OMG it is FORCED! YOu are forced to do pve and pvp! you are forced to kill a lot and you are forced into leveling up. ANd if you aren't having fun at a point you are forced to quit! I loved these words wow players use to make everything sound awful... being negative must be exhilerating.

Victim

By botters/ chinese wana-be profiteers and by you.

Overall I like the concept and would be ok with someone summoning my avatar or variant to help them and get free xp. However, I think you may want to have an option to change how much xp is shared between 50-50% and 75-25%. Also both players should know if the offline character is in use or is wanting to log on. I assume the offline avatar will despawn shortly before the player logs on even if it is in use and in-combat- that could be a problem whoever is using it.

In the senario where a group is doing well in a dungeon but the healer or tank really needs to go, he can give consent so he can be used while offline, is the most appealing feature to me. But beyond that, I don't think players will go beyond their comfort zone so they can summon someone they don't know to absorb a portion of their XP. And friends that do play together in a guild would probably not use it (esp. if they usually play at the same time frame), except for only difficult fights when nobody is on because they rather play with real people anyway. To make the best use of it is to know someone that plays on a completely different schedule, so you can always summon him when you need to. For a way to get people to interact more I don't think this is it but it is something friends might would use.

At one time I may have thought of this initially to combat gold spaming bots or slow it down at least but I wonder if this would be and acceptable mechnic. As far as I know all MMOs have chat channels with say(nearby), shout(wide area/zone), and a general chat so taking it away initally or making it not easily accessable may be a bit of a shock, especially to casual players. What if you didn't have this mystical chatbox that let you talk to anyone else in the game world/realm? What if loosing the general chat channel was the result to a catastrophic failure or sabotage by the enemy? I imagine (in my scifi universe :p) players needing to use comm. devices to have access to communicate with other players. Aside from needing to get the device and have the uplink codes for other player groups the chat would work the same as it is now.

I'm confused. You say the tank, healer, dps thing is outdated and unrealistic and you want to change it but what you did was listed tank, dps, heal. Also you mentioned that if put more points into a category it can be more powerful vs spreading them out. So with that you will still have players that become purely focused on tank, dps, or heal but still have the option for some variation. That brings you back to how the majority of fantasy mmorpg classes are but the classes are built in a way each one can do something unique and is fun in its own way.

What if you took out a way for a pure tank or healer?

More surveys please! I know you would like more detailed input where we can vote disagree too. Most of the questions could be answered with "it depends"

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Going back to the first option I don't want to have players control cities, or factions of anykind, guilds are ok though. When you have NPC controlled factions and cities players can work together for common goals and be part of a faction without the drama and the petty demands of the ruling guild or however you do it. Player ran cities are really only fun for the ones in power.

No, simply because player cities are not well designed, poorly placed, they have no history and they lack all the small details that developers can add that make cities really come alive, so I think player made cities really trade out quality.

Because I interpreted "player cities" as specified areas where players can build a city (or claim ownership of an NPC one), I think that  they could potentially work really well depending on their location and use. Cites or player homes with no function other than to have a space of your own, I have no interest in.

Coercer or melee spec warden

I love meaningless reviews. Not for another month, when players are high enough level to experiance all of what Aion has to offer, can there be and actual review the covers the game as a whole and not from start to middle at best.

Originally posted by paulscott

Scheduling: RL friends yes, Online friends no.

___Auto grouping mechanics___

All players withing the same area are automatically grouped, they share experiance they have quick options for ally targets. This goes for anywhere in the world, you also have supporting mechanics like NPCs droping loot for everyone and similar(IE one person gathering doesn't make the mob useless to everyone else).

Mini game group assignment. You enter a minigame(capture the flag, survive the waves) and groups are generated automatically and content adjusts.

What are the views on these?

_____

The first one could work in "some games"  IE staged shooters(WWII type thing)

The second thing is proven to work pretty well and that MMO players don't mind them in runescape.

I like the idea of the autogrouping but I'd rather have a xp bonus instead of splitting xp between local players.

Some questions you may need to consider would be:

At what point of number of players would xp get worse?

How do you keep players from leeching?

 How large of an area are players grouped?

How many players can be in a group? up to 24?

I think this would promote having only a handful of group grinding spots and wouldn't neccessarily get people to socialize.

Minigame group assigments are pleasant and a good change of pace which have worked well in some games but I believe there needs to be some sort of limitation to keep them from being the only thing played.

While reading this post I came up with an idea that I thought would be really cool and something I don't think has been done before. I was thinking you have mobs that roam and harvest nodes. Why not have mobs react to these nodes in different ways. Like when the Cackling Gremlin gets low on health he runs to the nearest Pumpkin Patch node to get a large HP heal. Or the Troll runs over to a harvestable Stone Pile and uses it to throw some rocks at you that are seriously painful. Or the Energized Lightning Elementic only stays within range of 3 Crystaline and in order to kill the Energized Lightning Elementic you must either harvest the nodes (while fighting it with others) or destroy them in order to turn the monster into rubble.

I think queues are a good thing to have instead of constant server crashes but if Aion continues to be popular after 2 months and continues to grow, I do hope they add more servers.

I don't have a wish for new games for games to fail or an agenda to inform all that it will fail because in comparison to another game or because of blah like the OP does. I'm a simple gamer that enjoys games and hopes they do well so I can play more.

on a sde note...

What  Aion is missing is more / commands!

In Auto Assault you could play in wireframe mode or many other view mods and in EQ2 you used to be able to order pizza with /pizzahut. Come on NCsoft, do more than /boogie.

Edited:

I wished there was more discussion on  actual game mechanics and the way they do or don't work centered around skill bases systems instead of the general theory =(

I had I feeling it would be too hard to answer. I'm playing eve now and there is just so many variables to consider. Thats one of the things that I really like and would like to recreate that sense of progression thats not a simple- I am higher level so I will do better. Iooks like I'll have to go through the skills, make some fittings, and use eve.battleclinic.com/calculators.php

As I'm working on a theroetical mmo game with a skill system somewhat like EvE I'm trying to get the bonuses for the skills on paper but I feel like the damage increase through progression gets too large and maybe too fast. In Eve what is approximately the difference in power between a 1 day combat frigate pilot and a.... 6 month one. Is it like and increase in damage from 5% to 50%?

good news... now if only they bundled the 360 with a HDTV 

So whats the point? Its easier to stand on your head if you bury it into the ground even if you suffocate?

3.5 for Hellrasier.  This was the only horror film I remember somewhat enjoying on a Halloween horror marathon.

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*****//*****QUESTION*****//*****

Will we be able to play Pazaak?

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Damn,I loved that game.

Yes, it works mostly like in AoC but I think there are a fixed number of channels depending on the area with starter maps with the most(7-10). Even with instances every area felt very much populated in the beta.

Edit:

OP as much as I may want you to play Aion, If you don't mind the game getting grindy at several levels and focus heavily on pvp later on, you may find more in enjoyment LOTR with a limited playtime.

Warcraft is a bit old. Try out or look into Vanguard. It has a lot of what EQ players enjoyed many unique class and much to explore