Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
My biggest complaint with MMORPGS lately is everything is on a very short timer. Your skills/abilities are all "for the next 3 or next 5 seconds." That is obnoxious, and every game has been doing it since WoW. As an example, previously, if you played a stealth class, stealth was a toggle, not a timed ability. Enemy players (or mobs) could see you based on their detection stat, and kick you out of stealth or attack you if you got close enough for them to 'see' you. You could raise your stealth ability just like you could raise your detection ability and it not only made stealthers good for scouting, but also ambushes and actual stealth gameplay- getting around other players to reach an objective. It also meant that stealth wasn't an automatic win, because plenty of players had high detection, and the good ones were smart enough to wait until you came in for a backstab to ruin your day. It wasn't an auto-success for X seconds.
The same thing applies to buffs. "+20% damage for the next 8 seconds" is awful. Id much rather have "+10% damage for the next hour." Or whatever.
DAoC had a fantastic buff system that I've never seen replicated since: Each buff you gave out ate a portion of your maximum mana, but lasted until the buffed player went out of your range, or until you canceled it. So you had to decide how many buffs to give out, and to whom. You could use up half of your mana bar by stacking buffs on people if you wanted, but it gave you less mana to work with for your active abilities until you canceled a few of them.
Another thing that has annoyed me lately is the trend toward offline skill training. It started with EVE, but several games are implementing it now. If I do a thing for 4 hours, I want to get better at the thing I'm doing. I don't want to arbitrarily queue up skills to train while I'm offline, that's ridiculous. It's a genius way to insure people keep subbing, but don't necessarily play and use resources, but it's an awful action->reward system.
Interdependency needs to be woven into the game right from low levels. Not saying no solo content but it should be obvious that teaming gives bigger rewards and makes your class shine brightest when teamed.
Would be great if somehow dungeons and raid could be at least semi-randomized so that people couldn't and wouldn't end up running them blindfolded after a few times through. Maybe keep the pace a little slower and the experience a little fresher........
One of the biggest things that builds this and keeps it from getting extremely toxic is player accountability. If nobody feels accountable for their actions then the community becomes shit very quickly.
A game can be great but have a crap community that makes you quit playing but you take a sub-par game and add a great community chances are you'll stick around awhile if for no other reason than some good laughs and hilarious moments.
I've mostly played WoW (and a bit of SW), but the one thing there that broke the camels back for me was the loss of stats and talent modification.
Simplification is (IMNSHO) the wrong way to go, there should be _more_ options instead of less (feel free to make the steps smaller if you want). Letting the players theorycraft and think they can come up with something unexpected to "beat the developers" is an important piece of the meta-game - if the meta dies then that will have a carry-on effect to the game itself.
(And seeing the ham-fisted approach to "rogue shiv-spec" and the creative use of "unconscious dig rat" in WoW is exactly the wrong way to go about handling the game. Still IMNSHO.)
Next up is expansions. (My view is still from having played WoW.)
If leveling is an important part of the game then expansions will be a problem. To give the expansion leveling the same importance as the original leveling then it has to be nearly as long. That means a longer way for new players (unless the game has mechanics that properly can mix new and old players) to "endgame" - this might be undesired by the developers. If you cut the expansion leveling short then you basically say it doesn't matter and is just a speed-bump.
Do you apply catch-up mechanics? That goes for both major and minor releases. I think WoW does it wrong (though the way you could get green Outland gear from early quests or drops in WoW was an ok way to up player gear at the start of the 2.x expansion.)
Do you add new abilities/talents, re-arrange and deepen talent trees with an expansion? To me it feels as the original WoW was meant to just keep the 1.x talent trees but let you have more talent points to place in it for future expansions, and then the new deeper trees came about as players weren't really willing to play hybrid classes. If players can do multiple roles(tank/dps/heal - and feel free to find some more) then think hard and long how that affects play, how it affects expansions, how you communicate this to players, and then stand firm by this.
Oh, and I too hate how WoW absolutely _has_ to reset and obsolete all gear and items from expansion to expansion. I see the point in having focus on the new, but don't go about simply destroying the old. Stuff with percentage-modifiers are one kind of items that could still be useful, or if something reduces the cost of some ability in a meaningful way. Let me theorycraft and wear new shiny stuff and that one odd old thing that turns the tables and surprises everyone.
An example would be. The weapons the Orcs use are not that sharp anymore, they need certain resources in order to properly get their weapons, so as a while group, they gravitate towards said resources (Players also need these) It makes it a lot more believable then them just walking around in a forest.
