New player, long comment.....
 

Ok, since the thread on DP, I think that you could use some more flamefest material.... ops, sorry I meant constructive comments from a new player. I have no idea if my character name shows up on the forum, in case it doesn't I'll let you guess who I am (it's not that hard :) ).

I've been playing for the last two months, on/off, since this is one of the two MMO I play at this time, and I tend to spend time in the other as well.

Not to sound nasty, but reading at that DP thread I get the feeling that a lot of old-timers are emotional about the game, and are completely incapable of imagining what a new player arriving on Atys sees.
I'll split in two parts: first impact, i.e. what you think about the game after 60 mins, and second impact, i.e. what you think after 60 days.
You may not like what you read, so continue at your own risk :)

FIRST IMPACT

The game is old. 5 years in internet time is long, and it shows. The character's running animation is horribly bad (it looks like it has a pole stuck up his.... let's say back :) ). (BTW this is a weird contrast to the amount of emote animations, which tend to be a lot better). It also feels very 2D, no way to jump over a small fence, no way to fall down a cliff, no way to bang the head against a wall. Considering the state of the current 3D engines, this looks VERY bad, and I wouldn't be surprised that you lose 50% of the people who connect "just to try" in this stage.
Don't answer "yes but ....blah blah... is so beautiful". I know, it's true, chances are I even saw it. But that 50% of people who leave on the spot don't and won't.

This is a problem not easily solved, unless massive money is available to replace the graphics engine.

The interface is functional but unusable on a modern PC. I have to put up with blurred graphics because I'm forced to run the game at a resolution which doesn't match my screen. I've tried at 1600x1200 (which is not at all uncommon these days) and the font is damn too small (I'm not that young, my eyesight is not improving with time...). There's no customization possible to rescale the windows, I can only move them or lower my game at 1280x1024 (still too small, but at least readable), and while I get free anti-aliasing for the environment, the interface looks like crap. For the rest, I find the windows pretty clear and, as I said, functional. Maybe a bit too bare-bone functional, but I like the kind of interface which doesn't get in the way, so it's ok for me. BTW it looks old-fashoned, but maybe I already mentioned it :)

This is a lot easier to solve than the previous one, just make windows/fonts scalable.

The "newbie zone" is a blessing, it really guides you through the game, showing how things work one by one. A weird inconsistency is that on one side it says that you don't need to mess with actions, but at the same times you keep getting walls of text about the customization of actions. The missions are mostly well-done and show what the game will be about, forcing the player to look at all facets of character developement (which is complex for a new player). One thing which hit me as weird is the extremely long cooldown on some abilities. More on this later.

The gameplay on the newbie island is nothing special. Go there, find this, go there, kill that. Nothing particularly new, but one feels at home. As missions go by and the richness of the skill system becomes more evident the interest in the game raises. Playing with the actions, even if useless on the island, promises great things for later. Same with crafting and the item's stats being dependent on the materials.

Another good point: people listen to questions and give answers and explanations. And it's even written in english, without l0lz at the end!! :) A lot of them are ready to chat, providing more information and help, even when unrequested (are they nice or bored to death? a troubling question....).

In the 'first impact' there's no mainland, since even if someone keeps to a single skill tree branch, completing the missions still takes time.

SECOND IMPACT

A one-line way to resume this would be "workarounds and korean grind". Hard, but also true. Note that it's said in a neutral way: workarounds are indications of problems, but also indicate that you need to look for solutions. Repetitive grind may be boring, but it's also relaxing and reassuring (and popular, considering that many MMOs are pure grinding).

When I analyze the time spent online on Ryzom the activities are mostly grouped in:

- travel (trekking)
- leveling skills (combat or digging)
- crafting (as in "understanding" more than simple leveling)
- I won't mention missions (rites included), because in the current state of affairs they suck so much that I grew tired of them almost instantly, so I NEVER do missions.
- chatting, which is hardly a specificity of this game.....

