Never seen a MMOG balanced at release, ever. You're right, it is expected at release, but I've yet to see a studio manage to get it right straight out of the box. If you have, I'd honestly be interested to know what game. Admittedly I have not played that many MMOGs, maybe 5 or 6, but in every single one I have seen the same thing happen - players whine about class X being over/underpowered, and the Nerfbat comes out. As I said in another thread, I do honestly wonder whether the devs (any devs, not just 'ours') are on the same planet as the players when it comes to the way things are fixed/balanced/nerfed/whatever...ctusk wrote:Balance in a modern MMORPG is expected at release time. Five years ago it was ok to be slightly unbalanced and have problems at release. New genre, new technology, unforseen problems. Ok. Everquest got away with it, Anarchy online had a horrible start, DAOC had no items on mobs nor populated dungeons for months. Yes, I played them all. From the beginning. People accepted it because they liked the new genre and the new games enough to cope with it. Nowadays this is not acceptable anymore.
With regard to problems etc at launch, the only people I've seen get praised for smooth launches is NCSoft with Lineage 2 and CoH, but look at what people are saying about those games now - L2 full of adena farmers and griefers, CoH is apparently bland with little content (I freely admit that's hearsay - never played either game). Again you're right, it's not acceptable, but we (the players) continue to accept it. Until we rise en masse and refuse to pay even one penny for MMOGs at launch, they will continue to be released in a less than ideal condition. I await the arrival of WoW and EQ2 with interest, not because I want to play them, but simply to see what they're like at launch. You all know as well as I that even if those games are totally unplayable at launch people will still sign up in their thousands.
Again true, but also true of near enough every other MMOG out there. Doesn't justify it, but Ryzom is bo no means the first or last game to be released before it's really ready. I find it odd that some people (not anyone in particular here) think that all content should be in at release. MMOGs are generally intended to last for several years, and it's unreleastic to expect all the story elements etc to be in at launch. Having said that, I do believe Nevrax dropped the ball here, as everyone has to admit there is currently no story content whatsoever in the game, and to me that really is inexcusable.What Nevrax has released here is a prime time example of an unfinished product, unbalanced, released before it was ready most likely due to pressure from the publisher or lack of proper funding to continue the development cycle. They promised content and did not anticipate the speed with which the powergamers would go through the existing content ( which is very slim ). So far so good.
I'm going to wait for the patch before I really decide, but from what I've heard I tend to agree. Personally I'd have switched patch 1 and 2 around, got the content in, then worried about harvesting etc (or better still left the mechanics of harvesting alone and simply changed the way XP was given from quality to quantity).What is not good is their solution to the problem that we see in patch 1.
Never sure what to make of this. In all fairness no-one outside Nevrax knows how many players there are and what % have threatened to leave or have already gone. For this reason I truly wish people wouldn't try to substantiate their posts by quoting figures that have been plucked from thin air. I personally believe the majority of players don't post on forums and don't make threatening or goodbye posts, they just go if they're going to, but that is purely my opinion with no figures to back it up.Wake up and smell the bacon dude. It's not 1%, its more around 50%+.
I will, or at least I'll try, thanksBut what the heck, enjoy the game if they survive, good luck ...
