What single MMO feature do you want to be in the next big game?

[Karak]

Frankly the idea that Public Quests and even solo quests can't in some way effect the worlds startles me. WAR is very close but I am talking true changes to the game world created by people working together and solo that changes the game world around them graphically.
What feature do you guys/gals want to see?

[Mashidar]

I want another planetside. I don't want it to require high end spec's so more people will play.

Other than that a lot of the features that are in games like War and WoW are well done. Something I've always felt that would be fun would be a casino setup for endgame folks to hang around to blow there money while they wait for Raids or guild activities.

PSU had a casino feature and it was kinda fun but I would like to see a better system with games like Chess or cards involved also.

[Karak]

Something I've always felt that would be fun would be a casino setup for endgame folks to hang around to blow there money while they wait for Raids or guild activities.

Excellent endgame idea.

[Troggles]

A well run, well made Planetside would be awesome. I used to play that a lot and the the only reason I kept playing it was because the concept was awesome, not the actual implementation.

[Deadend]

I want the game to help foster both competition and cooperation. I want my friendslist to work as a leaderboard for thing, so that I can try and brag that I am better at things than they are.

My most wanted feature is for the gameworld to not feel like a coating over a spreadsheet, which so far, all the MMOs out there still feel like. A graphical representation of another game that is almost inconsequential to the game. I blame it all on the targeting system used by MMOs.

[Jeffool]

1. A much lower server player-population. I want to occasionally see people, and only then sometimes people I know (unless we go out of our way to meet up with each other.

2. NPC population should seriously outnumber the player population.

3. The game should be written in a context that doesn't premiere me as the sole ultimate badass capable of deciding the fate of everything (just like the other 10,000 people.)

4. I don't want to keep up with the Joneses. Fuck the Joneses. Fuck anyone who does want to keep up with the Joneses. I want my armor to be a choice of style, not a matter of how much time I can waste grinding away for something that looks completely stupid, but I need to be merely competent when the calculations are made.

5. Player housing. It matters. Seriously. Fuck WoW.

6. Voice communication should be a given in any game with internet-based multiplayer (unless the lack of it is part of the design.)

7. If I'm a badass, I should be able to kill anyone who's not, at any time. Sure, there can be consequences, but this "no PVP zones" stuff is retarded.

8. The idea of 'end game' is retarded, unless the server is actually coming to an end. If me and a bunch of friends kill the giant evil threatening the world, then it should be dead. Period. Which brings me to...

9. The gameworld should be changeable by the players. If not in a procedural fashion by the action of players in real time (eg, killing a giant threatening evil force,) then by players choices during DM-controlled events and success/failure in worldwide events based on a timetable. Remember all that collecting stuff in WoW to open portals? Well, if don't collect enough supplies, maybe the hordes of hell should ravage the world. (But not in servers where they do collect enough supplies.) Chain a few choices like this back to back, and every time you add a new one, you're increasing server variance by an order of two.

10. Also, why not have the ability to communicate with people in-game while I'm out of game? Give me a web-based IM system that ties directly into the game's /whispering. Sounds simple enough.

I'd list a lot more, but I should be working.

/edit: Oh, wait, single? Er, um... #9. Yeah. What Karak said.

[That Darn Kat]

Individual loot drops! I hate sharing.

[Karusan]

Granted it might not be a "feature" but it's sort of a feature of a few different games. I wanna see a Gran Turismo meets LittleBigPlanet type game. Currently we can drive awesome cars with awesome physics on awesome tracks over on our left, then over on our right we have this create your own online world platformer where would be level designers might snare a job with their extreme level design prowess. Where is the design your own car game? All the way down to shocks, springs, engine mount, tyres, shape, colour, the list goes on, then take your car online and see how it handles or goes up against the big guns in performance races. After today seeing one of the concept cars unveiled by Citroën from GT it just seems like such a logical next step and the possible DLC is huge, plus the car companies can snare themselves some designs and maybe some designers that they would have never had the opportunity to before, win win.

[pomeroy]

I guess I want the world to feel "massive".

