DISCLAIMER: The two wizards writing this have both been playing for nearly 9 years, and we’ve seen this game grow and evolve. We share a love and appreciation for this game and want to see it succeed. With that in mind, we’ve devised a list of balance, quality of life, and miscellaneous changes that would excite and interest the older fan base while not changing that iconic feeling of whimsy and adventure that attracts younger players. Balance School Needs Balancing Balance wizards struggle in Second Arc worlds. Balance and Astral school enemies can sometimes feel like a wall to a Balance wizard, since they resist the majority of the damage Balance has access to. Spells like weakness and plague also counter Balance wizards heavily, since they have no way to remove these charms without also wasting their own blades. Combine that with the weakest blade-trap combo of any school, and questing starts to feel more like a grind where each fight can drag on if an enemy shields at a bad time. Balance is meant to be a support class with access to powerful utility spells that can alter the flow of battle, but it shouldn’t be so difficult to solo quest. Allowing Balance spells to hit for neutral damage on ALL schools would help Balance wizards when it comes to solo questing, while not making them too powerful.
Bazaar Rework The Bazaar has always been a staple in Wizard101, since it allows players to sell various types of items in one location and purchase items that would typically have to be looted. To improve the functionality and usefulness of the Bazaar, it should act more like a market where all wizards can sell any item (excluding pets) for any price that they themselves would set. A change such as this would create an in game economy where activities such as gardening, grinding fights for rare loot, and crafting are more enticing to players, as they would be able to sell their goods for profit. Having this in the game would interest and help retain players.
Character Customization Players should have the ability to cycle through face presets at will, similar to changing equipment. A Barbershop could also be implemented that allows players to alter their hairstyle at will, but they would have to pay x amount of crowns/gold. The crowns price should be relatively cheap, with the gold cost varying based on type of hairstyle. Along this line, more hairstyles of increased detail might be added. The wizard’s base sprite color palette could be changed at the dye shop for gold.
Crafting The problem with crafting is that it feels unrewarding. The time it takes to collect reagents for upper level crafting outweighs the return. Additionally, players are typically more inclined to farm dungeons and bosses for powerful gear, rather than gather resources to craft a set. A way to bridge the gap between the quality of crafted gear and dropped gear would be to make the crafted gear only slightly weaker than dropped gear, but create a system of set bonuses.
... Wearing a crafted hat, robe, and shoes of the same set together should benefit the player by granting higher stats, thus rewarding players for devoting time to the game. These sets of gear should only be marginally stronger, varying by no more than 6-8% damage/resistance/pip chance at higher levels.
Fishing Fishing shouldn’t use energy. Being a Verdant gardener, training pets, and also trying to fish on top of that uses up a lot of energy, and due to priorities, fishing is always the last thing done, leaving no energy to even fish. This is why I think there should be another separate globe for fishing only with its own fishing energy elixir in the crowns shop. This idea could be further developed with special fishing gear (craftable / droppable), which could use special fish as a reagent. This gear could provide stats like fishing energy, chest luck, etc. Overall this would help balance the energy problem, and also get more wizards into fishing.
Hatching Kiosk The Kiosk is a great idea for making hatching more accessible for new wizards, and overall is very convenient. However, finding the pets you want can be tedious. I think there should be a better way of sorting pets (talent selector, sort by stats, etc.). This would improve quality of life for all wizards and make the Kiosk a much more powerful and effective tool that it should be.
Monstrology Speaking as an involved player in the wizard101 community, I have yet to find a person who has actually done monstrology, let alone even know what the purpose of it was. To most players, it honestly just seems useless and a waste of time and gold. Maybe a way to change this negative perception is to allow enemies in the monstrodome to drop their usual drops, and also for every enemy (including all bosses) available to extract animus from. This change would give more of a purpose to monstrology and get more players into committing their time to it.
