Hello!

It is my first post in this forum. I am playing Dungeon runners for some month now, sometimes regularly (at weekend, or if I cant work because of lack of creativity), sometimes I am not online for a couple of weeks as I am busy with working. So in average I am a casual player. My character in the game is Schattenspiel. Some people will know me (which might be positiv or negativ).

I am a NON MEMBER. I was nearly persuaded by the box to become member, because it was a really fair offer (most people will agree). But I know, there will be times when I will not be able to play for weeks, so even if its cheap in comparison to other games, I would pay for something I don’t use. That was for me the reason to choose a free online game instead of other popular games with maybe more opportunities, better graphics and so on.

On the other hand, I like DR. It has more the the flair of an open source project. The developer are very close to the players and new ideas of the community influence the direction of the design. So becoming a member is more like supporting a great project, than buying a product.

In the moment you make the game a product, do advertisement, the expectations are different. Members are customers now, instead of supporters or part of a community.
As a customer with a long term contract, I expect long time entertainment.

DR is a game with potential and good ideas, no question. Its fun for a while. But has it enough long time motivation for a casual player? I think it has to many limitations.

In the beginning everything is new, you find new items all the time, get new skills, level up fast, get your first rainbow, win your first PvP match. What happens after that. When you killed the same boss the millionth time?

A lot of people start playing, but most will never reach lvl 30 or 40. After the introduction of the box, the servers were full for a time, but now, especially on the PvP server its often very empty.

Dungeon runner is a nice game, but it has its weak sides and I think it might become a better game for casual players (which are the main group of interest for NC) with some changes of the trading, the fighting and mainly the PvP System.

The trading system:

Dungeon Runners, like many games of this type (of course the mother of all games: Diablo) are very simple. Click your mouse, kill monsters and collect stuff. People play, because they want more and more and more cool Items, they play another hour, because its just time for them to get their first rainbow and Sissirat or SC or some other boss will drop it for sure. And if not, it must happen the next hour.

After some time you have lots of rainbows, few space in you account and you cant use all this crap, as you are a fighter and got only mage and ranger stuff. So you want to trade, to get the sunstone armor.

Unhappily trade is often not successful. You offer items, others want them, but they don’t have the stuff you want, or the other way round.

To solve this kind of problem, people invented long time ago in human history the money.

Now I cursed the designers with fear of gosh. Trading with money is an onlinegame designers nightmare.

Monsters a permanent source of money. As NPCs usually don’t offer real good items and you cant make potions to expensive, a lack of sinks creates an inflation, like in a national economy. There is too much money on the market and prices will explode, making items not affordable for newer players.

As we know, in times of inflation other currencies are established, for example gold (but the reason is, that the amount of gold is more or less stable, while you create it in online games all the time) or cigarettes.
Cigarettes have the big advantage, that some addicted people have to use them and need new ones all the time + they are hard to get in war times.
One of the new ideas in good old Diablo II were items with sockets, and stones or runes to upgrade this items. That was a lot of fun. People had not only to collect items, but also this stones, tried to upgrade them or hunted for one of the really seldom runes. They although tried to figure out secret combination to get some extra bonus.

A similar idea would be good for the long time motivation in DR. More stuff to find means more fun in a game, mainly based on collecting. People can create customized items for their strategy and will spend lots of time to build the sunstone armour with two diamantes and this special endurance bonus rune they where hunting for weeks.
If its designed in a way, that this items don’t outlevel RBs completely it would be a lot of fun and is not so difficult to create like a craftsmanship system (which is not really fitting in an action RPG).

This might be connected with a new quest in a crystal cave, with some new bosses, basically like HDoL but with a higher chance to find stones instead of RBs

If this new stones would be designed as tradable items, they might be a currency like cigarettes. They are rare and people will be addicted to them, they hunt them and want to build their own items (which should be soulbound, so that creating items is a sink for stones).
I think this would create a stable trading system, allowing a lot more transactions than now and fewer people have to announce the same items over and over again, spamming the market chat.
To Backup against a still possible inflation a NPC Shop trading perfect stones against RBs should be introduced. Lets assume a perfect stone has the same chance to be loot as a RB and you can trade 3, 4, 5 stones against a RB. In case of an inflation the market price will for a RB will go to 10, 20, 30, … stones. So people will prefer the NPC, forcing the free market to cheaper prices and reducing the amount of stones on the market (as an NPC is a sink). This is a kind of gold standard. The Government (NPC) promises to change paper money (stones) against gold (RBs) whenever you want.


