Review of Ryzom posted to my guild of 200+

[kisedd]

Apples and Oranges. I like crafter type games. I do not like uber loot l33t EQ type games. That doesn't make those games bad, just different.

I do think there are some annoyances with the crafting economy in Ryzom. Crafters, unless they stand at the mat vendor to grind out levels, seem to level much more slowly than the combat types. This seems to restrict the levels of goods in the economy. Now some may enjoy grinding boots or whatever, but to me its not all that much fun. I'm really hoping at some point, someone comes up with a crafting system that is truly fun to play in terms of advancement.

The reviewer is correct, it can take hours to gather all the mats you need. It doesn't matter if they are choice or basic, the time is the same. During that time you gain harvester levels like mad. Then you go and take all these mats to make one item and get very little advancement out it. Crafters eat mats like they were nothing. This I suppose plays into the money sink that crafters buy mats from vendors etc, to level with.

Perhaps basic and fine mats shouldn't be quite the junk that they are. Or mob dropped mats be a little bit too inferior. There always seem to be an uber mentality in most of these games. It doesn't matter if its camp the spider queen for 8 hours so you can get that top end magic sword, or collect choice mats to get that top end magic sword. People want the best, and stick their noses up at pretty much anything else.

[elfmatic]

Well thank you for that review! I was worried that I might like WoW and it would draw me away from my guild in Ryzom, but if all the good **** is from mobs that will be ritualistically camped (and I don't care if they 'instance' the dungeons, good god are you a completely brainwashed zombie to like that b.s.?) or bought from a NPC vending machine then I don't want to play. I'm actually a little miffed that they upped vendor mat quality to 50 in Ryzom. I don't have much positive to say about SWG, but I did like their crafting and having to rely on other players, not some stupid AI world but my actually friends and guildmates, in order to get cool stuff and be effective in the world/universe. And I haven't talked to any crafters or foragers that don't like what they do. I even enjoy foraging for short periods of time and I'm very combative coming from a 5 year stint playing Counter-Strike.

I'm not going to waste a lot of words but I've played 3 MMORPG's for any length of time now and here's how I rank them on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the best.

EQ 7
SWG 5
Ryzom 8

Now if the future of Ryzom is as cool as they're saying it's going to be then that will bump them to a 9 possibly even a 10. Maybe I will try WoW if a friend gets it and I can preview a bit, but for me Ryzom is a hard act for WoW or EQ2 to follow.

~Elf

[phoenyx]

Perhaps basic and fine mats shouldn't be quite the junk that they are. Or mob dropped mats be a little bit too inferior. There always seem to be an uber mentality in most of these games. It doesn't matter if its camp the spider queen for 8 hours so you can get that top end magic sword, or collect choice mats to get that top end magic sword. People want the best, and stick their noses up at pretty much anything else.

I think if mob-dropped mats could be used to make gear that was roughly 90% as good as the choice harvested gear, we'd be much closer to a balanced crafting system. The players with lots of time and money would still gladly pay for that extra 10% boost. The more casual players who just want to fight mobs and level up would be able to do so quite well by holding onto selected mob drops and bringing them to a crafter when they needed a new piece of gear. You would still have *lots* of people putting in the extra effort for the "best" gear, but you would also accomodate the folks who don't enjoy the crafting end of the game.

And the crafters win too, because they'd get even *more* business and *more* mats to grind on for thier levels. Right now, though, the disparity between gear made from mob drops and gear made from choice harvested mats is much much greater than 10 percent. Ideally, you'd also have a tier of NPC vendor-sold gear that was at something like 85% of the max possible. This gives you a viable alternative for the people who don't want to be bothered with any aspect of crafting or collecting mob drops.

-----

Asheron's Call 1 had an interesting approach to dealing with camping for uber gear drops. (*the* pitfall of EQ and EQ2, in my opinion, and to some extent a pitfall in Anarchy Online as well.) In AC1, all manner of mobs randomly dropped special items called "motes." When you had collected enough motes, a mid- to high- crafter character could transform those motes into fragments, then bars, etc. When you finally had a bar or two, you could combine that with a quest reward item to craft a truly uber piece of gear.

The beauty of this system is that it prevented camping a given spawn location or boss mob. You could acquire these motes anywhere at any time (yes some mobs were more likely to drop motes but you still had to spread out and hunt for them all over). And you *needed* the services of a fairly high level crafter to transform those motes into the really top-notch gear. We're talking pieces of gear that sold for in excess of $300 a peice (like $500-600 for a full suit of armor on eBay). Everyone was happy. The players loved it, the crafters got rich. It was a true accomplishment to finally acquire that uber piece of gear--much more so than just camping in line at a known spawn location until you finally racked up enough raid points to earn the drop.

