Vehicles have the potential to be a really cool ingame feature. Indeed surely they already are- Yalms anyway.
But ground vehicles lack appeal in part IMO simply because of how they look. Who wants to pilot what looks like an air vehicle but stuck to the ground, and the size of your leg at that?
So I'd like to petition that Funcom up the appeal of ground vehicles by making them look like actual ground vehicles!
I was dismayed when I saw the current designs for the new ground vehicles to come in Notum Wars. Including armed ground vehicles is definitely a step in the right direction, applause.
But they look like those little lightweight solar powered racers universities build, don't they? Can I get an Amen on that?
Can we please have some big gnarly scary looking ground vehicles with tracks or at least wheels, or just hovercraft? Take a look at current real world military hovercrafts- plenty scary looking. Look at your own design for the big tracked vehicle What's-Her-Name drives in the AO flash animated series. Now that's what I'm talking about.
The loss of the movement benefits from being airborne like a Yalm can be offset by having fierce looking armed ground vehicles people /want/ to own not just as an alternative until they can afford a Yalm.
I can only guess at the reasons for the current design of ground vehicles, and my guess is that the animating of moving parts such as wheels or tracks may have been considered too hard to pull off or too resource hungry or what have you. Sure something like a battle suit completely changes one's appearance(and is therefore WAY cool) but I'm guessing that it uses the same model of movement, being humanoid and all.
But if all possible to reasonably make animated tracked/wheeled ground vehicles imagine how darn cool that'd look! And I suggest the hovercraft idea since that seems to be kind of the way ground vehicles are now- just laughable little hoverers instead of big fierce ones.
So please please before Notum Wars is finalized take a look at ground vehicles and make at least one big more conventional looking one any warrior would be proud to pilot.
Can I get an Amen people? I say can I get an Aaamenaah!
Two more vehicle suggestions I hope everyone can get behind:
1) No more smurf coffins! Size up them puppies! Vehicles should not be smaller than their occupants. ^_^
2) A multiperson transport vehicle, handy for transporting a whole team. perhaps with higher driving requirement to reflect handling a big monster of a transporter (kinda like driving a semi-truck trailer compared to driving a car). Imagine dedicated pilot chars transporting fellow guildies and what have you.
I can't beleive I'm the only one who thinks these are great ideas, let's see some community support.
Editing for spelling, I hope I got'em all. ^_^;