Anarchy Online, The experience Introductory Words:
Then, it was a bold and strange (albeit buggy) new world that was 3D and dangerous. It was mysterious and in its time it was beautiful. Now it is old and while the game has expanded in terms of content and locations some things old have been neglected for better or worse till now. Soon the new AO Engine will be released and that feeling of splendorous wonder at the grandeurs within AO will be returning.
I will do my best to outline how I believe Funcom could yield the greatest reward for their efforts from a developer/fan/player's point of view. As you do care about your product (Quite obvious to me from how things have been changing) and the player base (judging from how you have been taking our suggestions) and humility (having the foresight to listen to your community and react with purpose even if it is to change something that you had planned another way.. ie.. titles, inspect, etc..) and yet you know that these things will increase your ultimate goal: The Bottom Line. Year End Totals, Income and growth of the AO division of Funcom.
I will encourage all members of this community to see this thread as I will signature it for my every post and hope that through it you can get the feed back needed to maximize every last bit of what you have cooking for us.
The Beginning:
A persons first moments with your game are the most important ever. I will to the best of my ability give you some comparisons and my suggestion for AO based on it and categorize it by its parts:
- Intro Movies
- Character Creation
- Entering the Game world
- First moments on RK
- Some classics revisted
- Unfinished Content
- GUI Enhancements
- Paid for bonus content
- RP Points v3
- General Game Enchancements
- Bug Fixes
- Wish List
- New PVM Encounters
- Implemented Game Suggestions
Intro Movies
By far the easiest way to get your "interested" player in to the storyline of the world quickly. Give them a heads up to the type of speech and buzz words of lingo relevant to the world and by the visual + audible connection you make words like Kyr'zoch actually a real word in our heads.
Some other great examples of amazing Intro Movies exist in the newest generation of MMOs and Online games as well as offline games. Tabula Rasa has a great opening movie, Hellgate London as well tho I would rank HG:L higher on the engrossing story part.
Now how this applies to AO. AO has old movies created for it in forms of episodes and even some newer animated content that some have found online and posted (See addition below). I don't pretend to understand your budget constraints or your AO Dev teams capabilities only to say that with the right equipment or "funcom assistance" we "the community" with your help to spear head the project could create an Intro movie for AO if a in house big budget job is just out of the question. Additionally I have this suggestion as the "easiest" most "cost effective" method.
{Addition: Xinc }
{Link for Awesome Fan Movie}
This is an example of a movie that gets exactly the point across I am talking about.. In six minutes and thirty seconds they tell just about the entire history of AO and Rubika to a point of where your pre-rendered movie media ceased and we have nothing new.. please finish this video off with the newest stuff I know you got in house goodies use them! Just please use this video or do something just like it but newer!
{EDIT: Watch that video then come back here and read this with just the music in the background it matches nicely! }
If no "defacto" intro movie is made. Use cut excerpts from all pre-rendered material and produce a montage to music leading in to the AO logo closing and opening back up to the character creation screen. The imagery in my personal opinion if I were art director would be to go with the concept of "genetic memory" for the "tie-in" theme through out the movie.. Since there is the going theory that due to everyone having the same faces we are all essentially clones of the first colonists. Either way make the effects sorta like what you would get from a dream like rude awakening in your Gentic Tube you start in during Character Creation.
{Addition: Keldros }
{3 Seperate Movies, one for each side but based on the original AO movie intro}
My suggestion in response: Instead of a 3 seperate movies; Put new quest lines that are received after leaving newbie island and before arriving in the backyard
<see First moments on RK below for my updated idea based on Keldros post and Entering the Game world for a continuance of the old episodic content thought started here>
Character Creation:
The flight down the tunnel ending with the 4 breeds is still to me one of the best ways to lead in a character creation.. It follows the theme of drawing the person in to the world moment by moment that was so well done I would just like to see it face lifted to match the new engine. Enhancements would be having your chosen profession animate and show armor indicative of the professions end appearance vs only wearing Tier Armor which is highly misleading..
Furthermore I have no idea what you have planned for addressing how players look in the game and if you added a new system much like the toted AoC character creation engine and all of us get to redesign our faces after the "release" I would be in joygasmic heaven
Ending character creation would be just like before but have the person instead of just see their end result and then zoom in to the door make them step off the platform and walk through the door and before boarding the shuttle to RK.. Bring back the "Museum/ICC" <see below>
Entering the game world:
{Originally posted: Zeephonz }
Please for the love of all thats holy bring back the ICC area where there were a bunch of NPC's to talk to for story bits. I spent a good amount of time reading that whole area before landing on RK / SL and I really miss it. {Edit: You really should take some time and make this entrance hall a showcase of the best your new engine has to offer.. window view of RK.. holographic projections the works I mean.. make it have NPCs boarding shuttles and talking/walking..}
<Continued from above regarding the old animated series>
Added to the old ICC space station is a new terminal that works off your in game advertising bill board tech. Giving menu'd access to play back each of the old ICC "holo events" aka the old Animated Series as a "Historical Archive" which you could add to and Mirror on RK in the "ICC Platforming" area. This nifty little thing would either stream locally (big install) or via the net (small install) for newcomers to be able to experience it without having to find the forums or dig through the RP sections of the website. It could only serve to get more bang for your buck out of those ancient videos that ushered many of us in to this game in the days of old.
I would suggest of course updating it graphically to match the new engine changes but other than this screen would suggest little else other than to make there be at least 1 NPC for each faction that has "Latest News" ie.. Editor Articles that are offical storyline items. AKA A FJRKK, IRKK, OTPC news agent there with the last 3 headlines for each press house.
