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Suggestions for the future
danielvv1
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
First, before anyone says I'm trashing the game, I want to say I'm loving it. The Foundry is simply revolutionary, I'm having more fun with it than I had with any game since Diablo 1 or Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (yes, very old games). And Sharandar is the first end-game soloable thing I recall seeing in an MMO, something I've been dieing for since I reached max level in WoW for the first time (7 or 8 years...).
That said, this game still has a lot of room to improve. In this list I put all kinds of things, from trivialities to major stuff; I also made suggestions to how to do things that I think will already be done one day but might not be done the way I'd most like to see.
-Future Zones: although I liked Sharandar, I didn't quite understand why you chose the fey world as setting. Forgotten Realms is a huge map, with associated planes of existence, everything already described in many, many DnD books. You could have expanded the game towards Luskan, Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Amn, Icewind Dale, the Spine of the World, Mith Dranor, Menzoberranzan, and so many other places that I can't remember now. I really look forward to seeing at least some of those places in the game.
Regional/Religion/Racial "feats": in the character creation we choose a region, a background and a God for our character, but these things influence absolutely nothing in the game. in Forgotten Realms your combination of race+region of birth allows for certain special feats only pickable at the character creation. this is a very simple mechanic that would allow give a great deal more character customization. and in DnD (any world) the God you revere influences at least the list of spells of a cleric, and I think here it should too (maybe these could be the paragon paths for cleric...).
-Weapon Types: my first character was a GWF, and this is something I really missed. I only ever saw ONE axe, and it had no difference from an equivalent level greatsword. in DnD 3.5 for example, there are lots of weapon types and, although it's not explicit, each weapon type has it's own characteristics. for example, axes have less chance of crit than swords, but their crits are much more devastating; light blades like rapiers have higher chance of crit, but lower damage; flails have intrinsic defensive bonuses to represent how hard it is to parry a chain; polearms have longer reach; there are exotic weapons, each with its bonus and no important drawback, but that require the character to spend a feat point to learn how to use; the list goes on. this would be an amazing new mechanic to the game. it would also open the path to new paragon paths for the melee classes; GWF already have Sword-master, it would be just natural an "Axe-master" and "Polearm master", don't you think? (with more flavorful names, of course).
-Currency is currently "poorly designed": seriously, I never used a seal of the lion; the things bought with it are often inferior to the ordinary green drops, and take a lot of time to get enough seals (by this much time I already outleveled the reward...). same for manticore and pegasus. the bounty rewards are so meager that by the time you have enough bounties to buy them they are not worthy anymore. I also don't understand why you need rough and refined AD, the rough is only useful to... get the refined!? and 2 different coins from praying? I see the need for more than just gold, but the way it is now is just ridiculous, with so many useless currencies.
-PVE vs PVP balance: I didn't go to PVP in this game, I usually don't like it, but I can extrapolate knowledge from other games where I did try both PVP and PVE, so I can ask: make separate rule sets for each. you can't balance all classes with a single rule set and both objectives in mind, if you balance in one side you screw in the other, so that you never have more than half people happy. and I see you are doing exactly this, trying to balance with a single rule set. DONT. PLEASE.
-Protectors Enclave design: I often have crashes, dc's and lag in Protectors enclave because of excess of players. it crashes nowhere else, only there. judging by the number of complaints of crashes in the forum I'll guess I'm not the only one. There are a few of solutions to this:
--use protector's enclave space better: the place is huge, do you really need to have all auctioneers in a single spot pilling players upon them? make 3 or 4 auctions around the city, far from Rinx and Knox and other popular NPC's, preferably each inside its own house. it's not hard to change the spawn spot of an NPC, is it?
--smarter choice of instance: today when I logged in I was having so much lag that I thought there was some new problem that I wasn't aware of. it took me 2 crashes and a dc in about 10 minutes to see that this stupid server threw me in the most crowded of all the instances of Protectors Enclave. There was an instance with 8 players, and the game chose to put me in the one that had 146. I changed instance and guess what? no lag at all, and definitely no more crashes. I'll remember to always do that when I log in, and whenever I go to enclave, but really, the game should know better than putting people in the crowded place when there's an empty place available, shouldn't it?
I'll add more things when I remember them.
That said, this game still has a lot of room to improve. In this list I put all kinds of things, from trivialities to major stuff; I also made suggestions to how to do things that I think will already be done one day but might not be done the way I'd most like to see.
-Future Zones: although I liked Sharandar, I didn't quite understand why you chose the fey world as setting. Forgotten Realms is a huge map, with associated planes of existence, everything already described in many, many DnD books. You could have expanded the game towards Luskan, Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Amn, Icewind Dale, the Spine of the World, Mith Dranor, Menzoberranzan, and so many other places that I can't remember now. I really look forward to seeing at least some of those places in the game.
Regional/Religion/Racial "feats": in the character creation we choose a region, a background and a God for our character, but these things influence absolutely nothing in the game. in Forgotten Realms your combination of race+region of birth allows for certain special feats only pickable at the character creation. this is a very simple mechanic that would allow give a great deal more character customization. and in DnD (any world) the God you revere influences at least the list of spells of a cleric, and I think here it should too (maybe these could be the paragon paths for cleric...).
-Weapon Types: my first character was a GWF, and this is something I really missed. I only ever saw ONE axe, and it had no difference from an equivalent level greatsword. in DnD 3.5 for example, there are lots of weapon types and, although it's not explicit, each weapon type has it's own characteristics. for example, axes have less chance of crit than swords, but their crits are much more devastating; light blades like rapiers have higher chance of crit, but lower damage; flails have intrinsic defensive bonuses to represent how hard it is to parry a chain; polearms have longer reach; there are exotic weapons, each with its bonus and no important drawback, but that require the character to spend a feat point to learn how to use; the list goes on. this would be an amazing new mechanic to the game. it would also open the path to new paragon paths for the melee classes; GWF already have Sword-master, it would be just natural an "Axe-master" and "Polearm master", don't you think? (with more flavorful names, of course).
