f13.net

This post has been a while in the making.  The question is simple:  What features/systems does your favorite MMO have that are present only in that game, that you wish the industry would make more widespread?  I'm curious more about specific, self-contained concepts, as oppposed to the general "feeling" of a game such as, say, pre-Trammel UO, that we've already discussed to death.

My shortlist for Asheron's Call:

1.  Patron/Vassal allegiance system. Giving a powerful player an incentive to take you under his wing and be your mentor is a powerful social too, and IMHO it puts the standard "guild of equals + officers" setup to shame.

2.  Use of prefabricated parts in dungeon construction.  By snapping together pieces like lego bricks, AC now has somewhere on the order of 1,000 dungeons - and you can still make really interesting designs.

3.  Massive amounts of ingame lore.  Being able to walk into one of the game's city libraries and buy a 20-page book fleshing out the world's history is a really cool feeling.  Readable books (of lore and whatever else) take time, but they provide a unique immersive hook.

3b.  The ability to write your own ingame work.  When I joined my first allegiance in Asheron's Call six years ago, my monarch let me borrow a book in which she had written the allegiance's entire history.  Sure, you can do stuff like that on a website, but the option to do so ingame is nonetheless impressive.

4.  The ability to physically dodge magical and missile projectiles.  If someone shoots at you, and you run out of the attack's path, and the outcome is still determined by a dice roll, it's somewhat demoralizing; without that level of control, it's very hard to make a game where a character can be more than the sum of his spreadhseet.

5.  A graphics and gameplay engine that permits one player to take on massive odds at once.  Being surrounded by 20 creatures and winning the battle is cool; being able to do so without your FPS grinding to a halt is even better.

I'm sure more will come to me later.  I'm interested in hearing what you guys find unique in your favorite MMOs.

Not to disparrage, because the general idea of this thread is ok. But most/all of those features are old hat.

Most of that list is...eh, I don't like it.

1. - Um, doesn't CoX have this kind of setup? Other games as well?

2 - Ok, this is a decent feature to try, but as I don't play AC, I can't say how the dungeons play.

3 - Practically worthless. Doesn't make a game better. If I want to read fantasy stuff, I'll pick up a book. Also, it's been done before.

3b - See above.

4 - Ok, this is a nice feature.

5 - This is just as much a product of mechanics and client than it is your PCs preformance.

No, it doesn't.  CoH sidekicking is a temporary arrangement suited for a single play-session; it's not an ongoing arrangement.


On this, we disagree - I think this is an essential part of making a world feel like a world, rather than just a playground, a-la WoW.  Being able to spend a day tracking down lore instead of going after loot or XP gives the player some additional freedom of action, rather than making him railroaded into a specific playstyle/advancement path.

Just curious: Which other games do this?

IMHO, 3b (player-writeable books) is one of the best 'sandbox' features ever created.


FWIW, though, I'm interested in hearing what unique features you guys see in your favorite MMOs that nobody else has done - what sets them apart to you?

What's to stop anyone from activating the function whenever they play? I don't see the difference.

We definately disagree, because when I log into a game, I want to play a fun Game, "virtual world" be damned. I don't care if you have (insert favorite fantasy/sci-fi author) writing the lore, if the game itself is not fun, then the lore was just a waste of time. It can make a good game better, but it can't make a bad game good.

And what other games do your lore thing? Well, a certain Mud I've always liked (but which shall not be named, cause Schild hates me going into it) does the whole "lore thing" infinitely better than any MMO I've ever seen. Arguably, EQ had decent lore, as does WoW. Besides, what is "lore" exactly?

Also, things like books have been done in the same Mud I would mention, and UO (for starters).

The two are completely different systems.  In Asheron's Call, a newer player swears fealty to a more experienced player, and becomes part of his allegiance (guild).  As the newer player gains experience, a % of the experience he gains goes to the high level player as bonus XP (it's not taken away from the low level player).

As a result, more experienced players have an incentive to take new players - even total strangers - under their wing, introduce them to the game, help them out, things like that, and new players naturally find themselves recruited into a clan with more experienced players.  The XP that the vassal passes up to his patron adds up significantly over time - part of the equation for determining how much XP is passed up is how long you've been sworn in RL time, placing a premium on long-lasting patron/vassal relationships.

CoH sidekicking, by contrast, allows a lowbie to fight at a higher level temporarily.

The two systems have almost nothing in common.


We agree on that last sentence; but I have a hard time finding a MMO that's really "great", rather than just "good", without it.  I'm huge on the sandbox.


From what I remember of each, lore in each game was just NPCs talking to you.

What is "lore"?  Well, to give you an example; in many of AC's thousand or so dungeon crawls, you might find an optional puzzle or trap or out-of-the-way path that leads you to a less discovered part of the dungeon.  Going down that path, you might find a lore object; an old book or parchment or something like that.  It'll usually be in a language you don't speak; find a translator who speaks the appropriate language, and you'll be handed back a translated book.

It makes sense in AC because it's in the midst of an ongoing, monthly-updated storyline.  I might find a book one month that translates into a note from a few thousand years ago about some big nasty force trapped in an underground prison, and then a few months later we might have what appears to be a simple dungeon, but thanks to my having read that lore book and putting 2 and 2 together, I know it's actually a mechanism to release the big bad guy.  And then, assuming you're playing in a PvP world, by persuasion or force I could try and convince you and the other players not to unleash the big bad guy from his prison.

In Asheron's Call, some quests might have an ancient undead guardian that will kill you unless you could answer questions proving you knew the lore of his thousands-of-years-old race - lore you might have picked up in bits and pieces all over the place, doing quests and coming upon old books.


UO had writeable books?

