IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Hello friends!

What I am about to suggest may sound shocking at first, but please hear me out.

I propose to raise the max EP limit to 12000 (with cats).
The journey every player has to take on Atys is a fascinating, beautiful, fun thing to do. However, it is also a grindy one, which is not a problem at all.
To obtain a master in a certain profession is supposed to be something challenging and should feel rewarding. This is exactly how it is right now. Your first master in magic, fight, craft or harvest feels extremely satisfying to reach.
But getting your first master in a skill tree is not something after you stop walking around, it's not where the journey ends. Most of the times you don't even have enough skill points to get all the skills you want to have. This is where you start leveling other parts of the skill tree. Once you reached a certain point where you have enough skill points to buy all the things you want to use, you feel like you want to give something back to Atys, and especially to all the people that helped you along the way.
But you can't. What you can do right now is survive. You have one master, and that means you can survive on Atys now.
To obtain more level-ups should be easier now, and in most cases it is (looking at you enchant-leveling). But it's still very time consuming and keeps you from enjoying the game with all your friends, because to be a real contribution to a team you still need to level even more.

Why is a higher max experience limit a way to solve that?

The first thing you notice when you start leveling another profession after your first master is how you can slay monsters way higher than your current skill level. But it's not rewarding. It's actually boring. The challenge is gone, the reward is the same. This is the point where things get extremely grindy and boring. A higher max exp would reward the players that are able to slay monsters that are 30 or 40 levels above their current level. And they deserve to be rewarded, because they worked hard for it.
However, it would not effect those players without a master - they won't be able to slay such high monsters. They will probably still be stuck with their challenge of gaining even 6k EP.

So a higher max ep limit would profit those who have been wandering Atys for a long time and would leave those unchanged who are new to this world.

But there is more! There are many good reasons to change the exp limit.

1. There is not much endgame content. Players who have played this game for a very long time are often stuck with their current professions because they really don't want to level another skill to master. What they really would love to do is: use another weapon, harvest another region, heal their friends.
Make it easier for them to enjoy more aspects of the game!

2. New players feel useless once they reach their first master. It feels great at first, but this community is so great - you want to give something back. You want to get into the battle and stand by their side at OP battles. Sometimes, you just feel like dead weight, because you don't have the HP that players have that mastered magic and fight. You can't heal them, they are stuck with carrying you around. Most guilds like to help, but new players should be able to give something back.
Make them able to get a second master more quick to feel worthy in a battle!

3. Healing is one of the most rewarding aspects of this game, but it's also hooorribly slow to level beyond 200. Raising the limit opens up the possibility to fight monsters way higher and makes challenging teamplay available for all level ranges.
Make healing open up possibilities instead of just being something necessary between fights!

4. At very high levels you are stuck with killing monsters at your own level or only slightly higher than you are, resulting in something like 1500 to 3000 experience after cats. If you group up, you can double that experience to about 3000 to 6000. However: it usually takes longer than killing two mobs alone and is even more unefficient considering you could have someone heal you out of team, in some way exploiting the game mechanics. Raising the max limit would make players group up in higher levels if they want to achieve something faster, promoting teamplay instead of promoting exploiting of of team experience healing and/or damage dealing.
Make teamplay rewarding!


I think we can all think of more reasons why this change would bring some fresh wind into Atys and only very few reasons why it is a terrible idea.

I conclusion I want to point out that this change will profit old players and new players by opening up playstyles that have not been here before. Less people get bored by grinding after their first master and fresh players can enjoy the full range of the community more quickly. Teamplay will be more rewarding at higher levels and healer's won't be slaves, but a valuable contribution to this game you don't want to live without anymore.

+1 as long as the lvl difference for 12k xp is high enough (maybe +50 or even more)

My understanding is that the progression would remain the same, only the cap would change.

Looking at the Hunting XP article on BM, it would appear that back in 2004 when that article was written, the cap was indeed higher; the author tested up to (Level+32) which had a base of 5280 XP instead of the current cap of 3000 XP which is obtained at (Level+20). So it's not like it's without precedent.

