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Reader Comments (37)

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 11:14AM Celestian said

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Anarchy Online, terrible game at the time but introduced instancing which everyone has stolen since.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 11:50AM (Unverified) said

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I hope that'll shut up the "cryptic just wants to grab our money and leave the game discontinued a year later" whiners on the STO forum.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 11:49AM (Unverified) said

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Asheron's call 1 combat and skill based classless system. Being able to be a mage/swordsman/archer if you wanted was fan-freaking-tastic

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 12:34PM J Brad Hicks said

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I'll go along with Celestian's example; massive instancing was on the very short list of things that Anarchy Online did right.

I hated the character classes and I even more hated the boring quests in Tabula Rasa, and I hated the obvious fact that there was no way they were going to be able to finish it, let alone save it, even more, but it did three things that I wish all MMOs did:

1) Talking NPCs and talking avatars. When an NPC perceived that there was someone within potential aggro range, they audibly said so to the rest of their unit; ditto when opening fire. When your character got shot, he or she audibly grunted in pain.

2) Cover. On every incoming shot, the game would calculate what percentage of you was visible to the NPC or character that was shooting at you, and apply that as a damage resistance modifier. Sweet.

3) Control Point fights. In every zone, there were a certain number of "forts" that were in enemy hands at any given time. Once every 1 to 2 hours, NPCs on your side would siege one of those forts, almost certainly losing unless you helped. There were also forts that were in control of NPCs on your side. Every 1 to 2 hours, hostile NPCs would siege one of those forts, probably (but not definitely) succeeding if no players helped defend the fort. In summary, the maps weren't static, there were things going on (as if the NPCs actually had their own lives, what a concept!), and the presence or absence of even as few as 1 to 3 players could make a perceptible difference. It was fast, steady XP during a siege, it was the best game play in the whole game, and it did more than any other MMO has done before or since to make you feel like there was a war going on around you.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 3:04PM aurickle said

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I agree that the control points were an excellent feature in TR. My regret is that only the first CP you encountered really took the feature to its true potential because that was the only one that had quest givers inside. I really liked the fact that the base had to be under your control in order to get the quests from it, or to do the turn ins of those quests. The problem is that there just wasn't enough motivation for higher level players to come back and help keep the points controlled. As a result, you often got into situations where you'd completed a mission and there simply was NO way to turn it in -- you couldn't take the point on your own and there weren't enough other players around to help.

Now if they'd had a system where guilds gained prestige by holding control points and that prestige had useful ways to be spent for the guild's or guild members' benefit across all levels they would have been on the way to a really fun end-game feature. Then it's just a matter of adding a system that scales higher level defenders down to the highest level of the mobs that can attack that CP so that the system provides a challenge for all players regardless of how they might normally outlevel the zone.
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Posted: Feb 10th 2010 9:49PM (Unverified) said

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While I don't believe that Tabula Rasa was a "bad game" (it's still the MMO I've had the most enjoyment out of), I do still agree with all the things mentioned that it got right, and then some...

Auto look pickup. After TR, I get annoyed in any game if I have to click anything to pick up loot from a corpse. Oh how I miss just running over my kill and the loot instantly showing up in my inventory.

The class progression system. For games with classes, it can be tough to decide on a class you're toon's going to be stuck with for the rest of the game, especially if they've got a ton of classes that you're not familiar with (I'm looking at you LOTRO). But in TR, you started simple and entered the game as a single class, then as you played you got to observe the classes in action from other players & decide which class branch to go down next. And hand-in-hand with the class branches was their cloning system so that (as long as you remembered to clone yourself) if you didn't like your decision you could take the other branch & not have to re-do all x # of levels/xp/missions, etc.

And as Psychotic Storm mentioned, yes, the mimeomech version of crafting was great. When they launched that, junk loot instantly flipped from being a source of spare cash to a source of crafting potential.

Oh and about the CPs, I mean if that wasn't a fun way to grind away 2 or 3 hours (OMG remember the Ortho CP before they changed the walls that caused a bottleneck of Bane? XP & lag city! :D). And sure, if you had a mission to turn in but couldn't get enough people to flip the CP... I mean you pretty much made up the XP you would have gotten from the mission just grinding away trying to turn the CP, and then eventually you'd be high enough level to solo it anyways (although I would occasionally go back to the newbie CPs in Wilderness to try out a new weapon & just mow CPs down)
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Posted: Feb 10th 2010 2:17PM (Unverified) said

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Maplestory's assassin subclass used throwing stars as their means of attacking. The way the throwing stars were implemented was pretty cool- you had decks of a certain kind of star that, once emptied, could be "recharged" at any vendor. Each star had a different attack power and maximum number that could be carried, and there was a skill that increased the number that you got out of the recharging process. The decks themselves could be found, sold, traded, etc.

