First of all, I'll start off by saying that I disagree that removal or vast changes, as opposed to modifications/additions, are needed. If you don't want to read a reply by someone who thinks differently from you, stop reading... now
Since the running of the drills require neither upkeep nor maintenance, other homins rarely posses anything to offer you in return for these goods. Thus trade is seldom an option, which leaves donations or participating in OP battles as the main way to aquire these.
I think your initial argument is based on a flawed assumption - within groups of guilds, trade happens very frequently, and there is also the "community outpost" to consider. However, if I left it at that this would be a very short post so I'll continue on the (imo incorrect) assumption that lack of trade is a major factor towards the need for change in the outpost system.
It is time for the owners of OPs to step up and become landlords in a wider sense, to employ other homins in their service, and thus integrate their outpost into both the economy and the gameplay of all. The owners should still receive substantial benefits, they must be something worth fighting for, but by allowing a greater participating of all players in the OPs I think we can turn them into something great that would make Ryzom stand apart from other games.
This is the part of the thread that interested me most - the main reason why I replied instead of just ignoring you
So my suggestion would be this: crystals are excavated by the drills, flowers are grown in fields and the unique materials are gained through trading with the tribes of Atys. The current active outposts will remain as drills. The other two types of outposts would have to be build from the ground, on the current ruined outpost sites. When this has been accomplished, the game would have three times as many outposts, but each one producing only one type of resource.
While I do like the idea of different types of OPs, there's a few problems I have with the suggestions you make.
1) Opening up all of the OPs (making 3x as many) would I think remove what dynamism currently exists as there would be more OPs than guilds on Atys.
2)
Current quality caps should still apply off course, but enabling players to improve the distribution of qualities (fewer degrades) through various gameplay actions would open new opportunities.
These "degrades" as you put it, are infact very useful. I think a better way to think of outposts is that they produce a "range" of 3 quality levels around the level of the outpost (ie a lvl200 OP produces q150, q200, q250 mats/crystals/flowers). Imo this is a good thing and adds to their usefulness.
3)
Farms is where fields are prepared, flowers are planted, grown and finally harvested.
Sounds good in theory, but flowers suck. Whoever got a "farm" would definately be getting the short end of the stick because I know very few people who use flowers anywhere near as much as they use crystals or mats.
4)
Trade posts: Trading greslin for glasspearls with the natives. Would it be farfetched to assume that some of the tribes of Atys has their own secret sources of unique materials?
I don't think its too far-fetched, and would definately applaud further use of the tribes system, I think it might be a bit unrealistic to think that no homin would ever have worked out where to find these things on Atys without going through the tribes. That aside though, the missions idea is interesting.
5) Another point on the Trade Posts, I can't grab a direct quote for this but I hope you follow me, is twofold. Firstly there's the issue of the dual mission/fame thing... needing to do crafting missions to get mats which reduce your fame, and then needing to do any mission to increase your fame so you can keep trading. This to me seems a little convoluted, and I think a tad inelegant, but I can't really give a 'better' suggestion. The issue of only being able to do crafting missions to get mats links in with my second point on this; you suggest the "items for mats" solution, but you have to consider that taking a bunch of mats to make (an/some) item(s) to get a single better mat is something that I don't think many people would be willing to do very often. If you were thinking of giving a slightly more equal trade of mats-to-OPmats, then there's the issue that OP mats are currently rare-ish (not rare but certainly a lot less plentiful than normal mats) and allowing access to a large number of them to balance out the amount of crystals a "drill OP" makes would unbalance things a bit. Granted it might make up for the fact that "drill OPs" make loads of crystals, but then if trade becomes as widespread as you hope, perhaps everyone would have an OP weapon, and I don't think this is either intended or a good thing.
6)
To get a replacement part for a tree-bore you would apply at the Kamis naturally, conversely you would go to the Karavan to get a new part for your big trepan. Getting these should require a minimum fame (not too high though) and performing some mission which will increase your guilds fame with that faction, while decreasing it with the other faction. Thus even neutrals who own a drill will slowly find themselves becoming increasingly factioned if they want to have their drill running at peak efficiency.
