I'm sure everyone who's played these games has their own opinion about things to improve in the future, here are mine.
The PUG problem
Something that plagues all multiplayer games to an extent, and certainly MMO's, is the difficulty of coordinating random groups of people, both in terms of developing a system where people will group together, and in coordinating the actual group.
Some problems do in general seem player created (when systems for grouping are introduced, but not used, for example), but are still influencedby the design of the systems and by the type of players attracted. Certain problems I see as coming from other mechanics in the game (for example, World of Warcraft had, or possibly has, a problem where groups needed certain types of characters that were not as effective at individual fighting and leveling.)
If an MMO comes up with a good method for sorting more fun from less fun players, finds a good way for players to find together, and balances its mechanics properly for grouping ot be useful, I'd expect it to be a more fun game.
Achievement
It's pretty clear that "achievement" of several different kinds is a big motivator for many people playing MMO's. However, as reading forums, reviews, etc. will make clear (Provided that your mind stays intact from the complaining and such), a lot of the fun from achievements comes at the expense of other players (See the complaining from a person about how they "worked" for something, usually arguing against making things easier, for a very common example.) Because of the way achivement motivation seems to work, people with different amounts of time available, motivation from achievement vs. other elements of the game, and other such player differences related to achievement, will end up competing with each other. (If the game includes levels, looting, and and other such differences in character power, as most of these games do, a further problem is created where people of different power levels will have difficulty grouping, and difficulty staying grouped if they do not gain power at the same rate.)
A game that can reduce the competition between different sorts of attitudes towards achievement is one I would expect to be more successful, and more enjoyable for everyone involved.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
4X preferences
These are some general gameplay preferences I have in a number of areas for 4X games overall, whether they be civilization games, space colonization games, etc.
Expansion:
Expansion seems to be a difficult thing to balance in 4X games, with most of the (at least that I've played) having a bias towards a "grab as much as possible" type of gameplay over a "focus on high quality" type of gameplay. Others seem to try to respond to this by making expansion expensive, although land grabbing is still often advantageous.
What I'd like to see in theory, is a system where expansion is easy to do (cheap colony ships/settlers/etc.), but carries enough of a cost that land grabbing is balanced with high quality, or with other focuses in the game. This way, it would be simple to grab important resources and pieces of terrain if wanted, but still carrying a cost that must be accounted for. However, with a lot of mechanics, this may be difficult ot do for a number of reasons, and could also be difficult ot balance properly without creating a single balanced expansion strategy.
Elemental:War of Magic appears to have an expansion system that fits what I'd like to see, although I'm not sure how balanced it is at the moment or how balanced it will be. The sytem involves using "essence" to found cities. The cities, as far as I can tell, are founded immediately, but essence is a finite resource throughout the game, meaning that founding a lot of cities carries a cost in strength in other areas of society. There are some ideas I've had for adding a cost to expansion, although without actually having designed a game I am not sure how well they would work.
Combat:
In general, I prefer somewhat more complex systems (Such as those found in space colonization games) more fun than simple combat systems (Like those found in civilization games, especially civilization 4). This isn't a generally a strong prederence, however, the only combat system I've found unfun is the civilization 4 system (the other civilization sytems are interesting enough for me ot enjoy them). In general, what I'd like ot see are:
An ability to use different situations (Terrain, defending cities/colonies/etc. vs. open areas, for some examples) to someone's advantage/disadvantage.
An ability to counter different types of units using different sorts of tactics (This could be overall movement in land for civilization games, or different spaceship formations in space empire games, for some examples.)
An ability to use different styles of fighting (Lots of little units vs. big units, for example), with these options being balanced well.
An ability to design and upgrade units is always a plus, although some games have mechanics that are not suited for these elements. A good range of different units covering different levels of power makes a good substitute.
Improvements:
These could be civilization game terrain improvements, civilization game city improvements and wonders, space colonization game colony structures, or other equivalents.
