Illarion - its current situation and its future

[Lance Thunnigan]

I think this is a problem caused by the fact that elfes are too common between the humans. If they would seperate themselfs a little from the town this would change slowly i think

Nitram

If all the towns had the same resources and stuff like Trollsbane.
This might possibly happen.

[Lennier]

All towns and guilds have the possibility to buy animals and farmland. We do not give the right, that you can have all of them in one area, but you have the choice to take some. Same with tools. Nearly all settlements have their needed equipment. You only need to buy.

The only thing of differences are the minerals. But they are outside of the towns in general.

In some future differences will be in the ability to plant only a limited set of farming plants. And in far future the remove of Trolls Bane Depots outside of Trolls Bane.

The only advantage of Troll's Bane is a higher number of profitable NPCs.

[Nitram]

What is needed in the other town to make they kind of indipended but made is still required to have a kind of interaction between them? (trading)

[Lance Thunnigan]

What is needed in the other town to make they kind of indipended but made is still required to have a kind of interaction between them? (trading)

That's just it. EVERYTHING related to reading is in Trollsbane. The dwarfs have what, 1 vender infront of the entrance that only sells smith tools. Elves, same, but with carpentry, dunno about GB, Varshikar has a trader that sells weapons n stuff. Trollsbane has a pub, eliza, the coin exchange, farmer, potions, all that.

[Lennier]

What is needed in the other town to make they kind of indipended but made is still required to have a kind of interaction between them? (trading)

Motivated players with the aim to stay for the home of the own char. Greenbriar and Silverbrand do it well currently. In special Greenbriar consits of lots of different races. But the high number of chars have a common mind and are active to reach their aims.

[Lance Thunnigan]

Motivated players with the goal to stay for the home of the own char. Greenbriar is very good currently. They are of lots of different races. But the chars have a common mind and are active to reach this.

Doesn't have anything to do with them staying in their respective cities.
I'm not pushing anything, so don't take it as such, I'm just saying if you want players to behave like that, make the cities equal. Perhaps a small Pro or Con here and there, which would require trade between cities at times.

[Lahela]

I did play an elfess without a common skill. It is quiet fun I have to admit but it is hard because you can't interact with any NPC (besides the elf on Vanima who only sells... well... bulls**t)
Many couldn't handle the char because she had absoluetly no common skill. Most kept on talking and talking and talking and I saw only

xxx: **********
yyy: ******
zzz: ******************

than I saw their name and they walked off and I had to remember all the time "Alright.. I see the name but I do not know him."
I have to say William Elderberry was the first who actually rped with my elfess the right way and actually helped her. It was great, I never knew William to be a good roleplayer.

Anyway, I do not like the idea of groups/ clans/ guilds or anything else you have to join to be able to have some fun in the game. That would make it even harder for newbies to find into the game. How would a newbie tell who is "good" and who is "bad". He would join the group X and only find people from the group Y who would, of course, ignore or even mock him. Great fun...seriously.

One comment on the group thing Siltaris,
Those groups, in my eyes atleast are ooc groups of friends, wich totaly ignore others for no ic reason, they seem to ignore chars they don't know, and what ever.

That is so true. I made one of my one time characters and walked through Trolls Bane of course. I went to the Tavern and had some great fun there with two other characters. I won't tell names.
I logged off and some time later back on. I went back to the Tavern and found one there busy talking to someone else. Well that is alright. He greeted my character and left shortly after. I took a seat next to someone else, who started talking to me until another character (a friend) came back. My character was totally ignored. I asked question which didn't get answered, I watched them and didn't get any #me's back, I got frustrated and felt like typing "You guys suck" and press enter which of course I didn't do. I walked out of the Tavern logged off and deleted the character. I haven't played since.
Really great how the so-called good roleplayers threaten newbies or at least new characters.

I seriously don't know who such behavior is fault of the staff. The staff can't change the situation ig, only the engine and the engine is fine.

[Fooser]

I never thought Trollsbane would be in such condition as it is now, and to lift it up would take effort and creativity from many directions.

