Camelot Unchained MMO

- Maybe make stealth work like in League of Legends? You cannot stealth except in bushes and trees, and anyone too close would see you. 'Stealth' in the middle of an open field in broad daylight isn't stealth, it's called 'invisibility'. If anything, only casters should have true invisibility.

- All forms of "vanish" need to go.

- All complete fight resets like Preparation, Readiness, Cold Snap need to go. They always cause balance problems and inevitably require a bunch of special exceptions.

- Put all CCs on same DR, no exceptions. After that complete immunity to all CC for at least 10 seconds.

- No CC effect 'built-in' to any other effect. All CCs must be cast individually and have no effect outside of snare, stun, or whatever.

Anyway, this entire game is pointless unless they can solve the rendering problems in large-scale battles that GW2 and Warhammer had. If you cannot see a mass zerg of 100 players from at least several hundred yards away the game will be just as primitive as all previous attempts at large scale combat.

Gecko_sl said:

Justifying the OP nature of PVP classes getting invisibility based on strategic design does not change the fact it worked poorly in DAOC. Yes, it wasn't as terrible as is being mentioned, but a big reason it wasn't was due to the gank groups running around with radar clearing them out.

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Please explain to me how Assassins and Archers in DAoC were OP? Yes there were a number of bugs when the game launched, like Archers being able to stealth again before their arrow would hit a target and Double Frost for Shadowzerkers. IMO they were not OP and I played all three types of classes, Assassin/Archer, Cloth Caster and visible Melee. Personally I think non-stealth was just pissed because a stealther had an escape mechanism allowing avoid and escape conflicts.
What I loved about DAoC was the fact it had so many different levels of RvR. You had your stealth wars, your 8-Mans and your zergs and then you also had your Darkness Falls, which was an entirely different class of RvR.

Gecko_sl said:

The three things that have pretty much ruined PVP in every game I've played have been: Crowd Control, Silly Class Balancing, and Stealth/Invisibility. If one wants to make a good PVP/RVR/similar then limit the fuck out of all those things and focus on unique, fun classes not built from copying previous games and new mechanics.

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Except for class balancing, I disagree. CC was eventually done right in DAoC. In some MMO PvP CC is needed like in DAoC, in others like Asheron's Call, CC isn't needed due to it being more twitch combat. The problem with CC is if it's done wrong, like in WAR, it becomes a horrible crappy mess.
Also, as I said before, IMO stealth/invisibility is fine in MMO's as long as the class doesn't have the same type of damage capabilities out of stealth as a dps melee, like WoW. I liked the fact that in DAoC you'd open from stealth with a high damaging ability and then do much less damage than a regular melee and hope that you'd get off your stun from evasion to win.

RobXIII_sl said:

AHA got one! Here he is ladies and gentlemen. The typical stealther. He demands that it be rock paper scissors and admits as such. He wants that 100% chance to win, fuck a fair fight.

My memory's a little hazy on DAOC, didn't they also get a 'get out of jail ability'? I know WoW/WAR had a sort of vanish in the rare occurrence a fight went wrong. I think I remember DAOC archers had a super run speed get away thingie.

For what it's worth, I think Planetside 2 handles stealth well. Its not perma, and you can still see a little glimmer of them run by. Unless you play on low settings then they glow white sometimes (I run ultra settings).

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Did you at least read my post where I said I played all three types of classes and my favorite WASN'T a stealther. My three favorite classes in DAoC were my Bone Army BD, Warlock and Fungal spec'd shaman.

Mist_sl said:

The only people who complained about stealthers in DAoC were random soloers who were walking around being useless and basically playing the game improperly. The stealth classes were by far incredibly underpowered overall. Stealth was effectively a minigame where stealth classes scouted milewalls for their realms and preyed only upon each other and random solo idiots. It worked out fine.

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Pretty much this.

Well Gecko, what's your solution to handle one side being massively overpopulated? That's been the killer for the RvR type system in my experience.

