Dawnglory: Thoughts on the merge now that it's happened.

aeternusdoleo

It's been well over a week now that we've had the HL PVP crew come over. It's been... interesting, and things are still a little in flux. Figured I'd voice my thoughts on it. Just so you know where I'm coming from: I'm a F2P PVE kind of guy who's been playing on Morai for little over 2 years now. I don't enjoy unsolicited PvP and as a result have remained blue named for almost all my time on the server. I've got one BM main, one reasonably strong Cler, and a Barb and Mystic for BH/FSP and such. Beyond that I got a scattering of alts to run BHs with - that BM can solo WS and TT, so I've put the levelup pills to use for an altarmy to fill slots (some of which I could probably even run FSP with these days - even that altarmy is Astral 2 by now with near maxed primal passives).

But to my thoughts:
The good:
- It's shut up the usual cries for PvP at west. Joe, Preist and the other godly geared pvp junkies now have an ample supply of folk to clobber. Or get clobbered by.
- The HL crew is usually easy to understand, and overall I've found them to be friendly. I was worried that a PvP server would bring a spirit of PvP ego, which I've observed in a lot of above mentioned PvP junkies (looking at you Joe :P ) but that hasn't much materialized
- The HL crew is, surprisingly, unfamiliar with some of the less often ran instances such as the Undercurrent Hall. They get to explore that now if they want, since Morai has squads going there often enough.
- Cube of Fate. I was worried this would turn into a PvP hotbed which would make collecting cogs difficult, if not impossible, for <R9 folk. But thus far I've not encountered any PKing going on in the cube, not even in the "don't want to leave" rooms. The "Consequences" rooms also stay at 5 tokens from what I can tell. HL cube farmers!
- Activity at all hours! Server used to be a graveyard from about 2 to 5 am server time. But that's evening to the eastcoast folk, so there's good activity on the server at all portions of the day.

The neutral:
- Different terminology leads to confusion. "dg/ddg" meaning (Demons) Heavens Flame. Common term on Morai was "hf". "FWS Frenzy", common term on Morai was "FWS Spawn". But I suppose after a few weeks everyone will understand what's what.
- Different ways to handle instances and split loot. On Morai it was common to split loot in FWS and FSP at the end, but HL's method seems to be different - they just leave the squad on random (forcing a resquad after frog in FSP).
- Fragmentation. I've not seen much going on in the way of merging factions. Mayhem and Crisis seem to combine forces somewhat, and I hear Requiem has also gained a few folk... but the two playerbases seem to largely stick to their own factions for now. Might change after a TW season, once people see which way the wind is blowing.
- Archosaur West has turned even more chaotic then it was before. But well, trying to organize the shops... Not even Shadow the Hedgehog could control -that- chaos...

The Bad:
- PvP during BH sessions. People dropping from party to snipe someone. It's annoying and disruptive, un-fun for players such as myself. Doesn't happen often, but folk who do it can expect to never be in parties I host.
- The NW has more highly geared people in it now. This sharply lowers the tokens that lesser geared players can earn. However, prices for SoWs, raps and cannies have also gone down a lot. I guess NW is how the PvP crew "farms"...
- Lot of boasting and crying about bluenames being cowards. I largely ignore it. But will note: It has nothing to do with cowardice, it's simply a statement that you don't want to be subjected to unsolicited attacks by other players. We play a game, each of us can decide how they want to best enjoy it.
- Some of the HL crew is turning a little elitist towards bluename folk, rejecting them from participating in their PvE parties. Not the best way to attract folk of the Morai crew to join your faction, that...
- Not all of the HL crew can attend the various events anymore. I feel bad for them - some of the events (NW, TW, CoA, Tigers etc) are fun to do.

The Ugly:
- Number of annoying folk on the WC has quadrupled. And I don't mean clowns like Peloo or Cadfael who just lulz a lot and blow a bunch of teles in the process - no, genuinely annoying folk who use the WC as an e-peen measuring device, the kind that make you wish for a Blacklist Extention Stone.
- Not sure if related to the merge, but there's been some account hijackings by social engineering going on of late on Dawnglory. Someone is impersonating high ranking officers of main factions by using the capital i/lower case L naming trick. I've gotten word someone's tried to do so with my cleric, Khelvan... I guess if that rename stone will be by code for everyone, I'll rename that toon to something less scam-susceptible. Made sure to pre-register "Uisyr" to myself just in case.



Overall, I see this merge as a good thing. A few folk can't stomache that they can't just kill everything they want where and when they want due to blue name, but those folk I don't much care for anyway, so meh. It's increased the amount of active players and activity in low hours makes Dawnglory a nice server to be on for players who can play at irregular hours.

afaria86

There is also the "link weapon thing", don't think any HL player can form a squad for anything without linking their weapon/asking to link weapon... But maybe that will change in time.

