Some infos about old RAs: http://web.archive.org/web/20031206055110/www.camelotherald.com/realmabilities/

Few months back I would have been thrilled with the old RA set but nowadays I'm not too convinced anymore. NF RAs are not perfect.
Like encountering a mid tank grp and bang SoS/charge/aog on inc. *shudder*
But while I'm pretty nostalgic about the old RAs I'm unsure if they're an improvement. Bigger recast timers for less RA dumping is great but inevitably some of these RAs win fights for you.
NF RA's can too but to a lesser extent.
Like a hib grp with 2x Group Purge + Self Purge, BAoD, MoC and AM up, well....
In some fights you'll get less RAs creating more fair and more clean encounters but other fights will just get decided by RAs and I'm afraid that will mostly benefit high RR players.

I'm not saying we should definitely stick with the current RAs but I have my doubts that old RAs are gonna be that big of an improvement. Nevertheless Uthgard should really give them a go, if staff can get the development right, to try them.
I'm quite curious to see what RvR would be like. Brave decision by the staff which I applaud greatly cause it's a massive overhaul considering we've had NF RA's here since the beginning?

I like the added xp bonus aswell. It should make levelling a tiny bit easier which is always better for our RvR pop. Should be nice too for the current RVR'ers.
I know RvR shouldn't be about hunting xp'ers but could definitely increase the population. Soloers/small groups have some more targets, xp'ers who are getting farmed can call realm mates/guildies and it gets easier to locate other groups if they go about killing xp'ers at xp spots.

The RvR horses I can't really judge. I stopped playing live before they were implented and always had a certain dislike for them but I can imagine it increasing solo rvr in off-peak hours so can't be a bad thing I guess.

All in all a great change by the staff so thumbs up for them.

Zakoraya wrote:

panachier wrote:

Blue wrote:

Eclipsed wrote:If uthgard devs are willing to do all this hard work, id suggest going ahead and working on getting ToA , MA, and maybe the zone. The agrument was old ras because no toa, i think it would be less work to just add toa stuff.

The opposite is the case. 1.65 and old RA are way more easy to reach than ToA+MA. Beside that ToA has no place here. ToA is against Uthgards concept and will not come. 1.65 + old RA's would fit nicely into the classic settings.

just a question that could bring some more problems ( i love problems)

does it mean that we'll loose spellcraft ( and alchi? i can't live without endu pot ^^)? will we have to farm the rare drops to try to get a decent equipment? but on another side maybe it's better so the casters have a chance to deal correct damages on lower resists.

I personally liked classic Dark Age before spellcrafting, when everyone was different and the glowy weapons were the best People had to work with what they had. But its a romantic vision of the game perhaps, maybe i am strange in thinking so ^^

Glowy weapons were still awesome after spellcrafting Guess with ToA came the revolution.

well, i dont really care about toa bonuses just the MA for my ranger lol. But the old ra system will just bring new whines. So much they dont all relise.

One thing is alot of these active ablities is 30min reuse. Is uthgard going to keep it classic and stay 30min or customize it to be like 10-15. Because i know it alrdy. A grp/solo blows there purge or other 30min RAs, and they all wait before going out lol. Till they complain about it to be custom timer. Then you got the removal of Physical Defense, of what i seen , there is no PD. So no more super absorb casters lol, which i think is good lol. One thing i also like is viper will be a active ability then, with a long reuse lol. Only thing that sucks is they get detect hidden and MoS, archers will not get MoS, but at least they still get camo. But then every assasin will whine about True Sight lol, you bet my friends and i will be using that to the max lol. But yes casters and melee classes will get RAs to increase attack speed/cast speed, but i got a question. Back then, during 1.65, was there still charges on items or was that only Alchemy. So no stat charges. If there isnt, there goes there extra dex/qui , so they will cast and swing slower anyway. And if im not mistaken, there goes the 25% bonus that came with toa for buffs and other stuff.

No matter what you do, you can not solve everyones problems. Some people want those RAs, but there will be many changes im sure they will not like and will whine about it. And reverting back to new RAs again , will prob not happen, so i hope everyone knows what they are getting into. Im 50/50 for this change. Ill miss MoS, but i dont mind True sight and seeing all stealthers for 60 sec, at any range lol.

People asking for old RA dont even realize what they asking for i think. They just acting on impulse. Everyone prepared to give up thier class unique RR5 abilities ?

