Mortal online especially so started off as one of the greatest sandbox MMOs I've ever played and I had an absolute blast playing it only to have it be gutted by updates that pretty much ruined the game, and that is just one example.
Time and time again I watch this happen over and over.
A game with incredible potential and a good foundation slowly killed by a disconnect with the developers. The barkbox patch, The combat patch that killed off the current remaining playerbase and everything in between.
Don't get me wrong, there are a number of GOOD things in 0.2 but at the same time there are some extremely huge problems that people are beginning (if not already) starting to realize.
and so I went insane and wrote a gigantic list of garbage suggestions.
I enjoy theory crafting and playing with these kinds of things for fun, and discussion.
Be warned however I'm not going to make anything pretty or hyperlink/format sorry.
At any rate, here it goes
Attribute Changes
Make appropriate changes and normalize statistics to 0.
IE: all statistics will act the same way but the lowest possible value is 0 instead of using 10 as a baseline.
Statcap changed to 120 (meaning 20 extra stats to play with)
Strength
- Increases effective equipment weight by 10 points
Increases carry weight by 2
Agility
- Increases movement speed back to a cap of 25%
Increases strafing speed to a cap of 50% (or more hmhmhm)
No longer grants accuracy
Improves ranged weapon reload speed
Constitution
- Increases HP/SHP by 1 per point
Increases SStam, HStam by 0.5 per point
Increases speed 1/4 as effectively as Agility
No longer increases equipment weight
Will Power
- Increases carry weight by 1
Increases SStam/HStam by 1
Increases effective equipment weight by 5 points
Increase HP/SHP by 0.5 per point
Intelligence
- Grants Full Accuracy bonus
Reduces prefire and post fire animation times up to a cap of 30% (Applies to combos as well)
ATTRIBUTE SKILL BONUS
Now provide a STATIC increase to related skills.
Soft skill should count the same as "hard" skill (May require a second increase button for when a player wishes to increase his hard skill to the next milestone or his "soft" skill)
Meaning a character that has certain attributes maxed out can potentially have a good number of extra skill points to play with.
General/PvE/Etc Changes.
One thing to remember about ALL MMOs is that typically the majority of your playerbase are going to be solo or very small groups of players.
With the addition of NPCs I'm hoping this isn't asking too much but who am I kidding, this is all madness.
- Remove Invincibility and the magic forcefield in green zones.
Add NPC guards to the neutral trade cities. Guards will Attack red players on sight and will attack gray/criminal players if a player calls for help
Add one more Trade city for evil characters. Guards will attack players with very high positive alignment
Add invulnerable, decent quality crafting stations (as well as workshops) to trade cities (requires taxable coin to use)
Allow players to stable mounts in trade cities for a reasonably priced coin upkeep. (taxable)
Allow players to bind to trade city structures for a reasonably priced coin upkeep.(taxable)
(Essentially allow solo players to operate without requiring their own personal claim or base)
Eventually create Native "dungeons" plastered throughout the world, similar to UOs 7 antivirtue dungeons or Mortal Onlines dungeons.
(Wouldn't even be a bad idea to put some "easier" ones that progress into becoming much more difficult under or close to the trade cities)
Very rare random statue loot from NPCs -> These things are incredibly popular in Ultima Online servers (UOF and etc) People go crazy over their statue drops
Abandon native base raids, but parties of natives that attempt to move from one camp to another wouldn't be a bad idea (maybe)
Add more PvE stuff for players to DO, ie: UO treasure maps (which dropped as loot) were fun
Make the world round. (someday)
Remove Food quality modifier and give new mechanics to food. Lock exp bonus to 1 or something. (Should give additional value to power hours)
Copper and Bronze weapons/equipment: Copper cap around 30-40q, bronze 70ish quality (better than iron but inferior to steel)
Bring back voice chat from YO
REMOVE GLITCH DITCHES This is mostly done! needs some tweaking you can still get stuck sometimes. Good job!
