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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games)

DAoC To Ameliorate Level Grind With Giveaways 32

Posted by simoniker from the casual-player-grinning dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a 'State Of The Game' statement for PC MMO Dark Age Of Camelot, courtesy developers Mythic Entertainment, explaining that "We want to go even farther [to accommodate casual MMO gamers] and we will do so over the next few weeks." The "Gift of the Realm" system for the MMO is then explained, in which: "At certain time intervals... 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. These changes are designed to help the casual as well as the new player succeed more quickly in DAoC." Could this be a solution to help reduce the grind in many MMOs? Update: 07/30 16:05 GMT by S : A commenter points to further details in a follow-up post from Mythic's Matt Firor.
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DAoC To Ameliorate Level Grind With Giveaways More

DAoC To Ameliorate Level Grind With Giveaways

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  • More details now available.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by DragonPup ( 302885 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:01AM (#9844479)
    here [camelotherald.com].

  • everybody to level 60 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chris_mahan ( 256577 ) <chris.mahan@gmail.com> on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:19AM (#9844699) Homepage
    Can't they make everybody level 60 with all artifacts and everything to begin with?

    Like Carey in "Whose line is it anyway?": "Everybody gets a million points"

    Oh, I see, the whole point of the game is to find the stuff and get the experience.

    I see.

    They're screwed. They are spoiling the children with faster and better toys.

    Whatever happened to the days of 1d4 magic missiles?

    • It's not 1d4 magic missiles. It's never *been* 1d4 magic missiles.

      MMOs have always basically equated character power with the time the player's spent playing the game. Not in terms of player skill -- rather, it's a simple question of "I've spent 30 hours and you've spent 50 hours so you win".

      What Mythic has done here is to reduce the pain the 30-hour people have to endure when they inevitably encounter the 50-hour people. And that's absolutely huge.

      • What Mythic has done here is to reduce the pain the 30-hour people have to endure when they inevitably encounter the 50-hour people. And that's absolutely huge.

        I agree, but I still think their solution does nothing to reduce the problems inherent with MMOs, nor does it really solve the problem that existed on DaOC.

        Basically they turned what was originally supposed to be a PvP concept into a nightmare. From what I understand, the first expansion went fairly well (I played DaoC for a while before the expan
        • I think some people reported that one of the missions took like 7 hrs to accomplish or something ridiculous
          7 hours ridiculous? Try a 63+ hour ragefire camp in EQ, with every 6 hours or so requiring you to get a little group together kill off some firegiants. Its amazing what people will put up with to get that uber-leet piece of lewt.
    • Whatever happened to the days of 1d4 magic missiles?

      You're comparing (or confusing) apples and oranges. Dungeons & Dragons is to Everquest/DAoC/FFXI as a backyard game of football is to Madden 2005. (Or Madden 2007, or whatever iteration will give you the ability to play a full season online)

      Yeah, the basic idea, and even (sometimes) the specific rules are the same... but they're completely different monsters. A pen & paper RPG is about having fun with your friends, and playing a role (hence

  • The problem with DAOC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by johnkoer ( 163434 ) <johnkoer@yahCOFFEEoo.com minus caffeine> on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:20AM (#9844710) Homepage Journal
    One of the problems with DAOC is the new leveling grinds they keep adding with every expansion pack. All of these new grinds add benefits to lvl 50 characters, so even though you thought you were done grinding, every new expansion pack adds more grinding for all. If you started a brand new character today on a brand new account without knowing anyone on the server, I would hate to see the amount of gameplay it would take to get you to a lvl 50 with nice armor, a few artificats and a ML 10.
    • It is odd... People complain about expansion packs adding more grinding as if it was a bad thing. When ToA came out I had finally hit 50 with a couple of my characters and I was starting to run out of challenges. I was ready for something more - raise the level cap, give me new dungeons, more quests, SOMETHING. ToA came out and it was basically levels 51-60, though they claimed it was optional and wouldn't affect RvR. Well, anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed ToA and the "grinding" it involved. Now I'm runn

  • But why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NealokNYU ( 779603 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:30AM (#9844831)
    I wonder if they really will attract any casual players with this? If I were a casual MMOG gamer, it seems to me that a game like World of Warcraft or City of Heroes would offer more for me than any of the other crop out there right now, no matter how much they try to redeem themselves. In the sea of banality that is MMOGs right now, DAOC has exactly nothing to set itself apart from the masses of other MMOGs

  • So what does this really change... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkmayo ( 251580 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @11:48AM (#9845084)
    So you give kids levels faster... ok sure.
    But remember this is DAOC, a huge point of the game is RVR combat. Levels are only a small part of the RVR equation. All this is is cutting down a little bit of one treadmill so people can focus on the other treadmill.. oh did we mention the other treadmill involves your greenhorn character getting his ass pounded by over and over again by other players who have more Realm Abilities and all sorts of other goodies that only killing in RVR combat can gain. Sure you got to 50 faster great.. but when your facing that guy who has more Realm Ranks than you do you can guarentee that you'll be taking a trip back to the bind stone asap.

    You still have to keep up with the Jones after you "finish" leveling. Full spellcrafted gear, artifacts, realm levels and whatnot.

    Unless you are playing on Ghaeris(the coop server) not alot of difference will be there.

