[MUD-Dev] Interesting DAoC Poll

[Azeraab]

At 12:02 PM 12/12/01 +0000, Dave Shepherd wrote:

> Tradeskills, are not a money sink for the crafter per se - he
> makes a profit from consignments given to him by NPCs until he is
> high enough in skill to make items similar or better than the best
> store bought items (in fact he can earn many times more coin than
> his xp seeking peers).

I apologize for oversimplifying.  You can make money with trades at
the middle levels, but since the only use for money (beyond a few
gold for horse rides) is more tradeskills, and at 650+ they are
nothing more than a way to quickly flush a fortune for something of
possible future value.

>> RvR poorly implemented, it feels untested and thrown together.

> They do have a long way to go. There is some structure to it, but
> needs a lot of work.

The surprising thing is that Mythic's most similar game, Magestorm,
was much more thought out.

>> DaoC violates at least 7 of the 10 of the rules for viable pvp
>> system.

> There are only 10?  I would have thought there were more than 10,
> and perhaps more than one ruleset for viable PvP.

Possibly.

The rules (lets call it the Deep Blue ruleset) I am refering to were
posted here, I think a year or 2 ago, perhaps it's time for a
repost.  It adheres to the philosophy that pvp should be like a
chess game.  You should only lose if your opponent is better than
you or you make a mistake.  Things like giving the first person to
act a huge advantage (a moderate one is ok), 1 shot kills, and
putting in things like charm, invisibility and paralization without
effective counters are considered wrong.

I think follower's of the view on pvp that all players should be
able to effectively participate regardless of skill would most
likely have a different ruleset where those things are acceptable.

However, upon checking the DaoC boards I see most players
complaining loudly about the issues that Deep Blue warns against.

>> Most of the keeps are indefensible and guard nothing.

> Taking over a keep in an enemy realm reduces the number of
> defenders at the Relic keeps and capturing a Relic grants you
> bonuses over other Realms.  Sounds like a good start for promoting
> RvR.  They clearly have a long way to go with adding more meaning
> to the frontier but they do recognise this.

I half agree with this change.  The half that disagrees is the one
that realizes keeps are nifty, but pvp is about Players vs Players,
there are no NPCs in that equation.

DaoC lacks places where you can battle other players without a risk
of an NPC wandering in.  The only ones I can think of are the mile
forts, currently the majority of pvp takes place near these.

>> To spend 20+ minutes traveling to the nearest bindpoint to the
>> enemy frontier is another barrier to getting people involved.

> If you could respawn right next to the area you are defending then
> you probably would have impenetrable keeps.

I would settle for putting a bindstone in the portal keep or at
least next the the portal in your homeland.

> DAoC is level based, and with such a stratification of power
> combined with the inherited PvE bias you will always have this
> problem.

With the vast majority of player who are engaging in pvp being upper
30's to lower 40's, the level bias is small and getting smaller.
Sure if a level 20 player shows up on the field he's not going to
last long, but soon this game will have the majority of active pvp
players in the 45-50 range.

> (FYI being hit breaks mez).

One of the hibernian mez spells have been bugged since release, it's
not broken when you get hit.

> DAoC has a long way to go and they are the first to admit that.
> Mythic have taken a few small steps, perhaps as many as they could
> afford to take in this niche? PvP market.  I hope they do well,
> not just for them, but also for those designers that build on
> DAoC.

Of the players I've talked to nearly 100% were interested in RvR,
those who were not simply stayed in EQ.  Many players consider
levels 1-40 to be the annoying task you have to go through before
you can join the "real game" of RvR.  Every day dozens more players
break level 40.  The number of players active beyond 40 seems to be
remaining almost steady.  The time to finish RvR was a few months
ago when players had not yet started taking keeps, or better yet,
during the BETA.




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