"Fluff" from other mmorpgs you would like to see in Ashes of Creation

ArchivedUser

What kind of fluff content  from other games would you like to see added to Ashes of Creation?

Now, im not talking things that will change the core mechanics of the game, but rather small things you can do on "downtime"

Here are some of things i liked in other games. I will add more later.

* Rift Artifacts
https://telarapedia.gamepedia.com/Artifact

Gather trinkets around the world for achievements and rewards

* DaoC guard when logged off

In DaoC you could become a guard NPC for your currently held keep while logged off.

You got reward if the NPC defended while your were logged off.

Would be nice if you became a guard in your node town/area.

* Group exp

Often seen in Asian mmorpgs, where you get more exp the longer you stay in a group

Also have to be active to level upp the buff.

* LotrO Fellowship Maneuver
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Fellowship_Manoeuvre

* Everquest languages
In Everquest you didnt know the language of the other races and had to learn them

ArchivedUser

I like the concept of languages, especially if they play it off with the underground race and finding abandoned literature/runes/etc. from before the great migration off the planet.

I didn't follow any of the links and I am mostly unfamiliar with all the other fluff things you mentioned.

I would be opposed to bonus exp just for adventuring in the same group, unless solo players received an equal benefit for being solo and players that change groups often can gain more exp by traveling with new comrades. At that point, like most bonuses/buffs mentioned in the threads, I don't even see the point in doing it.

As for a guard for your freehold/town when you are off line...
I don't think this should work for freeholds, as the only time you can attack them is during a siege and you should have enough time to plan that ahead. I know not everyone will be able to protect their freehold 100% of the time and I am OK with that.

I think the town thing would be cool. As long as your NPC guard didn't gain anything while you were AFK and your character was set to 'guard.'

Overall I would likely be okay with a multitude of fluff items as long as none of them contained an inherent advantage. Then it becomes necessary to compete, and that's not fluff.

Golfing, I played a game once where after you cleared the area your character could play through it during a 'mini' golf game. That was some grade A fluff.

ArchivedUser

I think the languages would be great, unless all the races used a common language though I guess that would exclude the Tulnar anyway.

ArchivedUser

Quality ratings on resources, always adds more dimensions to the crafting system.

ArchivedUser

Group quests in Warhammer Age of Reckoning were good. You randomly get pinged with an invite to a group event and suddenly your killing mobs to get a small little world boss spawn to fight with a group of people, and you might get a good drop if you contributed a lot.

ArchivedUser

Zomnivore said:

Group quests in Warhammer Age of Reckoning were good. You randomly get pinged with an invite to a group event and suddenly your killing mobs to get a small little world boss spawn to fight with a group of people, and you might get a good drop if you contributed a lot.

I think they mentioned they would have something like that,
Rift had something similiar aswell.

ArchivedUser

Archeage 
UCCs and Music

ArchivedUser

WoW
PetBattles

ArchivedUser

Platforming. I think there's a little in this game already from what I've heard. As much as I hate literally everything about the maplestory games the only thing I liked was the platforming sections. It'd be fun to see that in this game. It adds a level of skill that you can do with any gear or play style

ArchivedUser

UNDEAD!!!

ArchivedUser

I LOVE the language thing. It reminds me of MUDS where you could pick a language to talk in and if someone didn't know it they would just see random letters.

ArchivedUser

Archage

Writing music you can play, creating art, cooking, languages, gliders

Lineage2

The 'seven secret emotes' which, if done in the right order, would open the blouse of female characters (and males, of course)

ArchivedUser

McKnightrider said:

Platforming. I think there's a little in this game already from what I've heard. As much as I hate literally everything about the maplestory games the only thing I liked was the platforming sections. It'd be fun to see that in this game. It adds a level of skill that you can do with any gear or play style

TauTau said:

Archage

Writing music you can play, creating art, cooking, languages, gliders

Lineage2

The 'seven secret emotes' which, if done in the right order, would open the blouse of female characters (and males, of course)

Rift had jump puzzles, i actually enjoyed those.

Would be cool to make art that you could put in your house, and players could trade them.
Lotro also have a music system where you can import converted files from real music and play with different instrument in groups.

ArchivedUser

I really liked the dungeons in DnDO that had hidden traps you could notice passively or with an active skill check.

ArchivedUser

Zomnivore said:

I really liked the dungeons in DnDO that had hidden traps you could notice passively or with an active skill check.

Ah yea, its been in several rpg games like Baldurs Gate etc.
Its a common dungeons and dragon skill thats used in many games using the system.
Divinity Original Sin beeing another recent one.

ArchivedUser

As people have mentioned before, it would be nice with answear options when talking to NPC with more good and evil options.
Like in SWToR or many DnD games.

ArchivedUser

Agreed, having options that always end in you being the hero is lazy. However, with less than good deities about and the importance of religion, there should be positive/negative responses for most major story quest. Side quest... probably not so much, but I am with you in hoping for it!

