General Discussion

I've really wanted to push the enemy AI button.  Its been over 10 years and our MMO games still have the same NPC enemies who stand around or walk in predicatble patrols.  I made a topic about this a few months ago too.

Why don't we have NPC characters who are aware of their surroundings?  Why is a player able to walk almost 20 feet from a mob and not be noticed, yet the player can see the mob from 500 feet away?

When are we going to get rid of the generic aggro system?  I hate seeing healers get mobbed by 6 enemies because his regen spell ticked to 2 points on the tnak just after the pull.  Split the neemies up and make them attack different people on a pull.

Can we get rid of the crappy pull system that has full camps of enemies ignoring the fact that their partner just got shot in the back with an arrow.  If you pull a mob in a camp, nearly half the camp should be alerted with a verying responses from ducking and covering, running in fear, and charging head first.

Animals really piss me off in MMOs.  It seems mother natures only intent is to kill anything humanlike that moves.  Just because it's a bear doesn't mean it wnat to instantly kill you.  Make animals attack at random.  Maybe if you hold food in yoru inventory animals will attack you for it.  Above all make animals act a little bit like the real ones.  Wolves don't attack solo.  If you encounter a lone wolf, it runs.  Deer do not charge headfirst into a fight when attacked.  Nor do they fight to the bitter end when losing an obvious battle.  They run, FAST!

All I want are some smarter AI.  It is really not that hard to program.

Originally posted by pencilrick

Biggest mistakes, IMO:

1.  Linear design:  Assuming players need to follow a "story" instead of simply letting them explore a world.

Agree

2. No significant death penalty:  If dying doesn't hurt, it doesn't feel real or immersive.  Dying doesn't have to have horrible consquences, but should be enough of an annoyance to make a player's heart skip a beat when that sand giant whacks him from behind for 300 points of damage.  Also, a death penalty makes dungeons more fun and scary.

Totally agree.

3.  Too much PVP:  The vocal PVP minority is getting too much attention in new MMO design.  PVP-centric MMO's tend to flounder, and for a reason.  PVP is pointless and repetitive, IMO, much like playing tag football in the backyard.

Completely disagree. For one you can say that any feature of an mmo gets boring and pointless after a while; pvp with consquences and rewards (like in EVE,  UO, SB, old AO, ect) is in many peoples minds the most compelling reason to play an mmo. At least your competiting against another human being in pvp, as opposed to a scripted non-ai static boss/raid mob that is exactly the same every time. I can see if your talking about pointless RvR like in War, corpse camping like in AoC, or WoW style bg's, but pvp has and will always be one of the most compelling reasons to play an mmo. Just like warfare and violence in the real world, if you wish to create a compelling game world for players to live in, pvp must be an option at all times. 

As for the vocal pvp minority getting all the attention in mmos, are you crazy? What was trammel? Everquest, the notion of the pve server, the karma system in L2,  safe zones in every game, the complete removal of loot from almost every mmo released over the last 6 years, RvR, LotRO, etc? If any thing there is a a tremendous amount of evidence to show the opposite, that games are moving away from pvp, or at the very least the kind of pvp that the pvp minority would like.  The vocal pvp minority want UO pretrammel ffa pvp with loot, or some version of risk reward pvp at the least. The "carebears" want factions, instanced pvp with rewards and no risk, safe zones, pve servers, etc. If you are refering to the "carebear" model of pvp as the vocal minority then I agree with you, otherwise I would like to see some prof that pvp'ers have swayed mmo in their direction in any significant way.

4.  Too many slider bars during customization:  Obsessive players will never be satisfied with their choices unless they can select from a finite list and know that choice was the best from the list.  Some customization is good, but too much open-ended customization is a distraction.  We don't need nose slider bars, for example.

Rubbish, give me more slider bars, one of my many complaints with WAR was the TERRIBLE character creation, literally every one of the same race/class looked identical. I don't want to live a world clones, more slider bars allow for a greater degree of player diversity. BTW I made my main in AoC with a big ugly hook nose

5.  Too many redundant classes:  We don't really need two types of bards or two types of shamans.  Keep classes to about a dozen choices or so gives players class identity and more easily identifiable class roles.

I would argue that out of the box premade classes are an even bigger issue, give us UO/EVE/SWG style character progression and classes.

6.  Seamless world:  Not talking about loading times so much as zones that seem like they all mesh together in one indistringuishable mess of green, gray and brown.  Zones should have their own character.  Also, zones should have their own chat channel.

This is true of most game, at least imo.

7.  VENT:  any live voice chat ends up detracting from immersion and becomes real non-game chat or sports-like team chat in raids.  I've never seen anyone role-play in VENT (or the equivalent).

Well, you certainly can choice to rp on vent and several guilds in several games do choose to do this.

