How was DAoC pvp more "skill" based than other games?

[KilllerRock]

I didn't play DAoC as much as my friends did. But that was because the PvE blew chunks, and i was young and leveling was so slow and painfully boring for an ADD teen.

 

 

But the PvP was amazing. Zerg vs Zerg in that game just seemed epic, these 50 vs 50 battles of spells going off and melee charging in, and CC/AoE that can hit an infinite amount of targets if they are dumb enough to stand that clustered togeather (yes, you wanted to spread out so 1 ground AoE spell didn't hit everyone).

 

Then you had 8 mans kiting or bombing zergs because again, zergs were lazy and put 1 guy on auto follow so everyone was clustered ontop of eachother and allowed themselves to be hit by 3 casters CC or AoE dmg spells and wipe 50 people. Which i loved about the game that a smaller force could wipe a force 3-4x bigger if they played well together and the zerg did not.

 

The 8vs8 fights were intense, they could be fast matches that ended in 40 seconds or they could last 10 minutes. And ya casters were interupted a **** ton, but casters hit like a truck, if you didn't make sure to shut certain casters down they would demolish a team if they were allowed to free cast. And melee had directional attacks and chains. Attacks that could only be used from the side or the back or after a block or dodge, attacks that could only be used as a sequel to a previous attack, 3-4 chain attacks.

 

On top of that, you had solo players running around looking for 1v1 or 2v2 and most the community had what they considered "honor" in that game. That even though an 8 man could simply kill the solo player to get realm points to help lvl up, they usually past them up and let them roam looking for a 1v1 as it was considered "dishonorable" to gank a solo player with your 8 man.

 

It also had castle sieges and a resource called relics that gave faction wide buffs if you controlled them. It required a huge assault force usually to take these so if you controlled one, you knew you would probably have it for a while and you would try to defend those with your life if you were online when a enemy faction would try to take it from you.

 

And ya, some classes did just counter other classes. But it made teamwork all that more important. The good 8 mans were well known because they hardly ever died except to the other good 8 mans. And you couldnt just mindlessly zerg good players as with good CC and kiting they might still wipe your group of 40.

 

Hell im pretty sure you can youtube a video of an 8 man wiping a 100 man zerg because they funneled them up into a tower and nuked the sh*t out of them as they came inside.

Edited February 7, 2012 by KilllerRock

[Whiteswag]

Having played DaoC and being on the best guild in our server and being #1 across all servers for my class (infiltrator) for the time I played (release - TOA), I can tell you exactly what went wrong and right with daoc.

 

DaoC was by far the best PvP game Ive played yet, and I will tell you why.

 

THE GOOD

 

1. Realm pride - Everyone no matter who you were in that game had a sense of pride in the realm. If your realm got attacked, no matter what you were doing you hauled *** to defend it. Lots was at stake. Being attacked and losing your melee and/or magic relics meant your WHOLE realm did less damage and the enemy who took it and capped it in their own fortress gained that damage. Mind you, this wasnt as a walk in the park. It was basically unheard of to take a relic for the first few months of the games release, and even then oh my lord was it hard. You had to capture a number of keeps, kill defenders along the way, break down the walls to their fortress and take the relic, THEN you had to carry it (like flag) a long way away to your portal. From there you then had to run it all the way to your fortress in the middle of fricken nowhere to cap it. All along the way fighting for your life, defending, having gank groups peel off you, and then in some cases having the OTHER realm come in and try to wipe everyone and take the prize for themselves. It was EPIC. People would wake up at 2am in a coordinated realm login to form the raid party to invade the enemy lands and take their relics. Everyone would log on and immediately type /anon so they wouldnt show up on the /who (enemies had spies and would check in on people to see where the forces were)

 

2. Crafters - these people were very important. Whoever was Legendary Grandmaster was known to everyone on the server. This was an achievement and they made 100% quality items. Quality affected the damage your weapon did, the closer to 100% the closer to the true weapon damage. There were 90000 crafters, there was one maybe two, and they were your best friend.

 

3. Community - EVERYONE knew everyone. The server was large enough to have people all over the world at all times, and yet small enough to remember everyone, what guild they were in, etc. I myself started off as a complete noobie in a large "family" guild and then worked my way up to one of those "elitist" guilds. Deathspam was awesome, when you killed someone the whole zone was alterted that you had just done so. People feared certain people and either refused to head out solo or grouped up en masse to survive. We also all used IRC at the time so it was awesome having the whole server on talking smack and/or congratulating eachother over pvp wins etc.