ArchivedUser

Fishing. Mainly for old boots and garbage near and in towns. lol

ArchivedUser

Sozia said:

Fishing. Mainly for old boots and garbage near and in towns. lol

I dont like F2P games but Asian games usually do fishing well.
Breath of Fire series also had quite fun fishing minigame.

ArchivedUser

A Table Top RPG of the setting.

Table Top is pretty big right now, a lot of people at Intrepid play D&D including Steven, and there is a lot of lore being developed for the game so why not use it two ways and rake in some alternative coin using the same development investment.

ArchivedUser

I'm not personally a huge fan of "fluff" game mechanics. To me, the only "fluff" a game should have is cosmetic items.

However, this is based on the notion that "fluff" is inherently useless. Things like languages (aka EQ series) are fantastic if done properly. Thing is, they are not fluff, as the actually do perform a mechanical function. Languages in EQ2 - specifically - were used as a form of quest key.

Rifts collections were directly inherited from EQ2's collection system, and in both games they performed actual functions (in some cases, the rewards of collections were among the best items in the game for some classes/slots), so can't really be considered as fluff.

Fishing is rarely fluff either. In every game that I've played, it performs an actual function other than just a means of acquiring fish (which in itself makes it not fluff).

Even emotes aren't always fluff, and to me it is a waste of game developer time to map the animations and not add in some form of actual game play to tie to them.

I guess what I'm saying is that everything posted above could be added to the game, but in my mind nothing should be added to the game just for the sake of adding it to the game. Everything should have a purpose - even things that seemingly don't.

ArchivedUser

LoTRO musical instruments.

ArchivedUser

    Zonned said:
    Quality ratings on resources, always adds more dimensions to the crafting system.

Hi,

i would totally agree on what Zonned said. Putting quality ratings on ressources and items produced with them could surely add to the depth of a crafting system, the item system, the market and to the system how you aquire the ressources. Gathering can be much more interesting, if you dont run somehwere marked on your map and just click the thing you want, but instead have the players actively look for the stuff and have the outcome in different qualities.

Let me describe the - in my opinion - boring way of an "ACME-Crafting System":

-> Aquire knowledte and recipies by bying them from a vendor or learning them from an NPC (not very creative)
-> Run around on the map over and over to find the needed resources and gather them (very boring timesink)
-> Go to a crafting station, put everything together in mostly lousy a** minigames to simulate "real" crafting work (maybe depends on the minigames, but never worked really well for me or got boring at the 3rd try, if you dont have any qualtity system)
-> Put those single items you crafted togeter to create a part of gear (rather unspectacular, also)
-> Outcome: Have thousands of exact same looking items in the market; People use to create only the "best value" items; Everything else is forgoten or never hits the market

Now let me describe a system, that would comfort me and make me want to be a crafter

Note: A lot of the inspiration is drawn from the crafting-/market-system in "Star Wars Galaxies" - so the developers of this nice game have to be credited for the most part of it.

Professions

Choose your profession finding and visiting a proper teacher (like e. g. blacksmith, a bowmaker, and so on). These people should be spreaded throughout the world and not on a regular place where you find all of them in a "pack". You first have to find your "Master" to become a student... Sounds like a proper way to me and doesn't feel as "unnatural" as having all crafting people hanging around in the same place.

Maybe some classes/races whatsoever are more talented for different crafting professions, than others are (e. g. a Dwarf has bonus on everything that works with metals, while another race has bonuses on alchemy or the like) This could likely add another dimension to a quality-based crafting system, because race/class could also play a (smaller) part in what your crafting results are.

Resources/Gathering

Finding & aquiring ressources would be fare more interesting, if you had to actively search for resources, and if you really wanted to search for them. In Star Wars Galaxies i found the system very engaging. You had to learn a profession about how to find ressources, then visit different places (planets in this case) and actively scan the area for ressources. When you have found a place where ressources where located, you had to "dig them up", to find out about the quality of the ressource (lets say ores, gasses or liquids of a certain quality). It happened rarely that you found resources of very good quality (90%+), but if you did, you where a lucky person and you where able to aquire quite some $$$ by just gathering the high qual ressource and just sell the ressource itself, OR gather the resource yourself and use it to hopefully craft some high quality item and sell it to anybody who wanted a high quality gear and has the needed moneys to do so.

But finding and digging up the ores, gasses etc. was not enough. Star Wars Galaxies even had a gathering system, that was very engaging and fun. Once you have found a ressource you wanted to aquire, you had to actively aquire it by planting facilities/gathering machines (wich you had to buy, craft your own or rent from someone!), have them hooked up with energy, so they can work and you had to manage the flow of resources because your gathering facilities ran out of space. Sure - in AOC you wouldn't plant a ore-mining robot facility - but how about having to set up a temporary mine, where you want to aquire your stuff or something similar...

