Stealing Systems

[Slayerik]

I'm not talking nixing a XBox 360 or something here, I was just thinking last night through my history of MMOs...What systems did I enjoy most, and why?

UO: Of course, the open PVP system with loot but looking at today's MMO's what could be stolen from UO? I was looking at possibly Factions or Order/Chaos. Hell, why hasn't a similar Guild Wars system been implemented? Does lack of loot drop make it pointless? Or is it due to (lets say in WOW) having a limited number of sides (alliance vrs. horde)? People love their shiny, be it a PVP title (the e-peen of being in a 'hardcore' PVP guild) or a purple drop.

AO: When I look back at AO, wow they were ahead of their time. Instanced missions, flying 'mounts', great graphics for the time. Guess these systems have been made standard by WoW. Their PVP ranks were interesting as you had to win A LOT to go up in the ranks, loses hurt bad.

Planetside: Certifications meaning flexibilty not power. Concept used in GW I believe (didnt play it beyond beta). Gotta love that a guy out of the box can get a kill on a maxed out soldier. Fast and intuitive voice macros.

Neocron: Implant and drug system. I absolutely loved the way these worked. Basically, you used implants to specialize your character.  If you wanted to use a weapon your implants did not quite have skill points for, you could use drugs (with increasing side effects). Outpost battles like we had then are pretty standard these days (group v. group warfare), but they had intense ones. In NC there were item drops from PVP deaths as well. Horrible PvE was one of the game's downfalls.

SWG: Ummm. The only memorable thing I have here was the sun coming up over the Naboo temple (I think) and it was breathtaking. STEAL THE HAM SYSTEM!!! Oh yeah, housing and stuff. I love housing in my games.

Shadowbane: Siege warfare. I want more. Take out the SB.exe back in the day and horrible PvE grinds, throw in a way for guilds to get back on their feet a little bit and it mighta made it. I love me some open PVP.

EvE: Security status for zones. I really think this concept is well done, promotes risk and reward and turf wars. Similar to UO where death has meaning but isnt that hard to recover from. PvE is grindalicious.

WoW: A broken record: Polish, fun, playable on lower end systems, Blizzard



So looking at this list, why is it so hard to make a PVP+ game with decent (or not mind numbing) PvE? Are they all underfunded? What systems have been overlooked?

[ahoythematey]

Yes, making a decent PvP game with PvE is hard.  In my opinion, these would be some design choices to make when trying to build a great PvP+ experience:

-Make it completely open PvP.  Factions/"sides" are okay as long as you don't make them hard bounderies that prevent infighting and teamkilling.  Players will police griefing if you give them the tools.

-Don't make it too difficult to escape combat.  If I bump into some asshole three times my level/power during my travels, at least give me a chance to flee.

-Make death meaningful, but from the perspective that while dying doesn't necessarily hurt you much, it does hurt the group's chances.

-If you can't do it right, don't fucking waste the players time with objectives/missions when it comes to territory control.  Collectathon grindquests are fucking bullshit in PvP and PvE, and the players will not like being forced into it just to claim regions as their own.  If you don't have the savvy to pull it off, just build the world and let the players decide which territories are valuable enough to fight over.  Asheron's Call ended up "doing" this well enough on their Darktide server.

-Your game will be niche, so build the world on that idea.  You can always make more shards if the game is more popular than expected, but I imagine it's a lot harder to make a huge world feel less empty.  Don't be afraid to make your players sometimes feel slightly cramped together; that could really help sustain player-driven conflict that is essential for a good PvP game.

Those are my thoughts for now.

[Xilren's Twin]

-Make it completely open PvP where I can kill my best friend the moment our new characters arrive in the world.  Factions/"sides" are okay as long as you don't make them hard bounderies that prevent infighting and teamkilling.  Players will police griefing if you give them the tools.

-Don't make it too difficult to escape unwanted combat.  If I bump into some asshole three times my level/power during my travels, at least give me a chance to flee./quote]

Those two statements don't seem to go together.....

