Laje wrote:I can accept others playstyle. But to say that the majority of this server is not RvR is simply asinine.

This idea that there is this hidden PvE focused players is just not true. Thats not why you play this game.

I think what Blue is speaking to, and I suspect several of the developers would be included, is there is a demographic that actually does enjoy the PvE, and the slow pace of it with the accompanying socialization. This is probably their happy spot, no different from a slow day at the lake fishing with some buddies. While I suspected this playstyle is in the minority, it is an earnest demographic.

Personally, I think an increase in experience rate wouldn't hurt this play-style. The grind can be increased by a factor of two and still have a lot of time devoted to sitting in one place--socializing--with the slow pace that we know classic to be. The benefit in doing this would be that it would still serve the demographic that loves leveling at a slow rate--as each of the latter levels would take multiple hours of sitting at one camp (and you can level new toons to do it again!)--while helping other demographics that want the leveling time minimized so they can access the part of the game they enjoy.

I was replying mainly to this " Most folks focus rvr, fine but stop trying to call this rvr centered"

I understand the argument about leveling having a slower pace. I come from everquest.

Liking the PvE grind vs the game being ABOUT the PvE grind are two different things. I understand people like the PvE grind, but this game is not focused around the PvE grind.

Imagine you wanted to explain this game to someone new to get them to come play on Uthgard. The selling points are not you get to spend a couple months killing the same mob camp over and over after spending a few hours putting a group together. If you want a more varied, interesting leveling experience in PvE, there is Everquest, WoW etc. They do it much better.

Its the AMAZING RvR content this game created, the zerg fights etc, after a "classic" grind to get there. (and before you think i proved your point @Blue, the grind could still be half as long and you would still have the same effect )


Again, if you want to enjoy the PvE . GREAT! Have at it.

Laje wrote:@bubbler ummm what? This is not a PvE game. It USED to be. I templated my character without ever even killing a dragon.

No one is sitting at 50 saying, man I can't wait for the new raid to be released.

Player made items are the best in slot. That should answer your question right there. This is 100% RvR centered. No one came back to this game to experience this level grind.

You want a PvE game go play project99.

I do play project 99 as my avatar suggests. However I came back to DAoc because it has BOTH styles of play. It has great pvp and fun pve. Sometimes I'll spend my night on my temp'd druid and RvR and other nights I will sit on one of my lowbies lvling. Both have a spot at the table imo.

Now I do agree with you, sitting at 50 waiting for SI for more raids or just doing the current raids would get boring in my eyes. Completely agree with you but some folks enjoy that. I know I do at times. All I'm saying is that this game has both styles of play and both have value. Sure the majority playing right now are here purely for RvR but to say that this game is only about RvR is just not true. Even the devs have stated that back on Uth1 they're PvE player base was the larger of the two at certain points.

Back to the point of the thread. I do think an increased xp rate would benefit the server. I just don't think it should go over board. I would still like to be able to sit with a group, talk in chat and kill stuff for hours on end. That doesn't mean that everyone enjoys that, so I can see increasing xp a bit. Just not so much that we have the exact same lvling experience as live, where lvling is a day or two event.

Yea I def agree leveling has its place and time.

I also agree it should not be a one or two day event Sans PLing perfectly. I honestly think about half of what it is now would prob be a sweet spot. Would still take a casual multiple weeks. Would allow people to grind it in a week or two if more hardcore

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the grind burns ppl out for sure. I'd love to lower the barrier to entry even a little bit tbh. dunno if that's double weekends (not my fav option, not everyone plays all weekend) or boosted xp rates or what but I'd love to see the curve for 1-50 be more like the current 1-42 or something.

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Laje wrote:I was replying mainly to this " Most folks focus rvr, fine but stop trying to call this rvr centered"

I understand the argument about leveling having a slower pace. I come from everquest.

Liking the PvE grind vs the game being ABOUT the PvE grind are two different things. I understand people like the PvE grind, but this game is not focused around the PvE grind.

Imagine you wanted to explain this game to someone new to get them to come play on Uthgard. The selling points are not you get to spend a couple months killing the same mob camp over and over after spending a few hours putting a group together. If you want a more varied, interesting leveling experience in PvE, there is Everquest, WoW etc. They do it much better.

Its the AMAZING RvR content this game created, the zerg fights etc, after a "classic" grind to get there. (and before you think i proved your point @Blue, the grind could still be half as long and you would still have the same effect )


Again, if you want to enjoy the PvE . GREAT! Have at it.

