Elder Scrolls MMO Announced

[kaplin42]

Originally Posted by jd1020

I'd like to play a MMO that doesn't havent instant travel. Everything is instanced these days. What ever happened to exploring? That's the whole point of "massive."

I agree, as with everything though, it's a fine line. I don't want to sit on a boat for 40 minutes like in EQ1, but I agree with getting rid of instant travel removal so you actually had to make your way to different destinations.

Some quick blurbs about other things I would do:
Tl;dr lots of ideas to fix some features in MMO’s.

Spoiler!

Bring back massive, contested dungeons that are hard, but certain areas have rare spawns with a chance to drop nice items i.e. lower guk, Karnor’s Castle, Sebilis.

How to solve the appearance armor issue; Change the way weapons and armor are effective. Instead of having stats on the items, the items have slots, the better the item, the more slots. These slots can be segregated a little bit, for example resistance in some, bonus to hit/crit in others, and then base stat improvement. To fill these slots you need gems or what not, the better the gem, the better the stat improvement. Customize the look you want, with the stats you need. Gems can be assigned to clothing locations, helmet, feet, arm so that you can’t just find the best gem dropping mob in the game and farm it.

Speaking of stats; for ****s sake have the right stats mean something to the right class. I have in two games been told that either strength or dexterity is the stat for my class that will improve everything; instead it has been the opposite in each game. So when you build your armor, you build the wrong stats, and then realize you messed up and now have to obtain different gear. It's called math, hire someone to figure it out for you before you code it in.

Balancing PVE vs PVP; I am so sick of having raiders come into PVP contests with their raid gear and be so much better than the top geared PVP players, and vice versa. Neither one should affect the other. If it says PVP in it, it will be almost useless in a PVE environment, if it doesn't say PVP on it; it will be pointless in a PVP environment. Spells and abilities should have two versions, PVE and PVP. Stop nerfing PVE spells because they are too powerful in PVP. I can't believe over the last 10 years that how to solve this issue hasn't been figured out yet.

Launching a new game; Two things on this; First have enough servers to handle the load, you know you're going to be 1.5x - 3.0x your normal running numbers of players for the first 2 weeks to a month, make sure you can handle the load. Second, stop underestimating your players and have a fully developed end game at launch, with more material to be delivered soon after. I have launched EQ2, Vanguard, DDO, and SWTOR, and have played several others. Of the ones I launched, EQ2 was the only one that had some end game content at launch. And while it’s a small percentage of the player base, some will be max level in 1 to 2 weeks, with a bunch more hitting it within a month. Either have a well-defined end game or suffer the fate of SWTOR. Losing a lot of your player base out of boredom.

Keeping the same old dungeons and raids fun to do; Put them on a tier system, like a lot of games have now. Dungeons are easy, medium and hard, same with raids. This idea works best with raids, but could be used on hard mode dungeons, and maybe variation of on easier mode dungeons. For raids, you have “x” amount of bosses, each boss has “y” amount of abilities. Let’s say 5 bosses, with the easiest boss have 6 abilities and the hardest boss having 15. On easy mode, each boss gets 1/3 of the potential abilities assigned by RNG. So easiest boss would have two abilities, hardest would have five. But, you never know what those abilities are until you fight the mob, and they are always different. The harder the mode of the raid/dungeon, the more abilities they bosses end up having. By doing this, you can never just go in and faceroll the encounters, because you will never know the combinations of abilities that you will be facing. Some days, it will be super easy, others it could be incredibly hard, but every time would be different.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by kaplin42

How to solve the appearance armor issue; Change the way weapons and armor are effective. Instead of having stats on the items, the items have slots, the better the item, the more slots. These slots can be segregated a little bit, for example resistance in some, bonus to hit/crit in others, and then base stat improvement. To fill these slots you need gems or what not, the better the gem, the better the stat improvement. Customize the look you want, with the stats you need. Gems can be assigned to clothing locations, helmet, feet, arm so that you can’t just find the best gem dropping mob in the game and farm it.

Speaking of stats; for ****s sake have the right stats mean something to the right class. I have in two games been told that either strength or dexterity is the stat for my class that will improve everything; instead it has been the opposite in each game. So when you build your armor, you build the wrong stats, and then realize you messed up and now have to obtain different gear. It's called math, hire someone to figure it out for you before you code it in.

Balancing PVE vs PVP; I am so sick of having raiders come into PVP contests with their raid gear and be so much better than the top geared PVP players, and vice versa. Neither one should affect the other. If it says PVP in it, it will be almost useless in a PVE environment, if it doesn't say PVP on it; it will be pointless in a PVP environment. Spells and abilities should have two versions, PVE and PVP. Stop nerfing PVE spells because they are too powerful in PVP. I can't believe over the last 10 years that how to solve this issue hasn't been figured out yet.

