AOC game play suggestions and idea's

[Kreed]

Hello Guild,

Here is some idea's for AOC game play please review and let me know what you think. I have also posted in the official forums for AOC to bring it to the attention of the Game developers please be sure to comment there as well to generate interest. It can be found under general discussions " Game play Ideas"

Security and anti botting report system

Bots, Botting, gold spammers are a pain and have plagued games across the board. Botting programs are getting way more sophisticated. However there are some games that have been successful at eliminating the offenders.

LOTRO has a next to no gold spammers, their reporting system is based when one receives a certain number of reports the offender gets their chat ability removed. To report them it is a simple right click on their name in chat and options comes up as to which reason they are getting reported. I think it is set at 5 reports gets you shut down. Reports are verified by Game Masters and bans are implemented. Either way they have been successful in removing gold spammers. Along with their system they also run an anti spam program that picks out the gold spammers in chat and in game mail.

There should also be an active Game Master dedicated to hunting bots, along with an easy reporting suspect players in live time for active players to help. There could also be additional options in how to handle bots when found. Game masters could teleport the characters to a jail or shackle them in the town square, with no chance to log out to get free, the offender characters are stuck there until the evidence finds them guilty or not guilty. The guilty get a ban, there characters get a righteous public death. Fed to a Dragon or impaled at a city gate.

Or the Game Masters mark them globally and other players show up to repeatedly destroy them. Players can get awarded achievements for identifying botters and killing them.

Female armour

Hot topic no pun intended.

Cosmetic clothing should look good a little leg , a little belly , shoulders. I have had several discussions with Women who play online games and many of them want to make their characters have sex appeal, they want to make them pretty or look really dressed to the nines and look attractive.

As for the armor, light armor or leather armor should be tailored to the female design and not look like they are wearing mens clothing. They should be able to dress up or dress down to the players preference. There should be a freedom there within reason.

Devs interactive in game

A few games over the years when beta ended or the game closed sometimes the Devs would spawn in as some sort of boss and attack players or towns or cities. These were fun times. When games went live it never happened again. These moments are some of the most memorable times and events for gamers.

Devs really should consider the value in this. They should spawn in as world bosses or Dungeon bosses randomly un-announced. It doesn’t have to be all the time but occasionally would be a lot of fun. It can be done several ways, nothing gets more stale then doing end game bosses repeatedly for gear going into the fight knowing where everyone needs to stand and do and expected boss sequence attacks or positioning. Having a random show of a dev or game master take over the boss and completely change up the fight would be a thrilling experience. World bosses could be even more fun, attacks can be changed up and the fighting can take place in a much wider area, the Boss can focus on random players breaking aggro and really mess with people. If the boss gets beat quickly the Dev/ game master can respawn even tougher and chase down the attackers. Random attacks on cities or towns would be a lot of fun as well.

Dungeon Boss / World Boss fight mechanic

Many games with boss fight mechanics simply have the Boss standing and moving around swiping at players never really making full contact. Would it be possible to have the boss mechanic be able to grab the players, such as the boss can reach down and grab the tank or other players in the raid by the ankles and swing them around using them as a bat to beat up the rest of the raid. There can be a focus of the raid to do something that releases the held player. Or the Boss simply tosses the tank aside and demands a real tank be brought to the fight, if the tank survives the beating then he is geared enough to survive the encounter and shakes off the stuns. It would be an impressive sight to see the tank used as a bat and his armour starts to take damage and fly off. Well any player for that matter.

Dragons could grab players and impale them on their horns declaring “ How worthy are you ? Can you survive my horns?” Eventually the Dragon could shake off the impaled players. It would be one hell of a sight to see players wiggling impaled on the horns in agony.

Or do something swallow certain players from the raid where the players are picked up and eaten, for the players that have this happen they are teleported into a temporary instance ( stomach of the beast.) Several things can happen and be done at this point like the players outside still fighting can focus on freeing the captive players by doing something that makes the beast throw them up or cuts the belly open partially. While the players inside can take acid damage and will need to be rescued before they lose their armour and die.

Depending on the setup of the dungeon it can be done several ways, a big log can swing ( constructed during raid or cut loose in raid) out and hit the beast in the stomach or he is tricked to eat something foul ( target Dummy / Scare crow) that will make him sick enough to cough up.

