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My MMORPG Wish List
Vinzent
Member Posts: 161
My MMORPG wish list
by
Vinzent
1) Does it have to be Tolkien again?
With the glut of Tolkien fantasy rip off mmo's, why aren't other genres being explored. Currently there are no decent sci fi mmo's (star wars was the closest but that managed to be bad too). What about fantasy kung fu? How about world colonization? How about the freakin' bronze age? What about victorian gothic?
Frankly there are some cutesy japanese MMo's out there I'd love to play, just for a change of scenery. But sadly they never seen to make it across the ocean.
2) Let me decide what my character wears.
City of Heroes shines in this respect. I'm suprised more mmos haven't adopted this idea. I don't want to be forced to wear the ugly green armor simply because it is the best armor I can get for my level, and I'm tired of seeing other people who are dressed just like me because they are the same level. How hard is variety anyway?
This leads me to point 3...
3) Let crafters be creative.
Face it, at most a game might let you change the color of the item you are crafting. The black leather boot will look just like the white leather boot except for it's color. However, the thigh high boot looks totally different (but you can't make that until you are XX level).
The models and color pallets already exist. What we're looking at really is the attributes of the boots. Why can't those attributes be transitory.
Here's an example.
At level 15 I can craft Heavy Leather boots with an armor of ooh...15 and a weight of ..maybe 10. They are far better than the Medium leather boots I could craft last level.
So I open up my crafting panel and first I choose what I want the boots to look like (thigh high, calf high, ankle high, whatever boot model is available). Then I tweak the colors from the pallet. Bada bing, I update my armor without having to change my character's unique look.
This approach will...
a) Increase character customization.
b) Put greater demand by other players for crafters abilities.
c) Add slightly more gameplay to the crafting grind.
4) Get rid of the craft grind
So let me get this straight. I need to craft 150 shoes before my skill level is high enough to craft boots. But I need to be 5th level before I can learn the boot recipe. Anyone else see anything wrong with this?
If my progress is being moderated by level, why bother with the grind at all? Why not make all of the recipes level based and save me a long, boring headache.
5) Why do I have to be 150th level before I can dye my armor black?
Please somebody explain this one to me. Armor color has no direct affect on gameplay. It's window dressing. Why make me grind levels for two months before allowing me to have a character dressed the way I want? Color pallets should be open and easily accessible (like going to the NPC tailor and paying gold for a dye job).
6) A living environment (or "the chair that nobody sits in).
Okay this one is more window dressing. Ever notice how NPC's never sit? You might walk into a bar full of chairs and benches and not a single one of the thirty NPC's is sitting down.
This is a pet peeve of mine, since some mmo's are including the ability of the player to sit on furniture. That means that the developers have the animations, they've just never implemented it on NPCs.
When I played Star Wars Galaxies, one of the things I loved about it was that NPCs occasional did things like huddle in a corner and carry on conversations with each other. It felt more alive than walking into a town full of people, all waiting for you to talk to them.
7) Reputation that means something.
You've just completed 20 missions for the town magistrate. You've saved the town from certain destruction. Wouldn't it be nice if the gave you some recognition? City of Heroes shines here as well. Often I've overheard civilians talking about my exploits. Of course I like my ego rubbed, that's why heroes where spandex!
Common designers, how hard is that. It's just a bit of text. I walk into a town I have a high reputation in and the guards yell "Hail Verbraxis!" (if I were named Verbraxis of course) and maybe the baker shouts out to me "good morning Verbraxis", and maybe even the local ladies give a "Oh my, is that THE Verbraxis?". Yeah, it's the small things that go a long way.
8) Stop the Farming! (the bad kind)
Again this is one point where Star Wars Galaxies shined. They created harvesters that you leave in a given area, where they obediently churn away for you and get the ore you desire. The best part was that the field was so huge and stayed so long, no one could monopolize it. I'd like to see more of this.
9) Personal property
Player housing should be available if not mandatory, but only if...IF...the designers can make it interesting. Lets look at what can be done with housing.
a)What if every character on your account was considered part of the same family. Each family would get one personal plot of land. This helps solve the rampant housing problem.
b) What if you could choose what kind of house it was? Housing is generally just a place to stick stuff now, but what if it were more. What if you had a choice between a house, a farm (that generated animal and vegetable ingredients for crafting), a mine and foundry (for metal crafting), a store (where you could set up an npc to sell your wares). Wouldn't that be cool? The ideas behind this are already at work in sims games. Why can't we roll over those ideas into mmo's?
c) You can decorate a house. Those games that have player housing generally do a good job on this one.
10) Let me solo!
Yes, I know that MMO stands for MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER online, but why are you forcing me to be massive?
I have a core group of friends I play with. I like them, they like me, and when we are playing in the same room, we don't have to type. If they aren't available to play, I don't want to be forced to run around with a group of potentially stupid, potentially underage, potentially abusive, potentially ninja-looters just because you think I can't make friends without your help.
City of Heroes was good at this one too. Say what you want about instanced missions, I liked the convenience of going in alone, or having it rescale if I teamed up with a friend
I'm not asking you to make everything instanced. I'm asking you to make soloable content and group content throughtout all levels and make it transparent as to which one I am choosing (maybe the town magistrate is the only one handing out 'group only' content, while the local town peons hand out soloable content).
11) Never make me kill rabbits
Unless the rabbits in question are 50 feet tall, rabid, and have laserbeams shooting from the freakin' eyesockets. Use your imaginations and come up with something suitably dangerous sounding for the adventurer to fight. Star Wars Galaxies was terrible at this. Star Wars wasn't about going outside of town and killing womprats and butterflies, it was about fighting the empire!
