Idea's that sounded good, but....

[Zuuljin]

This thread is about design principals that sounded good, but turned out bad. This is to perhaps make you think about negative aspects to your idea's, that sound good on paper, but just dont work out right in practice, or perfect idea's that still may be good, but were improperly implemented.

As I'v been thinking about fun things to create for my own MMO, alot of my idea's matched EQ2's way of doing things, but turned out to be things people hated.

1) To start off, story driven progression. I thought this would be great. We all loved single player RPG's with their stories, and never felt confined when having to complete the story to move on, yet when applied to EQ2, people started responding that they felt trapped, that there were too many zones blocked off by quests needing to be done. People hated everything being keyed.

2) Along with story driven progression in EQ2, was character class progression. Doesnt it sound cool that you pick a basic class, which, as you grow in your skill, becomes a master class! Many people are simliar in the start, but afterwards begin to become unique as they choose their class. Quests involve the player in this transformation for a more immersive world. And again, people hated this. They couldnt see what higher classes were like without playing through the same basic classes. They felt trapped in that they had to complete quests to move on. Noone felt unique enough at the start. Also along with this, was that there were WAY too many classes at the end, making balance a complete nightmare.

3) Next is linear zone design. How to keep people from avoiding the zone and following the walls? Create a path through the zone. This way they can also progress the story as players pass through the zone. Requiring people to actually play through the zone instead of skip it. A few complained it was too restrictive again, and not giving people the choice on how to pass through the zone, it was their way or you go back from where you came.

4) Sort of skill based combat. EQ2 used the Heroic oportunity system to add some strategy to abilities used in a specific sequence. I cant really say if players did not like this, but noone ever uses it, besides someone randomly hittng it, and hoping something good comes up. Everyone is just too lazy to bother timing things, and they would rather just button mash.

5) Voices. Not something that people hated, but turned into a feature that required WAY too much upkeep. Having to record voices for possibly thousands of NPC's seemed to be too much trouble, and every expansion after the initial game released had minimal if any voices added to their NPC's.

6) Players belonging to a factioned city. Keeping with the storyline of the world, having players be attached to a city, gain faction for their guild from the city, and have certain things available to those who gain enough faction. Nice idea, and I'm not sure how many people like the guild system of EQ2, but alot of people complained about there only being 2 cities for which players could belong too, Again with the trapped sense of felling. Faction system was worthless for those not in guilds, those who wanted to be the lone wolf hero. The city still never really gave you your props after gaining guild levels though. The faction you were alligned with did, but guards still called you names regardless of the fact that you could smack them down with 1 swing.


Thats all I can think of right now. Anyone else have any examples of idea's that sounded good but didnt quite work out?

[Vorph]

#1 was one of my favorite things about EQ2. Pussies needed to just do the key quests, they weren't that hard.

#2 ... well, lifting ideas from L2 is a recipe for disaster.

#4 worked great in FFXI, aside from marginalizing certain classes who didn't contribute to Renkei as well as others. EQ2 took the idea and made it both complicated and underpowered. Personally I think if you're going to gank shit from FFXI, you need to start with the job system before even looking at anything else.

#6 I agree with. It should have either expanded upon to a much larger degree, or just scrapped. As it was, it didn't even have the depth of WoW.

[Twobit Whore]

I guess this is one of those personal issues, because I tend to like a lot of those ideas. Then again, everything in moderation. Voices in EQ2, too much. In WoW, much better. Factions in old EQ, pretty cool. Factions in VG, retarded. Skill based combat that has worthwhile payoffs, good. I.E. FFXI. Group attacks that are just fluff and not really vital to the outcome, worthless. I.E. EQ2.

I could do more for each point, but as you see. It's not the ideas that are bad at all. It's the piss poor implementation of them in certain games that you are basing your opinions on. I know you mentioned that in your opening, but I don't think that is due cause to dismiss the ideas entirely. Instead focus on why previous incarnations failed to deliver and brainstorm on how you would like to see it done better.

[Ahnkosis]

edit: totally misread this thread.

Inventory Management.

