5 Steps forward, 2 steps back

[tester9]

Hey,

I'm new to this game and have spent a few hours on it and i'm having difficulting grasping the game structure. I've looked around the website and it appears the company is moving this game forward fast, and giving people the choice on a few of it's features. I'd like to say that, altho this game has alot to offer, it might be too much, esspecially to new players.

I'd like to suggest a few things that have got to me while i've been playing..

1. Character going transparent
As the Character is centre of your game, the Players character should be solid and all other items etc. should go transparent around the character.

Edit: I've just logged into game and it's daytime, this problem doesn't seem to arise. Probably just a night time problem.

2. Transparent un-lockable screens
All the 'screens' i.e. Inventory, Chat etc. are transparent. Maybe have a few fixed solid screens like chat, health etc. like most games and little buttons to link to the other menu's this way it's easier to find something i might want to find. Not like the Menu on the right with the 3 tabs tho.. bit of an eye sore when playing the game. Just little buttons with definitive pics. (i.e. little character pic for Character Status window, little box pic for Inventory window etc.)

3. Unused menu's
I've had a click around the game and appears to be ALOT of menu's to almost everything. *sigh*
I'm not far into the game, but i'm not sure of the feature to follow a mob or to do emotes at forage area. Is there a need for any of those emotes ? In most games it's nice and easy, and you just type the expression you wish to portray.

4. Default Weapon
I'm not sure if i've set my character up wrong, or i can change what i've done, But i seem to have 'melee' as my default attack. If i wish to kill a mob with magic, i have to target the mob, then click the Quick Key for the magic spell, and keep clicking the Quick key for magic to Que it up as the next attack, unlike the Default 'melee' Skill which auto Ques.

5. Look around while fighting
I've noticed that when fighting, if you turn the camera around to look around the land that the camera moves back to default (behind the character) when the character attacks. Not handy if your keeping an eye on another character or other mobs.

6. Target then Kill
Why does the player target with the first click, then attack on the second ? would it not be easier to Click and attack on first hit ?

7. Loading up in Windows
Just a slight problem with the game loading in a window to start up, my res is 1024x768, i have the game set to the same res, so when the game loads i have to auto hide my Start menu to get to the bottom of the screen, which contains the [Delete] [Start] buttons on the character select screen.

8. End User License Agreement
This seems to pop up after logging in username/password. Any reason why it asks me to 'Accept' everytime ?

9. Quatering/Collecting/Money
I must say that it's alot of effort of quatering then collecting items from a mobs, especially if you cant 'target' the mob then have a hotkey for Quatering and collecting. Maybe the mobs could drop any items they hold onto the floor, then maybe have a hot key for collecting all items on the floor within a certain distance of the character. Also it occured to me that mobs don't give 'money' when they die, you have to sell the collected items for 'money'. Maybe auto share any 'money' to all players that hit the mob worked out on damage ratio to 'money' given from mob and put this money straight into inventory. The same idea not just to parties but to solo play too.

10. Definitive Skill Tree
As far as i can see, it's quite hard to make out a proper skill tree as such to see what items have been purchased and what they do. It seems altho alot of the info given is mumbo jumbo, really un-neccessary info. Maybe 4 tabs for the different types of skills. then a skill tree with every skill with-in 1 page of the skill tab. Then Hover Info. for any of the skills.

11. Talk Control
There are like 4/5 different tabs for talking. Maybe have 1 chat page, but depending on the chat 'type' then apply different colours. (i.e. If a person in the party talks to you then display party chat in Purple and common chat in white). Activate party chat by clicking a button or apply a command before talking (i.e. //party Hey)

12. Quick Bar
At the top is a quick bar menu that has 2 rows of 10 (i think) for actions and skills etc. If the top row is 1~0 on the keyboard what are the 'up arrow' 1~0 buttons? also it seems that you can have upto to 10 different sets of quick keys.. Any need for this many? can people not just change the skills they have for the battle they need? i'm sure 20 Quick keys is enough for any battle.

