Silius
I am new here in Vanguard. I am a loyal player, having spent 8 years in Dark Age of Camelot. I guess what I have to was is simple but probably long winded so buckle up but please read it all. I was not only a Beta player for DAOC but also sent regular monthly feedback for the entire 8 years. See to me the game was more interesting then reality, lol don't worry I have a life, but I pretty much hate people so if my very tight group of friends cannot gather then I am in game.
First I love the fact that crafting is a pain in the butt. People should have to earn the right to be great crafters. This is one area that DAOC failed and imo that was the beginning of their fall. Their system was so simple that a 10 line 3rd party macroing program could craft you all the way to LGM in a day or two. So to fix this problem they made it easier for everyone so now there is no point to crafting at all. They also made common drops that were more powerful then master piece crafted items, again leaving no reason to craft at all. IMO only the most rare and most powerful drops should be better then the finest crafted wears. Now there was one thing that they had right when it came to crafting. Let say I made a pair of level 40 gloves. Those glove are between 94% and 99% quality and have 4 enchantment slots, and (making the numbers up but bare with me till I make the point) this means that you cannot place an enchantment that is higher then lvl 40 and all 4 enchantments must add up to 40 or less point. So you might get 2 level 35 enchantments and 2 level 40 enchantments. Like +5 str, +2 fire resist, +9 dex, +40 hit points. Thus restricting the item to reasonable power. However if the item was a master piece (100% quality) then it would have 4 slots and 60 points thus allowing you to perhaps have 4 lvl 40 enchantments. A MP (100% item) would have a 1 in 100 chance of being crafted on a random roll per item. BTW the enchanting and procs are done by a second crafter called an alchemist. The item also has a 5th slot for charged or reactive procs. Now I know OUR crafting system is not the same as DAOC but there are some ideas that would rock. I do not like the fact that I am told what to combine to get item X, I would much rather have it set up so that I know Ingredient X does this and if I mix X and Y with some B and W I get an Item that look like Gloves of XYBW. Or if I do not have any B then I end up with Gloves of XYW and so on. My point is I learn what the catalyst do and create my own item the way I want it. The system now offers (example) Gloves of Str and Int, but what if I am making them for a tank, and I would rather use a different attuning dust to make Gloves of Str and Dex. I guess what I am saying is give us freedom. I tried WOW for 3 months, lol prepaid for 6 and left after 3, I was stunned when I saw that even color was not an option in crafting, lol if you had the blue shirt recipe then you were wearing blue. I freaking hate blue! In DAOC the Alchemist makes Enamel, Leather Dye and Cloth Dye and pretty much any item can be dyed the way you want it. I personally love that feature. Also back to the freedom, when your mix and matching stuff to see what pops out there is a chance that you will fail and end up with junk even a vender would not buy, but as people learn to make items they share this knowledge with others and the players begin to interact. Sure have 80% of the recipes come from the trainer but have a few that are out there but only by trial and error will they be uncovered. (that's from another game, long before MMORGs lol) In DAOC if an alchemist tries to OC (over charge, which is possible based on item quality, enchantment quality, and luck) and fails it kills him and he has to either have a rez handy or release and run back.
One thing I loved about DAOC was its difficulty (before Mythic lost control, and I don't mean the buy out.) See before the plat farmers and macro crafters completely destroyed the economy of the game Dark Age rocked, and I am sure 90% of its ex players will back me on that. I stayed and waited for them to fix it but the whiners posted crap and Mythic made it easier and easier until there was nothing left. Real gamers do not want easy, real gamers do not own cheat books, would not run macro programs if they were free, turn down offer for free gold from other players, and die 50 time trying to reach their corpse even though they could just summon it. See real gamer play with respect, pride and honor. We have principles to uphold. See I stayed with Mythic for 8 years, from Beta to death because I believed the promise they made at beta launch. They promised to never sell out to the whiners. "A game for real gamers written by real gamers!" and for 4 years they lived up to it and then it happened; they launched a new expansion and people came in by the thousands and they saw all that money and forgot their promise, forgot their loyal players and not they are dying. Because the fly by night, game hopping idiots are not your bread and butter, they are a quick fix. They quadrupled their population and trying to hold on to those numbers they made change after change until all the old timers were gone, then came some other games super new release and 80% of the population hoped away. Now all they had left was a fraction of the population they had before the expansion release and a screwed up world that was dying. Now after 8 years even I have left their world. A place I used to love to go, and friends I will never see again, but friends that left that world long ago.
So if I give you 8 years of my life, what do I get in return? Will you keep the game hard and look for ways to make it harder? Games like this are not for everyone and people like me do not want 10000 idiots running around in our world. Trust me if you make a true gamers game, and worry less about weather or not we can zoom in and see the mites walking around on the leaf on a tree and worry more about game play and use less ram, lol a lot less ram then they will come. Accounts that will stay active forever. Hell advertize it as a hard as hell game and put right on the add that idiots are not welcome and watch how many people come over. Debug it a bit more first. Remember Zelda? Crappy graphics and I mean really crappy. Not the new Zelda I am talking old school Nintendo Zelda. You would think in today's market that game is junk, yet people still play it lol and people still say it was one of the best games ever written. Because without the cheat books it was challenging. People like to fight, no matter how much they whine about it, they keep trying to overcome it. I complain everyday that I wish I was not dying so freaking much, and everyday I log back in and die some more. Why? Because trying to stay alive is fun, having it handed to me is not fun.
Here is a closing thought. If you do sell out to the whiner then make one pvp and one pve server that are expert servers and make them hard as hell so that real player do not have to deal with the idiots that want you to give everything to them. I bet you see a lot more loyal pop on your expert servers.
Louis Cyphre
(the bringer of change)
