Back to the basics....

Ok everyone, I spent this entire morning reading various posts in various areas. I noticed most of the posts were complaints dealing with game bugs (y'know, the unimaginable amount of game crashes and freezes) or problems with individual classes (and yes I agree AO has extremely poor balance). What I did not see is anyone addressing a very core problem in AO.

Putting pvp aside, AO has very very little to offer as far as game content goes. Please, sit back and think about it a minute. You start a character and start doing missions and you think 'these are kinda neat dungeons', after a few missions and a few levels later its like 'oh, this mission area again...'. Then after 80+ it became 'dear god I am sick to death of these lame, boring, single level mission areas'.

My agent is level 98 now and I sit in towns wondering why I am even bothering to level up. I go and look at what level 150+ players are doing, well what they are doing is missions that are absolutely no different than the missions I do except the npc's you encounter have 'Master' or 'Ace',etc.. before their names. This goes on and on, and I cannot help but wonder is that all I have to look forward to?

I played Asherons Call for 1 1/2 years, and while it had its own areas of concern, one thing I can say for it was that the dungeons you entered were BIG. Some of them went very far into the earth and became progressively harder as u progressed downward. In addition to that they quickly recognized that more variety was needed in the environments they were sending players into. They also realized players needed more to occupy their time than 200 levels of repetition. (I am not trying to sell AC to anyone I quit because like any game it gets old after a while). But FunCom has done NOTHING to make the game interesting, the story is NOT immersive, exploration is just boring, slow, frustrating, and lame. First off, so many areas you cannot reach directly because of those 'invisble' walls, secondly what are you going to find? In other games I go explore and I find places that are scenic and have lots of hidden goodies....dungeons few people know about where unique monsters/items can be found. Places with spawns that provide good xp and new challenges. In AO you find mission areas you need a key for (not counting the few static dungeons which I will discuss in a moment), and, with a few exceptions, the same npc's to fight that do the same things blah blah blah. Why are there NPC's that are engineers? Do they make bots you have to fight as well? No. They fight and hit like any tank NPC. What about Bureaucrat NPCs....do they make their pets or even use the 'charm' nanos to try to control someone in your team? No. (wouldnt that make for some exciting fights?) You simply fight overbuffed npc's that use a few basic nanos like debuffs and nukes. An engineer npc shouldnt fight like a 'tank' type yet they do and heave nearly the same health (i said nearly). The engineer once should not have near the health an Enforcer type npc does but it SHOULD ACT like an Engineer. (i.e. make a BOT!). Bureaucrats should fight LIKE BUREAUCRATS (i.e. make their pet, try to charm a person in the team, etc.) When was the last time you saw an MP npc create a heal pet or an attack pet? Why bother calling it a Meta-Phys when it so obviously is not? When was the last time you were in a mission with your hand shaking on your mouse because you were worried that Agent NPC would see you and get an aimed shot off for tons of damage? What about once Agents get fixed? Wouldnt it be awesome if you walked into an empty room but i wasnt empty you simply didnt see that agent sneaking in there because you didnt raise your perception and BLAM! The NPC ambushes you?? Dont you WANT that kind of excitement in the game? BAH! We fight the same stupid things in the same stupid areas (and no the areas arent stupid they just start to seem that way after an eternity of the same thing). Where's the creativity? Where's the challenge? Where's the POINT?? Mission areas need to be multi level, they need to become progressively harder with maybe each level offering a reward at the end progressively becomoing more valuable.

Ok, now about static dungeons. I visited 3. They sucked. All the stuff I found in them with my 98 agent was grey yet these things took forever to die and I constantly had to flee....for what? 1 xp per kill and the chance of getting a unique, nodrop item that was useless to someone my level. So I took my 70 MP to the same static dungeons, this time the things were green and the xp didndt totally suck 3k a kil roughly. Now the problem was they had overbuffed the health on these things killing them was ridiculously difficult but thats okay I can accept that I just need to go get a team. But what team will find enjoyment killing 'greens' for a chance at a unique item that is barely your own level? Yay you got a unique item to show off that you either will never use or will only use for a couple levels. (not counting unique spawns like Nugget of course).

Has anyone had a mission their own level (which needs to be considered the avg for any mmropg since the avg player doesnt have tons of uber friends to help them over-equip or overbuff) that actually has items they can use? If my 98 agent does a mission lvl 100 (which can be pretty damn hard even tho i've equipped him rather well) he will get a ton of items (hopefully) that he has absolutely no use for. I mean, if I was wearing ql 100 armor I wouldnt be able to do the mission anyway!

Once team missions go in single missions need to be fixed. First, sing mission keys should not be able to be duped once team missions are available. You should HAVE to do it yourself with no help, thats sorta the point of a single person mission after all. BUT the items that load obviously need to be of a level you would reasonably expect the player to use. If a lvl 70 NT does a mission the stuff that loads needs to be things you would expect a level 70 player to want/be able to use. i.e. ql 100-120 items, just make the mission more challenging dont make the loot useless.

Anyway, it just comes down (for me at least) to alot of time spent wondering why I'm leveling...what do I have to look forward to? Yes, I get to use higher imps,weaps, armors, etc....but for what? I want to run/travel for an hour to an area where no one goes and find dungeons to explore and unique monsters/items, I want NPC's that act like what the game says they are, I want new kinds of mission areas to look forward to, I want mission areas that I have to kill something on the other side of the world to get a key to open it (if the key spawns for me at all!). I want variety guys, I want fun. I dont want alot of boredom from repetition.

Anyway, I know I rambled a bit and not sure I stayed focused on my point but I dont post on boards very often. I just wanted this pointed out because more than anything else this is what will make me eventually decide to quit this game.

(and for those who absolutely feel the need to point out flaws in my thoughts/logic let me say this....DUH! I'm not a genius, I'm not an expert at most things...what I am is a regular guy who makes up the majority of mmropg players and who pays FunCom's bills)