Hello everyone, been a while. Please excuse the wall of text, but I don't think I can express this with fewer words. Please don't feel insulted either as I'm only trying to help. I wouldn't bother writing all this if I didn't still love this game and its community on some level. Its just very hard to for me to get the tone right with text only, especially after not playing Illa for over a year.
Lennier wrote:To create fractions leaded by GMs was the answer at the chaotic situation of the past. Communities depanded on only few players and their chars and chrased regulary with bad effects for the whole game. We tried to get some sets of different but stable community systems, able to survive about time, not in same risk to crash by the leaving of individuals (I hope you get the right intension of my words).
What were the bad effects for the whole game?
We had player run groups that have been stable for one or even several years and did create lots of interesting stories. Bearers of Fire, Temple (which did survive leadership changes), the Dar'krest clan of orcs, Farmer's Union (which did fine without any leadership at all), just to name those that have been active pretty much consistently since I joined, up to the VBU. Other groups had their ups and downs, but there was always
something going on. It may have been very chaotic sometimes, but chaos is a lot more exciting than the stability of a granite rock that we have now. This isn't even any GM's fault, they do what they can with their limited time. They simply have way too many (and sometimes conflicting) responsibilities to handle with such a small team.
So after more than 2 years of stability and failure to create, support or even simply let happen one single political storyline I have to ask, what did the GM team achieve here that the community as a whole couldn't? I realize how brutal that sounds, but I'm not aware of any inter faction conflict happening to this day. Again, its not about pointing fingers at anyone, but this question has to be asked and answered.
Jupiter wrote:The town are starting to get a player shaped image. Working against that would now be like hitting those in the face who actually put effort into it. We have seen a lot of improvement and I am sure it will keep heading in the direction. Many problems were found (e.g. that the banning npc do their job a bit too well) and will be dealt with.
You didn't mind hitting all those in the face who worked on shaping Gobaith for a decade, but it doesn't even have to be that way again. We could have two GM controlled towns and one player controlled just to see whether it improves things at all, if the whole gems of power issue wasn't in the way. Of course that would be an easy fix too, if you were just willing to reconsider the magic gem system, which is central to many issues Illa has.
Nitram wrote:What takes long is adapting the content scripts, the database any everything that is tailored to the current map. Forcing the players out of one city is not that much of a problem. But we'd also have to move the NPCs around that are unique to that places, alter the arrival island, redistribute the crafts that are currently limited to the specific towns, alter the NPCs that promote the towns as a place to live. Just to name a few of the tasks such a change would lead to.
Yes, that all those things are so heavily interwoven is a real problem, perhaps the biggest problem of all, because it makes the entire game very, very static and static=boring. The best thing about the VBU in my opinion was that you made this wonderful, easy to use map editor that is available to everyone. Finally, I thought, we don't need to make Lennier work hours for every little map change anymore. Its such a shame it doesn't see much use.
What purpose does the crafts distribution serve anyway? Nobody ever cared to explain that. We can live in one town and craft and sell our stuff in another. Since all towns are open to all other towns it doesn't matter anyway and if for example Cadomyr decides to close their gates to all outsiders, you'll have an ooc riot on your hands cause half the characters in game depend on some NPC merchant there. Not to mention the impossibility to learn alchemy as soon as the status quo is disturbed.
This game needs content that facilitates change, instead of preventing it. Its a similar problem with outlaws. You've said several times that they aren't supported by design, but you never even bothered to explain why. You're trying too much to herd players into roles they never wanted to play to begin with by limiting their access to basic game features. Naturally they find that very frustrating, especially if they don't even understand why you think its necessary. If you don't realize that all those limitations on what you can do and how are hurtful to morale, Illa is already dead and no amount of polishing the exterior (like a new website) is going to change that. You think the steam community is going to be as nice and constructive about feedback as your current community, that actually cares deeply about this game? They'll rip you to shreds in the most hurtful way possible in their reviews, because they'll never even get a glimpse of the potential that we see here. All they'll see is just a very simple, unchallenging, unispired MMO with antiquated graphics and a nerdy population. They'll laugh, mock and go back to EVE, WoW or any of the other big titles out there, that at least offer an overwhelming quantity of content to explore.
Don't fool yourselves that you have an interesting crafting system to keep players here either. It's been a very long time since I did, but I played WoW for a few hours. Their crafting system is not any different from ours. Get resources, click button, wait a few seconds. Simple, easy, boring. You don't need half a brain to do it, nor even watch the screen while its happening so how is it going to keep players happy for more than a few hours especially if the products you make are mass produced, worthless junk nobody wants? Crafting is still Milestone II, right? How can it be more important than immersion in a role playing game? Send the right message and people may be more willing to help.
Illa's only strength is RP and that includes the possibility to be
any kind of character, even outlaws. You've asked what devs can do to improve RP occasionally in similar threads. Well, first of all don't try to narrow it down to loyal, lawful, well adjusted citizen by making everything else near unplayable. Then drop everything and implement custom look-ats, before you work on stuff like in-client character creation. If this game is still about RP, make the RP-related features Milestone I, not IV or whatever it is now. What message do you think your order of priority sends? To me it seems like you'd be more happy with any kind of player base as long as it is bigger and don't actually give a damn about this being a haven for roleplayers anymore. That is worded a bit harshly perhaps, but I can't help feeling that way.
Then get rid of OOC stuff like those marker stones or alter them somehow to be explainable IC. Sure, its fun to look for them, but try to explain in game how you get stuff from it out of thin air from some invisible explorers guild that somehow even managed to place these stones in extremely hostile and dangerous places. And they do all this why exactly? Immersion is good for RP. Everything that breaks immersion, must therefore be avoided as far as humanly possible. We all know that most of the newbies we get have never done any RP in their lives. Make it as easy for them as possible to get their brains wrapped around that concept instead of distracting them with stuff every other so called RPG does.
Then get rid of the highscore tables. In my opinion, they are against the game rules, stating "Illarion is based on cooperative playing...". Competing for highscores is not cooperative and only distracts from the game's real purpose. It facilitates a competitive mindset, which we all have to actively suppress here and its hard enough as it is, with all of us living our entire real lives in a very competitive world.
If there would be any hope for all this to change, I'd free up 20 hours a week of my time to work on it starting tomorrow, but as long as the answer to all feedback is "we have a plan and it can't possibly be changed in any way" all I can do is wish you good luck and go back to the futile search for a decent, RP focused game that I might actually enjoy playing. Cause Illa in its current state had me so frustrated and bored out of my mind, that even the very nice people here couldn't keep me logging in anymore and I'm not easily bored.