OK, i know this is alot, and some bit's are like 'like most games', but i think these are the best bits of most games.. in my opinion.
I hope this will help the dev team to create a slightly easier game control system.
Ideas and suggestions from 'experienced' players of the game are much appreciated, because i'm sure there are some problems i've suggested that can be solved with-in game already.

Thanks for your time and hope this game goes far..

tester9

[lienem]

1. Character going transparent
As the Character is centre of your game, the Players character should be solid and all other items etc. should go transparent around the character.

Edit: I've just logged into game and it's daytime, this problem doesn't seem to arise. Probably just a night time problem.

6. Target then Kill
Why does the player target with the first click, then attack on the second ? would it not be easier to Click and attack on first hit ?

A few of the questions you bring up here can actually be fixed. Go into the game settings (hotkey U) and fix there whatever is bothering you.

2. Transparent un-lockable screens
All the 'screens' i.e. Inventory, Chat etc. are transparent. Maybe have a few fixed solid screens like chat, health etc. like most games and little buttons to link to the other menu's this way it's easier to find something i might want to find. Not like the Menu on the right with the 3 tabs tho.. bit of an eye sore when playing the game. Just little buttons with definitive pics. (i.e. little character pic for Character Status window, little box pic for Inventory window etc.)

Transparency can be tweaked if you right click on the window tab. Oh and the main window can be put in icon mode much more practical. But mostly, we just remember the hotkeys (all visible here : hotkey K) and bring up windows when we need them.

3. Unused menu's
I've had a click around the game and appears to be ALOT of menu's to almost everything. *sigh*
I'm not far into the game, but i'm not sure of the feature to follow a mob or to do emotes at forage area. Is there a need for any of those emotes ? In most games it's nice and easy, and you just type the expression you wish to portray.

Emotes have a set fix, so you can't for example emote a /kiss or such. But anyone on the list will work if you type /emote, such as /evil, /love, /scared, /megalomaniac and so on .

5. Look around while fighting
I've noticed that when fighting, if you turn the camera around to look around the land that the camera moves back to default (behind the character) when the character attacks. Not handy if your keeping an eye on another character or other mobs.

Try using NUMPAD 1 and 2 to look around, might work better. You might also want to keep an eye on your compass (hotkey C) to watch those mobs .

8. End User License Agreement
This seems to pop up after logging in username/password. Any reason why it asks me to 'Accept' everytime ?

It's to make sure you actually do agree. EULA has changed slightly now and then I believe, and by clicking it each time you renew your agreement.

11. Talk Control
There are like 4/5 different tabs for talking. Maybe have 1 chat page, but depending on the chat 'type' then apply different colours. (i.e. If a person in the party talks to you then display party chat in Purple and common chat in white). Activate party chat by clicking a button or apply a command before talking (i.e. //party Hey)

The "user" chat does just that. With /say for around, /re for region, /te for team and /gu for guild.

12. Quick Bar
At the top is a quick bar menu that has 2 rows of 10 (i think) for actions and skills etc. If the top row is 1~0 on the keyboard what are the 'up arrow' 1~0 buttons? also it seems that you can have upto to 10 different sets of quick keys.. Any need for this many? can people not just change the skills they have for the battle they need? i'm sure 20 Quick keys is enough for any battle.

Noooooo actually, a few of us would like even more quickbars. The way it works, is you'll probably end up with a couple quickbars in which actions are for melee, maybe one for healing, one or two for offensive magic, a couple for harvesting / crafting ... It's a realy pain to have to adjust your stanzas each time if the balance you had found was perfect .

[aylwyne]

Hey,

I'm new to this game and have spent a few hours on it and i'm having difficulting grasping the game structure. I've looked around the website and it appears the company is moving this game forward fast, and giving people the choice on a few of it's features. I'd like to say that, altho this game has alot to offer, it might be too much, esspecially to new players.

Welcome to Ryzom! It's interesting to read your feedback, especially on the interface design. I've had my interface customized for so long that I can't even remember what it was like when I started and what was confusing.

I'd like to suggest a few things that have got to me while i've been playing..

