A player editorial. No, I do not work for Nevrax.
After patch one, I am one of the apparently very few who are enjoying the game more than pre-patch. To me, things are now challenging. Combat is fast-paced and demands more quick reflexes, caution, and thinking. When I fight a prime yber, which gives me 1500 xp, I take a beating and I have to keep my wits together to come out on top. I like this.
Yes, a lot of people have left; patch one made a lot of people very unhappy that the game isn't as easy as it was before, and a lot of them quit. Some of the people who have quit are so angry that they have chosen to stick around on these boards and complain about things some more, leaving choice droppings like, "patch 20 is another piece of crap." I suppose that is their perogative, although it is irritating to me, personally.
In response to that "piece of crap" post I just mentioned, Tayster offered us this bit of insight:
I think he or she is dead on with this one. One of the things I have noticed post-patch is that you never hear of anyone even mentioning going to other civilizations anymore. Before patch one, that, along with getting into the prime roots, were the major things that the high-level players were doing. I think that that didn't fit into the vision that Nevrax has for the game; the meeting of the different civs and exploration of prime roots are supposed to come much, much later in their timeline. If you think of it in terms of the story, it pans out like this:Tayster wrote:Here's what I believe happened. Nevrax envisioned a game. They released it. The game then started heading somewhere completely different. This patch is meant to correct that.
Homins were decimated by the kitins. Thousands died, and the few that were left were shepherded by the united efforts of Kami and Karavan to refugee lands. Each civilization spent three generations there. It was a long time--again, three generations--before things had settled down to the point where the Kami and Karavan felt it would be safe to return homins from isolation back to the surface of Atys. And this is where we, the players of SoR, find ourselves now--facing an overtly hostile new world, trying to survive and rebuild from the ground up.If you think about it like that, the fact that people were running around digging materials out of the prime roots and staging massive guild migrations between civilizations seems out of sync. I believe this is why the devs implemented patch one.
Many people will read the above reasons and respond that it is the devs fault, then, for making things too easy in the first place, and, since everyone was used to things being like that and having fun playing that way, it is the devs responsibility to roll things back to the way they were before. But, if things were too easy, you cannot entirely blame the devs for a lack of foresight. MMORPG players are an obsessive bunch. There were large amounts of players, many who seem to have left now, who played for massive amounts of time and were able to build their characters to levels of 150+. My thinking is that that's not what the devs had planned for this game, either, and so they made sweeping and drastic changes to stop that kind of rapid advancement. What I am getting at is: if you are going to say the devs are at fault for implementing patch one, you've also got to step back and see why they would think it necessary to make such major changes. They do have a plan for this game, and that plan was being jeopardized by a section of the population who advanced quicker than they had expected. To keep the plan on track, they had to put the player population in check.
Many people are saying that the devs have committed suicide with patch one. Look, the devs don't want to kill their own game. They may want to stick to their vision, though. I believe that there are players who were, are, and will be excited by that vision and will stick with Ryzom. Many may be leaving now, but I venture to say that more, who are more in-line with the devs' vision for Ryzom, will come. That's just what I think and hope; only time will tell.
Finally, if you are not satisfied with this game because it is not perfect and does not quench your thirst for instant gratification, or if you just simply don't find it fun anymore, it doesn't bother me if you leave and go find something more to your liking. I hope that is possible, and that you are able to find something fun.
