Initially it was a nightmare. Stuns were un-breakable and chainable. Midgard was rightly re-labelled 'Stungard'.
Then they added ways to resist/diminish CC (determination) and to break it if it did land (purge, cure mez spells). They shortened the duration of stuns and, most importantly, added an immunity timer when the CC broke.
This made CC a tactical decision. Hit them with a root or mez first to see if you can get some to blow their purges. Then hit them with the stun.
And god help anyone who broke your perfectly timed and placed AE mez: 'Grats, noob, you just granted them all immunity!'.
I found this far more acceptable than the current trend of being CCed for 3 seconds every 4 seconds. Longer CC also gave me a chance to take a breathe, survey the situation and plan what I'd do a minute when I came out of it.
The individual TTK was also longer in DAoC. This meant that in a 1 on 1 fight being stunned didn't guarantee your death. Nowadays if the rogue/assassin stuns you for 4 seconds that's more than enough time to make the rest of the fight un-winnable for you without outside interferance.
Thank you. This is exactly what I mean. You were CC'ed longer (which gave you time to observe and prepare your strategy) but you knew once it wore off you would have immunity for a minute. In other games you get CC'ed again and again repeatedly which is a lot more frustrating.
in a minute, your entire group could be dead. A minute is an eternity to stand there and watch your group get focus-fired down one by one. This really turned off a lot of players, its why Midgard was nicknamed Stungard as the other poster noted. The idea that the only people that werent happy with this were newbies/baddies is just ludicrous. Everyone but cc classes hated it. I honestly dont think you played the game that far back, otherwise you would know that.
in a minute, your entire group could be dead. A minute is an eternity to stand there and watch your group get focus-fired down one by one. This really turned off a lot of players, its why Midgard was nicknamed Stungard as the other poster noted. The idea that the only people that werent happy with this were newbies/baddies is just ludicrous. Everyone but cc classes hated it. I honestly dont think you played the game that far back, otherwise you would know that.
Played an Armsman,Pally, and a Warden. No CC to speak of really. Enjoyed the way they did CC in that game, from the beginning, immunity timers just made it better.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
The main sort of cc I hate is wow / rift / swtor type cc, where while you are controlled you can also take damage.
You need cc to make pvp tactical.
But you need all cc to break on damage. This does 2 things. 1 It counters big aoe spam groups, as they need to be careful with their aoes. 2 cc becomes a tactical choice, e.g. cc healer, kill dps, rather than something you just spam as part of a rotation.
Originally posted by evilastro Long duration CC is the opposite of skillful, it is in fact very cheap and doesn't discourage a zerg at all. Instead you get zergs of CC, which is even less fun than getting bowled over by a zerg.
You couldn't be more wrong.
Except I'm not, its why most games moved away from long duration CC in PvP. I played DAOC and the CC was a joke. So very cheap, but there were no other alternatives for PvP at the time. Don't get me wrong, it did other stuff well, but CC was not one of them.
Back in EQ2 when they first introduced PvP and I could CC large groups as my Illusionist while I picked them off one by one. That wasn't skillful, it was cheap, and I'm not too proud to admit it. There was nothing skillful about me targetting someone and clicking a button that took them out of the action while I killed their friends. Its about as sporting as hunting a deer with no legs.
The only people who hated the CC in DAoC were the baddies/newbies as they didn't understand it and didn't know how to use it to their advantage.
That is completely and totally wrong. Did you even play pre-ToA DAoC? AoE mez was devastating. The first group to get their AoE mez off usually won, and won easily. Bards and Healers especially dominated the outcome of PvP battles. The idea that the only people who complained about it were baddies/newbies is just ludicrous. If that was the case, they wouldnt have added realm rank skills to dispel CC (which were vital to playing RvR) and they wouldnt have added diminishing returns. They changed those things because of massive complaints from the player base. You should have seen the forums! And most of those complaints were from experienced players, because the casual players usually didnt bother to post in the forums. But when you were in raid chat, you would hear those complaints over and over and over. Except maybe from Healers and Bards and Sorcerors, LOL.
I did play a sorc. We lost a lot of fights even in cases where I got perfect 1+ minute mezzes off. There were many counters like individual purges, group purge (hibs), demezzes, instant mezzes and roots used defensively, mass healers (mid), determination, charge(later) etc. The perfect mezz worked perfectly only on newbie groups or when catching your enemies directly after a close fight.
well there ya go, you played a sorc, no wonder you feel cc wasnt a problem in DAoC. And by the way, the game didnt release with all of those purges and cc-immunity, those took quite a while to add and to refine. It sounds to me like you played the game quite a while after release, or at least thats what you remember, because if you were a non-cc class in the first 6 months or a year, you would definitely remember mez dominating battles and chain mezzes that turned off a lot of players to the game. I knew realm-mates that quit RvR and never really gave it a 2nd chance, thats when DAoC started losing players. It steadily lost casual players until mainly the hardcore were left playing, wondering where everyone had gone. A lot of people blame ToA for the player decline, and certainly ToA helped it along a great deal, but the trend was already there prior to ToA. People would reach lvl 50 (which took a long time back then), go into the frontier, and die repeatedly from mez/chain mez. Players either grinded realm rank, or they quit. Many quit, and when ToA came along, most had quit.