In many way, AC1 was a benchmark MMOG against which I still measure all games to this day. It's too bad that Turbine was unable/unwilling to stem the tide of unattended macroers and exploitative client-side speed-hacks that eventually ruined the game for many players. Lineage 2 has been learning this hard lesson as well. My guild was all about L2 for about a month, until it became abundantly clear that exploiters were bot-farming the money drops in a major way, wrecking the economy balance. (Well, plus the fact that the game was a boring exp-grinder probably on par with or worse than FFXI.)

[jjm152]

This post is user feedback for Nevrax. Detailed reasons why I won't be subscribing after the free month is out, with the hopes that they will eventually be able to address these issues, provided they notice a trend similar to mine. Sincere attempt to help better a game that has potential.

As for my guild, we're fairly well-known in PvP circles, being a PvP-centric guild of mature players. We were voted the most influential guild on AC2 Darktide, on AC2 Insider magazine. Formed back in the early days of AC1.

The Ancient Order - TAO
http://theancientorder.com

There isn't anything wrong with valid criticisms and polite commentary as far as I'm concerned. Some people who read this thread need to supress the urge to make it "Attack of the Fanbois". Nevrex doesn't need you defending its game against the likes of Blizzard or Verant, Ok?

As for my two bits, things that bother me are:

1) Feedback on prospecting needs to eliminate more false positives. Example, searching for high quality materials when none are present but a lower level type is present will often give you the message that the material is present at less than 1m.... which it is not.

2) The "force" rating system for determing how difficult and enemy is... fairly worthless. The level spread on the colors is so large its like a crapshoot to try and determine if you're committing suicide or not the first time you engage something.

3) Item decay is too fast, this is a common complaint I believe. I agree that having items decay is necessary for crafters/harvester to have something to do, but if people are literally going through 2 weapons a night the developers need to address this.

4) Lack of jump/falling physics is very lame. Add a jump button please, I would very much like to be able to jump over obsticles than have to run around them, including little 6 inch railings or stumps.

5) Camera controls could be improved dramatically, especially the third person "over the shoulder" camera. The zoom out range is too small, the camera is kind of dodgy if you use the mouse for movement you often end up moving the camera in advertantly, also mouse controls in general feel a little sluggish.

6) Lag. This game has serious lag/connection issues, atleast on the north american server. It needs to be addressed immediately as this is probably the number 1 gameplay experience issue with retaining new customers.

Notice none of those things are really "bugs" but just stuff I noticed in my 3 days of playing this game. I don't think any of them are outlandish either.

Also for some suggestions on how to make Ryzom a little "cooler" than some of the other MMORPGS out there:

1) Put an in-game MP3 player into the client dashboard. That would be incredibly easy to implement and hecka cool. Maybe even let people do P2P file swapping like you can do with microsoft instant messager.

2) Put in-game support for voice chatting ala team speak into the game. Many new console games for systems like X-box live have already done this and I'm surprised MMORPGS are still ignoring this as a huge feature. Many people don't want to run teamspeak servers, etc or would have no idea what it is... but if you build it into the client all they need is a headset/microphone combo that you can purchase at best buy for less than 20 dollars...

3) Give players an atlas interface in game where they can make detailed notes about areas, including maps, monsters, materials, etc. Many people do this with paper on their desk but why not let it be in the game? All the data could be stored client side and maybe stored in an XML format so that it could be exported to either websites or other players.


I'm sure I could come up with a gazillion things.... but hey, those first 3 are free, the rest will cost you

Later

[svayvti]

the only thing I can agree with in the original is the degrade rates. They're fine at lower levels, but at higher levels just way too high.

Crafters in general do level too slow. The fix however is not vendor mats, that only causes more of a problem really. Its a temporary slap-fix.

The problem is harvesters. Crafters are supposed to be supplied by harvesters but they obviously aren't able to do that job appropriately. Very little has been done about Harvesters since beta 3. I hope there is a wake-up call and a realization that just because foragers can exp, doesn't mean they're functioning well.

[ralgur]

Some quotes from the review about WoW linked to above:

"Considering the game is still in closed beta and the community is nowhere near its full final potential yet it's hard to judge this one. However I will say that it definitely seems that WoW is drawing a younger crowd than previous MMORPGs. More than likely it's the followers of the RTS series coming over. There have been several times ingame that I've been grouped with people who could not have been more than 12 or 13. And if they were older than that, they sure didn't act like it. Also if you've been to the official forums you can see this in action there too. I can't imagine what it's going to be like once the game goes live and there are thousands of people on each server? Hopefully there will be some RP specific servers as these tend to attract an older or more mature player base."

A good reason for me to avoid the game. I don't have a lot of patience for mouthy 12-13 yr olds who ACT 6.

"Unfortunately, in my opinion it's not trying to do enough. It really brings nothing new to the table. In my opinion at this stage of the MMORPG evolution you have to be innovative to some degree."

