A comprehensive suggestion

[jorricane]

Let me first preface this with a few things.

First, I am not a game designer - I am simply someone who plays a lot of games. I am a metagamer, in that I tend to look for mechanics that allow you to stretch what is possible in games for some advantages. I am not a metagamer in that I do not exploit mechanics to engage in godmode.

Secondly, this is opinion based on experience. As I am not an expert any more than any gamer can be without having design training, some of what I suggest may not be expressed in terms actually used in the industry. However, I believe that the general concepts contained herein are germane, as they are based on what works in other games, that not only do I enjoy, but manage to create and retain new subscribers without the novel gameplay and fantastic artistic concepts utilized in AO.

This third point is, of course, silly for me to put here, since this is an MMO forum and no one, not even me, will heed it. Please be constructive. Flame me if you must, but let others post in this thread without fear of "death by troll".

As well we all know, AO, and Funcom in general, are facing some real problems. As I have no experiences whatsoever in finance, I am going to focus on the problems inherent in AO and it's draw to both new players, and it's retention of veterans.

First, THE BACKGROUND.

AO was designed in the halcyon days of MMOs, when solo and team play consisted primarily of enjoying the gameworld and sort of randomly going around doing things. Exploring dungeons, killing dynas, and generally mucking about. A few quests here and there provided structure, but it was truly part of the original "open world" generation of games.

Over the years, different content teams and designers have tacked on various structured dungeons, endgame encounters, and questlines, that almost, but not quite, kept AO on par with newer titles in terms of providing a structure for players to grow upon. The problem with true open world play is that it provides no such structure, and relys heavily on players and third party websites to tell you about the game, what gear you need, and what to go and do with yourself.

These same teams have also been incredibly lax about the ingame economy, as well as the rarity and desireability of certain items. Lootright selling, multibox instance farming, and outrageous pricing have come together to create the perception in new or even returning players that the game is rigged towards those who have capital to spend.

I don't blame them for this - many have been chosen from the community, and it seems AO was an early/first MMO for many of them over the years - now, community members can turn out to be great coders, content designers, artists, and even team leads, but what most lack is a true interest in the metagame, and a big picture view that can identify what the problems are AND how to fix them.

They don't seem to look to succesful MMOs on how to improve the experience in AO - or at least, don't see how to apply these systems, perhaps thinking that AO is somehow too unique to support these systems.

That is false. Many of the game systems at this point are quite capable of handling newer teaming, raiding, and questing mechanics. They just haven't been used in that capacity.

The problems with the economy, player retention, new player aquisition, dearth of content, these are all symptoms of the larger problem - and can all be fixed given a clear goal and procedure to do so.

Continued in next post:

[jorricane]

2. Starting to fix it.

Firstly, the fixes need to start in a top-down, mechanics based approach, along with content designed to foster these mechanics.

True, instanced, queued raids. The BS queue is part of a system, that, with some tweaking could be used to great effect in fostering teamplay and endgame grinds without creating yet another solo-farm lootrights market. We all decry grinds, but in the end, it's the grinds that keep us playing. Players need to be able to sign up from anywhere, be teleported to the instance when it begins, and returned to their original location when the raid ends.

BS style reclaim should be added to the INSIDE of these raids - a either a good distance from where the action is, or with a 15 second root that won't make it "too easy" to get back in the action. No rebuffs, no rez, no waiting - instant gratification, and little to no downtime.

These raids should implement a new loot system, and a new philosophy on loot drops in general. First, loot should be spawned directly into play inventory - no more lootright sales, at least not from new instances. There should be some either moderately useful gear (a la DB armor), valuable shopfood, or high-end YESDROP consumables. This should be coupled with a new (or repurposed) points based currency (more on that later).

The random gear is used by new players to gear their toons, and the shopfood is a boon to whoever gets it - the high end consumables make sure people will play and replay this instance to gather it either for themselves, or to sell.

