Here are some things we are considering seriously, in no particular order:

1. Removing the need to repair items. This is a controversial one at Sigil as there are some people who really like the system and worked hard on it. With all due respect to them, I don't care for the system and I don't think I've ever seen someone say they like it in-game or in a post. There are other ways to create money sinks.

2. Getting helmets to show up -- I'm asking what's up with this and where it fits into the schedule.

3. Reduce the amount of exp lost when you summon a corpse at an altar. We need to not just make sure people know you can do this (and there are still people who don't know and think they always have to CR no matter what). But I also think people who do know about this often avoid it because of the amount of exp lost.

4. Get caravans working again. This will allow groups to stick together more. You designate a caravan leader and then join his Caravan. Then when you log on, you have the choice to pop up where you last camped OR at the altar nearest where the Caravan leader is. This way if you couldn't play one night and your group/guild moved a significant ways away, you don't have to do a bunch of traveling to catch up with them; rather you'd pop up at the altar nearest them and then find them. If they are outdoors, this shouldn't be a problem. If they are in a dungeon, you should be able to approach the entrance of the dungeon and be summoned to your party.

5. Implement the Fellowship system. A person can create a Fellowship and then people can join it (assuming he/she allows it). Then when you are offline, a percentage of the experience they earn when playing doesn't go to them but to you. This would allow players who can't play as much to stay relatively in the same level range as their friends who can play more often. There will be limitations like you can't join a fellowship if the people in the fellowship are too far ahead of you in level. We want this so you don't have noobs powerleveled up by high level buddies.

6. Enhance the compass so that it takes into account a 3d world -- that way when locating your corpse or a quest NPC or whatever, it works better in a dungeon. With only 2d guidance, you could be at the right x,y but the wrong z coordinate (e.g. your corpse or whatever is underneath you in a lower section of the dungeon).

7. Make sure people know that talking to guards in cities and villages will add vital locations to your travel journal. You shouldn't have to be searching for your trainer or a merchant when you enter a new town. That's just tedious.

8. Enhance the LFG system so you can enter personal information about yourself such that you can find people with common interests, both in-game interests and RL interests. That way hopefully when you join a pick-up group the people there are people with common interests and the chances you develop a relationship with them increases, which builds community and helps people who don't already have a guild or pre-existing group of friends develop lasting relationships.

And then to steal from another post here in this thread, I like these ideas for enhancing the LFG tool as well:

A Matchmaking system should be put into place that would dynamically suggest group setups from among the LFG crowd. All people should have to do is press the LFG button.

• All LFG options should be available from within vgplayers.com via a web interface. You should not even have to log on to the game to look for groups. When the group is formed, pressing one button should launch the game with the appropriate character. Note: no, we wouldn't charge more for this.

• You should be able to tick off certain quests as being LFG specifically for those; the system would try to match together people doing the same quests.

• You should be able to select specific dungeons or chunks you are LFG for; the system will match you with people interested in the same.

• You should be able to create "Group proposals". You create a textual description of what the group would be about "I'm looking to start a group that would take on the first tier of quests for the dungeon of DwarvenName's Place." Then you would assign specific requirements that the group needs before starting (say, 1 tank, 1 healer, +2 more random classes). People can see you group proposals and subscribe to them; as soon as the system sees that the requirements are filled, the group is formed.

One of the issues that Vanguard is having, as I have posted about recently, is that the shards are underpopulated at times. I think as more people buy the game (and they are) the server pop will increase and this will help with community and finding groups. That said, enhancing LFG, putting in Caravans, etc. would also help considerably given the size of the world.

We want people to be able to find groups.

We want people when they join a pick-up group using the enhanced LFG system to have a good chance that the people in that group share common interests and so more permanent groups and guilds are formed, community is enhanced, and we're not just relying on pre-existing guilds joining the game or pre-existing groups of friends. Making new friends is very important in these games.

We want to keep meaningful travel and take advantage, both short and long term, of the fact that we have a very large world. It adds to immersion, it allows us to add content to the exiting world and keep it fresh, etc. But the downside is finding new friends, or being able to stay with your existing friends. We are considering some teleporters, although will start slowly with this so we don't go too far and make ships, horses, etc. obsolete. I don't think they should be class based. I think they should be fixed in location (a device you activate, or an NPC you talk to (and we already have some of these).

Anyway, there's a brain dump from me after reading through this great thread. I hope this is a positive thing -- it could backfire if people assume these are promises or that they will be patched in soon. I specifically didn't promise a time frame and also noted when something was still being worked out (e.g. item decay). Also, there may be better ways to achieve the above -- I know there are alternate proposals as to how a Caravan system should work -- these were written up when we put Caravans in beta and there were exploits and problems.

Also, if Nino reads this, hopefully you can integrate some/all of this into the what's coming section on the web site. This stuff combined with other features, fixes, new dungeons being opened up, etc. are very important and I think overall we could do a much better job here. We need to let players know what's being thought about, what's definitely going to be implemented, where our priorities are in terms of design, art, and programming, etc.

thanks for reading this.

*bow*

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