Put a hole in the wooden keep for monument
Add more wooden keeps (a low skill one and potentially an expensive one in architecture)
Ability to spawn on rally point at any time
More craftable decorations, Sell additional skins for them.
Upon the next map iteration be sure to extensively include proper biomes. Massive deserts, arctic, etc
Add alternative structures to make living in such harsh environments less of a hassle (ability to build from readily available resources even in desert)
Add a general skills ability that bans a player from entering your personal claim "I ban thee", banned players may also be managed from the personal claim tab
Add a general skills ability that removes a player from your personal claim "Remove Thyself"
Add a general skills ability "Guards!", The player will receive a debuff that lasts 30minutes where Guards will aggro to the flagged player. Removed upon death
Rework criminal system.
- Becoming a murderer should be difficult to reverse.
Criminal time should only be removable by logged hours.
Yellow Name - Protected player newly created characters. It is not possible to damage them or poison them. This is protection for new players and lasts 6 hours upon transfering to a world.
(Using a teleport code will not apply yellow/protected status)
Innocent - players attacking a blue named player flags you as a criminal for 4 logged hours
Criminals - Innocent/Blue players may call guards on them and attack/kill them without penalty
Murderers - Town Guards will always attack them
- Free to play:
- Allow free accounts to transfer to Godenland.
Free accounts are locked to 1 character and T1: 60 Skill, T2: 30 Skill
Free account skill increase is slowed by half
- Skill loss on death normalized. Will always drop the same static amount regardless of alignment.
Skill drop equal to the current +60 alignment value, Negated by the regular subscription insurance
Upon death a character will ALWAYS leave a head in their tombstone.
Completely remove General skills.
Move crafting abilities such as art/decoration into appropriate crafting skills like artisan or whatever.
All characters act as if they have 100 horse riding and etc etc
Allow guilds to rent land to solo players, Potentially have a interface that allows solo players to see which areas may be available to them. Use new province mechanics, essentially allow small groups of players and solo players to get involved with the rest of the world without necessarily being forced into joining a guild
Either greatly reduce the upkeep on outposts or have them do maintenance weekly instead of daily (or some other method of balancing resources produced vs cost).
JH is a very good mechanic it prevents the terrible aspects of other games with 24hour destruction where it becomes a contest to see who can stay up later, however being more options on being able to stack into bases is needed.
IB - Implement a Mercenary system -> Allow guild leaders and minor leaders to put coins into the totem through the IB menu like a mercenary coin pool.
The guild leader may adjust % of coins granted upon a loss.
When accepting players there will be a new type of checkmark allowing the player to be accepted into the battle as a mercenary.
Upon concluding the battle the mercenary players will be given an equal portion of the coins from the "mercenary pool"
Completely rework alchemy -> Poisons and Positive preparations. (only very select effects are usefull currently such as restore softHP and etc)
- Lets make some use of your lore https://lifeisfeudal.com/LoreStories/?lang=en
A character may select only 1 deity
A character may change their deity once a week, doing so resets their alignment to 0
A system where killing other players "steals" alignment from them, however killing a character with 0 alignment grants no such benefit.
Alignment can be spent on very expensive "sorceries", do note however it's extremely important that anything magicky stays OUT of this game as the mundane nature of the game is a big selling point for many people.
Any kind of effects, items, abilities added through this system should remain very subtle (The greatest example of how to treat this is still Robert E Howards Conan stories (Not the movies!!!)).
Worshippers with very high negative allignment may be treated as if they were murderers
Each god has various items/abilities that can be purchased with positive (good deity) or negative (evil deity) alignment.
(If you really want to expand on your lore some deities may have different effects based on the characters race)
- Sleeper, Svefnii
PvP oriented, but lore says he does favour those that labor to exhaustion
Praise the god: Reduces alignment (evil deity)
Aori, Goldenhanded
Crafting, maybe something related to weapons of finesse (?)