The fighting system:

The fighting system in DR is very simple like in other games of its kind. Basically you click your mouse as fast as you can. There are some tactical elements like resistances against elements, healers or portals creating monster, but the difficulty is mainly based on the number of mob and strength of the monsters.
But times are changing. Some games (for example Diablo II with the assassin) introduced concepts like combos to RPGs to make fights more interesting.

The new Diablo III (I am mentioning it because Blizzard is a company defining the standards in the business, so others will follow) will include a physic engine allowing interactions between players and environment (as it is standard in the action genre already). It looks great, but the point is that it makes fights more tactical and interesting.

DR don’t need a complete physics engine (by the way, the grass for example in Pwnston looks really good moving if you walk through it), but it might include some interactions, for example burning tables, barrels or trees, damaging monsters (or in PvP opponents) nearby if you use a fire spell on them, or fighters might get the chance to throw a table or chair causing lots of damage.
It’s a fun way to kill monsters and it might be interesting to do PvP in an arena full of toys to throw, burn or to hide behind. Imagine a sniping ranger behind a table. A fighter will jump over the barrier and kill him from behind. A Mage will send a fir bolt and let him burn (I have nothing against rangers).

Another aspect might be the creation of bot – like boss monsters, which behave a little bit like a human player in PvP. So the boss (for example the dark evil mage V., whose name shouldn’t be used here) could use fire resistance if you attack him for a while with fire and if his poison is not successful, he tries ice bolts on you and if you hide behind a barrel, he will burn your barrier (haha).

A real AI can only be developed by specialists (expensive specialists), so many games contain standard mob behaviour from a textbook on AI programming (enemy in a radius of x feet, check how many friends are in a radius of y, if there are enough friends, attack, elsewhere run z feet backwards)as some poor underpaid guy has to do it between 10 other jobs.

So a real bot is maybe not a practical solution for DR with its reduced team in the moment, but intelligent behaviour can be simulated by scripting (if more than x sec attack with fire, doing more than y points damage, change skill z to fire resistance; or if less than x% health and healer still alive, run y feet away from enemy) (ok, its textbook again).

After killing stupid mobs all the time, this might be a new challenge for higher lvl players. There is a gap between the lvl you can kill Balzack solo and Rasputin starting with lvl 75. So you are forced to do Balzack all the time. Maybe there is a good place to introduce a dungeon for lvl 65+ players testing some more intelligent monsters.

The PvP System:

If you have killed already crowds of monsters, farmed some bosses, collected RBs, PvP is one of the last things you can do in the game (if you didn’t start already as lower lvl). It is maybe the last frontline of long term motivation, before you get bored (ok, I know some people do only PvE and love it the way it is). So it is now essential as part of a complete onlinegame.

Month ago, many people complained about the old matching system, which matched Players independent of their level or experience. This created a lot of unfair situations especially for new and inexperienced players.
Its not fun if make your first steps into the arena and a lvl 100 in full rainbow – gear eliminates you in seconds and enjoys to make fun of you stupid noob in a language I personally now only from US – American B - Movies. Luckily there where some exceptions; nice high lvl players, who gave you some tips and offered you a stalemate to win a kings coin and motivated you to continue playing.
As a result PvP was mainly waiting until all high lvl and twinks are gone or have a match, so that you and other noobs can enter.
I guess lots of players (and possible customers) quit playing PvP or maybe DR because of their experience with this living killing machines.
As Dungeon Runners is planned as a game for casual players, it should be a goal that all people can participate in PvP and get a match with someone on their level and have a chance to win and not just some hardcore players (who are as I understand not primary the customers DR wants).
The ‘solution’ for these problems was the Rating System, based on the Elo System in chess. The idea is simple. Basing on their success, all players are rated and the matching system matches only players with approximately the same Rating.
It should create fair games and more and faster games, as people don’t have to wait to enter until some Über – Players are gone. So far the theory.

In practice the system created an enormous competition. The rating was not understood mainly as a way to create fair games, but as ranking determining who is a PvP God and who is a stupid noob . People don’t offer stalemates because they are thinking about their points. People became aggressive. You are always a noob, a runner, a cheater, a bill user, … , depending if you win or loose.

As the rating sytem matches players after some time more or less independent of their ranking, it leads to the old situation. If someone with lets say 2600 Rating is waiting there is a big traffic jam in front of the PvP Gate as people are afraid. Lots of people with nearly the same Rating (lets say 1700) are waiting and nobody is in a match until some beginner enters without knowing he or she has to fight some Über - player.

I know this game from both sides. With a max of 1993 Point, I am not one of the top players, but its enough to frighten lots of lower lvl people. So you wait long time for a match and in the end you have the unpleasant job to kill some poor guy 7 times in seconds. That’s not why I do PvP. Its not fun for me and for sure not for him/her.

