Illarion.org

I think the proposal board should be removed. The proposal board is helping to ruin Illarion. Illarion is and always has been a very enjoyable game for me until recently. I have remained fairly quiet in my arguments against all these new ideas yet it has gone to far and I must speak my opinion as I feel that many of my other Illarionites feel as I do.

Illarion is a game, it is meant to have RP of all sorts, gain skills, slay mythical creatures, and craft the best items. It is not meant to be realistic. Everyone plays a game to get away from reality, we live life as it is, we do not want to live a virtual life too.

llarion is a free, graphical fantasy game that focuses on true roleplaying. I think this original statement on the Illarion homepage, backs up my argument a great deal. It is the first sentence for a reason. It tells you immediately what this game is supposed to be about. These new proposals are really just making this game way to realistic for any enjoyment to be drawn from it anymore.

One problem I think that causes lack of interest in people is skill gain. People want to be able to "level up" at a moderate speed. Not ridiculously hard. I mean you can not go from blue to green or light green in a week and a half, since PGing is illegal and it takes forever to train things without doing that. You will never get anywhere. The only way to get any levels now is to play 50+ hours of Illarion. Most people have real lives so this is impossible.

I remember the first time I logged into Illarion to play. I chose this game out of a whole bunch of possibilities because it looked so interesting and different. A new type of game from ones I was used to. I had never really heard of RP in a game sense. So once I started to play and people helped me learn while RPing I was hooked. The game was great.

Over the years though the game has received a few changes here and there as necessary, which is to be expected. But lately it has become ridiculous. A diet system? I mean come on seriously. If you talked to people who played Illarion for a good long while they would laugh at you if they came IG now and tried to play. They would say what is with this ridiculous crap.

Most of these new changes in the game are just making it more difficult. I used to be able to level up a lot easier, since a) there was no skill cap, b) it was easier to get food and you did not have to eat as much, c) people had fun so you enjoyed your training. Since it was easier to gain levels people had plenty of time to get strong as they wanted to and RP a ton since they did not feel pressured to train to get anywhere. Now, if you go into Illarion and you want to have half way decent skills you need to spend all of your limited time training to get there. You do not have time to RP.

I mean this is stupid. I am gone to repeat this one more time. llarion is a free, graphical fantasy game that focuses on true roleplaying. Please realize that and try to understand exactly what fantasy means. Look it up in the dictionary if you are not sure. Also, if you are worried since the proposals board is closed that nothing new will happen, fear not. You can do it the old fashioned way that everyone else did and PM a staff member with your ideas in a neat orderly fashion. Trust me changes were made even in the old system like this. So please burn the proposal board, it is helping greatly in making mine, and other players of Illarion, game experiences a drag.

Sincerely,
A Deicated Illarionite

Edit: this post was edited to make it easier to read. I had written it once and it was deleted when my internet shut down so I had to rewrite it again. Sorry about the run on sentences and thanks for your concerned criticism abcfantasy.

I agree.
I used to come play Illarion because it was so amazingly awesome,
I got to get away from reality for the time I RP'd. It was nice ...

All I have to say now is, Realism sucks fatass donkey testicles.
As Richard said, you have to play 50+ hours of Illarion to gain skill, to get good in anything basically.
PGin' is illegal, and so really ... getting good in a profession is just a turnoff anymore.

Also with the expansion of the map, and the small playerbase, now there's deserted towns and places all over Illarion.
It's a hassle trying to RP, because sometimes you can't find people to RP WITH.
And skillgain system was FINE before, now it sucks. You get nowhere.
You get 100 swirlies, and no visual raise in skill. Darkblue to, z0mg, darkblue still.

Eh, aaaaaanywho.
/signed

Agreed, Although I didn't play the old Illarion, From what I hear it's much much better. Us new players can't get anywhere with skills, And it's really hard to find people to rp with.

/signed.

let me insert something noteable.

everybody makes e bow and says how important roleplay is, and how much they love roleplay. - to go on and whine about slow skillgaining....

Korm Kormsen wrote:let me insert something noteable.

everybody makes e bow and says how important roleplay is, and how much they love roleplay. - to go on and whine about slow skillgaining....

No RP is good but we want to gain skills too, I mean you could RP on a chat thing or a messenger, the difference is that it is based in a fantasy setting where you CAN gain skills and learn crafts and professions and do something with your character WHILE you RP.

