Good to hear, thanks!  Any hints on when that might be?

I had always assumed "armored riverling" meant like a turtle shell.  Does this mean riverlings are intelligent and advanced enough to smith their own weapons/armor?  Or are they like hermit crabs and find armor laying around to occupy?  Or I suppose it's possible that the riverling body could convert minerals in the water and food supply into a protective casing over time, like our bodies do with calcium to make bones.

Just because player A knows more about fighting in real life than player B, that doesn't mean player A's character is a better fighter than player B's.

After all, when you throw in the different races and such, how much super detailed RL fighting knowledge actually translates to PlaneShift?  Sure, if you have two Ylian fighting you can imagine it like a real life fight, but what about kran, or kylros, or enkis?  Surely moves/grapples/holds that would work against real people would be totally ineffective against them and vice versa, since their bodies are shaped differently and move differently.

The point is, requiring players to have deep knowledge of RL fighting is unnecessary.  It's a game.  It's not a simulator.  All that should be required is common sense and the ability to envision actions in three dimensions.  On that note, the more specific you are about what your character is doing, the easier it will be for everyone to envision the same thing.

The idea of using in-game rewards to motivate player contributions has been talked about before.  It's a good idea but so far nothing has come of it.

I like the idea but I don't think the rewards should be too big, to promote fairness.  Maybe some purely cosmetic pieces of equipment.  For example, someone who contributes some textures or 3d art could have one of their characters receive an artist's hat.  Someone who writes a book or a quest could have get an equipable quill pen.  Stuff like that.

Of course, someone would have to make the rewards first.  That could be the first task.  If you create a piece of character customization equipment, one of your characters gets a copy of it free.

Another skill under testing is bow making and mace making.

Fletching/arrow crafting as well?

Just for the sake of throwing my two tria in...

There seem to be 2 relatively unrelated issues being addressed/argued here.

1. The game is too hard for new players starting out.

2. The game takes too long for people to max their skills

Problem 2 seems to be what's under debate, and that's fine.  It takes a very long time.  A lot of people think it's too long, others are ok with it.  Personally I don't see the big deal with "maxing" skills anyway.  Unless you're doing PvP (which doesn't seem to be the majority of players) then skills in the 100-150 range seem fine for most purposes.  In my experience you only need ~100 in a crafting skill to make 300q items regularly (correct me if I'm wrong, I've only done a few skills).  Some people have reasons for wanting to max, and I understand that.  Whatever.

Anyway that's besides the point.  However you fall on issue #2, I think it's universally agreed that issue 1 should be addressed.  Current "oldbies" are starting new characters and having a hard time leveling them up, and these are players who already have extensive knowledge about the game world and mechanics.  For someone just starting out, who doesn't know where anything is or how to do anything, it's even more frustrating.  I think this is the problem that should be focused on first.  If we can make the starting out process less painful then maybe player retention will improve.

The new tutorial is a good start.  Maybe to help, we could do something as simple as double the starting skills you get from character creation.  Make new characters just a little less pathetic at the beginning.  Make the first ~15 or so levels take less tria/PPs to train.  Stuff like that?  I don't know, I'm just throwing out random ideas.

That metric would have to be normalized though.  Obviously the total value of looted goods should be higher back when there were hundreds of players than this fall when there were ~40 on average.