We've been badgered into believeing that the whole bag/bank system from EQ1, EQ2, WoW, etc etc...is the way to go.

There are numerous systems, many of which work as good or better than a bag/bank system.

If it is a fantasy world, why even have a limitation on the amount of overall space a player can have?

In Everquest 1&2, you were limited in your personal inventory, and in your bank inventory in the amount of space you could have. At least the bank had an unlimited amount of storage for your money however.

In World of Warcraft, you again have limited personal inventory and limited bank inventory. It is WORSE than Everquest 1&2, in that to obtain more personal inventory and bank inventory, you have to spend money to obtain them. EQ1&2 you had to spend money as well, but it was orders of magnitude lower than what you must pay in WoW. Also, WoW had no money storage. The money storage was infinite on your character, but even still, having money storage at a bank allows for easier saving.

In many MUDs & various other games, you are limited by an arbitrary number of inventory slots. It is similar to the EQ/WoW systems, but not as compartmentalized.

Either case is only in place to impose a restriction on the player, often times to force them to visit a town/bank to interrupt their playing session.


Another thing that really bothers me was FOOD & DRINK. (TY EQ1.)

Requiring food and drink, while the devs claimed it made the game more "immersive", only made the players groan as their character wouldn't gain mana due to lack of food.

World of Warcraft had a much better system of food being supplemental (although some would argue typically required).

[Kuro]

As much as I hate to say it, Anarchy Online's Equipment system could likely be slotted as a failure. The amount of twinking and system-knowledge required to be "effective" for your level range really inhibited new players' game enjoyment. A single fuck up, like accidently right-clicking off a piece of equipment, could take hours of wrangling with other PCs for buffs, gear swapping, and fast fingers to fix. It doesn't help that they eventually started designing the game around an originally optional twinking through buffs et al.

However, as a long time player of the game, I personally loved the equipment system. The amount of pure awesome shit you could pull off with enough game knowledge and fore-planning was amazing. One of the most involved and customizable loot systems on earth, but waaaaay too much for a bulk of new players to get.

[Vorph]

The last time I tried to play AO, I accidentally unequipped my Fixer's Manex within the first 5 minutes. I needed pretty much every relevant buff to get the damn thing on and never was able to get it done before I just gave up on the game again.

I really did like their implant system though.

[Aulirophile]

Originally Posted by Ahnkosis

edit: totally misread this thread.

Inventory Management.

We've been badgered into believeing that the whole bag/bank system from EQ1, EQ2, WoW, etc etc...is the way to go.

In all fairness, the bag system isn't bad neccesarily, it is the fast that in most of those games you can end up carrying around 5-6 sets of gear and a bunch of other stuff. That was a flaw in the game design, having 5 sets of resist gear is retarded, limited inventory is not inherently so. The thing to do is really to imagine what your players will actually end up carrying around in a reasonable scenario and if it is just to much you need to either find a way to handle it or go over what they should be carrying and find ways to eliminate the need for them to carry it.

[Vorph]

Inventory management is another EQ2 pet peeve of mine. The idea of having backpacks for your inventory and boxes for your bank and house was a good one. Limiting the ability to carry boxes simply by their weight was where the retardation set in. Casters could barely carry one without being encumbered, while a str-based melee could easily use a full load of them in place of packs, ending up with nearly twice as many total inventory slots.

Balancing carrying capacity by class is fine in a single player game, but it really sucks in a MMO.

[Skurd]

One thing comes to mind :
Bind on Equip, Bind on Pickup, Soulbound, etc..
The implementation on those things fucking sucks.

