DAOC 2? "Camelot Unchained" Announced

They will be announcing the beta, but not yet - Soon. And it will be a real beta,not a soft launch. They say there is realistically very very little chance of releasing 2018, but 2019 the game will absolutely be released.
Source is the interview Mr Jacobs just did last night.

Not sure how you make an MMO that has a monthly sub with a 28 person team. Something‘s gotta give.

I don’t know either, but then again, tools have improved vastly, making one and two person studios more feasible - Perhaps the same can be said with MMOs?

I know for a fact there is a two person studio making an MMO that works, and is very well recieved so far - Project Gorgon. So, with 14 times the resources, quite a lot could be achieved I’m sure.

I’ll try to give as brief as possible (thus likely too simplified) answer:

1)As mentioned, new wave of hires should bring them to 40ish team members, I guess 50ish in later betas closer to launch.

2)Per Gordon Walton (Crowfall, ex exec producer of UO,SWG,SWTOR), PvE takes “up to 70% of MMO budget” - mostly spent on PvE raids, quests and such, none of which CU will have.

No quests? No monsters to kill? You can only advance by direct conflict with other players? Sounds tricky.

If they are not going to have PvE they are clearly aiming for a low-subscriber game. I think they will struggle to have six figures after a few months.

A game without PvE content would be massively cheaper to make. PvP re-uses resources like no tomorrow. I say this as someone who has played about 1000000000048384837 warsong gulches.

/shrug. The best part of DAOC by far were the battlefields, it’s just a question whether not being able to take a break from that and work on your character in other ways with sit with people. If it catches on as an “e-sport” they might have a shot, I’d say the odds are about 1 in 100.

A subscription based PvP only game, in a world full of FTP massive content, best of luck! They may pull it off by being small enough that niche is ok, I’m sure there will be an audience for it.

Yeah, there’s a ton of games that are very popular where PvP is all there is. The hook with MMOs is character development. Players like to see their characters become more powerful. The problem I see with character development requiring PvP is that there will be winners and losers, and losers end up unsubbing.

It wouldn’t be hard to put in boring, static PvE. Just go old school and populate an area with monsters who aggro and give XP when killed and respawn.

Shadowbane had some very basic PvE. It served to help players level and learn their character abilities.

I believe there are monsters and the like, but they’re not the source of progression.

And yes, they’re aiming for a very niche MMO.

What they typically mean by no PVE is you don’t grind dungeons or raids for loot or exp. The progression is horizontal as well, so you’re getting more options and abilities but not bigger numbers though leveling.

To add to what KevinC said, here’s a quick summary of PvE from CU Wiki - https://camelot.gamepedia.com/PvE_in_Camelot_Unchained#Aspects_of_PvE_in_Camelot_Unchained

I can dig a game with no raids and dungeon/daily grinding, for sure.

How did I miss this?! Backed.

I had SO much fun back on Nimue… (sp?)

Yeah I also backed. Basic level, will upgrade if beta 1 is ever announced.

I’ll be very interested to see how they handle this. It seems like a catch 22 for me, to keep players interested, the character has to progress and get stronger, but making a character satisfying from a getting stronger perspective, means that lesser developed characters are fodder. I’ll be surprised if they solve that problem.

The other problem I see with no PvE, with a competitive only game, it’s not just how good it is, it’s how many other people are playing it. These type of games tend to sink or swim very fast without another structure to occupy players time while the game attracts a following. Once the player numbers drop to a point where getting matches becomes slow or uneven, the game is toast. The likelihood that will happen is fairly high I think.

Based on the Wiki info linked above, it sounds like your skills will still improve even if you are fodder and getting constantly slaughtered. Also, it seems like you’ll get rewards for mining, crafting and any other stuff you do. It looks kind of interesting, actually. I like the idea of a slow, horizontal progression.