One thing I dislike, that a lot of games do, is to use industrial production, or an equivalent resource, of a particular colony/city/etc. to determine the speed of further improvements. This is generally because some cities and colonies are specialized for such production, while others may be specialized for something else, but these non production specialized cities/colonies often end up taking really long periods of time to get built up compared to production specialized cities/colonies. Systems where improvement building speed is based on an entire empire's resources, fixed amounts of time, or on something all colonies/cities will have, are often more fun for me.
Improvement game mechanics are often different from game to game, so there isn't much else I can say in general about these.
Specialization:
Generally, I prefer games that allow generalization, though I prefer that specialization offer its rewards as well. However, games with more potential generalization do seem prone to have different empires, and different games, all play similarly afterenough time (Since as an empire gets powerful overall, it becomes powerful in most individual areas of a game). Balancing this issue ot improve the fun may be difficult to do.
A specific form of generalization that I would certainly want invluded, however, is that specialization in an area should provide enough benefits that an empire will not have glaring weaknesses in some other area. Having such weaknesses either acts to force generalization again (removing some diversity), or would make some strategies quite risky, with a possible rock/paper/scissors type effect rather than a more flexible type of game.
Bottleneck Resources:
"Bottleneck resources" are what I call resources that everything else, or just about everything else, in the game requires. Gold often fills this position (Most space empire games, Age of Wonders games, for example). A resource like this isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, but sometimes, the bottleneck resources gets so limited that maximizing the bottleneck resource becomes the main challeng of the game. Such a bottleneck resource often significantly limits the options in a game, since there is not enough of it to use al the options.
Generally, games that avoid such bottlenecks do so by having lots of the resource available, and having other buildings, empire properties, or other mechanics, effect the efficiency that the resource is used for particular areas. Galactic civilization 2, for example, has money as a potential bottleneck resource, but different empire bonuses to production, research, and such allow an empire to sped money more efficiently (as well as simply having more total), and buildings have maintenance costs that further rewards efficient use of individual ones.
Expansion:
Expansion seems to be a difficult thing to balance in 4X games, with most of the (at least that I've played) having a bias towards a "grab as much as possible" type of gameplay over a "focus on high quality" type of gameplay. Others seem to try to respond to this by making expansion expensive, although land grabbing is still often advantageous.
What I'd like to see in theory, is a system where expansion is easy to do (cheap colony ships/settlers/etc.), but carries enough of a cost that land grabbing is balanced with high quality, or with other focuses in the game. This way, it would be simple to grab important resources and pieces of terrain if wanted, but still carrying a cost that must be accounted for. However, with a lot of mechanics, this may be difficult ot do for a number of reasons, and could also be difficult ot balance properly without creating a single balanced expansion strategy.
Elemental:War of Magic appears to have an expansion system that fits what I'd like to see, although I'm not sure how balanced it is at the moment or how balanced it will be. The sytem involves using "essence" to found cities. The cities, as far as I can tell, are founded immediately, but essence is a finite resource throughout the game, meaning that founding a lot of cities carries a cost in strength in other areas of society. There are some ideas I've had for adding a cost to expansion, although without actually having designed a game I am not sure how well they would work.
Combat:
In general, I prefer somewhat more complex systems (Such as those found in space colonization games) more fun than simple combat systems (Like those found in civilization games, especially civilization 4). This isn't a generally a strong prederence, however, the only combat system I've found unfun is the civilization 4 system (the other civilization sytems are interesting enough for me ot enjoy them). In general, what I'd like ot see are:
An ability to use different situations (Terrain, defending cities/colonies/etc. vs. open areas, for some examples) to someone's advantage/disadvantage.
An ability to counter different types of units using different sorts of tactics (This could be overall movement in land for civilization games, or different spaceship formations in space empire games, for some examples.)
An ability to use different styles of fighting (Lots of little units vs. big units, for example), with these options being balanced well.
An ability to design and upgrade units is always a plus, although some games have mechanics that are not suited for these elements. A good range of different units covering different levels of power makes a good substitute.
