Several Suggestions For Game Improvements(warning: long post)

[derricks2]

This game has the most potential of any mmo of its type on the mobile market right now. I feel like if you want the game to make money long term you have to balance content for end game users and new players. On top of that you MUST balance the platinum system. That's a tough one because you must maintain a pay system that makes customer WANT to spend money, not forces them to spend money. I have some thoughts of things that might make the game a better game. I am also a developer so I know the time sync required for some of these ideas, but in the end I think each of the ideas will have their own pay offs. As a side note, these methods have been widely successful in other games. I will quote references where possible.

Things I will discuss in this post(this will be a long post, but good).

1. Recurring monthly payment system(optional, not mandatory)
2. Platinum on the market
3. Better platinum purchases
4. End game(Highest level) dungeon with unique rewards
5. Advanced PvP
6. Item customization
7. Achievements
8. Skill distribution

1. Recurring monthly payment system(optional, not mandatory)
First, don't get scared. Definitely not a mandatory system, but, in a mobile game you will lose everyone if you make a mandatory payment system. First, you need to make the payment system COMPLIMENT platinum. Parallel kingdom came out with this type of system. I will use fictional numbers as examples for this. In this system you would charge $5.99 a month. You would become a "premium" member. Being a premium member would gain bonus's to existing platinum mechanics.
Examples:
A) Exlixers last 2x as long(including daily free exlixer)
B) All platinum purchases are sold at 33% discount(includes exlixers, item packs, holiday packs, map packs, weapons, armor, rings, vanity items, char slots, bag slots, stash slots, etc...)
C) Premium members are granted 10 platinum per day as long as they are a premium member.


The idea is to make the deal so good that people WANT to pay you for the service. What you get is definitely worth the 6$ a month. At that price, a great deal of people will voluntarily pay this, however, these benefits are all optional. If you do spend additional money on platinum, it will make that platinum go further. However, you only get 300 plat to spend on your monthly subscription, thus this will encourage players to maintain more platinum, but, its not required. Platinum is free for STS to make up anyways, so if you have to drive the bargain up, its not costing STS anymore to do this and will begin a trend of guaenteed recurring monthly payments while giving the customers more bank for the buck.



2. Platinum on the market

Again, in several other games, the "pay to play" currency(such as platinum, food, gold, etc) eventually have been made into a tradable commodity. In parallel kingdom specifically, "food" is the pay to play item required to do things even as simple as leveling up. In my whole time playing PK I did not purchase food, I bought it off other players. Since it could be traded in some form, it was able to be "brokered." A small group of people purchased most of the plat that existed, and sold it on the market for gold, which allowed players to access premium content without paying RL money. It didn't matter, because PK owners made their money off the food anyways.

In PL, I think that it would be in the best interest of both players and STS to treat platinum as an item that can be sold for gold. That is to say, NOT to change the market system to allow players to sell things for platinum. You can only sell platinum for gold. I think this change will be easy enough and, even if it was not widely popular, worst case it would not have any negative impact on the community. I do think it will be popular and it will likely cause a influx of plat purchases for STS and the ability to get platinum without using real life money for all players.



3. Better platinum purchases

I realize that items purchased for plat should not unbalance the game and should not be better than drops of the appropriate level. In other words, I do NOT believe STS should sell platinum items like level 19 pinks with stats that rival level 30 pinks drops. I believe that items should exist with different stats than weapons found at the same level(not better, just different). This allows players more diversity in equipment. If platinum is available to trade for on the market, people lose their complaint that they do not want to pay RL money to get these items.

I feel like people would buy more platinum IF they had more viable items to spend the platinum on. Currently, their is not much.
Ideas:
A) Much, much more vanity to customize your look and feel without being forced to wear mismatched items because of stats.
B) Better weapons and armor that span from level 1, all the way to max level(whatever it happens to be at the time).
C) Rings up to max level. Create better sorting(by level, then primary stat maybe(str/int/dex)). Sell jewelry all the way up. Currently you only have to purchase once or twice.
D) Their are endless things you could add here and I think more is better. Low level is great, but adding things for vets is not a bad idea either



4. End game(Highest level) dungeon with unique rewards

I just came back to this game. What this game originally lacked was end game content. As pvp is pretty sub par and not a major part of this game yet, getting better gear is the only real goal. Once you get the best gear, theirs not really anything left to do and the game gets VERY boring VERY fast once their is no way to advance further.

