Yaladan said:Silly, but I did enjoy the ability to speak several languages that you had to learn in EQ, I thought it added some fun.
True enough. That was a good immersive element to the world. Unfortunately it doesn't work so well today as voice chat and other things are so widely used it strips that away. I do remember way back when though, long before team speak and Ventrillo became so common use that it was kind of a necessity to learn those (at least on the RP server) to actually communicate with others. Good times. lol But I guess long gone are those comical days of attempting to spam each other into linguistic coherancy. ;p
Also, a Middle-Earth Shadow of War Nemesis system variant in an MMO will one day be something truly special.
lotro fellowship maneuvres
eq2 heroic opportunities
vanguard group-required weakness/status effect placement and exploitation system (here)
vanguard Chained Attacks, Counters, Rescue Actions and Sympathetic Actions. (here)
ffxi skillchains (provided they required a group as well, apparently they do)
And/or anything remotely similar to.. A superior mechanic that came out of those discussions on these forums (at least, I think it's superior) is the group leader can assign group effects, and when each class plays their role, it fills the requirements to fire the effect, allow the group leader to do so when appropriate. In practice, this means as long as you're using your abilities, any of your abilities, you contribute "properly" and no-one can do it wrong.
That way, players play their role, there is a group benefit, and the leader gets the most latitude in choice and timing.
Anything that promotes grouping, with tangible benefits for grouping, benefits for characters that aren't botted/boxed/sleeping, and players are rewarded for playing their role well.
Long form version of what I responded with on Twitter.
- A meaningful, depthful, challenging crafting system (SWG and Vanguard are good examples)
- A mashup of Vanguard and SWG player housing. Vanguard style housing plots and construction (though larger please), SWG-inspired player cities with public buildings. For decorating that housing, mashup of EQ2 and SWG, including the ability to put your old gear on the wall.
- A fully integrated diplomacy system ala Vanguard, but taken further, with the ability to influence world events, regional trade routes, and so on.
- Regional markets and regional player and NPC-based trading. Several games come to mind that we could learn from here - Earth and Beyond and Archeage are two titles that I remember.
- Deep, rich lore that is connected in subtle ways and expressed through a variety of mechanisms, not just quests. EverQuest excelled at this.
- Dynamic events that really make the world feel alive. Many games have tried to do this, but few have really succeeded (mostly because their events happen far too often and thus become far less special).
- A really great guild management UI. EQ2 had one.
- Ships, sailing, and exploration as in Vanguard
- Collections or a similar exploration-rewarding type of gameplay (probably via Perception) as in EQ2 and SWG
I could probably keep going but I feel like this covers some of the big features/systems that I'd like to see.
I really loved the exp loss that allowed you to Lose Levels.
It made the game dangerous.
Achievements. i like a little pat on the back once in a while. Nice positive to share with friends, guilds and groups.
EQ AA system
I liked how ESO handled lockpicking. Perhaps VR could give their own spin on that mechanic to cover not just chests but doors and disarming traps and the like. Additionally, quality of lockpick could affect how easily the lockpicks break. Perhaps limit lockpicking skill to rogues, bards and maybe monks.
Although some of these would never work with PRotF, these are systems that I thought were very well done and would love to play a game with a similar system (or I still play the listed games because of those systems).
1. FFIX multi-class system - In particular restarting a new class while being able to swap some skills from classes with similar skillsets/resource use once that class was high enough level.
i.e. If someone had a Ranger, once their character had X amount of STR and CON, they could start as a warrior while using some of the ranger's weapon skills (but not the pet or tracking skills) and then when you swapped back to ranger, maybe you could use battle cries and gap closers (charges). It allowed for huge customization/unique/self identification without breaking game balance. If you wanted to be a SHM that could make your target wet AND blast it with lightning, you would level up 2 classes (independantly) to eventually play how you wanted to play within reason (because not all skills could transfer to the other classes which maintained the class' identity).
---again, I wouldn't "expect" anything like this to be in PRotF, but if it were it would likely be the #1 game out there for a very very long time when combined with everything else.
2. The next best thing... Alternate Advancement systems from many many games. This also allowed for a minor level of customization that allowed players to become really attached to their characters because they could create their character more in their image without significantly changing the game balance/mechanics.
3. EQ and WoW's language system - In EQ, if you were a Dark Elf, you could speak Common, Under Common, and Dark Elf... other "evil" races could understand Under Common, only other Dark Elves could understand Dark Elf, and everyone could understand Common... if you were grouped with someone, you could level up your language skill and slowly translate the gibberish as your skill increased.
-In WoW, you could never understand the opposite faction and on PvP servers this made the PvP very immersive and almost visceral because the opposite factions didn't really seem like other players... they even made the opposite faction look different by adding shadowing to the character models to make them appear more like NPCs.
-Just another level of immersion and some level of customization if you wanted to try to learn multiple languages or speak in secret to others that share your language in public channels.
