(Woah, come back to town after a week or two away, and look at what changes...)
etrusan wrote:... do you see the problem in this logic?
Yup. No side can be given an advantage, therefore all sides must remain the same to prevent imbalencing. And quoting SA's Lowtax: "stagnation = death, death = death". In the past _year_, there have been the release of outposts, a full-blown war over resources, and the news that the ideological leads of both factions were arriving. Yet, just like at the beginning, both sides remain in stalemate, not due to player effort, but rather storyline. Didn't the Kami have more progress on the temples in Ep. 2 (Kami@167% vs. Kara@153% = ~10% more) and more kill points (in the top 30 scorers: Kami@~46,000 vs. Kara@~43,000 = ~7%)? What changed in these players' game because of all the effort they put in? So what if players got to trade in points for goodies; this war was _supposedly_ over factional superiority, not individual. Yet the powerful players got rewarded due to their power (killing, crafting, digging), rather than a faction being rewarded for its coordination and group effort. But I overextend myself. All in all, the political relativity of the two factions haven't changed, and there is not much motivation for players to push for an advantage for their faction. "So what if Kara lost Ep. Whatever overall, my character still got an insane amount of faction points!" 'See the problem' indeed.
Now, I do have to rebuke the point about R2 being weak due to non-competition. The RP community in Ryzom is _strong_. Regardless of my personal quipes, there is no other game that I've seen that had as dedicated a community as Ryzom has to RP. RP does take a good deal of imagination - suspension of belief aside - and some of the player created events are quite interesting. Turning this kind abundance of creativity into a way to fill the stagnation of content is a marvelous achivement. R2 has the potential to create the "robust"ness you crave(?), with roleplay intense scenarios for story/character inclined, and Episode 2 type versus combat for those that are drawn to conflict. Within a splinter realm of R2, statistics could be independent of the main server characters, requiring players to rely on skill rather than grind for an advantage. For instance, a splinter that is a simple capture-the-flag scenario, where players are given a blank character upon entry with skill points to assign to whatever they choose. It wouldn't matter how often you played on the splinter, your character wouldn't improve. So the power would lie in player skill, team coordination, and group effort. That would fill my little niche quite nicely, and with a little scripting, you might even be able to make a bot system, so 32 v 32 matches could be played by one person. Battlefield style matches in a RPG environment seems robust to me.
As for leveling in Ryzom versus others, I dislike the grind, but find EVE's constant leveling to favor the out-game player in terms of effort vs. reward, which seems a wee bit unfair. I had a good deal of head-banging when starting to write, trying to compare the two, but in all actuality, they are different worlds; apples to oranges. Ryzom rewards in-game time, whilst EVE rewards real-world time. You still have the veteran players having more power, but in EVE it's simply an inescapable fact, rather than something that can be fought against with sweat and blood. I do despise how grinding only leads to more grinding, for purpose other than player-relative power (do I hear "kipee invasions"?) would be a refreshing change.
In short, it's a 'different strokes' situation here. You go to EVE for the off-line leveling, Infinity goes to RF for FvF, Deadsong goes to D&DO for the inter-player unity(?). Anyway, R2 _could_ be the best thing Ryzom has going for it right now - graphics aside - but that all depends on the players who make stuff, and how grand a spectrum that content covers. I'll keep my sub through R2, say thankya, but if there's a failure to deliver, sympathy for me stops there.
