So I've been playing again on Uthgard for a bit. Mainly because simply by remaining relatively unchanged, Uthgard becomes more and more distinguished from that other server. As it stands, Uthgard is the undisputed Classic DAoC server. I also wanted to check out how the server has changed since launch. Probably the best decision so far must have been the implementation of Draughts. Great change!

However, that being said, there are very valid reasons why people who prefer this setting are still refusing to play here.

Here's a list of what I see as essential improvements that are needed to put Uthgard back on the map.

Mob camp density and respawn rates.

To be honest this has not changed since launch and has been quite desastrous. Virtually all 'known' spawns -at least in Hibernia- are severly underpopulated, to the point where not the XP rate, but the actual rate of available mobs has become the primay reason why XP feels so slow. Even solo(!) I am running out of mobs to kill at what used to be great spawns.

Also, some of the kill task mobs are ridiculously spread out and equally poorly populated, making it hardly worth even bothering to look for them.

Salvaging, trinketing and crafting in general.

Farming mobs for salvaging material can be satisfying, but spending more than 2 minutes just salvaging a single drop is frankly driving people to insanity. I've spent 2 hours simply salvaging and trinketing a few bags worth of salvage loot, netting about 3-4 platinum.

Add 20 wood/metal trinketing options. Give players a way to reduce the crafting timesink.

Getting around in the realm.

Mobility is notoriously poor on Uthgard. To the point of frustration. In fact the RvR porting system is probably one of the best ways to get around even with the 3 min timer.

A porter in the capital cities and a few more hasteners in strategic places would be a tremendous improvement.

These three things don't touch PvE nor RvR balance and would vastly improve the player experience. Launching SI will not address these and will not stop people from becoming desillusioned once more, as they have since the launch of Uth 2.0.

Obviously there's more to talk about, but these are the core problems that stick out when trying to enjoy the server as-is.

Every single word ure wrote is true.
But i dont think anyone in charge will listen even i hope so.

2+ years of trinketing 2 bars at once...I've come unhinged.

I'm happy to match live rates for camps if you can demonstrate them, but we have no intent to customize them. I can confirm, generally, we have a 'best guess' that acts as a baseline but broadly speaking we make no affirmation that individual camps have been set to the right spawn rates.

DF has has received lots of care and feeding over the years so it may be the exception.

Abydos wrote:I'm happy to match live rates for camps if you can demonstrate them, but we have no intent to customize them. I can confirm, generally, we have a 'best guess' that acts as a baseline but broadly speaking we make no affirmation that individual camps have been set to the right spawn rates.

DF has has received lots of care and feeding over the years so it may be the exception.

Well, you're basically saying "spawn rates (and size?) for camps are customized, but we don't want to customize them" . . .

No offense but using 'live' as an excuse not to remedy this is nonsensical really.

A lot of camps on Uth are cleaned in just 2 pulls or are extremely tedious in the sense that you constantly have to move around to find mobs that are so far apart that they won't even link. Classic zones had to support a playerbase of 3k+ players without any other areas available. I can't imagine that providing a 3k+ playerbase was the criterion for the applied "best guess".

It's definitely custom already, but unfortunately in a bad way in most cases.

As a player, I look at spawns and see them in terms of 'pulls'. If I'm under the impression the spawn will repop before I've pulled the last mobs in a decently functioning full group, I'm generally satisfied with the camp. If it's a highly popular spot, such as parth farm in Lough Derg for instance, I'd wager you need to calculate at least 3 full groups pulling at a good rate to determine the respawn rate. At least this was what was happening on Live back in the day. If the respawn was too low, it would have never gotten so popular. On Uthgard a single group of 5-6 players can clear the spawn and may even have to wait for mobs to respawn.

Overall though, despite being a bit of work, this seems an issue which really is fairly easily addressed, given the motivation to do so.

PS: I'm mainly talking about open field camps. Dungeon spawns are trickier given the need to pass through or set up a spot to reg at times.

Zarkor wrote:

Abydos wrote:I'm happy to match live rates for camps if you can demonstrate them, but we have no intent to customize them. I can confirm, generally, we have a 'best guess' that acts as a baseline but broadly speaking we make no affirmation that individual camps have been set to the right spawn rates.

DF has has received lots of care and feeding over the years so it may be the exception.

Well, you're basically saying "spawn rates (and size?) for camps are customized, but we don't want to customize them" . . .

No offense but using 'live' as an excuse not to remedy this is nonsensical really.

