f13.net

I'm working on super-secret :nda: report / project about MMOs / game design currently and have done this already on my guild forum and felt it was a bit biased from the games my guild has been playing, so I need a wider spectrum of answers. My question to F13eers is:

Could you list your top 10 features ever implemented in an MMO ? I will elaborate a bit in the future on the report and the project, but I thank you in advance on the time spent.

PS: Answers can be something like :

1) Age of Conan combat system
2) EvE tutorial and interface etcetra etcetra.

---

My list :

1) Necropolis Naxxramas - WoW
2) Tome of Knowledge - WAR
3) Melee combat system - AoC
4) Tortage start area - AoC
5) Economy / crafting - EVE
6) Small / large scale open world PvP - General
7) Class diversity and customization - General
8) Instance progression pre-TBC - WoW
9) Town portals - Diablo 2 (not MMO, but town portals are win)


"Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte

 - The EVE resource/crafting/economy system is one of the greatest feats not only in a an MMO, but in any game ever imho.
 - Mind Control and Mind Vision on my priest in WoW.

I'll think about it some more.

1) AoC combat/collision
2) UO skill-based advancement
3) EQ1 zone design (pre-PoP)

edit:
4) CoH travel powers
5) EQ2 appearance tab
6) UO/EQ1 dyes
7) UO crafting (not a crafter so I like it simple)

Can't get to 10.

In no specific order because that changes with mood.

DAoC RvR
Age of Conan melee combat system
EQ2 Illusionist. Just a fantastic class that, to me, felt like a D&D type Wizard, not just another glass canon.
WoW's reduction of downtime for solo melee classes with pots, food and bandaging. EQ hated on solo melee guys which pissed me off.
Superjump in City of Heroes along with travel powers in general.
City of Heroes character creation. I could spend hours in that game just creating new characters.

That's all I can think up off the top of my afternoon sleepy dear god why isn't it 5pm yet mind.

I never played UO, could you link me the skill-based advancement that you speak of ?

1) Necropolis Naxxramas - WoW
2) Tome of Knowledge - WAR
3) Melee combat system - AoC
4) Tortage start area - AoC
5) Economy / crafting - EVE
6) Small / large scale open world PvP - General
7) Class diversity and customization - General
8) Instance progression pre-TBC - WoW
9) Town portals - Diablo 2 (not MMO, but town portals are win)
10) CoX character customization.

EDIT : Yes Brogarn, I completely forgot CoX.

EQ2's Appearance tab.  Every game should have one. 

In no particular order.

1) Being able to kill a guy just to wear his jester hat. (UO)
2) Being able to knock people off high ledges and watch them fall to their death (AC)
3) Being able to side step spells and arrows (AC)
4) Not having levels (UO)
5) Being able to wear actual clothing over your armor, or dress yourself in a way that makes it appear that you might not be wearing any armor, or making you appear weaker than you really are. (or even stronger than you really are. It goes either way.)  (UO)
6) Being able to swing your fucking sword without hitting TAB to target something first. (Conan)
7) Causing people to fail the Vakentu's quest in AC2, where they'd not only NOT get the run buff, but they'd have slower than normal run speed for the next 2 hours of in game time. (IE: a penalty for being a dumbass.) (AC2)
8) Being able to attack anyone virtually anywhere (Eve, UO at first)
9) Having FRIENDLY FIRE so you can't sit in a group and stand on top of each other casting AOE spells without killing each other instantly. (AC2 until they PATCHED THIS OUT because it was "too unforgiving" and "confusing")
10) being able to aim your bow shots yourself so you can hit moving targets like you were playing a FPS game (Conan, ranger class, 1st person view only.)


Please note the lack of comments on NPC AI or anything having to do with raiding or fighting NPCs. Which is all boring shit that has needed to be revamped since 1996.

FFXI's Job System
EQ2s Broker
Puzzle Pirates Crafting & "Work" system (This is a totally overlooked gem)
AOs instanced missions (the terminal ones meant for "grinding" -- pretty much same as COX has, but with a boss & loot at the end)
WoW's crafted instances/raids for "heroic" & quest content
Conans blocking/open/swing combat system -- tho not so hot on the carpal tunnel combos
COX character customization
Complete interface customization (EQ2 got it right, WoW went too far)
COX's non-healer support classes
COX gameplay with chaotic combat against large groups of enemies

My ultimate game is COX mission gameplay and occasional quests in WoW style crafted instances with your primary/secondary "powersets" being mix/match/replace like FFXI's job system. Set it in Dereth, so I can slay hordes of Olthoi. I will be a very happy girl and write you a large check for a lifetime sub.

Offline, grind-free skill gaining - Eve
Customisable skill tree choices - SWG
Quest-giver denotation - WoW
Character design - CoH
PvP design so that newbies can kill vets - Eve
"Holy shit I'm in a world" - UO
"This game is well-enough designed that my wife likes it" - WoW
Narration/The DM's voice (EGG) - D&DO tutorial
Drama/politics so intense you can wake up wanting to read about what happened overnight - Eve

Tome of Knowledge from WAR- not innovative but very cool to track your char's path through the game
Character creation in CoH
Flying mounts in WoW
Auction house in WoW
Customizable UI in WoW - I've spent hours messing around with my UI. I love that stuff.
Concentration mechanic in DAoC - I know this ended up being a bad thing, but not having to recast buffs all the time was pretty sweet. If you have Ronald McDonald in your group, why does he have to keep giving you burgers?
Sidekick mechanic (CoH did this first, I think?)
Instancing (AO did it first)
Twinking with ridiculously overpowered items in EQ1
Factions in EQ1 - I can go to the evil cities!
Talent/skill tree specialization (Bunch of games did this, but WoW comes to mind)

Without reading other responses, and in no particular order:

1) AC Darktide's utter Lord of the Flies free for allness, which actually forced politics in to the game
2) Early UOs lack of itemcentricness, which made gimpy characters viable
3) AC's Housing system
4) SWG's attempt at a skill system that let social characters be viable (pre NGE/Hologrind/CU)
5) AC's collision based combat - twitch can work in an MMO
6) The total pollish on WoW's newbie experience - especially Burning Crusade
7) AC's crafting system - breaking down loot for components of variying quality that could be used to enhance other loot
8) AC's item system in general - yea I'm biased here, but its the best itemization in a game so far
9) AC's monthly updates
10) Graphics - WoW for being pretty and Stylized, AoC for being pretty and semi-realistic, and for Breaking the North American Boob Barrier

Not in order.

1. SWG: Prospecting for resources.
2. WoW: Focus on questgrinding instead of mobgrinding. Hell, it was something different after DAoC/EQ camp and spank.
3. Planetside: Big fights. Bridge battles. Galaxy drops. Love.
4. Diablo 2: The waypoint system.
5. UO: Skill based advancement.
6. Eve: Time based advancement.
7. Both of the above for keeping mudflation down to a dull roar, instead of a screaming hurricane.

Steal anyone else's stuff for my last 3. I'm sure you guys can think of stuff I'm missing.

* relatively flat player power growth (EVE)
* lack of level-based artificial penalties in player interactions (EVE)
* entertaining gameplay rather than 'sit and watch progress bar' mechanics to crafting and such (Puzzle Pirates)
* lack of 'grind X hundred useless items to advance your craft skills' mechanics (EVE, Puzzle Pirates)
* playable NPCs aka monster play (LotRO)
* separation of 'stats gear' and 'looks gear' (LotRO)
* if class-based game, reduced number of classes with reasonable skillset given to each, making them all capable of playing solo and useful/wanted in group (LotRO)
* if skill-based game, ability to freely switch between custom picked skills/skill branches with no grind attached to setup change (Matrix Online)
* realistic combat animation system i.e. players appearing to react to each other's actions rather than just each swing at empty air (Matrix Online)
* reasonable hardware requirements, game designed for the present not nebulous future (about any Korean MMO to date)

In no particular order:

* EQ's Dungeon design
* WoW's badge/token loot system
* LOTR & Eq2's "Visible item" equip system
* WoW's raid design
* COH's travel powers - particularly super jump
* COH's customization - albeit this goes along with the equip system
* Eve's skill progression & clone system (I feel you need to do both if you do one.)
* Eve & Planetside's static 'loot power' - Things don't get more powerful, you get better/ more options
* SWG's 'useless' classes (Entertainer, Musician, Stripp.. I mean Dancer)
* WoW's 'useless' items (pets, fireworks, silly holiday crap)
* WoW's Holiday implementation
* WAR's Tome of Knowledge... and that's just based on what they HAVE told you about it. :NDA: on the rest.

Ok, so that's 12. Phbt.

I forgot this one, but for me this is a huge ++. Most default UIs not only look awful, they are generally hard to work with. Although some addons do detract slightly from the challenge, and skew game design to accomodate those who use every resource; being able to have a totally clean, minimal UI with keybound actions that are hidden from sight, that provides a maximum of information and minimum of fluff is something I am all for.

I was thinking about doing something similar - some sort of "what every MMO from here on out should have as standard".

