I'm also very keen on the idea of OF, I've played DAOC on and off since it's release so have experienced alot of OF and NF action, along with playing other shards running OF.
I believe emain is perfectly suited to the population of the server and would continue to be so even if the population were to double.
As said above, players know or are quickly able to find the hotspots, and even avoid them if need be.
It's definately worth putting the idea of OF to a vote.

Excuse we you have exactly what opportunity in ClassicEmain? If you played in these times you knew that ...

Albion: has to move from ATK to AMG which actually offers only one straight route - the road itself. Not many ran between the granny spots at the southern side, though it also would be in rang of view from the main road.
Hibernia: usually moved through the eastern valley, in rare occasions via western due to the fact that the eastern valley directly lead to the AMG
Midgard: usually just picked the closest route which was just besides the eastern zone bounding of the valley to AMG. Of course some groups picked the route via lusus-lake, but this one usually was taken by SGs.


I used to play back in these times and Zarkor already quoted my arguments against OF. Even if you believe the zone wouldn't be zergy it obviously would due to the fact that all action would be pointed towards the AMG. Rare 8vs8 fights would fastly be zerged down, because these fights used to take place not more than ~5-10k units afar of the AMG meaning a quick interfereance is possible. One of my biggest concerns is that this zone would mean a loss of imlemented and probably upcoming features while in it's final appearance it would reduce DAoC RvR to some kind of battleground RvR ... something we as staff never wanted to have!

As Blue already mentioned the major problem is that players often simply do not "meet" each other while the removal of boatroutes to hostile territories was the first step to solve that issue. Currently we are working on further improvements so that the players find each other more easily. Two possibilities are in staff-internal discussion.

How can you say that implementing OF will reduce DAoC to battleground RvR? FYI: old Emain WAS DAoC RvR.

Your arguments against 8v8 fights are not valid, as any group which seriously wants to have a clean fight will not pick one in the choke points (this goes for both OF and NF).

I find it quite amusing everyone talking that "change x" and "change y" and this and that will lead to "zergs". I see that most people can't comprehend that THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH people in redesigned frontiers for proper 8v8 let alone "zergs".

Let's attract more people to 50 rvr, "zergs" should be taken care of in step 2.

Back to the topic - if implementing old frontiers would improve lvl50 rvr, then i support them holeheartly.

Haldan, what you see as a zerg problem and BG RvR, the community sees as a way to finally know where to find incs, combined with one of (if not the) best RvR map DAoC has ever known.

Agramon is just not cutting it, LWRPs have halved since camps are removed and the general action is just horrible. Once groups start logging, it's becoming a pain to go out and try to find incs because they can be anywhere. During primetime, Emain will automatically spread out its action because groups will try to avoid getting fights near AMG, because indeed, it's one of the biggest chokepoints ever seen in DAoC. It's like fighting near HMG when camps were still in. Going there is asking for adds on primetime.
However when primetime comes to an end, AMG will become more and more attractive for the groups still around, keeping the action concentrated and fun for the people that are still around, whereas the current RvR zone Agramon comepletely destroys RvR outside primetime. You can't neglect this fact, it really harms the RvR motivation.

90% of the community agrees that RvR isn't as fun as it can be and agrees that there needs to be a solution to this problem. OF is one of these solutions which is supported by most of the people that replied here so far, most of them stating that the feared zerg-effect will not be the problem some people are afraid of. Emain used to be the RvR zone for more active RvR players than the whole of Uthgards current entire population and still there were few to no troubles regarding zergs. In fact, 90% of the people that played then enjoyed the map a lot. Of course, zergs were always around, some people just zerged every time they could, regardless of time/place, but I don't think this can be reflected to the Uthgard situation because most of the time, Uthgard just doesnt have the RvR opulation to support these kind of zergs/habits.

I agree with you that the loss of features and upcoming changes is something that should not be taken lightly, the staff has worked long and hard on these things and are in the position to not give that up. However, if the changes do not live up to their goals, I believe that it might be worthwhile considering more drastic changes.

Don't get me wrong though, I wouldn't mind waiting for improvements to the current system, but I just fear that it will not become the way it should be. Making me still highly supportive of having OF instead of NF. Perhaps even rather sooner than later, since I truly believe this would actually be a working solution from the start on.

PS: The timed port doesn't really support the 'BG RvR' argumentation .

first of all: anyone has a full map of hib OF zones?

second:

Haldan wrote:Two possibilities are in staff-internal discussion.

could these 2 possibilities be public known so it could be discussed by community before it is / isn't implemented?

atm I don't see problem with lack of people in agramon, they are there, even it's lower number than before, but thing is most of the time you meet them at bridges, so basicaly you have huge zone where everyone meets at one place, this seems to combine the cons of big and small zone.

and btw milegates in old emain - camping 24/7 woot.

Haldan wrote:Excuse we you have exactly what opportunity in ClassicEmain? If you played in these times you knew that ...

