_Oglop_ wrote:In today's setting we have frivolous abuse of such ridiculous abilities. Stealthers Viper spam, 15minute RuT on Vanish allows them to avoid almost any casualty.

You clearly have never played an Inf for any period of time. I will grant you that running around in DF on Mid side works out how you describe a lot however out in Emain it is a different story.

Once you get to AMG on an Inf during high population time you immediately get a Ranger shooting you from max bow range with MOS5. 3-4 arrows before you can get to them and with IP you have no chance of killing them when they drop you to 10% health before you even touch them, and my Inf has the best of everything.

Vanish is totally worthless against MOS. I managed to make it to MMG a couple of days ago and was promptly killed from behind by a Ranger.

The only time this isn't an issue is when the population is low late at night. Vanish isn't that great when everyone on the server has a ranger and every ranger has MOS5.

Which reminds me Camo was put in the game as a counter to the Old RA See Hidden which was always an overpowered game breaking POS for archers. Now we have MOS so why do archers get Camo on Uthgard?

I agree Svp to a certain extent with your 2 posts above. Assasins are VERY powerful classes, but the ranged stealthers in the game if spec'd and played right are the paper to their rock in the paper/rock/scisorrs game of DAoC. I dont think there is anything wrong with Viper 3. If they made a custom change on it I dont think it would even effect the really good assasins as most of them only spec Viper 1 or 2 and go with high Aug Dex, Purge 3, Toughness, and Mastery of Pain. I will admit that an assasin with Viper 3 and Vanish will kill most tanks no problem by simply going up, perf, drop poinsons and disease, vanish, wait 30 seconds and come back to finish the job, but some tanks have abilities that are almost as powerful. Levi on reaver, dirty tricks on Mercs, Wrath of Champions for Champs/Thane/Pally, RR5's on many of them, spammable AoE effects to pop an assasins after they vanish, and well you get the point. Viper is strong, but a good player spec'd right should be able to overcome it.

As far as the camo comments are concerned, I remember when Camo was implemented on live. The reason they implemented it was that the ranged stealthers were supposed to be the "scouts" of DAoC. They were supposed to sneak around and give intel on the enemies whereabouts. As you pointed out, when this was first implemented MoS did not exist. It was put in place to counter act the "See Hidden" ability that all assasins get for spec'ing into stealth. Assasins still get that abliity, so I dont really see a reason to remove camo. However, if you are talking strictly from a point of view of trying to achieve a bit more "equality" in the stealther warfare then I always said Assasins should lose the "See Hidden" ability and should instead get their own version of camo that works just like the ranged stealthers camo. I also wish MoS helped assasins detect other assasins. However, as my parents always told me, "Wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which fills up first." That change would never happen.

RonELuvv wrote: It was put in place to counter act the "See Hidden" ability that all assasins get for spec'ing into stealth.

Close but no. That is Detect Hidden. See Hidden was an Old RA that cost 8 points and only Assassins could get. It completely nullified archer stealth and you ended up with Scouts that couldn't scout. So Camo was put in as a counter to See Hidden.

Now with MOS in the game for both Archers/Assassins there is no reason at all to have Camo on archers.

svperstar wrote:

RonELuvv wrote: It was put in place to counter act the "See Hidden" ability that all assasins get for spec'ing into stealth.

Close but no. That is Detect Hidden. See Hidden was an Old RA that cost 8 points and only Assassins could get. It completely nullified archer stealth and you ended up with Scouts that couldn't scout. So Camo was put in as a counter to See Hidden.

Now with MOS in the game for both Archers/Assassins there is no reason at all to have Camo on archers.

Except that assasins now get Detect Hidden (same exact thing as See Hidden) now for free and dont have to spend a single point into MoS to have it. So it still exists, but maybe under a different name. Also, if what you say is true then why did archers keep camo on live?

RonELuvv wrote:

svperstar wrote:

RonELuvv wrote: It was put in place to counter act the "See Hidden" ability that all assasins get for spec'ing into stealth.

Close but no. That is Detect Hidden. See Hidden was an Old RA that cost 8 points and only Assassins could get. It completely nullified archer stealth and you ended up with Scouts that couldn't scout. So Camo was put in as a counter to See Hidden.

Now with MOS in the game for both Archers/Assassins there is no reason at all to have Camo on archers.

Except that assasins now get Detect Hidden (same exact thing as See Hidden) now for free and dont have to spend a single point into MoS to have it. So it still exists, but maybe under a different name. Also, if what you say is true then why did archers keep camo on live?

