General Stores:
This one requires some thought... I think you risk losing some of the feel of the game by running a lot of the game out of one shop. The shops are rather close together in cities, so losing 1 minute during your restock or shopping time to add a feel to environment is reasonable. If you are looking to stockpile items for faster reequip after you die, I recommend piling them in your bank or house if you own one then you just have to go there :-). Also as your character develops I think you'll find you end up at the enchanter and magic shop to sell items more than the others.
Auction House:
This is a feature that will be added later rather than sooner. First we need to finish getting all the in game features developed.
Cash Shop:
To keep the game free we do need some kind of revenue... There is currently thousands of dollars invested in the game and years work. This will be handeled in two ways:
Special Account Features that can be purchased
Here is how features will work:
When the game is released, a free account will allow you to create up to three characters on that account and access all features of the game other than player housing.
You will be able to add features to your account that allow you to have up to 10 characters at a small onetime cost of say $5.00.
You will be able to add the ability to purchase a house (a property right) to your account at a onetime cost of $7.00. You will be able to purchase up to two property rights.
Many players who participated in beta and gave feedback such as yourselves will be getting free account upgrades with 1 house and 10 characters. So this will be a mute point to complain about for many of you.
Were also considering adding side story quests that can be purchased and then accessed on your account for small costs but all core game quests will be free.
Cash shop
There will be a cash shop with ascetic items that can be purchased for your house for example. None of the items in the shop will give any player a tactical advantage of any kind but add may add something unique that they have.
We may also offer gp or experience in the cash shop at a "higher" rate. This needs to be investigated a bit more to see what effect it has on game economy and character development. The rate would likely be expensive though to Tdeter many people except those who have money but not time,
Banks:
he chests were added for flavor, I never liked speaking with npcs to open containers it just never made sense to me. I was originally going to do bank vaults rather than chests in a back room. I didn't want to make a global bank because I thought it was kind of lame that your items were accessible from any town even though you may not have ever been to that town. Though perhaps a feature could be added to transfer your account from city to city for a gp fee.
Spell Damage:
This is done for a few reasons:
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The damage you deal is not just a function of the spell and your character but is a function of your opponent as well. So if you are fighting someone with high resist, and they resist a spell of yours that spell may do significantly less damage than you might expect.
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Descriptions of spells are currently static, most every spell has variance in damage based on your intelligence and/or meditation even if you were going to ignore the resistance and considerations of an opponent, the descriptions would need to become dynamic.
That being said maybe the descriptions could be significantly better and offer a new field called base damage which is the minimum amount of healing/damage a spell heals/deals.
Show damage:
I don't have any strong feelings about not doing this. I'd like to get other players to weigh in though. Does it take away anything from the game? Does it add to much clutter text to the screen?
Repairs:
Many people have asked for repairing while equipped, I will investigate what it will take to do the request. As you know we just added blacksmithy as a skill allowing you to repair anywhere an anvil is. I don't want to take away from that class by making portable hammers though.
Levels:
Sure we could probably add pseudo level ratings to creatures. What should the scale be 1 - 100? I don't think it is fair to show player's levels.
Prestige:
Fantasy Realm Online will be implementing a title based system with trials based on your class. Completing the trials may earn you new titles and fame in the world. Titles themselves may influence other things such as available quests, city store discounts etc... The trials may also offer unique items as well as possibly open up new spells or special abilities for your character. This is something we will likely do in the late spring, or summer time. Your core title will be determined likely by level and possibly skill set as well as quests/trials completed.
Solid Players:
There are several considerations here, which is why this hasn't been handled yet, it may seem like a simple problem to solve by just allowing players to pass through all npcs and other players but doing so is not likely the best solution. There are a couple of fixes we are considering to the issue.
The one we are leaning towards is allowing you to push through a player/npc every, say 5 seconds. This keeps it fair and realistic, if you are surrounded by creatures or players then you should not be able to quickly escape danger. You should be delayed at least.
Thats all I have time to comment on right now... Ill go over the rest at a later time. Thanks for the comments.