I haven't played that long... but from my perspective, things were even easier then. I DO play the game for fantasy and fun....not to be hard as some things are in RL. Eating the "right" food, treating "sneezes",burning hands while trying to cook, training and seeing nothing in return...... or a very small return, worrying about fires etc.. This takes the enjoyment out of the game.

Some of these skills that are so hard to get now.... go along with the RP of the char. A smith asks for blue dye...now Achae will tell them she needs the raw bluestones, and the anger berries which magically she can no longer get because her skills aren't high enough in herb gathering. The fighter char that has to "train" in order to be able to RP as a fighter char. So in a way, skills matter to some extent

Not that I disagree (I was here in older days), but "Ouch" for the devs?

Player: "Okay here's what we want; erase everything you just finished and bring us back a few years (or months)."

Dev: "WHAT?"

I never once said that. I said quit with the proposal board, and the ridiculous ideas.

Richard Cypher wrote:I never once said that. I said quit with the proposal board, and the ridiculous ideas.

Oh, my bad. Excuse my useless words then.

Would be nice if the old skillgain system came back tho.
<_<
>_>

Lance Thunnigan wrote:Would be nice if the old skillgain system came back tho.
<_<
>_>

With the old "black to red" colors as well? Those were SO hard to tell a difference in!

I completely agree. smile realism. Yes i said it. smile REALISM. if i wanted things to be realistic i would go outside and mess around. yeah. And im sure everyone else that things that illarion is going down the tube would agree with me. im not saying bring things back to the old ways.. i mean if they could go for it! awsome! but if they cant thats cool. just stop editing stuff...

Quinasa wrote:Guys, take a chill pill. No one is holding a gun to your head making you read the proposals board. You can choose to ignore it, just in case you didn't realize that before there you go. The devs look at that stuff and they decide what goes in the game and what doesn't, often times without listening to the pros and cons from opposing sides. Devs don't care about sides They care about a worth while game. Don't read it and then you don't have to complain about it.

Besides, if you look at all the proposals in there and then look at how many of them made it into the game... the number is VERY small.

Yes. *signs*

Well, aside from not wanting the proposals board in,
Alot of OTHER points were stated in the previous posts as well Quinny.

The proposal board isn't the problem, it is the proposals that are being accepted and neglected I think.

New skill gain system - IMO is useless.

To the people that have been around 2+ years....

Think about what RP was like..before all the EXTREME aint-powergaming rules the like came along. Do you think RP was better or worse overall?

I'm not having to click 1000+ times for 250 ingots AND THEN more just to make something. The time saved in mining, transport, and smelting, makes the extra time waiting in smithing fairly bearable for me. Plus you get skill every step instead of per item, once you get pretty high the only thing you got is 2 handed swords or armor that takes 5-7 ingot in the old system, each item only equals 1 step in the new system. I recall Salathe saying he didn't gain any skill with 10,000 ingots in the old system, a bit rediculous. We got forced levelling after X amount (still got luck too) now so we don't have to worry about that, but that was a reality with the old system.

The fighting system is not realistic at all though, which is too bad.2 Serinjahs are stronger than 2 handed swords, wtf m8?

I) You are taking a very one-sided view. The proposal board is where a player can EXPRESS his or her ideas. And if you must know, around 2 years ago there was a "suggestion" board as well, so if you think its a new idea its not.

The problem is the proposals which YOU don't like, namely the eating system.

II) The eating system was designed to help cooks. Cooks do NOT gain any money at all, because every lizardman catches fish, every halfling grabs fruit off trees and everyone else slaughters pigs.

III) I don't lyke the new skill system either, having said that. Making a shield requires DYE...
Yes i KNOW it looks nicer if you PAINT the shield, but the blacksmith's job is done isn't it? It shouldn't be compulsory...

The proposal board was removed and there were reasons to reopen it. For me, it is a vital aspect of this game that players can voice their opinion and suggest new stuff. But I agree, >90% of the proposals are [insert bad word]. That's nothing new.

But as it seems, this is not the issue here, but the changes of the last... 3 years or so. Those who played Illarion in e.g. 2002 know that the game was crap from a technical point of view, lots of inbalances and bugs around, but it was FUN!!!111oneoneone. Now it is better from a technical point of view, yet it still looks and feels like a commercial game from the late nineties - something I appreciate, by the way, for games were cool back then. But many changes made the game more complex, more realistic, more difficult, more boring, more like-every-other-game. Not all changes were bad, to name one, the crafting system itself is a step into the right direction. It is complex, yes, but apart from some bugs and inbalances, its main assumptions (no jackhammer clicking, automated work, combining different skills and items for final products,...) are just right.

