Ryzom

kashius wrote:Ok.

- End Game to me is what you do once your character has reached the end of the game level wise/has all the skills he can/will acquire. As I said, end game is there so you don't beat the game and simply be done with it. In a single player game there is some in the way of side quests/arenas and the like. In an MMO there needs to be a ton of it to keep players from feeling like they've done everything there is to do.

- Did you attack me personally, no. You did one better and made a generalization of an entire group of people. The reason I said I wasn't going to address the comment is because I noticed what your definition of end game seemed to be. That's why I offered the more common (in my experience) definition of End Game.

And I did read the entire thread.

-Bosamba of Infinity-

Can you understand I find it rather dissapointing considering the topic of this thread that you chose to react to a single remark in a single post? A remark I might add that has little to do with the actual topic of the thread..

But as I understand from your posts I have wronged you a great deal so I must apologise to you and to all the others who might feel insulted in any way by my crude generalization, I never meant to hurt your feelings...

Sarcastic apology accepted.

My apologies for taking the thread off topic.

-Bosamba of Infinity-

In guild chat this morning, Keoni and I were discussing the true living world concept. Understand, this wuz before my second cuppa, so I do not remember who said what. To simplify, if you find it to be a clever or good idea, ascribe it to Keoni, otherwise blame me

Basically, it's just a food cycle more or less as it exists on Earth, albeit simplified.

For this to work would require a few things to be changed.

All things would have to eat, including Homins. I believe this was mentioned earlier in either this or another thread. Luckily, the foundation for this has already been laid down, in the Matis food rite

We already have three of the four necessary eating groups, predators, herbivores, and plants. All that remains are scavengers to be introduced. Or, possibly, existing mobs modified to fit that role. Yubo and Frippo would do nicely. Omnivores would also be nice, but they are not absolutely necessary.

The numbers of types would have to be modified to be closer to real world proportions, i.e fewer predators and more herbivores. Each predator would have to kill and defend it's kill from scavengers and other starving predators, tho a reasonably well fed predator would eschew it's neighbors kill, in favor of it's own. A predator would be required to kill and eat one herbivore (or Homin) per two or three Atys days to remain in top shape. Meat being a less efficient (albiet more tasty) energy source than plants is the reason for the massive intake of food. Killing and eating one per weak will allow it to survive, but in a weakend state (slightly less max health an max damage). Eating one every two weeks will keep it alive, but just barely, and fewer than one every two weaks will cause it to starve to death. With each stage of deprivation, there should be some noticeable change in either the predators title or it's appearance (just as you can tell if a dog is starving or well fed by looking), it's health and damage should be lowered, but, its agro radius should be increased.

Herbivores would be simpler in some ways. They almost always have enough food. I mean, we LIVE on a plant, heh. They would however face two new problems. One, no longer will the Varinx be content to remain near it's spawn point, trotting back and forth randomly. It must now eat to live, so it will roam until it finds food. Two, winter will now have an effect, as even on this living planet, things get a little sparser. To represent this, herbivores would be a little weaker during the winter, with the possibility of introducing a random element to the severity of the season, i.e. sometimes you have a very bad winter, and the herbivores get very weak, a few even starving to death. Once a set amount have starved during the season, however, the rest will be ok, as they now have enough food. The now actual dependance of herbivores on plants would also lower the overall population in much of the Fyros/desert areas.

Scavengers would perform several minor, but fairly important functions. They would be a foil for the predators, mimicking real world interactions. They would add a blanket of security to the system for instances where one or the other of predators or herbivores population got out of hand, defending territory from predators whos population has exploded (although, this would typically be taken care of by a wave of starvation, as there would not be enough herbivores to feed them) , or, more often, as they usually depend on the predators for food, if predator population drops low enough, scavengers will be forced to hunt for them selves. As few things will willingly eat a scavenger, their population growth would have to be carefully planned so that respawn= just a little more than average death rate, just to be on the safe side. Homins may occasionally be obliged to lower the verminous population, and restore the "natural balance". Scavengers could also appear to explain the current dissapearance of corpses, and why unlooted corpses take longer to *poof*, there is more to eat

Plants need little tweaking. As it is a game, coupled by the fact that homins are not yet major polluters, we can safely operate from the assumption that plants can take care of themselves, and that there are always the appropriate number of them.

To maintain experience point gain, perhaps any mob killed by a Homin respawns as it does now. This may at first break the reality of a functioning food cycle, but look at it this way: We come back to life when we die, even if it is at a deficit. As such, we are slightly removed from the life/death cycle, and it may be that our actions are as well, due to the inherent fairness of the universe (matter/energy is neither created nor destroyed, all actions have an equal and opposite reaction, etc.) if we cannot truly die, then we cannot truly kill, either. Sophistry, but it would work within the framework of the game.

We could get very hungry if we do not eat, reflected by a lowering of our stats (and their attendant scores, such as amount of Health and Sap), but for the sake of play, perhaps we do not starve entire.

Essentialy, and ideally, this would work so that the rules could be introduced and the developers would not have to manually balance the numbers of creatures, it would happen on it's own. Breeding cycles would need to be tweaked to maintain the cycle, but, provided they make it dependant on a single number somewhere, and leave a note telling where it is, that would be easily accomplished. Making breeding cycles and/or rate a pressure valve of sorts.