[TheDreamr]

EVE: The "you're about to do something dangerous and/or stupid, click here to do it anyway and/or click here to not be asked in future" dialogs.  Personally I think they're a minor work of genius as a sandbox risk / reward enabler in otherwise "protected" areas.

On reflection maybe it's more the concept that a "safe zone" can support intelligent risk / reward / PvP that appeals to me, as opposed to a location being either dangerous or not dangerous with nothing inbetween.

[ahoythematey]

Ahh, I should have been more clearer.  I meant that anybody should be open for attack, as opposed to how Horde can't fight Horde but for a few controlled areas.  Open PvP, essentially.

[zubey]

CoH (CoX?):  Sidekicking.  I wish every new MMOG had a similar mechanic.

[Kail]

Personally, I think EVE got it just right for the overarching PvP macro-system (I think I just made that term up).  Safe zones with limited resources, so that friendless schlubs like me can putter around without a carrier escort, and large lawless zones where the devs players can wage their massive turf wars all day long.  A complex economy, research, manufacturing, mining, politics.  It all seems to work well.

The one thing I think EVE falters on is the specific mechanics of how, exactly, you go about blowing up someone else's spaceship.  It's not exciting.  Swap out those mechanics with something more involving (either something twitchier or something deeper), and I don't think I'd ever unsubscribe.  Maybe include some more personal level activities (boarding parties, that kind of thing), to appease the people who want character avatars rather than spaceship avatars.

[Slayerik]

CoH (CoX?):  Sidekicking.  I wish every new MMOG had a similar mechanic.

On a positive note for AoC, the latest thing I posted here said that they would have something similar...called apprenticeship or something.

[Riggswolfe]

COH Badge system/LOTRO Deed & Trait system. Titles rock.

If we're talking Open PVP hmmm...

maybe the solution is similiar to the LOTRO monster system. You don't get XPs to level your monster, you just get to make it look cooler and buy perks/buffs for it. Open PVP almost needs to abandon all previous ideas to have a miniscule chance to succeed. And for the love of God, don't mix open PVP and PVE. Neither crowd will be happy, and balancing becomes a nightmare.

[Lum]

The problem with open PvP is that it's very much an either/or. Either you make it wide open so that, as the poster said originally, you can kill your best friend the moment you rez into the world, or you have hard coded sides where you can't whack the nimrods on your side. It's really difficult to come up with compromises between the two. And open PvP is very much a niche - it drives the rest of the game into a place that few players actually want to dive into.

My (limited) AC1 Darktide experience for example, involved running a lot. When creating a new character RUN FAST because people were killing new characters at the spawn point. When buying supplies DO IT FAST because people liked to camp merchant NPCs to whack their customers while they were busy selling things. Not everyone wants to play Beirut 1989 Online.

[Nonentity]

The problem with open PvP is that it's very much an either/or. Either you make it wide open so that, as the poster said originally, you can kill your best friend the moment you rez into the world, or you have hard coded sides where you can't whack the nimrods on your side. It's really difficult to come up with compromises between the two. And open PvP is very much a niche - it drives the rest of the game into a place that few players actually want to dive into.

My (limited) AC1 Darktide experience for example, involved running a lot. When creating a new character RUN FAST because people were killing new characters at the spawn point. When buying supplies DO IT FAST because people liked to camp merchant NPCs to whack their customers while they were busy selling things. Not everyone wants to play Beirut 1989 Online.

Heh, I like that. Sigged.

I believe that Holtsburg got the nickname Quakesburg from a few people, for the tendency for it to be an all-out slaughterfest from the first minute.

[shiznitz]

Shadowbane: Siege warfare. I want more. Take out the SB.exe back in the day and horrible PvE grinds, throw in a way for guilds to get back on their feet a little bit and it mighta made it. I love me some open PVP.

How would the siege/PvP crowd react to a "scheduled" warfare system?

