a very possible future for the english server

[mugendo]

................pfft, my 25 cents..

Well said kuroari, An excellent post.

[wardone]

Facts

Amazingly the actual number of people showing for battles these days has lessened on both sides due to lower population.

big battles used to draw upto 200 players in the past now we lucky to see 120.

Kami given up? not by a long shot we still have a hardcore of 50+ regular pvp players and while u have that you will always win a few battles just not maybe the war.

Lots of doom and gloom posted recently but if you actually attended the recent battles they have been very close and most times the difference between winning and losing has been npc guards or dam tribes adding.
numbers win outpost battles thats a fact but now we have similar numbers when we have battles that are in timezone to suit both euro/US players tactics have been playing a part and for me been adding some challenge and fun back to battles i have enjoyed the last few loads and its been a long while since i could say that. no really great victories for kami side recently but its just a matter of time before Ma duk blesses his followers.

[dakhound]

Facts

Amazingly the actual number of people showing for battles these days has lessened on both sides due to lower population.

big battles used to draw upto 200 players in the past now we lucky to see 120.

Kami given up? not by a long shot we still have a hardcore of 50+ regular pvp players and while u have that you will always win a few battles just not maybe the war.

Lots of doom and gloom posted recently but if you actually attended the recent battles they have been very close and most times the difference between winning and losing has been npc guards or dam tribes adding.
numbers win outpost battles thats a fact but now we have similar numbers when we have battles that are in timezone to suit both euro/US players tactics have been playing a part and for me been adding some challenge and fun back to battles i have enjoyed the last few loads and its been a long while since i could say that. no really great victories for kami side recently but its just a matter of time before Ma duk blesses his followers.

shhh dont say that Harv, its against kami policy to admit numbers are close!

quick quick delete it before someone spits their dummy out

[twina]

@VIPER

Somthing Sasi said made me thikn - about its sad using an alt etc to level up. I agree. There are too many people on ryzom that would only be too happy to help you level.

Cats are NOT needed. You and I have been playing Ryzom for about the same amount of time I think - 2 months? I have stopped leveling my Ele - you know why - cause I dont want AoD this soon. I realy enjoy hunting -and want to keep ele available to hunt with many friends I have.

But back to what Sasi said - healing in between mobs etc. Made me think a little. I was telling you how negative you are and that realy things are not that bad - and you should be more constructive. Well I am now going to take a leaf out of my own book - and offer you my help. Add me to your friends list - my ingame name is Twina (what a surprise). I am a karavan follower - but I will show you how we are not as bad as you think. Contact me in game and I will help you level - and you will see that you can have fun with some of *us karavan* folk. You may see a different side to things then

I have posted the above to make you and others stand back a little - and see that our community is a great community -and there is plenty to look forward too. I will look forward to hearing from you Viper

[putterix]

Silly, the game is about more than outposts, lighten up guys.
You can have fun without Outposts, trust me

[dakhound]

Silly, the game is about more than outposts, lighten up guys.
You can have fun without Outposts, trust me

agreed*

(message is too short)

[acridiel]

Do you realy think they will listen?

Oh, harken the day that most people may actually realize that there is more to the Game than just PvP and Outposte-Ownage.
How glorious a future it would be, such a brave new world

CU
Acridiel

[viper579]

Twina and sasi, i still hunt in party's, i just use my alt when i dont feel like trying to get a group together around my level (not many people are sub-100, though ill be past that today hopefully) . none the less ill contact you in-game, though if you want to heal me, we'll have to hunt something that gives you xp . not going to waste your time.

shhh dont say that Harv, its against kami policy to admit numbers are close!

quick quick delete it before someone spits their dummy out

no one in this thread has said the kara outnumber the kami player wise. its been said they do high level op wise, which leads to the kara having more 250 players. for instance lots of people i started the game with use lots more cats than myself and are much higher level even though im on around the same time as them.

for that matter, when this thread started, no one was talking about the kara. not until DT brought it up.
below is the quotes from my posts. if you notice they dont point to a side, just to realities. that apply across the board.

