Elimination of junk loot and ~80% of quests.
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 3:13 pm
If I could wish Vanguard:SOH into being rather than you having to spend thousands of hours resurrecting it, I would have the below poofed into being.
Remove junk loot
Junk loot (e.g.: Long Tortoise Tooth) seems like more work than its worth, so I'd remove it. What would we lose? We'd lose immersion and sources of money. To add immersion to a game, there are methods that I think would take the same amount of development time and actually get noticed far more than would junk loot. The status quo just fills a player's limited inventory and requires developers to create items that everyone know is of virtually no emotional interest to players. As for a vector of adding money into the economy, mobs can simply drop the coin or quests can significantly up their money rewards. One of the advantages would be a reduction in burden on the server, but I've no idea if it would be significant.
Eliminate most Adventuring quests
While I recognize that adventuring quests help push players out into world areas that might otherwise go underappreciated and underused, I think the quest-driven Adventuring in Vanguard (and perhaps most major MMOs since 2001) resulted in more harm than good. I suspect it dramatically diminished player-originated planning and play. That most of the adventuring gear--and some of its money and experience--is derived form quests rather than the mobs or world loci (e.g.: treasure chests) incentivizes players to look for quests to drive their plans rather than making plans themselves. It also drives players to look for the next quest rather than possibly staying in an area for its other inherent positive qualities. Given that, I'd destroy perhaps 80% of the quests. No, I've no plan which would go and which would stay, nor which metric one might apply. Those few quests that remain would pay out a lot more money (to offset the loss of money from the shunted quests and from the above removal of junk items). As for all of the loot formerly introduced via the quests, I suppose they would simply be added to mob drop tables. I have not seriously considered possible complications from this portion of the change.
Remove ~40% of Class Abilities
Please tell me I'm not the only one who thought Vanguard: SOH suffered from overburden of abundance: in this case class abilities. To even use your compliment of abilities requires such an unfolded UI of buttons such than you not only abandon visual immersion but simply expect to feel swamped by options. More than that, the status quo risks class roll overlap. Vanguard somehow avoided major overlap of class abilities (my opinion, and good on the developers) but if there is a problem, it can largely be addressed by reducing each class' ground.
Shrink All Cities About 60%
Exhibit A: the popularity of New Targanor. I suspect that world design--and city design--is still based on the woefully out-dated approach called a Buildings-first paradigm. It's as if a writer writes a description of the look and feel of a place, then an artist draws something that would look cool in a movie or a poster, and then maybe someone considers how the space would be used by players. I'll diverge to reality for a moment. In the US, the early 1970s featured a major social struggle by city dwellers against city design which focused on large and new buildings and streets rather than concerning themselves first with how citizens would actually use a space. This sea change has filtered considerably into architecture and interior design, but sadly not into PC game development (just look at Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen). There's no point building a giant space which players find too tedious to run through. Shrink it and they will come.
Let a Developer Have Fun Creating More Diplomacy
I assume that any creator could flesh out Diplomacy in many directions that players would enjoy. I trust your vision. Let it rip.
//edit - fixed erroneous lack of percentage sign in the subject line//
Remove junk loot
Junk loot (e.g.: Long Tortoise Tooth) seems like more work than its worth, so I'd remove it. What would we lose? We'd lose immersion and sources of money. To add immersion to a game, there are methods that I think would take the same amount of development time and actually get noticed far more than would junk loot. The status quo just fills a player's limited inventory and requires developers to create items that everyone know is of virtually no emotional interest to players. As for a vector of adding money into the economy, mobs can simply drop the coin or quests can significantly up their money rewards. One of the advantages would be a reduction in burden on the server, but I've no idea if it would be significant.
Eliminate most Adventuring quests
While I recognize that adventuring quests help push players out into world areas that might otherwise go underappreciated and underused, I think the quest-driven Adventuring in Vanguard (and perhaps most major MMOs since 2001) resulted in more harm than good. I suspect it dramatically diminished player-originated planning and play. That most of the adventuring gear--and some of its money and experience--is derived form quests rather than the mobs or world loci (e.g.: treasure chests) incentivizes players to look for quests to drive their plans rather than making plans themselves. It also drives players to look for the next quest rather than possibly staying in an area for its other inherent positive qualities. Given that, I'd destroy perhaps 80% of the quests. No, I've no plan which would go and which would stay, nor which metric one might apply. Those few quests that remain would pay out a lot more money (to offset the loss of money from the shunted quests and from the above removal of junk items). As for all of the loot formerly introduced via the quests, I suppose they would simply be added to mob drop tables. I have not seriously considered possible complications from this portion of the change.
Remove ~40% of Class Abilities
Please tell me I'm not the only one who thought Vanguard: SOH suffered from overburden of abundance: in this case class abilities. To even use your compliment of abilities requires such an unfolded UI of buttons such than you not only abandon visual immersion but simply expect to feel swamped by options. More than that, the status quo risks class roll overlap. Vanguard somehow avoided major overlap of class abilities (my opinion, and good on the developers) but if there is a problem, it can largely be addressed by reducing each class' ground.
Shrink All Cities About 60%
Exhibit A: the popularity of New Targanor. I suspect that world design--and city design--is still based on the woefully out-dated approach called a Buildings-first paradigm. It's as if a writer writes a description of the look and feel of a place, then an artist draws something that would look cool in a movie or a poster, and then maybe someone considers how the space would be used by players. I'll diverge to reality for a moment. In the US, the early 1970s featured a major social struggle by city dwellers against city design which focused on large and new buildings and streets rather than concerning themselves first with how citizens would actually use a space. This sea change has filtered considerably into architecture and interior design, but sadly not into PC game development (just look at Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen). There's no point building a giant space which players find too tedious to run through. Shrink it and they will come.
Let a Developer Have Fun Creating More Diplomacy
I assume that any creator could flesh out Diplomacy in many directions that players would enjoy. I trust your vision. Let it rip.
//edit - fixed erroneous lack of percentage sign in the subject line//