The ring is an awesome feature.....but

[suib0m]

Send an email to [email protected] and give them all the details you can to help identify yourself. Ask what else you need to supply to gain access to your account again. There is a chance they will not be able to offer that information, if there is not sufficient identification, but they will let you know.

The support page:
http://www.ryzom.com/en/support.html

The support forums:
http://forums.ryzom.com/forumdisplay.php?f=90

Good luck,
- Sui

[chibiarc]

Back to the ring thing (tm). My suggestion to the stay online problem is as follows:

First:
One Scenario per Account. Not per Char, per Account.
Free. No additional charging like buying a piece of virtual land.

<> Now where to get the resources from? Well...

Second:
All the published Scenarios won't be running nor taking any resources.
They will just show up on the list and only start running once a player demands access.

It is similar to a manual upload/launch of a scenario, just in this case the server has a huge list of available scenarios and is autolaunching those as requested.

All of the above is of course only valid for Masterless Scenarios. Mastered Scenarios can't run alone obviously. For those the rules should apply as we have them now.

<> Resources, Limits and Player Choice...

Third:
Once launched Scenarios should stop again. When?
Naturally if the last player leaves and it's empty.

However in case of people falling asleep or other odd cases I suggest adding a thing similar to a watchdog. If there hasn't been any activity / player movement / action triggered within half an hour or so the scenario is considered stalled and shuts down.

The afk Player will be booted aswell.

Fourth:
In case the server load is too much, because of countless scenarios activating at one time, there is only one solution, to limit the number of active scenarios.

But how? I suggest a simple system. Player voting for the top 5 Scenarios to be put online might work, but I see some danger of abusing this system.

My solution is to add a credit system.
Every scenario not running will get credits over time. Like 1 credit / hour.
Once a scenario is launched the credits will be reset to 0.

Now if there are more scenarios in the launch queue than available free slots, simply the scenario with the highest credits will be launched. If the same amount of credits, first come first serve.

This way it is always guaranteed for scenarios to have a chance and go online. If a scenario is always running and another one has to wait all the time, it will accumulate lots of credits and the running one will be at zero credits.

The next time a scenario is supposed to launch the one waiting before has a great chance to get launched and the one just running all the time has to sit out.

With this system new Scenarios always have the chance to get launched and the queue can't be blocked with the 3-4 most popular ones. The longer the new one has to wait out, the more credits it gets and the higher the chance on the next round to go online.


So far my ideas, what do you think about this? I think a problem might be if scenarios will run within all rules and just stay online. E.g. due to macros or other tricks. Would it be useful to add a maximum running time? E.g. it has to relaunch / go back to queue after running 24hrs straight? But how to stop the scenario?

My problem atm is, what to do if the server resources are exhausted and the scenarios have to be limited.
How to make it fair and as elegant as possible.

arc

[liseke]

simple solution to your final problem arc:

display all scenarios in the list, but allow only x amount to be "active"...

soooh, say you have a list of 50 scenarios, of which only 15 can be active at one time. Add a counter to the top of the window to show how many "activity slots" are available, so players aren't surprised if they can't launch the scenario of their liking.

The maximum amount can easily be raised if more server resources become available.

[kaetemi]

I think it's better not to implement anything that limits the amount of activity on the Ring, there's enough of those limit features for keeping people out of the Ring already, and they seem to do their work unfortunately.

[chibiarc]

Originally Posted by liseke

simple solution to your final problem arc:

display all scenarios in the list, but allow only x amount to be "active"...

soooh, say you have a list of 50 scenarios, of which only 15 can be active at one time. Add a counter to the top of the window to show how many "activity slots" are available, so players aren't surprised if they can't launch the scenario of their liking.

The maximum amount can easily be raised if more server resources become available.

This does not solve the problems I presented. Scenarios perma blocking the slots, fair play towards new scenarios and equal time sharing. The goal is, if there has to be limitations, to make them fair and equal to everyone.

So what if your list contains the most popular 15 scenarios and they are running all the time and a newcomer wishes to present his / her first work. It might not be good nor his / her name known, but he / she has the same right (even more imho) to have his / he first work hosted.

That's what I meant with a credit system, the longer one has to wait, the higher is the priority for his / her scenario to be launched next.

I do agree to Kaetemi, however if you remember some of Xtarsias Scenarios with massive Kitins and AI going on, it was slowing down the ring. If the current system can handle 50+ Scenarios and nobody notices any slowdown, perfect!

I was just assuming this might not be the case and therefore presenting a solution to limiting.

arc