Hmmm, the Lord of the Rings reference there is just getting me wondering, will there be epic-style quests? And will they be the majority of quests, or just the odd handful?

Well, an obvious reason why WoW wouldn't add it would be that they'd have to balance everything out, and that most of the flair that WoW has comes from combat. People would be like "Ummm, what?" if Activision-Blizzard suddenly added in some crazy personality thing that dramatically effects the way some people play (doing kill ten rat quests -> kill one mother rat)

Additionally, it would just be a whole lot of work - WoW has a lot of quests, and editing those and having them say different things, and open up different options for players based on their "personality" statistics would be a huge undertaking, which I'm sure they're already sweating in overtime trying to get Cataclysm up and running with new content.

Now, as for a new game doing this, sure, it could be cool, but no one has seen whether it would be financially viable for our demographic - the whole "most people that play MMOs are 18-35 year old males" demographic. Perhaps another study says that 18-35 year old males prefer bloody combat to an additional personality layer that alters and defines our character a little more in the sea of clones.

A company would have to see the demand for it, or come up with the idea themselves, and then invest enough time and money into it to make it work within whatever game they're making. An I imagine that adding in a "personality layer" and changing quest options accordingly would make many low-level designers, stuck with the quest dialogue, very, very tired.

EDIT: Oh, and yes, I would think that doing one single interaction should alter things other than HP, Mana, and EXP. Things like a general good/evil should apply, and personally I think more factional sliders should be in place.

Originally posted by Lansid

Originally posted by Elikal

Originally posted by Josher

Originally posted by uquipu

 MMOs haven't changed.

The Internet community has changed.  In the good ol' days of the Internet it was early adopter types, eg nerds, today everyone and their grandma's have broad band.  Eight year olds have broad band in their bedrooms.

Change with it, or find a new hobby.

 

Nope, certain people will cry forever about what was stolen from them by the big, bad, evil, NORMAL people.  The funny thing is, most of them are barely in their 20s=)  Dying breed, hehe.  Most of them only know what an ATARI 2600 is because of an emulator or because its nailed to the wall on display at a TGIFridays.      

 

Haha, yeah I always laugh out loud when some 20-something kid tells me of the grand old days of gaming. XD

second

I'm only just nineteen myself, first console I played on was... hmmm, a computer in DOS, Captain Comic and Commander Keen, later moving on to DOOM and Duke Nukem (where are you, Duke Nukem Forever?)

The second console I played on was the Super Nintendo (missed out on playing the original NES, oh well) - played a lot of Turtles in Time and Super Mario World 1/2/3. (I always enjoyed playing Donatello for the long-range of the staff.)

Then I got my very own Nintendo 64 and enjoyed the two Zelda's released for it - Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Majora's Mask I still reckon is one of their best Zelda games, simply because of the heavy adult themes granted by the NPC characters thoughts that they were all going to die, most likely, quite soon, along with the actual deaths of various characters you met. It also didn't follow the same ol' <find 3 stones> -> <get master sword> -> <defeat six temples> -> <kill ganon> storyline.

Bah, I eventually moved to computer gaming as a primary, and still have a Gamecube sitting upstairs, but no Wii/360/PS3 in my house.

But yeah, I remember the "good ol' days", like most people do. Except mine lie in the late 90's, haha.

I wish people would stop going on about balance and allow Blizzard to make their traditional medium for the scizzors/paper/rock concept a la Starcraft.

Reminds me of that old quote I read like a hundred million times:

"Dear God,
Rock is overpowered, nerf plz.
Paper is fine and just need to l2p.
Signed,
   Scizzors."

Originally posted by Ibluerate

I head about how everyone in DF was basically a carbon-copy of one another skill-wise.

At least with classes I'm not like everyone else.

Depends on many things, but overall it depends on how you make the skill system work, and how you balance different skills.

Adding different types of attacks and attack types adds an element to the player...

Basically, if you make the skill sets either really complex, or really simple, you would likely get a fairly varied bunch of play styles.

Originally posted by wisesquirrel

It would still be best if they could at least warn you to not make a complete mistake from which you couldn't recover from.

Or, alternatively, to allow you to make ammends on your mistake.

With ye olde UO, for example (from what I read) - you could have at maximum, about 700 skill points, and there were heaps of skills, levelupable to 100 each.

Say you have all 700 skill points used, you could then decide to train a new skill, but reduce another skill for it.

Funnily enough, the closest thing I can think of that closely relates is Pokemon Red through to Diamond, where you have four moves and must "forget" an old skill in order to learn a new one.

It certainly is an idea, although I think the lord himself would have a reasonably lower cap on his skills. Say 50 was the highest, you could progress to 25 maximum on the lord.