Albion: has to move from ATK to AMG which actually offers only one straight route - the road itself. Not many ran between the granny spots at the southern side, though it also would be in rang of view from the main road.
Hibernia: usually moved through the eastern valley, in rare occasions via western due to the fact that the eastern valley directly lead to the AMG
Midgard: usually just picked the closest route which was just besides the eastern zone bounding of the valley to AMG. Of course some groups picked the route via lusus-lake, but this one usually was taken by SGs.

That is your experience from your server. I played OF on live aswell and groups would rather follow the eastern ridge near the levian-al. AMG was largely avoided because of the (alb) zerg. You had a different mentality back then where zerging was 'okay' and people did it for no particular reason. Except for the occasional mid zerg some months you don't see a lot of zergs on Uthgard unless it's a relic raid.

I can't agree with the whole adding-issue either. It's a problem right now aswell. In the last few days I've seen groups adding on numerous occasions even with this huge zone. In primetime atm there are (normally) enough groups running but the layout just makes for more adding. Like the small connecting piece of land between HW/Emain/Odins and Agra, so small that you can't avoid other groups/fights. I'm not all negative about the current RvR situation cause at primetime you can find 8v8 action when there are enough groups but at off-peak hours it's not that great either, not in the least for soloers.

i dont know if someone played rightnow or the last 2 hours..

mid raidet crauchon no defense

i camped since 10 o'clock beno/boldiam

since 2 hours no inc there.. sorry to the some greens we killed wasnt grey for us =(

any hib/alb can tell me whats the problem is ?
100mids/300 people at all online

i just wondering u see zerg or nothing.. i didnt count the some low rvr action early in the morning

will old emain really change it ?

nixian wrote:first of all: anyone has a full map of hib OF zones?

...

Zarkor wrote:PS: Here are links to some the OF maps.
[HIB]http://daoc.catacombs.com/maps/c_hib_frontier_kirstena.jpg
[ALB]http://www.io.com/~caladin/kirstena/albionmaps/albion_frontier.gif
[MID]http://daoc.catacombs.com/maps/c_mid_frontier_kirstena.jpg

It's in the OP

Zarkor wrote:It's in the OP

/doh ty

nixian wrote:first of all: anyone has a full map of hib OF zones?

second:

Haldan wrote:Two possibilities are in staff-internal discussion.

could these 2 possibilities be public known so it could be discussed by community before it is / isn't implemented?

a) We have complete old OF, old mainland patchfiles at hand. No problem.
b) To give a hint. We think about extending the porterlines nearly into enemy territory so there will be a large moving frontline and giving you ports into action. There is another idea that can help solos to show that they are there but I dont want to talk about details.

Blue wrote:

nixian wrote:first of all: anyone has a full map of hib OF zones?

second:

Haldan wrote:Two possibilities are in staff-internal discussion.

could these 2 possibilities be public known so it could be discussed by community before it is / isn't implemented?

a) We have complete old OF, old mainland patchfiles at hand. No problem.
b) To give a hint. We think about extending the porterlines nearly into enemy territory so there will be a large moving frontline and giving you ports into action. There is another idea that can help solos to show that they are there but I dont want to talk about details.

a) Sweet, old maindland aswell ... ! *drools*
b) Interesting ^^.

PS: funny how people are forgetting what OF stands for and are using 'new OF' aswell as 'old OF' . Probably just because they focus on the actual topic instead of futilities like this.. /slap me

Zarkor I have been long enough a staffmember to have seen different proposals, implemented proposals and the reaction of players on implemented proposals meaning even if some arguments sound absolutely conclusive and at least some of the most forum active players try to push a certain change, it simply ...

a) ... does not mean that the whole server population wants the change
b) ... does not mean that these forum active players are able to understand a supposed change in terms of "global/server/gameplay effects"
c) ... does not mean that these forum active players know current statistics and player movements within the current zone

See, if we implement a feature we simply do not implement it and just forget about it. We implement it, watch the results of the implamentation and analyse the situation. Thats for example something Blue did the last days and he found out that there are enough players (primetime 120-180 which is by now a +30-100% improvement of total players in comparison to the numbers we usually had when the camps were still implemented) meaning the last changes improved the overall situation and this is exactly what we as GMs can see while observing primetime RvR. What now has to be done is to bring the soloers a bit more together and that is exactly what we are currently working on!

A call for a map change seems for some players to be the "via regia", the "ambrosia" to dedicated, fast RvR but to make it plain simple ... it just isn't.

Haldan wrote: Blue did the last days and he found out that there are enough players (primetime 120-180 which is by now a +30-100% improvement of total players in comparison to the numbers we usually had when the camps were still implemented) meaning the last changes improved the overall situation and this is exactly what we as GMs can see while observing primetime RvR.

It doesn't seem like you took the gain in population from i50 servers going down into consideration.

You now have the opportunity to keep a high population by implementing things properly and enticing players to stay before the next one appears.

EDIT: Here comes the "if people do not wish to play here, they can leave" reply.