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My own ideas that may be used to improve the game
ArchivedUser
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Hi, I am known as Toshito in most of the forums I sign in, it's my dream to someday work on programming apps and websites, especially game developing in the future, it's always been my dream honestly, since I was kid. I've played a bunch of MMOs in the last 10 years, World of Warcraft being the MMO that I've spent more time, I played Blade & Soul, ESO, etc... Not big titles at all, but as the time has passed I always thought about new features new systems for MMOs because even me, I realized that this genre used to be really great, now a days not so much.
One day I was playing WoW in a private server called WoW Ascencion and some1 talked about Ashes of Creation on the Global chat, honestly you should visit that server cause it's a custom server that implements custom features to the game, like they removed classes, they implemented custom Random Enchant System, Stat allocation as you level, etc... Some ideas that I will bring here comes from the inspiration of that server and some other ideas I used to have back when I was waiting for the Beta release of Elder Scrolls Online, back when I gave alot of ideas on their forums, but unfortunately it was never heard of and funny enough some of that ideas back then were very similar with some systems you have here, or also the same.
Well, about the present and the future, I hope this game goes really well in terms of development cycle, I really hope this can redifine the genre, since MMORPGs really needs innovation at the very core. I'm used to see MMORPGs that focus on more single player stuff and more on casual players and to me that is the critical point, its the agraveting point where these games die, because MMORPG in my opinion is about community, is about player interaction and player progression, if you miss some part of this, you are not doing right, so you as developer have the penalty to have players losing interest and the consequence of that is they will leave ASAP.
I bring alot of ideas, there's some system that I don't agree 100% on this game, systems that you already brought to the table in some live streams, etc. And the point of this topic is to give some ideas and where to improve that, so I'll begin by saying what is bad and what should be gone and after some other systems that may replace the old ones.
1 - Get rid of the leveling system
I know what youre thinking, that I'm mad or something like that, but the truth is, why is leveling system is bad in my opinion, well, if you watch other MMOs, no one likes to level, they want the instant level cap, or get to the level cap as soon as possible, since the meat of the game is at the level cap, even though, the meat of the game may be around on the game itself no matter what level you are on Ashes of Creation, still this system brings more bad stuff, normally the leveling system separates the early game content, from mid game content from end game content and as I could understand you dont want end game content, or mid game content, instead you want the game itself being the ultimate game content from begining to end and I agree with that, that's why I'm pointing out why this system is bad. Another thing with the leveling system is you must have a level cap, well for a player that played new MMOs and new WoW private servers, one thing I noticed is that the people doesnt take the time to experience the content they are at, at certain level, they dont enjoy the moment of the game, not matter if that content specifically is enjoyable or not, people wants to rush to the level cap and this system is really old and since Ashes of Creation is a game that will innovate, this thing alone, you guys should get rid of, cause it hurts the game and the community since leveling is another thing that tends to separate more the community aswell.
2 - Get rid of Classes
Seriously, again, people may look at me and say, this guy is crazy, but no, why I want you guys get rid of classes, let's think about it a lil bit, on old RPGs and MMOs it was understandable since back then no matter what was your philosophy, you were always limited by the tecnology you had back then, you had to have some system that would indentify some player to have a certain roll in a dungeon, or to organize spells and perks from talents per player, classes back then fixed alot of the issues since in the old days tecnology was really limited. Well, after playing Skyrim (one of the best RPGs out there), WoW Ascencion private server and Elder Scrolls Online, I came to realize that you don't need classes at all, you just need to balance talents and spells, wich can be very hard to do so, but even with classes you are experiencing unbalanced player specializations and it's also hard either way, in my opinion, you should give more freedom to players and make them create their own identity, not forcing them to choose a pre-defined identity, cause no matter how many classes you have, you will always lack some classes, not having classes at all, can be a risk at a times, but it should be something to consider in my opinion.
Now I will focus on systems that can be created to replace these 2.
1 - Implement Talent Trees
I know it's nothing new, most RPG games did that in the past, but we can follow the example of Skyrim once more, you could have Heavy Armor, Light Armor, Medium Armor, 2H weapons, 1H weapons, Shield, Fire Magic, Frost Magic, Dark Magic, Light Magic, Conjuring Magic, bow, trees and more.
