Things I'd hope to see in the II

[Meridian]

I've had a love hate relationship with MO since the Beta. During Beta and early launch, I loved exploring the beautiful landscape, eventually with an intern-developed weather system, hoping to discover little secrets hidden in small coves, caves, ponds and lakes. Of course, none of these were in the game yet, but I was hoping soon™. But, it would take years, and even then, the lackluster chest system, recipes, and predictable events just became a hot spot for farmers. The landscape turned into a neon green mess with crap textures and a bright, uplifting and motivational sky dome. I felt like I went from exploring listening to Wardruna, to listening to Enya. I also couldn't forget the exploding horses, lack of swimming (just drowning), a temporary flagless system that couldn't be exploited, capture-less territory control (fully destroy only), and simple resource gathering and selling for coin. Then came butchery, the mindless time sink, good for coin, good for bots, good for inflation, or making players grind their time away to save for a maxed breeding pair or armor recipe fragment in a future release. Anyways...

Most non-combat things I'd hope to see within the first year:

World

• Dynamic, unpredictable events (c'mon, we are in 2020)
• Weather (I'm sure that intern is doing great things now!)
• Events and AI activities based on day/night cycles, moon phases, and weather
• Seasons
• Migratory and roaming animal herds based on seasons or player pressure
• Foliage and gatherable resources based on seasons
• Roaming, intelligent, hostile and friendly AI (scrap static bandit camps)
• More places to discover, less dead-ends. No more fallen dreams of maxing swimming skills to explore the bottom of a lake, just to find more rock and sand, and if you're lucky, a pyrite.

Players

• A trade system consisting of a broker (like before) and merchant tables for rent (no brokerage fees) for players to display goods in categories to incentivize person-to-person trade negotiations rather than spam yell, and benefit the merchant.
• More support for those who don't want to solely PVP so guilds like Thirteen want to stick around. Trade and commerce is a must. MO turned into a giant empty arena. It lost it's MMO status imo. We need the merchants, the farmers, the fighters, the sheep and the wolves.
• A better environment for new players or players that do not wish to engage in PvP constantly (ie. more AI driven things in towns to earn coin or develop skills, and do more than sit around and spam what they need help with or want to sell)
• More interesting use of cities, laws, and NPC populations. Possibly a reputation system for each major city. For example, if you're a thief who is caught, then it's a strike to your rep and the more negative rep you accrue, NPC's are less likely to trust/talk to you (banks included), then possibly banished, so you'd have to find a place outside of town to store your goods. You could earn back your rep by doing xyz. This would go for griefers too. It can be done, but the more it's reported/caught, the harder it is in town. I played a thief for a while in MK. The flagging system is just archaic and a time sink. It was incredibly easy to play a naked thief and harass people. Positive rep could me access to higher end NPC's specific to that city. You'd be more of a trusted local/citizen of that city, offering different privileges. Territory control could also have an effect on how reputation and influence of the local NPC's is handled.
• Integration of capitol laws, making the flagging and bounty system more interesting and dynamic based on the proximity of a major city. These zones would extend a bit outside the walls of a city and along major routes, otherwise feather off into lawless, flag-free zones.
• Capitol routes - patrolled by local guards, reputation and TC system could come into play here.
• A dynamic capitol bounty/quest system. Sorry, leaving this up to players doesn't work. It's like wanting players to create and run CHAZ. It fades away.
• Flag free zones - lawless areas where things can't be reported. These areas would be a majority of the wilderness areas, until a guild claims it as a territory and sets their flagging guidelines.
• How do we get rid of blue-blocking?

This is just stuff that I've thought of over the years. I've gone through cycles in MO, PvP heavy, TC building, then wanting more PvE but just couldn't get it. The one thing MO lacks vs other MMO's is the hustle and bustle in cities. A lot of people get scared off due to constant griefing or lackluster trade and commerce tools. Really hoping MO2 offers more to everyone.

Please feel free to add or subtract!

 

[Kavu]

Some of this is pretty easy to implement.. (I've done it before)
Some of this is harder than it sounds...
Some of this is questions being asked rather than things you'd like to see..
Some of this is hot political takes.

