Yesterday I watched the MO stream summery after a long time not playing the game, because i wanted to wait for my comeback till we get meaningful PVP and a world that try to balance the interests of PVE and PVP players. I have seen the Relic Wars on the Roadmap and found out that one of the relics is supposed to spawn pets.
Something like that can certainly be implemented well, but i don´t see how this mechanic will fix any of the existing problems and that are the following
1. The keep spots are unbalanced in terms of PVE content.
2. There is no direct competition between kingdoms for inhabitants, taxes and influence.
3. The PVE content is camped by the PVP players.
All of these problems could be solved quite easily with the introduction of Group tasks and with the help of Influence Points.
So with systems that have already been integrated into the game.
Ultima Online was a very popular full loot game, becuase it respected the time of the players, offered something to PVP and PVE players and tried to balance their interests. We need a system that takes the pressure off the dungeons for our PVE players by providing more content for the PVP players to keep them always busy fighting each other in specific Hotspots at specific times in the open World, to give the PVE players a timewindow to complete a dungeon, which would normally be camped.
People with a real life and jobs can only do a dungeon run during prime time, which is currently almost impossible to do. Therefore, the world events would also have to take place during prime time aswell.
The worst mistake a developer of a full loot game can make is that the PVP players get bored, who then murder the new players.
Complex Group Tasks
Complex Group Tasks could be used to create Hotspots. There could be complex guild quests for chefs, alchemists, and any other profession imaginable. For excample Get the King's Alchemist a Minotaur Head, Risar Chieftain Head and several alchemical ingredients from the Talus Risar Dungeon chest. The contract leasts 72 h. This would make these 3 specific dungeons a hotspot for PVP for the next 3 days, thereby reducing the ammount of PVP Players in the other dungeons. To make this work, the rewards for the guild tasks would have to be made super interesting.
Influence Points
Thats why i had the Idea of adding influence points as reward that could be spend to make a kingdom more interesting for its inhabitants. So we get a competition between the Kingdoms for the most valuable area, for which residents could be charged higher taxes, which then adds more money to the war chest. The ammount of influence points compared to other Kingdoms should have an effect on the amount of resources (double Nodes) and the PVE. For example, there could be inactive Troll and Risar Cheiftain Camps and spawns in every area that only become active when your Kingdom have reached a certain number of points or top the list of season points (Inbfluence Points). The members of the 3 most influencial kingdoms could then get a special mount or something at the end of the season, like they get in Albion.
Keeping PVP players busy with enough world events and guild quests should be Starvault's most important task, otherwise their game will never make enough money to deliver enough content quickly enough. The fewer players the game has, the harder it is to find opponents roaming arround and therefore they have to be concentrated on the map through interesting events to make these 50 vs 50 men battles we all play the game for more frequently happen. The best would be an Event every 2-3 h. In Battle Royal games, the few surviving players are concentrated through a fog of death or with the help of world events such as airdrops, so they don´t have to search each other forever. The airdrops could be compared to the demon strones we had in MO1 and are still missing in MO2. In Mortal Online the developers can´t add death fog. This concentration of players has to happen through lucrative world events.
Mortal Online doesn't need hundreds of thousands of players, but events at predetermined times. For example, a meteorologist NPC could inform players when a meteor impact will occur and whether it is expected in the northern, eastern, western or southern hemisphere. Players who are short on time could prepare and schedule time for such an event.
During the Combat Alpha, sometimes only 50 players were playing, but since they all met in one city, I logged in constantly because the fighting was non-stop. If these players were all spread out around the world it would have been boring.
Camps could be made more interesting, if the loot in the camp crates would spawn fully refreshed every full hour at 1.00 am, 2.00 am, 3.00 am ..., so you can be sure that there will be a small fight for the crates every full hour, like for the Troll between the RIsar camps.
One of the problems with MO2 is that more mobs stress the server and might cause lag in big fights. That's why I liked the idea of trassure maps, which only spawn mobs when someone activates such a tressure map and plan to kill the mobs that could be spawned with the dynamic spawn system for a specific ammount of time. The dynamic spawn system was already integrated with the introduction of the outlaw spawns and should be used in a much better way.
Check out this new player's experience. He accepted a quest to kill rats with his friend, but not enough rats have spawned to complete the quest wo waiting like 10 min for the respawn. This is where the dynamic spawn could help to spawn the right ammount of mobs depending on how much players with the contract are heading to this location ! Here is the video with time stamp.
Starvault needs to prioritize. The combat system and spells are absolutely sufficient and good enough to have tons of fun in PVP, but the fights are not happening frequently enough at specific times, so players can prepare for and take some free time to participate. We need reasons to fight and a true competition between the kingdoms.
Siege battles only take place very rarely, as no guild that lives in Gaul Kur wants to live in Meduli and vice versa. Why should they attack each other's keep if no other guild pays them money to take over a keep? The siegesystem is therefore not the right way to guarantee permanent battles and conflict to keep the PVP players sufficiently busy in its current form.
SV nees to try to get the most potential out of already existing mechanics as this takes lesser time then develop new magic schools and whatever. The fights for terretory control towers could be made so much more interesting. So much potential was wasted in the bounty hunting system too. With the smallest changes the game could be made so much more interesting, so i recommend also reading my other suggestions to save as much development time as possible.
Richard Garriott was once asked how long it took to think up all the mechanics from UO. The answer was 15 years. That's how long it took until the game was released. If he had taken less time for his biggest project, he would not have flown to the moon with our money.