1) Casual friendly, non-long-term-grinding content ala WoW and CoH/V.
2) Character customisation such as CoH/V and MxO (although MxO needed more flexibility between clothes and the stats they offered).
3) The sidekick / exemplar system of CoH/V - why this hasn't become a basic feature of every other MMO that uses lvls (i.e. all of them) I just can't understand.
4) The skill tree system of MxO. You can fully respec with a few clicks so easily and without penalty, making the development / progression of one character very easy across all skill types.
5) Instanced environments for key mission requirements / situations, from lots of MMOs including Tabula Rasa and CoH/V. Spawn camping for required named mobs should not be happening.
6) Travel powers - CoH/V. Time spent running between targets != fun.
7) Contact 'call' option - CoH/V. You've done a mission / quest or two for your contact, they give you their phone number / a magic seashell which means you can call them once you've finished further missions from them. Running backwards and forwards between contact and mission / quest != fun.
8) Achievements / badges - CoH/V. It's an addictive mini-game.
9) Destructible environments - DDO, CoH/V. Being able to blow objects up / smash objects during combat adds a lot to a MMO.
10) No stamina / mana bar - Fury. Given that an empty stamina bar = a no more fun bar, balance power recharge times instead of making players watch how much 'energy' they had left.

EDIT: I felt it too basic to say at the time, but a decent set of communication and team management tools really need to be the standard as well.

1. Small/medium gang pvp in EVE with a good FC and voice comms.
2. DaoC pvp back in the day, just before SI was the best time for me.
3. Epic flying mounts in WoW. I just love flying.
4. SWG CH's with Grauls, best pets ever.
5. Darkness Falls in DaoC. Awesome dungeon, loved the realm change overs.
6. SWG crafting, the variety and personalisation rocked.
7. Covops ships in EVE. Best implementation of stealth anywhere IMO.
8. My WoW frost mage. He's just so much fun to play.
9. EVE's complete lack of 100% safe areas.
10. DaoC's LFG tool. No other MMO I've played has come close to it.

Bards. - EQ1.
Alternate Advancement - EQ1.
EQ's chat system, also EQ2's improvements on it. - EQ1/EQ2.
Global Chat Handle, Global Ignore - CoX.
Raid design circa Omens of War with both outdoor and instanced raids involving ~45 people. - EQ1.
Extreme character customization, and not related to your equipment/abilities so you can look good without raiding ubermobs. - CoX.
Quest, story, and NPC design circa Velious Age, with less bugs. - EQ1.
FFXI-style auction house system with more robust history options. - FFXI.
Job system. - FFXI.
Cutscenes. - FFXI.  (Done in others, but done best in FFXI).
Factions, particularly circa Velious Age (and what was intended but never quite made it for Luclin), only taken a lot further than they managed to implement. - EQ.

Yeah, that's more than ten, but I couldn't really move any of those down to the list of....things that come close and I just had to say:

Mark, Recall, Gate. - UO.
FFA Full PvP - Original UO.
Customizable UI. - EQ, WoW.

Clarifications, addendum.  Not necessarily in any particular order (except for Bards.  Definitely my #1 favorite anything, ever, from an MMOG or any other game for that matter).  Velious age quest design includes pretty much everything about it, including quests that take months of the entire player base searching and learning about them to solve (not to mention even FIND in the first place).

I'll try and pick a few people haven't praised as filling a top 10 would be too difficult anyway

*  Resource quality system from SWG that differentiated finished crafted products, gave crafters something to strive for after they've maxed out
*  "Meaningful" PVP in EVE with lots of stuff actually worth fighting over
*  EVE's death penalty which is pretty much just what you're willing to risk - from basically nothing with T1 to months of grinding with supercaps
*  EQ2's "fight the sewing table!" felt a little cheesy but I enjoyed the interactive crafting and it was AFAIK unique

Replying without having read many others.

Black Rock Depths - WoW
Complete lack of quests, only missions - GW Beta
Explorable unexplained areas with some interesting stuff in them that made sense and was fun of itself and didn't need some useless quest to take you there or whatever but simply rewarded your desire to explore by being interesting - GW Beta
Raid encounter design in Naxx/TBC - WoW
Lack of levels - UO
Politics/Drama/Player Control over the 'world' - EVE
UI/UI moddability - WoW
Non-instanced largely seamless large world - WoW
Flying Mounts - WoW

Fixing things you say you are going to fix, being balanced, and constantly getting better over time - WoW

10 things I hate about MMOs would be much more focused though!

I love all the customisation options, travel modes and most of the ideas in CoX, too.  Too bad about the lack of real content and the same old same old tile sets.  I also loved the way I could customise my characters, including after initially making them, in SWG, by hiring someone to do it.  I loved all the different professions and the missions associated with them, too.   Entertainer!  How much fun was that in the beginning!  However, I had forgot about:   That really was good fun!

It was literally the only good thing about that game.  It was *really* fun.  Whoever designed that system is an unsung hero.

• Early EQ1 dungeons - original, Kunark and Velious. The first fully realised 3D versions of what until then had been described in text. I'd like today's MMOG designers to paint us their imaginations, rather than "wouldn't it be cool if ..."
• EQ1 dangers - even the most powerful player still had to be afraid
• EQ1 enchanter crowd control gameplay
• SWG resource/crafting systems
• SWG player housing/cities
• Anarchy Online atmosphere - intro movie, plot, environments, music
• Tabula Rasa control point battles
• Vanguard bard song system (build your own song from effect components)
• Planetside base control battles (descended from Tribes 1)
• DAoC/WoW factional communication barriers - no chat with enemy players

I would have put SubSpace powerball in my 10, but only me and Slayerik remember.

Unsurprisingly some of my 10 most hated things are on some lists here. Is that the case for many others too?

no particular order:

-superjump/travel powers (CoX)
-active combat (AoC)
-RvR (DAoC-preAtlantis)
-changeable jobs (FF)
-Playable instruments (AC2, LotRo)
-super character customization (CoX)
-the "feel" of Zones (EQ1, AoC, WoW, CoX)
-Tortage (AoC)
-Apprentice (better in CoX, ok in AoC)
-travel over land...ie in boats across the ocean, etc (EQ1)

UO- SKILL USE ADVANCEMENT instead of leveling
CoH- travel powers
CoH- character creation
Shadowbane- guild/city features (until you get snuffed out like a bug, at least)
PotBS- Ship to Ship combat
WoW- customizeable UI- some really useful and some just pure silly fun
WoW- Mounts, especially flying
EQ1- Enchanter mezz abilities.
UO- crafting, especially for non-combat related items like furniture. Also really liked the Maker's Mark on stuff.
UO- player housing
WAR- Tome of Knowledge


So that's 11. Sue me.

Most-hated? Not really, but in some ways I'm too forgiving of certain bits of MMO designs.  Some of the most annoying/ illogical are turning up, though.

1. EQ 1 Dungeon design
2. Long travel times
3. Skill advancement instead of levels
4. freedom to think outside the box (think tank and spank killing as normal, then other ways of killing as outside the box)
5. Large worlds
6. One server (think Eve)
7. Eve's economy and crafting
8. FFA pvp
9. Group/guild based progression
10. Harsh death penalties and massive exp grinds

Most of mine have been mentioned (WoW's customizable UI, CoH sidekicking system, EVE's skills and crafting, etc.)

I'll mention some of WoW's quests (Bombing runs, the seasonal stuff) and the multitude of cameo's and pop culture references in the game.  And now that they've increased it a lot, I also like EVE's daily news thing.

I think pretty much all mechanics from both worlds for me have been mentioned. Which makes me sad as it means I won't get rid of them even in future MMOs.  :heartbreak:

Not in any particular order.

1)  Public Quests - WAR
2)  Extensive use of player made mods. - WOW
3)  Combat System - AOC
4)  Un-Instanced World
5)  Apprenticing, Mentoring, Sidekicking
6)  Instanced progressive storyline - LOTRO, AOC
7)  Simplistic Class System.  (Not a lot of classes) - WOW
8)  Different Skill Mechanics i.e. Rage Bar, Energy Bar etc. - WOW
9)  Player Economy - EVE
10)  -- I can't think of any others now.

Anything that didn't involve human interaction, generally

In no particular order

farming skill - Runescape
agility skill - runescape
Cert system - Planetside
Option to use Multiple characters to control and augment the capabilities of a mount - Planetside
Economy System -Eve Online
Skill deck system - Chronicles of Spellborn
Battlegrounds - WoW
low skillpoints/level not being as penalized as every other MMO - Eve Online
Sidekicking/exemplar - CoH(V)/ EQ2

Collision detection with accounting for height of target - Discarded feature for a game I'm in beta

If you can't accept the last one then:
NPC Spawns migrating, changing spawn locations, building cities- Darkfall

1) UO -  Seers and IGMs system for constant, dynamic and roleplaying in-game events;

2) UO - "World/Sandbox" feeling ;

3)UO - Skill based advancement ;

4) UO - PvP FFA system (Pre-Renaissance).


And in no particular order:

WoW - Interface modifications ;

Tabula Rasa - Combat System ;

WAR -  Tome of Knowledge ;

WoW - Perfect Quest System ;

WoW - loot tables balance ;

WoW - Newbie experience.

