Nayru wrote:We only told you that we are thinking about the implementation of the old realmability system. Nothing more. We're just in a listening mode.

Well if we are to give a proper feedback about the old RA system, we need to know first what this implies. This thread has gone for 6 pages now (and counting), and yet people who are not familiar with how the old system used to be have no much clues about this, nor how it would be implemented according to Uthgard's specificities.
I've tried to check the patchnotes 1.xx to make my mind, but it's hard to get a precise picture of this system.

In short, to non-old-school players (and perhaps for others too), it would be handy to know beforehand:
- What is the gain of old RA system, compared to the current one;
- What is the loss if they are implemented.

Therefore it would be more easy to decide if this change is valuable or not.

Please check whether you have already voted: http://uthgard-server.net/modules.php?n ... ic&t=10096

If such a thing is going to be voted on and affect all players, this needs to be made into an in game prompt that directs them to this poll and shows up every time someone logs into the game through out the duration of the polling. Furthermore, more in game news and notifactions need to be made available since this is such an important stage of development for the server. All players need to be involved in this, not just regular forum viewers.

Well I don't mind if we get old RAs, but is it forced to step back to 1.65 then ? It will surely make some chars useless or uninteresting to play.

Just the class abilites such as stoicism or tireless would need to be removed I think.

Blue wrote:Please check whether you have already voted: http://uthgard-server.net/modules.php?n ... ic&t=10096

Thanks for the link, for some reason, that thread didn't show up in my search results. That cleared much things up.

Zippity wrote:If such a thing is going to be voted on and affect all players, this needs to be made into an in game prompt that directs them to this poll and shows up every time someone logs into the game through out the duration of the polling.

I concur. Or at least make this (or another) poll a bit more official within the forum itself. As it wasn't started by a staff member, it's hard to figure to what extent the poll results will be considered, or used.

Hedra wrote:Well I don't mind if we get old RAs, but is it forced to step back to 1.65 then ? It will surely make some chars useless or uninteresting to play.

Just the class abilites such as stoicism or tireless would need to be removed I think.

Such a rollback to old ra's would be a big step in balance, and the class changes between old ra to 1.80 would be huge, since all changes added after new Ras was added, could have been related to the RA change, expansion change and so on. Yes some classes will be worse off, but other will be gaining some really good RAs for them self. If they do this change to make the server feel classic, then everything has to be done. Only exceptions i could think of, if new changes past 1.65 that where class fixes, and not new features. And such customize additions would have to be really reviewed and decleared, not a benifit over others.

Blue wrote:Please check whether you have already voted: http://uthgard-server.net/modules.php?n ... ic&t=10096

I wanna redo my vote :<

Haldan wrote:Please note that currently neither bardings nor armors are available.

and when will this come? because atm the difference between a war mount and epic one is 19% speed and 29 platin

...

PONIES!

...

Would rolling back characters to 1.65 and using old RAs also mean using the old Frontiers maps? If you're truly going to go "Classic" are you going all the way? If that's the case, fine... but I'd say don't mix old with new.

I prefer seeing a "pre-ToA" server rather than a true "classic" server. Keep the SI classes and races. Bring us the SI continent, keep the NF with all your alterations including the new RAs.


***<B>Pay attention, fellow readers!</B> For those of you saying "it would be great to have the old RAs except I want you to change [insert complaint here]." They have stated that if they go to old realm abilities they are going all the way. No modifications. Whatever you liked or didn't like about the old system is what you get.

So be sure this is what you want before you vote for it.

To the devs... thank you for giving us the chance to state our views on the direction of YOUR server. I like what I see on Uthgard as it is, and would rather not go back to seeing Mythic's constant nerf/love, balance/imbalance tennis matches. That's what drove me away from their servers to begin with.

Sounds really really nice! Gonna love it. Now all we need is Old frontiers back and it would be heaven!

kikoo wrote:

Nayru wrote:We only told you that we are thinking about the implementation of the old realmability system. Nothing more. We're just in a listening mode.