New raids need to be added at least bi-monthly - we aren't talking LoX scale raids, or even LE boss room scale. Each raid does not need new textures, or a fancy new mechanic, or even a complex new map. Simple DPS fests, kill XX mobs, stops these mobs before they reach portal while killing boss mob, really simple stuff, just to keep things fresh

These raids could even be created across the level ranges by using current boss encounters - take the boss room from ToTW, instance it, add some extra mobs with a more complex objective (say, add minibosses on the side paths that can be killed to make the trio fight easier), add a couple things that are either rare or nonexistent on the current loot table (a bundle of Purifying rods, GTA, and that skull implant that doesn't drop, etc) as well as a consumable or two, level lock it to 40-70, boom, early midgame instance. Most of the current RK statics have boss rooms that could be used for this pretty easily.

The new raids should have between 1 and 4 hour lockouts, rewarding about 25-50% of the XP that a daily provides. Elite versions can be unlocked upon a sucessful run of the normal version - higher level mobs and damage, in exchange for better loot/XP.

In one fell swoop, you have created new content, created lowbie content to help train new players, and taken a step towards fixing the economy - new, inventory spawned nodrops that don't suck will go a long way to curbing solo/instance farming and selling, and an accesible means to get these items will mean newer players don't feel obligated to purchase rather than raid for themselves.

[jorricane]

3. Training new players

This is a concent used in many current MMO titles - lock raids until certain other things are completed. Now, the NPE may address this, but if not, here we go.

A set of 14 profession specific quests for early game (20-40) characters. These should be structured as a series of mini boss fights, with a reward of a profession specific nano of a type critical to the profession after every fight - i.e. fixers will receive a root/snare, then an RS buff, then a meep nano, and the use of these nanos will be critical to finish the next part of the mission succesfully. Popup text (similar to the supression gas countdowns) should periodically by used to spur the usage of the profession's toolset - "Use your roots!", things like that to prod new players into learning their tools.

Successful completion of these quests will unlock access to queued raids.

4. A whole new currency

Right now, it does feel that AO might have too many different currencies to add another - on some level that may be true, but there are ways to use a new currency to balance and fix the economy.

For this section, I am going to take a huge, huge page from PWE's book, since I feel they did an excellent job in STO with creating a secondary economy that significantly improved the game.

Create a new points based currency, for the sake of this article I'll call it Refined Notum Nodules (STO uses Dilithium - AO has a ready-made canon currency in the form of notum), RNN for short.

This currency should ONLY come through the new instanced raids, or solo, daily missions of some kind - the key is to gate this currency and limit it to a specific maximum per day. STO requires you to refine dilithium, as what you get from missions comes in an unrefined state, and limits this refining process to 8k per day - this would also work in AO since we know notum comes in refined, unrefined, and Finely Refined states, plus about a million others.

RNN will be used in a new ingame shop containing both social, and high-end armor and weapons - the RP reason for this (in my opinion) would be the ICC now allowing individual citizens to export notum and purchase directly from other companies, i.e. SOL Banking, Dreadloch, M.T.I., whatever. These should be premium, nodrop items, significantly better than OFAB, maybe not as good as AI armor or Xan weapons (although, upgrades to these items could also be sold). An upgrade to AI armor (similar to what can be done with the helmets) could add a minor upgrade but make it nodrop. Whatever the specific items, again you are creating a reason to team and raid, to play the content, and to further reduce the meaning of the credit-based economy.

A subset to this (and due to the past problems with bugs in AO, maybe not a great idea) would be an "exchange" or market for RNN (again, PWE uses these in games, and they work very well) that allows people to trade RNN for FC points, at a rate determined by the players - since players are directly trading the points, Funcom sees a win/win - people will still purchase FC points - in fact they will purchase more in order to trade them. You will also see an instant impact on the GMI economy - the credit prices of YESDROP item shop items will crash almost instantly, since people can just trade RNN for FC points and purchase directly. This also helps cut down on P2W, since if you spend enough time grinding, you can purchase shop items without spending a dime of your own money - someone else spent the money, you spent the time.

The extra revenue stream from this for FC should also not be overlooked - this system went into PWE games at the same time every game went F2P - and profits went way, way, way up.

