Heya devs and everybody else reading this!
First off, I wanted to say thank you for a VERY fun 2020. With the quarantine keeping most of us homebound for the majority of the year, plenty of us logged way more hours than we probably should, and devs, you delivered with DLC, new free content, patches and bug fixes, and a ton of communication with us. For that, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Looking forward to 2021, there’s quite a bit that I’ve taken note of that I want to push for. Buckle in, because you’re in for quite the read. Note that these are in no particular order, but instead gathered from my notepad that I write stuff down in when the fancy hits me:
PLAYER MADE CONTENT: I understand that making a system so players could create content from within the game is far too large an undertaking. However, I’m curious what it would take to create a system to upload content made from Unity into Orbus. Obviously there would be certain requirements (Must have X number of enemies, Y number of Elites, 2 bosses, Z square feet, etc). This would allow for several benefits:
More, unique content
Faster content release
Another non-combat activity for players to engage in (creating content)
Less work for devs regarding creating dungeons
Old players would undoubtedly re-create the Preborn dungeons, so players may actually stop complaining about that.
There’s plenty of spare rooms in the Fellowship Hall, Player House, and different buildings in Highsteppe that aren’t being used yet. Any one of these could host an NPC that opens a menu to browse through custom content similar to the Forge of Neverwinter or the custom dungeons in Sword Coast Legends (RIP).
Obviously I have zero idea on the logistics of implementing such a system, what it would take to upload entire maps and NPCs, or quality control. However, if this were to be implemented, I definitely have a few dungeons already made because I got so excited about the idea that I went ahead and got started regardless of if it ever happens.
NEW TALENT SYSTEM/CLASS REWORK: As is, each class has a meta set of talents. Not just meta, but like, “this is the way to play this class”. Shaman is all Left talents, as is Runemage. Warrior and Paladin have almost no variation whatsoever because the odd talents, for the most part, just aren’t even close to being worth taking. This could be solved by having each class have two very distinct paths. Ranger was done very well with this regarding Precision vs Rapidity (after the balance patch). Mage has the right idea with True Affliction, but with how much it drops damage of individual spells, and with how small most groups in the game are, it’s not worth taking anymore.
Things we could see here:
Bard being Troubadour (healing path) vs Skald (damage path). (See post here More Bard Ideas)
Shaman being Witch Doctor (CC/Support) vs Wildling (pure damage path)
Warrior having Guardian (tank as we all play it) vs Berserker (a viable DPS path) [this also gives people a melee DPS class, two birds with one stone!]
A rework of talents could also allow some currently unused items to be useful. Hex totem isn’t used because the polymorph effect is random and may fully heal an enemy about to drop, or polymorph an enemy that we want to focus down first. Impact orb isn’t used in group content because Musketeers aren’t meant for damage. Having a variety of play styles for each class may help get these items in rotation.
DUNGEON QUEUE AGGRO SYSTEM: It would greatly benefit the community if the aggro system in Dungeon Queues was looked at and reworked. Even with the scaling of dungeons, a non-leveled tank has no hope to hold aggro against a higher level DPS class. This is especially prevalent when you’ve got something like a level 10 Paladin and a fully kitted, tiled 30+6 mage blasting 70+k. This can lead to frustration with newer tanks/healers, and frustration with higher level DPS because nobody is able to do their job correctly when a DPS pulls. As an end-game DPS player I have to either wait 45+ seconds into a boss fight (and that leads to people asking why I’m not helping) or severely crippling my damage to ensure I don’t pull (and….I usually end up pulling regardless).
RANGER INTERRUPT: Currently Rangers have two options for interrupts: Our trap (which requires us to get MUCH closer than we normally like) and our Charged Arrow (which is a HUGE portion of our DPS). Currently, the Charged Arrow does damage first, and then interrupts. On a Link Shield caster, this means that if the interrupt falls on us, we’re losing a significant amount of damage because the Link Shield eats our charged arrow damage and negates it, THEN interrupts the shield and removes it. This isn’t the case for Scoundrel, Mage, Musketeer, Shaman, Paladin, or Bard (may need to double check each of those). If we can get the interrupt to apply first, that would be amazing.
EXTRA CHARACTER SLOTS IN THE CASH SHOP: While I’m sure the holiday sales were amazing, this game doesn’t have a recurring way of making money from long time players. I’ve sunk nearly 4,000 hours into this game but only ever paid about $40 (30 for the game, 10 for DLC). While the cash shop items are cool, they don’t really do much for me considering none of them fit my style. Having something that benefits me but still doesn’t give me an edge over other players is something I would definitely drop cash on, and I know I’m not alone on this. I know it’s been mentioned that this is on the list for things in 2021, but I wanted to hammer it in again that the community wants this.
OFFICIAL SUPPORT FOR INDEX CONTROLLERS: Once I got my Index, I stopped playing Mage almost altogether. It went from my #1 DPS class to my #4 DPS class. Not just because of the different controllers, but because I can’t rotate with my wand out. That just sucks straight up. And somehow I lost the ability to give a thumbs up. That makes me kinda sad too because I love giving people thumbs ups to show them I support them without having to toggle voice chat on and off.
HAND LOCATION ON GRABBED ITEMS: It’s hard teaching new players the resurrection ritual because when they grab the scroll in the Library, their hand is literally right in the middle of the scroll. It’s a small thing, but it comes up often enough to where I made an entire post about it before.
PASSIVE DUMMIES: I’m really, REALLY into Bard (not sure if you could tell lol) but a lot of our damage comes from our passive abilities. It’s hard to test range, damage, tiles, etc when the combat dummies normally used to test don’t take damage from our passive auras of Harm and Justice.
MAKE MOBS LEASH NEAR GRAVEYARDS: This is especially prevalent during seasonal events, and it’s been an issue since they’ve started: adds gather near the graveyards and will get new players stuck there. The new player dies, reawakens at a graveyard, tries to leave and IMMEDIATELY pulls aggro and dies again. This, combined with a lackluster tutorial so that they don’t know about the home teleporter device is hell. I myself got stuck for two weeks in the Rainforest in Preborn as a level 3 due to not knowing about the teleporter device. Luckily eventually some veteran player portaled me back to Highsteppe. I honestly was about to quit the game back then, and I’m glad somebody helped me before I did.
RUNE PILLARS: Frost 1 has been drawn incorrectly on the rune in Fellowship Court since Reborn launched. This has been reported before, and I swear sitting in Fellowship Court telling people that the rune drawn there is incorrect is my part time job. Frost 2 doesn’t go into the journal, nor does Arcane Explosion. There’s also no in-game representation of Frost 3 or Fireball 3. I’m not sure if that’s intentional, but it’s worth mentioning that those spells survive entirely based on Word of Mouth and Youtube.
FRIEND/FELLOWSHIP/PARTY INVITES: Each of these gives an almost identical pop up menu. How many people have joined a new Fellowship by accident, or left their party because they thought they were accepting a friend invite, etc? Simply changing the color of the pop up menu would help solve this. There’s also been issues of the invites stacking on top of each other, so sending a Fellowship Invite immediately followed by a Friend Invite may proc an acceptance of both invites.
Regardless of what gets implemented, what gets tossed out, and how the year goes, I look forward to an awesome 2021 and look forward to the new Hard Mode Raid and Bard changes 
Viva Orbus!