Mist_sl said:

The only people who complained about stealthers in DAoC were random soloers who were walking around being useless and basically playing the game improperly. The stealth classes were by far incredibly underpowered overall. Stealth was effectively a minigame where stealth classes scouted milewalls for their realms and preyed only upon each other and random solo idiots. It worked out fine.

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This. Stealthers were useless in zergs, useless in 8v8.

I mean I see the complaint of being a warrior without purge and running into some RR 8+ stealther 1v1 with consumables and getting devastated but realize you're not high RR, don't have purge etc and that on paper you should lose.

I had this problem when I played and came to terms with that answer making sense to me.

The low info groups will rage in such a system, but it works.

PvP games do better when there's "L2P" guides that set expectations.

Nirgon_sl said:

Well Gecko, what's your solution to handle one side being massively overpopulated? That's been the killer for the RvR type system in my experience.

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I'd vote for designing the game better at the macro level. I'd also prefer if they used factions with incentives with more open areas vs hard coding sides.

Regardless of class balance, permanent invisibility in my opinion is a dumb design. It was less of an issue due to people running radar, which in itself was another, segregate problem.

FF11 had a system where once the server was full you had to have people on said server to buy an in game item to get you on past the cap. This item's price fluctuated depending on how full it was. If you had friends you could get over but people really frowned on random idiots looking to join full servers. Something like that would really help with bandwagoners.

The reality is population is only one small portion of the equation. Many developers get that wrong (GW2) by counting accounts and not having a metric for activity. In addition when you include PVE and PvP some servers just get PVE heavy so they might have enough people online they just don't give a shit about PVP. Something CU won't have but it is an issue in other games. You also have large skill gaps where alliances with good players stack on a single server giving a solid advantage skill wise even if populations are even.

Many of those things are difficult to over come. Short of developers actively managing, meddling and changing variables to help even things out there will usually be a clear winner.

I guess they could very very slowly give a slight numerical advantage to under dog realms. Until some kind of equilibrium is reached. Combined with other bonuses it might help even things out some.

I would have to agree with the comments that stealth in DAOC was not much of an issue. Stealthers had their own mini-game of fighting each other and bridge camping but were almost completely excluded from the organized RvR game other than possibly scouting the enemy. Vanish was somewhat annoying since it gave bad stealthers an out when they chose targets poorly, started to lose and could instantly turn invisible and and run away but it was not a huge issue. If stealth (invisibility) was an issue anywhere, it was in Darkness Falls where it just provided an easy mechanism to grief low level players. Visible characters who remained in Darkness Falls after the realm lost control could kill low level players but were eventually overwhelmed since they did not have an easy out like stealthers. Characters with stealth could just stealth after killing low level players and continue the cycle. I know there were counters to stealthers in DF but it was much more difficult than dealing with visible players and generally just led to griefing.

I have no problems with stealth but it should have more of an impact on equal level fights and not primarily be a tool for griefing low level players. In my opinion, DAOC failed in that regard. Stealth against equal level opponents was trivial to deal with but made it incredibly easy to kill low level characters without consequence.

Stealth has never bothered me in any mmo. What pisses me the fuck off is when I'm fighting someone and they vanish instantly in front of me when they start losing or use it to set up some stunlock combo. That's a bullshit mechanic that has no place in pvp. All it would take to get rid of it is giving whatever ability makes the target invisible a 2-3 second interruptable cast time.

One thing I noticed about archers is they had peaks and troughs in power and damage at various levels as they got new styles. I'm sure this was the same for most classes but archers were completely silly in one of the lower level battlegrounds. I was standing atop a keep wall and killing casters running in a group from the walls in one shot, zero risk. This was fairly recently as well, they were much worse early days.

The only thing preventing them from just making everyone else quit was the fact that you killed so much you'd level out of the battleground really quickly, though I think eventually you could turn xp off maybe?

It wasn't my biggest gripe. The game was filled with nasty problems. I think the biggest mistake they made was the absurd crowd control. It really isn't fun to stand around watching your group die. And I never really found it fun killing someone that couldn't fight back.

Players these days have a really low threshold for quitting. It is as much to do with being babied in the modern games as it is with there being less investment in the characters.

