Syp’s Wish List: September 8, 2008
September 9, 2008
Every once in a while I want to take a more positive approach to perceived gaps or problems in Warhammer Online, and issue a “wish list” of features or changes I’d love to see:
- Automatic loot pickup: The extra step to see a sparkly corpse and click on it to receive your loot doesn’t seem like a big deal — after all, we’ve been doing it in MMOs forever now. But I’ve been finding that with the hectic combat in WAR, particularly in PQs (when you want to be killing as fast and often as you can) or PvP (where even in victory you have to look for the next danger source), I just don’t have time to pause and loot. I really wish there was an option to just throw all of my loot into my bag the second I kill the mob. The extra pause/step doesn’t seem worth the hassle these days.
- Overhaul the backpack: ironically, the backpack did receive an overhaul a little while back, but there are still two issues I have with it. The first is that the quest tab isn’t clearly labeled as such and is pretty easy to miss entirely (as evidenced by many people looking for quest items without finding them, then reporting on forums and blogs). The second is that there’s a significant lag or pause when it comes to moving items around. I should be able to quickly click-drag-drop items, but it’s always been hard click-pause to see if I got the item-drag-pause to drop. This is way too slow, and it’d be great if it were improved.
- Being able to access your own Tome of Knowledge when not playing the game! Pleeeeeeease!
- Letting us queue up for scenarios other than the tier/zone we’re in. This is highly requested by the fan base, and the only reason I’ve heard against it is for lore reasons, or that you’re supposed to be fighting for the zone you’re currently in.
- Two words: Trampoline Zone!
Waaagh! A Warhammer Online Blog 
Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, and Huh?
The loot thing absolutely drives me nuts. Seriously, if WoW can do it, and it’s basic logic, put it in the damn game. Same as linking to items and skills in chat, why the hell isn’t that in the game?
There’s a few other things I can’t remember off the top of my head that are also standard in WoW, and people are getting real annoyed that they aren’t in this game, since they have become standard in other MMO’s.
And, of course, fix the dozen major bugs/problems haunting the game that keep pissing people off, with priority being the mobs that become untargetable. Most annoying bug ever.
I know its not ‘auto loot’ but the shift click method is close. At least you don’t have to click twice.
I’m really not so bothered by the current set of bugs, but the loot thing is an issue. The way loot was handled in Tabula Rasa was one of the only things I really liked about the game. All you had to do was run over the mob and you automatically grabbed the loot. Their bag system was also pretty nice. I also wish crafting was a little clearer in Warhammer. I still have no clue what crafting skill is going to best help whatever class I’m playing or exactly how it really works. The only crafting skill I’ve played with is the gathering skills, but I’m not even certain that scavenging and butchering is worth the extra time. Of course, I’m a very casual beta tester—the highest level I’ve hit is 7, so maybe it’s clearer at higher levels.
There is already a mod that automatically hits the loot all button for you when looting, bypassing that extra step. You should go grab it from Curse.com, I’ve been looking to try it out myself but haven’t gotten around to it yet, mabey tonight perhaps.
Loot/inventory wise, I just wish the bag icon at the top of your screen had a filled slots/total slots counter on it so I could easily see how much space I have left and know when to go hit up a merchant and sell my junk. With scavenging as a gathering skill my bags fill up fairly quick and it sucks not being able to loot stuff since your bags are full.
Auto Loot: That would be nice, but I already run into the size limitations of the backpack. If everything was set to autoloot, then I’d always have trash loot cramping my bag. Then, I could miss out on some nice equipment or potions because my bags were full and I expected things to be autolooted. So, for now, I think we should just keep the current system.
Backpack: I like that it expands as you level. WoW’s system also worked well because you could just stuff 16+ slot bags in there and be done. As for the quest tab, it should just be another labeled tab. I had no idea what it was until I decided to click on it out of sheer curiosity.
