Ryzom

lyrah68 wrote:Then there are the aggressive ones like cloppers, gorai and the larger more dangerous species out there.

I thought Cloppers and Goari had nothing to do with Kittins. I thought they were just large crabs.

sydius wrote:That is a very good point, and is why the “punch in the nose factor” that UO was released with went so horribly out of proportion with expectations. The anonymity of the game and the relative low repercussions could result in wide-scale mass-slaughter in a similar fashion to UO’s history.

On the other hand, being counter-productive to the success of homin is something that I believe should be a viable option for those of us who believe the world should be controlled by insects and that we should all die. There are also people who don’t really care about the success or failure of long-term anti-kittin efforts, and only care about their short-term goals.

I fully realize that we will never lose completely, that is obvious. What I could see happen, and this, in my opinion, would be interesting, is the slow degradation of regions by kittin invasion to the point of overwhelming kittin presence outside every city. You would still need newbie areas to level in, but it would force players to band together against them much like in real life.

You make good points, also, sydius.

As far as the option of being counter-productive to hominkind goes, that should be allowed only if the player suffers certain consequences. Again, if in real life your choice was to cooperate against a common threat or else all your family and friends would be eaten by giant bugs, I imagine that 99.9% of normal people would unite against the threat. Furthermore, the consequences of not uniting would be severe, I suspect similar to the penalties for being a traitor currently in place. The leadership of hominkind could not tolerate anything less given the gravity of the issue (survival).

Thus, if you want to sabotage hominkind, you should be killed on sight by other homins, shunned from the cities, and so forth. Otherwise, you can wreck the story for everyone and the whole thing becomes a big joke.

To a lesser extent what I said above also applies to those who "don't care". When everyone's survival is at stake, such an attitude would not be tolerated.

For the game to continue to attract interest the story needs to be as real as possible. Allowing players to sabotage it willy-nilly would wreck the immersion factor, and probably the game.

Doctor Z.

sydius wrote: I fully realize that we will never lose completely, that is obvious. What I could see happen, and this, in my opinion, would be interesting, is the slow degradation of regions by kittin invasion to the point of overwhelming kittin presence outside every city. You would still need newbie areas to level in, but it would force players to band together against them much like in real life.

I don't think that would actually work, sydius. How is a new player, just freshly arrived from the new areas, to do anything if they can't venture outside the city? No one would want to play if that's the case. They wouldn't care that the actions of those who were there previously led to that state of affairs. Nevrax has to keep the game viable, and that limits the extent of the consequences that can be imposed.

Doctor Z.

zukor wrote:Thus, if you want to sabotage hominkind, you should be killed on sight by other homins, shunned from the cities, and so forth. Otherwise, you can wreck the story for everyone and the whole thing becomes a big joke.

To a lesser extent what I said above also applies to those who "don't care". When everyone's survival is at stake, such an attitude would not be tolerated.

Something along those lines is what I was thinking, but there would have to be a way to own an apartment or guild hall outside of town. Other than that, I think they should be fully shunned from all cities, which is a considerable detriment to their playing ability as a consequence, especially considering no matter how much you suck up, Kittens would still eat you.

zukor wrote:I don't think that would actually work, sydius. How is a new player, just freshly arrived from the new areas, to do anything if they can't venture outside the city? No one would want to play if that's the case. They wouldn't care that the actions of those who were there previously led to that state of affairs. Nevrax has to keep the game viable, and that limits the extent of the consequences that can be imposed.

Doctor Z.

Like I said in the quote you used, you would still need places for newer players to venture. One option would be to have the “ultimate” worse case to have all but the capital surrounded like that. The capital could remain newbie-friendly, however.

sydius wrote:Something along those lines is what I was thinking, but there would have to be a way to own an apartment or guild hall outside of town. Other than that, I think they should be fully shunned from all cities, which is a considerable detriment to their playing ability as a consequence, especially considering no matter how much you suck up, Kittens would still eat you.

Ok, I would be fine with all of that, it's perfectly consistent with the story. And I like what you said about the Kittins; I was thinking the same thing myself as I was reading your earlier remarks.

Doctor Z.

sydius wrote:Like I said in the quote you used, you would still need places for newer players to venture. One option would be to have the “ultimate” worse case to have all but the capital surrounded like that. The capital could remain newbie-friendly, however.

Interesting. I hope something along these lines is already planned. One of the things about this game that peaked my interest was the idea of a war taking place, where territories could be changing hand, and you could have a role in that. This would be the most extreme case if the homins in one region screwed up too badly.....I LIKE IT!

Doctor Z.

zukor wrote:Interesting. I hope something along these lines is already planned. One of the things about this game that peaked my interest was the idea of a war taking place, where territories could be changing hand, and you could have a role in that. This would be the most extreme case if the homins in one region screwed up too badly.....I LIKE IT!

Doctor Z.

I have this fear in the back of my mind that it will never be very siege-like. I haven’t even seen any walls or towers that you can climb up on, or gates at all. Except the towers you teleport up to – which seems weird to begin with, since they would have to be Karavan/Kami created.

sydius wrote:I have this fear in the back of my mind that it will never be very siege-like. I haven’t even seen any walls or towers that you can climb up on, or gates at all. Except the towers you teleport up to – which seems weird to begin with, since they would have to be Karavan/Kami created.

I hope there will be a well-defined front line, with infiltrations going behind the lines in both directions. There could be seiges at outposts along the frontier, perhaps. You would need seige engines and ladders and battering rams and a host of other things implemented for this to happen, unfortunately. That may be awhile.

I'd like to start seeing some real "dynamic" gameplay, and I don't mean boring herd migrations. No place should be completely safe from Kittin scouts or forward patrols, except the very capitol cities themselves. How exciting it would be to be out in Imperial Dunes somewhere near Pyr, doing the usual stuff, and suddenly hear a panicked message on "region chat" about a party of Kittins who suddenly appeared and started killing homins. A call would go out for every able bodied homin and homwomin to defeat the enemy raiding party. If they don't respond, small groups of homins will be slaughtered wherever the Kitin find them, or everyone would have to cower in the city.

I don't mean for this to be an "event" announced weeks in advance, either. Small raiding parties should be a part of regular gameplay. Perhaps we could even go out on patrol looking for such a forward raiding party; maybe we could get such missions in the city. Imagine you're chasing a weak-looking Kittin patrol when suddenly.....you realize they led you into an ambush.

The possibilities are really great if this kind of thing gets implemented.

Doctor Z.

zukor wrote:Small raiding parties should be a part of regular gameplay.

I fully agree.

Something about how they spawn into the world needs to be considered, though. Just randomly spawning anywhere seems kind of weird to me – I think they should actually come from the Kittin strongholds. I know the path-finding system in SoR is strong enough to support waypoint-style navigation, perhaps even randomly-generated throughout a region with focal points around cities, then generate between 5 and 50 Kittins, and send ‘em on their rampage.