Survey Results and LoF Development Outline

Thank you all for taking the survey from a while ago!
Only a few of you might have taken the survey, but we did manage to get opinions from many other mmorpg players.

(Here's the survey url: http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/dPQPZqM/What-do-you-want-from-a-2D-Indie-MMORPG?skip_to_results=1)

What view should the game have?
The survey tied at TD 45deg oblique, Side-Scroll. (A late entrant made Side-scroll move up to the top and had TD 45deg Oblique tie with Isometric).
The game will be in TD oblique view. Previous LoF releases had a fusion of a complete 90deg TD and a slightly lowered angle TD view, which was pretty messy. This time, LoF will have a strict 30/45/60deg TD Oblique view to make it look neat and clean.

This brings us to the next inquiry of presentation- What type of movements should be used? Object allocations? Object rotational views?
There was an obvious favor of a free-fluid movement rather than a grid-based one. LoF will take this on like it had in previous releases.
Rotational display of 8-directional separate sprites were in the most favor. LoF CBT had no rotations at all, but it will take on a fully-designed 8-directional graphics and details for the OBT.

The next question was a tricky one.
It seemed as if people wanted varieties at first, but at the very end it came out that social interaction was more important. On this matter, LoF will be worked on to have more basic variability first, then some systems to support person to person interactions. As of now, we will not worry too much on Mood or the graphical and auditory presentation (except the ones mentioned in the first two questions).

What should the game progression focus on?
This was quite surprising. It seemed as if players wanted a deliberately HARDER leveling. LoF will take on the middle ground of that, since we see that a beginner-friendly enviornment is very important.
Also, leveling will continue to just unlock new skills and strengthen the characters.
Alternate money-specific grinding methods will be removed and not worked on for now. Rather, with the introduction of "items" in the game, we will primarily focus on a well-established market.
We will keep (and also elaborate on) PvP, PvE, and GvG systems. One new GvG currently in plan is the Area-Siege which will involve 2 clans (regardless of their coalitions) fighting each other to gain control of a town- another upcoming future system that will allow players to manipulate their town's economic markets.
For now, the game will not work too much on graphical eyecandies or other higher-spec requirements. Simple events will still be present at times and Party system/Clan system will be worked on despite that unpopular votes.

The control scheme question was rather puzzling.
Rather than choosing movement by mouse-clicks, people favored movement only by keyboard, but they also like to have their hands on both keybaord and the mouse at the same time for the majority of the gameplay (which is mouse-controlled movement). Either way, LoF will use mouse-controlled movement, due to current bandwidth limites and server capabilities.
Also a biased skew for key customization was apparent. LoF will try its best to provide that freedom mechanic.

Finally, the game was asked to work on its basic systems first, rather than its contents (which was done since alpha).

I hope this gives many people some ideas of what is to come! Be sure to participate in LoF~RE offline test and LoF OBT!!

-[GM]GameMaster