Q&A: Answers To Questions From The Board - 2006-04-03

[soulsnatcher]

Today we bring you a Special Ring Q&A, with no less than 33 answers. More details are given here on what you are able to create with R², what you can bring or gain when playing a scenario, and some more information about the Beta.
All the questions listed below have been posted on the forum and directly answered there by Xavier, our Ring specialist. Feel free to give your opinion or ask other questions in the feedback thread!

[marct]

Ok, some of this makes sense in regards to the Ring Points. If the motivation of that and the 'rewards' is to get people to also spend time in the Ryzom we know today, I think that is a goos idea.

On the other side, Xavier's comment about earning stuff seems very off. Would you give a limited tool set to a map creator for BF2 until they made their first good map? What if the thing that inspires them is not in the initial toolset, and as a result they never even bother to create a map because they feel stiffled?

Things like permanently hosting good maps for no fee, seem like a great idea as a reward, a sign post of top ring scenarios, (most played today, most played past 10 days, most played last 30 days, highest rated in same timeframes, etc.) Seems valuable.

Earning points for time spent running your scenario, and such seem valid. But I think these things should not give you more things, but give you more flexibility and credit with the folks that are running the Ring system.


More thoughts to come.

[katriell]

22) I see reasons for limiting brand new players, but I see only problems with limiting long-time players, and thus supporters of the game. [Submitted by dazman76 (EN)]
We agree with you on this, that's why we want to relate the Ring points to the Ryzom character; currently we plan to give an amount of Ring points proportional to your character's level, but that's still being discussed - if you have better ideas, feel free to write them down here, we're reading!

The problem with this logic is that not all older players are high level. This means powerlevellers will have more options in the Ring, but powerlevellers usually aren't the kind of people who would make great things with the Ring...the people who would, are the people who spend much of their time doing things more constructive than levelling. So you're probably going to end up rewarding the wrong section of the playerbase.

And you still haven't said which character will be used to determine level.

Anyway, thanks for the answers. Long Q&As are always nice.

[richky]

The problem with this logic is that not all older players are high level. This means powerlevellers will have more options in the Ring, but powerlevellers usually aren't the kind of people who would make great things with the Ring...the people who would, are the people who spend much of their time doing things more constructive than levelling. So you're probably going to end up rewarding the wrong section of the playerbase.

And you still haven't said which character will be used to determine level.

Anyway, thanks for the answers. Long Q&As are always nice.

Yup, if the goal is to reward long-time players, then base it on length of subscription and not level of character .

[marct]

Yup, if the goal is to reward long-time players, then base it on length of subscription and not level of character .

It appears they are trying to encourage folks to spend time in the regular game, not just the ring by doing this.

After release that is at least. I get that impression by having no XP gain, etc. If they give XP catalysts, you can only use them in the rest of the game.

[kostika]

An interesting solution would be to base it on total number of levels on the character instead of highest level. This would balance things for those that are long time players who have alot of levels in alot of things, but aren't necessarily capped out in any one skill.

Still I think basing ring points on level of a toon is not a good idea.

[richky]

It appears they are trying to encourage folks to spend time in the regular game, not just the ring by doing this.

After release that is at least. I get that impression by having no XP gain, etc. If they give XP catalysts, you can only use them in the rest of the game.

Could be. However, I don't think that a player who has subscribed for a year but can only play, say, 10 hrs a week and spends the time exploring is less deserving than a player who has subscribed for 6 months and spent 20 hrs a week powerleveling. The cats raise another question in that regard. Basing points on character levels will mean that prospective Ring designers who prefer not to use cats will be penalized.

[dcaxe]

Have to say I agree that basing it only on the level of your charaters seems a little nasty, as a lot of the players I can see being good modders are not always the heavy leveling types.

Though to be fair, some of the heavy levelers, heavy hours user would make good mods as well.

There should be no reason why the ring points can't be earned from multiple sources though, so perhaps giving some rewards for high levels as well as playing time?

[dazman76]

I have to agree with Noin - as I felt when I first read these 'ring points' comments, the decision to drip-feed editor contents to the user is wrong I can wholly appreciate why that is the case for a game, and I agree with it. However, this is not a game - it's an editor, a creative piece of software. People cannot be expected to get excited about a toolkit that's partly functional - in essence, most people will be excited about R2 purely because of the level of control you guys are touting. When they find out they don't have that control, they will put R2 down and probably not come back to it.

