Best features of past games

[Dustie]

Feel free to post in here if you want but I just started it for now as a list to pull items out of other threads to keep track of good features from past games.

A. SWG Player Built Stuctures

B. WoW UI

C. Guild Vaults and Customizable Guild Controls

D. Planetside Griefing System

Yeah, the Planetside system for allowing friendly fire but limiting "griefing" was very well done. If you were careful, you could afford to off the occasional jerk. If you were sloppy or were just trying to grief, it would shut you down before you could ruin the game. You can mow 1 guy down, but if you mow down 5 guys in a row you're going to get real close to a lockdown.

E. AoE Handling

I think we all agree that the Planetside method of AoE plus friendly fire is the best option.


Vllad

F. Public Quests

Warhammer : The public quests implemented in PvP.

So PvEvP. There is an objective besides killing the players.

You can implement it so that to advance in the PvE part of the quest, so many PvP kills have to be accomplished (other side can't see your progression).

G. Play Control

To throw it out there, I've also felt like City of Heros had the best play control of any MMO. The movement rate, jumping, and implementation of your action/power/ability buttons. It felt the most immersive of any MMO, and more like an action/shooter. Combat actually felt exciting for the most part.

H. Z axis EQish

I'm going to also go with EQ. The z axis element in EQ is really undeniable. I'd gladly go back to zoning if it meant I could climb up shit again or swim to the bottom of a lake. I'd also venture that the dungeons in EQ were just sick. I've never seen any game pull off the level of suspense that all EQ dungeons seemed to have. Why is that?

I. Gear with unique properties

Lastly, I'm going to go with Rainbow6 Ravenshield. All the guns in this game had unique properties and they really felt good when you pulled the trigger. The sounds and the timing and reload etc were just spot on. I have no idea, of course, how accurate they were to real life weaponry I just know that they felt powerful and awesome.

J. Strategy

The combination of strategy from netbattletech and simulation from Mechwarrior 4. Most of the pilots didn't participate in the strategy aspect but you felt like you were part of a larger strategy nonetheless. I'd be interested in seeing something of this in a MMO. Planetside kind of had that but there wasn't much of a strategy element that endured more than one night. The map could look completely different the next day which has its appeal I suppose but doesn't satisfy those looking to make their mark.

K. Skill and gear based abilities rather then set classes (don't let the game fall apart since you can't find a healer)

Someone with a sticky trigger finger. :lol:

I'm going to add TF2 to my list. The ability to choose from 8 different classes at a drop of the hat really breathes new life into a game. I'm never going to be the guy who plays an alt in an MMO because of the fact that I have to level them up to be competitive. The fact that so many groups fall apart in MMOs because you are missing a class really sucks too. There has got to be a way to make MMOs more flexible like TF2 in this regard and it would really make the games more accessible don't you think? "Alright who's turn is it to bring the healer?"

Can we combine this with the Planetside idea whereby anyone can be any role -- you just can't switch in 2 seconds? It may take a day to unlearn "tank" and then learn "medic" but anyone can drive a tank or be a medic. To further the idea, you could augment abilities with gear, i.e. a medic kit etc.

??? --> yes

L. Cross Realm/Team Comms

EQ-Cross-realm communication. I understand the downsides and embrace them along with the ability to communicate across factions. This has to be married with the ability to exact punishment on players on your own team in a meaningful way. You also have to be able to regulate intra-faction communication effectively. While I think trash-talking is a necessary part of being emotionally invested in a game you have to have tools available to you to quickly and easily set up secure lines of communication with deliberate parties.

Chat capabilities really need to be expanded upon.

- Cross team communications. I thought WOW had a great idea by preventing this because they prevented some of the xteaming issues. But it removed a social aspect of the game. Like Hoof said, some version of this needs to be allowed. Even the aspects of settling disputes was positive in EQ,

M. Community

One of the best features I encountered in EQ was purely an accident: the make-shift auction house in the East Commons tunnels.

"WTS Lammy 10k 2nd torch!"

I just remember the community that built up; it was awesome. Not only were there auctions, but since it was in a newb zone, you'd have high level toons helping out the lower levels with snakes and zombies, and handing out crap gear, though great for the newb, especially when the newb is down to 3s in cash. People would always meet up there LFG, or after a long night grouping, they'd head back to the tunnels to sell their loot and unwind. The zone's chat channel was always funny as hell. Lots of good times and people to be had and meet there.

But when Sony created the official Auction House in EQ, that entire community aspect was destroyed and neer recovered.

