Ngruk said:
1) The one core basic feature would you 100% expect to be in, and expect to be perfected at launch, bug free and "cool"
The questing/leveling experience. Make it engaging, make it fun and it will buy you time to tweak other aspects of the game while people simply enjoy leveling up. It needs to flow well and properly reward the player along the way. WoW"s leveling experience is often praised, but if you look at it critically there are numerous flaws. Itemization is a big one, it"s very rare to get an item from a quest that you actually want or even care about. It would be nice if quests felt more rewarding.
I would also like to see fewer "meaningless" quests, and more excitement at all levels of play. I don"t want to feel like I"m only questing to level, it would be nice if I didn"t even think about it as I played. Rather than having 20 dull quests like gathering apples and wolf hides, why not start out with ONE quest that leads the player through 20 different steps, culminating in something that feels epic (even at level 5) and rewards them properly along the way. The end result - gaining level 5 - is the same, but the path to get there would be much more fun.
From the very beginning, I want to feel like the main character in a grand story. I don"t want to be an errand boy doing menial tasks for NPCs. I want to make my own choices and reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. I"d like to see quests presented in different ways as well. If I start killing skeleton warlords and there"s a quest in town to kill 10 of them that I didn"t pick up, the game should just recognize that I"m doing it and allow me to get the reward for it later. Check out more of my thoughts on questing in
this post on my blog, if you like.
Ngruk said:
2) What one thing that hasn"t been done well, or at all, in any MMO, would you most like to see as a thoroughly fleshed out mechanic/content piece/UI feature?
I"m going to go with alignment and reputation on this one. EQ1 did it best, imo, by allowing players to raise or lower their faction with pretty much anyone. You also had semi-alignments in EQ based on your deity. This type of thing could easily be fleshed out and perfected, with the flaws in the design corrected along the way.
I"d like to see an MMO where a player"s alignment actually had an effect on their character, altering what quests they can receive as well as how they might complete them. Think KOTOR, Fable, or Neverwinter Nights in the sense that you can do some quests in different ways and your choice effects your alignment. Sometimes, even the way you speak to an NPC can effect your alignment slightly. When you find a valuable family heirloom in a dungeon, do you return it to the rightful owner, keep it for yourself, or sell it to the highest bidder? The player should have these choices and what they do should effect their character.
Similarly, I want a good, diverse reputation system. One of the coolest things about Velious was choosing which of the three factions you wanted to ally yourself with, and being able to switch those factions at will. I want to see more choices like this.
Give us factions that are less black and white, so obviously good or evil. Let the player decide if they really believe in that factions goals and want to help them or if they"d rather stand against them.
Let the player customize their character in the way they choose to act and which factions they align themselves with. An ogre should be able to walk in the city of the elves if he has proven himself to them.
This kind of thing is part of what made EQ feel like a real world and not just a game.