-Currency is currently "poorly designed": seriously, I never used a seal of the lion; the things bought with it are often inferior to the ordinary green drops, and take a lot of time to get enough seals (by this much time I already outleveled the reward...). same for manticore and pegasus. the bounty rewards are so meager that by the time you have enough bounties to buy them they are not worthy anymore. I also don't understand why you need rough and refined AD, the rough is only useful to... get the refined!? and 2 different coins from praying? I see the need for more than just gold, but the way it is now is just ridiculous, with so many useless currencies.
-PVE vs PVP balance: I didn't go to PVP in this game, I usually don't like it, but I can extrapolate knowledge from other games where I did try both PVP and PVE, so I can ask: make separate rule sets for each. you can't balance all classes with a single rule set and both objectives in mind, if you balance in one side you screw in the other, so that you never have more than half people happy. and I see you are doing exactly this, trying to balance with a single rule set. DONT. PLEASE.
-Protectors Enclave design: I often have crashes, dc's and lag in Protectors enclave because of excess of players. it crashes nowhere else, only there. judging by the number of complaints of crashes in the forum I'll guess I'm not the only one. There are a few of solutions to this:
--use protector's enclave space better: the place is huge, do you really need to have all auctioneers in a single spot pilling players upon them? make 3 or 4 auctions around the city, far from Rinx and Knox and other popular NPC's, preferably each inside its own house. it's not hard to change the spawn spot of an NPC, is it?
--smarter choice of instance: today when I logged in I was having so much lag that I thought there was some new problem that I wasn't aware of. it took me 2 crashes and a dc in about 10 minutes to see that this stupid server threw me in the most crowded of all the instances of Protectors Enclave. There was an instance with 8 players, and the game chose to put me in the one that had 146. I changed instance and guess what? no lag at all, and definitely no more crashes. I'll remember to always do that when I log in, and whenever I go to enclave, but really, the game should know better than putting people in the crowded place when there's an empty place available, shouldn't it?
I'll add more things when I remember them.
Post edited by danielvv1 on
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Comments
Please keep in mind Cryptic's number one goal is to make money off of you and other players.
If any of those suggestions will create more cashflow for them, they make take it into consideration.
I wouldn't hold your breath.
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
Regional/Religion/Racial "feats" - not so sure about too many pros/cons
weapon types - again it could get messy with players feeling they need to carry a dozen+ weapons to cover options... at the moment it probably goes too far the other way with classes only really having one weapon which behaves the same way no matter what it physically looks like
currency - agree strongly - it is a mess. Gold quickly becomes meaningless once you have enough to have a mount and companions
PVE/PVP - probably agree ... I don't bother with PVP anymore ... tried it, it felt constantly broken,
Protectors Enclave - lol YES. the shard auto-selection is broken and layout seems to be more designed to be inconvenient than useful... - it however does have multiple exit 'doors' which the other regions typically lack, and they lack postal boxes even in places where you might expect it reasonable to have them.
- New city zone. Waterdeep or Baldur's Gate. Could expand quest lines off of it and new areas, but the real benefit is to further spread out players and access to AH, mail, banks, etc.
- Player housing. Yep, I'm one of those players. I will invest a significant amount of time on a digital house, especially free time. You've already got the foundry, so there is room to simplify it and add a profession system into it all to support a very in-depth housing system. Then throw in the Zen market and loot drops for decorations, and we're getting something very awesome that should require very little overhead after the fact from Cryptic.
- More PvP queue's. I've gone into detail in other posts, but adding different classes of queue's based on party composition and class-specific gear score would really add to the 'balance' of the game at high-end pvp.
- More PvP gametypes. Zones are nice, but CTF and Deathmatch would also be great additions. Three-man and 10-man groups would also be interesting to see.
- Branching dungeons. More in-depth AI, and more skill-associated objectives which can make the dungeon easier or harder, depending on party makeup. Like a section that allows the parties TR to sneak by and lower a drawbridge, thus skipping some mobs. Or a system of portals that only the CW can open which speed up the run. Or a huge bolder that, if the GWF pushes on it, can crush some enemies below. Etc.
- More secrets and exploring. In the beginner zones, especially the first three, there are tons of hidden nodes and trap doors and secret areas. As you level, however, the complexity of each map is lower and lower, until in the end you've got a single path way and the resource node is always behind some little nook or corner.
- Large scale dungeons and skirmishes, including 10-man and 20-man instances.
- More armor variations and rewards for PvP, including ridiculous cost access to higher-tier 2.5 and 3.0 gear. Combine GG coins and Glory if you need to, much like Sharandar rewards.
- More classes, especially pet-focused druids and necromancers. And rangers.
"D*mn wizards," said Morik the Rogue.
Learn what a GWF and GF really are: The History of Fighters
+1 ...
New players that are unexp with 9k gs easily get destroyed at all T2. When I run with guild I can use one hand and still do T2, but when i run with pug I need 3 hand to try to pass 1st boss. And my guild are not some hardcore guild at the first place my self is a quite decent player and well geared.
Void Reaper - 60 CW
Eliza Trickfoot - 60 TR
Scarlet Maiden - 60 DC
Timmy Orc-Bane - 60 GWF
Ranger Jo - 20 HR
Edit: Maybe more power upgrades too. I feel kind of limited with just 2 upgrades...