I thought it did. I know I played on emulated, altered shards that did at least. I assumed that UO itself made the feature.

And on the lore thing, both games had books and things as well.

But anyway, you're looking for something else. I just want a fun game with good, solid, balenced mechanics. Maybe I used to care about the less tangible stuff in the past. I remember exploring EQ for exploration sake. I've already tried sanbox stuff. Now I just want fun games.

What you consider tangential to the fun, I consider to be the fun itself.  Fair enough.

I want to hear your list, though. ;p

My list? I don't have a list.

Why? Because I don't see anyone doing anything "unique" at the moment...or at least, unique and good.

Right now I'm playing Eve Online, (name of MUD I've played on and off for about 10 years), and little bit of Baldur's Gate, War Rock, and Age of Empire III.

None of these games do anything that's really unique...but the things that they do do, they do well. That is what I think is key. I don't need someone to reinvent the wheel or something, I just need them to do it well for me to enjoy the game.

Arguably, this is what Blizzard did with WoW - there's nothing new with WoW. They simply cherrypicked a bunch of concepts and put them in a better package.


But I just thought of some things that I might want to see....combo/synergy combat.....sort of kind of in a way that the stupid combos in EQ2 work...but in a way that's not stupid and makes actual sense. Such that, lets say, I'll have much different combat options as a rogue when I am duoing with a mage than I have if I am with a warrior, or something. I don't have a problem with class/archetype games, and I'd like to see a game in which group make-up matters, but not in the stupid divine trinity way the classes have mattered before...I'm not describing it very well, of that I am sure.

But who cares what I think - I'm not the one making the games. If I had great ideas, I'd be putting them into action, instead of paying to play the creations of others.

But that's precisely the problem with WoW, IMHO - sure, they put a bunch of concepts into a better package, but they didn't pick a single fun concept from the bunch.  All the polish in the world won't save you if the underlying game (kill things, get better loot so you can kill things with more grandiose names) is a load of crap.

Of course, they did sell a lot of units.  But then again, so did Deer Hunter and Myst.

WoW is great at what is does, but that doesn't neccessarily make it a great game.

Another idea I'd like to see explored is more...involved combat mechanics. Instead of hitting a hotkey to swing a weapon or cast a spell, make my actions determine how I attack with a weapon. Make spellcasting more...complex. Not sure how to do it in an MMO, but I actually really like the system from Lost Magic on the DS. I also really like the melee mechanics in Mount and Blade, though I'd like to see more of it.

Also, more twitch combat. If I physically hit, then I hit. You can have seekrit dice rolling for damage in the background, but enough of the stupid "whiff" shit from Diku muds. This would also help alleviate the problems of "levels" killing open PvP - a lowbie with skill could Hit a higher level toon, but he would certainly have trouble Killing him (though it should be reasonably possible). The combat from Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, in an MMO, would be fucking awesome.

EQ: Bard.  By which I mean the specific EQ-type bard, not to be confused with any other class called Bard that has ever been concieved in any other game.  The bard has far too many unique characteristics to go through them all, really.  This will never happen, though, and no one will ever again come close to the EQ Bard.

FFXI: Environmental effects that make a difference.  Fire/Ice/Etc. days, for example.  They should perhaps make even more of a difference.

FFXI: Elemental effects that work with/against each other.  Renkei being the obvious example, but it should be added upon so that coordinating certain kinds of attacks together will be more effective, not just specific moves.  Just a general Fire + Water don't work so well, but Water + Ice do.

CoH: Sidekicking and Exemplaring.  So far I haven't heard of any other game that does this, though I may have just missed some.

Planetside: VR training.  Something that lets you experience at least a little what your character will someday be like when he gets X or Y ability.

Probably more, I might think of them later and come back.

What was unique about bards? The use of songs as buffs? That's been done before.

FFXI: Job system.

Amazing that more other games don't do this. It's a fundamental feature that makes the game much more interesting and playable and much less tedious. (FFXI is plenty tedious as it is)

I've always liked the Guild Wars system of being able to constaly switch up your abilities and skill builds, for free.

If you could, could you elaborate on EQ bards, FFXI's job system / fire and ice days / combining attacks?

How do those things work, exactly?

Job system means you can switch classes at basically any time. Sick of playing White mage/black mage? Switch to Samurai/Ranger. With the same character.

In most games if you want to change classes you have to re-roll, which means a different name, you have to do all sorts of stupid quests again, etc.

Butting in, but stuff that I like:

From EVE: Offline skill ups.  Gives the persistent character advancements that devs like (gives people a reason to keep paying subs), without giving much advantage to the hardcore catasses.  It doesn't matter if you play twenty hours a day or two, you get the same skills (money is another matter, of course).  Lets me feel like I'm making progress in the game even if I can't play much.

Also from EVE: Single shard worlds.  A huge community where everyone can interact with everone else is neat (EVE Radio (http://www.eve-radio.com/) has always struck me as an excellent example of something that only really works on a single shard world).  Not having to argue with friends over which server we're going to play on is nice.  Knowing that somewhere off in the distance, badass huge PvP guilds are having massive wars and stuff is exciting, and being able to add that "off in the distance" part is important.

From Guild Wars:  AI Henchmen.  They're not as effective as other players (not even close), but it's nice to have some option aside from spamming "LFG" for twenty minutes.  It's nice to be able to feel like you at least have a shot without having to wait around for a pickup group to form.

Also from Guild Wars (though I think FFXI does this, too): Sub-classes.  Gives a lot of diversity to the gameplay to be able to choose a combination of two different classes rather than just being railroaded into one class.

I totally agree with this.  AC had this for the first few years, but it was more of a "happy accident" than intentional policy.  It always struck me as A Good Thing to be codified in some form.