Indeed, to get out of the current misery there is not ONE solution. Instead a lot of efforts have to be done at the same time, all following the same aim, the same objective or if you want to call it that way: the same vision. That is why I strongly recommend to set up a vision for the development of Illarion, too. Incremental actions will lead to an unsatisfactory situation in the very end of the day...

Exactly, to do it you'd basically need all of Trollsbane's citizens to get off their asses and be proactive at the same time, which would be hard to do.

[Miklorius]

Isolated RP groups:
A problem simply is that you need to know a bit about the others if you want to perform some "deep" RP. But today there are so many characters ingame you can't remember all of them (in the past I made a list about the people my characters met but it became too much work).

So the "deep roleplayers" stay in their groups where everyone knows each other. It is a logical step.
But to avoid RP with others at all is indeed bad.

One good thing such separation may has:
Other towns will get more life, not everything take part in TB. And if these towns have strong or politically motivated leader, exchange and communication with other towns will come.

Look at gnomes, fairies and gnolls? How many do we have? 3 or 4?

We can play Gnolls? Or do you mean Goblins?
And for the gnomes: Nobody wants to play them because they are so damn ugly and look more like aliens (and have too long names)!

Wrong played races:
Maybe the background is too hard to get? I still hope for a short and comprehensive location where the essential info about Gobiath are collected.

[Mr. Cromwell]

What Trollsbane (and maybe all towns) need is a way to generate income for the Powers that be.

The GMs wonder why it's impossible to build up a stable government, when the government-builders receive no means to tax the people for the income that is needed for a running government. The current sitiuation is such, where the God-King works in the fields so that he can afford to fix the door broken by the zillionth-monster quest and that the entire Guard of town working for free; both of which are simply ridiculous.

They can't levy tax from the players without much instability in terms of income / rebellion. While in other towns it is possible to rely on donations due to the selective nature of citizenship in those said towns, such option is not as good for Trollsbane. The bane is the scumbucket and melting pot of the island, with all the troublemakers but very little characters who give a damn about it.

Giving the group who is determined by the gamemasters to be the current ruler of the town, the ability to Tax NPC's would be precisely what is needed. This would make it possible to HIRE guards and mercenaries to protect X town and uphold the law, instead of having to rely on semi-irregular groups and guilds. THIS is the core problem.

The NPC's could be taxed on either percentage/transaction or x-coins/transaction. How this would be realised technically is none of my concern as I wouldn't know a damn about it anyway.

Sorry. My english is really atrocious tonigt. I shouldn't write stuff like this when being tired.

[Nitram]

I fear all in all, that the thing Edward said it exactly what is required. But i don't feel good with bumping alot of coins into a single character who is ment to spending this for the town.

Because ALOT of players will moan again about the pushing that one character gets.

Nitram

[Samantha Meryadeles]

I tried to give ideas of a tax system for trollsbane.

like guards walking around and go to the fields south of town. if they see someone working, they ask for his name, and for a donation. if he pays, it will be added, if not, THAT will be added with a stern look. i think next time he will pay out of free will.

but thats the only true way of taxation. collecting parts of the stuff the peoples make at the workshop or other places once in a time.

tax for the citizens wont work...everyone can enter town and use its tools and stuff. it would just punish someone for becomming a citizen while you still can have all the possibilitys without being one. and a few citizens have to pay for many many noncitizens lurking around the town

[Fooser]

Yeah, income probably is the #1 biggest problem faced by any government, especially in Trollsbane, where the standards for repairing quickly and expanding are fairly high. Even if someone puts forth the effort and time to try and help the town, they can't do anything besides putting their own personal funds in. Then when the next overthrow occurs they have to live with the fact that they put in all that money for nothing, and to have the current rulers dislike them. Fooser put a decent amount of his own money in, but realized at some point he had to be careful due to the risks. I use to think land taxing was the way to go, but no longer. For the simple reason that people need to hold on to their money to do the actual building and improving of it. And if you have taxes people are less likely to become a landowning resident of your town, and that is counter productive.

