Ryzom

fadin wrote:It seems some people are assuming people are leaving in droves and tend to post that all over the place. I see the numbers every day, and I don't see the people leaving in droves. People stay, people leave and new people show up... daily... So, I can say, I took a look at the database and have no idea what you are talking about.

The problem is this, everyone who plays an MMO affects other players by their presence. These players all form complex social structures among themselves in everything from trade to hunting and simple socialization chit chat type stuff. Some of these players have very strong interactions with a great many players, as an example on the NA servers... we had fuzz for armor and haddo for jewelrey. Fuzz made a crapload of pretty decent armor, did a pretty good job of stocking the vendors with it, and sold it for reasonable prices. Haddo still does the same with jewelrey last I checked. The same can be said of some harvesters who churn out tons of mats or very good mats, or various guild members who are great at organizing parties to go out and do stuff. Every time one of these folks leave, those strong bonds yank on the other players who they touched in their day to day interactions with the community.

Once you start pulling away more and more folks, from these complex social webs, people start to leave faster than those newbies you talked about can fill in the gaps and you have what results in a community falling apart. You can say that the high levels, the crafters, the always on types, and the guild coordinators will eventually be replaced... but that takes time to happen, during that time the community shrivels up and becomes lifeless. It might come back if it gets enough time and care, but odds are good that it will be a shadow of what it once was.

The numbers may show that population levels are rather steady, but at the same time the players see a different version of the situation. They see guilds merging and swallowing other guilds that were going dead due to too many members leaving. The players see guilds exploding and leaving for other games with very common complaints about treadmills and boredom coming from the folks on their way out. They see guild members talking more and more about other games and other beta or about how they dislike so many things about this game and how bored they are.

I apologize for the novel. I am just at home and looking through the forums. I thought I would at least try to get some responses on this one. I hope I haven't disturbed the wasp nest.

I felt that that last quote of yours was the best thing that could go before the rest of this post... so I moved it

When it's all said and done, and the anxiously awaited patch day comes depite all of the merges, all of the explosions, all of the complains, all of the boredom... players get a patch that very often leaves them bewildered as to what the heck Nevrax was thinking. Players bicker about things like changing the DP time down to 20 days instead of the "too fast" 3 days as being pointlessly slow, and folks play devils advocate saying that 20 days is better than nothing because the already existing 3 days was too slow for them to even notice. Players see these patches quite litterally attacking their enjoyment of the game, everything from selfmagic changes/removal, AOE reflect heals, and herbavore loot drop nerfings, all the way to PR changes and mob "tweaking"... and they are reminded of something that has happened in many table top roleplaying games as well as a good chunk of early everquest.

They are met with a system that seems to be shaped and grown out of a desire to win and beat the players. As players level higher and higher, they start to see horrible cracks growing in the foundation of the game as a result of what seems to be a beat the players desire. Without useful AOE heals to cut the effectiveness of heals, healers are left with a system where they wonder why they should buy new heals long before 250. Without AOE reflects, the predicted "well duh... you just need two, three, four, twentyseven healers to do.. well... anything" situation comes true. Without AOE heal reflect off mektoubs, healers are left utterly helpless without leveling another tree. With all of the above changes to healing combined along with the late FBT changes to exp, the old "grab some folks and get someone willing to heal then go have fun" becomes "grab some folks, find some healers, make sure everyone is a compatible level, and then go find some mobs that the group has enough healing power to kill and try not to kill the exp ratio... you are left with situations where three healers wander about with wildly different levels in melee and magic trying to find someone compatible with their levels, but eventually give up and go watch tv. With PR changes that seem designed to slow down leveling, and make good equipment more [strike]frustrating...difficult[/strike] "rewarding", players are left frustrated and annoyed about how their skills gained by leveling PR foraging is being attacked by the devs. With "tweaking" done to mobs, players are left with GM's confirming that they are unable to even damage some boss mobs even after killing all of their minions due to excessive and silly regen. With "tweaking" done to mobs, the "high level" game is reduced to "grab tank then pile on more healers capable of casting CH style heals".. gone is any thought involved with using self magic to balance hp/sap or help yourself regen, gone is the excitement of watching people's HP bars slowly trickle down and having the group wonder if they will die or the mob will die... it's been replaced with dominos and watching still buggy and often broken HP bars fluctuating between -50% to 25% and 75% to 100% each time a player is attacked and a heal lands.