All in all, our devs are no professional game designers and work on this game in their spare time. So we have to appreciate whatever they do, but we don't have to like it.

I agree with Richard. I tried to go back to Illarion not so long ago, but after playing for a short time I thought whats the point. The only roleplayers I met were to busy running after a cow to interact with what they assumed was a new player. And when I thought about gaining skill I had a sickening realisation. All the characters I saw IG were ones which have been on the server quite some time now and hence have high skills. And after trying to gain some skill found it very very tiresome. I could powergame my heart out for hours and perhaps see a small change, but it leaves no doubt that newer players will never catch up with the older established players. Where in the past where the skill gain was more simple the task was not as daunting.. And the crafting system,, ye gawds what is that thing, I think my engineering and DIY classes in Real life were more simple.

So for the facts that to gain skill is impossible, and that people would rather run after cows than speak to other players these days, I doubt I can return. Though ill haunt the forums when I can.

Illarion has turned into a new form of monkey island, where every move and action is a new puzzle to solve.

Aristeaus,

so the game has changed.
when i joined, before the actual crafting system and just before the new admittance, there was just one guy, who roleplayed with me. (the one, who lured me onboard) everybody else was "chasing some imaginary cows", ignoring noobs.
so, what you experienced lately, was exactly, what you dealed out, before you went.

i as well feel appalled by some proposals. thinking , what for should we change everything. so as the game was when i joined, was good enough.

the best, what the staff could do for this game, would be to close the forum.
replace it with a simple system, where players could write to the staff, and MIGHT get an answer.

the forums, where ideas, preferences, cultural backgrounds, gender-specific preferences, RL-age, char-age, new players, old players, ex players and whatever more, are clashing, are the real funkiller of this game.

i count this for at least three cents,korm

Korm Kormsen wrote:Aristeaus,

so the game has changed.
when i joined, before the actual crafting system and just before the new admittance, there was just one guy, who roleplayed with me. (the one, who lured me onboard) everybody else was "chasing some imaginary cows", ignoring noobs.
so, what you experienced lately, was exactly, what you dealed out, before you went.

No

And im not saying the games worse, just that its a game that surpassed me.

Every user can wite his/her opinion in the proposals board. So before such a proposal is implemented everybody has the chance to take part in the discussion about the pros and cons. A great advantage for all players, isn´t it?

It is the players' fault if they didn´t take that chance. Recent example: diet system. The discussion has ended more or less mid May to June. 2,5 months later it was ready to be implemented. And suddenly many players complained about it (and in many cases they didn´t even read and understood the system...).

So all in all it´s up to the players how they use the proposals board. It is a nice gesture from the staff to give this opportunity and actually they imposed more work on theirselves.


But I am surely in favour of a skill system where one can reach a medium level quite easy and quickly. Easy to learn - hard to master.

pharse wrote:Every user can wite his/her opinion in the proposals board. So before such a proposal is implemented everybody has the chance to take part in the discussion about the pros and cons. A great advantage for all players, isn´t it?

Oh, right. And this applies to the "We are going to make an NPC mage teacher regardless of what you think or say so just be a good boy and give us ideas" proposal?

Remove the proposal board because one proposal was realized? The main part of the proposals are useless. Really useless. Buts its not that the scripters realize every single proposal there. We think about them. IF they are good we realize them or put the good parts into our own concepts.

So what is the point of removing that board again? Noone HAS to read it. The main use of that board is to give the developers ideas for new things.

Lance Thunnigan wrote:You get 100 swirlies, and no visual raise in skill.

Yeah yeah. 100 swirlies in one skill means only that your skill raised from 0% to 100% So its basically from dark blue to yellow.

Skills are in my point of view the main long time motivation you get in that game. If we increase the skillgain now ( what could be done in around 30 seconds ) everyone would gain the skill faster. Sooo. You reach the 100% skill border faster and then? You learn the next skill. So we basically get our "Smith-Carpenter-Tailor-Warriors" again.

The problem is, that i do not really understand what the problem with a low skillgain is. You get better slowly. Thats not the problem. You still get better. You can fight better, or you can make new things. That you can't learn everything a smith could make within a week is logically.

And the explanation "oh the skills are hard to get so i have to powergame all the time and can't roleplay" its the most crappy explanation possible. You don't HAVE to get good skills, you can roleplay without. That shouldn't be a problem. Just just can't play the great "i-one-hit-kill-everyone" warrior from the beginning on. But you CAN roleplay how your char is SLOWLY becomming one.

