A few suggestions I have to make playing more immersive.

[DragynDance]

Most of these are quality of life immersion things I'd like to be included. They don't really affect the difficulty of the game, nor the mechanics, but I feel like they'd add a lot.

1. Setting roles to classes. Not so much for the party feature (but maybe you can use it for the upcoming dungeons thing?) But for when people demand nerfs/buffs. It seems as if your playerbase only demands nerfs and buffs based on everyones DPS, but I wanted to make jack of all trades classes, tanks, and healers/supports do less DPS, so they always get cried for buffs even though they never die and steamroll through content in parties. Being able to set a class as being identified as a "tank" or "healer" so that the playerbase will accept lower DPS on them would be nice to stop the constant demands for buffs.

2. At the personality trait of being "altruistic". I know I'm not the only one, but when I play MMO's if I see another player getting ganked by multiple mobs or low in health, I might jump in to help or cast a heal/buff on them just to be friendly, because dying sucks. It makes me sad seeing players in this game just walk past someone who pulled too much aggro without even batting an eye, maybe add a trait that will make players willing to stop and help someone they see fighting a higher level mob, or fighting against more then one mob while not in a party?

3. Slider on the abilities page and characters page to show what the DPS and numbers looks like at higher levels for abilities and stats. I have a really hard time balancing the higher level abilities, especially with mobs versus players. Every once in a while I get some ability that just chunks mob or player HP and I can't figure out why, especially when using .5 as a damage number it skews the dps calculations ridiculously. I want players to have a long time to kill, but the content to be relatively easy unless they pull too much aggro or get to "elite" areas, but it's hard to balance this when I only get the numbers for level 1, and the game seems to do the math way differently then it makes sense to me in my head.

4. The ability to make and save "developer characters" so you can playtest the experience in world. Also because maybe I just want to play my own custom made MMO. I mean, this would be both practical and fun for a lot of reasons.

I'll add more to this list as I think of them!

[Zack Wester]

One thing I would like to see is the same mob but diffrent stats/classes.
like the spider having.
spider worker (whit one ability).
and Spider Soldier (whit another ability)
both spawning in the same Spider monster zone.
and when making quests setting the example.
kill 10 Spider total.
or Kill 6 Spider worker and 4 spider soldier.
or for bandits having bandit soldier whit a sword. and bandit archer whit a bow and range attacks.

[Germaine's Bra]

No they do make complaints on other classes for abilities other than dps. When I gave a Class a Immune spell for a short time on a long cooldown or high damage reduction on long cool down complaints shot up. (talking 60% for 6 seconds or 100% for 1-2 seconds trying to simulate a blocking on a warrior or generic Damage reduction stuff) Biggest complaints I get is the Tanks almost ever time I build one, and I ensure they have low dps (Typically the best healer having the lowest then the tanks.)

[Zalfir]

1. I don't think roles for classes is a good idea. Those roles appeared organically for specific scenarios and WoW and its clones built continuing development around that phenomenon after it appeared. RPGs don't specifically need those roles.

To explain a little better, I have a counter suggestion: get the parties to try to balance themselves with different ability levels, in a pretty straight forward process, like get a high hp character, a high mana character, a character with a healing ability, a character with a high dps. Basically like a local search function for characters in the immediate area that they'd normally party with anyway. And most of all, avoid having two people of the same class in the party.

The roles don't really matter when people are playing by themselves or in pairs, and the roles don't typically have names that appear in a fantasy genre. You don't call the party's fighters in AD&D "Tanks" for example, you call them fighters.

One annoying thing that keeps various people from playing a lot of WoW clones is that those roles exist. If the demands for buffs and lack of progress for low DPS characters leads to unsubs, isn't that realistic? I know it's why I unsubbed.

