I like what they are planning to do with the Content, Marketplace, Combat System and Spy Tree. They are totally overhauling everything and putting it back the way they want it. They are experts at MMO's, so I trust what they are doing.
http://thematrixonline.station.sony.com/news_display.vm?id=9&month=current
I know this has been done several times by others, but here are some thoughts for more content and changes to the game as the way it is now. It is a little long so if you don't want to read it, just glance at the headlines I put at the top of each suggestion.
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Organization Balance
A new redpill contact should be created that provides the first few crit missions until the redpill is able to choose which organization to side with. Before completing these crits, the redpill is not alligned with any organization. When gaining reputations, their alignment will change and they will not be able to go back to a neutral state. If leveling to 16 and they still have not choosen a side, Zion will default. New redpills should be greeted by all the mission contacts in a special "Meet the Organizations" mission once they have completed all their crits.
Looting NPCs and Redpills
When we loot NPCs we are forced to take all the items that are on an NPCs body. Allow us to select which items we want and leave the rest. Currently there is no looting off of Redpills. If looting was allowed with some sort of lootable item, such as a random object in their inventory, there would be a reason not to die besides a lame Death Effect. And since we'd still have the option to reconstruct, if we saw an enemy lurking around our body we'd be able to escape their greedy hands before they got what they want.
Organizational Control Zones
If one org does the most missions in a certain neighborhood, they control that zone or neighborhood. This control zone would only show up on the atlas. Being in control would reward the organization with _____ while inside the zone.
Interference Missions
Create a new type of mission called Interference Missions with all of the same options as standard missions. Two organizationally different teams go head-to-head in the same mission trying to complete different, but similar, objectives before the other. On regular servers, teams would automatically flag-up at the start, but stay unflagged to everyone else.
Dynamic Missions
When coming to the final phase of an assissination mission, have the target panic and try to run out of the mission area to escape, instead of throwing insults and attacking. If they are sucessful and run outside, you would have to give chase and hunt them down. Once outside, an automatic mission waypoint would be generated so that you cannot lose total track of them. When coming to the final phase of a delivery mission, have the target in a field, construction zone, park or near a hardline. Change the scenery; bring the missions outside of the boring buildings once in a while.
Official MxO Ladder Ranking System
A database created that ranks individual players by their CQs. Viewable on a special page on the MxO website. Multiple CQs are awarded to winners and subtracted from losers individually, by most damage done, adjusted through level restrictions. If a 30 defeats a 50, the 50 loses, and the 30 gains, more than 1 CQ. If the 50 defeats the 30, 1 CQ is awarded to the 50, the 30 loses nothing. I have a more detailed example of how this would work.
Transportation and Long Distances
Reducing the max speed of Hyperspeed was a good thing. But transporting players from one section of the city to another (Richland to International), is currently way too fast. There are too many HLs everywhere, which causes people to just teleport to get somewhere fast. In reality, we shouldn't even be able to teleport. Cars and motorcycles would be a nice change to the transportation issue. I would much rather ride in my team's car to our mission area, than teleport there. The subway should actually transport players through the city, with a nice view of the scenery, taking time to get to the final destination. And if we remove the teleport option entirely, this would give reason to use vehicles and the subway. But since there would obviously be those who abuse their privledge to drive, have the vehicles cost a lot and be very sensitive to off road driviing.
Interactive Environments
When agents are on your tail, The Matrix Trilogy has shown us that being able to jump out of a window has proven a reliable form of an emergency escape option. Click on the window and select "Jump Out". Depending on if you are running to the window or just standing next to it will determine your character's animation while falling and reacting to the glass shattering and cutting your RSI. -- All mission doors should have the option "Break Down" which should aggrevate all surrounding NPCs to the intruder. -- Include an ability to flip-off and run on walls while interlocked in a room. I suggest placinge it in the Focus branch on Awakened and call it the passive "Revelation" ability, Dodge Ranged +10, required level 16.
Realtime Environments
Implement season changes to the city according to the northern hemisphere. How cool would it be if the city changed with the seasons of the actual world? When it got closer to winter time, it would snow off and on in MegaCity. In the spring, the snow would melt and the wind and rains would come. Summertime would be, sunny and occasionally a light storm would kick in. Fall would change the colors of the leaves on trees, leaves would fly in packs down streets and gather in corners. The city would decorate itself during holidays such as Halloween or Christmas. Since Megacity is a real city to the Bluepills, they would still celebrate these things. It would be nice to see something like this, some great visual content and a wonderful change of scenery!