A lot of camps on Uth are cleaned in just 2 pulls or are extremely tedious in the sense that you constantly have to move around to find mobs that are so far apart that they won't even link. Classic zones had to support a playerbase of 3k+ players without any other areas available. I can't imagine that providing a 3k+ playerbase was the criterion for the applied "best guess".

It's definitely custom already, but unfortunately in a bad way in most cases.

As a player, I look at spawns and see them in terms of 'pulls'. If I'm under the impression the spawn will repop before I've pulled the last mobs in a decently functioning full group, I'm generally satisfied with the camp. If it's a highly popular spot, such as parth farm in Lough Derg for instance, I'd wager you need to calculate at least 3 full groups pulling at a good rate to determine the respawn rate. At least this was what was happening on Live back in the day. If the respawn was too low, it would have never gotten so popular. On Uthgard a single group of 5-6 players can clear the spawn and may even have to wait for mobs to respawn.

Overall though, despite being a bit of work, this seems an issue which really is fairly easily addressed, given the motivation to do so.

PS: I'm mainly talking about open field camps. Dungeon spawns are trickier given the need to pass through or set up a spot to reg at times.

It aint hard at all to fix. Log on to the Dol Admin Sandbox, target the mob in question, with the right /command, you will see how easy it is to fix. Just. One. Little. Slash. Command.

Zarkor wrote:So I've been playing again on Uthgard for a bit. Mainly because simply by remaining relatively unchanged, Uthgard becomes more and more distinguished from that other server. As it stands, Uthgard is the undisputed Classic DAoC server. I also wanted to check out how the server has changed since launch. Probably the best decision so far must have been the implementation of Draughts. Great change!

However, that being said, there are very valid reasons why people who prefer this setting are still refusing to play here.

Here's a list of what I see as essential improvements that are needed to put Uthgard back on the map.

Mob camp density and respawn rates.

To be honest this has not changed since launch and has been quite desastrous. Virtually all 'known' spawns -at least in Hibernia- are severly underpopulated, to the point where not the XP rate, but the actual rate of available mobs has become the primay reason why XP feels so slow. Even solo(!) I am running out of mobs to kill at what used to be great spawns.

Also, some of the kill task mobs are ridiculously spread out and equally poorly populated, making it hardly worth even bothering to look for them.

Salvaging, trinketing and crafting in general.

Farming mobs for salvaging material can be satisfying, but spending more than 2 minutes just salvaging a single drop is frankly driving people to insanity. I've spent 2 hours simply salvaging and trinketing a few bags worth of salvage loot, netting about 3-4 platinum.

Add 20 wood/metal trinketing options. Give players a way to reduce the crafting timesink.

Getting around in the realm.

Mobility is notoriously poor on Uthgard. To the point of frustration. In fact the RvR porting system is probably one of the best ways to get around even with the 3 min timer.

A porter in the capital cities and a few more hasteners in strategic places would be a tremendous improvement.

These three things don't touch PvE nor RvR balance and would vastly improve the player experience. Launching SI will not address these and will not stop people from becoming desillusioned once more, as they have since the launch of Uth 2.0.

Obviously there's more to talk about, but these are the core problems that stick out when trying to enjoy the server as-is.

So basically you want phoenix with OF?

Too much qol is actually detrimental imo, and even though daoc comes with annoyances like those you mention, getting rid of them would be overtuning the qol. There is a point at which the question: "why bother farming/xping at all?" becomes relevant if you get rid of too much of what those things involve.

So to me its either more sensible to do away with any and all leveling and farming or keep it as is with way more minuscule qol adjustments compared to those you suggest.

As a point of interest, it's been years yes, but mob density really feels like vanilla live... Respawn rates were always poopoo too...

edit: to clarify a bit, i agree with all the points you raise being pains in the wiener sometimes, but if i had to do QOL on uthgard, i would pick 1 or 2 and certainly not all of them, and i would adjust by very small amounts (e.g: salvage 4at a time instead of the 20 you suggest, which would still be twice as fast btw)

Also, i think the idea here is to replicate as close as possible to the vanilla experience, i think if you're looking for custom daoc, you should look elsewhere...

IamKaia wrote:So basically you want phoenix with OF?

I want a Classic DAoC server that remains true to the Classic spirit. Whether it's 4, 10 or 20 metal bars at the time does not alter the spirit. Being able to port to certain locations or getting hastener speed here and there does not alter its spirit. Fixing spawns so that they are actually usable even improves its spirit.

