Well I have to agree that the pressure on players in the top is driving a lot away just becuase they cant grind the repair costs and tons of pots/elixers/flasks.
But instead of making the economie bigger I would suggest cutting down some on the consumables.
- When entering an instance all buffs are removed. No more getting tons of soulstones in oggrimar, getting 3 worldbuffs and then kill a boss.
- Elixers now all persist through death, max of 3 elixers/flasks per person.
- Up the cooldown on pots to 5 minutes.
- Remove protection potions.
- Pots, felwood consumables and the new consumables from herbalism on the same cooldown.
Todays raids are to focused on having 40 people there with to many worldbuffs , prepotting as much as possible and then pot all fight long to the max instead of just having the right people there with the right gear and giving it all you got.
1. Alt Management Features: We all play alts. Tons of them. To the point where the concept of a 'Main' is pretty foreign. It'd certainly be nice to be able to sort and associate characters with accounts, rather then the straight 'character with maybe a guild note' option we currently have.
2. Sorting and Identification: Keeping track of who-has-what and who-can-do-what is pretty dang difficult. Why not add internal character profiles for guild members? It'd be great to compare loot, to see what guildies are geared up enough to do X, and so on. Other possibilities: lists of enchants/recipe holders in a centralized spot (CRUSADER: Amanix, Rosterbabe, Smiley), the ability to post your spec, and so on.
3. Guild Rep: I really like this idea from the Casual perspective. Think of it as a bunch of little AQ Gate quests. The entire guild works together to get enough rep for a certain faction. That gives them access to, lets say, certain enchanting/recipe options -- but they only work if you remain in the guild. Suddenly, guild membership has real EQUITY -- it's an asset. As stands, if my longstanding guild was to disband and restart with a new name, who cares?
I didn't play EQ2 very much, so I can't say I have that much experience with the guild leveling system. However, what I do know is that as the guild levels, members of the guild get benefits like clothing (yay), armour, furniture items that allow you to make items (think, your own personal anvil), discounts on mounts, discounts and access to larger player homes and access to certain raids. When you do City Writs (sort of like repeatable rep quests), which raise your faction with one of the 5 city factions (Fighter, Mage, Scout, Priest, Artisan), you also gain guild experience for your guild. However, the actual experience the guild gets is divided by the number of unique accounts in a guild (up to 24).
That's all I remember off the top of my head, I'm sure someone else here has a clearer description than me.
That's basically it. The thing that was cool was that there were writs (which granted guild xp) at all levels so people always had an incentive to help guildmates, regardless of level difference. Since you had to mentor down to the persons level (20 quest, 55 help, 55 goes down to 20ish level temporarily) it wasn't a matter of blatant twinking, either.
It wasn't just that, though. A built in guild bank with access restrictions based on rank in guild, a guild recruitment window which you could customize and people could browse, a built in guild calendar and history of major events log... it was more or less what everyone wishing for better guild functionality in WoW says they want.
Mages have a set time that they want you to ask for food, and that time is pull #4 of the night. You may notice them putting a little snack table down before the raid, that's them cooking the food for you to demand on pull 4. --Nork
There was a game I played way back in the day called Nexus TK. Overall the game was pretty terrible, but it had some great guild features that new MMOs should hope to reproduce.
Basicly, once a guild was created, they could spend a little money and purchase a guild hall. More or less, on the purchase, it was an empty shack. Anything the guild wanted to purchase was paid for via items in bulk; basicly the equivalent of WoW's flask of titans. A new wing for the hall would cost 80 of each of a bosses drops in a dungeon (no instances, bosses respawned very quickly) from a mid to high level dungeon, and a few thousand gold.
Eventually upgrading your guild hall and purchasing new items for it earned benefits, such as a pvp arena zone or teleports for the guild to use (members all got hearthstones for the guild at some point as well).
In the end was it a grind? sure, but at least it wasn't a grind for a single boss kill, and the guild halls were seen by the public.
Edit: also, for the sake of it, the items that were required change for every purchase the guild wanted to make, and were easily farmable by anyone above level 50 or so (99 levels total). Another very important thing to note was that everything was controllable. Rooms could be made public or private for guild members/visitors, and ground space was used for storage of items.