I agree that you will have more base HP and stamina/sap to fight mobs, but your outgoing damage is still limited to the skill level you are training. Even worse, the skill level will also determine the opponents chance of dodging/parrying or resisting magic. If a mob is 50 levels above your skill they have about a 60% change of dodging/parrying. So, I really can't see many people efficiently fighting mobs 50 levels above their skill level- you could probably kill 3 mobs 20 levels above you in the time it woudld take to kill 1 mob 50 levels above you.

50 levels above your current level is probably too high. But consider 35 levels higher or even more in a team. You also have to take into account that you can kill stronger mobs that have a higher experience multiplier but still are in a level range you can hit without missing too much. The current system limits you to 6k even though it would probably feel more rewarding to get the full experience you could earn, killing Kinchers 20 levels above your level.

Well I hate to spoil this, but I will.
Personally i disagree with it.

I have only mastered three melees including Launcher fight. I have mastered 2h sword and 2h mace.

Yes, I dread training and training to master another so,
what I did was explore other aspects of the game and mastered them, such as all the Occupations! Or there is many many other things to try out even if they seem HORRIBLE to try!

I think it is great to be forced into trying other things just because you hate the Idea of grinding up another level of some fight skill. Now that being said, I love the Idea of having my 2h mace mastered now because now I can kill Cuttlers and Gingos effectively whereas before they were resistant to slash attack. Also, I mastered Launcher so now I can be effective and causing a neusance at OP fights when I choose to participate. Next I want to level up my spear/pierce attack because other creatures are weak against that. I dread it, but it makes me DO other things in the mean time and I find I like those other things after I try them. Yes, even digging!

And, I have been playing this game for 6 1/2 years, so it is keeping me entertained. Albeit on a slow slow progressive time scale, which in hindsite, it a pretty good idea otherwise I would probably leave the game if i mastered everything. That is what I would call boring.

If we had increased exp per kill, then you would have multiple players reaching master in all skills much faster. The people I know who have done it have taken a long long time to do it and yes they still play, but only because they miss people.

 So, the long time range can be seen as one facet of the End game in this game. That is to train, or not, and have fun. If you don't like grinding, then do something else that is fun in this game. Try recipees, crafting, Occupations, getting involved with events, Politics, roleplay with the Lore. Tune in to Ryzom forge meetings so you can contribute. Learn ARC so you can develope events, add graphics to the game, volunteer for events, write your own storys, poems, missions, etc. There is so much to do, and to me, the dread of grinding forces me to explore the other possibilites.
 So sorry, I like everyone to contribute ideas and hate to spoil any, but this is my reason for saying no, I don't necessarily like the idea.

I totally see your point. However, no one should be forced to do something just because the one thing a person really wants to do is tedious and needlessly time consuming.

Again, I see your point, but it is a very short-sighted point and mostly ignoring the fact that new players don't want to invest 6 years into this game to be able to keep up. The raised exp limit would not magically make everyone a master.

What it does is reducing the grind between level 20 and 200. At level 200 and above you are not killing monsters that are 35 levels above yours anyway, because they don't exist.

What if someone does not want to develop events but play them? What if someone can't develop graphics? You can't say forcing people to do other things they don't want to is a good thing. Especially not in times where this game could use some more players.
Besides: no one would get hurt by reducing the grind. It just helps newer players by making the grind after their first master easier and makes old players explore weapons they haven't used without a long boring grind.

I agree with Naema.

Mastering a skill takes time and that's great because this game is a RP game, the aim is not to master everything as soon as possible.

Being a new player is not boring: it's a challenge and I like it. Yes, I couldn't help much in the very beggining and that's a reason why teamplaying is so important in this game.

In my point of view, making the mastering process shorter will make the game boring.

I think the exact opposite is true. And I believe you might have lost the perspective of how it feels to be new in this game.
Think about all the players coming back from pre-merge getting their characters back at 0 levels in anything. They might want to jump back into the game and not invest another 3 years to just catch up to everyone that has been playing for a long time. What they will do is what many new players do when they join the game: leave it again.

Please try to think about how players feel about this game that haven't been a part of it for the many many years that you have. And it's not only new players. This change would adress many issues and would probably be very little effort for what it would give.

This change would likely result in more players that really love the game but can't invest years of grinding to just catch up to all the people they like.