I just think it was wrong to merge the servers due to different time zones, all the rest people can learn to live with

zoldickun

afaria86 wrote: »

I just think it was wrong to merge the servers due to different time zones, all the rest people can learn to live with

^This

Anyway the only thing I cared about was the attendance in NW. I thought 200-250 would maybe be too much, but in the end we "only" got about 50 more people by nation (because of new requirements ?) and I find that 175-190 is actually a good number.
Fights are more interesting and so far I kinda win almost the same number of tokens as before.
What I found very surprising is that the NW population was almost the same (talking about numbers) on Friday and Sunday. I would have expected more people on Sunday actually.

So for the moment it's rather positive for me even though the changes are not very important. But it might be different for people who have to adapt to new timezones.

aeternusdoleo

Yea, I heared from one of the HL folk that their average nation was about 50-60 people on their server. So a bump of around 50 people per nation sounds about right - and indicates there's not that many HL folk that actually have to miss the NW. I was not aware the NW has new requirements...

As for the weapon linking thing - it doesn't bother me much. Toons I run squads with all have at least a G16+7 main weapon, and noone thus far has said no to me based on the weapon. It just means that the Morai95 pillbabies are being booted from those squads, and that's not a bad thing imho.

zoldickun

aeternusdoleo wrote: »

Yea, I heared from one of the HL folk that their average nation was about 50-60 people on their server. So a bump of around 50 people per nation sounds about right - and indicates there's not that many HL folk that actually have to miss the NW. I was not aware the NW has new requirements...

I didn't know there were so few people attending NW on HL, so it might not be that bad for them (at least for the ones who can attend).
If I'm not mistaken (but i would have to check later), you need to be RB1 to attend NW now.

aeternusdoleo

RB1 minimum? Mh, that'll cut down on the number of pure maphopping pillbabies in there. Well, until the altarmies go for rebirth 1 that is - not that hard to boost a group of alts back to 100 in under a week these days (provided you take the time to focus on leveling em ofcourse).

chary

We don't actually expect you to link your wep to us. We just link ours as a way of trying to attract people to join the squad.

As for me, I'm generally liking the merge so far outside of the lag and 8am tws. NW has been a highlight as it reminds me of how it was back in the day before most people stopped doing it on HL.

afaria86

Depends on what you call lag, it is normal your ping to raise a bit, but don't forget you now play in a more crowded server...
I wouldn't blame it all on being an EU server as I see many from HL saying now they get 20k ping (unless they moved to the moon after the merge?).

You should keep an eye on the resources the game is taking, I often shut down the client and reopen it again b4 fsp when I notice its using more resources than it should (use to tank frog on sin and it works better if I am lag-free), but I am not sure if the problem is from having a crowded archosaur or the update to windows 10... But most of the time it is quite ok.

zoube

chary wrote: »

We don't actually expect you to link your wep to us. We just link ours as a way of trying to attract people to join the squad.

I have a r9 barb and I will not respond to someone who links his weapon. It seams (even if it's not, it's seams) elitist. So for some people it's unattractive.

chary

afaria86 wrote: »

Depends on what you call lag, it is normal your ping to raise a bit, but don't forget you now play in a more crowded server...
I wouldn't blame it all on being an EU server as I see many from HL saying now they get 20k ping (unless they moved to the moon after the merge?).

My ping is a constant 400-600 usually. Most others from the eastern parts of the US seem to be about the same ping outside of those that I know have laughably bad internet/comps. This combined with the fps lag I get on the comp I'm usually on outside of NW/TW makes things really annoying at times.

zoube wrote: »

chary wrote: »

We don't actually expect you to link your wep to us. We just link ours as a way of trying to attract people to join the squad.

I have a r9 barb and I will not respond to someone who links his weapon. It seams (even if it's not, it's seams) elitist. So for some people it's unattractive.

That's perfectly fine with me as I can tank whatever on my cleric anyway outside of a couple bosses in r8rr QSM.

aeternusdoleo

The transatlantic backbone adds a -minimum- of 270ms from what I've found. And even a local connection (netgeographically I'm living next door to the server) has some 30ms minimum, so yea, US folk will end up with at least a 300ms ping. In PVE it's usually not too big a problem ('xept tanking frog as a non-barb, that gets iffy), but in PvP that can be a bit of a handicap vs the Euro players. Those will always have the initiative now.

Thanks for clarifying the motive for linking weapons Eoria. On Morai we did have a select few who did a "pm class and weapon for invite" worldchannel parties, I assumed wrongly that the HL weapon linkage implied that.

afaria86

Don't get me wrong Ulsyr, didn't say lower ping isn't better vs higher ping, but it's far from the 1800-20k some HL say they now have.

