The overall roleplay and pitfalls.

[Estralis Seborian]

Once again, a very good observation.

The homepage is in a poor state, some of its content wasn't brought up to date since 2001 or so. A good homepage is like a business card; and Illarion's is dirty and crumpled. At this moment, no one is working on the homepage and the only attempt to recruit someone for that task remains unanswered: http://illarion.org/community/forums/vi ... =1&t=34886

Indeed, Illarion needs more "d00dz in da base". Volunteers? There are tons of very concrete tasks available and, with a little luck, we'll get a public list of those tasks any time soon. For the homepage, it's pretty simple: Throw out everything that isn't up to date or helpful and replace it with helpful content and the basic lore from the wiki. Advanced lore should be found ingame, though.

The key to success is also to try to hire new developers, making use of external sites. Illarion is a free open source online roleplaying game, fully playable and it even has its own server, society and a rather loyal player base. This should attract developers like a flower attracts bees. However, once again, to promote Illarion it needs someone to take the initiative! And this "someone" is simply not around to act as "multiplier".

[The Returner]

I would be more then happy to offer my skills in areas like lore and writing and the like. A few years ago I offered to help work on the chronicle and translate english to german and german to english, but since my grasp of german is then shakey, and still quite shakey, it seemed more like I was learning german while others translated.

I could work on the site in a pinch, I have several years of web design experience, however, my time in webdesign stuff is limited. I have many other clients, and they would not like me slacking for free work If the site is so old, I could probably port it to a newer CMS if nessecary, though its probably already done so far.

The linked thread is a few months old, and doesn't offer much information. Perhaps if you expanded on what needed doing and allowed those without ICQ or MSN to communicate here on the forum it would help? Obviously, the locked thread does not show much interest in who may have offered, if anyone, already.

Also, I'm not great at PR, and I know that some of the stuff going on is a bit....dry. The news page for example, its kind of tucked away with meeting times and concise messages such as "We need specific help, to participate be here at this time, this is what we need in purely business terms" if you want books, say you want books, give some contact info, make a post like "Do you have something interesting you would like to contribute? Would you like to get your writings in the game? Maybe get a forum title as "Scribe" or some such things. Build the interest. If your holding a chat, IRC and Quakenet should be a footnote, you should offer something like...click the "Chat" button, which brings one directly to that room.

As you say, its a matter of initiative. Illarion is a game, that is very much community driven. But, though you may argue it is a "business" and as such, it technically is a not-for profit, running it like a business will not generate the required interest you need to make chips fall into place. Engage people, offer them little shiney things in exchange for their work. They will come eventually.

I think alot of the staff is coming to that already, I see waaaay more community involvement threads recently that are generating good feedback.

[Estralis Seborian]

Those who are able to help with web design should contact vilarion: http://illarion.org/community/forums/me ... ile&u=3915

Those who are able to help with lore and creative writing should contact Skamato: http://illarion.org/community/forums/me ... le&u=10083

See also: http://illarion.org/general/us_news.php ... 7#news_197 and http://illarion.org/community/forums/vi ... =1&t=34370

On the "shiney things": It's not the case that the staff didn't think about such incentives. Forum titles were awarded for banner designers and NPC writers. Doing the same for e.g. books is also possible but once again: Such things have to be done by a living being. It is all about initiative. The current core developers show their initiative in producing tons of cryptic code, so the initiative is up to others, such as the community managers or gamemasters. Or anyone who wants to help, no helping hand is rejected!

PS: Added the link to the chat to the most recent news entry. Thanks for the reminder .

Edit: Talking about initiatives...

http://zfx.info/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1188&start=0 (german)
http://www.spieleprogrammierer.de/12-pr ... g-gesucht/ (german)
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=2149 (german)
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=302 (english)
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/588651-ill ... evelopers/ (english)
http://www.devmaster.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17429 (english)
http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/illar ... aying-game (english)

[David Turner]

I think it would help to clear things up a bit by refocusing the conversation.

The one biggest reason people stay is the rollplaying but the one biggest reason that people say that they give up on the game is because they can't find people. Perhaps working on the problem that is the biggest issue would help. People who simply want to abuse the system will always be around and are less put off by a lack of people, but people who really want to rollplay find a lack of people to be a killing point. So if you want to fix the problem with "too many non-rollplayers" than the most direct solution would be to fix the ratios so that the real rollplayers are attracted and stay.

First, make sure that noobia only drops people off at Bane, that one (easy to do) thing would greatly increase the chance that they will meet people and not just be off alone by themselves.

If there would be a way to make some sort of indication where there are a lot of people than that would really go a long way to solving the problem. Afterall, it doesn't really help to know that 8 people are on if I don't know that 6 of them are all in greenbriar, or somewhere else that I don't know. This would make it so that fewer numbers of people would be needed to make the game seem "full" and "active", and an active game is a growing game. I'm not sure what it would take but I would go so far as to say that this is easily a big enough issue to warrant taking people away from the VBU to do it. In the end, what good is finishing the VBU if the game is all but dead when it is completed?

Or make it clear to people how important the forums are to the game and roleplaying. How often do you see someone who doesn't use the forums but still sticks around? It happens, but only extremely rarely. Like it or not, the forums are a part of the game, so new players should be informed of this so that they can join in.

These are just a few of the unanswered pitfalls of trying to learn to roleplay in this game, and my philosophy has always been to try to deal with problems by making things better rather than attacking what appears to make things worse.

[The Returner]

@Estralis, its great to see you out there working on the game dev side of things generating interest.

