Episode 2 Poll

[thosholm]

Recruiting targets

[grimjim]

using rotten food is not a fair comparison. Instead you could say that you are a vegetarian, and PvP is meat. Some of us like meat. You do not, so you send it back.

If we use YOUR metaphore, the place would only allow you your nice vegetables if you also ordered meat at the same time.

It would also be the ONLY place to eat in town.

[calel]

The neutral position will be integrated in Episode 2; it won't be specific gameplay, but on a roleplay point of view neutrals will get specific instructions.

That is actually the sadest piece of news I' ve heard so far. The events and lore so far have somehow always left a backdoor open for a neutral stance. (note: Neutrality does not always mean being a Hominist which many seem to forget)
Some have been waiting a long time already for this to actually become implemented gameplay specific, Episode 2 looked promissing for that, yet again it has to be improvised and we have to paddle with the oars we were given long before. I honestly doubt 'specific instructions' will save the day here as the neutrality some envision is all about having and making choices when and where you want, not between A and B and atm as that is a forced choice only. Which is basically the same as taking away our right to choose not to choose a side. Imo only the most uninspired PnP gamemaster or the most bland type of crpg would ever use this type of forced 'making choices'. So seriously, this is a major let down to me; I had expected more from a game that encourages players to make a difference and promises to give them the possibility to affect the world around them.

Last point on this: I agree that some sort of 'railroading' is needed in anything concerning role-playing games but I had the idea that role-playing meant I COULD take on the role of someone I CHOSE to play within the limits of possibility. The background of my character is totally viable with the lore, old, new, even recent published material on the Atys Chronicles. Yet in this awe-aspiring story I can somehow not be what the story says I can be. Either remove it out of the lore or give us the chance to be it Nevrax. I sincerely hope you pick the later.



On to the rest:

Most things that have been said I can agree on:
I' m no big fan of PvP and try to avoid it if possible, so some might call me biased on this. However, it is not the PvP itself here that failed in my eyes, because I think it would somehow not feel right if it had totally lacked that, but it is the implementation.
The map is ..... well, sorry, but it reminds me to much of a Counter Strike map. 2 camps, flag or tag in the middle, boom boom, you' re dead, respawn. Oh ok, there' s mobs that kill you too somewhere. I would have played a FPS game if this is what I wanted. It lacks depth.

Various things here I feel are lacking or not balancing it out. It is for one way to easy to gather 'honour' points by activly hunting players of another faction compared to actually do the thing we were all supposed to do in the first place. An hour of 'hunting' can easily provide you with 2k to 3k points provided you actually inflict damages (go healers go, oh wait .... ), you die a bit, no problem you respawn as there is no DP and you head back in. An hour of foraging should imo normally give the same benefits, but it doesn' t. Unless you have this huge streak of luck that you can remain unnoticed or aren' t forced to pick up your amps to heal out when your party gets attacked repeatedly. If you die and respawn you still have downtime as you can' t heal focus yet. Crafting ..... well, you have to be lucky there' s materials to craft with in the first place, but not very likely as everyone is to busy killing eachother instead of grabbing mats. Now should you be so lucky as to have foraged a full bag of materials yourself to craft with and hand them in, you best be the only person around the temple or someone else will grab those precious materials for free!

What I would see as solutions:

A larger map; low ql zones of materials without FvF or PvP zone. Why? Lower-level players won' t have to fear being useless that way and can still contibute and actually gain something from it. The higher ql zones should be FvF as they hold the most rewards and thus should have consequent risks. Maybe add non FvF zones with high ql materials but make them deplete faster perhaps or just toss in more mobs (Loria style).

Do something about the easy gain of points by PvPing. AoD' s should have the right to take on anything within their powers but I don' t think it would be really honourfull if they crush ants, right? Why get a reward for something that is so easy and thus has no risks towards you? And why no points for defending your faction' s foragers from kitins or even healing up your teammates? All in all I have the feeling there' s more reward in 'ganking' and playing 'ping-pong' at the moment than there is for tactical battles and well-thought out strategies that could make PvP all the more enjoyable (maybe, in a way, at least to me).

Make it so maybe that if I bring in materials myself in the hope to craft with that I can chose to actually craft if I wanted instead of having the possibility that others may 'leech'. Maybe hand the player the refined materials and then have them chose to hold on to them to craft or make them available to others. Flawed idea, but it' s the best I can come up with at the moment.


Well, time to have another go at it.

[Xavier Antoviaque]

Oh GREAT!
So the neutrals and non-PvP-ers can go roleplay!
Yeehaa! First we wait 2 weekends with speeches and nothing to do, and when at last episode 2 go life, the people who do not like PvP are told do some more roleplaying?

