Review of Ryzom posted to my guild of 200+

[daleknd]

Pheonyx, what do you mean Anarchy Online did not have instanced dungeons? Almsot all of the missions in game just sent you to some instanced dungeon. You'd see a constant stream of people heading to the same doors in cities because those were the entrances to the mission dungeons.

Some of the dungeons that were out in the wilderness were really bad in making you cross through a PvP zone to reach them even for relatively low level missions.

The problem with instancing is that it soon starts to feel like you are playing a single player game on your PC instead of a multi-player game online. Sure group missions were possible but during the months that I layed Ao they were bugged and not working.

The randomly generated instanced dungeons in games like AO or CoH to me get boring quickly. I'd rather have 3 well laid out dungeons and deal with overcamping than the assembly line randomness that instancing leads to.

Dalwin
humble forager of the Fyros

[evalisa]

AO invented instance dungions

[lupine04]

Pheonyx, what do you mean Anarchy Online did not have instanced dungeons? Almsot all of the missions in game just sent you to some instanced dungeon. You'd see a constant stream of people heading to the same doors in cities because those were the entrances to the mission dungeons.

Some of the dungeons that were out in the wilderness were really bad in making you cross through a PvP zone to reach them even for relatively low level missions.

The problem with instancing is that it soon starts to feel like you are playing a single player game on your PC instead of a multi-player game online. Sure group missions were possible but during the months that I layed Ao they were bugged and not working.

The randomly generated instanced dungeons in games like AO or CoH to me get boring quickly. I'd rather have 3 well laid out dungeons and deal with overcamping than the assembly line randomness that instancing leads to.

Dalwin
humble forager of the Fyros

I think he's referring to the places like Camelot, or Tower of Three Winds... or the Crippler Caves (in Shadowlands), static dungeons that everyone shared.. not the instanced areas for missions.

In any case, it's real interesting to read this thread and see the division in opinion about instanced areas.. I can see it from both sides.. Coming from FFXI, it's a nice change to be able to go after something without having to worry about there already being a whole crowd of other folks there (many times, bots)... On the other hand, the instanced areas do start to feel very repetitive (thematically, not layout-wise, obviously and you do start to long for human interaction .

Personally, WoW, from what I've heard and read about it (even in official previews, etc) is that it's sort of a MMORPG-ified Hack-N-Slash game.

A good friend of mine is interested in checking it out.. I'm not all that interested.

I was going to try out Everquest II, more out of curiosity as to what all the hype is around it.. but.. I dunno.. the look of it is sorta "plastic-looking" to me. I'm feeling more and more at home in Atys

I really like Ryzom's fantastical look. I like Ryzom's gameplay and so far I like the balancing between adventuring and crafting. I think the introduction of NPC vendors will greatly help in addressing the trouble people have finding (and selling) various equipment.. and should help to get a nice player economy going.

It occurs to me that the people who least like the idea of either crafting your own gear, or gathering the materials for others to do it are possibly those who just want to go out and level their weapon skills... call it power-leveling if you will. Else, if you enjoy doing different things with your time, it seems to me that the ability to switch your time up between different activities would be welcome. It is for me, anyway.

[spaaz69]

Sorry, but I've been beta testing WoW for months now and it's the most watered down generic MMO I've played. The crafting system in WoW compared to this game or many others is also very generic. You don't have freedom to go anywhere you want, youre more confined and directed where to go much like KOTOR. Oddly enough everyone there bashes EQ and says how horrible SOE and EQ are, yet they are trying to turn the game into EQ with consistant camping and exacerbating raids. I may be the only one who thinks WoW is no more than a generic MMO.

Like many other MMO's people who covenant that game are going to be dissappointed by, yet again, broken classes, consistent nerf bats, and the game will hit the stores unfinished from what was promised to be in beta, but was pushed back.

[raynes]

Sorry, but I've been beta testing WoW for months now and it's the most watered down generic MMO I've played. The crafting system in WoW compared to this game or many others is also very generic. You don't have freedom to go anywhere you want, youre more confined and directed where to go much like KOTOR. Oddly enough everyone there bashes EQ and says how horrible SOE and EQ are, yet they are trying to turn the game into EQ with consistant camping and exacerbating raids. I may be the only one who thinks WoW is no more than a generic MMO.

