You should read Davids letter complete. Its is just about vision. It shows a lot about the initial idea. Its all about factionbased conflict on a much larger scale (chessboard)
Maybe it was a big mistake to start SoR like they did. The game evolved in a different way. Now its very hard for Nevrax to finish the game like it was intended. You can say that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, but this game is a startup project. Other companies know this. Thats why some games are so erm.. mainstreamed.
dazman76 wrote:
Atys as we know it is pretty huge - well, huge compared to the player population anyway. We have 5 entire continents (the 5th is spread out, but piece it together and it's comparable I *think*), spanning a large virtual area. To think that this is only 5% of the real Atys just doesn't cut it - what's the other 95%, the same thing with trees in different places? The same mobs but different spawns? Creating new resources of any kind takes time, even if it's creating new mobs using the 'boss mob' technique (same mob, diff. textures, diff. AI values).
really, you have to experience it to understand this. Due to NDA i can not say too much, but imagine a lake triple the size of lakelands. And this lake ist just a blue dot on the worldmap...
In such a scale factionbased PvP ist completely different. Its like i live in germany and a faction in australia does not like me. I would not care the first 6-12 months ingame

.
If SoR would reach such a scale it would be completely different.
Again, i do not talk about the current state of the game. Faction is atm completely useless, only good for some RP.
Under normal circumstances i am not a fan of PvP, but nevertheless i would have played the first weeks or months different if my faction would have had any consequences.
dazman76 wrote:
And once more of this remaining 95% is revealed, what happens to our current 5%? The playerbase could harldy 'populate' what we have at the moment, if you didn't close the original 5% when some more areas open, the playerbase would be even thinner that it is now. What good is a continent of 5 people?
I respect David for all he's achieved, but I feel this one comment blows that respect to pieces. It simply isn't believable, unless this remaining 95% is empty, boring and devoid of anything new at all.
Sorry to hijack a PvP thread, but since Ryzom will not go full-PvP without losing most of it's players, I don't feel too guilty.
I dont think it will go full-PvP. But with outposts there will be more of it. At least it is intented

. We still have to wait and see what these benefits are that where mentioned a couple of times. They are the key to everything. Here are some thoughts about it:
- lets asume you get a bonus in HP and/or SAP and/or STAM and/or FOCUS if you hold an outpost
- lets asume you get even more bonus when you hold two outposts, tree outpost, ...
- lest asume you get even more bonus the more outpost are owned by your faction
And this on a large scale (+95% playable areas on a couple of planets) the chessboard game starts that David mentioned.