Originally posted by Tuyet

Free cats and Companions would both be quite controversial. Maybe just a load of non-tradeabl e Q100  cats for a new paying account? No biggy though and as is low lev Q50 cats have been pretty hard to just give away.

Companions/mercenaries would just be a nice solo option for those that prefer solo play -- Ryzom isn't really soloable for most of the skill levels in the game ( digging/crafting aside ). And they would never be as good as being in a good  team.

I have mixed feelings on both of these ideas. I can see how they'd be attractive to some players, but the adage of:

You can't have your cake and eat it too

applies.

Ryzom, more so than most mmos, is very community oriented. The whole game design is geared towards players co-operating with each other. Throw in companions and free cats, and you undermine that design.

Most of the time that I played I was able to get into levelling teams, and when I couldn't, I spent time harvesting and crafting.

Something like hired mercenary companions would help with solo'ing, but personally I'd rather see them invest time in developing mechanics that make forming/joining groups easier.

Eg. something like City of Heroes' team search function. It would just need an additional field or two for players to enter their skill level/the highest skill level being used on existing teams.

Cos this was, as I recall, a problem with the game. There's no LFG chat channel - I was told to get my reputation up, join a faction, and use that channel, which even then only reaches about half of the game.

In my opinion,  I found only the last 10 levels impossible to solo (you really have too few choices at that levels, unsoloable). Other than that with the right knowledge of the correct animals to hunt at the right level, you can pretty solo up to 240 with no problems (i'm speaking of combat skills, ofc).

Of course, grouping is much more fun, but sometime, traveling solo is better for testing mobs and getting knowledge as your time don't depends by others.

My experience in Ryzom leads me to make a few observations:

1. It's not a game for instant gratification and easy casual soloing. It's not Guild Wars. Ryzom rewards time spent observing and learning. It rewards putting in an effort to meet people and learn from them. It can be soloed, and I spent most of my time solo, but teaming definitely makes things easier. Even when "solo", I was chatting with friends and guildmates, so I was never lonely. Ryzom is a rich and dynamic environment, with its own unique characteristics and methods. Spend the time to get to know it and you will probably come to love it with a fierce passion. If you are not interested in making that investment, the game may not be as fun for you as it is for me. Nothing wrong with that, there are plenty of great games that don't float my particular boat, c'est la vie.

2. In my opinion, Ryzom's best hope for long term survival is to locate and market to the correct people. Many of them are probably not playing games right now. I wasn't when I stumbled upon Ryzom. Also, there is a segment of the game-playing public that yearns for something richer, something that demands more from a player. That's another potential source of new blood. Ryzom is (was) and should be a game that fills a niche, a place in the gaming spectrum left hollow by its absence. Attempting to compete for players who wouldn't like Ryzom anyway is not a path to success.

3. Ryzom's best feature, by far, is the core playerbase. Yes, that means that the game isn't nearly as good if you play solo and never talk to anyone. It's also a fragile feature that the owners cannot directly control, but they've done a pretty good job of damaging it in previous incarnations. Those of us remaining are a pretty tough and obstinate bunch. We dearly, dearly want to grow our ranks, though. I believe there are many more out there waiting to be found.

Tossing my plugged nickel into the discussion about newbie areas:

I played Ryzom very, very briefly. I remember being baffled by the game, but that was entirely my fault; I didn't bother trying to find a manual and so just muddled along. I quit playing simply because of real-life affairs and I plan on giving it another spin -- a more informed spin, thanks to the links provided by folks in this forum. (Aw, c'mon now, group hug everyone!) I don't remember much about the newbie experience, so I can only speak in generalities.

When I first start playing an MMO, I want to get guidance on 'How to play the game.' This not only means instructions on how to do tasks -- harvest, fight, sell, craft, and whatnot -- but also the goals and activities the developers have in mind. In games like WoW this means questing. I learned early on that I should take quests to earn rewards, and I carried that behavior on throughout the rest of the game. The game reinforces this by having the quests direct you outward, so that you're steered to more advanced locations as you progress; by the time you reach a city you've probably got stuff worth putting on the Auction House, for instance.