And not just big, like WoW, where there's a lot of territory or whatever. But I want there to be a city of a million NPCs that all have a story, or at least something interesting. And I want multiple cities like that with their own unique architecture and cultures.

And then I want the world to be big, too.

While I'm wishing for this, I also want a pony.

[DangerousDaze]

I feel bad about shilling in this post, I really do, so fair warning that this is full-on shilling with no attempt to pretend otherwise. Technically it's not really a shilll. No, this is an advert, pure and simple. ;)

Take a look at Neocron 2.2. Go on, there's tons of YouTube stuff out there but here's our trailer (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWBBiOi-3yY&fmt=18) - please forgive the grammatical error, the mother company is German.

Neocron's been around since 2002 but it's changed, grown and improved over the years. It's a sci-fi MMORPG with a combat mechanic heavily borrowed from Deus-Ex in that you play it like an FPS but player, weapon, ammo, target (character,armour, shields etc.) stats are calculated under the covers - it was absolutely unique back in '02 and I'm still surprised to see the same point-n-sleep MMOs coming out today. It's aimed at adults so be warned that there is swearing, alcohol and drug references, sexual overtones in certain areas, and violence. Lots of violence.

What else... There's player and clan housing which you can furnish as you wish (you can even own your own club complete with strippers). There are ground and air vehicles from bikes to scout gliders, heavy troop carriers and bombers. There are tons of weapons from baseball bats through plasma cannons and remote-controlled flying drones. Various things can be hacked including the gen-reps which are used to transport you around the world. Hacking a gen-rep takes you into cyberspace (there's a brief glimpse in the trailer) where not only can you travel to gen-reps that would otherwise be locked from you but you can also steal blueprints for items owned by opposing factions and even fight and kill other players. We have a political system, a stock exchange. There are outposts in the wastelands that can be taken over and owned by clans (these give specific skill bonuses to members of the owning clan). It's very PvP oriented though there is plenty of PvE there too. You're not the Messiah. In fact you're going to die. A lot.

I'm not going to pretend that it's perfect because it isn't (though the very definition of perfect changes from person to person anyway), but it's worth taking a look if you're after a change from the usual. Also, if you've played Neocron way back in the past it's also worth trying it out again.

If you didn't like shilling you can open your eyes again now! Sorry, but I couldn't resist. Put yourself in my position (someone who kinda works for Reakktor) - could you? :p Shill off.

[SilentScreams]

I played the first Neocron on release day and for a month after that.
Since then, I'd totally forgot about it. I didn't even know that a Neocron 2 existed.
It was certainly unique back then, but the implementation was poor.

I'm going to echo what other people have said and say I want another Planetside type game. I loved that game to bits, but quit soon after they brought in the BFRs (Big Fucking Robots/Battle Frame Robotics).

But if, as the thread title suggests, we're talking about specific features, then I'd have to say I'd love another game with UO-style mark/recall/gate spells to make traveling less tedious.

[Hotcod]

What i would honestly really like to see is mmos employing people to be the 'big bad guys'. They would have a lot of control and ability to do things and while a lot of the time the server and bad guys may just be left to ai there is always the chance that there's some one in control who can respond to and create dynamic events. You could plan out some big events but it could just be little things like a mob raid on a village or outpost... hell why stop at having them control the bad guys why not let them control kings and generals too... they could make calls to action to try and go do something and can have power to give rewards and things too. If you then have a changeable world if you have thinking people in charge of it all sat about in a room talking to each other and come up with cool ideas and so on it could get interesting.

You see, the main problem with having things effect and change a world is that its really freaking hard to program to any real depth... which is why we see to little of it and most of what we do see is based off the back of pvp beacuse its easier to do when people are in charge. So if you can give a server a team of people who can take on and control the big characters in the world and can cause events to happen, well, you just have to program them the tools and they go out and change the world in meaningful, interesting and unique ways based on player actions and feedback.

[Cyndair]

I guess I'd like to see a sci-fi MMO that really works on a massive scale. Multiple planets, space combat. Perhaps two different systems or races that are at war with each other over resources. Owning those resources gives your team advantages. Give players the opportunity to build and develop their own colonies, space ports, cities.

