W13's List of Suggestions

[W13]

Somebody posted about this game on Zybez forums and it piqued my interest. I hope this is a serious project. In case it is, here's my suggestions:


• Change the name. "Thornefall" sounds like it was made using a 'random MMORPG title generator'. It's so cliche sounding, right? :-D Come up with something that has a deeper meaning and something that makes one wonder. Thornefall reminds me of Titanfall, except Titanfall is called Titanfall because those 'titan'-like mechs 'fall' from the sky.
• Devices: Like it or not, the world is moving away from PCs and towards tablets, etc. You need to incorporate this early into your game. I want to be able to play on laptop and then go to the toilet to take a poop and play on my Samsung Note 8.0 tablet (I don't believe in wasting XP). Also, supporting devices puts you into Apple, Microsoft, and Google's app stores. That means huge traffic for free.
• Replace all the RuneScape assets (which I'm sure you're just using as placeholders) with your own creations (I'm sorry if I'm mistaken and all 100% of the assets are your own creations already). This is for legal reasons and from my own experiences in the past, I can tell you that Jagex is very trigger-happy when it comes to legal stuff. Keep the art style as close to RuneScape as possible though! That's the magic which will make this game a success.
• Make a very nice Kickstarter page with a professional-level video showcasing all that your game can offer. I bet this game has the capability to reach several million dollars on Kickstarter if you curate the page properly and do the video right. I can't stress this enough: Don't rush into this unless you've spent at least a month researching on how to do it properly!
• Once you've got the cash, then you can quit whatever you're doing in real life, recruit a very small group of experienced/smart/motivated individuals, and actually sit down and make this game properly.

More suggestions:

• Talk to seasoned players that have been around for many years and ask them what they liked and disliked about RuneScape and other games. Don't trust people's opinions too easily: often people give you idiotic ideas, and you can't always trust a democratic poll either because people often don't understand the repercussions of something before supporting it.
• Google-based authentication. I have two-step authentication on Google which means it's super-safe. RuneScape.com requires me to login like 8000 times per day. If there was a keylogger on my computer, my Rs password would be the most frequently occurring phrase. Anyways, just make sure that you build in easy-to-use, fast, and secure authentication early on.
• Anti-bot measures. People say RuneScape started going down after Jagex messed with Free-trade and the wilderness. I say it's actually because of the chronic bot infection we had. So, pay attention to this early on and don't tolerate a single bot.
• Competitive: Games do well thanks to competition. So, build proper tournament/ladder systems that track fights and K/D ratios etc for clans. But, give the clans as much freedom as possible. I'm not an expert in PvPing but you should ask prominent and ex Rs clanners.
• I think Jagex waste too much of their energy on putting out new content updates as often as possible. Focus on quality rather than quantity otherwise you'll have such a huge load of low-quality content and not enough resources to support/fix it all.
• Keep to the theme. If you dressed like a total idiot in RuneScape 3, you'd fit right in with everybody else there. What happened to walking around wearing armor, looking like a knight? Now everybody looks like a douchebag with outlandish colorful outfits. Don't go down this road. Keep it "realistic".
• Don't lie to the players. What I mean is: don't insult the intelligence of the players by trying to deceive them or not being honest with them or not being transparent. Many game companies do this and it pisses the players off. People say that they like one game over another due to the community. I say: people like one game over another due to the atmosphere presented by the game publisher/developer. If it's a corporate/cold/hostile/dishonest atmosphere then I don't feel comfortable. If it's a casual/honest/transparent atmosphere, then I'm happy. -- If you're honest and clean, you'll find that players will generally respect you a lot more.
• Microtransactions: if you take this route, you have no respect from me and many others like me. Keep it old-fashioned: I pay you monthly and you provide me with a game worth playing.
• Don't sell out to investors, publishers, etc. or else you'll lose all respect.
• Be careful not to release too early (even an open beta) where people start comparing an unfinished Thornefall to RuneScape and realizing that RuneScape is better. So, release this game ONLY when it's definitely better than RuneScape.

