Lost Lands: Delucia and Papua

[Cyrus Tegyr]

So I have added back in Lost Lands, this is already known, these two towns however, I have an idea for them and wanted to throw it out to players I want feedback, I just started clearing statics from them and with Papua I removed all statics from every building except the inn.

My thoughts on these two towns and Lost Lands in general:

Lost Lands is supposed to be as I believe an unruly, lawless, untamed expanse of land, what about these two towns being completely player driven/owned. Maybe not in a siege sense but no vendors, vendors would be on the main land except for an inn keeper at the Papua inn?

This will give a real appearance of the land being wild and untamed and at the same time give some more player housing which is a minor point at this point in time. Eventually I would not mind seeing player vendors purchasable but for not it would be a hard frontier type life for players, I say hard, more inconvenient but these towns would be almost anything goes and more importantly for me, I won't have to go back in and redecorate some of the buildings I already cleared of decorations.

What are your thoughts, players on this one, I already sent Argon my thoughts on this but have yet to receive a reply however I just sent them to him. This would mean the entrances to the lost lands from the mage shop in moonglow would not be there but there are plenty of other ways to make your way to the lost lands.

[KrondorZuula]

Lost lands were also lost due to Esuna destroying them and pulling Imperial to safety in Malas, we just gonna forget about that bit of history?

I remember it well many years ago...

[Shalinn]

Lost lands were also lost due to Esuna destroying them and pulling Imperial to safety in Malas, we just gonna forget about that bit of history?

I remember it well many years ago...

Who said anything about Imperials ?

[Glarundis]

We could have LL, nothing against LL for the sake of LL, but don't we have more important things to focus on right now?
Besides, one of the things I dislike is that huge portions of the map are just empty. Even talking about monsters out in the open, the main map could be a lot better there. In terms of cities, it's a disgrace. The more we spread, the worse, I believe. We need players to see a bit more life in the other cities around Felucca. Having more houses will make it even worse. But maybe time will tell, and we'll start having a need for more houses (which I doubt)

[Bella Pious]

I think to begin with there should not be player house available in the map of Lost Land. With this info and 2 cities only, it can easily be dominated by 2 group of players that are either against each other or against other players. I am sure people's minds would start planning, because I would. By all means make houses for future usage. But to begin with, I think it is better to have NPC vendors, and we can gradually turn them into player homes. This way, as shards getting forward (religions ready, etc.), and as players come back, they will need to buy house elsewhere first, and it can prevent having the houses in these 2 towns bought-out right after the new map launch.
On a more self-ish note, I hope this Lawless Land will attract the fights and robberies from areas around guarded cities in Felucca.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Well Lost Lands is already going to be open so sorry folks that's happening. It was a specific request by Argon that it be open. It took me a good amount of time to just add it to the map.

Frustration with scripting and development, push that somewhere else, few people know what's going on with myself and current staff and I won't air dirty laundry. So in terms of more important matters, I have, to be blunt, fuck all to do with it, I started threads on here to show or discuss uses of map portions, keep posting updates on a fairly regular basis to show something on my end is being done and even asked for assistance and no one could be bothered to fucking speak up. I'm as frustrated and to be selfish about it should be more frustrated then the majority of players who are frustrated at the stagnant feel of things but at the same time I'm realistic and know I may not be able and probably more likely unable to deliver everything that was promised from a scripting perspective.

As for vendors, well that's an idea, instead of me redecorating, I will leave em empty and they can be dynamically decorated for ease of sell off value in the future.

As for houses, large swaths of unused land, well new Haven is gone so that takes a ton of housing out of circulation. I've added some housing and a new town to offset this but not nearly as many houses I demolished. Plus many of the houses I added are not just buyable outright, they're a decent size so will cost something more than a few stacks of gold. I've added more dungeon entrances, some on per existing mountains and some on mountains I added.

If you're wondering why I'm not working on religions, that's something you'll have to ask me personally but to be clear, I'm more than unhappy with the current pace but also very discouraged when I have had "well shouldn't xyz be more important and you should work on that first"(not necessarily in this thread though I feel a bit of that from one of the posts here) when I have nothing to do with it even if I wanted to, I've done one scripted project I put together I handed to Blckfire but it's not live and I've no idea if it's even been tested.

Sorry for the rant but I'm beginning to wonder if making it known I was working on the map publicly known or where it began in the counselors thread, it has clearly in the last week become a real chore considering the frustration people have toward others directed at me. For fuck's sake, I've got 0, zero, nil, nothing, nada, không có gì, mitte midagi, ничего, nic or ingenting to do with scripting religions or anything that IS NOT A STANDALONE PROJECT.

[Emirien]

Cyrus, keep up the good job man, happy to see that the LL are making a comeback and heck, more land? more houses? awwww yeah!

[Glarundis]

Well Lost Lands is already going to be open so sorry folks that's happening. It was a specific request by Argon that it be open. It took me a good amount of time to just add it to the map.

Then by any means, go for it, you've done an excellent job with all these updates.

I understand you may be frustrated to see your work not being given enough credit since people are demanding religions instead. If I was one of the person that may have given you that feeling, I apologize. While I do want religions (not for the sake of religions themselves, but for the sake of ppl playing again) to be back, I do welcome the stuff you are doing (and as you know, I've congratulated you on previous topics about your work). It's just that we've been waiting for religions for so long that we're kind of stressed at the moment.

As far as LL is concerned, if my post wasn't clear, my main issue with LL is not that we should have religions instead of LL, it's the fact that having an even bigger map that may spread the thin playerbase even more won't seem to help (atleast in my eyes)

[Cyrus Tegyr]

I think that is where you and I differ in thinking. I am of the opinion that every map should be accessible, ya, even Tokuno. So there are times that you do not run into people, maybe a majority of the time but how often did your daily interactions in game actually lead to anything meaningful. I will say for the most part, my interactions past and present while some memorable did not, again for the most part, endear me to those players.

It was the forums that did and it was ICQ that was used to rally the troops for hunts and what not.

I understand the age old argument on Pangaea not enough players, means no new map based content accessible, much like a lot of the thinking on Pangaea, it's flawed. I mean Ideally with the player base we have currently with that thinking if it could be done we should all be restricted to a map 1/4 to 1/2 the size of Felucca. This argument does not end, either, what about those times in the not too distant path where player online count was 1 should he have free run of the entire map? That is after all a huge expanse of map for a lowly character and he may never run into anyone even when a second person logs in.

And to be honest, that post was mainly directed toward you but to a couple others as well, believe me, I am just as frustrated with the pace things are moving scripting. My apologies, I came off harsh, I know I did, chalk it up to a shitty week of being sick with a bad cold with other mitigating variables that got to me.