Constructive Criticism

1. Introduction (In which I banter.)

To reinforce this, I will also add that I have been playing games since C64 and Amiga, and have been developing several - both online and offline - gaming systems throughout the past fifteen years.

This gives me no right to think I know better in anything than you do, however, I would like to give my point of view regardless as some things I think could be improved on. To make it an easier read I'll go topic by topic and hopefully get my point across - if not, please ask me to rephrase, I'm not a native english speaker and I'm prone to banter.

The reason I'm posting from a level1 character's profile is that I've encountered massive immaturity from players before regarding my forum posts and I would not wish to deal with any sort of conflict while playing the game.
Feel free to growl at me on here, though.

Commenting my post (just to clear a few things out)
Having been on the Internet for fifteen years now I've learned to ignore posts such as "you suck" or "Narni you stupid b*tch you have no idea".
I'm 27 years old, an adult, with my own supply of experience and common sense dear fellow players, so please spare us all of having to skim through trash posts. I'm addressing the development team here mainly but if you have something to add, please do so in good spirit. Thank you!

Things I will address (A list.)
- Interface vs Playability: A few points to note, my opinion and a few suggestions I came up with just in case you haven't had enough of those yet.
- Game Balance vs Income
- Ideas on how to make us pay you more money.





2. Interface vs Playability (In which I'll get technical.)
The first thing I noticed about the game is the very simply drawn interface. The icons I find too small and are not obvious enough.
- I think it would be better to give that interface a bit more thought once you can, so it's clearer, with larger and better-articulated buttons. Take a look at other MMOs sometime.
- For example I'm loving how clear and beautiful the website/forum design is, maybe you could use this theme for the game itself at some point?
- I also miss more Hotkeys.
- Camera rotation by mouse would also be nice on character creation and even on the login/starting screen so I can walk around my character. (wheel preferably) I realize that there are those little arrows on creation but it's still not the same as using your mouse.
- Allow more items in the mailbox, PLEASE!! Charge extra per item, but it's PAINFUL to keep opening a new letter everytime I want to mail the mats to my alt.
- Dismount people automatically when they open up a conversation window. This prevents a lot of lag as the mounts will no longer be animated in your

2.a. Window system
The second thing is, I play in a window. I need to, I multitask with a lot of things at the same time. I tried to resize the window so it fits my screen a bit better and it went on the fritz, even crashed on me.
- I love how you can move the inventory and other windows around, but it would be nice to allow to resize them by frame drag the same way as the game window itself.
- I also notice that ESC doesn't work as the cancel key in most cases. I think it would be better if ESC was the key to close a window, instead of having to click all the time.
- Alphabetical order: In certain windows such as the coordinate assistance you don't get things in an alphabetical order. Not a big deal I know but it would be useful. Also hitting down an inital key could take us to the first option starting with that level. Meaning: If I want Seamstress I just click the window, hit S and the cursor hops down to the first option starting with an S, faster than scrolling.

2.b. Chat Window
First of all, I really don't like the chat window as it is now.
I realize that the game was intended for asian keyboards and that you have less trouble with many letters but
THE CHAT BOX IS WAY TOO SMALL. I mean I can't type a whole english sentence in there and it bugs me. Please allow more letters per line. Three times more would be very nice, please.b:sad
It takes two shift/alt keys (Faction chat is the hardest to change to for me, the ~ key is in the other corner of my european keyboard.) to change between channels instead of the widely used and easy to type slash name or slash letter: /talk ( /t) /faction ( /f). I of course can't demand PWE to rewrite the whole chat client but I've had feedback from majority of my friends that they find it weird and not too comfortable.
Here are my suggestions anyway:

2.b.1. Chat Modes
Currently we have Zone Chat, Faction Chat, Squad Chat, World Chat and the Trade channel. I think it would be more practical to have:
- Zone Chat !z or /z or whatever key you want to use really -.- which works as white text does now.
- Low Range Chat /talk /t which would only be heard within twentyfive steps at most so people could have conversations in far-out places without having to squad and others listening in. I mean 12-ish people who cannot be in the same squad but aren't necessarily in the same faction either wanting to have a conversation and half the world hearing.
- World Chat: I think it's a brilliant way to charge people for world chat, though we still have some people that are too rich to bother shutting up b:laugh