An escape is sometimes to group with someone. If many people are in Pwnston there are often groups of two or three people and it’s the best chance to get a challenging and interesting game with chances for both sides. But some smart people found a way how to cheat the system. They just enter with a group of two of their characters. One is their real character and another is a lvl 1, maybe even nude. The lvl 1 leaves the match in the beginning and you have to encounter an even stronger than normal lvl 100. Thats fun. If you are lucky even in combination with some ghetto language.

Is that advertisement for a games PvP system? If you make this experience during your 10 first matches, would you continue to play?
A possible solution could be a limitation of the ranking band in which players are matched. Lets say none will be matched with someone who is stronger than 200 Points rating (so a PR 1600 will be matched with max. a PR 1800). It will become Difficult for a hand full of Top Players to get a match (and they have to start to fight equal opponents), but the number of matched games (and fair games) in general will increase. More players will do PvP (as lots of people left Pwnston if too many high rating players were there) and more people will continue to play (and maybe become members later).

I know a lot of people will disagree with me. They will maybe say that I discriminate high rated players or that I am angry not to be one of them or that I am a running Bill user. I know that the public opinion represented in this and other forums is dominated by long term players with usually higher rating or lvl (as there are people doing only PvE). But it will be the level 20 PR 1450 player (or the hundreds of them) who decide the economic future of DR depending if they continue or quit playing the game. In the moment you can see many new players, but most of them will not play for a long time and after the Box boom, the servers are often empty.

I hope some of my ideas might help to make DR a better game and persuade more people to become a member (including me) and I hope I did not offend to many people. I guess some of the ideas a not new and I apologize, if I started a discussion which was already finished for the thousandth time.

Lovely feedback! I'll read it all carefully soon.

steve

I am a NON MEMBER. I was nearly persuaded by the box to become member, because it was a really fair offer (most people will agree). But I know, there will be times when I will not be able to play for weeks, so even if its cheap in comparison to other games, I would pay for something I don’t use. That was for me the reason to choose a free online game instead of other popular games with maybe more opportunities, better graphics and so on.


I pay for $50 for games I play for a month. $20 for something I may only play that long at a time is just as good and I keep coming back.


Members are customers now


I am still a supporters and have bean repeatedly.


In the beginning everything is new, you find new items all the time, get new skills, level up fast, get your first rainbow, win your first PvP match. What happens after that. When you killed the same boss the millionth time?


Sometimes I like to make up stuff to do inside the game. I don't expect it all to be handed to me on a platter.


A lot of people start playing, but most will never reach lvl 30 or 40. After the introduction of the box, the servers were full for a time, but now, especially on the PvP server its often very empty.


I agree Here. Took me forever to reach level 50. about 6 to 10 characters.


The trading system:


A similar idea would be good for the long time motivation in DR. More stuff to find means more fun in a game, mainly based on collecting. People can create customized items for their strategy and will spend lots of time to build the sunstone armour with two diamantes and this special endurance bonus rune they where hunting for weeks.


This is a really good Idea. But shouldn't be stat bonuses. They should relate to something else maybe.


If this new stones would be designed as tradable items, they might be a currency like cigarettes. They are rare and people will be addicted to them, they hunt them and want to build their own items (which should be soulbound, so that creating items is a sink for stones).
I think this would create a stable trading system, allowing a lot more transactions than now and fewer people have to announce the same items over and over again, spamming the market chat.
To Backup against a still possible inflation a NPC Shop trading perfect stones against RBs should be introduced. Lets assume a perfect stone has the same chance to be loot as a RB and you can trade 3, 4, 5 stones against a RB. In case of an inflation the market price will for a RB will go to 10, 20, 30, … stones. So people will prefer the NPC, forcing the free market to cheaper prices and reducing the amount of stones on the market (as an NPC is a sink). This is a kind of gold standard. The Government (NPC) promises to change paper money (stones) against gold (RBs) whenever you want.


I am confused here. I think things will take there course though.


The fighting system:


The fighting system in DR is very simple like in other games of its kind. Basically you click your mouse as fast as you can. There are some tactical elements like resistances against elements, healers or portals creating monster, but the difficulty is mainly based on the number of mob and strength of the monsters.
But times are changing. Some games (for example Diablo II with the assassin) introduced concepts like combos to RPGs to make fights more interesting.


Try a really unique character. Like a Mage/Fighter hybrid. Combos aplenty.