 

3. Skill - In my opinion the highest skill cap game released yet. Casters and healers were probably the best players I've ever seen and that game built and bred some of the best players in current MMO's. Casters and Healers could not cast through damage and face tank people in this game. This was awesome, it encouraged positioning, situational awareness, kiting, prioritizing targets and abilities etc. Ever since WoW and even before then, games decided to go extremely casual and make it so you can cast in peoples faces with only a little delay in casting (which in most cases is removed via talents).

 

4. Items - All the best gear was crafted and thus everyone at end game was equal. At L50 (if you did your whole class quest) you got a full set of 100% quality armor which was really cool and unique looking. This never even got close to capping you on stats but it was a good start. Crafted gear + enchanting made everyone perfectly equal with their respective max stats.

 

5. Diminishing returns - Awesome CC implementation after the poorly designed release CC. Diminishing returns forced players to play smart (which is a good thing). If you stunned, slept, rooted someone etc they could not be controlled with that same spell again for a full minute. It really made players vigilant and conscious about when to do things and when to hold off because they would do more harm than good. Now a days people just throw cc at the nearest tab target and who cares, it means nothing.

 

6. Realm Abilities - Very fun and always left you wanting more. This was the quintessential min/max for your character. You wanted that extra +stats, you wanted to save for that expensive 10 point realm ability even if it did have a 30min cooldown lol. Some abilities were necessary, others were useful, and some were just fluff.

 

7. Ranking - I would love looking at the camelotherald website all the time to see where I stood vs everyone else pvping, where I stood in the assassin category, solo category and where our guild was. It was a small way of getting recognized by everyone on your server.

 

8. Character balance - Honestly, SWTOR has better balance but DaoC wasn't too far off. Sure Hibernian casters could stun and nuke you down in a few seconds but hey, that's life, one interrupt and they were yours. I honestly never said to myself, OMG that's so fricken overpowered, or raged as hard as I do in Star Wars.

 

9. Named Mobs - ALL named mobs dropped something, and that was awesome. Anytime I saw a named mob I went and I had to kill it. Anyome remember the sword from Tusker the named pig in the Yarley Farm? He dropped a ****** sword that was the FIRST weapon with a particle effect in DaoC.

 

THE BAD

 

1. Radar - due to large map sizes and large zergs some of the gank groups uses radar programs to find fights and avoid the zergs. Not a huge issue to anyone who was mildly competent since you were panning 24/7 in that game so you didnt get flanked.

 

2. CC - for the first bit of the games PvP life there was no crowd control breaks, and no diminishing returns. If you landed a sleep on someone, good game, that guy was sleeping for a full minute. This was remedied fairly quickly and really turned the game around.

 

3. Population Imbalance - One strong realm was able to bully, zerg and camp the other side with relative immunity. Only a joined effort between the two enemy realms vs the big dog or a midnight raid to cripple the stronger force would tip the scales.

 

4. Emain - Poor Hibernians, they had the best terrain and it was easy on the eyes too. This made the best PvP open area but it left the poor Hibernians always defending their lands.

 

5. Stealth zergs - Omg, when people saw how good assassins were, they blew up and became flavor of the month. I was one of 3 Assassins on the whole server, but once people saw the power and sheer carnage of a well played assassin, people began to form whole groups of them in pvp and lie in wait to jump on helpless stragglers trying to join the fight or in some cases jump full groups.

 

6. Archers - Archers would one shot casters and own tanks too when the game released. This was remedied by giving casters bladeturn (made the first arrow get absorbed), gave shield tanks engage (they would face you and put up their shield and block all arrows, but they couldnt attack) they increased the chance to fumble and drop your arrow, they increased the chance to pop of out stealth when you were trying to fire and they made them visibile to almost all assassins. Poor archers, Mythic really laid the smack down hard, but good archers still prevailed.

 

7. TOA - complete utter disaster. No clue why decided to add a PvE expansion to a PvP game. It completely forced people that PvP to PvE just to remain on par. Items were so powerful and had insane "on use" effects that single handedly tipped the scales in your favor. The PvP got angry, joined in on the PvE fail, got the items, had to then grind their life away to level up the items and then go back to pvp. By then, the game lost a lot of subscribers and began its long and slow decline into the annals of history.

 

 

Daoc R.I.P "never forget"

[Warlyx]

i enjoyed how archers worked in DaoC was original and refreshing

 

u could spam fast but low dmg arrows or u could draw your bow (i still miss that sound! )

 

lots of arrows to choose from:

 

piercing , blunt , slashing ^^

 

opening with a critical shot >>>------>

 

best archery system ever ^^

 

archers go nerfed hard , but oh well , they changed archery later too adding lot of skills :S

Edited February 7, 2012 by Warlyx

[Mallorik]

Daoc didnt have pvp gear, and all the end game gear you wanted for pvp was made by crafters with very few exceptions.

