If you were game designer working on Anarchy Online, how would YOU enhance the game?

[Ninjaman]

If you were game designer working on Anarchy Online, how would YOU enhance the game?

Think about this folks. Think REAL hard. You play this game for a reason, most likely because you like it. This is a peice of software, it is NOT perfect. Nothing is perfect. Place your ideas here.

It can be *ANY* idea. From making the sand look more like sand, to complicated things like fixing professions, combat balance, world geometry etc.

[_______Drunk Captain]

First of all I would re-map Omni1, that is the most uncreative, drab, and confusing city i've ever seen. Not to mention the Arena, which is an absolute joke(you can't even see their health from the outside).

Newland has all it's shops clustered together in the center of town, causing ALOT of lag. Whoever designed it wasn't very mindful of how lag accumulates. They moved the mission terminals closer to the center also, the only point in that would be to create even more lag.

They hardly utilize color changes in the chats, making alot of what you read very hard to differentiate.

I was very dissapointed to find the edge of the world, what kind of a joke is that? couldn't find the time to map out the rest of the world?

Neutrals are treated like the scum of the earth, No rewards, they cant buy from Omni/clan stores, and they get attacked by both sides. This is absolutly rediculous, I don't want to be on either side of this pathetic war, so I get crippled for it(what kind of a mentality is that?, wars have always existed, and Neutrals have never been treated so badly(untill now...))

Why are they wasting money on their Computer Animators(making this little animated series) when they could be paying their Game Designers to add more creativity to the game. The short little movies arn't even that good anyway, they slap the credits in to waste a good 20 seconds, and they frequently use still shots(think we can't tell???) to avoid animating scenes.

The biggest thing this game lacks is creativity, and theres a scarce amount currently existing in the game.

The all time biggest mistake they have made so far is splitting Rubi-Ka into 2 servers. The only reason they did this is because their lavish(laggy) environments take up so much space on our hard drives, therefore they couldn't make enough room for all the players without adding a few extra maps.

I'll be a Pro Game Designer in less than 2 years, and I wouldn't work for Funcom if my life depended on it. They released a poorly designed game, and sit back and smile while the profits roll in. And yes poorly designed games do make money, I've seen many MMRPG's released where the players were treated horribly, while the creators sit back and collect the paychecks.

I was shocked to read that they "just" realized that this game would need constant updates and attention a few months ago.


Funcom if you want help, i'll tell you everything you need to do to make this game the best on the net. But of course they'll never listen to me, to them im just another idiot with a credit card.

Ill be playing for 2 more month's tops, after that im trying something else. Unless they change most of the game that is....

(anticipates Squaresofts new MMRPG[FFXI]) <-which will literally dominate the market if done correctly.

[Teknolord]

1) Remove QL based items. Let items instead have a bonus to attack, and the output of guns be based upon the wielders skills. PERIOD.

2) Make all professions UNIQUE, with skills and nanos NO OTHER profession got.
Also make em in such a manner, they fill and strengthen parts of teams.

3) Make missions NOT based solely upon killing: e.g see a person in Athen, get item from that person, this item need to be hacked by a second person/someone, then bring that item to a third person in Borealis. Or a mission where u have to see a person who assigns u a mission to do something to prove u are capable of doing something, and he then sends u to do [whatever]
Missions like that, which spans over several areas, persons and actions.

4) Let users and/or professions be able to form their character more, and make it more personal. Fixers only wield one gun, for example: Mausser. Idiotic. Variation is the answer, without it costing bloody much

5) Let players have a deeper impact on story and game. Heck, players who killed like thousands of omni mobs should REALLY be a target of hunts from omnis, rite? Same goes vice versa.
Also, some ability to do terrorism; destroying buildings, making problems etc. DANG i would like to blow up some buildings in Omni Ent... Maybe anything as simple as spraying a grafitti logo on the walls?

6) XP should be that focused on killing. I spent a few hours trying to build a nano, and i really think that should pay up as much running in dungeons and killing brainless...
Variation on how to get XP is the clue. Its WAY to focused on killing. Would be cool if a person in fact could build a car, and get ALOT of XP on that (yeah, would take days, and cost shouldnt be more than the value itself. Parts need to be cheap, finished product must be worth something)
Building and/or buying robots is an option too, where built bots can be sold or traded or even rented out.
Note: only built or bought robots should be tradeable, not summoned ones. Figure how fun it would be to enter a city with a horde of robots? Or a BIG dungeon? Backdraw would be a) the cost and b) player gets no xp from the killing or stuff which the robots do. This could also benefit on part 9.

7) I want a simple mission where i just have to break into a building in enemy territory (requirement would be high breaking and entering, concealmet and perception), and gain GOOD xp on that.

7B) While talking of enemy territory: People who NEVER killed persons of different alignments, should have a fair chance to move in enemy territory. Killers, who killed ALOT of opposites, shouldnt be killed, thats just too lame, they should be put into jail for one hour or so.. Would punish em more. Other crimes would punish more or less.