The PvP System:


A possible solution could be a limitation of the ranking band in which players are matched. Lets say none will be matched with someone who is stronger than 200 Points rating (so a PR 1600 will be matched with max. a PR 1800). It will become Difficult for a hand full of Top Players to get a match (and they have to start to fight equal opponents), but the number of matched games (and fair games) in general will increase. More players will do PvP (as lots of people left Pwnston if too many high rating players were there) and more people will continue to play (and maybe become members later).


A good idea if enough people will enter the PVP server to make it feasible. Right now some people would never find a match. Maybe group low scores against high scores to even the playing field?


I hope some of my ideas might help to make DR a better game and persuade more people to become a member (including me) and I hope I did not offend to many people. I guess some of the ideas a not new and I apologize, if I started a discussion which was already finished for the thousandth time.


I just hope I didn't poot on the post to much. I was trying to be helpful when I started. Probably hard to tell though. Sorry....

Too many walls of text my head aahhhh!!

Regarding Gold Trading: This has been the subject of numerous heated debates, and the general consensus of the community (and to the devs, I believe) that it must not happen. Gold Trading introduces truckloads of undesirables into the community: beggars, scammers, gold farmers, and all sorts of idiots and no-lifes. Eventually, the community will devolve at an accelerated rate to the point of no return, like almost all other MMORPG communities out there. It also creates problem like inflation, which will slowly make the game less friendly to low levels. For the sake of the community, a flowing economy must not happen.

As for the rest of your ideas... honestly, I didn't read them, I only read 5% of it all. I can see they're comprehensive and detailed though, and I will probably read them if I have the time.

Nice post...you're even more longwinded than I am!

Lots of good points, tho.

Thank you very much. You do a great job!


I am used to read lots of scientific papers (most of them contain at least graduate level mathematics) and discuss them with a group of nerds, so I am maybe even if I try to write informal a bit long, boring and academic. I apologize.

I followed some of the discussions and I am aware of the problem of inflation in online games and most of my discussion about a currency was about how to avoid this phenomena.


Money has many functions but the original idea, was simply to make the exchange of goods easier.

That is the property of a currency, most players of DR as of any other RPG would like to use. Sadly, this leads to a couple of consequences most players don’t want.

The Problem is: Money itself is a good. Its value in a free economy depends on supply and demand and so the phenomena of inflation enters stage.

Beside speculation, the relation between the amount of money and the amount of items you can buy with it will define the value of the money.

Gold, the money in many online worlds is earned very easy by killing lots of mobs, or maybe even Gold mining (which can be done by professionals or with the help of bots). The amount of good items (RBs or its equivalent in other games) is growing much slower, as the are dropped seldom and randomly. People have to pay more and more money for one of this top – items. We have inflation.

The amount of Gold in reality is more or less stabil (a finite number can be mined per year, but only for a finite time as the gold on earth is restricted by nature). That’s the reason why gold is used in a crisis as alternativ currency, or to backup a currency (gold standard system in earlier times for example.


My idea was to use gems/stones/runes as a currency. They are not like gold in online games, but like RBs. They would drop very seldom and if you use them, they are soulbound. They are nothing else then today’s RBs. The difference is, that certain RBs are only usefull for certain classes, or levels, so it is often difficult to trade them.

Gems would be RBs, everybody can use (if he/she has a socket item), so they will be widely excepted.

As they are droped like RBs (if there are different qualities of them, the perfect ones would be like RBs) they grow in the same pace as RB items. The amount of RBs and gems should be in a stabil relation, so the danger of inflation will be small.

In which case can an inflation (or a deflation) still happen?
If people use more RBs or more gems, so that they get soulbound and there are to many gems or to many RBs on the market.
If there a too few gems on the market, there is still the possibility to trade in the old way RB against RB which will stabilize the market.

If there are to many gems, we have inflation, even with the danger, that nobody will accept gems for trade anymore.

So I had this cigarette idea. If people really want to use gems, they will not only hunt for them like crazy, which is a new content and will add more long term fun and spent time with figuring out new builds and combinations for their game strategy, but they will although soulbound many gems (sink). This addiction to the cool item gives them a real value beside their use a currency, like cigarettes on a black market.

As their might still be the possibility of an inflation, I want to add a gold standard system and the institution of a central bank (or FED).
The real value for players in DR are RBs. The value of the new gems will be in some range defined by the number of them you have to pay to get a RB item.
RBs are in some way the gold of the DR world. They will always have a value.
So the idea is: Install an NPC shop, where you can pay with a number of perfect stones. This garanties a minimum value of a gem.
If there are to many stones on the market, the free market price for RBs will increase, maybe people want, 5, 10, 20 gems for a RB. In this situation, players will go to the NPC shop and exchange gems against RBs, as it is much cheaper there.
This adjusts the relation between the amount of gems and the amount of RBs. The exchange rate in the NPC shop, allows the developers by patching to control the value of the currency in case of inflation, so they can act like a central bank if necessary.
In the best case of course, the market (and the dropping rates) will regulate the price itself.

