Ryzom

Well, it's sad my first post is also my last one. Started, played, got bored, quited. I just couldn't figure it out what's the purpose of training your character. Everything seems so pointless.

I found WSIMike's review from mmorpg.com and I think it explains how I feel right now:


"I once gave this game a glowing review. This was when it first came out. Then a horrible thing happened. It was called Chapter One and with it came a mass exodus of a large portion of what was already a very small player base. Nevrax dropped the ball several times over with that disaster and had to work quickly to fix a few of the issues they created before everyone was gone. They made their changes, but it was too little too late. The damage was done ... Now about a year later what has Ryzom experienced? Well, let's see, they've gone through a bankruptcy, or the equivalent of it, they've had to merge servers to reduce their overhead and they've yet to implement things they've been gloating about making Ryzom unique since before its launch. They have no clue about how to balance difficulty in creatures... you can run 100 meters from a starting city and still be annihilated by creatures when you're 20 levels higher than recommended level to leave the starting/newbie island and begin exploring the main land.. There's no point to anything you're doing. It's said that currently, players are supposed to be "establishing themselves in the gameworld" - well.. that sounds just lovely. What they're really saying is "we don't have any meaningful content so we're hoping we can buffoon you into believing that you're preparing for better things to come down the road... eventually... when we get around to it... if we get around to it and haven't been shut down by then..." If you can even find the game on store shelves anymore, expect to pay about one penny for it - and that's only if the store staff didn't get around to throwing the boxes out to make room for games that people actually want to play and are buying. Just do yourself a favor... look elsewhere. This is a game that had so much potential and so much promise but was designed and is being run by people who are, to put it simply, utterly and completely clueless. Their reach by far exceeded their grasp. Don't waste your time. My guess is that this game's high score is due to the promotion of people who - to their credit - genuinely love the game and are hoping to keep its profile high enough so it and its developer don't just vanish one day."

I'm sure you have read enough threads like this. But there will be more threads like this and there won't be Ryzom in the future if things won't change =(.

yep, I get that feeling and agree with the review wholeheartedly.

I love this game, but it does seem that they keep puttin off all the content that will truly establish this game and bring people to it in a large way. As it is now, we get a slow trickle of people trying the 2 week trial... of them only some of them stick around longer. Outposts and possible R2 could bring a ton of people to the game, but they're taking forever to do them, and considering Nevrax's finanical position, it might not have all the time in the world to do it. Also with R2, considering they still haven't done outposts (something that still hasn't been released but was supposed to be a part of the game since the beginning) who knows when they'll actually make it something more that an item on the "We're working on it" list

I''l be sad to see you go Anttimus. Nevermind, Bye, cya, enjoy your life and future gaming experiences. Perhaps you will find something soon that meets your criteria of a good game. If not....who cares.

totnkopf wrote: As it is now, we get a slow trickle of people trying the 2 week trial... of them only some of them stick around longer.

I think there is problem in new players island. It's not so good guide to this game. Most of the time new player is totally lost there. It does not guide well to how everyting works. It's more like go and do it, without showing how to do it or how everyting works. After new players get in the main lands, they notice that they are most the time alone and lost, doing just the simple leveling, hacking more Yubos. No wonder people quit after two weeks. New players island should be teaching how the game works and how to use interface. Not just thrown players in the cold and hard world. It miss the good first impression.

EQ2 does this a lot better.

I played longer than just 2 week trial, I was in a guild and trained all skills, explored world and really tried to find out why should I continue playing this. But I just couldn't find this game interesting.

Edit: Just saw your last post, well, in this case, just skip to the end of this post.

anttimus wrote:Well, it's sad my first post is also my last one. Started, played, got bored, quited. I just couldn't figure it out what's the purpose of training your character. Everything seems so pointless.

On the one hand i can really understand your sentiments from the point of view a first time player. On the other hand i also see you passing judgement too early. It's true that the starter region is empty and doesn't do much more than teach you the very basics. I don't know for how long you played, but i'm pretty sure you didn't socialize much and tried to find out about the world itself. Forgive me if not, but i can only assume from your rather short post. (Hell, I don't even know if you left newbie island.) This part of the game will be addressed in the future.
Anyways, to answer your primary question:
You level your character so you can do what you want to do. Ryzom is a game that does emphasize RP. Most players who are here now played it, got to know the world, the players, the rules and made a character, with a personality, a background, and goals.
I'll give you a few examples:
- some people like to explore, they like to wander around the world and find out what it has to offer, but they dislike combat, so they level up melee a bit to be able to take a few hits and then concentrate on harvesting and perhaps healing magic to help random passerbys
- some like to tinker, puzzle and create things, they too dislike combat, so they level melee and healing magic a bit, improve their harvesting in order to gain easier access at materials to experiment with and mainly concentrate on crafting, sitting for hours on end in their apartments, trying to find the recipe for the perfect sword(which does not just consist of putting in the best materials )
- some like .. bonk bonk on the head , they simply abhorr anything except for melee, so they train all melee trees, get one single up fast in order to be able to dish it out and take the damage when it counts, but they need teams, so they keep an eye on their other trees, always keeping options open to be able to team with all levels
- some like to explore, to learn, i am the perfect example for that, you could call me a scholar if you like, yet my levels are the barest minimum, even tho i played since release. still that didn't stop me from playing an integral role in the last war on leanon. my agility, ability to collect informations and fearlessness made it possible for the person who had taken up the job to lead the main force there to always have a precise overview of the battlefield. (tho i wasn't the only one who did this.)

