Tyton wrote:Howdy all,
First off, super excited to have Uthgard back and be playing DAoC again. Huge thanks to the server’s staff for their tireless efforts and bringing so many thousands of people together!
Starting a thread here to ask players (and hopefully GMs) if the Battlegrounds will be remaining the way they are (i.e. releasing after death ports you back to border keep/realm outside of BG). As it stands, this really renders Battlegrounds obsolete (in my opinion). I know we’re all rushing to 50 at the moment so not a ton of us are stopping to smell the roses, but I don’t see people really coming together for Battleground play now or in the future with being ported out of Battlegrounds and not returning to action 15-20 minutes later (there should also be a healer there IMO as well). It's just too much for the lowbie crowd. I’d imagine the opposition would tire of waiting if say, that was the only enemy group in the instance. There are no where near enough people in Battleground for this to occur, as wild as that sounds with 5.5k trying to connect on a Sunday. In the interest of discussion I’d like to explore this topic itself here regardless of the outcome.
Now, there was a bug report on this last year HOWEVER this is how BGs were originally intended to be in 1.65, it would port you out of BG just like the way it does on Uth 2.0. So this is NOT a bug (it just sucks lol). Many have pointed out that this is “live-like" or “this is 1.65” but we’ve already had so many additions, modifications and upgrades to our patch level I don’t think remaining true to 1.65 is necessarily a valid argument for this one. I do recall someone in the report pointing out that battle groups weren’t until 1.66--but hey, we want them and they’re great so we use them in 1.65. That’s just one example, there are countless others.
The main argument I’ve heard against this being implemented is that it will hurt 50 RvR because people will be tempted to twink Battleground alts and not participate in RvR. This is not an invalid argument, it is a legitimate concern and one that I share. But let’s look at the facts, there was +5.5k people trying to connect today, when a ton of those people hit 50 and template, how in the world will frontiers be hurting for action? Hell, there hasn’t been a time I’ve gone out even now without getting into some trouble (and rather quickly). Also, are we saying that the vast majority of us just can’t control ourselves from playing Battlegrounds constantly rendering endgame RvR scarce? Maybe there’s some of those people (this doesn’t include myself) but they’re not the majority, not even close.
One thing that makes DAoC so great is that there’s so much to do, and Battleground play is part of that. For me, it’s an extremely fun part of it and I know hundreds if not thousands of others feel this way. We love PvE, we love Frontier RvR, we love the crafting system, we love housing, and we love BGs (inb4 someone bashes one of these parts of the game). Taking away one of those things hurts the overall game experience for a lot of people, Battlegrounds is no exception. Now I know BGs aren’t purposely being rendered useless but that’s likely the effect the current state of BG instances will have, and at the very least will make them way less fun than they were on Uth 1.0.
Having the opportunity to experience RvR as your class in Battlegrounds as you level is invaluable to newer players, returning players and players who aren’t as experienced in endgame RvR. This will give them an opportunity to test their skills beyond PvE, and while it won’t make them rockstars at 50 just because they played a few rounds of Thid, it’s still experience. But we’ll all still complain when people don’t do their jobs right at 50 in RvR even though they haven’t even had the chance to fight anyone until then, right? In the old days of live, shortly after the release of SI, someone of my fondest pre-50 memories were seeing enemy players for the first time. I no longer had to wait until that specific character was 50 to see some realm vs realm action, I was genuinely excited and those BG trips helped me learn the classes I played for the first time. AND it creates and early sense of realm pride (something we’re all serious about here with the huge waits to switch faction).
Another issue people have with this is players/twinks being too OP in Battlegrounds, owning the newer, less geared players. But it’s really no different in Frontiers, in fact the gap will grow even farther in time there than it could ever have in a Battleground. I think it’s fair to say most people that play on this server (or daoc in general) don’t reach endgame, templated RvR so by those people being in a Battleground, you’re not necessarily taking away from endgame because they were never going to be there in the first place. Those are the more casual players of course, and if people are saying, “well good, we don’t want them here anyway” or “beat it, you’re tying up the queue to play stupid BGs” who says those people don’t have a right to play the game the way they want (or as much as their schedules allow) as long as they follow the Uthgard rules? Now if the Uthgard staff doesn’t want these people playing, that’s another story and that’s entirely up to them (I don’t believe that is the case though, they seem to be pretty happy that everyone is here playing--as am I). But that’s the whole basis of games like this, get better gear and more money to beat the other guys. How is a few BG twinks worse than a templated level 50 group owning countless full groups of grey players in frontiers? I think it’s up to us to be responsible (or irresponsible) as players while remaining in line with the Uthgard Server rules.
People have stated (and I agree) that those exceeding the RR cap for the BG will hurt the experience for other players (again no different than endgame for some). So why not just either A) force them out once they’ve capped B) not allow them to continue gaining RPs passed that cap or C) prevent them from returning to the Battleground after capping and dying?
Personally, and I know many others feel this way. I love DAoC not just for the 50 RvR or killing dragons but because of how multifaceted the game is--there’s just so much to do. And Battlegrounds are part of that. Uthgard gives us the best (and only) shot at experiencing that again. This is my favorite game of all time and I have been playing it on and off since 2001, and I strongly feel that this part of the game shouldn’t be rendered useless (or with major hinderance) because of a 1.65 technicality, as so many other modifications have already been made that aren’t exactly ‘1.65.’ Certain parts of ‘classic’ were updated because they hurt gameplay, this is a prime example. Would love to hear people’s (intelligent) thoughts on this. Hopefully this hsan't been discussed yet on forum (I didn't see anything beyond bug report). OK good talk, see ya out there.
T
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