I had like a 40 page essay going on about loot, player retention, why mana and levels are stupid and etc...etc...and then I realized none of it had to do with guild features. Damn you people for derailing. Damn you's all to hell.
Anyways...
One thing I'd like to see in addition to everything else is some sort of alliance feature so that you can expand certain functionalities to people in your alliance of guilds. Many servers in EQ had open raiding organizations and I've seen quite a few formed in WoW as well. It always makes me giggle when I see someone advertising that membership in their newbie guild includes grouping/raiding opportunities with their 'sister guilds.'
As for DKP tracking systems and the like, it'd have to be pretty customizable. All you have to do is browse around to any one of the "How does your guild handle loot?" threads on any sizeable message board and you'll find 100+ variations on how people have their DKP system set up.
Vhals on the right track though that DKP doesn't have to be the future. But that's an entirely different thread just on how future MMO's should handle loot.
Leaving guilds with benefits
A lot of what I read in this thread is on the basis of an eternal guild. You invest in it, you can never leave it. While you can make hay all you want about what should ideally happen, let me propose what I think is a bulletproof scenario - your single guildmaster dies in a car crash, without having shared his l/p. While you can coast for awhile if the officers have sufficent permissions, everyone in guild and all their time investments hang even more precariously on the officers. While I know account sharing/selling/inheritance is a fairly common practice, since it's explicitly persona non gratia by Blizzard, they design a brick wall of CSR issues with such functionality.
In the alternative, friends with benefits
If such a thing were implemented, I think the guild infrastructure should be the sum of its parts. That is, let's say "Flask of the Titans" is labeled as a guild pattern, and gulid alchemist Joey gets it. As long as Joey is in guild, anyone can just dump the mats in the guild lab, and 30 minutes later, there's a Flask of the Titans. When Joey goes, so too does that functionality. If, stepping back in the example, someone in guild needs to purchase "Alchemy Lab" so that Flasks can be done in town, whoever actually spends the 10,000g "has" the lab. When they go, so too does it. So that risk management becomes a guild/player issue, instead of a CSR issue.
Removing the necessity of 100% attendance on That Dude
I think what would be amazing in the WoW paradigm would be Guildbound items (which would be guild transferrable through players switching tags, the point isn't really to lock them down, so much as to have a trust mechanic). This is, of course, ignoring the blue post that suggests resist fights and fear fights are going the way of the dodo. Once you've made your Bramblewood set, your guild will always have one rogue with the right NR, for example. The item can automagically be yoinked back to guildbank at any point (ie., when rogue-last-night isn't on tonight, and we need another NR rogue...)
This would exclusively be towards "guild sink" items, not raid reward items, and could be a consequence of constructing the item personally ("Hey, pal, would you make me the BoE bramble set~") versus guildically ("Mmm, depositing them thar Bramble bits...")
Zone buffs for killing zone stuffs
Speaking of resists, I suggested this, and will again and again. I think raid zones should give a buff per piece of gear you have that's raid set from zone or higher, increasing your resists by a fixed amount. As an example, wearing 5/5 of the AQ40 set, when I zone into MC, I magically get a +200 FR buff (that disappears on zone out) because presumably, I'm too awesome for MC anyway and have already completed the challenge there. This implies a mono-track raid system like we have now, but it's not un-adaptable to multitrack raid systems. Going back to my example, zoning in with 5/5 of the AQ40 to AQ40 will net me +150 NR. Presumably, I had to get resist gear to get the armor in the first place, so this is just "merging" the items without fiddling with the item budget.
Edit: DKP...
I would like a mixed token system - think AQ40's armor system and Atiesh's splinter system (although, obviously, scaled down). It would be incredibly easy to design an interface which reflected how many of what where a player had received in the guild tab, with summaries, and moving from the complete lotto to "Well, he's gotten 5 weapon tokens, now it's the next guy's turn..." means DKP's luck management is out the window. The AQ40 system would mean you don't farm the bracers boss into infinity, because you're just going to get bracers, but the Atiesh portion would mean you don't get an Ashkandi as easily as an Untamed Blade.
Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.
Nice post Digo.
One thing to add: why stop at a mail system for repairs? Why not have say, a vendor in your guild hall who subtracts the repair costs directly out of the guild bank? To prevent abuse, you can turn him on or off to free repairs at will. Any stragglers who log early can still mail (or suffer because they piked!)
Also, for above, an additional safety feature is you can yank back sets of gear at any time. So even if the person leaves, they might end up naked the next time they zone :P
Originally Posted by Fric
Fingering a girl while she argues with her husband-to-be is perhaps my new low point morally in my horribly debauched life
I think the concept of "Guild Property" is atrocious because there are going to be issues about it. While you may lose a Thunderfury or a set of Doomcaller here and there, if your guild leader goes on a powertrip, the entire guild loses their hard earned effort. I'm not sure where to strike a balance between the two issues, but it's something to think about before clamouring about "Guildbound" items. For every 5 "Movin on up" guys you have an Avatar, you're entire guild is fucked if he decides it's an awesome idea to take your second Thunderfury, and your next Kalimdor's Revenge, and Dark Edge, and Ash'Kandi and Might of Menethil... He has the power do this because he owns every guild item.
If you want to make "Guild Bound" items, what would be your anti-drama proposition?
If you want to make "Guild Bound" items, what would be your anti-drama proposition?
That every example you mentioned would not be a guild bound item. It would be a narrowly construed set of items - things people generally only want to raid. That is, specifically, the resist sets.
And I specifically mention how they wouldn't necessarily be guildbound if someone wants to go through the effort of putting together a personal set.
Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.
Nice post Digo.
One thing to add: why stop at a mail system for repairs? Why not have say, a vendor in your guild hall who subtracts the repair costs directly out of the guild bank? To prevent abuse, you can turn him on or off to free repairs at will. Any stragglers who log early can still mail (or suffer because they piked!)
or simply repair bots that take gold from the guild bank.
I'd like to echo "guild faction," particularly for tradeskilling. Thorium Brotherhood would have been much better done this way.
The materials to gain faction are raid items (unless you crush your soul or burn $ getting DI ore). The benefit should flow to the guild rather than the individual. To tune it properly, you could certianly make it take about 10x as many mats to get up to Exalted (since you'd be benefitting 10 tradeskills at once).
I also like the notion of some guild property. Thunderfury is one example. You leave the guild, and it vanishes from your inventory and appears in the guild bank. Hell, doesn't even need to be BOP - just make it flagged so that only people in that guild can possess it.
I'm glad for all of the reliance on group effort, but the worlds we have here do not have the systems we have IRL to keep people honest. (I'm thinking mainly of contract and property law, I suppose.) Guild leaders and guild members can influence each other through soft factors, but there's no way to create binding agreements. You gear someone up and he guildhops or whatever, then you're just screwed. Sure, you can trash his reputation and yell at him, but that dishonest guild member is still able to sell his char on ebay or change servers and avoid consequences. IRL, you can force that bad employee to give back his laptop and you might be able to enforce a non-compete agreement that he signed when he was hired. And if he tries to sell some intellectual property that he developed using company resources, you might be able to stop him.
I would like to see MMOG systems that allow guilds to have a little more power than they currently do - that allow them to enforce agreements in way stronger than is currently possible.
Pater - how do you deal with the inverse case, that being corruption at the top? If guild officers/masters are to have more power, there needs to be a way for the members to deal with grievances.
DeeNogger: "No dot timer? Get your belt off, its spanking time."
3. Invest in your guild.
- Putting gold into the guild bank earns interest. Give your players additional incentive to strengthen their guild. Farming sessions aren't just about endlessly refilling a bucket with holes anymore. To curb enormous guild banks, it becomes auto-taxed once it reaches N amount.
This seems like a bad, inflationary idea to me. However, providing tools that let overly anal guilds charge interest for loans and distribute interest to creditors might be possible... probably still to complex.
4. In-game DKP management.
- Allow players to track attendance, loot, and anything else (dark glare deaths!) the guild needs. Keeps players in the game and not relying on external administrative applications. DKP is here to stay. It's going to be a part of any successful item-based MMO, so rather than burying their heads in the sand, devs need to accept it and find a simple, intuitive way to track this information in game with quests (easy tutorials) that teach players how to use it.
