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DAoC... some of the best PvE ever?
erasmoth
Member UncommonPosts: 40
I'm talking about when I first played this game way back in old Emain? I think it was called. The dungeons were group based, ones you had to set up by INTERACTING WITH OTHER PLAYERS, for the most part the dungeons were really fun, but the combat was fun too. I was thinking about some of my favorite mmos and the PvE in DAoC just stands out.
You had buffing and healing classes, melee, a variety of casters, and real tanks. Mobs had cons that really mattered, came in difficult packs, uh just so much stuff to list.
I'm talking Albion side of course because if I remember right Hibernia was just terrible in PvE, but does anyone else feel the same?
Comments
I appreciated that each side had their own continent to explore and level in,but I dont ever remember the pve being that fun.It was kind of bland to me,I guess I was just spoiled with Everquest at the time.
the RvR however made DAOC shine.
I had some of the best times of all MMO's in DAOC PvE. If our side had won in PvP, we could farm in Darkness Falls.
I used to do a lot of PvE in the PvP zone, just for the extra thrill
DAOC was truly old school, where each class really played a role. On the Albion side, it took several classes to make a real team.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...
The PvE was fun, and you actually had to interact with people and form groups, no quest hubs like these days. You actually had to explore the world.
Best fun I agree was running 8 mans, I was not really into the zerg.
Good times indeed.
Actually you are wrong about hibernia being terrible in pve. I still have my old DAoC account, and my RR8 hero I used to take level 40s-44s down towards Legion in Darkness Falls. The group slaughtered everything, hib was easy mode in pve with the pbaoe enchanters and eldys. I have multiple level 50s on all 3 realms, and hib was by far the easiest to level up in. Pve was pretty good in DAoC, but the RvR will never be beat. Just sucks that ToA and New Frontiers ruined the game.
In a world of sharp knives, you would be a spoon.
What gave you the idea that Hib was terrible in pve?
They had terrible melee, with expensive moves and low damage. Tanks couldn't wear plate or hold aggro that well. The best I remember of that realm is piggybacking on Chanters backs.
Magic oriented realm has terrible tanks!
CALL IN THE BALANCE HAMMER SQUAD !!!
It wasn't terrible. It was exactly as it should be, Hibernia was supposed to be worse in melee and better in magic. The whole damn point that made the game competitive, challenging and fun was that it was completely out of balance. It wasn't even rock paper scissor lizard spock kind of balanced and that is exactly what made it epic.
Who ever came up with the notion of balance took the soul out of MMO's. **ck balance. *'ck everyone being able to heal and rez . **ck massive health regen and non cooldown fights. And most of all, *uck soloable content in an MMO.
DAoC PVE was epic exactly because alone you could hardly do anything, save for few easy mode classes. And more so because every group got exponentially more powerful from more members. When everyone can solo, any group of two amounts exactly to 1+1. When you can't solo easily, but have an array of supporting effects, team of 2 equals fun multiplier of (1+1)^2
DAoC - 00-06 - And every now and then
WoW - Online since launch - and now back again.
EVE - Online since 07 - and still on, and on, and on..
WHO - Online 08-10
LOTR-O - Online 06-08
Also played : Asherons Call, EverQuest, EQ2, Dungeons & Dragons, Cabal, Dark & Light, GW, GW2, LA2, Ryzom, Shaiya, SWG, Allods, Forsaken World, ArcheAge, Secret World, Darkfall, Rift, ESO, Tera.
Well duh they had stronger magic, but that was really just for PvP. I completely agree with your last paragraph; as I am playing Rift right now and that game is completely devoid of any challenge.
For PvE, I still say that Albion had the best PvE setup from a group perspective. The other realms, while having different focuses for PvP, fell short in the PvE category. Also your balance hammer comment doesn't make sense. Why not make a realm that is worse at EVERYTHING. Everyone wears cloth and can't cast spells. O the sense of accomplishment lol.
Edit: Expanding on that last paragraph even more.
What is up with MMOs these days and making everyone a one man army? Remember in DAoC when you got that Aug spec healer in your group and saw your stats shoot up and your damage too? Or Everquest getting that Haste buff from an Enchanter or Shaman and thinking "How did I ever live without this?" Now its just group up with other players, since everyone has every ability just spam buttons until things die. Man games suck now.
(EU Servers) Hibs were 1st to take down Legion with 8 people. 1st to take down Dragon with 3 people. First to kill 200 people in 4 seconds with 8 man group. PBAOE Disco was ridiculously powerful, and PVE got even more hilarious with Animists - even post nerf.