For example, a largely PvE game with a UO-flavor skill system has X cities. Any player can join any city. Every city has one enemy city which changes based on events in the PvE world. PvP is not allowed within a city except for once a week (or more or less).  Each city gets flagged as siegable for a few hours, announced in advance. Participants can earn titles/points/rewards based on contribution to the siege. These rewards are specific to sieges. Players who do not want to participate in the siege need to vacate the city and will be given tools to do so. The outcome will help/hurt on a PvE basis in some visible, yet not crippling, temporary way.

[Jayce]

I think an underlying reason that the two gametypes have coexisted in roughly the same way comes down to lack of imagination.  (Note:  my imagination has not come up with any better ideas either)

The problem is that to make PvP meaningful, you need something to fight over.  Usually the easy answer is territory: UO player towns, AC leveling areas, SB gold farming areas.  If you have control over a leveling area, you have control over a new player creation machine.  If you have access to gold farming areas, you can upgrade your town. 

That stuff is important enough to fight over, but too bad the gameplay once you're there is pretty mind-numbing.  The fact that people will do it - grind hours to experience minutes of PvP - shows that the model is pretty compelling, but not everyone wants to pay the price of entry.

If you can find something to fight over that is important enough to fuel wars but doesn't involve banging your head against the wall, I'd say you will profit.

[palmer_eldritch]

SWG: . . .  Oh yeah, housing and stuff. I love housing in my games.

And shops? I like shops. Not just in SWG, but even more in UO. I don't just mean shops that sell useful stuff, but anything that people are able to do with their housing that makes it interesting to other people. Letting people open a tavern or whatever. On Europa when I played there was a very popular fighting school. They didn't do anything special with it (there weren't many tools), but just decorated it nicely and called it a fighting school. PKs used to go there and fight, and even obeyed rules about not looting and so on, as the owners had the power to ban someone who disobeyed. Because it was seen as a cool place, people didn't want to get banned.

I always enjoyed the things people did with buildings, whether it was putting tables and chairs and a vendor selling ale or calling their tower a mage tower or whatever. One guy I know opened a butcher's shop, even though food had very little use in the game at that time. It seemed to make him happy and added to the general variety of the place.

Giving players in some basic way the ability to make their mark on the world adds a lot.

[Jobu]

SWG: Ummm. The only memorable thing I have here was the sun coming up over the Naboo temple (I think) and it was breathtaking. STEAL THE HAM SYSTEM!!! Oh yeah, housing and stuff. I love housing in my games.

I'm still aching to see game's copy SWG's customization more. A lot of people enjoyed the dressup aspect of the game, and the range of personality you could add to the world with pets that you painstakingly raised, droids programmed to say things and run around in circles, and housing/shops, obviously. Only CoX has come close to that.

[DraconianOne]

I'm still aching to see game's copy SWG's customization more. A lot of people enjoyed the dressup aspect of the game, and the range of personality you could add to the world with pets that you painstakingly raised, droids programmed to say things and run around in circles, and housing/shops, obviously. Only CoX has come close to that.

The social side of SWG was fantastic - both the crafting and the entertaining IMO.  Crafting had real meaning in the game - largely because crafted goods were so much better than loot -  and players could make a name for themselves by being damned good at what they did.  Entertaining was, well, entertaining (ignoring the whole BF/mind wounds healing thing) and events could be organized that would just have people messing around at a party followed by fireworks and so on.

The downside was that if you were either a crafter or an entertainer, you were probably not combat proficient so never got to see much of the rest of the game.  If they'd been secondary professions so that players could take a combat prof and a social/crafting prof (or some other combination) then it would have been great.

Actually, I miss the skill learning system too - being able to pick and choose professions (and then drop them all to try something else) was liberating.

[Morat20]

The downside was that if you were either a crafter or an entertainer, you were probably not combat proficient so never got to see much of the rest of the game.  If they'd been secondary professions so that players could take a combat prof and a social/crafting prof (or some other combination) then it would have been great.

Actually, full hybrids were common until the CU -- you were restricted to one crafting or entertaining mastery, pretty much (you did get some Merchant in there too) -- but you could also have a full combat profession with it. Fully buffed, you could do most anything.