1.  SWG's player housing
2.  EVE's skill training system
3.  DAOC's pvp
4.  SWG's crafting system pre-CU
5.  WOW's polished quest system
6.  EVE's pvp system
7.  SWG's non-combat professions, pre-CU
8.  SWG's initial jedi system with death penalty
9.  SWG's open planet design, loved being able to go anywhere
10.  Anarchy Onlines instances

Now that you're out of lurk mode, you're almost ready to interact.  It won't be long now!  (http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/images/smilies/grphug.gif)

in no particular order:

Customizable/Configurable UI - EQ2, WoW

Appearance Tab - EQ2

Player editable in-game map - uuuuh, AC + ACExplorer is closest to decent I've seen so far.

Sidekicking/Mentoring - EQ2 (edited from CoH as I'm reminded how much better EQ2's is)

Auction/Consignment/Bazaar/whatever - EQ2 has the best I've seen so far

Post-creation Character appearance redesign - SWG, CoH, EQ2

All classes getting a teleport home spell - umm, was AC1 the first?

Ignore - OK, I think they all have it, but it was a really really important thing to have!

Faction system - EQ was best so far.  We don't have the tech to change the world, but at least it can react to us based on our actions.  WoW's faction is just a poorly disguised content cockblock with no gameworld meaning to it.

Multiple professions - FFXI (edit: honorable mention to SWG, but I REALLY hated having to forget stuff to learn new stuff, rather than just temporarily setting it aside somehow.  ESPECIALLY with the asinine single-character server limitation)

Don't bet on it.

EQ1 actually has/had the easiest post-creation appearance redesign, in that you were allowed to alter any alterable facet of your appearance without limit or cost at any time and any place (post-Luclin).  Admittedly, what was alterable wasn't that much, but you could definitely change it anywhere, anytime.

I find it interesting how many of these were in games prior to the ones cited.  :oh_i_see:

Weren't public quests in MUME in 1996?

AC2 - Runcasting - Pre Nerf. Made for some of the best action to date.
AC2 - Real Exploration No limits to where you could travel, with some imagination needed in places. And a beautiful world to do it in.
AC2 - KvK Like RvR, but you get to choose the faction you join not fixed by your starting area/race.
AC2 - Allegiances Some of your exp goes to your Liege, who has an incentive to help you out.
AC2 - Untraining This made your skill choices not so final and allows you to completely redo your character without losing your identity.
AC2 - Dyes Customizing your armour should be a standard feature in every MMO.
SWG - Single Character One server/One character. Very controversial, but defines your character, rather than having an army of forgettable alts.
SWG - Utter Confusion When you first enter the world, you had no clue what to do. Screw hand holding nub zones! Confusion ftw.
SWG - Sand Box World I missed the UO boat :( but freedom rocks
TR - NPC's don't appear out of nowhere In TR they come in drop ships (complete with AI too). Hate how we are supposed to swallow that mobs just miraculously reappear, especially when you have to clear the area to get to something, and they just respawn on your fucking back.

Many of these appeared in earlier games and aren't limited to just these games, but these were just a few of the many points I wanted to list and I wanted to have a few AC2 points for all those who love to hate the game  :evil:

The internet tells me Age of Conan has totally ripped off WoW's ideas. Blizzard should sue all the companies making MMOGs.

So I am sure nothing happened in MMOG history until I played one.

I don't claim omniscience, they may have shown up in earlier games... these are just the first games I played which I recall these features showing up in:

EVE - Offline skill advancement
EVE - Skill based advancement (as opposed to level based advancement)
EVE - Entire "universe" accessible to any player (not divided up into shards or servers or whatever)
Guild Wars - Hireable NPC Henchmen
Guild Wars - Ability to take a subclass
Warcraft - Large instanced battlegrounds (AV)
Warcraft - Consistent, compitent artistic direction
Warcraft - Runs well on old computers
Lineage - Only played it briefly, but IIRC, there was an actual class for guild leaders ("Noble" or something) which was an idea I liked

Nothing else springs to mind...

Folks can only reference their experience. We're not games historians, we're gamers.  Those who work in the field may need such an in-depth knowledge, but I'd rather focus on things relevant to my career if I have to spend time learning minutiae.

  There's also the chance that while we know something existed in other games, the specific implementation referenced was seen as better than prior or latter experiences. e.g. When I referenced WoW's Raid design but EQ's dungeon design.

Since we all know every other person playing UO quit when Trammel came out, leaving only me and one Japanese guy with 200k accounts, I'll point out that while the Age of Shadows expansion was generally shit looking back, the customization of housing it added was le awesome.  Yes, there was still too much urban sprawl, but that was just a matter of world design and the fact that they expected like 300 players per shard when they were first building it.  The house construction itself is the best there is in any MMO, even today.

The achievement/Title system in LOTR is something I thought was cool. (Hoping WAR's tome of knowledge is something like it but more).

The Directed play/Questing from WoW, I don't care if other games did it or whatever. I came from EQ1 where my leveling as a ranger consisted of fear kiting Zelnaks in Dawnshroud peaks for 30 levels , and some grouping. So when I played WoW for the first time the way they  hid the grind was one of the things that initially clicked with me. Yes it was alot of Kill x Collect Y but it progressed you thru an area and opened up exploration and in some cases gave you tibits of lore (Difias etc..) and broke down your play into little sub-goals.

The AA Systems from EQ1, now this one may seem like a strange choice but I like that the more you play one character the 'better' that one character becomes. This fits in with my dislike of playing alts in these games, I tend to only focus on one character and develop that one best I can. I haven't since experienced something similar to EQ1's AA that felt the same.

Housing was fine until they made it totally secure. I could go out and place a new house any day of the week.

Here is my list:

1. Housing in UO before the lock changing patch.
2. Thieves in UO before they got nerfed.
3. Sandbox UO/EVE world.
4. Player Justice/Policing in UO.
5. Dyeing of items in UO.
6. Skill system from UO.
7. Ability to take a group of 3 guys, and kill a group of 15 guys in UO/AC.
8. Smaller guilds in UO. (I hate being forced into a huge organization full of people I don't know in order to accomplish anything.)
9. City building in Shadowbane.
10. The melee and ranged combat from AoC merged with spellcasting in AC1.

(These are not really in order.)

1. The unsubscribe button of UO.
2. The unsubscribe button of EQ1.
3. The unsubscribe button of Shadowbane.
4. The unsubscribe button of DAoC.
5. The unsubscribe button of AC1.
6. The unsubscribe button of LotRO.
7. The unsubscribe button of AC2.
8. The unsubscribe button of CoH.
9. The unsubscribe button of WoW.
10. The unsubscribe button of AoC.

This post brought to you by the non-functioning armor and attributes, the pointless guild cities and the unitemized world of Age of Conan.   :awesome_for_real:

Daoc RvR
SWG Resource Gathering
EVE markets & crafting
EVE skill advancement
CoH character design
CoH support character archetypes
CoH pve battle mechanics
CoH sidekicking
CoH, Daoc, or EQ2 LFG tool
Vanguard forum drama

1) AoC combat - every game i play from now on needs this or i wont play it

2) shadowbane char creation - i NEED another game were you have to alocate stats plus all the different runes you had to choose from, every single character was truly unique.  Fuck the current pick a race/class/gender/face system of every game since then.

3) WoW tournament realm - this saved the game for tons of people who were ready to bail for the first thing to come along, being able to make 3 max level chars of any race/class and have the same gear as everyone else for 20 bucks = win.  The fact that it was season 2/tier 5 before melee dmg got way out of hand is another plus

4) WoW customizable UI

5) WoW BC endgame - yes i liked it, shut it.

6) EQ zone design - nothing since then has been as lovingly crafted

7) AO housing - i dont actually know how it compares to other games since its the only game ive played with housing besides lotro, but i loved having my own place at level 1 it makes a lot more sense than being a world saving homeless bum until you are rich enough to afford a cottage like in lotro

8) lotro deed/accomplishment system - very addicting

9) shadowbane freedom in character development -  "gimp as a dagger dwarf" was an insult one month and a fotm the next, a friend played a dual wielding dagger throwing elven mage that relied on procs that WORKED incredibly well, the amount of customization and freedom to make your char exactly what you wanted is unmatched in any game so far, the fact that you could end up with really fucked up beyond redemption chars was mitigated by the extremely fast leveling so experimentation wasnt punished.

10) Does NWN count if we played in persistent realms? cause i really fucking love multiclassing.

