So, I've been looking around the thread entitled "Post your mission/rite ideas here" in the General section of this forum. But, being a newbie, I can't post in that section of the forum. And, as I'm sure, there are a lot of us newbies that might have some ideas about how to improve Ryzom which might be helpful for the future owners (if they decide it's worth browsing these forums to test the waters).
Granted, I'm a true newbie in that I have never been to Atys so I might be missing something. But, perhaps not. Also, there might be some false-newbies here who let their sub relapse and were stuck back on Silan when they tried to start playing again.
Anyway, what got me thinking was this post by iceaxe68:
Had a thought. (ouch!) What if instead of going and talking to an NPC to get a mission, an NPC occasionally wandered through asking for someone to help with something. Like a mini-event for one homin or a small team. Some of the best times I've had in-game have been when someone needed help with something and I was able to contribute. And i'm thinking that if these NPC people really needed help with something, they wouldn't be standing idly in some corner waiting for a random homin to come ask if they needed anything.
This is a great idea! Having NPCs that occasionally seek you out for missions is a very good way to create immersion in this game. Ryzom already has a few legs up on pretty much every other MMO out there with its interactive world (migrating animals, seasons, hunting animals), and having the NPCs not be static would set it head and shoulders all else. Imagine walking through town and having an NPC approach you with a mission. Then as the mission wears on, or perhaps if you log off and forget about it when logging back on (having multiple missions queued up) getting a tell from the NPC or running into him again and the guy expecting results. Very cool.
Anyway, that's just my two dappers. What do you other newbies have to say? What ideas have ya got?
Yeah. We need a suggestion board. Actually, how about just not locking us out of the other forums? I suppose most of the time it makes sense, what with levels caps normally being 20, and the "island" of Silan being your only exposure. I just happen to have had a payed account before, so my situation is a little different.
As the "Ryzom isn't for stupid people" thread started wandering into, I think there are plenty of good places to start with missions. You basically build around the lore of everyday events in the game. Not only do we have to try and keep balance in nature by killing animals that are too neumerous, but we also need to cultivate the plants and animals for our own uses.
I have no idea how complicated the scripting system is in Ryzom, but if you wanted to get more challenging, how about some kind of endangered species mission, where you have to keep predators out of a protected area, protect the animals there, and wait for them to reproduce to a specific number. (I guess time would be exaggerated for them to reproduce that fast. but who needs realism. animals "spawn" out of nowhere.) You can reproduce similar results I suppose if you kill off all the predators in an area and allow a sparse population of their prey to reappear.
It would be interesting if we had other methods of helping creatively rather than destructively, like somehow being able to plant plants. or heal mobs. (I suspect that last one could be annoying, and probably isn't in the system. if it were, it would have to be set up to work like PVP: if you're not an enemy of the creature attacking it, you can't heal it.)
<daydreaming>
I know for certain this game isn't set up to be everything I dream of... being able to plant plants and actually see them come up. the environment isn't that interactive. or actually reshaping the landscape. building ramps and tunnels and small dwellings.
</daydreaming>
right... we also use plants and animals materials to build with. our characters can only build weapons and armor (and tools), but in the lore, they build other things. buildings, ladders,... more tools.
I've seen missions which are pretty creative. Scientists analyzing things like goo. (Karavan Silan missions) The Matis looking to reattempt to engineer plants to extract materials on Silan.
You'll notice the Matis have houses made out of trees. I bet those are engineered. There's a lot of work in breeding plants and animals for specific traits. and if you read about it in the real world, you'll see there are often unfortunate results of this intense focus. You breed for one trait, and you unintentionally end up with another undesired trait, that you might not even notice for many human generations even. (like aggressive male chickens who kill females instead of mating with them. I don't remember if it was related, but trying to breed white eggs made very nervous and high-strung chickens.)
And not just the creatures have to be paid attention to. The environment the creatures are in is important. You need the right kind of soil for plants. The right sunlight exposure. The right amount of moisture. Maybe a team of homins is required to dig up all the hard wood nodes in the ground before the land can be used to plant food crops. Or perhaps you need to... get counterbalances (wood nodes, pelvis bones, hooves) and cloth, to craft some nets to reinforce the soil so you can reforest an area, perhaps so those trees can be used to live in.