8) Government and tax: Let players have a chance to be into politics or running cities, where the benefit would be money, xp, etc.
Their task would be improving, developing and protecting the city. All players with hometown in that city would have to pay a tax,e.g 10% of all money they make. The leaders in that city would/could also use of their own money to improve cities. Athen is a good example, lotsa player, lotsa wealth, and i would for SURE give a few credits to freshen up that ugly looking city.
This could create some competition between cities, who would struggle to become beautiful and growing.

9) Moneysucking, to stop or prevent or influence in economics.
I wanna rent a TANK to go into combat, why cant i? It would cost ALOT to buy it, and a fair amount of credits just to rent it.
Damage would be huge, AC too, but backdrop would be little XP.
This could also make a fun addon to wars between omnis and clans.
Other ways of sucking money from characters, is payment for services (the grid, wompah, etc)


ok, just a few ones from me.. To tired to write down all in my head atm..

[______________Scorus]

Originally posted by Ninjaman
If you were game designer working on Anarchy Online, how would YOU enhance the game?

I would work with my CS people to get players questions answered.

Scorus

[________Dealingdeath]

We would never nerf anything or change any rules until ALL existing bugs/exploits were fixed FIRST and we as designer's decided and published exactly how the game and professions are INTENDED to be played and then keep our promises come hell or high water.

We would allow players to allocate and adjust their hard earned IP as they deem necessary to ecourage experimenting with different skills UNTIL we as designer's decided and published exactly how the game is INTENDED to be played.

When we publish statements, in Official Sybex Strategy Guides that we charge hard earned cash for, such as.."Agents are masters of long-range damage and stealth" ..it would mean more than just words.

When we publish statements, in Official Sybex Strategy Guides that we charge hard earned cash for, such as.. "NTs are the long range artillery nukers" ...it would mean more than just words.

etc...

But the main philosphy we would live by is:

We would NEVER EVER change any rules or implement any nerfs based on a vocal minority of whining childish players.

[______________Taelyn]

del *.* would be a good place to start ( rm -rf *.* for the unix wierdos).

Ok, more seriously....
1) Balanced Classes. The current classes simply weren't well thought out, and its pretty obvious. Some classes have clear purposes. Enforcers are tanks, docs are healers, but what the heck is an adventurer good for in a world that's already been more or less explored (and where everything interesting happens in or near cities).

2) More nanos. Far too many nanos are now simply copies of other classes nanos or unimaginative buffs. I want to see some real creativity here. Just pick up a DnD book if you need ideas. Also, the current nano animations are.....well...dull and unimpressive looking.

3) Allow more diversity. There should be multiple weapons available to all classes, that are actually worth using. Each with clear advantages and disadvantages and descriptions that actually help the user determine which weapon to wield.

4) Teknolords numbers 3 and 5. Very important.

5) Being able to influence the game world (as others have commented).

6) Have missions as an integral part of the storyline with real objectives and measures of success or failure (see jumpgate).

7) GMs that do more than just screw players over and never help.

8) Remove the whole QL system. Instead, have basic items, and set up the system to work more like Ultima Online.

9) Set up a viable economy with item decay and limited wealth.

10) Make death harder and more meaningful

11) Make the game better for groups and orgs. If you want to play a solo game, you shouldn't have bought a MMORPG. You should have bought Return to Wolfenstein/Diablo 2/the current flavor of game you like. This game is meant to be multiplayer, and it should encourage it and reward it.

That's all I can think of for now.

[_____________DeadTed]

-Storyline information from NPCs. There are NPCs walking around the cities who don't really do anything. It would be good to walk up to them and initiate a conversation. Perhaps a regularly updated set of speeches about the story or even sub-plots. Though this would take a lot of effort from the writers it would make a big difference in imersion for players. Not only should all the storyline information be available within the game, but players should be rewarded by finding hidden news if they take the effort to look around. There could even be special NPCs in bars with "reliable" sources of information.


-Interactive and or "toggle" emotes. Emotes are great, but one particular problem is dancing at a club. Each Dance emote only lasts a brief moment so players must continuously emote, which can be a hassle when you are also trying to chat. My idea is a collection of toggle emotes that repeat until either you re-selest that macro, choose another emote or perform an action such as enter a fight. then players can continue to dance without effort while talking at the same time. this could just be an added command like "/disco tog" or "/wave tog" that would tell the program to repeat that emote until signaled to stop.
Another emote type would be interactive. For example a waltz. I would select another player and type something like "/waltz other player" and if the other player accepts then we both waltz together, hand in hand. With the toggle feature a couple could dance together all night long at their favorite club.


-color coding items like backpacks has been said and needs to be said again. A number displayed in the corner of the backpack displaying remaining weight left similar to ammo count would also come in handy.


-ability to wear "social armor" with other clothing items.

[XtroXtreme]

Get some proper light in the cities.

No but seriously, The game need balancing in PvM witch is so bad and just get worse as you lvl as the over equiping and compains that SOME player don´t get a challange while most have trouble vs MOBs.

Well Tknolord have a lot of good idees there, and I love that idea with weapons doing damage depending on skill. Maybe you should make armor decrease damage with a procentage then.
Nah, that would just balance things and we cant have that.