Otherwise you have these lord players who keep dying, but doesn't matter 'cause they're at 50 anyway.

It gives incentive not to die.

Anyway, interesting idea.

Originally posted by TheDarzin

Originally posted by Margulis

So because the rubber banding and latency is fixed it is now a great game..............................................................................

Nope still a WoW clone -- but one step closer to F2P!

I would still argue that it is not a WoW clone - it has taken various ideas from different games and mashed them into itself. For example, the study system that is taken from EVE gives the ability to learn things while offline - some increase critical strike chance or dodge or critical strike with daggers, etc. etc.

I never got into the game heavily enough to appreciate things, and I'll probably try out the trial sometime later to see how it's doing, but it's not a WoW clone, they have done some wierd things that augment into the nice UI and progression system that WoW has.

It's a game built for players who have played WoW for a while, but are bored with it.

Anyway, I'ma play some WoW on mah tank.

I'd love to see a game where not every race is humanoid, and races vary from beastial/all fours type travel, to fish-like people travel, to flight and a bird race.

Enter the ability to play Naga and Harpies and you have the second and third in WoW...

But yeah, I'd love different races to actually vary in various abilties, rather than just having every race be good at everything. Grumble...

Originally posted by wisesquirrel 

To whoever said class system and skill based are the same

What if I want to be a Mage + Thieft + Warrior?

You can;t do that in a class system, but you can in a skill based system.

I would agree that people should be able to be able to play as a mage + theif + warrior, but no mageifior should be better at being a mage than someone who just plays a mage, or better as a theif than someone who just plays a theif, or better than a warrior than someone who just plays a warrior.

I believe that adding skills that give positive attributes as well as negative attributes would help to cap out this sort of ridiculous "I'm the buffest mofo you ever seen, 'cause I train EVERY SKILL TO MAXIMUM."

I mean, if someone has every skill to maximum in a game with +'s and -'s to skills, they're going to have a character, let's say they go for melee specialisation.

Melee +10, Ranged -5, Magic -5

And then they add in some ranged specialisation!

Ranged +10, Melee -5, Magic -5

And then they add in some magic specialisation!

Magic +10, Melee -5, Ranged -5

I mean, that is the ultimate redundancy of skill training I have ever seen. Granted, getting both melee and ranged, or melee and magic, or magic and ranged, would end up with a +5 to both and -10 to one, but it disallows the ability of just getting everything and being more buff than everyone else.

A Ranger, who plans to use ranged attacks more than anything, should get Ranged specialisation, and stick to it. Perhaps you could have an unlearning ability in the game that still takes a little while, but only like a 10th of the time to untrain than it did to train. I work at McDonald's (University study life is hell), and every time they change something on a burger, it makes the next week or two annoying, until the new procedure cements itself properly.

Anyway, just an additional two cents for game design thought pools.

Originally posted by tro44_1

Originally posted by Savage16

Originally posted by bloodaxes 

And you know that by?

Classes are more popular/wanted then classless games (check how sandbox games and fantasy mmorpgs are in popularity)

Well, the majority(read all) sandbox games are designed by indie companies and arent on the same quality level that the multi million dollar productions that companies behind fantasy MMORPG's make.

And that makes them not in the Minority how?

I believe he was pointing out that you can't really say that sandbox games vs. themepark fantasy mmorpgs' popularities are is a good indication of class-based or not, specifically, because not only are most sandbox games extremely newb-unfriendly, but involve the player a lot, not into the game as such, but into the community, which is the real kicker for sandbox games anyway.

He is also saying that they are produced by indie companies, you know, those people like you and me who have ideas, but not necessarily the skills to make a game. Perhaps we have a nice little savings account of like, $5 million, and we got a group of forty or so people to make the game for a few years, as opposed to the corporate giants in the MMO sector, like NCSoft, Funcom, Blizzard, Cryptic, these places have huge financial support, either by investors or through previous game sales.

---

Anyway, my 2 cents on the idea of skill-based systems is that they should include something similar to the Certificate system a la EVE Online. I'll just check a few of my certificates and tell you what they entail... grr, downloading a patch, the bad thing about free expansions...

Field Technician - Basic
-Salvaging Level I
   -Mechanic Level III
   -Survey Level III
      -Electronics Level I

Resource Harvester - Basic
-Mining Level IV

Refinery Foreman - Basic
-Refining Level III
   -Industry Level I

So, with those certificates, you can sort of get an idea of what I've been doing... getting mining skills up (I want my Retriever, damnit!) and also learning salvaging, through the beginner tutorials... I've also been trying to get my refining up to a bit better efficiency.

