing their character to 50 to get started with RvR and endgame content. And I really wish the staff would find a way to better include these people in the community and make their life a little easier. Maybe give out a non tradeable XP bonus necklace for everyone who is married or has kids. I know it sounds funny, but just consider it.

Please, there were 300 lvl 50 mids out yesterday, defending 1 relic, then taking two, while killling albs and hibs vs the 100 albs and 100 hibs, vll 50s only. If anything the 50 ratio is very lopsided and some mids need to reroll to keep this going.

I really have no sympathy for people wanting faster experience. What did you think when you joined a classic 1.65 server? If you have kids, you should understand that some things you have to sacrifice to be a good parent. That includes being a top-tier MMO player...i'm sorry if you can't understand that. Uthgard was up for over 10 years before so if it takes you 3 months to hit 50, what's the big deal? You then never have to exp ever again.

My thoughts are if you don't have the time to commit, play something else. Instant gratification crap is what killed every MMO out there. Without significant time investment, there is no attachment to your characters and thus people will walk away from the server all that much faster. This is classic. Maybe you forgot what that was.