Improvements:
These could be civilization game terrain improvements, civilization game city improvements and wonders, space colonization game colony structures, or other equivalents.
One thing I dislike, that a lot of games do, is to use industrial production, or an equivalent resource, of a particular colony/city/etc. to determine the speed of further improvements. This is generally because some cities and colonies are specialized for such production, while others may be specialized for something else, but these non production specialized cities/colonies often end up taking really long periods of time to get built up compared to production specialized cities/colonies. Systems where improvement building speed is based on an entire empire's resources, fixed amounts of time, or on something all colonies/cities will have, are often more fun for me.
Improvement game mechanics are often different from game to game, so there isn't much else I can say in general about these.
Specialization:
Generally, I prefer games that allow generalization, though I prefer that specialization offer its rewards as well. However, games with more potential generalization do seem prone to have different empires, and different games, all play similarly afterenough time (Since as an empire gets powerful overall, it becomes powerful in most individual areas of a game). Balancing this issue ot improve the fun may be difficult to do.
A specific form of generalization that I would certainly want invluded, however, is that specialization in an area should provide enough benefits that an empire will not have glaring weaknesses in some other area. Having such weaknesses either acts to force generalization again (removing some diversity), or would make some strategies quite risky, with a possible rock/paper/scissors type effect rather than a more flexible type of game.
Bottleneck Resources:
"Bottleneck resources" are what I call resources that everything else, or just about everything else, in the game requires. Gold often fills this position (Most space empire games, Age of Wonders games, for example). A resource like this isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, but sometimes, the bottleneck resources gets so limited that maximizing the bottleneck resource becomes the main challeng of the game. Such a bottleneck resource often significantly limits the options in a game, since there is not enough of it to use al the options.
Generally, games that avoid such bottlenecks do so by having lots of the resource available, and having other buildings, empire properties, or other mechanics, effect the efficiency that the resource is used for particular areas. Galactic civilization 2, for example, has money as a potential bottleneck resource, but different empire bonuses to production, research, and such allow an empire to sped money more efficiently (as well as simply having more total), and buildings have maintenance costs that further rewards efficient use of individual ones.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Galactic civilizations 2 ideas: Ground combat
These are a some ideas for how ground combat could be handled in galactic civilizations 2. The combat system would allow player control of the fighting, and overall would use a lot of similar mechanics as space combat. (some inspiration for customization also comes from Alpha Centauri, Call to Power, my own ideas for other games, and a few other sources. A lot of descriptions are based on my space combat ideas blog post.)
Number of Combatants
The number of attackers would of course be based on the number of soldiers the attacker brought along. The number of defenders, however, I could see being adjusted based on several conditions, to represent the fact that people in a group may or may not be willing to fight hard or risk getting killed.
Using current galactic civilizations 2 stats: The amount of defenders (most likely based on a percentage of the total planet's population), would be increased with morale and loyalty of the defending civilization, and would decrease with higher influence from the attacking civilization. In addition, advances, such as information warfare, could be researched that would increase an empire's own defensive troops, and decrease enemy defensive troop numbers, in addition to the other stats. Ethical alignment might also have some influence here, although since ethical alignment also would presumably also influence combat strength (As it does in current GalCiv 2), I am not sure how such interactions for numbers of soldiers would work, or whether the two effects couldn't be merged.
I do like the idea of armies being composed of large groups of citizens (Similar to how armies work currently), since whether or not it is "realistic" (Or at least as realistic as a futuristic warp drive space empire game can get) it is a relatively simple to understand the micromanage system that still keeps invasions costly. However, I am not completely sure how to differentiate between different types of fighters (vehicles, infantry, airplanes, etc.), on defense. The most likely solution I can think of is to add certain buildings (such as airfields, tank centers, etc.) that cause defenders to have a certain amount and/or percentage of defenders to use these different types of fighting.