12) How about some variety in gameplay?
Platformer games have been doing it all along. What if my character's jump was used for more than just leaping over the fence. Jump puzzles have been in games practically since games have been invented. Asheron's Call actually uses this function in some of their dungeons and you know what, it's fun.
I know..I know.. DDO is adding more variety with traps and levers and such. Good. It only took how many years? Lets take this trend even further.
13) Size matters
Yes it does. Ask any gamer who has brought down a Black Dragon solo. Sure they were probably five levels higher than the dragon, but the feeling of taking down a collosal beast resonates. I'm not saying these beasties don't exist in current MMos. I'm saying they seem few and far between.
14) Never force me to kill my brother.
I'm talking about PvP here. I know this is a hot button subject but I want you to know the types of people who are shouting at you.
a)"PvP should be mandatory!" - Ganker/griefer. He's not interested in realism. He's interested in making someone else feel as awful in the virtual world as he feels in the real world. Besides if it were about realism he would suffer some major consequences for ganking, like locking up his character for 25 years (real time).
b)"I hate PvP" - Honest. They hate PvP. Don't exclude this part of your market because of group A.
c)"I like PvP" - Also honest. This person prefers the challenge of playing against another human. They also would not be adverse to making PvP optional. Only a ganker would want to kill someone not interested in PvP.
What is the solution? Group B will always out number group A, and group A's antics will only piss off your customer base. Make PvP optonal. The gankers may get mad, but they can still try to gank. The PvPers will have their moment of glory fighting people who really want to be fought, and the carebears will be left alone to enjoy themselves.
15) Spontaneous Agression.
In Asheron's Call 2, they had an event where the drudges had stormed into town. Essentially they just put drudge spawns in town, which looked weak because all of the NPCs were still there (standing around).
I found this disheartening, because I remebered Asheron's Call 1. When a town was being attacked, IT WAS ATTACKED. Creatures came charging down from the hills attacking any player in the city. Hordes of them. There was no warning, just a call on the world channel from any eye witnesses "Shoushi is being attacked!"
It was spontaneous (to us), it lasted maybe ten minutes, and then they were gone, leaving only a trail of player and monster corpses. This happend all month at different times, different cities, and always a treat. It scared the fluids out of me and I loved it.
16) Make the game run on my computer, not your computer
I dont have a multi-million dollar developing house buying my hardware for me. I am Joe Average, and I only update my computer after the burning makes the smoke alarm goes off.
If I have to pay $500 to upgrade my machine because you crammed the game with pretty-shiny, then your game costs me $550. Thats too much for pretty-shiny, especially when its virtual.
By the way, the current trend in CG is the more you try to make it look real, the less real it will look. I cant watch Polar Express without getting the heebie-jeebies.
And WoW didnt bother with the pretty-shiny. They took the time to make it look good, and at 5 million subscribers quality seems to outweigh pretty-shiny.
PS> Two years and two upgrades later and I still cant run Star Wars Galaxies with the graphics at medium.
Comments
Unforunately,setting the game on the lowest graphics settings still means you need at least 1gb of RAM to smoothly play WOW. WOW is an eater of memory. And it'll still lag regardless.
However,WOW has (imo) the easiest interface to use. No other game before or after WOW I have tried (except,maybe EVE Online but it takes longer to learn....I learnt WOW's UI in 5 minutes) has made me feel comfortable when playing knowing I can see everything. Easier interfaces are NICE TO USE!!!
Well thought post though,I'd like to see a fantasy MMORPG based around very tiny people exploring a child's bedroom. Dare you take on the epic Jack-In-The-Box boss?
Overall, well written post, I just have one (major) argument.
a)"PvP should be mandatory!" - Ganker/griefer. He's not interested in realism. He's interested in making someone else feel as awful in the virtual world as he feels in the real world. Besides if it were about realism he would suffer some major consequences for ganking, like locking up his character for 25 years (real time).<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
b)"I hate PvP" - Honest. They hate PvP. Don't exclude this part of your market because of group A.
c)"I like PvP" - Also honest. This person prefers the challenge of playing against another human. They also would not be adverse to making PvP optional. Only a ganker would want to kill someone not interested in PvP.
The big problem with optional pvp is that its not really player versus player. Its "hey you wanna duel?". True player versus player combat can and should be allowed any place, any time, and for obvious reasons. Before I get real into this, NO I'm not a ganker/griefer, even in faction based games (WOW etc.), I would usually just wave at the enemy and not do anything to them unless they attacked first. In faction based games, you shouldn't just have to sit and watch your enemy steal your mobs or just fight in the same zone... They're your ENEMY FFS... You should be able to kill them, flagged or not. In non-faction based games, its all about immersion. If someone is griefing me (stealing mobs, stealing loot, etc, which is in my opinion much worse than being "ganked"), I should be able to kill them. This also adds a lot more to the gameplay. With current mob AI, you don't have to watch around your shoulder to make sure you arent going to be snuck up on. In PVP, a player can come attack you at any time, and (for the pvpers at least) this adds a lot more fun to the game. http://www.gamespot.com/gba/action/thatssoraven2/index.html?q=thats%20so%20raven
Now, not to be mean or anything, but if you can't handle a little competition in your games, see above link for a more suitable game for you
I want full original armors, and everybody should look diffrent, but I don't want to lag when a few people gather because I can't upgrade my computer.
I want all options such as customization to be avaible at the start of the game, but I can't figure out why I'm not motivated to reach the endgame and lvl my character.
I want NPC's to reconize me when I walk into towns, but I just don't know why my whole screen is filled up with npc's greeting everybody who walks into town.
I want crafting to be based on my normal lvl, but why the heck can't I specialize in crafting?