In general, the 2d platformer MMO was a good idea, but a lack of interesting things to do, slow speed of progress, immense grind and microtransaction-focus ultimately killed the game for me. It's a shame, because it had some of the best music I've ever heard in a game, ever.

Posted: Feb 11th 2010 12:44PM Rya said

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FFXI's one char fits all approach

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 3:27PM (Unverified) said

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I agree with a lot of what has already been said, so here's one that hasn't yet.

The Matrix Online's Radio Free Zion. I found the game itself miserable but the radio show was something that really fit.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 4:16PM Bezza said

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Guild Wars: Respec your toon for free any time you want. Awsome idea, and why not! Why should you have to pay to respec? There is just no justification for it.

Age of Conan: Tutorial Area, day time multiplay area, night time single player primary quests. The whole Tortage part of AoC was the best game intro ever.

Vanguard: Flying Mounts, it was the only reason i ever tried the game, they were awsome though glitchy at first.

Aion: Winged Flying Characters, great idea, but the way they limited it to certain maps and for a short time made it all but pointless.

Champions Online: Great Travel Powers! Awsome variety.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 5:00PM Zach Adams said

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Do F2P games count? Because I rather liked the skill system in Megami Tensei: Imagine Online. It was kind of like Oblivion--all your skills level by use, but with XP-based leveling on top of that to manage your HP/MP and a few other things. The hitch was that you had, at any given level, a limited number of points for skills. So you had to manage what was and wasn't leveling at any given moment by turning on and off a given skill or stat's ability to accrue points.

This was pretty much the only thing I liked about that sad, empty little game.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 5:30PM (Unverified) said

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Runes Of Magic's dual-class system - lets you perform two roles of the traditional MMO trinity, with your inactive class adding some flavour to your active one.

WAR's open parties - a great idea for those of us who enjoy playing in a group, but find that in most modern MMOs the effort required to form a group outweighs the enjoyment.

EQ2's collections - I'd make the collectables no-trade though, it kind of undermined the fun for me when I realized that all the parts I needed were for sale on the auction house. Or make them swappable (for other collectables) but not able to be sold for gold.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 8:36PM henbot said

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Vanguard; as mentioned, the 3 sphere system was a winner for me.
If you didnt feel like adventuring, you could do crafting or diplomacy. each of these view individually had its own merits as well.

I'm still a big fan of vanguard i realy do recommend people try the free trial with a couple of your friends, it'll keep you occupied for hours.

Warhammer, public quests, and the use of them in objective capturing in pvp was awesome. basically rewarding those for being there and contributing, whilst not having the hard and fast burden of forcing groups on people.

Its tiered capture approach for capital cities was good at the start, until they capped players in zones.

Posted: Feb 10th 2010 9:10PM (Unverified) said

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FFXI's job and sub job system. I hate rolling alts but in FFXI you can change your class whenever you want and pick up where you were when you last played that class. With over 20 classes to choose from you never got bored.

Posted: Feb 11th 2010 1:26AM (Unverified) said

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Well... there were two things about auto assault I really loved... The first was you could tinker with your crafting recipes to get different enhancements on your items (not sure how many games allow it, but it's been the only game I've seen that does it). The other was the ability to drive up to an NPC's village, turn on your flamethrower, and drive away from a flaming wreckage. More MMO's need completely destroyable terrain.

Posted: Feb 11th 2010 6:51PM Zoan said

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The backpack glider-wings and flight physics from Dark & Light. ALMOST made up for the horrendous quality of the rest of the game.

Posted: Feb 12th 2010 4:59PM (Unverified) said

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Shadowbane: city layout design and sieging. Every game that I've played since had a set city design which is rather boring.

a tale in the desert: while it's mostly crafting, the system is brilliant. you don't make things based on the levels, you make things based on your technical skills achieved. the further up you go, the more automated things get. some skills are unlocked individually while others take the community to unlock to be available for all.

Horizons: The entire server needing to work together to open up new content. Crafters and adventurers working together - crafters building bits for the tunnels while adventurers protected them from the mass amounts of mobs coming out of the tunnel.

Dark and Light: Flying mounts were pretty much the only thing that ever worked right in the game.

City of Heroes: Sidekicking. EQ2 had something similar just not implemented as well.

Vanguard: the two different targeting system, friendly and foe. the crafting system was painfully dull and carpal tunnel inducing, but it also wasn't go do something else while making a zillion worthless pieces of junk.

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