Now, time for even better news! During the last year, Mythic has made DAoC an easier game to play than ever before. We have introduced a more group-friendly system and made it easier than ever before for new players as well as casual gamers to play and succeed in DAoC. However, we want to go even farther than that and we will do so over the next few weeks. As part of this we will introduce a number of initiatives, the biggest of which is the “Gift of the Realm” system. How this system works is quite simple. At certain time intervals (more on this later), players will be able to go to their trainer and receive special rewards for their character. [color=red]These rewards will include a new experience level as well as gold on a weekly basis.[/color] These changes are designed to help the casual as well as the new player succeed more quickly in DAoC. Thus, players will be able to level their characters more quickly than ever before and in a way that rewards people of all play-styles (casual, hard-core) equally. When we first launched DAoC, we wanted it to be accessible to all kinds of play-styles and we will continue and expand in this tradition. We are also planning to add in-game maps (for non RvR areas) as well as new systems to make grouping even easier than before. We will also be adding things like in-game keyboard configuration as well as other things as part of this initiative, with lots more to come over the next six months.
They go on to say that low-pop realms will have their rate of freebies accelerated. This is just the motivation I’d need to pick up an alt on a low-pop realm!
Man, this beats the pants off of the WoW rest system. Everyone gets a reward, and if 1 free level per week isn’t good enough for you, you can always grind out some more. No one is being “punished”.
I too applaud the DAOC dev’s for implementing a system like this. It’s risky too, because if they find it totally unbalances the game system - it’s hard to explain to the players that their characters are getting deleted/regressing because they leveled too much off a fault.
huh? Did you read the same letter that I did? I didnt’ see anything about characters getting deleted or regressing.
XP in the bg’s though is probably the best thing they ever did. 42 deathblows to 10 deaths tonight, woot! 11 bubs experience and about 15 gold besides that. Hooray for thidranki! :)
I would imagine that the level gift would only be if you haven’t received one yet that week. And when you think about it, it’s not a big deal. That means a basic character would hit level 50 in just under a year, with little effort. Not going to hurt anyone.
huh? Did you read the same letter that I did? I didnt’ see anything about characters getting deleted or regressing.
XP in the bg’s though is probably the best thing they ever did. 42 deathblows to 10 deaths tonight, woot! 11 bubs experience and about 15 gold besides that. Hooray for thidranki! :)[/quote]
I was just imagining a “what if everyone hits level 50, and rolls chars on every server to hit 50 real fast everywhere”, and what they would do to unfuck that. Just a “what if mythic is unhappy with everybody being super high level”.
Also, Leirvik is the worst BG ever, so I’ll be very happy to get out of there without too much effort post above implementations.
I will still never, ever touch DAOC again - with that said…
The gold will be the biggest thing. The main problem with leveling in the BG’s is no loot, and the gold is very very little compared to PvE, so only twinks can really do it. Giving a healthy amount of gold will really help the low-level economy.
Now kill buffbots (hah!), make PvE interesting (not gonna happen), and make RVR more dependent on skill rather than numbers and phat lewt of the participants. Do those three things and THEN, maybe, just MAYBE, will I play DAOC again. But even then… I have so little trust…
This “problem” in MMORPGs I don’t understand. So what if everyone hits level 50 although I will say multiple characters might be an issue here. If though they can limit it to one or a few characters I see no problem with this. Why must the level cap be so unattainable? This is part of what drove me off City of Heroes lickety split. I really liked that game and would have had great fun making a couple different of my favorite comic book characters or hero types but when that major grind started in the 20s that was the end of my time there.
If your game has enough to do, and especially enough to make people want to play multiple characters you should not fear the level cap. But again, this on the assumption that there is something to do which with alot of these online RPGs may be assuming too much.
P.S. The “defenders of the faith” will say that the journey to max level is the game itself, I call bullshit. Sure there will always be some uber nerd that makes it faster than you, but like I said if there is enough there to make you want to do it more than once than even the casual gamer should find it attainable in a reasonable amount of time. (Reasonable of course being quite subjective)
“At certain time intervals (more on this later), players will be able to go to their trainer and receive special rewards for their character. These rewards will include a new experience level as well as gold on a weekly basis.”
