The game was ruined by community

[cielchan]

The community is one of the best out there, period. If you were here from the beginning you would know. With the direction change a different community was attracted, yes, but the core of the players who love the game and stay loyal to it originate from the old community.

I think the community is the reason we are still all here and alive, not the other way round.

[martl]

Not the outposts themselves ruined the game, but their poor implementation did. They might have worked better if shires would have been implemented same time or shortly after, but who knows...)
A system that offers rewards like cats and op mats to those who are already powerful makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker. Yes, trading was possible, but that made the ppl who have chosen a smaller guild practically digslaves for those who were in a strong guild. At certain times, it was close to impossible for a Kami to obtain q250 rubbarn, simply because no Kara guild in posession of such an op saw any need to trade, why, when the own guild swims in sup zun...

On a long term basis, this leads to one faction that is at mercy of the stronger faction, with no hope at all to recover. (Yeah, we saw a turnaround in the Kami-Kara balance of strength, but that was basically due to many Kara members leaving bored, with a huge drop in population).
We have a 2 class guild system, those with an OP and those without. Recruiting new members and keeping them was incredibly difficult for a guild without an op.
This annihilated a lot of the smaller guilds who added depth and colour to atys.

Also, the lack of other new content led to the outpost battles being the only thing to do for high lvl vets, bar the odd boss killing (which is kinda repetitive too) and sup camping.

I think the game is in a cul-de-sac.. add high lvl content plus a lvl cap raise - all the superlevelled peeps here will have been there, seen it all within a couple of weeks (how long did it take the first player on Cho to master all jewelcraft?)

Add new areas and reset levels - most vets will leave because they gotta restart from scratch.

pessimistic, true; i really wish the new owners have the killer idea to rez ryzom and are working on it very hard atm, but i doubt it.

[sidusar]

On a long term basis, this leads to one faction that is at mercy of the stronger faction, with no hope at all to recover. (Yeah, we saw a turnaround in the Kami-Kara balance of strength, but that was basically due to many Kara members leaving bored, with a huge drop in population).
We have a 2 class guild system, those with an OP and those without. Recruiting new members and keeping them was incredibly difficult for a guild without an op.
This annihilated a lot of the smaller guilds who added depth and colour to atys.

Not so at all.

The turnaround in the OP battles was partly because a number of Kara members got bored and left, but also for a significant part because the Kami side put a lot of effort into growing and getting better organised. It was an awesome archievement on their part when they suddenly took 6 outposts at once and permanently turned the tides when it seemed they were all but beaten, and I'll not have it talked down as "that's just because there weren't any karas left". There were plenty left back then, the Kami massively outnumbering the Kara at OP battles didn't happen until much later.

Recruiting and holding new members has always and will always be difficult for a small guild, simply because people join a guild to have other people to play with and thus most will leave if the guild isn't active enough. Small guilds also die easily and often, exactly because they're small: there's only a few active members, thus only a few need to leave to annihilate the guild. And now with the population dwindling alltogether for the past years, ofcourse the smaller guilds are going to be the first to disappear. OPs have nothing to do with this. Several guilds have grown from scratch to being large guilds while OPless and didn't obtain an OP until they had grown large. Other guilds have acquired OPs while small, and stayed small while still holding on to their OP.

I agree with your assessment that OPs were poorly implemented. Severely poorly implemented actually. I've no idea what the devs were thinking at the time. But it's not like OPs are at fault for everything and anything that goes wrong.

[martl]

The turnaround in the OP battles was partly because a number of Kara members got bored and left, but also for a significant part because the Kami side put a lot of effort into growing and getting better organised. It was an awesome archievement on their part when they suddenly took 6 outposts at once and permanently turned the tides when it seemed they were all but beaten, and I'll not have it talked down as "that's just because there weren't any karas left". There were plenty left back then, the Kami massively outnumbering the Kara at OP battles didn't happen until much later.

i agree, it was a major achievement of the Kami guilds to keep their ranks organized and motivated (and in the game). How much of the success of this campaign was due to the fact that the Kara guilds members were just plain bored, having outlevelled every skill they wanted, etc. How many boosted sup zun amps do you want to craft? how many times do you wnt to kill Mekoo with 3? remains a mystery.

Recruiting and holding new members has always and will always be difficult for a small guild, simply because people join a guild to have other people to play with and thus most will leave if the guild isn't active enough. Small guilds also die easily and often, exactly because they're small: there's only a few active members, thus only a few need to leave to annihilate the guild. And now with the population dwindling alltogether for the past years, ofcourse the smaller guilds are going to be the first to disappear. OPs have nothing to do with this. Several guilds have grown from scratch to being large guilds while OPless and didn't obtain an OP until they had grown large. Other guilds have acquired OPs while small, and stayed small while still holding on to their OP.

Here i disagree. Without ops, there is no other incentive for joining a larger guild than having more people online in the playtime, which is a factor for some, i agree.
But if you join the game, decide to go to a small guild, and then see your Silan mates outrun you on levels with double speed, that feels sucky.
I was an officer in such times with MoM, and first question when talking to a young homin typically was about cats.

[sidusar]

Well there's no point arguing over the details really. As I do agree the outposts in their current form encourage exactly what you describe, hence poor implementation. I just don't want to make it sound like OPs are solely responsible. There are other factors too.

(Okay, saying "OPs have nothing to do with this" was a step too far towards the other extreme and probably didn't help my point )

[acridiel]

As someone said once:

"The winner in an MMORPG isn´t the one who after four month of play has everything maxed out, but doesn´t know what to do anymore. It´s the one who´s still got fun in a Game after four years of play."

Wise words.
Regarding people who leave a game because they´ve "finished leveling".
A play style I personally will never understand.
But that´s just me.


CU
Acridiel

[iphdrunk]

"The winner in an MMORPG isn´t the one who after four month of play has everything maxed out, but doesn´t know what to do anymore. It´s the one who´s still got fun in a Game after four years of play."

"The winner in an MMORPG isn't the one who's still got fun in a Game after four years of play. It's the one who's still got fun without playing the Game" -- wiser words? I don't know, I just made them up....

Joking aside, Acri, first, I am not sure of what's your point here. it's neither black or white. There's a trend to dismiss player concerns and general boredom as if coming from "i-win" button pushers. Between 4 months and 4 years there's an important gap.

You say that you will never understand that one can get the "finished levelling" feeling and quit (which, imho, is the wise thing to do if you feel so, rather than staying out of inertia). Myself, I am also intringued by those who can get entertained with a brown paper box for years, and sometimes they don't realize the rose died and there is no smell. Their own bragging rights and achievements is to state that after 4 years of play they have not reached level 16, to be praised for having found entertainment options that rendered leveling unimportant. They would do things that remove XP if it was enabled in the game...

To each its own, without going extremist...

Oh, I forgot,

[dakhound]

terrible thread

[sx4rlet]

terrible thread

very well said.

[magick1]

Not the outposts themselves ruined the game, but their poor implementation did. They might have worked better if shires would have been implemented same time or shortly after, but who knows...)

I don't think hobbits would have helped.

Sooorry, I couldn't help myself. Feel free to get Ratara to punch me in the face (that way I can get a t-shirt.)