In this way, an automatic trading shop can be installed. People can put their items for a fee in the shop and say, how many gems of which kind they want for it. Other people can go shopping their and if they find something they like, they just pay the amount of gems and the item will automaticly be transfered like in an NPC shop. This makes trade for standard items easier and reduces spam on the market channel.

The maybe heavier problem than inflation is how will a currency change the community? Nobody wants beggars and gold farmers. I think this problems are mainly connected with a goldtrade- system as people call it. Farming (as proffesional occupation) is only possible, if the currency is easy and in large amounts to get, in best case in a way that a bot (or many of them) can do the job.

This is difficult for RBs. They are very seldom and random drops. There is no guarantee to get them. Maybe the best strategy is farming bosses on insane in a group. That is not a typical job for a bot.
As in my idea, gems/stones/runes, would be like RBs, there is no increasing danger of professional farmers than in the old system.

Begging happens all the time now. People ask you have RBs and if they can get one. If there would be gems, they will ask you instead if you have gems or RBs and if they can have some for free.

So the problems that are usually discussed in context of trading and money are connected with and unique for the traditional goldtrade sytem, or they are general problems in online games (or in society).
My idea is only an extension of the old RBs, without the problems of typical currencies.

I think the problem is not, that there are to few PvP player, but the problem are to few PvP people actually playing.

Sometimes, there were 70 or 80 players on the server. So in principle there would be a chance for everyone to find someone on the same level for a fair match. In theory.

But in practice, most people don’t enter the match, but they are waiting for some big guys they are afraid of. That has nothing to do with being a coward or being afraid of loosing rating (ok, in some cases it has), but if I am PR 1700 and I know there is a PR 2400 waiting for me, as nobody else will enter, I wait like all the others.
There are two possibilities to solve the situation: 1. A noob enters, not knowing why everybody is waiting; 2. Another PR 2400 wants a challenge.

Some people are duelling each other for a while or form groups, but most people will have observed, that in situations like that, after a while many people just leave the server or do PvE. I have seen it many times that there where a number of low Rating players (even less than 1500) but 1700 and 1800 people too doing lots of matches and than one big guy entered and in minutes, people started to discuss, where to do PvE and left. From a vivid oasis to an empty desert in minutes.

I don’t blame the 2000+ people for it. They just want to do PvP and it is sometimes hard to find equal opponents. But it makes it hard for new players to have fun with PvP and become better.

Even if there are few people online, you can always find new players with no, or few wins. They are maybe lvl 15 or 20 (some start even with lvl 5) with bad gear and no experience. They will run into the trap and encounter in their first matches the strongest players. They cant even run and have no chance to learn tactics or something like that as they have only second to life.
Some duel instead and with other new players for a while, but regular PvP is a main content (some of the old DRs will disagree) for people who buy a MMORPG.

They cant really use a content they paid for (the costumer idea again). They are frustrated and quit PvP, maybe DR after a while.
Lets say, there are every day 10 noobs trying PvP for the fist time (or 20???, someone should try to count them and do statistics, but there are lots of them). Maybe they are just looking for a free online game and they are trying some of them. The PvP experience will make them choose another one as their game and they will maybe become a member there later. It is not the best advertisement.

I would guess that of 10 people who start PvP eight or nine quit PvP and 50% to 70% of them after some time the whole game as they don’t use a mayor content and PvE can become boring after some time (are there existing some official number?).

Dungeon Runner has its special charm and humour (it has). Some veteran players are always talking about that DR is a special, different game. Some don’t want PvP or want the old system.
BUT is that the expectations of people who bought the box and read reviews in magazines or on WebPages, comparing DR with WoW or Diablo?
They are the casual players DRs should be for. They just want to play an hour after work, university, school, .... They dont want to level until they are lvl 100 or collect RBs to have an invincible Twink. They just want to enter and have fun and they should have.

If players have a first positiv image about PvP (with fair games against other noobs or only a little bit better players), they will probably stay, even if they loose in later matches, or make negativ experiences. If we would loose two or three or four players less in PvP every day, its maybe 60 a month which would form a bigger PvP community after a while and make it more attrativ for other players (and support finding fair matches in short time). Maybe its a 100, or a 150 per moth + all the hundreds of people they would invite.

People who play, are telling their friend, writing on their blog, … ; they are multipliers, especialty for a game which is not as present in media as for example WoW (many people play it instead of other games simply because everybody is playing it).