But what I mean is, threads like the ones Achae and Athian started. When you have "Email" or "PM" the devs, nobody still knows whats being done. Open discussion is imo the way to do things. Threads focused on book writing, lore, chronicling, website. Open threads, not stickied locked ones. People are more likely to respond here in an open forum, so that people maybe without the WHOLE skillset asked can offer input on what they think should be done. Like this thread here, and those others.

That way, once someone comes in with "OH I can do THAT" you get more people in the camp. Now probably should bring back open proposals forum or better, a "Development Opinions and Needs" forum, so that general isn't crowded with these threads. And advertise the hell out of it. Hey we have this new forum, it has tons of input threads, please offer your input so we can improve the game. We are doing this, we need this, we want this, we want creative talents.

The difference between here, and gamedev and gameart and open source forums is, here are the people playing the game, either actively or inactively. You can't be concise and dry with these people, they are the creative minds behind the roleplay and stuff, so appeal to them directly and more personally! Tell them how its going to affect the game, HOW their books will affect the game world, HOW their NPC's will affect the community IG, HOW their lore writing and story skills will be used!

@David, Its my opinion Noobia shouldn't exist at all. There should be an ingame accessible manual and windows describing basic functions, and your off. Noobia is tedious, easily exploitable NPC's mean anyone who can type "cherries" or "apples" in a sentence, pass the tests. I think I passed one by saying "Hey ____ I popped some cherries". Noobia does not really promote roleplay anyway. Also, it doesn't matter what they do to the online list, if half the players are hidden anyways. Perhaps they could do "There are 3 players in Trolls Bane" or such instead of namelists, but not even that is a garuntee that those people will actually be there, and would require more server side scripting for this old client instead of adding as a feature for VBU

[Estralis Seborian]

This thread is really constructive, keep up the good level of discussion .

On not meeting other players:
We will try to create hot spots with the release of the VBU. Places you want to be, places where you have a reason to be, places where you will meet people. Just very few such hot spots are planned as far as I know, so you have a very good chance to run into players at each of them. In any case, attracting roleplayers should be the main goal and this is achieved best by... attracting roleplayers! So, all methods that have the aim to keep players out of the game, good and bad, aren't helpful. What we need are constructive approaches as Mr Returner pointed out. And people should not feel lost in the game...

On Noobia:
Noobia should be unnecessary, not simply ruled out. The game should be so simple that you don't need a lengthy tutorial. So, no more "shift alt ctrl click with third mouse button"-shit. The new client will have totally reworked controls. However, I think a very brief tutorial might still be helpful, something you can finish in 3 minutes. Many might remember those days where you spawned between book shelves in the library without any clue where you are, how you do things and what you can do in the very first minutes instead of reading books . Any tutorial should give you a smooth start, some warm words of welcome and a little task you can do.

On sorting players by location on the online list:
A very good idea! The current sorting by races isn't really helpful. However, I think such things should be done after the VBU. Perhaps you want to post a feature request on Mantis? http://illarion.org/mantis/

On public discussions:
The CMs' initiatives are appreciated. It is just those kinds of threads that help and, guess what, that's one of the reasons why CMs were hired . The core developers can talk to you about code and stuff, but mediators are needed that translate the needs and wishes of the community so that they can be implemented. I doubt it is helpful if Nitram posts a thread about the differences in graphics libraries JOGL and LWJGL and their impact on the particle engine of the client. Or vilarion making a poll whether all base.nls functions should be implemented in C++ or remain as Lua functions. However, some more "show case" like posts and announcements of the devs would be great, indeed! I tried to bring some attention to the development by hosting the recent TechTalks, maybe such things can be done on the forum, too. It all depends on individual initiative, again!

[David Turner]

I agree with you both, noobia should be unnecessary. Most of the forums should be largely unnecessary as well. In a perfectly designed post-post-post-VBU world much of that may be done. But currently these things are needed and are necessary. And the game we are playing in is the current one. Fixing up Noobia, at the very least to only let people out at Bane (for instance) isn't very hard but would be a big improvement. But currently the game as it is is being neglected in order to only focus on the game as it will be... and it is no surprise that the game as it is shrinks and atrophies under these circumstances.

I'm glad to hear about the specific focus on "hot spots" (such as the picture of the traders all being in an open area together). That is a good idea and hopefully the many others like it will fix a lot of problems.

Still, I tried to get a new player interested in the game yesterday. I play pen and paper games with him and so I know he is a decent rollpalyer. He is also used to playing on roleplay servers of other things (like runescape and such) and I thought he would like this game for its dedicated focus on roleplay. The first thing he said was about how ugly it was, and all I could think was that the controls were worse. He then noticed that there were only 8 people online, and all I could think was "that's more than I expected". When the game wouldn't register right I think he gave up. And, honestly, I really couldn't blame him for it. THIS is the reason we are loosing good roleplayers. When there were 10, 14, or 21 people on at a time than you could be reasonably assured of running into someone but now, not so much with 6, 8, or 11. But what can I say in response to the questions I get? I can't say that the current problems are going to be fixed soon or that there are things in place to take care of the glaring issues the game has. Any fixes will have to wait for the VBU and I have been waiting for the entire time I have been playing the game. So currently nothing changes and nothing gets fixed. I really do want to be able to get my other roleplaying friends interested in this game, but currently I just can't. Even an incomplete VBU world would be better than this. Add in some scripts that block areas off until they are finished or patchwork something in. This game has always been "in development" so players can forgive the fact that it is unfinished. But this lurch of nothing being updated (in the game as we have it) just kills.