Jump to content
Eternal Lands Official Forums
Sign in to follow this  
LEXIC

The Main Thing This Game Lacks....

Recommended Posts

The main thing and one of the big problems I see for the future of this game is it needs absolutely no skill to be played. This game is 99.99% time based, meaning if you have loads of time to play this game, you can practically do anything in the game, which makes it boring. The only skill involved in this game that I see is being able to read a compass.

 

I dont know all the answers but i'll list some of the main ones.

 

Absolutely no skill involved in "building" your own unique character. You do not need to actually be good at creating and building your character, thinking hard about how to build him to have the most advantages. EVERY character in the game can be the same, and will end up the same in the end. What im taking about is every person can get the maximum levels in skill with alot of time on their hands, every character can have the exact same main attributes through buying them ( which is a big big problem ), The cross attributes are based on the main ones so they would be the same also, and I seen that Entropy wants to also make the Nexuses buyable too. EVERY character in the game can just have the maximum level and points in the skills, and every character would be exactly the same. What is the point even for the races? Thats why I suggested this a while back: http://eternal-lands.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=651 Many people have told me in game that they really liked the idea, I havent had 1 person dislike it. But For some reason Ent wants everyone to buy the skill points. Which then again, it takes absolutely no skill in making money, just alot of time.

 

Fighting has close to no skill involved. Fighting is mostly about what your combat/attack/defence levels are, along with some main attributes that affect your health. Another problem I see is how everyones levels are posted on the website. Lets say a pker is going around the pk maps, and there are people hunting there. He finds the name of one person hunting there, goes to check on the website, "hmm his levels are much lower the mine, I can take him no problem", then bam you go back and kill him.., or "his levels are way to high for me, better stay away from him" Anyone see what I am talking about here? If there was not information of players like that on the website, people trying to kill other people would judge the other persons levels buy the gear they had, by rumors of the players levels, and actually make a skilled desicion if you wanted to attack him or not, with a fairly big risk involved. Even still, there would not be too much skill involved in fighting him, yes his gear vs your gear helps skill wise, but it mostly comes down to the stats of each character in a fight.

 

I know this game is still young, but I seen that you Ent is already paying for advertisement to get more people to play. I seen many people that played for a short period because this game has alot of potential when you first start, but then when they realize it is all time based they quit.

 

Anyway this is just my opinion, you might not agree with me or you might, post your responses, and also if you have any other ideas that would convert the game to skill wise rather then time wise post here.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Some people level much faster than others, and the only difference I can see is being smart about which stat to level first. E.g. getting manufacture up so that you can make bars when you get your harvest up to iron will give you a lot more money than just harvesting iron. And getting potion up before the fight stats will allow you to raise the fight stats much faster, because you don't need to use bread to regenerate.

 

At least that's the only explanation I can see why some people who joined long after I did have so much higher stats than I do. I don't belive that it's just a question of how much time people spend playing, don't tell me that people with wife and kids (Krull) have more time for playing than me, with only work, sleep and eating to distract me from playing.

 

Apparently I suck at every kind of game (except tetris maybe), and EL is no exception to that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The unfortunate thing is that almost all of the games of this type suffer from the same problem. The game is pretty much idiot-proof.

 

I have an idea for a skill based MMORPG, but that won't be around any time soon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I dunno...ZoneTheta and I ran into an 8 year old yesterday who was begging for weapons...his harvesting was at level 20 because he'd been picking flowers like crazy...I asked him many times if he's read the manuals and beginner's guide and he said that he had but none of it made sense to him...

 

At first, when running into the guy, I thought he was a someone's multiple account, trying to scam people out of items, but ZoneTheta talked to him a bit longer and found out this user info...

 

So, may not be idiot proof if you're actually use to gaming, but it can still be a big game to someone who's not use to stuff like this and they're more use to Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. games or something...especially if you're young....

 

Out of curiousity, shouldn't there be an age restriction on this game? It's mainly that there's still obscenities that get through the newbie chat, people find ways around the "smeg" filter...the only violence is killing animals (and other players, if you're off in pkland)...or is the game still too much into beta for something along the lines of ESRB ratings...or at least a...er...policy of some sort saying yes, I'm of such-and-such age...