Is this not possible with addons? It seems like it would lead to an explosion of complexity (Who do you charge for that eyebeam chain? Did Gurgthok pull aggro because he is being stupid, or because he is doing his macho first healer to die thing on an attempt that was going down the tubes anyhow?)
Originally Posted by Praetorian
I'd kill for in-game DKP tracking through the guild interface. Set up three automated DKP-tracking systems: Fixed-price zero-sum, accrued per hour with bidding, accrued per kill with bidding, and then have a wildcard "Custom" option that would just let players manually adjust values in-game.
More explosions of complexity. What about all your upgrade stuff, and special prices for resistance gear? From my guild, what about paying players on the wait list? I would probably say a builtin, exporting to XML attendance tracker and loot tracker is as far as I would go. Maybe a kill tracker too.
As far as constructive thoughts go I like closing the loop between casuals and more serious players. Guildbound items have potential for the serious -> casual half of the loop. How about this for the casual -> serious half: Repair/consumable costs are nerfed, but once a week or once a month items have to be "reworked" by a craftsman, costing semiserious amounts of materials. Joe Wrongtimezone can be given a Perditions, but he'd better continue to come up with thorium and arcanite if he wants the firey cores he needs to maintain it. This would also be more appealing if gathering was fun at all. Maybe if mines were little mininstances that take about 20min, but have 3-4 nodes at the bottom? I don't know how to fix herbing or skinning. Of course, all the guild bank enhancements previously discussed would help tracking all these mats bouncing around.
Also, semiofftopic, the alt-bank and mail crap around system is a complete mess. A total rework of the players bank is desperatly needed.
Hopefully they would also consider allowing for serving forums for guilds and maybe even options like TeamSpeak / Ventrilo.
Pater - how do you deal with the inverse case, that being corruption at the top? If guild officers/masters are to have more power, there needs to be a way for the members to deal with grievances.
Get a new guild.
Honestly, I'm really sick of games which impose restrictions which in the end are a hassle to 99% of people, and stop people getting away with things the other 1%. I realise the populace is to blame, but alot of this guild stuff could be set up in such a way as to be self regulated within the guild.
Just an aside, you can get GMs to transfer guild leadership if people havn't been on for about a month or so.
Originally Posted by Fric
Fingering a girl while she argues with her husband-to-be is perhaps my new low point morally in my horribly debauched life
Yeah, I'm kinda against the idea of guilds running around saying, "All your raid loot is ours." We can probably get very derailed on the nature of individual versus group effort, but at the end of the day, if raiding doesn't have some personal reward, it doesn't happen.
I advocate only that certain items that really are guild resources (resist gear) become treated as such. Whereever you go, Ashkandi cuts people. Bramblewood set, practically noone is going to cry about that getting yoinked out of their inventory willy nilly, especially if it was chartered to you by the guild for the specific purpose of you showing up 90% of the time wearing it.
Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.
Pater - how do you deal with the inverse case, that being corruption at the top? If guild officers/masters are to have more power, there needs to be a way for the members to deal with grievances.
Totally valid question - I'm not calling for complete power in the hands of guilds. And I'm certainly not saying that all guild loots are owned by the guild - just a few things that required sustained guild effort that was purely for the good of the collective. (Cores to TB rep and Atiesh shards are perfect examples, I think.)
Of course, each individual has the power to walk at any time. You lose guild-centric bennies, but the guild has no way to force you to stay other than that. That's the main source of individual power.
Now, if your question is "how do 24 honest members revolt against 1 corrupt GL holding their guild perks hostage?" then I'm not sure I know the answer. The game could have built-in democracy tools, I guess. Impeach guild leader with some kind of supermajority? As far as distributing the guild resources if the guild does explode, I guess you could have an automated auction of guild resources (guild items, rep, etc.) to other guilds and distribute the proceeds to the former members. Clearly this is all difficult to program and devs probaby don't even want to worry about the CS headaches. Not putting in resources like that means, as I said earlier, that your only power against a corrupt GL is to walk. As long as expansions come with some kind of regularity, the guild resources will not create too strong of a lock-in to keep people with a corrupt GL. Right now, going into BC, there would be no reason to stick with your guild just because it had 3 Thunderfuries, 2 Sulfuras, Exalted TB, and 30 Atiesh shards. TBC stuff will make all of that obsolete.