Anyway, the main point here was your comment that only baddies and newbies disliked cc in DAoC, and thats just totally wrong, especially in the first year or so of the game, the outcry against cc was overwhelming, which is why all that anti-cc stuff was added.
in a minute, your entire group could be dead. A minute is an eternity to stand there and watch your group get focus-fired down one by one. This really turned off a lot of players, its why Midgard was nicknamed Stungard as the other poster noted. The idea that the only people that werent happy with this were newbies/baddies is just ludicrous. Everyone but cc classes hated it. I honestly dont think you played the game that far back, otherwise you would know that.
Played an Armsman,Pally, and a Warden. No CC to speak of really. Enjoyed the way they did CC in that game, from the beginning, immunity timers just made it better.
ok, well I guess that stungard nickname happened for no reason.
I find it hard to believe anyone would find chain mez acceptable (prior to cc imminutiy timers), but hey, to each their own. Most people dont like standing there helpless watching their group mates focus-fired down one-by-one by the dps train.
Besides, if cc was so good, they wouldnt have added all of the purges and immunity timers. Those just didnt happen by coincidence, they happened because of massive outcry from the player base.
in a minute, your entire group could be dead. A minute is an eternity to stand there and watch your group get focus-fired down one by one. This really turned off a lot of players, its why Midgard was nicknamed Stungard as the other poster noted. The idea that the only people that werent happy with this were newbies/baddies is just ludicrous. Everyone but cc classes hated it. I honestly dont think you played the game that far back, otherwise you would know that.
Played an Armsman,Pally, and a Warden. No CC to speak of really. Enjoyed the way they did CC in that game, from the beginning, immunity timers just made it better.
ok, well I guess that stungard nickname happened for no reason.
I find it hard to believe anyone would find chain mez acceptable (prior to cc imminutiy timers), but hey, to each their own. Most people dont like standing there helpless watching their group mates focus-fired down one-by-one by the dps train.
Stungard happened for a reason, because most albs and hibs were too stupid to counter it. If you didn't like DAoC just say I don't like DAoC and you can be done with it. Not really a point trying to convince others who played the game for years to change their opinions. Just my 2cents.
edit in response to edit: That's why I said it just got better after immunity timers etc. It was fine for a lot of us to begin with.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV Have played: You name it If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Originally posted by evilastro Long duration CC is the opposite of skillful, it is in fact very cheap and doesn't discourage a zerg at all. Instead you get zergs of CC, which is even less fun than getting bowled over by a zerg.
You couldn't be more wrong.
Except I'm not, its why most games moved away from long duration CC in PvP. I played DAOC and the CC was a joke. So very cheap, but there were no other alternatives for PvP at the time. Don't get me wrong, it did other stuff well, but CC was not one of them.
Back in EQ2 when they first introduced PvP and I could CC large groups as my Illusionist while I picked them off one by one. That wasn't skillful, it was cheap, and I'm not too proud to admit it. There was nothing skillful about me targetting someone and clicking a button that took them out of the action while I killed their friends. Its about as sporting as hunting a deer with no legs.
The only people who hated the CC in DAoC were the baddies/newbies as they didn't understand it and didn't know how to use it to their advantage.
That is completely and totally wrong. Did you even play pre-ToA DAoC? AoE mez was devastating. The first group to get their AoE mez off usually won, and won easily. Bards and Healers especially dominated the outcome of PvP battles. The idea that the only people who complained about it were baddies/newbies is just ludicrous. If that was the case, they wouldnt have added realm rank skills to dispel CC (which were vital to playing RvR) and they wouldnt have added diminishing returns. They changed those things because of massive complaints from the player base. You should have seen the forums! And most of those complaints were from experienced players, because the casual players usually didnt bother to post in the forums. But when you were in raid chat, you would hear those complaints over and over and over. Except maybe from Healers and Bards and Sorcerors, LOL.
I did play a sorc. We lost a lot of fights even in cases where I got perfect 1+ minute mezzes off. There were many counters like individual purges, group purge (hibs), demezzes, instant mezzes and roots used defensively, mass healers (mid), determination, charge(later) etc. The perfect mezz worked perfectly only on newbie groups or when catching your enemies directly after a close fight.
well there ya go, you played a sorc, no wonder you feel cc wasnt a problem in DAoC. And by the way, the game didnt release with all of those purges and cc-immunity, those took quite a while to add and to refine. It sounds to me like you played the game quite a while after release, or at least thats what you remember, because if you were a non-cc class in the first 6 months or a year, you would definitely remember mez dominating battles and chain mezzes that turned off a lot of players to the game. I knew realm-mates that quit RvR and never really gave it a 2nd chance, thats when DAoC started losing players. It steadily lost casual players until mainly the hardcore were left playing, wondering where everyone had gone. A lot of people blame ToA for the player decline, and certainly ToA helped it along a great deal, but the trend was already there prior to ToA. People would reach lvl 50 (which took a long time back then), go into the frontier, and die repeatedly from mez/chain mez. Players either grinded realm rank, or they quit. Many quit, and when ToA came along, most had quit.
Anyway, the main point here was your comment that only baddies and newbies disliked cc in DAoC, and thats just totally wrong, especially in the first year or so of the game, the outcry against cc was overwhelming, which is why all that anti-cc stuff was added.
