As per Daomei's suggestion, and to avoid further hijacking Virg's thread, I'm starting a new thread to discuss player's ideas about marauders and their logical future.
This was Placio's comment:
Well, I think it's probably a bad idea to take the marauder faction out of the game. Mostly because it's generally disastrous to give something to a player base and then take it out afterwards. Much crying will ensue. =P Also because it feels like a huge waste to throw away all the time and effort that was dumped into coding the mara faction and then just toss it. From what I was told it took like 2 years of dev time to code the mara faction, not sure if that's accurate.
However, I do agree with Placio on the view that the mara faction is perhaps "unecessary" or to put it more accurately, that there were better things to do with the dev time than to implement the maras.
The player base is already somewhat scarce, PVP is not a huge thing for most actives, and to be honest neutrals have always been the underdogs in Ryzom and I find that the Ranger faction is much more needed to give neutrals some extra gameplay and RP options than a mara faction. After all PVPers already had the whole kami vs kara conflict to go about =P
Plus as Placio said a faction that is despised by all civilizations and both religions and generally viewed as the bad guys of Atys doesn't make for good socialization in such a small community. And many people who go mara just want to try something new or take advantage of the teleport system, and they don't seem to even care about the lore and background history of the faction or about RP'ing a "bad guy".
I think it's just that maras came to exist in a different context. From what I was told, Aniro had a much larger player base than the other servers, and PVP and RP was much more prevalent there. Player initiated events and politics was also a big thing, so giving the player base a "villain" faction as an RP tool to propel events made more sense in that context maybe?
But I mean… occupations are somewhat unfinished (advanced occupations gone, the promise of new occupations not fulfilled), the Kitin Lair is unfinished, the NPC bosses are unfinished. Neutrals as I said never had much love and the ranger faction is unfinished. I just think those things are a better investment of dev time than a mara faction.
But since mara faction was chosen as a priority and coded first (not sure why), might as well make sure it's a finished product and playable with a few more options of missions and/or occupations (even the evil maras need dappers ^^) and access to Almati.
This was Placio's comment:
Placio
I understand the Mara point of view, but the reality is still that there are 4 nations, 2 religions, and maybe the Rangers that at some level view Marauders as bad. This is so unbalanced that even if the marauder faction received the development (and implementation) that it desperately needs, they would still be mostly isolated and unwelcome...
I think the point of any game development would be to make the game more enjoyable and to attract and retain players- on these 2 criteria the playable marauder faction is a 100% failure. It is partly due to the lack of implementation and development, but also due to the unrealistic expectations by players of what playing with all fames at -42 or below would be like.
I would recommend taking the playable marauder faction out of the game, marauder NPCs make a much better target for discrimination and they can drop nice loot :P But most importantly the playable marauder faction is costing us players- our most valuable resource.
Well, I think it's probably a bad idea to take the marauder faction out of the game. Mostly because it's generally disastrous to give something to a player base and then take it out afterwards. Much crying will ensue. =P Also because it feels like a huge waste to throw away all the time and effort that was dumped into coding the mara faction and then just toss it. From what I was told it took like 2 years of dev time to code the mara faction, not sure if that's accurate.
However, I do agree with Placio on the view that the mara faction is perhaps "unecessary" or to put it more accurately, that there were better things to do with the dev time than to implement the maras.
The player base is already somewhat scarce, PVP is not a huge thing for most actives, and to be honest neutrals have always been the underdogs in Ryzom and I find that the Ranger faction is much more needed to give neutrals some extra gameplay and RP options than a mara faction. After all PVPers already had the whole kami vs kara conflict to go about =P
Plus as Placio said a faction that is despised by all civilizations and both religions and generally viewed as the bad guys of Atys doesn't make for good socialization in such a small community. And many people who go mara just want to try something new or take advantage of the teleport system, and they don't seem to even care about the lore and background history of the faction or about RP'ing a "bad guy".
I think it's just that maras came to exist in a different context. From what I was told, Aniro had a much larger player base than the other servers, and PVP and RP was much more prevalent there. Player initiated events and politics was also a big thing, so giving the player base a "villain" faction as an RP tool to propel events made more sense in that context maybe?
But I mean… occupations are somewhat unfinished (advanced occupations gone, the promise of new occupations not fulfilled), the Kitin Lair is unfinished, the NPC bosses are unfinished. Neutrals as I said never had much love and the ranger faction is unfinished. I just think those things are a better investment of dev time than a mara faction.
But since mara faction was chosen as a priority and coded first (not sure why), might as well make sure it's a finished product and playable with a few more options of missions and/or occupations (even the evil maras need dappers ^^) and access to Almati.
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"We are Kami. We are here to be you. We are many as you are of many minds. We are one as you are one in Ma-Duk."