Indeed, with my system, some people with their actual rating would not find a match and that’s OK, because some ratings are simply unrealistic.

The idea behind the Elo system is, that every player is only winning the points his/her opponent looses. No points are created or getting lost. The only way this can happen is by new players entering PvP or old players retiring.

In matches between Top players (which are all more or less on a similar level) points are only transferred. If only the best 10 players would fight against each other, there summed rating would be the same, just the position in the top ten would change depending on luck, lag and new strategies and counterstrategies.
The reason why they can accumulate so high ratings is slaying lower rating players. The high number of new entering noobs feeds the ratingpool of the Top.

This process is supported by cheating (as you will usually get few points slaying low levels). Some days ago, I was grouping with another guy. We had both around 1850 Rating. Our opponent had 2100 rating and a nude 1000 rating as friend (I guess his own account) who left the match after entering. They change the system now, but actually it’s a fight between a Rating 1850 group and a 1550 group. We lost 0 : 1 and about 24 Points if I remember.

With a fair rating sytem, points will mainly be transfered between players with similar rating and the accumulation process will be slowed down. So instead of maybe 3400 point the best will have only 2000 Points and still be able to fight lots of people in a 200 points range.

Bye the way I don’t say that all high ratings are cheaters. But if you win against someone who cheated, your high rating is supported by the cheated points too.

You write really good and convincing posts.

Welcome to the forums and the game by the way.

No---NO!!! Please!!! Do go on! It's refreshing to actually have someone who can post coherently--especially in regards to Dungeon Runners.

Naturally.....Devs butchering PvP = less people PvPing.

Thank you for the encouragement. I still have plenty of suggestions on all areas of the game.

Most of the ideas are not completely new, but I have a more analytical view on some old suggestions and old discussions about them and I hope this will lead to new ideas for the game.
Maybe some people like my suggestions and open a new thread, about how they think these or that can be implemented in the game, or how this can be combined with their ideas.

Everybody is busy in the moment with the new build, but I would like to hear, what the Devs (Stephen was the first who replied, you don’t have this at other MMORPGs) or veterans like Legendrunner or LordMagnus who know a lot about the game and its people and support it with their projects.

Bye the way, I someone thinks my English grammar is crap, yes it is.


Additional Suggestion for the fighting system:


In DR you have to choose. With enough money, you can buy all skills in the classless system. But even if you have all of them in your skill list, you have to decide which of them you want to use to farm Balzack on Insane or finally kill this nasty twink ranger who pwned you the last three matches.

You create your own build, you own strategy by choosing some skills out of the pool. So more space in the skill tray would destroy this idea.

But there are strategies and counterstrategies. Many skills make only sense to encounter another. Passiv fire resistance is only usefull if your opponent (Player or monster) is using fire attacks, while a fire bolt is useless against someone with the right resistance.

So you want to adjust your strategy during a match or battle. This is difficult, as you have to open you skill list, find the right skill and drag it to the right position and in between you died or you have to run during this process, making people in PvP angry.

With the new, smaller PvP arenas, supporting a faster game play this is nearly impossible. Especially in a duel between two mages, it’s a kind of gambling game, who chooses the right attacks and resistances in the beginning.

By the way: I like the map design, but I think the length of the squares sides should be 20% longer, as this maps makes it difficult for ranged attack using players (fire bolt for example) to use their strength and supports fighters to come in close combat distance easy.

Back to the attack vs resistance game. My Idea is, it should be possible do define a sideboard of maybe 3 skills on your right and left mouse button. One of them is always activ and the others are non active skills. For example I choose Fire bolt, Ice bolt and Shadow bolt on my right button. By pressing for example shift and scrolling my mouse I can switch between them. This makes mainly sense for passiv skills or attacks without long recovery time.

This would leed to a very active and dynamic gameplay, mainly in PvP (where the new maps already support this) but although against future intelligent monsters.
Players would adjust their attacks and defences all the time during the match, it’s a kind of ping pong game. The change will cost you maybe one or two seconds in which you can not attack, so people will maybe sprint, hide behind a corner, reload weapon and attack again, hoping to have choosed the opponents weakness. People can fake the change of their attack skill, hoping the opponent will change its resistance. There are plenty of possibilities.



Dungeon Runners as a MMORPG (and marketing of the game):

Millions of players around the world are playing them, are addicted to them. The main reasons, the big four why they do so are: Community, Competition, Freedom and Individuality.
This sounds a bit like the description of the modern western capitalistic society (and of course there are differences between western and asian games), but that’s exactly what this games reflect and why they are so interesting for social science.