I'll start with the skill leveling:

- fight/magic: endless grind on the same mobs. Sure you can group for faster exping to feel like you're doing a group activity, but it plays like the Korean MMO I have experience with. Find a nice corner and kill the same mob a bazillion times. Early on you're given the rewards of more skills to play with, but soon enough it's clear that while very complex, the action/stanza system in combat is a lot less important than it looks. Another limit of the game engine shows: compared to newer games the lag tolerance of the engine is a lot worse. I'm with around 200ms ping and I still have mobs which reach 0 hp run up to me and hit me before dropping dead. It may be 200ms, but it feels a lot longer.

- crafting: just do stuff if you have the mats. Goes very fast time-wise compared to the others.

- digging: my favorite activity to relax, but an honest analysis is that it's mindless grinding just the same. Digging requires no skill whatsoever. Sure, you may need to fiddle with the actions ONCE when you get new stanzas, but then a bot would do a job as good as me (actually better, since it won't get distracted). The interesting part of digging is getting what you want, i.e. getting to the source, but this is better covered in "travel".

(to give you an idea, my dig/craft is around 2x my combat skill level, when I want action I usually logout and go to the other MMO I play)

Crafting: the crafting system in Ryzom is extremely interesting, and it's basically the main characteristic which "makes it different" (another is below). There's an interesting balance between "being able to do something decent", which requires finding out which mats add to which stats, and how to exploit to the maximum the "special magic" which at times happens with the right mixtures. While I've started to collect data to understand clearly what is going on, at the same time I'm a bit scared that if I find out then the whole crafting thing will lose all interest to me. In any case, if there's one thing which should NOT BE CHANGED, it is crafting.

Travel: the other thing which makes Ryzom unique is that the world looks like a world and not like a random collection of mobs sitting there waiting to be slaughtered for XP. While there are grind spots for leveling, travel requires to cross areas which at times contain too much aggro to handle (and with my pitiful combat skill, ALL are like this for me), and this is interesting. Nevertheless, there are a few glaring problems which break the illusion of a "real world", I think they could be fixed easily:
- too much mob density. For a "real world" it feels a bit too often like a crowded bus, with tons of mobs piled one on another. I understand that otherwise it'd be too easy to dodge aggro, but having more "aggro patrols" and less "tons of zones with static aggro" would be better.
- almost no NPC/mob interaction. Guards at towns may join the kills, but it's really weird that a patrol group can cross a zone full of aggro without being attacked, while I'll have everything jump on me as soon as I get near. Guard groups/aggro fights would be nice and add one more "variable" to the trekking skills.

I travel around quite a bit, either with the help of others (a big thank to the player who trekked me out of Lakes, it opened me a whole new world), or I just travel solo: very risky, but the interesting thing is that (like crafting) it's a player-skill and not a character-skill.

There are a couple of things which I find stupid with travelling and risks: the horribly long CD of defensive skills (invuln, run, MPA) and the sparseness of spawn points. This second one in particular is very annoying since it just forces me to re-do something which I have already done (at times even mastered) and which is then just a waste of time. It reminds of 20-year old games with fixed savepoints.... something which was due to technical limitations, was abandoned, and won't be back (nor missed).
About the CDs: it's completely idiotic that they don't reset on respawn (note: respawn and not death). It basically means that after a failed try I have to do something else for around 30 mins before trying again. Result: I do something else, and at times the "something else" turns out to be more interesting than returning to Ryzom, and the character sits there afk for ages. This is a no-no in a subscription game: I don't pay to wait, I pay to play. The same problem is when travel is successful: I cross a nasty area of aggro and end up using a CD, result: I have to sit somewhere (water, friendly camp, empty area) for 30 mins before attempting the next leg. Same problem as before. A system which allows "CD speedup" when in safe areas would be appreciated (example: if you spend 3 mins sitting down then all the CDs reset, but if after 2 mins you stand up you lose all the bonus... you get the idea).
I won't mention DP, I think one death gets cleared with 2 prospections+digs at my current level, so I don't even notice I have one. In any case it's just more mats for my craft :)

Conclusion and other random musings (and workarounds):

- why I stay? I never said I'll stay. I'm still in doubt whenether renew my subscription. Maybe I'll stay, maybe I'll leave. Some patch coming our way would at least make me hope that evolution is possible and some improvement may happen in the future. Honestly, the games look very dead. People say it isn't, it still looks dead. Ok, maybe suspended animation.... or zombie :) Is there ANY developement going on? Bug tracking? In the meantime, I'll probably join a guild to see if it adds to some activity (note that I'm no PvPer, I just don't see the point, and in a sparsely populated world I see the point even less).