[damijin]

The problem with open PvP is that it's very much an either/or. Either you make it wide open so that, as the poster said originally, you can kill your best friend the moment you rez into the world, or you have hard coded sides where you can't whack the nimrods on your side. It's really difficult to come up with compromises between the two.

Whatever happened to flagged PvP systems with strong consequences for PKing? L2 used to have it, but they moved away from it when they made it possible to lower your PK count via a quest, and then later tossed their flagging system out the window (for the most part) with clan wars. But I never understood why this system was not more widely adopted.

It's simple, if you kill someone while both of you were temporarily flagged for PvP, then it was legit PvP. You both agreed to it when you hit the other person and became temporarily flagged for 45 seconds. If you kill someone unflagged, then you turn red and can drop your gear, or some other harsh penalty. The more people you kill, the worse your penalty gets. I mean, that could even be applied into a game with hard coded team-PvP as a way to settle disputes on your own side without throwing a keyboard through the window in frustration while you get griefed and danced on by some little fuck who you can't hit.

Edit: Also important to note that unlike most games with a chaos/karma/going red for pking system, L2 gave the PKer no way to defend himself after going red. If you went red, and someone came to kill you, they would not flag when they hit you. That means killing them would be ANOTHER PK and you would go further red. The only way you could go red and not be screwed is if you had a lot of friends willing to protect and heal you.

[CmdrSlack]

It seems to me that flagging systems are flawed.  Even if we envision some pie-in-the-sky perfect, non-exploitable flagging system, you'll still have people who enjoy the brinksmanship of seeing how far they can get before the penalties bite them in the ass.  That slight risk will drive many people away.  That doesn't mean that a game couldn't do well as a niche game, but with the current trend of comparing every game to WoW (and the penchant for developing a "WoW killer"), it doesn't do much to attract a ton of VC.  And you need some VC or a publisher in this era of development.

Sure, there's indie houses that make great stuff, but the last thing we need is another bellhop trying to make a MMO in his spare time.

[DraconianOne]

Actually, full hybrids were common until the CU -- you were restricted to one crafting or entertaining mastery, pretty much (you did get some Merchant in there too) -- but you could also have a full combat profession with it. Fully buffed, you could do most anything.

Yeah, true.  My main was a long time Dancer/TKA (don't ask) and I think I had a crafting pistoleer too.  I think the main problem was that I couldn't master a second tier crafting prof (like shipwright) and master a second tier combat prof (like pistoleer) because there weren't enough skill points.  It was more annoying than anything else.

Or something.  I don't know - my memories hazy about anything that happened more than 10 minutes ago.

[Margalis]

Things I would steal:

AO itemization of armor where you could play dress-up with a variety of different gear that was essentially interchangeable other than looks.

FFXI job system that allows you to try new classes without having to repeat quests and unlocks and such.

FFXI diversity of end-game. The amount of stuff you can do in the end-game is mindblowing at this point.

[qedetc]

It seems to me that flagging systems are flawed.  Even if we envision some pie-in-the-sky perfect, non-exploitable flagging system, you'll still have people who enjoy the brinksmanship of seeing how far they can get before the penalties bite them in the ass.  That slight risk will drive many people away.  That doesn't mean that a game couldn't do well as a niche game, but with the current trend of comparing every game to WoW (and the penchant for developing a "WoW killer"), it doesn't do much to attract a ton of VC.  And you need some VC or a publisher in this era of development.

the only thing that had bothered me about L2's flagging system when i played was that a higher-power could hit you and flag without killing you, and to fight back would mean a free kill for them, since you would then flag.  in this situation, the flagging system is a deterrent from them killing you if you want to accept harassment in its stead.  i can't think of a good solution to this, since i think level restricted pvp would be an unnecessary and more detrimental step (and furthermore, not necessarily address this problem in every circumstance), and harsher punishments for the higher powered character could then conceivably be used to harass the higher powered character.  but this isn't an exploit, at least not with the common connotation of the word.