 

[Beistet]

I dont think that muting gold spammers do anything at all since they just make new lvl 1 characters whenever they get banned/muted. it is true that bot programs have gotten a lot better, but since nobody knows whats profitable in AoC (or at least at the early stages) were most likely just gonna see lvling bots which should be fairly easy to spot based on behaviour. As long as you have active GM's that pay attention it shouldnt get out of hand that easily. What frustrates me the most is when people can run bot programs for weeks or months non stop without getting banned (like in WoW)

 

[Kreed]

I dont think that muting gold spammers do anything at all since they just make new lvl 1 characters whenever they get banned/muted. it is true that bot programs have gotten a lot better, but since nobody knows whats profitable in AoC (or at least at the early stages) were most likely just gonna see lvling bots which should be fairly easy to spot based on behaviour. As long as you have active GM's that pay attention it shouldnt get out of hand that easily. What frustrates me the most is when people can run bot programs for weeks or months non stop without getting banned (like in WoW)

Yeah I have seen that as well where nothing happens for a long time , I found that it is usually for two reasons. For one it means no one cares or there is not enough resources for the Company to do it. The second is the company watches the botter for sometime to get an understanding of how they are doing it.

Muting gold spammers simply makes it really hard for them to advertise, often the initial stages of introduction in a game levels 1 to 5 are separate from main game or higher levels makes the goldspammers waste their time when they get removed. Other games dont allow world chat until certain levels, time consumption and banning the offenders accounts means they need pay for a new account. This is not a productive thing for goldspammers if it cost them. accounts need to be targeted not just characters.

Being a monthly subscription based game would mean less gold spamming remade characters if the accounts got targeted. Company would offer no refunds either to offenders.

Kreed

 

[Beistet]

The sad fact about gold sellers is that the most "trusted" websites are already well known amongst people that buy gold and even if you dont know about the sites u could just type in "AoC gold" in ur browser and get a ton of hits. AoC is only gonna have a monthly sub right? so thats not gonna be very expensive if they just want to keep making new accounts if bans get ur account banned for a period of time.

 

[Kreed]

The sad fact about gold sellers is that the most "trusted" websites are already well known amongst people that buy gold and even if you dont know about the sites u could just type in "AoC gold" in ur browser and get a ton of hits. AoC is only gonna have a monthly sub right? so thats not gonna be very expensive if they just want to keep making new accounts if bans get ur account banned for a period of time.

Gold sellers aside what do you think about the Boss mechanics and active Devs idea's?

 

[Beistet]

As far as i know, the encounters change based on how well your group does in the raid/dungeon so it might not be as stale as we expect. The boss mechanics sounds fun tho. I have seen some of them before (like beasts swallowing players or teleporting players into cells where they have to fight to surive) but you need to make it so that its not too random. Otherwise it could make the encounter more frustrating than entertaining.

As for the dev ideas, i think the most important part is that they try to build a bond with the community through different events that they create. It could be an encounter, or a timed event where you have to complete certain tasks.

You got some good ideas and it would be great to see if they could pull off some of them

 

[Extermicide]

I honestly don't think gold sellers is gonna be a huge problem in this game. Once they do it, they get a account ban. If they want to pay for a new account and try again - have at it - it will end in the same result. It's "FREE REAL MONEY" for the Ashes Team.

 

[spork]

So on the cosmetics front, I have an opinion I like to glean information at a glance, and I know that having cosmetic skins like swim trunks and bikinis for avatars in a PvP class based game makes it impossible to tell what class/ type of character somebody is playing at a glance without needing to read the UI. If I see someone in swim trunks, is it over platemail? chainmail? are they a naked internet funnyman? I don't know and as a tank, I NEED to know where my priorities are on a battlefield at a glance. If skins like bikinis are restricted to in water only, or in town only, I don't care have at it. But there is a very legitimate problem in Conqueror's Blade where people will put cloth armor skins on Monastic Knights or Imperial Pikes, making it impossible to gauge threat level at a glance. It's a deceptive and annoying tactic and I'd prefer it not enter a Subscribtion based PvP MMO.
Now, obviously a solution for this would be to allow players to toggle off foreign cosmetics, but no developer in history has done this because the driving sales pitch of cosmetics is showing off your personal taste to other players. If they can turn it off, sales dramatically decrease.

 

[Beistet]

I think that transmogs/avatars/skins or w/e you wanna call them are fine as long as you're able to tell what you're up against. Some games do a great job at this, and some don't. Steven have made it pretty clear that you're gonna be able gain the info you need to know about your opponent pretty quickly in his older interviews so I would recommend watching those if you haven't.

 

[Bringer Of Glory]

Agreed..