Its broken and does not work. What I am saying is true. See Hidden was put in the game and let Assassins see Archers to the clipping plan. Camo was put in to give scouts a way to Scout. As to why Camo stayed in, I dunno.

svperstar wrote:Its broken and does not work. What I am saying is true. See Hidden was put in the game and let Assassins see Archers to the clipping plan. Camo was put in to give scouts a way to Scout. As to why Camo stayed in, I dunno.

I'm pretty sure it does work, but i would have to burn a ra stone to prove it. IIRC Detect Hidden gives assassins another 125 units from Detect Hidden that works against all stealth classes. That's basically MoS 1.5 without speccing any MoS. If i'm specced MoS 2 to go along with Detect Hidden, then i should (and i beleive i do) see MoS 3 ranged players (scouts/ranger) at the same time they see me if their camo is down.

Its been a long time and i can't verfiy or contradict your statement that you could see archers at clipping range with See Hidden (Passive Ability). I don't think that was correct, but hey, your memory may be better than mine.

I do recall Ranged classes (i had a hunter on live) got True Sight which detected ALL stealthed enemies in clipping range, but was on a 30min timer, with a 60sec duration.

_Oglop_ wrote:DAoC was not built around the solo game, there will always be imbalances in that setting. Hence why the game is focused around team-play.

I always thought the game was designed to let you decide how u wanted to play... Solo or Grouped. And to this end i'm glad its still like that. There's nothing i hated more than spending 1 hour of my typical 2 hour per night playtime building groups, running 10 minutes to action, dying (or living), then 2/3 of my group (or the enemy) going afk while ra's came back up or walking the dog. Thats why i choose to solo now. I have no one depending on me, and i do not have to deal with 7 other people staying awake, taking a smokebreak every 5 minutes, going to the bathroom, spilling a drink on their keyboard and having to clean it up, ranting and ragequitting while they slam their keyboard because they lost a fight... you get the idea.

I know you have always hated the solo game Nayeh. I was impartial until i played the group game on uthgard during offpeak hours. I don't miss it a bit.

RonELuvv wrote:Tell me Nayeh, what does going to Old RA's fix? I mean what does it truly fix at all. It makes casters a little bit better, and it gets rid of charge and low RuT's on RA's, but what does it really improve? Does is allow for more people that are not getting groups to get groups? Nope, still the same BS usual set ups that you always run. Does it make group fights more fair? Nope, it just increases timers and cost for RA's. You are delusional to expect going to Old RA's to improve a single thing here.

Old RA's fixes a number of problems. The easiest way to sum it up with one sentence is that it "presents a balance that was designed around our patch level"...that is, NF was designed around, and further balanced to include TOA and other things we will never have access to.

Before I point out some of the things wrong with NF I want to say it did do in my opinion two things well. The changes to DET for hybrids and Mastery of Focus were good changes. Det to hybrids improved the 8v8 meta game, although it did kind of give a benefit to zergs i wish it hadn't, but you can't have it both ways I suppose. MoF is obviously superior to majestic will.

But to go into detail, it fixes a lot of problems. I won't be able to cover them all but I will name a few.

NF RA's are too expensive, so players that are new and not high RR are severly punished. In Old RAs you could get DET5 and Instant Purge on a main tank at RR3LX, in NF that takes RR5L9. RR3LX versus 5L9 is incredibly different, that one single thing alone is enough to make the switch, but its one of a thousand.

Continuing with the trend of RAs favoring the high RR, the passive in NF are setup so that the higher tiers which cost much more RSPs grant drastically more points into a stat than the lower tiers. This means that people who are high RR can make use of much more significant bonuses to stats. Old RA aug stats were linear, so aug strength 5 gave the same increase over aug strength 4 as aug strenth 1 gave over no aug strength.

NF MoC at nearest to OF value costs 30 points and has a 25% dmg penalty. Old RA's MoC was I think 14 points (and needed i believe AA3 an already useful RA), so you pay twice the points for a 25% penalty. Someone who only had the points to spend as they would in old ras (read: low RR) would get a 50% penalty. Further favoring high RR.

NF RA's totally screwed up the timers on active RAs. in NF you could instantly port into action, so mythic saw fit to drastically reduce the time on actives, but this creates huge problems for balance, where high RR players with tons of expensive active RAs will always have them up.

Purge on a 5 minute timer should only go to hibernia. And it should go through group purge on druids (2 groups purges normally plus everyone's own purge every 30 minutes, so almost 1 every 10 minute on average). Albs and mids should not have access to that many purges. Giving them access to that many purges allows the high RR to trump bad play and loss of CC with RR. One of the defining characteristics of daoc was its CC, and 5 minute purge works to ruin that dynamic.