2.b.2. Other chat gimmicks
- Chat window recolor, resize, font type, font color, allow to personalize the colors please, the faction chat's color hurts my eyes on this screen.b:chuckle
- Copy Paste from-to chat window.
- Allow live links in chat window, with a "This link takes you to unknown space, please confirm if you want to go to this link or risk being invaded by viruses and small green men wearing pink shorts and bow ties." popup just in case some people don't know what not to click, or accidentally would click something they shouldn't.
- Automatic smileys. If I type I could get b:pleased, if I type I could get laugh, it would be nice. Could toggle them on and off even.
- Enable chat logging in a file in folder with filters such as some people might only want to log faction and squad etc, (toggle) and make a chat log for the game itself too. I see that private chats can be logged, that's a nice start!

2.c. Minimap, Tracking
I love the tracking and auto-move features. They're really brilliant. What I'm missing is a better and clearer way to locate people on the map. As useful as it may be to see random green dots run around on my minimap, I see no point in it, not even knowing level and class. Instead it could get a bit more useful:
- Toggle viewing Faction Members,
- Toggle viewing Squad Members,
- Toggle viewing Friends,
all of the above individually under the options menu and/or with an in-game hotkey without needing to actually open the options menu.
- Toggle Display Info on players both in squad and faction list and on minimap: Class, level, faction, live coords (changing if moving) OR coords the moment you opened the map if live would be a problem or too much for the engine to handle.
- Coords appearing on minimap under cursor would also be brilliant.



3.Game Balance vs Income (In which I sob and sniffle for more coin.):
It's free to play so we can choose to pay or suffer? Could it be perhaps a bit more free-play friendly? I'll put in money even if you don't lash my back.

3.a. Money problems
Don't get me wrong, I very well know that proper game balance is the hardest thing in the world to achieve, but to me it seems that separate development divisions don't communicate well enough among themselves. The result: I need to spend Unit:100 coin on a levelup but I only gained Unit:25 coin and I'm not going to gain the Unit:200+75 I need for next level by next level either.
Meaning: We need to spend about twice as more coin as we gain (repairs excluded) and it multiplies by three every second time we level up. A double drops weekend compared to the "average drop rate" provided not double but one point five percent better income according to my calculations, point five diminishing.

Yes I understand that you want people to put real money in, but you still shouldn't kill the "free to play" myth entirely. Those who can pay will pay anyway, and people you chase off with the imbalances could very well become paying regulars eventually.

3.b.XP Balance
A level ten character gains approximately the same XP as a level fifty character does.
This means that the amount of kills required increased by five times. While quests do demand you to slaughter up to seventy monsters of the same kind, it's by no means fun or productive to do. I realize that there are daily quests to make up for this but I would rather see more options and more fun solutions personally.

My suggestion would be either to revise the drop and xp system or the cost of things, on either side allowing things to go a bit more fluently perhaps.

4. Ideas on how to make us pay you more money.(In which I cut my own leg.)
This is not something you often hear, a player giving suggestions on how to pay more money! It's not that I'm so rich but rather that I get frustrated. I'd rather pay twice as much for something and be sure that it's what I wanted than get what I did not want and then spend hours upon hours trying to trade, most of the time ending up just putting it on the auction house or giving up on it altogether.

4.a. Dyes
- Random dyes are sweet, nice and cheap. They cost 2g or 2 dollars.
- How about Specific Color Packs, 1x 5x and 10x dyes of the same color in them, costing 2g, 10g and 18g respectively? Itwould be sweet. So what if I want to buy 20 green dyes? I'll have to pay 36g.
- Color Days: This day the boutique only sells THIS color of item. Randomly. Could be vomit green all week. And then suddenly black one day. Color announced, or not announced at all, up to you!

4.b. More Sales
Not much I can describe about this. Keep those Sales coming, they make us spend like it's Christmas. Wait.. it is.. *snicker*

4.c. Lift the mount restrictions!
I want to ride a phoenix as an archer. Why shouldn't I be able to collect ALL the cute mounts despite having wings as well? Some people like to own stuff just for the sake of owning them!

More to come as I advance. My main is on the 60 range now, not quitting until I reach 100!

Hugz and kissez.
Narnicakes