If you're a level 25 WM/BM, do you instantly become a level 25 S/R?  How does it handle the different gear you need, etc.?  Still, sounds like an interesting concept.

The way it works is that each of your classes is leveled up independently, and only levels up when set as your primary class. The level of your sub is, at max, half your primary class.

And when you swap classes, you must swap gear.

In the end, this resulted in a bigger grind, because to be "effective," you had to use a sub, and had to keep it in line with your primary class' level. So, as a Ninja/Warrior, for every 2 ninja levels, you have to go back and grind up another warrior level.

Yeah, but that's just a consequence of the subclassing. It also means that if you have a main job that has 3 good sub-jobs people might expect you to have all 3 levelled.

But the job system I'm talking about is just the ability to class-change without starting over.

Hmm.  I somewhat prefer AC's system, where there's an unlimited but timered respec ability.  (As in, you can completely respec your character an unlimited number of times, but after the first time or so, you'll have to wait a couple of months in between complete revamps of the character)  At least, it works well for AC because there's relatively smaller differentiation between classes.

FFXI's system does sound nice, but it strikes me more as a way to avoid having to roll alts than as a means of trying different classes without duplicating your work.

Which, I suppose, is the intention.

Yes, that sounds much much better. Instead of changing what you want to be, wait a couple of months and then change.

That's clearly far superior.

Uh, you don't have to level twice.  You go from being level 100 sword to level 100 mage, without having to level again.

Therein lies the advantage.  Or am I not understanding something about the Job system where you can transfer levels from one job to another?

It's hard to fully appreciate the wonder that is the EQ Bard unless you've played EQ and played an EQ Bard but I'll try to explain some of the basics. First a disclaimer: My main was a Bard but I haven't played since right before Planes of Power came out so some of this may no longer be accurate.

In EQ the Bard is the epitome of the expression "Jack of all trades master of none". Bards are technically a hybrid class (melee fighting + some magic) but they aren't a hybrid in the traditional D&D/DikuMUD sense like a Ranger is a Fighter with some Druid spells or a Paladin is a Fighter with some Cleric spells -- Bards are their own special class. On the melee side of things Bard's can wear Plate armor which is the toughest of the armor categories (Plate > Chain > Leather > Cloth) and dual wield your typical one handed fighter weapons. On the magic side Bard's have songs which, with a few exceptions, work differently than EQ spells in that they don't require mana to "play" or "sing". Since they don't require mana (exceptions excluded) you can in effect play or sing forever which was quite a bit different than your traditional mana consuming spell caster in EQ which spends much of her career sitting on her ass regening mana (very) slowly. To balance this out the designers typically made a Bard song weaker than its rough spell equivalent (i.e. the "master of none" part) and they made it so you can only be actively playing/singing one song at a time. However they also made it so that for many if not most songs the effect lasts for a few seconds after you stop playing/singing it. This means that you can in fact have multiple song effects active at one time by repeatedly starting and stopping a sequence of songs since, if your timing was right, you could start up a song again after stopping it earlier before the effect ran out. This is called "twisting". Though some people claim to be able to twist up to four songs the practical limit (taking into account interruptions and song startup failures) is three.

Each Bard song is associated with a particular musicanship skill such as Singing or Percussion or Stringed and you can equip instruments to boost of the effect of songs (Singing being the exception, ignoring the Bard epic) and there are a variety of magical instruments you can acquire that have bonuses to the boost effect. There is a tradeoff, though, because equipping an instrument means you can't be wielding any weapons (there are some one handed instruments but those are rare). So you have to decide if it's worth the drop in DPS to get the bonus to the song effect. You can also twist instruments along with songs. In other words as you switch songs you can switch out instruments right before you start up a new song to get that instrument boost into the song effect. Twisting songs and twisting instruments is, as you might imagine, a lot of work and I only did it in special situations.

The versatility of the Bard stems from the fact that the Bard songbook, so to speak, covers a wide variety of spell effects -- arguably the widest of any spell casting class. This, combined with the fact that the Bard can tank (in a pinch) and melee as well, means the Bard can fulfill a large number of roles in your typical group setup.

Now for some EQ background. In EQ there are a number of roles a player can fulfill depending on what class they are playing. The main roles are "tank", "healer", "DPS" (damage dealing), and "crowd control". There are other roles as well including things like "puller", "travel facilitator", and "efficiency expert".

I won't go into the first four since those are pretty obvious to anybody who has played RPGs.

A puller is somebody who goes out and brings back mobs to the group. The premier class for this in EQ is the Monk cause they can "Feign Death" which means they literally drop to the ground like they were dead. Any mobs that were chasing the Monk will stand around confused for a bit and then slowly wander back to where they came from. If you timing is good you can stand back up when some but not all of the mobs have wandered far enough away and only the closest ones will come chasing after you again. This is referred to as "splitting" mobs. You can also split mobs if you can run fast enough by moving far enough away from some (but not all) of the mobs that they give up and head back to where they came from.

A "travel facilitator" is somebody who makes traveling around EQ faster. I stopped playing EQ right before Planes of Power came out where they made it easier for everybody to get around but before that point the Druid was the premier class for this since they not only could teleport people around (an ability shared with Wizards) but they had a variety of spells that could make you run faster (sow plz!).

An "efficiency expert" I'm defining as somebody who increases the amount of experience a group can earn per unit time through the use of spells (or songs). The primary way this is done is either by helping the group kill faster and/or decreasing the amount of downtime between kills. The Enchanter is the premier class for this sort of thing. The Enchanter can, among other things, increase the attack speed of the meleers (kill faster), increase the mana regen rate of the casters (less downtime) and decrease the attack speed of the mobs (less healing needed and therefore less mana is expended and therefore less downtime). Plus they can do crowd control which means the puller can bring back more mobs at once which means less time waiting for the puller to bring stuff back to the group.

