1. Skill tree would be nice, but it wouldn't be the same as Fallout. (I could live with this change, though.) But to accurately model human learning, it must become harder to go back and learn/improve completely new simple skills when you get older, as well; something I've yet to see an MMORPG do.
2. There's no good way to do that. If by limited by people involved, that will lead to abuse by higher-level players. Plus there will be teammates/random passers-by who will want to jump in and help. On the flip side, if it's limited by area, random passers-by who DON'T want to be involved will be annoyed by the slow-down.
3. Yeah, I can't think of any way to explain a huge population in a sparse wasteland.
Exactly. For an MMORPG to not have this problem, it needs to do two things that I don't see happening anytime soon.
No NPCs.
Leveling NPCs aren't needed.
Training can be through experimentation, books or other in-game items, or learned from other players. The first players can learn from GMs.
Especially no random NPCs waiting around to ask you to kill 10 rats for them. Have some rats in a house/sewer/whatever. If you kill some, that's cool, get exp. No arbitrarily given exp for getting that 10th rat.
Permanent death. If your character dies, start a new one.
Assuming, of course, that they actually get it out the door.
SPECIAL and the skills/traits/perks system is awesome, but it is kinda meaningless when people get up to level 50 or so and have every possible skill maxed out and obtain every perk possible.
Tactical combat will be a bitch. What are you going to do - make every person in the world take turns?
A "wasteland" isn't a wasteland with 1 million people running around doing the same damn quests as me.
With those three points alone, everything I love about Fallout is ruined. It's been said before, and I'll say it again - Fallout Online = FOOL.
1. Skill tree would be nice, but it wouldn't be the same as Fallout. (I could live with this change, though.) But to accurately model human learning, it must become harder to go back and learn/improve completely new simple skills when you get older, as well; something I've yet to see an MMORPG do. 2. There's no good way to do that. If by limited by people involved, that will lead to abuse by higher-level players. Plus there will be teammates/random passers-by who will want to jump in and help. On the flip side, if it's limited by area, random passers-by who DON'T want to be involved will be annoyed by the slow-down. 3. Yeah, I can't think of any way to explain a huge population in a sparse wasteland.
With those three points alone, everything I love about Fallout is ruined. It's been said before, and I'll say it again - Fallout Online = FOOL.