"for all of those who want to own all ops. "

"this highlights the reality that the objective should never be to win it all. we have to remember that we should keep it fun for all sides, even when we have the upper hand."

"cats determine who gets the 250 players the fastest, that simple. the more masters you have at ops, the better chances you have."

"it doesnt matter what you play for, it matters what happens when one side completely dominates the other side."

[jared96]

Sitting "outside the box" as a neutral player in a neutral guild, the arguments put forth are more than shall we say "convoluted"....bunch of words put together to support a position determined not by what is being put forth but other unnamed motives. For example, the argument of "hitting back cause you hit me" is the same one I hear from my 17 year old son when he smacks the 10 year old and just as meaningless. "He hit me 1st" doesn't cut it as an excuse when one is 6'-4" and 190 pounts and the other hasn't broken 4' yet and is 75 pounds.

Fact 1 - one side has more resources than the other.
Fact 2 - more resources makes that side more attractive to new players.
Fact 3 - it's very hard to "turn around" facts 1 and 2 without a significant exodus from game.

The original OP has a valid point tho.....what % of players log in only for OP battles ? What attraction is there for them when you reach endgame ? What is the viability of Ryzom when that point is reached.

For the most part, what I see from the outside is much like the main political parties we have in the US. They will stand up in righteous indignation rail and point to the other party's guy about <insert your favorite subject ....evading military service, lying, infidelity, etc here> and yet 2 weeks later when one of their guys is caught doing the exact same thing, all of a sudden its OK. And more often than not, the guy who did the most screaming seems to be the next guy to get caught. Someone finds a way to twist every action to an imagined ulterior motive.

There has been several tirades recently with regard to OP trades and allegations of artificially raising thresholds. In the first instance the OP was handed back to the orginal owner and, as planned, the threshold that was reached was only the minimum necessary to make the handover happen. In the more recent "double handover" it was argued that again the intent of the "double" was to raise the threshold without any apparent thought to the fact that the same threshold could have been reached in the 1st battle if that was the intent.

Hatfields and McCoys ..... with every slight, real or imagined, blown up and propogandized way out of proportion to serve as a basis for an unstated motive.

Note we do have a small number of truly mean spirited people on the server but that point is not the subject of this post. The post is general in nature and applies to both factions, but at different times.....both when kami was in control before the "great exodus" and now with the kara side in control.

Saying the one side doesn't have all the OP's is a meaningless statement. It's an excuse, not a justification. The meaningful statement is "One side has all (but 1) of the OP's of signficance".... Cats from 50-100 are meaningless. I pretty much only use cats for crafting and I can sit at the raw mat dealer and level any skill to 100 in about an hour. One side has 3 outposts above 100 QL, one side has 13. That's a significant difference that can't be denied.

Saying "we only hit back after repeated hits on us" is, again, is no justification. It's an excuse. One side which has 12% of the resources seeks to create some balance....to get their "fair share". The other side says, "OK, you are unhappy with only having 12%, fine, we'll fix your butt, how does one or two less suit you ?" It's like management complaining that if labor doesn't stop complaining about low wages, they are going to lower them even more.

I left the game soon after OP's were introduced because I couldn't stand the bickering. I checked in for a few hours every few months and observed various goings on and noticed that some guilds switched sides (i.e Atys Wayfarers) as the Infinity led Kamis had too much dominance. As I go back and look at the peeps who complain about whining now, I did notice the same names doing a bit of whining back then.

I constantly see people saying they like PvP for the challenge. For a side that dominates, where is the challenge ? I would think that if peeps really did want a challenge they would step up and say "This is just too boring, I (or we as a guild) are going to the other side." Are we seeing that ? or are we seeing the switches going in the opposite direction ?

When we played pick up baseball, basketball, whatever as kids, the losing team got to pick a player from the winning team "to even things up". It made the game fun as each time you never knew who was going to win. It was a challenge. Even when you did get the advantage, the odds were immediately adjusted and balanced for the next round.

Stick a fork in the OP Battle Concept.....it's done. It was interesting for a while but is a source or more people leaving the game than coming in. It's stale ..... without other content to bring peeps together, it's divisive. The recent poll here showed that IIRC 78% of the people wanted new PvE content. Either GF comes up with something or the players will have to do it on their own.

