Here are my opinions on your ideas:
bruare wrote:Allow packers and mounts to TP with the player. I personally think that would be a very nice "wow" factor to the basic gameplay. As is now, both packers and mounts are mainly just storage facilities in town.
I don't agree. I got a lot of fun when i was in need to move my animals to other continents. I never sold one to buy another in another land. Trekking is one of the best features of Ryzom and it should be encouraged. Enhance animal trekking with 'open fields' where you can feed or add guild stables building at OP's. You should never feel the need to rush to the cap, just as wower that need to show quick his uberness. Ryzom should be seen more as a "virtual world" than a simple game (and i'm sure most of you think that). I believe, many old and mature mmorpg players are now demanding that. Of course Ryzom need a lot of more features to fully accomplish it, but it's unique 'living system' pwns every mmo around.
bruare wrote: Change TP bulk to 0.
Agree. No logic in that choice.
bruare wrote:Expand map marker system and have it stored on client comp. No limit on number of map markers. Multiply color choices for map markers.
As pointed out, the markers are already saved on client side.
bruare wrote: Concentrate on making the UI more user friendly.
Personally I always hated the 'fantasy' UI of most MMO, so occlusive. If I could I would play any MMO without any UI. But it's impossible. Ryzom UI is not absolutely bad. Need some improvements, as the possibility to save personalized actions in a 3rd tab of the action window, but I like it's minimal behaviour. Actually, I'm playing VG and the first thing I did is to download a mod UI, totally different from the default,and absolutely minimal.
Probably the best choice would be to leave the players change and improve UI at will.
bruare wrote:Cleanup a few locations in the zones where PCs cann't
go over a small rise would be nice too.
Uhm, didn't understood what you mean with 'cleanup', are u referring something specific I don't get in my mind now?
bruare wrote: Major work on new zones, exp balancing, quests, range weapons, fight actions stamina use, etc... is just unrealistic.
Agree. Fix things first.
bruare wrote: Cleanup some quests on both Silan and ML. Especially the
counts while doing newbie quests on Silan. And remove the quests on ML that can no longer be done -- like the Goo related quests. Really a bummer when someone takes a quest and spends 5+ hours trying to find Goo creatures that just don't exist.
Agree. This is a major argument. The game need a full revamp of the quests, with Encyclopedia rites as a specific lore-quest line available only after a certain goal is reached and with useful perks as rewards.
bruare wrote: Want a way out idea -- Have mercinaries for hire so that a player can hire a NPC to group with. So rather than just soloing, a player could take along a healer, meleer, or nuker NPC to grind exp up. Yep, I bet that would grow the player base fast. Hey, don't even charge for em -- have it like sort of like help out the community quest but no quest. It would be a major development effort but would really bring in the players i bet.
I don't agree. That feature would means a total revamp of the game balance, and as you mentioned early, that's irrealistic for now. The game is soloable, just depends by your choices and your knowledge of the fauna. I would improve the choices for the last levels, where you actually have very few choices and they are only for group: shallas, plods, bolobi and madakam).
Personally i loved Ryzom because of some good choice:
- Game experience (not the xp) really matters. That means: geography knowledge, fauna knowledge, resources knowledge.
- You don't need to be at cap to experience the game. Also when capped, you still can experience low level content, because of the insane numer of skills you can use. Except very few exceptions, old players could still group with newbies using some skill without artificially rebalancing your skills to match the friend's skills.
About the 'costraints' in the world and lack of jump:
How you feel about this is due to the way devs implemented some textures, nothing more. I explain: consider a game with a jump, if some part of the land couldn't be accessible, the textures are just 'high enough', ie: a rocky mountain (using simple words, not technical as this doen's involve only the textures).
Because of the way devs implemented Atys, it's normal you have that constraints, just as part of the whole 'world knowledge' quest. Try to travel in HH without any knowledge of the territory and you'll easily find yourself trapped (that's a quest!). What they missed was just to implement the constraints allowing the jump (personally i never felt missing anything without jump).
The economy: I think the answer here is more simple. The problem is just that 'prices' were too low... To make a guild was too cheap, to maintain an OP was just cheap, and so on.... Make upkeeps for Apartments, GH and for OP's, increase the overall value of specific items, put more costly features and the economy could have been fixed long time ago.
Another solution was, really, already found by the players: resources can be the currency. You want an apartment? give the city major the resources he need, want a packer? let's see what the stable boy need for that, maybe some amber could make him happy.... and, of course, players exchange stuff for goods, as already happened in game. Just enable NPC with the same behaviour....
Uhm, i think I could continue posting as the more I write the more things appear in my mind.
No fear!! The post ends now
i fully agree with above poster
not casters/meleers or healers tho - that'd be nerfing the game a lot... 