The idea of those tools of democracy is exciting to me, but I'd be content with the only individual power being walking (and taking any non-guild resources with you--which will include almost all of your gear).
UO implemented votes on guild leadership ~10 years ago. its also had housing and you could give certain members access on crates (2+ access rules). theres still that guild tower on my account on SP :p, but i have no idea whos playing that accout atm.
ive seen democratic ruled guilds in wow just go down the drain because of lobbyism. hive mind, common sense is the only way, that and a few good leaders. if you sense the smallest sign of people not following or disobeying rules, handle it before its too late. one spoiled bee will crack up your hive.
guild administration and tools should be outside of wow. having dkp inside and from blizzard would make it hard to have your own tool and systems that people accept. the only good way would be a basic token system on that guilds can build their own rules. e.g. bosses give tokens to everyone but maybe guild/raid leader decides who can trade it in for an item. players own their tokens and can carry them over if they change guilds ... still flawed but anyways, why do i still not have a dft after 50 bwl runs, is that fair ? 40 tokens per boss would allow to cover more things than just dkp
in fact : end game raiding affects less than 20% of the playerbase. blizzard investing more resources on raid&guild administration would not make sense.
ps: i love the idea of removing consumables and buffs when entering raid instances. would make design of encounters better. difficulty would scale more with gear and skill, not with consumables and buffs - money/time
Even a pointless guild house without even a sign on who is owning it would do for now. It would be something atleast in the right direction. Guild house heart stones, guild bank, signs on the house of who is owning it, some better tabards, herb gardens would be a nice features that could be added later. Something like upgrading your guild house to get nicer furniture could be nice even if its pointless :)
I do miss the castles from Lineage 2, even if the experience from it was really laggy (playing on a west coast server in the US and coming from europe) it was really exciting and you had something that you really wanted to defend or conquer. A feature like this would make you cooperate more with other guilds of your faction because as a raider you barely see eachother because of the instances.
Some kind of guild war would also be nice, in lineage 2 you would drop something from your inventory and could really hurt you if you died, in WoW you dont loose a thing. Let us drop a skalp or some kind of token when we die in a confirmed guild war that makes you want the other guild dead and makes it some kind for competition.
The problem with the last 2 is that the servers cant handle a large mass of players so i guess we will not see these features ever in WoW.
Another thing that i wish for is fixed matches in battle grounds. I have never been interested in playing against a random group because we already have the advantage of being on ventrilo and having a gear they dream about. What i want is that you have your random groups versus random groups and have your guild groups versus other guild groups where the guild groups can challange eachother and the challanged team can accept or deny the challange.
I am a carebear on a PvP-server because there is absolutely nothing to gain if you are not going for rank 12 or higher. A castle, guild wars or guild vs guild battle grounds would change that.
Gentlemen, I am going to go ahead and critisize some of the suggestions listed in this thread. I think people are missing the point of what a "next gen MMO" should be. Some of the suggestions almost sound like people want the game to be played for them. More importantly, some people are tackling this question using only WoW as their perspective, without a broader know-how of what other MMORPGs are offering in the public.
1) .. allowing for serving forums for guilds and maybe even options like TeamSpeak / Ventrilo
While you are at it, why not ask them to host your guild website and make your guild webpage?
I would much rather prefer an MMORPG developer focus on making a kick-ass game, instead of trying to re-invent wheels. Theres a reason why vBulletin, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, etc are such popular peices of software. Because they are very good at what they do. For example, technically speaking the WoW forums are crap compared to Vbulletin and other forum softwares... the Search feature is still unusable after 2 years. This is what you get when you try to develop unscalable in-house software (no matter how simple).
Bottom line: Let MMO creators worry about making a GOOD stable game. Dont ask them to make something they arent passionate about
2)I'd like a system, much like Allakhazam, but instead something that is run and developed by the developers of the game.
