Hello, everyone.
My question, or questions, are about the dev team, as my Title as stated. What I am interested in knowing is; who makes up the dev team? And what are their skills? What amount of experience do all of the devs have?
My next set of questions are more about the game.
Are there any serious plans to add mounts or dragon riding into the game? In the past (from what I can tell) this used to be at the top of the list for (one of) the dev team. But, from what I can tell, these goals have been dropped, or put off for a long time, by the current dev team, for the reason, "The game does not currently support this." Does this mean that the games engine cannot support it? Or that the dev team lacks the time or experience to add it to the game? The resources to add it? Is it planned for adding at a later date?
This is not only about mounts and dragon riding, but those are two of the most prime examples.
The next set of questions are more about the future and possibilities.
If some of the content that the players have asked or begged for, for years cannot be added due to lack of experience, time, etc... from the dev team, would it be a possibility to sub-contract it? If it's a problem of lack of money, would it be possible to set up a donation button that would directly go towards that project?(The money not being spend til a set goal is reached to fully pay for the sub-contracted work).
Are dragon riding, mounts, boats, etc... still planned to be added to the game. I like the portals for fast travel, and they are a good money-sink for the economy, but I, along with most others, would enjoy more options for travel. Maybe it would be possible to create other money sinks to replace the portals?
Is there a place where I can see the most immediate plans for the dev, as well as mid and long term plans?
The next few questions are about "What-if?'s".
Would it be able to manipulate other game systems to add in mounts? Such as create a mount that is essentially a cargo-disc in disguise, but instead of slowing down the player, increasing his speed. And then having the player have a sitting animation on the mount, instead of running? Would it be possible to loop the sitting animation until it's terminated (the player dismounts), if its a problem of getting it to work?
To tell you the truth, I know little to nothing about game design, so I do not know if copying, and then tweaking other systems to make new systems (such as mounting) would be possible.
I'm not sure how dragon riding might be done, but maybe it could be possible to give dragons a new passive skill that allows them into no-ped fly zones (that is, if a bi-ped tries to enter an area above a certain altitude, they'll be teleported back on the ground/fall to the ground. Could these no-bi-ped zones by creating invisible water of sorts that has the effect of dropping any bi-peds? (Pretty much invisible lakes in the sky that have no affect on dragons due to the passive skill, but would make bi-peds be teleported or fall to the ground)?
Would systems like these need to be made completely from scratch? Or can other systems be salvaged or tweaked, like I said earlier, to make these new systems? Or is that not possible or beyond the games engine/the dev team?
If a dev responds, I'd enjoy it very much if you gave in depth answers to some, or all of the questions I plan to invest hundreds of dollars into this game (by the way of subscriptions) over the next few years, and would enjoy knowing more about it's future.
If some, or all of these questions have been answered before, please point me to the threads or pages in which they are. I did some quick searches, but most, if not all, of the questions were unanswered, or I failed to find them through the search feature. Maybe someone who has seen threads such as these with the answers I seek will have more luck finding them?
Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read. And, thank you in advance if you respond, or attempt to answer my questions.