With a more obvious certificate-esque system in a fantasy-based game, you could even get titles, or bonuses granted with certain certificates. If you see a person walking around with the "Shaman" tag in their name, it could mean they've learned a bunch of given skills that work well with a stereotypical, but perhaps well planned and defined character or role.

Certain certificate-esque titles could be given exclusive access to further skills or traits. Say, for example, I've learned the following for the "Beserker" title:

Beserker
-Melee Level IV
   -Off-hand Melee Level III
      -Dual Wielding Level I
-Bloodlust Level I
-Pain Threshold  Level III

An additional ability that is only available for those using the Beserker title could be, say, Frenzied Striking - which decreases chance to parry or block by 1%, and increases the chance to critically hit by 2%, passively, with an increase of each by the same up to level five.

In this way, a Beserker is gimping their ability to tank by choosing to increase this ability, but the increase to critical chance is pretty nice.

The way I see it, players should learn how to counter these melee-dps monsters instead of crying about them and getting everything available to every class (Blizzard has swayed to the demands of the masses, and we've seen how that's turned out). If you were to fight a beserker, you should know that you can likely kill them fairly easily, as long as you don't let them take out everything by ignoring them to focus on various tank-types.

I mean, the list goes on for how you could help create specialised roles that disallow making fully-capable hybrids.

Say there was an ability, "Spiritual Attunement" - increases holy damage and healing by 2% (up to 10%), decreases other magical damage by 1%(up to 5%) and chance to critically hit with spells by 1% (up to 5%)

If someone were to get Spiritual Attunement, they would be gimping out their mage/shaman/elemental/arcane affinities to increase their holy and healing ability, to become some sort of monk/paladin/priestly character. The lore would generally make sense, depending on the game IP universe, as most forms of "magic" are "manipulation" and "conjuring", forcing various elements and energies into your bidding with your mind and nature attunement, where as a holy ability should come through devotion and faith to some path, rather than learned magics.

Anyway, it's not to say someone couldn't be a hybrid, but doing so would make it so you could never be as good as a pure-breed in any one gameplay style.

Originally posted by Mithios

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

There are a ton of posters on here that are complaining that companies design something that will make money and how wrong that is.

Talk about completely missing the point, if a game makes money then it was designed correctly becaues enough people found it fun for it to be profitable. It's that simple.

These forums represent the vocal minority of gamers and not where the market is. For example look how many people on here say WoW is terrible and killed MMOs. Well when a game has 11 million subscribers it isn't terrible, it is exactly what the majority of gamers want. It is that simple.

So no there aren't very many devs designing for the posters on these boards because there's not enough of them buying and playing games for it to be worth it.

Although I do agree that how much profit a company makes from a game is one way to measure success, out of 6 billion people on this planet, the majority still think it's OK to continue to use up all the planets resources with no thought to how it will affect the future simply becuae it's not "their" future. Just because something is voted by the majority doesn't automatically make it right.

Agreed, if only to speak the old quote from Men In Black.

"Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

But I partially agree with Webb, in that sometimes games... just... aren't liked, really. To throw down an image from the Ctrl-Alt-Delete sillies:

Originally posted by ToteLeeLost

Offline advancement?  WTF is wrong with you people?  Why should you be rewarded for NOT playing a game?  More "I want to earn things without putting in time and effort!"  Another example of how this new culture of instant gratification is completely out of wack and ruining this genre.

Why don't you play the new Super Mario Bros. Wii game?  The game will play through parts that you don't wanna take the time to play your way through!

Coming soon...  The New Monopoly!  Hotels are built for you while you sit on the couch watching your favorite anime, stuffing cheese puffs in your fat face!

Pretty soon, you will have a video game where all you do is sit on your fat ass and watch it...  Hope you enjoy it. 

It's not about instant gratification - in fact, I would say the fast-interaction games more highly reward instant gratification over the slow-automation games.

I am, admittedly, currently annoyed at how my EVE experience is going right now - I want to mine asteroids, and I want to do it well, so I want a mining barge, but it's going to take me maybe another three or four days to get the skills to use the damn ship.

There are good and bad parts of different aspects of games, and, well, offline progression is something that I have decided that I like, but I don't like how everything is based on the generally slow progression of skills, in EVE. I also don't like being a spaceship.

Bleh, this is worth a blog post...

Anyway, let's put it this way. I could spend twelve hours in a game grinding mobs for faction rep, gold, and weapon skills, or I could rank up a skill that takes four days. Depending on the person, they might like it one way, or the other. A business person who doesn't have those three hours each day to play video games might prefer the second option, and a university student who has no friends or life might prefer the first option. Hell, the latter might get it done in one day.

