A small ranty post. As i feel like it

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Aristeaus
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A small ranty post. As i feel like it

Post by Aristeaus »

Ok ive spoken to various people and i get a simular result from all of them. You can take this as constructive criticism or a flame against the developers either one will do im sure, yet the developers do know that i dont dislike them so shouldnt take it so.

Well matter of annoyance one

The account system

The removal has done no good what so ever in my opinion, if a good roleplayer wishes to play they are usually mature enough to wait for thier account acceptance. These days your roleplay is disturbed by captain caveman running around shouting about how everything is gay.. it destroys the mood. A new player who is willing to learn and listen i will gladly spend my time trying to help. The 99 idiots who log in and try to play runescape are just a pain in the arse. so back to the original point

Account system needed. tested without - my conclusion is that people who wish to roleplay are mature enough to wait.

Matter number two

Craftmanship

All of the elder player which i know say that the tasks of crafting are more than monotomous they are stupidly monotomous and complicated. This may not be apparant to the newer players within the game but compared to the elder systems i personally find it near impossable so no longer try. With the combination with the new merchant systems which dont allow the crafters to sell thier goods in most circumstances, and those that do buy in most instances make the time not worthwhile. Prime examples to be used which i can speak from experience. Alchemy.. have you seen what you need to make a potion? even with the skill maxed you may as well buy a potion it will end up more profitable in the long run for the amount of time youd have to spend in gathering the ingrediants or paying for them seperatly. Dyeing, haha what a joke come on now. Firstly you need to alchemly skill and then you need all the ingrediants. then you make something when your skilled which is worth a few copper? this is one example, and im sure many people can speak about the other crafts in more detail than i so i shall leave it to them. This doesnt touch the amount of nonsense you have to go through to make these tasks possible, lucky the characters are ambi dextrous isnt it ;].

Roleplay in general

Im sorry to all of you but its dropped like hell, apart from the small conversations. Currantly in illi you get small groups who stick together and dont mingle ever. and they stay in thier own little world. You can walk the land and see people speaking and think!! ahh at last some people to roleplay with! Then you speak to them and either get completly ignored, or told to go away.
You walk into a area with your head falling off and the people will turn round look for a moment and carry on speaking. Then the horde of undead shall follow shortly to be ignored by most and then having a woman approach them asking if they sell leather.
So in short, spread roleplay is now not possible, its all reduced to small petty groups who stay together not spreading thier roleplay. Which results in complete boredom in most cases. And the only way to get a response from masses in general is to fart lightning bolts.

GM crap

Some of the nonsense ive seen from GM's of late is really nonsense, they intervene when not needed and dont get involved when they are. Im sorry Damien im going to use you as one example. Pking an elf for beleiving in evil. Im sorry GM's you cant tell people how to roleplay. If someone wants to play a evil elf, or a bloodthirsty fairy why should you care unless they do matters which counter the rules. And the next example is Keikan banning Chrissys character and the way Nitram responded as well, you guys know i like you both but come on. You treated this person who has put years of her life into this game, like a peice of shit to be discarded like a macdonalds wrapper. You cant treat people like this, you are not better than the rest of the players. You are just people with responsibilities who have to earn respect like everyone else.

There are more matters i could address but i really dont feel upto it. This is just a small rant because i think it needs be said, and if you cant see it for yourselfs you must be blind. Hell ill carry on playing Illi till im banned i expect, but at this time im playing for the people not the game.

Darren
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Post by Fooser »

I blame Darren.






But agree with most points
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Gildon
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Post by Gildon »

Much agreed Darren, I personally loved the roleplay between Quinsea, Aristreaus and Rina, first good bit of roleplay I had since Rankor died. ( Apart from the provocation of Revlen in Varshikar ^_^ )

To hell with the no-name-check thing, I too find it unfair of Chrissy's bannage of special powers and all. What I want most is the name check back, and everyone to roleplay fairly and equally to everyone and everything, unless there is an rp reason not to.

I feel much better!
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Post by Misjbar »

I thought you were Jaime the entire post....You have improved grammar and spelling-wise buddy!

Anyway, I think the point about Roleplay is combined with the account system. Most people just fear it is another idiot trying to screw up their fun in the game. Could just be me though.
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Post by Retlak »

I find it surprising how many n00bs cannot read, if they read the manuel.