1: The ability to pick and choose skills and professions with a point based system without having to create a new character. (Pre-NGE SWG)
2: The art and graphic design of the Final Fantasy universe.  (FFXI)
3: Loot pinatas. (Hellgate:London)
4: Five man dungeons that could be completed without the traditional holy trio of tank, damage dealer and healer (Pre-TBC WoW)
5: The ability to stealth in to a dungeon or quest area to complete a task without actually killing anything. (WoW and DDO)
6: Amazing travel powers that alter gameplay in and out of combat. (CoH and CoV)
7: New abilities that altered gameplay dramatically and came at a reasonable pace (The first twenty levels of CoH during a double experience weekend)
8: Real character customization (CoH) and the ability to colour armour / alter appearance (Guild Wars, SWG, UO)
9: Social dynamics combined with cutting edge AAA gameplay that elevate simple play to a new level (F13.net Forum - MMOG Discussion - numerous topics)
10: Being able to stop playing or get up to go to the bathroom without having four to thirty-nine people you have never met before hate you. (Any MMO that allows solo play as a viable method of advancement:  WoW after patch 2.4, CoH, CoV, Guild Wars, SWG, HG:L and F13)

Sidekick/Mentoring system - CoX/EQ2 - seriously there is no excuse not to have this. We like playing with our friends
UI - EQ2 - Completely customizable out of the box. No need to download/install addons
Job System - FFXI - Feel like messing around with an alt? start a new job
WoW - balance of instanced VS non-instanced content.
UO - No Levels. Please someone try this again.
Combat system - DDO - collision detection, click to swing combat, active blocking.
Guilds - EQ2 - guild exp (I'd rather level my guild than me) - guild banks, fully customizable permissions/ranks
Group resource gathering - Vanguard
Taunt/deaggro abiliies in EQ2 actually did something in PvP. Imagine that!
Monster play - LOTRO

Yah, I know. It's just interesting to see how recent so many of the references are.

Generally speaking if it's been done more than once the one that did it later did it better. The fact that there are older games on the lists should be an indictment of recent MMOs for not picking up on the good stuff and/or and making it even better.

It's it is worth remembering that the last successful MMOGs to launch (excluding AoC as it is so recent) were the EQ2/CoH/WoW generation, and even these were years ago. Not much is very recent in this genre.

And while mentioning MUDs like MUME is all very worthy, translating it across to what people would recognise as a modern MMOG is non-trivial. Espeicially for something like public quests, where the impact of the system varies wildly depending on the context and presentation of the quest.

The sleeper was a public quest. For obvious reasons you won't see that on anyone's list.

My 'net connection in 1996 consisted of 14.4 kbit modem, charged by the minute. Through the nose. While the interwebs extend beyond the soil of U.S, the infrastructure can take its sweet time there to develop.

I did see a few people play MUDs around that time perusing the university network, but frankly they never caught my interest. Watching combat numbers scroll by as some guy repeatedly whacked some generic foozles and very little else happen ... tbh i still can't help but sigh when i see the "combat log" in yet another new MMOs, it's like the devs are so firmly trapped in the text-based origins, it never occurs to them to just do away with it. Or with most of the text feedback that's pretty obsolete at this point, for that matter.

UO : Skill based instead of lvl/class based
UO : Housing
UO : The travel systems. Moongates, gate/recall and later on runebooks (made travelling quick easy, and its still felt like a world without wasting huge amounts of time getting anywhere)
DAOC : Siege and rvr (Large scale pvp)
DAOC : PvP ranks
DAOC/WOW : battlegrounds (Quick and fun pvp)
WOW : Nice stylised graphics even on low end computers
WOW : Auction house (hoping AoC just steals this as the trader is near useless, and the wow auction house + auctioneer is near perfect for selling/buying)
WOW : Addons/Customisable ui 
AOC : melee combat system

Text logs, like Dice rolls in P&P games are there for the min-maxers and to make sure things are working right. You can close the windows if you so choose.

I do close these windows. I just don't see the point in the first place, of getting million lines how "You loot 30 copper" when i *see* that happen on the screen and the amount of money my character has is updated to reflect that. Or how i "Gain agility buff" or whatever shit, when that buff appears in the visual list of buffs that affect my character at the moment. Or that i hit a kobold for 15 points of damage when that number also appears right above that kobold *and* their hp bar updates to boot. Or that i craft an useless_sword_01 when said sword appears in my inventory after the crafting process is done. Etc and so on. The game already lets me verify if things are working right, and that text that used to be necessary because there was no other way to convey that info before... is truly redundant now. It mostly just shows how the devs see their own game -- the same old excel sheet, now with GUI.

And the min-maxers? Frankly, fuck them and their number fetish. Do catering to their needs really make these games any more entertaining? I ask because i don't recall _lack_ of explicit damage/dps tooltips ever have impact on amount of fun derived from any other genre...

I am going to put forward what I like about Eve cause it's the only MMO I have ever played.

* Timebased skill advancement.
* PvP still gives me the handshakes.
* Fleet warps are so cool.
* Frigate club (a bunch of peepsutilizing noob skills to take down vets proving team spirit wins)
* Daily drama posts.

Every single game ever made since the advent of newsgroups ARPANET has had this.

I can echo that: I first connected myself to the Matrix Internet in January 1995; here in Italy, that was basically the early early paleolithic :P (talk of "Usenet", "Telnet" and similar stuff only started to appear in italian gaming and specialized magazines about two or max. three years before)

When I were young this were all fields.

Actually, acoustic couplers.  If someone walked across the room I'd get nonsense on the screen.  And Compuserve redefined paying through the nose to play a game.  I knew people that straight out, no shit, here's-the-bailiffs bankrupted themselves.  Prestel and Micronet, as well as BBs running some crude multiplayer stuff, were much better value.

I also joined the Internet on my 57.600 baud modem around 95-96, and I never forget downloading C++ (13.XMB) file for several hours, when I payed per minute. If you remember, when somebody picked up the phone, internet went poof, so at 92% my mom picked up the phone. Needless to say I was... disappointed  :grin:. At least I got it though and was the local guru at school for programming from there on. At 10-11 years old. What can I say, I got pong when I was 3 years old, it was only going one way from there  :awesome_for_real:

1200/75 crew represent.

Yes, that is 75 baud ("bps" in your fancy-pants lingo) upstream.

Bet you could get like 7kbps with that ? Nerf !

My first modem was a Radio Shack 300 baud manual direct connect--non-accoustic, but you dialed from a phone then flipped a switch on the modem when you heard the tone, then hung up the phone. I used it with a CoCo2.

There were a bunch of games on the Cyber at U-Mass, but I mostly used it for chatting in CONFER and occasionally trying!to!send!gateway.athena.mit!email that never really worked.

When I started on the internet we had to shout ones and zeros down the telephone manually.

And by telephone, I mean an empty baked bean tin and a piece of string.



Strange thing was, most webpages just said 'checksum error'.

(http://www.apox.no/bird.jpg)

lol.

I started on BBS's at 400bps. That was back when you cracked Apple //e programs in assembly code. And people bitched just as much then about it. :awesome_for_real:

There was no internet, no email, this was in the days when media started advertising "fax", the mouse was a relatively new invention, I was still impressed with my "80 column card" and I used a TV to play Ultima II in color.

Somebody I'm sure will fact check all this shit, say some nonsense about "400bps was only available in year XXXX". This all lumps together for me.

Yea. I gots yer old right here buddy :geezer:

Considering how many times players have pointed out how the devs that think they know how their game works are actually wrong through testing and running the numbers, it does make the games better, for everyone, including people that don't pay attention.  If devs think the game is working one way and it's actually working differently in practice, then they're going to keep balancing and making changes based on what they think is happening.  Or they'll have to spend a considerable amount of time and expense figuring out exactly where the problem is between what they think is going on and what they observe happening in practice.  Either way, the data the players with access to this information come up with is helpful.

And all those things you mentioned don't give exact data, can't be recorded in logs, and are hard to correlate outside of game.  If I want to know how much money the average orc pawn gives me, I need to kill a huge number of them, then average out the money obtained.  Getting that average becomes infinitely harder if you don't have a log entry saying 'you have slain an Orc Pawn' then a moment later the 'you loot 22 copper'.  All that data goes into the player guides and forum posts that say if you want to make money fast, farm these mobs or do this quest, cause it's the best use of your time, that the average guy uses to reduce the amount of time he has to spend grinding to get whatever it is he wants.

In the end there's very little good reason to obfuscate this data.  Maybe make it not appear by default, something you can only access if you specifically turn it on, but the claims that not having numbers and such available increases immersion are silly.  The people who don't care about the numbers won't care about them, and the people that do care will be frustrated by the lack of information presented to them, they won't magically forget that they're actually playing a computer game with calculations going on behind the graphics.

Yep.  I can say I got my first modem in 1983, but I dunno how fast that one was, and I'm not about to guess and get the picky bastard brigade on me  :uhrr:

I think, however, he's misremembering the speed unless Apple had their own proprietary modem protocol. My memories of the early days of BBS'ing was that there were 300 baud modems and the next upgrade was 1200baud. I think originally there were 75baud modems as well but if there were they had vanished by the time I got my first computer.

There were certainly 75 baud upstream ones, like the one I was remembering, but that was the upstream speed.  I think you're right that 300 was the earliest standard I can remember using, at any rate.  i can't remember whether that varied down/upstream.  i do remember 40-colum text pages filling up in lines oh God what am I doing I have become my father...  :ye_gods:

4) Scrolling combat text from WoW (or whever WoW ripped it off from).

Hmm, maybe it was 300 then. I did have a 1200, then a 14.4, then a 28.8 and 56k (X2 if I recall, with the other option being k56flex or something like that).