I've always believed since then that games should be more open ended in the sense that we should give the players utilities or tools to, for example, help with auctions, but only to an extent, and do not designate an official location. Let the community decide for themselves where to create their Home Base for these sorts of things. And don't make the tools too helpful - if they can check their auctions, buy, and sell, all from a pop-up window from anywhere in the world, then there is no need for people to gather together into a community.

Make them work a little, and make them walk a little, to form a community. They may bitch about it a bit, but unknown to them, because they are working a little to form the community, it will mean that much more to them.

N. Item Loot and heart pounding

A couple notes about the original EQ.
- Item loot PVP, - before it was turned to coin only. I recall being in some pvp fights, where when it was done, my hands were shaking and my heart was pounding. The risk of loss, was pretty cool. While there were people who would "bag" everything, I always thought with a couple of tweaks this could have worked well.

O. Battle Length (this could be contentious)

- Long PVP battles. This might be old memories, so Ill just say, make PVP battles last longer. WOW's 30sec battles were always a disappointment. Also there was very little personal fame in WOW and other MMO's that came after. In EQ, I can still recall several names that infamous.

P. Being scared/horror, EQ zones where you waited until day break to run through

In EQ, for example, while all the zones were "neat" for one reason or another, there were only two zones that scared me - actually scared me. One was Kith Forest - holy crap, for the first year I played that game, and was low level, I would literally sit at the zone line until daylight, then run my ass off and hope that I didn't get lost (this was back when there were no in-game maps, and EQ Atlas didn't yet exist, so if you didn't know where you were going, you got lost).

[Kakarat]

Warhammer : The public quests implemented in PvP.

So PvEvP. There is an objective besides killing the players.

You can implement it so that to advance in the PvE part of the quest, so many PvP kills have to be accomplished (other side can't see your progression).

[Breand]

To throw it out there, I've also felt like City of Heros had the best play control of any MMO. The movement rate, jumping, and implementation of your action/power/ability buttons. It felt the most immersive of any MMO, and more like an action/shooter. Combat actually felt exciting for the most part.

[Hoofhurr]

The combination of strategy from netbattletech and simulation from Mechwarrior 4. Most of the pilots didn't participate in the strategy aspect but you felt like you were part of a larger strategy nonetheless. I'd be interested in seeing something of this in a MMO. Planetside kind of had that but there wasn't much of a strategy element that endured more than one night. The map could look completely different the next day which has its appeal I suppose but doesn't satisfy those looking to make their mark.

I'm going to also go with EQ. The z axis element in EQ is really undeniable. I'd gladly go back to zoning if it meant I could climb up shit again or swim to the bottom of a lake or fall down a trap door. I'd also venture that the dungeons in EQ were just sick. I've never seen any game pull off the level of suspense that all EQ dungeons seemed to have. Why is that?

Lastly, I'm going to go with Rainbow6 Ravenshield. All the guns in this game had unique properties and they really felt good when you pulled the trigger. The sounds and the timing and reload etc were just spot on. I have no idea, of course, how accurate they were to real life weaponry I just know that they felt powerful and awesome and an MMO should aspire to that level of detail.

[Dustie]

Who stickied this? This doesn't need to be a sticky imo, it's just like every other sub topic we're talking about. My 2 cents.

[Hoofhurr]

Someone with a sticky trigger finger. :lol:

I'm going to add TF2 to my list. The ability to choose from 8 different classes at a drop of the hat really breathes new life into a game. I'm never going to be the guy who plays an alt in an MMO because of the fact that I have to level them up to be competitive. The fact that so many groups fall apart in MMOs because you are missing a class really sucks too. There has got to be a way to make MMOs more flexible like TF2 in this regard and it would really make the games more accessible don't you think? "Alright who's turn is it to bring the healer?"

[Dustie]

Someone with a sticky trigger finger. :lol:

I'm going to add TF2 to my list. The ability to choose from 8 different classes at a drop of the hat really breathes new life into a game. I'm never going to be the guy who plays an alt in an MMO because of the fact that I have to level them up to be competitive. The fact that so many groups fall apart in MMOs because you are missing a class really sucks too. There has got to be a way to make MMOs more flexible like TF2 in this regard and it would really make the games more accessible don't you think? "Alright who's turn is it to bring the healer?"

Can we combine this with the Planetside idea whereby anyone can be any role -- you just can't switch in 2 seconds? It may take a day to unlearn "tank" and then learn "medic" but anyone can drive a tank or be a medic. To further the idea, you could augment abilities with gear, i.e. a medic kit etc.

???

