David Cohen Corval wrote:
June 30, 2005 :
Letter : Immaculate vision - part 1 by David Cohen Corval
So, last time I pinged you to know what you’d like me to address. You’ve ponged me back with a rather wide scopeand I can’t address everything in a one page letter. So I’ll make several letters to address as many points as I can.
But before I start writing, I’d like to underline that what I say here is not a promise. It is my vision and you have to understand that many factors affect the reality of the game (design details, UI design, code, 3d art, testing and tunning for example). And in particular, things take time to be built
What’s next after the outposts?
I don’t know yet. I have my wishes, but this is a production question and I don’t decide alone what goes next into the game. It depends on what resources we have at hand versus what we’d like to push into the game.
Some of you are asking: is it about RP, PvP, a mix? SoR is a mix of RP and PvP (it’s an MMORPG, so RP is clearly there). But PvP should slide in more centrally to the game, while not being mandatory. The background and the story are designed to be interesting grounds for RP, but also to ‘fuel’ the PvP. As the PvP becomes more important, background revelations will be used to back RP convictions and in turn trigger your motivations to pick up a side (Kami vs Karavan, or a new faction not still in game). I expect players to fight for their faction’s values and try to achieve its goals.
Besides dressing up the PvP side of the game, the RP should also grow its own content, as the Homin civilizations find and rebuild their lost identities. An important effort was made to give each civilization their own background and culture. These cultures disappeared because of the Kitin Wars (the ancient civilizations were destroyed), but they weren’t lost all together. Indeed, in their mighty wisdom, the leaders of these past civilizations were able to save them. When they realized that the end of their kind was near, the past leaders summoned their best heroes and gave them special containers which contained the pieces of their nation’s culture (craft plans, secrets, artefact, etc). The heroes were then sent across Atys to hide these treasures so that, one day, the descendants of the falling civilizations would find them again and rebuild their greatness to once again claim the domination of Atys. Today, very few Homins are aware of this historical ‘detail’. But the time will come when the hunt for these treasures will be a major key to the development of true Homin Nations.
I have no doubt that this alone will give another meaning to PvP, since any Homin could gather the precious containers from a variety of Homin civilizations, not just his own kind. The question of territorial domination will grow more important. The war for territory and the benefits of holding that territory will become a need for both the Homin civilizations and the Factions. The outposts will be central to this dimension of the game. The factions conflict will grow bigger with this exploration/conquest dimension of the game. Some revelations will keep entering the game regarding the true essence of these factions, their organization, their problems, their goals and their intentions regarding the Homin genre and the planet Atys.
The true destiny of SoR is not just about Atys (the name of the game doesn’t contain Atys for a reason). I’d rather call it a Space Opera or a multiverse. My influences here are clearly not from the gaming industry (even if I’ve played a lot more than my parents would imagine). I am after works like Dune (Herbert) or the Foundations (Asimov). I’m also very much into mangas and animes, such as Ghost in the Shell, Apple Seed (the latest anime adaptation is good, btw), Nausicaa (the manga is more complete than the anime), Mononoke Hime, et al. And I like to mix the genres. I find them very rich in contrasts and I think it is possible to mix genres, as long as it is done with proper coherence in both the looks and the background/story. I really like that sort of contrast (techno vs magic), because it releases a lot of energy and pure emotional energy is what MMORPGs have to deliver.
For SoR, I have several planets in mind, plus a space dimension. The space dimension could be compared to a mix of Harlock(anime with space pirates fighting imperial fleets for the future of mankind), Cowboy Bebop (anime about mercenaries) and the Stargate TV series. Today, we have less than 5 % of Atys open for exploration (okay, that’s a bit frustrating, but it’s also exciting for the future, don’t you think?). What you as the Homin civilizations are, in fact, is just a small portion of the true Homin presence on Atys. The past Homin Nations were wider. As an example, I’ll just say that there are the Dark Matis and the Fyros Nomads who follow the herds of huge elephant like creatures which carry the Fyros villages carved in their shell.
I hope not to wait until Atys is complete to open the other planets. The story development is what dictates when a new world has to be opened to players (for the moment, the NPC of these other worlds are minding their own business). But when the time comes, it doesn’t mean that Atys ends. On the contrary, Atys will keep evolving with new content, too. By the time we reach the complete opening of the Saga, you should have a pretty decent multiverse in your hands. That will be the end of what I call the introduction of the Ryzom multiverse. From there, I think it’ll just be a big chess game on a gigantic scale.
This was the future of Ryzom in 2005.
Is there are clue to how much of this was developed behind the scenes?
Was the 5% we can see at the moment, 100% of what was developed?
edit - The fingers crossed is that more was developed than was ever release, maybe it was just too buggy to give to the players, this will be much more interesting to potential buyer than the existing stuff, *wink*
