Scarcity as an answer to the outpost lock-out - IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Gkr (atys)

Hey there... I totally respect you as a player and all that... but... all this coming from you, as a neutral player not engaging in any PvP... welll it's kinda dry...

You have almost no real experience when it comes to OP and PvP (that's my understanding, sorry if I'm assuming wrongly) and I'm only attacking your statements because I have seen this pattern before, ie:

people with no PvP/OP war interest telling what is good and what is bad... but you dont know how it feels when you are 30 vs 80 - once you do PvP, once you get involved I'm sure your perspective will change because you will realize some things the way they are right now, make a lot of other futile.

So if I were you I would keep my statements a bit more general than saying "this is horrible idea" - Why? we are trying to find a way here to make the OP wars more interesting as in, divide the armies - and by that I mean, each fraction have equal opportunity.

So please join the conversation but be realistic about what you can put on the table and what not...

Gkr --

From (IRL) 2009 to 2012 I (Bittty) was first a member and then GL of a small Tryker/Karavan guild on Arispotle and participated in numerous OP battles. Almost every time I was on the losing side. I fought to defend Tryker and Karavan holdings and I fought against the Marauders when they were first being introduced. I have participated in PvP. I didn't like it much then but the few times the teams I was on prevailed there was a momentary rush. However, my position on who to defend and attack was clear. I supported my nation, my religion, my friends.

About halfway through that period the guild split. The leaders changed from Karavan to Kami and I was left holding the original guild as GL and managing the Psykopla Knoll OP. I spent a deal of time offering the goods from it to anyone who needed them (The cats were pretty worthless, but newbies could use them, and the q50 armilo was actually worth something back then.).

There really was a glut of OP mats and cats in Arispotle at that time, but I was the only person in my time slot who offered them up to homins who could use them. (I was informed that there was one other guild (in a different time slot) who regularly offered cats, but that was it.)

That aside, I did trade for other cats from time to time and I did have friends who paid me for my services in OP battles with q250 cats and the occasional bit of greslin or other OP mats (the big weapons OP mats, of course, I never saw even at that time).

There was a Kami alliance on Arispotle, too. What finally broke it on Arispotle was not economics, but personality. If the leaders of the current Kami alliance work well together and use both real rewards and roleplay equitably, nothing will break it.

To bring this up to the present day, I regard myself as a midlevel RP person. When the Second Great Swarming occurred, I decided that Bittty would be disenchanted by what he saw during the Exodus and during the years of waiting and would work to avoid PvP and to become friends with all Nations and cults. (The actual introduction of the Ranger pseudo-faction was just gravy.)

Gkr

Bitttymacod (atys)
Mjollren -- I am not interested in acting to "create the right climate for the powerplayers" (whatever that might mean). I just want to keep the possibility open that a social person like my GL might score a piece of armilo or two from time to time. Drastically reducing the number of OP mats means that will never happen.

--B

Bah, so in the end you dont mind about the way is implemented right now because "it works for you (tm)". that is very, very selfish.............. but then again... I wont judge you... fight for your interest.. and I appreciate that you made it clear that is just a personal reason why you dont agree with Mjollren's idea.

But, Gkr, the current implementation doesn't "work for me", and I am most certainly not being "very, very selfish." I get nothing except what my social GL can obtain and share (which is very little). My statement above says exactly what it says. I don't understand what Mjollren meant by "powerplayers", but if he just meant "active PvP players", then I don't want to make PvP any more important in the game than it is now, and I certainly don't want to create an elite class of "powerplayers" who work to crush their foes in that theatre of operations.

My position is not just one of personal interest. There are a lot of players out there who are not "well connected" and who have even less chance than I do. Of course I work for my own self interest, but I also think I am looking out for others. The whole thesis of this proposed change is that people will do that very thing. I think that thesis is flawed, and have tried to point out why it is flawed because it is based on the assumption that there is a surplus of OP mats when that doesn't exist.

What I am saying is that there is not a glut of OP mats and that if the OP battles need sprucing up, reducing the number of mats even further is NOT going to help the game as a whole. What might be interesting is to enforce the guild vs. guild aspect with a guild change block to either side of the battle. That might, and I do say might, encourage mobility and faction breaking. (I have seen this in another game and it seems to work, but in that game the membership rolls of all guilds are open knowledge so you have a chance to see the enemy building himself up.)

I have accepted the thesis that the status quo is unsatisfactory in terms of both availability of OP mats and in terms of the chance for PvP players who are not of the "currently winning faction" to have a chance at a fun, evenly matched, battle. What I am criticising is the proposed method to solve the problem.

--Bittty
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P.S. Thank you, Gkr, for generally maintaining a respectful tone. I hope that you understand my tone to be the same; strong disagreement, but no personal malice.