I dunno how I feel about it yet, and I think there is more gameplay types in EVE needed before I can argue more for or against it - hell, I still haven't PvP'd yet.

Originally posted by TheHatter

I've always wishEd more games would take a hybrid approach. It could be done in hundreds of different ways and could easily be made where it helps the casual and doesn't hurt the 24/7 hardcore player.

More games need to reach both audiences more and if developers just put a little thought I to their games, rather than rehashing over used ideas, the whole genre would be better off.

*cough* Alganon *cough*

I'm not an Alganon fanboy, and it has many, many flaws -- I personally hate the jumping animation... but then, I haven't logged on in like, a month, they may have changed it by now, I'll check in a few minutes -- but it does feature a second style of progression, the continual-even-while-offline style of progression.

I feel there's been a lot of hate directed at the game that really isn't needed. Yes, it looks a lot like WoW - you might as well all yell "Simpson's did it" over and over, because it doesn't matter. And hell, the MMO community have just been horrible about it. So, TheHatter, yes, someone is trying to make a hybrid game, using a UI that is similar to World of Warcraft's.

But I suppose no one will ever get to see it, and marketers will look back on it, see the failure (half of the failure probably being produced by cynical people on forums spreading negativity).

Bleh, anyway, I'm an optimist (sometimes), and I think they've got a few interesting ideas that this post has sparked my anger at the ignorance and unjustified hatred some people are capable of, not that it's your fault Hatter.

The real problem here is that Lord of the Rings Online tried to put in a lot of good story, while putting in all the time sinks that MMORPGs apparently "require" in order to make a profit over many, many months of players being subscribed to the game.

So, they made a very lore-rich game, and you go around, I assume, very happily killing Orcs, Trolls, and occaisionally a Balrog or two, and you feel all very heroic after doing this. You feel immersed.

And then you have the WoW-esque part of the game - faction grind. The idea that a faction will "like you" enough to sell you really nice stuff - honestly, they should have worked some of those quests and Balrog kills into the faction meter, amirite?

But after doing all that heroic stuff, and being immersed, telling you to grind mobs for faction gain is certain to pull you out of the book you thought you were in, and into an MMORPG again.

I think the fundamental absurdity of MMORPGs is that they have to keep the player playing for months! If someone buys an MMO for $50, but never pays for subscription because "they finished the game", well dang man, that sucks! That's not going to be profitible, because everyone knows that much fewer people buy MMOs!

I think that's a load of crap - First Person Shooters and classic RPGs have been doing fine for the last twenty years, why are we not considering initial box sales for MMOs anymore? Why are we not making fun MMOs that pull the player in because they're fun, not just because you feel obliged to level to the maximum level cap?

As you were saying before, it is absurd that you kill all of these unholiest of the unholy enemies in Moria, the greatest endevour the Dwarfs have ever attempted, and then get told to grind faction. They should have linked it to the quests, and made it a story thing, rather than another garbage purely statistical grind where some retarded marketer and game content designer combo went "they need 100 hours of gameplay!", and just filled forty hours with faction grind.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Originally posted by BloodDuality

While I do like Eve's system a lot, it is also one of the reasons why I quit the game. I just don't like the idea that other characters are more powerful simply because they have had an acount running longer. You can catch up in eve if you choose to limit yourself, but its not the same as somoene who has been around for years.

The EVE forum here has several threads of extensive posts debunking that myth.

But to be fair, if you want to use certain things, it could take a week or two to train up the necessary skills. For example, mining barges... but yeah, you can go out and tackle with the best of them in a reaper after about half an hour of skill training, I guess.

I think it'd take about a month to effectively "catch up" in any given specific area and then be good at it.

Also, Wizardry, some people prefer not to have to do something mundane over and over to improve their character, and actually prefer the exact, precise timer on their skill training, over the hope that, even though I only have that materials to get my blacksmithing up to 200 if all these yellow items successfully level up my skill each time. That sort of leveling up a skill seems a little silly to me, looking back on the three or so years of it that I played.

Originally posted by Samkin772 

The mechanic used by WoW and DAoC where you get more exp when "rested" should be about as far as games should take things like this. 

Eh, I quite like EVE's skill system, it makes sense. Getting the first level of any skill only takes about 5-20 minutes. That's like, say, teaching me how to hit someone with a stick, giving me "Melee I". I can do it now, cool. But using a sword may require "Melee II" or even "Melee III", as an idiot with a sword will not likely keep their legs for very long. And hell, getting the skills ranked up higher doesn't increase the actual ability that much, honestly - and the second/third levels only take about 2-4 hours to get. Remember, you can train these offline...

