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
The Devs mentioned control classes. Would love to see CC come back and matter. When not playing mage or healer loved playing the Original Mesmer in GW1. CC and interrupts change the game play a lot knowing when and how to use them for both PvE and PvP.
Currently in some games group combat has devolved to tank gathers everything and AOE it all down. What happened to the classes having strengths and weakness? Why does every class need to have AOE? What happened to the journey being a big part of this style game? Why the big rush to get through it as fast a possible?
Choices and class differences should be paramount end the zerfest we see happening everywhere else.
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One thing I'd very much like to see is the feeling I got when I started playing WoW: It felt like an adventure game to me. Which it wasn't, we were all on the same conveyor belt, but why not mix that up?
Why do everyone need to have the same experience? Can't quests be given by varying NPCs? Can't the items/drops/mobs/persons be varying things? Have it so that players can't get all quests - you get a random set of the ones in the game, say 75-90% are the same for all and the rest are random.
Playing WoW on a private server I was reminded how all classes and all professions have their own quests. This feeling of how your choices affects your questing is great!
Make the play experience unique for all players.
And for a wrap-up let me point out three elephants in the WoW-room:
1. Flying. I love it. But it can't possibly be good for the game so I would sacrifice it.
2. Transmogrification. I love it. But I couldn't care any more about how new gear looks (and why does it have to be so un-appealing?) so that severly devaluates the effort put into the looks of new gear. I'm not sure what to do about it. If included, perhaps try to tie it to professions somehow.
3. Artificial boundaries between zones in the world. Don't stop me from going somewhere, just design the game so that if I'm somewhere I'm not prepared for then I'll be greeting the Spirit Healer. I'm perfectly up for attunements though (like the ring for BWL).
Any mmorpg that has caught my eye and I've decided to try, I find myself running trying to catch up to the group ahead of me who's ran the dungeon or event 15 times.
I lack the ability to sit back and enjoy a play through the 1st time if I join late. I'll also fall into the same category If i don't quit my job and live in mom's basement to play 26 hours a day.
I'm hoping for something that makes this different than all the 4 minute MMO's that already do exist.
Force CC's, make some mobs hit a little harder so they cant be pulled in from start to finish of some mid to high level dungeon or event.
I just don't want to feel as if I'm always being rushed through content because others have the ability to do so. I'm playing for the long haul, not the 2 week gear and clear.
Sure there were negatives to that, especially when wanting to do content on servers that were not bustling with people, but the worlds seemed to have more purpose in the pre LFR/LFD world where everything just feels like an instance with a queue of randoms at all times.
My favourite aspect is PVE raiding, it's a great activity you can do with your guild, learning the best tactics and working together towards a common goal. Ideally raid content of varying sizes (10-20 people). Difficulty scaling is ok, different challenge levels etc.. but not so important imho.
PVP RAIDING
Large open world PVP can be fun too if it benefits more than just PVP, like crafting, quest hubs (Rift), world buffs (GW2) access to bonus dungeon (Aion) etc.. so they have a bit more meaning and impact on the world and a reason to do it often other than just to kill players.
CRAFTING & TRADE
Having a good crafting system ensures that all materials gathered while questing or gathering between raids retain value, so players can use or sell that to get what they want, be it more expensive crafting materials or armour/weapons and other trade goods. Often games lately have had crafting as an afterthought, I always find this a bit disappointing.
SOLO CONTENT
Something you can do alone that is fun, rewarding long-term and not too repetitive.
I love doing stuff solo but hate the "kill 10 rats" style daily quests.
Having a reason to login each day between raids is so important to keep an mmo looking alive, look at Wildstar's new Primal Matrix heroism system for some ideas.
Look at all the other MMOs and see what works and what doesn't. Then create your own. TRINITY system is trash and always has been, don't copy that. Exponential Leveling segregates the game's population. Almost every MMORPG out there does those 2 mentioned things... don't do it.
- Integration of a diminishing returns system on CC (Crowd Control Abilities). If a player can be chain CC'ed to death, large scale PvP will revolve around who has more numbers as more numbers = more CC. Some games give you buffs which make you immune to certain type of CC once you've been hit by them. So say, if someone was stunned, they receive a 5-6 second stun immunity. If someone were to be knocked down, they receive a 5-6 second knockdown immunity. This ensures that large scale PvP revolves more around skill instead of numbers.