Types of Combatants
Combatants could be composed of on of several types of units, each with different gameplay characteristics:
Infantry: Clearly, infantry would be one type of fighter, and would be the default from the beginning of the game, and the type used on defense if no special measures were taken. In gameplay, infantry would be sort of like small ships in space combat. (Not powerful individually, but not very expensive in terms of supplies and space individually either.)
Vehicles: Vehicles of different sizes would require advances to develope. Vehicles would fill a similar role to heavy ships (Harder to individually destroy, but more expensive, and easier to hit.)
Artillery type units: These I imagine as emerging from other units, by using lots of ranged enhancements and such.
Aircraft: Aircraft could be built in a bunch of different sizes, kind of like vehicles. They would be much faster than ground troops, would be considered to have a distance advantage over ground troops, and an advantage at avoiding attacks (both representing the effects of flying.) In return, they would be much more expensive, and would take up extra space on transports.
Other types of units: Most different variations of these unit types I imagine as being producible through customization.
Unit Customization
I see ground units as using the same weapons and armor system that space units use, with Lasers, Mass Drivers, and missiles as weapons, and specialized defenses for those weapons. (for ground troops, mass drivers would represent guns like we have today, missiles could also stand for small scale rockets, as well as larger missiles used today, and for lasers, imagine star wars blasters and other similar weapons.) Just like in the space combat post, Lasers would be more accurate, Mass drivers would be faster shooting, and Missiles would have longer range.
Speed increases would be represented by powered armor (or possibly transport vehicles, both for infantry), engines, and such, rather than hyperdrive.
In addition, ground troops would like get some additional customization effects. Increased range would almost certainly be included as an optionfor customization (unlike ships), and additional customizations might be added for Area Effect damage. Weapons customization I imagine as having the option to either bundle all weapon strength together (As is done in space combat), or could be divided into smaller blocks of damage (meaning that each individual shot would deal less damage, but more shots could be fired at the same amount of time). This adjustment would be made to compensate for the fact that ground combat would probably involve a lot more individual forces than space combat.
The actual strength of units would be effected by their soldiering bonus (As weapons and defense bonuses effect space combat).
Transports and Defense
Instead of transports automatically loading with soldiers when built, they would be built separately from the individual infantry, tanks, etc. When the tanks were bui,lt, transports could come to the planets and load up soldiers. this process would involve a good amount of micromanagement, and I could see having an "automate loading" command for transports, similar to the command for survey ships and miners, though programming such a loading process could get a bit difficult.
Each unit built on a planet would consume a particular amount of money to produce, use a certain amount of money as defense, and
For defense, as mentioned earlier, I am not sure exactly how defenders would be able to choose what forces would be produced. (Certainly, with unit customization, the process gets complicated.) The brute force method would have the defending player choose at the start of the battle how to divide the forces up amongst potential unit types, although this would take awhile to do. The player might also have to build specific vehicles and such, with the remaining resisting population being defaulted to infantry, and the defending soldier would choose which sort of infantry unit was being used. the player might also not get the population's help in defending a planet, with specifically built army units doing all the work. (This is certainly a big weak spot in this set of ideas for ground combat.)
Bombardment
"Bombardment" would represent the various strategies (such as core detonation, tidal disruption, mass drivers, etc.) used in galactic civilizations 2. It would be a decision made before the battle, and the severity of the bombardment would influence the planet quality reduction, population killed, reduction in combat strength, and destroyed improvements.
Number of Combatants
The number of attackers would of course be based on the number of soldiers the attacker brought along. The number of defenders, however, I could see being adjusted based on several conditions, to represent the fact that people in a group may or may not be willing to fight hard or risk getting killed.
Using current galactic civilizations 2 stats: The amount of defenders (most likely based on a percentage of the total planet's population), would be increased with morale and loyalty of the defending civilization, and would decrease with higher influence from the attacking civilization. In addition, advances, such as information warfare, could be researched that would increase an empire's own defensive troops, and decrease enemy defensive troop numbers, in addition to the other stats. Ethical alignment might also have some influence here, although since ethical alignment also would presumably also influence combat strength (As it does in current GalCiv 2), I am not sure how such interactions for numbers of soldiers would work, or whether the two effects couldn't be merged.
