The very best thing about Acridiel's message is simply that it exists. Ryzom is far from the only MMO with a genuinely welcoming and helpful community, but it is certainly an excellent example. And so I give Acridiel full credit and thanks for taking the time to write his letter.
Unfortunately, it has some inaccuracies and does not (in my view) adequately address why new players today get frustrated and leave. But I agree with him that Ryzom is a wonderful game and players shouldn't quit. So I am going to revisit his points and add my own.
Each of Acridiel's points raises three questions:
- How accurate is it with respect to the current version of the game?
- If it's accurate, how unique to Ryzom is it compared to other games?
- If it's accurate, how much does it have to do with new players getting frustrated and quitting?
Then Acridiel gets into the following numbered list of descriptive bullet points about Saga of Ryzom. These are his points, not mine.
1. Ryzom´s a Sandbox-Kind-of-Game. Accurate - it is a sandbox as opposed to narrative type of game. Unique? Certainly not. EVE Online is a sandbox. Second Life is the ultimate sandbox. Original SWG (before they destroyed it) was a sandbox. EQ2 is pretty sandboxy. And so forth. And does this have anything to do with why new players quit? Maybe a little, but let's be clear on the reasons. Some people just don't like sandboxes. You can't force them to stay once they find out Ryzom isn't narrative. What worries me more are the people who just don't like inadequately documented sandboxes - more on that later.
2. Ryzom´s got Invasion. Accurate in the past - I haven't seen one happen since the new owners took over, but as long as they retain Jolt I expect this will continue. But every major MMO has dev- and GM-puppeteered in-game events; it's the one feature every publisher seems to agree is worth having. Do new players leave today because of Invasion? It seems more likely that Acridiel is thinking back to some complaint of the past. As a new player in today's Ryzom I couldn't care less about Invasion, would probably look on with interest if it occurred or take a few days off if I felt I couldn't handle it, and certainly not quit the game either way.
3. Ryzom is Teamplay. I can't call this claim accurate because it's completely subjective. Certainly there are situations where it makes a lot of sense to be part of a team, so people can monitor each other's health and do other protections. But solo play can be very rewarding as well. Ryzom isn't teamplay, Ryzom is whatever happens within Ryzom, team or solo. At any rate, Ryzom shares this in common with about 65 other MMO's, and I do not think that players are quitting because it sometimes helps to be in a team. They're unlikely to find any other MMO to play where this isn't true.
4. Ryzom´s got community. Absolutely accurate - Ryzom has a great community, or rather several of them (also a problem - more on that later). But in fairness, every single MMO out there, from the smallest to the biggest and the oldest to the newest, has something on the website or the forum stickies or the guidebooks or all of the above, saying "The best thing about PeppermintQuest is the Community!" It's a total MMO cliche'. True for Ryzom, true for every game. And from what I've seen in the last month, players these days are certainly not quitting because they think there's no community.
5. Ryzom isn´t E-Sport! (meaning don't just grind levels). I have to call this one highly inaccurate - grinding is an essential aspect of Ryzom and this is obvious the more time you spend in-game. Precisely because it is a sandbox, getting the skills you need requires grinding. Yes, ideally we should all stop and smell the roses along the way. But just you wait until your guild wants to take out some boss and your offensive skill is 40 points lower than anyone else's. Catalyst crystals wouldn't exist if grinding weren't a necessary evil. And again, this is common to many or most MMO's. Are players quitting because of the grind? I'd say yes among other reasons.
6. Ryzom´s got no real "Endgame" - this may be a language or terminology difference. The endgame in a MMO generally means whatever style of gameplay takes hold once your character has stopped gaining levels/skills. It's true that because Ryzom has so many skill tree branches, you never really need to stop "growing" in some area or other, but at the same time, once you've hit 250 in several of your primary chosen skill areas (combat, crafting etc) your gameplay does switch from "leveling" to more social and/or PvP oriented stuff, along with supporting your guild, tackling bosses, and enjoying those in-game events. That's the endgame. We might say that Ryzom's endgame is different from some other MMO's - just as those MMOs' endgames are different from each other. We can't say Ryzom doesn't have an endgame. Also, by definition, this issue is not causing new players to quit.