[KilllerRock]

so instead of having gear advantage. you had flat out ability advantage.

 

yea, that sounds like 'pure skill' /sarcasm

 

 

it was minor ability advantage, its like a skill advantage in the 1-49 bracket between a level 30 and a level 45. Ya you're missing out on a few abilities, but i feel at less of a disadvantage when i hit just as hard but am missing a skill or two, than when its a gear disadvantage and i can use all the same abilities but they just have higher dmg reduction and higher damage.

[KilllerRock]

Also, why did Mythic instead of making Warhammer not just make DAoC 2? I seriously would purchase for $60 a updated version of the same original DAoC. Just update the graphics, make the PvE a little more enjoyable, and keep the classes/abilties/CC/AoE all the same and i would buy it.

[FichutheDude]

A good templates at the beginning of TOA and reaching ML10 was not a 'walk in the park'.

Plus you had to find a spellcrafter and alchimist. It's was expensive and most of them were doing only their guild or were too busy.

 

So you had to ask in the forum and their price would be awesome. Or you had your own which mean you were far from being a new player anyway.

 

Reaching GM level was A PAIN IN THE BUTT. So I never did it myself .. I simply used my guild mates crafter

 

MP armor did not come cheap either . You also would lose extra imbue points if you opted for 99%

 

Farming scroll ( You needed a group or a buffbot) with super rare drop rates and getting credit for your artifact was not pleasant and very long. I have fond memory of ppl camping spot for day so they could get that frigging arty credit or drop. DaOc was everything but not a casual game and you needed a group.

 

RvR had plenty of imbalances . Also a rr5 gank group pre made could beat a rr10 pug grp .. Sure. Really? Maybe if all their RA were down. Some class had active RA and most of the time it what made the difference between equally skilled group. Some RA were overpowered like MoC . Some class had their moment also . Like Warlock , Savage , Bonedancer, Cleric (yes yes CLERIC) , Sorcerer , Berserker and Enchanter!!

 

DaOC was not without problem. The open world RVR was the best thing about this game.

 

Plus leveling to 50 ... Yes .. .Day and day camping the same area. It's was WORK. Took me 18 day the first time ... My XP bar keep moving a little .. .each hours after 100000 pull.

Edited February 7, 2012 by FichutheDude

[CicadaDDR]

UO PvP, imo.

[Vylettes]

 

Plus leveling to 50 ... Yes .. .Day and day camping the same area. It's was WORK. Took me 18 day the first time ... My XP bar keep moving a little .. .each hours after 100000 pull.

 

18 days? took me 30 for my first 50. But that is also what made the community so consistant. Since it took ages to make a level 50, people didnt have like 10 different level 50s or 20 different characters. Was important to make the one have a good reputation and less people to remember.

[Aleksiel]

it isn't.

 

CC that lasts for 30 seconds.

No CC breaks.

Any hit interrupts spell casting so you cant cast any spell if you are getting hit.

Permanent stun.

Archers used to kill casters in one hit until they introduced bladeturn. Now it requires them 2-3 hits.

 

Maphack is a must. If your group doesn't have maphack, they can't roam open pvp since 1 group mez = dead party.

 

THIS. Was good for it's day but ridiculous now. RVR was the only good part. Getting one shot by an archers Long Draw was not fun. As far as gear goes, you dungeon crawled all day to get the best get to destroy people with. One of the reasons why a pvp stat was implemented in WoW. Don't ever let any of these so called "true pvpers" tell you that the early games weren't gear dependent, or that pvp was for the "thrill of killing others". If you didn't have max level PvE gear you were getting destroyed, bottom line

[Briljin]

Not sure I would call it more skill based, they had their share of OP classes and abilities just like any MMO. But their faction based PvP system blows away anything BW has right now.

[Dego_Locc]

I know it must be shocking to some people that people actually rvr'd because it was enjoyable and not a grind for gear.

 

No, they grinded for "realm rank", which gave bonus to skills/stats at times.

 

Same thing as gear progression.

So a RR10 would pwn a RR 1 easily.

 

Without motivation or progression, or the cause to fight for relics, there wouldn't have been a ton of ppl doing it "just for the fun of it."

Edited March 13, 2012 by Dego_Locc

[Dharnyle]

Said it before and I'll say it again.

