New content / Old content

[mugendo]

Originally Posted by flat75

What should be done?
1,. Decrease overall aggro levels in those regions to match that of the void, or even further.

It would be easier to set all Mobs to passive, then only those looking to fight will activate combat, this will allow those on a trek to pass without delay, and the diggers could work without interuption.

2,. Create one or two additional TPs in all Q250 regions. If you create two, make one of that usable by neutrals too. I know, blasphemy. But they are players too.
Create some background story if you wish (OMG marauders is coming, Karavan and Kami decided to reinforce their bases in high level areas! Sending partols to kill monsters, etc, etc We need to get prepared!) or something.
It would result booming exploration around new TPs, much better use of existing content. Up to say 15% of the region. wow, that would be soo coool.

Maybe one step further, and have teleport tickets directly to the best resource, save all that walking nonsense that we currently use to move..

3,. Make players able to deal with aggro-infested spots.
Say, if you kill a monster, on the loot window, there should be a button "bury". If you bury a monster, you dont get tthe loot, but it won't respawn for an hour. Or two.
Whoa, all of a sudden, it would be possible to get in an area, kill of monsters, and dig for an hour. Or two.
Maybe diggers could ask help from guildes to clean up areas. Maybe diggers could flock together in an effort to clean up an area. Wow, social aspect.

Bury is a nice Idea, but why stop there, why not implement the Pause button where you can dig without the interruption of ...well....anything. For those not familiar with the benefits of pause button I can assure you it has saved my ass many times when playing the sims 2..

4,. Take a look on material spots: I think all Q250 area should contain all types of mats. Ok, I may be wrong here, but think about it. I've never seen so far Q250 choice forest anate fiber. Only Buo and Dzao. Of course it might be there, but noone digs it, because its unreachable or too far from TP.

Again why bother to dig at all ?, there is already the MP3 player built in.....why don't GF implement a feature to contact 'credit farmers' from ingame...how cool would that be. $5 paypal for one bag of supreme mats.

.................Though some 'The wild ideas' in the second half of the original post had some very constructive and practical suggestions.

[iwojimmy]

Some of the complaints posted have been valid, and some of the suggestions have been good. Others have been on the order of asking the goalkeepers to be removed from soccer to make it simpler to score.

I am about to commit the crime of dragging PvP into the thread

The only thing I would like to see done to the Radar, is let players learn an aura (on the same timer as MPA/MagicPA etc ) which makes them show as orange dots instead of blue/red during combats. Many people complain ( or the same people many times) about how radar prevents tactical surprise yadda yadda yadda. This would provide a balanced option to deal with it, and follow the cardinal rule of giving players MORE options, not less.

*wonders where derail will end up*
/edit .. not sure if this is clear from my post, but by "orange", I mean the same colour as mobs. Alert players would have to watch for motion that 'looked wrong', like trying to spot the old kitin patrols, without the giveaway of a clump of blue dots charging towards them. PvP radar already differentiates friendly from hostile (short range), and player from mob (full range). Providing players with a short term countermeasure is just addressing an issue that has been mentioned elsewhere.

[vguerin]

Originally Posted by iwojimmy

This would provide a balanced option to deal with it, and follow the cardinal rule of giving players MORE options, not less.

I agree with the spirit, but what is radar ? Does it resonate from the homin core, so adept it can not only differentiate objects... but whether there is danger ?

Why don't we click where we want to go and just appear there ? There has to be something the player has to do to be responsible for themselves... like watching where you are going.

[flat75]

Mugendo, since you have not mentioned one fact or conclusion, at first I thought there is no possible way to answer your post.

But suddenly I had an idea: here is a copy of a letter GameForge (never) received:


Dear Sirs!

I am UGAMBA MAWABI, son of the late president of Nigeria, and I need your immediate assistance regarding grave issues.
I play this game of yours called Ryzom, with my brother (ASHURA MAWABI, son of late president of Nigeria) and we have some problems with it, and I ask for your help.
Here are our concerns:

1,. Remove all chat.
As we can't speak english at all (this is a babel-fish translation you recievied, and pretty damn good one!) we can't use this feature. But we can see other players use it, and we are sure other that they are creating some kind of conspiracy against us. We play 10 feet from each other, so we don't need chat at all, and we find it really distressing that you facilitate conspirations against us.

2,. Remove team targeting and those annoying little bars on it.
Since we always play together and only we are in team. I can pretty much see my teammates HP or SAP status. If I can't he will tell me if he is in trouble or something. But those little bars jumping up and down are really distracting, and they are destroying our gaming experience.

3,. Remove map
That map thing is really, really, annoyingly inaccurate. It shows one tree where there is a forest. This is causing confusion for us.
Since landmarks are completely unnecessary (we have very good, eidietic memory) those 10 landmarks we have, we can keep them in our head.
Please remove this annoying distraction.

