IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Really, there is little need for a neutral forward in battle. How hard is it to /who and pick an alt target you KNOW is a healer and set up a /tar? We can each see where the other team is and what each is doing by the weapon they are wearing. There is no information that a neutral forward can give that we cannot ascertain ourselves and in my opinion is not worth the time to bother using in battle.

I agree Inifuss, but they were there at the last OP battle. I cannot prove this is what they were doing, but they were positioning themselves well for use assisting targeting. My frustration stems from my inability to kill someone obviously an enemy.

And I do not agree with some of your points Erizon. I like that we must sometimes be careful about aggro due to bombs...keeps people from just automating button mashing. Likewise, I think being aware of ones environment is an important skill that divides good players from bad. I also dont agree with your assesment that forcing players to tag will not fix the FO role. It does not suffer the same concerns because I can choose not to team with or heal said spy (assuming it is obvious they tagged wrong)...yet they will take splash damage from enemy attacks. If they are a spy joining the opposite side by infiltrating a guild, then their actions go well beyond the OP and this in my opinion is good fun. And, again it does not suffer the concerns because although they may be feeding intel to the enemy, they also must act like they are not...hence they must fight for the guild they are hiding in.

We can agree to disagree =)


If you heal AoE, you will potentially heal the "spy"; you can't control who your AoE heal touches and who it doesn't, beyond controlling where you drop your bomb or aim your spray/ricochet.

As long as they appear to be trying to help by throwing out level 1 sap heals, they'll be considered a contributing member of the attack, be res'd as needed, and continue to provide important intel to comrades in voice comms or other means. I don't know many people who stop in the middle of battle to carefully look around at how much everyone is contributing and compare the output of their abilities to the impact that the hp/sap credits appear to take. Personally, I'm more interested in my target's information, and finding the next target to affect.

Neutral, or tagged friendly, the enemy is still obtaining important information about your side of the battle, particularly the info that can be gained by following you from the respawn point.

This information leak seemed to be your main concern, and tagging does not address it at all.

<deleted>

=)....just to clarify again. My concern is neutrals being used for target assisting in OP battles.. If they are obviously an enemy (or acting for the enemy), I want to be able to kill them (or not heal them as the case may be).

I have no hidden agendas or underlying meanings...I would just like to see what I simply asked for. It is not a game breaker for me...just offering a suggestion.

Nonea, there is absolutely NOTHING WG can do to prevent "leaks" in op wars. It's not unwillingness, incompetence, or whatever other negativity about the company you're trying to introduce here, it's the game mechanics which they inherited and which noone I think wants to change as it would change the entire nature of Ryzom.
It's not even limited to Ryzom. Even if you don't have an internet connection you can have contact with others outside of Ryzom.
So say you're Kami and want to spy on the Karavan preparations? Contact (using Skype, MSN, Facebook, Twitter, cellphone, smoke signals, carrier pigeon, whatever is convenient) a friend who plays the other faction and exchange information with them.

I've played mmos in the past where there was a very strict separation between factions. They played entirely different content, never saw each other outside of pvp battles. You couldn't even create toons in more than one faction per server (and there was no cross server pvp).
Yet some people still managed to have spies and allies in the opposing faction. In fact it was well known that some of the largest guilds on either side had alliances with each other, non-agression pacts, arranged outside the game itself, and would lure unsuspecting players from outside their guild into traps to be killed by their friends in the opposing faction, thus slowing down the progression of players not in their guild and ensuring their guild's status as top of the faction.

With multiple accounts, split between factions, this gets even easier as you can now have one toon parked at the opposing faction's tp (and part of that faction), several more along the approaches to the outpost to give warning of incoming hostiles, etc.

Get over it, there's absolutely nothing that can be done to change that, and anything you do do in-game that forces outsiders into your little pvp wars is only going to seriously annoy a lot of people who want nothing whatsoever to do with them.

My post really was misunderstood.
Loryen: I wasn't trying to say you have alterior motives.
Iala: I wasn't trying to say anything negative about WG.
What I'm trying to say is exactly what you said, Iala. That it's impossible to prevent leaks and we shouldn't try to do anything drastic to.
Killed my post so as not to cause any more confusion. And I apologise if anyone's feelings were hurt.
*goes to stand in a corner*

No no....no worries Nonea...my response was a general one, not aimed at you. And, I was confused my Iala's response because I thought you two said exactly the same thing (in your own ways).

not everything is about pvp :P go go drama

But it's so hard to dig dishonourably. :p

removing the neutral option is like saying switzerland doesnt exist :o}
what happens if ye want to be in that area and not be in op (made the game sooo much better) fun times?

Apt analogy...I respect the right of Switzerland to be neutral, but are you claiming this status gave the Swiss citizens the ability to wander around the battlefields of WW2 unscathed? And, to make the analogy more apt...the concern is not the magical invulnerability of the Swiss, rather the Axis and Allies claiming to be Swiss in order to take advantage of that power.

To avoid this situation, why not just remove the fictional magical ability of the Swiss? They can be neutral all they want and avoid war by avoiding the battlefields (just like they did in real life).

100% agree with above

If there is no neutral option, what is the default set for a person who enters the OP zone and doesn't pick a side?
What happens to players banned from one, or both, sides?

How does removing the neutral option actually fix any of the afore-mentioned problems? :)

And let's not forget how well the Swiss are doing out of the Euro crisis (relatively speaking)...

When your outlook is confined to a narrow point of view, it's easy "not to see" anything. An obvious neutral bias is quite evident in the negative connotations & "labels" attached to neutrals in some posts.

Throughout time most people didn't see a problem with things that didn't affect them. The slave owner for example, had a different outlook as to what was reasonable / unreasonable with respect to conditions slaves lived under.

Again, consider an example.... back in the day I am digging in FF when an attack on Magic Pole is going on. Though I am some 400m away from the OP, I am continually aggro dragged on simply because I am in a direct line between the kara TP and the OP. Where's the call to make any critter aggro'd by a PvP player to "ignore" neutrals ?