[Zalfir]

2. I agree, but first the player-AI needs to figure out how to tackle a nearby monster that's not attacking them or idle in general. I noticed in MMOs that even without an altruistic personality, players will target other people's fights. In this, though, players will move past another player fighting a monster that would have meant easy loot/xp share. People do help other people in MMOs not just for helping them out but because the monster is on a path and they enjoy destruction of monsters and such. Even non-altruistic types would act in that scenario.

I'm thinking also that there's often higher level players showing up in low level areas in real life MMORPGs, often to coach other players, provide heals in difficult spots, get low level players into higher level areas for quicker loot gathering, and sometimes simple stuff like keeping a road clear just for fun.

I ended up planting a bunch of Elites around a road that leads from a level 1 zone to a level 3-5 zone (there was another road to the 2-3 zone from the level 1 zone), and it ended up being very chaotic, both "I keep dying" and "the monsters are too easy" hotspots showed up in that area. In a real MMO, that area would have a reputation. Realistic altruistic behaviours and game knowledge simulation would use those hotspots to alter behaviour. I hope you can see why I mention this in regards to what you said.

[Zalfir]

3. I'm wondering about something. When you put 2 damage on a level 1 ability, does its damage scale up with the levels? Likewise, if you put exactly the same damage (2) on a level 6 ability, does it scale up with the levels they've already attained, thereby doing more damage as soon as that player gains it? That seems to be what's happening, but I can't be sure.

If it is happening, wouldn't it be reasonable to pick a "normal" damage amount for the whole game (ie. 2 for mana cost abilities, 1 for instant non-mana abilities, 3 for 1 second casting time spells) and leave each new ability using that scale even though it's gained at a higher level, simply because it will keep the damage ratios in line with the % power increase per level table?

[Zalfir]

4, Yeah, prototyping characters before you've finished them would be great. I get pretty annoyed when new players join and pick a class I just invented and haven't even named, let alone made the appearance, sorted out the abilities or balanced the starting stats.

[DragynDance]

Your argument against roles has nothing to do with why I want roles. I don't want roles for anything that has to do with how parties or players oganize themselves, literally only just so people don't complain that healers and tanks need DPS buffs, thats it. Some way to tick a little box that says "Hey, this class, by design, is supposed to do less damage." As it is right now, my tank class is the one that has the most time between deaths and the lowest time between levelling (because they never die) yet is always the most requested for buffs because of it's low damage. There should be someway for me to tell the game "No, you're wrong."

[Zalfir]

But here's the thing, is it a tank class, or is it a fighter class? If it's got so many hit points, why doesn't it have martial prowess to match? Did you design the class around an MMO trope (tank), or around a fantasy trope (fighter)?

[DragynDance]

Why the hell does any of that matter? It's a class who's survivability is extremely high, so for balance reasons, it's damage should be lower. I should have a way to tell the game that, roles were just the most immersive way I could think of, and you're going off on like it means anything more then that.

[Zalfir]

Originally posted by DragynDance:

Why the hell does any of that matter? It's a class who's survivability is extremely high, so for balance reasons, it's damage should be lower. I should have a way to tell the game that, roles were just the most immersive way I could think of, and you're going off on like it means anything more then that.

Have you tried pitting high DPS and very low hp against people of other classes, and varying the monsters available to fight at each level? It sounds like you have a balance issue. I had something similar with a class that had low DPS and could heal itself, and it was rated S. Until they started facing the giant spiders that the mages were killing with ease from a distance.

[DragynDance]

It's not a balance issue, if anything it needs to be nerfed. As it is right now, it's the class with the highest survivability (lowest death rate) and the highest/fastest levelling rate (because it rarely dies) yet it is the most requested class for a buff. I merely want an option to tell the game to ignore it's low DPS because it's supposed to have low damage. Telling the game that it is a role that by design, is supposed to do lower damage is the most common sense thing, I have no idea why you're going on a tirade about it. It's supposed to be a "design your own MMO" type game, if I want my MMO to have everquest like class design, then I should be allowed to have everquest like class design.

[Zalfir]

A tirade. Ok. Good luck with it, sorry for my natural verbosity.