Yet another new player view of the game

[glynnj]

First off, before you start reading, After playing ryzom for my 2 weeks trial ive signed up, suspended my 2 eve online accounts, my DAoC account and my Everquest account and now only play Ryzom, rather too much my wife would say hehe
So expect the following to be either praise or constructive criticism

My first impressions of Ryzom were mixed, when you download the trial you get no manual, so the learning curve is quite steep, with most of your information coming from the limited help system, bugging some poor mug who was foolish enough to answer your first question posted into region ( hehe ), and the occasional resort to asking a guide or gm (who were pleasantly and surpisingly helpful)

Well heres a few notes on my views of the different aspects of the game i have experienced, hopefully in the order i experienced them, with a couple of my own opinions for improvement.

Harvesting - more interesting, more complex than simple dig it up and use it - similar in a few ways to how SWG handled it, with materials having different qualities.
I was a bit disapointed that the resource was always a pile of green blobs and wondered if it wouldnt be nice to have different colours or appearances based on the material found, even some different effects for explosions - or even totally different hazard reactions.
One thing that would be nice to see is an occasional Super Success - so when you find a material and harvest the first batch it suddenly explodes and covers a BIG area arround you with loads of visible nodes of resources.

Combat - fast - i like that, but there are a few things that bug, for example gingos loose their xp value quite quickly yet are still able to be a real pain when they gang up on you. If there was a bigger xp reward for handling a multiple opponent combat this might be more balanced - i love taking on five gingos in mad rush - much more fun that just one bigger opponent, but the reward doesnt seem so good.

General interface - Generally easy to use - escpecially love the multiple desktop - some wierd and distracting effects can happen, occasionally whilst in combat i spin round to tackle that aggro that just plowed into the back of me to find my view of the screen completely obscured by the top of a tree that was 20 yards away.
Also it would be very nice if i could pan out my view just that little bit further.

Crafting
Again similar in some ways to SWG, and a good system, but its unclear at the begining what you are suposed to use for what part, I soon figured this out and found it to be one of the more interesting parts of the game.

Skills and stanzas
The way the whole stanza and skill progression - the bricks effect - works well, but a lot of the skill descriptions are too ambiguous, so when your looking ata a skill you sometimes dont really know whether it would be useful or not. Eventually through trial and error i got used to what was useful at early levels - because although you have no limit on what you can learn, you can still make your progress more difficult for yourself by buying the less useful stanzas early on.

Noob to Mainland gap

I stuggled with this, the game tells you you are ready and level 20, you're not by far, after four atempts ive succeeded to get along ok after waiting til i was level 25 in everything and level 35+ in at least one combat orientated area, I think the noob area needs a little bit of an NPC info rewrite - not loads, but just enough to give new players a fighting chance.


Community/social

The community and social atmosphere outstrips anything i have played so far in any game, but the chat channels i find are a setback to this
you cant just create a channel and invite some friends to it - other than the team channel, theres no little indicator to say that a new message has appeared in a channel so sometimes i miss things people have said because i was too busy to be constantly swicthing channels.
Some global channels would be nice - i mean other than region, maybe a trade channel or two, or an OOC channel.
It would be nice to be able to alter the size of the text so i could fit more in without taking up screen space aswell.

Overall the whole community atmosphere is far nicer in ryzom than in any other game ive played, ive been to a few events recently - a wedding and a fashion show, im yet to experience the big combat ones, (i missed the nexus event recently)

There im done - all in all im enjoyiong ryzom and looking forward to watching the game grow.

Im also anticipating the new patch (thats going on whilst i type this)

I think it is very inconsiderate of you not to do the patch whilst i was asleep last night ( joking )

Wondering if you could hurry up please i want to play before my wife comes home and gets me to do more decorating

[glynnj]

oo sorry - i just looked and that post was bigger than i intended

[glynnj]

hehe i also managed to put this into the wrong forum - its suposed to be in the european english one lol (DOH)

[glynnj]

could you please remove it? ill post another one where its suposed to be

[draggi]

My first impressions of Ryzom were mixed, when you download the trial you get no manual, so the learning curve is quite steep(

Hi glynnj, I fully agree with you on this point. The worst thing is that the first mission in the noob island is not helpful. Remember the first thing it ask me to do is to find the warrior trainer. Where on heck do I find him? At first, I thought of giving up this game but luckily I perserved.

After much exploring, I found the trainer and the most frustrating part is that the trainer did not teach me anything useful. After meeting the trainer, I still don't know how to fight. Same for all the trainer.

That's why personally I feel that the first mission is damn stupid, serving no purpose except telling u that the minimum level to get to mainland is 20.




I suggest that they add a true tutorial for new players. When a new player is created, they shall ask if the player wants to run a tutorial. The tutorial shall teach the basics of movement (arrow key, end, delete button). After that, it shall teach fighting (how to fight and combine stanza). Then magic, harvest and crafting

[glynnj]

Hi draggi - these thread was suposed to be on a different forum but i dont see the harm - i presume that the shards are the same.

Im glad you stuck it out - like me

I think yes, a new tutorial for noobs would make a big difference in perception of the game. I think a lot of trial members that could have been subscribers have been lost because the intro is unhelpful

as i posted i lost quite number of new friends over the first couple of weeks because of frustration - hehe even figuring out how to ask a question caused me problems at the start

Its a shame, of the six of us that first went to the mainland with high hopes and looking forward to what the new lands had to offer, i think only two of us continued a couple of days longer, and i havent seen my remaining friend for a wekk, im hoping im not the only one who carried on

Dont misunderstand, ive made loads of new friends, but i miss the ones i "grew up" with.

[vinnyq]

Hi glynnj from the Euro forum,

2 things that might help.

- The "Users" chat tab is your friend. They really need to make this the default tab for new players and the rest filters.
You can select which channel your msg goes to in that tab by selecting it in the bottom left button, or use /region (/re), /team (/te), or /guild (/gu).
They don't have a command for around though, which is weird, and frustrating. They need a command for around too.

- There is a way to zoom out your camera futher, but is sorta consider a hax -.-

Open the client.cfg file in the Ryzom folder, then add this line:

CameraDistMax = 250.0000000000;

That's 10 0's after the decimal, dont forget the semicolon.

[vinnyq]

ooo.... just logged in ... patch is running ...

*holds breath*

[gddss]

My first impressions of Ryzom were mixed, when you download the trial you get no manual, so the learning curve is quite steep, with most of your information coming from the limited help system, bugging some poor mug who was foolish enough to answer your first question posted into region ( hehe ), and the occasional resort to asking a guide or gm (who were pleasantly and surpisingly helpful)

Actually you can DL the whole manual. I know you have probably gotten past this point yourself by now of needing it, but I just thought I would add it here for others if they needed.

http://www.ryzom.com/?page=support_manual

[tobaran]

Hi glynnj from the Euro forum,

2 things that might help.

- The "Users" chat tab is your friend. They really need to make this the default tab for new players and the rest filters.
You can select which channel your msg goes to in that tab by selecting it in the bottom left button, or use /region (/re), /team (/te), or /guild (/gu).
They don't have a command for around though, which is weird, and frustrating. They need a command for around too.

- There is a way to zoom out your camera futher, but is sorta consider a hax -.-

Open the client.cfg file in the Ryzom folder, then add this line:

CameraDistMax = 250.0000000000;

That's 10 0's after the decimal, dont forget the semicolon.

Hadn't realized you can shorten the slash commands for chat to 2 letters, but then I'm a fast typer..... the slash command for they Around tab is /say. Also consider command /shout which broadcasts to I believe 50m, however I haven't tested the range on this...