Ryzom

k so im tryker 92 forage 65 heavy armor 50 melee and 27 magic.

i think the hardest thing to overcome with patch one is that if you already had a high level skill that u were power levelling, that high level has now become a hard xp cap. u can now no longer do any of the foraging/killing u did before, you have to take it down a few notches, and so youre getting screwed for xp, screwed for mats etc. a difficult situation at best.

but, imagine you just bought the game today. you would have no idea how the game mechanics had changed from yesterday to today. so as you begin your advancement, you would not know you were getting 'less', or using more focus, or whatever you percieve the problem to be, as youd have no points of reference.

its very obvious nevrax wants to slow down the rate of advancement, and while i dont agree that its been implimented after release, honestly, its better sooner than later. letting the player base max out too early will throw all of their plans out of sync, and cause them to have to cater to the high levels much sooner than they had planned for (add new content, higher monsters, raise skill caps etc etc). id much rather have them spending their time on bugs, gameplay, content.

as a forager, i agree the changes are harse, relative to how it was pre patch. i pull less mats of less quality than i did pre patch, and in comparative terms thats crappy. but i must try to see the bigger picture. i want this game to succeed, and have longevity (sp?) . i see they have already posted that they are going to modify further the changes to harvesting, and thats great.

but in the meantime, i just reset my expectations of what i percieve success to be, and continue playing, trying to trust that the game makers, who have poured their heart and soul as well as a large chunk of capital into this game, are striving for the best possible outcome, and may, just may, understand more about the goals in mind than i do as the end user

if you dont like your massive dp, and getting 12 xp per kill, and you refuse to slow down, and try different things, then reroll and relearn how to play this 'new again' game. one thing ive learned after playing an mmorpg for 5 yrs (ac1) is that the game is going to constantly change, mostly for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. as a mmorpg gamer, i understand that these games are inherently different than a single user game, and that they CHANGE. rolling with the changes is part of being an mmorpg'er i think, and if you cant handle it, you shouldnt be playing mmorpg's

just my 2 daps, and a bit of perspective

peace

meestor

Excellent and much needed post, Meestor! You express an opinion and attitude that I would like to see more of; you are able to step back and see the larger picture. You're able to not stress out at the changes, which seem harsh, because you 1) know they are not permanent, and 2) trust that the Devs know their game and the goals they have set for the game much better than the players do. Players, naturally, see the world that is set before them. If they lack the ability to put things into perpective, as you have done, then a necessary change implemented to slow down advancement (aka "patch one") becomes a game-stopping event. On the other hand, if we are able to adjust our playing techniques and expectations, it becomes much less catastrophic. I think you expressed the key to this well when you said:

lootking wrote:
its very obvious nevrax wants to slow down the rate of advancement, and while i dont agree that its been implimented after release, honestly, its better sooner than later. letting the player base max out too early will throw all of their plans out of sync, and cause them to have to cater to the high levels much sooner than they had planned for (add new content, higher monsters, raise skill caps etc etc). id much rather have them spending their time on bugs, gameplay, content.

I couldn't have put it better, my friend! Thank you for posting this bit of insight; I hope many people read it and are able to wrap their mind around what, although it may be a different way of thinking, is a simple concept.

i think many miss the point.
The point is not that we dont accept the idea of slower leveling the point is the way the devs try to achieve it.

sure, you can say: a lvl 90 fighter is supposed to get 7xp only for a growling clopper that can kill him now, this is intended slowing down
sure, you can say: a lvl 1 harvester has much fun seing that he / she can harvest 1 source and then sit down and think of what went wrong.

oh yes, we see the big picture that they needed to slow down leveling, but this could have been accomplished by:
- reduce exp for mobs (no changes in design needed)
- reduce exp in harvesting (no changes in design needed)
- increase the amount of exp needed for a level (no change of design needed)

so, uhm , where was your point again that we dont see the big picture?

Harvesting was plain boring before the patch, not it's not worth doing. I'm only level 90 harvest and that was with painstaking effort to force myself to do.

If I were to start the game today, having never played it before, I'd simply pass on the whole harvesting bit altogether after a day or so and probably have to reroll my character. That's assuming that I had another interest that I wanted to reroll for. A new player might assume that the whole game is like harvesting and just move on.

Work <> Play. Challenge does, but not this monotonous work.