A Bard can basically fulfill all the above roles and more. They aren't nearly the best at any of the roles, except in some special situations (like intra-zone travelling described below) but they can do them. In a typical group setup the Bard replaces the Enchanter handling the CC and efficiency roles. A Bard's not as good as an Enchanter in those roles (I had an Enchanter as well, yes I'm a control freak) but a Bard is also doing more DPS than an Enchanter and can do a lot of other things as well.

As a plate wearer, Bard's can tank in a pinch. Their defensive skills are capped lower than true tanks so they will take more damage even if they have similar AC but they can do it. Perhaps more importantly a Bard is a lot less fragile than a Enchanter when doing CC which means if somebody in the group breaks mez or the mez wears off before the Bard can reapply it, a Bard really doesn't care that the mob is now beating on her since she has the armor (and HPs) to handle it.

Bard's also have a very good group HP regen song which, in a very tight pinch (like your healer is dead or you are waiting for one to join your group), can be used for general purpose healing. This requires some coordination in a group since you need for the tanks to spread the damage (aggro) around rather than concentrating it all on one player which is the typical strategy.

Bard's can also do CC, as mentioned above. They can't "lock down" as many mobs as an Enchanter can (4 being the practical upper limit for a Bard, at least when I played) but they also don't need mana to do it (unless you are charming as well) so they can do it indefinitely (assuming it isn't resisted too many times) whereas an Enchanter might run out of mana, depending on the situation. I still remember the time I helped our guild recover from a near wipe on the Plane of Sky. We were fighting some killer bees (bzzts) and somehow most of the Clerics picked up aggro and everybody started dying. A Cleric managed to rez me before camping out and I was able to mez the two remaining bees for like a half hour while everybody else recovered from the near wipe. Now an Enchanter with full mana should be able to hold two mobs for an half hour but not after a rez where you start with 0 mana.

Bard's aren't that great on the DPS side of things cause their skills cap out before the other melee classes do (just like their defensive skills) but they can dual wield and they have some damage songs which can add a bit to their DPS so they don't embarrass themselves when meleeing (and I've certainly out aggro'd other tanks at times when I played but part of that is the aggro from the Bard songs).

Outdoors Bard's are very good pullers because of their uber run speed songs. In fact their run speed got so fast at one point it literally wrapped the run speed variable around so that you were running slower than you should have been, and making outdoor trains is a Bard speciality (Google "Fansy the Bard" for some entertaining reading).

Those run speed songs mean that Bard's are "travel facilitators" as well. Though they don't have any inter-zone teleport songs, for outdoor intra-zone travelling (the run speed songs don't work indoors), the Bard is arguably the best class for this (the only thing they are "best" at) since at higher levels they have a song that not only boosts run speed (faster than a Druid can boost), it levitates you *and* makes you invisible. With the levitation you can literally "run" at the top of the zone from one exit to another and if you have to travel on or near the ground the invisibility hides you from most creatures (undead being a notable exception).

The Bard is also one of the three efficiency expert classes (Shaman being the third, though they don't have a mana regen spell making them less useful in certain setups) since they have songs that can increase the attack speed of the group, slow down the attack speed of mobs, and increase the mana regen rate of casters.

But wait there's more!

Bard's have songs that boost resistance (by a lot if you use the appropriate instrument) to special damage types such as magic, fire, cold, disease, and poison making them very desirable in raid situations since a lot of the really big mobs have AE attacks using the above damage types. They also have songs that decrease the above resistences on mobs.

Bard's have special purpose attack speed boost songs that can boost your attack speed above the normal speed cap.

Bard's get the track skill which allows you to see a list of mobs in a certain radius around you. While the Bard track skill has nowhere near the radius of the Ranger's skill (much lower cap) given the Bard's outdoor travel abilities it's a toss up which class makes the better outdoor scout (Ranger are better at "spotting" a mob but may have trouble reaching it to pull it or whatever).

Bard's also get an invisibility song which makes the entire group invisible (which works indoors as well). And they get an underwater breathing song as well (though that's really only useful in emergencies).

Bard's have a song that allows them to "see" through the eyes of another player or an NPC. Though this is mostly a "gimmick" song, it can be very useful in places like Veeshan Peak's where you need to track the location of the wandering dragons.

They even get a song that boosts Int which makes Bard's popular among those trying to increase their tradeskills (higher Int means greater chance of a skill increase).

And there are songs for other stuff as well such as locating corpses, identifying items, curing poison and disease, and so on and so forth.

Heh heh, someone misses their EQ bard. Its ok, I miss my EQ sk. Ah, those days won't ever come back, sad to say.

I agree that there probably will never be something like the EQ Bard again. However, while writing up my Bard treatise I realized that one of the reasons why I like my Illusion/Kinetics controller in CoH so much is that she is very "EQ Bard-like" meaning she can fulfill a lot of roles. She's a controller, obviously, so she can do the typical CC stuff. But Illusion controllers can also tank with Phantom Army so there's no need for a true Tank unless it's like an AV or something and even then that's only if you are having trouble doing damage fast enough (e.g. I "tanked" Jurassic with just my PA and lots of running around once). Kinetics gives me the efficiency part with powers like Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift. Tranfusion works well as a heal power for meleers and I picked up Aid Others to heal the ranged and I've been in plenty of groups where I was the primary healer (and nobody died :D). And with Superior Invisibility and a variety of travel powers I get similar Bard-like exploration abilties.

