Talk:Game Features
Sorry to say, but I don't like the page as it stands. It smells too much of game-prescribed career paths. I prefer an open style, where a player can choose a character's "career" very freely (depending on world design of course).
So, "player activities" would be much more to my liking. But it's a matter of taste of course (which is a bit of a problem in WF... we have sometimes (widely) divergent opinions in game design. Like I'm not a fan of permadeath, but it seems a number of WFers are).
I see careers/professions too, but not excluding each other at all (depending, of course... maybe you have a world where if you start to study magic, for whatever reason you cannot study anything else (apart from minor supporting skills which are part of the study of magic anyway (think WoW's "Herbalism")))
But a Settler would of course be a bit of a Crafter too (how many settler had to know how to build their houses themselves? Lots of them I'd say). (And part of your Settler path is "Farmer" anyway).
--Jae 11:43, 11 March 2006 (CET)
I knew this page would probably look too much like character classes or professions.
However, the intent of the page is to try to list the different kinds of motivations players might have in playing the game, and list what kind of game features there are to support each of these goals or activities.
The more paths a single character is participating in, the better, as that means that the gameplay mechanisms and content we made is attractive to everyone.
Agreed about settler being farmer mostly.. I called it survivor first, as it is about collecting food to stay active. (not eating food will put the character in a starving state, which will reduce its movement speed and skills somewhat - so you won't die, but it's uncomfortable).
--zzorn 13:22, 11 March 2006 (CET)
Teaching pets and training troops is kinda similar... and dissimilar. Training troops (if they're not NPCs) is not complete control. A pet can be under your control. I'm thinking of Pets. In a very general sense, meaning all the various "pet" variants in existence. That's what I mean(t) with "general page"... maybe a sort-of "encyclopedia of MMORPG implementations/implementation possibilities", not a concrete implementation.
And my pets comment in User:Jae/Various Comments was related to WoW. Should likely have mentioned that those comments were not initially written publication-ready, I just noted what occured to me. AO's "pets" are very different from WoW's. (More like the minions a City of Villains's "Mastermind" archetype has).
Pets page and a comment on the "Various Comments" coming up within 30min.
--Jae 10:57, 13 March 2006 (CET)
Reformatted... looks better now (I think)
--Jae 11:14, 13 March 2006 (CET)
Yep, the first caption was unnecessary, it's clearer now.
Heading over to read the pets page now.
--zzorn 11:40, 13 March 2006 (CET)