then there is another reason, namely what is currently happening in the world. there have been predictions of jena, the goddess of the karavan coming down from the stars to go to battle with the kami, to ultimately destroy them. her followers stated reasons, such as the claim that ma-duk was in fact sick and a danger to all homins. but that is something i cannot believe, not coming from people who won't even touch the soil of atys. so even i will train to at least be able to aid in battle when needed.
next is the more imminent danger of the cutthroats, a troupe of bandits who tried to invade fyros last week, after conquering a region of matis. we managed to throw them back this time and they lost their leader in these lands, which don't seem to be familiar to them.
and lastly there are strange things happening in fyros, young, inexperienced homins, who just arrived from the exile had been kidnapped. for now we don't know who or why did it. but they left plenty of clues and i'm sure all homins will do their best to bring them back safely.

now, what to level for? in order to be powerful and ressourceful enough to play a major role in these happenings.

i could write a lot more about wanting to help others, about setting your own goals, even: creating quests for others(the story about neun, who gave his all and only managed to do so with bare seconds left, crafted a wedding dress for a young homin, comes to mind), but you have given more to answer.

-

Keep a few things in mind while reading this: This is the first game that Nevrax has made. They consist of a team of 50 persons. They initially tried to maintain an insanely fast patch cycle, which resulted in bad patches and sloppy code. This was cleaned up in the last half year, but also completely halted visible implementation of "content".

> It was called Chapter One and with it came a mass exodus of a large portion of what was already a very small player base.

The main point about chapter one that led to people leaving was a rebalancing that wasn't mentioned in the patch notes. This rebalancing initially made most mobs too hard to beat, what it did was: decrease HP, increase DMG. This was a response to complaints of players who said that battles were too long and boring. So what they did was make battles faster and more challenging. They simply miscalculated the values and overdid it, but managed to react and remedy that within a week.

> they've gone through a bankruptcy, or the equivalent of it

Wrong, they recognized that they couldn't possibly keep the company afloat and pay their debts without changes. So they acted before anything could happen and froze their debts, put themselves under legal observations and hired Jessica Mulligans in order to reorganize the company as well as the production methods. In short: they came close, but avoided it.

> they've had to merge servers to reduce their overhead

They merged 2 servers, american english and british english, which makes sense no matter how you look at it. Also i think, it's no big surprise that this french game never managed to gain a solid foothold in the usa.

> they've yet to implement things they've been gloating about making Ryzom unique since before its launch.

One thing: Outposts. Other things were on the insistence of the players implemented only partly, yet fully usable, or slightly buggy.

> They have no clue about how to balance difficulty in creatures... you can run 100 meters from a starting city and still be annihilated by creatures when you're 20 levels higher than recommended level to leave the starting/newbie island and begin exploring the main land..

Completely wrong in the range of 100 m from the main entrance of a main city you will find mobs in the level range of 1-30, excellently suited for the complete newbie to train on. After that tho it get's harder, as there will begin to be aggressive mobs, but well, noone said Ryzom was an easy game. Besides, it's completely possible to evade these mobs by employing the use of: the radar, your eyes, your brain.

> There's no point to anything you're doing. It's said that currently, players are supposed to be "establishing themselves in the gameworld" - well.. that sounds just lovely. What they're really saying is "we don't have any meaningful content so we're hoping we can buffoon you into believing that you're preparing for better things to come down the road... eventually... when we get around to it... if we get around to it and haven't been shut down by then..." If you can even find the game on store shelves anymore, expect to pay about one penny for it - and that's only if the store staff didn't get around to throwing the boxes out to make room for games that people actually want to play and are buying. Just do yourself a favor... look elsewhere. This is a game that had so much potential and so much promise but was designed and is being run by people who are, to put it simply, utterly and completely clueless. Their reach by far exceeded their grasp. Don't waste your time. My guess is that this game's high score is due to the promotion of people who - to their credit - genuinely love the game and are hoping to keep its profile high enough so it and its developer don't just vanish one day."