Praise the god: Increases alignment (neutral deity)
Gloom
Very easily translates to potential in game mechanics, Worshippers do need a wearable codpiece
Praise the god: Reduces alignment (evil deity)
Holza the Spinstress
Time related abilities, Is the goddes of time/prophecy potential abilities may be information related or something
Praise the god: Increases alignment (neutral deity)
Kallente
Farming/Procuration themed abilities
Praise the god: Increases alignment (neutral deity)
Amate-Maksha, the Sunmaiden
Agricultural themed skills, Day related abilities similar in theme to Velent (Her lore claims to take the sparks of those that die during the day)
Praise the god: Reduces alignment (evil deity)
Velent-Elianne, Mother-Night
Night time related PvP style items/abilities ("burglary, murder, and other dark deeds")
A thieving ability (calling guards on a player that has recently stolen from you will criminal tag him and aggro guards)
Praise the god: Reduces alignment (evil deity)
Terskel and the Three
Party related items/abilities
IE: Can use alignment to purchase a consumable horn that temporarily increases formation bonusses
Praise the god: Increases alignment (neutral deity)
Jomfrutotte
Various personal fighting themed stuff.
Before an IB begins, may mark a player on the opposing side. If you can score the killing blow on the marked player gain a alignment bonus
The marked player receives a notification as well as whom has marked them
Praise the god: Increases alignment (neutral deity)
Jodenande, the Dead Maiden
IB/group fighting themed skills. Possibly something along the lines of sacrificing a sheep for a group luck bonus or something
Praise the god: Reduces alignment (evil deity)
Sófaþek-king
Various guild vs guild information related abilities? The god of knowledge and wise council so hm
An expensive but temporary totem that allows the checking of how many players are in an area? (like a very expensive GH active)
Praise the god: Increases alignment (neutral deity)
Rob the Shoveler
Various digging enhancements. Can decode treasure maps
Praise the god: Increases alignment (neutral deity)
- General changes
- Stamina Regeneration globally reduced by 15%
(combat effects like shield bash/trample/knockdown/etc should no longer drop war stance, Special attacks that rely on this should be appropriately buffed IE: shield bash special)
Being hit in Melee applies a debuff that slows the player by 50% for 2 seconds. (Active shield hit slows half as much)
Flee ability plays a voiced scream sound and cleanses any active hit slow, no longer unequips items, slightly nerf move speed increase.
Visual recognition is very important in any pvp game
- Tabard model changed such that the armor underneath is at least somewhat visible
Remove ability to apply higher tier skins to armors
New effect/sound for when a wound/fracture is scored
Having negative soft HP equal to your current maximum hard HP kills you
Luck has a passive increase to everything equal to 10% current luck value. (Multiplicitive, not additive)
IE: 100 luck increases armor/weapon/passives by 10%. An armor resist value of 50% would become 55%
Different tiers of Catapults (trebuchet being the best), Rams, ramps/ladders etc
Parry
- All classes should have weapons with a riposte special attack with a VERY low base prefire animation speed (like 0.1/0.2 seconds)
Active shield block changed to a directional block, Shield hits behave the same as current active shield
A successful shield parry does not grant a riposte special attack but DOES apply a greater stamina drain (like the current system)
A succesful parry cleanses hit slow (including a succesful shield parry)
Wounds
System in general needs a small rework, should try to take a step away from RNG. Consider having hitpoints to each limb and a weapons wound/fracture multiplier does that much "wound damage to the limb" Limbs can have stacks of wounds up to a cap or something hmhmhm (note that my changes below assume the current system in game but all that would be required is scaling the wound effect to match)
- Fracture changes
- Broken Arm: Increases pre/postfire animation speed by 10%, Reduces missile accuracy by 25%
Broken Leg: Decrease Movement speed by 5%, Decrease strafe speed by 25% for the side the broken leg is on
Broken Chest: 10% slower soft stam regen, +5 stamina cost per swing
Broken Head: Combat Sprint and run costs 50% more stamina, 10% slower soft stam regen
- All bandage abilities to stop bleeding from Battle survival moved to skill: 0
Arm: Bleeding duration increased to 5 minutes
Leg: Bleeding duration increased to 8 minutes
Torso: Bleeding duration increased to 12 minutes
Head: Bleeding duration increased to 15 minutes
An armor that is broken is not unequiped but loses 75%l effectiveness.