Like many other MMO's people who covenant that game are going to be dissappointed by, yet again, broken classes, consistent nerf bats, and the game will hit the stores unfinished from what was promised to be in beta, but was pushed back.

Not WoW. It's going to be 100% perfect and all other games will close up shop. LOL

[fellgrim]

Asheron's Call 1 had an interesting approach to dealing with camping for uber gear drops. (*the* pitfall of EQ and EQ2, in my opinion, and to some extent a pitfall in Anarchy Online as well.) In AC1, all manner of mobs randomly dropped special items called "motes." When you had collected enough motes, a mid- to high- crafter character could transform those motes into fragments, then bars, etc. When you finally had a bar or two, you could combine that with a quest reward item to craft a truly uber piece of gear.

GOD NO NOT THE FREAKIN MOTE DROPS!!!!

The mote drops drove me crazy in AC1. Running all over the freakin' world looking for fragments or shadows or whatnot... At least with foraging, your 'motes' are, once you locate the spawn point ('sources'), always available to you unless someone has depleted the site or it's time-dependent. You don't have to pull your hair out searching for critter spawn areas or camping the heck out of the spawn areas that are well-known. Foraging is so easy to level, I can't imagine why you'd want to go the mote route instead. Running off some forage levels and prospecting for sources vs. killing 10000 creatures to get 100 motes...which one is the big timewaster again? And I'm being generous with the 100/1 ratio of mote drops. Some of those critter mote drops were 0.5% or less....at least back when I played.

Want to feel like you're 'fighting' something? Pretend that source blowup is actually a kipee taking a swipe at your head

[lupine04]

You don't have freedom to go anywhere you want, youre more confined and directed where to go much like KOTOR.

Funny.. that rings a bit of FFXI, too. You have all these enormous areas just begging to be explored, but you can't because if you wander off too far by yourself (or even with a group, if you can get one together in the first place), you're likely to run into stuff you can't handle - the mob level range in a given area in FFXI can be as much as 20 levels.

Along with that, you pretty much have to go to very specific locations at certain level ranges if you want to be able to find any groups to get with to level up some more. Of course, since everyone else believes the same thing, those areas are often over-camped. It's really ridiculous.

Anyway... I guess it's more a trend than an anomaly .

[phoenyx]

Funny.. that rings a bit of FFXI, too. You have all these enormous areas just begging to be explored, but you can't because if you wander off too far by yourself (or even with a group, if you can get one together in the first place), you're likely to run into stuff you can't handle - the mob level range in a given area in FFXI can be as much as 20 levels.

Along with that, you pretty much have to go to very specific locations at certain level ranges if you want to be able to find any groups to get with to level up some more. Of course, since everyone else believes the same thing, those areas are often over-camped. It's really ridiculous.

Anyway... I guess it's more a trend than an anomaly .

I played FFXI. I've played WoW closed beta for more than three months now. The two games are nothing alike in this regard. What the original poster of your quoted statement meant is that you are guided from zone to zone as you progress, by the quests that are offered to you. The quests you get suggest which zones you should explore next as you reach the level range needed to do well in that next zone. Or zones, I should mention. For both Horde and Alliance characters there are actually two sets of level-appropriate zones, or more, at any given level.

This is really no different than in Ryzom here. As a Matis, for instance, you leave the newbie lands and find yourself in the zone with all your cities. This is a good place for you until you are able to tackle level 50+ mobs. If you go to the north border, the mobs in the next zone are obviously wayyyyyyy too hard for you. If you go to the south border, the mobs are just right for you. WoW and SoR are *no* different in this regard, except that WoW offers you more choices.

In FFXI, you also had more level-appropriate zones to choose from, but you wouldn't want to even attempt soloing in any of them after you hit about level 13+.

[phoenyx]

GOD NO NOT THE FREAKIN MOTE DROPS!!!!