SW:TOR did both of these things really well. Towards the end, PvE gear was completely useless in PvP. It was ridiculous. I think there definitely has to be some kind of balance for those who prefer one or the other, but you can't just make PvE gear completely useless in PvP because it ruins open world PvP. Maybe you can have arena sets that can only be used in organized PvP... IDK.

Balancing MMOs is definitely not the easiest thing to do.

[jd1020]

Originally Posted by Pants

SW:TOR did both of these things really well. Towards the end, PvE gear was completely useless in PvP. It was ridiculous. I think there definitely has to be some kind of balance for those who prefer one or the other, but you can't just make PvE gear completely useless in PvP because it ruins open world PvP. Maybe you can have arena sets that can only be used in organized PvP... IDK.

Balancing MMOs is definitely not the easiest thing to do.

I've never understood why there needs to be separate gear for PVP.

I never had a problem with getting wiped clean by someone who spent the time to get the legendaries in WoW, that's the nature of the beast. I didn't want to spend 8 hours a night 7 days a week farming all the shit needed to run the hardest raids in the game so I accepted that fact.

Now they are switching it to where you only need to play 10 arenas or w/e a week and get the latest and greatest PVP items which will mop the floor with anyone wielding items that probably took 6+ months to get? Come on...

[Pants]

Originally Posted by jd1020

I've never understood why there needs to be separate gear for PVP.

I never had a problem with getting wiped clean by someone who spent the time to get the legendaries in WoW, that's the nature of the beast. I didn't want to spend 8 hours a night 7 days a week farming all the shit needed to run the hardest raids in the game so I excepted that fact.

Now they are switching it to where you only need to play 10 arenas or w/e a week and get the latest and greatest PVP items which will mop the floor with anyone wielding items that probably took 6+ months to get? Come on...

I get both philosophies. On one hand, you want PvP to be based on skill and not gear. On the other hand, you want the rewards you work so hard for to actually provide a tangible benefit.

I honestly don't know which one I would prefer, they both make sense to me.

[kaplin42]

Originally Posted by Pants

I get both philosophies. On one hand, you want PvP to be based on skill and not gear. On the other hand, you want the rewards you work so hard for to actually provide a tangible benefit.

I honestly don't know which one I would prefer, they both make sense to me.

I don't see why you can't have both. Taking the gem slot vision of the gear, why not have two sets of slots for stats, PVE and PVP. When PVP flag is on, the PVP gems apply, when it is off, the PVE stats apply. Yes it's twice the work to get the PVP and PVE stats up for the armor, but that is only if you do both, and not everyone does.

You would get the various gems like you would anything else. Raids, dungeons, quests provide nice gems for PVE. and then PVP battlegrounds/arenas provide nice gems for PVP. You could even extend this to crafting so you wouldn't have to have crafting gear, but you could have gem slots for that.

The organization of this could be easily be done through tabs on your paper doll. And by doing it this way, you can always keep the armor/look that you like, but advance in stats by upgrading the gems.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by kaplin42

I don't see why you can't have both. Taking the gem slot vision of the gear, why not have two sets of slots for stats, PVE and PVP. When PVP flag is on, the PVP gems apply, when it is off, the PVE stats apply. Yes it's twice the work to get the PVP and PVE stats up for the armor, but that is only if you do both, and not everyone does.

You would get the various gems like you would anything else. Raids, dungeons, quests provide nice gems for PVE. and then PVP battlegrounds/arenas provide nice gems for PVP. You could even extend this to crafting so you wouldn't have to have crafting gear, but you could have gem slots for that.

The organization of this could be easily be done through tabs on your paper doll. And by doing it this way, you can always keep the armor/look that you like, but advance in stats by upgrading the gems.

That's exactly how SWTOR was doing it. You had two different sets for PvP and PvE. The only thing is that there were people who did way more PvP than other people and were able to steamroll those who played less due to the gear difference. There is no easy fix for this, I don't think.

[kaplin42]

Originally Posted by Pants

That's exactly how SWTOR was doing it. You had two different sets for PvP and PvE. The only thing is that there were people who did way more PvP than other people and were able to steamroll those who played less due to the gear difference. There is no easy fix for this, I don't think.

Not a new idea, but ranked combat according to gear. Similar ideas are being done already. It just needs to be fine tuned a bit. Would be similar to how you have to do easy mode, then normal, then hard mode dungeons. Also, unlike Rift, don't put newly level 50 characters right into the shit storm. They just hit 50, and probably don't have the gear, they are just going to get mowed down.

And to be clear, my ideas are not necessarily original. I stole a lot of things from the various MMO's that I thought they did right. Like the gem slots is sort of a take on the orange gear from SWTOR, just expanded upon.

[hometeam]

Originally Posted by Pants

That's exactly how SWTOR was doing it. You had two different sets for PvP and PvE. The only thing is that there were people who did way more PvP than other people and were able to steamroll those who played less due to the gear difference. There is no easy fix for this, I don't think.

Actually, the easy fix is not to have a gear treadmill.

Like the way UO was/is still on free shards. All gear created equal = all skill