MoC is on a 10 minute timer and favors non dmg classes. In Old RAs, moc was designed as a 15 seconds every 30 minutes way for people that typically did massive amounts of dmg to try and time perfectly for a key opportunity. In NF RA's its a dump every fight for people that don't get effected drastically by reduction of dmg. Like buff shear/disease/cure mezz etc, and it lasts 30 seconds. 30 seconds every 10 minutes encourages dumping the RA every fight, where as in Old RAs you were rewarded for perfect timing and use. And since it didnt penalize dmg casters, it was useful for doing much greater things.

SoS is neutered, has too short of a timer, and is given to hibs and mids. While hibs should be able to purge often, only albs should be able to SoS on inc. Furthermore, it should be up every 30 minutes only, again, rewarding well timed use, and not encouraging dumping. The fact that mids can SoS on almost every inc is an abomination to the idea of a "classic" setting.

BoF every fight and for every realm. Oh ya, and we will just more than double the cost...c'mon.

Sorc's with complete melee immunity and ichor allowing them to root a train 3 times in succession, give me a break.

Mentalists should counter theurgists/caba/sorc with STT. Pretty simply, ments should be a direct counter to basically all of albs casters. That's so huge for a low RR hib group, facing albs that are way high RR than them. If the theur moc spams out a million pets, the cabby and sorc use their pets to lock support, the ment can just tear them down. But its not like you can do it every 5 minutes or something, Old RAs balances that awesome counter with a long timer, making you think twice. And btw, its 1 pet clear, so you better land it and not let the albs recover. There were certain alb groups that I used to fight back in Old RAs, that we could not beat without STT, the loss of that RA alone would convince me to go back to Old RAs, but again one of a thousand.

AOG in NF is a bad joke. Only reason I have 1 shot full buffed casters with quads over 1,000 dmg.

Viper in NF is a bad joke. 1 viper3 application would probably kill an SC debuffed caster here.

WoC in NF is a bad joke. "i win!"

So many RR5 abilities are a complete joke. Oh, were you and a ranger having a close, down to the wire fight? lol, not anymore.

PD in NF is a bad joke. At least SI had cold damage weapons for mids, but are those even going to be implemented? and they were no even lvl 50, but like 48 or something.

Aom should reduce CC. It should also cost a lot less and be linear increases per level.

NF RAs encourages people to timer camp. If you've only got another 3 minutes until purge is back up, why not just wait? 3 minutes is nothing. If you've got 28 minutes of purge being down, you are going to timer camp crap. Not if youre sane.

MoA is missing. Wild Arcana is missing. The other MoA that increases buffs is missing. The other other MoA that increases melee speed is missing.

Dualist reflexes is missing.

Dodger is missing. (wru defense penetration....)

MoB is set to the wrong classes, and gives too much at high levels. (wru defense penetration....)

Charge is NF is a bad joke squared.

To sum up, NF takes a giant steaming dump on our intended setting.

svperstar wrote:

_Oglop_ wrote:In today's setting we have frivolous abuse of such ridiculous abilities. Stealthers Viper spam, 15minute RuT on Vanish allows them to avoid almost any casualty.

You clearly have never played an Inf for any period of time. I will grant you that running around in DF on Mid side works out how you describe a lot however out in Emain it is a different story.

Once you get to AMG on an Inf during high population time you immediately get a Ranger shooting you from max bow range with MOS5.

Old RAs fixes that, the Viper problem, the I can IP every fight problem, and the PD problem.

A lot of true words, but you are lucky if this will get you as much as a *shrug* from the staff unfortunately. It's not a RvR server run by RvR players, it's basically a PvE server run by PvE fans with sort-of-functional RvR as an added bonus. You just have to look at the real RvR participation - 900+++ players online, and maybe 4-6 groups out doing any sort of RvR. I am not saying that this is all due to OF RAs not being implemented, but it shows that the staff is not doing enough to make RvR more attractive to a wide range of players. Sure, they have things 'in the pipeline', but that is a very long pipeline indeed, if it has taken > 3 years now with little game play fixes to show for (not talking about RAs and so on, but things like the relic and keep system etc). Of course it's a hobby'ist project, but the focus is clearly on things other than the RvR game play.

Specifically, the staff will never see eye to eye with the RvR-active population when it comes to OF RAs - or all the players that joined the server or stuck around because of the promise to implement them. But rather than admitting that they clearly don't feel comfortably going that route and paddeling back to a patch setting that they can fully get behind (i.e. NF), we now have this mess that they refuse to resolve in a live-like way (one way or the other).