[Hoofhurr]

EQ-Cross-realm communication. I understand the downsides and embrace them along with the ability to communicate across factions. This has to be married with the ability to exact punishment on players on your own team in a meaningful way. You also have to be able to regulate intra-faction communication effectively. While I think trash-talking is a necessary part of being emotionally invested in a game you have to have tools available to you to quickly and easily set up secure lines of communication with deliberate parties.

Chat capabilities really need to be expanded upon.

[Diggles]

EQ-Cross-realm communication. I understand the downsides and embrace them along with the ability to communicate across factions. This has to be married with the ability to exact punishment on players on your own team in a meaningful way. You also have to be able to regulate intra-faction communication effectively. While I think trash-talking is a necessary part of being emotionally invested in a game you have to have tools available to you to quickly and easily set up secure lines of communication with deliberate parties.

Chat capabilities really need to be expanded upon.

I happened to like their language system, although most people cheated and learned all the languages, having a system whereby text is tied to your races languages would be cool.

Or you have to devote skill points to learn other languages. For a fantasy game this would be used to great affect...as it makes alot of neat opportunities outside of the realm of combat.

[Hoofhurr]

Can we combine this

???

Yes.

[Vllad]

I agree that City of Hero's had the best combat system I ever played.


I like games like Planetside that do not have a gear base system.


However I realize I would be in the minority so if we have to have a system where gear is part of it I would prefer a system like Horizons.

All gear (weopons, armor, etc) whether it is drops or crafted have a Durability and Quality rating.

For example a breast plate with 10 Durability and 10 quality.

Their are small random chances (based on skills) and upon death that you lose a durability point. When your breast plate gets to 0 durability it is broken and any bonuses it adds are gone. When you take it to a PC or NPC armorsmith he can repair it back up to 10 Durability. At which point you permantly lose one quality.

Now it is a 10 Durability 9 Quality Breast plate.

Once it reaches 0 quality and it runs out of Durability the Breat Plate is permantly broken. An NPC or PC can gets some spare parts out of it and thats it. If you want a new one you have to have it made or go get another drop.

No economy can survive with permant equipment. Everything has to eventually leave the game. I don't care if you camped for that FBSS for 3 weeks straight. Eventually it is going to break and you will need a new one.


This accomplishes a few things.

1. It creates a healthier econ.
2. It creates long term use of all NPC drops. This helps prevent content that you build from ever becoming obsolete.
3. It makes crafting always viable.
4. It creates an additional penalty for death.
5. Prevents bind rushing
6. Gives you additional methods of dealing with gold farmers.


Vllad

[Vllad]

The best game at present for NPC fights vs PC fights was City of Hero's. Their NPC's had the best bang for your buck. The NPC's where built just like the PC's and behaived as PC's would.

They had a perfect balance and proved that NPC's could present challenges that games like WoW and EQ couldn't provide short of making them god like.

You don't grasp NPC challenge if I have to pat my head, rub my belling, run in circles 6 times in order to defeat a paticular NPC.

I don't mind god like but WoW encounters got to be stupid.


Vllad

[Dustie]

For example a breast plate with 10 Durability and 10 quality.

Their are small random chances (based on skills) and upon death that you lose a durability point. When your breast plate gets to 0 durability it is broken and any bonuses it adds are gone. When you take it to a PC or NPC armorsmith he can repair it back up to 10 Durability. At which point you permantly lose one quality.

Now it is a 10 Durability 9 Quality Breast plate.

Once it reaches 0 quality and it runs out of Durability the Breat Plate is permantly broken. An NPC or PC can gets some spare parts out of it and thats it. If you want a new one you have to have it made or go get another drop.

No economy can survive with permant equipment.
Vllad

I agree that the economy needs this. I want to avoid one thing though. I never want to be required to do the same repetitive task over and over throughout the game. I don't ever want to plink on my armor plate once every other night from now until I quite the game. When we come across situations where repetition is necessary, we need to make it fast and easy.

[Alio]

Just have gear be a side point. A bonus, albeit small.

Im thinking that if you have a gear based system again, you get WoW. A gear based system that makes PvP gear based, regardless of level or class.

You have to encourage advancement, but no matter what you do, a gear based system is going to be repetitive grinding for that gear.

[Hoofhurr]

I agree that the economy needs this. I want to avoid one thing though. I never want to be required to do the same repetitive task over and over throughout the game. I don't ever want to plink on my armor plate once every other night from now until I quite the game. When we come across situations where repetition is necessary, we need to make it fast and easy.