I do like the idea of armies being composed of large groups of citizens (Similar to how armies work currently), since whether or not it is "realistic" (Or at least as realistic as a futuristic warp drive space empire game can get) it is a relatively simple to understand the micromanage system that still keeps invasions costly. However, I am not completely sure how to differentiate between different types of fighters (vehicles, infantry, airplanes, etc.), on defense. The most likely solution I can think of is to add certain buildings (such as airfields, tank centers, etc.) that cause defenders to have a certain amount and/or percentage of defenders to use these different types of fighting.
Types of Combatants
Combatants could be composed of on of several types of units, each with different gameplay characteristics:
Infantry: Clearly, infantry would be one type of fighter, and would be the default from the beginning of the game, and the type used on defense if no special measures were taken. In gameplay, infantry would be sort of like small ships in space combat. (Not powerful individually, but not very expensive in terms of supplies and space individually either.)
Vehicles: Vehicles of different sizes would require advances to develope. Vehicles would fill a similar role to heavy ships (Harder to individually destroy, but more expensive, and easier to hit.)
Artillery type units: These I imagine as emerging from other units, by using lots of ranged enhancements and such.
Aircraft: Aircraft could be built in a bunch of different sizes, kind of like vehicles. They would be much faster than ground troops, would be considered to have a distance advantage over ground troops, and an advantage at avoiding attacks (both representing the effects of flying.) In return, they would be much more expensive, and would take up extra space on transports.
Other types of units: Most different variations of these unit types I imagine as being producible through customization.
Unit Customization
I see ground units as using the same weapons and armor system that space units use, with Lasers, Mass Drivers, and missiles as weapons, and specialized defenses for those weapons. (for ground troops, mass drivers would represent guns like we have today, missiles could also stand for small scale rockets, as well as larger missiles used today, and for lasers, imagine star wars blasters and other similar weapons.) Just like in the space combat post, Lasers would be more accurate, Mass drivers would be faster shooting, and Missiles would have longer range.
Speed increases would be represented by powered armor (or possibly transport vehicles, both for infantry), engines, and such, rather than hyperdrive.
In addition, ground troops would like get some additional customization effects. Increased range would almost certainly be included as an optionfor customization (unlike ships), and additional customizations might be added for Area Effect damage. Weapons customization I imagine as having the option to either bundle all weapon strength together (As is done in space combat), or could be divided into smaller blocks of damage (meaning that each individual shot would deal less damage, but more shots could be fired at the same amount of time). This adjustment would be made to compensate for the fact that ground combat would probably involve a lot more individual forces than space combat.
The actual strength of units would be effected by their soldiering bonus (As weapons and defense bonuses effect space combat).
Transports and Defense
Instead of transports automatically loading with soldiers when built, they would be built separately from the individual infantry, tanks, etc. When the tanks were bui,lt, transports could come to the planets and load up soldiers. this process would involve a good amount of micromanagement, and I could see having an "automate loading" command for transports, similar to the command for survey ships and miners, though programming such a loading process could get a bit difficult.
Each unit built on a planet would consume a particular amount of money to produce, use a certain amount of money as defense, and
For defense, as mentioned earlier, I am not sure exactly how defenders would be able to choose what forces would be produced. (Certainly, with unit customization, the process gets complicated.) The brute force method would have the defending player choose at the start of the battle how to divide the forces up amongst potential unit types, although this would take awhile to do. The player might also have to build specific vehicles and such, with the remaining resisting population being defaulted to infantry, and the defending soldier would choose which sort of infantry unit was being used. the player might also not get the population's help in defending a planet, with specifically built army units doing all the work. (This is certainly a big weak spot in this set of ideas for ground combat.)
Bombardment
"Bombardment" would represent the various strategies (such as core detonation, tidal disruption, mass drivers, etc.) used in galactic civilizations 2. It would be a decision made before the battle, and the severity of the bombardment would influence the planet quality reduction, population killed, reduction in combat strength, and destroyed improvements.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
"You can't reduce people to numbers"
You can, and should, and here's why...
