Topic
fulfilling a month old request
Well about a month ago I posted a thread titled "maybe I'm missing the point?" That thread was posted in general rather than off topic but the final word is so off topic that I didn't feel it would be appropriate to perform necromancy on it. My short review of glitch is "It's not for me".
Now I did attempt to explain what might make glitch more appealing for me in other threads but that isn't all that interesting and not worthy of a recap. What follows is not a lamentation about glitch. It is not an account of what I wanted glitch to be.
No - the question I'm answering is the broader question. "what do I want in an mmorpg?".
I want an end to the auto battle mainly.
I am not ignorant of the many arguments for or against the design of certain mmos and the trade-offs that are conventionally accepted but in my case I can't imagine an mmorpg design that relies on auto-battle that would satisfy me.
So here is my plan.
The battling would be handled in a fashion similar to skyrim. It would be very action oriented. No classes. Tons of skills. The more skills the better. Equipment strength would be drastically downgraded compared to what WOW players are used to. Instead of being on the lookout for increasingly powerful swords you'd be on the lookout for increasingly cool looking swords and tons of skills. That's not to say that some swords won't be better than others but my dream is that a band of newbies would be able to take down a "maxed" character under the right circumstances. In order to handle this on the server side you'd have to regress a bit to the days when rpgs had random battles. You'll trigger instances as you travel and it'll load in the background while you run. There doesn't need to be a loading screen. The game will take you straight into the instance the second everything is ready. The aforementioned skills would relate to battle skills of course, but the bulk of them would be toggle skills that would work outside the instances. One example would be a stealth toggle that would reduce the odds of random encounter with hostile mobs. Another could be a hunting toggle that would increase the odds of a random encounter with a deer. Yet another hunting toggle would relate to quail, so in this way it would be possible to be an excellent deer hunter (lots of encounters with deer) and yet also a poor quail hunter (few encounters with quail).
This relatively minor change would have profound changes in the way the game is played. Running from a mob would be defined differently. Grouping would be different. Looting would be different. In every case I've got a solution that works. There are some disadvantages that i choose not to dwell on but then there are some very large advantages as well. Boss battles could be decided by the dexterity of the player rather than your clerics aptitude at whackamole. There's a lot to work through but i think it could be made to work. No- that sounds too passive. I KNOW it would work for at least a certain type of gamer. Doubtless that there'd be many happy WOW fans who wouldn't see the point but I think there would also be a huge number of people like me who need something more immediate.
Well that's all. This isn't the first time I've laid down an out of the blue essay about mmorpgs but i think I'm getting better at explaining myself. Good day to you all!
