I always wanted a "recruit" member state for new members on trial. This recruit state should be able to communicate with the guild but not be publicly tagged. This to prevent bad behavior done by recruits reflecting on the guild name.

Well actually just a anonymous state that will remove the public guild tag on anyone.

Whatever type of progression works, but it must be an extensive system.

Personally I get bored with gear progression systems, especially one sided power upgrade systems like [insert just about any  mmorpg since 2005]. Gear progression is ok, if it is backed up by other progression, or give choices in gameplay style - power, hp, mana is just too simplistic... we need much more and more versatile.

Progression should offer real changes, and not just mindless power up changes (fireball now hits for 10% more). If it's a level progressing system, reaching level xx should be a real game changer, giving you something completely new. If its a level progressing system, it should not be a race to max, and preferably not a max, unless there will be several progressing systems taking over at lvl max - There should not be the dreaded "endgame" as we know it (gear grind), but not exluding gear progression just more than that. So. If you are with me so far, no game since 2005 really has offered much of this, some tried a little, but most ended up with ridiculous leveling speed, followed by engame aka gear grind.

What I might like to see, but not saying it is the true recipe:

Skill based - For example using a broadsword increases your broadsword skill.

Advanced skill system - Could be generalized skills, example for broadsword: Melee skill, 1 handed weapon skill, Edged weapon skill, Sword skill, Broadsword skill, Skill with a specific broadsword (soft-soul-binding). All of these skills will effect how well you use that broadsword you have.

Power exclusive - Using necromantic spells will seriously hurt your ability to use light magic, but not completely prevent it. Some smart formulas with cooldown periods or something come to mind. Same for gear types, wearing plate as a caster is possible, but it will prevent or effect certain spells/spell types (lightning spell while incased in metal ?, try to fire a bow with metal gloves?).

Choice in play style - A weapon can not only swing and miss or hit, it can be used in many ways and how you choose to use it will determine your play style. In some situations, you may want to use the shield to bash with and in other situations you want to use it to shield your group from a fireball. In some situations a force field can be used defensively, in other cases used to stun a caster. Also choice in where you want to hit something, and where you are hit, not excluding hitpoints but a cutting the hamstring should have a real effect (not throught through heh).

All these skills should progress as you use them, and new should unlock as you get proficient in others, while even others should only be obtainable by finishing tasks/quests/training.. as in, earn them not get them handed because you are xx class. Some sort of diminishing returns system should ideally prevent the "maxxing out" problem, so if you keep working on something you will keep getting better even after a year of playing (utopia, but as a basic idea).

Some kind of xp system might be in order, so the game can match correct difficulties, but basically level-less and class less. But NOT roleless, gw2 showed us how dull roleless becomes. You just choose your role from what you do.. and You can choose to "level" several roles and switch as needed, still most will likely favor a certain role/style and work on that mostly. Also, then you are in control of your role, battle cleric ? sure, mage-archer ? sure, rogue-tank ? sure, kite-mage, fearkite-melee, mindcontroller cc, root/push cc, etc.

Also I am very much in favor of locked areas, such as parts of dungeons that needs a key dropped or whatever. This is something that will make any WoW clone company shiver, actively lock people out of content ? But there is nothing like the feeling of accomplishment from gaining access to an area because you EARNED IT - Now go help you friend/guild get the key and BOND and interact with other players.

No more need to balance every class to death, you just choose to work on some solo skills for soloing, and/or progress some group skills aswell - Maybe you like to be a pet class for soloing, but love tanking when with a group, and healing in pvp, etc.

Ah I am straying.. Skill based progression mainly coupled with gear progression and quest/task/area progression, not because level based can't be done, Everquest did it perfectly, but to try something new.

A little afterthought.. Know golf games, press-hold-release to control the power of your swing ? Something similar could be great for a mmorpg, charge up and release kind of stuff. Your fireball can (with your current skill) do 50 damage at 100% and takes 2 seconds to cast, but if you only charge it 1 second and release it, then it will hit for 25 for example.. or even be able to overcharge (with diminishing returns), like charge 4 seconds and do 80 damage. Overcharge also beeing a skill that needs to be levelled/progressed. There is a world of opportunities, it just needs to be done.

Game dead ? Well those servers are certainly dead. They will find a few exploiters of the ah bug and those who did it recently, but as with the others exploits, they are only going for the worst cases.. the rest will go free. So I have no faith in a fair outcome from "investigating and banning".

When things settle and exploits have been addressed in some months or half a year, and if they make a brand new server with new economy, I might come back.. but then again.. who knows if other distractions have caught me then /cough EqNext.

You know the smart exploiters dont' have 100million on one account, they did it on anonymous accounts, split stuff up, sent it to other accounts numerous times, and bought legit items and resold.. exactly the same as in real life, the more complicated your transaction record is to unravel, the more chance there is to get away with it.

Well I think its pretty easy to answer the zerg mentality question. In gw2 zerging might be a useful play style. But lets take another similar game Neverwinter (similar as in same style of combat), where you have to be a bit smarter, then people will be a bit smarter or they will fail. Some come from gw2 and fail, some of these fail and adapt.

