I have seen many people call themselves 'gamers'. These are typically the people who need the fast instant gratification and dont stick with a game for more than a few months at a time and cannot see the potential. These are the people who should NOT be playing a game at release, because those of us who have played games from release and onwards realize that everything will not be worked out at the start and bugs/changes will happen over the first few months to improve the gameplay/performance.
In a word, don't bother. It's cool at first but Nevrax got it wrong with several very basic gameplay factors. The worst offense is that your ability to PvE is based on your gear, and you cannot buy decent gear from NPC vendors. All the decent, actually usable gear *must* be crafted. The next worse offense is that the decay time on your gear is insanely fast.
The above quote shows lack of gameplay experience in a crafting game. Try a game like DAOC (which I loved for 3 years before they put in the new frontiers patch killing fg vs fg rvr :/). In order to have the best eq you HAD to get at least SOME of it crafted. A better example is SWG, there all the best gear was crafted, and SWG had one of the most amazing crafting systems I have seen on a game (too bad the rest of their game was laggy and not to my liking). I love the fact that heavy emphasis is put on crafters and they have a REAL role in this world to fulfill.. Recommending that people not play Ryzom because YOU dont like to interact with the crafter community or put the time and effort to help your guildmate raise his crafting to be there to equip you, is not really a good review...
Players in teams, fighting mobs that yeild appropriate exp for the group members, routinely wear down their weapons and armor in a day or two at most. Some players even go through two weapons in one evening of playing.
Ok, now , its hard to even respond to people who play the game, want to review the game but dont know what is going on in the game. The insane rates of armor decay and weapon decay are a *BUG BUG BUG BUG BUG*. Its a KNOW BUG and will be fixed asap. Please dont tell me you thought this was working as intended? We are lucky if our armor lasts 2 hours in a guild group at the rate we pull/kill stuff. So we just outfit the main tank and the rest go nekid
Until this bug is fixed that is, that is our plan.
To exacerbate the above issues, foraging for the materials needed to make the decent crafted gear is fairly time-intensive. Interesting, even fun at first, but too time intensive for the yeild. It can take 2-3 hours to forage the 112 pieces of material needed to make a set of good heavy armor, for instance. You can sell that set at level 50 for roughly 250,000 to 300,000. In that same amount of time, you could be hunting and leveling your fighting/magic skills, having fun and thrills, and make the same amount of money or more off the mob loot drops. The net result is that there's no serious incentive to craft for most players, so there's not enough crafted gear to outfit all the players who'd rather hunt and not deal with crafting. Even in guilds with dedicated crafters and lots of people foraging to help the crafters make gear faster, the crafters can barely keep up with the demand. You see the regional chat filled with people asking for a piece of gear at a certain level and you seen almost no responses. The few crafters actually advertising gear to sell rarely have anything that is germane to yourself.
As a counter argument here, in the same time you are out hunting fighting doing magic and all that boring stuff, i could be out foraging and crafting and make the same amount of money as you! Not ALL people find fighting hunting and magic using the great thrill... Some find making things and selling things and supplying things to people what they love in games. I see the regional chat as well asking for items for sale. TALK to some of those people sometimes, they CANT afford the items they are asking for. I know that I can, as a wussy crafter type, run missions and make a few hundred k without any problems, the people asking for armor and weapons and not getting any on the region lines CANT afford it... Dont ask me why, I dont know what they do with their stuff, or why they ask for gear they cant afford.. but they just cant. Believe me, ive talked to enough 'customers' to realize this. If you want to be a capped out maxed armor/weapon for your level ,its going to cost a bigger chunk of change from your fighters pocket (relatively speaking) than it does to get slightly lower gear.
But as a side note here, READ THE PATCH NOTES. THERE WILL BE PLAYER VENDORS WHICH WILL MAKE IT DEAD EASY TO GET GEAR WHEN YOU WANT IT.. Sorry for the caps but this guy obviously cannot read patch notes or boards to see what known bugs are and what is intended to come into the game really soon to help releive some of his woes.
In AO, for instance, a crafter would be needed to put together your implants for you, or to modify your weapon for better damage output, or to put together quested materials into an armor piece for you that was uber armor. But in all these cases, the crafter did not run around getting all these parts. You brought the parts to the crafter, he put them together for you in a matter of minutes, and then you tipped the guy for helping you. And it was not time-consuming/boring to get those parts together. In the case of implants, you just bought the parts from vending machines. In the case of the more uber armor, you acquired the parts while hunting mobs (fun) or solving a tough, interesting quest (fun). In other words, you acquired the parts you needed while questing or hunting. Not staring at a resource node on the ground, pulling the slot machine handle while you slowly accumulate 0-4 resources with each attempt.
Again, why would i bother to raise skill if im going to craft for people and just get a 'tip'. Not create anything of my own with my own materials. You really seem to have missed the boat on the crafting community and what is wanted and needed there. Your whole post is very anti-crafter where fighters actually MUST use them. You would like your games to be non crafter dependant, which is fair enough, but that is no reason to tell people not to try the game out, or that its not worth trying the game out. Saying Dont try out this game because they actually make crafters important to the community sounds a bit obnoxious.
When decay rate gets fixed, crafters WILL be able to keep up with demand and you will see a LOT more stuff for sale outside of just guilds as crafters WILL have an overstock then. If you wantit now, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Join a guild and HELP a crafter level up to be able to supply you. You help them they help you. If you want some solo game, buy a stand alone game to play on your PC not an online multiplayer game
Anyway, with a superb game like WoW due out very soon, don't bother with Ryzom unless you're really bored and just want to see something different for a "free" month. You won't want to actually subscribe after the free month is over. Which is a shame, because the game is beautiful and could be so much better. The game designers just really have wrong ideas about very basic stuff. Plus the game was released too early, like most MMOGs (except WoW), and there's very little content other than killing mobs and foraging and crafting. No end game. Not even any quests. Yes yes, some of this is "coming soon" but again, when will developers and publishers learn that they shoot themselves in the foot by releasing a game too early? Players always chew through your newbie/lowbie content with amazing speed. Again, Blizzard has done an amazing job with WoW in this regard. There is more diverse and content ready and polished in closed beta than most MMOGs have a year after retail launch.
As mentioned above, DONT play a game at release if this is your attitude. Even your saintly WoW game will have bugs in it that were not intended to be there and make gameplay a bit annoying for a while. If armor decay wasnt bugged then your crafting problems and decay problems wouldnt be an issue. Your people skills and not wanting to deal with other players in the game to help your character advance would still be an issue (like buying crafted items), but I think that is a personal problem.
You cant see the forest for the trees here. This game has great potential. But as with all new games there will be bugs and needed features coming in post-release. Fixing decay rate and vendors will be major improvements to gameplay. And we KNOW those fixes are coming in the next patch. In your reivew you make it seem as if these fixes do not EVEN exist, you do not acknowledge that 99% of what you complain of is a known bug that is being worked on that is causing high decay rate and lack of crafted items for sale, and that vendors will be in soon making it easier to get crafted items. Im not even sure if you can deem that a 'review' or a smear to a game that has great potential.
I have heard that Ryzom has 8 years of storyline planned for it. Its most definitely geared for roleplaying, not just lewt farming of mobs.. You have to give them a few months before making judgements until they have all their ducks in a row. They are a new game just out of release with a new company that doesnt do other online games. No game at release has ever run smoothly, there were always bugs and things to be worked out that were not forseen. Making judgements in the first month of release based on bugs and things that are not here yet but coming in future patches is too premature. My jury is still out on this game, but I can see where they are going with it, and if they actually make it there, this game definitely will be a must play.
Just my 2 dapper..