I started 6 months after release and don't remember cc without immunities tbh. I agree with you that without immunities and some skills to get out of cc it surely wouldn't be fun.
I strongly disagree that it was losing subscribers before ToA. Actually it was thriving and they were constantly adding new servers. The downfall started with ToA.
I started 6 months after release and don't remember cc without immunities tbh. I agree with you that without immunities and some skills to get out of cc it surely wouldn't be fun.
I strongly disagree that it was losing subscribers before ToA. Actually it was thriving and they were constantly adding new servers. The downfall started with ToA.
That is what a lot of people think, especially the ones who didnt like ToA. But there was already an exodus of casual players before that. If you were a hardcore player who grouped with hardcore players, then you probably didnt notice it as much. But if you were a more casual player with casual-player friends, you would definitely have noticed it. A lot of the casual players took many months to reach level 50, and when they got there and tried to do end-game RvR, they got steamrolled because by that time realm rank has been added and the RR abilities were very strong. Purge for example was essential.
By the time Shrouded Isles was released, DAoC was already moving towards being a more hardcore game. The people that complained the most in forums tended to get their needs addressed, and those people tended to be hardcore players. Change after change favored hardcore players, because DAoC didnt want to lose their subs. That is why buffbots lasted so long, it was a way for Mythic to get multiple subs from the hardcore players. Mythic lost sight of the casual players, who were less vocal but more numerous. The evidence of that was ToA which was the ultimate gift to hardcore players, because it gave them an avenue that made them immensely powerful compared to most players who couldnt (or wouldnt) do the grinding. But my point was that the players were already drifting away before that. It took time for that to be reflected in subs because many people had multi-month subs. But it was very clear if you logged in and looked around, especially in the starter areas, which became dead.
And btw DAoC added very few servers. Yes they added the open world PvP servers but those just cannibalized the other ones, they didnt add many new players. I played on Nimue which was added a few months after the game went gold and it was one of the last servers added, not counting the PvP servers.
I will agree though that ToA was the straw that broke the camel's back. But the camel's break was already gradually breaking before that, it was just less evident to the hardcore PvP crowd than the more casual crowd. It was funny however to read the forums when the hardcore pvpers began to realize they had driven off the casual players and were lacking newbs to slaughter in the frontiers. Especially the ganker types. They dug their own grave and never realized it.
By the way, I was more of a hardcore player but I had many casual player friends and was in a casual guild, so I saw this more firsthand than the high realm rank PvPers.
I started 6 months after release and don't remember cc without immunities tbh. I agree with you that without immunities and some skills to get out of cc it surely wouldn't be fun.
I strongly disagree that it was losing subscribers before ToA. Actually it was thriving and they were constantly adding new servers. The downfall started with ToA.
That is what a lot of people think, especially the ones who didnt like ToA. But there was already an exodus of casual players before that.
There were fewer casual players, maily because of /level 20. There were no longer any vets around to show newbies the ropes, so population became stagnant. It didn't decline until about 6 months after ToA came out though.
Omg this gets so old. When using words like "ALL" "best PVP of all time". Daoc was not a huge hit.
This is a thread of what the OP liked and dislikes. And haha the game not touched is the one still left with MILLIONS playing. Gee so your making a NEW mmo do you try to get the people that loved the dead mmos or go after the one with MILLIONS of players?
So if you have really been around this long you know its all about money. Whats going to bring in millions. Hind sight is always 20/20.
Like it or not people are still paying to play World of Warcraft and alot for pvp. The other mmos? So good, the best ever..omg! are dead. The days of everquest are gone and will never come back. People want easy pvp easy quest and a hand to show you where everything is
The key to good open world pvp is simple. Don't put in battlegrounds or any sort of instanced pvp. Once you do that why would anyone choose open world pvp when rewards are much easier to get in battlegrounds.
I think it is fine ot have pvp and pve gear, just make the distinction. This was something that WoW did very well after introducing pvp gear.
Exactly. Battlegrounds, Arenas, Structured PvP or what ever you want to call it always detracts from the open world PvP.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Long duration CC is anti-fun. Other than that, nice OP. Perhaps make defending keeps a bit more rewarding than capping them? That would make sure there's no keep trading, everyone would want to conquer a keep simply to get the benefits of defending it. I'm afraid though that devs want capping to be rewarding instead of defending just so there's more back and forth action on the map?
The key to good open world pvp is simple. Don't put in battlegrounds or any sort of instanced pvp. Once you do that why would anyone choose open world pvp when rewards are much easier to get in battlegrounds.
I think it is fine ot have pvp and pve gear, just make the distinction. This was something that WoW did very well after introducing pvp gear.
I agree here, back in the day I went to WoW forums to go on and on about how I'd like to see more rewarding open world PvP so that I dont have to sit in BG's just to stay competitive against other players gear. It was crazy how many people rushed in to scream how WoW will never get more rewarding open world PvP because it's not popular enough play style. What the fuck? Why do you think it's not popular in the first place? Because it has no rewards to compete with the BG rewards.
Edit: Also like some people mentioned here, I dont count area PvP to be open world PvP, it just does not have the rush or the element of surprise in it, or the sense of danger when doing something else. It's just like BG's, a designated area for PvP but with larger map.
Like the post OP! In my opinion, Asheron's Call had the best way of handling PVP! there we're White (nonpk) servers, and 1 Red (pk) server.