For Blue, 'classic' is punishing PvE, long downtimes yada-yada. For RvR players its uniqueness of realms in the RAs that they have access to. Two sides of the same coin when it comes to 'classic DAoC', but they just don't get that. It really grinds my gears when they argue that NF RAs are here to stay because they are 'more balanced, improve game play, etc' - when they are on a quest to make PvE increasingly cumbersome. Hypocrisy, that's what that is.

Smokey wrote:And as i said before, if you allready handicap your Char when creating it, you cant expect much.
Its like running Elf bm .........

Blablabla :p

There appears to be a correlation between advocates of New RA's and those that play classes that immensely benefit from them. Rather amusing how defensive some people get when it comes to the New vs. Old RA discussions.

Look beyond the tips of your own swords.

The above few comments and past threads already sum up as to why Old RA's would be superior to have in this setting. Old RA's provide equality and balance through indifference. New RA's provide equality through copy and paste, balance was acquired through ToA content. Which we will never have.

The goal of this server is to recreate what is known as "Classic Dark Ages of Camelot." Some act as if completely impossible to replicate Old RA's. Give me a break, there are tons of existing New RA's that could serve as an excellent foundation for the mechanics of most of the system. After branching off and working with what we already have, the reset should be simply to fill in. Some, with obvious descriptions (Mastery of Water -> Increased Swim Speed (+3%/level) ). The only things I see that would be difficult to implement would be the timered styles.

As I have said before in many discussions and I repeat yet again, we have had this server up and running for a LONG time. In that whole time we have ran NF RA's. Please, go look at the bug report section. Talk to players that know every RA for all classes and ask how many things are now working properly as of right now. The answer will be staggering. There is still IMMENSE amounts of work being put into fixing the current RA settings and we have had them for many, many years. We have also had a website in which we could test almost all of these RA's to make sure they are working correctly. With all of that we still don't have complete working RA's.

Now in saying all of that you would have us throw those to the side, years of testing and work, and start back over from scratch? Also, whether some of the RA's could be eventually figured out or guessed on there are many others that cannot be tested anymore (Grapple, Hail of Blows, Trip, Rain of fire/ice/annihilation,Winter Moon and those are just from Hib's BM and hero) . So now we are admitting that we will never know if we can work to a properly working setting or not. Yah, we can guess, but I have never seen the GM's do much on this server based on guesses.

@ Lasatard- I loved your statement and although you and I see differently on whether or not Old RA's should be implemented or not, I agree with your arguments. My favorite part is that you clearly see the problem of creating a "classic" server. One persons idea of classic is not the same as another person.

@ Nayeh- I will 110% agree that the classes I play certainly factors into why I don't want Old RA's. I also think many other people, including yourself and 90% of the rest of the population does the EXACT same thing. The difference is that I can at least admit it. You and so many others think Old RA's will fix balance issues, but I have shown on numerous occasions that it doesn't fix anything. It just mixes them up a bit. I will fully admit that there is many good sides to Old RA's, but there is MANY negatives that go with those.

@ Force- Very good post. You point out many things that show how Old RA's could provide benefits to the server. However, you unfairly only showed one side of the argument. I'm not going to go through every single problem, but I will list a few.

- You say that Old RA's allow for higher RR players to have to much of an advantage, yet high RR will still have distinct advantages. You use main tanks as your example, as a hero at 3L6 you can have det 5 and purge at a lower level, whereas at it would take 4L9 (not 5L+) to get comparable RA's with NF RA's. Nevermind you also forget the passives you now have to spec. Tireless, oh that now costs points if you want to regen endurance while in combat. Regeneration, oh yah, that helps and costs now, but was something everyone got for free. What you also don't mention is that the if this ever happened, det 5 and purge would not be enough to get you into most groups in frontiers, but det5 and purge would get you into more groups with the current settings. The fact is no patch setting will allow for lower RR's to have more success than high RR's. Groups are not suddenly going to say they will take a 3L6 over a 6L7 because its Old RA's.

One more argument there, you use heavy tanks, but what about other classes. Lets say a class I'm more familiar with. On a ranger (playing right into Nayehs hand). I would say the basics that a ranger needs to compete in RvR is MoS3, IP2, and Purge 2 with the current settings. Sure, others may feel differently, but that is the basic RA's most ranger would want to start with and they could have that at 5L0. Now on Old RA's that same ranger would probably need IP, Purge, and Truesight. Guess what RR they need for that? 5L3... Oh, and I forgot to add in tireless and regen lvl 1, so 5L5. You see, its easy to come up with examples of how it benefits, but how quickly we forget that some lose in this deal.