What part of it says that you must ctrl-click every char you see?
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Estralis Seborian
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Post by Estralis Seborian »

Account system:
Naaa, I don't want it back. Lots of work for the GMs, useless work in the end. I always hated reading all those stupid applications. Better let the GMs spend their time ingame, doing quests (erm...) or responding to pager calls. Or kicking out people with unfitting names. One can see a big increase in player numbers and I doubt most of them are r|_|n3$@p3-n00bs. Playing Illarion with 2 other players online sucks much more than playing Illarion with 20 players and 2 morons online. Fact: Many players, good and bad, are scared off by a strict account system. Never forget this is not a well known game like UO, thus, many people would never spend time into such an application thingy without checking out the game.

Craftmanship:
Aye, I agree. Most crafts totally suck. Magic sucks. Current trader system sucks. Skillgain sucks. Afaik these problems are well known, some are being worked on, some are not. I do not want to blame the devs, but sometimes I'd prefer fixes for problems that last for months instead of season systems for herblore or quest planners. Also, there are bugs posted on flyspray that can be fixed in some minutes (afaik), not touched for many weeks.

Roleplay in general:
Not sure how to improve this. What I have noticed, the map design of Trolls Bane encourages seperation into small groups for there is no real hot spot - the shop is too small and narrow and the constant "I sell 5 crappy daggers" is annoying. Those were the days when Eliza was mute and one could buy stuff with a graphical menu...

GM crap:
Crap happens. But I also noticed that the tone became more rude again. Maybe a player <-> GM/Dev chat would help. We had this in the past and it worked out well. This could even be done ingame(!) to increase the server traffic ;-)
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Solumn
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Post by Solumn »

I think they are brain-dead. I read Illarion web before I play, I don't recall I try to kill everything in my path.
But if you want to play a game where the objective is to level up and kill everything on sight or gain as much skills as possible, then this is not the game for you.
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Post by Retlak »

Hm, chatting to gms/devs..

I think i have done that so much ig, they are annoyed :P

It usually starts with !gm the depot is broken, this stairs wont work, etc.
Then i babble.
But they want coffee.
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Post by Nitram »

What is the use of the #illarion room in the quakenet if not the chat between Devs / GMs / what ever with the players.

@Estralis: Magic sucks?! I think its pretty nice now O.o
All other things i agree, but to say it clearly, i'm (can speak only for myself) are not allways in the mood to fix bugs. Fixing bugs is hard and not very funny work. Developing new stuff is much nicer. So we often write new things instead of fixing old. If you write something new that seems to work you get a feeling of success. Fixing bugs offers that not.

About the account system, i still think its the better way to leave is disabled. While is was enabled we got n00bs too. But they had good names and where hard to find.
Now we get n00bs with n00bs names. Easy to find and to get.
But while the system was active, many good roleplayers didn't go thought it too. So we lost some good roleplayers but got some n00bs less.
Now we get more good roleplayers and more n00bs. But the n00bs are not too much. I think its fine.

GM Crap
Weeell. GMs are humans. You know? Humans make misstakes. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. But they do them allways.
About Devrah i think my point is clear. She got what she asked for. We thank her for spending her time to Illarion of course. But that doesn't give her the right to do the things she did. All others aren't allowed to do this too.
Or am i allowed to wipe all characters randomly, after i left the team of Illarion, because i offered all the work i did to Illarion?
Its the same. Basically.

Nitram
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Garett Gwenour
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Post by Garett Gwenour »

Nitram is right and unfortunately Darren I love you but i must disagree.

Your blaming part of the declination of illarions roleplay, (we will all agree I hope that it is infact getting worse), on lack of account system and cliques. Ill address cliques first cause it will take about 2 seconds, cliques have always been in this game, you know that, I know that, you cannot say the roleplay got worse from something that has always existed and always will exist, you know I never bother to be in cliques and infact I am largely disliked by people because I deeply loathe people in cliques. Lack of account system, matey the roleplay was bad even with the account system. Case and point is the orc that raped dravish, that was someone who PASSED the account system but one day just got bored and didn't care anymore. That happens. The reason that roleplay in this game sucks lately is becuase there are Devs being streched thin, there are unfortunately no GMs that will stop this. Case and point, reskilling has become common place because first of all the Devs dont have time to look into it and second of all Gms don't listen when it is being pointed out. But martin won't be fixing any new Gms because he does not believe this game needs GMs to work, however I am sure if we tell him nicely that the rules of the game are being blantently ignored and the game he is currently working on is becoming more of a pking game then a roleplaying game, he may change his tune.