1. Character going transparent
As the Character is centre of your game, the Players character should be solid and all other items etc. should go transparent around the character.

Edit: I've just logged into game and it's daytime, this problem doesn't seem to arise. Probably just a night time problem.

I don't like this either. Under the game configuration window ('U' key), you can change this so your character doesn't fade at all.

2. Transparent un-lockable screens
All the 'screens' i.e. Inventory, Chat etc. are transparent. Maybe have a few fixed solid screens like chat, health etc. like most games and little buttons to link to the other menu's this way it's easier to find something i might want to find. Not like the Menu on the right with the 3 tabs tho.. bit of an eye sore when playing the game. Just little buttons with definitive pics. (i.e. little character pic for Character Status window, little box pic for Inventory window etc.)

Again, you can customize the amount of window fading (or if there is fading at all) in the configuration window. Also, you can change the main game menu (the one with the three tabs) to an Icon mode by right-clicking on it.

3. Unused menu's
I've had a click around the game and appears to be ALOT of menu's to almost everything. *sigh*
I'm not far into the game, but i'm not sure of the feature to follow a mob or to do emotes at forage area. Is there a need for any of those emotes ? In most games it's nice and easy, and you just type the expression you wish to portray.

Yeah, these menus could probably use some cleaning and better organization. For emotes, however, you can do an emote by just typeing /<emotename> where <emotename> is what you see in those menus. You can see a full list here

4. Default Weapon
I'm not sure if i've set my character up wrong, or i can change what i've done, But i seem to have 'melee' as my default attack. If i wish to kill a mob with magic, i have to target the mob, then click the Quick Key for the magic spell, and keep clicking the Quick key for magic to Que it up as the next attack, unlike the Default 'melee' Skill which auto Ques.

Being able to "auto queue" magic actions has been requested for a long time. You're definitely not alone in that.

5. Look around while fighting
I've noticed that when fighting, if you turn the camera around to look around the land that the camera moves back to default (behind the character) when the character attacks. Not handy if your keeping an eye on another character or other mobs.

This aggrevates me too. In beta, it didn't do this. You could swing the camera around and it would stay where you put it. I can't stand it always swinging back to my current target for each action. And it's not always the target of the action, it's the current target when the action begins executing.

6. Target then Kill
Why does the player target with the first click, then attack on the second ? would it not be easier to Click and attack on first hit ?

I'm going to have to disagree here. It's nice to be able to target something without attacking it to check the level, point it out to teammates, etc.

Edit: I just reread your initial suggestion and I think I misunderstood. I think you're suggesting removing the second click altogether and not having the attack start until you explicitly initiate an action. If that's the case, then I agree.

7. Loading up in Windows
Just a slight problem with the game loading in a window to start up, my res is 1024x768, i have the game set to the same res, so when the game loads i have to auto hide my Start menu to get to the bottom of the screen, which contains the [Delete] [Start] buttons on the character select screen.

Are you running in windowed mode? If so, you could reduce the height slightly to account for the taskbar. If not, then I'm not sure what's happening for you as in full-screen mode it should appear on top of everything, including the task bar.

8. End User License Agreement
This seems to pop up after logging in username/password. Any reason why it asks me to 'Accept' everytime ?

Probably just erring on the side of caution. Most games I've played do it this way. Overall a pretty minor inconvenience in the big picture.

9. Quatering/Collecting/Money
I must say that it's alot of effort of quatering then collecting items from a mobs, especially if you cant 'target' the mob then have a hotkey for Quatering and collecting. Maybe the mobs could drop any items they hold onto the floor, then maybe have a hot key for collecting all items on the floor within a certain distance of the character. Also it occured to me that mobs don't give 'money' when they die, you have to sell the collected items for 'money'. Maybe auto share any 'money' to all players that hit the mob worked out on damage ratio to 'money' given from mob and put this money straight into inventory. The same idea not just to parties but to solo play too.

This would be kinda hard to sort out. Many times people want the mats and not the money (for crafting). I suppose an auto-split feature to automatically divide the quartered mats could be useful though.

