Your Questions & Our Answers *Updated 3/4*

[lyrah68]

I don't want them to "dumb down" Ryzom, but there should be some adjustment on the "learning curve". I forgot how HARD it is to play Ryzom, until I went on a Beta testing spree and found another game that is EASY and well...a bit brainless. The game I am testing pretty much plays itself, it isn't easy to level, and gaining gear and other "fun stuff" takes not only money, but levels and time, and when you get it...even if you BUY it...you feel as if you DID something. You don't just feel like you were stubborn enough and able to endure the hardships and PAIN, tedium and BOREDOM to get to that point.

In this game I am testing, I have run around areas that the monsters in that area were WELL beyond my ablity to even HIT them. I did get hit, and I think I died twice, but when I set out to GET to the city....I made it. When I set out to see what all was out there, wandering around and exploring for FUN and info...I could do it.

In Ryzom...that kind of exploration is kinda like walking into the middle of an interstate during rush hour...pretty much SUICIDE. In Ryzom, to explore you need....a pocket Melee of roughly 175 skill or higher, and a pocket healer, or two or more of both, LUCK, a SUPER fiber to Premise connection (makes cable look like low end dial up, or so my hubby says of what was demonstrated at his workplace...Verizon...who is installing Fiber to Premise in his district), and knoweldge of EXTACTLY where to step. SORRY folks, in my opinion, and to fill MY exploring fix (think of feeding your Chocolate fix, sometimes ONE Hershey's kiss will do it, other times, you want the WHOLE 2 pound box of Godiva) Ryzom just does NOT do it for MY exploration needs. For me, Ryzom is like having to WALK five miles through traffic and having to FIGHT for ONE hershey's kiss....when I am needing the two pound box of Godiva's and time to PROPERLY enjoy it (Ask a Frenchman exactly how to ENJOY a meal, this is one thing they have VERY right! It takes time, quality, companionship, and a view. In America...we seem to have forgotten HOW to eat, sleep, drink, etc to the FULLEST, in France...they never forgot at all, they make a FINE art of it.)

To me I want to walk up to the PR ruins and poke around. Heck gimme a trowel, a sieve screen and paint brush...I wanna be a Ryzom archeologist! I wanna dig in the roots for something...and it AINT supreme mats!

I want to find the first evidence of METAL. I want to find books, history, ruins, heck...I wanna find Hieroglyphics (pardon my spelling, I just found the house of my dreams and have been up for 36 hours celebrating the signing of the contract). I want to find the bodies of those Fyros that "set loose" the kitins. (why do I think that the Fyros found a Karavan stronghold DEEP in the bowels of Ayts, deeper than the DEEPEST roots ANYONE has so far gotten back to? Why do I think the Karavan has DEEP space teleport ability and that THEY are responsible for importing the kitin to Ayts? Could it be that many cases of 'they did it! *point the finger* just end up a wrong place wrong time kinda thing.)

I am glad that you find it a challange to travel. I find it a mind numbing torture session, beginning to rival the Mage Epic in Everquest. I find run LAG SPIKE die, two minute loading time, run back get 20 m's farther then have a spawn right on TOP of you (after you spend more than 45 minutes "learning" the pathing and spawn patterns to prevent this, and you can NOT kill anything in the area...so it is not a RE spawn...just an odd ball spawn OUT of pattern), die, two minute loading time. Repeat this for FOUR DAYS...only to give up. After trying the north route, south route, wall route, "down the middle brassy" route, the "down the middle brassy" ten more feet to the west route, the spring run, the fall run, the summer run, the winter run, the ONLY when it is raining run, the Only when it is thundery run, the only when it is day run, the only when it is NIGHT run. I would hop on ONE foot if I thought it would help, HECK I would wear PINK poka dotted panties (I think I mean in game, but if I had HOPE that wearing them in real life would help...I don't know that I wouldn't try it)....if I thought I could actually ENJOY trying to travel and not end up having everquest camping flash backs (two MONTHS in Sol A, 25 to 40 levels after the highest mob gave any xp...for four quest peices...nuf said).