The mote drops drove me crazy in AC1. Running all over the freakin' world looking for fragments or shadows or whatnot... At least with foraging, your 'motes' are, once you locate the spawn point ('sources'), always available to you unless someone has depleted the site or it's time-dependent. You don't have to pull your hair out searching for critter spawn areas or camping the heck out of the spawn areas that are well-known. Foraging is so easy to level, I can't imagine why you'd want to go the mote route instead. Running off some forage levels and prospecting for sources vs. killing 10000 creatures to get 100 motes...which one is the big timewaster again? And I'm being generous with the 100/1 ratio of mote drops. Some of those critter mote drops were 0.5% or less....at least back when I played.

Want to feel like you're 'fighting' something? Pretend that source blowup is actually a kipee taking a swipe at your head

Some people would consider running all over the world and killing tons of mobs to be..... FUN. Perhaps more fun that clicking on a source node and clicking again and again until you score a mode 1 or 0, then watching little meters drop, healing after you take an explosion, watching little meters drop some more, getting ready to hit the sit key when you realize you're not going to squeeze out that 4th item before the white line runs out... And then sitting on your butt for a minute or more to recharge your focus so that you can do it all over again. For hours at a time. To make one suit of armor. That wears out way too fast if you're above level 50.

The mote-based items in AC1 were not something you could really focus on doing as your primary goal. It was a long-term goal. Something always at the back of your mind. An "opportunistic" kind of quest that you did here an there as opportunity presented itself. Getting enough motes for a full suit of greater shadow armor could take weeks and months. But was GSA mandatory? Nope. Could you get along fine without it, even on the Darktide server (the FFA PvP server)? Sure you could. You didn't *need* GSA. Or hollow weapons. They were uberrific and a serious status symbol, but you could get along fine without them.

In Ryzom, however, somebody is forced to sit there at resource nodes for hours on end in order for you to have gear that is *needed*.

[tgile001]

I have been playing Ryzom for 2 weeks now and I like the skill system very much. However, the biggest problem for me is that I do not like harvesting. Finding the specific mats you need is very frustrating, taking hours. Then once you find them, you have to just sit there and watch the little line drop to make sure you don't deplete it. It takes many more hours to get enough mats to make 1 suit of armor. So, I have decided harvesting is not for me.

I do like crafting however. But, like has been previously stated, there is a HUGE difference in crafted with foraged mats and mob drop or vendor bought ones. For example, I notice that my choice QL 20 pike I made in the noob lands was much better than the QL 50 ones sold on the vendors on the mainland. Like double the dmg making vendor wpns worthless. Also, the mob drop mats from the kippees and other mobs on the mainland QL is very low compared to the toughness of the mob. So, even getting mats high enough QL to craft a semi decent wpn appropriate for your level is impossible if you are soloing. And, mob drop crafted items are also very inferior to harvested mats as well. So, taking these things into consideration, it is kind of pointless to craft unless you harvest too.

So, no harvesting and no crafting for me...What does that leave me for getting gear? Well, I decided to just kill things and level and make alot of money and support the crafter community by paying them to make my equipment. Guess what? I get on regional chat and ask for an item and I get no responses. I can't get the gear because the crafters are not eager to make you an item. From what I can tell most lower level crafters who take the time to harvest and craft the good gear keep it for themselves or for a few friends because it takes too long to harvest all the mats for good stuff. And the higher level crafters do not want to waste time making low QL stuff for lower level players.

So, it is very difficult to even get gear if you dont craft or harvest. I am hoping that the vendors they put in game will alleviate this problem. But when are they putting them in? They told us the first major patch with the vendors would be within a few weeks of the game going live. Well, here it is 3 weeks in and no patch and not even a word from the developers for an eta. Hmmmm, this is not good. So what am I to do? I cannot level effectively because I cannot find anyone willing to make me gear and I do not want to bore myself to death harvesting....

I like this game alot and am trying to hang on until the crafting vendors are in game. But, for me, if I cannot establish a good way to get gear, I will sadly be moving on to another game.

Not to mention I really wanted to be a ranged wpn user in this game and that is not possible either atm because of the insane costs (money wise and sp wise) for ammo. But that is for another time to discuss.

Heres to hoping Nevrax gets the economy working pretty fast!