Community:

DR is not really a MMORPG. It is not Massive Multiplayer. It is mainly a single player hack and slay game in the style of the original Diablo, which additionally allows small groups, trade and PvP Interaction. If you read comments by people who played the game or bought it (for example on online shopping pages), people who expected this kind of content were disappointed about the game.

It is not WoW (even if it is sometimes compared). It’s a single player or Coop Mode game.
This is a result of its conception as a game for casual players with limited time. They don’t want to wait, until all friends are ready to play, the want to find a group easy and slay some monsters.
The problem is, that community is one of the reasons why people get addicted (sometimes really addicted) to a game. If DR sucks in this area, it will loose many players after they reached lvl 20, 30, 40.

How can the casual concept be combined with MM, which usually demands more game time.

The Posses are a possibility. Some people who started with 30 min as casual players, level up and spent more time on the weekend. Maybe some friends play the game too, or they meet people regular. For this group of people some options of traditional MMORPGs should be added.

This might include new group dungeons for posses and larger number of player groups, maybe 8 or 10, with monsters and bosses, that need group strategies (intelligent bosses, monsters with different resistances). This suggestions are already discussed in other threads.

Typical groups in MMORPGs contain characters with different roles, like tank, damage dealer, … . It should be possible for members of posses to buy skills like group healing for use in special dungeons or group PvP.

So the hack and slay (I hate my boss) office warrior group can play their 15 – 30 minutes casual game during the weak and have some MMORPG like in WoW at the weekend in their Posse.
Its another way to make people stay after the first weeks.


To give people MM experience, as for PvP, as for trading, as for many aspects, you need a critical mass of players. DR lacks this critical mass.

I would chance the marketing strategy to reach this goal. In the beginning, DR was mainly a free game, with a member option and an advertisement platform for other NC games. Now, non members can use fewer and fewer items and have to pay more and more KC. It’s of course to force people like me after to finally become a member, after they used the game for free for month.
But its mainly frustrating for beginners. They cant use all the cool stuff and instead of becoming a member they will play another game. With the introduction of the box, it was forgotten a bit, that the process from free playing beginner to paying member is an important supply for DR.
Make all yellow, 50% of the purples and 10% of the member items free and more people will continue to play.

Give and you will get something back. Guild Wars, another NC game sold over 5 Million times. Write an e – mail to all of them, that NC offers them a free membership for 3, or 6 month for DR.
Many people will try (as it is for free and maybe some of their friends from Guild Wars will try it too).
Lets say 1% will like the game and play it on a regular basis, for example if they don’t have enough time for guild wars, or all their friend there are busy. If I calculate right, 1% of 5 Million is 50.000.
This players will maybe want to continue playing after their free membership runs out. These people have friends they can invite, maybe friends that did not play MMORPGs yet, as they did not have enough time for conventional titles.

This would attract new members and free players, companies who want to do advertisement for the free players (remember the nike clip, it would much easier for the Devs to persuade companies to spent money with 100.000 free players) and last but not least, the game will play a more important role in the press.

I heard about DR from a review in the German Magazine Gamestar, which is Europe’s most important game magazine with a monthly circulation of 250.000 in Europe. It is published in Germany, Hungary, Czeck Rebublik and the peoples Republik of China.

Short time after me suddenly lots of Germans started to play the game. So the influence of major game magazines is strong.

Work together with the press. Ask people in important game magazines to play the game for free and send you essays with suggestions, artworks or 3D Animation for new content, new bosses, new ideas about how people want to play the game. You make the game THEY want. Give prices for the best suggestions make a lottery where people can win free memberships.

More people will strength the position of the Devs against the NC management and guarantee the future of DR!
Comments on the other 3 of the big four will follow.

Singe-player RPGs for the PC have been doing this for years now. In Neverwinter Nights, for example, you have a ten-slot skill bar and it is mapped to your ten number keys. Press 1 for a Health Potion, 2 for Magic Missile, et cetera. Behind that bar you have another one, accessible by pressing Ctrl. So Ctrl-1 will summon a fire elemental, while Shift-1 activates the Hide in Shadows ability. Shift-2 equips adn activates the +5 lockpicks.

The ability to move freely between the three skill bars may need to be nerfed, tweaked, or somehow limited for PvP, that I can't say. But it seems to me that having access to three times as many skills as now in PvP could lead to... chaos?



Edited by Khazandra (09/14/08 10:30 AM) — reason: can't spell before coffee

Back to the attack vs resistance game. My Idea is, it should be possible do define a sideboard of maybe 3 skills on your right and left mouse button. One of them is always activ and the others are non active skills. For example I choose Fire bolt, Ice bolt and Shadow bolt on my right button. By pressing for example shift and scrolling my mouse I can switch between them. This makes mainly sense for passiv skills or attacks without long recovery time.