There. Lots of ideas to inspire.
*sigh* I just wish we could change the world. I heard even when we were building those altars to Jena and Ma'Duk, that they got completed whether we had enough mats or not, and our contributions didn't change anything. :S Plus the whole thing was planned ahead of time and manually patched into the game. I think the most we can customize in the environment are the outposts. The land is already set up for structures. I suppose that's to be expected though.
Hmhm, some NPCs DO wander around the countryside (and mostly new people keep complaing about just that, because these guys and girls are sometimes hard to find) and they do give small Missions.
If these guys would give Missions that were better tought out and developed than the Kill X, find Y ones that are allready there it would be just what you desire.
On a sidenote:
My favorite Missions from those guys are the ones that go something like this:
"Hello Homin, I need to find out if there are any (insert Mob) in (insert Region), please help me and be quick!"
Sometimes, if I could, I´m realy tempted to answer:
"Uhm, would you care to turn around? There´s one breathing down your neck right now. - Stupid Gid."
CU
Acridiel
Take a look at the collected Works of Ryzom Players all over the World! At"Ryzom Movies"!![highlight]
238[/highlight] Videos, [highlight]181[/highlight] Fan-Artworks and [highlight] 3 [/highlight] original Songs are up allready.
[highlight]SoR Score Musics including Trailers!![/highlight] Ryzom: We dare to be different! Do you dare to adapt? Ryzom on Vimeo-Videos!/Ryzom Ning-Network/Die Lore auf Deutsch! Bardentreffen / Atys Kundschafter
acridiel wrote:Hmhm, some NPCs DO wander around the countryside (and mostly new people keep complaing about just that, because these guys and girls are sometimes hard to find) and they do give small Missions.
The point of the idea was that the wandering NPC would ask you (or anyone around) to do a mission, rather than you asking the NPC if she has any missions to give.
In real life, my boss is very good about asking me to do work - I don't usually have to go ask her if there is anything for me to do...
The guy in the parking lot asks if you can give his car a jumpstart - he doesn't loiter around like nothing is wrong, waiting for someone to ask if he needs something.
Just looking for some added realism, better immersion.
iceaxe68 wrote:The point of the idea was that the wandering NPC would ask you (or anyone around) to do a mission, rather than you asking the NPC if she has any missions to give.
Having NPCs chat randomly like they do on Silan would be nice. For a short while after I got to the Mainland I didn't realize the those homins in the middle of nowhere were mission givers. Perhaps just the mission givers chat tho...I honestly think I tried to talk to every single one that had a chat bubble on the island
Okay, anybody remembers Daggerfall? After switching a storyline trigger, you'd be contacted by faction or NPC - say, after killing a sufficient number of innocents, a Guild of Assassins took a notice of you and offered you a membership, associated member-only quests and such.
Let's have something like this in Ryzom. Let's have several factions that react on player's actions, offering him/her an individual (randomly generated) job. We could even use the in-game message system for that!
*
"[CHARACTER_NAME]! We have heard of your efforts in exterminating dangerous predators. Unknown beast is lurking around our village, roaming our lands, killing our bodoc herds and stray children. We ask you to come to help us. You will be royally rewarded. Sincerely yours, *the peasants*"
If player decides to take the job, he'll gather a party of companions according to his own decision, then travels to the village. Some time after entering the area, the boss beast will (randomly) be spawned just outside the party's visiblity range, aggroing on them (and only on them), and despawning once there is nobody alive in the visiblity range. Nobody but the player's party will be able actually do the substantial damage to the boss.
*
The player loves to kill the diggers in Prime Roots very often, eh? Well, maybe someday (say after 50+random number of victims, random time after last kill), he'll get the letter like this:
"You should know that your actions have been noticed. It would be in your best interest to visit the Mull of Despond on the 15th day of next month. Failing to respond would have most unfortunate consequences for you."
If the player comes to the area, he will be contacted by NPC, offering him a membership in the Assassin Society. Should he accept, he will be given various hitman jobs from time to time - stopping the materials caravan, assassinating a local representative, killing the other players who refused to join the Society. Those quests will be purely solo ones - when the assassin is grouped, the target will be unattackable for him. Also, the player needs to wear an assassin garb in order to stay unrecognized, otherwise he'll get a bounty upon his head.
