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I fully support these suggestions.

I support the principles behind the suggestions, but feel the details need to be discussed further.

I do not support these suggestions.

[Sargon of Akkad]

Our apologies, but we seem unable to add a poll to the original post.  We have included the original post below, for easy reference.

Regards,

The Schrodinger Cats

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.

[Sargon of Akkad]

5. Faction Wars

There is no direct diplomacy or conflict between factions. We feel this is an area that is severely lacking in the game.  We have noticed that groups of high-level players have nothing to do besides taking over a town.  Since not all players wish to do this, these players end up resorting to banditry and assaulting lone players just to give themselves something to do (Epislon Patrol, anyone?).

Not only this, but the player factions don't really feature in the game at all.  They take towns, but that's all they do.  You can't trade with them, its a devil for new players to join them, and you can't take direct action against one without first following one back to their base (assuming you're lucky enough for the player you're following not to notice you).

This is strange, because it's a whole area of the game you are not exploiting.  Let the players conflict with each other and the game will grow without you having to take any kind of action at all.  Player factions will create alliances with each other against stronger factions, and the world will actually gain diplomacy. 

A. Let Faction bases feature on the map.

We recommend that when a faction grows to a certain membership (20 members, for example) it is considered to be a town. It should show up on the map and players could visit it if they wished to.  This would make it easier for factions to grow, and allow actual faction wars to take place.  One faction could attack another, etc, and thus create a real need for diplomacy.

B. Let players see who belongs to what faction.

If a member is a part of a faction, it should be obvious to other players.  In the example of the Slavers, you get a big tattoo across your face, declaring it to the world.  Other players should be able to tell what faction you are because of visible markings like this.

This could simply be represented in brackets under the player's floating name above their character.  It could be based on perception or some kind of reputation rating, so that some may just have (unknown) under them.

Once again, this would give players another reason for interacting with each other. It might be a noob trying to join, another faction trying to initiate diplomacy, or a high-noon standoff in the middle of a town.

The bracketed name of the faction could be coloured to represent your diplomatic status with them (red for enemy, blue for ally, green for same faction as you, grey for neutral/no diplomacy).

C. Let faction bases do things for the public

A great example of base management is found in the Fallout 3 mod Real Time Settler.  It allows you to build different kinds of buildings and allow a base to provide new functions to the player.

We appreciate that allowing players to place buildings may be beyond the scope of FOnline, but we think it would be feasible to adopt some of the features from Real Time Settler.

i. Allow players to hire NPCs
   
Let the players hire different kinds of NPCs from the computer.  Simply adding a command that says "Open position" to take you to a menu to hire different NPCs would add much functionality to a base.  It should cost a significant number of caps, but then the game could just add the NPC to a forecourt in the base, that anyone can interact with.

We suggest starting with, but not limited to, the following NPCs:

1. Merchant - allow people who visit the base to buy and sell equipment.  This acts just like a normal NPC merchant.  For each item sold by the merchant, the base's treasury (a storehouse accessible by members of a certain rank only) should be credited automatically with 10% of the cost of the transaction.  This gives factions a reason to want to hire a merchant, gives them a way of making those precious caps and gives their new players a relatively-safe place to sell their equipment.

2. Caravan Master - allows low-level players to do a caravan quest, and each successful caravan trip should credit the faction treasury with a lump sum from the trip, probably depending on distance covered.

3. Master Craftsman - an NPC who can craft things, for a price.  If the player brings him the resources and his fee, he'll craft them an item.  Once again, a tax could be paid to the faction treasury.

4. Mercenary recruiter - Allow players to hire lower-level mercenaries, to allow them to gain access to followers early-game and yet not outshine the NPC recruiters in other towns.  Also allows easy recruitment of guards for the town.

5. Greeter/Town Crier - This would simply be an NPC who stands there with a shouted message above his head that the players set in the computer (e.g. 'Welcome to SchrodingerCatsville', or 'We are no longer recruiting', or perhaps 'we are looking to trade shotgun shells', etc).  This allows factions to make general announcements to the world that can be learnt about by players visiting the faction, and then taking the news elsewhere.  If talked to, he may be able to give out public information via dialogue.  Perhaps tell others of faction possessions (mining camps, towns) and the overall size of the faction perhaps.  The sort of things you'd want players to know.

6. Slave trader / Brahmin Trader - gives players somewhere to sell their slaves/captured brahmins, and the town can tax it.  Who says you have to be the good guys?