 

Even Neopets, a game that has very little violence (except you can fight other people's pets, but no one dies), has a policy you have to sign when signing up with the website...parental guidelines, etc...if you're under a certain age, you can't receive messages or anything....you're limited in that respect, but you can still play the game...

 

Or, like I said, is the game still too beta-ish to do anything about something like that?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you read the license, it should be clear that the policy is, that people (or their parents) should decide for themselves if they are old enough to play. All those "click here if you are over 18" are just so silly, and besides, a 85 years old grandma is probably going to be much more offended than a 16 years old boy.

 

Deciding if kids is old enough to play should be their parents job, not ours.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

m'kay, making sure...I just know that a lot of parents DON'T monitor what their kids are playing or watching...

 

Sometimes kids can stumble into something accidentally...

 

All it was is that I got worried about that level 20 harvesting 8 year old...*L* it's weird sometimes how much kids know, but don't know when they get onto a computer...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I like your idea lexic...mainly because i absolutely HATE the idea of buying skills/attributes/nexuses. It's extremely lame, sounds like the lazy mans way out :P

 

Unfortunetly I really dont' have any alternatives, and I haven't put much thought into it..just don't have time...but that's what these forums are for, so you guys can make your input on these things.

 

We should NOT be making a game for idiots, and it's kind of coming to that. Ent doens't even want any more quests in the game, because people are too stupid to go through them. But what about the people that actually like quests and actually like to play a real game?

There's quite a few gameplay issues to EL that I don't like, but I really don't have control over it, and barely a say....it's up to the programmer.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Leeloo my beef is not that it is easy for some people to level faster then others, its that in the end every character will end up exactly the same.

 

Another good thing that would require the skill of exploration would be to put some secrets in the game, like being able to walk through a wall or mountain to get to the secret. Maybe having a spell that creates a fire, and you can light up lanterns that are in dungeons to drop a wall to reveal a secret area. Just little ideas like that would make the game much less boring.

 

I hope something is done soon that will solve these problems

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Let's have some quests that require people to think. Not quests that people have to do (not everyone can think), but quests that make a difference.

 

Btw, I still think a river that you would have to walk through, once you find the right place (where it's not too deep) would be a fun idea.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not all the players level up all their skills. It just takes too much to be good at everything, so most of them focus on half of the skills.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ok, let me define idiot proof:

Fighting-click on creature. Watch and see who dies.

Harvesting-click repeatedly

Magic-buy stuff, choose sigils, and cast.

Manu, alch, summoning, pots- click ingredients and hit mix.

 

My point is, not something that requires careful planning and strategy. It doesn't require much skill. You're probably wondering: if I keep saying such bad things about this game, why do I keep playing it? The answer is, at first, I would play for hours. Now, I am on the forums more than I am on the game. I am suffering from something called monotony. Quests would really help, but ent, feeling that i am too stupid to read the story behind quests, has deemed that the only quests shall be idiot-proof fetch quests. So even in quests i am only doing more of what I already do.

 

As for nexuses, I don't think that you should get them automatically when leveling, because that begs the question of why even bother having them if they become just an extension of our stat. For example:

Let's say i get 1 nexus for every 10 levels.

And say I'm level 40.

The game says I need 4 nexuses to do something.

In that case, why not just forget the nexuses and say I need to be level 40?

It makes them essentially pointless. I like that you get them through quests, because it makes people more involved in the game, rather than just leveling. However, that means no more fetch quests! And, I think there should be areas that require certain nexuses to enter.

 

And I like the idea of secrets, but I hope they don't get leaked. And I think some should be more like secret puzzles. And with the secret lantern, i would make it so that you could click trade with the lantern (and it wouldn't auto change to the icon), and a modified window would appear, which allows you to give it a fire essence.

Or how about one of those skeletons on the ground, where you cast remote heal on it and it teleports you to a secret area?

Or a place where you can attack a tree to cut it down to create a bridge to a secret area? Then it respawns, so to speak, back to being a normal tree so that other players have to figure it out for themselves?

 

Ok, those are my ideas. Whew, this is one long post.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The secrets WILL get leaked almost instantly.