This will never work out in reality. Besides, this is a detrimental business move on part of the developers. Sites like thottbot, allakhazam, Vault, etc are breeding grounds for community interest. You want to encourage people to make fansites for your game.
3) A per-person incurred repaircost is tracked and after a raid is finished you can choose to refund a % of that and the system will automatically reimburse all raiders %
This is not a feature that a developer of a "next-gen" MMO should concern themselves with. This kind of suggestion belongs in the "Little features you would like to have in the next WoW patch". heck, with a lot of hacking a round, maybe even a mod writer could write this - maybe.
4) grindless endgame
Thats an oxymoron.
Many MMO developers in the past have tried to create grindless MMOs. The reason why they continue to fail is because players conquer content much faster than developers can create new content. Therefore, once players reach the "endgame" - the only thing left to do is grind. In anticipation of this, most developers intentionally add elements in the endgame that require grinding - this buys them time to offer new content.
WoW is as grindless as it gets really, whilst maintaining the quality of content.
5) How about just removing alchemy from the game?
uh, No? Alchemy has been staple crafting profession in many generations of MMO. You cant just "remove" it. Sorry I dont have a more compelling reason, the "coolness" factor of creating potions is compelling enough for many people.
6) Alt Management Features: We all play alts. Tons of them. To the point where the concept of a 'Main' is pretty foreign
I dont play any alts. I know a lot of people who hate playing alts. We prefer to focus on one character. I dont see how this "problem" cant be curtailed by a peice of pen and paper. Again, not a "next-gen" MMO feature.
7) - "Guild leaders and guild members can influence each other through soft factors, but there's no way to create binding agreements. You gear someone up and he guildhops or whatever, then you're just screwed."
- "how do you deal with the inverse case, that being corruption at the top? If guild officers/masters are to have more power, there needs to be a way for the members to deal with grievances"
You gotta be kidding me. People people... you cannot ask game developers to worry about the social aspects of running a guild or playing an MMO. I used to play this game called Shattered Galaxy that allowed players to vote for their president, that was a pretty cool feature. But I sure as hell dont want to be burdened with stuff judicial bureaurocritical crap while playing an MMO. I do understand that in-game politics are an intigral part of an MMO, but asking the game-devs to implement technical features that cultivate this phenomenon is absurb. Let players worry about these things! Thats what makes these games soo fun.
After reading some more of the postsin this thread, most of the suggestions are concerning little nuances and quirks with current WoW system. Moreover, the kind of automation people are demanding dilutes the social aspect of being in a guild. I want to have a "guild enchanter" and a "guild blacksmith" and a "thorium brotherhood guy" and a "flask guy". Sure, at times its annoying when these people arent online - but it adds to the essence of being in a guild where each person shares certain unique traits and responsibilities. Please dont take this away from us. And I dont want no bloody in-game judiciary system.
Gentlemen, I am going to go ahead and critisize some of the suggestions listed in this thread. I think people are missing the point of what a "next gen MMO" should be. Some of the suggestions almost sound like people want the game to be played for them. More importantly, some people are tackling this question using only WoW as their perspective, without a broader know-how of what other MMORPGs are offering in the public.
1) .. allowing for serving forums for guilds and maybe even options like TeamSpeak / Ventrilo
While you are at it, why not ask them to host your guild website and make your guild webpage?
I would much rather prefer an MMORPG developer to focus on making a kick-ass game, instead of trying to re-invent wheels. Theres a reason why vBulletin, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, etc are such popular peices of software. Because they are very good at what they do. For example, technically speaking the WoW forums are crap compared to Vbulletin and other forum softwares... the Search feature is still unusable after 2 years. This is what you get when you try to develop unscalable in-house software (no matter how simple).
Bottom line: Let MMO creators worry about making a GOOD stable game. Dont ask them to make something they arent passionate about
2)I'd like a system, much like Allakhazam, but instead something that is run and developed by the developers of the game.
This will never work out in reality. Besides, this is a detrimental business move on part of the developers. Sites like thottbot, allakhazam, Vault, etc are breeding grounds for community interest. You want to encourage people to make fansites for your game.