What in reallity should indicate what is the power of your character is what level is your chosen trees, for example we can say that each player can have 3 trees, like Heavy Armor, 2H Weapon and bow trees and by that we could consider that player as a Knight or a Warrior, the player could level the other trees no matter when, they could level up all trees if they wanted to, but each tree had a level cap of 50 so when you got level 50 at least on 3 trees it would translate like you had reach level cap on the regular leveling system and by that I mean like you got all the stat points, talent points and abilities/spells points that you could get on that character. The more you leveled one tree the more perks you would unlock from that tree so when you got a talent point to invest, you could invest on that tier of perks on that tree specifically. Some spells or abilities can be learnt from some perks, the player can reset the Talent Tree for a price in some shrines or some NPCs, something like that.
2 - Rewards as you level
Since in the first point on this second part I've mention there must be some rewards and these should be, Stat Points, Talent Points and Ability Points. In every 5 levels of some tree you would unlock the next tier of perks, you could invest 50 talent points at max in just one tree, so by that every level of every tree would reward 1 perk point to the player, the cap of talent points should be 150 talent points, so they can invest 3 full trees, every 10 levels of a tree can also reward 1 ability point and the cap of that should be 14~16 points and most of the abilies and spells cost 2 points, they can reset the points at a price at a shrine or npcs, just like the talent points. And finally but not least is the Stat points, every 5 levels of the tree should reward the player with 5 Stat Points they can invest on Stats like Strength, Stamina, Agility, Intelect or Spirit, the names of the stats doesnt matter, but to give some idea, they can change their stats whenever the player wants for free.
3 - Make more reasons to explore
Also with the removable of the classes (Archtypes as you call it) can give place to something more interesting stuff in the game, some spells and skills that were used by certain archtypes can now be learnt towards exploration and by that I can give some examples.
Example no. 1 - There is an old church, built by the ancestors before they left Verra, on that church at a certain time with the progression of certain node, that could pop up a book, a book that you would need to find and by this you could implement a puzzle, with this puzzle it would maybe require some players to help to pass that puzzle and maybe it could awake a dark creature that was the keeper of that book but that sadly he got corrupted, so you need help to take down that boss and after you passed that challenges you would be rewarded with the book, in that book it would teach you how cast a spell that would belong lets say to the Light Magic Tree and it's effects was a powerful healing spell, but just reading the book it wouldn't give you the powerful rank of that spell, but a lesser version of the spell, now you maybe would need to improve that same spell, maybe by practicing, using alot of time sin combat, maybe by trying some combinations (And by that, maybe you could implement a profession that would craft Spells and Skills, yeah Spell Crafting), stuff like that.
Example no. 2 - There's a quest you accept from a weird guy, I don't know the lore, but I'm giving certain ideas, that guy let's say is a mysterious person that lived in the ancestors time, but the gods gave him a purpose and by that they gave him immortality, he was kind of a keeper of the world, a guardian, but until he accomplish his objectives and missions he will live, he kinda feels like he was cursed to live forever and he needs the player(s) to help him to accomplish the missions the gods gave him and so, this would embark the players to go for a quest chain with that NPC, at the end of the quest chain he would give a skill used by a certain race of the ancestors to the player, this event would occur again just by a certain time of a progression of a node for example and maybe just one time ever in some specific server.
I could go on and on giving ideas and examples but I feel that my post is already too big.
For now this is some ideas I can give, cause I feel that if you guys give freedom to the players and more reasons for them to go out in the world knowing the risks they may find in the journey it would be also great, cause I feel like with the systems and ideas you have right now may force the players just to be in their nodes instead of going out and explore the world, you need to give that also, I know the caravan system, but in my opinion that system is not enough for exploration it's not enough to be honest.
Sorry for this long post, I wish you the best, I really want to invest in your project, with money and suggestions to improve the gameplay and let's make MMO's great again xD
My sincerely compliments
-Toshito
One day I was playing WoW in a private server called WoW Ascencion and some1 talked about Ashes of Creation on the Global chat, honestly you should visit that server cause it's a custom server that implements custom features to the game, like they removed classes, they implemented custom Random Enchant System, Stat allocation as you level, etc... Some ideas that I will bring here comes from the inspiration of that server and some other ideas I used to have back when I was waiting for the Beta release of Elder Scrolls Online, back when I gave alot of ideas on their forums, but unfortunately it was never heard of and funny enough some of that ideas back then were very similar with some systems you have here, or also the same.