Semantics again but some repetition is necessary on a rote level. The nuance is repetition you are aware of and repetition you aren't. You can do a dragon uppercut a thousand times with Ryu and it never gets boring. Pick a thousand light saber crystals off the ground and you're ready to punch your monitor.

I'm a little concerned about the psychology behind your reasoning though. It sounds to me like you are saying, "Yes give me something that's important to my character's success but don't make me exert energy in obtaining it." Or minimally, "Give me something important to my character that through routine use begins to decay but don't make me do something routine to re-obtain it." Is that even possible? Or more importantly, why have it decay at all if you don't have to do anything exerting to get it back? If something is going to decay through the its routine use how would you recommend you reobtain that item through perpetual unique experiences? You're going to encounter repetition and very quickly unless someone knows how to program infinite variation into a video game. The question is can you make the repetition necessary but perhaps fun?

This is an important aspect to the gamer's mentality. I've held on to items well passed the point where they were useful to my character simply because of the items rarity or the difficulty of obtaining it. The only thing that ever made me delete these items is a lack of bank space or I would have held on to them indefinitely for nostalgic reasons. This behavior actually permeates Real Life as well.

[Ulfen]

I'm a little concerned about the psychology behind your reasoning though. It sounds to me like you are saying, "Yes give me something that's important to my character's success but don't make me exert energy in obtaining it." Or minimally, "Give me something important to my character that through routine use begins to decay but don't make me do something routine to re-obtain it." Is that even possible? Or more importantly, why have it decay at all if you don't have to do anything exerting to get it back? If something is going to decay through the its routine use how would you recommend you reobtain that item through perpetual unique experiences? You're going to encounter repetition and very quickly unless someone knows how to program infinite variation into a video game. The question is can you make the repetition necessary but perhaps fun?

-1 point for being a dick in the mud!

[Hoofhurr]

lol. <3 Ulfen. You care about me and what I say. Admit it! Anyway I'm more and more convinced that the concept where one 'doesn't know good without knowing evil' is inescapable in video game design. The idea that you minimize negative experience in a video game and maximize the good ones just seems alien to me. It's the contrast between the two that creates the emotional range and the span between 'good' and 'great' isn't so great as the span between let's say "I hate this" and "this isn't so bad" or "fuck this" and "wow, I'll play this game for life".

[Ulfen]

Das stimmt!

[Dustie]

I agree that the economy needs this. I want to avoid one thing though. I never want to be required to do the same repetitive task over and over throughout the game. I don't ever want to plink on my armor plate once every other night from now until I quite the game. When we come across situations where repetition is necessary, we need to make it fast and easy.

Semantics again but some repetition is necessary on a rote level. The nuance is repetition you are aware of and repetition you aren't. You can do a dragon uppercut a thousand times with Ryu and it never gets boring. Pick a thousand light saber crystals off the ground and you're ready to punch your monitor.

I'm a little concerned about the psychology behind your reasoning though. It sounds to me like you are saying, "Yes give me something that's important to my character's success but don't make me exert energy in obtaining it." Or minimally, "Give me something important to my character that through routine use begins to decay but don't make me do something routine to re-obtain it." Is that even possible? Or more importantly, why have it decay at all if you don't have to do anything exerting to get it back? If something is going to decay through the its routine use how would you recommend you reobtain that item through perpetual unique experiences? You're going to encounter repetition and very quickly unless someone knows how to program infinite variation into a video game. The question is can you make the repetition necessary but perhaps fun?

This is an important aspect to the gamer's mentality. I've held on to items well passed the point where they were useful to my character simply because of the items rarity or the difficulty of obtaining it. The only thing that ever made me delete these items is a lack of bank space or I would have held on to them indefinitely for nostalgic reasons. This behavior actually permeates Real Life as well.

I understand what you're trying to protect. You're trying to protect the idea that the value behind something comes from the effort it takes to get it. I understand and agree with that principal. My idea is not incompatible with that, think of epic quests to get some ability or item. While I don't need those, I think there's room for that type of thing in any game. But now think of potions in WoW. If I need to kill things in Un'Goro crater over and over again to keep up my potion count just to be competitive, then I call that mindless repetition with no purpose. Everyone has to do it to be competitive. We're essentially paying Blizzard to grind potions for 30 minutes, and then play for 30 minutes.

Getting back to armor decay. I don't have the solution yet, but I do know that I don't want to go back to the black smith each day, sit down, hit 'g' 50 times, wait 20 minutes, and get a new breastplate. I don't mind at all, having a guild black smith who re-supplies us and we simply need to swing by the black smith and pick up our order.