8.  Zillions of quests:  While some quests are good for giving players direction and keeping them occupied, too many quests end up destroying the community and the feel of freedom, as players feel compelled (by experience rewards) to follow some monotonous cookie-crump trail of endless quests.  Yes, people will engage in behavior they do not enjoy in order to gain some advantage or reward, much like if you threw a bunch of one dollars bills in the air among a crowd of people, many would drop to their hands and knees to pick them up, but not a one would recall this as an enjoyable experience.  Perhaps this is called "following the path of least resistance."

Agree, I would rather grind mobs then "quest". Tho I feel the only solution to this is a system that does not have levels, thus does not require you to grind quests for levels. That way the quests that do exist could be hand crafted to actuly be interesting.

9.  Real-life out-of-game humor:  A lame joke referencing the present world might garner some recognition or a chuckle, but this destroys immersion more than anything else.  Lack of enforcement of a naming policy also falls under this category.

I do not support strict enforcement over player actions on all servers, but I could see why you would want a strictly period server with harsh enforcement.

10.  Designing a game instead of a world:  The lure of fantasy (fiction too, not just gaming) has always been "I want to live in this world".  Like Middle Earth or Hyboria's free-spirited adventures, the draw of being able to live in a simpler and more direct environment is compelling.  Players want to log into a "world", not into a "game".  While games can be fun, there is nothing quite so magical as logging into an MMO because of its world.

Agreed this is one of the few reasons that FC's AO still has me playing from time to time.

A few of mine:

• Major IP's that are required to be strictly followed.  One Example is Lord of the Rings Online even though it is a good game that I no longer play.  MMOs have to allow major creativity and the IP will have to allow that.  Otherwise create your own for sanity's sake.

• Major death penalties like item loss.  See Pirates of the Burning Sea where you lose your ship should that durability get to 0.  Why the hell would you punish players by taking away what they earn?

• Any performane issues.  See D-Day minus June 9th for Age of Conan with Out of Memory, gray mapping, and stuck in loading errors.  LOTRO hitching in it's early days and while I was playing.  POTBS crashing on open seas with its item loss on death with durability 0.  Vanguard having the ability to blow my power supply in its early days.  Really folks make your MMOs work or please delay them if you can't.

• Game Balance. Especially if the game is based off a major IP.  The trick should be to make that fighter just as powerful as in a single player game.  Everyone with power is a cancel all itself.  The D&D Fighter is king in lower levels and the caster steps up in the later levels.  Balance in itself.

Edit: grammar and additional content

Biggest mistake:

Creating these horrible pvp/pve hybrid games.  why does every MMo have to have pvp and pve?  Not everyone like pvp so why bother spending all that time and effort in implementing it, balancing classes etc.  Just make a pve game and concentrate on that!!! And for the love of Pete if you don't like pvp stay the f*** away from that game.  Don't trash it all to hell just b/c you love pvp and every game *has* to have it b/c every other pvp-centric game you played has failed and thus have nothing else to play.

On the flip side stop making pvp-based games have pve.  PvP'er swant to pvp. stop wasting their f***ing time levleing up just to get to end game to play the "real game."  Let them pvp from the first minute in the game and base the WHOLE GAME ON PVP.  WAR kind of did this but they still put the useless crappy pve in their because they think you have too. 

There's a free idea for you better go an make it before I finish my degree and do it myself!!!!

Look at sword of the new world, Beautiful original 1700 era style, amazing music sound track to rival Final fantasy series, Good graphics with plenty of detail, HOWEVER the worse possible game play you could ever think of is put to play in this game, 150 levels (with all the scrolls) level 100-110 you gain 000.1% per kill, level 110-120 you gain 0000.1% per level and so on...yes At one point you need to kill monsters in the millions to level. Sure you can AFK level which is a nice feature for homework doing college students like myself, but for anyone who actually wants to PLAY this is the worse game out there period. And the definition of the biggest mistake in mmorpg history.

Letting the same ol' cornballs design it. No adult male over the age of 40 that uses the words "cool" and "awesome" as often as these guys do, and about crap no less,  is gonna design anything you wanna play. When you buy a "next-gen" game from these guys Its like electing a man whose been part of the status quo for 26 years running on a platform of change, plan on being disappointed.  Great games are made by true artists, not market researched, buzzword dropping, groupthinking asshats.(300)

Biggest mistake is devs listening to players' whims and being friendly (or pretending to be) to their fanbois, implementing things retards want (quick ego gratification e.g.) : it ends up with one or two good ideas and a total distortion of the genre towards easy cheap entertainment for the masses. Eh i remember the good old days without internet when my Amstrad CPC games were so cool and devs totally unknown semi-gods to me. Now you've got the constant herd whining and demanding all day long how they should be entertained on special suggestion forums read by devs... zomg