See above, currently Ryzom has a solid playerbase on every server, a playerbase that is big enough to support the game and make it feel real, yet not so big that it's crowded. I'll be the first to admit that Nevrax have made their share of mistakes and blunders, but they aren't the morons this reviewer makes them out to be.
His guess is far off the mark, the real reason is that Nevrax has managed to create a stable client/server package and filled it with an almost real world, rife with background and history and prepared a real story, which is being played out, expanded and improved on by the support staff. The part about loving the game is true, the part about hoping zo keep it high-profile to prevent it from vanishing couldn't be more wrong. We're simply trying to share this experience, to give other players who like to roleplay casually and consistently a chance of experiencing this game.

> I'm sure you have read enough threads like this. But there will be more threads like this and there won't be Ryzom in the future if things won't change =(.

Yes, things need to change, but not in the drastic kind of way that this reviewer suggest they should. They also will change. =)

--

One last thing though, don't take this as me saying you should stay. This game is not made for every possible gamer out there and never will. Forcing yourself to stay would be foolish at best and only leave you with a bitterness toward Ryzom. I'm just trying to say that there is more than meets the eye and sometimes it needs uncovering.

*applause* Xenofur, I sometimes wish I had your patience and eloquence.

100% sign

Acridiel

anttimus wrote:I just couldn't figure it out what's the purpose of training your character. Everything seems so pointless.

That's true; there is no point in training your character unless you like levelling, which usually involves doing the same thing over and over for about 250 levels.

I normally ask new players if they like to grind (aka develop their character) and run around (aka explore). If they say 'no', which they usually do, then I call the Southgate Snatcher and get them disposed of. Originally I tried the 'join a guild' line and 'find mates and team' and so on. But this was like telling the terminally ill to rise up and walk. The new player had already fully understood the irony of the desserted desert.

There are a whole heap of other games out there that already have all of Ryzom's features, and they usually then have a whole heap more too. Indeed, if you want outposts then there are many games that have that already. Same goes for if you want an economy, different graphics, politics, meaningfull PvP, jumping or sitting on chairs, guild missions, some damn loot, giant raids, proper emotes some with sound, and so on.

I'm only sticking around because it's very amusing to visit shops and find nothing for sale. I mean, the RL market size is 350 million people right? And the game can't attract enough to have a barely functioning economy! Very amusing to watch.

It does sadden me though when someone on 'Resin Hill' asks for a rez and doesn't get one. Oh man, that's like going to the palace to find the king resigned last year and the place is now a dry cleaning centre.

trenker wrote:That's true; there is no point in training your character unless you like levelling, which usually involves doing the same thing over and over for about 250 levels.

unless you have a goal, like i mentioned above

trenker wrote:I normally ask new players if they like to grind (aka develop their character) and run around (aka explore). If they say 'no', which they usually do, then I call the Southgate Snatcher and get them disposed of. Originally I tried the 'join a guild' line and 'find mates and team' and so on. But this was like telling the terminally ill to rise up and walk. The new player had already fully understood the irony of the desserted desert.

so you actively drive players away, pretending to be able to judge what is actually different for every person?

trenker wrote:There are a whole heap of other games out there that already have all of Ryzom's features, and they usually then have a whole heap more too. Indeed, if you want outposts then there are many games that have that already. Same goes for if you want an economy, different graphics, politics, meaningfull PvP, jumping or sitting on chairs, guild missions, some damn loot, giant raids, proper emotes some with sound, and so on.

yes, ryzom is not wow, nice observation there. now, how many of these other games do have events like they are in ryzom? with a real story, background and real people acting them out and even with the possibility to determine the outcome?

trenker wrote:I'm only sticking around because it's very amusing to visit shops and find nothing for sale. I mean, the RL market size is 350 million people right? And the game can't attract enough to have a barely functioning economy! Very amusing to watch.

don't know what it's like on arispotle, but on leanon, which has a smaller community than arispotle has, there are no empty shops, period.

trenker wrote:It does sadden me though when someone on 'Resin Hill' asks for a rez and doesn't get one. Oh man, that's like going to the palace to find the king resigned last year and the place is now a dry cleaning centre.

i don't know what resin hill is, but at 0900 in the morning i can see people call for rez and get answers, tho it'd be foolish to expect the same thing at 0400. besides, did you bother to rez? ...

xenofur wrote:Completely wrong in the range of 100 m from the main entrance of a main city you will find mobs in the level range of 1-30, excellently suited for the complete newbie to train on.

This is not true. There are a substantial number of creatures that, when they are at or below your level, are not only capable of wiping you out, but do so very easily. It is not uncommon to be killed by a creature that, when you do manage to prevail, yeilds the message "You recieve no experience in _______, the action was to easy." And please, spare the bull about "You must be doing something wrong", it happens to to many people for it to be the players fault.