Yeah  :crying_panda:

SK's were fun too. I took over an SK from a guild member who quit and in a typical group an SK is/was the best tank -- better than a Warrior. SK's have much better aggro tools *and* they have Feign Death (two in fact). It's just too bad that in raid situations the Warrior's Defensive Discipline screwed over all the other tank classes similar to the way the Cleric's Complete Heal screwed over all the other healing classes.

I liked AC2's system where you could reallocate points at the cost of gaining a certain amount of experience points.

I believe EQ2 has something similar but my understanding is that the design isn't as "clean" as CoH's since CoH was built from the ground up to support "scalable" powers while EQ2's was tacked on after the fact.

Yeah that is cool. I wish CoH had something like that (hello Danger Room?) so I don't have to keep transfering characters over to the Test server to try out new powers.

The feature from WoW that more MMOGs should adopt is being compiled to run on Mac OS.

The feature from AC2 that more MMOGs should adopt is being canceled.

Oh, can't forget the musical instruments in AC2!

I've yet to see a better musical instrument implementation than in Clan Lord, where it was possible to compose original music and play it in concert with other players.

Should change this thread title to: Re: Features that game X has that more MMOs should have.

Because hardly anything mentioned has been original.

That's true enough, and they certainly haven't been unique. However, its also evident that Tele would continually split hairs to try and claim that all his suggestions were only available in AC no matter what examples were given, and would claim that the minute difference between the AC implementation and that of other games was crucial to his enjoyment. So, given that he created the thread, its unlikely that the title will change short of an admin or mod griefing him.

Uh, what?  Someone mentioned that writeable books were done in other games - I have no evidence that other games didn't do that, and so I went with it.  Someone mentioned that in their opinion lore sucks, to which I replied, "I like lore."  Someone claimed that CoH's sidekick system is in any way related to the patron/vassal relationships present in AC (and I guess AC2), and I replied "No, they're actually completely different, and here's how they're different."

How in the world am I "splitting hairs to try and claim that all my suggestions were only available in AC"?

For ref, UO had writeable books. Limited to 20 pages of really large-print text, if I recall right. I played UO briefly after launch and my 'role' in the anti-PK guild I was in, since I had a shitty connection and computer, was to sit around writing books about the guild's adventures and victories against the PKs. It was... unconventional.

I know writable books have existed in various MUDs since at least '95, but I dunno if MUDs count in this thread's worldview. They've also obviously existed as long as MUSHes have.

I like some of the Artistic design in Guildwars. I think it is aweosome. Some of the indoor or underground areas, with the lighting comming through and the statues, carvings, etc on the walls - I don't think I've played another MMORPG-like game that has conveyed atmosphere as well on sheer area design and art alone. One of my favourite things about it, if not exactly a 'feature' in this threads sense of the word.

I don't know if this was just a rumour or if it actually happened but - I recall hearing that books written by players in UO could start appearing in bookshelves elsewhere in the gameworld automagically. Sounds like a nice way of "publishing" player-written books in any case, whether it happened or not.

If that actually happened, that's incredible.

In game writing was indeed in the UO books. I used to leave missives to my victims after robbing their houses blind.

Your precious AC isn't the only one doing randomized lego dungeons. Anarchy Online's mission generators work on the same principal. Diablo does as well... thought it's in a grey area of being an MMO. Most "dungeons" you see in any game probably start out that way. A set of interlocking assets that can be arranged seamlessly to a designer's whim. AO and AC just moved the arrangement to a randomization server thing, instead of making an artist/designer piece them together manually.

The point being that a lot of what you considered unique to one game really isn't. Just about any feature can be found somewhere else, if you look close enough. It's the set of which features they decided to implement that make a game unique, IMO. Some features you might like in one game, would be odd in another. Player housing, for example would feel strange in Warcraft to me because they could not be placed in the world to match it's seamlessness. So you'd be running into an instance portal in Old Town or something silly. Just because you really like, doesn't necessarily mean it will enhance a different game.

Good to know.


I take it you haven't actually played AC?  AC has no random dungeons.  None whatsoever.  I'm sorry if I sound strident, but if you'll read what I wrote:


Nowhere did I say anything about randomness.

AC's dungeons are all handcrafted, and 95+% of them appear handcrafted - as opposed to AO, where for better or for worse you could really tell it was random.

As for whether other games start with precrafted parts for their dungeons, they might - but the proof is in the pudding.  I want a MMO with hundreds of handcrafted dungeons, and I haven't found other games that offer that.  The lego aspect is just a means to  an end.


On the writeable book point, I haven't disputed you.  Your talk on dungeons rested on a complete misreading of what I wrote.


What if they retconned the world to increase its size, spread things out a bit, increase everyone's runspeeds to match, and then plopped housing on the landscape rather than in separate zones?

That's always what I thought they should have done with DAoC.

Frankly, though, I think both WoW and DAoC have really erred with the tiny size of their ingame landmasses.

In DAoC, at least, it felt huge because character ran at a rather slow pace. Until you got maxed out speed buffs and whatnot, it was really good.

As for WoW, I think they did this purposely because they wanted faster travel...  whcih I don't like, but that's a different issue.

I was a Troll Warrior in Midgard without a clan at the game's release - speed buffs were not forthcoming.  And yet, the world still felt relatively small to me.  That might just be a matter of personal taste.

I suppose my view may be skewed by nostolgia for the game, but the game seemed really big to me until I ran into my first invisible wall I found in the game that was outside one of the main cities. That kinda sucked. But also, they didn't have in-game maps which I believe made the landscape seem much, much larger. Specially in a heavily forested area like a lot of Hibernia was, which was the realm I played.