(In all honesty, I think the viewpoints of whether or not people are "reduced to numbers" comes from differences in how people are comfortable thinking, and how the different ways of thinking may not overlap. I'm sure lots of people reading this post will say "But those require less "people are numbers" thinking, not more, and I would agree that, for different styles of thinking, different methods would be useful for overcoming these biases.)
1. "A million is a statistic": I'm sure plenty of people have heard this expression and understand what it means. In cases like these, a more mathematical "a million is worse than 1" mind would come in helpful.
2. "I can identify with him/her/them": Probably also familiar to a lot of people, this is where someone's sympathies will be much stronger for something they are more familiar with or can identify with more easily, even if the less familiar problem is actually more severe for that particular person.
3. "I'd like to be treated as a real person": For some people, "treating me like a person" is a good thing, with friendliness, interest, etc. The bad side of this is, of course, being treated as the sort of person that the treater dislikes or is disrespectful of. This could happen for a number of reasons (gaffe, miscommunication, the "treater" just doesn't like certain people, etc.). in those cases, being treated as a completely anynomous person is perfectly fine.
And, not exactly in the same category, but along similar lines:
"You can't buy happiness": Sure you can, you just have ot know how ot spend the money well. (And, of course, ask a person without much money, and that will provide a response as well.)
(To me, the idea that the expression seems ot be trying ot get across is that the happinewss something can give does not necessarily equal the price. So buying a bunch of stuff isn't going ot work well unless the person has a good sense of why they are buying it.)
(In all honesty, I think the viewpoints of whether or not people are "reduced to numbers" comes from differences in how people are comfortable thinking, and how the different ways of thinking may not overlap. I'm sure lots of people reading this post will say "But those require less "people are numbers" thinking, not more, and I would agree that, for different styles of thinking, different methods would be useful for overcoming these biases.)
1. "A million is a statistic": I'm sure plenty of people have heard this expression and understand what it means. In cases like these, a more mathematical "a million is worse than 1" mind would come in helpful.
2. "I can identify with him/her/them": Probably also familiar to a lot of people, this is where someone's sympathies will be much stronger for something they are more familiar with or can identify with more easily, even if the less familiar problem is actually more severe for that particular person.
3. "I'd like to be treated as a real person": For some people, "treating me like a person" is a good thing, with friendliness, interest, etc. The bad side of this is, of course, being treated as the sort of person that the treater dislikes or is disrespectful of. This could happen for a number of reasons (gaffe, miscommunication, the "treater" just doesn't like certain people, etc.). in those cases, being treated as a completely anynomous person is perfectly fine.
And, not exactly in the same category, but along similar lines:
"You can't buy happiness": Sure you can, you just have ot know how ot spend the money well. (And, of course, ask a person without much money, and that will provide a response as well.)
(To me, the idea that the expression seems ot be trying ot get across is that the happinewss something can give does not necessarily equal the price. So buying a bunch of stuff isn't going ot work well unless the person has a good sense of why they are buying it.)
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Age of wonders type game: Magic types
Part of the magic system description is here:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dg8gfb6r_6gccgp7fx
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dg8gfb6r_6gccgp7fx
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Age of Wonders Type game
These are some documents for a Fantasy 4x game idea I've had. This is not the sort of idea I'd expect to get turned into an actual game (It's way, way, too complicated for one), it's mostly for my own enjoyment (hopefully the few other people reading this post as well, if curious), although it has a few ideas that I'd like to see in other games.
As described in the title, the main inspiration was Age of wonders, but some ideas also came from other sources.
The two documents themselves describe the different races of the game, and in general how the system would work. I'll have more documents in the future describing other elements of this theoretical game. Also, I'll probably split the one describing all the racial categories into a smaller set of documents, (and update this post).