Alganon is using the idea of offline training, as well as levels. So people can improve their characters while offline... not sure if I like their implementation or not, but whatever.

In EVE, I am currently trying to get the ability to use a mining barge. It has taken about 6 days of training, but I nearly have "Mining V" trained. Then I can get "Mining Barge I" trained, woohoo! I only have to get Mining Barge III in order to use a Retriever, or Conveyer, or whatever the mid level one that I want is... yay!

Originally posted by paulscott

I really really think you need mechanics that strongly encourage people to change stances.   And those mechanics to NOT just be statiscal advantages, because they obviously don't work from looking at 1 on 1.   Needs to be something flashy, and basically "IN YOUR FACE" for people to realize shifting modes will be a good idea.

Hmmm, I think you're probably right there. You would probably need some sort of huge quest chain that eases you into each stance, and tells you the difference of each stance and what they can be used for, and how it works for your specific class.

For example, you could have a quest for a mage where you have to protect an NPC ranger with low health by using your ice-based AoE to freeze/slow enemies so the NPC can pick them off, which he will do much faster than you in the quest. In that quest, the quest-giver could be like "remember that in the support/defensive stance, your Frost-storm has the ability to slow enemies much more, and even has a chance to freeze!"

Various stance-based, thinly veiled tutorial quests would help people to realise that the different stances help their character in different ways.

I have always quite liked the ability to switch roles in the midst of an encounter, which is probably why I thought a wholle thread on the subject would be a great idea. I used to play a Hunter in WoW, there were times when I had to kite, by effectively changing my "stance" to "Aspect of the Cheetah" and running like hell, jumping, turning mid-jump, pressing one of my instant cast abilities, turning back forwards, and continuing running. Those times, when the tank and healer and other DPS were down, were probably the most fun for me. Oh, and don't forget pet tanking... good times, good times, being able to change my role effectively...

EVE pvp is harsh, and can be very harsh if someone decides they do, in fact, want to destroy your pod.

For those who don't know much about EVE and consider it "full-loot pvp" or something, here's a few things and estimated costs:

If someone destroys your ship, you have lost:

-All items in the ship (jesus, 0ISK -> trillions of credits worth)
-All ammunition (probably 5,000 credits for low end, and 10,000,000's of credits at high battlecruiser end of things)
-All equipment, turrets, lasers, missile launchers, shield boosters, rigs (anywhere from 5,000 credits, say with one Miner I laser equipped, all the way up to billions of credits worth of launchers, lasers, and especially upgrades and rigs)
-The ship itself (20,000 credits all the way up to 1,000,000,000,000 credits, I think, for a huge ass mother f***er)

Once you die, you "escape" the blast of the ship inside a "pod" - this little thing can warp alright, and you'd best warp as fast as you can, because if you don't, and you get your pod killed, well:

-Any implants (stat boosters, stats like intelligence, charisma, perception, memory and that, help your skill training time get reduced) will be lost, these are usually tens of millions or billions each, depending on their quality
-You'll have to buy a new clone (which ranges from tens of thousands of credits all the way up to millions of credits)

And, god forbid, if you don't have a clone that has enough skill points in it (i.e. - you have trained 10,000,000 worth of skills, but have been lazy and haven't upgraded your clone to a better grade of clone, and only have a 9,000,000 skill point clone) you will lose skills that you've trained.

There's reason to be fearful of pvp, I think. Although, I only have about 600,000 skill points worth trained, so my clones are still dirt cheap, and I could go out and pvp, do some tackling (warp disrupting?, webifiers?) if I wanted to... I just wanna mine before I go out and die a whole bunch.

I still need a corp.

Also, happy birthday to me... I'ma go out and have fun now.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

...

Ideally I would have liked to seen the idea of a Darkfall or a Mortal Online with EvE's FFA PvP system and the depth/diversity of SWG (pre-nge) crafting system completed by a big name company that had the resources to a) not have to take 8+ years to make it or b) not have to ask for pre-orders to finish what they have of it to push to launch

I too would like to see, well, pretty much, EVE, but on foot. You get what I'm saying?

Also in response to your signature, Asheron's Call never gets looked at as a template because Asheron's Call 2 didn't follow the original game's roots and failed financially. Since then, Turbine hasn't really had the money or franchises to cling onto and create a nice 5:1 return on investments, that only one in about twenty games do (like Asheron's Call 1 may have done). I suppose marketing people are stupid, and look at the sequel instead of the original when creating games now, and say "well, that didn't work there, so we shouldn't do it, for financial reasons".