Achae Eanstray wrote:burning hands while trying to cook

I don't get it why the player over rate that messages so badly. The mean of that messages is not that your character get wounded nearly to death. The use it that the work is interrupted and those messages came up for me as ideas first. If you have better proposals for more "harmless" messages, feel free to write me a pm.

Achae Eanstray wrote:training and seeing nothing in return...... or a very small return

Thats pretty bad indeed and have to be redone some time... or it is allready in work. I'm not really up to date in that matter.

Achae Eanstray wrote:worrying about fires

Such a impressive small chance that anything happens and still someone worries? I would no even care for. If something happens its a accident. And the point is reached that you do not start a fire without watching it.

Lance Thunnigan wrote:Would be nice if the old skillgain system came back tho.

What old?
The first one? 1 day to master any skill?
The second one? Based on nothing but luck if you gain skill or not? ( that was really worse at higher skill levels )
Or the current one? No based on random values. Just not balanced that well ( what could be changed )

xBaurusx wrote:just stop editing stuff...

So you basically want that the development shall stop?

EDIT #1:

AlexRose wrote:

pharse wrote:Every user can wite his/her opinion in the proposals board. So before such a proposal is implemented everybody has the chance to take part in the discussion about the pros and cons. A great advantage for all players, isn´t it?

Oh, right. And this applies to the "We are going to make an NPC mage teacher regardless of what you think or say so just be a good boy and give us ideas" proposal?

You were asked for proposals as well to solve the current situation that made us thinking about such a npc. Did you came up with any proposals? No. So stop moaning if you can't say something usefull.

Nitram

pharse wrote:Every user can wite his/her opinion in the proposals board. So before such a proposal is implemented everybody has the chance to take part in the discussion about the pros and cons. A great advantage for all players, isn´t it?

It is the players' fault if they didn´t take that chance. Recent example: diet system. The discussion has ended more or less mid May to June. 2,5 months later it was ready to be implemented. And suddenly many players complained about it (and in many cases they didn´t even read and understood the system...).

So all in all it´s up to the players how they use the proposals board. It is a nice gesture from the staff to give this opportunity and actually they imposed more work on theirselves.


But I am surely in favour of a skill system where one can reach a medium level quite easy and quickly. Easy to learn - hard to master.

I won't even read Nitram's above post.
But this one, was pretty stupid.

I can see many times where players said they wouldn't want that,
and in the end Nitram, and his holy Devness says, 'Sorry, it's already active. Locked. KThxBai.'

AlexRose wrote:Oh, right. And this applies to the "We are going to make an NPC mage teacher regardless of what you think or say so just be a good boy and give us ideas" proposal?

Oh, I made this topic with the sole propose to annoy the 0.001% of Illarions community that is called "AlexRose" and not to please all the other players that crave to finally be able to play a magic user themself.

On the other hand, I am actally in favour for closing the propsal section down.
Not because these proposals turn Illarion in a "realistic game", worse then Sims2 and Second Life combined, but for other reasons.

Most of the propsals are repetitive, like a really bad dejá vu.
Those proposals who are not, are either trivial or completly over the top.
Then we have these "brain farts", proposals that were made up in the blink of a moment and not even thought to the end, or worse 'created' while writing the corresponding post at the board.

I am deeply dissatisfied with the quality of the proposal board, and since I do not belive that the community, as whole, is able to come up with something of better quality, I think the whole section of the board can simply be dropped.

Lance Thunnigan wrote:I won't even read Nitram's above post.

lol. Thanks.

Lance Thunnigan wrote:But this one, was pretty stupid.

I can see many times where players said they wouldn't want that,
and in the end Nitram, and his holy Devness says, 'Sorry, it's already active. Locked. KThxBai.'

Do you even realize how idiotic that is?

Roadmap of that topic:
pharse: *proposal for the diet system*
everyone else ( but one ): yeah, okay cool, *some questions, answers and proposals*
*silence*
pharse: System is done!
everyone else: what!? but? *same questions and answers as before* *random moaning*
Nitram: *locked*

So before the development noone ( but one ) said anything against it. AFTER the development was done everyone was bitching around. So i wonder why the players don't tell their problems with upcomming system BEFORE the development of those stuff is done.

Nitram

Are you serious? On fucking Pg.1 there's arguments against it.
Perhaps you can't see them, I dunno.
But they're there.

I am. As i said, before pharse stated out that the development is done there was one argument against. By Rorukh.