Heres an excerpt of the wiki
Game World
"The world itself is large at over 500 square miles (1,300 km2). Unlike many other games in the genre, there are no zones. This means players can cross the world on foot, without loading screens or invisible barriers, and any terrain that can be seen in the distance is a real object in the world. It also has a much longer viewing distance than other games of its vintage, with mountains, bodies of water and other terrain being visible long before it is actually approached.
The world is also dotted with a system of one-way portals which expedite travel. Knowing the location and destination of the portals, as well as lifestones, is of vital strategic importance - especially on the Darktide (PVP) server, where allegiances battle each other constantly for dominance over lucrative hunting zones and trading cities.
Apart from the seamless surface world, some of the portals also lead to intricate dungeons. Many of the dungeons are part of quests and contain unique treasures. Dungeons are often much more difficult to navigate than the surface world. They include dizzying labyrinths of passageways in which it is possible to get lost or cut off from your adventuring group, trapped in pits due to missing difficult jumps, stuck behind locked doors, or simply surrounded and overwhelmed by beasts. Some doors require keys. Other dungeons have a series of levers which open otherwise impassable doors, and require group teamwork and timing to run or jump through."
Battle System
"Players attune themselves to lifestones. Upon losing all of their health players will be resurrected at the last lifestone they attuned themselves to, having lost half their pyreals, one or more valuable items, and temporarily losing a certain percentage of their primary and secondary statistics due what is known as a "vitae penalty". The resurrected player may then go to the place the death occurred and recover the item(s) and pyreals from his or her corpse. If killed by another player the victor is allowed to take the dropped items from the vanquished player. The vitae penalty is removed by gaining a small amount of experience.
Player Killers, also known as PKs, are players who have chosen to change their status to enable them to attack other PKs in Player vs Player combat. On most servers players by default are prevented from attacking each other and must change their status to allow themselves to become PKs. One server, however, is completely PK; players are able to attack each other at will and cannot remove their PK status on Darktide."
Allegiance System ( aka guild )
Asheron's Call features a unique allegiance and fealty system that creates formal links between players and rewards cooperative play. A player of equal or lower level can swear allegiance to a player of the same or higher level, becoming a vassal of a patron. The patron earns a small percentage of bonus experience based on what the vassal makes, while the vassal is motivated to seek a patron exchange for money, items, game knowledge or protection. In the words of one reviewer: "At worst, the allegiance system is a multilevel marketing scheme, whereby greedy, uncaring Patrons enlist as many Vassals as possible in order to gain large amounts of bonus experience. But at best, the allegiance system can provide a tightly knit companionship for players genuinely interested in helping others and developing an organized assembly." Players may also join together in fellowships, temporarily splitting the experience they gain amongst themselves.
I totally just registered on this site to say that the OP has it ballz On! Everything he has said hits home with me.
I played DAoC on Alb Nimue from 3 months after it started until Warhammer and I've visited it a few times since then.
I remember the old cc, yes it sucked until they changed it, all other CC is watered down WTF is a 2 second CC for? (Some games have insanely short CC) Thats not even worth using. I love DAoC CC and I would love to see a game with DAoCs current emplimentation of CC. I remember the old frontiers, I remember when they changed stuff. I remember TOA.
I actually liked the stuff that TOA brought with it but it could have been implemented in a much more friendly way.
DAoC at no point was a noob friendly game. It took a hardcore player to excel at it and I was not one.
Also probably the main reason I registered here:
Eol sounds like a sniveling child. Justinian must be some sort of popular name cause it seems like I remember a Justinian crying about CC on my server all the time.
I totally just registered on this site to say that the OP has it ballz On! Everything he has said hits home with me.
I played DAoC on Alb Nimue from 3 months after it started until Warhammer and I've visited it a few times since then.
I remember the old cc, yes it sucked until they changed it, all other CC is watered down WTF is a 2 second CC for? (Some games have insanely short CC) Thats not even worth using. I love DAoC CC and I would love to see a game with DAoCs current emplimentation of CC. I remember the old frontiers, I remember when they changed stuff. I remember TOA.
I actually liked the stuff that TOA brought with it but it could have been implemented in a much more friendly way.
DAoC at no point was a noob friendly game. It took a hardcore player to excel at it and I was not one.
Also probably the main reason I registered here:
Eol sounds like a sniveling child. Justinian must be some sort of popular name cause it seems like I remember a Justinian crying about CC on my server all the time.
From these interview they talk about CC a bit ( I think its funny they say CC instead of saying crowd control lol), so there will be CC and it sounds like you can get chained CC'd. Everyone gets an escape that uses stamina and sounds like it uses alot of it. I wonder how long they will last or if they will stack.
Also, while its nice to have different classes with different abilities in different realms, it creates a balance nightmare. DAoC was never balanced. Not even close. It just became a never-ending nerf contest, as some classes became FotM and were eventually replaced by others. People like the idea of different classes with different abilities, but they dont face the reality that balancing those classes across realms is inherently almost impossible. I hope they stick with an elder scrolls approach, where all abilities and classes are available to all realms, and its just a matter of what class you choose and how you spend your points/skill up. Its is hard enough to balance the basic classes (fighter, thief, healer, mage) in PvE and PvP much less balance different classes across realms.
