Aren’t they still a month away from even launching the Kickstarter, HRose? Yes, it’s all rather vague at this point, that’s what I’d expect. I’m willing to give them a little bit of time (like the start of their KS campaign) to come out with more concrete details. If it’s still as vague at that time, they won’t be getting my money.
Regarding RvR in Warhammer, they did make it so you could be involved in RvR from the start rather than being purely an endgame activity. The implementation could have been better, but I don’t get how he “broke his promise” with that.
All I know is that I had more fun in the human (Norwatch?) and dwarf-orc Tier 1 and the Temple of M…something or other Tier 2 battlegrounds in Warhammer than I did in any other MMOs ever except EQ1, WoW, and GW2. If the whole game had been that fun it would have been a hit. Instead Tier 3 became a boring chore, both in the battlegrounds and the PvE grinding/PQs. Mark needs to figure out what made those early BGs and PQs so fun and figure out a way to make a full game’s worth of content that fun. Actually some of the “lake” or whatever they called it PvP was pretty fun, too, in the early days but it was a bit inconsistent and annoying at times. Everything after level 20 sucked.
I am not saying the design of this DAoC 2 will be bad, because I obviously know nothing about it. I’m simply saying that, while Jacobs may have plenty of qualities, I’m also now familiar with this problem he has with his ego (and now we have Jacobs + unproven team).
I’m saying: if he doesn’t understand that fundamental problem, everything he comes to is going to be clouded. So I’m simply more than skeptical. Again, he surely have plenty of other qualities, but I had the impression DAoC (1) was good IN SPITE of Jacobs.
Even worse, whenever he comes to HIS DESIGN, HIS DOCUMENTS he always, consistently demonstrated to have absolutely no game design sensibility. ANY. He may be great running the company, be a great fellow and a pleasure to work with. I don’t know. But when it comes to game design it’s a disaster.
Just an example I remember is how in the redesign of DAoC RvR zones (so a design revision, where you have chances to fix what was broken) he was responsible for the big push about retaining a huge number of zones, and he absolutely wanted that terrain was a feature, with valleys and so on. He was responsible for making terrain slopes that were one-way (you could go down them, but not up them).
Result: those zones have been completely deserted. They were a pain to navigate and no one ever went there. They added this “feature” of the player completely stopping movement when going against a slope marked as “impassable” and there was no fucking way to figure out if a slope would let you go up or not. It was like having the zone filled by invisible walls that you smashed your face against and COMPLETELY STOPPED while trying to run away. Players bitched to no end about this. The bottom line is: everything that you find in the original plans is always completely wrong. It “looks” like it would be cool, but that’s the difference between good and bad design. If you understand the thing you can say a good idea from a bad one. And in the case of DAoC it seems as if everyone struggled hard to steer Mark Jacobs’ ideas AWAY from the suck.
Regarding RvR in Warhammer, they did make it so you could be involved in RvR from the start rather than being purely an endgame activity. The implementation could have been better, but I don’t get how he “broke his promise” with that.
The implementation was bad, but I agree it’s not the true problem.
The problem, I repeat, is the broken promise. “RvR not just endgame”. You are making the error considering instanced Battlegrounds as “RvR”. They are not.
RvR is that open thing where everyone joins and is not limited by timed instances, carry the flag type of thing.
Which was, and is a clear part of tier 1 in Warhammer - I know…I was there from day one. Sure, they had netcode issues, but that aside, it worked and was damn fun.
The only problems I see with this (assuming it gets funded by a publisher) is that there are already games on the market that do everything DAoC did only better. Guild Wars 2 does PvP/RvR (WvW) better, LOTRO does atmosphere and story better, and WoW does basic MMORPG 101 better. What niche is left to fill?
I’ve played late in beta and the first couple of months. Joining the most crowded server. So when the low level population was at its peak.
Sure, sometimes you could organize and decide some zone where there could be some RvR. But in most, pretty much all cases, you would sit on your ass looking at empty scenery. For hours. I remember once during peak hours I left my orc sit idle while I went buy groceries, sitting there right on top of one objective. When I was back he was still there. This in Tier 1.
99% of the players were funneled into Battlegrounds, and that funnel is made by game design.
In any case we are debating whether that promise was maintained or broken, and the fact remains that he’s now selling it as if it’s a new idea.
We had VERY different experiences then. On my european server (Burlok, I think it was called) there were crazy battles each night in Tier 1. T2 was ever better - We had sieges that lasted 4 hours into the night, where we defended keeps against hordes - So much damn fun.
I loved tiers 1-3 in Warhammer, both open rvr and battlegrounds. It was tier 4 that sucked because the gap in power was just too great for the new character entering the last tier. That and the tendency for tier 4 to be dominated by one faction or the other in open rvr caused some boring waiting games.