To fix this, I was thinking a level XX(max level) dungeon. With the way it is, their should be a dungeon that required max level(example level 66) to enter. The dungeon would scale as level caps are raised. This dungeon should not require elixers, as a matter of fact, this dungeon will remove all exlixers from all players and are not to be used here. This dungeon and its rewards are designed to be challenging and rewarding, not easy and fast. No help from pay-to-play mechanics.
Dungeon Mechanics:
A) Requires max level
B) No elixers
C) 4 bosses total
D) Each boss will be a long/challenging battle, however the rewards will be good. This dungeon will be dynamic. The dungeon itself will remain the same, but when an expansion comes out, the level reqs and creature toughness and loot tables will be adjusted.
Boss 1) This boss when killed has 100% chance to drop a pink helm to each player. The pink will any existing pink helm from level 1 - [Max Level - 1]. Example: Any pink from Req Level 1 - 65(if 66 is max level).
Boss 2) This boss when killed has 100% chance to drop a pink armor/shield to each player. The pink will any existing pink armor/shield from level 1 - [Max Level - 1]. Example: Any pink from Req Level 1 - 65(if 66 is max level).
Boss 3) This boss when killed has 100% chance to drop a pink weapon to each player. The pink will any existing pink weapon from level 1 - [Max Level - 1]. Example: Any pink from Req Level 1 - 65(if 66 is max level).
Boss 4) This boss will spawn when all other bosses and creatures are killed. The loot tables for this Boss are all 100% unique. My idea is that the loot table will have 100 unique items on it. All armor/weapons/shields/helm/pets will be required level of 66(or whatever max level is at the time). Examples of possible loot: High Quality gear only available as loot here, different amounts of platinum as rewards, vanity items only available as loot here, rings only available as loot here, etc... As level cap raises, these weapons/armor would be the item loot tables new expansion bosses, while this new dungeons main boss gets a new loot table of weapons/armor. This means after the first time, you only have to make new weapons/armor for the max level dungeon. This cuts down on the required work devs have to do for new expansions.


5. Advanced PvP

Making PvP a viable option in this game would go a long way. Currently, its very very easy to get the best gear once you level up to max. Giving people something to do when they get that gear is a way to keep people interested. Currently, the best pvp is at low levels like level 20 because HP do not scale with level, and damage does. Especially with combos, pvp is much much to fast for anything above the 20s(and even sometimes with combos at level 20). Find a way to integrate a pvp balance(highly scaled down damage) and some sort of rewards program(like world of warcraft did with their PvP). People will participate more and your turnover will drop.


6. Item customization
Give a way to allow people to customize their characters so that people can come up with a strategy of their own instead of sticking with the same gear setup as any other character in the game. This can be done in several ways. Dark Age of Camelot had a system where you could level your weapons up and they would get better as they are leveled. If you get attached to a cool looking item at level 30, after just a few levels you have to end up giving it up because the next wave of gear is so much better. What if you could work hard to level that gear up to your level? The stats would increase on it and maybe add additional stats with this system. Maybe you find a high level weapon, but no proc? Maybe a way to enhance that weapon to add into your play style? This type of system would definitely be accepted by the community. No one likes "cookie cutter" things and currently that's what our item state is in.. theirs very few options.


7. Achievements

Even with new dungeons and weapon leveling, its always good to add a few more things that high level characters can shoot for! I feel like opening up an achievement system would help this. The achievement system would show a pre-set amount of tasks(like completing all quests in the game, owning over 1000 platinum, owning over 1000000 gold, having over 500 stash slots, completing all dungeon levels for X campaign(each campaign has their own achievement), reaching 10000 kills, reaching 20000 kills etc... Once you reach an achievement, you get something(that would be set by STS) like a skill point or stat points. This means that with a large achievement system, all level XX players will not be equal. Hard work can grant you additional ability points and it gives maxed out players more things to do. The extra ability points mentioned here is taking my #8 suggestion into account.



8. Skill distribution

I feel like currently only allowing each skill to reach 6 is too low. It allows each class to get about 85% of their skills maxed out. That is too many. Theirs no diversity in character. Everyone has roughly the same character and its boring. If you let all skills raise to 10, it would mean each person can only potentially max out roughly 1/2 of their skills. This makes different TYPES of characters... true dps classes, true tanks, true healers, buffers, de-buffers etc..., as it is.. you can be the best at everything. Increase skill rankings up to 10 and make people think their template out.



Well if you read all that I thank you and apologize for the several typos I overlooked. Hopefully some good will come from this.