Next Craftsmanship, well I cannot help but disagree again. I like it this complicated and difficult, not only because I am a weirdo but because previously you could just take logs from a tree, work on them in log form and make arrows, no thread or anything else required. Blacksmithing, you take iron ore and coal ore to an anvil, no need to smelt, just hammer away, (of course we both remember the days where you would blacksmith while mining but well I don't think your argueing for that to return :p ). The problem with craftmanship is not how arduous it has become, but how hard it is to get good at. I mean, my character has pretty low carpentry (out of 74 tries I only succeeded in about 25 attempts at making arrows) and I didn't get one level in carpentry. I think that needs to change a bit.

Everything else I either don't remember or I agree with. And yes, I really do agree with current traders, at the time one person can take away all the money from most traders alone. But if you put in more money that same person can just make more money, I think there needs to be a way to have a trader have infinite money but only give so much money to one character daily or so. Because it is incredibly frustrating to go out, gather things/make things and not be able to sell those things for a few days because someone beat you to the trader.

Love,
Sam
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Miklorius
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Post by Miklorius »

I am here just since february but I will post anyway...

1. "Account system"
We have more players without the account system. We have more noobs now, but not so much noob who really destroying RP aggressivly.
Unfortunately many refuses to read the manual and it's pain in the arse to explain that ingame; I tend to "F1 please, noob", if they do not have specific questions.
So: The turorial island is much needed where the new players learn the basics. That could be hard to design but if the devs need help, they should ask in the forum.

2. "Craftmanship"
I see balacing problems in some crafts, that's true. In my eyes the actual inter-player-economy is not the best, but maybe I am wrong.
But the handling of crafting is much easier know (less clicks); the needed things to make an item are okay.
I think there needs to be a way to have a trader have infinite money but only give so much money to one character daily or so.
Yes, it could also linked to your ESS, INT, PER and/or WIL (I mean something like Charisma).

The problems with skill-gain are bugs, with leads to...

3. "GM crap"
There are quite a lot of buggy things ingame and I have to say, that bugfixing should be a priority. New features are welcome and may be more fun for devs, but they need balacing etc., too, so the game get's more bugged for some time.
I wish there would be some feedback in Flyspray - there are no replies from developers. And some of this bugs are quite heavy (NPCs/trading system - bug, bugs, bugs: "Hello noob, sorry, but the NPC won't tell you what they are selling..." :roll:).

RP:
Don't know exactly, but with more players there are seperations automatically. You can't RP with all the players you meet everyday, so you have to focus on some players/characters you know (otherwise you have to make endless lists about your "buddies" - I did this in the past).
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Re: A small ranty post. As i feel like it

Post by Quinasa »

I agree with almost every single word Darren has taken the time to post. Almost. This sums up my position on the matter supurbly:
Aristeaus wrote:Hell ill carry on playing Illi till im banned i expect, but at this time im playing for the people not the game.
Its been a long time since I played "for the game". Over a year, actually. And the good bits of roleplay come few and far between. Perhaps I hold my standards too high, but not too long ago they weren't considered high at all. I dont think it has much to do with the account system, though. I think the account system being gone is a good thing, so far. Sure we get the stray and often times repetitive n00b that wants to PK everything in sight... but its worth it because its nice to see a new face. Its the general quality of roleplay that needs conditioning. New people coming to the game look at the people who are already there for ideas on how hard they need to try. If the people who are there are just in it "for the game" and not for the roleplay too, guess what: first impressions are lasting impressions.

I see you all talking about the manual and how it doesn't help because no one pays attention to it. Do you know how many people play the game and don't even know there are forums, let alone a manual? They see the words Download and Play and Free Account and thats all they think they need to see. Now, don't go thinking that just because they're playing people have read the manual. Newsflash guys: Almost three years here and I've never ever read the manual. I've skimmed it before I think ( :oops: ), but never read it. You'd think most of it is common sense and you're absolutely right. But good roleplayers, like writers, aren't born: they're made.