 

DAoC was a RvR game. Not a PvP game.

 

Key differences were things like 3 factions. Biggest difference as it meant it wasn't us vs. them but us vs. them and them.

 

Frontiers areas were 24/7. There were no safe zones or towns or bases in the Frontiers. It meant there could be small scale skirmishes or large relic raids... at any time whatsoever.

 

Up until "New Frontiers" the game didn't play for the player. You couldn't click on a map and see where the action was, you had to get out there and find the enemy. This gave rise to the players who were scouts. Constantly wandering the frontiers looking for trouble. It took time. A LOT of time and dedication. It took skill to be a solo scout moving at stealth and being able to track a enemy raid moving at speed, knowing where they were going and able to alert your realm for a possible CTA.

 

Frontier fighting wasn't JUST about killing other players. Doing well in the frontiers meant a boon for your realm. Control your relics and the enemy relics, receive a stat boost to either damage or spells, depending on which relics you controlled. Control a majority of the frontier keeps and gain access to Darkness Falls dungeon.

 

But aside from that, the smart realms waged economic warfare on the other realms to cripple them. Keep doors didn't respawn or repair themselves. The players had to expend time and currency to repair and upgrade doors, so you literally COULD raid a enemy realm, knock down keep doors but not take the keeps and force them to repair and upgrade doors themselves. Do it often enough and drain a realms players of the money needed to be successful in the Frontiers.

 

Relic Raids were epic excercises in teamwork. Again. RvR. Everyone was involved and the truely epic relic raids would start weeks before the actual raid. Even on the actual raid day the stealthers and scouts would be out combing the frontier looking for weak points and enemy movements hours and hours and hours before the raid even gathered.

 

But all that was before New Frontiers expansion when they changed everything.

 

I loved the old way in that game and was one of those crazy people who spent hours upon hours upon hours scouting the frontiers, ever vigilant.

 

But those days are long gone. No one present day is willing to put forth the time to do that anymore.

 

Lastly, I really am not looking at DAoC through rose colored glasses. It had some horrible flaws and some really FUBAR systems. But for all the flaws and *** moments, the mechanics of RvR was and is superior to PvP.

 

You really can't compare the two.

[Yeke]

Without motivation or progression, or the cause to fight for relics, there wouldn't have been a ton of ppl doing it "just for the fun of it."

 

Not sure where you played but you didn't get any rewards for repairing a relic keep door for hours on end nor running wood for the people repairing and yet they did it willingly also iirc there wasn't realm abilities at release. (could be wrong but thats how i recall it)

[Keldaur]

I'm just curious, I never played the game but i've seen probably 40 threads about how skill based it was over the past few weeks.

 

 

For the most part, they just talk about the gear making it more skillfull or that classes were hard countered by other classes

 

 

Neither of those things sound particularly "skillfull"... so are there any other reasons why so many people talk about how skill based it was?

 

It wasn't. People saying otherwise are just nostalgic.

 

The good thing was everybody could get crafted gear and go pvp, and the RvR was quite good, but the PvP had insane amounts of overpowereds CC's.

Edited March 13, 2012 by Keldaur

[kweassa]

I'm just curious, I never played the game but i've seen probably 40 threads about how skill based it was over the past few weeks.

 

 

For the most part, they just talk about the gear making it more skillfull or that classes were hard countered by other classes

 

 

Neither of those things sound particularly "skillfull"... so are there any other reasons why so many people talk about how skill based it was?

 

It wasn't really 'skill based', but more like "hardcore team coordination."

 

The limits between each class was so definate, and CCs were so powerful, as well as heals and debuffs, that each different class with distinct/absolute limitations had to perform their 100% as a team in order to win. A slight miss in team play used to cause catastrophic wipe outs.

 

 

Compared to that, in a relative sense, the classes we have in SWTOR, or any other contemporary MMOGs, is basically a lot more "omnipotent". Hence, the difficulty of the gruelling team-coordination went down a lot, and a lot more can be achieved as an individual.

Edited March 13, 2012 by kweassa

[Corran]

I'm just curious, I never played the game but i've seen probably 40 threads about how skill based it was over the past few weeks.

 

 

For the most part, they just talk about the gear making it more skillfull or that classes were hard countered by other classes

 

 

Neither of those things sound particularly "skillfull"... so are there any other reasons why so many people talk about how skill based it was?

 

it was not. people have rose colored glasses on.

 

they forget the zerg trains, the long distance aoe mezz, the sos. they forget how that game actually played. they forget bonedancers and necros solo'ng full groups of their opponents for the nearly 8 months before aoe healing with your buffbot from the pk was fixed.

