Monday 21 July 2014

Blood Wall

I'm sure you're as enthusiastic about Camelot Unchained as I am, and noticed the recent slide pack about character progression in CU. One slide in particular caught my attention. The one that says:
Our mantra is "Use it to improve it!"
In other words, to improve a skill, just use it, and you will get better at it. Sounds like a great idea doesn't it? the more I use a sword, the better at sword-fighting I get. the more I cast fireball spells, the better I get at casting them.

While that sounds good, it reminds me of another game that tried that strategy. Do you remember Blood Walls in Darkfall Online?

Blood Walls, for those who have forgotten, is lines of clan members standing facing each other continually hitting each other with weapons to improve their weapons skills, and yet others heal them continuously to improve their healing skills.

It was the ultimate grindy experience, and one that lent itself to macros and I dare say botting. But it was required behaviour if you wanted your skills to be as good as your enemies. While enemy clans and alliances were doing it, your clan had to do it as well, or find yourselves at a disadvantage in battle.

So what started out as a good idea - improving skills through just playing the game - turned into a nightmare of unavoidable grind for everyone. Darkfall Unholy Wars had to get rid of this system before its players got rid of Darkfall. I hope Camelot Unchained has learned this lesson.

3 comments:

  1. Will you be able to attack your own faction CU? If not, that puts a bit of a hole in your objection.

    "Us it to improve it" is old school, a product of MUDs and before and has been in a lot of games. It was dropped by WoW at one point more for convenience and accessibility than because it cause grinding problems. People were just annoyed that they had their 1h axe skill max'd out and then a really good 1h mace would drop.

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  2. Good point, Wilhelm. And I recall that there was a similar "use it to improve it" thing in GW2 that never caused the slightest problem.

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  3. By the way, even in Azeroth, you can attack your own faction (duelling). Do you recall, Wilhelm, if anyone used this to improve their 1h mace skills?

    I certainly remember improving my fist-attack skills by attacking a low-level mob that had another mob healing it. I went off and made a sandwich while that was happening, and returned to find that some helpful soul had killed both mobs for me, and I had to start again!

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