We're packing to move and I just found a TV older than probably everyone here  :grin: It's certainly older than the Internet at least.

OK, i'll concede it can help to fix the bugs when the game is broken PoS and when some people bother to play QA for the company they pay their money. In theory though, this shouldn't be necessary, should it? That part about the devs otherwise spending time and expense to verify the game behaviour, that should be the natural and expected course of things, instead.

Yes; which in a way is the point. The examples you give why one would _want_ to correlate the data outside of game, are all about stripping the game experience and turning everything into neat set of numbers for one and single purpose: to minimize one's time spend on the "suck": the grind, the farming, the shit people apparently don't enjoy doing.

And personally, i see this need for combat log you cite as good example just how broken these games are on the basic level. And i'd much rather see the devs focus on re-designing the gameplay in way that allows to do away with both these sucky parts *and* then the log -- so people don't need to play with the excel sheets  to figure out how to minimize the time they spend in game like it's some sort of chore and a second job, but so they rather instead you know, enjoy just playing the damn thing.

With the amount of visual feedback provided at the same time there's very little reason to expose the lot of it, either -- as long as they narrow down to "because i need to know what parts of your game are broken, and i need to figure out the best ways to play it the least".

Honest question now -- if these number crunching people get frustrated... so what. Do you consider these games are actually better off pandering to needs of people who aren't ever able to forget it's just small numbers running behind the pretty visuals?

And taking it from another angle... those latter people, do you think they take the same approach to other game genres? Say, when they play FPS that often come with as many guns as there's weapons available to end-level MMO character, but doesn't actually list the damage numbers for them. Or when they play a beat-em-up game, that doesn't show numbers for any of the multiple attacks available, just chunks of hp bar going away under hits. Or RTS that takes the same approach to the damage/firepower feedback ... when they play all these other games, do they get extremely frustrated because all they see really just the little numbers being added and substracted behind the visuals? Or do they still enjoy plain experience of shooting another player's character in the face, even though it's just pixels on screen and no matter if that gun they used deals 75 or maybe 77 points of damage..?

Because if the answer is "yes" to that last one, then it raises question what is it about MMOs that breaks this immersion other genres can provide.

Yes. Log parsing by thousands of players is a check against the assumptions of a few dozen developers. You need this because the latter group will never have as many cumulative man hours logged in actually playing as the former.

I don't need them. Most games I'm watching the HP bar against my own and the buffs. But why not have the logs for the parsers. It's about options. And while that is a small crowd, there's a lot of different small crowds of players as relevant to the overall game in their own way. The best games have diverse players.

That's bug tracking though, while i asked about entertainment. And no, i don't necessarily draw the equal sign between these two, given lot of stuff people cite as 'the most fun i ever had in mmo X' are actually results of imbalance, exploits, bugs or other abuse of broken mechanics.

In another way -- would adding the text log to FPS game make that FPS more fun? Or adding it to GTA? Or to Tekken? Mario? Harvest Moon? Need For Speed? MGS? If all these games can do well without it... why are the MMOs clinging to this crutch from the ancient times when the text feedback was simply the only source of feedback available? I just wonder if this apparent inability to part with the outdated roots isn't holding the genre back in a way... i.e. it's not about the presence of explicit logs per se, but rather if they aren't (one of) results of devs being stuck in the same old mindset of zones, mobs and 'you hit the foozle, the foozle hits you'. Where the basics are never questioned because 'it's been always done this way'.

Dunno; but maybe so the devs can't subconsciously rely on them as excuse why their games still can be shipped chock-full of bugs and filled with grindy suck, for the players to sort out on their own with the help of parsers..? And the diversity of playerbase is fine, but when part of your playerbase finds it more interesting to drag the text output of your game through excel sheet, so they can figure out the best ways to skip the most of it and how to spend the least time playing it... then what does it really say about your game? :uhrr:

I remember reading through combat logs of Quake II and Counter-Strike to see who's been killing me and with what.

Text logs should be in MMOs, but you should be perfectly free to turn them off. I don't see what having them for those people who prefer to get their info through this way to use them.

CoH/V hid the numbers (not combat text, but a lot of things) for a long time. What happened? The players reverse engineered the data to get at the numbers to work out how the powers functioned. So it's less about the game than the players who choose to use it in that way.

Good point.


No. Because your gear does not define your performance. There is a number of stats that ARE tracked for Clans, but MMOs are a different scope altogether.

You are your gear and stats in an MMO, and you're on a path of constant improvement. Over time, your improvement goes from being measured in double digits to single digits to decimals to infinitesimals. Log parsing becomes necessary for those folks who are seeking validation for their investments. Basically, ongoing research to answer "was it worth it". This isn't how everyone measures "fun". But I'd argue it's as fun for them as it is for others who receive salutes from guards in NPC settlements of EQ2 and LoTRO after performing certain grinds/actions. The effort by the devs is about the same. These games are all stats anyway, so why not show them? (and as to the guards, the emotes and stats were all there anyway, why not add a foozle for immersion?).

I'm having a hard time remembering a recent game that didn't allow you to turn off dmg notices, even to the point of not showing the window at all in some cases. Why do you so feel the need to take it away from everyone else rather than just turning if off for yourself?

I for one enjoy reading the combat text. I started online gaming in MUDs, so it's slightly nostalgic. Because of that background, I instinctually pay at least as much attention to the combat log as the "visual cues" that you think are all we should watch. I do dislike games without visible numbers honestly. I don't play FPS games; in racing games I like seeing a high MPH number (as opposed to just a needle or gague with no number); I like seeing the damage my units do in an RTS; I'm a number crunching munchkin in D&D; etc.

Am I broken? Maybe. But don't try to take away my fun when it doesn't get in the way of yours.

That should really be a fucking lesson to any developers out there, one of the reasons I'm having so much fun in AoC is because I feel so overpowered, even though I'm on par with quite a few other classes.

Sometimes you just want to fucking Brock Samson it up, not single pull until you're nearly dead and wait for your 3min cooldowns to refresh.

QFT. This is what made pre-ED CoH so fun. Now its more "balanced" but much less fun. Running in with my defender, hitting Fulcrum Shift then unleashing Psychic wail to drop an entire pack of mobs, bosses included, was awesome.

I very much agree: that's why, in my opinion, AoC and Tabula Rasa have the best combat systems out there (yeah, ok, beside the other flaws the latter has, even tho I'm enjoying it). You can take on multiple enemies and make a mess of them with lots of blasts and blood and fast pace going on. Pure fun :)

1. Full loot FFA PVP - UO
2. Skill Based Advancement - UO
3. Player Housing - UO
4. Massive Battles - Planetside
5. Interactive Combat - AoC
6. Music System - LOTRO
7. Outpost Battle (endgame PVP) - Neocron
8. Market - EvE
9. Time based advancement - EvE
10. System Security Levels - EvE


Honorable Mentions...

11. AoC Quest Refinement , WoW Quest implementation
12. City Building / Sieges (Shadowbane/AoC)
13. Well done PVE Endgame/Raiding - WoW
14. Neocron Implant System


The strange part is ...I found myself trying to come up with something to put WoW in the top ten systems. Just additional proof that they innovated very little, and polished everyone elses existing systems.

With all the talk of combat logs, I'll chip in and say that I hate it when a game doesn't give me numerical feedback as to what is going on. Big pet peave with AoC right now is the lack of numbers. Maybe it means I'm anal, but it really pisses me off that there is no way to know what is more effective - a dagger with + 0.6 fire damage, or a dagger with +1 dex, short of parsing a few thousand combat logs.

Give me WoW's detailed dps screens. Even if the game is about the story and questing for me, if a game has loot, I want some damn way of knowing which piece of loot is actually better.

Have you been in an AoC siege yet?  Just curious.  And for WoW, they have the best auction house ever.  I love their auction house.  I think I might have played Auction House more than any other bit of the game.


(Edit: words confuse me)

Ah yes, thanks...that one deserves mention absolutely.

The AoC thing was for city building , the sieges was more Shadowbane but I like the idea of it :)

I don't have 10 that I can think of, but my all time number one feature from any MMO was the UO skill system.  It meant that even though I played for two years off and on from launch and never had a 7X GM anything I could still hang out with my friends and go do stuff with them without having to worry about keeping up on the level treadmill.

I like sieges, too.  I even tried playing Lineage 2 but the grind to get to the sieges was too intense.  I played Lineage 1 for ages because of the sieges, and finally left because I deleveled at level 50 and just couldn't do it again.  It would have taken months!  (Well, I had a thing about the Ant Caves and B-teles, too)  Sieges are so much more satisfying than raids.

1. AC1's classless skill system, anyone can be anything they want if they've got the points to buy the skill.
2. Missile and magic tracking in AC1, dodging spells and arrows was  :heart:
3. AC1's Spell experimentation learning system (without splitpea)
4. Genocide's regulator/dev system, once you hit max level you got a dev character and could make content which went before the real devs for review and possible entry to the game.  (MUDs are MMOs, rite?  :grin:)
5. SWG's crafting quality disparity, people going to certain crafters because they knew that person made the best stuff.
6. AoC's voiceovers & destiny quest (1-20)
7. AoC's active combat system, Vanguard was a step in the right direction with combos and reactions, but this just blows it out of the water.
8. Eve's offline training, needs to have a bonus for actually playing the game though, use-based skill leveling would be my choice.
9. Suicide ganking for lulz and loots in Eve
10. World-changing quests and monthly events in AC1.