Since Ryzom doesn't work like that (apparently) I think the newbie experience should be a bit different. I think Ryzom might benefit from a isolated tutorial area that operates mostly on a metagame (OOC, if you like) level. Basically, it'd be an interactive game manual, divorced from the world-at-large. You'd learn how to perform the game mechanics, and at the end it would set expectations for you: "Now go, explore Arys! You may wish to find a guild to support you in your travels... and support them in return. The world is a dangerous place, so keep your wits about you blah blah pep talk blah...." Basically, reinforce the idea that you're not going to get a lot of NPC guidance but should seek out other players instead. Now that they've got a grasp on how to interact with the game they can figure out which direction they want to go in: combat, crafting, harvesting, what-have-you.

After that you're dropped in a major activity hub, albeit one where you can wander off a little ways without getting slaughtered by hordes of ravenous beasts or harvesting nodes that melt your skeleton if you try to extract them.

Obviously, a player should be able to skip the tutorial "zone" if they're so inclined, such as a experienced player making another character.

the new-ish starter area kinda does this, the old ones were nightmare's

---

Originally posted by Curate
{snip stuff about WoW}

Since Ryzom doesn't work like that (apparently) I think the newbie experience should be a bit different. I think Ryzom might benefit from a isolated tutorial area that operates mostly on a metagame (OOC, if you like) level.

{snip very good starter area suggestions}

Obviously, a player should be able to skip the tutorial "zone" if they're so inclined, such as a experienced player making another character.

---

Some time in 2006 (iirc) Ryzom introduced a new starter area that worked very much as you describe. It went through a few updates as well to make incremental improvements. Although it definitely served the purpose of tutorial and used quests to do so, as you suggest, it also had the unintended effect of giving new players a wrong impression of what the game would be like.

I think your ideas are spot on, but the implementation probably needs yet another iteration, to make a clear distinction in expectations between the quest driven tutorial of the starter island and the largely questless mainland.

P.S. Hiya Jack ;)

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

If they offer a fresh server, a new start, then it should draw in a lot of people, but if they offer an existing 4 year old server, then I am not interested.

That's really weird. A server wipe would damage this game more then it would attract new players. A sandbox is what you make of it, not how it makes you. Like some other popular MMOs out there, where yes if you start late you will be at a disadventage, especially 'end game' wise. But as far as I understand Ryzom is always changing and evolving, there is no real end game like you see in other games. There is still raids and bosses and pvp both in duel form and while contesting for outposts (right?), but it's not driven by the game but by the players themselves.

You're asking to wipe the work of your fellow gamers, it's like asking an artist to pour water on their painting because you want to use the canvas for something else. :/

Originally posted by Cynthe

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

If they offer a fresh server, a new start, then it should draw in a lot of people, but if they offer an existing 4 year old server, then I am not interested.

 

That's really weird. A server wipe would damage this game more then it would attract new players. A sandbox is what you make of it, not how it makes you. Like some other popular MMOs out there, where yes if you start late you will be at a disadventage, especially 'end game' wise. But as far as I understand Ryzom is always changing and evolving, there is no real end game like you see in other games. There is still raids and bosses and pvp both in duel form and while contesting for outposts (right?), but it's not driven by the game but by the players themselves.

You're asking to wipe the work of your fellow gamers, it's like asking an artist to pour water on their painting because you want to use the canvas for something else. :/

I think people are forgetting that though a server wipe would be a shame, in essence, this game was over. Finished. Kaput.

What you all have is a second chance to play this game. If they wipe it is that worse than if the game just ceased forever? And keep in mind, you don't know what these developers are going to be doing. They "might" keep it as business as usual and they might take it in a completely different direction.

However, assuming that they don't, as I said, this is a second chance to play a game that you love(ed).

Originally posted by Sasi

 

---

I think your ideas are spot on, but the implementation probably needs yet another iteration, to make a clear distinction in expectations between the quest driven tutorial of the starter island and the largely questless mainland.

 

Iterating away:

1)      Detatch the tutorial from the game world. You are NOT on some island on Arys, you are in That Place For the Teaching Of the Game Mechanics. Making it a plain gray area where you interact with simple geometric solids is probably extreme, but making it a (large) enclosed area called “Tutorial” where you get lessons from, oh, “The Shrub of Combat”, “The Tree of Crafting” and “The Lichen of Commerce” rather than NPCs might help. No one would tell you “These pantaloons are threatening the village crops! Go kill ten of them!” Instead, the Shrub of Combat would say: “On your task bar you’ve got a special attack power called ‘Thump’. Practice using that on the pantaloons to the north. Return to me when you feel like learning more.”