7. Ryzom´s got no Instances. This is accurate (so far!) and interesting to know, but frankly, at Ryzom's player population, not really an issue for anyone. Instances become necessary when crowds interfere with looting rares. Ryzom has no crowds to speak of and few rares. There are other MMO's without instances, if anyone really cared - again, "No instances - I'm quitting" is not a complaint I've heard. But it is an interesting fact about the game, at least until it changes...
8. Ryzom´s got a Staff that cares! Wow, this is an understatement! The staff (both devs and CSRs) are wonderful. Of course this is hardly unique to Ryzom. Many MMO's have wonderful personnel behind them. Ryzom is simply a good example. I sure wouldn't want to think that any new players were quitting because they thought the staff didn't care - they definitely do. Having said this, we don't know for a fact whether the new owners will continue to employ Jolt to manage the English speaking side - or what will happen to the existing devs. So let's hope this point stays true in six months.
9. Ryzom´s hard to solo. As someone who actually is soloing two characters - one guilded, one non-guilded - I find this accurate, but the context is important. Soloing when you're a high-skill veteran player in the toughest areas is one thing. I'm sure that's hard, although I'm not there yet myself, and I'm also sure that new players aren't quitting because it's hard to get to level 230 in the Prime Roots. Soloing when you're trying to crack 38 in Melee - which is more relevant to the new player experience - is something else. It is extremely doable, even if you start on the Mainland (I took one toon straight there as a test) and even easier if you get the most out of the starter isle of Silan first. But it's just a dreary grind. Your enemy isn't some social aggro mob, it's boredom. The grind is one reason people quit. And unfortunately, social play doesn't really lessen the grind. It makes it more fun, but in turn you have to spend more hours.
10. Ryzom has gut no real "Quests". This is not accurate from a new player's perspective in today's game. The NPC's on Silan do give out "real" missions (=quests) that are not repeatable, have specific goals, that grant Experience Points and useful loot (amplifiers, sword etc) and are intended to teach you the game. Acridiel alludes to this in a footnote, but for noobs it stands front and center as the Ryzom experience. It's true that once you eventually transition to the Mainland the handholding "other MMO style" missions dry up. And that may contribute to player burnout, especially if people got used to having "the next thing" handed to them. I get the impression that more, not fewer, "real Quests" are in our future for this reason.
11. Ryzom´s got no Classes. Absolutely true and interesting; absolutely not unique to Ryzom; absolutely not why new players are quitting. People like having options. That's one reason Ryzom is excellent.
Well, that was Acridiel's list. Now let me give you my top 5 reasons why I think new players in today's 2006-2007 edition of Saga Of Ryzom are quitting, and what we need to do about it.
1. The client is a pig. It's not the 1.7GB download size, which is middle of the pack for modern MMO's, although you could argue that a small game like Ryzom, hungry for new customers, might want a smaller trial size. Nor is it the 7GB unpacked footprint. Ryzom is a pig because the running game client brings low-to-medium PC's and laptops to their knees. It's much worse than most of the competition among equivalent MMO's. Even at the lowest detail settings - which are not turned on by default, even when you install on a PC that needs them - Ryzom chews serious CPU just sitting there. (It chews CPU at the login window.) The choice between OpenGL and Direct3D is not obvious to new (or many experienced) players, and the default "Automatic" choice (the game doesn't tell you which one it picks) may not be right.
The reason this matters is that sluggish gameplay exerts a constant, irritating psychological effect - one that colors the entire playing experience, no matter how brilliant the game design is or how otherwise rewarding a player's session might be. Eventually people just get fed up with it and don't log in.
The new owners need to take a "tiger-team" approach to lightening the client's impact on the PC, either by tweaking the engines or making some other choices. Perhaps there are some bugs to fix. Most importantly, the CEO of the game needs to walk into a middle class shopping center, buy an ordinary PC, take it home or to work, install Ryzom on it and use THAT as the benchmark. Not some lead developer's badass Opteron showpiece. Nobody should have to quit this game because it runs slower than other MMOs.