Well, about the present and the future, I hope this game goes really well in terms of development cycle, I really hope this can redifine the genre, since MMORPGs really needs innovation at the very core. I'm used to see MMORPGs that focus on more single player stuff and more on casual players and to me that is the critical point, its the agraveting point where these games die, because MMORPG in my opinion is about community, is about player interaction and player progression, if you miss some part of this, you are not doing right, so you as developer have the penalty to have players losing interest and the consequence of that is they will leave ASAP.
I bring alot of ideas, there's some system that I don't agree 100% on this game, systems that you already brought to the table in some live streams, etc. And the point of this topic is to give some ideas and where to improve that, so I'll begin by saying what is bad and what should be gone and after some other systems that may replace the old ones.
1 - Get rid of the leveling system
I know what youre thinking, that I'm mad or something like that, but the truth is, why is leveling system is bad in my opinion, well, if you watch other MMOs, no one likes to level, they want the instant level cap, or get to the level cap as soon as possible, since the meat of the game is at the level cap, even though, the meat of the game may be around on the game itself no matter what level you are on Ashes of Creation, still this system brings more bad stuff, normally the leveling system separates the early game content, from mid game content from end game content and as I could understand you dont want end game content, or mid game content, instead you want the game itself being the ultimate game content from begining to end and I agree with that, that's why I'm pointing out why this system is bad. Another thing with the leveling system is you must have a level cap, well for a player that played new MMOs and new WoW private servers, one thing I noticed is that the people doesnt take the time to experience the content they are at, at certain level, they dont enjoy the moment of the game, not matter if that content specifically is enjoyable or not, people wants to rush to the level cap and this system is really old and since Ashes of Creation is a game that will innovate, this thing alone, you guys should get rid of, cause it hurts the game and the community since leveling is another thing that tends to separate more the community aswell.
2 - Get rid of Classes
Seriously, again, people may look at me and say, this guy is crazy, but no, why I want you guys get rid of classes, let's think about it a lil bit, on old RPGs and MMOs it was understandable since back then no matter what was your philosophy, you were always limited by the tecnology you had back then, you had to have some system that would indentify some player to have a certain roll in a dungeon, or to organize spells and perks from talents per player, classes back then fixed alot of the issues since in the old days tecnology was really limited. Well, after playing Skyrim (one of the best RPGs out there), WoW Ascencion private server and Elder Scrolls Online, I came to realize that you don't need classes at all, you just need to balance talents and spells, wich can be very hard to do so, but even with classes you are experiencing unbalanced player specializations and it's also hard either way, in my opinion, you should give more freedom to players and make them create their own identity, not forcing them to choose a pre-defined identity, cause no matter how many classes you have, you will always lack some classes, not having classes at all, can be a risk at a times, but it should be something to consider in my opinion.
Now I will focus on systems that can be created to replace these 2.
1 - Implement Talent Trees
I know it's nothing new, most RPG games did that in the past, but we can follow the example of Skyrim once more, you could have Heavy Armor, Light Armor, Medium Armor, 2H weapons, 1H weapons, Shield, Fire Magic, Frost Magic, Dark Magic, Light Magic, Conjuring Magic, bow, trees and more.
What in reallity should indicate what is the power of your character is what level is your chosen trees, for example we can say that each player can have 3 trees, like Heavy Armor, 2H Weapon and bow trees and by that we could consider that player as a Knight or a Warrior, the player could level the other trees no matter when, they could level up all trees if they wanted to, but each tree had a level cap of 50 so when you got level 50 at least on 3 trees it would translate like you had reach level cap on the regular leveling system and by that I mean like you got all the stat points, talent points and abilities/spells points that you could get on that character. The more you leveled one tree the more perks you would unlock from that tree so when you got a talent point to invest, you could invest on that tier of perks on that tree specifically. Some spells or abilities can be learnt from some perks, the player can reset the Talent Tree for a price in some shrines or some NPCs, something like that.
2 - Rewards as you level
Since in the first point on this second part I've mention there must be some rewards and these should be, Stat Points, Talent Points and Ability Points. In every 5 levels of some tree you would unlock the next tier of perks, you could invest 50 talent points at max in just one tree, so by that every level of every tree would reward 1 perk point to the player, the cap of talent points should be 150 talent points, so they can invest 3 full trees, every 10 levels of a tree can also reward 1 ability point and the cap of that should be 14~16 points and most of the abilies and spells cost 2 points, they can reset the points at a price at a shrine or npcs, just like the talent points. And finally but not least is the Stat points, every 5 levels of the tree should reward the player with 5 Stat Points they can invest on Stats like Strength, Stamina, Agility, Intelect or Spirit, the names of the stats doesnt matter, but to give some idea, they can change their stats whenever the player wants for free.
