Sethor wrote:...

Tajendi has shown that quests in DAoC can be created in a more fun-giving way. Especially new MMO titles have shown that players demand quests. A well mix of fast standart "kill and deliver" quests in combination to more exciting longer storyline quests which in the end give players a more or less huge exp boost.

...

If we had such quests, the staff could simply kick out the battlegrounds without fearing that players could become bored. Sidenote: battlegrounds were implemented around middle to end of SI times. Almost no player used to play within these battlegrounds as everyone just wanted to become lvl50 to be able to participate in lvl50 RvR. That's the goal the staff should aim on.

With regards,
Sethor

I'm sorry to burst your bubble here, but what you're saying here is that the staff should make more work of customised quests for each level range in each realm to prevent players getting bored by rewarding them with huge XP bonusses for it.

My opinion, and I bet a lot of other people's opinion on this matter would be:

- More focus on PvE coding while there's still so many things unfinished or being worked on as we speak? Even after OF, 1.65 and Old RAs get implemented and working on Uthgard, that's by far not the end of the line. Just think of the classes and pets that are missing, not to mention the possible bugs in the new elements and classes. This alone is work for months, if not longer.
- Custom quests? Quests are usually a very large part of why MMO development takes so long before release, I can't imagine the dev's trying to re-invent DAoC quests just like that, combined with the work needed to code it all. Just look at how Mythic struggled to get all their quests bug-free.
- Quests giving a huge XP reward? (This for me is the worst aspect.) Hmm, where have we heard this before? Ah yes, WAR, WoW, ... the games where you play solo in an MMORPG because every quest is soloable, questing gives a way better possibility to level up, which makes grouping laughable, since not everyone can stay as long and not everyone can get the same quests, making everyone lose time if they want to stick together.
Quests themself became a dull and repetitive grind as it's almost impossible for anyone to keep coming with new and innovative ideas to base a quest on.

However, on the battlegrounds matter, I see 2 options if you're willing to completely revamp the system, because I do think you have a point. A lot of people are just not coming to end-RvR due to being able to RvR in BGs aswell. If you look at it, the gap between end RvR and BGs is enormous. I remember being able to destroy pretty much everything in BGs with some good gear and coordination, with a similar mixture, you will be having a hard time in Agramon.
I believe this is the biggest reason, not due the fast-paced aspect of BG RvR, since the speed really is similar to Agramon.

1. Use only 2 BGs:
- A lvl 20-24 BG with a realmrank cap of 1L6 or 1L7 to make people warm for RvR and get useful abilities such as MCL.
- A lvl 44-49 BG with a realmrank cap of something around 4L0 to arm people against the high realm rank dangers that lurk in end-RvR.
To prevent people from getting tired of the grind inbetween, raise the XP rate to x2. Keep the high xp rate from PvP kills and keep the possibility to /xp off without the possibility to /rp off.
This will make the complete road to 50 more bareable and less boring because you get new abilities and levels relatively quick and will keep the opportunity to make an RvR pit-stop at 20-24 and 44-49.
In time, classic quests should be adding some more variation in this all, of course these would need a serious XP boost so that they are worth the time, but never by far the best way to gain experience, possibly due to not having enough quests to completely level up with constantly.

2. Remove BGs all at once, giving again an XP rate increase by x3, however I believe this option has one major flaw, being that people will have to join end-RvR with a realmrank lower than 2L0 (maybe some lucky DF kills/leeches).
Again, classic quests with considerable XP boosts should replace the variation and entertainment BGs bring now, like it was before the BGs were introduced in DAoC.

In the end, you could think it's going to be more and more like an instant 50 RvR, where there's end RvR and nothing more. However this would never be the case, since you still need to compose your own template, get your levels and group up to PvE, with a few quests here and there to spice things up.
Personally I would prefer option 1, to prevent having a huge gap between fresh and old end-RvR players.

Of course, this is all pure theory and I don't think this will ever be introduced on Uthgard, since the dev's are not really out to make PvE become easier and to remove the current BGs for the sake of end RvR. I guess I could only hope I'm wrong, but even if so, it will take a looong time for this to actually become reality since besides even thinking about this type of renovation, there's still tons of work to do as mentioned above.
It would be nice to see a bigger amount of new players in end RvR, but currently that's far from a priority, I'm happy with what the devs are working on and will see what the future brings.

PS: The proposed XP rate increase has a few major reasons:
- People know Classic DAoC, there's really no point in making the grind slow. Yes, I know Uthgard is faster than say 6 years ago, but even for a Classic freeshard, I think that in the current time and day, it is very much acceptable to have a slightly increased XP rate without any Xpac or instance crap Mythic decided to add, especially with the low amount of quests compared to live DAoC, the xp on Uthgard is maybe faster, but definately more boring than back then.
- Uthgard has about 1/5th of the population live had during the classic era. This has a huge impact on XPing and grouping. The fewer players you can group with, the more it will affect the xp/time on the server. Not to mention back in the day, groups were more open to any class compared to now, where stealthers have a hard time or get no chance at all to join a group, for instance. Since the Uthgard xp rate is slow, it's only becoming somewhat ok to level if you try to strive for the best xp setup, which again excludes a lot of classes.


