Never seen a more terribly unfriendly game

[zuretal]

I only played the game for couple hours a couple days so far, yet I'm very frustrated with this game. Nothing is explained in game and little useful is found on these forums, and in fact the forums make things worse because the posts have old info in them. Here is some basic examples of the things I'm tired alread of dealing with.

They tell about making your own techniques by altering the stanzas. Great. But it would have been NICE if they had said that before I wasted points buying cold 2. I looked at the stats and saw I could use cold2 as slow nuke and use my start8ing acid spell for a fast spell to get off in combat. So by being intelligent and doing what any smart gamer would do, I lost a bunch of skill points because I could have just got acid 2 and MADE a quick version of the spell.

Then I tried the 3rd or 4th mage quest, where you have to go kill weaned rendors. The quest says that it's in the "hunting grounds". What a waste of time. I walked around and around in the "hunting grounds" and could not find the weaned rendors anyway. I kept looking and looking because I actually found other rendors and figured they must be around somewhere. Finally someone in universe chat asked about it, and the location is actually by the SHRINE. Shrine does not = hunting grounds.

Frustrated with that quest, I tried to take up crafting. One quest he tells you to buy a "trouser" recipe and make 5 trousers. Well, I went to the shop didn't see any trouser recipe, but pants recipe. So I bought a pants recipe. Turns out their are two pants recipes and you are giving no idea of which one to buy., Also turns out that you only have like 40 skill at that point, which means you have to go grind on some useless chunk to get skill and you wasted 30 skill points! WHAT? You gotta be kidding me.

Then the next quest tells you to buy a hit point enchant and make 5 sets of pants and trousers using that option. But you can't do it. You can't enchant anything. People in chat were telling me something about summoning sap crystals or something but I did not have any of the skills I needed to create this crystal nor could i figure out hot to use the hit point enchant.

Frustrated, I logged off. I came here and now I see I can't even post on the general boards.

Though I love the "crerate your own skill" aspect of the game, I am not impressed at all with the game given how frustrating difficult, cryptic and non-intuitive it all is.

Edit: and the cherry on top was seeing myself log into this forum for the first time today only to learn that the first time I apparently logged on to this forum was Jan 3 1970.

[katriell]

Useful post. You explained your expectations, the processes you followed, what happened, and how what happened frustrated you. Thank you.

[eriu3]

yep, your critisism is valid, and all feedback is good feedback.

the bit you got stuck on is actually a hp bonus (40sp from the craft trainer) to be added as a credit to the craft plan that gives the trousers/pants a 5 hp (life) bonus, nothing to do with enchants or sap crystals.

silan needs some tweaking, but trying to simply such a complex game into an easy to understand tutorial unfortunatly does create problems.

[101gerd]

Yes it would be nice, at leased for the first 20 levels, to be able to sell the skills back to the trainers. So you could experiment a little without messing up the char.

[piquedram]

we've all been through that, wasting skill points in the early game. But, at that point, they're so easy to come by it doesn't matter all that much. Of course you're right, the missions should have the correct places and names.

Point is, this can all be fixed rather quickly as soon as things are finally up to normal again. You shouldn't be set off by all that just yet. Next time you log in, just tell in uni chat you're a newbie and looking for some answers. Depending on the amount of people online you should have a veteran player helping you in a matter of minutes.

[sidusar]

These are all valid compaints and I can do nothing but agree they should be fixed.

The only advice I can give you on how to deal with these admittedly frustrating mistakes, is to not get too stressed over completing the quests or spending your skill point optimally. The quests on Silan are only meant as a tutorial and there's no penalty for not completing them and instead just figuring out how things work on your own. And it is very hard to really waste skill points, as there's few things on the trainer that are truely useless. It's very likely you would've bought cold2 anyways at some later point, all you did was get it a little earlier at the cost of getting something else a little later.

In fact, it's possible the cold2 you bought contained the elements you needed to turn your acid2 into a slow spell, but I'd have to check to be sure...

The game is complex and thus has a steep learning curve, so naturally everybody is going to make some mistakes at the start while they're learning how everything works. Don't worry too much about those, the game is more forgiving of mistakes than most other MMOs I've played.

[petersk]

I would have to agree with you that Silan can be frustrating at times. But, as other replies have stated, the object of Silan is to teach you the basics: how to forage, how to craft,how to melee, etc. , not really delve into the details of tweaking things. As sidusar stated, the learning curve is rather steep, but don't be bothered by that much, many people on the mainland have alternate characters still on Silan if anyone needs some "hands on" guidance with anything. Do not hesitate to ask for help. The majority of the community would be more than happy to help with whatever you need, all you have to do is ask.

And yes, there are some bugs in the game, left behind by the 2 previous owners, some pretty major (imo) and some just annoying. However, I feel the new owners have done a great job getting things up and running, and have kept up with their word on keeping things moving towards a fully operational game. They can't fix everything at once. Be patient with them, yourself and us (the older players) and you may just have fun and come to love this game as we do.

And again, please don't wait til you are ready to log off, ask someone for help. I have a char on Silan and would be happy to spend some 1 on 1 with you and help however I can.

[kuroari]

Only advice i can give you myself is, let it cool off, and then try again. Trust me the learning curve may not be the easiest in any MMORPG out there, but once you get in swing, it's definitly an extremely unique game. The best tips you will ever get is with the players, I myself would be very happy to help you with any problems you have (i've done all the silan quests many times over and i spend much of my time "training" my new guildmates anyway)

Ryzom is not a quest-driven game. the starter island quests are just tutorials, and i always felt they made more sense to people who already knew the game, but they aren't all-together too difficult imo. Many other players have gone through them fine, and again - any problems you have, contact other players.

if i'm around, feel free to " /tell nightblade " at any time and i'll be happy to help.

[neverdie]

I have noticed a few bugs as well. However, every problem I have had was easily solved by asking for help in Universe Chat. The more experienced players are very helpful.

[dominick]

Ryzom has always been known to have one of the most supportive and helpful communities around. The fact that you waited till someone asked the question to solve one of your problems shows you failed to take advantage of the help Universal chat could offer you during all of the troubles you mentioned. I agree some parts of Silan are confusing and other down right broken and both items can be frustrating. But, don't flame or give up the game simply because you did not avail yourself of the one area that could have helped immediately.
All veteran players pride themselves on being helpful to new arrivals on Silan and the Mainland. We try to help the best we can simply because we WANT you to stay and enjoy the wonders of Atys.
Remember the ONLY bad question is the one you failed to ask in Universal for help with.