Each realm had their epitome of PVE setups and they worked perfectly against the right enemy type. As a realm, none was significantly above the other. As classes yes, but not as a realm, the only balance that matters.
Achievement is more meaningful if conducted by underdogs. Thus, if you'd create a game where one class can never get out of rags nor cast spells, I'll bet my ass that someone will be perfecting this class and make significant feats with it and people will look at them in awe.
"If you give superpower to everyone, then no one is a hero".
DAoC - 00-06 - And every now and then
WoW - Online since launch - and now back again.
EVE - Online since 07 - and still on, and on, and on..
WHO - Online 08-10
LOTR-O - Online 06-08
Also played : Asherons Call, EverQuest, EQ2, Dungeons & Dragons, Cabal, Dark & Light, GW, GW2, LA2, Ryzom, Shaiya, SWG, Allods, Forsaken World, ArcheAge, Secret World, Darkfall, Rift, ESO, Tera.
I'm a DAoC veteran of the first hour. My appreciation for the game made me participate in the Uthgard project for over 5 years leading into the development of the custom zone Tajendi and finally made me join the games industry. So, let me share a few things about DAoC.
The great thing about DAoC was not its PvE content, its PvP (RvR) content or the different playstyle of the 3 realms alone. It was the combination of these elements and the immersive nature of the game. The strong focus on class roles and the different playstyle for each realm made for a great experience.
The PvE alone was not that impressive. You had a few quests, your epic quest (class storyline that gave you lvl50 armor with unique skin but mediocre stats) and that's it. Most of the time you simply killed monsters to get your experience. Something that today is considered grind. The cool thing was, that in PvE playing together with other people actually meant a benefit. You gained more experience and your downtime was little. Finally, with the Shrouded Isles expansion it was possible to be powerleveld to max level within 12-24 hours due to nice level spots with super fast respawn.
Then came Trials of Atlantis. Some players hated it, bacause it was mandatory to do the masterlevels and to gather some great artifacts to build a new armor set. However, with Trials of Atlantis DAoC reached a new player peak. Personally I liked the Masterlevels, asking you to team up with sometimes 100 players to accomplish a Masterlevel.
(Masterlevels: 10 levels. Levels gave you new powerful abilities. One level contained 10 sublevels ordering you to fullfill certain tasks. Most of the tasks needed 50-100 players.)
(Artifacts: Artifacts was new equipment that could be leveled up to level 10. Each second level or so your artifact gave you additional bonuses and sometimes special abilities. Certain named monsters dropped artifacts. Most of them could not be soloed. After having received the raw artifact you needed to unlock it. For that you had to farm 3 different scrolls that could be combined to a book that unlocked your artifact. A hell of a grind but boy, it made you happy when you finally unlocked it.)
Equipment, Dmg types and Armor tables:
What I loved most when it comes to DAoC: You did not have to grind for gear all the time. Attribute points, resistances and so on were capped. Basically you downloaded a little tool such as Moras Configurator. There, you chose your class and added gear to an equipment sheet. Slots that you did not fill with special drop armors such as artifacts or powerful high end gear were filled with crafted gear. The crafted gear could then be spellcrafted by a player. That way you tried to cap your resistances (~26-31% max.), your attribute points (+75 max.) your skills (+11 max.), your hitpoints (+200 max.). With ToA, stat cap increasing bonuses were introduced. When you had your final setup, you went to crafting players.
Also, DAoC offered a deep combat system with 8 dmg types and several armor types. The armor types were vulnerable, neutral or resistant to certain dmg-types. Example for a Hibernia Blademaster or Ranger wearing reinforced armor:
Slash: resistant
Crush: vulnerable
Thrust: neutral
Heat: -10%
Cold: +5%
Body: +5%
Matter: +5%
Spirit: neutral
Now, keep in mind that different realms also meant different weapons and therefore, different dmg types and attack styles. Midgard for example was heavily focused on slash or crush, favoring crush for the great styles and slowest weaponspeed leading to a high spike dmg. While a hammer wielding troll benefited from the blademasters vulnearbility to crush, he dealt less dmg to for example Heroes (Hibernia Tank class) or most support classes of Albion and Hibernia.
Weapon Styles
Another great thing when it comes to DAoCs combat mechanics was, that the most effective attack styles were positional or reaction based. Midgards best Sword style was Ragnarok, achieved when putting 50 point into Swords. This style dealt a lot of dmg due to its growth rate multiplier (base dmg was taken and multiplied by the growth rate of a style to calculate maximum possible dmg).
