To bring players to Istaria!!!

[Kymba]

Well i have spoke to many people in my guild as well as in game. There seems to be some thing that we just don't understand. Ther projected plan for the game is very confussing. What has been the constant in all my conversations with others is these following thoughts.


#1 The devs would do better to fix the game bugs!! Includeing the ones in sandstone bluff. The multiple layers on top of each other have caused many differant visual glitches as well as craches and lock ups.

#2 Instead of nerfing, tweaking, and or removal items like ambrosia, which the community has come so dependant on to aid in the removal of Dp's. Our consensus is that Dp's should be left alone, or maybe changed a bit, but not to the extent that the devs have spoke of. As should ambrosia. yes the vendors for ambrosia should be removed! But does the game really need all the changes like these are planing?

#3 Why not add to the game! Like adding One or two new races. Like the ones that were originaly plan. http://pc.ign.com/articles/134/134589p1.html
Like vampires and Angels. Why not add new regions to hunt with some new creatures, maybe some water creatures with all the water we have in istaria. How about giving us some new things to craft like furnature for our homes. Even some new home styles, and changes the way the T1 human house looks! Who in thier right mind would live in that ugle brown tent!! It looks like a construction tent.

Maybe even a few more spawned areas in the exstisting areas we have!


#4 The last thing we always seem to touch on is the plots!!!! Why in the Devs name are some plots so dang small. We have whole commuintys that no one will ever live in becuse of the size of these plot. We think that all the plots in istaria should never be any smaller than 40x40. A vast percentage of the smaller plots that are purchased is 40x40, and if you go looking for a plot in the Istaria all plots above that are purchased.

These are reaccouring themes in conversation all over Istaria. If the game is truely to be the game it was ment to be, then just these few things will help do that. Why not make an expnasion pack to put on the shelves in stores! One that includes all new mobs, content, races, crafts additions to current crafts as well as revamped plot sizes. This would surely bring back people to the game.

What are your thoughts on this istaria!!!!

[Vaz]

My thoughts on it are that it has too many exclamation marks.

[Kymba]

well thanks for that! I guess that this was not of intrest to you?
I would have liked to see something else a tad bit more informative, but thanks just the same.

Kymba

[C`gan]

#1 The devs would do better to fix the game bugs!! Includeing the ones in sandstone bluff. The multiple layers on top of each other have caused many differant visual glitches as well as craches and lock ups.

Some of the aforementioned glitches are already in process of being fixed. But, feel free to keep sending in bug reports.

#2 Instead of nerfing, tweaking, and or removal items like ambrosia, which the community has come so dependant on to aid in the removal of Dp's. Our consensus is that Dp's should be left alone, or maybe changed a bit, but not to the extent that the devs have spoke of. As should ambrosia. yes the vendors for ambrosia should be removed! But does the game really need all the changes like these are planing?

The changes they're putting forth now are to make confectioner a worthwhile class. Think of how boring it'd be to live on a diet of ONLY one thing, say, chicken. Now, while you can get creative with how it's prepared IRL, say you're also stuck with grilled whole bird, no other way. That's what confectioners have NOW. Only thing people want is ambrosia 7. So, why have the class?

With the revamp that's occurring, we've already been told the DP system is going to be affected. So, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach like now, it's going to have some variants. But this is a result, not a cause of the confectioner revamp. That way, both a la carte foods and full meals with have better benefits, wider variety, spicings, and lots of different boosts and bonuses, much like when the ability to add techs was added to tools and techs and colors to amors. I can still remember the very early on in Horizons when cargo armors were unteched and everyone wore pretty much the same gear whether by lack of components, lack of skills to make the teched gear, lack of techs, etc. I still have my unteched flax cargo gear in it's marvelously drab gray from those days. But look at how much better the entire system has gotten now that armors and tools can be teched, colored, or customized to fit the needs and style of the user. That similar explosion is what confectioner is finally getting, and I for one am anxious to see what they're doing.

#3 Why not add to the game! Like adding One or two new races. Like the ones that were originaly plan. http://pc.ign.com/articles/134/134589p1.html
Like vampires and Angels. Why not add new regions to hunt with some new creatures, maybe some water creatures with all the water we have in istaria. How about giving us some new things to craft like furnature for our homes. Even some new home styles, and changes the way the T1 human house looks! Who in thier right mind would live in that ugle brown tent!! It looks like a construction tent.

Maybe even a few more spawned areas in the exstisting areas we have!

This really should be broken down into separate categories.

New races: technically skins on current frames. It's low on the priority list, if at all. Really, what would another biped, two handed race add to the game?

New regions to hunt: We all want this, but it takes time to adjust the programming to add locations. Plus, how do you get there from here? Bridges to be built and portals to be added to the current list all take coding time, which is currently being used for the Vista patch and other things at the present. I don't doubt, though, that we will see more of them.