The system for how races would work in this game
The actual races
(An actual fantasy 4X coming out, that will probably do a lot of the stuff I've thought of here in a much more playable way, is Elemental:War of Magic, which I'm theoretically in the beta for, although the game currently does not work on my computer due to some odd bug, so I don't have much to say about it at the moment.)
As described in the title, the main inspiration was Age of wonders, but some ideas also came from other sources.
The two documents themselves describe the different races of the game, and in general how the system would work. I'll have more documents in the future describing other elements of this theoretical game. Also, I'll probably split the one describing all the racial categories into a smaller set of documents, (and update this post).
The system for how races would work in this game
The actual races
(An actual fantasy 4X coming out, that will probably do a lot of the stuff I've thought of here in a much more playable way, is Elemental:War of Magic, which I'm theoretically in the beta for, although the game currently does not work on my computer due to some odd bug, so I don't have much to say about it at the moment.)
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Guild Wars 2: What I'd like to see/not see
I'm not sure if I'll actually get Guild Wars 2 even if it has the features/qualities I'm describing here (It depends on what else I'm doing at the time), but these are my own viewpoints on what I'd like to see/not see in the game.
Low/No Leveling/gear times:
My favorite feature of the original guild wars was how characters could reach max level relatively quickly, and how gear with max stats was quite easy to get. I prefer RPG type games this way (And would like to see leveling, gear grinds, and equivalents removed entirely) for a number of reasons:
It keeps lots of areas accessible (the character won't be over or underpowered) at a time
It allows people too keep up with each other, even with different playstyles and playing times
It's easier to experiment and try out different sorts of characters
Exploration is more free (there is less of a worry about "If I do this, I won't be able to access that for more time).
It is a worry, from hearing descriptions of the game, that it will be moved to a more typical leveling and gear collection game that I tend to find highly annoying. I'll see how this develops, though.
Good uses for Secondary Professions (If they use the same profession system)
As guild wars went on and people figured out the game better, it seemed that seconadry professions got less and less important and useful. (for a variety of reasons, runes not being available for secondaries, certain skills too dependent on primary attributes). I won't get to actually know whether secondary professions will be more useful (If they exist), but it will be something I look for in reports and such.
The Event System
Original guild wars seemed to have a lot of cool ideas that weren't really fleshed out well, so it does seem a possibility that the same thing will happen with the event system they are describing. If it works, though, it would be a great addition.
Instant outpost travel, quick skill switching, quick respecs, etc.
There are a bunch of features like this in the current Guild Wars game that make it quite a bit simpler and more streamlined to play, and I wouldlike to see these types of features continue into the sequel.
Low/No Leveling/gear times:
My favorite feature of the original guild wars was how characters could reach max level relatively quickly, and how gear with max stats was quite easy to get. I prefer RPG type games this way (And would like to see leveling, gear grinds, and equivalents removed entirely) for a number of reasons:
It keeps lots of areas accessible (the character won't be over or underpowered) at a time
It allows people too keep up with each other, even with different playstyles and playing times
It's easier to experiment and try out different sorts of characters
Exploration is more free (there is less of a worry about "If I do this, I won't be able to access that for more time).
It is a worry, from hearing descriptions of the game, that it will be moved to a more typical leveling and gear collection game that I tend to find highly annoying. I'll see how this develops, though.
Good uses for Secondary Professions (If they use the same profession system)
As guild wars went on and people figured out the game better, it seemed that seconadry professions got less and less important and useful. (for a variety of reasons, runes not being available for secondaries, certain skills too dependent on primary attributes). I won't get to actually know whether secondary professions will be more useful (If they exist), but it will be something I look for in reports and such.
The Event System
Original guild wars seemed to have a lot of cool ideas that weren't really fleshed out well, so it does seem a possibility that the same thing will happen with the event system they are describing. If it works, though, it would be a great addition.
Instant outpost travel, quick skill switching, quick respecs, etc.
There are a bunch of features like this in the current Guild Wars game that make it quite a bit simpler and more streamlined to play, and I wouldlike to see these types of features continue into the sequel.
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