English

I would love to know exactly what efforts the French players made with regards to their RP following the merge. And this may sound sarcastic (and is partly intended as so but partially I am genuinely interested to know more about this).

What I experienced personally was them attempting to bully and threaten.
What I continue to see is very little if any compromise.
Please understand why I have taken it upon myself to discuss this matter despite it not directly affecting me: RPers, in my opinion, continue to be in positions of power where they can implement things that affect the gameplay of non-RPers with the support of higher powers. Forget even the Tryker Fair, theres now the plans for only nations to own outposts in their lands... we'll that would stop me from declaring on a non-Forest based OP.............. I didn't bloody vote on this - if I don't get involved and RP how else am I going to get my voice heard if not on forum threads such as this!

To go back to the point you attempted to make and I replied to, are you saying that the French Kara's effort is to be applauded in the example I gave?
The chose to act towards us in the way they did.

All that I, along with others, did was to stand up and make our voices be heard. I did so because it was something that was directly affecting me. Those French Kara players who left the game did so because they CHOSE to. I will not give ANYONE the pleasure of thinking for a single second that I feel in any way guilty for them leaving the game. So lets clear that up.

All I have tried to say in my posts is that:

1. In my humble opinion, the real perpetrators here are the Devs and Event Team and the powers that be who failed to consider the possible post-merge issues which could arise with the different approaches regarding RP and Lore in the servers. This has, in my opinion, cause significant server wide issues between players - resentment and animosity. They didn't address this when they should have and even Tamarea's response, to me, was completely void of consideration of Ari RP. They have basically left us to stew and here we are boiling with emotions.

2. The right to free will that we have to play as we wish is what allows us to make choices and decisions as we want to. RP allows for ingenuity and the freedom to come up with a million and one RP reasons for us to compromise IF we chose to. And I like to think that we can.

3. (The main one I am the most happy about infact looking at the recent posts - I was unable to post this earlier despite writing it hours ago...) To come together to share our experiences because only by doing so will we be able to understand why we all play the way that we do. I would hope that in my previous posts, I've been able to show you a little of why I have the opinions I do.

Since that reply was a reply for another player's saying , taking it for you is a bit out of context.
But, yes, i think "french" karas/maras/kamis had to change their way to play because of Aris'/Leanon's way to play, adapt to them or play alone and be treaten. I don't say french are the best in anyway they did mistake as the other communities did theirs
And btw, for the french players who left, they weren't only karavans but kamis and marauders too...

I was kara follower before and i did some efforts trying to play with your way to play by closing eyes ( because i didn't wanted to lose my RP but didn't wanted to play only with french players either), so you could play as you wanted even if it annoyed me. I didn't lost my RP because of that.

So saying WE ( french players because they are all bad and do nothing to make Atys life a dreamland ) do/did no efforts, i just a huge lie.

great post elvenae, this should actually be posted directly to the ryzom team in my opinion.

I dont think I did take it out of context, the meaning of it is plain and clear. Did you enjoy seeing "French" players leave was what they asked, because the latter put in so much effort that the only thing left to do was to leave the game.......

That is not what I was trying to say at all.

I tried to be as clear as possible in that last post. I gave you a specific example of one of my earliest experiences post-merge with RP. And sadly it was a very negative experience for me. Maybe you are not aware that my real-life partner is Virg, who back then was a Kami and I was a Kara... someone is telling me I can have no interraction with him in game... now you do the maths... and yes I made players aware of this because sometimes these things blew up in Kara chat where certain players would note that I was training with him...

Anyways, it was MY own personal experience that I wanted to share so you can understand that, unfortunately I do not have very many, if any, positive experiences with RPers.

I never said you didn't put in effort at all, La Firm continues to be a part of the Karavan faction and I have nothing but respect for the guild's leaders. They did not join us in battle last time because of the Marauders but they still interract with us so we know them and do activities with them. 

We still blame eachoher that we have "faults" but I made it clear in my post, we are a product of the failure of the Devs to sort this out for the merge. And yes, we are likely to still have some  RPers who have strict beliefs but if you don't compromise here and there then sadly people will leave the game, RPers and non-RPers. You can be smart enough to come up with something which in terms of RP can try to appease as many players as possible.