Hmm.  Oh, I thought of one thing I love about AC that I haven't seen in other games:

NPCs who are broadly aware of the fact that nobody will ever die in the game world, and react accordingly.  It's fully part of the storyline that nobody dies in AC; that part isn't unique, whether the game explains it with reconstruction terminals, lifestones, medical bays, etcetera.

What's different about AC is that the whole entire plot is written around this fact.  When the Evil Mastermind attacks, he knows he's not going to kill you.  He knows you'll be back in 10 minutes whacking at him again.

Different NPCs react differently to this.  Some find it amusing, others tedious, some fall into existential despair and it changes their worldview.  But the game never ever pretended like the NPCs killed you because they really thought you'd Stay Dead.  I like that, and consequently, when a newer MMORPG wants me to pretend that all the NPCs fear death even when there's a bindstone 10 feet away, it breaks the Fourth Wall to me.

So uhh, it may be outrageous to say any MMO should adopt anything from Lineage 2 but I wish more games could handle massive castle sieges which have large impacts on server economy (being able to collect taxes on towns for example). That game could have 500 something players and hundreds of NPCs on the same screen with very little lag (so long as you turned off player names... in a battle that large it hardly mattered because every player has an attack/defense icon).

1. A Tale in the Desert — waypoints, storiing up offline time to expend as travel time in getting from point A to point B, would like to see offline time used for other "batched" activity & skills…

2. WoW — very cool representation of orcs & trolls

3. Shadowbane - minus the sb.exe phenomenon, best full scale PvP+, way better than all the RvR crapola of other games which I abhor…

4. EQ — as stated in previous posts, the bard was a unique class and playstyle, and "bards" in other MMO games have not come close to capturing…

5. NWN — world building/campaign creation tools for the user…

I realize there are all sorts of nifty new MMO offerings, but since I'm primarily a Mac Luser these days, don't know all that's new and shiny in the newest and greatest Windoze offerings…

Ooh, that's so true. It always bugged me in an MMO when you'd hear an NPC talk about some great warlord finally managed to be taken down and that's why they built a monument of him or somesuch think. I just think "Well, why didn't he just return to his bind point like everyone else?" However, I do believe Shadowbane had the whole respawning thing built into its story, its just that there were no NPCs to really care about it.


Another feature I wish would be in more games:

A in-depth faction system akin to EQ's. Sure, WoW and DAoC have factions, to an extent, but nowhere on the scale of EverQuest. Basically every NPC was hooked up to multiple factions and the player is free to raise or lower whichever factions he wanted. In EQ, if I wanted to, I could completely ally myself with my opposing faction by doing enough quests/killing enough mobs that raised faction with them to earn their trust. And it had a huge difference on how the game played for me. In WoW, faction is only used for yet another grind to get gear.

True.

So much so that when EQ did the race server PvP+ deal, I was disappointed and wished more so for a "religion" based faction setup. One where you choose religious alignment at character creation (or choose not to decide), yet can earn (or be excommunicated so to speak) yourself into another faction…

My faves:

Thanes from DAoC -- I never understood why people thought they sucked... I loved mine but not enough to continue playing the zergfest that is DAoC.

Mailboxs from WoW -- finally a way for me to move items

Auction house from WoW -- nice although the economic forces dizzy the mind

Useful crafting from DAoC -- at least before I stopped playing, crafted items were as good if not better than almost every world drop. This allowed a casual like me to be able to be equipped on par with some of the catasses

Exemplar/Sidekick from CoH -- mentioned before, but what a great concept

Sense of wonder from EQ -- ahh, memories. No game will ever capture that sense of wonder for me, but you never forget your first...

Diversity of world content from EQ -- the sheer size of the map and the diversity of the geography was nice

Day/night and weather from EQ -- Sunrises in Butcherblock and rain in the Karanas; eye pleasing. And, I didn't mind being a human blind at night.

Mistmoore -- god, I lived in that place.

Off line training from EVE -- already mentioned before

I'm sure there is more that I am not remembering at the moment...

Both done earlier in FF XI and done far better in the case of AHs.

Yes.

Also, I want more games to have a housing system similar to current UO, where I can design it from the foundation up to look however I want.  That's good shit.

I'm cool with housing in a game with dev-made content as long as the players have no say in deciding where it goes (In a hypothetical, Dawn/Wurm-like game, it might make sense that way).  I think player-made housing tends to make games worse rather than better; I've seen almost no games that have done it reasonably well.  It just seems to kill the nice flow of the world with a random mishmash of crap.

MMORPG makes have never heard of zoning laws. It really is simple: limit one house per person, allocate enough room for those houses and allocate that space only in certain spots.

If people unsub for 3 months or so their house goes away unless there is a free plot available.

What I'd like to see is housing that's less common, but shapes how you play your character.  For instance, very rarely have houses deep in "bad evil things" territory, but your living there means that you can sort of bend the surrounding baddies to your will, or that over time you become like them and have a thirst for innocent blood, that sort of thing.

In other words, incentivize the gameplay so that if you live "on the wrong side of the tracks", you actually play like it.  To where players say "I don't trust him, he's from _____ shady area".

Another pet peeve of mine.  Too often, games only give players reasons to trust and cooperate with one another - all the incentives are for cooperation, and competition is limited to clearly-defined sides (He's either One of Us or One of Them).  I like game systems that make things more ambiguous, where you meet someone and you're really not sure whether you should trust them or not.

Developers really seem to slap together PvP systems as an afterthought rather than planning out gameplay like that.

I love your idea there...


It would make sense if you had a house or a lair or something out near where "Bloodthirsty Bob" the local cutthroat lived, then people would start making connections between you two. "Hmm, he never seems to have problems with that Bob guy, maybe they're working together..."