- XPing, leveling and such. The xping system seems ok: in particular cats seems a self-adjusting solution: few new players -> lots of cats available -> said players raise fast in level and can join the existing population. Many new players -> less cats -> more low-level people to join with. BTW side comment: when an established high-level population is already present it's logical to allow the lower levels go up faster to be able to group with as many people as possible. Stratification across a tons of different "level layers" prevents grouping and is bad for a MMO (the first 'M' is for massively :) ).

- fame/reputation/faction: do they serve a role? They just look irrelevant and I didn't bother.

- money: you mean the green drop-shaped icon at the bottom of the inventory. All I know is that I have a big number (big compared to the only thing I buy, i.e. TP pacts) and I have no idea what it's for. Ah yes, some missions propose me a reward in that with values which are smaller than a single TP pact. So I don't bother.

- TP pacts: why these things must take up a slot in the inventory (and bulk space, even if it's not indicated on the item's info)? Can we just make so that when you visit a new TP it gets 'memorized' in a separate tab of the inventory window and then I can use it whenever I want with a payment of 10k green-thingy? No effect on gameplay except cutting away idiotic micro-management.

- storage: nice idea about the packers (to move things around) and the apartment to store things. Why can I craft from my packers' bags but if I'm sitting in the apartment I have to pull things out? This is only one of the flaws of the storage system, which only adds tons of micromanagement and no useful limitation or gameplay. Limited space: get alts, or a GH, or just use the cheat of NPC shops to store almost-infinite quantities of stuff. So storage in the end is not limited, it just requires stupid micromanagement. Dump the whole thing and make so that
- when it town you get to access FROM EVERYWHERE to all stuff you have in town (packers, apartment). It's not like I need to run through aggro from stables to my apartment.... it just wastes my time.
- apartments can be extended (but the extension have a manteinance fee), NPC shops WON'T store your stuff for free: if you buy it back you lose money. A lot more than the apartmenet manteinance fee.
- one apartment in every town which can accept one (again, with fees).
Limited transport capabilities with packers: a nice idea, which (just like the apartment/NPC shop cheat) is nicely circumvented by the Hawker cheat, i.e. insta-teleportation of goods from within aggro straight to a merchant near you. I understand that Hawkers are nice people, but maybe they'd like some solid payment to transport your goods, and it'd TAKE TIME (say 24h between deposit and when you can get it in town).

Ok, long wall of text. That's all for now. Let the flamefest... I mean discussion begin :)

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

yepp. valid points. im also pretty new to ryzom (even if my account is pretty old) and can confirm almost everything you write. graphic isnt that bad imo. animations sucks if you look at chars from some distance it gets from smooth to... i dont know... blocky and it just looks ugly. but i like the community, i like ryzom sandbox idea. but for sure devs need to do something to attract new players. i don't think that the old player base is enough to finance ryzom's future. ryzom need fresh blood ;)

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

Really, if the post is meant to be constructive, why start it like this?



The DP thread is not a good thread to judge things by. Much of it plays off as well placed troll fodder. Dumbing down of the game (which DP removal would contribute to) is one of the things that has contributed to players leaving.




Each race has it's own running animation. Are you referring to a specific race, or do you feel this of all races? The amount of emote animations is a particular clue as to what the direction of this game once was, which is much different than the points of this and some other threads lead to. When I first learned of this game, back in beta, it was in a context of a living planet and an evolving story. Sadly, due to a handful of bad ownerships, this never came to be. Recent activity seems to show that we might be moving back into that direction though.



This might already be available. We'll see after next week's patch.



I guess I don't understand this. You don't need to mess with actions to use them, but there is much you can do with them so learning how is essential. I don't get how this is inconsistent. ?



Now, this one is an interesting point. The Ryzom community has almost always been very helpful. In fact, part of the population problem is due to this. The community has a habit of giving everything to the new player, smothering the excitement of a challenge. It's also fostered a gimmegimme sense where players expect to be handed greatness and get bored at the lack of challenge or angry when it is not given.