Just a reminder in case you forgot: Uthgard is and always will be a custom freeshard. The question is do you create it custom in a way that attracts enough players to resemble the original Classic playing experience or do you drown yourself in the illusion of creating a 'true livelike' server which turns people off from playing it so badly that you get nowhere near to what Classic DAoC used to be?

It's a free world out there. Everyone's free to create a wasteland of a server or to spend time playing on it. I just think it's a shame that so much potential is being wasted when it's so easily remedied.

No i get it, but i keep making this point because you come here asking for this change to the trinket recipe, the guy after you is going to then use that as a basis for implementing a +50% crafting speed, and the next will mention how there should be macros to automatically buy X number of tries worth of each recipe, and so on until it takes 2 hours to get to legendary grand master and subsequent people will demand you increase xp gains by 1000% because we're in 2019 and nobody wants to pve apparently?

The slippery slope of qol was my point basically

Whether it's 4, 10 or 20 metal bars at the time does not alter the spirit.

That's like your opinion, man..
If you implemented all the QOL you mentioned in your post, it would certainly make things easy, but i would argue it would be a very different thing to classic daoc, which may not be 100% achievable, but is certainly not achieved by custom additions all over the place.

As a point of interest, have you even tried phoenix? why don't you play there? because all the things you have listed are there and then some, so it would seem to me that you would have an easier time enjoying yourself there rather than pushing for things uthgard devs have been notoriously reluctant to consider these last years.

SI will help the xp process a lot IMO. Good camps, good dungeons, fun raids, more xp loot...not to mention all the quests (w/ the bonus quest xp on top)

More hasteners were supposedly coming...be nice to see them indeed.

Same w/ tinderboxes...

SI also gives new capitals w/ porters...don't see the harm in putting in porters to current capitals now...

If the whole thing came together w/ SI, RvR missions, and tinderboxes, on top of things like 50% static xp bonus to a FG, huge xp bonus for hostile areas, quest xp bonus, RP bonus zone, 9 charge pots, 48hr realm timer, stat buff charges in all realms, insta port option, cheap recharging in HZ, and the extremely dedicated player base keeping global LWRP at 1mil+...well I think DAoC would have a thriving classic server! Probably see /played to 50 in 35-48 hrs, a decent pop, epic raids, dynamic RvR scene...

Things are picking up...action is getting better everyday...Hib is reborn, and even some 8v8 (or 8v7) is happening...even had a 3 realm brawl in Emain a couple days ago...

Also Blue said 'time sinks' were being looked at, and I do really hope trinketing gets attention. I get the 'slippery slope' argument...but moderation is key Not everybody who visits a Colorado chocolate shop ends up doing porn to feed a crack habit...

Grahmdal wrote:SI will help the xp process a lot IMO. Good camps, good dungeons, fun raids, more xp loot...not to mention all the quests (w/ the bonus quest xp on top)

More hasteners were supposedly coming...be nice to see them indeed.

Same w/ tinderboxes...

SI also gives new capitals w/ porters...don't see the harm in putting in porters to current capitals now...

If the whole thing came together w/ SI, RvR missions, and tinderboxes, on top of things like 50% static xp bonus to a FG, huge xp bonus for hostile areas, quest xp bonus, RP bonus zone, 9 charge pots, 48hr realm timer, stat buff charges in all realms, insta port option, cheap recharging in HZ, and the extremely dedicated player base keeping global LWRP at 1mil+...well I think DAoC would have a thriving classic server! Probably see /played to 50 in 35-48 hrs, a decent pop, epic raids, dynamic RvR scene...

Things are picking up...action is getting better everyday...Hib is reborn, and even some 8v8 (or 8v7) is happening...even had a 3 realm brawl in Emain a couple days ago...

Also Blue said 'time sinks' were being looked at, and I do really hope trinketing gets attention. I get the 'slippery slope' argument...but moderation is key Not everybody who visits a Colorado chocolate shop ends up doing porn to feed a crack habit...

I agree with all this, but moderation is such a fleeting notion

To sum it up - reduce timesinks with QoL - porters, barrels, xp speed etc and people might consider returning when the Voldemort server gets ****** through too many QoL.

I really enjoy the porting, having barrels, faster xp in the other server. Barrels & porters would not change a thing in game logic, it just reduces timesinks.

I would love to see 2 sucessfully server, so we can have a healthy competition, which generate more players then 1 server could.
And ofc, Uthgard is the oldest daocfreeshard and Uthgard, in persona Blue, had such a big impact on the daoc freeshardscene.

So i wish Uthgard much sucess.
And the other server too.
So lets go and let us play again!