aside from that, i disagree with you.  semantically, if a flagging system were perfect and unexploitable, it would address brinksmanship where possible, and if impossible, it would still stand as the perfect flagging system.  flagging serves as a system to supplement the general players' lack of omni-policing, in order to create a more orderly version of open pvp.  if you restrict it further, it's not open, and it fails its purpose.

i feel that the niche labelling is silly, or i don't have a good definition of it.  when is something niche?  why isn't WoW niche?  because of its popularity?  if so, i'd have to ask what you think makes it popular.  if wow adopted open pvp, and the majority of people didn't quit, would open pvp be more or less niche?  is niche binary or a spectrum?

i don't understand why you seem to think people trying to make games without VC is a bad thing.  why is it any more necessary now than it was before?  i'm inclined to feel encouraging a reliance on funding similarly encourages a kitsch mentality in the industry.

[CmdrSlack]

aside from that, i disagree with you.  semanitcally, if a flagging system were perfect and unexploitable, it would address brinksmanship where possible, and if impossible, it would still stand as the perfect flagging system.  flagging serves as a system to supplement the general players' lack of omni-policing, in order to create a more orderly version of open pvp.  if you restricting it further, it's not open, and it fails its purpose.

Semantically, anything that is "unexploitable" is pefect.  Sure.  Thankfully, that's vastly unpossible.  ETA-- I was mostly riffing on the idea of scalable penalties for ganking/high level vs. low level ganking.  I've yet to see an implementation that is perfect, so I am dubious as to its ability to work well.

As far as the rest of it goes, I doubt you'll see any serious MMO offerings from a dude in his garage, unless he uses a pre-existing platform or dev environment.  I don't think we're at the point where game development is that open source and democratized.  I welcome someone proving me wrong, however.  ETA-- Niche isn't bad, but any full PvP game is going to be way niche and have a tougher time getting dough.  Since money still makes the dev cycle work, I just don't see how it's possible to have a game come to market that requires the resouces of an MMO without outside development for the garage developer circut. 

I would love to be proved wrong, but I just don't see it happening.

[lamaros]

The problem with open PvP is that it's very much an either/or. Either you make it wide open so that, as the poster said originally, you can kill your best friend the moment you rez into the world, or you have hard coded sides where you can't whack the nimrods on your side. It's really difficult to come up with compromises between the two. And open PvP is very much a niche - it drives the rest of the game into a place that few players actually want to dive into.

My (limited) AC1 Darktide experience for example, involved running a lot. When creating a new character RUN FAST because people were killing new characters at the spawn point. When buying supplies DO IT FAST because people liked to camp merchant NPCs to whack their customers while they were busy selling things. Not everyone wants to play Beirut 1989 Online.

The old MUD system of zones seems a decent workaround to these issues if you ask me. Starter places are PvP free while you learn the ropes, get some ruidimentary gear, etc. Then you have PvP areas out in the 'player controlled' world. So when you venture out there you do so with knowledge of not only how to play the game, but also what to expect from certain groups of players and certain areas.

Fundamentaly though there are just issues with decent PvP and a constant escalation of player power. All the good PvP games I have played have had a (reasonably easy to reach) pleteau. One that is not pushed higher and higher each expansion.

PvE on the other hand becomes a bit pointless without this advancment, or does for many players.

PvP is mostly a political/fps skill/social enjoyment, as I see it, while PvE comes with a "defeat the world". In RPGs this defeat the world mostly comes from you getting stronger and stronger, which destroys attempts at PvP/PvP Politics balancing.

What I would think is needed is a bit more of a FPS-like approach to PvE. In that PvE advancment doesn't make you fundamentaly stronger. It just recognises/requires you doing harder things. I could see it working.

[squirrel]

My (limited) AC1 Darktide experience for example, involved running a lot. When creating a new character RUN FAST because people were killing new characters at the spawn point. When buying supplies DO IT FAST because people liked to camp merchant NPCs to whack their customers while they were busy selling things. Not everyone wants to play Beirut 1989 Online.