Really?? I think I need clarification on this one. While it is true that actions are not as unique as one might think they can create upon first learning how to use the stanzas, with most players generally having the same actions built into their hand bars, this does not mean they are less important in figuring out how to most efficiently use them. And sometimes you even discover that efficiency isn't even the best route.



This kinda falls back to your statement about inconsistency using default stanzas vs. creating your own. Sure you could just settle with fiddling with the actions once when you get a new stanza and leave it at that, but I don't figure you're digging as well as you could. Starting at around lvl 150, in order to gather maximum mats you start needing to use multiple actions during a singular extraction. Each prospection can use a handful of usually very tweaked actions. Mixed with self careplanning (if you're solo), there can be alot of work involved. I tend to find combat much more boring than digging. But, it is a matter of play style; you could take a safer stanza setup and just start extracting and chat away with little threat of death.



This is partly a problem of low player population. It's also quite different for different areas. For example, what you bring up is quite pronounced in the lakelands since the mobs can have very little space to wander. Where are you seeing static aggro? For the most part, the mobs have resting and eating zones and will migrate between the two until killed.



Part of the lore of this game is that toons do not die. They go unconscious and are protected and transported by the Kami or Karavan for protection. That lore backs up that the toon would not be "reset", just protected from true death. In that, it doesn't make sense that the cooldowns would be reset. Also, those cooldowns that are very lengthy are not meant to be used too often, and they are really not essential to gameplay. It is possible to trek the world without ever being hit, and this can even be done at level 1 (not likely, but possible). It is not necessary to wait for the cooldowns to return, you can always restrategize (or, in the case you are trying to attack something much bigger than you, you can return to more appropriate prey).



The owners have recently started using twitter and a blog as means to offer information. Since then we've seen a bit of stuff going on. The new patch has been mentioned (coming next week) and some of the updates have been shown. Also, the event teams seem to have been hard at work recently. There have been many events, including information offline at the RP forums, and even the introduction of a player run government (Fyros). I've been away for a while due to RL, so I don't have much info on it, but I've been trying to keep up with this stuff as I can using the forums and asking around.




It's a difficult question that, I think, is largely mired in the history of this game and its ownerships. However, it seems racial fame is showing more importance lately with the implementation of the governments.



It does affect gameplay, but you'll learn that as you move along. At one point there was a concept called Spires in which regional ownership could change through battle, this would definitely affect pact usage/purchasability. As far as I know, though, Spires is currently shelved (but that doesn't mean other similar concepts are not underway).

Anyways, those are some of my thoughs on your post. I'm in the middle of that RL thing, so it was written over time when I had moments to, so it may seem disjointed :P

Peace,
- Sui

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

Before I find the time to answer in full:

Windows and fonts are already scale-able and have always been.
I´m surprised you didn´t know that Suibom. 0ô

Just look under "u" and/or "setting" (I guess in English, not sure here) and you´ll find all you want to change inside the windows and much of what you can change on-screen. Including window/fonts colors and the size of the font.

Many windows (not every single one, admitted) are scale-able by simply clicking on a corner and hold/drag into the wanted size.

More later. ;)
And I´ll try to be nice :p

CU
Acridiel

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

Short answer 1st ;)


No, they aren't. Windows are RESIZABLE, which is not quite the same thing, and not even all of them are (action bar being one example). At high resolution the text on the icons in the action bars is plain invisible.
The font size option only affects the chat window; mission, mob stats, action bar, radar, they all are unaffected.

If the patch addresses these problems and provides more customization it's really really welcome.

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

Who knows what'll be in the next patch. What i DO know is that the devs seem to read the forums, and probably read your (very interesting) post about how the game feels.

Now let's cross our fingers some of your valid points get fixed ;)

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

delete, double post (I've had weird behaviour from the forum, no idea why)

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

[note: I'll condense points at times to be more concise]


To defuse trolling. It's like saying "I know that this could turn into a trollfest and I expect it, so don't bother". So far, it has worked.


All. Tryker is particularly horrible, mostly because they move fast, but running animations have the character stay with his back vertical and fixed. This is extremely unnatural.


