Ryzom

rikutatis wrote:I'd be more than willing to participate in an occupation commune of this sort. You can count me in for a protect along those lines.

I'll be back in Egg Room as of today....starting Larvester 4 an double so when I start SM5 in cupla days. Gimme a yell IG if ya want dig partner in Egg Room or recipe hunter on Larv4.

jwenting wrote:That was my point exactly.
Doing water carrier missions you can spend an hour swimming to get the components for 2-3 recipes (even at ech 2), then 3 days later you've found 3 30% recipes...

So what?
I don´t get it, y´know.
Why the obsession with maximum efficiency and least amount of time spent on maximum results?

Playing a Game should not be about getting maximum results in a minimum of time.
That should be reserved for RL work and occupation.

Frankly, I´m absolutely happy with the way the occupations work, because once again they go clearly against the grain of "modern gaming culture.
As a rather casual Gamer, I get results anyway.
No matter how often, or how much I play.
I don´t need to be permanently online to be a "good player".
And that´s what gaming should be all about!

Practically the game becoming a second day to day job, because "you must get all the things you need to have just to be competitive may work out for those who play Aion or WoW, but Ryzom should never turn into this kind of "I´m better than U bcuz I lvl my Skillz faster!" crap-pile.

Just my opinion, like it or not

CU
Acridiel

I second what Acridiel said.

On the other hand, anyone is entitled to play a game the way they want, and a game that allows different playstyles is a good game.

You wanna do hardocre occupations? Granted, you can do.
You wanna relax and run mission at a slower pace? Granted, you can do.

So, if people want spend their time finding a 100% recipe and what's the logic around it, why not? Other people can just advance with random results. Both types of gameplay are good.

People using alts? Well, they also pay more to have more accounts, so why not?
You can level faster but you will never be a good homin if you rush in Atys ignoring all the knowledge hidden there. Anyway you can do.

Occupations are just more sand in the box, and that's why I liked it since the devs patched them into game.

I only wish devs will add merchants for the occupation items someday.

gcaldani wrote: I only wish devs will add merchants for the occupation items someday.

But, those Merchants should only be selling player made stuff, right?
I´m not sure if I´m reading some of the suggestions regarding this right, sorry.

Merchants that sell "pre-made" potions and stuff, well, they would defeat the entire idea behind occupations, wouldn't they?

And wouldn't it be much simpler just to make the occupations products sell-able, but not "trade-able"? So we could put them onto the existing merchants sales-rack, but not just swap them between characters.
(which probably wouldn't do any real harm, but could make true sales useless, as we all know.)

Creating new merchants, where a dedicated network of merchants already exists would be pretty redundant imho.

CU
Acridiel

acridiel wrote:Creating new merchants, where a dedicated network of merchants already exists would be pretty redundant imho.

Judging from previous posts, that is indeed what Gilgameesh means, and I agree.

The existing network is fine for it already, but it does need a new dedicated "occupation items merchant" where the occupation items that players put on sale show up for those who want to buy them. Just like jewels show up on the jewel merchant etc. And then we need to be able to sell occupation items "on to players" at any merchant, ofc.

But a separate merchant for it would suffice if that's easier for the devs to create, I suppose.

I'm not sure. Redundancy is not always a bad thing. We already have a lot of specialized merchants. Why don't have simple merchants selling everything then instead of the actual different merchants?

I was thinking about the barmans. (edit: really I was thinking a separate npc and not the existing merchants. Acridiel was correct ).
It's just to have diversity and give more meanings to other NPC.

I admit that the "potions" are not really "potions", except the water, and a barman selling, in example, a medikit or a tool, sounds strange. But can be any other npc and also existing merchants.

Why merchants defeat the entire idea behind Occupations? Not sure I understood this statement.
I suppose not everyone want to do Occupations so why not giving a way for the people that don't want to do them just to buy the potions?

The problem around trades and sells exists because:
1. it's actually impossible to sell "sets" and people don't like to buy a LA vest and being unable to buy the rest of the LA at the same time. Same for jewels.
2. with a high population this problem would almost disappear, as we remember from the past.

So, it's normal we have now only direct trades.

But that's different for the "potions". For anyone willing to use them to solo during a hunt, you need a lot of them, not just a dozen.
With the exception of scrollmaker stuff.
And the rate to craft them is pretty low.

