Major freeroam and Pking areas. POST MAJOR IDEAS HERE!!

[Andy Knight]

This game would be so good if it had a big freeroam world with banks and pking areas to pvp and stuff, bit like runescape apart from runescape got rubbish since they removed pking. If you have any similar suggestions to add to this please put something below.

[TheUltimaton]

one question, whats 'Pking'?

[King Richie]

player killing

[Deathshock]

I do like the idea of getting rid of how everything is instanced, but i'm not sure if this is possible. However, everything in guild wars is instanced and that worked out fine...

[Banned]

I'm almost positive this system will never change.

[Demarrer]

Freeroam isn't possible on a a phone, I believe the devs said this somewhere.

[Splurd]

Freeroam isn't possible on a a phone, I believe the devs said this somewhere.

People need to start realising their iPhone is not a PC with gigs of ram to spare.

[Eltivo]

People need to start realising their iPhone is not a PC with gigs of ram to spare.

Yet it's bigger than the first PC I played the debut release of World of Warcraft with.

[Splurd]

Yet it's bigger than the first PC I played the debut release of World of Warcraft with.

uhhh huh... what are the specs for your PC then?

[Demarrer]

Yet it's bigger than the first PC I played the debut release of World of Warcraft with.

lol this guy

[Eltivo]

uhhh huh... what are the specs for your PC then?



Ok so maybe I over exaggerated a bit.....BUT!
Maplestory, a free-roam mmo (who's game engine requires more RAM than any iPhone engine) requires a minimum or 128mb RAM to run.
iPhone 3g- 128mb RAM
iPhone 3gs- 256mb RAM
with a lack-luster amount of players on and an iPhone game engine we can estimae that as a free roam game, Pocket Legends would require a minimum of around 70-100mb RAM.
Either way it's more than capable of going free-roam.

[Splurd]

It is a understatement to say that you over exaggerated but never mind, moving on.

I assure you, you will never be running maplestory smoothly on a 128mb pc.
Firstly, windows XP already requires 128mb ram for itself. Heaven forbid we talk about windows 7 and its 512mb minimum specs. And Dont even talk about Vista. Dont. :o
Secondly, PC's can play around with their memory, storing some lesser used portions of their ram into the hard disk. Virtual memory etc

Most companies just put minimum specs there for the sake of putting them there. Yes, Maplestory can run. But it would be laggy and slow as hell and your system will be crashing any moment.

Also, its not just ram. It is also about processing power and your video card. And since this is a mmo, on a iPhone, also have to think about network.

Anyway, lets just leave it to the devs to say whether something is "more than capable" or not. Dont assume its possible, and be lenient in your fantasies about a mmorpg on the iPhone.

[Futumsh]

One thing to understand if you want to guess at what's possible - on an iphone 3g, there can be as little as 4 megs available to a particular app. A free-roaming, non-instanced game is certainly possible in that, but it's not likely to look like PL does. That's not to say we may not add free-roaming components to the game, but they'll almost certainly be instanced (as the majority of pc mmo's are as well). It's that or reduce detail and visibility to almost nothing.

[Splurd]

Ascii based graphics! Back to the old days of Rouge!

[Hai5]

One thing to understand if you want to guess at what's possible - on an iphone 3g, there can be as little as 4 megs available to a particular app. A free-roaming, non-instanced game is certainly possible in that, but it's not likely to look like PL does. That's not to say we may not add free-roaming components to the game, but they'll almost certainly be instanced (as the majority of pc mmo's are as well). It's that or reduce detail and visibility to almost nothing.

Hi dev, can you at lease make it so maps are connected to each other? Like in order to proceed to 3rd stage of Forest Haven you have to go through Stage 1 and Stage 2 first rather than make a room with stage 3 to start. And what I mean by connecting map I meant instead of getting a "Cleared" message after clearing all enemies and then map changes, why don't you make it so we can just go from point A, which is the starting point, to point B, which is the end of the level, straight and proceed to the next level. That way it feels like at least we are in a world rather than each small stages. You don't have to make this game a free roam world but at least make it seems like one. I don't know if I did a good job on explaining it but take look at the Guild War. You start in the town(You can make a player spawn in a random town channel in PL) which can contain around 50 or more players to socialize, then player leaves the town, the map autatically changes to the open field which is instanced but the gam auto-group 4 party members together to fight monster on that map, upon exiting that first part of open field, the party proceed to the 2nd part of open field without changing party members(just like PL), then somewhere down the road, the party will arrive another random town channel with lots other peoples to socialize. So the Guild War isn't a free roam MMO, everywhere is instanced except town. Devs, I believe you can make the town and battle field connect to each other. Because right now in PL, what's the point to start game in Stage 3 if you can just start at the last level for higher exp and gold? if you make a player actually have to walk through stage 1 to get to stage 3 actually make Stage 1 or stage 2 worth playing. See what I'm saying?