Elvanae,

While I agree to much you wrote (though also to a lot Maxxye wrote), I definitely disagree to blaming the Devs or the event team.

As to the Devs: After the merge, even before when having changed the original plan to axe all skills on demand of the community, they were drowning in work. The good decision to preserve the skills (which saved Ryzom in my opinion) left them with a lot of additional work unifying the three shards. After the merge, a lot of new, unexpected bugs appeared. The dev team is tiny, and what they achieved during the last years is a lot. I fail to see that they had any minute free to meddle into community issues.

As to the CSR and ET: They are volunteers, players like us all. The fusion posed a challenge and lots of workload as well, moreover some of them left before or short after the fusion. I recall one feedback meeting with a german event guide where the players complained that there were - at least for the language community - practically no events comparably to the old times. The event guide then revealed that the whole team was caught in organizational work such as translations, inter-community cooperation etc., where the Germans had an overproportional workload because more of them were in mastery of English and French than vice versa. She hated not to have been able to create nice events due to these circumstances much less to even play her own player character a single time.

And, to say that, while changing or even fixing the game, much more creating and guiding events etc. may be and probably are satisfying even if a burden of work, meddling into players' quarrels is possibly the most frustrating and unsatisfactory thing a developer or admin may be confronted with. Personally, I always hated to have to interfere and to mollify conflicts between my children, that is among the worst in education though necessary here and then. But we are not the children of Devs and CSR, though some used to behave like spoiled brats at times.

What I want to say: we are the ones who have to settle our conflicts inside the community in the first place. We may appeal to event team, CSR, or developers as a last resort, and hope for adequate assistance. The work to be done remains with us, anyway.

I wholeheartedly agree with your last comment, because it is the only thing we can do to move forwards.

The rest of your post, to me, was excuses for the Devs, and  I dont mean that in a nasty way. Lets accept they didn't do what they should have, lets accept they struggled and had a lot of work to do to achieve many other things (I highly respect them for the work they did do) and lets accept that we need to stop taking chunks out of eachother (most importantly) because the reality is, for me, it is not our faults that we played in the manner we did on the different servers and now in the small community that we are, lets understand and communicate and be mature enough to compromise and discuss things.

Anyways, I feel that I am only repeating over and over the same things which I hope will actually get through to some people and sorry to the rest of you that read the same post in different words! lol

once more i'll say this: "let's put the sand back in the sandbox"

ok, so ryzom has RP, and each player is able to do and act out RP as they see fit. i would like to remind everyone that ryzom was made as a PvE game, and that rp was to help the progression of the story of atys.
the fact that each server had a different progression from the base story that all 3 server shared means that now we have 3 truths of the histories of atys. because of this confused history, ANY rp that i personally do will have nothing to do with either the lore or the histories because there is not a single one to base off. my personal rp has nothing to do with any one faction or group, but has something to do with ALL of them at once. (keyword: upper branches)

it seams to me that because group a does X in rp they get a real physical change in the game related to their RP. if this doesn't fit in perfectly with EVERYONE else's rp then there should be no changes to the physical game that we all play. many of us that do not RP more then a little bit (or not at all) should not suffer changes that are one sided for a group of rp's without consideration of the impact on non-rp's or those that rp a different way.

when i thought up my ideas for the "upper branches" i spent much time speaking with different players of all walks of atys life, and tried to think of everyone. the mara were told that one day they would have a city that was welcoming of mara, upper branches have towns where all homins (other then npc bandits) are welcome. there was talk of the trytionist (sorry if spelled wrong) and rangers coming along in the future and so i sought out players that had chosen these possible paths of play. i found a german guild that was already following trytionist ways, and some players that were also seeking this line; from them i learned what i could and tried to keep that in mind as i wrote the ideas and stories. i sought out players that were following the ranger ways, and spoke with them, again learning about them. after some time doing research i finally started to put together the ideas of the upper branches, trying very hard to include something about every group known on atys and even left it open for future additions with a few choice words "not yet known". i'll not keep ranting about this, it's all posted on the forums, both the ideas and the stories to support them.

if RP is the path we must take to get things done, my now over one rl year project still has no word on when or if it will even be considered. it seams that only the most selfish RP is rewarded and the RP that could be beneficial to the entire server is of no merit. anyone that wants to try and help translate the ideas and/or stories is welcome to, and if the person(s) wanting to can speak english i'll be happy to use voice chat (teamspeak3) to help with it.