I really like this idea. Though for the more backward folk (like me) that don't know how to use a mouse wheel or don't like to use it for that, maybe Shift + Click for skill 2 and Ctrl + Click for skill 3 (or something like that).

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This game only has a few points in the PVE side where you need to switch out Resists and their are only a handful of Area of attack spell. My oh my are their a lot of targeted attack spells I have trouble using because I can't have them on my left and right mouse button. For the space is already in use. I have bean getting seriously annoyed lately with the skill setup. Even being able to assign Ctrl and Shift to certain already available slots would help out alot.

I will reply on the sideboard issue later.

It is interesting what Game Developers say about some of the issues I mentioned (and lots of other things).
There are many blogs, analyzing MMORPGs, sometimes by designers of other games, or former employees. Some people were involved in NC games, too, so you might know this guy (good luck with your new job): http://ansonthegnome.livejournal.com/
As you can see, the devs have been not to happy with their PvP system.

Have a look on the blog of one of the City of Heros makers, with various comments on other MMORPGs. I like his ideas about classes and classless character systems.
http://doublebuffered.com/category/g...gn/mmo-design/

Another former NC Developer: http://brokentoys.org/about/

I had of course single player RPGs in mind and I really enjoyed NWN.
I agree with you, that it makes no sence to be able to use all skills at the same time. The choice of your build is part of the game, especilty in PvP and it would be difficult to balance. That’s why I wanted to reduce the number of skills, you can have in your sideboard and only one of them should be activ. If you change the activ skill, and it’s a skill with timer, you have to wait befor it becomes usable. So it will be more or less limited to elemental damage and resistance.
It might be good to add an additional timer of one or two seconds, so that the opponent in PvP can use the changing time to attack or heal, but it would not be the disadvantage like with moving a skill from the list. This was maybe OK in the old arenas, but it leads to a kill now, so I would see it as a balance for PvP + an additional fun component.
The best would be to allow everyone to customize his/her control. Without using a PC mouse, I would have only 1 mouse button. That’s the advantage of Diablo II, you only need an old G3 to play it.
I think a change in the fighting system would allow to create more interesting dungeons, where you are forced to switch skills or operate in a group. Maybe a second HDoL, but even in HDoL it might be useful to switch skills a little bit faster. You will not die without it, but it makes the game smoother.

Competition:

People like to compete. And they work very hard to become compitabel.
Of course PvP is a way to organize this. PvP provides a lot of content because beside the fights it self it is connected with many hours of farming for the right gear and working on a perfect build.
Wins in PvP or a high rating are a way to show off. That’s a goal we can have in the game, as there is no real roleplay with endgame content. The best in the ranking, the most wins. It’s the same kind of motivation that drives us to buy big cars and graphic cards with enormous fans.

This system works pretty good in Dungeon Runners. And if you don’t like it, you nevr have to enter Pwnston, as it is on a separated server.
The only problem is the balancing of the matches. The competition element makes only sense as long as most people think to have a chance to compete. If they think, with a few more matches and the new purple body or the fantastic rainbow iring, they can finaly beat their all time enemy, the lvl. 78 Ranger calling them noob once, they will continue to play.
If they realize, they will never have a chance, they will leave the game.
If the matching is fixed and there are more peole on he servers than now, an additional content might be a PvP posse competition, for example with 10 : 10 PvP matches and a posse ranking.

A more hidden way to compete is levelling up. If you start at the same time as your friend, of course you want to be the first at lvl. 30, 50 or 100. This is a more peacefull way, but it makes people playing more and stay in the game.

And of course last but not least there is the hunt for special items. Everybody wants to get the coolest RB and show them to other players. When the new build comes, people will try to get the pirate armor first and present it of course.

This content has still some potential. Maybe there could be a number of special quests to get less random dropped items, similar to the boss chests.

Résumé: I would say, this point goes to DR if the PvP matching system gets fixed. There are possibilities to compete, but nobody is forced to, as the game system is not depending on for example massive PvP battles as in other games

I like this , but am not sure I get it fully. I was never one for competition anyway with anyone but myself. You are right though , properly implemented a good PVP system would give those that like to compete a way to. I think Dungeon Runners is well on the way to doing this , but as you said(i think) they still need to work out a few wrinkles. Anyone that doesn't want to play PVP doesn't feel excluded from the game either for their is a lot of content that is made purely for them.

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You are right , costomized would be the best way to go on skill set controls. Though I do like using both buttons I could see those that would like to use them for something else or in a different fashion.
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I don't know why I am posting just to agree with you. Think it is just to incourage you. You have good writing to read.