I don't enjoy the slow XP rate but... I do enjoy the organization that it takes to overcome the slow XP rate. Our guild has been awaiting the Uthgard relaunch for years. In our guild forum we decided which classes we would play to form an optomized XP group. We practiced on Uth 2.0 beta and knew where to go and what to do. When the game launched we quickly formed into our groups and leveled up. Within an hour or so we had enough gold to form the guild. Classic DAoC is a pain in the arse for non guilded players but goes pretty quickly for those in an active guild. Recently we've had some stragglers join the guild. I asked one of them what his /played was to ding level 40. It was 19 hours played. Your mileage may vary.

Gil wrote:

Laje wrote:I was replying mainly to this " Most folks focus rvr, fine but stop trying to call this rvr centered"

I understand the argument about leveling having a slower pace. I come from everquest.

Liking the PvE grind vs the game being ABOUT the PvE grind are two different things. I understand people like the PvE grind, but this game is not focused around the PvE grind.

Imagine you wanted to explain this game to someone new to get them to come play on Uthgard. The selling points are not you get to spend a couple months killing the same mob camp over and over after spending a few hours putting a group together. If you want a more varied, interesting leveling experience in PvE, there is Everquest, WoW etc. They do it much better.

Its the AMAZING RvR content this game created, the zerg fights etc, after a "classic" grind to get there. (and before you think i proved your point @Blue, the grind could still be half as long and you would still have the same effect )


Again, if you want to enjoy the PvE . GREAT! Have at it.

I don't enjoy the slow XP rate but... I do enjoy the organization that it takes to overcome the slow XP rate. Our guild has been awaiting the Uthgard relaunch for years. In our guild forum we decided which classes we would play to form an optomized XP group. We practiced on Uth 2.0 beta and knew where to go and what to do. When the game launched we quickly formed into our groups and leveled up. Within an hour or so we had enough gold to form the guild. Classic DAoC is a pain in the arse for non guilded players but goes pretty quickly for those in an active guild. Recently we've had some stragglers join the guild. I asked one of them what his /played was to ding level 40. It was 19 hours played. Your mileage may vary.

You are on MID all comments on leveling should be disregarded...

go fight the necro's on alb, or spam every paladin online for an hour so you don't need to sit for end every other pull.

XP rate will cause the server to die.

Gil wrote:

Laje wrote:I was replying mainly to this " Most folks focus rvr, fine but stop trying to call this rvr centered"

I understand the argument about leveling having a slower pace. I come from everquest.

Liking the PvE grind vs the game being ABOUT the PvE grind are two different things. I understand people like the PvE grind, but this game is not focused around the PvE grind.

Imagine you wanted to explain this game to someone new to get them to come play on Uthgard. The selling points are not you get to spend a couple months killing the same mob camp over and over after spending a few hours putting a group together. If you want a more varied, interesting leveling experience in PvE, there is Everquest, WoW etc. They do it much better.

Its the AMAZING RvR content this game created, the zerg fights etc, after a "classic" grind to get there. (and before you think i proved your point @Blue, the grind could still be half as long and you would still have the same effect )


Again, if you want to enjoy the PvE . GREAT! Have at it.

I don't enjoy the slow XP rate but... I do enjoy the organization that it takes to overcome the slow XP rate. Our guild has been awaiting the Uthgard relaunch for years. In our guild forum we decided which classes we would play to form an optomized XP group. We practiced on Uth 2.0 beta and knew where to go and what to do. When the game launched we quickly formed into our groups and leveled up. Within an hour or so we had enough gold to form the guild. Classic DAoC is a pain in the arse for non guilded players but goes pretty quickly for those in an active guild. Recently we've had some stragglers join the guild. I asked one of them what his /played was to ding level 40. It was 19 hours played. Your mileage may vary.

I leveled to 42 on Mid, wasnt overly difficult to be honest.
Then we switched to Hibernia.
Well... lets just say I have displaced aspirations of being able RvR before Summer.

Honestly though, the difficulty difference in running leveling groups between mid and the other realms could be described as ridiculous.
As to your organized guild group points : The majority of players cannot afford such luxuries and that is the crux of the argument.

Heck, even a global Lfg channel would work wonders in cutting down the tedium and having to whisper : 12 mentalists, 15 bards, 20 druids, 12 enchanters, 10 wardens, 13 heroes, etc., whenever I want to level and need to build a group.


By the time I gathered enough people for your mystical '' optimal exp group'' it will take another 30 mins until everyone is gathered around the specific spot hub.
Soon after that someone will have to leave due to : children, work, cooking, waifu, having a Life.

Time again to whisper 16 mentalists...