3 - Make more reasons to explore
Also with the removable of the classes (Archtypes as you call it) can give place to something more interesting stuff in the game, some spells and skills that were used by certain archtypes can now be learnt towards exploration and by that I can give some examples.
Example no. 1 - There is an old church, built by the ancestors before they left Verra, on that church at a certain time with the progression of certain node, that could pop up a book, a book that you would need to find and by this you could implement a puzzle, with this puzzle it would maybe require some players to help to pass that puzzle and maybe it could awake a dark creature that was the keeper of that book but that sadly he got corrupted, so you need help to take down that boss and after you passed that challenges you would be rewarded with the book, in that book it would teach you how cast a spell that would belong lets say to the Light Magic Tree and it's effects was a powerful healing spell, but just reading the book it wouldn't give you the powerful rank of that spell, but a lesser version of the spell, now you maybe would need to improve that same spell, maybe by practicing, using alot of time sin combat, maybe by trying some combinations (And by that, maybe you could implement a profession that would craft Spells and Skills, yeah Spell Crafting), stuff like that.
Example no. 2 - There's a quest you accept from a weird guy, I don't know the lore, but I'm giving certain ideas, that guy let's say is a mysterious person that lived in the ancestors time, but the gods gave him a purpose and by that they gave him immortality, he was kind of a keeper of the world, a guardian, but until he accomplish his objectives and missions he will live, he kinda feels like he was cursed to live forever and he needs the player(s) to help him to accomplish the missions the gods gave him and so, this would embark the players to go for a quest chain with that NPC, at the end of the quest chain he would give a skill used by a certain race of the ancestors to the player, this event would occur again just by a certain time of a progression of a node for example and maybe just one time ever in some specific server.
I could go on and on giving ideas and examples but I feel that my post is already too big.
For now this is some ideas I can give, cause I feel that if you guys give freedom to the players and more reasons for them to go out in the world knowing the risks they may find in the journey it would be also great, cause I feel like with the systems and ideas you have right now may force the players just to be in their nodes instead of going out and explore the world, you need to give that also, I know the caravan system, but in my opinion that system is not enough for exploration it's not enough to be honest.
Sorry for this long post, I wish you the best, I really want to invest in your project, with money and suggestions to improve the gameplay and let's make MMO's great again xD
My sincerely compliments
-Toshito
0
Comments
I understand where you are coming from and we have seen people ask for similar things. While these ideas sound great for a single player RPG a lot of them just do not translate well to an MMO and certainly not a an MMO with PVP and PVE focus.
Not knowing what class I am up against in any PVP scenario will make PVP a dice roll and it will drive people away. It makes PVP a game of chance rather than strategy. The classless system also makes balancing much more difficult.
As for the reward system you suggested, I don't see how that is so different from how leveling in other MMOs works. Furthermore, I truly believe that MMOs need a robust leveling system. Have you played with someone that boosted a character, or bought their account? It's a terrible time for everyone. Some people need that learning curve. My wife for example, someone who does not play many video games, needs the leveling experience with skills introduced one or a few at a time or she can not wrap her head around it.
For PVE purposes, I think that knowing what classes you have and what potential classes you need to bring along would make life so much easier when putting a 40 man raid together.
Again, I think that you bring up some great points, but some just don't take into account the dynamics of the MMO that Ashes is trying to achieve.
Levelling is required as measurement of your improvement with individual skills.
But beyond that I also see no use of character levels...except for one instance.
Where your progress can be removed as a punishment or sacrifice.
But removing XP wouldnt in itself punish a player....removing 100s of amassed skill point that unlock and empower their skill trees would.
That is the real quantifiable aspect of character progress.
As would the concept of sacrificing character level (skill points) to save the community in dire situations where 100s would otherwise be wiped out and a node lost.
Unlike @Meudestroy above, I do not believe in having combat handed to me on a plate by knowing all the details about my adversary in advance. Nor do I believe dungeon clears should be given to people on a plate in advance by watching the latest youtube videos. Being skilled requires adapting to any adversary of any kind on the fly. Both as an individual and as a group.
That also necessitates being prepared 'for any eventuality'. Which forces you to cover all bases with your group make-up and enforces player variety. You are also forced to harmonise with your group members to make sure you dont duplicate on skills and waste potential versatility. You must cover for each others weakness to make the team strong.
On a more important note, this all doesn't matter because ashes will have a class system