I hope the exact opposite. I LOVED the fact that the 3 realms in DAoC were different. Classes were unbalanced? So what? As long as they can't solo groups... I couldn't care less if a class was 5% better. Complaining about Bonedancer pets or Minstrels climbing walls and insta-CCing defenders was part of the game. It created some actual Realm identification and thus realm Pride, which has lacked in all the games I have played since. The closest feeling is in a FFA-PvP game where you make your own alliances and thus identify with it, but that is not relative here... so I would strongly prefer each Alliance in ESO be unique.
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I totally just registered on this site to say that the OP has it ballz On! Everything he has said hits home with me.
I played DAoC on Alb Nimue from 3 months after it started until Warhammer and I've visited it a few times since then.
I remember the old cc, yes it sucked until they changed it, all other CC is watered down WTF is a 2 second CC for? (Some games have insanely short CC) Thats not even worth using. I love DAoC CC and I would love to see a game with DAoCs current emplimentation of CC. I remember the old frontiers, I remember when they changed stuff. I remember TOA.
I actually liked the stuff that TOA brought with it but it could have been implemented in a much more friendly way.
DAoC at no point was a noob friendly game. It took a hardcore player to excel at it and I was not one.
Also probably the main reason I registered here:
Eol sounds like a sniveling child. Justinian must be some sort of popular name cause it seems like I remember a Justinian crying about CC on my server all the time.
From these interview they talk about CC a bit ( I think its funny they say CC instead of saying crowd control lol), so there will be CC and it sounds like you can get chained CC'd. Everyone gets an escape that uses stamina and sounds like it uses alot of it. I wonder how long they will last or if they will stack.
It'll be interesting to see how the CC plays out. Essentially you could burn out of chain CCs early in a fight, but then you'll be out of Stamina for fighting or breaking CCs later. So you'd want to save your Stamina for the "right" time to break CC. Some classes will probably be able to dispel CC from others with magicka.
With this system you could potentially have 1 minute long CC because people can just choose to break it if they didn't spend all their Stamina already.
in a minute, your entire group could be dead. A minute is an eternity to stand there and watch your group get focus-fired down one by one. This really turned off a lot of players, its why Midgard was nicknamed Stungard as the other poster noted. The idea that the only people that werent happy with this were newbies/baddies is just ludicrous. Everyone but cc classes hated it. I honestly dont think you played the game that far back, otherwise you would know that.
Played an Armsman,Pally, and a Warden. No CC to speak of really. Enjoyed the way they did CC in that game, from the beginning, immunity timers just made it better.
ok, well I guess that stungard nickname happened for no reason.
I find it hard to believe anyone would find chain mez acceptable (prior to cc imminutiy timers), but hey, to each their own. Most people dont like standing there helpless watching their group mates focus-fired down one-by-one by the dps train.
Stungard happened for a reason, because most albs and hibs were too stupid to counter it. If you didn't like DAoC just say I don't like DAoC and you can be done with it. Not really a point trying to convince others who played the game for years to change their opinions. Just my 2cents.
edit in response to edit: That's why I said it just got better after immunity timers etc. It was fine for a lot of us to begin with.
Oh come on, are you seriously saying that Midgard was called Stungard because the dumb players were on Hib and Albion? Seriously? And by the way, in the beginning there WAS no counter to AOE CC, that was the whole reason it got the repuation it did, and why they added all of the purges and diminishingn returns.
As far as liking DAoC, I did like it, but liking a game doesnt mean you have to like every single thing about it. Also DAoC changed a lot over the years. In the first year or two there was a nice mix of players, but over time the player base declined and the remaining players were almost all hardcore. That may be fun for hardcore players but its not a recipe for financial success, especially for a brand like Elder Scrolls. Although I suppose coming to MMORPG.com and saying that is like going to a coven and talking about the virtues of christianity, LOL.
...I played DAoC on Alb Nimue from 3 months after it started until Warhammer and I've visited it a few times since then...
well by being one of the few players to stick with DAoC, you arent typical of the other 95% who left the game. I can pretty much guarantee they wont be making a game to appeal to the DAoC hardcore because thats a recipe for financial failure. I imagine they will try to take some of the things that made DAoC fun (3 realms RvR with most PvE within the realm but some in PvP open areas) but it make it more accessible to mainstream players. I mean, the DAoC hardcore is a few % of the Elder Scrolls playerbase.
I started 6 months after release and don't remember cc without immunities tbh. I agree with you that without immunities and some skills to get out of cc it surely wouldn't be fun.
I strongly disagree that it was losing subscribers before ToA. Actually it was thriving and they were constantly adding new servers. The downfall started with ToA.
That is what a lot of people think, especially the ones who didnt like ToA. But there was already an exodus of casual players before that.
There were fewer casual players, maily because of /level 20. There were no longer any vets around to show newbies the ropes, so population became stagnant. It didn't decline until about 6 months after ToA came out though.
Agree to disagree, it declined long before that. The starter areas were pretty empty even before /level 20, and when you did go to the levelling areas, it was almost all alts. There were very few new players by then. I remember because I levelled an alt at the same time that a new player (friend of a guildie) started. We were usually alone. I also levelled another character on a bigger server (Nimue had a lower population) and I saw the same thing on the other server. This was less than a year after release. No comparison to the first 6 months or so when the game was booming with new players.