Agreed. I want innovation. I don't want a "been there, done that" feeling. A well-made family car that does its job (getting from point A to point B) is not nearly as fun as a sports car doing the same thing. It looks like WoW is the sports car type, but it's just going to retread territory that's already been covered in a sedan.

I'll still probably try it. I just can't wait to see the whining a month after the game's been out. It's hyped out the wazoo. There's going to be a huge let down.

[phoenyx]

... but if all the good **** is from mobs that will be ritualistically camped (and I don't care if they 'instance' the dungeons, good god are you a completely brainwashed zombie to like that b.s.?) or bought from a NPC vending machine then I don't want to play.
~Elf

No mobs are ritualistically camped. The game design totally prevents this, in so many ways I won't go into. Most of your bread and butter gear comes in the form of a reward from an NPC who gave you the mission. You have the option of buying similar gear outright from an NPC vendor if you prefer and have the money--which you usually don't, because the money sinks are well-designed.

As for instanced dungeons, I've played the games with them and without them, and I think instanced dungeons are the way to go. In Anarchy Online, which did NOT have instanced dungeons, your team would often miss out on the fun of working your way down to the bottom because some group ahead of you had already been decimating the mobs on their way down. Or you'd get somebody pulling a huge train of mobs into your group as they attempted to flee the dungeon because they got in over their heads. Finally, you'd hit the bottom where the boss mob was, and there'd be multiple other groups there all competing for the kill on the boss so they could earn the looting rights. Boring boring boring!

In a truly instanced dungeon, your team enters and it's all for you and you alone. It falls on your team alone to fight through the dungeon to where the good bosses are. It falls on your team alone to beat the bosses. You get all the fun, all the risk, and all the reward. You don't get a total party wipeout because some griefer leaving the dungeon decides to pull a big train behind him for his sick grins. And believe me, the instances in WoW will drop your jaw. Some of them take 2-3 hours to fight your way through and you start getting these as early as level 15. Taking on an instanced mission can be a truly challenging quest in and of itself. Guildmates *love* to be invited on these dungeon crawls, and you need to have really good team balance and teamwork in many of them.

Oh, and there are many non-instanced "mini" dungeons that aren't so mini. One of the newbie quests for night elves, as an example, takes you into a fairly large dungeon to acquire 4 different items, and while you're in there you find another NPC who gives you yet another quest to solve within the dungeon itself. You can spend 60 minutes in that dungeon easily, and you're forming ad hoc teams with the other people you find in there to advance the steps of your quests. You can do the original quest solo, but you *need* a team to pull off the sub-quest

"brainwashed zombie"? LOL I think not.

[vladww]

In a truly instanced dungeon, your team enters and it's all for you and you alone.

Never understood this concept, it was one of the only thing i didn't like in AO ( instanced missions ) & i didn't like it in EQ's lost dungeons of Norrath.

Whats the point of playing a mmorpg if you or your team get inclosed alone in a dungeon ?
Not only its illogical but you end up having an empty world where most of the gamers are playing in their little self generated bubbles.

Different people different tastes i guess.

As for the crafting in SoR i think it's pretty well balanced the way it is ( except a few issues ex : items decay at high levels ).
Wouldn't like to see the economy flooded with easy to craft gears.

I hope Nevrax keeps it a bit of a challenge as it is now.

[phoenyx]

Whats the point of playing a mmorpg if you or your team get inclosed alone in a dungeon ?
Not only its illogical but you end up having an empty world where most of the gamers are playing in their little self generated bubbles.

Only if the entire world is instanced. As they're going to do in both Guild Wars and in Tabula Rasa. Those games will essentially be one small battlenet lobby done in 3-D with avatars. You'll share this tiny world with other players while you get together a team to go do whatever. Then your team jumps into instanced content, maybe with another opposing team for some PvP goals.

WoW is not like this. The instanced dungeons make up a very small percentage of the total content. There is a huge world with lots of intricately hand-built zones with tons of outdoor hunting and questing. Every zone has at least two non-instanced dungeons, some of which are fairly large. On the PvP servers, most of the world zones are contested areas which means you can PvP any players of the opposing faction if you encounter them.

Anarchy Online was similar. The instanced mission areas were only one small piece of the content. Unfortunately, it was the best way to grind exp too before the Shadowlands expansion, so the surface content seemed barren. The good dungeons were all non-instanced. And when Shadowlands came out then people stopped doing missions and outdoor hunting in the shadowlands was the way to go.

[elfmatic]

Look, if you're going to 'instance' a dungeon for 'my group and my group alone' then I'm not going to be wasting $15/month on a subscription to play on a server wither 1,000's of people all the time. Period. I will get NWN or Dungeon Siege, or something like that and then we can have our own little private dungeon or whatever. I accept and WANT the interference of other REAL people in my game experience, griefer or newb or whatnot. That is WHY I play MMO's. MMO MMO MMO! It has good and bad and if you can't deal with the challenges of dealing with real people you don't know, tough ****.

~Elf