7. Player Recruiter - an NPC that the faction commanders can set to auto-recruit any player that requests it, to a certain level.  For example, the recruiter might be set to recruit any player of level 5 or above with a karma rating with the faction of 15 or above, and set their rank to 'member'.  These should be set in dialogue by the faction commanders to any specifications they want, as well as 'don't recruit anyone right now'. This NPC could also be merged with the Town Crier to save space.

8. Sherriff - an NPC who can automatically and manually put bounties on players' heads for crimes against the base.

ii. Let players destroy or capture faction bases.

This could work like the town control system, only with greatly extended time for destroying a base.  If the faction loses all of it's bases, it is destroyed and the players must found a new faction (or refound the old one somewhere else).  The faction base is removed from the map and replaced with a ruin, perhaps.

It's a harsh wasteland, right?

iii. Extend the current bases available

There is a good choice of bases at the moment, but they could be improved with a few extensions.  If the above changes were to be implemented, we would recommend changing the layout of the bases thusly.

Each base come with an interior and exterior.  These do not have to be separate sections of map, just a fenced-off area that can have a door guard, like any bank or shop in the game.  If you don't have clearance (rank or paid for) to get into the area, you get shot if you try to enter.

Better bases could then be bought with more concentric areas, so a base might have a forecourt that is pubic, a basic-member area that has containers, workbench, brahmin pen, farm etc, a second area that the more experienced members have access too, with lockers etc, and the command area, which has a few good lockers, a treasury (that the earnings are paid into) and a small stash that can only be opened by members of the faction.  This stash would allow raids to happen, but give the faction a place to put some equipment to get back on their feet with.

D. Faction Diplomacy

The computer terminal could be used to initiate faction diplomacy.  If one faction goes to war with another, it could be officially declared, or if a faction wishes to get peace with another that could be cemented with a proper announcement.

These could be announced in the same way that factions taking control of towns are - a message comes up, informing the world that the Rogues have declared war on Vault Silene Brahminy, or the Knights who Say Ni are allied with the Wasteland Eaters.

Inter-faction trade routes could also be established this way, but simply sending a request for the other faction to confirm. This could then be added to the Caravan Master's caravan routes for players to then guard.  This could be trading X of something that one faction produces for X of another, using the Say function to give quantities.

E. Mines should be conquerable

If you make mines conquerable, and pay out X resources to the owning faction for each person who has mined something from there (for example, for each 5 minerals or ores mined, the faction is given 1 mineral or ore), straight into their base's treasury, it would change the nature of mining.

This would mean you don't have to noob-harvest to get resources, noobs would be able to mine in safety and continue to progress through the game and it creates reasons for faction wars that are actually about real-life issues - control of resources.

It would mean that you actually want to protect the people doing the mining, as you're benefitting directly from it.  This would mean that enemy factions could come in and kill your guards and leave mercenaries on 'shoot everyone' to really screw-up a faction's resource income.  It would create reasons for wars and diplomacy in who owns what, rather than just "you're the enemy because you're not part of our faction".

This gives the high-level players something to do, and helps the low-level players progress through the game more readily, and gives enemies a way of striking at their opponents.  Everybody wins.

F. Give players titles

Even if they don't give specific bonuses, players love title systems.  It would probably appeal to a lot of people to have 'King' before their name, if they end up owning 5 bases or something of that nature.  These could be automatic or manual through the computer system, and would give a sense of structure to a faction and allow new low-level faction members to recognise higher-level faction members without actually having to read the whole roster to familiarise yourself with it.

These are the main ideas we feel would add real depth and longevity to the game.  We have many other smaller suggestions, and would be happy to provide these upon request.

Please let us know what your opinions are.  We would prefer it if you could avoid simple statements and actually go into depth about what we've written - this post took some time to write, and we did so because of a love for the game and not because we enjoy picking holes in things.  FOnline is an excellent game that we spend many hours playing, and we just want to help make it better and more immersive for a greater number of players.

Thanks for reading,

The Schrödinger Cats.

[Jeoshua]

Jesus they're good suggestions but I'm afraid over half of them would need reworking of some sort.  I agreed on nearly all points but you know what the general public will say?

TLDR

[Surf]

As been said already - those suggestions need a overhaul, especially when it comes to the visuals. It's a wall of text and needs formating. Also, you know you could've just asked a moderator to add your poll there before you open a new thread?

I will now add your poll to the other thread and lock this one.