~Elf

hi Mellodi

hehe yeah, i have seen every form of protest and accolade a player can put forth about an mmorpg. i have seen the vocal minority actually press devs to make changes, with negative results. i have seen the vocal minority scream 'its death to the game' more times than i can rub my new magic gloves together. and from what i know- it (death of the game) - rarely ever happens to a good strong well coded mmorpg.

to the community:

do alot of you board trollers know that the majority of casual mmorpg'ers dont even read boards, heck, some dont even know what 'boards' are lol. you have to realize, you are the vocal minority out there peeps, the devs hear you, but also realize what percentage of the population you are. they arent by any means naive, or stupid. they have alot more customers to worry about than just the people who are computer savvy enough to to come here and post posts. and if you think im kidding or exaggerating then ask my friend in NY and his wife, who i have to, on the phone, walk them through things you may think are so simple to do on a pc, yet they dont get, or understand. they just like to play games, but they are almost computer illiterate hehe. and there are many, many gamers such as this

again, the devs have a long term goal, i believe they have an 8 year plan if i read right. to all you folks who are level 150-250 in a skill in 2 months, do you not see the problem here? step back, think about it, and you may just see that this HAD to be done

for cstrahd- bud, give them some time, its not the easiest thing to code an mmorpg, its actually easier to code rocket guidance systems, if you can beleive it. did they get eveything right this patch? no, of course they didnt. will they leave it like this? hehe DEFINATELY NOT

ok, and elf, regarding 'boring' harvesting. um, if choice and up mats are so tough to get now, doesnt that increase their value? i know im totally excited about getting some of my medium quality heavy armor suits on the market, for a huge, huge profit, as they are now quite rare arent they??? i dont find harvesting rare and valuable resourses boring, guess thats why im a harvester

yy48n19 wrote: I haven't been in game since Sunday, but am currently downloading the big, scary patch, and looking forward to seeing what all the controversy is about.

Someone who hasn't been playing the game since SUNDAY should not be constantly posting to these forums about how we're all taking it out of proportion when you haven't even finished downloading the patch yet.

lootking wrote:ok, and elf, regarding 'boring' harvesting. um, if choice and up mats are so tough to get now, doesnt that increase their value? i know im totally excited about getting some of my medium quality heavy armor suits on the market, for a huge, huge profit, as they are now quite rare arent they??? i dont find harvesting rare and valuable resourses boring, guess thats why im a harvester

No one is going to be there to buy your gear. I've got 128 armor pieces on the armor vendor that are just gonna sit there until 7 days elapses, why? Because no one is there to buy it.

cstrahd wrote:oh yes, we see the big picture that they needed to slow down leveling, but this could have been accomplished by:
- reduce exp for mobs (no changes in design needed)
- reduce exp in harvesting (no changes in design needed)
- increase the amount of exp needed for a level (no change of design needed)

so, uhm , where was your point again that we dont see the big picture?

I think that they executed it the way they did because it is more difficult to get around everything simply being exponentially harder than it would be to get around a flat xp reduction for mobs and harvesting, or an increase in the amount of xp needed for each level. If they had done that, the players who are hell-bent on maxing out their character ASAP would somehow find more time to play (even though some of them seem to already play 24/7 ), and they would continue to level quickly.

What I mean is: by beefing up the mobs temporarily and making harvesting extremely difficult temporarily, it seems to me that they are effectively throwing the brakes on the player population. Making it so people are being slaughtered by mobs they so easily used to solo through, or being incinerated by a source explosion from a piece of basic dung resin, causes death points-- which, in turn, are more difficult than usual to work off, due to the increased difficulty of getting xp from just doing just about anything. Yes, it seems harsh, and is probably not much fun (I still don't know, as I haven't finished downloading the patch yet! ), but you must keep in mind that this, as all things in an evolving MMORPG, is temporary.

The Devs felt they needed to slow things down, and so they found a very effective way to do it. I trust that they are doing their part to preserve the longevity of this game; what players need to do is to trust that the devs know what is best for their own game, and realize that this is a long-term endeavor.

tleilaxu wrote:No one is going to be there to buy your gear. I've got 128 armor pieces on the armor vendor that are just gonna sit there until 7 days elapses, why? Because no one is there to buy it.

if you have 128 armor pieces they you have obviously levelled farther than the devs had planned for at this point in the economy's evolution. personally every suit i make, i sell within 10 minutes of having built it. im only up to q70, and there seems to be a good market for gear in this range, perhaps because more characters are in this level range.

if you have the skills to pound out 128 armor pieces so fast u cant sell them, doesnt that tell you you are far far ahead of the curve? doesnt that tip you off that perhaps you are way way ahead of everyone else? maybe you could try some other skills for a bit. maybe you can try helping people and giving a bit of your wealth away to alot of players that are truly broke, and struggling to level up. maybe you can just quit cause youre so dismayed that the population, nor the devs, can keep up to your pace, nor your expectations? thats the beauty of expansive mmorpg's, so many choices

tleilaxu wrote:Someone who hasn't been playing the game since SUNDAY should not be constantly posting to these forums about how we're all taking it out of proportion when you haven't even finished downloading the patch yet.

Okay, T. Point taken. I'll shut up for a bit.