  1. A different kind of Progression System is necessary
  1. The game does not use the typical vertical leveling system, which CSE claims ends up being a race to the top by the best players.
  1. The horizontal system in Camelot Unchained is expected to be much slower than in most MMORPGs - as Mark Jacobs said: “If you are looking for a game with a slower level progression than most of today’s Western MMORPGs, you have come to the right place, that’s for sure.” [7]
  1. The results of actions are not always as important as taking the actions themselves. So, even though a player is killed by a higher level player, that doesn’t mean that the player’s skills don’t improve from the fight that happened.
  1. The Progression System uses more than individual accomplishments but also looks at the actions of an entire Realm, and players are awarded for all the efforts once a day by their King, via Daily Report. This report includes not only PvP but also mining, building, crafting, gathering, trade…in fact any activity that can be considered useful in the Realm`s war effort.

This statement right here says a lot. How many players complain about leveling being too fast and how many complain about it being too slow? Which is the more likely complaint you will hear about any level-based MMO?

I thought Shadowbane handled this pretty well. Leveling was quick and you got most of your advancement early, and when leveling finally slowed the character advancement was just about over and any gains you got were trivial.

You’re comparing apples and oxen. In a traditional MMO, leveling (or otherwise making numbers go up through gear) is the core of the game.

This is technically a MMO (it’s online, it has a large number of concurrent players) but aside from that it’s not really much like what we typically associate with a MMO at all.

They are also not trying to appeal to the MMO crowd. This is a niche game for people that enjoyed DAOC’s RvR and found the PVE aspects a chore/grind. These people just wanted to fight in the frontier and battle over keeps, not grind levels, get artifacts or mastery levels, etc. Trials of Atlantis kind of took the legs out from under that game for those reasons and they’re looking to avoid those mistakes (not to mention building out the PVE portion of the game is outside their scope and budget).

So you’re saying this no power curve. Progression doesn’t really exist? You install, log in and create a character, and you’re as powerful on day one as you are on day 100?

The hook for me in an MMO is that I create a character and over time I see the character improve. I enjoy being able to improve via PvP but it’s also nice to have PvE options as well.

My point is that if progression is slow, and it only happens through PvP, then I don’t see that as a winning formula for anything other than a niche game. So maybe this will be that niche game. No idea.

The most fun I had with DAoC is with the full-on PvP server where anyone could kill anyone. That was a lot of fun, but the numbers dwindled after awhile and instead of logging on to jump into PvP it was logging on and running around and looking for anyone to fight.

Guess I’ll have to watch others play this for a while. Unless I get into a Beta. ;)

All of that stuff is fine, but it doesn’t change the basic problem. People that play more will be more powerful, and that’s a self fulfilling downward spiral. Getting a few stat points, in a game that he himself calls slow progression…how many times to you think the people on the bottom of that chain are going to que up and keep subbing? As I said before, the inherent system is bound to fail. It’s one thing at release, but it’s especially troublesome the longer the game is active. The later you join, the farther you are behind, and the longer you have to be cannon fodder to try and catch up, I just don’t see it.

/shrug, they are caught between a rock and hard place. You need to make people feel like they are advancing in a meaningful way, while also making the people that aren’t that advanced feel like they have a chance. Those two goals are mutually exclusive, and have never worked. The entire point of being at the top of the chain, is so you can faceroll people.

Successful PvP games all have one thing in common, the characters are relatively static, and player skill accounts for the improvements. There’s a reason for that. Losing to gear, with no chance of really winning, is a formula for failure.

Sorry, not trying to be negative, but to me, this is a glaring, obvious problem, with only one possible outcome.

I bought into this just under 2 years ago when ESO pvp started circling the drain. If they can just avoid the wild design swings/weird redesigns that ESO underwent I will be a satisfied customer. Of course if my class (I’m one of those guys who chooses just one class and specializes) gets the continuous nerf bat/game play redesign treatment that it got in ESO, then all bets are off. Here’s hoping that it fills the void that ESO once did. Man that was a great game.