I’m not so sure you cant interpret what they say as meaning you will get a free level a week. You will get gold every week, just don’t count on a level. Maybe they should clear this up for those who are getting really excited.
If this is a new paradigm for MMOGs, then I’m quite baffled. I need to dwell on this concept for a bit before I can take a firm stance on it. It really strikes me as so odd!
I suppose Camelot is a bit of a different situation, since most of the game is built around the pvp endgame. Still, if you’re giving out levels, isn’t that essentially saying “Look, we know the treadmill sucks, so here’s some free levels and gold to get you where you want to go.” Now, that’s awfully cool of them on one hand, but on the other hand, what does that say about the gameplay? It’s like they gave up trying to make the treadmill interesting and just put in an artifical accelerator to help you move along.
I’ll give em kudos for trying such an idea, but we still come back to the concept that the treadmill gameplay has to go in MMOGs.
I disagree completely. This is all about hooking up the casual player. These rewards will be negligable to the catass crew, but casual players are going to love logging in to finding these rewards. A little gold and XP will be nothing to a 50 hour/week player, but to the 5 hour/week player they will be a godsend.
I disagree completely. This is all about hooking up the casual player. These rewards will be negligable to the catass crew, but casual players are going to love logging in to finding these rewards. A little gold and XP will be nothing to a 50 hour/week player, but to the 5 hour/week player they will be a godsend.
/agree
I might have to check this out for my lowbies, if I can tear myself away from the WoW beta :P
I imagine it has less to do with being a new paradigm for MMOGs and more to do with Mythic having decided that the sole strength of their game is RvR combat, and that their RvR combat is best experienced in the latter levels, despite the presence of battlegrounds.
Seems like a reasonable assessment, as they’ll never really compete with eq on the PvE stuff at the high end, and the newer games could easily be out-designing the solo/casual oriented PvE content of DAoC.
Basically it sounds like they’ve said “Hey, y’know, we basically have a fantasy version of Planetside as our main draw; they do okay with a shallower levelling curve.”
(Course, I’d rather that you got exp bonus than just get handed a free level, although I can understand why the latter is better in some cases.)
For what it’s worth though, I have had more fun in thidranki in the last week than I EVER had in real RvR on my old account. Maybe it’s a matter of choice of characters - infiltrator now versus warrior and spiritmaster before - but theres something fun about playing a more pure version of the game, before uber realm abilities and artifacts enter the equasion.
One thing I wonder about though, is are these bonuses going to be on a per account or a per character basis. If it’s per character, I see issues. What’s to stop me from creating 8 characters on every server, and periodically logging in each of them to collect my free coin and XP? Eventually I’d have a level 50 of every class, albeit spread out among all of the game’s servers. Will this be a ‘carebear’ way to level up characters on the Mordred server? Just log in once a week for a few months? Even if you just do it on one server, you could use the extra coin generated by the other nonplayed characters to help outfit your main, which I doubt is Mythic’s intent for this system.
I think it’s a great idea but if they don’t address these issues, the system will be abused to hell.
I wonder what an account with 100 level 50’s would go for on ebay?
Here’s my idea for a different way to do this. Revamp the bounty point system. Make it so that there is a cap, based on your level, of how many bounty points you can earn per week. Make it so that bounty points are also earned in the BG’s, and at all levels. Make it so that you can easily cap your BP’s earned for the week in 5-10 hours of play. Then be able to spend those points on teh leet xps and teh phat loots. This makes it so only played characters can receive these bonuses, but makes them relatively easy to obtain for casual players without letting hardcore players get too many. Or, if you want to keep the existing BP’s how they are, add another kind of realm reward points earned in PvP. Hell, make mobs give them in PvE as well. I just think its a better idea if you make it so characters have to do SOME work in order to get these gifts, otherwise people will abuse it.
Greetings:
What odd synchronicity; they were just talking about this kind of thing over on terra nova. So, did the DAOC folks plant that story to swoop in and be the good guys (viral marketing +3), or is this just one of those weird coincidences?
