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).

[AmonGwareth]

Sure, that was done last October. He has multiple places he can spawn and his respawn time is measured in days (min and max). If nobody has killed him then he'll stay right where he is.

[Krystine]

Before merge many of the small plots in towns were ocupied. The town of Morning Light on Life server was filled up as were most towns. They added a few places like Meadow Hill and they filled up too. When the merge happenned tons of new plots were added which included the medium and large plots we have now. The population wasn't large enough to fill all the plots and towns full of small plots were abandoned. There has been some redoing of plots and we can hope this will continue. It is sad to see towns so empty.

[Andor]

two big things I would like to see
1) duel wielding... back in the day they had talked about adding a rogue class. I don't think the class is necessary, but it would be nice to have off hand weapons

2) mounts... maybe something that would be equipable where the cargo disk equips

[Lio]

I totally agree with you Kymba on most of your post .. I think like all things, as some have alluded to, VI is now working through the basic aspects and some new revamps at the same time ..or so is my general understanding ..and this will all take time as we know ..

..at the very least we can be CERTAIN and confident that this process is underway at whatever rate the developers can manage and for the first time in a long time ..and IS contributing to many old timer returns ..

Like Krystine, I remember on 'Life' (ah happy memories) when Meadow Hill was introduced ..along with her guild and contributions from ours and a few others at the time ..that town was opened up with great excitement .. was one of the first towns/Suburbs to really introduce a good number of some large sized plots in one place ..

I think at this point in time ..we can be confident the game is moving forward ..the pace will never be fast, but I feel it is steady .. this is indeed great progress and even though the Confectioner and a few other things are the only visible signs ..underground revamping is just boring, and takes its time .. and by its nature is not overtly apparent ..but it IS being done .. we need to be patient .. a bit longer ..lol

1) DUAL WIELD - would be very cool ..off handers for casters too, a use perhaps for the Spiritist Orbs with some nice stats possibly.

2) MOUNTS - fabulous ..even the ability to ride a friendly Dragon ..i'm sure a possibility, but down the list I'd think.

3) FURNITURE - looking forward to it ..

4) New suggestion - possibly EPIC spawn instances?

Keep up the great positive stuff VI .. many of us I believe returned because we feel progress and basic consolidation is what is happening ..I'm sure we all look forward to the results when you can make them happen!

[Spirit]

Good post Kymba! I'll add a few of my own thoughts too...

I'm still itching to see what this new client will hold for game performance. I recall it was withdrawn from Blight for further internal testing. The current client runs like a sleep-walking horse... and it's only with caffine on a drip line and a cattle prod (i.e. a suitably beastly machine) that it is forced to run better.

In the wilderness, even the eastern blight, the game when sensibly set up runs ok. The problems happen when in towns, *especially* busy player towns. I think the game is trying to take on more data than is wise. While flying about I've witnessed towns looking like their loading, but the objects vanishing again almost immediately. I can only assume the game is pre-loading the town so that when you are really in range it's ready to display. Unfortunately it seems that as soon as it's loaded, whether being displayed or not, the performance takes a hit.

My little list of things that would improve new player impressions with Istaria:
- Vista support (and possibly Firefox browser support)
- A good manual on how to set up the interface (chat tabs and all). The number of times I see "How do I group chat" for example. The interface is great but it needs a good pdf guide or something. Perhaps tabs for community/group chat should be created by default?
- Client performance... almost kicks the bucket when stuff is loading while running along and the hd light goes crackers. Is this because of the immense amount of log-file creation that happens while the game is running?
- Enemy loading times... Even as a hatchling, I had to sit and wait for golems to spawn nr Dalimond. And then they appeared On Me so then I had to run!! A bit smarter and proactive a generation system I think.
- Game bugs... one in particular springs to mind. If I right click on an equipped blighted claw, the game crashes to desktop. No error displayed... perhaps in a log file somewhere.
- enemies not running through stuff like walls lol... does my head in seeing that. It's like "Community project to fix the wall at Harro"... well Why since Jo the Huge Armoured Blighter can float through it?

- more involving quests that are not "Kill X of Y near Somewhere or other". I hate to make WoW comparisons, but there are some good storyline based quests in it that usually finish in killing a boss. Of course WoW also has dungeons and instances, which helps this immensely ... but not all quests are as such. I've mentioned this below.

Even just adding the second one would reduce the learning curve for a new player and improve their experience.

Other desirable additions, non-critial of course:

- Fall damage and swimming!!!! Annoys me immensely. I do understand that there is a limitation with the client regarding heights, but surely there's a way...

- More dragon spells... and why can't we use a sword/staff as a khutit??
- Visible dragon armour scales.

- Dragon animations mentioned at http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=17778 .

- make the water ripple.

- More ambient sounds and more use of weather. And perhaps the atmospheric conditions we have could be rendered with volumetric fogging, rather than just arriving when you enter the zone, so you can see you're approaching worse conditions. Hell in a perfect world I'd vote on a full weather system that affected flying creatures like dragons. "You want to fly to Draak from Harro in this SE'ly gale do you? You must have a death wish!" ... fat chance of that lol.

