The Next Generation MMO

Well, I've seen games that allowed some choice in how you tackled challenges, be they solo quest or group, and I'm all for that being in SOTA, but I don't know about it being innovative.

As for breaking the Holy Trinity, YES PLEASE. I think any adventurer who isn't a total moron should have some way of healing themself, on the fly if possible, and I've always HATED the concept of "aggro". I mean, I build a character who's sole function is to absorb and mitigate damage, I don't stun, I don't CC, I don't do lots of damage, but I take a hit like a bank vault, and yet the raid monster, even the supposedly brilliant ones that are mages or scientists or whatnot, feel compelled to attack me before dealing with the soft, squishy people standing right behind me, who are dealing massive damage. WHY? Is it some sort of mind control? 'Cause that's kinda how it seems to work, and if I can have mind control powers that say "Ignore the fact that a bowrogue is turning your kidneys to pincushions, and attack me mindlessly." then why couldn't I have developed mind control powers that say "beat yourself to death with your bare hands." or "Serve me."

I think healers should be supplemental at most, a good group not taking heavy damage shouldn't HAVE to have a healer. I say tanks should be cc/debuff masters who are really annoying to have active, and thus make ideal first targets, but use armor, guile, range, and anything else they can get to avoid the beating they so richly deserve. I'd look for a way to build tank powers so that they would compel PLAYERS to focus on them preferentially (perhaps while the tank is up and nearby all his enemies do less damage and all his allies TAKE less damage, ignore the tank and you'll never hurt anyone, kill him and your attacks suddenly power up), at which point it would be reasonable for NPC enemies to do the same.

 

"The Game of Life" is positive sum, negative sum, or zero sum... it depends upon how you argue it, there are a plethora of arguments for any stance. Kind of a meaningless thing to talk about.

Combat, whether it be designed for an MMO or not, should be challenging. The point made is that people who want a social experience don't want to be challenged...

That's totally fine.

In-fact, plenty of good MMOs have offered social roles for people to play. The trader, the speculator, the thief... All possible. I've played old MUDs where I played a real thief class, as in, I would break into houses owned by NPCs or players and make off with their goods, sell them to specific black market NPCs for experience or other players for gold. This is a fun, reasonable way of character progression that has worked in old classic games that aren't World of Warcraft, the only issue with it being a matter of balancing and designing systems. I could go into detail here about what I mean, but it's rather pointless.

The trader/speculator is something you see in EVE Online. People buy goods at X and sell them at Y. They basically make money by transporting goods from place to place. This can be a social role that involves bartering with real players or NPCs. No combat ever has to enter the picture for any of these classes (though combat CAN, NPCs might try to attack a trader and kill him, though I doubt you'd be able to lose your goods this way, which ideally you should, a thief in the same manner can be attacked by owners of a place he is robbing).

In terms of slashy-slashy WoW-ish progression, where I hunt kobolds for copper and experience... nothing can be more overplayed and dull than this. I'd rather see monsters become empowered and scary, so as to emphasize the exploration aspect of the game - you try to explore a new place, but encounter a super dangerous monster and are forced to explore another place instead. If monsters just become whackamole pinatas of loot, then they no longer represent a challenge; they aren't an obstacle. Just a thing to grind. I think this game should be about acquiring loot from dungeons or NPCs or players, with various obstacles in the way to prevent easy acquisition. You needn't kill every monster to get the good loot, sneaking past them might work (though we should have safeguards to prevent people blinding running past them).

 

I'm not downgrading anything. I'd say planning to ignore the story whilst playing is the actual downgrading.

They SAID its not an MMO. People can keep spinning things how they want because the game has Feature X, but it doesn't make it right. I'm going off what RG said at the beginning.

It's a story driven single player game you can choose to play with friends you know, or friends you'll meet while playing. There aren't mentions of the avatar and the virtues just for kicks. That's straight up single player Ultima stuff. The virtues in UO were practically tacked on.