Simply put BOP or how to transform a game into a job.

Classes.

The whole "only-one-person-gets-a-coin-good-for-a-radiance-gear-piece" thing on Lord of the Rings Online. The fellowship doing a radiance quest wins or loses as a team and should be rewarded as such, not the person with the luckiest roll.

Finding players to do other things than radiance gear quests? Forget it. It's gotten so bad that they're revamping the book quests so you can do them solo. As much as I like the game, the current setup for radiance gear is idiotic.

Originally posted by Ruyn

Originally posted by SioBabble

Originally posted by Ruyn

Lack of harsh death penalties. 

followed by a close second, instances.

 

By all means.  Impose a harsh death penalty on yourself.

Reroll your toon.  I dare you.

You will of course not do this.

 

Or I can play an MMO with a harsh death penalty which I do.

which is? i seek a game with adrenaline too, share your pleasure
 

and as for subject, penalty for pk ij Last Chaos was retarded idea: u got your stats lowered for killing ppl

bind on pickup

Originally posted by TarotMage

The whole "only-one-person-gets-a-coin-good-for-a-radiance-gear-piece" thing on Lord of the Rings Online. The fellowship doing a radiance quest wins or loses as a team and should be rewarded as such, not the person with the luckiest roll.

Finding players to do other things than radiance gear quests? Forget it. It's gotten so bad that they're revamping the book quests so you can do them solo. As much as I like the game, the current setup for radiance gear is idiotic.

And thats why its getting a complete revamp next week :)

autoattack

Full loot

The Quest Grind..  IMO quests should be few but long, interesting and hard to complete. I would be down for a game where it like takes multiple game sessions to complete a single quest. But I guess that is just me.

Grind. Much worse than the Quest grind.

Originally posted by loirnoir

Originally posted by Axehilt

Originally posted by loirnoir

Originally posted by Axehilt

Harsh death penalties.  Slap a penalty on me at death?  Fine.  Kick me in the gonads and eradicate hours of effort?  Uh, yeah, I think I'll go play a game that wants me to play it, thanks...

What do you consider a reasonable death penalty?

 

Basically the death penalty used in the vast majority of fun games throughout videogame history: restarting the "level" (which in MMORPGs terms is restarting the current dungeon or quest you're on.)  Castlevania, Left 4 Dead, etc.  There's a long list of games that immediately put you back into the fun of playing the game but reset you back a reasonable length of time (which is almost never more than 30 minutes, and usually quite a bit shorter than that.)

Basically:

• The majority of rewards are at the end of a quest or dungeon.
• Dying puts you back to the start of the quest or dungeon.
• An individual quest/dungeon shouldn't take longer than 60 minutes.

This would go hand-in-hand with varied difficulty too, but that starts to diverge from purely talking about death penalty ;)  Basically you want to have some quests as easy as typical MMORPG quests, and some quests which are genuinely hard - so to get that hard mode reward you have to make it through a lengthy series of tough challenges without dying (again: just like the challenges found in normal games.)

From this I have to also assume that you'd think it'd be better to have a single, more difficult, yet more rewarding quest, than running around a town to pick up 25 quests to do at once?

 

Yes, that would be a necessity for this approach to death/content design.

Originally posted by alakram

Classes.

I 2nd that one.

Heirloom gear

--Why even bother with PVP in WoW when 90% of everyone else is a twinked out alt of a level 80 character who can kill you in two hits?

Voice chat

--Because I hate being required to listen to some chick wih a thick North Dakota accent blabber all day about her Wiccan religion.  Not to mention the announce that is just trying to understand people half the time.  Lag spikes prevent messages from coming across, some people don't know how to configure their mics, and sometimes turning off push to talk is obviously a mjaor mistake.

EQ's Crafting System

--I used to view EQ2's crafting system as one of the best in the genre until I actually started doing it.  I mean, if your  idea of fun is sitting in one spot clicking specific buttons over and over again, then by all means, go ahead.  In my view, crafting could still be deeply involving yet the actual item making process should be something that doesn't require a whole lot of attention, so that it could be done when a player doesn't have time to fully devote his attention to the game.  The way EQ does it, crafting is just as demanding as fighting mobs.

Raiding

--There's a reason why it's such a struggle to find a casual family guild in today's MMORPGs.  Everyone wants "teh uber gear," and there simply isn't room for guilds devoted entirely to casual play with no means of raiding.  In my view, a guild as a whole shouldn't be the main means of progression in a mainstream MMORPG like WoW, but instead progression should be done largely via a group or by the individual so that everyone has the same chance to progress no matter what sort of guild you are in.

Originally posted by cukimunga

The Quest Grind..  IMO quests should be few but long, interesting and hard to complete. I would be down for a game where it like takes multiple game sessions to complete a single quest. But I guess that is just me.

Earlier in this thread there was a guy who wanted meaningful quests. I agree with both of you. Almost all quests now in mmo's are just grinds with a small reward attached to it. Have all of the quests actually have meaning.

Also I have to agree about appropriate loot drops. If I kill a bear don't have it drop some chainmail armor.

Originally posted by RealmLords

WoW's phasing as applied in the Death Knight starting area.

One minute you and your buddy are talking, next thing (after a quest turn-in) he's off your radar and there's no way back to him to help him catch up.   Sorry Joe, tough-luck...  WoW won't let me help you drop that elite.

 

Ken

Phasing, period in WotLK has a lot of drawbacks.

Especially given the solo nature of quest chains up to the climax, which then switches over to the "you need a partner or two" to take out the elite.

Instant Auction Houses (in games where they make no sense)

Instant Mail

EvE's time-based skill progression system (I hate to admit it, because I really like EvE)

  Worst game mechanic of all time? Probably the Jedi system in SWG. Destroyed that game.

Instances are a pretty close second, followed by Auction Houses, and then quest grinding.

raid dungeons

levels

Originally posted by SignusM

Best game mechanic of all time? Probably the Jedi system in SWG. Destroyed that game.

Fixed.

Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history. There is no way possible that you can even begin to dispute or deny that.

Jedis were OP, but those people spent ALOT of time making them OP. They didn't just roll a Jedi and go "ok, I'm OP now" ala WoW Paladin. They put alot of research, alot of game play, and alot of dedication into making what they wanted. That was BY FAR the best game feature ever developed. The Bounty Hunters who went after them were very able to take them down if they planned their attacks right and brought friends. Probably the most fun I've ever had in an MMO ever.

Originally posted by TheHatter

Originally posted by SignusM

Best game mechanic of all time? Probably the Jedi system in SWG. Destroyed that game.

 

Fixed.

Taking them out and changing the game to suit people like you killed that game........... true story. 250,000 out of 500,000 (or so) subs lost in 4 months. To date, the biggest MMO Exodus in history.

 

 

You must have a foggy memory. Here's what the Jedi mechanic in SWG was. 

You grind for months to get these really really rare drops off these really really rare mobs. These drops then tell you what profession you have to max out. You max out that profession by (guess what) grinding at your skills for another month or so, then you go back to grinding for those rare drops, then they give you the next profession you had to master, another few months of grinding. 

Finally, after all this horrible grinding, you get a Jedi, yay! Oh wait... there are literally HUNDREDS of other Jedi now? Oh good, so the game is just BountyHunter vs Jedi online! Great game! Weren't Jedi supposed to be uh.. rare?