4. EQ2 "concentration" system - Classes that had group buffs didn't have to recast them every 29-59mins but instead had a seperate resource (concentration) and each buff used a certain amount of concentration, so you could just maintain 3-5 buffs at a time depending on the cost and not worry about gathering an entire raid together and take 5 mins to buff all of the melee with a 30min haste every 25 minutes (because it starts to wear off of the first person you cast it on).
So I was putting more thought into this, and something similiar to combo's that others have recommended. I really like the idea of combos. I think it gets people out of "this is my DPS rotation" and more into a "we are a group and play off each other".
Example would be, I'm using Anthem terms here don't kill me, Primers and Detonators. One class can cast/proc whatever say a Water based attack and say if a Lightning attack is cast in 5-10 seconds the Lightning attack does X% more damage. You could make it so you can't detonate your own primer too. This would increase the DPS coordination and really help get away from people just repeating the same 4-5 abilities in a specific min/max order.
Also something else I've always wanted to see is Undead mobs take damage from healing spells like in some of the old FF games.
Kilsin said:What is the best game system, mechanic or feature you have experienced that you would like to see in Pantheon? #mmo #communitymatters
some of the best systems IMHO are from DDO ( dungeons and dragons online)
1) traps and find traps, open locks and find secret doors, all thouse make rogues special regardless of combat or DPS output. same with wizards who learn "knock" spell or clerics who learn divination "find traps"
2) same stat on different pieces of gear dont stack, i.e. if you have gloves with +5 stamina and cloak with +3 stamina, you get only the +5 from the gloves. so you are free to replace the cloak with something else.
this mechanic make stacking stats difficult, but it alows you to shift pieces of gear around, thus doesn't make gear obsolete so fast. because you canreturn to your older gear depends of what piece with which attribute you have found.
3) special non numerical attributes on gear, boots of jump-> allows you to jump farther and higher, cloak of feather fall reduce the falling damage by x% and you cant die from falling you will always have 10% HP left regardless of height. crown of true seeing you can see secret door and invisible monsters, belt of poison immunity you ignore all damage over time that come from disease or poison.
and many others!
4) reincarnation system: when you reach max level you have an option to restart you character again from the start with small added stat or feature that characterize the previous class.
5) crafting system from star war galaxies but not from repopulation. as far as i recall in SWG you could craft parts from different types of resources.
for example: you have to make basic sword: basic sword is a single recipe that is made from metal blade, metal handle and leather grip. and the end product takes the attributes of the materials you use.
so you make it from resources availible to you, you can make steel blade, bronze handle and pig skin grip, or you can make mithril blade, dwarven steel handle and wyvern leather grip and this will be a different sword completely. from the same recipy.
-- i will also mention the crafting system from WOW vanilla, which i think had a unique crafting system because it had some unique recipies that felt different one from the other and most of the recipies were rare world drops, dungeon drops or raid drops. what you could buy from trainer is just the bare basics.
6) gathering from FireFall; thumping.
gathering resource is a continuous noisy operation that attracts enemies, as soon as you start gathering increasing waves of enemies will start attacking you trying to interrupt your gathering or steal your resources. the longer you hold the position the better quality resources you can gather. so bring your friends :)
Kilsin said:What is the best game system, mechanic or feature you have experienced that you would like to see in Pantheon? #mmo #communitymatters
RvR ala DAoC. Three way tension is far superior to a simplistic Them vs Us mentality (WoW and so many others). RvR was 24/7/365 3-way pvp that never ended, none of this instanced Battlegrounds BS. The rewards for maintaining a majority of PvP objectives were enough (but not excessive) to ensure there was a constant tension between 3 factions/3 realms. Also part of the RvR model was PvP zones and segregated PvE zones so that you could PvP when you wanted and then PvE when you wanted (excluding Darkness Falls dungeon).
Trying to think of something that isn't already confirmed or intended, I only come up with pretty frivolous/flavorful things.
One of them is... contextual animation, or whatever we're supposed to call the thing that BDO does, and EQN was doing, where certain emotes or idles yield different results depending on the immediate environment. For example, triggering the resting emote, which might normally sit you on open ground, will instead lean you against a vertical surface if you happen to be adjacent to one, or hang your legs off if triggered at a ledge. BDO especially is pretty remarkable with how characters find footing. It's great to be surprised by this "smart" animation that treats the world with solidity and gravity where we've become used to so much clipping and floating.
Gyldervane said:I would say probably an AA-type system of horizontal character skill progression. Nothing that would blur class or archetype lines--but a system that would allow the player to customize their character to a small degree with special abilities and traits.
I'd like to see this, as well, but I'd like it to be limited. If players have 10 possible enhancements through alternate advancement, I'd like to have to pick 4-6 of those and not be able to have them all. I'll use a wizard because it's easier to see as an example. With 10 possible, 2 of those affected fire, 2 affected ice, 2 affected arcane and the remaining 4 would be something like increased defense, doge, stamina or mana pool.