With all of these problems and more, the playerers come to the forums and yell at a wall. The players say things about X Y and Z in these forums, but don't see even a hint of sanity in many of the changes that effect X Y and Z. When they comment about the apparent randomness in changes to X Y and Z, they are given more silence, or worse they are given a jig about how someone will report it to the devs or file it in their report.... but when it's all said and done, it doesn't seem that Nevrax is listening to these reports either. A wall of silence does not create or mend those earlier mentioned bonds. A wall of silence does not make folks say "well gee, maybe I should just wait for those other shiny things they have been talking with us with", instead it makes folks say "well that settles it, they screwed up/forgot about X agaiin and don't even appear to be listening at all".

It only serves to further discourage when someone gets the wardrums spun up for their pet subject, and start to visibly see a lack of faith from their only source of communication with Nevrax. People know that having more tickets and reports filed about their pet gripe for the Nth month, is not going to have any more effect than the ones before. People see frustration in their only lines of communication to Nevrax, and they put 2+2 together. They take the person that they have socialized with or goofed off with in the past, and assume the silence and stonewalling is thanks Nevrax.... it's not a hard conclusion to jump to when they step back and look at seemingly random us vrs them changes that do a great deal of harm to the game or are just downright silly. After all, it's very easy to blame a faceless wall of silence compared to someone you have chatted with about movies or seen testing stuff.

I wish to start by thanking Fadin for the response to the post, and the professionalism he put into his response, it is appreciated.

Now to the matters at hand.
Things I have written so that I know its 'easily done', COM objects to monitor server uptime, including pulling last reboot information and polling remote logs of servers, the objects are able to poll each other and notify when a server is not communicating back.

These polls run on a 5 minute interval and send 'blocks' of useful information to each other that in turn help to monitor up time centrally.

How much time does it take to make such a creature, well, about a week, something that needed done back during alpha stage to keep track of the server farm.

Also, there are 'out of the box' solutions that do this exact same thing, however they cost around 10k to purchase, but can also page people when servers go down, perform automated tasks like reboots or scripted events, heck they can even use the phone system to dial a phone number and give an automated message to the person who answers, be it the on call person or whatever.

Out of the box solution takes about an hour to configure and can monitor the entire network status of every server in every farm and react accordingly in the appropriate time zones.

What I am talking about with broken promises, is those on the box, when you buy it, not ones given after the fact, your right, no one has promised anything past the purchase of the product, we just want what was advertised in the game, rest is peaches and cream.

Do your numbers you see daily, also include the canceled accounts or are those removed from the list you see, or rather the number of players you see, is it the activity online? Just curious.

I think the general player base would be content with the content that was supposed to be live from day 1.

Time table chart could be a very generalized one, not specific, and can be estimates, but your right, could be more problems than its worth.

As a side note, EQ (as I am one of the beta to live to retired after 6 years player), announced back at year one, month 3, that no character over level 10 would be deleted during any whipe, and they have whipes monthly.

Month 6 of year 1 they announced that no account will have any characteres whiped or the account itself whiped if it contained a level 10 or higher character.

I guarantee that I can login to my old account, now dorment for 6 months, and it will be fine, thats my primary account, my secondary account went dormant for 4 years, and the highest level toon was level 12, I logged into it and it was still there and all the characters were still there, that was a 4 year timeframe.

They want your money and they want you to return and be happy, so there not going to delete what you created, because characters take up practically no room on the servers.



Thanks again Fadin for responding, it was very gracious of you and I truely appreciate it.

fadin wrote:I really have to say, please do not say "It's not hard" unless you are intimate with the specific code used in the game, network, integration of the sites, etc. I won't speak for the coders, but even being on this side of things for as long as I have, I will not tell them it is easy or "not hard"

Some of the Devs do speak English, others speak mainly French.

Nobody wants to break a promise, and I am not sure anyone has ever said "I promise" about much of anything. There are times when things just do not work out as planned, and something may not be as possible as it once seemed. These are the times developers and coders dread the most, but they are times that happen. Everything done today is working toward a goal for tomorrow. Players will not always be aware of that goal, and the main reason is to avoid the "You promised!" issue. The last thing anyone wants to do is create a bitter player. Though it seems to happen.

No matter how hard or how easy the technical side of things are in this game, the developers have done a horrible job. This isn't because outposts and other features aren't in the game yet, it's because of what is in the game. I've played since launch and there hasn't been one patch as of yet that wasn't so bug ridden that it's been pretty much unplayable. We aren't talking little bugs, we are talking huge roach in your face bugs.

I don't think there are many players that expect the developers to say "On June 20th outposts will be in the game" and have that really happen. Most players understand that things happen and strict schedules don't work. I do think that most players expect when the developers say "Update 2 went live this mornining" they will be able to log on and enjoy the content that update brings. This is not what has happened.