Add Tailor and Blacksmith armors for each class. IE: Blacksmith armors for Guard and Ranger tree, as well as tailor armors for Cavalry, Sword, and Berserker
All armors should be good against certain damage type but not to the point where we're playing with rock-paper-scissors armor
Fighting an opponent with a favourable weapon against their armor should provide only an advantage and not a near autowin
Tailor should have much better passives but lower damage reduction for those that wish to play a glass cannon agility typed playstyle
Increase Maximum Magnitude of passives abilities of Tailor armors by either 1.5x or even 2x
I used to have specific numbers here but I wrote them quite some time ago before the archer cancer patch
so I'll use a rough scale of
Terrible, Bad, Meh, Ok, Decent, Good, Great.
and most of my fighting in the new patch has been naked with the occasion T1 set so still getting a feel for the new damage values
Take them with a grain of salt. I just write this garbage for fun.
All in all in a perfect world it should take at MAXIMUM 15 to 20 hits to kill a player and Minimum 2-4ish
However with a fully geared opponent it should take a decent amount of hits to kill them even if you're using a favorable weapon.
He will have to hit you more times to kill you but the numerical advantage as far as TTK difference should end up somewhere in the 30% range
I may repeat a few things here, but in general
Tailor armors -> Relatively low to medium defence, Low-Med weight, Greatly increase the magnitude on passives TTK should be end up around anywhere from 2-8 hits
Blacksmith armors -> High defence, High weight, Standard Passive magnitudes TTK can end up anywhere between 5-20++ hits
Like with all PvP equipment all Tiers of gear should be useful in some context, either in a niche or a specific build.
Armors should give an advantage against certain damage types but never into rock paper scissors territory where we have the hot garbage that is the current armor values.
- Militia, Spear, Guard:
Padded
- Slashing Meh
Piercing Good
Chopping Terrible
Blunt Decent
Siege Decent
Passive: Increase Militia/Spear/Guard tree weapon damage, Horse trample damage reduction
- New Blacksmith armor
- Slashing Decent
Piercing Great
Chopping Bad
Blunt Good
Siege Bad
Passive: Increase Dismount Chance, Chance to avoid knockdown on horse trample
- Slinger, Archer, Ranger:
Leather
- Slashing Bad
Piercing Meh
Chopping Terrible
Blunt Ok
Siege Great
Passive: Missile weapon damage resistance (should help pure archer builds from dying to incoming missile fire during initial skirmishing)
Bonus % to reload speed
- New Blacksmith armor
- Slashing Decent
Piercing Ok
Chopping Bad
Blunt Meh
Siege Meh
Passive: Thrown weapon accuracy bonus, Missile Damage Bonus
Cavalry, Knight, Lancer.
Mostly a non naked option for the glass cannon spirited lancers.
- New Tailor Armor
- Slashing Ok
Piercing Terrible
Chopping Bad
Blunt Terrible
Siege Decent
- Chainmail
- Slashing Good
Piercing Meh
Chopping Ok
Blunt Bad
Siege Bad
Passive: Decrease Chance to fall out of saddle, Increase horse trample damage
Footman, Swordsman, Huscarl
- New Tailor Armor
- Slashing Meh
Piercing Meh
Chopping Meh
Blunt Meh
Siege Ok
- Scale
- Slashing Decent
Piercing Good
Chopping Decent
Blunt Meh
Siege Bad
Assaulter, Vanguard, Berserker
- New Tailor Armor
- Slashing Decent
Piercing Terrible
Chopping Ok
Blunt Bad
Siege Meh
- New Tailor Armor
- Slashing Great
Piercing Meh
Chopping Good
Blunt Bad
Siege Terrible
Weapons/Combat skills
Many missile weapons (especially Bows) should now have a Intelligence requirement.
