As a player of the Genré entitled MMO I have become abit bored I will say. I have played somewhere in the region fo maybe 70-80 mmo's now both F2P and P2P and Im going to hand on heart and in honesty say, WHERE have all the original idea's gone?
This isn't a dig at People stealing each other's User interfaces or game design, after all I accept you can only make MMO's in so many ways and let's face facts, an mmo won't work if you don't have at least one action bar and an optional minimap perched in the top corner like a sneaky biscuit.
I'm talking more along the lines of character classe's and races and I will say that Warhammer age of reckoning did a great job of opening that up some with their idea of six races (not too varied with orcs, humans and two different flavour of elf) and the concept of each of them having four unique classes, granted each has a healer and a tank but Im glad to say no two work the same way (other than the fact they heal or hold aggro.... ok so maybe they do work along similar lines) but the simple fact of the matter is WHY do all MMO's stick to the same boring trends?
Look at any MMO they will have the following character classes:
Warrior - some Degree of Tank or melee damage
Priest - some degree of healer and weak spell damage
Scout - either an assassin or archer type sub class if class evolution applies
Mage - some sort of range spell caster which will use fire / ice / arcane
and these are ok as something to start the base mix off by why not add something abit different?
Look at Dungeons and Dragons: Stormreach.... Ok Ill give you a minute to google it, YES they did make an MMO out of it.............
Back?
Great stuff, That game had some interesting concepts, Bards who are your primary buffing class, and they work with a decent lore system, music makes people happy. How many armies marched into battle with music at their side?
One of my personal favourites in MMO design is our "in need of tweaking" friend Lord of the Rings online. Im not going to sit here and insult something as small as the classes not gelling as well as they could but I WILL praise their originality and creativity of using Morale instead of Health. This makes ALOT more sense than typical MMO's.
Yes in ancient times where most of these are set Priest's were some sort of apothecary or healer but this doesn't translate realistically (as so many MMO's claim to be aiming for while throwing elves at you) and while this is a seperate arguement entirely Im going to focus on the Priest thing. You never saw a Priest on the battlefield praying that a dead soldier would come back to life only for him to get up and run back in after a few quick heals. On a battle field you WOULD see some sort of Musician playing his music and the soldiers whose Morale was low and were planning to turn tail and run instead stood back up and charged back in feeling a new vigour. That concept Gel's and it does nicely.
Another thing Im sick of seeing in F2P mmo's
WHY OH WHY do you keep insisting on making classes bound to 1 race and I don't mind having like and Elf warrior or an Orc Wizard or whatever I mean.
Here is Race Number one they can be warriors and Priests
Race Number two can be Assassins and Archers
Race number 3 can be Wizards and Summoners or something.
What's the god damn point? Your just segregating gameplay and that isn't cool. It also means that later down the line you can't have any decent RvR. Just Guild or Clan wars (depending on what you ran with) and those get boring after abit when one clan come's along and steam rolls the entire server. I like being able to click a race and then choosing all of them classe's rather than being restricted. By all means make Race one Better Warriors but let me use them as an archer!!
Moving swiftly on, Item restrictions. I've seen alot of different systems for these but they can be safely catergorised into:
Race
Gender
Attribute Requirement
Class
Level
Skill (Passive to use Swords or Heavy Armour, etc)
And these are fine as well well except for Gender limiting, Just make the armour look the exact same on both genders if you can't code them to adapt depending. Why does a female mage need to use chest armour which is basically a bra when the male version looks like a robe??
If I wanted sex appeal I'd go on the FHM website, but I dont I want gameplay and I don't want to find an item my attributes and class conform with only to find that me having a penis means I can't wear it. I can accept that a mage can't wear a warriors armour as Mages wouldn't be physically strong enough, I also accept that an assassin can't use a two handed axe because it's not a weapon they would wield. I DO find it annoying that because im playing a male or female character i can't wear a piece of armour made for my god damn class.
On this note has anyone else noticed that when you play as one class, gear will drop for every class BUT yours? Sick of playing as a Priest and finding endless amounts of assassin and Mage armour. I don't see why you can just say "Light armour - Requires 20 Intellect to use " or "level 15" not "Must be a mage as this armour is allergic to Priests" that's also breaking gameplay up abit too much. Race binding of armour is acceptable assuming your going somewhere with it. Simply saying a pixie can't wear a dwarfs armour because its a pixie is stupid. If you say a Pixie can't wear a Dwarfs armour because Pixies are dainty and fragile and that much plated spiked armour isn't going to fly (literally) IS acceptable.
Well I think I've covered all my current staning grievenses with MMO's as it stands. I got few issues with Skill's systems as long as we don't look at Archlord and its one new skill every 10 level's system (and im NOT joking). I accept Skill system's like that of Shin Megami Tensei Imagine (don't ask about anything else to do with that game Or I'll go postal) where you build it up by using it similar to 9 Dragons, but shin trained up a catergory like Blades then boosted skill's within it, while 9D just boosted the skill being used.
AAAAAnyway, I need some coffee and a sausage roll. So I shall see you all later.
I look forward to your comments and replied but please be civil about it. Trolling is such an ugly reason to be put on a block list.