1) Many levels of the nodes and variety on nodes type (possibility to random generation of buildings, inns etc?)
I would really like to see an MMO with nodes that go from level 1 to, for example 50 or 100, and to give the final level only when you have a large, powerful guild in the area (so to obtain really few lv 50 or 100 cities in the world, that can be considered metropolis based on your classification).
For who didn't read it yet this is the system proposed for nodes stages:
Stage Rough Development Time
Expedition Few Hours
Encampment Many Hours
Village Few Days
Town Many Days
City Few Weeks
Metropolis Many Weeks
I would add the levels 1-50 or 1-100 as divisions of those stages (ex. expedition from lv 1-10 or Metropolis from 80-100, idk).
The goal of what i'm writing is to create a world when only a few cities are at a high level and balanced with a large number of small villages all around.
The high level would be a reward for a big amount of players working together for the city, with maybe the possibility of limited downgrade if population goes away (ex. if a city is LV 70 and people goes away it can go back to LV 60 but not lower, so we are certain that a LV 100 city is full of active players and not an empty monument conquered maybe 5 years ago by an offline guild).
2) Keeping the city alive
I would think well of a necessity of players to return to the city at least once every 5-6 hours of gameplay maximum (need to sleep / buy potions / gear etc), development of inns with games and MUSIC (expecially if the idea is to make a solid bard class, it would be not bad to have some different playable instruments that can get you paid by innkeeper etc).
I would think to some guitar hero like mechanic like seen in Two Worlds (i really liked it) and to progressively decrease difficulty with the skill and or opening new complex music sheets for higher levels.
It would be extremely cool make the work of the innkeeper a skill and to make only high level "barmens" the possibility to craft beverages that can be used a limited amount of times for a player and that raise the experience points and or strenght / stamina / intelligence points permanently as a complement to the usual training with monster kill etc.
It was about giving a lot of definite levels to cities (like LV 1 - 100) as a subdivision of this system given by game team:
Stage Rough Development Time
Expedition Few Hours
Encampment Many Hours
Village Few Days
Town Many Days
City Few Weeks
Metropolis Many Weeks
And as an aspect that I find important, give the higher levels only to cities with large guilds or groups of organized, online, active people with the possibility of limited downgrade (ex of 10 levels maximum) if the city becomes empty.Every single level should unlock something to build / more house slots and for example every 10 levels change the whole city visually (ex. wooden to stone roofs, earth to stone brick roads etc.) to make everyone understand that it is growing.
Make cities more living by adding for example playable music (Two Worlds 2 style) innkeeper recipes that raise permanently some skills (expecially for high level innkeepers).
Nodes develop from our actions, but I hope there will be other means to show our effect on the world. Maybe some tribes with whom players can become friend or foe, dinamically developing terrain, etc.
Random things for me other then the above.
1) Great PvP.
2) A great politics/guild/ect... system (LET THE BACK STABBING AND ALLIANCES BEGIN!).
3) Make PvE (profession specifically) worth doing (monetary wise and recipe wise). As much of a PvP guy as I am. Sometimes I just wanna make potions/alchemy all day and I'd like there to be a demand for such items.
4) Make PvE and PvP mix in certain aspects. I've been doing a bit of reading and I know that there are guard for caravans for traders, but what about allowing HUMAN players to also bee guards and make a decent living just running back and forth between cities as a guard brigade. Traders higher players to defend their goods, while pvpers have something to do in conjunction to the PvEr.
5) A solid party system/Solo system. If you want to grind by yourself that's cool, if you want to be in a group that's alright too. No reason hurt players xp/gains because they prefer one or the other.
*random additions that would be nice.
i. A good master/disciple system would be nice (would give buffz to lower player while points to higher lvl player to get decent items).
ii. A diverse recipe system, where recipes are learnt through trial and error, and special recipes are found throughout the world/dugeons. (Want the best burn healing potion well the best one can only be learned once you've done a certain dungeon and got lucky. But the other burn potions can be made just not AS effective as the dungeon one. ).
iii. Personally an indepth alchemy with varied and powerful potions (cuz i love being potions guy).
https://support.trionworlds.com/hc/en-us/articles/203364538-Crest-Brainstorm-Guide