truthfully
05-27-2009, 05:30 PM
This will fix everything. Hear me out. AV, consider hiring me if you really want this game to take off.
An MMO company has to juggle many things. Playability with longevity. You have to hook the user in enough to have them remain, but also make sure not to give them too much to where they will ever become stagnant and want to quit. WOW does this beatifully, primarily through content. They can afford to hire designers and teams solely dedicated to creating new quests. This is a grind too, but it's hidden.
Let's be honest. AV will never have enough coffers to create a team to improve the PVE experience. How else do we get users hooked in for hopefulyl many years to maintain cash flow and continue operations? We have to get users to "grind" as well, but in a fun way, and since AV can't afford to make PVE fun by hiring a real team to do this, there has to be another way.
The other way is EVE's skill system.
Do away with the current leveling system. Make it so if I want to train up Pole Arm to 25, it will take 1 week from when I hit this button. Neat. So I can go to a pole arm master, ask him to train me, bam, got a ticker counting down 24 hrs x 7 days to get 25 pole arm. Now what do i do? Oh yeah, I"ll just go PVP then since thats why I bought this game.
Make it so you can make out you current char in 8-10 months.
This is where AV lacks--they have designers/coders but no real business experience. After you see a certain percentage of users having decent skills over time, thats when you start to trickle in new skills to train. Ok, 75% of the user base has pole arm mastery? Cool. let's add in another skill that impales the user and slams them on the ground. Make it 3 months to train up.
This is the hook.
This is a rough pass, and no doubt there are minor issues that need to be worked out (whats the skill cap? is there one? what about crafting? keep the current grind?), but can you at least see that if this method were implemented correctly, it would be much more fun?
An MMO company has to juggle many things. Playability with longevity. You have to hook the user in enough to have them remain, but also make sure not to give them too much to where they will ever become stagnant and want to quit. WOW does this beatifully, primarily through content. They can afford to hire designers and teams solely dedicated to creating new quests. This is a grind too, but it's hidden.
Let's be honest. AV will never have enough coffers to create a team to improve the PVE experience. How else do we get users hooked in for hopefulyl many years to maintain cash flow and continue operations? We have to get users to "grind" as well, but in a fun way, and since AV can't afford to make PVE fun by hiring a real team to do this, there has to be another way.
The other way is EVE's skill system.
Do away with the current leveling system. Make it so if I want to train up Pole Arm to 25, it will take 1 week from when I hit this button. Neat. So I can go to a pole arm master, ask him to train me, bam, got a ticker counting down 24 hrs x 7 days to get 25 pole arm. Now what do i do? Oh yeah, I"ll just go PVP then since thats why I bought this game.
Make it so you can make out you current char in 8-10 months.
This is where AV lacks--they have designers/coders but no real business experience. After you see a certain percentage of users having decent skills over time, thats when you start to trickle in new skills to train. Ok, 75% of the user base has pole arm mastery? Cool. let's add in another skill that impales the user and slams them on the ground. Make it 3 months to train up.
This is the hook.
This is a rough pass, and no doubt there are minor issues that need to be worked out (whats the skill cap? is there one? what about crafting? keep the current grind?), but can you at least see that if this method were implemented correctly, it would be much more fun?