Ryzom

I enjoy playing this game a lot. The ideas in this game are fresh and new. With that said I will give some of my background.

I have a degree in TV and radio and am very judgmental by nature. The problem seems to be in the application of the Grand Vision of Ryzom. Each patch that is supposed to implement new features only adds more bugs.

The bugs I am talking about are known bugs like the NM’s that are unkillable. The crashes that happen often when I go in Zora’s front area. The fame that goes to the wrong faction. The sudden I am trapped up high and I cant get down. The Broken TPs that we are give Cryptic answers about y e cant buy tickets. The invisible walls. The tele in Thesos that got mved temporary and is still not back. The rite missions that are un finish able. The kill intelligent plants in the Cities of Intuition that can not be finished Because there are no plants there. And many others I can not remember but others can and I encourage them to state not rage them.

Now to the promises almost all seem to have been broken or left in limbo. The box said there would be outposts that are player run. There are not. There would be guild missions and trainers as well as add-ons to halls there are not.


My greatest Fear so far is by the time the programmers finally get the entire features promised finished there will be a lone player in his basement with 250 in all trees and max fame saying “This is all great now too bad the game is dead and no one will ever trust Neverax again due to slow time tables and belated promises.” With that the last player unsubscribes and another MMORPG fades into black.

I'd always like to see something fade into another color besides black for once <_<

On the topic at hand, the devs really need to buckle down on these gaming issues and introducing new content. The trivia contest is nice but it seems like they're doing it as a stalling tactic more than anything.

The trivia contest is a gimmick and a joke. How does it really belong in the game? Only as a means to keep ppl from logging off...

I would be happy if only they would fix the encyclopedia missions, which was promised and still not delivered. And even after the promised fix it's only gonna be a subset of the real encyclopedia... guess the cliff notes encyclopedia version... :/

Financially speaking the US server would be gone way before then, thinking of which, I was doing some generic number crunching the other night, more because I was bored, and came up with a guestimate of costs for Ryzom in the US.

At a minimum, I am guessing they need 300 player subscriptions on the US servers to be profitable, or at the very least break even, depending on where they put the server in New York.

Thats about $4500 a month, now this is thinking they are only spending $3000 a month in 'housing' of the equipment.

BUT, considering our office costs us over $10,000 a month to rent in Florida, they need about 900 players to pay for an office like ours in New York, Personally I don't see 200 players on at any given time.

Bugs, we all agree with you on the bugs, there are TONS of them, and presumably there working on them, features.. well.. there advertised, thats about it for now. "maybe" we will see them by christmas, maybe not, I stopped counting on them a while ago.

To be hones, I think there on a time table to go from Red to Green, because its my firm belief that they are in the negative for profit on this game.

Thus, this explains why there is no such thing as a contact phone number for support, it frankly just doesn't exist, because they can't afford it.

None of us are asking our friends to join the game, atleast I am not, the gaming community I belong to spans a few states, literally, (huge network of LAN friends), we gather once or twice a year and get a few convention style rooms at hotels and do LAN parties, eat pizza and drink beer all night long.

Sad to say, I am the ONLY one playing this game from that team of people, and they count on what I say about the game as to when or if they will get it. Right now, there not getting it, not until what is advertised on the box goes live and is not riddled with bugs.

We have different people in different genre' type games who do the research and discuss if its worth our time to get the games, wether there MMO's or just LAN games in general.

I firmly believe the current player base is "ok" with the game the way it is, and has become comfortable with all the issues because they expect them.

The game, for what it is at the moment, is not to dull, but not exciting enough to advertise to our friends and neighbors, not yet.

It has become very hard to label something as a bug or a feature that we don't understand.

List of a few I know:

Prime example, the teleporters, it used to be that the merchant filter had nothing to do with the teleporter merchants.

In the last patch they changed the teleporter merchants so they are similar to regular merchants so that they act on the global merchant filter the individual sets.

This was not documents in the 'feature release' or 'patch updates' notes, not even the GM's knew it happened, but it did.

The first Wisdom cube from the barman in Yrkanis is broken, you can get to the final piece of it, get the neck item, go to the hill, it gives you a message stating that the 'special resources' are in X direction, you go there on the map, it has a flag spot, an NPC is standing within 15m of the spot.. and you can't find the resources, so you can't complete the quest.

Individual appartments, randomly the apartment will 'boot' you out of the apartment and load you outside, sometimes this happens in a minute, other times it might not happen for 30 minutes, but when it does, you can't re-enter the apartment or it will crash you to your desktop.

Dieing mounts, you can be cruising along (this is a rare bug), your mount runs out of food, you have no food in his inventory, and he falls over dead underneath you, this one was just funny, full speed, no agro, mount dies.

Shielding, this one was cute, If I use the Shielding ability on myself, not only do I take the damage that the monster did initially to me, but directly afterwards I also take the adversary damage that is altared based on what the sheilding ability was supposed to absorb.

Ammo depletion bug, if I have a ranged weapon in my right hand, ammo in my left hand, and immediately switch to a 2h weapon, randomly the ammo stack goes to 1, no matter how much ammo was in that stack.

Crashes to deskop, if you are cruising along and you run to a city while you are on your mount, and that city, say Yrkanis, has alot of graphics, you get a 'please wait' pop up, then crash to desktop.

After reloading the game, you have to use the 'walk' button to make your mount walk while your on it to the city, to allow it to load properly or you will crash again.

Sale of items, there are still 0 Quantity items on the merchat.

List goes on, but these are either features or bugs, no clue which.

rmillard wrote:The trivia contest is a gimmick and a joke. How does it really belong in the game? Only as a means to keep ppl from logging off...

I would be happy if only they would fix the encyclopedia missions, which was promised and still not delivered. And even after the promised fix it's only gonna be a subset of the real encyclopedia... guess the cliff notes encyclopedia version... :/

To their defense even if they got everything right on the first try, the full encylopedia wouldn't be in the game. You have to consider that each entry has to have a unique mission and there has to be a detailed write up about the item. It's not a small accomplishment.

I thought this game had big backers so thay could aford to only have a few people play as long as in the end are 1000s of us.

I'm quite happy playing the game as is, and would be happy playing it if it stayed the way it is.

Why? Because I know there's more to it than leveling, and doing automated quests. There's more to playing an RPG than just it's features. I'm here for the backdrop, not all the neat new features that no other MMO might have. Features are just icing on the cake for me. Not the final, deciding factor.

Actually, it's funny, I was just wondering about this earlier today and then I read this thread. That is, is this game making money? Perhaps Xenofur, who seems knowledgeable about some of the "inside workings" of this game, might comment.

By my reckoning, we have at least 200 people on Windermeer during prime time. I count about 30 in Imperial Dunes. There must be 30-40 more in the different Fyros territories. I assume there are at least 50 in each of the other territories (all of this may even be conservative). Of course some of those logged on may be just trial subscribers. Also, I have no idea what percentage of the subscriptions is represented; surely not everyone subscribed is on at the same time.

I cannot even guess the costs, but it includes more than just the server and the building it's housed in. I suspect the GM and technician salaries are the highest part of the cost. It must be WAY MORE than $4500/month.

Overall, Nevrax's profitability obviously also depends upon the three European servers. Even if each server is breaking even, that would not pay for the main Nevrax team developing the game, who all need to be paid and need a place to work.

Xenofur, any information on this?

Thanks.

Doctor Z.

I wouldn't worry about it. Figure 500 or more on prime time, and figure what, 20 subscriptions per person online at any one time primetime? Unless that's too conservative. 10k subscriptions in NA, at least?