» Sun Jul 05, 2009 12:21 pm Dang real life getting in the way of my gaming!
But the installments return! But this time with a disclaimer!
I do not believe I am awesome or better then anyone when it comes to these ideas. I am passionate about seeing a NON-fantasy MMO brought to the market and I've loved fallout since number 1 to present. If somehow the suggestions I give or the debates/questions they help form assist in making this game become reality then it's worth the effort and time. I don't plan to offend anyone and I apologize if I do accidentally.
With that said, lets go to installment 6 Quests/Missions/Roaming/Grinding[/i]
Under this we have one underlying attribute (experience) which covers advancement of our characters, making money, getting better gear, becoming more friendly with the locals, and getting those items that make us truly involved in the world that is the mmo.
[u]Quests - These are the tutorial missions as well as npcs sending you out to do things for them they can't accomplish on their own. Everything from killing rats... ........ ............ to grinding down epic-zomg-thats-rare-and-eating-my-face-as-I-look-at-it animals/characters. To fetching eggs for farmer brown since he's 'sprained his ankle'.
Quests quickly drive players insane with rage, loathing and hatred for NPCs. And nothing is worse then killing 1,000 zombies to GET to the NPC quest giver and the quest is "can you go kill 20 zombies for me!?" where you practically want to yell at the top of your lungs "WHAT ABOUT THE 1,000 I'VE ALREADY KILLED YOU MORON!!!!!!! (devs please please please take note, if there can be some way for our pip boys to track what we've killed and make it so we don't have to grind out the same creatures 3 million times I'll bet we'd all love you so much more!)
Missions - These are factions as well as players able to send you on more complicated quests. Instead of 'kill 20 of xyz creature' it can be as crazy as: Go to town A, meet man, get special ammo, go to town B, begin hunting zombies. After zombies are thinned, go to town A, lead party into town B and establish a presence to begin assimilation of town B. Return to me and get reward, oh and there will be about 10 to 20 follow up quests that will make that area and mission more expanded, explained and enriching.
Roaming/Grinding - This is simply where players go to the best area they can, find the best npcs they can and setup shop hunting them down gaining the exp, loot and caps till they slowly go insane, and begin drooling out of the side of their mouths.
This also leads to players dumping vast amounts of items and money into the economy. Which leads to inflation which leads to players setting up bots, which leads to RMT (real money trading) and the game goes to hell in a hand basket.
Why not give players far reaching, month and even year long objectives that replace grinding/roaming?
We all saw that games are used to npcs saying "I need you to bring me 20 of x item and I'll give you gold!" or the EPIC upgrades in a certain game where the npcs said
For something TRULY amazing I will ask you for more then you've ever seen!!! Bring me 20,000!!!!!! of 40 items each and I'll open a gate to another world for you!!!!
Wow, that's amazing. Really. (see what I did there?)
Anyway, I believe it might be a problem with server load BUT it might be worth mentioning. What if players were given objectives to complete by factions and NPCs that were almost as epic but were always running. Everything from killing opposing npcs, to gathering resources to turn in, to getting better at secondary skills, to exploring other areas to assisting other players on other objective missions so there is some interaction between players if they want the best rewards.
I'm not trying to punish players that only have some time once a week to play for maybe 4 hours. On the contrary I'd like to see players actively wanting to work with others to accomplish goals. I believe that would lend itself to the atmosphere of post nuclear fallout and having to struggle to survive.
That is the jist of my installment, however the parts below are types of missions I'd like to see in any MMO or Fallout that would lend to more then the same 50 missions/quests just re-skinned and repeated 50 million times.
Beachhead establishment - Think D day, you and hundreds of other players are going to go into an unopened territory and for the next 30 days creatures and NPC factions will be flooding the area trying to figure out what is going on or trying to gain something for themselves. It'll be hell, it'll be bloody, but man, the exp and rewards should be amazing if you can survive long enough to enjoy em!
Drug running - Faction B hates Jet, the faction your working for has tons of it. You think just delivering the 4 crates is enough? Oh heck no, you have to go sell to dealers, distribution houses and even work the street on the side to make some extra caps. It'll take a while and the risks are huge, but man the payout will be massive.
For great science!! - Just because the bombs fell doesn't mean everyone with a brain is gone. In fact some have seen it as an opportunity to further science! Collecting specimens, going deep into rad zones and running tests (things as simple as placing a rat in a cage in a crater for 2 days), and even running experiments of your own that may or may not be ethical fall into this. After all who's to stop you these days?
Chaos rules! - some people think that only through destruction does life advance. These people came to the fore after the bombs fell, they point to the new factions, empires and changes in the earth as examples of this. (they neglect to mention the billions dead, starvation, mutation and war that are part of it) But hey, there's always someone willing to further the cause a bit to help stir things up. Funding and supplying raiders, blowing up critical equipment, setting free a camp of captured slaves, leading a group of slavers to a hidden town, starting a mutated wildlife stamped into a city. All fall into the role of creating Chaos, and there's always someone willing to pay to pull such strings. You just have to find them.
Empire building - NPC factions might want to expand tiny camps or towns from time to time. Other factions don't want to lose territory, these are the brushfire wars that should be in the background and helping to keep the world from looking 'at peace'.
Not everything is human! - think of a very backwards daniel boone, you believe that everything has a right to life. Even mutants, ghouls and robots. Help these minture factions become more then a passing footprint under the tread of the bigger factions. Cause a robot swarm to begin attacking outlaying settlements, help the ghouls fight to keep the territory they've claimed since the bombs themselves dropped!
Re-exploration - Just because something 'was destroyed back when the bombs fell' doesn't mean it actually was. Radiation, dangers and war made all kinds of territory fall off the map. It doesn't mean its gone, it just has to be rediscovered! That's where you come in. You have to be the first to find a way in, document what creatures are there (maybe your pip boy says there are 47 different types of bio signatures in this region but it doesn't tell you what till you at least get close to each one for a minute or so) you have to document what the landscape looks like, where the resources are, what resources there are, what damage the area has taken and who, if any, npc factions has a presence there. Then you can sell that info, maybe even to a few different factions within a short time, to create a land rush!
Where the heck are we?!??! - Bombs fell, that's a fact. But do you think everyone stayed in the most typical places? Heck no. Artic bases, under sea vaults, under sea cities, people that went underground outside of vaults to natural caverns, miners that just kept digging when they figured out the bombs were falling that have had hundreds of years to create something that players can explore and learn about (or the game can expand to in future expansions). Being on the surface in a desert is fine and dandy, but there are other environments out there, we should try to push out to them at some point. Though space I'll leave to you...
I'll work on number 7, where I'll hopefully look at terrain, zones and scope of scale. See you next time dear reader!
Mix a few ingridients you just salvage from the ground or bought from another player and there you have it, a new potion. Problem is you know if it has any effect and if it does, what are those. 
Let's say, make them untradeable until you test them on yourself (love the experiment part); after, the recipe will be added in your PB for furthure use.