3) A per-person incurred repaircost is tracked and after a raid is finished you can choose to refund a % of that and the system will automatically reimburse all raiders %
This is not a feature that a developer of a "next-gen" MMO should concern themselves with. This kind of suggestion belongs in the "Little features you would like to have in the next WoW patch". heck, with a lot of hacking a round, maybe even a mod writer could write this - maybe.
4) grindless endgame
Thats an oxymoron.
Many MMO developers in the past have tried to create grindless MMOs. The reason why they continue to fail is because players conquer content much faster than developers can create new content. Therefore, once players reach the "endgame" - the only thing left to do is grind. In anticipation of this, most developers intentionally add elements in the endgame that require grinding - this buys them time to offer new content.
WoW is as grindless as it gets really, whilst maintaining the quality of content.
5) How about just removing alchemy from the game?
uh, No? Alchemy has been staple crafting profession in many generations of MMO. You cant just "remove" it. Sorry I dont have a more compelling reason, the "coolness" factor of creating potions is compelling enough for many people.
6) Alt Management Features: We all play alts. Tons of them. To the point where the concept of a 'Main' is pretty foreign
I dont play any alts. I know a lot of people who hate playing alts. We prefer to focus on one character. I dont see how this "problem" cant be curtailed by a peice of pen and paper. Again, not a "next-gen" MMO feature.
7) - "Guild leaders and guild members can influence each other through soft factors, but there's no way to create binding agreements. You gear someone up and he guildhops or whatever, then you're just screwed."
- "how do you deal with the inverse case, that being corruption at the top? If guild officers/masters are to have more power, there needs to be a way for the members to deal with grievances"
You gotta be kidding me. People people... you cannot ask game developers to worry about the social aspects of running a guild or playing an MMO. I used to play this game called Shattered Galaxy that allowed players to vote for their president, that was a pretty cool feature. But I sure as hell dont want to be burdened with stuff judicial bureaurocritical crap while playing an MMO. I do understand that in-game politics are an intigral part of an MMO, but asking the game-devs to implement technical features that cultivate this phenomenon is absurb. Let players worry about these things! Thats what makes these games soo fun.
After reading some more of the postsin this thread, most of the suggestions are concerning little nuances and quirks with current WoW system. Moreover, the kind of automation people are demanding dilutes the social aspect of being in a guild. I want to have a "guild enchanter" and a "guild blacksmith" and a "thorium brotherhood guy" and a "flask guy". Sure, at times its annoying when these people arent online - but it adds to the essence of being in a guild where each person shares certain unique traits and responsibilities. Please dont take this away from us. And I dont want no bloody in-game judiciary system.
1) if its a vital part to have those things then why not ? its becomming key features of some upcoming games. again UO had guild info pages 10 years ago (myuo.com), AO offered xml listings. blizzard makes a crapload of money with this game, they could offer parts of this easy. does your phone company offer extra online/offline services ? if it keeps customers happy theyll offer some.
2) again not much effort for devs, they got the data allready there , theres no need for hackersquest(tm) etc. to build custom stuff
3) i was never a fan of repaircosts, just makes gold selling/buying worth it. people dont have time to farm resources and raid 5 days/week. i want to play, not farm
4) grindless endgame , well devs still havent figured out that. but i dont think its impossible (in info science nothing is impossible). endgame as it is in all games atm is static (5 different breaths is still static). doesnt need a genius to say that the 1st game with adaptive gameplay will win a big market share.
5) pots are a nice to have feature, should never be a requirement in any way. the difference between a raid grp investing heavy in buffs/pots (time/money) vs. a raw grp can make and break an encounter (huhuran and ZG pots). good way of boss fight and buffs is chromagus and hourglass sand (get what you need from trash).
7) those social aspects keep players paying their fees, ignoring them is stupid. the time of big socializing games ended with wow. endgame is more like a job, if you got people who cant do it right you wont progress - fire them :(
to repeat myselfes, endgame is difficult to provide. id rather lose 10% of those who conquer it too fast than losing 30-50% players who dont have a perspective after getting to 60. mmoprgs still lack adaptive gameplay mechanics. devs still make the same mistakes after 10 years of mmoprgs and will continue to make them (because its cheaper to make them).