Production

If you can find materials of certain quality, the outcome (products) could also be influenced by the skill of the producing player and also the quality of the gathered resources. Example: You produce a pickaxe for other players to use in mining. Your smithing skill is mediate, your resources are of a good quality. So you produce a pickaxe (it does not break, because of your mediate skill - this time) and the outcome is a pickaxe one can work with and which would work for a certain amount of time, based on how good the quality is. The amount of ressources you get with this pickaxe also depends on the quality. And maybe the pickaxe breaks under certain circumstances, depending on quality... You get the point.

If you ask me, i dont need no minigame for the crafting process itself. If only the process in getting the stuff and combining is fun it its own way. And of course, if your skill and your quality ressources really matter.

Market

If you would implement a system like that, which depends in pieces on how much time and effort you spend on your actual products and on their quality there would be a lot of bonuses for the playerbase (the market):

a) People care about finding good ressources and willingly invest time in systems like that
b) A lot of diversity on the market for newer and veteran players. Example: Beginners will (and are able to) buy cheap or lower quality stuff from the market, to get started; Veterans go looking for the highly priced high quality stuff or go find a master crafter, who can make it for them.
c) Aquiring a good skill is not for everybody, but for the people who put effort and thought into the process (Timesink). But this one day it will pay and will be a lot of fun for the player, because there is a reward for throwing your time towards a crafting system...


Conclusion

If you implement crafting, please don't do it to simply _have_ a crafting system in game. Love it, or leave it. If you implement a system, please take a close look at what the community wants and make the experience fun and engaging and not another simple gathering/payement-ladder. Pure timesinks with no fun wont drag a lot of people to actually try to be a master crafter or anything.

I know, things can get pretty complex with a system like the one i outlined. But better have something complex and enganging, than something simple, boring, that nobody wants to play actually.


There are a lot more ideas, how you could make crafting engaging and actually fun. Maybe theres more ideas and also contras to what i wrote above. I'm eager to read all the good stuff in here...

Most sincerely,
Savant

ArchivedUser

Noaani said:

I'm not personally a huge fan of "fluff" game mechanics. To me, the only "fluff" a game should have is cosmetic items.

However, this is based on the notion that "fluff" is inherently useless. Things like languages (aka EQ series) are fantastic if done properly. Thing is, they are not fluff, as the actually do perform a mechanical function. Languages in EQ2 - specifically - were used as a form of quest key.

Rifts collections were directly inherited from EQ2's collection system, and in both games they performed actual functions (in some cases, the rewards of collections were among the best items in the game for some classes/slots), so can't really be considered as fluff.

Fishing is rarely fluff either. In every game that I've played, it performs an actual function other than just a means of acquiring fish (which in itself makes it not fluff).

Even emotes aren't always fluff, and to me it is a waste of game developer time to map the animations and not add in some form of actual game play to tie to them.

I guess what I'm saying is that everything posted above could be added to the game, but in my mind nothing should be added to the game just for the sake of adding it to the game. Everything should have a purpose - even things that seemingly don't.

I was really only focusing on the last paragraph of this post but anyway. I hope that everything from old boots to random trinkets that mobs drop can have a crafting use as well as a cosmetic one. I hope that Old boots can be worn or broken down into old leather and used for crafting new items.
I also think you should be able to reverse engineer items in the game to learn how to make them and then that recipe will be open to you.

ArchivedUser

Hm, my last post didnt fit into the "Fluffs"-thread to be honest. I redirected it to a crafting post. Sorry for that. But as i now understand "Fluffs" are things implemented into the game, that don't have an impact on the gameplay itself (so just "fun stuff", right)

After all i think one should not waste time on unneeded stuff, like Noaani said. Such things can be implemented later, if people really want them for a reason. But im sure there is stuff, that really adds to the athmosphere of the game. Even some "Fluffs" - like e. g. a Karma System or something that makes the player feel, that his actions actually matter in the world or that he/she has achieved something, which wasn't quite easy to achieve. I mean "Fluffs", that make the game feel rewarding for the player. Actually i don't have an idea on proper concepts for such things, but maybe theres ideas here...?

ArchivedUser

pressing a button and automatically following a party member, party members on maps, marriage system. 

ArchivedUser

What do you think about "hidden" quests?
Like NPCs without a !

Or, to go even further, lets say you get an item that you need to take to one place, but theres not mentioned anywhere what you should do with it.
It might even be that noone ever figures it out.

ArchivedUser

Lorebooks (Like Elder Scrolls)
Player agency to create in-game documents. (Gryphonheart Items, WoW) 
Playermade music (Lord of the Rings Online)
A large assortment of emotes (Final Fantasy)

ArchivedUser

Ariatras said:

Lorebooks (Like Elder Scrolls)
Player agency to create in-game documents. (Gryphonheart Items, WoW) 
Playermade music (Lord of the Rings Online)
A large assortment of emotes (Final Fantasy)

you named everything I want so thanks ^^