Please take note of all the people who are against old RA as well. This just screams out to me that its a bad mistake. You have a few issues to sort out now which need addressed - no biggie. You make this change you will have 100x the issues to deal with. I cannot see how in the world you would even consider implementing this stuff with alot of "guesswork".

Hell if you want to do some guesswork how about adding the missing 12-15% damage to archers. You dont need exact numbers... just guess. Then i will give you feedback if its working.

I just want to say, please dont impulsively do this to try and prove to community that you "listen".

I guess some congratulations are in order on informing the public about the future changes being planned. I can only hope that in the future, each issue is brought up seperately so that these discussions between the staff and community can be focused only on specific issues so we can all take one problem at a time. Now on to my commentary...



RvR changes:

I guess ill have to wait to see what other tweaks are in store with this but I really do not think increased XP bonuses will resolve this problem between soloers, small groups , zergs and general rvr action. Just look at the things that make the BG's so successful and active and try to emulate those. New frontiers would not be sacrificed for this however since NF can still maintain its importance for darkness falls and relics. There are quite a number of benefits to the idea of a level 50 bg system:

1. Fixed map for primary action (any play style can know where to find action here)

2. 3 identifiable points of entry (teleport keeps allow for timers to be implemented for teleportation so some control over player access is possible)

3. Varying types of terrain: BGs have water, hills, mountains, plains and forests to fight in and around which make them universally compliant with different play styles and strategies.

4. Map Rotation: BGs can rotated in/out for a change of scenary without as much maintnance and effort (teleportation/camp spawn points) as have occured in the past when new frontiers zones were used as primary RvR.




Old RA System


I've looked at the various threads and proposals in favor of the Old RA system. I don't want to be put in the place of knowing what people's actual experiences are with this but in my live server playing experience from december 2002 through december 2003, i got to see very well how the old RA system worked through my experience playing as a hibernian and later on as a member of midgard. My personal opinion is that most of the people who are proponents of the old ra system on uth are either not informed about what this means through either not having experienced this system themselves or having never played the game; nostalgic about "old times" and looking for a change in scenery here, or are just after unique advantages that they personally (or their realm) would get from having this system in. Any of these situations are in my opinion, good enough reasons to not implement this.

My experience with the Old RA system was that in many cases, it was extremely over powered while in quite a few others, the abilities made for certain classes were far under powered and essentially useless. For example, albion had access to bunker of faith RA which made fights against them practically a joke while that was up. The NF RA system in my opinion, offered a greater diversity of choice to players and play styles. Furthermore, the system of certain active RA's caused situations where groups (mainly the elite high rr groups) would not fight at all unless their abilitiy timers were up, or if they did go join the action, it was only part of a zerg because without the assistance of other groups, they would most certainly be killed due to the nature of how these RA's worked. What this means for uthgard is that there would (in my opinion) be increasing focus on large zerg wars if one has the population in their realm for this, or great lulls between fights since people would be waiting on their RA's to be up before venturing out again.




My proposed Solution To Class & RA balancing:



In light of the issues surrounding current and perceived balance issues on the server, I recommend that instead of implementing a system that failed in the past and the currently flawed new frontier system, that uthgard steer itself in the direction of taking on custom class and RA balancing to make a system that works for THIS server and THIS community, instead of adopting a system that is tailored for the live servers. My recommendations would be to review each class, and RA available and make determinations based on community and staff input together, as to what abilities need changing, removing or adding in. We could first start looking at this from a perspective comparing inherent advantages/disadvantages for each realm and then look at class vs class advantages/disadvantages so that we can determine which classes would be best suited for special tweaks to put them on par with their counterparts in other realms.

I think uthgard shouldn't limit itself to one particular patch, or system. Perhaps using elements from official patches, the old RA system and new RA system could be beneficial. For example, Speed of sound could be deemed as "too powerful" for any realm to have and thus ought to be removed entirely as with anger of the gods and so forth. However, abilities like dodger could be implemented and given to specific classes that are deemed to find this ability useful. There would need to be a give and take aspect to handling this.

Another way to look at this problem is over fairly administrating realm/class balancing. Uthgard has a rather tumultuous history of custom changes for certain classes. I think that some sort of standard needs to be created and common ground reached to determine what class abilities in each realm may be considered "too powerful" or "not powerful enough" and tweaked or removed accordingly. Instead of singling out certain classes and elements of game play, all these factors need to be looked at so that no one class or realm is inherently disadvantaged or singled out. For example if animists, necromancers and bonedancers are seen as a problem in certain instances, then perhaps those instances in which they are a problem could be addressed collectively as opposed to just singling out animists only to be changed. This applies to other classes as well (stealthers, supports, casters, tanks etc).]