As is, I agree it's an advantage for EU players, but not one that would be so noticable and game breaking like if playing an fps game...

Eoria might link weapon to attrack people to squad, but don't think that is the case for all from HL... Atleast I see often "lfm for *** pm weapon" squads, but it doesn't botter me that much, can allways pick who to squad with.

oreowarrior

aeternusdoleo wrote: »

The neutral:
- Different terminology leads to confusion. "dg/ddg" meaning (Demons) Heavens Flame. Common term on Morai was "hf". "FWS Frenzy", common term on Morai was "FWS Spawn". But I suppose after a few weeks everyone will understand what's what.
The Bad:
- PvP during BH sessions. People dropping from party to snipe someone. It's annoying and disruptive, un-fun for players such as myself. Doesn't happen often, but folk who do it can expect to never be in parties I host.
- The NW has more highly geared people in it now. This sharply lowers the tokens that lesser geared players can earn. However, prices for SoWs, raps and cannies have also gone down a lot. I guess NW is how the PvP crew "farms"...
- Lot of boasting and crying about bluenames being cowards. I largely ignore it. But will note: It has nothing to do with cowardice, it's simply a statement that you don't want to be subjected to unsolicited attacks by other players. We play a game, each of us can decide how they want to best enjoy it.
- Not all of the HL crew can attend the various events anymore. I feel bad for them - some of the events (NW, TW, CoA, Tigers etc) are fun to do.

The Ugly:
- Number of annoying folk on the WC has quadrupled. And I don't mean clowns like Peloo or Cadfael who just lulz a lot and blow a bunch of teles in the process - no, genuinely annoying folk who use the WC as an e-peen measuring device, the kind that make you wish for a Blacklist Extention Stone.



Overall, I see this merge as a good thing. A few folk can't stomache that they can't just kill everything they want where and when they want due to blue name, but those folk I don't much care for anyway, so meh. It's increased the amount of active players and activity in low hours makes Dawnglory a nice server to be on for players who can play at irregular hours.

Going by the points listd above as they are the ones i wanted to comment on.
-ddg meaning demon heavens flame. I was on HL before the merge and damn, i didnt know what that extra d meant.
-PvP during BH Sessions. Never seen this DURING the run, however i have seen it after, where everyone is fair game.
-NW. I miss my 200-300 tokens QQ
-Some of this is directed at HL players and rightfully so for some of them. People like AmTooh and TrisEaton(named because theyre perfect examples) were from HL and were constant people out at SP. After the merge, they both went bluenamed and havent been out of it since. I have been robbed of my vengeance QQ
-The timing does suck. Were learning to deal with it tho.
-snip-

aeternusdoleo

Addendum, and this one's bad:
With the addition of the HL folk, PvP events such as the Nation Wars, Territory Wars and other similar events have become nigh-impossible for free-to-play folk. I've suffered through 3 NWs since the merge and didn't bother with it last sunday. Won't bother with it further I think (won't much need to anyway). It's turned into a "oneshot your target, or be oneshotted by your target" kind of event, and that just ain't fun.
To all new(ish) players hoping to get into PvP but not wanting to spend money on their toon: This game is not even pay-to-win when it comes to the PvP aspect, it's become pay-to-compete. If you can't, get out before you, like me, waste a lot of time at setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.

afaria86

There is still a lot you can do Ulsyr...
- well refined orns
- nw buff pills
- defense charms
- run when you see a veno
- ...

But agree... The increase in competition doesn't make it any easier

aeternusdoleo

I'm honestly not going to bother much Afa. Well refined means you need to bring your ornies to +10 at least - and for that you need the final versions (NW cube neck, R9 ring upgraded). With supply tokens in short supply for me, pun intended, spending em on buffpills isn't the way to go. Aside from that, I don't enjoy pvp and the NW rewards don't make up for it anymore. I can instead farm something in those two hours and use the coin to buy a SoW or two.

Also, run when you see a veno? Must be a sin thing... Marrow magic, Will of Bodhisatsomething and charge!

afaria86

No, as a sin I often find myself praying to the tidal lord, but the problem tends to be what comes with the veno... Even the most tanky barbs get sliced pretty easy when a veno is done dealing with them xD

aeternusdoleo

Yea, well, when in a mass pvp event, if you charge solo into a group, you're not gonna last very long anyway unless you heavily outgear all in that group. And even then it can be iffy, as long as the group coordinates their actions (IE keep you CC'd and debuffed while pouring on the pain). I assumed you were talking about a somewhat isolated one on one with a veno. As a sin or BM that should be survivable.