New player, long comment.....

[ishark]

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