Suggestion Hit List

No, this isn't a post about skill changes, nerfs, or patch problems. I think anyone that's been browsing the forums over the last few days has had their fill of those conversations. Nope, this is about Allods as a whole and some ideas and suggestions about how the game could be made better for everyone involved. This is opinion only of course, and I'm sure at least a few people will disagree with what I say here. Such is the nature of MMOs. Here we go, my hit list:

1 ) Clean Up Game Text

There are dozens of places in skill and ruby descriptions, tool tips and quest text where a bit of cleanup would go a long way towards removing player frustration, especially with regards skills and rubies. As part of this process, developers should mark known non-working skills and rubies. This would reduce the flow of bug reports for known issues. And speaking of that...

2) Publish a Known Issues List

There's a sticky "coming soon" post in the Bugs forum about a known issues list that's dated December 2009. It's time for Gala-net to step up and publish this list so players aren't repeating the same questions and gripes about broken talents and skills. A single authoritative source of information on known issues would go a long way toward reducing some of the forum noise about buggy skills.

3) Support Schedule

Allods is a 24/7 product. While I certainly sympathize with the game masters, who go above and beyond the call of duty to provide support, Gala-net needs to bite the bullet and establish at least a seven day a week game master presence. I don't think a full 24/7 staff is needed, but an official presence on the boards and in-game every day of the week is certainly something MMO players expect to see.

4) Patch Scheduling

Thursday patches, especially given the world-crossing time zones involved between Gala-net and Astrum Nival, are just a bad idea. Gala-net should consider patching early in the week to allow any issues caused by the patch to be addressed during the regular work-week instead of festering over the weekend. The former shows proactive support, the later simply creates hard feelings.

5) Better Forum Organization

This is a relatively small one, and I'll use Chomp's posts on the Warden / Renew issue from the last patch as an example. When this issue flared on the boards, Chomp quickly posted a locked announcement in the General forum, directing discussion to a thread in the Warden forum, where he did a great job updating people. The only problem with this is the main Warden Renew update thread generated a lot of player responses, making it hard to track the official word. I'd suggest a slight change to the strategy used: create one 'official word' thread, which is locked to regular posters and only used to announce updates and official information. Create a second discussion thread, linked from the official word thread, where player discussion takes place. This gives Gala-net a clear channel for announcements about a specific issue and players a way to provide feedback without crossing the two up.

So there it is, my top five hit list for Gala-net. What do you think?