Hi all!
I got MO2 a couple days ago and have really been enjoying it. This game has the potential to be THE ONE. I wanted to throw some ideas out there in case these things are being considered by the dev team. I hope you guys will weigh in on this stuff and put out well-considered ideas of your own too so that there is lots of inspiration to make MO2 something truly legendary. Some of these points I have seen mentioned online already, but I wanted to share some potential solutions and ideas of my own in case they could be helpful.
- THE WORLD FEELS EMPTY. It's one of the major complaints I'm seeing, and it's a valid one. I walked for an hour today and saw maybe a dozen animals. The soundscape and atmosphere of this game are great, but there's too little to interact with for now. The one thing that could improve this immensely would be a dynamic spawn system for mobs. This can be useful for server performance if mobs are only generated in areas where players actually are or where they can see. A per-player mob quota could also make busy grind areas generate more mobs so people have stuff to do even when there are others nearby.
I'd like to see a couple different levels of dynamic spawn system: an area spawn like I just mentioned, but maybe a more elaborate spawn system for roaming/hunting groups of enemies who are actually seeking out players. These could be tailored a variety of ways, for example you could have packs of individually easy wolves which occasionally hunt lower level players, while raider bands go after higher level players.
- ENGINE NEEDS MORE GRAPHICS SETTINGS AND PERFORMANCE OPTIONS. Seems like this game either works well for people or it doesn't, from a performance perspective. It seems to run smoothly for me (after some tweaking) but there are issues. I'd like to see options to completely disable shadows, or small eye-candy things like random pebbles or puddles which may not look good (puddles for me are glitched) or which detract from smooth gameplay on low-end computers.
- MORE RESPAWN POINTS ARE NEEDED. The priest system feels weird to me, honestly, and it limits respawn points to places where civilization (ie, a priest) would hang out. The sheer size of the continent makes respawning ridiculous. I would suggest either a replacement for using priests as respawn hubs, or this could be used to supplement them: ancient shrines. These could be simple stele, statues, pillars or whatnot situated in ancient ruins scattered across the land, where lost souls can reconstitute. This allows players to respawn in places which are remote without having to trek for an hour back to a city. There don't necessarily need to be a lot of shrines, since death should be somewhat punishing and require a little bit of a journey, but the current system is going to lose people, guaranteed.
- MORE OUTBUILDINGS AND SERVICES EQUIPMENT ARE NEEDED. Skyrim does a good job of this, where you can stumble across a shack in the woods where an alchemist was hanging out, and there's an alchemy station in the basement. I'd like to see more of this in MO2.: abandoned houses, ruins, camps, etc. where there are crafting stations -- not necessarily all of them, but stations fitting for the location. For example, a lost/abandoned mine might have the crushers or an extraction furnace. A hunter's cabin might have an old butchery table. Etc. Make it possible for players in MO2 to live out their occupations away from city hubs. I know the engineering system will help with this, but there needs to be existing infrastructure.
- THE BEACONS USED WHEN RESPAWNING ARE PRETTY GREAT. I'd like to see world events which also use beacons to draw players in, such as boss spawns, battlefields for guilds, etc.
- IMPROVEMENTS TO CONTROLLER INPUT ARE NEEDED. I was really pleasantly surprised that rudimentary controller support is already included. Well done and thank you! I only play games with a controller. Right now, controller input is set up as keypress input, which makes remapping things efficiently nearly impossible. Some buttons on my (fairly standard X360 controller) were also not recognized at all. It would be amazing to have a context-based UI with action wheels instead of the hotkey bars, which would work the same way for controller users. Just throwing out my wish list here...
- QUALITY OF LIFE FEATURES. I'm sure there are any number of things planned in this category already... for me, being able to navigate is important, and I don't feel MO2 does that well at the moment. I'l like to see road signs and possibly a region name message when crossing into new areas or a town. I actually have no idea where I am in-game right now.
Anyways, thanks for reading! I'm interested to hear thoughts.