MO was released at least 5 years too early and i wish SV good luck,
since you are trying to create a product to fill a market gap and not try to maximize profits.
Thanks for reading
Something like that can certainly be implemented well, but i don´t see how this mechanic will fix any of the existing problems and that are the following
1. The keep spots are unbalanced in terms of PVE content.
2. There is no direct competition between kingdoms for inhabitants, taxes and influence.
3. The PVE content is camped by the PVP players.
All of these problems could be solved quite easily with the introduction of Group tasks and with the help of Influence Points.
So with systems that have already been integrated into the game.
Ultima Online was a very popular full loot game, becuase it respected the time of the players, offered something to PVP and PVE players and tried to balance their interests. We need a system that takes the pressure off the dungeons for our PVE players by providing more content for the PVP players to keep them always busy fighting each other in specific Hotspots at specific times in the open World, to give the PVE players a timewindow to complete a dungeon, which would normally be camped.
People with a real life and jobs can only do a dungeon run during prime time, which is currently almost impossible to do. Therefore, the world events would also have to take place during prime time aswell.
The worst mistake a developer of a full loot game can make is that the PVP players get bored, who then murder the new players.
Complex Group Tasks
Complex Group Tasks could be used to create Hotspots. There could be complex guild quests for chefs, alchemists, and any other profession imaginable. For excample Get the King's Alchemist a Minotaur Head, Risar Chieftain Head and several alchemical ingredients from the Talus Risar Dungeon chest. The contract leasts 72 h. This would make these 3 specific dungeons a hotspot for PVP for the next 3 days, thereby reducing the ammount of PVP Players in the other dungeons. To make this work, the rewards for the guild tasks would have to be made super interesting.
Influence Points
Thats why i had the Idea of adding influence points as reward that could be spend to make a kingdom more interesting for its inhabitants. So we get a competition between the Kingdoms for the most valuable area, for which residents could be charged higher taxes, which then adds more money to the war chest. The ammount of influence points compared to other Kingdoms should have an effect on the amount of resources (double Nodes) and the PVE. For example, there could be inactive Troll and Risar Cheiftain Camps and spawns in every area that only become active when your Kingdom have reached a certain number of points or top the list of season points (Inbfluence Points). The members of the 3 most influencial kingdoms could then get a special mount or something at the end of the season, like they get in Albion.
Keeping PVP players busy with enough world events and guild quests should be Starvault's most important task, otherwise their game will never make enough money to deliver enough content quickly enough. The fewer players the game has, the harder it is to find opponents roaming arround and therefore they have to be concentrated on the map through interesting events to make these 50 vs 50 men battles we all play the game for more frequently happen. The best would be an Event every 2-3 h. In Battle Royal games, the few surviving players are concentrated through a fog of death or with the help of world events such as airdrops, so they don´t have to search each other forever. The airdrops could be compared to the demon strones we had in MO1 and are still missing in MO2. In Mortal Online the developers can´t add death fog. This concentration of players has to happen through lucrative world events.
Mortal Online doesn't need hundreds of thousands of players, but events at predetermined times. For example, a meteorologist NPC could inform players when a meteor impact will occur and whether it is expected in the northern, eastern, western or southern hemisphere. Players who are short on time could prepare and schedule time for such an event.
During the Combat Alpha, sometimes only 50 players were playing, but since they all met in one city, I logged in constantly because the fighting was non-stop. If these players were all spread out around the world it would have been boring.
Camps could be made more interesting, if the loot in the camp crates would spawn fully refreshed every full hour at 1.00 am, 2.00 am, 3.00 am ..., so you can be sure that there will be a small fight for the crates every full hour, like for the Troll between the RIsar camps.
One of the problems with MO2 is that more mobs stress the server and might cause lag in big fights. That's why I liked the idea of trassure maps, which only spawn mobs when someone activates such a tressure map and plan to kill the mobs that could be spawned with the dynamic spawn system for a specific ammount of time. The dynamic spawn system was already integrated with the introduction of the outlaw spawns and should be used in a much better way.
Check out this new player's experience. He accepted a quest to kill rats with his friend, but not enough rats have spawned to complete the quest wo waiting like 10 min for the respawn. This is where the dynamic spawn could help to spawn the right ammount of mobs depending on how much players with the contract are heading to this location ! Here is the video with time stamp.
Starvault needs to prioritize. The combat system and spells are absolutely sufficient and good enough to have tons of fun in PVP, but the fights are not happening frequently enough at specific times, so players can prepare for and take some free time to participate. We need reasons to fight and a true competition between the kingdoms.
Siege battles only take place very rarely, as no guild that lives in Gaul Kur wants to live in Meduli and vice versa. Why should they attack each other's keep if no other guild pays them money to take over a keep? The siegesystem is therefore not the right way to guarantee permanent battles and conflict to keep the PVP players sufficiently busy in its current form.
SV nees to try to get the most potential out of already existing mechanics as this takes lesser time then develop new magic schools and whatever. The fights for terretory control towers could be made so much more interesting. So much potential was wasted in the bounty hunting system too. With the smallest changes the game could be made so much more interesting, so i recommend also reading my other suggestions to save as much development time as possible.
Richard Garriott was once asked how long it took to think up all the mechanics from UO. The answer was 15 years. That's how long it took until the game was released. If he had taken less time for his biggest project, he would not have flown to the moon with our money.
MO was released at least 5 years too early and i wish SV good luck,
since you are trying to create a product to fill a market gap and not try to maximize profits.
Thanks for reading
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