Referring to the latest forge meeting: the amount of people getting back to the game is very high! We won't keep them here if we just say: well screw you, we don't give the levels back and also you will likely grind for many many months to just be able to do what other players do.
There even was a person coming back to the game some days ago that landed on Silan and talked about how he lost everything. Likely the frustration was very high. This change would not harm anyone that has been playing for long and will definitely make people stay longer.

I think the XP system is fine, I have mastered all 63 skills and found it simple and fun to grind the levels. (Except jewel craft that sucked)

You should not only think about yourself, but also about how new players feel and if this change would actually benefit the game as a whole.

You mastered ALL 63 skills. You have 378 days played according to your banner. That equals over 9000 hours playtime. The average person can't play more than 2.5 to 3 hours every day. That is more than 3600 days of playing the game, or roughly 9+ years. Your opinion probably does not represent the new or recurring player from older times.

And besides: especially you are not in any way harmed by this change. It would actually maybe give ou more players to share your knowledge with, play with, or concerning Naemes argument: give you more players to RP with and enjoy created content with.

I don't see any downside to this. It is just fresh wind for a game that deserves more attention.

Hmm ... perhaps raising the xp cap isn't the way to go about it?

I have only 1 master after 3-4 years. I friggin hate the grind after level 200, partly because you kill the same thing OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Hornchers, kinchers, najabs, jugulas, maybe cuttlers if you can make them work. Some super herbivores that need full teams to have quick kills.

I wouldn't mind the grind that much, if the xp was perhaps faster? If you could kill mobs in a more efficient way? Hornchers are nice when there are at most 2 teams, but after 3 it gets nasty. Najabs are only 7 in a spawn, same with jugs. It's a mindless repetitive boring task.

Oh yes, and before level 200, you're best served if you hit cratchas of level 197 / 205 / 215 / 223. So, 40 levels of plants. Yay.

Maybe there could be ways to aoe mobs easier? Kill an entire najab spawn, etc?

I totally agree with you Mjollren.
The 40 levels of plants would be way faster the second time.
I really believe this is a good and particularily easy way to improve gameplay for everyone.

I'm trying to match up your constructive critique with the proposed solution. And I find it doesn't:

Your biggest gripe seems to be with the grind above level 200. And I can relate to that. However, if you raise the max EP cap, then this speeds up the grinding of the lower levels more than the grinding of the higher levels: The diff of the skill trained and the level of the monster can be bigger the lower the level is.

So, _if_ one wanted to address your issue, then it seems that introducing higher level monsters while leaving everything else as it is would be the solution to go for. At level 230 you'd team up and kill level 260 monsters. Those are currently hard to get by in easy enough circumstances that it would be worthwhile levelling, aren't they?

On the whole, even though after maybe five years of playing I'm still exactly in the position of levelling a couple of skills through those levels 180-250 (mind you, at the rate of possibly five hours game time a month), I strongly disagree with anyone who wants to make the game easier in any way.

I want this game to be hard. No one is forcing anyone to level to 250. I fully agree that the last thirty levels or so are really annoying. Especially for those of us with limited time on their hand. But as has been said before: There's so much else to do. And when I do grind "mindlessly", I - as a player - enjoy the time with some ooc or roleplaying chat with the other players.

Nothing in Ryzom is given without such mind numbing tediousness:
- Ever tried to craft your own armour? Found a good recipe? Found all the mat spots for such a recipe yourself?
- Ever tried to trek alone? Without a mount?
- Ever tried to master the occupations? I mean, without spoilers?
- Ever tried to figure out how best to compete in PVP?
These are very hard goals. But there's also a light side: Some fun events. Light chatting. Exploring the countryside. Finding missions with good dapper rewards and faming up to be able to do them. Getting to know every single tribe. Doing the "mektoub runs" for the four civilizations. Digging up a few hundred mats for your favourite crafter/item supplier... The list goes on.

As a summary: I actually wouldn't mind more (reasonable) "ordinary" spawns of monsters above level 250. But no further easing on the EP mechanics. Just remember that not so long ago even subscribed players would need to find cats in order to get the double xp. So some folks actually grinded with a 3000EP cap...