Topic: Bunch of suggestions from an oldie
A few suggestions by somebody who did a nostalgic come-back trip to Faldon after 10 years. I don't claim to be omnipotent and some features could very well be only bad, but still I wanted to throw in my 5 cents. I guess this could promote "too long, didn't read"-responses but I honestly think there might be some viable suggestions too.
- Promote Faldon (more) in the Indie sense
As a small time game-dev hobbyist I have great compassion for Faldon in its independent development sense. For example the Indie scene has come up with several great ideas in the past, for example the Humble Bundle (www.humblebundle.com) and I see that Faldon player-base would profit from meddling in such affairs. I know that being an MMO poses challenges, but there are distribution channels for small-time projects that still have potential. Some examples: Steam according to my knowledge only charges for advertising, not for having the game on its list. XFire is an another gaming social channel and it doesn't contain Faldon and it would
require Faldon players to promote the game on its request-channel to be added. Currently Wikipedia lists Faldon falsely as an RPG as in a pen-and-paper game, not an MMO, and the game lacks its own page.
- More sandbox
Players could be able to build their own houses, upkeep them according to certain rules, make small changes to the map etc. Abandoned houses would be derelict if not properly taken care of. Customizable NPCs could be provided for the people to create their own creative content. Of course monster/item/etc spawning would be very limited to prevent abuse. It would be really nice to be able to show-off in other means than just flashy equipment or the swing of the sword.
- A scripted NPC for ranked PvP matches
A scripted NPC that would keep track of 1v1, 2v2, 2v1, etc balanced/unbalanced matches on the PvP duel field. You could challenge certain people to matches and according to their current ranking (scaled by level, gear, etc) you would gain standing or lose it for winning/losing. The specifics for preventing abuse and making the standing statistics work well are of course hard to define, but properly done this could be of great value. Rankings could be wiped monthly or so.
- Bring back qubic exp requirement instead of quadratic
Right now it seems that the scalability of equipment versus the achieved levels are way off. This would probably need a wipe or a fresh server anyway.
- Bring back agility as a separate character stat
Archers used to be distinguished from the warriors, and as I see that one of the greatest features of Faldon is its open-ended class distribution I would love to see this stat brought back. Also defence is useless nowadays, albeit it used to have its place in e.g. PvP (with defence I could cancel out 100% of Katana damage back in the old days and be only killable with glass-swords or so).
- Balance mages in contrast to warriors (for new players at least)
At least from a new player's view-point, exping wise and the cost of spells makes this "class" very unfriendly, although it is fun to play. PvP-wise they seem decent, and if dires are the hardest they can ever imagine to kill, this is quite different from warriors. Right now the only viable way to get a proper end-game mage is to level it up as a warrior and then stat-reset or so. The newbie/mediocre quests could include more spell upgrades until e.g. mediocre levels (5-7), to some major important ones (slimes, fireball, clit) to help them get started. The amount of active scribes has collapsed, and the new players might rely on say couple people (Link, Barbie) to be able to exp.
- Add buyers-market
Similar to the current market system, but allow offers for buying certain gear. For example a person could define they are paying for 5k for any prefix/suffix wiz talisman, and 10k if it is includes Noble and Wiz/Sorc/Whatever prefix and suffix.
- Separate default broadcast channels defined by the language of the client the player is using
The broadcasts by the BRs would go to Spanish by default. People could define which language broadcasts they would like to see, and they would all be visible by default. Also you could later change your default broadcast channel from e.g. options or by using an in-game command. In-game you could use "b1", "b2", "b3"... or so to talk to english, spanish, dutch broadcast respectively and "b" to speak to your default channel.
- If the development gets active again, monthly letters to e-mails of current accounts (able to disable too)
To wake up all those sleeping Faldon-fanatics and promote false hope!
- Improved keyboard customization
My shift-key on my laptop didn't seem to work and the game seemed to have some trouble with my scandinavian keyboard - I couldn't type certain letters/symbols due to hotkey'd jumps to e.g. skill or magic tabs. I would've liked to use WSAD instead of arrow-keys for moving and couldn't find means to customize this.
The last though on my head is the potential new client (coming year 20XX?), but I think for most of the people this is obvious remember to include Linux and OS X compatibility, if just possible.
I used to play around at the turn of the millenium (99-01 or so) with nicknames Some1, Some2, Nikodemes, Nikodemos and Nikodemus in guilds such as Paladins of Justice and Creatures of the Night. If anybody thinks they know me, drop me a message - I've forgotten almost everybody