You also talk about cost of RA's, but you forget that for many classes their important RA's have pre-requisites. You want dodger? Better get Aug Quickness 2. You want Mastery of Pain, you need aug dex 2. The list goes on and on. Yes some classes come out better with Old RA's over New RA's, but others don't. This is not balance. How about how some RA's cost different for different classes? A BM can get IP with 17 points (First Aid 1 and 2 + IP) on Old RA's, but a Champion must pay 23 points? Yah, that's is balance all right...

-I will agree that the timers were designed for more continuous fights with insta ports, but if you remember that Blue is working on a RvR revamp that is supposed to include... PORTS. So there you go, problem solved. Now the timers will be based upon what you said they were supposed to be.

- As far as your list of RA's and who should and shouldn't have them etc, you are basically saying as Nayeh said in his post. That with Old RA's you had equality through diversity. Albs got SoS, Hibs got group purge, etc. Diversity is good, and I can understand why many would like this, but it also creates balance issues. Late at night not every group of hibs will have a druid with them, so now they don't have the "5 minute purge" you talk about. New RA's if the player is high enough RR he can run his own purge on a 5 min timer. If anything going to Old RA's makes having a set group with set classes more mandatory than New RA's does.

- You mention MoC and how timers now encourage dumping RA's every fight as opposed to being strategic. I believe this argument is invalid in the sense that you still had RA dumping with Old RA's. Its not like this only got introduced with the faster timers. Also, if you honestly don't think people will sit around and wait for 30 minutes for RA's than you are wrong. People that play this game have patience. I've seen 5-6 Mids sit at MTK for hours waiting on another 2-3 people to go to emain, and this is when there may not even be a FG out. People want to win fights when they go out, and if they think they will lose by not having RA's up then they will either avoid action or wait for RA's. Now I will admit that this will make lower RR groups more able to handle high RR groups shortly after the high RR group won a previous fight and lost RA's, but that still exists albeit on a shorter time frame.

- You mention all of these RA's that don't belong in our current settings (AoG, Viper, WoC, RR5's, PD, etc) yet with all of these OP'd RA's wouldn't they counter each other? A person who specs high PD or Toughness can withstand Viper better. A player with WoC 3 can kill a player with Viper pretty easily. AoG is very tough, but don't a lot of players RR5 abilitys allow them to withstand this better?

I do agree with you guys that NF RA's were designed with the idea that with ML's, ToA content, and the ability to go beyond the normal cap's on stats that it was more fair. This is true. However, remember classic RA's were implemented in a time when ALOT of the current classes we have didn't exist. They were also implemented without knowing full well what the effects of them would be. Because of this they revamped all of them and started from scratch.

Going from NF RA's to Old would fix some balance issues and it would create others. That is a fact. Not to mention that the task of putting them in would take another god know's how many years of work. We love to give the staff grief for taking to long to fix bugs, implement content, complete classes, introduce SI, revamp RvR, etc, and yet here we are telling them to throw out YEAR'S of work spend on our current RA settings and to start back over from scratch. Whether Old RA's are better then New RA's is a mute point. The time investure far outweighs what little benefit it would provide, and mark my words, if they were to magically appear tomorrow and they worked perfectly, it would take maybe 6 months before you heard players being upset about new imbalances and new bugs. They would be begging to go back to New RA's, just like with the switch from New Frontiers to Old Frontiers.

bow classes would never support old-ra

I understand you disagree Ron, but I don't see your reasoning to be honest. When you go through the min requisite RAs for example in Old RAs, you'll find that you can have everything you need to compete at around RR5 or RR6. Being another 2-3 realm levels above that afford minimal additional gains, as you've already picked up the important RAs at their most effective or needed levels.

In New RAs, youll see (especially in certain classes) a need for RR9-11 to get the requisite RAs. The cost and scaling here are to blame.

Groups in Old RAs at RR5 could kill groups that were RR9+ much easier. An RR4 groups that caught an RR9 group with its 30 minute RUT abilities down, and had their 30 minute RUT abilities up could win. In NF that basically never happens.

Its RR5L9 for instant purge and DET5 in New RAs, not RR4L9. At 4L9 you get 5 second delay purge.


Your examples about how the NF RAs might potentially counter each other is misguided. The counter to PD is legendary weapons. The counter to viper was increased HP pool/resists from champlevels/toa. The counter to charge was bodyguard, warguard stacking with SB etc...we don't have that setting, NF balance is completely broken by that. Old RAs is very well balanced for our setting.

Old realm abilities would be unique and draw a much larger crowd to uthgard, plus its called a classic server for a reason. End of story