WAR Armory: It would be great to be able to access your “armory” profile, including your Tome! I would love a webservice that exposes this information so that you could even create your own online journal for you character. It could read your Tome entries from the webservice and present them on a web page, how delicious!
Item Linking: Ever after WoW, I can’t live without this feature. Linking abilities is cool too, but item linking is necessary. I hate describing everything that I want to show to someone. Just link it and go!
Not Attackable Bug: This is the single most annoying bug that I encounter. Hopefully this is fixed before long.
Scenario Queues: I would to queue for other scenarios, but it makes a bit of sense to only be able to queue for the current zone’s scenario. But, you could just as easily travel to a different zone, queue up, then hearth (book?) back to some other place. Then, you’re queued for another zone’s scenario. So, I don’t think it’s a huge deal to just let us queue remotely anyway.
1. Generally like the idea, but what happens after your bags are full?
2. Meh, I didn’t have a problem figuring out there was a quest bag tab (would have sworn it *is* clearly labelled). But agree moving things could be faster (for some reason I seem to see the same fraction of a second pause trying to loot mobs sometimes too).
3. Definitely agreed! I just find I’m too busy in-game to stop and read lengthy section of the Tome, so, cool as the idea is, there are still whole sections (such as NPC histories) I still haven’t read.
4. Queueing for scenarios is great (as a long-time WoW player, the ability to queue anywhere and be returned right back to where I was is awesome!). Agree that a choice of scenarios w/o having to travel would be even better.
5. Trampoline zone? Dunno, dwarfs don’t bounce…
If I had one to add, it would be that quests, PQs, RvR zones, and groups all get more obvious level indicators (or suggested level ranges). I may just be missing something obvious since I’m such a newbie in WAR, but I just don’t see that kind of info when I’m looking at maps, etc.
Other than that I’m really loving the game, untargettable mobs and all 🙂
Right, you can queue for another racial pairing scenario by either flying to their area, or joining a group with someone already in the other area. Your group mate can then queue as a party. You can queue in the zone you are in and then you will be in two queues at once.
Would be easier of course to add queue options to any of the 3 scenarios from anywhere in Tier 1, perhaps they will add this down the road as the population in Tier 1 areas starts to thin out.
Scenario queues : IMHO, MMO developpers always switch between in game limitations due to lore and player frustration. In WoW, it seems that the tendency is to reduce the frustration instead of respecting lore (why the hell did they decide to give an out of combat heal to droods ?). I can see lots of MMO going this way, evolving into a situation where everyone does the same and looks the same (wow again). Short : keep the queues as they are.
Mouse-look lock! Toggle button between mouse-look and mouse-select….my wrist is killing me from holding down the right mouse all the time.
Tome out of game would be awesome. I’d like to read more of it, but there isn’t enough time in game to stop and read everything as my group moves on to the next quest/objective.
I’m right there with you on the Tome of Knowledge access outside of the game….God…the amount of time I could waste at work, err I mean over lunch…
Whats EA’s stance on mods since they’re using Punkbuster? Since its still open beta idk if its even an issue but they might really crack down after launch.
I haven’t heard much on Punkbuster at all, but since Mythic is supporting the use of mods pretty heavily, I doubt they’re going to crack down unless people start making bots or macros that go against the EULA.
The actual link to the autoloot tool: http://war.curse.com/downloads/details/13508/
(Automatically uses ‘Loot All’ when looting a corpse, even when the modifier key is not held.)
If you press Shift and loot like in WoW it auto loots everything anyway…
“Being able to access your own Tome of Knowledge when not playing the game! Pleeeeeeease!”
Oh, absolutely. I’d love it if they made an Armory-like website but for each of our characters’ ToK. I have to admit I don’t read everything there, and I’d love to be able to do it when I’m idling somewhere with an Internet connection but no WAR. 🙂
I’m supporting a thread on the Warhammer alliance forums, in relation to the Mouse look portion of this blog entry. Please support the tread if you want this added to the game.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95084