The Mana World Forums

How about when you right click on a person, it shows some information (the only one I can think of right now is their level), to add the trade and attack options already there.

I think if you want to know somebodies level, you should ask them. This seems too invasive to people who don't want to show off their level.

you could add a whisper option to the menu

If you are too shy to ask, it could be a nice idea to display more information about another player. But you must allow the players to decide whether that information is available or not. Let them opt-in or out.

Keep in mind that knowing a lot about your enemy would make PvP much less interesting.

However, not knowing enough would be just plain irritating.
What if you attacked someone only to find that they're 20 levels above you and they just one-hit-KO you?

Just never underestimate your enemy

That's just silly. I would be too afraid to actually ever attack someone.

No risk, no fun. PvP would be pretty boring when you always know if you win or lose before starting a fight.

Also note that the character system will be much more complex in the future with stone-paper-scissor style character builds and equipments. Figuring out the enemies resistances and skills and then adapting to the situation will be the most challenging part of PvP combat. Being able to do this by looking it up would be much less interesting than figuring this out by observation and experimentation.

You just contradicted yourself (well, sort of).

You could set it to display the players level but no other information about them. So you would know when you wre attacking someone way out of your range but you wouldn't know if you had a real adantage over them given their elemental strengths and weaknesses. So you could have an element of risk and observation without the danger of a newbie accidentally attaking someone's leet level 80 character.

Not sure what the current ideas on friending/ignoring/clans are, but one common feature in mmorpg’s is that you can see more information about those you call friends (and in at least one, your enemies as well — the flash game Dofus). Typical information is level, health, location...

Personally, I like the idea of seeing my friends’, group/clan members’ health (as I tend to be some kind of healer). The location is practical at times, but understandably some will not want to share this. So information like level and location could be hidden by default, but activated for friends (and/or everyone else) by the player.

Crush wrote:Keep in mind that knowing a lot about your enemy would make PvP much less interesting.

I have to completely disagree with you here Crush. I think it is fair to say that World of Warcraft has one of the best PvP setups in current MMORPG games. In WoW, you can see your enemies level if they are no greater than 10 levels of your own. Anything more than 10 levels gives an icon indicating they are more than 10 levels higher than your character. You can also tell what class they are. Rogues, Warriors, and Shamans are melee classes. Mages, Warlocks, and Priests are ranged spell classes. Druids and Hunters can vary. Just by mousing over your enemy, you know their class. Instead of making PvP boring, it actually increases the thought/planning process, which is what makes PvP interesting. Not having some random chance to be 1 shotted by the enemy or 1 shot the enemy. The illusion of predictability is exactly what makes PvP interesting. If you should, in theory, be able to defeat your enemy, but they defeat you because they have a better strategy, then PvP is fun.

I think we should go for a more realistic stat showing: you have no idea what your enemy is capable of, unless you watch him/her fight others.

...Instead of making PvP boring, it actually increases the thought/planning process,...

The idea of not seeing other players stats, and having to study your enemies more would add more thought/planning to the mix than WoW's idea. AND, it's more realistic.

Wow is not comparable: they have static classes and we will not.

Also the concept of a level for us is a bit fuzzy.