Do people now expect simplistic combat since they tried gw2 ? Did people even demand wow simplified combat when wow came ? Or was it developers who mindlessly copied everything trying to get a bite of the success-cake. If gw2 become a huge success like wow, sure the mindless combat might become a standard, but that is not a certain thing at all.

I think the zerg mentality is just what you get when you design the game in a roleless manner, where fights have no group mechanics build in. Gw2 is every man err woman for herself, and you get nothing extra for supporting others, as long as the big thing die.

Another reason is that you will get a larger audience if the game is free to try, and this audience will generate more profit than the running cost of hosting them. The cost of developing a game is heavy and the more you can get to try your game, the more will spend something, whales and casual spenders who only buy one smaller item.

Creating a box is riskier as it will need much more quality to keep selling and make money. Cash shop is a more secure step-by-step approach, where every month a company can decide if a continuing development is financially sound. "Free" is just a great business model in a world of gamers with short attention spans.

What we get are short sighted games, some would say lower quality. You could argue that only the best will survive and therefore we get better games, and that is great theory, one that we still need to see proven hehe. So far the best mmorpgs are still those where a big company put all its muscles behind and went all-in.

I have played in the off hours mostly, so that may be why I hardly ever see anyone. 1-20 zones were sort of alive, but after that I have only seen people occasionally running past. I am lvl 48 now, and since lvl 25 nothing has been said in zone chat, no one ever replied to anything I said or asked in zone chat. I had one group for one quest ever, took 5 minutes and no one said a word.

Problem is the game may not be as empty as it seem, its just no one has any reason to talk to anyone, there is no reason to group as you can just go to an event and do your own thing along with whoever else is there and then leave. Apart from a guild group I have seen no forming up and progressing an event, and for what reason anyways ?

I view gw2 as a single player experience, its a beautiful little time waster, and the game has so far not giving me any reason to play with anyone I meet randomly. I am sure two friends logging in and playing at the same time and the same hours it is fine, but finding people to do quests with for 5 minutes, quests that you can do solo anyways, is just a little too much for the brief period of interaction.

Progressing events have so far seem utterly pointless to me, some Karma and xp or unlock a town with a vender with nothing interesting, what is the point, am I missing something ?

Neverwinter I have reasons to group all the time, and although roles are vague, there are still tanks and healers and crowd control and the combat is far superior to gw2 - Well rather neverwinter combat is fun, although gw2 combat is technically probably better its not really alot of fun. But getting close to 60 in Neverwinter, I am starting to see the end of reasons to play further and with the limiting DnD rules I don't see that changing.

Oh, yesterday I killed a bandit and as he died he said "Well played" - A bandit I just killed should not say "Well played", he should be cursing me, second it is supposed to be a role playing game so gw2 please stop talking to me, talk to my character - That is a generally a symptomatic problem with gw2.

Originally posted by reploidx
So no one answered the question. What are they supposed to do? How are they supposed to test their cash shop to make it work?

Guess they could have done like Path of Exile did, full cash shop in beta, but anything invested were refunded to be used when the game launch. Neverwinter guys "forgot" to check the definition of beta, and called their launch a beta. Anyways, too late now and what we think has no meaning anyways, back to playing.

Originally posted by kjempff

Progressing your character IS the whole point of mmorpgs, and as I welcome new ways to progress, the standard "vertical progression" is something that is easy to control.

Right now yes but that doesn't mean games can't do more. I remember back when I first started playing MMORPGs, I had only up until then played single player games. One of the biggest things I liked about MMO's was that they never ended, you couldn't just "beat the game". It was a permanent virtual world where I could always log in and do something fun. I think we need to focus more on that, instead of the typical vertical progression rewards that end up separating people. Yes GW2 got boring but that was not mainly because of it's progression model - if GW2 had better combat, a trinity role system, and put more importance on server and guild communities in the way standard MMO's do, it would have lasted longer. I think game devs can do better and keep us interested.

I agree completely.

And my point is that it is not "vertical progression" that is a problem in itself, it is how many games does it. The problem is that alot of games "vertical progression" stops and the progression is too fast, and that is a problem with those games design philosphy more than a problem with "vertical progression". Progression used to be the game, now its just a bump on the way to the end... game.

I am starting to dislike that definition "vertical progression", it is only a question of from which side you look at progression hehe. Owell in any case, progression is the key to a mmorpg, and I don't see it as having a direction really.

What I am reading the OP is speaking for is non-progression, and that is in my opinion silly.. maybe I am misunderstand the message.

Personally I would really like to see skill based systems, just much more advanced than what attempts we seen so far.

Originally posted by Dahkoht
The people who say who cares obviously have zero clue of how economies work in game.
Or anywhere for that matter.

Well yes, or rather they don't have that competetive approach to games. Competetive is the wrong word but I am lacking a better one. It has nothing to do with pvp either.

Its like sports, You play it for fun, but You still want to win. You know who are better than you, and you know whom you are better than. You compare with others, and you can do this because You are under the same rules. Gaming is great because it has many ways to compare with others than just scores. That is what a game is, and if someone gets advantages that breaks this "contract", You loose something important about gaming itself - This is also the bottom line of the whole p2w discussion but lets not go into that, no seriously please don't.

