The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (PUBLIC) The Pub KGB and the Alganon MMO

POlearms Online - or POO for short.

Realistically speaking, good MMO PvP revolves around the concept of Sandbox style world design, pvp flagging, etc.

In all honesty, to many MMO developers try to make a RPG version of Team Fortress, complete with WoW-grind... and fail miserably at it.

Without being unduly verbose, the best advice I can give you is to either a) make character progression extremely quick and easy (the funnest part about AoC, was playing with all sorts of different classes/specs when advancement was still relatively quick and easy. They nerfed 60% of the fun out of their incomplete game when they turned it to a grind), or b) have a classless re-speccable advancement model. (so you are never stuck with a bad character)

Balance, and gameplay can, will, and will probably need to be changed over time. The mood I have been reading from players for a good while now, is players are now much much less tolerant of the "hamster in a wheel" model of gameplay. Those who still enjoy, and buy into that style of gaming are probably not going to leave their existing, hundred-million dollar budget hamster wheel for an indie hamster wheel.

If you want to seriously capture (and more importantly, retain - see WHO and AoC for reference) the interest of players you need to do something other than offer a slightly different wheel, with a different backdrop for said wheel. You need to offer some new toys for the hamster to play with...

The clearest and most defined way to do this, is to go back
to the way of thinking of the early MMO / MUD era when people were thinking in terms of virtual worlds that strove to offer player freedom - as opposed to the newer era where most of what you see is pure team-based co-op content and extremely structured play.

Though Eve has managed this to a degree, and Darkfall will be as well, neither game is perfect, or perfect for everyone. Though I ofc have my own ideas, I wont try to tell you how to make your game. I am sure many of your team have your own ideas.

All I am saying, is that what players really want is not another wheel, that is similar to the old wheel, but set in a different cage, or a different color, or with extra little decorations to look at as you run in place.

We want a virtual word, with a better balance of grind/fun that can still hold some meaning. Which admittedly, is one heck of a tough line to follow. ( as time itself imparts meaning to the ones willing to spend it, seeing as once youve spend 100 hours doing something, the end result obviously bears some value to the spender if for no other reason than it took so long to do it. )

Thank you Derid, Crimthan and others, your comments are duly noted and taken to the development team for consideration. They have a lot of experience in playing and developing games from the MUD era as well, so understand your perspective.

When we move forward with PvP and anything mentioned here, I'll let you know.

One of the game mechanics we want to ensure is done right above and beyond PvP itself when that is implemented, is the balance between PvE and PvP. Otherwise you can ruin both if they aren't being compared together.

A quick update to KGB that we've added our CEO's February update letter, as well as the latest Community Roundtable feature that answers some of your direct questions!

Nice, it's awesome to see that input from some veteran gamers is really appreciated

Yesterday we posted our second gameplay video of Alganon, showing the Kujix on the continent of Harraja. The first video shows the Asheroth on the continent of Ardonya:

http://www.alganon.com/video

The Harraja video also shows our new sky & environment system!

We've updated our 'About Alganon' page with more information and a consolidated view: http://www.alganon.com/about-alganon

Thanks we will check it out.