Just my 2 cents.

Careful with bubbles especially as long as you are not able to measure out if it's a bubble or not

The quests would not use up the time of developers. Uthgards "TriggerActionSystem" offers GMs the possibility to completely create quests within the game without the needs of a DEV to code. Currently some of the GMs are doing an overhaul of classic quests, meaning implementing new classic-quests in addition of replacing former dev-coded quests by TA-scripted ones. So, the work is clearly seperated. The Devs are still doing their development stuff while the GMs received a new toy which empowers their abilities.

Developing quests is not that difficult, especially in the world of DAoC as there is plenty of lore to be found within the internet. The following subjects have not yet been fully implemented by Mythic:

Tuatha de Danaan; Milesians, kindreds of half-god Beli Mawr;Welsh Mabinogi Saga; Gylfaginning Saga; Thors Crusades; and so on ...

Further more to say I did not say that each quest should give huge rewards, but that there should be standart quests like in WAR/WoW/... in addition to large scale storyline quests which will take a few hours for the player to solve and eventually could lead to a hard group-encounter. Such quests should obviously give a lot of exp especially due to the length and difficulty.

A reduction of BGs would be an option, even though you still will have players running one twink after another to participate in BG rvr. However, I like your RR-ranges as these should be enough for players to jump into the "small rvr", get a taste and go on leveling to reach the next lvl-range. This is exactly how the battlegrounds should work ... having a taste of RvR, but not being able to stay within a certain range for too long as the main fight is going on at lvl50!

The major point is that DAoC always used to be about lvl50 RvR, a fight between the realms and on classic-live servers no player ever argued that much about having to face highRR opponents while being just for example RR2 ... the players simply used to join the fight AND fought together!

Indeed I do not know whether it really would be so hard for the staff to get those quests in place, but I can see that they're not popping up a new quest each month let alone week. To fully benefit from your idea u'd need a lot more quests than we have now.

Anyway, besides that, I think it's important to look at the positive element of DAoC PvE: socializing and communicating with people to start a grp and especially while xping on itself. Perhaps it would be a nice idea to boost the xp for being in a group, not only for pulling mobs in group, so that every group can benefit from working together.

The lack of this element in quests is a huge flaw in quest-based MMOs like WAR and WoW. Those games allow you to mind your own business and gind trough the levels as if you were playing single player, completely destroying the community feeling and immersion. This is what I'd never like to see in DAoC, which is why Catacombs for instance was such a big fail in my book. Instancing is another community killer.

I think more quests, like they were on live, perhaps with an xp boost here and there would help the PvE grind become more pleasant and interesting, however the quests should never become the main XP source or else u'll end up in a WoW - WAR similar situation.
I wouldn't mind custom quests I think, but I'd rather have them work on the old quests first, perhaps tweak the sometimes very gimped items and rewards a bit like I said before, but for the rest they're perfectly viable to do if u're bored of grinding.

Even though it's true what you say about no fuss on live about being 2L0 when entering end-RvR, it would be kind of rough to make this change now on Uthgard. I personally wouldn't mind, even if I'd have to start all over again, but I think it'd just make it rougher for newer players. The downside on having that last BG of course is that it's another BG, which in place creates another opportunity to hide from end-RvR.

To summarize:

- I think classic quests should come first, with or without slightly improved rewards.
- Quests should never be a viable way to level from 1-50 without ever having to group up to hunt mobs like we're used to.
- My perfect XPing speed order would be: Solo PvE < Quests < Group PvE.
- Reduce BGs to either only 20-24 or 20-24 and 44-49 (probably lower the 44-49 cap to 3L5 to reduce BG campers).
- Double the overall xp rate.

Oh and.. of course, as long as there's BGs, there will be BG only players, but I don't think even by removing BGs they will easily take the step to end-RvR.

Nayru wrote:We do not have the capacities for another bg. Battleground split the players from all other zones and homelands. If there would be an extra bg, you would even have less action in the current battlegronds.

No resources to make a BG, but resources to make Tajendi 2, am I the only one who's putting a big ':?:' right here?

Oh and by the way, the issue is that the BGs start too low, in fact I think it's better to have a BG from lvl 20-24 and then again from 44-49 instead of the current custom way...

20-24 to break the early grind, 44-49 to get some RRs to be ready for Agramon and ease the hardest levels.


Nothing more to it really.

Saucez wrote:No resources to make a BG, but resources to make Tajendi 2, am I the only one who's putting a big ':?:' right here?

This is your server? This server will be how GMs want to have it and not how you want have it you.

Did I ever say otherwise? Never, EVER have I said so, in fact I've always said the opposite but noooooo people LOVE selective reading in here.

All I'm saying is that I think it's worth raising some questions about such a statement while the last big new implementation was Tajendi 2 and what I think about the BG issue. Yes, I think it's an issue, just like many others, but that get's disregarded by the staff, which is of course their full right, it just doesn't bring either parties any further.

Zarkor wrote:Did I ever say otherwise? Never, EVER have I said so, in fact I've always said the opposite but noooooo people LOVE selective reading in here.

