A question or more about the Dev team

[Eelime]

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.

[LOVWYRM]

Ee
lots of questions- my English is not good enough to give you sufficient answers,
but
some things are important to me to let you know:

Dragonriding was NEVER PLANNED- and we all excepted that it is not possible in this world-due to technical things NOT due to lack of experience of our devs.
If anybody knows all about our game-then its our devs who do
(this is why we call them "our gods of Istaria"^^).
We do not know all or all about our devs- we never asked.
What we know is that they love the game as much as we do- and that they respect and consider the opinion and suggestions of the players-if possible.

Its a small game, with small resources. and a small team.
But a great community(devs are part of the community too)with big hearts, much patience and lots of enthusiasm.

[AmonGwareth]

Eelime,

The dev team is a small group, mixed with some of us who work on games for a living, hard-working volunteers, and even a few contractors. Not really going to go into details on each of us, but three of us have been with Istaria since it was in development, one of us from pre-blackout even. Others have been with us for several years, sometimes starting as players and then becoming team-members, or just joining us as team-members.

Regarding mounts and dragon riding, I think I answered it to some extent in the Suggestions thread. Mounts simply aren't cost-effective for us at this time and so no development time is planned for them in the near future.

Not really sure how to answer your question about content that players ask for. Sometimes we do implement features or changes that players ask for, other times we don't. It really depends upon the features/changes, if they fit into our plans, if they add value to the game, etc.

Regarding our future plans, we discuss them in our Developer's Desk emails and you can see the latest we've discussed there. We really don't discuss too far into the future, its been a bane of many online games (including this one) in the past if the things we discuss don't get implemented or are changed from their original vision. Our most recent project we've been working on has been a total revamp of the loot in the game. This is nearly complete and should be going live just after the New Year. We should have a new Dev Desk coming out in the coming weeks that discusses our Spring plans (but I can hint and say that we're looking at Plot and Lair stuff).

I hope that answers your questions and satisfies your curiosity. Glad to have you here in Istaria and we hope you choose to stay with us a long time. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Amon and the Virtrium Team

[Frith-Rae]

Wishing people would read the FAQ stickied at the top of the suggestion forum. Its there for a reason and would have answered some of these questions that have been asked 380253 times .

[Eelime]

Wishing people would read the FAQ stickied at the top of the suggestion forum. Its there for a reason and would have answered some of these questions that have been asked 380253 times .

The only question on the FAQ in the suggestions forum that I had is the one about dragon riding (though there are other questions that I didn't ask that were answered there, two or three), and it was answered with "It is not supported by the game at this time." which is something I wished to further discuss in this thread.



I did do a search on dragon riding, and I clicked on all the "Dragon riding/mount/cantheyrideus" threads that everyone else linked to saying "this has been brought up before" and read all the threads in hopes of finding dev responses. The only one I have been able to find is the "It is not supported by the game at this time." And I'm ok with that. Istaria is an amazing game without mounts, riding dragons, and all the other contents we(as in about 99.9999999999999~% of the newbies and still a lot of the older/veteran players) wish we could have. I just wanted more elaboration on the subject and I was no able to find the answers. Like I said, if someone more experienced than me in the form of search-fu can find the stuff I seek, then please link it and a dev/mod can close the thread. Until then, please leave it open so we can discuss the subject.

This is a discussion thread as well as a QA thread. I hope to keep this thread alive for a long time, updating it with more questions as they come along, maybe one day updating the FAQ with some of the stuff here, or making a totally new FAQ.



Thank you to everyone who responded, especially to you, Amon. Your answer didn't answer all of my questions, but it sure answered a lot, and I'm glad you answered my questions. It's rare to find a dev team that actually talks with and discusses things with their players Also, thank you for not getting (to) frustrated with me and answering my questions instead of telling me to go find them myself :S

[Velea]

Amon did a great job of answering the questions asked, so before this becomes a "we want dragon riding" thread again, going to close it.