2)      Teach players to be proactive rather than reactive. Apart from an initial nudge -- “Go talk to the three plants in front of you to learn about interacting with the world of Ryzom” -- the players are free to browse the lessons as desired. “Tell me about casting spells,” “Tell me about selling items”, etc. Once they’ve read a lesson it’d switch to “Remind me about X.” There’d be no requirements to advance (unless a lesson requires another lesson to precede it -- you have to read “Tell me about attacking things” before you read “Tell me about special attacks”, perhaps), and they can also leave whenever they want.

3)      No rewards -- you leave just as you entered. You don’t earn anything for completing the lessons, so you don’t reinforce the “Do task, earn reward” mindset. Any items you gather as part of the tutorial either have no worth outside of the tutorial or (preferably) disappear once you head into the game proper. (Warn people of this beforehand or you'll probably have cranky players showing up who farmed the tar out of the tutorial area.)

4)      Be as subtle as a sledgehammer about expectations. No matter what, people will leave the tutorial and ask the nearest person/chat channel, “What should I do now?” Other games have conditioned us, it’s not our fault, we’ll still try and make Tutorial Lesson = Quest. Still, put in a message about “You will not have quests to steer you, your make your own goals” as you depart so that the handful of people who read such things will have a clue.

 …OK, so maybe less with the combat shrubs (boring day at work), but something along these lines.

 As far as a server wipe… as long as I’m not alone and useless with my shiny new character while everyone’s elsewhere doing highly advanced stuff, then I don’t see the need.

Originally posted by Curate

 

Iterating away:
(...)

 

4)      Be as subtle as a sledgehammer about expectations. No matter what, people will leave the tutorial and ask the nearest person/chat channel, “What should I do now?” Other games have conditioned us, it’s not our fault, we’ll still try and make Tutorial Lesson = Quest. Still, put in a message about “You will not have quests to steer you, your make your own goals” as you depart so that the handful of people who read such things will have a clue.

 

Agreed. This #4 of yours is what was (is) really lacking the (once) current strating area, called Ruins of Silan, RoS.
It has (as the servers are slowly restarting, I'll keep the present tense for now) quests to make the players learn the mechanics.
That approach was OK, as you stated, most MMORPG players are quest-spoiled after all.
It had the very serious mistake to tell the player that there would be no quest system in the "real" world (There are "quests", but few and very special ones...). That, ofc, led the pre-spoiled new children to misexpectations.

RoS has some other, pply smaller, faults, too: it is too large (encouraging a longer stay than actually needed); it gives -for the expected player skills- uber item rewards (-> wrong expectations again, Ryzom is playerdriven itemwise, plus no market for crafted items on RoS); it does not encourage teaming by only having one single "boss" of a few that cannot be solo'ed; it doesn't give a correct impression of the four main "lands" the four civilizattions split into, including to only mentioning once that on RoS found friends are likely to be seperated upon leaving, which leads directly to the last fault I can remember right now: it has an option to be summoned to any capital of choice instead upon leaving (which breaks the immersion and has some other small disadvantages for crafters and their crafting plans and in terms of initial fame).

Apart from that, RoS is a very good idea. Ryzom is very hard to learn, especially if players are spoiled by questdriven and/or static other universes.
Those have to learn about beiong able to learn everything, about creating their own actions/spells/combos/call'em-howya-like, stanzas, and editing the predefined ones, about the differences of harvesting, about the interchangeability of crafting materials, about the two main religious! factions, and most importantly about the interaction with the other inhabitants of the planet, the difference between carnivores, herbivores and kitin and their common behaviour, as Atys is alive and interacts with itself - you don't have a combination of all that anywhere else.

RoS is needed for learning. It should only make very clear that it is there for that purpose only and that it's different from Atys. The problem with telling the player just that is: which casual player actually reads what the "system" is telling them? From my memory and experience with RoS 85% of all questions about mechanics itself have been answered by the system before...and have simply been skipped, clicked away...
How do you transmit information to a player that doesn't read?

Ooops... now I'm seriously offtopic, am I not? Too loquacious, too. Sorry...
*looks for the donkey hat*