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No. One of the primary reasons why healbombs are so vital in OPs is that the splash from other teams is instrumental in keeping one or two members of a struggling team up long enough to rez their teammates, or supporting the only one or two mages in a largely melee/ranged team. Restricting healbombs to team members only would gimp the heal mechanic entirely.

Restricting healbomb splash to flagged allies, during PvP, would be a sensible partial solution, however.

This would be great, and might address most of the concerns raised?

Unless we have CSR presence at the outpost battles again, I'm not sure anything will be able to be done during the battle (ie: ban the neutral account) that isn't otherwise overly draconian (ie: network bans).

It would resolve the problem of soaking up heals, but not of spying, neutral chars being used for targetting etc. I don't know if those actually are problems or not, but they've been mentioned. :P

That said, I'd be perfectly happy to have CSRs at OPs again, especially given the bunch we have now. CSRs are certainly better placed to deal with potential rule-breakers than homins are, especially those who get particularly fired up during battles - plus they have abilities such as teleportation of players if necessary.

My concern was never heal soaking or aggro dragging. It was neutrals sitting in the middle of each link of our heal chain and assisting the enemy with targeting.

But, this goes both ways. If no one else cares...then I guess it is a valid tactic we are welcome to utilize as well. Afterall, we can just claim all our "spotters" were watching and it is impossible to prove otherwise.

It is a battleground for that 4 hours. I agree forcing people to tag is unfortunate, especially to those who are not trying to take advantage of game mechanics, but it is the only easy solution I saw, and is even RP/realism supported. But, as I said, if it is a valid tactic...well, alts are free now...and I have 3 computers that should each probably be able to run two clients apiece...

(sarcasm - illustrating a point...just because others do it does not mean I can bring myself to do it...but just because I won't does not mean others won't)

30 out of 40 people do care, enough to conceive of several alternate solutions that shouldn't be that much harder to implement than removing the neutral option entirely.

But any dev-required solution will take a few months at least to program in. What do you propose the CSRs do in the meantime? (Given that they're forbidden from attending OP-battles following massive player complaints about favouritism.)

(By the way, I must agree with you removing the neutral option wouldn't be a big deal with the current frequency of OP battles. But there's no telling if they'll remain at that frequency forever.)

Actually nothing Marelli. I was just making a suggestion. A welcomed all of the other suggestions. Unfortunately, I am not sure how to respond to comments that do not address my concern...and none of these suggestions did, which I clarified several times as just being the neutral FOs (as opposed to heal stealing or aggro dragging).

The one suggestion that sort of did, the "ghosting" which limited a neutrals ability to interact at all with anyone participating in the combat only half addresses my concern. While they then cannot be used to target assist, they can be used to gather intel about the enemies formations and personel, which could be a slower version of target assist. Additionally, I feel "ghosting" is unrealistic and would need some sort of lore explanation that is beyond my scope of imagination.

I don't mean to sound so worked up about this, I think people are mixing up my worked up and not worked up tone. Just trying to offer a solution to a problem I see. If others do not see it, then no worries. I just have a habit of talking very "non-emotional" when I am distracted, and this point was not really worth the effort of focusing upon and adding "fore-play" to (to make it a kinder read)...just wanted to point out something I observed that might want to be addressed...and offered the most viable solution I could think of.

well, if we go look at the ore opwars themselves are very hard to explain as there's no talk about anything like it in the lore of the New Lands.
Of course in the original Ryzom concept no such thing as outposts of pvp battles (apart from duels and arena events) existed, this was all added later without the lore being changed to account for it.

Several concerns about neutrals have been raised, but not all of them are specific to neutral players. Even requiring everyone to tag up could lead to some of the exact same problems.

So, concerns about neutrals are:

1) Heal soaking
2) Target assisting
3) Observer reporting on the enemy from the midst of the enemy

The first point could be solved by limiting heal AoE to "friendly targets associated with your current state". That is, if you are tagged, heals would only bounce to other players who are tagged as friendly. If you are not tagged, heal AoE would bounce only to others who are not tagged.

I would further expand this to close another loop-hole: if you are attacking an enemy player with AoE attacks, those attacks only bounce to other players tagged as enemies, not to (neutral) creatures. Let's make the PvP battle about who can PvP better, not who can find the biggest pack of social herbies to stand beside. If you really have a burning need to drag aggro, go find a pack of hostile creatures. The point here is that you are in danger from the hostile creatures; there is no danger to you for standing next to neutral social herbies and waiting for them to be hit by AoE.


The second point could be solved by preventing neutral players from targeting tagged players (in the outpost PvP zone) AND preventing tagged players from /assist'ing neutral and tagged enemy players (anywhere). Why both? Nothing is ever perfect, and just the experience we've had with titles is enough to show that bugs have a way of crawling into the middle of things and refusing to die. Two ways to ensure this can't be abused are better than one. And really, it makes sense to have both checks in place anyway.


The third point can never be solved. One side could always send a new or low-level player alt into the midst of the enemy, tag up friendly to the enemy, and provide intelligence on the enemy. It wouldn't be much harder to get this low-level "spy" into a recognized guild, considering the way some guilds recruit fresh from Silan (or even right on Silan).


There will always be people trying to push the rules to find some way to win, regardless of ethical behaviour. Sometimes, such as the case of yelking packers and aggro-dragging, it becomes accepted. Other times, such as using a dead ally to provide target-assist, the method is prevented. We just have to keep chipping away at them until the day that people decide to stop trying to bend the rules.

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.

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=)....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*