[Malanius]

I Like that idea, and think the devs could make that sort of thing work. I think a guild wars model would be great for this game to follow rather then a full free roam game like WoW (though I'll be honest a WoW type world on my Ipad would be awesome). And one addition I might add, to make levels more fun and challenging, is to change the difficulty of enemies based on party level. I don't know how feasible that would be but I think it might at least be worth looking into, and could keep people interested in those beginning levels if they can't just skip through them.

[Hai5]

Hi dev, can you at lease make it so maps are connected to each other? Like in order to proceed to 3rd stage of Forest Haven you have to go through Stage 1 and Stage 2 first rather than make a room with stage 3 to start. And what I mean by connecting map I meant instead of getting a "Cleared" message after clearing all enemies and then map changes, why don't you make it so we can just go from point A, which is the starting point, to point B, which is the end of the level, straight and proceed to the next level. That way it feels like at least we are in a world rather than each small stages. You don't have to make this game a free roam world but at least make it seems like one. I don't know if I did a good job on explaining it but take look at the Guild War. You start in the town(You can make a player spawn in a random town channel in PL) which can contain around 50 or more players to socialize, then player leaves the town, the map autatically changes to the open field which is instanced but the gam auto-group 4 party members together to fight monster on that map, upon exiting that first part of open field, the party proceed to the 2nd part of open field without changing party members(just like PL), then somewhere down the road, the party will arrive another random town channel with lots other peoples to socialize. So the Guild War isn't a free roam MMO, everywhere is instanced except town. Devs, I believe you can make the town and battle field connect to each other. Because right now in PL, what's the point to start game in Stage 3 if you can just start at the last level for higher exp and gold? if you make a player actually have to walk through stage 1 to get to stage 3 actually make Stage 1 or stage 2 worth playing. See what I'm saying?

So dev, any feedback on this suggestion whether or not it's doable?

[Beermon]

Even if free roam was possible on the game engine we have now, why would you want that over the instanced? I mean think about it if you had five minutes to spare would you rather spend it running around getting to the cave, or would you rather spend it running around clearing the cave and gaining gp and xp? I mean ya if your sitting at home and have a couple hours to kill a free roam would is cool, but this is a phone a phone with very limited battery life, a phone that you goof off with on your lunch break or at the store or while waiting for food at a deli. This game is genius in that you can pick it up, kill a few hundred quirky little monster, then go about to something else. I wouldn't trade this system for anything I love it.

[TheUltimaton]

I believe that if we had the enter game system we have now, eg. go to lobby and enter game, could also work beside the connected maps, so you could walk or go straight to lobby, im sure some people would choose to walk if they have some time to kill and want the game to SEEM more freeroam(ish).

@Beermon: If your iPod's losing it's battery life quickly try reducing the brightness to lowest quality, as soon as you do it it will seem extremely dark, but your eyes will get used to it.

[Splurd]

I believe that if we had the enter game system we have now, eg. go to lobby and enter game, could also work beside the connected maps, so you could walk or go straight to lobby, im sure some people would choose to walk if they have some time to kill and want the game to SEEM more freeroam(ish).

@Beermon: If your iPod's losing it's battery life quickly try reducing the brightness to lowest quality, as soon as you do it it will seem extremely dark, but your eyes will get used to it.

Thats is not a solution, just a work around. Put it this way, assume if I reduce brightness to lowest quality, I get 5 hours of gameplay.
I rather spend this 5 hours doing dungeons and killing stuff, rather then spend 4 hours killing stuff, 1 hour running around.

[Orange_Revenge]

Arent we off subject? Anyways talking of this matter you could always implement teleportation as some games have,but going between dungeons could have sub routes. Take for example Pokemon you walk the routes, but you engage in battle meaning leveling up gaining items etc, etc. So if free roam could be implemented it wouldn't be just bare as if there wasnt enemy's along the way right? so you dont waste your time just walking you also gain xp and gp or as the other option you could just teleport there! :).

[Hai5]

Arent we off subject? Anyways talking of this matter you could always implement teleportation as some games have,but going between dungeons could have sub routes. Take for example Pokemon you walk the routes, but you engage in battle meaning leveling up gaining items etc, etc. So if free roam could be implemented it wouldn't be just bare as if there wasnt enemy's along the way right? so you dont waste your time just walking you also gain xp and gp or as the other option you could just teleport there! :).

Correct, you don't just waste time walking from map to map, you actually engaging in combat fighting against enemies on the road. Of course, if you are going to do some long distance travel, there can always be a waypoint systek implented for instantanous teleportation. To be honest, a semi-free-roam world is what I prefer over pure instant in PL. The fomer makes me feel more engaged.

Most important, the social experience in PL right now is horrible, i really did mean...horrible. In town, you can only walk to maybe a dozen people that's it. In map, you can only talk to 4 other players that's it. Dev should expand the chat feature by allowing chats from all players show up on the chat window. But if there are over 1K players talk at the same time, the chat window might be jammed. Not a very good idea. That's why I brought up the semi-free-roam like in Guild War into this topic. When a player enters a town he will be placed into a random town channel, so every time he enters a town he can always socialize with different people.