Like Darren, I play for the people. Honestly? Mainly him. Its been a long time since I decided "Hey, I feel like farming so I'm going to play Illarion!" A long long time. In fact I hate farming now. The only thing I can even stand doing that isn't roleplay is mining. Too bad Quinasa isn't a miner. Its hard to find people in game that are interested in anything thats going on around them. If it isn't in someone's character to pay attention to something then that's fine... but its hard to believe that all the world of Gobaith is immune and indifferent to the sight of a man walking into town with a gash in his head or blood spilling out of his torso. Not that I think the game needs more technical realizm (because that's unfortunately pouring out of every shift and click and ctrl button anyway) but the characters need more depth and more meat. You can tell who's just staring at the computer screen when they play not really interested in playing until they see someone they know come on screen just by watching.



Thats my two cents. Because we all knew I had to chime in at some point. Some of it is unfinished thoughts because I don't know how to finish them in words without getting frusterated with the issues. :/
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Errian Abêth
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Post by Errian Abêth »

All of the elder player which i know say that the tasks of crafting are more than monotomous they are stupidly monotomous and complicated.
And it became extremely boring.

Actually, to make it easier to gain skills in EVERY area would be a think that would make playing this game more interesting again. This is no *true* roleplay community anymore, so skills are more important than ever. Say "No, no one needs skills" like it was done in the past, but it will be just a lie. :)
So in short, spread roleplay is now not possible, its all reduced to small petty groups who stay together not spreading thier roleplay. Which results in complete boredom in most cases. And the only way to get a response from masses in general is to fart lightning bolts.
Hehe, quite true. I guess it's a development that had to come. Must be the bigger map, which is no negative thing I believe.
Don't know if it will ever change again... and I better don't post my personal ideas to that topic, in order not to get banned.
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Post by Misjbar »

Oef, one my big concerns yes. Skills becoming more important than the RP.
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Post by AlexRose »

Yeah; I hate that I can't RP with anyone. I hang around all day but everyone's too busy hunting and pging and crap.

I agree; the account system should come back; I'm tired of all the annoying noobs who we train then disappear a day later or don't listen to us at all. Seriously however funny this may be it's a load of crap and it would have never happened had we had the system back> http://illarion.org/community/forums/vi ... sc&start=0 <. Illa's becoming more runescapey and anti-rp by the day and the noobs think the lack of rp is normal amount! It's never going to get better as the noobs are being influenced by other noobs. It seriously will end up that there aren't enough GMs to man it and it'll become runescape. I really wish the account system was back; if this is the future of illarion; I never want it to evolve.
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Post by Aegohl »

Nitram wrote:
GM Crap
Weeell. GMs are humans. You know? Humans make misstakes. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. But they do them allways.
About Devrah i think my point is clear. She got what she asked for. We thank her for spending her time to Illarion of course. But that doesn't give her the right to do the things she did. All others aren't allowed to do this too.
Or am i allowed to wipe all characters randomly, after i left the team of Illarion, because i offered all the work i did to Illarion?
Its the same. Basically.

Nitram
However, she didn't delete people's characters. She made a prank; a prank that didn't hurt anyone and made a few people giggle. It was immature, yes, but I think it could have been settled peaceabley, guys.

If this is the first time that you've seen a player react negatively to a ban, then welcome to the real world. I got bugged by Sian and Konstantin for a matter of months when I banned Konny. You're lucky she's more stable than him.

I just don't see any excuse why she should have been kicked out of a questing group she helped found and was, reputedly, one of the more active members in for a single prank.
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Nitram
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Post by Nitram »

With a simple excuse the things would be fine. But she just had to reakt aggressive and arrogant.

She was one of the more advanced members of the ESQS. She has a kind of role model for the questers in the ESQS Team.
And then she did this.
I don't see a reason to excuse the things she did, since a warn others too. All of them have a good reasons for that what happend, and all excuse for the things they did.
Even "I was bored" is a reason. Its okay. But not without an excuse.

The things went correct in my eyes.

Nitram
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AlexRose
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Post by AlexRose »

Stop talking about Dev and start reading posts such as these!
Misjbar wrote:Oef, one my big concerns yes. Skills becoming more important than the RP.
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Nitram
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Post by Nitram »

How to change it?

Shall i set the skills of everyone to 100%?
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Post by Fooser »

Nitram wrote:How to change it?

Shall i set the skills of everyone to 100%?
Yes.

Except replace "everyone" with "Fooser"

Thanks again Nitram
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Post by AlexRose »

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

Account system!!!!!!!!!!

Bring it baaaack!

Or put becoming too tired to fight/work anymore happen really quick.