I liked stealth in EverQuest pvp. When SoS was in, and a rogue realized he had the damage chain on him, if he was smart, he'd try to duck towards mob and sneak/hide. Obviously, we can still see him, but in Sol Ro , Ssraeszha, CoD, VT etc it's easy to mobhump and completely disable your attackers due to fear of aggro.

Another thing, a rival guild would sneak a rogue in front of our raid in VT and fucking train the shit out of us. Log the rezzers out, the train gets destroyed or you wipe. As rezzers log in, rogue vs. paladin minigame ensues, as paladins try to ninja rez.

Furthermore, useless rogues couldn't get backstabs off 1v1. A decent rogue learned how to quickly spin around the joust and get that backstab. Not something that came easily, had to work at it in the year..... 2000.

Just some more random thoughts on mechanics based on DAOC and Warhammer:

-AOE damage: should it even exist? Inevitably in large scale PVP it will be stacked, therefore become un-healable except via AOE or group Heals.

-AOE/Group heals: A lot of complaints about the "skilllessness" of these. See Warhammer WarPriest/DoK or Spread Heals in DOAC. To be honest, they were fine in Warhammer, but only because of the retarded amount of AOE damage in the game. Imagine how even more ridiculous Bright Wizard would have been if there were no group heals or AOE dispels in the game.

-AOE CC: Seem to inevitably cause the need for AOE dispel.

-AOE pull effects: The WAR Magus/Eng AOE pulls were probably some of the most imbalanced abilities in MMOG history.

-Single-target pull effects: Ok if short-range, single-target, and long-CD (example WoW DK DeathGrip). Anyone remember the White Lion long-range single-target pull in Warhammer - it was basically a death touch - pulling a single guy into your zerg from 60 yards away.

-Push/Launch effects.: Seems ok in moderation. Perhaps single-target only? Don't fight while standing on the edge of a lava cliff seems reasonable.

-Detaunt: pretty cool mechanic imho. Don't think Warhammer invented it (?) but wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Astral Projection_sl said:

Just some more random thoughts on mechanics based on DAOC and Warhammer:

-AOE damage: should it even exist? Inevitably in large scale PVP it will be stacked, therefore become un-healable except via AOE or group Heals.

Yes, AOE damage was key for big zerg fights, imagine having to single target every single person and how long it would take to scatter a group sieging your keep. These are a must in any keep style game IMO.

-AOE/Group heals: A lot of complaints about the "skilllessness" of these. See Warhammer WarPriest/DoK or Spread Heals in DOAC. To be honest, they were fine in Warhammer, but only because of the retarded amount of AOE damage in the game. Imagine how even more ridiculous Bright Wizard would have been if there were no group heals or AOE dispels in the game.

Spread heals were interuptable and they drained a crap load of mana. The only way you could consistently spread heal through an entire fight was to first find a great hiding spot, and second allow yourself enough time to get up a power font. If you could accomplish both of these in the middle of a huge fight you deserve to be able to spread heal non stop as you have great skill.

-AOE CC: Seem to inevitably cause the need for AOE dispel.

I loved AOE CC in DAoC, it allowed smaller groups the chance to beat bigger groups, I never found it to be a problem. Again I think in any major group vs group type PvP this is a must. The problem was INSTA AOE CC, that needs to go, along with insta AOE interupts.


-Push/Launch effects.: Seems ok in moderation. Perhaps single-target only? Don't fight while standing on the edge of a lava cliff seems reasonable.

Yes I agree these were horrible, all types of effects like this can gtfo.

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Replied in quote.

All I know is that mistrels pissed me off so fucking bad. God damn such a bullshit class. I'd chase a minstrel back to his god damn realm keep with my champion... and my group would be yelling at me on Teamspeak, "Where the fuck did you GO, Dead? Yeah, he said minstrel about a minute ago so he's probably to the milegate by now".

lol. I miss that about DaoC. Perma stealth isn't 100% bad. Only minstrels are 100% bad.