To me, travel in Ryzom is like trying to solo travel in the Plane of Hate in Everquest...or like trying to solo camp the Plane of Fear for experience, either a study in masochism or a study in FUTILITY. If loading time was ten seconds...maybe my feelings would change. If there was an Inviz skill/spell, or a run speed spell with duration in MINUTES not seconds and an INSTANT reset timer (yes make it cost sap to cast it and make the speed you run level dependant, but PLEASE for the love of PETE something....ANYTHING better than the CRAP we have!), maybe if mobs didn't warp up to 200m in four seconds (I have had discussions about this effect in a group I was in...it isn't just me...everyone was seeing this). And maybe if agroing a mob wasn't pretty much a death sentence, MAYBE I could enjoy a nice wandering exploration in Ryzom.

And maybe I will win the Power ball lotto this time around.

1 – Will hawkers sell anything that actually people can use, atm they only sell stuff with the most crappy stats no matter what level…should be nice to see them sell stuff that people could actually use if it was different patterns and had a bit less stats then crafted items.

2 - Will there be a general chat channel, more and more needed in my opinion, for a lot more options either in hunting, for crafters, roleplay and chatting of course .

3 – I would like to see a plan of the things to come in the future in terms of patches and content. Not too much revealing but enough to keep us going.

4 – NPCs. Theres good suggestions about them already…just one more…can you try to simplify some names or make them less like other 10 npc with similar ones.

5 – On the website:
A development plan;
Search option in forums;
A who are we section, the people who work, where and what they work on for this game.

6 – Be truthful to your players, if things are going bad and theres a lot of bugfixing to do and you are unable to push content just say it, not saying anything can only make things worst…you cant expect people to hang around without information, even if its bad I believe people who love this game will wait for good things to come if they know what is going on.

7 – Better questing, group questing, guild questing…

8 – More information and challenges for boss monsters – would be awesome to have a guild mission to kill “insert name here” boss for Karavan or kami to reward that guild with a guild hall improvement for example…

9 – Will there be a better sorting system (for tickets at least...)

10 – I like this game because it’s not easy, and people will only benefit from hard missions so they work better together and with others so don’t make events to easy

11 – In my opinion this is very important and should be a major “adition” to the game, also related to the point before this one. On events make things not respawnable, let me try to make some sence, events are unique, made for players to feel like they advance and change and accomplish things, if you kill 100 monsters and they respawn behind you while you fighting others whats the point…I know you can say “well point is killing boss monster”. But, for example if you invade a town with kitins and players need to recover it you could make the monsters extra hard and players would need to unite efforts and use strategy to kill one at a time, at what point each would be a accomplishment till the last one (boss) without the worry of respawn wich doesn’t make mush sence to me on things like events (unless they require mobs spawn for mission items hehe). Hope I made some sence…

12 - Will there be any changes to the self heals, since i think its kinda silly i can only use one for a time, so i cant heal sap if i used hp (and no i dont want combos when i use hp i use full hp becouse i will need so duh!)

Ty, Ligia

[josephm]

9 days. 0 answers.

[sprite]

9 days. 0 answers.

Not exactly an answer but...

Seeing that there's still some confusion about the encyclopedia (some of you had been posting questions regarding it in our Q&A round), Nevrax has now published more detailed information on this topic:

http://www.ryzom.com/?page=lore_encyclo

Enjoy

[raynes]

Are there any plans to make siding with the Karavan or the Kami more attractive? Will there ever be a point where the faithful are rewarded while the unfaithful are punished?

[tetra]

Much like I predicted, any mention of ranged fight was left off from the answers given as a result of this thread. Given the absolute silence that Nevrax has had with regards to ranged since day one of beta and all of retail, it seems Nevrax is either afraid of a potential scifi label that might be stuck to the game if they fixed ranged... or they havent bothered to use ranged fight and think it's uber already.