Even a Spore type MMO could be very cool. Everyone has their own planet and race of creature that they can develop. Except when you get off your planet, there is a whole universe full of races developed by other players that you can interact with. Trade, go to war, enslave other races. That would be really neat.

[DangerousDaze]

I played the first Neocron on release day and for a month after that.

Sorry, I stopped reading at this point because I noticed your avatar. Damn you for that comeback to win 2-3 yesterday! :p

[Mashidar]

You know what feature I want to see brought back, personal shops. FFXI does a great job with it but I want to have the option of having a job class known as Merchant. I want to go somewhere, setup my booth and sell stuff either while I'm afk, or perhaps via NPC like SWG did.

When FFXI first came out I always would buy a lot of supplies and camp to the entrance of the dunes and sell my stuff. When I came back from work or school I would of sold everything.

I understand why they don't do it these days because if they did then there could be huge queue's because of folks that AFK in the game to sell there items. Also there's also the annoying thing if entering a town and catching like 30 folks bunched up selling items and it causes a cluster.

But at the same time it's just something I always enjoyed, selling my own products in game instead of on the AH. Sometimes you could make a better profit in the field then on the AH.

[SilentScreams]

Sorry, I stopped reading at this point because I noticed your avatar. Damn you for that comeback to win 2-3 yesterday! :p

:D

Dirk Kuyt sure picked a good time to actually hit the target, huh?
Gutted about Martin Skrtel though. It looks to be a nasty injury.

[DangerousDaze]

:D

Dirk Kuyt sure picked a good time to actually hit the target, huh?
Gutted about Martin Skrtel though. It looks to be a nasty injury.

Yeah, saw it close-up on the TV last night. Nasty. It's really sad but I can't hear his name without thinking of Pokemon (http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Squirtle_(Pokémon)). I'm 39 FFS, that's just not right. :/

[Wilkz07]

In-game voice chat (without use of teamspeak or whatever the other popular one is)

and some big endgame event - didn't asheron's call beta end with a meteor and abandoment of rules so monsters could enter the cities?

[Karak]

I want my armor to be a choice of style, not a matter of how much time I can waste grinding away for something that looks completely stupid, but I need to be merely competent when the calculations are made.

I can not agree more about this.
The SHIT I recieved every time I turned on Wow and have kept my armor despite it not being the BEST thing ever pissed me off. I liked the way it fucking looked. First thing written every time, why the old armor yo?

[MinorHero]

The biggest game killer for me is if there is any kind of experience penalty from death. Even if its a fantastic game, if that mechanic is in place then I'm going to skip it.

When it comes to making my ideal MMO, it would probably have real time elements like a space flight sim heavily focused on pvp and territorial control. MMOs are the perfect place to explore a really in depth sci-fi setting but very few have attempted it with any success.

[Wraith]

Ok, I probably won't be selecting a single feature, but...

I want FFXI's art direction, class variety, and main job/subjob system, WoW's easy to understand quest system and crafting system, CoH/V's depth of character customization, and PSO's ease of forming groups quickly to go out and kill monsters/get loot.

[keldi]

EVE's offline skill training is neat. They crippled it today, though, woo.

I was trying to post a topic about it, but the boards won't let me, and won't tell me why. I figure it's postcount, but that's still frustrating.

[Knightsaber]

I want SWG circa 2003's crafting system. Badly.

Edit: Curious as to this EvE change?

[KingGorilla]

The loot system in Mythos should be in every multiplayer RPG and MMO from this point forward. Every person in the party gets something from the creature. Everyone gets a rare drop from a boss. No more fucking bullshit over Ninja Looting or any of the fighting over "I could have used that item, Fag."

[SilentScreams]

The loot system in Mythos should be in every multiplayer RPG and MMO from this point forward. Every person in the party gets something from the creature. Everyone gets a rare drop from a boss. No more fucking bullshit over Ninja Looting or any of the fighting over "I could have used that item, Fag."

This.
I've had my fill of arguments over loot with WoW.