I could agree with limiting the maps themselves - nobody needs the whole of Fyros to create their adventure - not YET anyway. Heck, I'd be happy with something the size of Hoï-Cho to be honest, if not smaller The thing is, if all I have to place in my Hoï-Cho are a few yubos, a couple of random NPCs and a small hut - I'm afraid you can keep your R2 How do you expect people to get interested in R2 and learn the tools, if they can't access anything interesting?

I have to wonder exactly who R2 is being built for. Existing Ryzom players? Well, you have a large number of people who have seen most of the current content of the game, and for over 12 months now (not including potential beta play of 6 months+). What use is limiting the content these guys can use, when:

1) They've seen it before
2) They've probably hunted it lots for mats
3) Some people would DESPERATELY like to have something new and creative to do, connected to Ryzom

So how about new players? Well, they won't have seen much of the land/flora/fauna, for sure. So you probably don't want them recreating Stainmoor Gate crawling with Kipucka. That's fair enough, but it seems to me the two types of player are very different, and thus you should be approaching them differently.

You NEED your current players to create content so R2 can be sold to your new guys, especially if they can only create 'yubo village'. Asking current players to grind for points is just wrong, when they've been hanging on and hoping something new would come along for months anyway. If you can't open all content to experienced players, please arrange something like a one-off payment to allow this.

And Xavier I'm sorry, but I disagree completely and vehemently with your "would you want to be big chief from the beginning?" comment. This is a TOOL, not a GAME. As I understood it, R2 was going to sell itself and Ryzom to new and old players alike. Above and beyond making scenarios for their own enjoyment, people will be making them so others can enjoy them too. Instances of direct-control will be low, if the scenarios are at all interesting - not everyone has 3 spare hours to play an NPC for the night, every night.

Nevrax's perspective on R2 seems confusing to me. That is, unless my own R2 perspective is wrong. If you release it with the current intentions and mechanics, you can certainly scratch one potential user off your list. Which I think would be a shame, since I love to use construction kits, I'm a programmer, and I spent almost as much of my WoW time doing UI scripting as I did playing. Having to wait to unlock editor content is an annoyance - having to actually finish a scenario, and get people to play/review it to open more editor options is a broken mechanic. How can people be expected to create interesting scenarios with limited options, and why should people have to play through these 'starter' scenarios in order to grant the editor more power? Do you honestly think that well help to sell your products? Didn't a recent forum post say "we're doing OK, but we need more players really"? If that's the case, then please, please see what's wrong here - stop overloading R2 with game mechanics, leave it as an interactive editor with the features that should be there from the start, and allow people to use your new creation for creating, rather than advancing yet another damn bar and level gauge.

After almost 12 months of inactivity I was still interested in R2 - if you continue down the current path, that interest will be gone, and there will be no returning after that for me. You currently have a golden opportunity here - going into 2006, the MMO climate is unsettled. Many players are unhappy with their current games, regardless of which game it is - sieze the opportunity in front of you, and release an R2 wrapped in gold rather than tin foil. I guarantee you'll have players flocking here to try R2 either way if you launch it well - what will they think to their hut-and-yubo-village after 2 hours' work?

Apologies for the rant, but those 33 answers are almost nails in the coffin for me. Some of them were very promising and quite intrigiung, and the rest completely cancelled those out.

[oldmess]

/tar Dazman
/agree wholeheartedly

I said similar things in the other thread on this issue, but want to re-iterate here just so y'all don't think this is just one or two people: R2 should be a tool and not a game in and of itself. The game is what we create with R2.

If you're worried about limiting our capabilities to prevent overloading your servers, then create 2 tiered pricing and allow people to band together if needed to pay for the higher tier. (i.e. a guild could pay for the subscription to the higher tier as a group or individuals could)

If you're just worried about newbies creating bad scenarios, then don't. Let the free market apply; let them create the good and the bad and we, as players, will decide what we like and will use. Apply some of Noin's ideas about "top X most used scenarios" or something like that to give people tools to see what scenarios are liked and which are not. Give us rating tools, but don't limit what we can do based on them. Just make the info available.

And, if you absolutely can't see letting a new player have full access, then don't let a new player even buy the R2 expansion until they've played the game for at least a month (not level based, please).

But for those of us that have been waiting for this long for new content, please please please don't trickle it out this way. It's just going to frustrate people.