Of course every class had access to so called anytimer styles, but Anytimers dealt low dmg. To be effective you had to teamplay. For example the tank drew aggro in PvE and the dmg dealers dished out their best positional styles. In PvP, crowd control and stuns enabled dmg dealers to do positional styles. Example: Paladin uses Bash, a 9sec shield stun. Mercs, Paladins and other melee dmg dealers then dealt their positional styles.
Different Realms and unique classes by gameplay
While spells and styles seemed to be more or less the same, it was the distribution of certain skills, spells and styles to other classes and in other combinations that lead to a unique gaming experience when playing. Example: PBAE spells - Point Blank Area of Effect: A spell that causes dmg from the point of its caster in a certain radius around the caster.
At the very beginning, Midgard had no access to PBAE spells. Later the Spiritmaster class was given this spell to the Suppression-Line. The Spiritmaster has 3 spell-lines and therefore different playstyles. He could focus on Darkness, Summoning or Suppression.
Darkness offered the Spiritmaster Direct Damage Lifeleech spells, PBAE crowd control and various debuffs. Class role: Dmg Dealer; viable in solo PvP due to lifeleech spells. In groups he simply assisted the so called assist leader (player selecting primary target)
The Suppression Line offered the PBAE dmg spell, a single target crowd control spell and a strenght/constitution combo debuff. Class role: AE dmg dealer. In PvE he waited for the so called "puller" to gather monsters. Then a healer AE stunned the monsters and the Spiritmaster startet to bomb. In PvP he had to dive into opposing groups to dish out his dmg.
Summoning made the Spiritmaster a so called petpuller. He only had acces to baseline nukes, but was able to buff his pet with a dmg reflection shield. Using this reflective shield, a Healer + Spiritmaster combination could easily engage tons of monsters at the same time. In the very beginning of the game, these shields were so effective that if properly backed up, the Spiritmaster was able to enter epic dungeons and kill raid content bosses.
In Hibernia the PBAE class was the enchanter. The interesting thing was, that the specline offering the PBAE spell was the same line offering the damage reflective shield for the pet, only missing pet buffs.
Now let's look into the different classes
While Albion often was said to be the realm to have the most difficulties forming a competitive group setup for RvR, its classes shined in many ways. Albion was the tanking realm with balance between melee and magic capabilities. A decent equipped paladin was basically undestroyable in PvE and solo PvP. Only classes with extraordinary high dmg output or the ability to ensnare and slowly poisoning him down could kill him. Reason: strongest armor in game (plate), incredible shield defense (block = 0 dmg incoming) and chants that could be cycled to effect party members with armor buff, continuous heal and a dmg buff all at the same time.
Or taking the Necromancer class. A necromancer summoned a skeleton/undead, becoming an unattackable target as long as the minion was alive. This class was known to be the most valueable solo powerleveling class in Albion due to a manaleeching dmg-attack. Incredibly boring gameplay but effective as hell, as long as you attacked the correct monsters with weakness to spirit dmg).
Midgard on the other hand was the melee realm. Nothing is more awesome than a huge Troll Skald swinging a Battler Greatsword. Loved it. Albion and Hibernia often called Midgard the easy mode realm. For a 8 man group you needed: A buff shaman for spec buffs (combo buffs), an augmentation healer for attack speed and base buffs, a pacification healer for mana regeneration buff and crowd control and a Skald for Runningspeed buff. The last 4 slots could be randomly filled with spellcasters, warriors, savages or whatever. Usually you took one Warrior and 3 berezerks or savages.
A special and fun class to play in Midgard was the Bonedancer. He could summon several skeletons or in a different build, make use of an instant lifeleech direct damage spell plus a few skeletons.
To come to an end ... DAoC was special in the whole way it could be played. At the beginning instanced dungeons did not exist. Players knew each other and had to help each other. This made a great community.
My first 4 years of player were on the PvE server, Gaheris. I loved it. Gaheris is a wash now because there are no people on the server, so I have played on Ywain.
I enjoyed the PvE, but it wasn't as good as EverQuests. I always felt like they made PvE easy in the sense that you could always seem to pull singles or doubles, and rarely got a whole room. I remember on EQ you had to use a mind calming spell in order to not get multiples. I missed that, but I have to admit it was nice not to have to worry about that.
Reading this forum makes me want to reactivate my DAoC accounts ...
MMOrty
MMOrty.com
It will be interesting to see if WAR players discover/rediscover DAoC or if they wait it out for some upcoming MMO. RvR blew me away when I first experienced it. The PvE, not so much.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
i felt the same
I returned to DAOC for the PVE a few times but I preferred the PVE in both EQ and EQ2
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