Real Environments
Communications with important bluepills (shop owners, waiters) should yeild more interesting information through the use of Q&A dialogs. Waiters in restraunts should walk around the dining areas. Bartenders should be more lively. Blue Pills that wander the streets should walk inside buildings once in a while. Bluepill boats need to use the waterways more often. Information (?) NPCs should walk around near their respective hardlines and provide useful programs. Example: Master Takwen will teleport a redpill to a dojo and teach special techniques and moves.
Interactive Gangs
Allow players to trade and communicate with gangs. Depending on their level, communcations and trading could be simple or completely outrageous. Low ranking gang members would communicate in simple sentences. High ranking gang members would give options such as "Buy Protection" which would elicit his squad to help you in combat. Gang leaders would be able to carry on Q&A dialogs and give several political options in regards to his gang, with cost.
Club Bouncers
When things go awry inside clubs and someone starts a fight, bouncers should spawn just like the hostiles in missions when they jump out of nowhere and start kicking your *CENSORED*. We could see some usefull PvP and PvE in this respect, not to mention some safety for chillin on a hostile server.
Mission Agent Attacks
Improve the agent spawning animation. At the end of a sucessful mission have a bluepill walk from the entrance of the building, go up or down the elevators, and into to the mission area. If the team is still there, begin the transformation. Or just reduce the agent spawn timer to 1:30 min when completing a successful mission, and 30 sec when aborting a mission. And improve the AI by having agents follow the team even when hyperjumping.
Animation Adjustments and Special Effect Enchancements
Hyperspeed blur needs to be removed when idle.
Gaussian Blur puff of smoke needs to be changed.
With less than 10% HP, your RSI should automatically change to Hurt Mode until you're healed.
When creating a character, there should be an option to change the height: 4' to 7'
After a full blast of Hyperjump, the landing will cause the surface to crack along with a sound effect.
Powerful punches and kicks that cause characters to fall to the ground should cause dust and debris to fly up.
Characters in combat near ledges where the only action is to fall after being hit, should fall off the ledge, automatically followed gracefully by the attacker.
Furniture in mission rooms should react to combat by moving or breaking when under pressure.
Walls should react to combat by cracking or breaking when characters are thrown against them.
Food and Drink
Waiters and bartenders should be able to sell us food and drinks with effects. The Merovingian's Orgasm cake should be sold inside Club Hel. When drinking alcohol (or call it something else), the player's RSI will change to drunk mood, text should be slurred when chatting, and the player's screen should wave and blur as visual effects to indicate the drunken stupor.
Dancing
More dancing options need to be added: Break Dancing, Disco, two-player dancing, Tango, The Robot.
Games
Inside buildings there are pool tables, poker tables, dart boards, arcade machines, fues-ball tables, etc., they should be interactive as the games they represent. -- Natural multiplayer games that require equipment, scorekeeping or additional information, such as Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Racing, Oddball and Guard Territories, should be implemented into the game to augment PvP and OvO. Basic deathamtch PvP and OvO on hostile servers has brought a lot of people to quit the game due to boredom.
Client-side Player Controlled Bullet Time
Remove the random Bullet Time there is currently and give players a hot-key to select Bullet Time whenever they want it, but no longer than 5 sec. Include all the visual effects of the action. The hot-key would work just as Bullet Time does now. When pressing the key, time will increase, when the key is released Bullet Time will commence to return the player back to normal time. (Hot-key idea is in refference to Monolith's game F.E.A.R.)
Manipulate RSI
Our RSI's are a vision of what we believe ourselves to look like, therefore we should be able to change what we look like. Minor changes to the body such as tattos, eye color, scars, hair style and color, should all be allowed. Total body reconstruction should not be allowed, except in the case of disguises.
Future Additions as an Expansion pack
The movie was not entirely set inside the Matrix program and the game shouldn't be limited as such. Half the time it was shot outside in The Real. I suggest an expansion pack called The Real, or MxO: Reloaded, which includes the real world as well as additional constructs and areas of the city. The Real would be composed of Zion, a secret Merovingian dock, a Machine dock, The Human Fields, The Guarded Mountains, City 01, couple of small Machine towns, two old human cities, and the underground tunnels. Factions would receive their own fleet of HvCrFT in The Real once they have proven themselves through cumulative play time and reputation points. Several HvCrFT will be awarded to active factions. Each day, a HvCrFT will be selected by the first faction member to login, and every member after that will login to that HvCrFT untill full or another one is activated. The HvCrFT will be fully outfitted with all the regular equipment. Players will be able to select at the appropriate sections to jack-in, be the operator, pilot or co-pilot the ship, man the turrets, or provide medical or engineering support.
http://thematrixonline.station.sony.com/news_display.vm?id=9&month=current
I know this has been done several times by others, but here are some thoughts for more content and changes to the game as the way it is now. It is a little long so if you don't want to read it, just glance at the headlines I put at the top of each suggestion.