So I'll say it again...

what the heck... I'll give it a shot and see if this works different than all of these

-The "first round of changes" for ranged fighting back in december was pretty much a slap in the face. ATS folks in english and german forums saying that brining the +hitrate bricks back, because the base speed for ranged was not sped up like melee was when the bricks were removed in FBT, hurt ranged were ignored. There was an obsurd +16 shots per craft when hundreds were needed. Given that ranged is the only skill that has not received any attention all through beta and all through retail, and is currently in a state with a bit more ammo per craft and a few KM lower range compared to early beta... is there a reason why there seems to be no interest in fixing it? Will it be fixed, if so when and what plans are currently in existance to fix it.

-In the real world... grenades fired from weapons like the mp5 that everyone remembers from halflife, are the same as those fired from simple grenade launchers... they weigh about half a pound each. Why is it that a single shot of ammunition from an autolauncher has comperable weight to that of an 80mm mortar and launcher ammunition has weight comperable to a 120mm mortar round? These are obvious typo's and really should be corrected.

-Thanks to the hitrate bricks and the terrible accuracy of ranged weapons, it is pretty much required that max accuracy be used when in a group with a ranged weapon. Tack on the +hitrate bricks and you will suck down stam/hp faster than even the most sap hungry mages in most cases. Ranged weapons do less damage than melee or ranged, have extremely high component costs, have virtually no long term staying power due to the high bulk of ammo, and have lower ranged than magic. The single "benefit" of ranged is that you can shoot while running, and this is not generally all that useful... especially in a group... is having the highest hp/stam burn in the game really justified for all these negatives?

-AOE fighting was nerfed into oblivion in beta, at best it's just a stupid choice and at worst it's suicide. Is there a reason why Nevrax feels launchers and autolaunchers should be hindered by these useless and suicidal forms of combat?

-At level 150 the 2 handed ranged tree splits into rifles, autolaunchers, and launchers. It is currently impossible to level the launcher or autolauncher splits due to ammo capacity and the extreme mat use for what is, to put it bluntly, pathetic damage. At 2 mats per shot with autolaunchers, and 4 mats per shot with launchers, with a max ammo capacity of 15 launcher or 30 autolauncher shots not clips level 151 autolauncher/launcher is a dead end and virtually impossible to reach. Is it intended that these forks be impossible to level in addition to their already useless and harmful addition to a group?

-Are there plans to fix ammo capacity, and ammo per clip? If so what is planned? Currently you can only have 128 items on a vendor, yet a half decent rifle with +hitrate bricks can burn through an entire inventory of ~60 clips in about 35-40 minutes of fighting in a group. Not only is there no market for ammunition, but due to the extremely high amount of clips needed over time, even the idea of selling ammunition or going through the skill by buying it is an impossibility.

-Why is it that +range and +damage stats on ranged weapons and ammunition are always zero? At one point early in retail, you could see values for these stats if you identified the item, but after it was reported as a bug this was fixed so they no longer show at all ever. Is it that these stats would apply to magic cast while having a ranged weapon equipped? Is Nevrax that scared of what a mage would do with a ranged weapon and it's associated malus instead of an amp?

- Finally... how is it that depite many posts on the subject of ranged weapons, that showed the problems and gave all sorts of numbers, that someone decided the best way to fix the skill was to halfway revert it to a state it had during beta? If it's going to be a crap useless skill, can it at least be a crap useless skill with the old 15-30KM range?

-Actually.... I'll make it easy on you and answer it myself:
there are questions about ranged.
.......


I understand that you are trying to remain positive, but the playerbase has heard nothing back from nevrax and has almost nothing beyond flamewar interjections of civility from "official" type folks. A lot of us have been burned in the past by other MMO's promising communication and then delivering zip and answering nothing.

It's not that I dislike you Cerest, it's just that after seeing so many GM's and CSR folks here say they were going to put things about the problems with ranged "in their report", I simply have no faith that Nevrax would do anything different.