All I'm saying is that I think it's worth raising some questions about such a statement while the last big new implementation was Tajendi 2 and what I think about the BG issue. Yes, I think it's an issue, just like many others, but that get's disregarded by the staff, which is of course their full right, it just doesn't bring either parties any further.

Would you rather have staff doing stuff they love and keep working on the server

or

would you rather have staff doing something they dont like and stop working on the server for this reason?

1 to 30 is no grinding, it's plain fun, meet ppl, kill browny's, from time to time i just start a new char just to do some quests and kill some low lvl mobs, and most of the time i can't believe how fast i reach 30 and get into breamar, ok, the fast food nation would like a bg as soon as they create a char...
what will they do when they reach the first bg limit? play another game? create a new char?

as it is now, breamar addicts need to grind a day or two to get back to brea if they get kicked, with a lower bg, they will just stay there, starting new chars all the time.. or just leave the server..

just my 2 cents

monty wrote:1 to 30 is no grinding, it's plain fun, meet ppl, kill browny's, from time to time i just start a new char just to do some quests and kill some low lvl mobs, and most of the time i can't believe how fast i reach 30 and get into breamar, ok, the fast food nation would like a bg as soon as they create a char...
what will they do when they reach the first bg limit? play another game? create a new char?

as it is now, breamar addicts need to grind a day or two to get back to brea if they get kicked, with a lower bg, they will just stay there, starting new chars all the time.. or just leave the server..

just my 2 cents

DAoC PvE IS grinding from 1 to 50 and it's way better than the quest-marathon in <random NewAge MMO>. And i don't see the difference between xping a toon to braemar level + reroll and xping a toon to xyz level +reroll

P.S.: If you like xping so much, i could use some level 30 hibbies

salbei wrote:no more bgs !
sad enough that the agramon population is 10-12% of the max population.

its not asked too much to lvl to 30 to have a day fun i braemar

imo rr caps should get lowered again.

lvl50 rvr is what this game is about - not stupid bg´s.

Quoted because true.

No need for more BGs, just 2 BGs with the first one actually playable at level 20ish instead of 30 and the last one to get some introductionary RR.

That's all we really need, so the argument of 'more bgs' isn't relative.


I would rather have the staff to listen to their community when it has a valid concern and try to address those issues, but yea... In the end it's still them who decide what strings to pull and which ones to leave untouched untill they decay.

I only had time to read the first 3 pages ... Nice work guys.

I would like a lower level bg (not LOW level, but LOWER level). I think it is important that players learn how to play their toons .. so I think a bg at level 15 - 20 would be ideal. Maybe level 15 - 19.

And how about having a gap between the higher level bgs? So Braemar from 24 - 29 .. Wilton from 34 - 39 .. Thidranki from 44 - 49.

Now with the gap, players can make the most of the PvE environment too... Since previous posters have been saying how easy it is to level in groups etc, they shouldnt have a problem levelling between the bgs! ;]

Ragadas wrote:I only had time to read the first 3 pages ... Nice work guys.

I would like a lower level bg (not LOW level, but LOWER level). I think it is important that players learn how to play their toons .. so I think a bg at level 15 - 20 would be ideal. Maybe level 15 - 19.

And how about having a gap between the higher level bgs? So Braemar from 24 - 29 .. Wilton from 34 - 39 .. Thidranki from 44 - 49.

Now with the gap, players can make the most of the PvE environment too... Since previous posters have been saying how easy it is to level in groups etc, they shouldnt have a problem levelling between the bgs! ;]

I like this idea alot^^

At least make bgs, 24-29, 34-39,44-49.

A 14-19 bg would be ok too but not as necesary.

the first bg is joke, because the levels have a too high difference.
14-19 bg is not good, it ppl must level in ove zones.

Raghor wrote:Also Battlegrounds gab es definitiv mit 1.65 schon.

Ich hatte mit ca 1.4 auf live angefangen und konnte damals nach Thidranki (20-24)gehen.
Die BG verteilung wie wir sie zzt auf Uth haben ist eh schon coustum.

Eigentlich sieht es auf live so aus:
-Sandkasten 1-4
-Löwengrube 5-9
-Hügel von Claret 10-14
-Killalloe 15-19
-Thidranki 20-24
-Braemar 25-29
-Wilton 30-34
-Molvik 35-39
-Leirvik 40-44
-Cathal Valley (Oldemain clon) 45-49

Damals gab es:
-Abermenai 15-19
-Thidranki 20-24
-Murdeigean 25-29
-Caledonia 30-34

Ob nun alte Bg´s eingeführt werden würden oder alte behalten würden, und wie die lvl Grenzen gesetzt werden wird definitiv erst besprochen WENN es eine Entscheidung für 1.65 gibt. Gibts aber noch nicht^^

Could anyone be so kind to translate this to English please? I have the feeling it's useful material for this discussion, however I stumbled on it while peeking in the German Boards.

I think I understand but I'm just not sure enough to make it public, in any way I think quotes like these should find some way into an up-to-date FAQ that's not bound by being german or english.