My favorite all-time game is Ragnarok Online. One could play the game and have a blast for months without ever having done a single quest. HOW? The drive in Ragnarok was the hunt for items. Whether by party or soloing, everyone wanted to kill 'X' in order to get that rare hat, or rare card. The card system added an awesome dimension to the game by adding stats or new skills to a player's gear. Cards were rare. The drop rate for all cards was .01% Getting a card was an achievement. The game also had guild wars wherein guilds battled for control of a castle. The castle owners were rewarded with daily chests which contained useable items and a very rare chance at a piece of a God Item.
A huge part of the fun for me in MMOrpgs is the drive to get something that is very difficult to get or achieve something that is very difficult to achieve. Grinding to max level was a very long process but the satisfaction was immense!
In short: Add ultra-rare items and the ability to hunt for them without the need to quest. This adds a whole new dimension to the game. (and a way to show off)!!
Awww yehhh!
RO ftw.
Best mmorpg ever. Nothing even comes close to how much fun I've ever had in an mmorpg.
Farming 0.01% rates all day till WoE. WoE till you cry tears of joy (and realize all your investments are gone from the emp breaking all day lol)
Oh oh farming hats! Best incentive :D
Screw quests. give me hat grinds :3
I agree. I played a game with something similar. Rare fashion item drops.
I spent 9 hours killing one mob to get a pair of rabbit ears.
/priorities FTW
I agree with Lawlyss.
With today mmorpg communities such a thing sadly would result in a lot of people complaining about the "grind fest" to get these items. How they are casual players and are entitled to enjoy everything the game has to offer. And so on.
With so many on the forum complaining about RNG, I'm surprised anyone liked the idea. I've never played a game 8hrs in one day other than trying to beat the original Resident Evil game for Sony Playstation in one sitting, when I couldn't afford a memory card. I was like 13 with no job and memory cards were like $40 each.
I like the idea of rare items but I would also like them to be found via exploration, like in RIFT, so I would feel like I'm rewarded for exploring the map too instead of just grinding in hopes for a 1-in-400,000 drop or whatever the ratio would be.
iro sakray/chaos player here for 6 years, RO was about the leveling to me, not the card finding. i would rarely go out looking for cards because the chance was abysmally low. it was not fun, it was boring, and time consuming.
what i did have fun doing was organizing groups to tackle little known leveling spots like thanatos tower level 5. killing owl barons with wizards and other DDs was the shiznit
Okay, I'm serious when I say I -love- grinding for certian items. My second MMO (another Korean one I believe) was Perfect World, and there one of the lowbie items worth alot is Hay. I could grind antelope mobs for hours trying to gather hay to sell like crazy.
Then one day... as I'm grinding on normal mobs for hay... a gold item dropped (well, the mold for it, but that's another story.) Whether the mold was worthless or not didn't matter, what mattered is that I now had the gold Lvl 34 helmet (or something like that) that only dropped from a few select mobs, at like a .0001 drop rate.
^_^ so less of a crazy drop rate might be nice, but love this idea!