Even more suggestions:

• I don't think PvP should be completely exclusive to those that want to partake in PvP. There needs to be an element of danger (although very small) for regular players as well; this will also create new opportunities for PvPers. SO, how to do it: imagine the wilderness of RuneScape: except make it shaped like a huge circle. All around it will be the safe non-PvP world. Players would be able to walk all the way around it to get to the other side (the long way), or they can be like, "fugg it, I'll just run across" and take the short way by cutting across the middle of the circular wildy. (I have previously come up with another idea for RuneScape. You can see it: Beyond the Wilderness ( http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1550201-beyond-the-wilderness/ )).
• No teleports. We're so used to teleports but I think they're really overdone in RuneScape. Yeah, I know walking from town to town is boring, but it makes exotic places more exotic. I think you should make the decision to either get rid of teleports altogether or use them sparingly by making them difficult/expensive/rare/inaccurate.
• No set classes: Make it exactly like RuneScape where people can be a ranger one minute, and then switch their gear and suddenly they're a mage.
• Healers: I play other MMORPGs and healers are an essential part. In RuneScape though, they aren't. So, I suggest you make combat more dynamic by encouraging dependencies on different classes. It's boring to see 50 guys all wearing the same gear running around the wildy. Also encourage players to adapt by wielding different gear depending on the group that they're in: so if two guys are wielding swords, then it'd be better if I wield a mace, etc.
• If somebody's chopping a tree, and I'm standing right next to it, then it should be able to fall on me and hurt me. :-D It's not PvP but it's an element of realism where your actions can affect others around you.
• Instances: I'm not a fan of instanced gameplay (instanced boss/dungeons, dungeoneering, etc). It's just not very immersive/realistic. But this is one of those controversial things that people have different opinions about. I may be a minority here. I guess you can always go the way RuneScape has and make it a mix of instanced and non-instanced bosses.
• UI/UX: needs to super easy to use, super fast (require as little mouse-movements/clicks across the screen), self-explanatory, and shouldn't take up the game-screen too much.
• Lore: Don't be too lore heavy at first. I feel many new game developers try to create all this elaborate lore and it ends up being overly complicated, boring, difficult to grasp/related to, and incohesive with itself. You need a broad, main idea (e.g. "good vs evil") and then build narrower/specific ideas on top of that (e.g. a man betrays his family) and then very specific resolutions in the quests (e.g. he is forced to betray them in order to save their lives). Remember: Chekov's gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun .
  
• Quests: Please make them RuneScape style rather than traditional MMORPG style (please no "deliver 50 apples to Bob"). Quests should be complex and that'll require a robust quest scripting system.
• In-game screenshot capture and a gallery on your website where it will automatically be saved along with meta information about whatever's inside the screenshot: items, players, areas, NPCs, etc. (I suggested this for RuneScape a while ago. More info: http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1550703-in-game-screenshot-system/ )
• Twitch support.
• Auto-sort/arrange for bank.
• Logout timer in PvP areas will be 1 minute. Logging out shouldn't be a PvP strategy.
• RuneScape references: an NPC named "Stupid Old Man". Sheep next to a small bridge named "Lamb Bridge". A whole town named "Gowersville". A guy that sells hyped-up medieval fast food named "Mad Mark".
• Do more research when creating areas in the game: for example, Al Kharid... when it was first released in 2001, it said 'Danger' in Arabic on one of the signs. I saw it and smiled knowing that Andrew Gower probably asked an Arabic friend or did some research himself. Copper and tin make bronze! We need more of this real-life knowledge in the game rather than just crazy fantasy stuff like unicorn horns and divination memories. So, I suggest your content developers do their homework properly. Even the fantasy stuff, they should get it from historical/ancient mythology and literature. A deceptively educational game is an interesting game.
• SteamOS support? (that haptic gamepad, specifically)
• Oculus Rift support? Just kidding.
• 5.1+ surround audio support. Ability to turn off audio so it is never downloaded to the player.
• Translations: This is a touchy subject... jokes and references are often lost in translation. But at the same time, using just English alienates the massive Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese markets. All this can be crowd-sourced though.
• Accept Paypal payments along with various other methods. Don't exclude people based on their geographical location.
• Optional chat filter.
• Ability to report bugs via in-game system.
• The option to pre-download all textures, models, content, etc. so that the game is smoother afterwards.
• Summoning: less like RuneScape, more like other MMORPGs. If I summon a familiar, and then the next day summon it again, it should be the same familiar - not a new one - oh, and I should be able to level up the familiars too... the more I train them, the higher their levels in whatever their specialty is.



Finally, I just want to repeat: I hope this project is actually serious :-D I've been waiting many years for a RuneScape clone which isn't just a private server. If this is indeed the real deal, then I wish the developers good luck and want to say to them that we (the current and ex) Rs players will support you.

[1]

I agree with pretty much everything here, some excellent suggestions especially about setting the game apart from Runescape for legal reasons.

The idea for Kickstarter is excellent and as you said the game has perfect potential for making a good amount of cash from crowd funding.

Some great suggestions and I hope the developers take a lot of this into accounts.

[W13]

Thanks for the response, Cody.

Glad to know that you guys already had a bunch of those in your mind. :-) Can't wait to hear more about this project.

[Edmondveife]

These are all good suggestions. One thing though, I dont see a reason to add NFLE simply for the fact that the league disbanded it this year.