IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Tunnel of Woe could be cooler if you could actually sneak through like you can the Kitin Lair...

It took me until tonight to realize why I liked the Lair so much: everything there appears to act like there is a purpose for being there. It's not just a blob of aggressive critters plopped down with large aggro ranges.

The Kizoars patrol the tunnels in their little region, the Kipestas patrol the other side. Terminator Kipucka is just a general thug that wanders around keeping the peace. Kipees and Kibans, workers, are doing their things, patrolling where necessary and shuffling back and forth to pertinent areas. Kipuckas and Kipees also patrol their small areas as well, and you can't forget cowboy cattle wrangler Kincher.

The floor of the canyon is a mish-mash of busy creatures, though this could be more of the "throw some aggressive critters in a blob and let them roam around" variety.

If you look at an ant colony, none of the creatures just roam around except the queen, who's busy pooping out eggs. There is purpose, and that makes the place seem alive. To me, more than any other region in the game, the Kitin Lair seems "alive". That's what I like the most about it.

Go see how the different Kitin are described at http://atys.ryzom.com/projects/puben/wiki/L_Kitins and you'll also see the roles they've received in the Kitin Lair match their lore-functions.

• Kiban = kitin harvester, and in the Lair they're collecting resources in the mines.
• Kipee = kitin worker, so they care for the eggs and the food.
• Kizoar = kitin scavenger, so they're also collecting resources in the mines, but in their case resources includes food (ie homins).
• Kincher = kitin hunter, so naturally they're the ones who go out to capture food (animals).
• Kipesta = kitin scout, so they patrol the outskirts.
• Kipucka = migrant protector, so they guard the eggs.
• Kirosta = kitin soldier, so naturally they sit in their barracks when all's quiet and only move out when an actual threat appears.

These descriptions have existed for years, but you don't see any of these functions in the outside world; all Kitin act the same there. But in the Lair, their roles show clearly.

Yup. And the fact that they are actually performing those duties is what makes the Lair special, compared to the other nests scattered around the world. Everywhere else is just like every other game on the market.

I wish for creatures to have real herd-intelligence and behaviour and for populations to be dynamic. If you (Homins in general, or individual characters) are known to hunt that type of creature, they should not approach you, they should flee from you or even attack you. If you are known to easily kill predators, a super-predator if you will, then the predators should keep their distance from you instead of blindly attacking you, or perhaps attack you in a pack if they hunt in packs. Further, if you are known to kill predators of herbivores, depending on their social nature, they could perhaps even come to your aid when you kill their predators nearby.

More than just moving spawn points at season change, activity should center around availability of natural resources (not necessarily the mats we dig). That is what should change each season, because that would define what the rest of the food chain does. If herbivores consume the supply of resources in one area, they should move to the next. If predators do not catch and eat anything, they should die. If they over-hunt an area (hello BB), their numbers should diminish until the numbers of their food supplies increase. One type of predator would be competing with another type, and clash with each other violently if they were to close to each other. If there are no predators, the "prey" numbers should increase.

If you continually kill creatures in an area over an extended period of time (hello Void), those creatures should disappear for an extended period of time, to indicate dying off of the herds. Later, over time, their numbers should return and begin to increase to match the current conditions.

If you continually kill the Kitin in an area over an extended period of time, and they never report back to their local nest or lair, that should signal a red flag and trigger a larger and more dangerous incursion into that area, perhaps resulting in a mini-swarm to restore Kitin dominance.

If this behaviour were followed, I believe that places like BB and Void would balance themselves out quite nicely. You wouldn't see a million players in Void, you'd see them scattered around the various q250 regions. You also wouldn't see "nothing but aggro" in BB, since they'd starve themselves out. Each trek from land to land would be different, because feeding and migration patterns would truly be different and dynamic.

It would truly be a living world. That's what I'd really like to see happen.

But until then, more areas where the creature act with purpose, like finishing the Almati Lair and implementing the suggested Kitin Sites, would continue to add more hints of Atys being a living world.

On my first days on Atys, I actually came to expect the mobs to behave like you describe. It would really be a plus if they did.

Haha yes, as a newbie in Ryzom I had read something along the line that mobs in Ryzom acted dynamically and the example mentioned was that if you killed too many worker kitin in one area, the kitin would respond by sending out soldiers from the nearest nest.

I still remember being all nervous and excited when I reached level 50ish and started levelling on kizoar, not realising that was just a plan that had never been really implemented and fully expecting that after a while big soldier kitin would come for me to take the revenge for all the murdered kizoars.

while such a thing would on the surface be nice, it wouldn't be nice for people coming to an area after you're done grinding on those najabs for example.
Say after you've killed them 10 times they now take an hour to spawn instead of 20 seconds. You've gained a level, which is what you're after, but the next person coming along can't find any.

Similar with kitins. Would be very easy to kill enough of them to trigger that invasion, then port out. Do that in a major digging area and you're preventing others from digging...

Such complications are probably among the reasons this hasn't been (fully) implemented.

There would not be a "major dig area", because mats would also be constantly on the move. Nor would there be a "next person coming along" expecting a najab spawn there, since that too is a product of the current system where we know najabs to reliably appear in a specific location.

If you learn what something hunts, and the types of environments it likes, find the things that it hunts in those environments. There is a very high likelihood that you'll find the predators that you are looking for. If you don't know, what is it that you do in this game? Ahh yes, ask someone else! This will get people out and exploring more of the world, instead of just lining up in Void waiting for the groups ahead of you to finish the "grind" mob spawns so you can have your turn.

For the Kitin "uprising", yeah, that's a real threat. That's why you can see them from a distance. If you see a group of Kitin in the distance, don't go there. People dig in the Kitin Lair, and aggro is constantly harassing them. There are Kitin patrols in PR constantly harassing diggers there too. There are also aggressive named creatures that patrol back and forth through digging spots. Sometimes, some seasons, what you want to dig is safe, and then other seasons, a bunch of aggro is sleeping on top of it. Sometimes aggro sleeps on your target during every season. Somehow, despite all of that, digging still miraculously happens, believe it or not. People whine about those things, but the digging still gets done.

I would expect to see Kitin soldier groups in areas where Kitins had been killed often, perhaps even escorting the Kitins that had been dying. As the kitins there stop dying, the guards and patrols would gradually disappear.

But more realistically, if the Kitins above ground behaved with purpose like those in the Lair, there wouldn't be static "spawn groups" of Kitins just sitting anywhere milling about, like today and like in every other boring MMO to date. They would be performing their duties for the rest of their particular colony. Workers would use a different route instead of continuing through the dangerous spots, and soldiers would escort them and set up "checkpoints" (ie: come here to die please, homins!).

And in Ryzom, since things work best based on seasons (4.5 RL days), that is the most logical method to implement such pattern changes. You kill Najabs extensively that season, the next season the spawns will be diminished. Continue killing them season after season, and they won't be there for a while. Find where else they live.

What happens with all of this is you learn to adapt.
"Are you smarter than a level 5 Kitin?"