 

it was not more skill based, but it required more cooperation. it also required buffbots.

[kweassa]

it was not. people have rose colored glasses on.

 

they forget the zerg trains, the long distance aoe mezz, the sos. they forget how that game actually played. they forget bonedancers and necros solo'ng full groups of their opponents for the nearly 8 months before aoe healing with your buffbot from the pk was fixed.

 

it was not more skill based, but it required more cooperation. it also required buffbots.

 

^^^ This too.

 

DAOC was fun while it lasted, but it definately wasn't all that peachy pinky PvP heaven people like to describe as. Same goes for GW as well.

 

People simply find excuses in wherever place they look at.

[Corran]

Not sure where you played but you didn't get any rewards for repairing a relic keep door for hours on end nor running wood for the people repairing and yet they did it willingly also iirc there wasn't realm abilities at release. (could be wrong but thats how i recall it)

 

because owning the keeps and relics increased your overall power in pvp and pve and the realm abilities were in very quickly. remember we're talking about a game that released in 2001 - a time when you could not solo your way to 50 on most of the classes unless you already had a leel 50 buffbot following you around. there was no instancing. xp'ng was done mostly as a group

 

this lead to a feeling of community, something the genre has lost in recent years.

[Dego_Locc]

because owning the keeps and relics increased your overall power in pvp and pve and the realm abilities were in very quickly. remember we're talking about a game that released in 2001 - a time when you could not solo your way to 50 on most of the classes unless you already had a leel 50 buffbot following you around. there was no instancing. xp'ng was done mostly as a group

 

this lead to a feeling of community, something the genre has lost in recent years.

Exactly.

[ProfessorWalsh]

I'm just curious, I never played the game but i've seen probably 40 threads about how skill based it was over the past few weeks.

 

 

For the most part, they just talk about the gear making it more skillfull or that classes were hard countered by other classes

 

 

Neither of those things sound particularly "skillfull"... so are there any other reasons why so many people talk about how skill based it was?

 

DAoC was more skill based due to the dynamic nature of DAoC classes.

 

Ahem.

 

Playing a light tank (aka melee DPS) in DAoC was difficult. You had to take advantage of two major mechanics:

 

Positioning based abilities and Reactionary based abilities.

 

Positioning based abilities were abilities that could only be done from a certain location. Front, Back, or Side. A sub-category of this were abilities that could only be used right after doing previous abilities.

 

Reactionary based abilities were abilities that could only be used right after your character did a specific action before the circumstances were nullified.

 

So, you couldn't learn a rotation, because you needed specific things to make it happen.

 

For example:

 

As a Blademaster the highest damage "chain" in the game was "Twin Star, Super Nova, and Solar Flare"

 

Which was a positional reactionary style.

 

You had to hit them from the side for Twin Star to go off, you could only do a Super Nova after a Twin Star, and you could only do a Solar Flare after a Solar Flare.

 

Then there was another one that was based off of a parry, and the catch was if you parried a shot, but then the opponent swung again before you could use your maneuver and you didn't parry it would lose your window to use it. It was like, Scorpion Sting, Wasp Strike, and ... I forget the last one.

 

I remember that was one of my big combos.

 

Wait for a parry, then fire off that combo, the last hit of the parry reactionary stunned the target for 2 seconds which gave me time to strafe around to the side and launch into the big finale.

 

It was less about running around and more about situational awareness and skill use control.

[StrykerOne]

DAoC had (has, rather... it's still going) some odd issues but the melee was certainly more skill-based than most games. You had attack chains (attacks that required using another specific attack first), lots of positional and reactive attacks, and the ability to queue two attacks so that if the conditions for the first one were met (like a reactive that you can only use after a parry) it would fire, otherwise your second attack would go off. That made the melee a lot more dynamic than just popping off whatever attack finishes its cooldown and maybe one reactive.

 

I'm not sure the PvP in general was more skill based though... the casters were either godlike (if not getting hit) or worthless (if being hit) since casting was interrupted by any damage at all and some debuffs. Also the CC was insane... fights generally were decided in the opening couple of seconds based on which team got their AoE mezz off first or were decided by which team had more of the long cooldown (5-15 minute) abilities that actually let you break CC / ignore interrupts ready. The main reason I liked it wasn't the skill factor but rather the fact that it used to have large scale PvP, on the order of 200+ players per side at times, and had keeps and towers that guilds could siege, capture, and defend. Army vs army is more interesting to me than group vs group... if I want that I play a shooter.