Greetings all,
I represent the Schrödinger Cats, a small gang of players who have been playing FOnline 2238 for some months now. We've established a base, got several characters to level 21, and generally explored the Wastes pretty thoroughly. We'd like to present some suggestions, as people who are virtually full-time gamers, to help improve your game.
We want you to know that we love, LOVE the Fallout universe and are deeply impressed by what you have achieved so far, even for a beta. So please keep in mind that all suggestions here are recommended for the good of the game, and not out of some petty-minded "I got killed and lost my stuff" mentality. We've died so many times that we're happy to accept this as part of the game world.
1. Verisimilitude
While we appreciate that Fallout is a futuristic sci-fi game, it is still subject to the same rules as any other fictional universe. This requires internal consistency to maintain the suspension of disbelief, or verisimilitude, to properly engage the player.
What this means is that fantastical concepts, such as powered armour, plasma weaponry or super mutants are completely acceptable because they are justified and rationalised by the game's own internal lore (it being a futuristic, post-nuclear wasteland), but, for example, a malnourished wastelander firing a minigun from the hip at 60,000 rounds per minute when he only has a clip of 150 is just too much.
We all know that a normal human being cannot do this for three reasons: Miniguns are always vehicle-mounted because of the enormous kickback from the weapon, the guy's clip would last for less than a second, not allowing him time to aim, and we are talking about a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where people are still using bottlecaps as currency - where on earth did this guy even get a minigun, let alone a realistic amount of ammo to use it?
Therefore, all comments will be towards making the game feel more realistic, and balancing it out for all players.
2. Player vs Player
We do not think the banning of player vs player, or even restricting it to certain areas of the world, is a good idea.
Banning PVP would also corrode the suspension of disbelief, as there would be no way other than metagaming to justify it. There does, however, need to be a reason not to do it. You'll notice that people, even in tribal levels of society, do not randomly kill each other and nick their stuff. It might be an orchestrated campaign (a war or raid) but the people who go around doing this on a small-scale are utterly vilified by society at large.
There should be some kind of penalty for unwarranted aggression, banditry and theft.
Players need to be able to see each other's reputations. When examining another player, the game should give a brief statement about their reputation and fame/infamy ('he is a notorious bandit and child killer', or 'he is a paragon of the wastes', etc). It could be that a player's reputation is below a certain threshold for any information to be given out (he isn't famous enough), but after a certain point other players should be able to find out something about the players they encounter on name alone.
3. Less Miniguns
You and a friend are in an encounter, you kill the enemies with your shotguns and pistols, and then ten Poles turn up, each armed with miniguns. Hang on - I thought this was meant to be a post-Nuclear War wasteland?! Where on God's green earth did anyone in this world find TEN miniguns, let alone the ammo to use them?
The Fallout universe is not an industrial one. There are no factories, no universities, no operative production facilities of any kind (at least, not available to your average wastelander) and there is no such thing as consumer culture. Unfortunately, FOnline does not reflect this.
We feel that it detracts from the Fallout experience when pipe rifles, 10mm pistols and shotguns are worthless pieces of equipment. To your average wastelander, these things should be worth their weight in gold.
If you look around the map, it feels good. Junktown is made of junk. New Reno is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Modoc is a poor town of dirt-farmers and brahmin-herders. The entire world economy is based around BOTTLE CAPS. The last thing that should appear on the horizon is a gang of people wearing high-tech combat armour wielding laser rifles, rocket launchers and plasma grenades.
Too much time has been devoted to the high-end spectrum of the game, without regard to the concept of making the character make the difference, rather than the gun he is carrying or the armour he is wearing.
We suggest that there be no provision for actually purchasing weapons above a certain caliber from vendors, or at least make them rare and extremely expensive. If a player creates and then sells a high-tier weapon to a vendor, then that's fine, that's an economy, and that player should expect to make a small fortune in caps from it. If you happen past The Hub one day, and one of the vendors happens to have a high-tier weapon in their inventory, you should be thrilled and not just brush over it with the thought "no, I can get a HK90 anywhere, I don't need that right now".
Now, this does not mean that low-tier weaponry has to be bad or cheap. You may think that because low-level weaponry is low-damage that it would cause prolonged gunfights, but this wouldn't be the case, as it would be between relative equals - two players with 35 hit points and everything to lose. The tension would be enough to keep Chuck Norris on the edge of his seat, and the rewards for victory seem much greater by comparison.
This means the value of low-tier weapons should be significantly increased. Why is a laser pistol - something that modern science has yet to invent - worth less than 200 caps in a post-nuclear wasteland? Cells are shockingly plentiful for a world largely devoid of electricity, so after shoveling shit and moving boxes for 5 minutes, I can now afford a weapon that is normally the apex of science-fiction weaponry.
With the 200 caps I've just earned from moving boxes, I should be looking forward to buying my first pipe rifle and ten shots.
Now, we know what you're thinking - "I don't want to use crappy weapons like the mauser!" Well now, the mauser isn't a crappy weapon - it's a god-damned GUN! You can shoot and kill people with this! When you've finally got hold of a magnum, you're a force to be reckoned with.