    • Well, with a few of the right classes at level 50 you can crank out some cash to help equip them with optimal equipment. Of course that implies you have a few friends who will grind away for hours on end at earning cash after making your accelerated way to 50. Otherwise you need some extra accounts to play more characters at once by yourself (most people seem to feel the need to have a second account for a 'Buff Bot' anyway, much to the dismay of some others against the idea). But yes, as mentioned, afte
    • They did change Realm Abilities a lot since I first played. I'd wholeheartedly agree with you before the change, time spent in RvR gaining realm points was about 50% of determining your character's success, the other 50% was who you RvR'd with regulary.

      However after the change, they made tiers out of all the realm abilities and the first level of each is pretty cheap compared to what it used to be.

      For example, I was RR 8 before I could finally buy Mastery of Concentration (for a Healer, that was pret
    • I've noticed lately that Mythic seems to be aiming DAoC more and more at PvP gameplay. PvE is less and less important with every patch.

      It seems that Mythic got a surprise when they released ToA. Players had been complaining that the PvE content was too shallow, too easy, too simple. They wanted interesting quests, challenging encounters, something new and different. Mythic tried to deliver this with ToA, and I think they succeeded. ToA was very different from what DAoC had to offer before then. But p

  • With gold/experience handouts it sounds like.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cherveny ( 647444 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:24PM (#9846350) Homepage
    an MMORPG with a built in welfare/unemployment system. :) Couldn't find work (something to kill) this week, so get a free government (trainer) handout. (And no, this was not meant as Flamebait, just as a joke, although someone will probably moderate it as such.)

  • Errr. Don't think so. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LouSir ( 681838 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @03:35PM (#9847759)
    I quit DAOC several months ago. I was a casual player and played about 1 hour per day. I grinded through all 50 levels although most of the time it did not feel like a grind. It took close to 2 years I quit because the high level content like Master Levels took a 5 to 10 hour chunk of time. How could they possibly expect people to sit at a computer for that long a period of time (when not at work :) ). Even RVR takes a large time commitment. By the time you get a decent group moving my hour was up and the wife was yelling. I don't think free levels is the answer. But making high level content doable for the casual player is a step in the right direction. Lou Sir

    • By the time you get a decent group moving my hour was up and the wife was yelling

      You lucky man. You actually got a whole hour on the computer before the wife started yelling. Or was she yelling the whole time and you just started paying attention after an hour?

  • the only way to truly eliminate 'level grind'... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 30, 2004 @04:55PM (#9848442)
    the only way to truly eliminate the "Level Grind" problem in ANY multiplayer online rpg is to REMOVE LEVELS ENTIRELY.

    improving your character should be about skills and abilities, not "levels" that somehow magically give you more hit/spell points or greater damage capability or in some other way generally make your character more powerful than some newbie with practically the same character (like same race, stats, etc). this is the sort of stupidity that leads to a situation where a level 10 warrior class who normally fights with a sword, for some reason decided to fight with a weapon he's never used (staff for example) and yet he can still beat a level 5 who has specialized in using the staff as a weapon, just because that level 10 has more hitpoints or some arbitrarily assigned bonus to his WC just for being level 10. it's stupid. that level 5 should be the one who wins in that sort of situation.
    • Why I agree, most poeple don't...or at least most vocal people.

      If you ever present that idea on a messageboard for a game, you'll get instantly rebuked by eveyrone and their dog.

      It turns out, most the 'vocal' players of MMORPG live for the level grind, despite their complaints to the contrary. They'll tell you that you HAVE to have levels in order to distinguish all the hard work they put in. They'll tell you it's impossible to have an RPG without levels. They'll tell you that anything else is 'carebe
    • I've been railing against level-based design since DAoC was in beta, and I couldn't agree more with you.

      Levels were conceived for use in a Chainmail/D&D-style setting. They were a convenient yardstick for use by a couple geeks sitting at a card table in someone's basement, with a couple miniatures, a book or two, some graph paper, and a handful of D6s. Sure, levels glossed over virtually every technical aspect of character development, but they were a fair enough approximation for a game driven more by
      • Horizons and Shadowbane get stuck off on the side because they do things differently from the pack.

        it reminds me of IE's domination of the browser world. there's better stuff out there, but people are used to seeing the same thing over and over and don't feel like going another route.

        which is really a shame. I've been playing Horizons since it went live and had a hell of a fun time with it. I've got buddies that sing the praises of Shadowbane, but by and large those two games are dying off.

        and if you'

      • Problem is though, people seem to LIKE the level grind, no matter how much they may complain about it. Just take a look at how (un)successful Horizons and Shadowbane are in comparison to the more level-driven comptetition.

        I do agree that in this day & age, there really isn't a terribly good reason to use a level-based system. It is just as easy to define a character by a set of skills as it is some arbitrary numbering system. But, for some reason, people gravitate towards games with levels. People
    • Of course your 'solution' to remove the grind doesn't remove the grind, it just replaces it with another grind.

  • camelot - what they not telling you (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As someone who played the game for two years plus waiting for something else...
    Is that it will take 3-6 months of playing - grinding away to reach a point where you can be somewhat even competive wise. (right in time for them to nerf your toon type into oblivion)
    7 day free trial! *snicker* you might be able to get into a chibi mini battleground, good luck on finding someone to play with/against.

    This from a game whos main drawing point was realm vrs realm combat. Yet they did not bother to address some of
  • The best MMO imo coming out will be Guild Wars [guildwars.com]. I've been following this game very closely since the E34E event. This game in an alpha build, blew my socks off. The game play is not dependent on levels or items so much (although they will be slightly) but much more on strategy. A new character should be able to beat a character that's got 5x's as much time spent in the game as him if the new character has better strategy. Of course, the game isn't released yet, so who knows if it'll live up to the hype

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