The monotony.. well, very few people PK in EL, so that's why there is such monotony. When there wil be guild controlled points (soon) the monotony will dissapear, and strategy will be needed.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

About pk its not interesting cuz people dont go to pk maps nothing there only a chance of being killed...pk maps should have something good for people to come

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Quests are supposed to be challenging and involve skills but they dont, many times iver heard in channel 1 "If i get the stuff can someone make me a grammy cloak" that dont take a lot of skill to do, the most challenging quest ive seen is the book one and even thats easyish, quests should be more challenging and take longer than 5 mins, take runescape, they may suck but the quests are challenging and last a long time, but esuse me if you think clicking on an eye then clicking on some gold is a challenge

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes secrets can will get leaked, but not all of them. Another thing that might solve this problem would be to make some secrets almost impossible to find, so that someone that is looking for secrets will have something to look forward to. Make these secrets really valuable, and give absolutely no hints on where and how to find them, like for example:

 

put a texture tile somewhere on the ground that is a different texture then the ground, people would be wondering what this might be, then lets say if you put a specific item on the tile, only at the darkest hour of the night/day cycle, a portal will open, and you would be able to go inside. Once inside, you would be in a fairly sized dungeon, with new monsters like deamons, flying spirits and skull heads,etc. you would have to fight through these monsters, find new secrets in the dungeon to get you further, and at the very end, you enter a shrine, where there is a special book on a little table just like the book in the ancient temple, and if you use the eye key, it will say something like " through reading this book, you have gained a "blank" main skill point". In the blank you pick a skill point and it would be added to your character. To get to the very end it should be really hard for that reward, thus going into the next point...

 

The fighting system really needs to be improved. I see it like this... If something or someone goes to attack you, you do not have to attack them unless you click on them. When you attack someone/monster at the front, so you attack him face to face, then the person/monster has a chance to block your attack depending on both players skills. If you attack him in the back, the other character will not turn around like it does now, and you can hit him with 100% accuracy. Now the person that is being attacked can run away anytime he wants, no crap about failing to run away. I do not get how someone can "fail" to run away. If you get hit while trying to run away, you will lag up a bit depending on the blow of the hit, if its like a little queef hit for like 1-10 damage, you will lag up for like 1 second, if its really hard, like 25-40, then you can get nocked down, and it will lag your running for 2 seconds, untill you get up. The character attacking him should keep on attacking / following him untill you click somewhere on the ground to walk to and stop. I dont like the way the fighting system is now, that if someone attacks you, you are instantly put into a "battle" and cannot move. I like it to be free, so that you can just stand there, facing north, and someone can come from the south and attack you in the back, and you can start running anything you want or fighting back, without instantly being put into a battle. Also with a system like this, you will have to ability to be attacked by more then 1 monster since you will never be put into a "battle mode". Lets say you have 2 orcs attacking you at the same time, you can fight back with one while another one is still hitting you from behind. This would be cool for lets say the shrine idea I made up above. The dungeon would be so hard to get through that 1 person alone would not be able to do it himself, but a group of people would be able to manage it. So if you do run into a deamon, it will attack 1 person while the rest of the people with you attack it too. The only problem I see in making a system like this would be how gaining experience from fighting would work, but that would be just a minor problem that can be worked out with some thought.

 

 

Shadowknight im with you on this one, when I first started this game, it was very interesting, but lately it has got really boring, and I log on like once every week for like 10 mins just to see if anything cool was added. Yea I noticed that the inside for evil castle was added, etc, and it might have been impressive at first, but I went there for 5 mins, look around, and never have returned to it.

 

When I first started I also made a suggestion about adding chests : http://host115.ipowerweb.com/~eternal-/php...topic.php?t=470 Its little ideas like this that will keep people playing, Ent said he would do it, but this was and is one of the main things I was looking forward to, getting keys, finding chests in secret areas, fighting through hard dungeons to get the high level chests to collect treasure, but it hasnt happened yet. I know me, and a fair bit of people would rather see an idea like this implemented in an update, then the inside of the evil castle.