Broken weapons are not unequiped but have their models changed to a broken variant and effectiveness reduced by 50%
EVERY weapon should be viable, it's ok if some weapons are mostly useful in niche situations so long as everything has it's place where it becomes optimal.
Many weapons were overnerfed in 0.2, while globally lower damage is in many ways a good thing as it brings the TTK back down from the december patch (Good job here!)
However some weapon values don't make sense in comparison to others.
Assaulter
- Increase Estoc length, buff swing damage slightly
Increase claymore weight, slow down slightly, increase swing damage
Investigate zweihander hitbox/length
- Weapons should be comparatively slow. (in 0.2 they do seem to be slower, Good job!)
Weapons should be relatively high damage
Investigate bardiche hit box
Militia
- Unironically buff Pitchfork
Remove disarm from 90 skill and replace it with the ability to throw shaped stone for massive blunt damage. low arch, mostly for lobbing down walls
- Slowdown fast weapons to a level such that their hitbox does not lag behind their animations.
Greatly decrease the prefire time of wall of pikes, and have the hitbox behave as though it were active so long as the character is holding the attack.
Wall of pikes greatly reduces turn speed
Using any of the standard Melee attacks with pikes allow the character to walk/move
Investigate Awlpike hitbox in comparison to other spears
- Add an ability in antithesis to iron grip. Allows the player to ignore knockdown from horses for a short duration.
Left swing on poleaxe (the blunt end) changed to blunt (or siege) damage.
Adjust Guisarme, Partisan, Glaive. Some were over nerfed and have lost their utility/purpose
Cavalry
- Globally increase trample damage
Swinging attack animations changed to more easily attack ground infantry.
Overhead and thrusting attack animation changed to lean slightly to more easily fight other mounted cavalry
Note: Animation changes should apply to all weapons used while mounted
Investigate hitbox length and damage values on cavalry swords.
Globally reduce hitpoints on all horses (This however may not be necessary anymore as it feels horses are much harder to spam now)
Add a basic animal flee AI to all Horses when being attacked without a rider
Horses now have their own paperdoll and may equip different bardings (as well as tabard) Accessible from the horses context menu.
Horses are no longer slowed by player equip weight but do suffer a stamina penalty
Horses are however slowed by their own equipment
Tabard heraldry is applied on equiping, and does not change until packed away (stolen horses will retain the equiped heraldry)
Horse deeds only packable/unpackable from stables.
IBs transfer currently mounted horse with the player to the battle
Ability to ride warhorse moved to skill 30
Can mount horses with novice horse armor.
- Ability to ride Hardy warhorse moved to skill 30
Can mount horses with Regular Horse armor
- Lances useable on ground, Behaves like a pike
Most shields useable with lance while mounted (large shields are un-useable in this manner)
Can mount horses with Heavy and Royal horse armor.
Horse armors should vary greatly by type but commonly should have decent slashing resistance. The horse itself SHOULD end up with even more tankiness against archers, and possibly depending on values of the armor even more tanky against infantry as well
A reduction to horse RNG effects such as horse stuns and the like would be a welcome change as well.
Cavalry is exceptionally strong in mobility and changes should also be made to help cavalry use swords against infantry effectively
However getting caught by proper anticavalry options should be properly punished and not a simple task of just running back to the horse and remounting
Footman, Swordsman, Huscarl
- Investigate 1handed weapon hitbox interaction with server and lag compensation. (This whole class of weapons seem to be acting strangly at the moment)
This whole class was probably the most balanced class prior to the archer patch, should aim to bring it back to its previous level.
- With above attribute changes adjust weapon requirements to require intelligence
- Improve the accuracy of thrown weapons especially while sprinting.
- Increase the cooldown of stopping power and "arrow to the knee"
- Use pavise changed to a combat bar ability, Activating drops pavise at target location, activating it again picks the pavise up.
And there it is, good job. You made it to the end of my garbage.
What you do from here? Idunno pray they don't do something silly like remove barkboxing again.