----------
Organization Balance
A new redpill contact should be created that provides the first few crit missions until the redpill is able to choose which organization to side with. Before completing these crits, the redpill is not alligned with any organization. When gaining reputations, their alignment will change and they will not be able to go back to a neutral state. If leveling to 16 and they still have not choosen a side, Zion will default. New redpills should be greeted by all the mission contacts in a special "Meet the Organizations" mission once they have completed all their crits.
Looting NPCs and Redpills
When we loot NPCs we are forced to take all the items that are on an NPCs body. Allow us to select which items we want and leave the rest. Currently there is no looting off of Redpills. If looting was allowed with some sort of lootable item, such as a random object in their inventory, there would be a reason not to die besides a lame Death Effect. And since we'd still have the option to reconstruct, if we saw an enemy lurking around our body we'd be able to escape their greedy hands before they got what they want.
Organizational Control Zones
If one org does the most missions in a certain neighborhood, they control that zone or neighborhood. This control zone would only show up on the atlas. Being in control would reward the organization with _____ while inside the zone.
Interference Missions
Create a new type of mission called Interference Missions with all of the same options as standard missions. Two organizationally different teams go head-to-head in the same mission trying to complete different, but similar, objectives before the other. On regular servers, teams would automatically flag-up at the start, but stay unflagged to everyone else.
Dynamic Missions
When coming to the final phase of an assissination mission, have the target panic and try to run out of the mission area to escape, instead of throwing insults and attacking. If they are sucessful and run outside, you would have to give chase and hunt them down. Once outside, an automatic mission waypoint would be generated so that you cannot lose total track of them. When coming to the final phase of a delivery mission, have the target in a field, construction zone, park or near a hardline. Change the scenery; bring the missions outside of the boring buildings once in a while.
Official MxO Ladder Ranking System
A database created that ranks individual players by their CQs. Viewable on a special page on the MxO website. Multiple CQs are awarded to winners and subtracted from losers individually, by most damage done, adjusted through level restrictions. If a 30 defeats a 50, the 50 loses, and the 30 gains, more than 1 CQ. If the 50 defeats the 30, 1 CQ is awarded to the 50, the 30 loses nothing. I have a more detailed example of how this would work.
Transportation and Long Distances
Reducing the max speed of Hyperspeed was a good thing. But transporting players from one section of the city to another (Richland to International), is currently way too fast. There are too many HLs everywhere, which causes people to just teleport to get somewhere fast. In reality, we shouldn't even be able to teleport. Cars and motorcycles would be a nice change to the transportation issue. I would much rather ride in my team's car to our mission area, than teleport there. The subway should actually transport players through the city, with a nice view of the scenery, taking time to get to the final destination. And if we remove the teleport option entirely, this would give reason to use vehicles and the subway. But since there would obviously be those who abuse their privledge to drive, have the vehicles cost a lot and be very sensitive to off road driviing.
Interactive Environments
When agents are on your tail, The Matrix Trilogy has shown us that being able to jump out of a window has proven a reliable form of an emergency escape option. Click on the window and select "Jump Out". Depending on if you are running to the window or just standing next to it will determine your character's animation while falling and reacting to the glass shattering and cutting your RSI. -- All mission doors should have the option "Break Down" which should aggrevate all surrounding NPCs to the intruder. -- Include an ability to flip-off and run on walls while interlocked in a room. I suggest placinge it in the Focus branch on Awakened and call it the passive "Revelation" ability, Dodge Ranged +10, required level 16.
Realtime Environments
Implement season changes to the city according to the northern hemisphere. How cool would it be if the city changed with the seasons of the actual world? When it got closer to winter time, it would snow off and on in MegaCity. In the spring, the snow would melt and the wind and rains would come. Summertime would be, sunny and occasionally a light storm would kick in. Fall would change the colors of the leaves on trees, leaves would fly in packs down streets and gather in corners. The city would decorate itself during holidays such as Halloween or Christmas. Since Megacity is a real city to the Bluepills, they would still celebrate these things. It would be nice to see something like this, some great visual content and a wonderful change of scenery!