Well for a lot of people PvP is just a fancy word for ganking, so a lot of devs probably feel like they don't need to go much higher than those expectations.

I don't see how the FFXI AHs were any better.

They have a price history for every item.

Oh yeah, they did...

Still, I remember distinctly disliking their AH system.

I played both, FFXI was better for AHs. The WOW AHs were annoying to use, they just weren't presented or organized all that well.

Okay, I thought of a few more things that AC has that other games should copy:

The rare system.  AC added 'rares' with the second expansion, Throne of Destiny.  These are cool and interesting items - everything from a gem that makes you 99% immune to fire damage for 15 minutes, to an endless pot of colored dye, to a pack that holds double the normal amount, to a skeleton key that can open any locked door in the game, to powerful armor and weaponry, to an infinitely refilling quiver of deadly arrows.

The rares are divided into tiers.  The top tier (uber armor and weaponry) is several thousand times rarer than the bottom tier.  Every single creature in the game has the exact same chance of dropping a rare upon death (a very tiny chance).  Your character is also guaranteed to find at least one rare per month.

Every rare is tradeable and has no usage requirements - the idea is that if you get a rare, you can either start using it right away no matter what level you are, or trade it for whatever your heart desires.

How are they balanced, you ask?  Every rare is flagged to Always Drop On Death.

All the rares look cool and have a major Shiny Factor to them.

It's not a majorly game-changing dynamic, but it's cool to have it there.

Interesting thread. I'll toss a few in:

 - agreement with Tele (shiver) on AC's twichy ranged combat. IF I sidestep an arrow, it should miss me.
 - SWG's general approach to mix and match skill based classes (pre-NGE). It was hurt by the excesiive grind involved, but I really liked the fact I could make a character that had a unique blend of skills and styles. I could make a character whose focus was entirely non-combat, yet still take enough combat to shoot a womp rat or two
 - on the same note, SWGs ability to advance a charcacter without resorting to combat
 - Seamless worlds - not unique to one game, but a big thing to me for immersion.
 - AC's lack of artificial barriers. If I could jump over something, or find a way up something, I could get there.
 - Truely diverse character design. CoH is probably the leader in this rightnow. I should look unique, not just what armor I wear.
 - UO Seige Perilous - no selling crap to vendors. I loved how that effected the economy.
 - SWG - the idea of diverse craftin materials, gained from various sources, and being able to create somewhat unique results when crafting. It never worked as well as it was intended, but the idea was great
 - Housing - I think it's a great thing, if it's built in to the design ofthe game. No one has it perfect yet, but I liked AC and UO's in game houses, UO's and SWG's plaable houses, AC's huge guild houses. All good things, you just need a way to implement them without UO and SWG's sprawl issues.
 - WoW's hand crafted world. Random generated terrain sucks my ass.

Here's one nobody has mentioned and I'm certain would be the center of controversy:

Forced first person perspective. Done in Planetside, though with limited third person view, WWIIOL, probably Neocron (never played it), and most famously, Everquest (out of technical limitation moreso than design).

Perhaps this is best suited to a more twitch based game, but I really enjoy playing a virtual world from the first person. It adds heaps of immersion. Perhaps I'm being self-centered with my next statement, but, the only reason that I do not play games which allow first AND third person, is because they typically are designed with third person in mind.

For instance, playing from third person in nearly any game with PvP is ideal over first person for the simple reason of range of view. In most games, playing from third person is significantly better in PvE as well, because it allows you to assess the larger situation more easily. I would like to see a game that imposes first person perspective as a limitation on players ability to omnipotently fly behind their characters and assess everything around them. I feel that it helps immersion in ways that no amount of books or lore can even touch, and it's generally fun to play from the eyes of your own character.

Why limit it to mmo? I've wished forever there was a game that incorporated melee combat from Oni, sneaking from Thief, ranged like BF1942 (with discreet hotboxes, bullet spread, crouching/prone, etc), alignment system ala KotOR, etc.

In my opinion an mmo should put together the best elements from other genres.
That's because of how the game is structured. If you slap pvp on a game designed for pve, of course it's ganking. There is no ganking in BF2 or Planetside. That's why I've long been a fan of instancing adventure content and having a pvp+ overworld experience.

EQ did not force first person perspective, and in fact most people I know played in 3rd person mode since it obviously gave you a better situational awareness of your immediate surroundings.

In practice, forcing 1st person perspective limits gameplay options and prejudices one playstyle over another in MMO-based PvP - makes life harder for melees, since they're easier to spot when attacking because they have to close within range to hit.  Which then requires the game designers to bias in favor of heavy melee damage, since they're easier to spot as they try and close.  Which then requires that you stick within the rock-paper-scissors PvP format that has made PvP suck in pretty much every MMO to date.

When I played EQ the third person was like... a camera set in a really wierd fixed position. I think they added a more practical third person cam later, but when I came back for Discord server I still used first person out of habbit.


I have no idea how you just managed to blame RPS design on first person but, bravo. I don't see how the perspective really limits melees against ranged classes or how a decent designer would not be able to overcome the limitations imposed by first person perspective. If anything, it gives melees an advantage. Ranged classes will not be able to look around themselves in 360 degrees wich would provide more opportunity for a melee to sneak up behind you and strike while you're distracted with something else.


However, I have debated with myself if this desire for first person is part of that whole "wanting games to be like your first game" syndrome; I think it's Bartle who always argued that point. It could be me simply trying to chase the immersion that I found in my first online RPG (EQ), but on the other hand I tend to have had more fun in MMOFPS games with first person perspective than I have in any third person RPG. So I'm not entirely sure what my real motivation for wanting first person is, all I know is that I like it.