In Midgard I opened the LFG tool and asked one of the 43754 skalds or berserkers to join up. Didnt even have to find a mentalist because as healer I had my own pom.
As a Midgard player it is very easy to fall into the assumption that leveling '' inst that bad'' because frankly it isn't, on Midgard.
Find a healer, find a shaman, fill the rest with whatever people are playing and are available which 80% of will be some sort of melee fighters.
There, you got a full group with pom, cc, healing, spec buffs, endu, dmg add and lotsa focused melee dmg, good times, good exp.


For the same in Hib you will need to specifically find :
A Mentalist who does little else for the group than pom, so half a wasted spot.
A bard.
A druid.
A Warden who again does little dps but adds extra healing you dont actually need.
Heroes and Blademasters who are not played much.

or you go the petpull/ bomb route, in which case this means even less tanks for Hib and you only bring a handful of specific classes which sucks for RvR class representation later on.


I am not saying this to spite you or other Midgard players. Just please please realize that this process is exacerbated on Albion and Hib by quite a margin.

I quite agree that it's more difficult to find a PUG group on Alb and Hib compared to Mid. But we played ALB for years on Uth 1.0.
We leveled up there the same way we do here on Uth 2.0. We go with mostly guild groups and some alliance members.

Albs and Hibs require a guild/alliance even more than Mid does. Do you find it difficult to form guilds? We didn't back in the day on Uth 1.0

Gil wrote:I quite agree that it's more difficult to find a PUG group on Alb and Hib compared to Mid. But we played ALB for years on Uth 1.0.
We leveled up there the same way we do here on Uth 2.0. We go with mostly guild groups and some alliance members.

Albs and Hibs require a guild/alliance even more than Mid does. Do you find it difficult to form guilds? We didn't back in the day on Uth 1.0

Uthgard 1 had many qol features that uth 2 does not. Global chat channels being a huge part of that. Also it was easier to get respecced so some classes were easier to find and it also had new RAs which made it easier for people to get some helpful abilities. Not to mention that the BG setups on uth 1 meant that people could actually get some decent RAs behind them before levelling to 50.

(Also didn't mean to like your post, damn Tapatalk is a pos)


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Gil wrote:I quite agree that it's more difficult to find a PUG group on Alb and Hib compared to Mid. But we played ALB for years on Uth 1.0.
We leveled up there the same way we do here on Uth 2.0. We go with mostly guild groups and some alliance members.

Albs and Hibs require a guild/alliance even more than Mid does. Do you find it difficult to form guilds? We didn't back in the day on Uth 1.0

You imply that being in a active Guild equals steady and well formed exp groups.

This is far from true. Even on Midgard where I was in a large and helpful Guild, 90% of my leveling was pugging with maybe 1 or 2 friends in the mix.
You must be well aware that this is the norm by design of level ranges and various playing schedules.

Your proposed mode of leveling is unattainable by most people and simply not feasible for reasons of clashing timetables, level differences and required class synergy.

Gil, you are likely part of the absolute minority of what would be considered hardcore players.
For most people that simply isnt a reality anymore and the server will suffer from this if the Devs do not adapt the ruleset accordingly.


DAoC is a game where you must take such concerns to heart as loss of players will spiral the situation further into the negative based on how this game functions.

I refuse to presume that anybody currently active on this server wishes for that to happen. Even highly dedicated players of the 8 v 8 mindset likely prefer an active server, vibrant with '' casuals'', than what would move towards a premade- arena.

If we can just agree on that goal of player retention, we can find non- balance damaging methods to achieve this.

A LFG channel and some sort of support for people to hit 50 more easily, seem sensible to me personally.

I essentially soloed the first 44 levels on my infiltrator, but upon hitting 45 was stunned at the XP wall of doom that hit me. It is insane.

I don't mind groups leveling faster, but solo XP post 45 isn't really possible, forcing me to find a group. Since infiltrators aren't exactly a top choice to pick as a group member, and no LFG channel, I have to sit around hoping for a slot while gathering minimal XP solo.

This is stupid. The XP grind solo play shouldn't be pointless after level 44. What frustrates me is knowing nothing will be done because of 1.65 or nothing mentality. This will really hurt this server in the long run.

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Nemi wrote:

Gil wrote:I quite agree that it's more difficult to find a PUG group on Alb and Hib compared to Mid. But we played ALB for years on Uth 1.0.
We leveled up there the same way we do here on Uth 2.0. We go with mostly guild groups and some alliance members.

Albs and Hibs require a guild/alliance even more than Mid does. Do you find it difficult to form guilds? We didn't back in the day on Uth 1.0

You imply that being in a active Guild equals steady and well formed exp groups.