4,. Teleport Tickets
We see these things as an evil hand of corruption. For money, you can suddenly be moved to somewhere else. We are against corruption (in fact entire Nigeria is) yet others players use it, and they are able to get somewhere way before us. In fact our religion forbids any kind of corruption, so if you dont remove this feature you are violating my freedom of religion.

5,. Toolbars
We are shocked to see that toolbars remain in place after someone configures his command, usually covering a whole lot of the beautiful landscape. We want it removed now. It's much more challenging to memorize 2-key or 3-key or 4-key combinations for commands, that seeing it on screen.

6,. Moving multiple items.
Our late fathers taught us, it takes work to archive results. If somebody wants to move 200 item, he should click 200 times. Currently this can be done with one click, which leads to lazyness, and that is a capital sin.

We have several more demands, but we are unable to send them to you right now. As a sing of good faith, first you have to resolve these problems we have sent to you, after that we will be able to send ten times as much.

I hope you will find our cooperation as fruitful as we.

Have a nice day.

UGAMBA MAWABI,
son of late president of Nigeria

[flat75]

And now, for something completely different, this time in a much more serious tone.

I dearly hope we can agree on at least one thing: all players play this game to have fun. Since we are all personalities, fun is different for each one of us. Some like challenge, some like convenience. Some like thinking, some like clicking.

Convenience and challenge rarely goes hand by hand. I mean it's challenging to cross 50 miles of desert by foot, but it's hell lot more convenient to do ic in a car with air condition.

Yet, personal challenge is easy to reach by refusing to use convenient or efficient ways. Like say, turning off your hud. If you have not done it yet, try this out. I've done it to make some screenshots. It's surprising how much more immersive Atys becomes. (no, no irony here, I mean it) However, even trivial tasks are becoming much more challenging. You have to navigate by landscape, you dont even see your own health, you have to guess the spots stability by its color, etc etc.
What I want to tell you with it: personal challenge is a keypress away. Disable hud. Or more keypresses away: go to a PR mining session without all equipment, but a pick. You can do that, you have the opportunity.

However, personal convenience is never a keypress away. If you have a car, you can leave it home when you cross the desert for the challenge of it. But if you don't have a car, you don't have many choices do you?

Reaching personal convenience is hard to archive, much harder than challenge. But it's a good shield, a good excuse.
From your answers, it's quite obvious for me that you are not afraid to lose challenge, you are afraid to lose your competitive adventage.
You have learned how to dodge aggros, since you play say 2 years. Learning is usually a process involving success and failure and frustration.
Good decisions require experience. Experience requires making making bad decisions and regret them. Sure you have been attacked by aggros several times by not noticing them or going too close. Sure you learnt from the experience, making you a better sneaker.
Right now, this is your competitive adventage against those who have not gone through it yet.
And you are afraid to lose this "edge" over the other players. You want them to suffer, 'cos you have gone thru it: so they should too.
Until they do, you have the upper hand.


For a moment, just a brief moment, imaging the several hundred players playing the game. Let me assure you none of them have a same requirement about challenge or convenience. That's just it, we are too different.
By stubbornly trying to hold to your own level of challenge requirement, you .... are pushing those away, who have greatly different taste of challenge, or have lower level of ability (either dexterity, or understanding of the underlying system mechanics, or learning difficulties).
You are excluding them from severaly part of the game, which they can't reach due to the (for them) frustrating level of challenge.
Yes, some form of exclusion is by default necessary, because without it there is no joy in archivement. If everybody can go down to PR and bring back a bag of sup mats of his choice, suddenly doing it is not an accomplishment anymore. For everyone.

Imagine for a moment a chess club called "Ultimate challenge". In order to be a member, you need to have won an international championship.
And you must climbed the mount everest. For the challenge of it. How much members do you think this club would have?
I guess none at all.

You have been playing longer than I did, but I ask you a quiestion: have you ever tried to help a new player, who just couldn't understand the stanza action system? You told them once, told them twice, counterparts, options. And he just doesn't get it. A few weeks later, you don't see him anymore. Well, that is one type of exclusion, but this time I say, good riddance. Nevrax have created some pretty original, and wonderful thing regarding lot of subjects. Stanza system, crafting system, just to mention some.
Even tho, these features, which are belong to the CORE of the ryzom experience, exclude some players. Players, who need a "fireball" spell planted in their spellbook, ready to use.

If you think for a moment outside of your selfish feelings, you have to realize that exclusion is the last thing GF should do now.
They should make the game more appealing for new players, and they should provide further goals for old players in order to keep them.
Only if the incoming and remaining players outnumber the leaving players you have that "competitive adventage" of yours.

Everone knows something should be done. I know, you know, GF knows. Think about it: nevrax went bankrupt with current playerbase.
What will happen if GF only provides new content for high level (old) players?
I tell you: incoming player numbers fail to increase, Ryzom will produce more and more losses, up to say 1-2 year from now, GF will admit, it has no intention to provide financial backing for ryzom, and ryzom as we know it will be dead.

