After reading through a comment or two I found this comment about some person telling me to stop complaining. This is a review blog and obviously this person failed school since a review can be either good or bad, but enough about the terribleness of public schools and the dregs they bring out in millions.
He did have a point. So far I have had more bad things to say then good on MMO’s these days. So, I asked myself. “what would be your idea of a perfect Free to Play MMO?” and this is what it would be, along with the why.
Huge Character Customization: I hate it when I come into a game and see that the customization options are scarcely limited. I hate it even more when I can’t even go five characters over to see someone else with my exact, or near exact build. Making the character is a way to get someone involved with the game and amerce them into the world further. This is broken when you realize that you can’t truly stand out among the crowd in terms of physical or fashionable appearance.
I have seen too many games that skimp on hair style, eye choice, facial, body types and even skin tone. Seems like a good deal of games like to live in a world where either REALLY PALE or REALLY DARK people do not exist (which could be taken as unfortunate implications if the wrong person gets whipped into a frenzy even if it was just short sightedness as opposed to prejudice). I hate when a game doesn’t even let you alter the skin tone.
A game has bad character creation when every third character has near close to my build. A game as good character creation when only every 100th person has close to my build. A game as great character creation when I could only see someone near my build every 100,000th person. Running into someone who looks like me in game is always a possibility, but the lower the odds, the better.
No Gender/Racial/Alignment Locked classes: I always hated this and the people who keep thinking this is a “good idea” need to have their heads smashed in with a crowbar. Nothing annoys me more than me not being allowed to use a particular class just because of something like gender, race or alignment. That’s super restrictive, racist, sexist and makes things bland!
For the sake of argument, let’s say that only men can be warriors and only women can use magic. What if for whatever reason I wanted a male mage or a female warrior? This is a hindrance to the creativity aspect of making our own characters. We’re literately being TOLD how they want these things with no justification whatsoever and even IF justified it would still be stupid.
As for alignment, I hate games where everything is so Goddamn black and white. GIVE ME SOME SHADES OF GRAY, DAMNIT! Let’s assume there is a game out their which limits Healers and Demon Summoners by alignment. Healers would of course be automatically portrayed as good, while Demon Summoners are evil only. This is, again a hindrance in creativity not to mention insulting to my sensibilities. Do game developers think I’m so stupid that something like a heroic Demon Summoner and an EVIL Healer might be too much for me to handle? The Demon Summoner might just desire to use the powers of darkness for the greater good while the Healer could use their knowledge to more easily kill others, or steal life force from their opponents and use it to restore their allies.
The only time a Gender Lock is acceptable is if the species I’m playing as is of a single gender or story based where you control several different characters with different occupations.
No Grinding Required: I hate grinding, I REALLY. FUCKING. HATE. GRINDING! Some people think it gives them a sense of accomplishment to grind all the way to the maximum level, showing how hardcore they are since they can do all the endgame stuff. I view these people who have no lives, who pissed away God knows how many hours beating down all these mobs when they could have done something more productive such as writing a book, going on a date, cleaning their house or something else that actually matters.
The statement above doesn’t mean I’m some sort of self-hating gamer, I just don’t like to do what I feel is meaningless, boring work before I can play the damn game! If it takes me months of grinding before I can do the endgame stuff or PvP it becomes very unattractive like finding out your lovers private parts are really something that eats people after waiting forever and a day for them to bend over and drop their pants. Nothing is worse than working for what you want only while working towards it the trouble isn’t worth it.
Here’s an idea, how about rather than make us do all this grinding that you scale things like PvP and instances to our level? That way those of us who have lives can get to the fun stuff while the no life mouth breathers can grind themselves stupid, wondering what the fuck happened to their lives about a decade later. Nothing says that scaling has to make things less difficult it just makes it more accessible and any game that waits till the endgame to give us the awesome things to do, get the badass skills and the wicked cool moves isn’t a game, it’s a time sink.
Class Swapping On The Fly: I felt Eden Eternal did this right. I liked this idea, I could become whatever class I wanted, and I didn’t have to wait for a particular party member to come along, delaying the gameplay. Whatever we needed, someone else could become the role we were missing. This makes things run more smoothly and reduces frustration of someone needing to start from square one when they realize the class they picked isn’t working out for them. Give them a mulligan, you’ll retain them longer.
No More Dyes, PLEASE!: I’m tired of getting these items filling up my spaces as rewards. These aren’t rewards unless you’re a magpie! I’ve seen this stuff sell for prices that even rival EPIC GEAR in some cases. Instead of having these things, why not the moment you acquire something you can CHOOSE what color to make it? None of this restricting certain colors to premium content nonsense, it just goes to further show you’re less concerned about the players and more concerned about the money. Here’s a tip, keep the player happy and the money will come soon after. Which brings me to ANOTHER point.
No Overpriced Cosmetic Gear or Timed Gear: I know of some games which charge obscene amounts of money for ascetic stuff, and make it worse by having the stuff on a timer. I don’t like seeing costume pieces that do nothing cost more than say…$3. It’s virtual, it does nothing in the way of benefitting you other than make you look different (unless it’s really popular). Even in a bundle this stuff shouldn’t exceed $13 at most. Make the costume prices more sensible. If you want to have more elaborate costumes cost more, fine, but the average of all bundles should never exceed $10.
No Temporary Item Space Extensions: I don’t really think I need to go far on this other than space expansion should be for keeps.
So in short, these things would help bring me closer to the perfect game to play. Of course it’s not too likely that all these requirements would be met in a single game, but I would kill for it to be so. I no longer playing Eden Eternal, and that will be explained in my next post. But what would YOUR idea of a perfect game be? If curious, this is only a short list of my desires, but the most critical.
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