Furniture: already under process. The main problem right now is the occlusion factor. How do you get the system to NOT render everything in a world where it's been programed TO render everything. With all the stuff they want to add (and you can see trial models of some of it already on the live shards in New Trismus, clickable items in the buildings), having the servers and/or clients do all that rendering causes video lag (something no one wants) so there has to be a boundary limit developed inside buildings somehow so that if you're outside, what's inside is only partially or not rendered. If you look in your Horizons folder, you can already see files have been created for many pieces of indoor decor.

#4 The last thing we always seem to touch on is the plots!!!! Why in the Devs name are some plots so dang small. We have whole commuintys that no one will ever live in becuse of the size of these plot. We think that all the plots in istaria should never be any smaller than 40x40. A vast percentage of the smaller plots that are purchased is 40x40, and if you go looking for a plot in the Istaria all plots above that are purchased.

Again, already in process. This was interrupted with the EI buyout. You may or may not recall, but Genevia was once a straightforward community, row and column, 122 plots ALL 25x25. No river running through it, no angled roads. No one lived there. Go there now and you find waterways, different sized plots, and a nice community developing. The same was true of all of Genevia island. Sure, there were terrain height differences, but the entire island started with predominantly only 25x25 plots, much like Scorpion Island is now. That all changed when the devs started the tier 1 revamp. The process has been continuing, albeit slowly, to include Lesser Aradoth and is spreading to the tier 2 regions. It was rather surprising to see plots change shape 1m at a time, particularly for the owners of said plots. One day your plot is a 25x25, the next it's a 26 x 25. The process went like that for days and weeks while David was nudging what he could and not causing the entire system to crash or cause plot overlaps. Much of the adjusting on plot sizes was done in stealth patches, not just one big boom and the entire island was recreated.

[gopher65]

Furniture: already under process. The main problem right now is the occlusion factor. How do you get the system to NOT render everything in a world where it's been programed TO render everything. With all the stuff they want to add (and you can see trial models of some of it already on the live shards in New Trismus, clickable items in the buildings), having the servers and/or clients do all that rendering causes video lag (something no one wants) so there has to be a boundary limit developed inside buildings somehow so that if you're outside, what's inside is only partially or not rendered. If you look in your Horizons folder, you can already see files have been created for many pieces of indoor decor.

Rather than having the interior of houses "instanced" (sorta), which is what David Bowman originally discribed long ago as the goal, I think there is a much simpler and easy to code method of doing this that will have almost exactly the same end result (but not quite).

Right now there are 3 classes of rendering... things... as far as I can tell.

1) Terrain
2) Characters/NPCs/Mobs
3) World objects (houses, trees, stuff)

Each of these can be set at a different range. Terrain usually has the longest loading distance, and moving objects generally the shortest. So, create a 4th class of render... things. Lets call it "Furniture" or something along those lines. Find out what the biggest individual open room in Istaria is, and set that as the maximum render distance for such objects. Say, 65 metres (for those with REALLY powerful computers). Then, set the default range at something more reasonable, like 15 metres. All interior items (and also things like flowerbeds, and other plot decorations) would be placed into this category.

At 15 metres you wouldn't render anything on a plot when you ran past it on a nearby road, but you'd be able to see all the furniture in a decent sized room.

Now I'm absolutely certain that would take a huge amount of work to implement (if only for database entries for the items added, and forms, and possibly new tools and... geez that's a lot of work 0_0), but surely that would be easier than trying to recode the client to do instancing (or rather selective rendering I suppose) when it was never intended to do so.

[C`gan]

Thanks for the info, gopher. I was trying to put into words the best way I knew how to describe the stumbling block they were last having with furniture.

[AmonGwareth]

Actually, the furniture thing really requires a system called Parenting. Basically you tell the contents of the building that they are "children" of the house. Then the client is coded to know that if the house is occluded, so are the children. And there's a bit more to it than that.

But its a BIG change to the way the client works and so its still on the pony list I think.

As far as the rest... Many of the things on your list I agree with, but they are pretty much all monumental projects requiring months of developer time and so progress will obviously be slow. Plots though will continue to grow as we move around the world. And slowly so will spawn regions.

for example, in an upcoming patch I played around with spawn regions near the Aughundell Crater. (oh and I looked at the ones on Alged and about had a heart attack)

[C`gan]

Was this heart attack a good one or a bad one? Too many spawns? Too few spawns?

Oh, and while we're talking about spawning, is there something you can do to the South Gate/Old Oaks blight anchor to tell it that it's no longer welcome in that particular region and move on? People are ignoring it for the most part. I know I'm getting around quite well down there harvesting silk without a problem, but some people aren't quite as...sneaky when it comes to moving between fields 1 and 3 (2 being the one the anchor is in).