Yes, and I can hear them whining already
While I personally think that this is a good idea (its the smallest change you propose afterall) I think it would create even more problems wrt neutral complaints. Not being a neutral, I don't know whether my presumption is correct or not, but I'd be willing to bet on it.
7)
Conversely tradeposts will be less attractive to factioned players, since their fame cap would keep them from getting the best quality distribution of resources.
Leaving aside the issue of neutral guilds' fame caps, a faction allegience doesn't directly affect tribal fame to the same degree as other things do - in fact with a tiny bit of research it would be easy for people to pick the right tribe to work with to completely negate this point. Add to this the fact that your "dual fame/mission" thing wouldn't make sense if the tribe liked the faction/race allegience of the guild in question, and so wouldn't be as peeved by the guild taking up some of the tribal land.
8)
By keeping all of the outposts challengable through regular PvP outpost battles, I think a reasonable balance of power could be achieved. A strong, factioned guild would now have an incentive to allow a non-factioned guild to own an outpost of tradepost type, since the non-factioned guild would make the outpost more productive. The strong guild could then open favourable trade with the non-factioned guild, or flatly demand protection money to refrain from attacking them. Same would be true for farms. A guild of farmers should be able to hold onto their plot of land through trade relations with potential challengers.
(I have a couple of points on your last paragraph in general)
8a) The points I've raised already conflict with the issue of a factioned guild wanting to give a nonfactioned guild an OP for productivity reasons.
8b) I would contend that some of this already happens in some guild groups (larger guilds adding their strength to protect smaller allied ones), and is abhored by others (having to pay for protection for instance).
8c) I think its more likely that human nature would take over and a guild that had managed to take an OP that you say they would want to give up, would be more likely to just keep it and put up with the slightly lower productivity.
8d) See my first point about flowers sucking.
8e) All of your points assume that a factioned guild would be willing to work with a neutral guild or even an oppositely factioned guild for the "greater good". Its a common fact here that the two sides in the current OP conflict have radically differing views on a lot of things, and 'neutrals' in all their flavours are a whole other kettle of fish. For instance, your average Karavan guild (read "KA guild" if you object to my definition of "average Karavan") would be unwilling to allow Kamist guilds or 'opposingly neutral' guilds to hold an OP purely because they are not followers of Jena, and some of the 'flavours' of neutral guilds would be unwilling to trade with 'agressive' factioned guilds.
(A couple of general points now)
9) An issue of "balance" - changing the whole OP system would create some discontent however you did it; one of the main issues is that each individual OP that is currently active should be equally as useful to the owners after the change as before, and not just have some kind of balance over the continents or whatever (ie you couldn't just make sure that each continent has an equal increase in usefulness as it does decrease; you would have to make each individual OP have a net change in usefulness of zero which I think would be near-impossible with some of the suggestions given)
10) The whole idea of making each OP takeable and holdable by PvP, but making the upkeep purely mission-based. "Non-PvPers" still have the problem of having to PvP to take and defend the OP as they do now, so I don't think it solves one of the major grievances that is raised. In addition to this, a general stereotype of "PvPers" might be that they're only interested in PvP and would have no interest in doing missions (I personally wouldn't agree with this stereotype per se, but its worth bringing up I think), so while they would be able to take and hold the OP, they might not be very pleased about having to grind missions all day every day to keep it running at peak efficiency. This also leads onto my next point...
11) I don't think
anyone would be interested in logging on and spending some amount of their playtime every single day (possibly all of it in some cases) grinding missions in order to keep their OP running well. Some serious thought would have to be put into deciding "how much" work would need to be done, otherwise people would spend more time on upkeep than on playing.
12) The OPs that are currently active vary in their type; they have forts, border posts, farms, trade posts, etc etc. Your post proposes making them all into one of three types (one of which doesn't have a pre-existing name), and while I would love to see the different types of OPs work differently, I don't think this way is one that would have come to me if someone asked. While it does go in that direction, it just doesn't quite "match up" with whats there already. Even leaving aside that and the fact that I don't think there are equal numbers of all the types at the moment, what happened to Border Posts and Forts and Magic Poles?
All in all, while I applaud your attempt to come up with some useful suggestions, I just don't think you hit the spot. I will however, be keeping an eye open for more suggestions from you
