Suggestions: Quality of Life Stuff and other suggestions

[bungiefanNA]

1) Quest Icons. I think one of the biggest issues and gripes of the game is not knowing which npcs are quest givers, let alone which ones are related to a particular quest. The only way that a player can even identify who is who is by either having a hard copy of an out of date Brady's Guide like I do, or searching the web for a guide. In today's MMO's, quest npcs have become a lot easier to locate due to having some sort of Icon to signal that they are a quest giver or associated with a quest that a player has currently undertaken. I think the addition of this would alleviate that comes with doing quests in the game.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/...p-22/ref=nosim

They are still releasing guides for the game in Japan, at least yearly. This one detailed a lot of previously unconfirmed hidden effects and latent effects on equipment, which is starting to propagate to the wikis.

That said, a printed guide is always going to be out of date after the next patch, which is now occurring at least monthly. A wiki really is the best way to keep on top of an MMO, because it's the only thing that can be maintained and edited fast enough.

http://www.playonline.com/polapps/s/...op?polg_loc=en

They do link to one of the wikis on the Community Sites page, which is linked from the front page of the official site.

In-game indicators tend to clutter up the visual display, and the previous games never had them, yet had plenty of hidden sidequests. I'd say the better time investment would be actually making the quest descriptions more useful and informative.

[Evogolist]

Just to do a bit of thread control, I'm understanding that the majority of you guys are not in favor of the Quest Icons suggestion I made. But please remember that this is a suggestion thread and try to stay on track please. I definitely should have been more clearer on my first suggestion, because I now have you guys in a WoW panic and this thread has turned into a "GTFO with you WoW-esque idea".

You know, I was reading through the thread on XIV (not started by me) that's similar to this one and even though XIV is a semi new game and the ppl over there will have more suggestions than what we'll have for this 12-13 year old game, I'm sure that at one point we've all sat our pc or at our tv screens and wondered what could possibly make this game better or make playing the game better. Well here's your chance. I'm sure that we all love this game and would like for it to stick around for another 11+ years.

For those of you who have offered suggestions, thank you and I'll edit my OP to not only have my suggestions, but all of you guys' suggestions as well.

[Spectreman]

1) Create more merits for weapon skills
2) Revive the old areas for Party XP (Dunes, Kazham, Altepa, Kuftal Tunnel)
3) Revive Zeni NM
4) Allow players to solo Assault Missions

[Demonjustin]

4) Allow players to solo Assault Missions

You're a bit behind aren't you? They did this last month, same with Salvage, and the ones you can't solo easily right now, they said they are working on to make easier to solo or make the Trust NPCs help like with Lamps in Nyzul if I remember correctly.

[Evogolist]

Okay I got one more, don't know how hard it would be to implement this, but how about a search function for the auction house. It really sucks having to scroll through a ton of items when you're just looking for a specific item.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

http://www.playonline.com/polapps/s/...op?polg_loc=en

They do link to one of the wikis on the Community Sites page, which is linked from the front page of the official site.

It's about the only link on that page that still works (which says something about how frequently that page is updated), that particular wiki went through a fork, and the one linked to has been rendered all but useless thanks to the deliberate release of a rampant bot and a lack of follow-up (because why bother when you can just go to the other fork?).

And on top of that fragmentation of information across (by my last count) three different wikis, the only information that tends to get updated is that for bleeding-edge content. Reliable information from those sources tapers off with player interest, creating a vicious cycle where players only do the content for which there is information available.

And this is without getting into all the little bits of "How the @#$^ was I supposed to know that?" stuff strewn throughout this game ("Dcotor" status, anyone?)

That said, a printed guide is always going to be out of date after the next patch

If only there were some sort of first-party, online information resource that could be regularly maintained with game updates...

This is a problem with playability. This problem with playability has been fixed in their latest-and-greatest. The playerbase should not be paying $12.95/mo for the privilege of doing S-E's work for them.