Skip
01-03-2003, 10:26 AM
Just a few things I hope DNL considers - since these are a few things that effectively ended my enjoyment of a couple of other MMORPG's :
1. The power curve. This is where a small percentage of hard core players bring about changes in the final release of the game that deny the same gaming opportunity to the majority of players. Example - a handful of smart, coordinated players manage to obtain an item, spell, or ability that the developers had not thought possible to obtain. The game designers react by changing the game -- often while allowing the gained reward(s) to remain in the game, but making it impossible for 98 % of the players to ever achieve / experience the same thing.
2. Maxxed out characters running around "bottom feeding", because there is nothing left to do. There is nothing worse for the majority of any game's players than to have a few "uber" characters run around scrapeing up all the loot from baddies. Better to think about this now, than have it destroy your player base later. Most game developers say they will have new content available for bigger players to "move into" -- but after a game gets commercially released, it always seems that the big guy content mysteriously gets delayed or cancelled. IMHO, if ya cant make player advancement linear & open ended - better to just announce that player characters reaching XXXX experience points or character level XX will be automatically retired to the Hall of Fame (Shame) -- especially if those characters can not be one way portaled into the new Land of Gray (where they can continue or be reset to face new challenges & allow for more character advancement).
3. Avoid drudgery. Does anyone think its fun to have to harvest cotton just so you can make thread to fix a hole in your shirt? Additionally, no one that I have ever talked to believes camping for rare spawns in hopes of a rare drop is any fun.
4. Avoid character class bias. EQ became a tank-cleric essential game with hybrid classes seen as extremely weak & undesireable. In DAoC, damage casters ruled - with melee classes being ineffective in player vs player, realm vs realm encounters. If you're gonna allow for a Super class -- please let the opposing players have some kind of access to kryptonite.
5. Start thinking about encryption. There will always be cheaters out there looking to use data packet sniffers to gain an unfair advantage over the other players / team. It is possible to change encryption keys more frequently than the time it takes hackers / cheaters to dissemble & interpret the data stream.
That's just a few thoughts from playing online games over the last 10 years.
~ Skip ~
1. The power curve. This is where a small percentage of hard core players bring about changes in the final release of the game that deny the same gaming opportunity to the majority of players. Example - a handful of smart, coordinated players manage to obtain an item, spell, or ability that the developers had not thought possible to obtain. The game designers react by changing the game -- often while allowing the gained reward(s) to remain in the game, but making it impossible for 98 % of the players to ever achieve / experience the same thing.
2. Maxxed out characters running around "bottom feeding", because there is nothing left to do. There is nothing worse for the majority of any game's players than to have a few "uber" characters run around scrapeing up all the loot from baddies. Better to think about this now, than have it destroy your player base later. Most game developers say they will have new content available for bigger players to "move into" -- but after a game gets commercially released, it always seems that the big guy content mysteriously gets delayed or cancelled. IMHO, if ya cant make player advancement linear & open ended - better to just announce that player characters reaching XXXX experience points or character level XX will be automatically retired to the Hall of Fame (Shame) -- especially if those characters can not be one way portaled into the new Land of Gray (where they can continue or be reset to face new challenges & allow for more character advancement).
3. Avoid drudgery. Does anyone think its fun to have to harvest cotton just so you can make thread to fix a hole in your shirt? Additionally, no one that I have ever talked to believes camping for rare spawns in hopes of a rare drop is any fun.
4. Avoid character class bias. EQ became a tank-cleric essential game with hybrid classes seen as extremely weak & undesireable. In DAoC, damage casters ruled - with melee classes being ineffective in player vs player, realm vs realm encounters. If you're gonna allow for a Super class -- please let the opposing players have some kind of access to kryptonite.
5. Start thinking about encryption. There will always be cheaters out there looking to use data packet sniffers to gain an unfair advantage over the other players / team. It is possible to change encryption keys more frequently than the time it takes hackers / cheaters to dissemble & interpret the data stream.
That's just a few thoughts from playing online games over the last 10 years.
~ Skip ~