Goblin Squad Member
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In character creation, I'd randomly generate a character based on the average character breakdown for the region, then allow the player to customize whichever parts they didn't like, to finish out the character. Why? Because I'm undoubtedly going to hit option overload and paralysis. So many things to choose from, I'll be in the character creator for hours.
I would also be tempted to make certain race, class, background trait, or starting feat options randomly locked (as in, you have an 85% chance of having paladin be inaccessible to you if you choose tiefling, or something like that) - not to remove the option, because you'd be able to create one eventually, but to highlight the alternatives, and to make the character feel extra unique when you see that the button is available. From experience though, as soon as a player sees that something is restricted, it becomes something they have to have, so that would have the opposite effect. And also, I have to remind myself that there will only be the handful of stuff available at release...
And that's probably a good thing too, because as soon as the Advanced Player's Guide classes make it into Pathfinder Online, those are going to be all of my characters. Witches, Summoners, and Oracles galore!
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Goblin Squad Member
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...I'll be in the character creator for hours.
Be glad you didn't play City of Heroes/Villains. Hours in the creator was the norm, rather than the exception, and *lord* was it fun.
Allowing for randomly-generated characters is great for folks at risk of analysis paralysis, but you've got to keep the "every little detail" gates open for others.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...I'll be in the character creator for hours.Be glad you didn't play City of Heroes/Villains. Hours in the creator was the norm, rather than the exception, and *lord* was it fun.
Allowing for randomly-generated characters is great for folks at risk of analysis paralysis, but you've got to keep the "every little detail" gates open for others.
Character generation was fun, then the game was mind-numbingly repetitive once the novelty of using the powers wore off. Which happened fairly fast :P Anyway kind of off-topic I might throw in a serious answer later
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have at least one friend who still can't let go of them shutting down.
[threadjack]
Who knows where it'll go, but pass this along.[/threadjack]
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have at least one friend who still can't let go of them shutting down.[threadjack]
Who knows where it'll go, but pass this along.
[/threadjack]
Oh, believe me, he knows.....
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have at least one friend who still can't let go of them shutting down....I'll be in the character creator for hours.Be glad you didn't play City of Heroes/Villains. Hours in the creator was the norm, rather than the exception, and *lord* was it fun.
Yes, I'm one of those players still ticked off about that.
And running around as my Bots/Dark Mastermind was always a blast, I have no idea what you guys are talking about.DAMMIT now you've made me nostalgic again.
Stay on topic!
If I were designing the game ...
I would make sure that every feature of the game would promote working together verses solo play. There is nothing worse than playing a game all alone.
For example, I would never allow a single character to be able to do everything or even a quarter of everything. I would make it so that it took a group of characters working together to accomplish great things. Even to the point of combat. More powerful monsters like Giants, Trolls and higher should not be able to be killed by a single player. It should take a minimum of 3-4 working together to take it down.
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I would make the combat gap between the lowest newbie and the most powerful (with the best equipment) only about a x2 difference. Meaning that the newbie would have about a 25% chance to hit the Lord and the Lord would have about a 75% chance to hit the Newbie. Also, the Lord would only have about twice the hit points of the newbie. This would give any character the chance of being killed in PVP situations and if there is a chance of being killed, it would happen only for good reasons.
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I would have Permadeath - meaning that if you die, only hard to get or expensive divine magic could bring you back. Otherwise, you create a new character. Couple this with the x2 power level above and there would be very little frivolous PVP and players would be forced to play their characters correctly instead of doing stupid crap all the time.
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Finally, I would have extensive Mounted Combat, Chariots, Ships and possibly flying mounts. This adds such an excitement to the game and opens up so many new tactics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I were designing the game (with a greater degree of control than provided by crowd-forging)...
There would be a cap on the total value of all goods in the game world, which would increase in direct proportion to the amount of money paid in by customers. In game currency could be exchanged for real world money. The exchange rate would be set such that a dollar in to the game would produce in-game value worth pennies when taken out of the game (e.g. $1 = 10,000 gold = $0.07). Game marketing would heavily promote a handful of players who had 'struck it rich' or 'quit their jobs to become champions of the River Kingdoms full time'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In character creation....
In character creation, I'd have name as the first thing you pick and not the last. This way we can make sure name, appearance and build match (in our own very subjective view) even if the first (and second, and..) name we want is already taken.
Though if pioneers get to reserve names before EE, i'm good.
I'd also throw in a gentle 'reminder' when someone's been online for, say, 8, 12, 16 etc hours ("you have been playing for a very long time, are you sure you don't need to eat or rest?")
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I were designing the game (with a greater degree of control than provided by crowd-forging)...
There would be a cap on the total value of all goods in the game world, which would increase in direct proportion to the amount of money paid in by customers. In game currency could be exchanged for real world money. The exchange rate would be set such that a dollar in to the game would produce in-game value worth pennies when taken out of the game (e.g. $1 = 10,000 gold = $0.07). Game marketing would heavily promote a handful of players who had 'struck it rich' or 'quit their jobs to become champions of the River Kingdoms full time'.
if you haven't already, check out Neal Stephenson's excellent book "Reamde".
If I were designing this game... I'd try to get a lot of advice from Ryan :)
You've got a little something on your nose there. You may want to wipe it off.
I would add the ability to play with one hand. My friend lost an arm in a motorcycle accident, and would like to play, but if the games UI is like most others he will not be able to. His reaction time is slowed from switching between mouse and keyboard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I were designing this game... I'd try to get a lot of advice from Ryan :)
Yeah, gotta agree. We've been lucky having a challenging collaboration with Ryan's posts on these forums.
=
To contribute to the OP's kaleidoscopic-begging (!) question...
1. Some players choose mobs, animals etc
2. Some devs choose gods, demons, dragons and worse!
You've got a little something on your nose there. You may want to wipe it off.
And, you have something in your eye! ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I were designing this game... I'd try to get a lot of advice from Ryan :)You've got a little something on your nose there. You may want to wipe it off.
But... but... if I do that how would anyone recognize I'm a fanboi?
In all seriousness, I said that because Ryan has challenged a lot of the ideas I've proposed in a way that made me change my mind. If I were designing this game, I'd probably be the only one who wanted to play it.
Here are a few ideas I still think are cool:
- Never punish a player for using a single account.
- Keep characters in-world at all times, even when players are logged off?
- Guilds and Guild Money (Let Companies, Settlements, Nations produce their own scrip)
- The Art of War (Require large NPC Armies to effectively siege, and require them to move slowly across the map)
- Throw me a rope, please! (Give us the /rope command from Vanguard)
- User Objects
- Challenge Mechanic - To drive off other characters
- Non-Unique Names, Anonymity, and Disguises
- Sort Group Members in Group Window (Drag the tank around to make him F2 if that's what you want)
- Account-based "skills" (Give perks to Accounts over time based on how much training they've paid for, to create incentives to put all your eggs in one basket)
- Complex Voting Methods
- Please Let Us Make Low Reputation Characters Our Content
Some of them are already being implemented. Some of them probably never will be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like some of those ideas Nihimon, but particularly the account-based skills. I've always liked account benefits - when things get stale on your main character, the account benefits make it more fun and interesting to play a lowbie. It increases the longevity of a game for me.
I hate most variations of the "keep characters in the world at all times" idea, but I believe I made myself clear on that point in the thread. Not a big fan of the challenge mechanic either.
I do like the "make low rep chars our content" idea, and I think your reasoning in the thread is sound. Not for moderately low rep, but for real bottom of the barrel low rep.
There, 2 I like and 2 I don't like. Balance, mysteries and stuff