Seriously, what the fuck Turbine?  I know one of you pricks is reading this shit, hopefully furiously scribbling notes, but what the fuck happened to you guys?
AC3, it's all I want in life, just reskin AC1 with LOTRO graphics, call it AC3 and charge me $50, I promise right now I'll buy 3 copies.

Things I like:
-Games where effort is made to keep the gameworld consistent, like a world, like McQuaid always was on about.  Fuck instancing unless you've created a convincing reason for what is going on.
-Games that focus their attention on facilitating player competition, through combat or other means.  The less I'm supposed to be amused by fighting "AI" the better.
-Games that allow for multiple playstyles.  Strictly-combat, non-combat, the more variety in the types of gameplay and the way to "grow" your character(s) the better.
-Games that work at launch
-Games that don't have target + hotkey combat
-Games where the players create the gameworld's story, instead of their being no meaningful story
-Games with one server

I'm out of easy ideas.

But why would you play MUME voluntarily?

Edit:
And in that vain, you can't really mention EQ without mentioning SojournMUD first.  Then whatever muds prior to that.

How about "keying" to access areas.  Ho-Ho!  Not EQ!  Try mutha fuckin Tele-Arena and my green rune.  It's all relative though.

The calculations and numbers are all there, it probably takes less time to add a combat log than it does to do any one of a dozen other things that needs to be done to make a game.  Minimal effort, makes a segment of the customer base happy, AND that segment of the customer base both assists in testing and indirectly makes other segments of the customer base happy by providing complex information and guides?  I cannot think of a single downside to this, unless it's 'covering up the fact that we ever make mistakes'.

Depends on the game and how relevant that information is to victory, defeat, or advancement.  Like Darniaq said, these games are more about equipment and stats than other things.  A considerable part of player input is designing their character with the right abilities, equipment, sequence of combat, and so on to maximize effectiveness.  This is part of the skill of MMO's.  Furthermore, the differences between one piece of equipment and another are often difficult to gauge.

I have heard players of fighting games talking about how many pixels of damage Ryu's hadoken does, for example.  If the numbers aren't there, and the information is relevant, people look for exact measurements of some kind to determine relevant information.  Mario, on the other hand, has no numbers of that nature.  You jump on a goomba and it dies.  Some enemies take several attacks, but it's always the same number of attacks.  It's not a bag of hit points and each of your attacks does a different number of hit points of damage, not to mention their resistances and defenses can alter that, with different situations causing even further differences in the effectiveness of each attack.  FPS's often don't have this (although some do) in that they usually have a number of different weapons, each with a different purpose.  It's things other than the sheer amount of damage a weapon does that define them.  You can't get a headshot with a lightning gun in Unreal Tournament when the enemy's around a corner, but you can bounce flak off a wall or hit them with a shock combo, and which one of those you do doesn't typically depend on which does more damage, but other circumstances.  Even so I've seen combat logs from FPS's and so on.  You think people don't analyze this in an RTS, for example?


If there is something to analyze, it will be analyzed.  Making it harder to do so is not a good thing.

1. Freedom to choose our own niche, even things the devs didn't imagine; SWG, UO
2. The Lord of the Flies free for all in ATITD, except we couldn't actually beat each other up but find other ways to cause trouble...then get ourselves out of it
3. Non-zoning world of AC1
4. Loot of AC1
5. The mythos behind EQ1's world; the stuff pertaining to the gameplay
6. Unlimited, instant character transfers across servers; Tabula Rasa
7. Flying a transport in Planetside
8. Seeing Norrath looming in the skies of Luclin
9. Consolation prizes in WOW's PvP. Even if you suck, you still feel awesome doing it.
10. WoW's auction house

 :ye_gods:

I was in the beta forever and this is one of the major things that made me not buy a retail box. HATE HATE HATE this mechanic.


I hadn't considered it before this, but that is really a hell of a cool system. The ability to revisit any place you mark a rune almost instantly is really damned cool.

1) Twitch Combat in a MMO environment - Jumpgate

2) Meaningful Stealther vs Stealther (scout vs scout) battles - Shadowbane.  Scouting for sieges was a big deal in SB.  The experience of spending 4 hours trying to outwit the other scout in order to provide information so your side can win a siege.  Nuff said.

3) WoW's macro system.

4) Flying Epic Mounts in Wow for the endgame.  I've seen it all, now let me just get there fast.  What a great idea.

Vendetta Online is similar and is actually quite fun.

Oy!  No derails!  The "what MMO should I play" thread is over there.

1.  COH/V Character creation - They could seriously just package a character creation "game" and sell it for ten bucks.  It was a shame you had to be subbed to experience its brilliance.

2.  SWG's original class system - bugs and imbalance aside, I loved the variety.  At one point before the NGE hit, I actually found a viable prof combination that was so rare that I had never heard of anyone else using it (though surely someone else must have been).

3.  Guild Wars lack of monthly fee - was it even an MMO?  I don't know, but I liked the fact that I didn't feel like I had to play simply to justify 15 bucks a month.  Easy to get into, and out of again.

4.  WoW quest, um, progression (?) - You basically always knew what to do and where to go.  I'm not entirely sure this is a good feature, but at least it avoided the frustration of some other games.

5.  AoC combat - this is the kind of collision detection we like.  If two mobs happen to be in the way of my overhead swing, they both get hit.  Where I am standing and which direction I am swinging actually matters a lot. 

6.  Various MMOs (AoC being the most recent example with some classes, SWG being the most extreme example) - hey Devs?  I like my toon to be a complete wrecking machine.  Let me tear through 3 or 4 mobs of the same level, all the time.  Shit, let me take on 10 of them.  MMO players don't want to be like the foozles.  Make us feel powerful relative to the environment, at least against the average mob.

7.  Here's a real WoW feature I liked - faction mattered immensely.  Hell, the PvE game and questing path (aside from the overlaps) was unique.  You couldn't go into some areas or cities without being auto aggroing every NPC and PC.  You couldn't even communicate with the other side.  Has any other game done that to this degree?  That is not a rhetorical question, I actually do not even know.

8.  M-Rating in AoC.  I like every part of it.  The innuendos.  The blood and gore.  The swearing NPCs.  The hawt female NPCs, and yes, their boobies.  This is the only way a game based on the Conan IP makes any sense to me.  I don't know if this makes it niche-ish, but if so it was one that needed filling.

Almost made it to 10.

(Note: in no particular order, and I haven't played EVE, EQ or UO):

• CoX character customization - both cosmetically and in terms of powers
• CoX travel powers
• A Tale in the Desert's crafting system
• WoW's UI customization
• WoW's auction system
• DAOC's pvp/rvr system
• DAOC or WoW bgs
• LoTRO monster play
• WAR tome of knowledge
• AoC combat

Edited:  I left one out - I know that's 10 above, so this makes 11, but I can't decide which to delete for this:

• CoX's sidekick/exemplar system

I'm waiting for ATITD 4.  I wish they'd hurry.  I always play for a month or so when a new one comes out.  Bricks and Flax and learning gymnastics never gets old... well, at least for a month or so.

I ended up paying for ATITD3 for a year after I thought I'd quit.  I am going to skip 4, I think, unless they put in camel racing or paintball fights.

(Sure that's what I say now.  Come launch I'm sure I'll play at least for the first month.)

I don't know why they don't add paintball fights.  It's a natural! 

I also paid for ages after I quit and didn't catch it, and then two more months after I quit the second time.  He sent me two free t-shirts, though.  They're still in a box in the junk room, I think.

If you two play, let me know.  I always enjoy the first few months of a telling.

I got a shirt, too - it's one of my favorite tshirts, in fact.  Really nice logo, sand colored?

You should make up a contest and then award the tshirts as prizes (if you're not going to keep them)!

Oh sure, you'll have a brick factory before I even get my shack built.  I know you!

I'll sign up, play a few days, not log in for weeks, then play a few days.  I'm starting to play like Signe for some reason.  Flitting from game to game and not really attached to any of them.

Yes, that's the shirt.  They were too big for Righ and no one else I know here has any idea what it is, so off to the junk room.  They are very nice quality, too.  I just don't wear t-shirts that say stuff on them, for some reason.  I'll try to find them.  You don't know how deep and mysterious my junk room is.  I'm even afraid to wander too far in.  There might be snakes.

I'll probably give 4 ago as soon as it starts up.  I've had no resolution to my AoC crashing problem but, well, like Xanthippe said, I'm not attached.  I USED to get attatched, but not any more.  I think Nebu might be more like us than not, actually.  I play HG:L every now and then, though.

We'll have to find Somebob and Slyfeind.

I never got ATITD.  It's a crafting/socializing game in a desert right?

Monotony in the Desert. It's only fun playing with Nebu because he knows what he's doing. I really thought I'd love it because it's just crafting and building things, but you move so fucking slowly and shit takes forever. If they fixed that part of it - the slow as balls part - it might be worth looking into.

