Suggestions

HELLO FLIGHT RISING, I've spent a little time talking with my friend who also plays, messing with the game itself, and surfing the forum before writing up this here list.

This game has quite a lot of potential and I hope it grows well, I know there are a lot of bugs and lag at the moment but I'm not going to mention that in the list. You've just opened and that's normal so there's no point in fussing over that, also I know some of these have been suggested already but I'm hoping to add my two cents and suggestions onto them.

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1. A chat room

Yes, yes I know it's been suggested before. Though you really do need one, chat rooms are a great place for a community to bond and not only that, for new players to receive the help they need that isn't covered on the forums or in the FAQ.

You could use the forums, but everyday chit-chat makes for a pretty unneeded "spammy" thread.

1a- Since you've started out it may be a bit tricky getting some of your newest members to stick around when there are so many problems and not much to do yet. If you do get a chat room, hold trivia at a set time and give out small or large prizes.

Since you've got a bit of a mythology theme going on with your familiars, possibly a mythological trivia.

The harder the question the better the reward. Maybe anything from apparel to an actual baby dragon? Currently it is extremely hard for a newbie to even hope to get their favorite dragon species on the site, either being very rare to find in the coliseum or extremely expensive in the auction house IF they even show up there. It'd be nice to give someone a chance at getting their "dream dragon".

Note: I'm not saying do this every day. Nor am I saying give away the rarest thing/dragon in game. Space it out, do like 3 questions a round, if you've "won" a prize before you cannot win again that day. Don't even say what the prize is, make it a cool surprise.

As the site adds more things to do, decrease the amount of trivia/contests. Soon you'll have it once every few months or not at all and no one will mind.

2. Uses for Materials

Again, I've heard this was suggested before but let me elaborate.

We have items like cracked leather, bamboo, mineral ores that our dragons collect and add to their hoards. That's great, but other than selling or trading them off there's not much to do with them?

Why not create crafting classes. Blacksmithing, leather working, and so on to create the apparel items?

Make a level system for items that are difficult to make, and the lower a level you are the harder it is to make an item that isn't "broken". The more "perfect" items you make, the more EXP you gather and level up.
Now there'd be a market for gathered items, people paying for an amount of "X ore" to make BATTLE CLAWS or whatever.

For example, "You need 10 Iron ore and 6 Leather to make two arm guards at level 3. Iron arm guards give you +3 defense and has a durability of 12. Make?" and it's got a fail rate percentage depending on your level.

(This can also work for potions and the like if you want some sort of magical healer crafting class.)

3. Apparel items add stats

Pretty self explanatory, stat boosts to help in coliseum battles. Your IRON HELMET gives you +10 defense, your CLOAK gives you +5 evasiveness, your SHINY PRETTY NECKLACE gave you an extra breath weapon boost!! COOL.

Wait what happens if they keep these items FOREVER or get something super rare and annihilate everyone? Durability. Have durability points that can either be repaired for a fee (treasure/gems?), or the item breaks and becomes unusable.
Make these durability points only go down IN BATTLES and not general wear over time, I imagine some people want to keep their nice goggles free of bloodstains and ash, so why force them to keep repairing if they never battle anyway.

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I may have more suggestions to add later, but I'm all out of brain right now. Of course there are things that could be flawed with each of these suggestions, but the fixes wouldn't be hard as far as I know.

I've been on many sims and other small games and have a basic understanding of how complex things are to add, many have a stat system, trivia contests and much more. So I seriously doubt these small ideas are beyond the reach of FlightRising and I hope you'll consider them!

Thank you for reading my rambling suggestions!

I love the apparel reward idea, the crafting classes, heck! I love it all! Seems a little elder-Scrolls-esque, but hey, who doesn't like the Elder Scrolls!

Support!

Rhea: That's why I said you have the option to keep it separate. The durability wouldn't effect you if you do not battle with that dragon, plus its not like you can't remove your items and put on your battle items, then put the pretties back on after.

Though that is a bit of work, its something you could do.


Edit: Oh Lace brought up something, you could have battle clothing and then normal clothing if you want it completely separate.

@Rhea It's inconvenient, yes. Sometimes things are inconvenient, but it doesn't make sense to me to have an entire clothing selection that will no doubt grow in size, but have no benefits to the game overall other than "pretty" when we have a battle system that could be utilized.

@Venomheart I'm not exactly sure how this is a problem, more revenue for the site is a good thing. If it's about added stats, well...you paid for something. Don't you deserve the benefits that come with it?

THOUGH I see your point and it could be a larger problem than I think, a simple solution would be to have "Battle" slots and "Clothing" slots. If the separation is necessary.