Same with creatures of lesser intellect (non-humanoids) If a hunter is killing all the prey animals, the wolves will leave too, or start attacking lone travellers.
I guess what I am saying is, give them purposes, and dynamically make their actions change depending on what happens to the environment.
Keeping the world static and unchanging makes me feel like I have done accomplished nothing of meaning in the game. I want to see how killing wolves affects the ecosystem and how building a town affects the economy and native species living around the area. If all the goblins in an encampment are killed, it is demoralizing to know that they will just spawn again in a few moments because it feels as if my killing them doesn't actually matter at all. So essentially, I just want player actions to have weight in the world.
I really dread the current MMO trope of boring, linear, auto pilot dungeons that are prone to player burnout. If we want to beeline towards the end boss, give us the option. If we want to hit the boss with good loot for certain classes, let us do that. If we want to clear the whole thing, then by all means go for it. Anything that introduces even the most minimal amount of forethought into the experience instead of ready, pull, kill, rinse, repeat.
I'm not opposed to some dungeons being straightforward, but at the very least I would hope that more than 1 dungeon (including a late game dungeon) would be somewhat open ended.
I think an appropriate approach is make any level increases and gear/mob increases be relatively minor steps up from the previous level cap. IE: A level 50 player has 500HP, a level 60 player has 600HP, and a level 70 player has 700HP and not 1000HP or 1200HP as other games seem to do. I think this incremental approach should also apply to lower levels as well. It seems sort of silly that, say, a level 25 or even level 40 is basically worthless compared to a level 50 or 55 due to the massive power differential. I think if you can get 3 or 4 players together you should conceivable be able to kill someone 10 or 20 levels higher than you; it might be a challenge but it would be possible unlike in other MMOs. I think this would also help stem the rush to hit level cap, since you're basically in a tutorial until the "real game" begins at cap in most other MMOs. By allowing lower level players to feel like they're capable of accomplishing some things that higher level players can do by grouping together they might be more inclined to take their time, explore, or level up crafting skills since there isn't such a massive power differential making them feel so minuscule.
I'd say the overwhelming majority of MMOs fail to tick that box.
Take a game like GW2, it has some fun gameplay and interesting systems but the crafting (albeit interesting especially cooking) is pointless and the auctionhouse is completely over saturated. It also has some of the most boring end-game content. Fractals have hardly any variety, the dungeons are few and far between.
Make items actually "rare."
Parental Advisory - Make it some type of violent, gory! DEATH!
Story - With most MMO's I never really get into the actual story line, and it's usually because I get into the PvP more.
Player Interactivity - As mentioned in another post, have quests where you need a partner or 2, BUT have options where you can SOLO.
Character Oper-ability - (yes I just made that word up) Where learning to use a class of character actually takes time to learn which is truly experienced only through leveling with a class. As a member previously stated, make it difficult.
Talent tree and weapon customization - Should be in depth to keep each character unique and make even the slightest modification make that much of a difference.
System specifications - Graphics should not be demanding. Game play should always be smooth.
Environment - Keep the world interactive, have seasons and weather effects.
Audience - Keep in mind (not to sound like an old guy) some of us don't have the luxury of sitting for 6+ hours to get an item/quest/reward etc...
Subscription - I don't mind paying monthly for a game as long as it's actually worth playing.
One thing I would like to see modified is the grinding as mentioned in a previous post. If there could be a transition while going through MOB's, where specific enemies in groups are either higher classes (Mini-mini bosses), make enemies "smarter," have spontaneous patrols to making grinding more eventful instead of killing 30+ of something that's continuously easy to kill in the same area.
Looking forward to what the developers are going to end up coming out with!
Homogenization is the bane of all. Don't make the classes play the same.
I like having great character customization as far as build much like Rift does with the skill trees. Being given a choice of 3 skills every 15 levels is weak. Being able to experiment and find new different way to solve the same puzzle and being able to find what works best for you. No two people are the same what work best for you may not be what is best for the person. As long as stuff works and things get dead.
Group play is important If I want to play a single player game I can go load Fallout4.
The developers said crafting would require us to interact with others to build stuff and I think that is the best way to go. Nobody should be able to solve all the puzzles by themselves or even 90% of them. I think 90% of the game should require group play.(this from a notorious solo player).
Excited of all on what we have seen and hope they stay true to their vision.
Very much - 'puzzles and secrets...!'
I'd love some areas of the game to need you to think things out...
E.g. use of maths; anagrams; spatial awareness; timings; map and search skills and in-game knowledge to be gained from various nodes and/or NPCs - or a mix of all these types of skills, then GREAT!