10. Definitive Skill Tree
As far as i can see, it's quite hard to make out a proper skill tree as such to see what items have been purchased and what they do. It seems altho alot of the info given is mumbo jumbo, really un-neccessary info. Maybe 4 tabs for the different types of skills. then a skill tree with every skill with-in 1 page of the skill tab. Then Hover Info. for any of the skills.

I've generally found the action progression window ('A' key) pretty straightforward. Because Ryzom's action progression is a tree and not a straight linear progression, you can't really show all actions in one list in a meaningful way. However, if you click on any node of the tree, you should see all of the actions available within that node.

11. Talk Control
There are like 4/5 different tabs for talking. Maybe have 1 chat page, but depending on the chat 'type' then apply different colours. (i.e. If a person in the party talks to you then display party chat in Purple and common chat in white). Activate party chat by clicking a button or apply a command before talking (i.e. //party Hey)

You can chat on a specific channel similar to what you describe. Like "/team <message>" will send the message to the team channel. Likewise, there's /region, /guild, /say (/say = around).

12. Quick Bar
At the top is a quick bar menu that has 2 rows of 10 (i think) for actions and skills etc. If the top row is 1~0 on the keyboard what are the 'up arrow' 1~0 buttons? also it seems that you can have upto to 10 different sets of quick keys.. Any need for this many? can people not just change the skills they have for the battle they need? i'm sure 20 Quick keys is enough for any battle.

Shift+number is for the bottom row in the hands bar. And yes, as you get higher, you'll find that you'll probably need more than 20. I have almost every bar completely full (fight, heal, mage, one for each of the 5 terrain specs in harvesting, crafting, range fight).

[marct]

I think that this is all still proof that Nevrax needs a bit more work on making the user experience for a new player a little easier.

All of this information should be easily available in-game.

[acridiel]

It is avaliable...

By taking the new and improved "Tutorial" in the Help Menue, you´ll leran MUCH about the UI. Only Problem here is NOONE knows thta it´s there *LOL*

Acridiel

[swe999]

Isn't it funny that most of the things he wants are already there?
The only thing I agree with is the whole snap to focus when you attack or cast a spell.

[yahangir]

As a tester myself, I think there are a few too many windows and menus in the game. This reflects the style of older games like Anarchy Online and Eve and allthough they are all customisable there are critical menus you can't really close without impairing yourself.

Many of these windows should be combined into one, like system information (how much damage you do etc.) should be combined within the chat menu, and the map should be behind the compass.

I do not doubt that the complexity of the user interface scares away certain potential customers that are used to self explaining games like World of Warcraft. I wouldn't want this game to be WoW, but if there is one thing that you have to give the people at Blizzard credit for, it's the user friendliness of it's UI.

If the developers insist on such a complex user interface, they really should introduce a tutorial. The island on which you get dumped after character creation doesn't really adequately explain how things work. When you forget details about what the welcome bots told you, there is no way (as far as i see) to recall this information except for a journal with only the most basic of notes.

Conclusion:
Do not get me wrong, I love the lore, the character design and the friendliness of Ryzom's community (the few i met), but it's far from inviting to a player that doesn't want to constantly bother other people for information that should have been present in a manual that seems to be strangely nowhere to be found on the website.

[mtsmith]

As a tester myself, I think there are a few too many windows and menus in the game. This reflects the style of older games like Anarchy Online and Eve and allthough they are all customisable there are critical menus you can't really close without impairing yourself.

Many of these windows should be combined into one, like system information (how much damage you do etc.) should be combined within the chat menu, and the map should be behind the compass.

I do not doubt that the complexity of the user interface scares away certain potential customers that are used to self explaining games like World of Warcraft. I wouldn't want this game to be WoW, but if there is one thing that you have to give the people at Blizzard credit for, it's the user friendliness of it's UI.

If the developers insist on such a complex user interface, they really should introduce a tutorial. The island on which you get dumped after character creation doesn't really adequately explain how things work. When you forget details about what the welcome bots told you, there is no way (as far as i see) to recall this information except for a journal with only the most basic of notes.