No, I'm talking about neutral characters in the Kami vs Karavan war - the characters who don't want to follow one of the two factions, not the players who do not like PvP.

--
Xavier.

[boinged]

I was still enjoying it after spending a solid 10 hours on this event and reluctant to log off. It reminded me of the kitin invasion event, only this time it was against homins from a different faction. On that event there was some initial crazyness and then people got bored after a week, at least this scoreboard and building system will encourage people to last the duration.

I did a lot of harvesting and some healing (for which you get honour points if it results in a kill). After the initial back-and-forth battle, things settled down to be more orderly, I think it really depends who is playing when you are.

I think people posting in this thread are about 50/50 for/against this event. So Act I will satisfy half of them. Maybe Act II will cater to the other half and what's wrong with that? Anyway, you won't find me posting much more here, as like the 100s of people I keep seeing in Aelius, I'd rather be enjoying the game.

I don't see much point repeating your opinions, I'm pretty sure Nevrax takes it all on board but probably more like "player x made this point, 5 people agree with him, 3 disagreed and 10 are playing instead of posting". Making the point 10 times in increasingly eloquent ways doesn't add any weight to it.

I don't think flaming people because they like or dislike this event is very constructive.

Suggestions (to add some value rather than just repeating how much I love this event ):

The poor people who guarded us from the kitin were the ones that lost out on the honour points, I hope this is changed in later acts. Maybe quartering kitin morsels like before to hand in as trophies

We could really do with faction chat though - tactics were lacking and I'm sure noone wanted to discuss them in region

The craft NPC-dialogue part is still very rough: Click on the crafter-NPC, select "yes ok I'll do it", click on them again (why this pointless step?), click on a piece, click on the number you want to make (again another limitation of the script/code), then you're told there aren't enough mats - but not what they are, how unhelpful! So then you click to restart the whole procedure - why not go back a menu step or two?

(This was the same problem in the kitin invasion event and whoever wrote this menu script should be made to craft for the duration of the event )

It might be helpful to know what levels we need to craft various things although a big part of Ryzom is figuring out stuff that is standard gui/interface design in other games. I never know if this is intentional, to not insult the players' intelligence and let them work it out or just bad design

The harvesters have to guess what to dig. If you're lucky enough to get a craft mission you can find out the ingredients, but there's no way of knowing the reserves of mats. Why can't, at the very least, there be a 'foreman' NPC yelling at us "We need more shell!"?

[grimjim]

No, I'm talking about neutral characters in the Kami vs Karavan war - the characters who don't want to follow one of the two factions, not the players who do not like PvP.

--
Xavier.

What about the _characters_ who think this whole war is a bloody stupid idea and that the homin leaders have been taken over by insane mind-controlling space-bats?

[grimjim]

The poor people who guarded us from the kitin were the ones that lost out on the honour points, I hope this is changed in later acts. Maybe quartering kitin morsels like before to hand in as trophies

This would be a bad plan as it would mean more spawns.

[sehracii]

An hour of foraging should imo normally give the same benefits, but it doesn' t. Unless you have this huge streak of luck that you can remain unnoticed or aren' t forced to pick up your amps to heal out when your party gets attacked repeatedly. If you die and respawn you still have downtime as you can' t heal focus yet.

Even completely uninterrupted digging does not yield anywhere near the same amount of honor points as ping pong PvP back and forth for the elementalist. I'd say they get points 5-10 times as quickly.

I'd say an hour of uninteruppted dig should yield AT LEAST 2x more points than you can get killing for an hour. That way, it still evens out when you get the inevitable oppoising faction death squads overrunning your harvest site...


And PLEASE offer a reward for those who guard harvesters from kitin!
As well as careplanners!

Even if it's just making the mats tradeable so the harvesters can fill up their helpers and make less trips to town, with everyone getting points.

[sx4rlet]

No, I'm talking about neutral characters in the Kami vs Karavan war - the characters who don't want to follow one of the two factions, not the players who do not like PvP.

Ok. Point taken. But there are also characters who like a non-violent place in this whole event. And there is no part for that at all. Which is a big shame.

And Xavier, maybe it a bit too easy to bash you, as I bet you werent the one who made the event. You are just the guy who has the bad luck to communicate with us

[sx4rlet]

Then something else:

Last hours I have been in the area again, and wasnt killed once. It seems the big killing spree has ended, except for some people in the middle.
At that time I even was starting to have fun, so let's see what happens tonight.