I'm not blaming, merely correlating.  Why does third person perspective hurt melee classes?  Because they need the third person camera most in order to be able to dodge ranged attacks effectively, see what's coming at them from all sides.  Most MMOs have sticky melee of some kind for PvP, so if a melee's going to hit you, he's going to hit you - but having a 3rd person camera (presumably one you can rotate and spin at will) is essential to a melee's ability to physically dodge ranged attacks (i.e. step out of the way, not just a skillcheck).

With 1st person, out of necessity you're limited to systems where the dodging of projectiles is determined primarily by skill-check rather than by the player's twitch skills.  Which, before long, leads you to RPS design.  (The term I use for the alternative is "Gauntlet" design - where you have archers, mages, warriors, etc. but they have more similarities than differences in terms of their role, and they don't interlock with the Holy Trinity).

Right, because in games like Quake and Unreal Tournament it's impossible to dodge projectiles by, like, moving out of the way,

Well, of course people switch to third person for better view of their surroundings. Especially because first-person view in video games is usually terrible. In reality, sitting right in front of your computer screen you can have just about 180 degree view from left to right. In a most video games, that perspective is somewhere along 90 - 100 degree view from left to right. So naturally people will switch to a third person view that's backed up a little further to try to compensate for that.

That aside, I do think it would do the genre good to make a first-person only game as long as they can get the perspective correct. Though I'm not opposed to having a third person as long as its fixed, as to not give an unfair advantage. I can't tell you how many people I've caught in WoW trying to come up behind me while I had my camera reversed from where my character was looking.

Trippy, there are several big differences.  In games like that, melee is generally a secondary ability given to all competitors, rather than a primary class for one player.  Second, in FPS'es you're generally using sound as well as visuals to track incoming enemies, which works because.... third, the level designs are usually very much on the restrictive side, in the sense that there are a limited, finite number of spots from which an enemy might be firing on you at any given moment.

By contrast:  In MMOs, melee is the primary attack ability of many players.  Sound as an indicator of nearby movement is, at present, ubiquitous in FPS'es but not in many MMOs.  Areas of battle in MMOs tend to be largely out in the open.

I can't think of any major MMORPG released in the last couple of years that doesn't have footstep sounds. And if you want to talk about sound try playing Quake or QuakeWorld where players don't make any footstep sounds. That'll keep you guessing where they are coming from :-D

And they aren't in, say, Unreal Tournament Onslaught mode?

The only MMO I've played for the last year or so was Lineage 2, which has sounds. In fact, the sounds of players using buffs, spells, or hitting monsters are often an indicator of their location when ganking in a dungeon and occasionally in the open world. There is no reason why sounds can not indicate locations.

And to say that most MMOs are outdoor locations well... why? Obviously a game designed from the first person would be significantly different in a few ways from a game in third. Perhaps this game would have an equal focus on indoor as well as outdoor environments, and advantages to different classes in those places. Personally, I'm used to melees being gimp because that's how it's always been in L2 and you just deal with it. Melees and Range are only equal in efficiency in close quarter fighting, and melees are significantly disadvantaged in outdoor fighting (slow spells have like 100% land rate, kite ftw). But hey, games don't have to be fair to be fun. To be honest though, I would try to disadvantage ranged classes when fighting in close range. The fact that an archer can shoot a melee who is standing right in front of him beating on him with a sword is pretty dumb IMO.

Never got much into UT - when it comes to FPS'es, I only go for things firmly in the 'Counter-Strike-y' mold.  I'll take your word for it on that.

I imagine you could have an FPS that was wide-open with no footstep sounds, but I can't imagine the combat being very appealing.

As for footstep sounds in MMOs, AFAIK those tend to be client-side only.  Also, assuming your game has runspeeds appropriate for PvP (AC1 was good about this - one thing I instantly hated about WoW and DAoC was how my characters ran slow as molasses), you'd either have to be able to even hear player footsteps from far off in the distance (Which would mean an annoying amount of false positives as people passed within range but were not intercepting you), or they wouldn't work so well as an early warning device.

I do, however, still think that the secondary nature of melee in FPS'es is a significant variable.

I agree with you on some points, but the hurdles are not too high to overcome.

As far as melee goes, if you were to limit melee into 2 general categories (which could be broken down more specifically with class-tree-branches or something), you would do fine with a tank and a rogue.

Rogues could be either fast enough to avoid a lot of slow moving arrows and magic projectiles, or possess stealth abilities to close in the distance.

Tanks have shields, raise the shield, block stuff. Sounds good enough to me. Besides, a whole row of tanks holding up shields with archers behind them lobbing arrows at their foe sounds kind of cool, doesn't it ;)

I personally disappointed that very few mmorpgs don’t have more complex attack/defense combat where you can combine attacks and combine counters to attacks. Sadly simple model of DPS (damage) vs. –DPS (healing) with occasional tricks thrown is the norm.

Third person view also simulates not only the wider field of vision in real life vs First person in game, but the ability to glance with the eyes or turning the head, which also is not provided in first person views.

I always feel like I'm controlling a disembodied floating eyeball with a cardboard tube taped to it with any first person view, FPS or RPG.   

The one feature I wish all 3rd person views added was to show your own character as fairly transparent.  Its odd that you can't see though yourself from yourself.   Third person views today is really simulating a magic viewing carmera that floats along behind and above you and you are wearing goggles that see from its view.  (Or if magic, its a magic wisp and you have a remove viewing spell cast).     I'm not a lore person, but it would be fun if they build the concept of 3rd person view into the lore, and even had related skills and buffs.