1) if its a vital part to have those things then why not ? its becomming key features of some upcoming games. again UO had guild info pages 10 years ago (myuo.com), AO offered xml listings. blizzard makes a crapload of money with this game, they could offer parts of this easy. does your phone company offer extra online/offline services ? if it keeps customers happy theyll offer some.
guild info pages != guild forums, voice chat, etc. Please re-read the quote I quoted.
DaOC possibly had(has?) the best guild/server info database website. I loved that.
2) again not much effort for devs, they got the data allready there , theres no need for hackersquest(tm) etc. to build custom stuff
I never questioned the technical aspect of it.
3) i was never a fan of repaircosts, just makes gold selling/buying worth it. people dont have time to farm resources and raid 5 days/week. i want to play, not farm
I dont understand.
4) grindless endgame , well devs still havent figured out that. but i dont think its impossible (in info science nothing is impossible). endgame as it is in all games atm is static (5 different breaths is still static). doesnt need a genius to say that the 1st game with adaptive gameplay will win a big market share.
Cant.. find.. point..
5) pots are a nice to have feature, should never be a requirement in any way. the difference between a raid grp investing heavy in buffs/pots (time/money) vs. a raw grp can make and break an encounter (huhuran and ZG pots). good way of boss fight and buffs is chromagus and hourglass sand (get what you need from trash).
The person I quoted suggested the removal of Alchemy from the game. I countered that suggestion merely on the basis that Alchemy was an integral part of many generations of MMOs.
Nothing to do with consumables, or their impact on raiding.
7) those social aspects keep players paying their fees, ignoring them is stupid. the time of big socializing games ended with wow. endgame is more like a job, if you got people who cant do it right you wont progress - fire them :(
You made me go back and read my post 3 times. I still dont see the relevance of what you are saying.
I want democracy :P Monthly or annual elections for positions within the guild... a guild is often the end product of 40+ people's hard work and it's a real shame how poor or ineffective leaders can screw over a guild's progress and lead to their downfall. But it's not so easy to just replace them :(
Am I the only person who finds it... damn weird/interesting that we as Europeans, Americans, Aussies are lovers of democracy within real life but subscribe to benevolent dictatorships within our online world :P ?
After reading some more of the postsin this thread, most of the suggestions are concerning little nuances and quirks with current WoW system. Moreover, the kind of automation people are demanding dilutes the social aspect of being in a guild. I want to have a "guild enchanter" and a "guild blacksmith" and a "thorium brotherhood guy" and a "flask guy". Sure, at times its annoying when these people arent online - but it adds to the essence of being in a guild where each person shares certain unique traits and responsibilities. Please dont take this away from us. And I dont want no bloody in-game judiciary system.
I don't give a shit about "losing the social aspect of the guild", it's not really fun sitting online waiting for one person to log on because he's the only person with +4 stats to chest or Crusader. It's not like I need crafting to be friends with people in my guild. Your argument isn't that strong because I think most people could care less about the "social interaction" and "unique traits and responsibilities" of trading Grave Moss, Fade Leaf, Leaded Vial, Crystal Vial and Dreamfoil to someone else so they can make you some potions for a stupid fight.
most people could care less about the "social interaction" and "unique traits and responsibilities" of trading Grave Moss, Fade Leaf, Leaded Vial, Crystal Vial and Dreamfoil to someone else so they can make you some potions for a stupid fight.
I agree. But then you are asking for a re-design of the trading/crafting system. Nevertheless, Blizzard is trying to make this process less cumbersome.
However, some people suggested the complete overhaul of reputation rewards by making them "guild only" because probably, sometime in the past their guild may have gotten screwed when their "Thorium brotherhood guy" left them.
Or Got screwed over because your "Thunderfury guy" left the guild? Too bad. Next time, make a wiser decision on how to distribute loot. Or get better officers who can psychologically profile people.
Now see, thats the social aspect of the game I am referring to. This is a social game. You cant demand a failsafe mechanism for every risk.
10/22/06, 5:26 PM
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