I got MO2 a couple days ago and have really been enjoying it. This game has the potential to be THE ONE. I wanted to throw some ideas out there in case these things are being considered by the dev team. I hope you guys will weigh in on this stuff and put out well-considered ideas of your own too so that there is lots of inspiration to make MO2 something truly legendary. Some of these points I have seen mentioned online already, but I wanted to share some potential solutions and ideas of my own in case they could be helpful.
- THE WORLD FEELS EMPTY. It's one of the major complaints I'm seeing, and it's a valid one. I walked for an hour today and saw maybe a dozen animals. The soundscape and atmosphere of this game are great, but there's too little to interact with for now. The one thing that could improve this immensely would be a dynamic spawn system for mobs. This can be useful for server performance if mobs are only generated in areas where players actually are or where they can see. A per-player mob quota could also make busy grind areas generate more mobs so people have stuff to do even when there are others nearby.
I'd like to see a couple different levels of dynamic spawn system: an area spawn like I just mentioned, but maybe a more elaborate spawn system for roaming/hunting groups of enemies who are actually seeking out players. These could be tailored a variety of ways, for example you could have packs of individually easy wolves which occasionally hunt lower level players, while raider bands go after higher level players.
- ENGINE NEEDS MORE GRAPHICS SETTINGS AND PERFORMANCE OPTIONS. Seems like this game either works well for people or it doesn't, from a performance perspective. It seems to run smoothly for me (after some tweaking) but there are issues. I'd like to see options to completely disable shadows, or small eye-candy things like random pebbles or puddles which may not look good (puddles for me are glitched) or which detract from smooth gameplay on low-end computers.
- MORE RESPAWN POINTS ARE NEEDED. The priest system feels weird to me, honestly, and it limits respawn points to places where civilization (ie, a priest) would hang out. The sheer size of the continent makes respawning ridiculous. I would suggest either a replacement for using priests as respawn hubs, or this could be used to supplement them: ancient shrines. These could be simple stele, statues, pillars or whatnot situated in ancient ruins scattered across the land, where lost souls can reconstitute. This allows players to respawn in places which are remote without having to trek for an hour back to a city. There don't necessarily need to be a lot of shrines, since death should be somewhat punishing and require a little bit of a journey, but the current system is going to lose people, guaranteed.
- MORE OUTBUILDINGS AND SERVICES EQUIPMENT ARE NEEDED. Skyrim does a good job of this, where you can stumble across a shack in the woods where an alchemist was hanging out, and there's an alchemy station in the basement. I'd like to see more of this in MO2.: abandoned houses, ruins, camps, etc. where there are crafting stations -- not necessarily all of them, but stations fitting for the location. For example, a lost/abandoned mine might have the crushers or an extraction furnace. A hunter's cabin might have an old butchery table. Etc. Make it possible for players in MO2 to live out their occupations away from city hubs. I know the engineering system will help with this, but there needs to be existing infrastructure.
- THE BEACONS USED WHEN RESPAWNING ARE PRETTY GREAT. I'd like to see world events which also use beacons to draw players in, such as boss spawns, battlefields for guilds, etc.
- IMPROVEMENTS TO CONTROLLER INPUT ARE NEEDED. I was really pleasantly surprised that rudimentary controller support is already included. Well done and thank you! I only play games with a controller. Right now, controller input is set up as keypress input, which makes remapping things efficiently nearly impossible. Some buttons on my (fairly standard X360 controller) were also not recognized at all. It would be amazing to have a context-based UI with action wheels instead of the hotkey bars, which would work the same way for controller users. Just throwing out my wish list here...
- QUALITY OF LIFE FEATURES. I'm sure there are any number of things planned in this category already... for me, being able to navigate is important, and I don't feel MO2 does that well at the moment. I'l like to see road signs and possibly a region name message when crossing into new areas or a town. I actually have no idea where I am in-game right now.
Anyways, thanks for reading! I'm interested to hear thoughts.