However, with each new job, the player will have the (very minor, but increasing) chance of being recognized by someone and getting a bounty on him. If the player fails to kill his target several times, or if he is caught by bounty hunters, there will be no more jobs from Society for him. Caught player has to pay a fine, gets a fixed "murderer" title for some weeks and some factions might refuse to deal with him while he wears it.
Bounty hunters would be both NPC (spawning in random intervals, increasingly more common with each target) and PC (hired by authorities).
If the player fails to respond to an introductory message from A.S. / refuses the membership, he will have assassins sent upon him from time to time, unless he pays a fee in order to be removed from the Society's records.
All players will be able to order someone to be assassinated (if the price is right). But beware, it's hard to contact the A.S. unless they want to be contacted, so the A.S. representative you find may actually be the agent-provocateur of the King's secret police.
*
Once the player has several crafting masteries and some of his crafted items get sold to the merchant, he might get a letter like this:
"Dear [CHARACTER_NAME], I stumbled upon your [SOLD_ITEM_NAME] last week at Fairhaven merchant. I was genuinely pleased to see such a thorough work. It's not common to meet this level of craftmanship in times like this. You know, I received some old, pre-collapse plans in my deceased father's inheritance. They are very complex and require several precious materials. Should you be able to craft the items for me, I'll let you have the copy of plans as a reward. Sincerely yours, the local noble"
Player will get the plans; he will have to find (both loot and dig) various precious materials and craft the sub-parts (from various quest-only other plans he will have to obtain) and then craft the item from those sub-parts. If he succeeds in crafting and gives the (unsellable) crafted item to the questgiver, the plans will unlock for the unlimited manufacture of the sellable pieces. On the other hand, if he fails in crafting three times, the questgiver will take the plans back and compensates the player with some dappers "for his effort".
Each quest will grant the "unique" design (randomly picked from several models and several dozens of textures).
*
After getting enough expertise in both the fighting/magic and the foraging, the player can join the Atysian Nature Association and become the research worker; beasts he kills and nodes he forages will have a probablity to spawn a "specimen" or "rare specimen" quest item. Each newly discovered specimen will go into player's illustrated "Atysian encyclopedia of Animals, Plants and Resources", and the player will get some dapper, fame or special equipment when he turns the specimens in to A.N.A. officials.
He will also get quests from A.N.A. to recover the specimens from various beasts, to explore (=enter, walk through and make some digs) the various areas, to take the goo samples and so on. Several lore-making quests can be connected to this (e.g. after taking the samples of the goo-infected boss meat, the player gets contacted by Karavan and offered to sell it to them instead of handing it in to A.N.A. scientists).
*
If the player becomes neutral after being a member to both Karavan and Kami, he will have a chance to be contacted by the clandestine Fellowship of Elias, being offered various missions to thwart the Kami and Karavan plot and eventually to remove them from the face of Atys (that's not gonna happen, of course). After the first mission, he will be declared the Apostate (neat title, eh? But it will be wearable only when PvP flagged!), becoming attackable by both factions (when flagged) and being able to attack both. He will receive a new set of respawning points and teleports (visible only to F.O.E. members, less widespread than factional ones, but unique), plus the Trytonians will actually be able to attack and take over some of Kami and Karavan teleports (only those ones that are already accessible to neutrals), or to secretly reprogram/sabotage the factional teleports in order to use them (even those faction-only). Trytonian guilds can't own the Kami/Karavan factional outposts (as they are clandestine faction, it will be taken from them in the matter of days by Kami/Karavan NPC troopers and returned to previous owner), but they would have the option to "raze" the outpost and get some quantity of mats/cats immediately after capturing it, and causing it to be removed from game for a two or three weeks.
*
Skill trainers would sometimes send players to recover the "lost knowledge", or, the unique skill/stanza (basically the same as stock skills/stanzas, but with some bonus properties). The player would have to visit various places, talk to various people and make some digs in ruins or such, in order to piece the stanza/skill together. After that, he would either keep it just for himself (pissing off the questgiver, thus raising the price of skills from him a bit), or submit it to questgiver so he can make it available for all - under the player's name ("Noxious Acid Splash of [CHARACTER_NAME]").
Sorry, I forgot about that. Thanks for making this thread.