Essentially what we are proposing is a re-haul of the entire weapons system. We know this is no small thing, but just think how it would change the game and the way the high-tier weapons would be viewed. Combat would become more tactical, instead of just who bursts first. Combats wouldn't be decided in a single round of firing. And when you do stumble on to that level 21 character with combat armour and a minigun, you know for a fact he must have worked damn hard to get there, and you'll treat him with a good deal more respect. Not only that, but with great power should come great responsibility (did we learn nothing from Spider Man?) - hopefully by the time players have miniguns and combat armour, they won't want to bother gunning down noobs for their pipe rifles and mausers - it simply isn't worth the ammo!
This would make good weapons prestigious and worth looking around for or making for yourself. Players should spend more time with low-level weapons. The repair skill should reflect this was well - a pipe rifle should be easily-repaired with a skill of 25, with the equipment scaling up, rather than needing a punishingly-high skill level to even have a vague chance of success with. One of the main problems with maxed-out characters is you have nothing left to look for - you've got all the best weapons, armour and ammo, so now all you've got left is to go around terrorizing the natives because the players have become bored. Give them the opportunity NOT to have found all the best stuff right off the bat, and it will give the game far more longevity.
4. Give players a reason to be good
As said by Bertrand Russell, the only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation. In FOnline, there is absolutely no reason to be good, and every reason to be evil. It is very, very profitable to jump lone players, gun them down and take their stuff, but there is no profit to be made in helping a player out.
There is no reason for this either - the entire history of humanity is a story of cooperation, and a post-nuclear wasteland would be no different. Let us reiterate that we under no circumstances feel that PVP should be reduced in any way other than reputation, but as the game is you are actually PUNISHING players who don't want to live the life of a bandit by providing them with nothing else to do.
We feel this would be the single greatest addition to the game that we could suggest, and it could easily be solved by simply adding a mentor function to the game. Allow experienced players to take new players under their wing by NPC-assigned training missions, for which they can be rewarded for their time with caps, karma and XP.
This would do a number of things that we feel would be a boon to the game and player base in general. To start, it would encourage players to talk to one another and foster a sense of community. Community is what makes a game last, and so would be in the best interests of the developers, and would be most rewarding to the players to be able to make some friends.
It would also provide new players, who are trying to get into a very noob-unfriendly game, a leg up. Thirdly, it would give high-level players a way of earning XP without being a pain to new players. This would also give individuals a way of earning raw caps to inject into the world economy, something we're sure many of you would agree is severely lacking.
If the experienced players spend time with less-experienced players, it allows them to also recruit new and reliable members into your gang to help it grow. One of the main problems with the factions system as it stands is that you don't know who you can invite into your faction and who you can't. You'll never know, as you don't spend any real time with people you meet.
We suggest the following quests, given by important NPCs in each town, to a greater or lesser degree:
A. Training missions.
The town elder could, for example, give a quest for a high-level character to find a low-level character and arrange for them to join the player in patrolling around the town/area hunting down bandits. The quest might involve getting the low-level character to a certain level while they are marked as a follower, have them kill X monsters, discover different locations, get them a certain kind of equipment/gun, get them to craft their first pipe rifle or leather jacket, or something of that nature. For the NPC that issues this quest, they are receiving increased protection, trade and population for their town (visiting population, but people actually going there to stimulate the economy), the high-level player receives a chunk of raw caps and/or experience points (depending on difficulty of the quest. For example, getting a character from level 1 to level 4 might garner 5000 caps and 4000xp, whereas equipping them with a shotgun and leather jacket might get them 1000 caps and 500xp). The reward could even be incremental, with it increasing with each new player trained until a cap is reached.
For the low-level characters, these quests are their own reward. They get to meet someone and make a friend in a harsh wasteland, get into a combat where they might have a chance of survival and therefore have some actual fun and then get some experience, equipment and money.
Everybody wins, even if the motives are ENTIRELY selfish for doing so, any player will still want to do it!
B. NPC-set bounty-hunter quests
PC's that engender particular ill-will should have an automatic bounty placed on their heads for players to collect. Again, this does a similar thing to training missions: it pumps caps into the economy and gives high-level players a real opportunity to deliver 'wasteland justice'. A varying amount of caps/XP should be given depending on the level of the player, and the player that collected the quest must be the murderer in order to collect the reward.
They could be given a hint, for example: "Your bounty target was last seen in Modoc, approximately 10 minutes ago". The bounty hunter must then travel to Modoc, and if he doesn't meet him he's then forced to speak to other players who are wandering about to ask them if they've seen their target at all - another way of getting players to interact.
C. Trading and requisition quests
Have NPC vendors, merchants and tradesmen give requests to the players for things. For example, an armourer might ask the player for 15 brahmin hides, and in return he'll pay twice the going rate for them. Again, a good source of caps for the player, you're taking the less-useful junk out of circulation and not just clogging up the shops with them, and you're giving players something to do to earn some money without victimising the noobs.
D. Escort Caravan quests
While there are these in the game, they're hard to come by due to the stringent time slots they are available. It would be highly recommended to make these more flexible, and have a cooldown time on the quest instead.