[Alkanos]

One thing I would love would be to replace high end loot with rare crafting materials instead. So instead of getting the +1 sword of awesomeness from a raid boss, you'd get a chunk of +1 awesome metal. This could then be turned into your weapon of choice by a crafter. So it wouldn't necessarily be a sword, it could be an axe or a dagger or whatever. The end-result quality of the weapon would be based on the skill of the crafter. This wouldn't be limited to just raid gear, it can be any equipment over a certain quality requires this. Though I'd leave the best of the best items to be regular drops, to give them a kind of flair for the people who managed to get them.

This way, you'd end up with less worrying about getting a drop no one can use, and would give crafters a bit more utility. They tried something like this back when I played EQ2, but gave the recipes limited charges, and had them only drop in the most difficult raid zone. So the only people who actually got the recipes and materials were the top raiding guilds. IMO it didn't really seem to work so well, not being in one of those guilds. :D

[Nura]

Everything i want is already out there, but in different games :/

EvE has the whole one world thing going on,
Lotro has it's outfit system,
Vanguard has it's crafting system (although not great, it's a good beginning imo),
City of heroes have the random world events where players can get to play along side devs,
WAR has the meaningful RvR, the trohpy system, the public quests, the open parties,
Asherons call had some world changing events once in a while afaik,
AoC has a fun active combat system,
Tabula is OTS (if you zoom in enough :P) which i'm a sucker for,
EQ2 gives you the ability to have two specs at one time, allowing you to switch between the 2 depending on what you are doing (raiding, soloing, what ever),
World of warcraft is filled with things to do, be it PvE, PVP or just standing in org making fun of everyone else,

So yea, there is alot of things i would like to see in an MMO, and most of them are already out there, just not in one game :/

[Inverno]

I want a next gen version of UO "dread days". No it won't kill WoW but I will be happy.

[Loki]

Single server so I don't have a reason to jump ship to go play with friends who stupidly picked a different server than I.

Interchangable sides, i.e. No Horde or Alliance, just players.

A malleable world that actually changes with player actions (and doesn' reset).

Public quests, open parties, etc.

Ability to not have to grind. A la EVE: Log in, change skill, log out. I don't have the best items as people whoa ctually really play the game do, but I still will be able to go toe-to-toe with them.

Player housing

[KingGorilla]

I think that you want Warhammer Online Landon.

[Loki]

I think that you want Warhammer Online Landon.

I want Warhammer Online with EVE with WoW with Planetside with MMO that hasn't been conceived yet.

[Cit Phil Cit]

Gambling. I would like to sit at a neutral - or mostly neutral territory where members of each faction can sit down to some poker or some such. The equivalent of a Casa Blanca or a Jabba's Palace kind of place.

Where you can go and gamble your gold.

[SilentScreams]

Gambling. I would like to sit at a neutral - or mostly neutral territory where members of each faction can sit down to some poker or some such. The equivalent of a Casa Blanca or a Jabba's Palace kind of place.

Where you can go and gamble your gold.

That would be great and potentially terrible at the same time.
Think about it.
You're putting an addiction to which people lose their lives inside another addiction to which people lose their lives.

[Cit Phil Cit]

That would be great and potentially terrible at the same time.
Think about it.
You're putting an addiction to which people lose their lives inside another addiction to which people lose their lives.

You mean, win win?

[n00bian]

user generated content would be huge (quests, events, wars, story - played out by the useres)

only problem - the jackasses would ruin it with annoying content
im not even sure it would work on a pure role-playing server

so you still would need some kind of restrictions or control system

Update: yeah and some kind of card game like the kotors had - or even better a full on tcg with cards dropping as loot every now and then

[Deadend]

I want to be able to rate and comment on players.

So if I grouped with someone, I can put a note on them for everyone to see such as "fucker needs to lay off those AOEs!" or "best tank ever!" and rate them in several ways. Likewise, I want a system showing which players are aggressive PK'ers around me in an open PVP server. I want open PVP... but I want consequences... heavy ones.

Basically... I want my characters/account to have a facebook page with a rating system.

I also want the 1 giant server and having all my characters linked, so that my account is what you are friends with, not just a character (see Guild Wars for these 2).

Mostly, I want a MMO designed to be fun to play even with leveling disabled and loot turned off.