Real Environments
Communications with important bluepills (shop owners, waiters) should yeild more interesting information through the use of Q&A dialogs. Waiters in restraunts should walk around the dining areas. Bartenders should be more lively. Blue Pills that wander the streets should walk inside buildings once in a while. Bluepill boats need to use the waterways more often. Information (?) NPCs should walk around near their respective hardlines and provide useful programs. Example: Master Takwen will teleport a redpill to a dojo and teach special techniques and moves.
Interactive Gangs
Allow players to trade and communicate with gangs. Depending on their level, communcations and trading could be simple or completely outrageous. Low ranking gang members would communicate in simple sentences. High ranking gang members would give options such as "Buy Protection" which would elicit his squad to help you in combat. Gang leaders would be able to carry on Q&A dialogs and give several political options in regards to his gang, with cost.
Club Bouncers
When things go awry inside clubs and someone starts a fight, bouncers should spawn just like the hostiles in missions when they jump out of nowhere and start kicking your *CENSORED*. We could see some usefull PvP and PvE in this respect, not to mention some safety for chillin on a hostile server.
Mission Agent Attacks
Improve the agent spawning animation. At the end of a sucessful mission have a bluepill walk from the entrance of the building, go up or down the elevators, and into to the mission area. If the team is still there, begin the transformation. Or just reduce the agent spawn timer to 1:30 min when completing a successful mission, and 30 sec when aborting a mission. And improve the AI by having agents follow the team even when hyperjumping.
Animation Adjustments and Special Effect Enchancements
Hyperspeed blur needs to be removed when idle.
Gaussian Blur puff of smoke needs to be changed.
With less than 10% HP, your RSI should automatically change to Hurt Mode until you're healed.
When creating a character, there should be an option to change the height: 4' to 7'
After a full blast of Hyperjump, the landing will cause the surface to crack along with a sound effect.
Powerful punches and kicks that cause characters to fall to the ground should cause dust and debris to fly up.
Characters in combat near ledges where the only action is to fall after being hit, should fall off the ledge, automatically followed gracefully by the attacker.
Furniture in mission rooms should react to combat by moving or breaking when under pressure.
Walls should react to combat by cracking or breaking when characters are thrown against them.
Food and Drink
Waiters and bartenders should be able to sell us food and drinks with effects. The Merovingian's Orgasm cake should be sold inside Club Hel. When drinking alcohol (or call it something else), the player's RSI will change to drunk mood, text should be slurred when chatting, and the player's screen should wave and blur as visual effects to indicate the drunken stupor.
Dancing
More dancing options need to be added: Break Dancing, Disco, two-player dancing, Tango, The Robot.
Games
Inside buildings there are pool tables, poker tables, dart boards, arcade machines, fues-ball tables, etc., they should be interactive as the games they represent. -- Natural multiplayer games that require equipment, scorekeeping or additional information, such as Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Racing, Oddball and Guard Territories, should be implemented into the game to augment PvP and OvO. Basic deathamtch PvP and OvO on hostile servers has brought a lot of people to quit the game due to boredom.
Client-side Player Controlled Bullet Time
Remove the random Bullet Time there is currently and give players a hot-key to select Bullet Time whenever they want it, but no longer than 5 sec. Include all the visual effects of the action. The hot-key would work just as Bullet Time does now. When pressing the key, time will increase, when the key is released Bullet Time will commence to return the player back to normal time. (Hot-key idea is in refference to Monolith's game F.E.A.R.)
Manipulate RSI
Our RSI's are a vision of what we believe ourselves to look like, therefore we should be able to change what we look like. Minor changes to the body such as tattos, eye color, scars, hair style and color, should all be allowed. Total body reconstruction should not be allowed, except in the case of disguises.
Future Additions as an Expansion pack
The movie was not entirely set inside the Matrix program and the game shouldn't be limited as such. Half the time it was shot outside in The Real. I suggest an expansion pack called The Real, or MxO: Reloaded, which includes the real world as well as additional constructs and areas of the city. The Real would be composed of Zion, a secret Merovingian dock, a Machine dock, The Human Fields, The Guarded Mountains, City 01, couple of small Machine towns, two old human cities, and the underground tunnels. Factions would receive their own fleet of HvCrFT in The Real once they have proven themselves through cumulative play time and reputation points. Several HvCrFT will be awarded to active factions. Each day, a HvCrFT will be selected by the first faction member to login, and every member after that will login to that HvCrFT untill full or another one is activated. The HvCrFT will be fully outfitted with all the regular equipment. Players will be able to select at the appropriate sections to jack-in, be the operator, pilot or co-pilot the ship, man the turrets, or provide medical or engineering support.