You'd think building some sort of teleport infrastructure is exactly the sort of community project that ATITD would be all over.

Espeicially if everytime some used it the teleport booths would randomly pk some nearby flax.

This is why I can only play for a month or so.  I have never been able to do all the learning, either, because I get tired of running for so long.  If it wasn't for being able to learn things from other players, I wouldn't last a week.

Sly sits there and breeds beetles all day. I like me crafting games, but god damn. Breeding beetles. You can't even breed giant warrior beetles that can attack other players.  :uhrr:

(http://johnlepinski.com/images/320/320_Beetle.jpg)

Why are people talking about ATITD? It's obviously not a MMO, because combat is what MMOs are about.

I can fight with people anywhere. 

Edit: I think I misunderstood signe!

I don't want to dig ditches, online or offline.

I think ATitD is the ultimate in PvP.  You don't have to kill another player in combat to defeat them.  Hell, if you're a demi-pharoah, you can just banish them. 

In theory, the game is very deep and interesting.  In reality, it's little more than an exercise in spreadsheet/wiki wankery. 

1. UO's criminal system for pvp which allowed the general public to police itself. You want to be a thief or a murderer? Go for it. Negative actions against another player flag you as a criminal and then anyone can attack you freely for a time. Murder enough people and you go perma-red. Guards attack you on sight in every major town and everyone in game can attack you with no criminal penalty. It was great. Life as a red was exciting.

2. UO & Eve's sandbox world. Give me MORE ways to interact with other players not less. Players are what make the game an MMO not quests.

3. DAOC's RVR combat system. Multiple factions duking it out is way more fun than just two. The Keep sieging with a benefit to your entire realm for your success was a great way to get people out there. Skills gained through pvp was also fun.

4. WoW's AH and Mail system. Finally I can get stuff quickly and pass gear between my alts without worrying about being robbed by random guy who is helping me move my stuff around.

5. UO housing. How else was I going to make $1000 from selling a castle on ebay? Seriously.

6. COH character creation. Nothing else like it anywhere. Play till you get your travel powers (end game, you won!) then make another toon.

7. UO's inventory/gold system. Nothing better than loading up a bunch of pack horses with all the gold you need to buy a keep and then begging your guild to escort you to town to buy the deed. Checks ruined all that fun! conversely running into someone else doing the same thing was an instant payday!  :drill:

8. UO's non-gear dependency. Yes gear was nice and important but if you got completely murdered and robbed it didn't take all that much to get back on your feet. Plus, even without armor you could defend yourself. Naked perma-red mages!

9. EvE's offline skilling and time card purchase with in game money. I haven't actively played EvE in months but I'm still progressing towards being a dread pilot and its not costing me any real money to do so. I wonder though if I'll ever play actively again. Seems like I enjoy the idea of progressing more than actually playing the game.

10. DAOC's PvP server. Getting XP for killing players!!! I was in hog heaven. I found myself leveling up far faster than I wanted. I kept having to find new crafters for gear because you only got coin off of people.



I'm sure EQ and SWG could have made my list but I only ever tried them for a month. I started too late in the game for those titles and didn't feel like battling the learning curve.

I have to disagree with the idea that factions in WoW are significant.  They're pretty much just another bar to grind up to get another set of rewards.  There are almost no cases of a place where things are hostile to you and you can actually work your faction up and make them friendly (there's the Timbermaw, and...pretty sure that's it).  There's places where things are unfriendly, or won't deal with you, but the Timbermaw is the only one I can think of where you can go from kill on sight to friendly.  Oh, wait....Bloodsail Pirates faction.  Yeah, them too.  And you get...a hat.  And lose access to like 6 cities of considerable importance.  Also you can't change your allegiance in any way, as a human can't ever become KOS in Stormwind or friendly in any city they start out KOS in.  To an Alliance player, a Horde city is no different than any other monster spawn area, except there's no rewards to be had by killing there.

The only game I've personally played that had a robust faction system was EQ, where a character could murder their own city people and become hated by their hometown, at the same time becoming liked by their traditional racial enemies, and any variety of combinations.  Some people went to great effort to have characters that could go into many cities, by building up their faction.  There were some limits, and some cities and factions simply had no way to build them up, or there was an upper limit on how far you could get if you were a certain race - I don't think, for example, that a Dark Elf could ever build up enough faction to walk around in Felwithe (High Elf city).  But they could, in Kelethin (Wood Elf city).  Likewise, my Bard was max faction with every faction in Neriak (Dark Elf city) that could be built up.  There were certain areas she had to avoid, like the Necromancer guild, but for the most part, she could walk around Neriak if she wanted to.  Or there was Froglok faction, which allowed one to walk around the dungeon of Upper Guk unmolested, since it was inhabited by Frogloks.  Factions of normally 'enemy' creatures were common, allowing certain individuals to walk around in what most of the population viewed as monster dungeons.  Some of them even had shops and other functionality, such as Runnyeye Citadel - with sufficient Runnyeye Goblin faction, there was a banker and a shop one could use in that zone.

Factions were brought to their best point in the Velious Age, where one had to make a choice between the Giants, or the Dragons and Dwarves, which were enemies of the Giants, and there were numerous other interesting factions of less global significance.  It never got as far as it should have, and Luclin tried to do even more, but the company reorganization or whatever they had there that screwed up half that expansion pretty much broke the excellent plans they seemed to have for Luclin factions.  Even so, Luclin still showed a robust and interconnected faction system between Shar Vahl, the Shadweavers, the Grimlings, the Vampyr, and the two Combine factions of Katta Castellum and Sanctus Seru.  It just had gaping holes and broken connections where things never got implemented as originally planned, since whole swaths of that expansion were redesigned.

Factions in the Planar Age and beyond functioned considerably less this way.  In some expansions, faction was rendered almost completely irrelevant - in the Planar Age, for example.  I'm trying to recall much of anything where factions were relevant in PoP, and not thinking of any examples.  Although there were still the occasional interesting faction which you could maintain.  Most notably the faction which you lose by killing the auto-KOS inhabitants of the Halls of Honor.  If you get by without ever killing anything there, and enter the Temple of Marr, the entire zone is friendly.  But there's no way to ever repair that faction, and killing a single creature in the Halls of Honor is enough to destroy it forever.  Beyond that, there's no real purpose in maintaining the faction, as there's absolutely nothing of use IN the Temple of Marr.  Its only purpose is a raid zone, and the only reason to maintain the faction is to have a character that can help raids recover by being able to walk around there with impunity.

I believe the faction system of early EQ is one of the best and sadly, least replicated systems in the MMOG world, and even EQ has mostly phased out the excellent use of factions they had in the early days, making factions have little to no real purpose anymore.  There are many things on my favorites list from EQ, but if any of them are truly appropriate in almost any game, and yet have rarely or never been seen beyond EQ, it's the faction system.  I believe that Anarchy Online may have had a similar faction system, but I don't know personally as my experience with that game was very limited.

Now that's a long post on EQ factions.

WoW's Horde/Allicance faction breakdown is one of the stupidest things in the game. It serves single player only, as evidenced by the fact that most of the stuff becomes shared at some point anyway (Argent Dawn, Shatt, so on). It just means that the server community is cut in half and that they have to double up on content; content which will only ever be seen by 50% of the players (higher due to players who have both horde and alliance characters, but not a lot higher I'd guess: I personaly haven't hit 70 on any Alliance character).

Apart from that breakdown WoW just uses Factions (with a couple of exceptions) as grinds.

I never played EQ, but it sounds like its faction system would have made it to my top 10 features if I did.

If we're going to go back into mud (for Ralph) features for this I'd also include:

Player Run Cities/Guilds - Achaea: Rudimentary and no doubt done better elsewhere, but this was the best example in my personal experience. Every city in the game was run by players, with the ruling council/whatever setting guard behaviours, market prices, city enemies, and a number of other things. Guilds, by which I mean class guilds, were also player run and I had great fun being a officertype in one of the guilds and writing up the membership rules with others in the leadership, controling distribution of poisions (which was a guild monopoly) in the economy, and having to hunt down the guildmembers who were stealing poisions from us.

Multiclassing - Medievia: Multiclassing in Medievia was a case of level to 31 and then reroll as another class, gaining you old class skills as you reach the level you got them as in your new one. Only once you have multiclassed through all 4 classes did you reach the end of the leveling process. I'm not a huge fan of leveling, but this is the best way I've experienced it. The good things about this is that you reuse content 4 times, you become more powerful with each class, but the difference between a level 30 single classes and a level 24 (117 overall) quadclasser is not so clearcut. And you could reroll your final class at any time in order to redefine your character a bit.

Notoriety got metagamed to hell and back and was never a sucessful way for players to police themselves. The whole concept of Noto-PKs showed that.

"You hit Nina Williams with a hopkick, jab, jab, top spinner. She takes 50 damage!"

You are exactly right, the on-screen logs exist because of a mindset. Yes, players can parse them, but they could easily just be written to disk if they are simply debug/info tools and not really part of the game.