I'm sure I left some things out, but I cannot remember them, and I have already droned on far more than I had intended.


OOC:

Few questions on the food cycle idea -

How often would you propose we (Homins) needed to eat? How would we be required to prepare the food? Would normal xp mobs be acceptable food sources or would we need to raise animals for eating purposes? Finally, does time logged out factor into your hunger level at all?

Otherwise the idea is pretty well thought out, combinging a fair amount of realism while not impeding gameplay. Except maybe in the case of the winter/desert thing you were talking about. Due to the lack of herbivores in that time/area what would be done to keep from making leveling in those areas overly difficult?

Cool idea though.

-Bosamba of Infinity-

As far as necessary eating for Homins goes, I was thinking about making it simialar to human food requirements, although simplifying it to leave out the complexities of nutrition, heh. Maybe needing 6 bulk points of "food" per day, or three meals of 2 bulk points each. These could either be harvested/hunted by the character themselves, or purchased through a merchant. It could cause a whole new group of players to emerge Just like there are a few (a very few) who hunt/dig to supply the markets, there may be a few willing to make a career of providing food, the "Grocers of Atys"

Also for the purpose of simplicity, perhaps the bugs in a homins gut are of tougher stock than those in a humans, and food may be ingested raw, though I long for the day when we truly master the use of fire. For meat, herbivores would be preferable, as they would have the best nutritional value of the three animal groups. Either the quality could be a function of your level, as in you are a level 250 forager, you must eat at least Q240 meat, because of your tremendous output of energy, or, because that would likely be a game-killer, any variety of meat would do, just as you or I would be equally satieted by, say, 10 ounces of either rabbit caught in the back-yard, or 10 ounces of meat from the mightiest Cape Buffalo. Same goes for the harvested foodstuffs, berries, cereal, fruit, etc.

True agriculture would be ideal, and were the necessity of food introduced, would be as necessary to us for the freeing up of time as it was to our real-life ancestors.

Time logged out should probably count as time in stasis, it would be awful to log into your Level 200+ character after a tough week at work to find all their stats at 10 and a message flashing "You are starving" on the screen.

And yes, the desert decrease in herbivores may be too much. Perhaps the Caprynis, Timmaris, etc. there have learned to live off of lichen, or some other plant/fungus that is not readily apparent to us. I do however hold that the decrease in population during winter would be acceptable. It would not be overly drastic, as winters on Atys are less severe than winters on Earth. I was thinking of a similar reduction in the resource of "mobs" as the reduction harvesters encounter to the resource of "mats" during winter-time.

OOC:

Sounds like you people are thinking up a hardcore mod for SoR IF you get round ot making it (lol) and need a tester, count me in - sounds like a cool "game"

Something I should make clear: making Homins have to eat without enforcing the same rules on the animals would be a gross imbalance, but not the other way around, necessarily. If the animals have to eat and we do not, little would change as far as game-play, aside from different proportions of predator/prey. However, if Homins had to eat, and animals did not, we would be obliged to spend either dappers or time to obtain food, while certain parts of Atys would remain unnaccessable due to huge concentrations of predators. This would not enhance play, but would merely add to the list of frustrations, and cause more people to leave

Also, it may be better to have Homin food requirements work in a similar fashion to those of our Mounts/Packers. We would have 50 bulk points worth of stored energy, these points do not actually add bulk, they are just a representation of calories. If you spend a day simply sitting and chatting, you use only 1 bulk point in that day, but activity would dramatically increase your consumption. Actions that do not have a cost, such as running, fighting without using stanzas, or crafting without using boosts, would use up a small amount per action, say 1% of a bulk point per action, or per 100meters run. Actions which do use a cost, or have a latency cost, such as increase damage, casting a spell, Speeding-up Power, or digging, would use up 5% of a bulk point per use. This would mean that a harvester, for example, would have to stop and eat every 2000 swings of their pick. When eating, you could consume up to a total of 50 bulk points at one sitting by right clicking on the food and selecting "consume", but not over the amount of 50 bulk could be stored in your body at any point, you would be full. So that, if you had 120 berries in your pack(bulk of 60), and you currently had 20 bulk points of stored energy, right-clicking consume on the berries would result in you being full, with 60 berries left in your pack.

The introduction of a Healing spell "Provide Sustenance" might also be a good idea, with the amount provided being dependant on level. At a level 250 spell you could provide all 50 points of food by casting on a homin, but casting a level 100 spell would give them only 20 bulk points worth of satiety. XP for such casts would work in an identical way as healing currently does.

OOC:

You guys have really managed to surprise me

Here I was, posting an idea I was sure would be shot down by everyone and not only do people like it, they go and take it even one step futher.

I've read so many great ideas here it makes me want to see them implemented in a real MMO...

The Ideal SOR

They had the idea a long time ago, now they just need to get there!

thebax wrote:The introduction of a Healing spell "Provide Sustenance" might also be a good idea, with the amount provided being dependant on level.

Once upon a time you seemed to have new and innovative ideas...

Now it seems your TOO MUCH ON... I got to turn you off... GL Homin....
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