Also there was the issue that the more casual players who took a year or more to reach level 50, well they eventually got there, tried lvl 50 RvR, got rolled, and then realized they either needed to grind realm rank, or be cannon fodder in RvR. We lost a big chunk of my guild's alliance because of people quitting because of that. They thought level 50 would enter them into the endgame but really it just entered them into another type of grinding. RvR became more and more hardcore, and the player base declined. Subs took a while to reflect that (in part because of the proliferation of buffbots) but it was real obvious that the player base was declining and there were few new players entering the game.
I'm disappointed that the level of thought here is:
"Make it like DAoC pre ToA"
Really??? I mean the whole OP can be summed up with that statement... you all applaud, but that's basically it. I don't think copying DAoC's approach will work at this point in time due to competition.
Also most of you have 0 clue why 8 players worked in DAoC..... look at the classes and what was "needed" in a group.
Needed heavy CC
Need healer
Need 2nd healer (in case first went down)
Needed 5X speed
Needed End regen
Needed Bubble
And this was a basic pro 8 man set up... depending on the side you had room for 3-4 DPS. The abilities were spread out amongst classes so that's why you needed bigger groups in DAoC.... it wasn't some magical "that's the ideal number"... stop saying it....
Comments
in a minute, your entire group could be dead. A minute is an eternity to stand there and watch your group get focus-fired down one by one. This really turned off a lot of players, its why Midgard was nicknamed Stungard as the other poster noted. The idea that the only people that werent happy with this were newbies/baddies is just ludicrous. Everyone but cc classes hated it. I honestly dont think you played the game that far back, otherwise you would know that.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
Played an Armsman,Pally, and a Warden. No CC to speak of really. Enjoyed the way they did CC in that game, from the beginning, immunity timers just made it better.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
You need cc to make pvp tactical.
But you need all cc to break on damage.
This does 2 things.
1 It counters big aoe spam groups, as they need to be careful with their aoes.
2 cc becomes a tactical choice, e.g. cc healer, kill dps, rather than something you just spam as part of a rotation.
well there ya go, you played a sorc, no wonder you feel cc wasnt a problem in DAoC. And by the way, the game didnt release with all of those purges and cc-immunity, those took quite a while to add and to refine. It sounds to me like you played the game quite a while after release, or at least thats what you remember, because if you were a non-cc class in the first 6 months or a year, you would definitely remember mez dominating battles and chain mezzes that turned off a lot of players to the game. I knew realm-mates that quit RvR and never really gave it a 2nd chance, thats when DAoC started losing players. It steadily lost casual players until mainly the hardcore were left playing, wondering where everyone had gone. A lot of people blame ToA for the player decline, and certainly ToA helped it along a great deal, but the trend was already there prior to ToA. People would reach lvl 50 (which took a long time back then), go into the frontier, and die repeatedly from mez/chain mez. Players either grinded realm rank, or they quit. Many quit, and when ToA came along, most had quit.
Anyway, the main point here was your comment that only baddies and newbies disliked cc in DAoC, and thats just totally wrong, especially in the first year or so of the game, the outcry against cc was overwhelming, which is why all that anti-cc stuff was added.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
ok, well I guess that stungard nickname happened for no reason.
I find it hard to believe anyone would find chain mez acceptable (prior to cc imminutiy timers), but hey, to each their own. Most people dont like standing there helpless watching their group mates focus-fired down one-by-one by the dps train.
Besides, if cc was so good, they wouldnt have added all of the purges and immunity timers. Those just didnt happen by coincidence, they happened because of massive outcry from the player base.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
Stungard happened for a reason, because most albs and hibs were too stupid to counter it. If you didn't like DAoC just say I don't like DAoC and you can be done with it. Not really a point trying to convince others who played the game for years to change their opinions. Just my 2cents.
edit in response to edit: That's why I said it just got better after immunity timers etc. It was fine for a lot of us to begin with.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I started 6 months after release and don't remember cc without immunities tbh. I agree with you that without immunities and some skills to get out of cc it surely wouldn't be fun.
I strongly disagree that it was losing subscribers before ToA. Actually it was thriving and they were constantly adding new servers. The downfall started with ToA.
DAoC - Excalibur & Camlann
That is what a lot of people think, especially the ones who didnt like ToA. But there was already an exodus of casual players before that. If you were a hardcore player who grouped with hardcore players, then you probably didnt notice it as much. But if you were a more casual player with casual-player friends, you would definitely have noticed it. A lot of the casual players took many months to reach level 50, and when they got there and tried to do end-game RvR, they got steamrolled because by that time realm rank has been added and the RR abilities were very strong. Purge for example was essential.
By the time Shrouded Isles was released, DAoC was already moving towards being a more hardcore game. The people that complained the most in forums tended to get their needs addressed, and those people tended to be hardcore players. Change after change favored hardcore players, because DAoC didnt want to lose their subs. That is why buffbots lasted so long, it was a way for Mythic to get multiple subs from the hardcore players. Mythic lost sight of the casual players, who were less vocal but more numerous. The evidence of that was ToA which was the ultimate gift to hardcore players, because it gave them an avenue that made them immensely powerful compared to most players who couldnt (or wouldnt) do the grinding. But my point was that the players were already drifting away before that. It took time for that to be reflected in subs because many people had multi-month subs. But it was very clear if you logged in and looked around, especially in the starter areas, which became dead.