Also, if they are ment to be a help for the new people to solo, that means they could only do the 4 easy occupations. Impossible for a new player to do anything in the Lair, that's for higher players.

And the occupations are divided by continents...
And a people can do only 3 at a time...

So, why not have a merchant for the stuff?
Using merchants is much simpler than trading, given we don't have a market channel.

I think things ca be as they actually are, with the actual population i suppose we never see any problems. But with a higher population the things could be different.

rikutatis wrote:On the issue of occupations and alts... really, how is that any different from folks who have forage/CP alts, or heal/nuke alts? Someone who has 3 forage/CP alts will be getting close to 4x times as many mats as I do solo. And someone who uses multiple alts to heal and nuke for him (sometimes oot) will probably be leveling a lot faster as well.

No argument from me....however my sentiment lies with the other poster who referred to the promotion of "altism". In a sense, a game can be thought of as a competition .... your goal when playing a baseball game is to "win" the game. As a person who spent many years as a little league coach, manager and director, I have my own problems with that approach at the recreational level to an extent. We see that in Ryzom with the PvP side of things (which I don't engage in) but I certainly see the attraction for those that do.

My approach to the game is also based upon a challenge. That challenge is to find the most efficient / productive way possible to do things.

- Do you try and maximize your melee and magic stanzas to provide the highest damage / cost ratio ?
- Do you try and maximize your digging method to pull the highest amount of mats ?
- If you want to get from Point A to Point B, do you take the shortest route you have found ?
- When you craft, do you try maximize stats while also trying to use as many more easily obtainable mats which produce an equivalent result.
- Do you try and develop your skills and techniques so that you can solo trek just about anywhere ?

These are the challenges I enjoy setting myself against and working cooperatively w/ other players to solve these little riddles. Kinda like solving a Sudoku or crossword puzzle. This is very different from what I think Acridel is talking about which involves power leveling, heavy cats usage and "slave usage".

However I must also say that the scariest thing to me about Ryzom is mastering all 63 skill trees....leaving me absolutely nothing to do. I am in no rush to get there .... it's about the journey not the destination. But like a journey cross county, I might not care how fast I get there but I do wanna see the scenery keep changing or I'm gonna get bored.

Setting challenges before a player which require the development of a skill is a good thing. Where I am going to differ with Acridel is that repeatedly performing simple, repetitive tasks which require no thought whatsoever isn't a challenge. I enjoyed navigating the various beasties to collect flowers. What I did not enjoy was getting the 150 flower maintenance certs i needed to match the flower certs:

-Go to the well and get some water
-Go to the right barrel and get some water
-Go to the poo pile and get some fertilizer
-Go to the left barrel and get some fertilizer
-Rinse and repeat 146 more times ..... this is the part that needs work....so badly so that I am not quite sure whether it was intentional or unintentional that you can just abandon the missions repeatedly until you get one that's less wear and tear on ya shoe leather.

If it was more like the Scrollmaker missions (kill a plant, get ink cert) where ya gonna send me out to "kick the poo" outta 150 beasties , at least that's a bit more exiting than "we want this task to take several hours so just walk back and forth from here to there repeatedly".

Hmm, thanks Freddy, I think that makes me realise why I like the occupations I do: They have me do an activity I've not had to do before.

• Toolmaker and butcher... well, hunting down specific animals to kill or quarter is something I've done all the time for fame missions already. Same with going into bandit camps. And crafting stuff is nothing new either.
• Running around talking to NPCs, and delivering stuff between them, like for Water-Carrier, also something I've done plenty of times before, specially at events. Just because some of the NPCs are scenery items doesn't change much.
• Digging kitin larva.... is also something I've in essence done a lot of times already: Having to dig something that only pops in a small area while having to avoid nasties that patrol over that area periodically, is nothing odd.

• Digging flowers however is a new experience; having to visually find the sources that are scattered over a large area, being unable to prospect or track them, isn't something I've had to do before.
• So is killing the plants in the kitin lair; killing specific scattered mobs where the challenge isn't the killing but the finding them and getting close to them while dodging nasties is not something I've ever had to do before.
• Cartographer is a bit more thin, but still a bit new in the just having to walk to a specific location, and in the running around inside the city. Not something I've had to do often.