I'm just going to address the ones I care about most!

Blue blocking: can be solved in several ways. The most obvious one is to eliminate the ability to strike innocent targets without the direct intent to. This can obviously be abused in combat, as it gives a distinct advantage to groups who are made up of mostly innocent players. If you've ever played as an invader in dark souls, you know what I mean. (This can be balanced in other ways though, such as the hit player or the player doing the hitting getting staggered from the swing.) There are plenty of options, and there are entire threads dedicated to this topic back on the original game's forums.

Flag Free Zones: Absolutely yes. Honestly though, they don't even have to be a majority, just a reasonably sized area where fucking each other up at random doesn't take your ass out of commission for other aspects of the game. PvP'ers will flock to this area and be able to expect other PvP'ers who are there for the same reason. It NOT being a majority of the map actually works in our favor.

The Sheep & The Wolves: So what I hate about this dichotomy that I've seen time and time again, is that it assumes a binary, that you're one or the other, and never sometimes the prey and other times the predator. In truth, we all fluctuated. There was always a time when we were at the mercy of some other mofo, and we always had at least one moment where we had some other sap outgunned and outmatched. The game is at its best when you find yourself the hunter one day and the hunted the next. This concept also seems to neglect the existence of the Sheep Dog like players whose sole purpose in Nave was defending trash npc towns from the forces of evil and escorting braindead miners from one rock to another. There used to be a lot of these guys, but many of them moved on, and I think we need to ask the question why?

Merchant Tables Without Brokerage Fees: What do you mean by this? Do you want no fees for selling goods that are left up to passively be sold via NPC? The fees are there for a reason. This acts as a gold sink, which is intentional. MMO economies have a way of inflating if they get stuffed with too much virtual currency that isn't disappearing to the void somehow. One easy way to make sure you can keep an eye on existing balances of currency is to have small sinks set up that are constantly nibbling away at the total gold in game, and keeping track of this somewhere also helps you see how much money is actually being pulled into the economy at any given time. Yes, big purchases like house deeds work as sinks too, but you want to make sure you're always taking some small nibbles from the cash pool or it will grow real quick when everyone has their assets squared away. Houses can also be theoretically re-saled which doesn't work as a sink.

 

[Meridian]

Some of this is pretty easy to implement.. (I've done it before)
Some of this is harder than it sounds...
Some of this is questions being asked rather than things you'd like to see..
Some of this is hot political takes.

I'm just going to address the ones I care about most!

Blue blocking: can be solved in several ways. The most obvious one is to eliminate the ability to strike innocent targets without the direct intent to. This can obviously be abused in combat, as it gives a distinct advantage to groups who are made up of mostly innocent players. If you've ever played as an invader in dark souls, you know what I mean. (This can be balanced in other ways though, such as the hit player or the player doing the hitting getting staggered from the swing.) There are plenty of options, and there are entire threads dedicated to this topic back on the original game's forums.

I know, I used to endlessly contribute, yet nothing resolved. It's still a griefing mechanic.

Flag Free Zones: Absolutely yes. Honestly though, they don't even have to be a majority, just a reasonably sized area where fucking each other up at random doesn't take your ass out of commission for other aspects of the game. PvP'ers will flock to this area and be able to expect other PvP'ers who are there for the same reason. It NOT being a majority of the map actually works in our favor.

The Sheep & The Wolves: So what I hate about this dichotomy that I've seen time and time again, is that it assumes a binary, that you're one or the other, and never sometimes the prey and other times the predator. In truth, we all fluctuated. There was always a time when we were at the mercy of some other mofo, and we always had at least one moment where we had some other sap outgunned and outmatched. The game is at its best when you find yourself the hunter one day and the hunted the next. This concept also seems to neglect the existence of the Sheep Dog like players whose sole purpose in Nave was defending trash npc towns from the forces of evil and escorting braindead miners from one rock to another. There used to be a lot of these guys, but many of them moved on, and I think we need to ask the question why?