This is far from true. Even on Midgard where I was in a large and helpful Guild, 90% of my leveling was pugging with maybe 1 or 2 friends in the mix.
You must be well aware that this is the norm by design of level ranges and various playing schedules.

Your proposed mode of leveling is unattainable by most people and simply not feasible for reasons of clashing timetables, level differences and required class synergy.

Gil, you are likely part of the absolute minority of what would be considered hardcore players.
For most people that simply isnt a reality anymore and the server will suffer from this if the Devs do not adapt the ruleset accordingly.


DAoC is a game where you must take such concerns to heart as loss of players will spiral the situation further into the negative based on how this game functions.

I refuse to presume that anybody currently active on this server wishes for that to happen. Even highly dedicated players of the 8 v 8 mindset likely prefer an active server, vibrant with '' casuals'', than what would move towards a premade- arena.

If we can just agree on that goal of player retention, we can find non- balance damaging methods to achieve this.

A LFG channel and some sort of support for people to hit 50 more easily, seem sensible to me personally.

I hope (and expect) the staff will make some changes to address player retention. I have no clue which changes will do more good than harm and which will do more harm than good. It isn't easy to avoid unintended consequences in an MMO.

Jubileet wrote:

Rhil wrote:Well they have made it amply clear that they have their priority set, and it is not player retention. Uth is their project. It's a take it or leave it situation here.

A project that doesn't care if they can retain their population/players?

Oh.

Thats unfortunate.

Think about it this way....

You Love old homemade Shepard's Pie.

You love it so much that you have dedicated tons of your personal time over the last 10 years practising and refining your recipe.

In fact, you love it so much that you open a restaurant where you invite the world to come by and try some of your home made Shepard's pie as often as they like and you won't even charge them a penny.

Now on day one of your restaurant opening the demand is so high that you run out of Shepard's pie and pull out all the stops to make sure you have enough to feed everybody.

After a few weeks group of people start saying... 'Hey, thanks for the pie, but wouldn't it be great if...' your response is a simple no... we make homemade Shepard's pie like it used to be. Sorry.

After a few more weeks that same group of guys start to say things like... "The crust in this pie is too thick! It takes me too long to get to the delicious filling!" & "If you don't change the crust now everybody is going to leave your restaurant and never come back" & "You guys don't care about us! We want different Pie now!" & "We have heard that the restaurant up the road is going to make crustless Cottage Pie in the future, you guys suck and this will kill your restaurant, Haha"

Well... no. We make old fashioned Shepard's pie. That's our passion and if you can't get on board with that then sorry but that's the way it is. We would love you to get on board with it though.

If you were the owner of that restaurant would you really go running about in your spare time and spend more time trying to build something you are not passionate about just to appease this group of people?

Your surrounded by 3500 people, 3000 of which are happy to come and eat your pie regularly, thank you and go home. The other 500 are constantly on your case about new types of pie. Would you really care if that 500 left?

DAOC 1.65 is their passion, it's the patch level that they love, it's the game they love. If the devs don't maintain that passion this server will cease to be.

It's not that they don't care about the population, it's not that they don't care about retention... they just care passionately about 1.65 DAOC and this development project.

They may make some small QoL improvements in the future, who knows, I won't care if they do... as long as it doesn't move too far away from the stated goal.

But right now, what they need is for everyone to get on board and try to work to make this the best server / community it can be... that would have the biggest affect on player retention than anything else in my humble opinion.

TLDR: never mind.

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trebbettes wrote:just to appease this group of people?

Depends if you want to keep your ''Sheppard Pie restaurant'' open for longer than 4 months.
Did your Shepard Pie restaurant accept donations from customers before it was opened ?


This metaphor is not rooted in reality.

It won't really matter how true to 1.65 this vision is if there aren't enough players to keep it alive.


This project is nothing but a developer skill Demo without the playerbase supporting it.
People who advocate for player- friendly changes do not do so to spite the vision of the server but because they see it as a necessity to keep it going for a long period of time.

Now we can debate whether that train of thought is justified but you attempt to circumvent any argumentation by implying players have no value in this discussion solely on virtue of the devs invested effort.
This is a fallacy. Players dedicate their precious free time to this project and by engaging in it, making it in turn a successful project the Devs can then place on their resume.

People who don't care leave. They don't post feedback and worries on the forums.

Sorry but I find your position highly dishonest and detrimental to any sort of discourse.
The relationship between the Devs here and the playerbase is entirely different than what you seem to think.

ps. I heavily doubt the players who would gladly benefit from LFG channels, better exp curves and shorter travel times should be described as '' a group of people''. They likely make the bulk of the players here. ( opposed to the people on the forums who are able to dedicate much more time)