One short suggestion to increase FUN WITHOUT dangerous balancing problems

Dear Mr. Godager, Dear members of the Funcom Dev Team,

Of course there are many things that need fixing (pet AI, pathfinding, tradeskills, item, skill and class imbalances, lag, etc.). These issues make up for quite a bit of your customers’ critique (or, perhaps more precisely, bickering).

On the official forum boards, I have had much positive feedback on one general strategy to combat THE NUMBER ONE FUN-KILLER AND DANGER to your game. This danger, I believe, does not lie in the “broken” things that need fixing or implementing. This danger is boredom, brought about foremostly due to repetition, monotony, predictability, unvariability.

I would like to eloborate very briefly on my suggestions there (http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...threadid=20328).

It would be VERY EASY to make your world more vivid, colorful, surprising, variable, alive and even more logical WITHOUT HAVING TO PLAYTEST extreme changes or worry about game balancing or introducing new items.

People are still bored with missions.

Instead of empty shells, mere potential abbatoirs, measly vehicles for NPC killing, simple EXP recepticles, each room a repetition of the one before, make them REAL PLACES. Real places have people. What about just dumping some NPCs in there who are NOT hostile? So that the players might have to decide on whom to kill and whom to ignore? You might even toy with the idea of “protecting” certain “innocent” NPCs (at least for “good” missions if you like) from the “hostile” ones. Perhaps some are held hostage. Perhaps some of these “innocents” might even turn hostile if you attack them, perhaps some of them offer EXP and some not. For a “good” mission when we deliver food, for instance — FOR WHOM are we delivering it? Put in some NPCs, it would at least put a little “story” into an otherwise unbelievable facade. At the very least – not every single “dot” on our minimap should automatically be a target. TRY TO CHALLENGE US TO THINK AND DECIDE, or at least TO FEEL AND BELIEVE YOUR WORLD IS REAL, or at the very least to pretend to be able to RPG in it.

(Side note: It is absolutely preposterous that earning mission tokens is completely causally dependent on killing. Wouldn’t it make more sense for “bad” missions or “assasination” missions (oddly enough those which you get when you DONT set your slider to “bad”) to rely on slaughtering for a token — and earning tokens for “good” missions such as delivering food rely on delivering 100% of ALL the various food bags (that is, have the player “touch” 100% of x numbers of food recepticles scattered throughout a mission area)? Would that be so difficult? Give those sneaking fixers, agents, engis, whomever a chance too – or let them play “good” people. Or let them protect “innocents”. Or whatever. As it stands, there is NO difference between good and bad with the sole exception that all people set the slider to “bad” in order to get the “pickup” missions.)

Changes such as these, I believe, would cost you very little in development and playtesting, since there is very little bickering which could result from it (no “waaah! you nerfed me again!”). Take some advice from your customers, especially if it is, for the time being at least, free.

Put the FUN into FUNCOM!

Yours sincerely,

Hypokeimenon (crat)
Onomastikon (engi)
Hyperkeimenon (fixer)
Hoploicratus (soldier)