2. The community is fragmented by language. This isn't a problem for That Huge Competing MMO, because 8 million splits three or four ways very nicely. But for an at-best-modest sized MMO like Ryzom (Nevrax wouldn't give numbers, seldom a good sign) to divide its users into separate French, German and English language zones (server, forum, CSR etc) makes it feel like you're playing an oversized hobby MUD at times. You want to find something out about the game, it turns out the only guy who knows is over in the French zone somewhere. Major guilds have 2 or 1 or zero people online. You have much of the game to yourself, much of the time.
Ironically, Acridiel sets a great counterexample of cross-language-community support by coming here and posting his Open Letter. But this is more the exception than the rule.
By contrast, look at CCP. Until they launched their Asian shard, the rule for their trans-Atlantic, multilingual playerbase was, One live server for all, one official language (English) for commerce and support. Maybe that's harder to get away with in France than in Iceland. But it's worked for CCP. Nobody should have to quit this game because they feel almost alone.
3. Documentation is scattered and incomplete. And just to pre-empt, no excuses please about how you should "ask other players." There is nothing intrinsically mysterious about the mechanics of this game. The only feature that's uniquely creative and non-intuitive (that I can see) is the elegant Stanza/Credit system for Actions, which is just arithmetic once you wrap your head around the basic idea. In theory, Ryzom should be as lavishly and accurately documented as any other MMO. In practice, there was a lot of stuff written during Beta and the first couple of months of release, and relatively little since (even though some things have changed). There are things scattered around the Forums in three languages. There are some external sites still alive among the dead links. But not as much real info as you'd think.
Of course if you start on Silan and you take the "instructional" quests, you will see some popup windows containing the kind of explanatory text new players need. Somebody obviously spent a lot of time on them. But the moment you close them, that text is gone for good. You can't pull it back up in your Journal. You can't ask the NPC to repeat it. And it's not matched or even hinted at in the in-game Help system.
There is even a certain notion implied, from some players and perhaps hinted at in the official lore, that this obfuscation is somehow "good for" or part of the game experience. I think that's bunk. No truly elegant game needs its mechanics obscured. And I have played games where the actual mechanics were so crappy that people didn't discuss them in order to avoid depressing themselves. Ryzom's mechanics seem awesome to me.
New players should have every opportunity to learn as much or as little about how Ryzom works as they choose, on their own time. All of that instructional text should be readable online and in your Journal. Devs and players together should redouble efforts to create Ryzom 101 guides that lay out the basics in plain English (at least). Nobody should have to quit this game because they don't understand it.
4. The Grind. Don't bother arguing with me about this one - read what people say about Ryzom in other forums. Talk to the people who have quit to other games. Ask them what they finally didn't like. You can do the initial Silan quests, you can smell the flowers and chat with friends all you like, but sooner or later, you're going to have to grind. Those high level buddies you made in the wonderful Ryzom community, the ones that want you to go adventuring with them - know how they got those high levels? Want to join them? Start grinding. Otherwise you're going to be a casual-playing n00b for two years while your buddies go have fun with that funny little Tryker next to you who did grind.
This is a standard complaint with non-narrative sandbox games. The only workarounds are to introduce narrative/quest elements (without requiring them) or to endlessly diversify the universe of possible targets and zones to level in, which adds to the Pig problem above. But some solution should be attempted, because nobody should have to quit this game rather than look another Yubo in the face.
5. The Uncertainty. Our shining hope now is that the Gameforge era will render this problem moot, but if you're cataloging new player turnoffs in Q406, this is near the top of the heap. People have been unsure for months whether there would be a game to play next week. Nobody wants to create an account and llavish significant amounts of character building time and energy on a title that might cease operations, or turn into something unrecognizable. I heard about Ryzom through the Free Ryzom Campaign, and when I tried the game I saw it was too sweet to pass up if only for a few months. But others are understandably more reluctant.
And then there's the issue of whether Gameforge is keeping Jolt around. Many of the relationships players have developed and enjoy with "the staff" at Ryzom are actually with Jolt employees.
As I say, hopefully this has become a non-issue, but nobody should have to quit rather than risk investing in a vanishing game.
I hope this slightly different "new player perspective" is somewhat helpful. My thanks again to Acridiel for reaching out in the first place, and I hope this rebuttal is received in good spirits.
(joke...)