[jorricane]

5. A final grind

The last grind I am going to mention that AO could use to retain players (and this is ESPECIALLY important with Steam integration and Steam achievements coming) is an accolade grind.

This would actually (I am pretty sure) be insanely easy to implement. Simply, let us choose the title displayed in front of our name from a list of all the titles we have achieved - our various Title Levels, various PvP titles (all the various levels we have achieved, i.e. a level 8 solo score enf could still show "Mook" as the title), as well as PvM titles we may have earned.

Most of the larger quests ingame set a flag on your character that GMs can see to assist with problems - just add a plain text Title to it that people can choose, say "Ice Breaker" for people who have done the Allappa quest, you get the idea. Let us choose what to display, and presto, a whole new set of things to collect for each toon.

And actually, on the subject of toon names - add an account-wide handle for our toons already - AO obviously keeps track of each account in this way, since you can purchase account wide items. Add a handle under each person's info that is linked to a mail system that can be accessed by every toon on that account. This would aid heavily in offline communication between players, and also help provide references for players you may wish to team with - if I see a toon with the same handle as someone who ninja-looted BoC last week, I may think twice before teaming.

7. Account-wide game handle for friends list
Also great and been asked many many times .... For 1 account it should be obligatory to have 1 name and for ppl with 2 or more accounts it there should be an option to use the same name for all accounts.

Thanks for your time - this will be updated based on feedback received below.

[jorricane]

Reserved for future expansion.

[Traderjill]

So to sum it up:

1. Instance queues
2. System assigned loot rolls
3. Regular release of content (including rebooting old dungeons/instances)
4. Class-specific questlines
5. New raid currency
6. Achievements
7. Account-wide game handle for friends list

Everything you've said here has been suggested before, many times on the forums. These are things that are being done in pretty much every MMO on the market atm. I'm not sure why Funcom hasn't implemented any of it as they're all good ideas and nothing that would destroy the nature of the game.

[Awikun]

First I doubt FC can or ever will implement any of those sugestions. Things that they have already promissed to do will take them at least 1-2 years ...

As for your ideas, I like some of them and would modify a bit others but we can only dream ...

1. Instance queues
Yes but there should be an alternative way to organise team/raid and enter the same instance.
It is fun to play with random ppl but sometimes I may prefer to do it with friends or ppl I know are well equipped and know their profesions instead of finding out that I am teamed with random level 220 Crat in medsuit and with 1 level 200 robotic pet ...

2. System assigned loot rolls
OK makes sense however it will not stop lootright selling but only make it more time consuming (higher prices). I ll explain why. Now when I solo farm S7 I can sell lootrights to SE weapons to anybody, just invite him to team and wait until he come and loot. With your proposal I will have to team (idealy 5 ppl who need diferent SE weapons) they will enter ship, I clear bosses and they come to loot whatever drops

3. Regular release of content (including rebooting old dungeons/instances)
Everybody would love it but FC has no resources to do it.

4. Class-specific questlines
Great it has been suggested many many times before ....

5. New raid currency
This is in fact a partial solution to f***ed up economy and lootright selling...

6. Achievements
Great it would be nice if I could see if that level 220 xxx has done DB quest and I can expect that he has certain nanos.

7. Account-wide game handle for friends list
Also great and been asked many many times .... For 1 account it should be obligatory to have 1 name and for ppl with 2 or more accounts it there should be an option to use the same name for all accounts.

[jorricane]

First I doubt FC can or ever will implement any of those sugestions. Things that they have already promissed to do will take them at least 1-2 years ...

As for your ideas, I like some of them and would modify a bit others but we can only dream ...

1. Instance queues
Yes but there should be an alternative way to organise team/raid and enter the same instance.
It is fun to play with random ppl but sometimes I may prefer to do it with friends or ppl I know are well equipped and know their profesions instead of finding out that I am teamed with random level 220 Crat in medsuit and with 1 level 200 robotic pet ...