I think it's great to have gear being "attuned" to you (not the EQ2 way though), but do it progressively and not the instant you equip it or the instant you loot it.
It destroys so many things :
- twinking
- testing (yeah stats comparing is all great but it's always good to be able to test it "live)
- economy (yeah, sharding / vendoring / deleting is gay)

Do it like that :
- Allow for certain items to have an attunement period, count it in days, number of hits recieved, whatever, make it so that the more you use it, the more effective the item will become (keeping in mind the stats aren't going to improve, it's just that the stats effect is slowly raising from X% to 100% effectiveness).
After some time the item will turn in "symbiose" with you and will then lose it's magical powers if transferred to someone else (maybe introduce some alternative quests or trainers that allow to "re-vitalize" items by turning in gems or other powered pieces (make them raid drop only, or put them on hard bosses, whatever), make these gems have a certain potential so that in the long run you can't farm low level bosses to re-vitalize top of the line equipment.
Make it so that each re-vitalization actually wears out the item some bit and reduces the overall stats (make it percentage based) so that items would actually lose value in the long run and have a meaning for tradeskillers (repair skill using raid drops recovering partial stat loss, or something).

- Add skill requirements for certain items (X points in defense, Y points in agility) so that you can't twink characters with just about anything, but don't over do it, don't make the requirements equal to having a recommanded level, just make it so that people have to specialise if they want to wear specialised high end gear.

- For the bags, just make a goddamn quest bag that automatically stores any item that has a quest tag and make it expandable through minimal effort (or make it bottomless).

[Drauk]

Originally Posted by Ahnkosis

If it is a fantasy world, why even have a limitation on the amount of overall space a player can have?

Database impact, simple as that. In a game with WoW number of subscriber increasing character inventory even by 10 slots is tremendous amount of data.

[Faille]

Are these really bad ideas or just bad implementations of the ideas? Can you see how they might be improved on to actually become the good ideas you think they are at the start?

[Rune]

It's easy to understand why database limitations hinder the concept of unlimited inventory space, but making no attempt at some sort of lore based reason for that is what pisses me off. Blizzard has some shit database network code evidently, does that mean they shouldn't have any items in their game? Fuck no.

Inventory Management My Way:

1) Everything stacks. Absolutely Everything. To ridiculous numbers.
2) Anything remotely related to quests is specially flagged and goes into your magical unlimited pouch of quest items for your inspection / use later.
3) You can carry as much as you like until you hit the weight limit, determined by strength, and a short time later your character begins to drain mana / hp.
4) Your inventory pops up in a 10 x 10 bag with a large number of 'pages' navigated by arrow keys
5) No time sink bags / bank crap.
6) Money is heavy, and valuable but in the interest of anti-retardation, automatically converts up (100 copper = 1 silver ) during dungeon grinding.

I realize some of these are impossible or otherwise flawed, but in my opinion they should still be strive? strove? striven? for, if possible.

Also, just because, absolutely no durability if possible, but failing that, absolutely no durability loss for normal activities. Like Zehn pointed out, you forged an epic weapon from the fires of hell consecrated with the blood of a thousand goblins, but it gets fucked up during a routine dungeon run? Please.

I think if you were absolutely fixated on the goddamn concept you could implement it as a bonus rather than a penalty.

Also the guild lobby concept is something that needs to be implemented in more games. <3 xp loss.

[Ahnkosis]

Originally Posted by Drauk

Database impact, simple as that. In a game with WoW number of subscriber increasing character inventory even by 10 slots is tremendous amount of data.

Well, I could live with a limited character inventory, as long as there was an unlimited bank inventory. If WoW had an unlimited bank inventory, nobody would ever cry about lack of space ever again. That's one improvement that could be made.

Another improvement that could have been applicable to WoW (and other games) would be gearsets. If it's not realism breaking/immersion breaking/w.e to have 5 backpacks full of swords, axes and full suits of armor, why not just allow the player to be able to create gear swap pallates?

It would function like itemrack mixed with the Diablo 2 weapon switching. Say you wanted to go from your tanking set to your FR set. You would have a seperate paper doll tab for your FR set, that you could have the gear already equipped on another tab, hit one button and the slots with gear in them would switch out. Say you get like 3-4 of those to suit your various gear situations, and you'd have alot less crying over space.

Bagspace seems to be interwined with how gear is managed in the game, how tradeskills are managed in the game, etc...so dealing with those things concurrently is probably the best approach, rather than trying to stick to a rigid overall approach.