Having the ambition to try and improve the town is one thing, having the resources is another. There's just no way to have a respectable government when they can't point at things and tell the residents that they did it (improvements, construction). And that can't be done without $$

[Mr. Cromwell]

@Patric

They can't levy tax from the players without much instability in terms of income / rebellion.

Enough said.

I'll go more into detail tomorrow (today), Nitters. Maybe you want to hear what I have on my mind.

[Nitram]

I'll go more into detail tomorrow (today), Nitters. Maybe you want to hear what I have on my mind.

I listen to everything... as allways ^^

Nitram

[Siltaris]

only short note:

mr. cromwell is completly right: tb government needs money. and taxation is one part, donations another one.

Furthermore i think that money is important, but there are other fields of action, too... as mentioned today before: there is not THE solution, but a bunch of solutions.

So, i think the government needs more money. and if there will be in the end no other opportunity to tax npcs, i think it has to be done, even when there is the danger of moanings. as long as the money-flow is transparent, everything will be fine. btw, i do not think about hundrets if silvers, so it is just a littlte to make basic governmental structures possible.

cant write any more, my hand aches. cheers

[Gro'bul]

There was a good idea on this, kind of a "black hole depot" thing where everyone chucks random items into it and the government gets a little bit of money for each item. As a blacksmith and carpenter you'll end up throwing out about 1000 times more items than you keep.

[Korm Kormsen]

if this "black hole depot" would be used, then there would be inflation. now the things are thrown away - gone.
then they would be converted in money for goverment spending.
that would give additional influx of money to the economy.

so if we want additional influx of money, it would be easyer for the staff, to just hand out money to rulers.
(depending on the amount of citizens?)

[Gro'bul]

Its an exchange, at least if you get makers of valuable junk in your town you can make more money than the next town with 20 poor people.

[Korm Kormsen]

right.

but would that help "problem city"? (Trolls Bane)
it would become the poorest town on the isle.
because nearly everybody, who is productive, lives somewhere else.

in TB there are mostly new players and "talk only" RPers.

[Mr. Cromwell]

Korm:

I want a system where the people have some influence on the amount of tax income generated by the X-town, despite the fact that this money is gained from NPC's. So the characters can choose where they do business, and hence which town gets their tax money (However, trolls bane should have an edge in this respect, due to the lack of donation-income).

So,no. Just handing out money according to citizenship amount is ludicrous, because this would only support the already established governments and not really focus on the problem: Trollsbane.

1. Adjustment of the NPC-buyers and availability

In order to achieve equilibrium of sort, there should be multiple buyers for each good, with some being primary buyers (better pricing) and others secondary (worse pricing). This would take the necessity of selling goods to Merchants in trollsbane away, but would still keep it more lucrative if the Merchants in the bane would be mainly primary ones. So there would be the option between most income or supporting some other town for an individual character.

While your concerns about inflation are valid, it's not probable that the tax income would be more than a drop in the ocean. Most of the money in Illarion is not in circulation, but rather lying around in chests or spent on building projects. If excess circulation of money was the problem, I can think of plenty of ways to withdraw money out of the economy (NPC-aquired luxury/"import" goods, anyone? Salkamaerian Whisky, Albarian wine, Gynkeesh Mead, Silk cloth.. ) without making it a pain in the ass for the players. I'm a bit suprised that there has not been any attempt to create such money-draining by the devs, to be honest. Bad devs.


The amount of transactions of the NPC's would have to be monitored for a while to determine what system would be the best one to use. If there are really hundreds of transactions in trollsbane alone each day, then maybe it's sufficient if tax income would be created with a rate of something like 1 tax copper for each trade that exceeds 10 copper? Nitters should have a look around..

I should not write when I am tired, nor during a class.. damn. I hope that my thoughts are formulated clear enough for ya'll.

[Siltaris]

I like the idea of multiple buyers. And at the same time, I think it quite hard to find the right balance for the taxes and locations of the buyers. Would be really huge effort to create something which will be fair.

So, I think, before putting efforts in a balanced multiple buyers-system, there must be tested if the government works better with regular income and if this will lead to a better Trolls Bane.