I can go with that. My point is the "sheep" were chased off early on and the wolves hand to become part sheep, and hated it, so they'd quit. I was a wolfheep, I did both, like you describe, however, the people that played purely for economics, trade, and RP jumped ship very early. It's to easier (and more fun) to be a murderer and griefer than it is to abide by the law. Being blue gets boring. You're always babysitting your flag. War decs often happened just out of boredom, not guild hostility or ill action.

Merchant Tables Without Brokerage Fees: What do you mean by this? Do you want no fees for selling goods that are left up to passively be sold via NPC? The fees are there for a reason. This acts as a gold sink, which is intentional. MMO economies have a way of inflating if they get stuffed with too much virtual currency that isn't disappearing to the void somehow. One easy way to make sure you can keep an eye on existing balances of currency is to have small sinks set up that are constantly nibbling away at the total gold in game, and keeping track of this somewhere also helps you see how much money is actually being pulled into the economy at any given time. Yes, big purchases like house deeds work as sinks too, but you want to make sure you're always taking some small nibbles from the cash pool or it will grow real quick when everyone has their assets squared away. Houses can also be theoretically re-saled which doesn't work as a sink.

My idea is more for incentive to have active trade and negotitations in towns and cities. I agree with you for the most part, but I don't think the gold sink of a broker fee is doing much for an economy that has been/may be botted with butchery. I think there are larger, more important gold sinks that are more important than what you describe, like stables and expendable supplies, but that leads to another point, there's not really any gold sinks in MO except for when you get into TC. There's there isn't enough to counter the amount of money that is "growing on trees" in MO. There's not deminishing returns of merchants or limitations/depletion. The economy in MO does not have the same as in other MMO's. Some towns have nothing listed on the broker.

Replied in quote.

 

[Meridian]

you people never learn...

too long, didn't read, I'm against the whole idea

Haha. Dunk, you have become quite the sarcastic forum ogre.

 

[Kalistair]

The occasional caravan/patrol that travels from town to town would be a great addition. A little NPC-driven event to maybe nudge a few townsfolk out of town and get them moving around is something I'd like to see more of. Even if it doesn't in fact move people around, the fact that it's there still creates a little more atmosphere to the world. Have the town crier yell out its arrival and such. A little more variety to town life, besides seeing your neighborhood nudist playing with his dick outside of the bank, would be cool.

On top of that, rentable market stalls in a town's market district is another great addition to town life! Seeing items up for sale in the actual world and not in a little broker window is a small detail that I think a lot of us players looking to immerse ourselves in the world would appreciate.

 

[Meridian]

The occasional caravan/patrol that travels from town to town would be a great addition. A little NPC-driven event to maybe nudge a few townsfolk out of town and get them moving around is something I'd like to see more of. Even if it doesn't in fact move people around, the fact that it's there still creates a little more atmosphere to the world. Have the town crier yell out its arrival and such. A little more variety to town life, besides seeing your neighborhood nudist playing with his dick outside of the bank, would be cool.

On top of that, rentable market stalls in a town's market district is another great addition to town life! Seeing items up for sale in the actual world and not in a little broker window is a small detail that I think a lot of us players looking to immerse ourselves in the world would appreciate.

Totally.

 

[Kavu]

The occasional caravan/patrol that travels from town to town would be a great addition. A little NPC-driven event to maybe nudge a few townsfolk out of town and get them moving around is something I'd like to see more of. Even if it doesn't in fact move people around, the fact that it's there still creates a little more atmosphere to the world. Have the town crier yell out its arrival and such. A little more variety to town life, besides seeing your neighborhood nudist playing with his dick outside of the bank, would be cool.

On top of that, rentable market stalls in a town's market district is another great addition to town life! Seeing items up for sale in the actual world and not in a little broker window is a small detail that I think a lot of us players looking to immerse ourselves in the world would appreciate.

Best part is, in terms of AI, it's literally just way-points. Go To A->B->C->D->C->B->A->Repeat
If you get lost anywhere along the way or chase after someone and lose them, return to the nearest way point. Simplicity itself.
Wandering NPC enemies like bandits or monsters, literally the same thing, accept maybe send them to a random waypoint each time depending on the creature, to give a different sense of the beasts habits.

Guards would have to be pretty well done this time though if they're going to be wandering up and down the countryside. They were/are.. a bit special in the original.