Outposts, a few weeks later...

[rushin]

well, as you said op fights are pretty much FvF, i would love if they were a little closer to GvG. I think it's too much work in the present climate but it would be nice to have some ingame alliance, and for the battles to be guild + allies with a mechanism for controlling the numbers. too complex to think about here (well for me 'cause i'm @ work)

Are there enough? Guess so, there aren't that many fights going on - although that might be for other reasons rather than the quantity available. maybe everyone is scared to attack same faction op's for fear of none helping, or not helping in the future with defenses.

The thing i really dislike about them is they are a completely static feature. They just sit there, no reason to ever visit them, do anything at all with them until someone attacks. Still hoping there are more things in the pipeline would be nice to have:

NPC's attacking at random times to try and take them back. This would need to have a little concession to rl though or we would be griefed by them attacking at 05:00 on a monday morning, so leaders/HO would be given a 24hr period to dictate when the battle would start.

Something/anything to make ppl visit them. bonus to foraging/hunting in the immediate area, a mission giver at the op, improved success rate for crafters, etc, etc.

crystal/mat production/storage yuk! yuk! yuk!! why not have a store for the flowers and crystals at the op, and some way to allow all guild members to take them (whether by preset levels or leader/ho selection)

[kostika]

Agreed, but there's more factors to it, (e.g. the text at the load screen seems to state the FvF setting) or the fact that they came up right after Ep2, etc. That said, gameplay wise nothing prevents them from being GvG. Up to the players

Oh I agree there are factors that led the players to going the FvF direction. The examples you give are likely some of them. I jsut meant I don't blame Nevrax for it.

[vguerin]

The thing i really dislike about them is they are a completely static feature. They just sit there, no reason to ever visit them, do anything at all with them until someone attacks. Still hoping there are more things in the pipeline would be nice to have:

NPC's attacking at random times to try and take them back. This would need to have a little concession to rl though or we would be griefed by them attacking at 05:00 on a monday morning, so leaders/HO would be given a 24hr period to dictate when the battle would start.

Something/anything to make ppl visit them. bonus to foraging/hunting in the immediate area, a mission giver at the op, improved success rate for crafters, etc, etc.

Yeah, this is spot on... I swear we were told that owning an OP would provide foraging oppurtunities in the area surrounding the OP's. There is no reason now to visit an OP outside of attack/defend rounds.

As far as NPC attacks... I can see that being exploitable if it wasn't disabled by a real attack.

We pretty much got just enough from Nevrax with the OP's to keep us quiet for a bit... now they languish as a mere distraction that gives us some gameplay nuggets...

[marct]

I have the big fix that makes the OP's more dynamic and less a static situation. Make the materials not tradeable outside of the owning guild. *OUCH* The FvF turn was all a result of the players, not the dynamic.

I think(fear) that the spires will be the hotly contested item amongst the PvP kiddies (me included at times). What a slap in the face to take a region from your enemies, forcing them not to be able to TP into that region. Sure some will remain static, but outside of those few, expect a constant change on the world of Atys.

I posted a few weeks back about making the OP's a bit more lively with guards that defend, etc. I think one thing that is missing is the work of maintaing your OP. The initial cost is better now, in addition regular maintenance of your OP and or drill would make for a neat dynamic. Maybe your drill functions well in optimal condition, in poor condition it does not extract as well. This same feature could be implemented for every building, and could be scaled just as the cost of attack is scaled. This way, a small guild would likely have a hard time holding a high level OP, and in fact many folks might give up an OP as they do not enjoy the maintenance. The ability for the OP to fall into rouge control if it is in disrepair, or disrepair affecting the threshold level and guards abilities. Occasional Rogue "surprise" attacks would be interesting, allowing for the rogues to whack your guards and you to have to pay to re-supply with guards.

Too much info in that paragraph, but it gets a few points across.

What is really missing is a reason to be "near" your OP. There is nothing that makes me want to go to it, fight near it, dig near it, or even to go to visit it. :/ Something close to spire effects(buffs) would be nice, or some healers to heal me if I am a member of the guild tha owns the OP.

Noin.

[iphdrunk]

The thing i really dislike about them is they are a completely static feature. They just sit there, no reason to ever visit them, do anything at all with them until someone attacks

Definitely agree with you on this. A spwan point, teleports, or even in the case of Op materials, OP owners should go to fetch them to the OP, and not magically appear on GH, etc.

[riveit]

The thing i really dislike about them is they are a completely static feature. They just sit there, no reason to ever visit them, do anything at all with them until someone attacks. Still hoping there are more things in the pipeline would be nice to have:

NPC's attacking at random times to try and take them back. This would need to have a little concession to rl though or we would be griefed by them attacking at 05:00 on a monday morning, so leaders/HO would be given a 24hr period to dictate when the battle would start.

