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Stories are important. They give an added entertainment effect, and really are not that expensive since lots of people like to write.
Decisions are important. The player has to make decisions, and those decisions need to modify the outcome of their character and story lines.
AI has to be unpredictable. As soon as you get a pattern that always wins, it becomes repitious.
If enemies scale to team skill, it has to be done really well. If scalling matches to close, then the fun of leveling goes away.
Leveling is fun for peer reward of being uber, and opening up new things to experiance.
Crafting is fun for the accomplishment of being a master crafter, and is a good time sink.
Customization is fun for peer reward and individuality. Allowing people to play the way they want allows people to express themselves. Housing areas are really important for this. and to add to re reward of other people seeing such things, also some things should be done in housing so others travel to a persons housing. Space games that use ships as housing have a huge bonus in this respect since housing is mobile. Portals can create that effect also.
Multiple ways to be uber is important, but each different way to be uber has to be challenging, as soon as too many people are uber, it loses its uberness. And if there is only one way to be uber, everyone fights for those few spots. If there are lots of different ways to be uber, then people can find there own uberness.
Surprise is precious. If a game can catch you off guard, and it was hinted to well enough that you then think, "I should have thought of that" then it is both learning and fun. Building multiple ways to surprise and change a story is really good.
Stories should have twists, how many of us like those endings of twilight zone episodes. If foreshadowed, twist make people think about the possible hints in stories and which ways to go. Occasionally having a story make a player rethink an issue really adds to the challenge and thought of a story line.
Save games should be limited. there has to be a pentalty for failing something, otherwise people get to point where they just zerg and know they can't lose. (Note that is why having nothing to lose in life makes for great zerging adventures in real life)
If Save games are not relevant, like in online games, a loss in a fight needs some pentalty of time or some other factor the player works for, so that he has a reason not to mess up.
Anything that is failed, should be allowed to be reattempted at some other time, the idea of second chances.
Ability to easily friend and ignore should be easy so people can find and regroup with groups with there style.
Many styles should be able to play same game without ruining other players style.
Shard servers or instances should be the exception not the rule, segmentation of populations creates lack of interaction and depth and can easily create multi teir systems.
That last one is a perfect example, people want to find people of there same style, but at the same time they need interaction with other styles to modify and advance there play style. So the ability to interact across many groups is really important, as is a player not being negatively effected by another group. Basically any negative effect a group can create on another, should be limited in areas where everyone interacts, and unlimited in special areas. So instances can work for pvp, or ffa, or realm like combat, but buying selling and getting quests and information can be full players, so that people are around each other.
Farming areas should be scalable and not an instance. I would say scalable farming areas should be full population, since people when grinding are more conversational anyway. To make it less of a resource issue, having large sections that are farmable can help disperse populations. It takes good maitance of game to scale up and down popular areas, either by expansion or nerfing.
Stories also make sense to be instanced, so each player can experiance a plot line, but at the same time it is best if they see others experiance the same plot line. That is really tough, since it makes for grops to collide when having same goal. I would say the easiest way to do this is by having multiple objectives, and handing them out in an order so that people in the same areas are trying to do slighly different things as different groups. Then if there is overlap, some scalling could move in based on aggro and a few other things, to keep it at a challenging level.
If two groups are in same area to complete a one group story line in a full player area, the area should scale maybe by using aggro detection, if they work together it should not be just cake. And when the story line is given out, each group should have a different goal, so they do not camp the same area. Arguement for scalling is bigger groups of people draw more interaction.
Any way those are a few rules I have thought on.
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