Things I want to see in DAOC is the return of the BG’s with the keep in the center that is a continuous battle, not a timed instance. Destructable walls, varied classes between factions, and archery that behaved more “ballistic” and less like you are casting a spell with a bow.
Or something that warrants getting a phone call after 3:00am because those dirty Hibs/Mids/Albs are trying to steal our relic and everyone needs to log in right now or we’re doomed.
As a former DAoC fanatic who managed to get an entire class nerfed, I’m pretty happy to hear about this. I would add a few things in my ideal world:
encourage grouping from level 1, with the same kind of group dynamics that will be important at high levels. having a complete lack of quests would make me very happy indeed. this makes soloing hard, so instead of levelling through quests that nobody ever reads or has at the same time (which further hurts grouping), add…
sidekicking and downlevelling so that groups can stay together over time, even if some members are in grad school and others in full time jobs with kids. People want to play with their friends, so why make that impossible with a level barrier?
have something that guilds can build (watchtower-ish) that can be destroyed by enemies - that creates endless targets and builds guild pride
have something really big that entire realms can build (fortress-ish) that can be destroyed - that creates endless targets and builds realm pride. Make it so that the more your realm works on it, the bigger and badder it gets. building takes some form of resources, so add…
resource generators (harbors, mines, sawmills, etc.) that are controlled at the guild level, and can be taken over by any enemy guild. Instant targets that matter.
levelling through RvR battlegrounds, with some serious PvE/RvR dungeon action a’la DAoC darkness falls
very good crafted items available through a guild’s store
I can add more, but this is already a game that doesn’t exist that I’d play for a long, long time.
P.S.
One thing I’d suggest and that I’m thinking these days is to revert the subscription model in answer to Free To Play: you pay ONLY the monthly fee.
No fist purchase, expansions or whatever. A monthly fee and that’s all.
Interesting ideas, but “grouping encouraged, soloing hard” smacks of Everquest 1 and will be a very hard sell in 2013. Unsure if even Mr. Jacobs is crazy enough to try this.
Reason for original MMO business model starting with $50 boxed game wasn’t antiquated game design.
Though the only game that did that (Eve-Online) still goes strong. And I believe it’s strongly consequence of the business model (since you keep developing the core of the game, and not the “fringe” of expansion content, and that kept Eve’s world alive).
Only that Eve-Online fees are set by THIEVES. For some reason 15$ = 10£ (which is fair). And THEN if you are actually in Europe 15$ become 15€ (should be close to 11).
You know, I haven’t spent serious time in a group since DAoC, because everyone is out there soloing via quests. Well, getting levels and getting to the end game isn’t what makes the game fun for me, it’s the grouping with friends. There are plenty of failed MMOs out there that do the whole ‘solo until you and your friends all quit’ thing, but nobody is doing the ‘stick together as a group and build community from day 1’ thing, so I hope someone takes that ball and runs with it.
There are a lot of things EQ1 did that won’t work at all these days, like the horrible levelling pace, massive loss of exp with death, camping/lining up for quest mobs, and forced downtime for recovery of mana, but the way they fostered community through grouping worked very well.
I hope they keep the “downtime” that the original DAOC had, you could solo, but having a healer and mezzer or whatnot made it more efficient due to health/mana/stamina regen.
I guess the idea of an “old school” mmo does appeal to me, where classes rely on each other and are not basically super heros blowing through mobs.
If I remember correctly, even level mobs were pretty damn challenging to a character that was not geared up. Of course its been a while so I could be wrong.
Yeah, good points on EQ1. I was just thinking about this again recently. It is most likely because of its punitive design that the community could come together. I remember spending one night til 3am dying over and over again trying to get a friend of mine’s corpse when she fell in Sol A in the lava and swam herself up in a corner where you couldn’t get to her corpse. We had half the guild out there and luckily had a level 39+ cleric at the time to help res all my bodies. Other times half the high level guilds on the server would come out to help with a failed Fear break to help folks get their stuff back. Or, after a hard night of fighting, you could go to the entrance of Mistmoore or somewhere similar and do high level resses or buffs for folks and they would love you for it. I could still tell you the name of the guy that dragged my corpse out of a tough spot in Siren’s Grotto even though he put himself at quite a risk.
I loved DAoC for its RvR, so will be watching this closely. Time will tell, though, whether they can improve on the formula for reasons already listed above. I was another that really enjoyed Tier 1-3 in Warhammer and very early Tier 4, but once people started getting high end gear sets and ranks and learning high end tactics/synergies, it got a lot less fun for the normal guy.