In closing, if uthgard is going to be a custom server, then it needs to be customised to fit the play styles and interests of this community.

Hmm.. old RA's.. hello MoTa 5 casters! (Stunned and killed before u press "Purge")

If casters need a boost, lets introduce MoTa in addition to the new RA's, with a maxlvl of 3 or something..?

Group Purge/SoS/BoF to single classes are things that was mighty whined upon in the old days, the new RA's made that better imo.

And also as some have pointed out, the old RA's will be very hard to implement because there's no way to test them..

Regarding the RVR zone changes im happy with whatever as long as we have RVR and not lvl 50 bg's...

My 2 cents

uhm

non-rvr horse... 6p?

mistake or for real? if so - no one will use horses then

nixian wrote:uhm

non-rvr horse... 6p?

mistake or for real? if so - no one will use horses then

/agree

this must be a joke? :s

and 1p for lvl 35 135% non rvr horse? prices need adjustment imo

The prices are by no means a joke.

carnalito wrote:Hmm.. old RA's.. hello MoTa 5 casters! (Stunned and killed before u press "Purge")

If casters need a boost, lets introduce MoTa in addition to the new RA's, with a maxlvl of 3 or something..?

Group Purge/SoS/BoF to single classes are things that was mighty whined upon in the old days, the new RA's made that better imo.

And also as some have pointed out, the old RA's will be very hard to implement because there's no way to test them..

Regarding the RVR zone changes im happy with whatever as long as we have RVR and not lvl 50 bg's...

My 2 cents

Yup. My opinion is to customise class abilities and the new frontier ra's based on realm/class need and do some hardcore readjustment/nerfing to things deemed over powered for particular realms/classes. For example since midgard has instant stun/mez, why should their support classes also get the same ra's as realms/classes that dont have such advantageous inherent class abilities? Wouldnt it make sense to offer counter balance RA's to those realms/classes that need these to ouweight the advantages other realms have? Those are examples of issues that need to be discussed upon. I think the new frontiers RA system is workable if it gets readjusted to better reflect the already present realm/class imbalances (or perceived imbalances) that exist. This might mean removing RR5 abilities and other unique RA's such as SOS, AOG and so forth if these cannto be feasibly altered to something that isnt as strong as their present state.

I think part of the problem with all of this is that this server is advertising itself as being classic and this Old Frontiers RA system (and proposed 1.65 patch ruleset) is an attempt at converting game play back to that era. I dont think the consequences of what this means are really understood. Uthgard is certainly no classic server nor is it live-like due to custom changing. Uthgard is in reality a mixture of unique and custom features added on top of some systems that resemble live server mechanics. I think it would be a mistake to try to incoporate old mechanics with newer features when things worked entirely different in those days. Reinventing the game mechanics may be a workable idea if it also means adjusting class/realm imbalances, but just copying and pasting the old system into the current game wont really sovle the problems that plagued and are stilll plagueing daoc game play. If the goal here is to rebalance the game then solely relying on fixing the RA system is not the way to go about doing it as the game has inherent characteristics with each class that must be looked at to determine what RA's and abilities need to be adjusted/removed/added to create a game play environment that the majority of players can feel is a good attempt at balance even if imperfect.

Maybe uthgard needs to be advertised as somethign else other than classic..

Zippity wrote:I think uthgard shouldn't limit itself to one particular patch, or system. Perhaps using elements from official patches, the old RA system and new RA system could be beneficial.

Pretty much what I was going to suggest. You could simply combine the good things of the two systems in order to create a decent one. A system that doesn't have the flaws of the two previous systems, like unbalanced or overpowered RAs or the ability to mass dump them.

Just take the values and reuse timers of the old realmabilities and apply the class restrictions of the new ones. Some effects would probably need a review, SoS is a good example since the new version is definately the better one (saying this as an alb btw). Realmabilities that no longer exist should also be reviewed then.

Carnalito wrote:And also as some have pointed out, the old RA's will be very hard to implement because there's no way to test them..

There's quite a few servers that have had the old system. With the help of the community and some research done, it was always possible to find the needed information. Of course some of the values were guessed but I don't see this as a problem as long as the abilities are balanced.

Haldan wrote:The prices are by no means a joke.

so 6p for a useless horse is right?

wow

ps. could you please fix the ride to rvr quest too so theres actually a horse to use the lead on? ^^ ty

Is it possible to have a RvR Map with all xp spot located on it with mobs level ?