- Mounts... Meh... well I suppose we do need this. We're alone in a world of online games that have them. Perhaps it could be a school to train mounts for purchase, having first had to find the beast and tame it. And your mount wouldn't fit in your backpack either... you'd have to stable it at a town or tie it to a tree when not in use. (think a la Oblivion)

- underground areas. Personally I really enjoyed the mysterious nature of the underground in Tomb Raider. Creepy underground areas are quite something when done well. You could define these as dungeons or instances. Perhaps a dungeon-like effect could be created by porting you to a specially designed island when you enter a cave. Like some of the golem areas that are covered by rock, just with more detail and ground features to make it feel like a cave. You wouldn't have to worry about mob heights, since they're just running along the ground of this covered island. When you're finished you're ported out by 'leaving' the cave again. You'd design the area such that you couldn't agro a mob you haven't actually seen through a wall. Perhaps the cave could have black fog, limiting view distance and a low light level requiring torches to see (we have the sunscope thing).

Can't think of much else for now...

Rakku

[Kymba]

Well thanks to all the posters on this thread..

But in defence of HZ, i have to say that some of the things mentioned in the replys are better left in other games. I think that for the most part people come to this game for the things that are not so previlant in other games. I like the fact that we are not the same as other games, and don't have things like mounts and such. We are considered a fantasy role play and as such i think that mounts would be sort of silly. considering all the techs we for speed and the ports are the more than plenty to get us around.

But this is all my opion, and i like the fact that my game can run just fine with the things we have and any other things like mounts would only bogg us down. Who needs more lag..... Not I

Kymba

[Favoran]

Well thanks to all the posters on this thread..

But in defence of HZ, i have to say that some of the things mentioned in the replys are better left in other games. I think that for the most part people come to this game for the things that are not so previlant in other games. I like the fact that we are not the same as other games, and don't have things like mounts and such. We are considered a fantasy role play and as such i think that mounts would be sort of silly. considering all the techs we for speed and the ports are the more than plenty to get us around.

But this is all my opion, and i like the fact that my game can run just fine with the things we have and any other things like mounts would only bogg us down. Who needs more lag..... Not I

Kymba

Not so prevalent in other games... like playable dragons?

I don't have much experience with other MMO games, but I will say that I like them being individual games. If everyone took the best of another game and implemented it into their own, then they'd all end up the same.

I know that at times mounts may be convenient, but I don't think they should be added into HZ. For one thing, most dragons wouldn't stand for it, and even those that do are too large to be ridden on. I'm sure some sort of saddle could be constructed, but it seems to me that something like that would greatly inhibit us dragon's flying abilities.

[Xanthia]

I know that at times mounts may be convenient, but I don't think they should be added into HZ. For one thing, most dragons wouldn't stand for it, and even those that do are too large to be ridden on. I'm sure some sort of saddle could be constructed, but it seems to me that something like that would greatly inhibit us dragon's flying abilities.

Well really it is the dragons roleplaying who wouldn't stand for it. Otherwise why not, makes getting that healer up that incredibly high cliff or past a giant spawn of mobs all the more easier (certainly can't say "most" dragons is for or against it). And really, unlike the mounts in other games, this dragon has the choice to say "no" to the would-be-rider *coughtheneathimcough*.

Errr but what you mean by being too large to be ridden on or inhibit dragon flying abilities? Mmmm maybe it might be hard for the naka to get his legs around the waist for those of us "rounder" then others, but really who said they were riding on our backs? There is more than one way to carry your lunch errr *coughs* I mean passenger. The only way I can possibly see it inhibiting our flight is that while we are flying the naka decides to play a little joke and equips their disk while we are in mid flight(gosh did you take out your disk or just gain 200lbs in the last second!). :P

Regular mounts(non flying ones) are useless when a biped can use teched shoes, gates, buffs, gifts, road bonus and the standard sprint ability. (I say we get rid of the portals, nerf all the buffs and gifts and tear the teched shoes from every biped's scrawny feet........... I kid, calm yourself).
New flying mounts is out of the question cause then the dragon community would be in an uproar because the sky is meant for dragon use "only".(What! I work my tail off to get to level 30-50 to fly but the naka gets his wings by buying them!!!*cue whining*)

[Shian]

Sure, that was done last October. He has multiple places he can spawn and his respawn time is measured in days (min and max). If nobody has killed him then he'll stay right where he is.

On order, we've killed it multiple times and it just won't go somewhere else...

[Gegis]

I would agree that mounts don't really have any place in the game. I don't see why they would be needed honestly. Some kind of pet that was alluded to a while back either in EI or early VI would be nice to have. And I have to agree with much of every other point brought up here.

One thing im curious of, is the blighted labrynth on the list of things to do?

[Tzunoch]

What about giving dragon's in Khutit form the ability to switch to other classes that bipeds can use?

[Zexoin]

What about giving dragon's in Khutit form the ability to switch to other classes that bipeds can use?

cause then dragons wouldn't be unique and they'd be as powerful as bipeds, but able to fly too. Not really fair for bipeds.