Hell when i played on Darktide I had the "Run" skill specialized and I think it was close to cap. Yeah. Run. Fast. Far. Often. I enjoyed it then - and later when I could run people down - but it's definitely niche.

I know it wasn't designed that way, but when Running is a skill you should specialize it's an indication the PvP is somewhat hardcore.

[squirrel]

Actually, I miss the skill learning system too - being able to pick and choose professions (and then drop them all to try something else) was liberating.

And somewhat necessary given the Single Character per Server restriction. Just saying.

[Stephen Zepp]

aside from that, i disagree with you.  semanitcally, if a flagging system were perfect and unexploitable, it would address brinksmanship where possible, and if impossible, it would still stand as the perfect flagging system.  flagging serves as a system to supplement the general players' lack of omni-policing, in order to create a more orderly version of open pvp.  if you restricting it further, it's not open, and it fails its purpose.

As far as the rest of it goes, I doubt you'll see any serious MMO offerings from a dude in his garage, unless he uses a pre-existing platform or dev environment.  I don't think we're at the point where game development is that open source and democratized.  I welcome someone proving me wrong, however.  ETA-- Niche isn't bad, but any full PvP game is going to be way niche and have a tougher time getting dough.  Since money still makes the dev cycle work, I just don't see how it's possible to have a game come to market that requires the resouces of an MMO without outside development for the garage developer circut. 

I would love to be proved wrong, but I just don't see it happening.

I know folks weren't big fans here, but Minions of Mirth is over 80k boxes sold. That was basically one guy and his girlfriend, starting with Torque.

Once they broke the 20k point they had some Angel investors buy in, but it's still very much an indie shop.

[Jayce]

i feel that the niche labelling is silly, or i don't have a good definition of it.  when is something niche?  why isn't WoW niche?  because of its popularity?  if so, i'd have to ask what you think makes it popular.  if wow adopted open pvp, and the majority of people didn't quit, would open pvp be more or less niche?  is niche binary or a spectrum?

"Niche" to me means that the money flow is such that the future of the game is always in question. Obviously WoW isn't niche because they could lose 3/4 of their customers and the only thing they would have to do to stay afloat would be to sell off a lot of hardware.  Other games are much closer to the break-even point.  If a game lives there, it's niche.

Flagging systems don't work because of a basic dichotomy: if it's too easy to gain power, "The Disposable Red" problem comes into play, where someone flags themself so red they turn purple, delete and reroll.  Pow, slate wiped clean.  If it's too hard to gain power, then it becomes less conducive to PvP since it probably has a really high PvE ladder (or maybe just time, a la Eve) to climb, turning aside casuals.

[Furiously]

To me - PvP alone isn't worth it. There has to be something at stake. Otherwise you can just play a FPS.

EVE and good mining/complexes/rats in low sec make it attractive. However it doesn't stop anyone from just waltzing into your area to utilize it, YOU have to defend it. Just seems like an excellent way to handle things.

[damijin]

Flagging systems don't work because of a basic dichotomy: if it's too easy to gain power, "The Disposable Red" problem comes into play, where someone flags themself so red they turn purple, delete and reroll.  Pow, slate wiped clean.  If it's too hard to gain power, then it becomes less conducive to PvP since it probably has a really high PvE ladder (or maybe just time, a la Eve) to climb, turning aside casuals.

You have a point, I mean, we used to have characters that we called 'permareds' back in the day. Characters that existed simply to circumvent the flagging system. We'd roll around with a bunch of permareds and support characters to keep them alive when our enemies were too weak to fight us otherwise, just so that we could continue to demoralize them. Things like that are obviously a huge flaw and lead to people quitting the game, but compare it to a PvP system without flagging.

Look at WoW, level 60s70s can camp level 10s for absolutely no reason, for as long as they want. Theres no consequence, nothing to stop them. Isn't that worse than a few people managing to exploit a flag system?

