Some clean up on thoughts

Last few posts have been vague and not well explained and some good people of the Zam.com Community forums have brought this to my attention. My grammar and format has been sloppy and a few of my presented ideas and thoughts where not well explained. So with this post I am going to shed more light on the key areas that where brought up.

1: MMO's today
  When I posted my introduction I criticized on MMO's but had nothing to justify why and I will do so in this paragraph. What I was trying to say was MMO's feel stale like a bunch of mimes just mimicking each other. Though game worlds differ and classes differ not much game play wise is different. You attack perform a rotation and just repeat. I feel there should be more utility to classes where they do have their primary form of damage/tanking/healing they should also have mechanics unique to their class that differs them from the others. This I feel can come from the use of the style of ability and spell. For instance I have two magic casters that can deal damage in my class ideas folder, but one can create line of sight spells and draw in spells such as the spell boulder: creates a boulder that allows the caster and their allies to hide behind to break the line of sight of the foe. While the other caster utilizes familiars(D&D inspiration) to alter the way they fight or aid others. Now these two spells are not holy crap amazing, but what they do is gives the two classes their own defined way of fighting rather than one being a class that uses damage over time spells and one uses direct damage spells.

 The next point would be a area I am very passionate about and that's boss battles. Bosses in MMO's today are so predictable that once they are figured out they are no challenge. I recognize that not everyone is perfect and they can still be difficult even if beaten, but to keep encounters fresh I feel when a boss is engaged they should have 2-3 sets of AI they chose from as in one way the boss is aggressive and another it is defensive. Bosses should be tough but be extremely fun not something that becomes the same old dodge this avoid this AoE strategy over and over again. Yes people will get all the strategies down but at least they will have the sensation of what is he going to throw at us this time.

 Finally I made a horrible choice in words by saying I want to make a MMO that is not grindy. A very intelligent zam forum poster brought to my attention that EVERY new MMO dev says this. This is true I should of said try to not make it as grindy, but in all reality RPGs will always have some grind to them you level up, craft gear, do dungeons to get gear, and do quests for currency and exp. I feel quests should have more variety to them and that they should have more rewards than a box that says "pick your reward and here is some exp and cash." Cut scenes are one thing a lot of games lack now and days and yes you will get exp and cash, but you should get some sort of closure to the quest than just a text box that explains it. I would love my quests to have cut scenes and cut scenes that have quick time events. I feel it would be very fun after you beat a said quest objective or boss and at the last moment they attack causing you to react in time to stop there finally attempt. There is more on this I want to touch on but I will discuss more when I get into the games general game play.

2: The game world
 This will be shorter because the game world or Selethra as I have named it is still in the works. The idea of the post on the game world was to give you a general idea of how the world will work and be presented. I will have more info and story out about it as I continue to post, but to get a more clear idea of Selethra I want to state it will be a world full of conflict as far as the different realms go. Each realm will have it's own story and look while they are shrouded with the mystery "How where the realms formed and why where they formed." There will be no factions as far as the races go. I chose this because I feel the way your character handles things and the way they act should be up to you. Say you like city A but dislike city B there will be a notoriety gauge for each city and if you perform good actions for city A you will be liked and then you can chose to attack players with high influence with city B or aid in quests from NPCs that causes city B to dislike you and being so you will be attacked by the guards. This idea is still in the works and needs to be fine tuned so it doesn't throw the games balance out of wack. On a Final note the Realm Guardians will play a huge role in the game world so pay attention to posts and hints on them there going to be a cool feature in the game but that's for a later post ;)

3: leveling up
Class levels are strait forward if you have played a RPG you know what it effects so no need to justify that. Character level is the most premature of the ideas and is still in the works. What this will do is allow you to gain traits based more on your race than class. These traits will be minor and have less impact but still have a use. A good thing would be giving you an example ha ha. Small race one will have a few traits to chose from and so will big race one lets say they are both level 5 character wise and have access to 2 traits. The small race will have the choice between A evasion boosting trait or a movement speed increase trait due to their small size. The big race will have a choice between a physical damage increase trait or a defence increasing trait because big guys are generally tougher and can take a beating. To take the grind out of the character level and class level difference if you hit max class level you will hit the max character level. The only difference will be there are less character levels to gain so they will SEEM like they are moving slower but will move at the same pace.

 OK finally the weapon levels. Weapon levels are very inspired by Legends of Mana and are a funner alternative to skilling up. the point in weapon levels is to make a weapon feel like a class of its own and not just a choice of what weapon has higher stats. Each weapon also has its own equip bonus that helps further this idea here is a copy and paste out of my weapon concept foulder to give you an idea.

Two-Handed axes

Equip bonus

Physical damage +3%, Attack power +5%, Critical hit chance +2%

Attribute modifiers

Strength: 150%

Vitality: 25%

Dexterity: 15%

Weapon power preview not all of them :P

Ground splitter: Dig your blade into the rock and strike at all the foes in front of you up to a maximum of three foes kicking up dirt and hitting at an angle dealing 25% additional damage and another 40% of the damage dealt in earth damage.

Whoo big ol' gap but I hope this helps you the reader in seeing what I want to do with the three levels of progression.

4: Thank you

 Thank you to the members of the zam community and the people here who PMed me about the flaws in my first few posts. I hope this helped you understand more about my vision and if you feel your question was not answered email me at gliningerblog@hotmail.com and I will toss you an answer asap.