 

Also about the quests. I do not like them, and I see how Entropy does not like them either. The quests should be challenging so that you cannot finish a quest in like 10 mins of walking around and reading. Some harder quests could keep you working on it for days before you finish it. There should be bosses in the game, like a Gargoyal Lord (the big gard in the evil castle), or a Troll Lord, and a quest could be to kill one of these bosses. But It would take the boss between 2-3 hours to respawn after it is killed, So once you activate the quest, and you need to kill the garg lord to complete it, you would go to the evil castle, if hes not there you would just leave, and check from time to time to see if these bosses would be there. This quest would take you much longer to complete since you are not the only one doing the quest, and it takes a while before the boss respawns.

 

Also the God quests are the worst, atleast for the defence and attack gods. I think it must of took a whole 20 minutes to think of the quests for them: Get bla amount for antlers, get bla amount of gloves, get bla amount of silver bars, get bla amount of sulfur, etc, etc, etc. Its funny cause these quests have almost NOTHING to do with the actual skill the god is about. For example, for attack god, I think I had to get, cant remember the exact number, but a fair bit amount of enhanced leather gloves. Now how to get these gloves? 1) you can manufacture them, 2) you can buy them. In both cases, you need a good manufacturing skill level, a good alchemy and harvest level to make gold, or harvest ore and make bars. But I could do this quest with actually needing 0 Defence level???????? So I end up spending 300k on these gloves that are needed (i didnt read the whole thing and do not remember it exactly) for a fricken boxing match, wtf is that?? I love the idea of having gods, and getting the benefits from them. I heard this idea about gods from when I started to play, and it has been put in after 2 months of thinking about it, and coming to a good conclusion of what the gods do, but once this idea was put in, quests were needed, and the time was not taken to figure out some good quests cause it was all rushed.

 

My 2 cents....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh yea and Entropy, thats why I am saying the game is mostly based on time. Yes right now most players focus on certain skills, not all of them. But im hearing there is a max level limit. If there is, then in time, the higher levels will end up the same. Also they will end up the same way before this rumor of a max limit. Once they start to get higher levels so that it is just too hard to gain anymore, they will start on their lower skills to get them up, thus making all the characters alike once again.

 

There should be set up something like this, so you can level 3 main classes : thief mage and fighter

 

The defend/combat skill would be monstly based on theives, magic/summoning based on mages, and attack/combat based on fighters. So lets say you want to be a fighter, and you start to level your attack/combat. Once you get some attack and combat levels, you start to get a minus in the experience gained for defence/summoning/magic. So lets say you have level 10/10 in combat/attack but you have level 0 in magic/summoning, and level 6 in defence. now because the game would recognize that your highest levels are combat and attack, it would set you up for being a fighter, so at those levels you would gain -20% in defence, and -35% in summoning/magic. So that when you chose to level up fighting/combat to become a fighter, the minus to experience would be so severe that it would not be worth your time to level magic/summoning/defend to become a an all in one fighter/theif/mage. Same for mages, if you start out buy getting levels summoning/magic, then u get a minus in leveling defence/fighting/combat. So that if you wanna become a mage, you cannot also become a fighter. But the minus percentages would be based on the gap between the skills you want to level, so lets say:

 

If someone wants to make a straight mage character, and lets say he has 5/5/5 in combat/attack/defend and 35/35 in summoning/magic then thats a 30 level gap, so the game would recogize you want to be a mage, and would give you a big panelty in your fighting exp, and you would not get any minus exp for magic/summoning

 

but if the gap is smaller, lets say you have 12/12/6 in combat/attack/defend and lets say 16/16 in summoning and magic, then the gap would be to small to let the game recognize if you want to be a fighter or a mage, so they give panalties for both, -15% to combat/fighting

-12% to summoning/magic, and minus 35% to defend since you do not wanna be a theif here. So you have the oppertunity to be a mage fighter, but the minus in experience gained would leave you alot worse then someone that would go a straight fighter, or someone that would go a straight mage, but you will have the benefit of having an average level in both.

 

I didnt go through all the detail that can be put into a system like this, but I think something like this would help you distinguish your character class from another. Then later on, there would be gear that would require requirements, for bows/short swords/daggers - a defence requirement, for long swords/ 2 handed weapons/axes - a attack requirement, and for staffs/wands - a magic/summoning requirement. And the "classes" based on what skills you would level would have other benefits just like this.

 

And something does need to be done with the skill point system, everyone of decent level has 75 hp 72 mp. Thus again returning back to when I said characters end up the same.......