Dragunai
As a player of the Genré entitled MMO I have become abit bored I will say. I have played somewhere in the region fo maybe 70-80 mmo's now both F2P and P2P and Im going to hand on heart and in honesty say, WHERE have all the original idea's gone?
This isn't a dig at People stealing each other's User interfaces or game design, after all I accept you can only make MMO's in so many ways and let's face facts, an mmo won't work if you don't have at least one action bar and an optional minimap perched in the top corner like a sneaky biscuit.
I'm talking more along the lines of character classe's and races and I will say that Warhammer age of reckoning did a great job of opening that up some with their idea of six races (not too varied with orcs, humans and two different flavour of elf) and the concept of each of them having four unique classes, granted each has a healer and a tank but Im glad to say no two work the same way (other than the fact they heal or hold aggro.... ok so maybe they do work along similar lines) but the simple fact of the matter is WHY do all MMO's stick to the same boring trends?
Look at any MMO they will have the following character classes:
Warrior - some Degree of Tank or melee damage
Priest - some degree of healer and weak spell damage
Scout - either an assassin or archer type sub class if class evolution applies
Mage - some sort of range spell caster which will use fire / ice / arcane
and these are ok as something to start the base mix off by why not add something abit different?
Look at Dungeons and Dragons: Stormreach.... Ok Ill give you a minute to google it, YES they did make an MMO out of it.............
Back?
Great stuff, That game had some interesting concepts, Bards who are your primary buffing class, and they work with a decent lore system, music makes people happy. How many armies marched into battle with music at their side?
One of my personal favourites in MMO design is our "in need of tweaking" friend Lord of the Rings online. Im not going to sit here and insult something as small as the classes not gelling as well as they could but I WILL praise their originality and creativity of using Morale instead of Health. This makes ALOT more sense than typical MMO's.
Yes in ancient times where most of these are set Priest's were some sort of apothecary or healer but this doesn't translate realistically (as so many MMO's claim to be aiming for while throwing elves at you) and while this is a seperate arguement entirely Im going to focus on the Priest thing. You never saw a Priest on the battlefield praying that a dead soldier would come back to life only for him to get up and run back in after a few quick heals. On a battle field you WOULD see some sort of Musician playing his music and the soldiers whose Morale was low and were planning to turn tail and run instead stood back up and charged back in feeling a new vigour. That concept Gel's and it does nicely.
Another thing Im sick of seeing in F2P mmo's
WHY OH WHY do you keep insisting on making classes bound to 1 race and I don't mind having like and Elf warrior or an Orc Wizard or whatever I mean.
Here is Race Number one they can be warriors and Priests
Race Number two can be Assassins and Archers
Race number 3 can be Wizards and Summoners or something.
What's the god damn point? Your just segregating gameplay and that isn't cool. It also means that later down the line you can't have any decent RvR. Just Guild or Clan wars (depending on what you ran with) and those get boring after abit when one clan come's along and steam rolls the entire server. I like being able to click a race and then choosing all of them classe's rather than being restricted. By all means make Race one Better Warriors but let me use them as an archer!!
Moving swiftly on, Item restrictions. I've seen alot of different systems for these but they can be safely catergorised into:
Race
Gender
Attribute Requirement
Class
Level
Skill (Passive to use Swords or Heavy Armour, etc)
And these are fine as well well except for Gender limiting, Just make the armour look the exact same on both genders if you can't code them to adapt depending. Why does a female mage need to use chest armour which is basically a bra when the male version looks like a robe??
If I wanted sex appeal I'd go on the FHM website, but I dont I want gameplay and I don't want to find an item my attributes and class conform with only to find that me having a penis means I can't wear it. I can accept that a mage can't wear a warriors armour as Mages wouldn't be physically strong enough, I also accept that an assassin can't use a two handed axe because it's not a weapon they would wield. I DO find it annoying that because im playing a male or female character i can't wear a piece of armour made for my god damn class.
On this note has anyone else noticed that when you play as one class, gear will drop for every class BUT yours? Sick of playing as a Priest and finding endless amounts of assassin and Mage armour. I don't see why you can just say "Light armour - Requires 20 Intellect to use " or "level 15" not "Must be a mage as this armour is allergic to Priests" that's also breaking gameplay up abit too much. Race binding of armour is acceptable assuming your going somewhere with it. Simply saying a pixie can't wear a dwarfs armour because its a pixie is stupid. If you say a Pixie can't wear a Dwarfs armour because Pixies are dainty and fragile and that much plated spiked armour isn't going to fly (literally) IS acceptable.
Well I think I've covered all my current staning grievenses with MMO's as it stands. I got few issues with Skill's systems as long as we don't look at Archlord and its one new skill every 10 level's system (and im NOT joking). I accept Skill system's like that of Shin Megami Tensei Imagine (don't ask about anything else to do with that game Or I'll go postal) where you build it up by using it similar to 9 Dragons, but shin trained up a catergory like Blades then boosted skill's within it, while 9D just boosted the skill being used.
AAAAAnyway, I need some coffee and a sausage roll. So I shall see you all later.
I look forward to your comments and replied but please be civil about it. Trolling is such an ugly reason to be put on a block list.
Dragunai