First off, I really love the game… but there are definitely some design issues that I have no idea why they put in as these design issues were shown as bad as far back as even UO, DAOC, and Everquest. The problems and solutions presented here, are nothing new. The solutions have been used several times before and shown to work.
Daily Cooldowns
What we have now:
30 individual cooldown systems that may or may not have a GUI for us to determine when they are up. (IE. Elite Chests openings, Topaz Farming, Present Getting all have no GUI to tell you when they are available).
Solution:
Daily Cooldowns should NOT be character based, but server based. All cool downs should reset at the exact same time as designated by the server, not individually as set by character usage.
Diminishing Returns:
What we have now:
None. None what so ever, and this is literally causing major issues with all aspects of combat.
Solution:
Add it to the system. Anything that has a status effect should be diminished on effects. Stuns, bleeds, burns, roots, heals should all do exponentially less with spammed instances. For example, if you are stunned then the next stun should either be exponentially shorter/weaker or you should be invulnerable to it for a short period of time (ie. a second) in order to stop lockdowns. Heals should do a lot on the first application, but multiple quick applications should have much weaker to none effects.
OPR
What we have now:
Lots of one sided matches. Spawn Camping. People not participating in PvP but doing other things that do not lead to wins. Imbalanced leaderboard biased towards Healers. (This actually refers to both Wars and OPR. Range DPS is OP in wars and Healers in OPR)
Solution:
Either have players select the roles they are wanting to fill within the OPR and force that role or check the players currently loadout and place them in the proper role automatically. This will insure that one side is not all melee and the other is all range or one has a lot of healers and the other has none. Balanced positions will help to balance the team dynamics.
You stuck up a wall to help with spawn camping. WTF? All this means is that now you have to group up coming out and are slowed by the exit procedure (Same reason doors on forts are horrible for your own team). The proper solution would have been to make spawn players invulnerable for 5 seconds after respawning. Enough time to move out of position and strategically place yourself in a location to keep effective farm camping from happening, but not enough time to exploit the invulnerbility to get to a game breaking strategic location.
Brutes should be removed, they are just too time consuming to buy and over powered. The other ghosts, bears, etc are fine as they are easily farmed and though have an impact on the fight do not greatly effect the outcome as brutes on every gate make. Brutes are just a bad idea. Baron is … iffy,
Changed your point system. In OPR, time within a point capture should matter the most. If you are not actively capturing a point, then you should not be getting a ton of points. This evens out the playing field as ANY class can capture a point and taking a point is actually what determines a win not collecting hides or killing out in front of the gates. Damage blocked should be taken into consideration as well as damage healed and damage done. Tanks are just blatantly frowned upon. They get no credit in either War or OPR which keeps a lot of people from even wanting to play as a tank. (Tanks are just weak for the most part. Hard to tank when constant stunned.)
Storage
What we have now:
All inclusive storage chests that bulk all like types together with a semi-bad filter system.
Solution:
Create different types of storage areas for sets. (Ie. Mannequins, weapon racks) or chests that are not all inclusive and will allow us to see (only) what is stored within them. Or do a major overhaul of your current filter system in order to give us a lot more option for how we want to filter our items.
Everfall / Windsward Goliaths
What we have now:
All territories are able to have the same tier of stations. Two localized territories that make up 80% of the revenue on a server. Meaning a very unbalanced economy and war situation. These territories make so much money per week that they stay above the curve in gear and thereby destroy the balance of the game. Due to this, other territories tend to be ghost towns. They do not generate enough revenue to make it worth the owner’s investment to keep up. Thus town boards falter and people lose the missions gained from them.
Solution:
Make territories UNIQUE. Make reasons for other territories to thrive. A simple solution for this is to allow only 1 Trade station to reach Tier 5 in a central territory and maybe 2 or 3 tier stations in the other territories. This means people will have to travel to different location in order to craft and make money which in turn will distribute the wealth between different territories. Since Everfall and Windsward are popular due to their “centralized location” and therefore make enough money that they almost always have Tier 5 stations across the board. There is no reason NOT to go there. If the devs make it so that they can NOT have a monopoly (imagine that) then people will diversify and those two territories will still make lots of money due to their centralization, but other territories will now actually have a chance to propser.
Synch Issues
What we have now:
It seems that every action we make has a queue to go through the is unsynched with our current evironment. Chats can take like minutes to update. Notifications can take minutes to update and constantly spam repeat. Abilities either do not go off, go off but do nothing or go off in a very delayed manner, This makes the game feel extremely clunky, especially in combat.
Solution:
Rather this is a threading or networking issue, I do not know the solution to this, but the design needs to be reviewed and adjusted. There should not be so many de-synching issues happening.
Conclusion:
These have been the major concerns that I have personally have had with the game and have heard and seen other complaining about. Most of these problems really should not have ever been a problem as one person posted on the forums (have the game designers ever even played an MMO before???) as the designs were blatantly bad to begin with and never should have been implemented.