I also think that NPC attacks would be a great idea. It would add some dynamism to a very static situation. It would allow locked out guilds to get chance to enjoy ownership. Having a 24 hour warning and gathering your allies would change nothing though, you would have a fun defense and then everything would go back to normal. Perhaps if the attacks got stronger and stronger with each week a guild owned an op? Or guildmembers only could defend (easily exploited by adding ringers though). There must be a way to lose an outpost if you want to shake up ownership. Personally, I think having the marauders take them all back at random times, maybe once a month, would be great fun for all, as we scrambled and rearranged - but maybe that would be acrimonious also.

Back on the question of outpost conquests, Infinity took Lost Valley Stronghold and Guardians of the Lost took Qai-Du Workshop. Were those friendly transfers or conquests?

[richky]

From my point of view, Outposts as they are now are just one more thing to ignore and get on with playing the game. As for the outposts not changing hands, that makes perfect sense from an IC point of view. Why would guilds war on their allies when they could be called upon to fight together at any time? The alternative is to treat the outposts as an OOC minigame that is unrelated to the ongoing story of Atys. In that case it is the players arranging to have a friendly battle using their characters as puppets instead of the characters doing things for IC reasons. I realize that many people play that way, but Ryzom has a relatively large percentage of players who have put some depth into the development of their characters, and like to have good IC reasons for their choices and actions.

[XoloX]

.snip.
It keeps me busy and gives me more purpose.
.snip.

Speaking of it... That'd be the perfect reason to activate more.
*grins* Since with the current situation of being almost all settled, it'd deny most of the community that kind of purpose...


Anyway, I've come to keep you up to date with the situation on Leanon concerning outposts. I only hope to have gotten everything right after my little timeout there...
The distribution is not strictly FvF/region conformist, apart from Verdant Heights where every obtainable outpost is in Karavan hands. This may also be due to the fact that every country actually does feature both Kami and Karavan, of course the strongest one being the inherent one, plus, on Leanon the "faction" of the Neutrals (by self-definition) encompasses a considerable amount of Homins as well. During the construction of the temples, Leanon was the only server to build a Kami temple in Aeden Aequeuos...
How the distribution itself was carried out had caused some stirrup then. Apart from a few "more powerful" guilds, who unexpectedly had kept themselves rather humble concerning primal acquisition, propably until some time soon or introduction of the spires, a few cross-national, but from my knowledge mostly faction biased, alliances emerged and proved to have been rather aggressive in first taking outposts, accumulating many at the very start and even blocking external declarations until that was patched.
The current situation is very calm, comparable to what you are describing. There have been attacks, yet most of them had been diplomatic trade-offs from what I have heard. Also, as you are describing, an attack would evolve into FvF as well. In my opinion, only the aforementioned "more powerful" guilds would be able to turn the tides here. At the moment it appears to have come to a halt.
OP material is greatly appreciated and very sought after but not really traded openly in high Q's, being kept internally, I consider.
Flowers seem to be more annoying than any other thing... flooding the guild halls rapidly while noone really seems to use them.
Crystals seem to be well used and appreciated, I hardly heard anybody complain about them, almost everybody has them and only few refuse to use them. (My opinion: C'mon, Nevrax... crystals have been fun as reward but you should never have made them a constant... Leveling speed in low levels ist ridiculous with them now, DP don't deter from anything anymore, and everybody having gathered his/her experience "the hard way" must be laughed at now - apart from the loss of _real_ player experience in using whatever skill.
Drifting off...sorry.)
Everybody having access to outposts agrees that there really is nothing to do with them. Expansions are eagerly awaited.

OK, I bored you for long enough now
(May any Homin from Leanon correct me should my observations be really far off from their perception....)

[iphdrunk]

From my point of view, Outposts as they are now are just one more thing to ignore and get on with playing the game. As for the outposts not changing hands, that makes perfect sense from an IC point of view. Why would guilds war on their allies when they could be called upon to fight together at any time? .

Greed, ambition, power hungry, expansionism. I've been given the following example: in middle age Japan, it was common for war lords to fight between them, and yet they could be called to arms by the shogun.

Another example could be the crusades, where Chrsitians faught against the muslims, yet the Christians had internal discrepancies.

Also something similar happens in Ryzom. There is a FvF setting yet homins can unite against a common foe, the kittin.

All this to state that it's perfectly concevable IG/IC to have a GvG setting for OP yet in the framework of a global FvF setting, imho.

Yours,

[richky]

Greed, ambition, power hungry, expansionism. I've been given the following example: in middle age Japan, it was common for war lords to fight between them, and yet they could be called to arms by the shogun.

Yes, as in the cases you mention, it is possible for enemies to band together to fight a common threat. I think that the difference is that up until Outposts, we never had reason to consider other guilds to be our enemies, and in many cases they are our friends. For GvG to have meaning from an IC standpoint our characters have to start thinking of those friends as enemies, and outposts just don't give enough advantage for most to make that conversion. My own suspicion is that with the exception of a small number of people there is no possible reward from outposts that would induce our characters to turn on their friends.