Please give the treatment of the shuttle->RK a full work over with "Cinematic" as the core principal behind it. Make it "Tragic" to the person that they are one of the ONLY survivors of the crash.. or Do something equally as cool but keep the word "Cinematic" as the core principal leading up to everything you do beyond it. Now we enter the shuttle for RK but this time.. you should, whether, with a pre-rendered cut-scene (not preferred) or a 3D modeled out custom Scene that actually shows "crash landing" with other people on the ship (NPC is fine) with you and then blacking out then have the person be injured only capable of crawling till they got to the first mob would would unlock the ability to walk and tell them to sit down and use a heal kit on them teaching them the actions /sit, /stand, /crawl and how to heal before even playing which will come in to play later on when they interact with the world.
First moments on RK:
{Originally posted: Tani }
The newbie island as it was with the old item drop table, lootable AI items (glow sticks anyone?), implants, rings, etc, was such a great thing that actually made my time rolling an alt fun. Now I am off the island before lvl 5 if I can help it. There just literally is no reason for me to stay. While before I would find a newcomer and help them explain things to them etc I no longer do. I rush right through and barely even notice a name there. Please make Newbie island fun again when you get to the upgrading it part. And add an implant tech lol.. put a literal "Implants guide" on newbie island so its not out of place anywhere else. Make putting implants together and in part of a quest on the island. This will make the bottom of our playerbase stronger as they come up in the levels. And if the engine is released right and gets a major resurgance of users then this will be a great thing.
{Additon from: Vassilis }
{However, I'd like to see something like the old backyards where higher levels could come and interact with new players...}
My Suggestion in response: Perhaps newcomers don't just arrive at the gate of the city after leaving newbie island.. instead they arrive in the backyards just like the old days.. give the backyards a slight facelift and let people relive what we once did?
<From above regarding leaving the newbie island>
When you leave newbie island you arrive in a orientation room and are greeted by a NPC representative of each of the selected factions "parties" For OT you have the divisions, Clan has the Legacy Clans and Neutrals have Local Governments. Each would have a bit about themself and what they stand for which would then let you "sign up" with them. This would then select your starting backyard. Make it like a mini-instance that gears you up with some symbolic RP items and a bit of sided useful gear to show visible support for your side such as an Omni-Pol officers uniform or med suit or other similar type of items that would give a bit of guidance to a new player helping them to have more fun quickly and be drawn in to the game world and storyline.
What would be really fun is if the actual ARKs randomly showed up in this orientation room such as having a guest apperance by Sir Tristram or by Simon Silverstone just to say.. "Greetings.." and then leave.. you have no idea the impact this would have on players..
An example:
- Knights of Avalon supporters arrive in a Camelot Backyard (where higher level Knight supporters would be encouraged to go to find likeminded new recruits) Would be presented with quests that have a "Moral code" similar to what a Knight follower would find "good" to do to level up. Could be saving people etc.
- Sentinels start in Tir and hunt down some neuts collaborating with Omnis in a backyard..
- OT would have say "Omni-Mining" and would select the appropriate starting location with a backyard in it oriented around that division.
- Omni-Pol would start you in say Omni-HQ etc..
- Neutrals would be presented with the "flavors and themes" within and relevant to each of the local governments.. Borealis for now might be joining a freedom fighters brigade executing little strikes against Omni to free borealis or..
- Newland City which would have a totally different view such as strengthening the defense a quest might be finding and returning X of Y ammunitions crates etc..
{Addition: Trousers }
{Omnis take the Omni Tunnel out of the Arrival Hall and end up in Entertainment in the middle of an alien assault. Here they will have exposure to different OT Departments. Pol trying to maintain order, Med trying to deal with wounded soldiers, AF trying to fight aliens invading the Slums, etc. Players can kill wildlife encroaching into the city for XP, or drug addicts in the Slums not being invaded. Leveling from say 1-10 should mostly happen from quest XP rewards that give Lore rather then grinding mobs.
Substitute Tir/Athens/Newland/Lastditch as well as factions as needed to create the experience for the 3 factions.}
My reply: I don't agree with the right out of ICC part but I do believe this would fit with my suggestion of post newbie island.
Some classics revisted:
As you detail out the world from what I have seen you are improving everythings appearance across the board. Please add at least 1 if not more new ways to interact with each old environment. Even if its in code still "if clicked == yes do xyz" just spend a little time to increase our interactivity level with each other and the game.
Currently you could argue that players are many holographs running around in a VR simulation because of how things are tangible. Obviously when your going through and remodeling things the bounding boxes and issues of the past will melt away to being meaningless thanks to new physics engines (any word on which Havok or other yet?)
A few types of interactions that I think would be nice is things that change the world or let your character feel physically apart of it would take precedence. An example would be making /hug <target> actually animate a hug or /sit <target> actually sit on the object such as a chair or a stool.
- Add new luxery money sink items in to the game that have these new interactions such as in home grids and home security plus B&E skill becoming useful by allowing for someone to hack a flagged person's house to get inside as mentioned in the "changes for PVP thread"
- Grid PVP.. come on give this to us already???
- Fixer Grid PVP.. ok so they get advantages there.. but please make this happen!
- Upgrades for old RK items such as Edge of Tarasque.. these things could so use an upgrade.. in case you haven't noticed.. We <3 RK tech! -Added in 17.9
- Custom Org Governing Forms: by Berael (and many others)