Well if we are to give a proper feedback about the old RA system, we need to know first what this implies. This thread has gone for 6 pages now (and counting), and yet people who are not familiar with how the old system used to be have no much clues about this, nor how it would be implemented according to Uthgard's specificities.
I've tried to check the patchnotes 1.xx to make my mind, but it's hard to get a precise picture of this system.

In short, to non-old-school players (and perhaps for others too), it would be handy to know beforehand:
- What is the gain of old RA system, compared to the current one;
- What is the loss if they are implemented.

Therefore it would be more easy to decide if this change is valuable or not.

.... Second person to complain, yes I say complain because you haven't even searched the thread before posting this or else you'd see this on the thid page, first post;

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

Specially for you I'll also add this:
http://darkmage.ice.org/daoc/


Anyway, the RvR mechanics are still my main concerns currently.

Zippity wrote:Well the reason why i brought up the ideas of BG's and special bonuses for particular spots on the maps are that you folks keep complaining about lack of action due to people not having a place (bottle neck) to meet up at or find easy action, even though nothing has changed from before except now that it takes maybe 3 minutes or so to get to the old camp spots by the mile gates. This, in my opinion just seems like laziness on part of the players. If people dont want to take the 3 minutes horse ride to the mile gates (natural bottle necks) then I don't see why people would be against BG's which are a source of much more convenient access to action. If people are really THAT fond of rvr in agramon, then in my opinion, just add particular bonuses to certain spots in agramon (the radius around a mile gate as an example) and then that ought to start the flame that attracts the moth.


As for other classes that get affected by downgrading the features to 1.65...

archers get really screwed over with this as well. Volley would be moved from bow spec down into a purchasable RA costing 8 rps for 5 shots where as the current ability offers 6 and only requires bow spec. Archers also lose the ability Sure Shot (patch 1.69 addition) Furthermore, falcon eye would be reduced in effectiveness to a maximum of 25% chacne to crit compare to the current 39%. This is all without having an increase to bow damage to compensate. If that werent enough, stealth movement speed and detection would be decreased since archers dont get MOS. The only plus to this would be true sight (see all hidden characters) but that only lasts 60 sec and is on a long reuse.

I'm sure there are other classes hit by the change...

Zippity, you can not compare the old milegate hotspot, which was natural, to the new milgates(!) as a similar hotspot. The new milegates simply are not a hotspot because people can take either the other milegate or just a boat to whatever zone they want and camp keeps there, totally avoiding milegates. These possibilities decrease incs enormously. The reason for a natural hotspot to form, is the fact that there is a (bottlenecked) colinear route to whatever adventure u are seeking to do in the zone.
Back when camps were implemented, you would take a certain MG about 85% of the time to do whatever since it's the best / shortest / most convenient route. This, combined with the fact that there was an MG on that route, created a bottleneck for 85% of the realm's RvR population input, hence a natural hotspot. The fact that there is no such thing in the current setting (players split up depending on what they are intending to do in the zone, the second they leave the keep (boat is an other direction than walking or taking a horse to agra)). I'm also only talking about the keeps, because it's just ridiculous to take the effort to head to the telekeeps and hope for incs because it's a complete waste of time, considering the space that is actually campable and allows you to fight opponents (running back into guards is too easy).
Stating that 'players are lazy' is just not relevant with the issue, allthough that is what some players do appear, and might aswell be. However, the fact that some players complain due to laziness, should not prevent people from looking further than those handful of easymoders and check why people that are NOT lazy are complaining. This brings us (again) to the fact that there is a lack of natural hotspots in the current RvR setting. I believe it is time to face that fact and stop focussing on who is complaining due to being lazy and who is not, stop focussing on the fact that RvR routes indeed have increased in duration. The enlarging of the zone is not so much the problem, this is a very good aspect of the new RvR system, but a horrible aspect without the necessary elements inside that system, which are for instance, natural hotspots. Another necessary element is intertwined with the natural hotspot aspect. The fact that the supply chain is too easily broken in a way that completely destroys the possibility to have a hotspot (1 tower taken ends up in an immediate pushing back of the incs to the telekeeps, but not only that, it pushes them back AND instantly gives them THREE completely segregating options, which makes it impossible to aim for killing people of that specific realm).
Enlarging the RvR zone is NOT the problem, the fact that these 2 elements are not there, is the problem. However they are indirect and of course are caused by enlarging the RvR zone without thinking trough how it will work in reality without having natural hotspots and a very fragile supply chain.