Looking at the development page it seems that Kitin Lair shoulda been here in January 2007 or so. It took 15 months to get to Chapter 3 or an average of 5 months per chapter. Extending that timetable would have put Chapter 4 at around March 2006 but looking at the development page, and scaling it off puts Kitin's lair around January 2007. Extending further, Chapter 4 should have arrived around April 2007. Instead of these planned development efforts, we have instead gotten the "background downloader" (and whatever else is launching in the background even when that is shut off) and all the system problems it has entailed.

Yes, PvP is fun for many people....yes Nevrax vision was to include it as part of the game. But the implementaion was poor. Because of the "penalties" associated with staying out of the faction stuff, PvE folks feel cheated. When either side dominates, and thereby controls the majority of the game's worthwhile resources, another part of the community feels cheated. So all that's left is to fight over resources with 2/3 of the community always going to be left feeling that they don't have "equal opportunity".

I am reminded of Bill Cosby's skit on if there was a coin toss at the start of the American Revoloution. The Americans won and were given the advantage of choice:

"OK, our team can wear and color clothes they want, shoot from behind the rocks and trees and stuff and your team must wear red, stay out in the open and walk in a straight line."

In Ryzom, any advantage is reinforced over time. An advantage in 250 cats means one side can bring it's recruits to full strength in a much shorter amount of time. If we as little street kids could figure out a way to make their games more balanced, challenging and fun....I would think that a game company or even the players themsleves could come up with an idea or two.

Why not for example let the fame grind mean something ? Why not for example let faction fame = 100 give you a necklace or something which was only effective in PvP and boosted your power by xx%. XX would be bigger in mative faction lands. For example a Kara in Matis would get a 10% boost in Matis and Tryker where his "god" held sway and 10% penalty in Fyros and Zorai where the other "god" held sway.

Same for races only this could be applied to both PvE and PvP.....let your race fame be the % of the max boost when in your native land. So again say we say the max boost is 10%.....At 25 race fame, ya get a boost of 2.5%......at 50 fame ya get a 5% boost.....at 75 fame , 7.5% boost at 100 fame. Apply this boost ONLY to the native race spells. So a neutral could get 5% added to all 4 racial spells. A citizen could get the full 10% in the native land and the 75% / 25% / 0% as appropriate.

Like in a 1st person shooter game where the challenges increase as you go forward, obtaining a greater and greater % of OP's would become progressively harder. Right now, it's progressively easier which is at the heart of most PvPer's disatisfaction.

[twina]

Nice post Jared - think you outlined a few things there. I am not entirely in agreement with you - but do not wish to enter a debate about what is right and wrong - as you said - lets stick a fork in it - it has been a topic worn out now.

Think what people need to do is just chill out and lay off the forums if it comes to aggressive posting. Then when in-game I reckon we see how nice 99% of us realy are -I honestly cant believe a lot of what is said throughout these forums are said by people I realy like in-game.

There are too many sides to this coin - and no amount of argueing is going to win it. It will be a never-endless argument/battle - which reminds me of myself and my mother-in-law to be - a pointless waste of time.

The only thing I would like to comment on though is the fact that many use the argument that cats are used to boost up the players for OP battles. I have once said that I can use them if I want - but I choose not too very often - I do use them - but only every now and then and on skills below 200. I have been here two months and could have AoD easily - why dont I? Because I enjoy hunting using lower level skills also and helping out newer or lower level people - a trek here and a trek there etc. I think that the now old cliche of "Kara use cats to boost their players" is another unfortunte concept - as I am out-leveling a lot of people I know who have used cats - and I have done almost all of this without them. I think most people would learn they would level more if they hunted the appropriate mobs and with an appropriate team.

And for anyone that says "I amno use in an OP ´cause my skills suck" - well yu are very foolish - the truth is numbers are a great help - and an extra low level heal can make a world of difference in battle - its not always the skills you have - but the way you use them

Some may disagree with me - and I will respect their opinions