I wonder what an account with 100 level 50’s would go for on ebay?
Probably not a lot, if it becomes as easy as you suggest, because then everyone will be selling them ;).
Ugh. Today’s notes show that the free levels will only come to players who have earned a level the hard way in the last 7 days.
This is nice and all, but I’m just not as excited by it as I could’ve been. In my experience post-30 leveling is just entirely too slow. Hopefully the new XP bonuses they mention will be enough to get me through to 50.
Just in case no one’s picked up on this yet:
I’ve been playing DAoC off and on for nearly two years. My highest level character is 40. Eventually the xp grind just stops being fun for my higher-level characters.
One last note: Leirvik is not fun. No one seems to be using the boats for anything (at least on Merlin), and they’re just camping the tiny center island. Worst of all, full groups of casters/stealthers wait inside the towers to ninja anyone who walks past. There’s not really any open-field combat (though I hear regular RvR is the same post-NF).
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve taken from this:
When I get close to level 50, I’m going to make damned sure I earn level 49 and get 50 for free. It’ll probably save me loads of time.
Welcome to New Frontiers: If you’re not a caster or steatlher, have fun donating Rps!
We’ll see if this does anything for realm balance issues. I don’t think it’s going to help much - even if you get to 50 you still have ML’s and artifacts to do, which are probably worse then leveling from 1 - 50 was back when I did it.
It’s easily possible to quest straight from 48 to 50 without ever grinding. There are tons of quests you can do that give 1-2 bubs of experience at those level. I actually found 48-50 to be some of the easist levelling in my experiences on my Warrior and Spiritmaster.
I think the problems with tanks being weak in NF daoc is partly due to the keep warfare being a bigger part of the game, and partly because the new realm ability system totally screwed tanks over. Originally, the RA’s were pretty balanced between the classes… except tanks were sucking - getting owned by casters and by crowd control. To compensate, Mythic made some RA’s cheaper for tanks. This ended up being a bit too much, and tanks were TOO immune to crowd control and too powerful, and you saw lots of tank groups doing a ton of damage. It seems like Mythic reacted to powerful tanks by getting rid of the only edge they really had - cheap RA’s. I think the best solution would be for some of the new RA’s to be cheaper for tank classes, but not by the huge margins they were under the old system (purge and determination come to mind). Maybe something like 3-6-9 cost for purge for tanks would allow tanks to enjoy having purge up often without the prohibitive cost, and without totally unbalancing things.
Yeah, I never got how tanks were suddenly fixed enough that they didn’t need those things anymore (or things like Prevent Flight either).
The issue with determintion wasn’t that it was cheap, it was that you could take it to high. Giving tanks cheap Det but capping it at about 45% reduction is the better solution, IMO.
Keep in mind that tanks now get 25% for free - it’s called stoicism I believe, and I think they get it at level 35. I think the current cap between stoicism and determination is a good value. It could maybe go up 5-10% at the highest level but I don’t think it should go much beyond that. I mainly just think determination should be a little cheaper again. Right now there’s not a lot of utility for the cost. Mythic really seems to want to push tanks toward purge 3, as far as I can tell.
Slightly cheaper IP and toughness might be a good idea as well, maybe that whole 3/6/9 tiered cost again. Tanks need to be tanks, and that means having twice as many hits as many of their foes, not just the 20-30% more they may have now. Maybe let light tanks and tank hybrids like thane and reaver get a slight discount at 4/8/12 too.
The problem with RA’s that I’m running into is that for the class I’m playing now, infiltrator, there just isn’t hardly anything worth taking.
Viper seems useless with every class being able to get purge for 5 points. I could spend 30 points to have the top level poison do an extra 100 damage (maybe) every 4 seconds? Um…yeah. I’d be lucky if it isn’t purged or cured after two ticks. Anything less than the top level of Viper seems like an even more trivial damage addition.
Vanish is too buggy to invest in it past the first level, or so I hear anyway. Between spells still being able to knock you out of it if they are cast in time, stealth lore items from TOA, and being defenseless for 30 seconds after using it, I can’t see it being worth more than an occasional get out of jail free from mobs or solo enemies.
Assassins, generally speaking, don’t need purge up very often, so taking purge past first tier seems silly as well. I actually figured the five second delay on it might not be so bad, because as often as I fight other assassins, I could end up purging another poison that gets applied in those five seconds.
I actually figure on taking mastery of pain and augmented strength to their highest levels, just to up my damage as much as possible. As an assassin I figure I need to take people down as quick as possible, and almost everything else I can pick seems defense-oriented, and counter to that goal. That, plus I know no one is going to be able to purge my crits or extra weaponskill, like they could against viper.
I suppose I’ll get some mastery of stealth too, to counter archers that get it, and for the movement speed helping me set up my kills more easily.
