What if the NGE comes to "Saga of Ryzom"

[ark014]

How would the Ryzom community react if "Saga of Ryzom" suffered a massive simplification, and total abandonment of MMORPG principles, comparable to the "CU" and "NGE" changes that destroyed "Star Wars Galaxies"?

I would sum up these changes as:

1) Reduction in the number of skills/professions, and limiting each char to ONE skill/profession.

2) The death of the player-economy. Looted items are always better than crafted items, so crafters, harvesters, and all other non-combat players have no meaningful role.

3) No death penalty, so everyone can take reckless chances in combat with no fear of negative consequences.

4) The death of the game as a virtual world, and the death of the player-community. All players are "lone wolves". No incentives to group, no incentives to interact with other players, and no interdependence between players. Anything your char needs can be obtained in combat missions, rather than from other players.

5) No complex combat choices or strategies, just a mindless point-and-click First Person Shooter style of combat.

6) Giving away items, skills, etc. that veteran players had to work for for months (or years) to n00bz upon initialization of their characters, as a way to increase subscriptions.

7) No item decay, all items are "immortal" and never need replacing (thereby knifing crafters and harvesters in the back).

8) Always appeal to the lowest common denominator of intelligence and literacy. And since combat players are the most numerous, only worry about their needs, and ignore all other player types.

Shown below is a brilliant post from the EVE forums translating "Star Wars Galaxies" NGE changes into EVE terms. I am sure a similar post could be done for "Saga of Ryzom". The only thing this person omitted was "Since WoW is so popular we will plagiarize the interface, combat system, and other features of WoW and add them to EVE".

Thanks,
Amphiaraus

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Hmmm, how to best compare the NGE change to what could (theoretically) be done in EVE. I'll do my best (but I'm still new to EVE, but I'll try).

Well, not a lot of people play Amarr really. So we're going to remove them completely. Eventually we may code in some Amarr-like features to the other races.

Destroyers don't get played much. So we're removing them altogether, one less thing we have to worry about balancing.

Titans really are awfully hard to get. So we're just going to give you the option to select one from the very start. It's much more EVE-y that way, we think. And it will lead to a faster paced, more iconic gameplay experience if you can just use the biggest and coolest ships from the getgo, that others spent literally years trying to obtain.

Crafting sure is awfully complex. We think that's probably a turnoff. So we're going to condense all of the crafting skills into just a few skills, and minimize what you can do if you choose to go the crafting route in EVE. I mean really, combat is where it's at - and devoting dev time to fixing things for those who like to craft is kind of a waste. We want to nudge the crafters toward jumping in a ship to go kill things, since it's more iconic.

The best ships and components will all be looted now. No need for a player driven economy, or for people to mine/refine things and craft ships from BP's and the like, really. Requiring players to be interdependant doesn't really lead to the fast-paced gameplay we'd like to promote. So the stuff you loot will always be better now. No reason to buy much of anything, except maybe ammo. But we're looking into removing the need to do that, too.

Grouping up is overrated, and honestly we think that you should be able to complete every objective in this game solo. Several times per day. Making some areas/missions too hard to do solo just wasn't fair. So now you don't really ever need to depend on ganging up for much of anything.

There really are way too many skill trees over all. So we're just going to give you a few basic "Iconic" skills to train up. It's way too complex to worry about specializing in missiles, or torpedoes, or rockets - or autocannons vs artillery. So now you'll just train up Gunnery and maybe Advanced Gunnery. Those are all the offensive skills you'll need to train now.

Losing your ship and its components is awfully harsh, we think. In order to promote our new fast-paced, iconic and EVE-y gameplay experience, you'll now simply respawn a few systems away if you die. You won't lose your ship or your components. Of course, this means you won't have to buy replacement ships or components either - which means no one that makes them will ever sell anymore ships/components. But that's okay, we want them to be out fighting, not crafting things and worrying about an 'economy'.

[acridiel]

Well, it would be the same reaction as over at Star Wars.
We´d be leaving ASAP.

But that won´t happen
At least I hope so.

Acridiel

[amitst]

Dear god... what are you trying to start...lol. Phelan wouldn't let that happen.

[vguerin]

I think it's pretty clear most of us are here because Ryzom is unique(ish). If I wanted to sub to the other games I would already be doing it.

[ashling]

That is easy to answer. I'd react the same way I did to the NGE and leave.

I don't think anyone with common sense would pull an NGE on an existing game though.

[d29565]

Silence Crazy Person! Dont speak such things! There will be no cursing of the almighty Ryzom!

Psst, what is this NGE thing?

[jamela]

As I understand it, SOE's intention was to make SWG available on consoles to tap into that enormous market of gamers. It was tragic that the route SOE took to do this was to remould the entire game to suit the existing playerbase in that market rather than remoulding the engine so that the existing game could play on the consoles. Perhaps that decision was simply short-sighted, perhaps SOE had already investigated the latter route and decided it was effectively impossible. Expanding Ryzom's potential playerbase to include console players could be a good business move, though I imagine that roleplaying in Ryzom might suffer badly. Gameforge would do better to first make native OSX and linux ( ) versions of Ryzom and capture those markets at far lower development cost.

[mithur]

What's the point of this post? SOE take SWG and tried to do a WoW. GF knows well that It's stupid (and Phelan said that) try to make a WoW,. because then WoW will be better. This is a niche game, GF knows it, and know that try to change that is a loss of money.

For me this is a remote possibility, so remote as the one that said that GF will make Ryzom a Web Based game (I read that in this forums, Lol)

[ark014]

"Psst, what is this NGE thing?"

"NGE" means the MMO to which you devoted months or years of your time is suddenly taken away from you, and replaced by a mindless game for children.

You are d-mned lucky you don't know what "NGE" means.

(Some people believe one purpose of the NGE was to downsize "Star Wars Galaxies" so it would "fit" into a console).

Thanks,
Amphiaraus

[mithur]

Gameforge would do better to first make native OSX and linux ( ) versions of Ryzom and capture those markets at far lower development cost.

I think that OSX or Linux markets are a bit pointless... Little playerbase in that kind of systems. This isn't a bad idea, only... better develop the game content that make ports to other systemas, in my book, being limited of resources as GF are.

The console world could have some market... but The game, as-is, is hard to port, and the changes needed to port it maybe damage too much the game for me...