Miscellaneous Additions / Changes ○ Name change elixir (crowns item, around 1000 crowns would seem fair) ○ More name options ○ Anti-Aliasing? ○ Make all global spells hit simultaneously ○ More school design gear (either crafted or dropped) ○ Allow the wizard to move/rotate the bank in their house ○ THE ABILITY TO ABANDON SIDEQUESTS ○ More color options for all clothes etc. (dye shop) ○ Day and Night (in-game time) ○ A bank for players to deposit gold in that any character on that account can access ○ Roll out more texture updates ○ Individual casting animations for each school ○ There should be a way to access your various castles without having to equip them separately and then teleport to them. The spiral door exit in a castle should show the option to teleport to the other houses a wizard owns. ○ Add in customization options for the UI, allowing players to change the size and location of specific icons (HUD). ○ An option to display 4-5 quests at a time on the side of the screen, with the ability to toggle which quest you are tracking
At the end of the day, we’re just a pair of aging fans who would like to see our game age with us. We know that much of the player base is on the younger side, but we believe that with these changes players would choose to stay with the game much longer.
I agree with all of this. Principally, I'd love for all global spells to hit all targets simultaneously. Questing would be much less monotonous and time consuming if I wasn't spending half the battle watching Ra/Mystic Colossus/Frost Giant take his time killing each target. The idea for changing the Balance School makes a ton of sense as well. It is very difficult to solo quest as balance once you hit Celestia. With star balance and sun school enemies resisting our main forms of damage, and Chimera being an expensive single target spell, I agree that being able to hit for neutral damage on any school would be an appropriately strong buff.
Some of what you just mentioned just had me screaming to myself as I read along "Yes! Yes! Yes!"
A couple that I definitely agree with:
Make all global spells hit simultaneously
More school design gear (either crafted or dropped)
More color options for all clothes etc. (dye shop)
Individual casting animations for each school
A bank for players to deposit gold in that any character on that account can access
I also share your pain for balance. Many have suggested that the school get a convert of it's own and school only blades and traps referring to them as Sand blade and Sand trap.
The kiosk however is still, similarly to when the Bazaar was just introduced, the selection system was a bit tacky, but with time, it was updated. I'm sure this will eventually be the case of the Kiosk.
... Wearing a crafted hat, robe, and shoes of the same set together should benefit the player by granting higher stats, thus rewarding players for devoting time to the game. These sets of gear should only be marginally stronger, varying by no more than 6-8% damage/resistance/pip chance at higher levels.
Fishing Fishing shouldn’t use energy. Being a Verdant gardener, training pets, and also trying to fish on top of that uses up a lot of energy, and due to priorities, fishing is always the last thing done, leaving no energy to even fish. This is why I think there should be another separate globe for fishing only with its own fishing energy elixir in the crowns shop. This idea could be further developed with special fishing gear (craftable / droppable), which could use special fish as a reagent. This gear could provide stats like fishing energy, chest luck, etc. Overall this would help balance the energy problem, and also get more wizards into fishing.
Hatching Kiosk The Kiosk is a great idea for making hatching more accessible for new wizards, and overall is very convenient. However, finding the pets you want can be tedious. I think there should be a better way of sorting pets (talent selector, sort by stats, etc.). This would improve quality of life for all wizards and make the Kiosk a much more powerful and effective tool that it should be.
Monstrology Speaking as an involved player in the wizard101 community, I have yet to find a person who has actually done monstrology, let alone even know what the purpose of it was. To most players, it honestly just seems useless and a waste of time and gold. Maybe a way to change this negative perception is to allow enemies in the monstrodome to drop their usual drops, and also for every enemy (including all bosses) available to extract animus from. This change would give more of a purpose to monstrology and get more players into committing their time to it.
...
Regarding your comments about fishing.
AMEN!
Regarding your comments about Monsterology.
I do Monsterology and find a cheap, quick and convenient way to help with a boss battle. Soloed most of the way through Azteca as a Theurgist with my Monsterology animus and Sir Bedevere minion.
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