[Arnold]

The problem with open PvP is that it's very much an either/or. Either you make it wide open so that, as the poster said originally, you can kill your best friend the moment you rez into the world, or you have hard coded sides where you can't whack the nimrods on your side. It's really difficult to come up with compromises between the two. And open PvP is very much a niche - it drives the rest of the game into a place that few players actually want to dive into.

My (limited) AC1 Darktide experience for example, involved running a lot. When creating a new character RUN FAST because people were killing new characters at the spawn point. When buying supplies DO IT FAST because people liked to camp merchant NPCs to whack their customers while they were busy selling things. Not everyone wants to play Beirut 1989 Online.

Yes, but AC Darktide was an afterthought to the game.  One of my guild members supposedly suggested the shard to the dev team after some event in beta.  There were no UO-style guards in towns because the ghost servers didn't need them.

The interesting thing about AC Darktide is that it went from being the most sparsely populated server (300-400, primetime) to to being one of the more highly populated servers.  People actually got bored on their ghost servers and went to try out their stuff on Darktide.  Unfortunately, this had a negative effect, because many of the transplants would  align themselves with whichever allegiance controlled the best levelling areas (and would instantly switch sides with power changes).

Because of the allegiance system, and how XP gained from underlings was passed upward to superiors, you never had the intimate sort of PvP guild systems you saw in UO (they were there, but the extreme minority); the real benefit was to the "XP Whore" guilds that had a core membership who benefitted from hundreds or thousands of drone XP farmers, passing their XP upwards.

[eldaec]

CoX / EQ2 / DAoC : LFG system. LFG windows should not be hard to do right, but then, you look at the clusterfuck the likes of WoW and SWG produced, and you realise people aren't very smart.

DAoC : Guild emblems, clear and recognisable on the rvr battlefield, and a nice balance of giving your guild an identity with still leaving room for character identity.

DAoC : RvR. It beggars belief that nobody has attempted RvR since daoc (even more so since WAR appears to be moving away from RvR and toward instanced-sport-pvp).

CoX : Character customisation that recognises the bleeding obvious, to wit, FACES DON'T MATTER BUT CLOTHING AND COLOURS AND SYMBOLS DO. CoX learnt from comic books which go for the bright colours and easy identification because of printing limitations. Similar limitations exist in the gaming world, characteristics that are part of the character's identity need to be bigger, splashier, colourful, and not restricted to a tiny group of face pixels that spend 98% of the time facing away from the camera.

SWG : Crafting, and mining/resource collection. Also, 58 page threads containing several hundred pictures of Darth Vader, all MMOGs should have that.

FF and EQ2 : HO / combo systems. Some people think they are just fluff. I like them.

CoX : The badge system.

MtG : The model of mana that increases through a battle rather than diminishes. I know, not a mmog.

[Jayce]

DAoC : RvR. It beggars belief that nobody has attempted RvR since daoc (even more so since WAR appears to be moving away from RvR and toward instanced-sport-pvp).

CoX : Character customisation that recognises the bleeding obvious, to wit, FACES DON'T MATTER BUT CLOTHING AND COLOURS AND SYMBOLS DO. CoX learnt from comic books which go for the bright colours and easy identification because of printing limitations. Similar limitations exist in the gaming world, characteristics that are part of the character's identity need to be bigger, splashier, colourful, and not restricted to a tiny group of face pixels that spend 98% of the time facing away from the camera.

UO nailed the faces don't matter thing also.  I'm pretty amazed that SWG is such a big violator in that area given its design team and its chronology...

RvR: I think WoW's world PvP is pretty darn close to RvR, with the addtion of mingled leveling areas.  If you think it's different, how?

SWG: totally agree about the resource collection.  That was an engaging minigame of itself, though the third party site(s) that revealed the best resource spawns should really have been taken in-house.  As it was, it just rewarded those who knew which websites to read.

[shiznitz]

Agree on face detail. I have no idea why EQ2 and VG waste valuable rendering resources on eyeballs.

[Furiously]

Odd - I totally notice that every 11th person has the same face as me in CoX.