No, I don't say it will happen or it will happen because some hard-headed forum trolls want to play alpha dog of the week.

But unless GF finds a way to attact more players, and bind them into this wonderful world it will happen.
I wonder, what will you do with your superior aggro-dodging skills, and with your attitude to look down upon all those who are inferior when ryzom will be shut down?

[flat75]

And few more things: if you have read what i wrote, you may have an impression that i'm against challenge. I am not. Without challege there is no accomplishment. So I have not raised my word about PR. Well, my opinion is PR more or less suitable. Wouldn't mind kitin partols there. Somehow it feels like its their territory anyway.

But right now I have a feeling that current configuration narrows down the game tremendously.

People hunt in one small area. People dig in one (two) small area per region.
Their base instinct in going towards the least resistance (which are not my words, but completely true) leave them without choices.
I think we need more choices. I think players need more area worth being there.
My words are based on personal experience and observation of fellow players.
Your sentences almost always begin with "But I...."

I strongly believe GF must make some easy alterations which would make the game more appealing for broader masses.
To make it able for different personalities to have different kinds of fun. Most of your arguments are against losing your competitive adventage you have worked for. Yes, sometimes it is bad. But creating/altering complex systems is never easy. Like a spider web. You want to pull just one string away, yet somehow it pulls the string it is attached to, and there are the undesired consequences.

Ask yourself the question: is bringing lots of convenient features and losing some challenging features is the right price to play, if the fate of Ryzom is on it?

Because without more players, Ryzom will be dead.
I don't say my solution works. Hell, I'm not even sure I am looking at the right problem at first place. GF does not publish numbers of new subscribers, numbers of cancelled subs, or average lenght of subs. Maybe advertising could work better. I'm afraid tho, without being able to keep the new players, advertising only brings new players who shortly leave.

[mugendo]

Originally Posted by flat75

Mugendo, since you have not mentioned one fact or conclusion, at first I thought there is no possible way to answer your post.


UGAMBA MAWABI,
son of late president of Nigeria

Ahem...*cough* *cough* Mr President.........

Originally Posted by flat75

Thank you for your time reading it. ( Please do not post in this thread regarding your ideas. )

...And on a more serious note with sarcasm set aside, I understand that GF need to review the core game issues and direction of Ryzom (the saga of) that failed to attract/keep Nevrax profitable.

But shiny new options and 'mainstream' solutions will drive away the players who stay for the unique experience that Ryzom is.

[flat75]

Originally Posted by mugendo

But shiny new options and 'mainstream' solutions will drive away the players who stay for the unique experience that Ryzom is.

So you believe instead these GF should spend all it's resources of creating new content that is usable only for a fraction of players, (say Kitin Lair)
regardless of the fact that will not only not bring in new customers, already brought-in customers will not be able to use it, for at least a few months.

Do we need kitin lair? Yes, very much so. As some year-long players said in this thread: they done the old, and done it again. Now they want something new.
I agree with them. Unfortunately creating new content requires hell lot more work than my proposal.

Imagine the playground, with hundreds of toys around lying barely used, meanwhile a huge line in sliders. Isn't it rational to bring down some of the unused toys and build some more slides?
Before we buy the next building to build bowling hall for those who have played with all the toys in the playground, and want something else?

Besides, as I mentioned in my original post (red dots or not red dots) these are the changes that WILL NOT be made in the near future. Most of them are convenience features. All those in software industry know, that usually these features are the last to be done. First bug fixing, then required features, then optimizing most used features, then convenience features.
As GF seems to be seriously understaffed, I doubt Ryzom will reach that state in the future when all bugs are fixes, and all whining has been finished.

Yes, Ryzom must keep it's unique features, the saga has to continue, but at the same time, it has to give alternatives, more ways to have fun, for broader masses. Even if sometimes it means decreasing the challenge a bit here and there .. or how do you call it? Dumb down. Just a bit.

[mugendo]

Originally Posted by flat75

.........Imagine the playground, with hundreds of toys around lying barely used, meanwhile a huge line in sliders. Isn't it rational to bring down some of the unused toys and build some more slides?
Before we buy the next building to build bowling hall for those who have played with all the toys in the playground, and want something else?............

Or maybe imagine the playground sandbox section where all the kids are playing....and there they create sandcastles, dig water courses, make impressions of their hands and feet, mark out boundaries for hopscotch/football pitches, or just simply draw pictures in the sand.....
It's the participants that have to take responsibility for their own entertainment at some point after the playground has been installed.

[flat75]

Your example does not offer any explanation why lot of kids wants to build sandcastle on the same spot, when there is lots of unused space around. Maybe the sand around those places over there is full of dog ... hair. Hm?