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

i agree that the quest are to easy so how about saying you can only get to a set level and if you wanna go any high you have to do a quest. that way you could make it so you have to kill some to do the quest and it could be hard because you could say you can only get to level5 without doing a quest then you have to kill a deer. then people would have to get lots of pots and stuff like that to get rdy for the fight then they have to kill it with should take along time.

 

also for the god quest i have said before about have them make you do something to make the god they dont like look bad or doing something to make them look god.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree on making it so higher levels make for more unique players... but EL has much more potential than fighter/thief/mage

it might be simple enough so that focusing on one skill impedes the growth of another, and because we already have many skills, there would be quite a few unique possibilities..

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I like the idea of tougher quests, sectet places/items 'n stuff, but I don't like this plain Mage OR Thief OR Fighter separation. As for me I've always wanted to create a Battle-Mage in most RPGs I've played and some of them had to be cracked for this :) (I mean single, NOT multiplayer games *g* I don't plan to crack anything!)

I want to be able to learn everything like IRL, eg. if I want to be a Mage I'll spend a lot of time casting spells and creating Essences, thus lvl-ing up alchemy, but if decide to improve my fighting skills I'd like to be able to. I don't think anyone has enough time on his hands to create another char and lvl-up him once again from the beginning. Buying skills/attributes should be definitely removed and be affected more by what you do in-game, but actually I like the core of the system as it is right now. Ok, I'm not that experienced, but IMHO getting the harvesting skill e.g. up to lvl-20 took some time and different types of flowers/minerals to harvest, thus giving the player quite a variety of things to do in the process.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hmm, I can think of some excellent quests if you want Ent. I have had several ones in min,d that would take time to solve and such.

 

As for quests, make it to where any quest item cant be traded while in that quest (if you must keep the errands quest-i.e. you are in grammy quest, then you cant buy ANY type of glove or ANY type of cloak till it is finished).

 

And also, I think you should be able to proclaim yourself soemthing. Maybe like a house in say....WSC where you go whenever you feel to proclaim a new class, say make 10 classes (Fighter, Black Mage, White Mage, Thief, Assasin, Battle Mage, Barbarian, Ranger, Miner, Blacksmith, Traveler).

 

Fighter-Gets 10% extra in xp for Attack, and -10% in defense

Black Mage-Gains more exp when using a spell (such as fireball if it is put into game)

White Mage-Gains more exp when casting heal, protect, staus changing spells

Thief-They get 10% more exp in def, and -10% in attack

Assasin-Gains 15% in Comabt, and -5% in both attack/defense

Battle Mage-5% more exp for Magic and Attack, and -5% for defense and combat

Barbarian-5% in attack and defense, and -15% in combat exp

Ranger-5% for defense and combat, -10% in Attack

Miner-Gains 15% more when harvesting

Blacksmith-5% in harvesting, and 5% in alchemy

Traveler-Base Class for everyone, no bonuses or reductions of any ability

 

Atleast this way gives people more of a sense of belonging lol. And maybe set up guilds where you can ONLY go into and ONLY buy thing from these guilds if you are of that class. And maybe have set times of the week where for 2 hous of the day/night, only certain classes can fight, and swich the days up each week, so everyone can get a chacne to attack if they want.

 

 

NOW, I will e-mail Ent if I can about this next part:

 

I would like to create a hostory for each of the races to be placed in the library. The little bit of hostory in the races link isnt enough to interest me. But with these histories, gives people a way to look at their background/lineage a litlle bit better.

 

I have the entire human and elf races pretty much done...I think each os about 5-6 pages. And I would like them to be placed in the in-game library and/or atleast i nthe races page that has a link to a sperate page for the race history.

 

I am done for now....

 

For any suggestions on other races hitoies e-mail me at neofan69@hotmail.com (lol best place to send it as my @comcast.com I hardly ever check lol, and my othe e-mails site was retiring lol).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think there are only a few people who complain when they see a quest that is hard, a quest where you actually have to think, but I don't think the rest of us who like doing quests have to pay for those few who complain because of their lazy butts. If Ent is up to it, i would say put in more quests, so there won't be much monotony.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you're serious about that, contact Slayton. He's the semi-official head quest writer.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×