Old : no class balancing
New: at least 1-3 GM's on in a 24 hour period. 14hr customer service from 8pm to 3am and 7am to 2pm with clear guidlines on what to refer to a GM. I think this will also allow to cover most all timezones. GM's and guides that have rights to request certain things from creative and development teams for planned ad-hoc events/adventures/Mess-with-the-players, stuff. This includes special items(artifact) consumables or clickies and possibly instancing or special created zones that will be destroyed at end of event leaving rubble/statues with description/plaques with history in the world. With final veto/approval/suggestion to change from lead designer(s).
Keikami said:As far as newer MMO's, I would really like to see a fluid combat system where you don't just stand in one spot or in a corner and button mash until something is dead. I'm thinking of something like the GW2 dodge mechanic as an example.
I too enjoyed the GW2 dodge mechanic! I think they could have something "similar" in PRotF. I say similar because every class could dodge the same in GW2 but I do know that some classes have quick movement abilities like the Ranger's withdraw or Wizard's Flash abilities. If these can be used to avoid telegraphed attacks it will be GREAT! With that said, I think they could give more classes their own flavor of an evasion move that worked completely different than the others without having to do any crazy recoding (if the already existing abilities can in fact evade an attack in progress), like a phase out of existance, a tumble, an earth meld, swap places with pet or other NPC, etc.
Edit: It is also likely that the combat system will be similar to what you fear Keikami haha.
Old- Best form of leveling being grouping. A sense of danger where death actually matters. Most of the Old is really not the part i worry about getting right.
New- Not having massive DDOS attacks on launch day/week. Making the game hard enough so it doesnt fill up with farm bots ruining the economy. Stopping speed hacking before it starts and not having harvest bots booping into a node, grabbing it, and running before anything can happen to it. Not being too late on server merges for when 2-3 months in people quit the game (because they said they wanted all of the things this game delivers on but then hate how they dont actually measure up) because waiting a year to merge a dead server into a good one only makes people on the dead server quit the game entirely rather than waiting that long. Having all classes at least realistically playable on launch (it sucks to level somrthing up only to find it's worthless and no one wants you in a group for anything).
Some may think these are not new requests but I've never seen any of these things happen in newer MMOs on launch day. Somehow it all ALWAYS catches every dev by surprise that their game got infected by jerk hackers, gold farming bots selling gold for cash, and the huge starting numbers they didnt expect and then the huge drop they also didnt expect.
zendrel said:Old- Best form of leveling being grouping. A sense of danger where death actually matters. Most of the Old is really not the part i worry about getting right.
New- Not having massive DDOS attacks on launch day/week. Making the game hard enough so it doesnt fill up with farm bots ruining the economy. Stopping speed hacking before it starts and not having harvest bots booping into a node, grabbing it, and running before anything can happen to it. Not being too late on server merges for when 2-3 months in people quit the game (because they said they wanted all of the things this game delivers on but then hate how they dont actually measure up) because waiting a year to merge a dead server into a good one only makes people on the dead server quit the game entirely rather than waiting that long. Having all classes at least realistically playable on launch (it sucks to level somrthing up only to find it's worthless and no one wants you in a group for anything).
Some may think these are not new requests but I've never seen any of these things happen in newer MMOs on launch day. Somehow it all ALWAYS catches every dev by surprise that their game got infected by jerk hackers, gold farming bots selling gold for cash, and the huge starting numbers they didnt expect and then the huge drop they also didnt expect.
Brilliant. I especially love the part about people not measuring up to their own expectations, because I too see this being a huge eye opener to people that think they are more "hard core" than they really are... reliving their glory years in their 20/20 hind sight but not taking a lot of other factors into consideration - like the inevitability of havingn to play with obstacles that didn't exist 20 years ago (like some that you listed above) on top of the dificulty level that the devs are hoping to reach.
Old
AA point customization
open world, meaninful travel
wearing rusty chain armor till lvl 20 (not getting "super magical" gear handed to you for nothing at lvl 10 etc
death penalty that promotes careful game play and a real sense of fear in dungeons
NO cartoony graphix with light show-pyrotechnics every time you swing a sword in your giant pink sholder pads
New
combat mechanics depth (situational abilities, mob AI)
environmental detail