My suggestion would be to establish ideas we already had, like asking people for free donations, asking people for user-fee of property of TB (soil, tools, etc.), tax for residential houses, fee for citizenship, taxes for NPCs. I like the blackhole-idea; maybe instead of a blackhole it could be a new trader, the junk dealer, who buys trash for little money (e.g. 2 of random pieces for 1 copper?) and for every single itme he has bought he gives some coppers to the government as kind of tax.
The taxes for all the other NPCs have to be discussed. Maybe at the beginning a standard deduction will be a good way.

Then time will show if anything improves. If so, the next step should be done by thinking about multiple buyers and how to balance such system and the tax system in general.

[Estralis Seborian]

There are plans for "money sinks" and "multiple buyers", many ideas and rather detailled concepts (...). They are all "in the drawer", meaning, the concepts are there, but work has not started yet.

The current staff simply lacks the manpower for such things. They are important and will come, but not before bug a, b and c are fixed, system 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are implemented, feature XYZ is created and so on.

In case anybody wants to partizipate working out the details of "future NPC vendors" and "money sinks and stabilizing the economy", PM me.

In special, the project "money sinks" can use input.

[maryday]

-> Are you satisfied with the overall atmosphere in Illarion?
Yes.

-> Do you have the feeling that the other characters react in a good way to your roleplay?
Yes, also i go my own(b**ching) ways some times..

-> Do you have the feeling that the other characters react in a good way during quests?

I don`t know, i am no more a TrollsBane-runner(just because of this and that,
i go for banes to trade, not to find out what these horrible cries are about, though my urges itch me to);

Even in in faction-related playerquests will always be a hero
..but myself i also see them fall sometimes;


-> Do you feel annoyed by too many new and inexperienced players?
No. This is the simplest? and most occuring playerquest.


-> Are you satisfied with the current number of active characters?
Yes. But i no more log in with more then fifty IG.
(47?! leave the Forum beside..and hurry!!) :)

-> Do you want some kind of account system being reactivated?
Yes. Turorial Island:
1.)I want to become a fitter:
-Fluffy gardens of Moshran; gather ten carrots to become your designated race;( i would also like to live there as a farmer or wolf);
2.)I want to become a craftsman:
-Winterbaron; gather fifty(millionzillion)logs to build a boat, to leave the Isle gouverned by strangling hand;
3.)I want to become a magican:
-The geenie-trap; Find the three empty Bottles; (only you can see, wich are placed by the ramdom flower seeder);
etc.)


-> Do you think Illarion needs more actions on a political level?
Depends. If one is interested in the foregoings, he or she might find some pretty political possibilities;
(Keep the TB-Magistrate running..)


-> Do you think Illarion needs more actions affecting everyone’s chars’ roleplay? (e.g. wars, political conflicts, forbidden/designated territories, harsh rulers,…)
Stricter law inforcement..hunting rights only for noblemen, medieval punishments,
(showed on the marketplace-with a embarassing name addition-, unable to move, unable to be attacked; or kind of these..)


-> Do you want to know more details about how the fighting system works?
No. I am a vic. We all know when its time to run..

-> Do you want more details about each single weapon and armor, so you exactly know which weapon/armor is best against particular armor/weapon?
No. Keep that for the master-smiths.


-> Do you think the factions keep to themselves too much, with a decreased ammount of people -between-?
No. Since beginnings of mankind we have been splitted up to concurring groups, or groups with the same goals but diffrent ways in working towards them..


->How do you think about about a taxation-system?

Easy to imagine:
-Rise seller-prices of NPCs; Lower buyer-prices (10%..medieval!?).
-If you are a craftsman..every tenth object (no matter what, goes straight to the so called black-hole-box);
If you live in a tax-rising community, a EXPLICITE message occurs ( like.."You spend your effort for the authorities"..gives the rulers chance to rise taxes, and strangle the income..);
If you live in a community fed in other ways it only says ("Der Gegenstand ist mißlungen.");

->Multiple buyers?
No. -Takes away the need to do business on far distance.
-Discourages to trade with other chars (What is a TRADER!?)