[Rune]

Originally Posted by Skurd

One thing comes to mind :
Bind on Equip, Bind on Pickup, Soulbound, etc..
The implementation on those things fucking sucks.

- For the bags, just make a goddamn quest bag that automatically stores any item that has a quest tag and make it expandable through minimal effort (or make it bottomless).

I dunno how I missed your post, but I agree with everything you said. Heh.
I think truly monumentally powerful items should never be soulbound, and nothing should ever have a zero value to the vendor, if you can't scale it reasonably then don't cheat like that. If jump starting the player economy is so important then allow a system where you sell it to the vendor but the vendor turns around, marks it up, then attempts to sell it through a bazaar type system.

Furthermore, no game should ever have a system like EQ's bazaar, where you have to keep your fucking computer on when you're not physically present or even remotely involved with what's going on. I don't think that was the original intention, probably intended to be a very social zone where you were communicating for short breaks, but that was not what it evolved into.

I really see no reason why an auction type system has to involve any graphics at all, I would love a different log in method to 'auction world' where it was just a good solid interface for searching / buying instead of tacked onto the engine. Hell I could think of a few people who would stop logging into the actual game just to play the economy.

Also I despise Blizzard's system of quest -> item rather than EQ's of item -> quest. Nothing like killing 100 were-bears then finding a quest to kill 100 were-bears and get 30 bear dongs.

Game designers should learn from the death of everquest, as well, because the low population on servers such as Test has destroyed a lot of the game, like the bazaar, and lfg systems, despite there still being a relatively healthy population of people. Invent alternate ways for your game to still reach critical mass at different population numbers.

[Ahnkosis]

Originally Posted by Rune

It's easy to understand why database limitations hinder the concept of unlimited inventory space, but making no attempt at some sort of lore based reason for that is what pisses me off. Blizzard has some shit database network code evidently, does that mean they shouldn't have any items in their game? Fuck no.

Inventory Management My Way:

1) Everything stacks. Absolutely Everything. To ridiculous numbers.
2) Anything remotely related to quests is specially flagged and goes into your magical unlimited pouch of quest items for your inspection / use later.
3) You can carry as much as you like until you hit the weight limit, determined by strength, and a short time later your character begins to drain mana / hp.
4) Your inventory pops up in a 10 x 10 bag with a large number of 'pages' navigated by arrow keys
5) No time sink bags / bank crap.
6) Money is heavy, and valuable but in the interest of anti-retardation, automatically converts up (100 copper = 1 silver ) during dungeon grinding.

Also, just because, absolutely no durability if possible, but failing that, absolutely no durability loss for normal activities. Like Zehn pointed out, you forged an epic weapon from the fires of hell consecrated with the blood of a thousand goblins, but it gets fucked up during a routine dungeon run? Please.

I think if you were absolutely fixated on the goddamn concept you could implement it as a bonus rather than a penalty.

Also the guild lobby concept is something that needs to be implemented in more games. <3 xp loss.

I agree with alot of your points.

Stacking - Hell yes.
Quest Items - Couldn't agree more.
Carrying limit - No. Totally disagree. Have a standard limit...either that or no weight limit at all. After playing WoW, then EQ1 again, I can't emphasize how fucking gay it was to not be able to move because I gated with my bank plat on me on accident. To say "well next time you'll remember to bank it" is retarded, because it only makes players frustrated.
Inventory Pages - Agree & Disagree. While it does make it a good pacing tool to have limited inventory space, it is also very annoying at times to not be able to pick something up because you don't have sufficient space. On the fence about this one.
No bag buying/time sink shit - Yes. Yes yes yes. Find other means of exiting money from the player economy.
Money having weight - See Carrying limit. Just doens't make tons of sense. Also, if you're going to impose a weight limit, but not an inventory limit, it sends a mixed message.

edit: Also on the whole item -> quest issue, I agree. Often times, I was excited to kill something in EQ, just to see what it dropped, and if it was a quest item, I'd go see what it was right away. In WoW, if I saw anything named, I could always assume it was a quest NPC and just work around it, because it wasn't worth my time if I wasn't on the quest.