Shapeshifting
Into many creatures common or mythical: like wolves, horses or dragons and so on. Perhaps even flora or inaimate objects too.
It could be done through a class or spells or items.
Could be illusions for fun or the form might also provide a bonus/buff. Horse could be a speed buff, a dragon form might provide levitating/gliding or flying if you guys end up going that far.
Maybe it could be a full transformation where you are limited to that form's advantages and disadvantages.
My favorite thing about Everquest/Everquest 2/Vanguard was the ability to shapeshift into different forms. I really can't think of any current MMO that had as many transformation abilities as those games. I really don't want to play yet another "fantasy humanoid" race, which in the end is just a pretty human with blue skin or some horns.
That's why shapeshifting is so fun to me, so much diversity!
GeekVerve said:The very most important aspect for me would be strong class identity. I've grown tired of the new MMORPG's allowing every class to act in every capacity with similar effectiveness. Sure, multiple classes should be able to heal, but one class should be the premier healer in exchange for not being quite so good in other areas - less utility for example. Same with tanking, crowd control, DPS, etc. I always thought EQ got that right, until they started blurring the lines between classes in recent expansions.
I really liked everyone ideas here. Now if I had to choose one thing that was most important I believe GeekVerve hit the nail on the head. IMO this is the game changer that we need. A return to strong class distinction.
I was going to choose Bards but I think that is really just an extension of this.
I loved always having a reason to get XP. This is why I like an XP death penalty and lots of AA's. It keeps XP valuable even after Max level.
Going with Mikaela's idea, that everyones said the critical things necessary to make the game FUN and able to be considered a throwback to old school mmo's (death penalty, group centric, classes not overlapping, etc, etc).
My thing that I'd want to see is for VR to come up with a way to make monk's a puller again. I don't know exactly how you can do it mechanic wise without having EQ's horrible pathing bugs to manipulate splitting mobs...
But honestly some of my best memories and most entertainment in any mmo has been chain pulling mobs as a monk, doing splitting on raids, corpse retrievals, etc.
Give us those specific roles/jobs, so that when we excell at the job, others take notice and appreciate it. Ending a group session and getting to hear a healer jokingly complain about being spoiled with someones excellent tanking, or a chanter slipping up on mezzing after having mostly nuked the past hour due to good pulls "Sorry I took my AE stun off and put in a nuke earlier when I got bored, heh".
You wanted two things? Really? Oh great, I hated having to pick only one. My SECOND choice would be to have a way to better define your character's class. Specifically with Mages in mind, I always wanted a way to put more of my potential damage into my pet, being able to invest more attention into my pet than nuking and it be viable. Maybe sacrefice 80% of my max mana to be able to bolster my pet's stats and/or give extra abilities. ;)
Attributes have meaning
If an attribute exists then it absolutely has to be meaningful in game. Assuming people can modify attributes at character creation then anything that can be modified needs to be meaningful in the game and not a throwaway because it eventually was too hard or difficult to implement or balance. If it is too hard to implement or balance then don't have it. Not talking about resists, just allowing for character creation and attributes to be a part of the game, the experience, and the content.
Attribute definitions to be well defined such that people can modify their character depending on their playstyle, temperament, roleplaying ambitions, uniqueness (which extends to items and spells, obviously).
If only one thing, it would be scale of the game and scale of experience gain.
I really want a game where I am not encouraged to look and the experience bar often, instead, just lost in the multitude of things to do at any given level. Something which takes an extreme amount of time to progress through. Scale of the game which offers a truly HUGE world that creates it's own lore and fame based on player stories or shared experiences they have encountered.
I truly hope that my level 1 thru 5 experience is just as epic as my level 45 thru 50 experience. Now that would be an amazing game to me!
Fippy Darkpaw!
And now that's out of my system, I'd like to see a more fleshed-out crafting system than the gather ingredients - find crafting bench - make thing after 2.2 seconds vehicle that we're used to. I liked that the original EQ incorporated a chance at failure, and I think that should continue. But I think there are a number of ways crafting could be a more involved process. For instance, crafting a breastplate might carry a chance of failure, but a player could push the material beyond its natural limits for the chance to create a higher quality item (with risk of failure scaling appropriately). A novice crafter might throw a hail mary in the hope of a sweet piece of gear. An expert might create an item that her skill level outpaced some time ago, but now she has the confidence and ability to consistently create a better version of that item for a friend who's merely a journeyman of that craft.
If you want to really dream big, make crafting a minigame unto itself. Imagine your character standing in front of an alchemy lab, ingredients in hand to brew a difficult potion. A window pops up when you select the lab, and you have to click ingredients to add them at just the right time, or adjust the amount of fuel being fed to the burner as the concoction starts to bubble over. Your success (or degree of success) could determine any number of things from the quality/quantity of product made to the amount of tradeskill experience you gain for your endeavor. Grandmaster tradesfolk would need not just skill points and recipes, but a deft hand and quick wits to create the very best items.
I'm sure this has been theorycrafted by much more knowledgable individuals over in the Tradeskill Forum, but I still wanted to take the time to share this thought. Crafting and honing a trade are key facets of many players' MMO experience, and an immersion opportunity is lost when I can roll up to an oven with a backpack full of materials, click Craft All, and walk away to make a snack of my own IRL while my character churns out Misty Thicket Picnics like an automaton.
Cosmetic wearables seperate from appearance slots for gear. Tunics, britches, sashes, headbands, and the like (a lot of you can probably guess that I'm drawing this idea from UO) with different regional and cultural takes on various articles of clothing. I would hazard a guess that clothing can go a long way to help flesh out the meaningful experience VR is aiming for with Pantheon. That being said it might be something too difficult to implement (e.g. how to overlay this or that over a character wearing armor "x"), or just something that would take up a lot of valuable art asset time.
I also have to piggyback on the high level roaming mobs idea, people ought to be wary in a dangerous world after all.
I want to see the 'end-game' content focus more on single group content around the level of the griffon questline in Vanguard rather than focusing on raid content. Challenging content that requires many steps and many days to complete as well as a high level of skill that rewards players with gear and items near the level of raid items.
Ok, I've got another one.
I would really prefer fewer stronger mobs than wave upon wave of fairly trivial mobs. I hate it when games rely on the crutch of simply increasing the number of mobs in an encounter to make it more difficult. Obviously more creative pathing, different types of attacks, different behaviors, etc. are also preferable to just more mobs.