One big answer for the skill/stanza system: it's one of the most interesting features of the game, but it's complex and prone to walls of text. On Silan, it's brought up way too early during character developement, it could be postponed a lot. Personally I wasn't scared away because it's one of the things I came here for, but putting it in front of a new player, who doesn't need it and is told that he doesn't need it is a mistake.
Combat actions: for PvP battles more design is probably needed. I've never been in one and never seen one. For the "farming" combat I've seen, it's a matter of balancing hp/sap cost once, then it's spam-mode-on.
Digging actions: even if I'm only at 128 dig, I already use multi-step digging for better focus usage. I can dig from start to end with all the highest skills without running out of focus, but after a series of failed prospections, multi-step allows me to dig without waiting for regen or self heal focus. The second case when I use multi-step is when overdigging, I've found that by capping the action success % to 95%, I can overdig hard while not spoiling the material so often, so I use an expensive second action to push up the material quality. The split in speed/rate/quality is interesting, but what I don't like is that all sources require the same approach: an excellent source requires no different thinking than a basic one, the same set of actions will work.
This is in contradiction to other cases where the complexity is there and requires solution, like the design of jewels to match the plant's attack spells. It's not a single design which works, and building a multi-plant jewel set requires some thinking.... and there are many combinations.
BTW another comment: as you say it's needed at lvl 150... i.e. something which is 100% sure that a new player won't ever see.


Quoted in full. One of the biggest and most useful pieces of information one of the old-timers gave me when on Silan was to warn me that the community is "nice and helpful, at times TOO nice and TOO helpful". I mostly keep to myself, accept any useful stuff when I'm offered (cats expecially), don't ask for anything and expecially, EXPECT nothing.
I'm not really sure that the "lack of challenge" can be a reason to leave. What may be more true is that a new player feels completely useless. Whatever I can craft, someone else can do better and he's giving it away.... not very satisfying for someone wanting to craft.


In the Lakelands this is extreme (small areas at times), but also elsewhere. As for the migration between resting and eating zones, it's visible but not really definite. What I mean is that if you're travelling in the woods you may cross and be surprised by predators, but here it's still a bit too much like the classic MMO-like "1 mob per square meter".


Nice and fine. But if RP > gameplay, expect VERY few new players. MMOs, expecially MMOs with complex skills and leveling are not really good for roleplay. Just like in the old pen-and-paper world, where the best RP was done with the simplest of game systems (none at all being as good as one). Math-oriented games always ended up in a level-fest. From this point of view, it may be very consistent that CDs don't reset, but gameplay-wise it isn't. You're right that they are not necessary, but they are helpful if you want to try something more extreme. BTW long cooldowns tend to be a symptom of a design problem. Skills should be there to be used, not to be out of order most of the time.


Is there a non-quest-grind way to increase it? Because I've already had my dose of repeatable rep-grinding quest elsewhere.....


I still don't see why being forced to keep track of a ton of teleport pacts in my inventory/apartment instead of having them nicely stored in a separate tab improves gameplay. And your answer does not advance me one inch. Should they become unusable for one reason or another (change of faction, etc.), they just stop working. Or get you squarely killed if you use them.


Well, I'm raiding (and topping the DPS meter.... :P ), so my answer may be disjointed as well :)

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

Tons of good points m8. I agree with a lot of this. As somebody else already mentioned, Monday's patch is supposed to deal with the text in some way so hopefully that gets worked out.

You might want to try joining an active guild, gives you some more stuff to do. (hunting bosses, digging super nodes, outpost battles.) You are going to need to pick a faction and grind kami/kara reputation so you can pick up high level zone teleports, but it really isn't all that bad compared to other game's rep grinds.

Hopefully these next two updates on the horizon add something meaningful to the game. I assume you've already seem the developer's blog, but if not here is the link. http://blog.ryzom.com/

Re: New player, long comment.....
 

It's missions pretty much all the way but you have to choose the right ones. The best ones for raising fame are the "kill x [insert tribe name e.g. Dunestalkers]". You might need help with one or 2 of them but (as you already noticed) we're a helpful bunch. ;)

At lower level fame, each mission will raise you 1 point of fame. As you get closer to 100 you'll need to do them more. Yes it IS a grind fest but I guess it depends how famous you want to be. :D