Yeah this can be a problem - however, games that have this system tend to allow teams to sign up to these queues as a group - if it's not a full team an extra random will usually be brought in. Yes, you do get griefers and morons occasionally, but overall the ease of getting the instance going general outweighs the downsides.

2. System assigned loot rolls
OK makes sense however it will not stop lootright selling but only make it more time consuming (higher prices). I ll explain why. Now when I solo farm S7 I can sell lootrights to SE weapons to anybody, just invite him to team and wait until he come and loot. With your proposal I will have to team (idealy 5 ppl who need diferent SE weapons) they will enter ship, I clear bosses and they come to loot whatever drops

Hence why I suggested only new raids be equipped with the system - we have a plethora of important mid/endgame raid items that are going to be valuable unless totally outclasses - S7 and some others really don't need a change.

3. Regular release of content (including rebooting old dungeons/instances)
Everybody would love it but FC has no resources to do it.

I was operating on the theory that the reason that content takes so darn long is that FC always likes to add tons of new artwork and a new mechanic or two every time they add content - the key is they don't need to. I'm sure that although we all like creative new stuff, we would be happy with ANY content as long as it actually comes out every so often. I'm not saying that EVERY encounter that they add should be vanilla, but they don't need to create a work of art every time. Based on the tools that other MMOs use (and since we will be using the newer AoC-designed Dreamworld tools) banging together a pure vanilla instance, once the queue system is working, should be a relatively trivial project for a single content designer.

4. Class-specific questlines
Great it has been suggested many many times before ....

Hence why I called it a "comprehensive suggestion" - these things all need to come at once, or in short succession in order to work.

5. New raid currency
This is in fact a partial solution to f***ed up economy and lootright selling...

It works, and has been used successfully in many MMOs - decrease the importance of the regular economy to begin fixing it. It's not the only measure to take, but it makes a huge impact and a great start.

6. Achievements
Great it would be nice if I could see if that level 220 xxx has done DB quest and I can expect that he has certain nanos.

Yeah, useful on many many levels.

7. Account-wide game handle for friends list
Also great and been asked many many times .... For 1 account it should be obligatory to have 1 name and for ppl with 2 or more accounts it there should be an option to use the same name for all accounts.

Nice idea actually, adding the the main wall'o'text.

[jorricane]

So to sum it up:

1. Instance queues
2. System assigned loot rolls
3. Regular release of content (including rebooting old dungeons/instances)
4. Class-specific questlines
5. New raid currency
6. Achievements
7. Account-wide game handle for friends list

Everything you've said here has been suggested before, many times on the forums. These are things that are being done in pretty much every MMO on the market atm. I'm not sure why Funcom hasn't implemented any of it as they're all good ideas and nothing that would destroy the nature of the game.

I know it has all been suggested - I've been trolling these forums for quite a while

The thing is, individually these things don't do a whole lot of good. There needs to be a radical shift, and there needs to be one soon, in order to keep this game viable. I guess I should have prefaced the article with this, but these things are all in a way interdependent, in that a change on this level will almost instantly bring AO on par with other MMOS.

Now, I know that these seem like a lot to implement, but in most of these cases the systems are already partially in place - there are even a few quick-and-dirty tricks I can think of to implement the others without changing any real game mechanics.

Thanks for checking it out and commenting!

[Psikie]

4. Class-specific questlines

Perhaps instead of new nanos this goes along line of helping players equip themselves and it provide nanos vets would normally clicksaver/mishbuddy for? That new players may have no choice but to buy or fumble around without.

5. New raid currency

I am torn on this unless the currency was raid specific. If you have done beast 20x you should be able to get TnH belt, prof star or beast weapon. But not use those raid points for Xan weapon upgrade or beta symbs.

[jorricane]

5. New raid currency

I am torn on this unless the currency was raid specific. If you have done beast 20x you should be able to get TnH belt, prof star or beast weapon. But not use those raid points for Xan weapon upgrade or beta symbs.

I don't think the new currency should be added to existing raids. And it should NOT be usable for existing items. It should be part of new raids, and new items. Sort of like VP was supposed to be, but without the suck.