Yay for suggestion threads!
Okay. I’m going to list the things I consider to be beneficial changes in order of ascending importance.
1. Attempt to have character hair/limbs adjust to their armor. While I realize that this is probably a programming nightmare, it saddens me that I still have to see clipping in such an otherwise fantastic-looking game.
2. Slightly adjust certain jumping quest platforms. There are puzzle quests where places you have to jump are so specific and so impossible to read that it either takes YouTube cheating or multiple (sometimes fatal) attempts to figure out which small area you have to jump to. I’m looking at you, Dreamdark Enclave mushroom!
3. Fix the camera bugging that occurs in close quarters. Having that camera try to spam relocation when I’m in a small building or something is not only irritating, it’s dizzying and probably quite fixable. This will also go great lengths in allowing Norn and Charr to complete puzzle quests as easily as the other three races.
4. Enable proximity trading. Mailing items is clunky and weird, especially since cross-character direct trading has been an MMO staple for years.
5. Scale events (at least the ones you can) based on the number of players currently there. This would likely be exceptionally difficult to code in, but it would be a fantastic difficulty adjustment. When I’m defending a bridge by myself against hundreds of pirates, it’s just too absurd. When the raid brigade shows up and now we’re literally melting the pirates on their spawnpoints, as much as I like the free karma/exp, it saddens me that I missed out on a fun event because we overgunned it. Some of these events obviously can’t scale, but others (especially any event that involves spawning enemy armies to defend against) could be tuned so that a certain number of enemies spawn in each wave depending on how many people are in the event ring.
6. Fix the monthly survival experience achievement. This is not for me, as I’ve already completed it, but I know of several people who have their achievement counter permanently locked for no apparent reason, and the fact that it seems to reset every time you zone or log out is just not a good thing. As it stands, the only ways to complete it are either to stay in a zone for far too long, go to a really huge zone (like Lornar’s Pass), wait until you’re at a really high level, or sit in a city and craft the 100k. The first option is not good game design, the second is inhibited by the rarity of such large zones in “early game”, the third is obviously also cut off from casual players/slow levelers/hour-a-day busybodies, and the fourth is just a cop-out. And seeing as how this is tied to a pretty nice achievement set reward, it should have a priority fix within the next week in order to allow people to get their monthly chest for September.
7. This, above all else, is something I simply must have in the game, and therefore I’m bolding it. Switch the double-click evade to triple-click or even, I’d prefer, quadruple-click. This solves several problems. First, it prevents your character from stealth dodging—that is, dodging for no apparent reason because your keyboard read a double-click during your movement. Second, it allows frantic players who typically double-click to avoid similar dodge issues. Third, it allows us to direct our dodges, when we normally can’t because currently any person with remote sense unbinds the double-click option immediately due to the stealth dodges. Fourth, it doesn’t adversely affect the function of a direction-determined dodge because it’s very easy to quadruple-click something, especially when you’re like UNHOLYJORMAGFIREBALLINCOMING. I’m sure there are some relaxed sorts who can casually press their dodge button right when they want to, but I’d dare to wager that most humans simply aren’t like that on video games unless they’re currently under the influence of a particular narcotic. If you implemented this and I never saw another change applied to the game ever, I’d probably still be happy with it.
I strained to think of even these changes. You’ve honestly created a fantastic game. I ADORE the fact that you put puzzles in it instead of just entirely going with the standard “kill ’em all” mentality that most MMOs have, your worldbuilding is excellent (the lorebuilding less so, but I can deal with that), your races have interesting differences that are fun without being gamebreaking, and you’ve made your combat system something I’ve never seen in an MMO game. Keep up the fantastic work, fellas!