No wonder people quit. You max out inside of a week (weekend if you hard core it) and are left with nothing but a faction via daily grind. Even if I wanted to level an alt I likely won't because, ding ding ding, there is no fucking way I'm going to stick with them because of the retarded end game faction systems these companies have been shitting out lately.

What a shock people don't get attached to their characters or the game.

Astral Projection_sl said:

Just some more random thoughts on mechanics based on DAOC and Warhammer:

-AOE damage: should it even exist? Inevitably in large scale PVP it will be stacked, therefore become un-healable except via AOE or group Heals.

-AOE/Group heals: A lot of complaints about the "skilllessness" of these. See Warhammer WarPriest/DoK or Spread Heals in DOAC. To be honest, they were fine in Warhammer, but only because of the retarded amount of AOE damage in the game. Imagine how even more ridiculous Bright Wizard would have been if there were no group heals or AOE dispels in the game.

-AOE CC: Seem to inevitably cause the need for AOE dispel.

-AOE pull effects: The WAR Magus/Eng AOE pulls were probably some of the most imbalanced abilities in MMOG history.

-Single-target pull effects: Ok if short-range, single-target, and long-CD (example WoW DK DeathGrip). Anyone remember the White Lion long-range single-target pull in Warhammer - it was basically a death touch - pulling a single guy into your zerg from 60 yards away.

-Push/Launch effects.: Seems ok in moderation. Perhaps single-target only? Don't fight while standing on the edge of a lava cliff seems reasonable.

-Detaunt: pretty cool mechanic imho. Don't think Warhammer invented it (?) but wouldn't mind seeing it again.

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I'm just curious how else you could possibly design a game where a single group of people can kill multiple groups of people (Read 8man vs zerg) Without AOE Damage, AOE heals, AOE CC, and AOE Dispels? Atleast ONE of if not most of those things needs to be in the game for it to work, otherwise its always going to be a numbers game. You want a numbers game go play GW2 were WvW is basically a numbers game. Yea I know You Can kill bigger numbers in GW2 but at its core its a shitty zergfest.

AOE Pull effects probably have no purpose in a game but for all the QQ about the dreaded magus-bomb (or as we called it in my group of friends the Charsi-bomb) the magus was 100% useless 99.9% of the time. The second that ability was on cooldown they were gutter trash. Engineers on the other had actually had fucktons of aoe long range damage and their curses weren't instantly dispelled by any WP in a 10 mile radius. (Heres a nice little Infographic for those that don't know what I'm talking abouthttp://img297.imageshack.us/img297/9...rinfograph.gif)

I think I would like to see an AOE pull though to be honest, it shouldn't pull through physical objects like keep doors though that's for sure. And the area should probably be smaller than it was in War.

Knockbacks if they are implemented in a game should be streamlines. Ironbreakers knocking people 300 feet further than any Destruction knockback could ever hope was straight bullshit. I played an OP as fuck DOK and healed like a beast before they buffed my sippy cups. I don't know if people realized this but DOKs also got an AOE KNOCKBACK at level 40. My knockback on a minute cooldown could maybe knock you back out of melee range for 1/100 of a second if i Knocked you downhill. Meanwhile Ironbreakers were spam knocking entire zergs off of cliffs on a 6 seconds rune etched axe bullshit cooldown. I got knocked further uphill by an IB then I knocked him back downhill. No fucking sense.

Detaunt I like single target detaunt maybe an aoe detaunt with a massive cooldown and certainly they should NOT STACK like they did with Warrior priest Dark Promise Set single target detaunt and their aoe detaunt. Also why the fuck didn't I get an AOE detaunt as a DOK? More order bullshit!

Stealth is alright in any MMO to me, why? because who cares about 1v1 who gives a flying fuck that some douchehat is going to blow all his 30 minute cooldowns to try and one shot your cloth solo ass when the game isn't balanced around 1v1? where the game is balanced around they are garbage unless they have group stealth and I don't know if you can really balance for group stealth with any decent duration. That being said I don't think any perma stealth class should ever be like a vanilla wow rogue. If you need to know why just watch World of Roguecraft.