MMO devs are still making spreadsheets with graphics. And logs are a safety net - if you have shitty icons and shitty spell effect and incompehensible animations you can always think "well hey, if they want to know exactly what happened they can always read the log!"

When is the game going to come that does away with all that crap on the screen (toolbar icons, N chat boxes, enemy/group member boxes with damage bars, compasses, mini-maps, etc etc), or why do they even bother with a 3d display?

Don't even get me started on / commands.

How about a control system where you control your character, and only see the 3d environment?  Anything done in game should be by moving your characters hands, or speaking. 

And I'm not talking about doing X-O-Up-Down-Left-Right to activate a 'combo', but special attacks are the result of direct use of your control of your character's positions and motions.

Again, I'm not saying every game should try this ... but how about 1?

Are you talking about the whole Glorious vs Dread Lord/Lady thing? Because that has very little to do with what I was talking about. Karma was just a metagame. But the system of flagging based on criminal actions was very well done.

You can safely bet that within a week or so someone would have written an app (or an add-on, if your interface supports them) that sits discretely on-screen and lets you view a parsed version of the log in real-time, so people can see what is working.

I may have used the wrong word...I was thinking of Alliance vs. Horde "factions", not all the piddly sub-factions.

Eve - movement and combat tightly integrated. always be moving during combat.
Eve - skill system and offline advancement (only reason I keep playing)
Eve - combat dice rolls dependent on combat circumstances (range, transversal velocity) in addition to equipment and avatar power
FFXI/SB - melee powers. i don't like the timers, though. i think probably there are better examples of this that I haven't played. D&D 4ed seems to be a great version of what I like, so probably WoW is too. I just haven't played WoW. It sounds like AoC is on the right track here, but I haven't played that either.
FFXI - itemization, different nifty weapons that do unique things. Really I like Diablo. Really really I like rogue-likes like Angband or Tales of Middle Earth. 15 different damage types. YES.
Eve - power curve between new players and maxed out players. They have a pretty good balance between new players being able to affect old players and old players being able to develop niche profiles.
UO - chat on your head, not in a channel. The 21st century version would be voice chat with a volume falloff. yes it was irritating, but it was also more world-defining.
Eve- chat channels. Give me full IRC, thanks.
Eve - single shard.
Eve- separation of combat movement (ship velocity) and combat escape (warp drive, jumpgates). I'd like to see even more separation here in that fast characters shouldn't always be able to escape a bad combat easiest.
Eve - factional warfare. This is the best expression of an idea I had a long time ago, inspired by WoTMUD, that a MMOG should have world PvP organized along character racial lines. It remains to be seen if I'll be able to raid Jita, but I'd like to.

It was interesting when people wanted to build a society, because there were conflicts and shit storms and witch hunts all the time. Now everybody just wants to build things, and that means cooperation, and that's not a fun game without NPCs to bash.

I'm talking about the whole shebang. Flagging grey was metagamed too. You could be trying to pickpocket your own housekey from someone who PKed you earlier. (for a hypothetical) And get ganked by some dude walking by who didn't know why you were doing that. Or use that as an excuse.

As a system for tracking intention, it sucked ass. Better to just toss it aside (I did) and kill whomever you fancy, and then macro off the notoriety loss.

I prefered Darktide's system. To survive, you had to belong to a guild. Guilds quickly developed a reputation. If you did something that didn't fit in with your guild's rep, someone would tell your guild leader about it. Either you stopped doing those things, or dropped out of your guild and went to join Blood. 98% of the player base new the name and reputation of 90% of the guilds. You had to.

It was the ultimate in player run justice, because there really were no rules to govern it.

Do I think it could appear sucessfully in a game again? Probably not.

It exists in Eve.  Obviously, tiny unimportant corps and alliances will get away with stuff on the fringes, but basically people know what to expect when dealing with given (major) alliances, whether that be goons, RA, CVA or whoever.  That covers not just their attitudes to PvP, and whther they'll PK anyone they come across in lowsec or 0.0, but also the notable griefers, scammers or cheats.

Alright guys, all feedback up to here has been gathered and noted. This was also posted on other forums and it was a survey for my company on which features MMO players favorized and how we can use that in our future game design and evolve them further or use them as inspirational guidelines. Thanks a lot for your time, you may now continue the discussion :-)

That's not a word.

On a separate note: release a summary report of the most favoured systems within MMOs. And link those other threads so we can compare comments.

Paraphrased from this post (http://www.mahoganyfinish.org/?p=41) on Mahogany Finish.

EVE -- Single-Server Structure

EVE -- Free for All PvP (no hard factions except player-created ones); see Kings of the Hill (http://www.mahoganyfinish.org/?p=4) and Because It’s Not Over Until I Say It’s Over (http://www.mahoganyfinish.org/?p=5).

EVE and UO -- Player-Driven Economy; Absolutely essential. The more precious resources are available outside the reach of the law’s long arm, but to prevent radical inflation in the newbie market (as seen in World of Warcraft and elsewhere), lower-tier resources remain a necessity in “end game” crafting. All but perhaps a few items awarded for participation in one-time-only events can be crafted by players. Newbie quests may award final products, but most equipment is left behind upon dying. Most quests simply award money. There are no NPC vendors.

EVE, UO, Shadowbane, others -- severe death penalty in some form.

EVE, UO -- Shallow character advancement; i.e. skill system. New players can contribute to most aspects of gameplay early on, while advanced players can specialize. Nobody is so advanced that they become immune to lowbie attacks, or so advanced that basic items become useless.

Tale in the Desert -- crafting system.

WAR -- Tome of Knowledge (of course).

WoW -- tutorial. Pretty much sums up the entire game; ridiculously accessible, simple, basically fun. I prefer my games with a LOT more depth, but WoW nailed the tutorial. I thought Tortage was too long, and the heavy private instancing meant that newbies were kind of shocked when they set foot on the mainland (people can kill me now?!?).

EVE -- going to borrow from Dwindlehop

Vanguard -- massive NON-INSTANCED dungeons. The dungeons in Vanguard absolutely blew my mind. The level of detail, the size, the sheer spectacle, and none of them were instanced. Groups shared the dungeons but could trigger bosses keyed to them on distinct advancement paths. I could go on and on about even some of the lowbie dungeons.

Runner-ups
-----------------------------

Vanguard -- unique classes (bards compose music, necromancers assemble their golems from dead body parts, etc.); I'm not in favor of a class-based system, I just thought Vanguard's classes were extremely well-implemented when I played recently.

EVE -- interface. I love how much information you can get if you know your way around it. The obvious trouble is that the deluge of options and information is overwhelming even to players who have been in the game for months.

WoW -- interface. Perfect for a game in which you don't need a ton of information to play well, with easy modification for those who want more.

EVE, WoW -- built-in voice chat. EVE's is somewhat better than WoW's, in my experience, but both are simple enough and you can understand people at the other end.

EQ2 -- zone art and layout.

That's it, I think. All you people who put meaningful, world-changing PvP and WoW's battlegrounds in the same list should be ashamed of yourselves.

I find your ideas interesting, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Certainly. (http://www.mahoganyfinish.org/?feed=rss2)  :grin:

I love dungeon crawling, I was sad when EQ2 went away from this.  I assume the issues with vanguard make this moot.

I thought EQ2's zone art was atrocious.

I completely disagree. Just had to put that out there.  :grin:

Qey/Ant/TP/Nek/CL/FP vs everything else in EQ2 is a big difference.

I loved Freeport.

I hated the Freeport road layout with a passion. So... fucking... long... to... walk... to.... a.... spot.... ten.... feet... away..

But the art was fine.


Also, the EQ2 animation was cool, and most of the mob models were ok, it's only the character art that sucks donkey balls (yes, character art is kind of important)

Someone dissuade me from getting Vanguard when I get my new PC. This is making me want.

http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=562

Why would we do that?

You'll play - it'll damage a tiny piece of your soul - then you'll come back and post about how VG is complete shit - and we'll all post something along the lines of....


From our point of view, it's a winning situation.

Good one, hmm... I reserve the right to alter (and finish) this later as memory serves.

No particular order

1) EQ2's guild rewards and general guild levelling system
2) WoW's rested XP system
3) TR's cloning system
4) to be continued

more than 10...

UO: recall and gate runes for traveling. I miss it.
UO - skill training through gameplay. Going to a stationary trainer all the time is getting old.
UO - resources for player crafting and various consumables found in the world. Wood from trees, reagents off the ground, wool from sheep
WoW - the sounds and music of the world meshed with the game.
EVE - real time skill training. Ample time for other grindy behavior in EVE.
UO - housing before and after Age of Shadows. AoS added great customization to housing. You could build it from the foundation up.
UO, SWG, DAOC - running a vendor, the more customizable, the better.
WoW - questing with the ambiguity taken out
DAoC - usefulness of player crafting before trials of atlantis
DAoC - the accruing of realm points through rvr that open up realm abilities that stay with your character, not resetting after an expansion
SWG - extensive player emotes, opening up roleplay possibilities
DaoC - Darkness Falls
WOW - spell casting not being completely interrupted if taking melee damage
DAOC - being able to jump off public transportation