While your concerns about inflation are valid, it's not probable that the tax income would be more than a drop in the ocean. Most of the money in Illarion is not in circulation, but rather lying around in chests or spent on building projects. If excess circulation of money was the problem, I can think of plenty of ways to withdraw money out of the economy (NPC-aquired luxury/"import" goods, anyone? Salkamaerian Whisky, Albarian wine, Gynkeesh Mead, Silk cloth.. ) without making it a pain in the ass for the players.

IMO: Pain, induced by authorities..is always a reason for RP..

[Enwell van Illdoran]

first of all thanks Siltarsi greát job..

as some of you probably know i was absent some time and just saw this thread.. i have to confess that i only read Siltaris post and the devs posts until martins posts..

martin, i like the way you get things on the table. The point that is the most critisized about your posts is what i like.. damn straight.
And you are completly right, someone who claims himself as a harcore RPer is tottally wrong in Illarion..
Buuuut.. Lets consider the fact that that person tries to say he is an hardcore illarionplayer. Then he would ned all technical features..

I understand your oppinion that you start to feel like your done with illarion, with developing it. But i remembered that you were one of them which wanted to move illarion into the direction of a hundred players. And i remember many discussion about quantity and quality, even in the e.V. forum with Dji, forgive me if i am mistaking..

i am one of those who would appreciate if there would be some kind of account system. not the old one in particulair, but something that proves that the one who likes to join is serious..

I know the argument of not raising player ammount because of to long waiting time to fially get ingame. but there still are possibilities..

My suggestion: (in case that the Torurial Island isn´t working out...)

Making an account system but giving newbies the chance to try the game with some kind of demo version, or giving free access to the torturial island (free=without account)
Check logs in the torturial island and let resposible people descide if he the player has potencial..

Well my thoughts..
if anyone else has already said what i did, then just delete this post..

TONINO

[Korm Kormsen]

i know, it was just a language slip....
but i love the idea!
make tutorial island double purpose! make it a torture island too!

put some mean situations in front of the players. let them know beforehand, that the island is a kind of trial.
and then let the average and good ones enter the game itself.
weed out the idiots.

(but dont apply the trial to second chars of existing players! (we don't want the number of players to go down, do we?)

[Kevin Lightdot]

Not every character would do all that stuff.
Some chars may be scared little pussies so to speak.


As for torture: Nothing is complete without it.

[Juniper Onyx]

Motivated players with the aim to stay for the home of the own char. Greenbriar and Silverbrand do it well currently. In special Greenbriar consits of lots of different races. But the high number of chars have a common mind and are active to reach their aims.

I've just read this and I appreciate it, but I'd like to share a concern I have had.

When I arrived in Greenbriar a year ago RL, it was deserted. Frequented only occasionally by shoe salesmen. I thought of how to attract people. The answer was to open it up to all races. After all how many Halflings are there in the game, 5? 6?

Greenbriar as a 'halfling' town just doesn't work. I know this was what was originally wanted, but plans have changed. Now Greenbriar is a thriving community of all races, and I am very proud of it.

In my opinion, Trollsbane is in her decline. At the rate Greenbriar is growing, we are currently doubling our size, it may surpass Trollsbane as the Major city. Although I have been told this is OK if the players develop that way, but something is wrong with that I think.

On my part, dedicated as I am to Greenbriar, I see the danger of allowing Trollsbane to 'decline'. Trollsbane is where all the Noobs spawn, it's the center of the island, and is supposed to be the 'capital', not Greenbriar.

I'm going to try to help Trollsbane via a trade guild and marketplace, but I have only one major character. We all complain about changing Trollsbane governments and how the citizens don't care and such, but has anyone outside Trollsbane tried to help too?

I'd like to see the most productive characters quit running away from Trollsbane and let's get back there, if only a little, and help it out. We all started there, it's time to give back and help it out a little.
What do you think?

If the Government of Trollsbane would open up a little, be more tolerant and accepting of Noobs and create a 'vision' for it's citizens that they could rally to, Trollsbane could be a great City once again.

Just a thought.