Conclusion:
Do not get me wrong, I love the lore, the character design and the friendliness of Ryzom's community (the few i met), but it's far from inviting to a player that doesn't want to constantly bother other people for information that should have been present in a manual that seems to be strangely nowhere to be found on the website.

Unfortunately, Blizzard has often sacrificed content and value-added functionality to cater to inexperienced gamers. This allows them to make games that appeal to a broader audience, but never have I felt it to enhance the overall experience.

The in-game help and tutorial system covers every portion of the user interfact, menu items, windows, etc. This window is enabled when you first load the game and it's a really good idea to read it. It wasn't available when I got a beta account and logged in (that I recall) and it is at least a part of reason I only played beta for a couple of hours, the main being that my computer couldn't handle the game.

Give it some time, read the tutorials, and don't be afraid to try different settings. I have yet to see a setting that is unstable, although performance settings will have varied effects on different computers. Personally, I would much rather have a highly customizable HUD style UI than a fixed UI taking up 10-25% of my screen as is typical in many modern games.

To be fair, though, if there were one aspect of the Ryzom UI/Mechanics that I find lacking, it is macro support. The in-game macros can be useful; assist and chat functionality can be very helpful. However, they are pretty limited to standard preset commands and almost defeat the purpose.

[stijn]

As a tester myself, I think there are a few too many windows and menus in the game. This reflects the style of older games like Anarchy Online and Eve and allthough they are all customisable there are critical menus you can't really close without impairing yourself.

Many of these windows should be combined into one, like system information (how much damage you do etc.) should be combined within the chat menu, and the map should be behind the compass.

I do not doubt that the complexity of the user interface scares away certain potential customers that are used to self explaining games like World of Warcraft. I wouldn't want this game to be WoW, but if there is one thing that you have to give the people at Blizzard credit for, it's the user friendliness of it's UI.

If the developers insist on such a complex user interface, they really should introduce a tutorial. The island on which you get dumped after character creation doesn't really adequately explain how things work. When you forget details about what the welcome bots told you, there is no way (as far as i see) to recall this information except for a journal with only the most basic of notes.

Conclusion:
Do not get me wrong, I love the lore, the character design and the friendliness of Ryzom's community (the few i met), but it's far from inviting to a player that doesn't want to constantly bother other people for information that should have been present in a manual that seems to be strangely nowhere to be found on the website.

Mmh true, the manual isn't really good (if you find the right manual to start with...) but discovering how everything workd is really fun to start with...

The menu's is a thing you have to get used to I think. In the beginning it's a bith hard (maybay), but after a while, you won't be able to act without them
I think, (not 100% sure but around 95%) that the system window, if desired, can be perfectly fit into the 'main chat' window ( that one whit the differnt chat modes in)
Mostly of the tutorials on the refugee islands (=starter areas) don't provided enough info (not to say they are bad) but just ask in region chat for info or/and pm some older players with some questions (I'm Ruhen, at your service..., I'm sure you will find lot's of other players willing to help you out with any probs).

An thing is DON'T STAY TO LONG on the starter islands! If you feel comfortable with the game design or when you get bored on those islands, just go to the mainlands, use region chat, look for a guild or whatever. Don't be afraid, Ryzom has a real nice community , so just ask your questions, you won't be called a n00b or whatever...

Hope this clears a bith of your probs

grtz Ruhen


PS: my advice really don't be afraid of region chat, it is really helpfull
PS2: If this post contains reeeeaaally much nonsense just ignore... (beer is nice... )

[roninpvp]

Unfortunately, Blizzard has often sacrificed content and value-added functionality to cater to inexperienced gamers. This allows them to make games that appeal to a broader audience, but never have I felt it to enhance the overall experience.

I dont agree Blizzard games and other games have way more advanced features of customization available to their players than we do.

Lets just point out that we cant resize the actions or compas windows. Come on you know how small those things get when you start increasing the resolution.