--search queue--

[Dustie]

Just have gear be a side point. A bonus, albeit small.

Im thinking that if you have a gear based system again, you get WoW. A gear based system that makes PvP gear based, regardless of level or class.

You have to encourage advancement, but no matter what you do, a gear based system is going to be repetitive grinding for that gear.

You might be right. Gear based game might = mindless repetition. I hope we can make something better though.

[grizzle]

One of the best features I encountered in EQ was purely an accident: the make-shift auction house in the East Commons tunnels.

"WTS Lammy 10k 2nd torch!"

I just remember the community that built up; it was awesome. Not only were there auctions, but since it was in a newb zone, you'd have high level toons helping out the lower levels with snakes and zombies, and handing out crap gear, though great for the newb, especially when the newb is down to 3s in cash. People would always meet up there LFG, or after a long night grouping, they'd head back to the tunnels to sell their loot and unwind. The zone's chat channel was always funny as hell. Lots of good times and people to be had and meet there.

But when Sony created the official Auction House in EQ, that entire community aspect was destroyed and neer recovered.

I've always believed since then that games should be more open ended in the sense that we should give the players utilities or tools to, for example, help with auctions, but only to an extent, and do not designate an official location. Let the community decide for themselves where to create their Home Base for these sorts of things. And don't make the tools too helpful - if they can check their auctions, buy, and sell, all from a pop-up window from anywhere in the world, then there is no need for people to gather together into a community.

Make them work a little, and make them walk a little, to form a community. They may bitch about it a bit, but unknown to them, because they are working a little to form the community, it will mean that much more to them.

[Hoofhurr]

Great example Griz. That's the type of thing that builds investment into a game. The EC auction was both risky and player developed. Trying to buy items in a cash loot game had its own stresses but made the transaction that much more valuable.

[Slamz]

I think I would simply tie gear into the economy and make it come from resources, not unlike shipbuilding in POTBS -- your armor is your ship. Whenever you lose it, you have to buy a new one. Some will be common as dirt and very affordable, others will be better but more costly to produce in time and resources. If your town has access to bamboo, you can make bamboo armor all day long, very cheap, very quick to produce, but not overly effective stuff. If you've got access to mithril, you can make mithril armor, very effective but it represents a lot of work to replace. It's not necessarily "expensive" in the literal sense. It's actually free. You just set up a mine and it digs it up for you. But it may be expensive in the sense that mithril mines work really slowly, so that breastplate may represent 3 real-life days of letting the mine run. If you're losing it faster than the mine is replacing it, you'll have to start wearing something else until your supplies build back up.


So there is a sense of investment, and a sense of loss, but replacing lost gear is a question of real-time hours as automated mining operations do their thing. You wouldn't actually have to go out and farm your own mithril. You'd build the mine and wait. Or pay/trade for it.


SWG's economy was very similar to this.

[Vanraw]

A couple notes about the original EQ.

- Item loot PVP, - before it was turned to coin only. I recall being in some pvp fights, where when it was done, my hands were shaking and my heart was pounding. The risk of loss, was pretty cool. While there were people who would "bag" everything, I always thought with a couple of tweaks this could have worked well.

- Long PVP battles. This might be old memories, so Ill just say, make PVP battles last longer. WOW's 30sec battles were always a disappointment. Also there was very little personal fame in WOW and other MMO's that came after. In EQ, I can still recall several names that infamous.

- Cross team communications. I thought WOW had a great idea by preventing this because they prevented some of the xteaming issues. But it removed a social aspect of the game. Like Hoof said, some version of this needs to be allowed. Even the aspects of settling disputes was positive in EQ,

[grizzle]

I understand the point about making loot from resources, but I think there are too many players who really don't care about, or want to bother with, resource gathering or crafting. I'm one of those people. I love to get out there and PvP, PvE, explore the world, etc. I'd rather farm mobs all night and kill players to get cash to turn around and buy items from others, than make them myself.

In a game like PotBS, I remember I would set up for a Friday night of high seas sailing and PvPing, only to lose three ships in the first hour, and then spend the rest of the night sailing from port to port, gathering resources, buying, building, etc., and it just became horribly boring. One hour of action for four hours of gathering and crafting (or so it felt).

I think games that are gathering and crafting-heavy don't do as well as those that are more activity/action oriented. I would gladly camp Lower Guk for 24 hours for a shot at an FBSS, but spend 24 hours gathering and crafting to make a similar item? Next game. Too much crafting equates to too much work, and not enough fun.