And btw DAoC added very few servers. Yes they added the open world PvP servers but those just cannibalized the other ones, they didnt add many new players. I played on Nimue which was added a few months after the game went gold and it was one of the last servers added, not counting the PvP servers.
I will agree though that ToA was the straw that broke the camel's back. But the camel's break was already gradually breaking before that, it was just less evident to the hardcore PvP crowd than the more casual crowd. It was funny however to read the forums when the hardcore pvpers began to realize they had driven off the casual players and were lacking newbs to slaughter in the frontiers. Especially the ganker types. They dug their own grave and never realized it.
By the way, I was more of a hardcore player but I had many casual player friends and was in a casual guild, so I saw this more firsthand than the high realm rank PvPers.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
There were fewer casual players, maily because of /level 20. There were no longer any vets around to show newbies the ropes, so population became stagnant. It didn't decline until about 6 months after ToA came out though.
Omg this gets so old. When using words like "ALL" "best PVP of all time". Daoc was not a huge hit.
This is a thread of what the OP liked and dislikes. And haha the game not touched is the one still left with MILLIONS playing. Gee so your making a NEW mmo do you try to get the people that loved the dead mmos or go after the one with MILLIONS of players?
So if you have really been around this long you know its all about money. Whats going to bring in millions. Hind sight is always 20/20.
Like it or not people are still paying to play World of Warcraft and alot for pvp. The other mmos? So good, the best ever..omg! are dead. The days of everquest are gone and will never come back. People want easy pvp easy quest and a hand to show you where everything is
Nice Idea OP but...
Exactly. Battlegrounds, Arenas, Structured PvP or what ever you want to call it always detracts from the open world PvP.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Long duration CC is anti-fun. Other than that, nice OP. Perhaps make defending keeps a bit more rewarding than capping them? That would make sure there's no keep trading, everyone would want to conquer a keep simply to get the benefits of defending it. I'm afraid though that devs want capping to be rewarding instead of defending just so there's more back and forth action on the map?
I agree here, back in the day I went to WoW forums to go on and on about how I'd like to see more rewarding open world PvP so that I dont have to sit in BG's just to stay competitive against other players gear. It was crazy how many people rushed in to scream how WoW will never get more rewarding open world PvP because it's not popular enough play style. What the fuck? Why do you think it's not popular in the first place? Because it has no rewards to compete with the BG rewards.
Edit: Also like some people mentioned here, I dont count area PvP to be open world PvP, it just does not have the rush or the element of surprise in it, or the sense of danger when doing something else. It's just like BG's, a designated area for PvP but with larger map.
Like the post OP! In my opinion, Asheron's Call had the best way of handling PVP! there we're White (nonpk) servers, and 1 Red (pk) server.
Heres an excerpt of the wiki
Game World
"The world itself is large at over 500 square miles (1,300 km2). Unlike many other games in the genre, there are no zones. This means players can cross the world on foot, without loading screens or invisible barriers, and any terrain that can be seen in the distance is a real object in the world. It also has a much longer viewing distance than other games of its vintage, with mountains, bodies of water and other terrain being visible long before it is actually approached.
The world is also dotted with a system of one-way portals which expedite travel. Knowing the location and destination of the portals, as well as lifestones, is of vital strategic importance - especially on the Darktide (PVP) server, where allegiances battle each other constantly for dominance over lucrative hunting zones and trading cities.
Apart from the seamless surface world, some of the portals also lead to intricate dungeons. Many of the dungeons are part of quests and contain unique treasures. Dungeons are often much more difficult to navigate than the surface world. They include dizzying labyrinths of passageways in which it is possible to get lost or cut off from your adventuring group, trapped in pits due to missing difficult jumps, stuck behind locked doors, or simply surrounded and overwhelmed by beasts. Some doors require keys. Other dungeons have a series of levers which open otherwise impassable doors, and require group teamwork and timing to run or jump through."
Battle System
"Players attune themselves to lifestones. Upon losing all of their health players will be resurrected at the last lifestone they attuned themselves to, having lost half their pyreals, one or more valuable items, and temporarily losing a certain percentage of their primary and secondary statistics due what is known as a "vitae penalty". The resurrected player may then go to the place the death occurred and recover the item(s) and pyreals from his or her corpse. If killed by another player the victor is allowed to take the dropped items from the vanquished player. The vitae penalty is removed by gaining a small amount of experience.
Player Killers, also known as PKs, are players who have chosen to change their status to enable them to attack other PKs in Player vs Player combat. On most servers players by default are prevented from attacking each other and must change their status to allow themselves to become PKs. One server, however, is completely PK; players are able to attack each other at will and cannot remove their PK status on Darktide."
Allegiance System ( aka guild )
Asheron's Call features a unique allegiance and fealty system that creates formal links between players and rewards cooperative play. A player of equal or lower level can swear allegiance to a player of the same or higher level, becoming a vassal of a patron. The patron earns a small percentage of bonus experience based on what the vassal makes, while the vassal is motivated to seek a patron exchange for money, items, game knowledge or protection. In the words of one reviewer: "At worst, the allegiance system is a multilevel marketing scheme, whereby greedy, uncaring Patrons enlist as many Vassals as possible in order to gain large amounts of bonus experience. But at best, the allegiance system can provide a tightly knit companionship for players genuinely interested in helping others and developing an organized assembly." Players may also join together in fellowships, temporarily splitting the experience they gain amongst themselves.