You talk of there being no issue of player populations. You can sit behind your database and reports and say you see no evidence of that, but that is not what shows in game. If I am to log on at noon eastern time during the week in Cities of Intiution I am often the only one there. Saturday during the day there are maybe handful of people. Even in Fyros and Tryker lands there are maybe 20 or 30 people in an area at peak times.

You are right that people leave, some stay, and some new ones join. The question is how long do they stay? How many players do you have that are still here from launch? How much of a loyal fanbase have you built up? As I said I have been playing since launch and almost everyone I remember from then have since left the game.

So you can post here every once in a while saying how wonderful the server population is, how the devs/coders are doing a fine job, how things aren't as easy as they seem, but that is not what is showing in game. Long time players are either quitting or not signing on. The server populations are very low. The updates and coding the devs have done is completely untested and bug ridden.

raynes wrote:As I said I have been playing since launch and almost everyone I remember from then have since left the game.

I have been playing apparently as long as you have (since the 2nd open beta) on the EE server, and I can still count most of the people I met in the first week of retail, but maybe its just an american/european thing. When I was reading some other thread in the NA boards, it seemed like people thought that the fact you (raynes) had been here since beta was some amazing thing; "woo... join the club" is all I have to say to people who think that. Its nothing special on the EE server.

So you can post here every once in a while saying how wonderful the server population is, <snip> The server populations are very low.

The EE server is the fullest it has ever been. Granted this may be because it is now the "trial" server for some bizarre reason, but still... We have been seeing a contant increase in population for a while now.

sprite wrote:I have been playing apparently as long as you have (since the 2nd open beta) on the EE server, and I can still count most of the people I met in the first week of retail, but maybe its just an american/european thing. When I was reading some other thread in the NA boards, it seemed like people thought that the fact you (raynes) had been here since beta was some amazing thing; "woo... join the club" is all I have to say to people who think that. Its nothing special on the EE server.

The EE server is the fullest it has ever been. Granted this may be because it is now the "trial" server for some bizarre reason, but still... We have been seeing a contant increase in population for a while now.

Of course you have no real point as we aren't talking about the EE server. The EE server could be filled with 1000's of players and it woulnd't mean squat to the server populations of the NA server.

thexdane wrote:also incase you haven't noticed nor read the 50000000000000000000 times it's come up on the forum THE DEVELOPERS ARE FRENCH AND PROBLY DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH

Before using caps you should know that in Beta, Open Beta and Focus beta developers had NO problems speaking english on bi-weekly/ monthly basis.

We had regular chats with very productive bi-directional conversation.

raynes wrote:No matter how hard or how easy the technical side of things are in this game, the developers have done a horrible job..

I'm the first one to come down on developers; partly because I fully understand what they are doing from code stand point of view. Nevertheless -Unless you have been blind - you should have noticied an influx of players from WOW - people I speak to say the same thing "Endless bugs, lag, broken promises"; "Nothing to do past level 60", "No storyline"


sounds familiar? Developers didnt do a horrible job - everything they did, could have done better; I'm pissed off not because of bugs but because there is no communication other then Cerest and Fadin from time to time. And from what i understand those guys represent the first(!) line for in-game support and complete technical support. Yelling at them will not produce any results other then piss more people off.

What needs to happen are standard developer chats; heaviliy moderated (and probably censored) they will be able not only provide answers but also give a "warm and fuzzy" feeling someone actually gives a crap.

lariva wrote:Developers didnt do a horrible job - everything they did, could have done better; I'm pissed off not because of bugs but because there is no communication other then Cerest and Fadin from time to time. And from what i understand those guys represent the first(!) line for in-game support and complete technical support. Yelling at them will not produce any results other then piss more people off.

As developers they have failed horribly, why? Not because of what they are trying to accomplish. They fail as developers because they fail to test the stuff they develop. Many of the bugs that make it to the live server should never make it there. I've worked in software development before. If I had a program or peice of code that I wrote, pushed it to the live environment, then the users immediatly found a bug that killed functionality, I would be fired. Especially if that bug was found simply by using the software that I wrote.

Any developer that creates software and pushes it to live customers without testing it, is a horrible developer. It's one thing if it's a bug that only occurs on a few machines, that is understood to happen. However when a bug shows up in 100% of the userbase, then the developer has failed to do a basic part of thier job.

raynes wrote:Of course you have no real point as we aren't talking about the EE server. The EE server could be filled with 1000's of players and it woulnd't mean squat to the server populations of the NA server.

Hm, perhaps I should have made myself clearer; what I meant was that the *players* on the EE server don't seem to be having even half the complaints that you guys are having.

sprite wrote:Hm, perhaps I should have made myself clearer; what I meant was that the *players* on the EE server don't seem to be having even half the complaints that you guys are having.

The question is, what are you guys keeping yourselves busy with then there is no content in the game?