It just seems like my viable options are really limited. My best option appears to be mastery of pain 5, which is just an extra 30% or so damage on 39% of my successful hits. Doesn’t seem that great for 34 points… but what else is worth it?
Someone in this thread does not grasp the point of DAOC, and I’m thinking it’s you. You don’t stop advancing at 50, you just advance differently by gathering little powers in return for points earned in PvP combat.
A little while ago there was a thread on here discussing the different markets within the MMO player community. DAOC has targeted the long-term guild player by adding the majority of new content at higher levels - one of the new expansions, Trials of Atlantis I think, is designed solely for teams of characters of at or almost 50th level. There’s almost no point even getting it unless you’re in a big guild.
My own interest in these games lies in exploring the different kinds of classes, so I tend no to max characters out (I think I’ve the only Shoot Club SG characters left in City of Heroes) but try to play every class, each combination, etc. DAOC was good for that, but after the first expansion everything has been for high-level characters. Making it quicker to get to high level might get me to go back and play again, as well.
/jeep/
Someone in this thread does not grasp the point of DAOC, and I’m thinking it’s you. You don’t stop advancing at 50, you just advance differently by gathering little powers in return for points earned in PvP combat.
A little while ago there was a thread on here discussing the different markets within the MMO player community. DAOC has targeted the long-term guild player by adding the majority of new content at higher levels - one of the new expansions, Trials of Atlantis I think, is designed solely for teams of characters of at or almost 50th level. There’s almost no point even getting it unless you’re in a big guild.
My own interest in these games lies in exploring the different kinds of classes, so I tend no to max characters out (I think I’ve the only Shoot Club SG characters left in City of Heroes) but try to play every class, each combination, etc. DAOC was good for that, but after the first expansion everything has been for high-level characters. Making it quicker to get to high level might get me to go back and play again, as well.
/jeep/[/quote]
I understand the DAOC advancement system past-50, but it’s not something a lot of people lust for. I’ve got a few hardcore players as friends, and they just can’t stop rolling toons. The fun of the game for them seems to be rolling new chars and then getting them to hit 50, and then just abandoning them once they’ve maxed them out with the kewlest gear. Mythic is cutting out a big portion of the time it takes for them to do that. I wonder if the reduction in time to 50 is going induce boredome in the practice? Part of it for them is like a race between each other. “I just got my thane to 50, that makes 6 50’s for me. How many do you have? Dude I found this new way to level REALLY fast! it’s a lot of fun.” They also seem pretty bored with ToA and the Frontiers. A good portion of their fun sounds like it’s from racing the level game.
But then again, I really just might not get it. The highest I’ve gotten a character is to level 42. I’ll be glad for the extra help in reaching 50, but honestly I’m not looking forward to investing disgusting amounts of time doing raids in ToA or sitting on ledges of keeps leeching RP’s. I’ll probably just be happy to have 50 for /level .
edit: I don’t mean to be a pompous and say that past 50 isn’t something a lot of people lust for. I only speak from persona perspective (IE, what I’ve found within my own group of friends). It certainly isn’t ubiquitous amongst every MMO gamer. Point is, assume another portion of the gaming crowd shares the same interests of my friends and I.
Mastery of Stealth and Vanish are the most important things to get as an assassin.
As for the tank RA stuff, I’m well aware of the 25% base effect - I still think it’s too expensive to buy as you need at least 45% reduction. Not that it really matters - everything’s a keep fight anyway.
Yea, I wrote that before I really had any realm levels. I’m still a BG toon but I’m starting to see some of the usefulness there. I respec’d all my RA’s out so that I could try out Vanish. Vanish has saved my ass a few times in ways that no other ability could. Unfortunately it has also failed to work properly and done nothing at all for me. I appreciate it a lot when it works. Every time it doesn’t I wonder if I wasted my points. More often then not it works though.
After the respec I’m not missing my mastery of stealth at all. So I see archers better? So what. They are dogmeat anyway once I find them stealthed through normal means, or once they try to shoot me. My wife plays a minstrel and we run duo 100% of the time and have a good dynamic going there. Anything that I can’t just outright slash into fifty pieces, she mezzes or stuns or if all else fails she hits SoS and we get the hell out of there. More likely I would imagine an archer tryin to shoot my wife from range, not knowing I was there, then she hits SoS and we charge into melee with the archer and drop him.
I AM missing my mastery of pain and aug str. Anything to hit harder is great, but generally speaking I one or two shot casters. I don’t fear bonedancers anymore because after switching from a mercfil spec to a crit strike spec they are dead before the first pet heal lands. Even if they survive my initial onslaught I can do damage faster than they can heal, and I have my wife to stun his ass and ae mez the pets. I can’t wait to eventually have mastery of pain 5, with a 50 slash, 50 cs spec. That means crits on half of my perfs, which means a lot of mids and hibs looking at a huge ‘hits you for’ number and crying nerf infiltrators. Anything to demoralize the enemy :)