Good news indeed, and relatively swiftly too. That is halfway for that exploit, the other half is banning and announcing it.

Ok a wipe is exaggerating, but a good compromise could be a fresh server in some months when they worst exploits has been addressed. Nothing lost for anyone, and if you are concerned about "fairness" like me, you can start fresh on that server.

Agree with no 2. All the others have nothing to do with "vertical progression", and I think your reasoning is based on certain problems in certain games, but forgetting those where it has worked well.

Progressing your character IS the whole point of mmorpgs, and as I welcome new ways to progress, the standard "vertical progression" is something that is easy to control.

Up and Downlevelling characters to be able to play with friends is nothing new, eq2 did it back in 2004, and that is still "vertical progression" just adjusted to the experience in hand. I don't agree GW2 removed "vertical progression", but where they did make attempts is where the game become dull.

Every game needs progression, a mmorpg need character progression, and removing progression will only make a game pointless. If you don't like the usual progression scenario, come up with some other progression types.

Originally posted by Rossboss

So you're saying that the game isn't free? That someone else is paying for me to download it? To progress, another person is paying that too?

You had it right in this comment.

It is free for me. It is free for 99% of the players.

Sure, it is not free for a minority of players .. but so what?

---

There is no what. The only point is, everything cost money and someone has to pay, and therefore .. nothing .. is .. free .. to .. play.

To start with no game is free. There are no millionaires (yet) who funded a game just because they wanted to give players something nice. Some may play for free, but that doesn't mean it is free, it just means someone else are paying.

Those who are paying are in many free games know as Whales, and is defined by 1% of players are good for 99% of revenue, roughly speaking. This is known as Whaling, look it up.

For You a game might be free, and therefore it is free to play. If you look beyond you nose tip and see the whole picture, then you can't deny the fact that nothing is free.. Reality calls.

Yup working as intended. http://sv.twitch.tv/boolawa/b/403076723

If You ask me, they should take down the servers right now, and take necessary action. With the amounts of exploits so far, I would really prefer a full character wipe after fixes. I am loosing faith fast... yesterday I had fun, today I logged in several times but I can't get myself to do anything.

One of the most fun games I have played for years. It was a little dull at the beginning, but the further I get the better the dungeon designs, the more fun grouping become. There is a learning curve and it surpriced me how much dept there is in the sometimes chaotic fights, although some of the bosses are ridicolously chaotic and almost umpossible till you outlevelled them by 5 levels.

The graphics that people were busy complaining about was just a matter of getting used to (and click the "open advanced settings, and pull all sliders to 200), and now after seeing more and more awesome dungeons and settings I found I really like the looks.. there is something about the lightning that makes dungeons look and feel real. Faces are still messed up tho hehe.

However, there are loads of problems, and it lacks that slickness from aaa titles we are growing used to. And it is not really a mmorpg, so my commitment will be relatively short, but damn am I having fun while it last .

If you try to ask anything in /zone, you get nothing but stupid remarks. If you hint something is a little problematic with the game, you get instantly assaulted by a trolls telling you that you are just bad at playing games.

Yeah well Community is really bad, but what did you expect, its f2p and anyone can load it up and start typing crap, so they do. Also this IS an action game, it just happens to be in a rpg setting. Also that people press need to just about anything is a dead giveaway.

You just have to find the nice people in the crowd and generally ignore everything said in /zone, atleast till high level zones but even then..

Neverwinter is a great little game, its fun to play and has its charm. But it has some fundamental problems when it comes to long term commitment; it is just too shallow. DnD just aren't meant to be used as a mmorpg where you build characters for years, and since they are so relatively close to DnD rules, I can't see how that would change.

Eq survived on "neverending" xp (aa levels), raids, variety and complex combat mechanics + a stream of expansions.

WoW survived on everchanging mechanics, raids for everyone, and not too bad pvp, variety in builds and pure slickness + a stream of expansions.

Neverwinter has pretty simple combat mechanics, simple builds that are limited by DnD rules, lacking real roles. It has Foundry and ease of introducing adventures easily, but as I see it, DnD just doesn't allow enough room to change the character building part to allow long term commitment. DnD is simply stuck in the PnP mindset, which it is great for, but as a mmorpg, not so much in my opinion.

I could see Neverwinter benefit greatly from a live Game Master mode, where people could group up and run Foundry missions with a live GM with various controls. Get your friends on and have them roll characters and have fun roleplaying for awhile and then discard the characters again, just like PnP... and with the freedom of traditional PnP with a GM. Well shrug I don't know, but I just don't see Neverwinter making it as a mmorpg, so it should take advantage of what it can be.

Originally posted by sync00

What can you do in the game where playing more will get you more AD? You can only do the daily once a day. The skirmish events only seem to give 1k AD for the first time and then 100 AD for subsequent skirmishes. What else is there?

Skirmish does 1k EACH time. If You got a level 6-11, you can do 10-12 skirmish in the hour. Then there are tradeskills, invocation, dailys.