Then you could put a cap on fighting so they could only fight so much a day.
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Nitram
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Post by Nitram »

The account system and a few more n00bs have nothing to do with the fact that the skills appear to be more importaint then the rp this days.

Nitram
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Post by Hu'greu »

The fact is that none wants to play as a weaklen. I mean everyone is trying to become good at something. Im sure that it was like this before, when the skill was set low didnt everyone have mulitplu yellow skill levels or somthing. Well the new systems stop that in the way its so damn hard. Personally I woudnt mind if the system was like UO and you can only get so many skill points.
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Post by AlexRose »

No; it's the fact that currently over 50% of illarionites are noobs and haven't learnt to RP properly yet, and the new noobs are being trained by the other noobs. Stress roleplay, put skillcaps on things and make it clear to noobs that pg'ing isn't tolerated.
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Post by Arameh »

One of the main problem I see is, that there are too many features in the game that are not getting fixed. Everything needs fixing now, fighting, magic, crafting, skill gain, EVERYTHING technical is either unbalanced or bugged. We would need to slack down on new stuff and fix the current systems, personally, I prefer a game with less features and that is balanced than the opposite, by far.

For the account system part, I slightly disagree on the part where it was helpful to disable it, in my view, we do NOT need more players, at peaks when we are over 30 in the game, it can be both laggy or utterly frustating because of a concentration of characters (too much text to read in the same time). I can understand that GMs might not want to check the accounts, but we could at least make some sort of small automatic test, it seems that some n00bs dont even know how to read, thats horrible.

My advice about the traders, they are too useful and thus makes the crafting characters too useless. Why would a character buy from a smith if the NPC at the smithery sells quite good, new double axes for 3 silvers?.. I could give easily a few examples about such things, dwarven armor is rather good and very cheap too. Also the part where crafting characters make enormous amount of money off stuff they sell to NPCs, recently it was shoes, leather armor, goblets, cuttelry. All these systems are anti-RP because the character rather go seek a NPC than a character, it all needs to be balanced out. There is also the part of decaying of items, such as armor and weapons when fighting, it is currently nearly absent, if a character always keeps the same items it dosent need crafter (Ignore this if its a bug).
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Post by Hu'greu »

Alex what do you mean by powergaming. Do you mean going to acually do some work forawhile? Everyone has to PG at somepoint in time. I mean not everyone has loads and loads of copper they can spend. Not having any money means you cant really do a lot. Being weak means you cant do a lot. You can still talk to people but mainly you are left out of the main story line that is happening in Illarion.
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Post by AlexRose »

Hu'greu wrote:Alex what do you mean by powergaming. Do you mean going to acually do some work forawhile? Everyone has to PG at somepoint in time. I mean not everyone has loads and loads of copper they can spend. Not having any money means you cant really do a lot. Being weak means you cant do a lot. You can still talk to people but mainly you are left out of the main story line that is happening in Illarion.
You shouldn't HAVE to have money or be strong! It's about roleplay! The only reason I have money is because when I can't find anyone to roleplay with I go kill pigs a few minutes, I end up accumulating lots of meat and eventually sell it after maybe a month which generates quite a bit of money. I never spend this money cos I don't care about armour and crafting kits and other crap that's non-rp related.

You don't have to powergame! Why would you NEED to powergame?
Everyone has to PG at some point?

Really I never realised this I may now join the crowd who've powergamed before. Or not. I don't need to.
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Post by Miklorius »

Nitram fixed Zathrot and the "Show your wares"-bug - thank you!!
Arameh wrote:I could give easily a few examples about such things, dwarven armor is rather good and very cheap too.
Yes, I think Estralis told that these prices are made by people who do not know the actual ingame-stats. So maybe it will be fixed... someday...
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Post by AlexRose »

Miklorius wrote:Nitram fixed Zathrot and the "Show your wares"-bug - thank you!!
Arameh wrote:I could give easily a few examples about such things, dwarven armor is rather good and very cheap too.
Yes, I think Estralis told that these prices are made by people who do not know the actual ingame-stats. So maybe it will be fixed... someday...
See! Even now everyone is talking about items!

Seriously Illarion's going to the dogs.
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Post by Miklorius »

AlexRose12345678910 wrote:See! Even now everyone is talking about items!

Seriously Illarion's going to the dogs.
Pah! Better a game with bug-free items than bugged features!
I do not see bad thinks in stats, skills and items. You can RP with that, too.

Outherwise all the Roleplayer could play good old MUDs...
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