Heres a link to the full wiki
I feel this system created meaningful and memorable pve and pvp experiences.
It was the second biggest MMORPG at a time when competition was a lot stiffer than it was today.
I totally just registered on this site to say that the OP has it ballz On! Everything he has said hits home with me.
I played DAoC on Alb Nimue from 3 months after it started until Warhammer and I've visited it a few times since then.
I remember the old cc, yes it sucked until they changed it, all other CC is watered down WTF is a 2 second CC for? (Some games have insanely short CC) Thats not even worth using. I love DAoC CC and I would love to see a game with DAoCs current emplimentation of CC. I remember the old frontiers, I remember when they changed stuff. I remember TOA.
I actually liked the stuff that TOA brought with it but it could have been implemented in a much more friendly way.
DAoC at no point was a noob friendly game. It took a hardcore player to excel at it and I was not one.
Also probably the main reason I registered here:
Eol sounds like a sniveling child. Justinian must be some sort of popular name cause it seems like I remember a Justinian crying about CC on my server all the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayT_9USmIbg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDPuaU1xgY
From these interview they talk about CC a bit ( I think its funny they say CC instead of saying crowd control lol), so there will be CC and it sounds like you can get chained CC'd. Everyone gets an escape that uses stamina and sounds like it uses alot of it. I wonder how long they will last or if they will stack.
I hope the exact opposite. I LOVED the fact that the 3 realms in DAoC were different. Classes were unbalanced? So what? As long as they can't solo groups... I couldn't care less if a class was 5% better. Complaining about Bonedancer pets or Minstrels climbing walls and insta-CCing defenders was part of the game. It created some actual Realm identification and thus realm Pride, which has lacked in all the games I have played since. The closest feeling is in a FFA-PvP game where you make your own alliances and thus identify with it, but that is not relative here... so I would strongly prefer each Alliance in ESO be unique.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
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It'll be interesting to see how the CC plays out. Essentially you could burn out of chain CCs early in a fight, but then you'll be out of Stamina for fighting or breaking CCs later. So you'd want to save your Stamina for the "right" time to break CC. Some classes will probably be able to dispel CC from others with magicka.
With this system you could potentially have 1 minute long CC because people can just choose to break it if they didn't spend all their Stamina already.
Oh come on, are you seriously saying that Midgard was called Stungard because the dumb players were on Hib and Albion? Seriously? And by the way, in the beginning there WAS no counter to AOE CC, that was the whole reason it got the repuation it did, and why they added all of the purges and diminishingn returns.
As far as liking DAoC, I did like it, but liking a game doesnt mean you have to like every single thing about it. Also DAoC changed a lot over the years. In the first year or two there was a nice mix of players, but over time the player base declined and the remaining players were almost all hardcore. That may be fun for hardcore players but its not a recipe for financial success, especially for a brand like Elder Scrolls. Although I suppose coming to MMORPG.com and saying that is like going to a coven and talking about the virtues of christianity, LOL.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
well by being one of the few players to stick with DAoC, you arent typical of the other 95% who left the game. I can pretty much guarantee they wont be making a game to appeal to the DAoC hardcore because thats a recipe for financial failure. I imagine they will try to take some of the things that made DAoC fun (3 realms RvR with most PvE within the realm but some in PvP open areas) but it make it more accessible to mainstream players. I mean, the DAoC hardcore is a few % of the Elder Scrolls playerbase.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
Agree to disagree, it declined long before that. The starter areas were pretty empty even before /level 20, and when you did go to the levelling areas, it was almost all alts. There were very few new players by then. I remember because I levelled an alt at the same time that a new player (friend of a guildie) started. We were usually alone. I also levelled another character on a bigger server (Nimue had a lower population) and I saw the same thing on the other server. This was less than a year after release. No comparison to the first 6 months or so when the game was booming with new players.
Also there was the issue that the more casual players who took a year or more to reach level 50, well they eventually got there, tried lvl 50 RvR, got rolled, and then realized they either needed to grind realm rank, or be cannon fodder in RvR. We lost a big chunk of my guild's alliance because of people quitting because of that. They thought level 50 would enter them into the endgame but really it just entered them into another type of grinding. RvR became more and more hardcore, and the player base declined. Subs took a while to reflect that (in part because of the proliferation of buffbots) but it was real obvious that the player base was declining and there were few new players entering the game.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
I'm disappointed that the level of thought here is:
"Make it like DAoC pre ToA"
Really??? I mean the whole OP can be summed up with that statement... you all applaud, but that's basically it. I don't think copying DAoC's approach will work at this point in time due to competition.
Also most of you have 0 clue why 8 players worked in DAoC..... look at the classes and what was "needed" in a group.
Needed heavy CC
Need healer
Need 2nd healer (in case first went down)
Needed 5X speed
Needed End regen
Needed Bubble
And this was a basic pro 8 man set up... depending on the side you had room for 3-4 DPS. The abilities were spread out amongst classes so that's why you needed bigger groups in DAoC.... it wasn't some magical "that's the ideal number"... stop saying it....
Eve best sandbox mmo ever