So, to conclude, I believe the SIZE of the current RvR zone is not the problem and therefore should not be altered, which is what most people ask for. It is not that simple. The only way of creating a healthy and lively RvR zone with this size is to make 100% sure that there is at least 1 natural hotspot, at any given time in the supply chain. I'm sure this is perfectly possible, though requires more attention and thought than simply removing the camps and letting the system solve itself, because it won't.
To be honest, I've always been pro RvR zone enlargement, but never really knew how it would be affecting RvR in reality in the way that it is implemented now. However now that I've played it and seen what needs improvement, I'm pretty sure I know what has to be done to make this change really work for everyone, at all times.

This has made me come up with 2 more proposals:
-Together with increasing towers needed to break a supply chain (2 instead of 1), also make it so that when the supply chain is broken after all, players will have to take the boat from their telekeep, which only brings them to their own frontier zone so that the route to agramon will still be a natural hotspot, instead of making them split up to all possibly places.
(When supply chain is intact, the route from the keepdoors to agramon, but more importantly the colinear route to the docks, will become the natural hotspot in that situation if implemented correctly.)

- With the coming of the RvR horses, the current NPC horse routes should be removed in order to prevent people bypassing the natural hotspots while being pretty much invulnerable. You will not be dropped off the horse by attacks, which makes it for soloes and small tank groups impossible to kill people on horses from the RvR Stable Merchant.
Since RvR horses are usable now, the route will not be that long anymore, since you can still use a horse or hastener speed to get you into agramon. However, you will not get the option to take a somewhat safe route anymore. After all, this is just a way of avoiding action in the middle of the RvR zone, it actually makes it very easy for players to flee from incs, inside the RvR zone. I don't believe this idea should be supported by a mechanic, if you dont want to get killed, you should make sure u take the precautions needed in an RvR zone, instead of just hopping on a horse.


Combined with my former 2 proposals, I believe that in total, these 4 changes are vital for our lvl 50 RvR.

Zarkor wrote:1* Not 1, but 2 towers in enemy hands prevent players from porting to homekeeps in order to make it more attractive and reasonable to solo or run small groups. (Solo action dies out when the enemy realm(s) cant port to the keep because it's just in no way rewarding to camp boat dropoff points since people can jump at any given time. It's also just not viable running to teleport keeps because it takes ages and probably gets u killed by realm guards after 1 or 2 incs. I see this as a major issue tbh. Taking one tower is DF related 60%-70% of the time and has a HUGE impact on the RvR supply chain, which is a bit exaggerated atm imo. Taking a tower more if attacking the keep itself or the relic on the other hand should be no problem, since that force will be large enough anyway. I think it's necessary to give this mechanic some lowpeak/small action love. Let the DF tower actually be just a DF tower, but don't let it destroy the RvR action for such a large part.)

2* Relocate the docks to be on the (horse)route to Agramon or turn the keeps so that the route to the docks is largely colinear with the (horse)route to Agramon. (Maybe turn the keep a bit if possible, or just relocate the docks, or a combination of both.) This significantly increases the inc for solo's small groups. They will now have a decent hotspot with several places to hide (water, edges, behind towers, ...) which allows them to be relatively safe from FGs, but ready for targets. Stepping into the RvR zone will again require a bit more caution.)

Please tell me what u think (yes, staff aswell).

Thx for the input, Zarkor.

A question for those who are talking about weaker hybrids with the patch-downgrade: Have you also considered that the only classes in the of ra system with determination are fulltanks (Armsman, Warrior & Hero)? Of course you can argue on changed styles that weaken your characters, but in fact offtanks wouldn't have the crowdcontrol-resistance as they have it now. Therefore you could also see this as an improvement for hybrids. The argument of determination/stoicism that currently puts offtanks into a better light than hybrids would be gone then, too.

why shouldn't offtanks have determination, it it's included in all lists and in daoc charplan