I mean, make some small group dungeoning pve (all open world, uninstanced) with free for all pvp (or maybe free for all between guilds) with a ton of npc scripting.
Personally I would have preferred PvE and Zek servers (as opposed to how they went). That way carebears looking to run a dungeon with friends similar to the TESO multiplayer game that people have always wanted could play on a PvE server if they didn't want to deal with any PvP, and the PvPers could have an entire server (not only Cyrodiil) to jack around in.
No factions, but brotherhoods/guilds and a some open world objectives or boons for pvp, and done? Seems a more sure bet and cheaper to boot! Add in some optional and obscure pve quests too. IMO, you'd want to recreate an elder scrolls world where people can just "play".
The PvP that I would think would match TES IP the best wouldn't be large scale RvR, but more like small scale, intrigue driven, secret-society versus secret-society (or guild versus guild) PvP. So instead of having players all fuck around in big battles, picture this:
Some jackass breaks into your home and steals a bunch of items. Balance-wise it should be difficult to do if you upgrade your own home (guards, security, magic traps, etc), but when someone is successful the homeowner is pissed. Have the person flagged (invisibly obv) for stealing crap (unless a guard sees them, etc), and have NPCs in the underworld, or simply NPCs that your character has good enough faction with, be able to act on those flags and if you go out talking to your sources, maybe you get a quest or a contact so that you can do something in return. So maybe that Redguard woman in the skooma den that you have good faction with might be able to give you some intel or a name or maybe even a quest. Maybe you can find out where
THEIRhouse is at, or put a contract out on them, or track them down in the gameworld for vengeance, maybe even try ganking them in some far off dungeon and tee-bagging their corpse for forum screenshots. This could easily work like the intel or whatever agents in EVE, just make it deeper than having to go see an "Intel" agent.
Personally I'd like to see factions such as they are (maybe not all, but many of them) be invisible to players. So instead of this retarded 3 hard faction system, I can join some revolutionary faction that wants to overthrow the gov't and hates humans or whatever, but no one could just look at me and
know. Maybe have some mechanics so that people could be "outed" officially in the game world, maybe you have to sneak around guards or whatever. And if I gank someone from another guild or society, have the door opened for guild wars or something similar that can break out in the shadows of the gameworld w/o needing roped off PvP areas or bullshit carrots like "Alliance Points". Edit: and none of this being able to join a single faction, allow it so that people might be able to join multiple factions as long as they don't work at cross purposes, and you could even have instances where if two of the guilds you are a member of go at it, that could generate new decisions and events for characters.
Now I'm just some forum jackass drinking coffee and typing on an internet forum, if I can think of other paradigms for stuff like this there
hasto be people out there in the industry that can come up with this stuff
andmake it happen, instead of Devs just regurgitating a bunch of disparate systems and design options that have already been used, sometimes ad nauseum.
I mean Firor, shit, he has credibility, same with Jacobs. But I would
HATEto have to go through the rest of my career tweaking the same DaoC model (or EQ or WoW or whatever) that I had worked on previously, maybe adding a new twist here or there or borrowing from other MMOs, instead of...you know...creating something new and fresh and innovative.
Shit this thread depresses me, lol.