Salazar FH already has anti mara guards and some other towns now (they check db if you did mara rite you are kill on sight), Taliari has asked them to be added to the place where the fair will be held and event team has said yes we will add them there so mara can't show at all.

Would be really nice if we could buy a stall and try to sell some stuff but think each and every mara would be happy already to be able to show up and buy some stuff there atleast but now we will be kill on sight by the guards.

Mara have trainers and matis merchants in camp and today we finally got access to hairdressers and tatooist. Still not a single mission or anything tough, no occupation, no ... so it's actually mostly a death camp with guards that don't work at all. (Kind of funny they can make anti-mara guards in 12h and not pro-mara guards to protect the mara camp)

1 Bullying is one reward - as mentioned above - usual rewards of bullying include feelings of power

2 Addition of extra anti-mara guards all over - leading to yet another english guild unsubbing - this can also be seen as bullying - but more harmful is the fact that the anti-mara guards are not needed to keep an odd 20 homins under control - they are there for purely rp reasons and so are symbolic of the powers of the French Role Players

3 The reward of baiting ex-Aris homins - quite a few of whom are livid about all this - and cannot understand - in terms of keeping the game alive - why this is happening. No new homin is going to sit through umpteen years of role play before they role play - but anything they do or suggest in role play will be destroyed by French Role players

I realise Icus will say - good get out - and Maxxye will say we/I am blaming ALL French role players - but this is just their way of dividing the community even more (power trip) there are many role playing French who are lovely homins - they are not extreme and they can be talked with - BUT something is going wrong somewhere - I'll vouch for Jazzy and the Tryker role players - the guards at FH were quickly moved - but what about the Fyros and Zora Role players?

Yes they are hindered - it was made clear at the meeting that extra guards MIGHT be brought in - one extreme role player speaking again, and part of what we are writing on here is saying Aris had a Tryker Fair for everyone - why not this Tryker Fair - to which the reply is "go have your all-Atyss fair somewhere else" - which is okay - BUT if I get involved in role playing in Trykers then I have to Role Play the French Way? I suppose I could have organised the Tryker Fair via the English speaking Trykers (only me at the last meeting - think other English speakers have thrown-in-the-towel and given up) but then I would have been told - This is against Lore ... so - what can we do?

Also events are organised through meetings - so it you want to organise and event you HAVE to go to a meeting ...

I am thinking you have missed out on some of the posts - event organiser and french role players have made it very clear that Mara eat babies, etc and are not welcome anywhere ... so guards MIGHT be reinforced

a little thought about RP and gameplay: yes marauders arent the nice guys, we all know that, I agree that nations should guard against them and other enemies, its natural and understandable and i might even concede that it springs from prejudice rather than facts. As far as gameplay allows, it lets players to train everything to mastery, and a lot, if not most, players have trained their skills for hours to become powerful, and many of them have taken vows for a certain civilization or faction. so speaking about the logic of roleplay in an MMO is that your character should be able to face the dangers of the land. if we were to follow that simple logic than adding more guards is detrimental to RP both of marauders and players.

1- the new guards are too poweful to even be confronted, so the answer is fleeing
2- marauder cant even come close to attack a city and play the ROLE that the current roleplay gives them 3- if you trained your character and Love your nation/faction then you should be the guard

In all i think anti marauder guards shouldn't exist even under the premise of RP, regarding activities such as thr fairhaven fair, we should make an effort to make events that are server inclusive, and if you are to PUSH marauders into being hateful, and fearful, then include that RP as part of the event instead of putting a ban to it. if youre doing a national event, then talk to marauders and get them to RP in tagged pvp as part of the event. but keep the current model and youll get is angry people (and with lots of reasons for it)