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This would be quite challenging to answer word-for-word, so instead I'll just cover the general ideas:

- As far as I'm aware, season-restricted mobs do exist. If you rememer, the other day I was trying to find an Awesome Kipesta for a mission. After 50 minutes of combing two regions (KoD/GoU), I sent a ticket. Answer? "Use the spawn in Underway Arch" -- and no, looking back on all the times I passed that location while trekking, the mob is definitely missing some times. It was certainly not there the 3 times I passed during the same day.

- Regarding the learning curve, sure, I get your point and I would normally agree to it. Ryzom generally has a steep curve. But, to my mind, daily missions are supposed to be picked in such a way to provide an overall gentle ride, or at least to make for a progressive difficulty. Instead, we had the entire stock of missions dumped in the rotation, with several bad apples in there -- and the testing was left (again) to the players.

Again: you and me are still there and subscribed, it's not us that we have to consider. It's the vast majority of players that get put off by the game in several different ways, one of which being the artificial difficulty stemming from this perpetual state of beta-testing-at-the-expense-of-the-players.

- The "kill a spawn to get different mobs" thing definitely exists, I already gave the Fairhaven example. Looking back, there's a similar situation with the kipees around Zora.

The game's concept of "one spawn consisting of the same mob having different levels" runs contrary to what most people would expect, especially since the game never teaches you how spawns work. You have to figure it out completely on your own -- a good majority of people don't.

If this kind of problem doesn't come up in the list of daily missions, so much the better.

- The issue isn't with having a game where you must go "above and beyond", but rather with the expectation that comes with a certain kind of mission (or goal). I have no issue if the players have to figure out how to even begin killing a puzzle boss like Bodokin or Cratchakin. But the T&E required for daily stuff should be lower, imho.

-Typing with the previous point: the impact of dubious quality content is that it produces frustration. Again, you and me are still subscribed and logging in, the standard to compare to is the beginner-to-average player. If something produces too much frustration for them, they'll quit regardless of what other advantages the game has. If you remember, you had a Bunny making this exact same point.

I know talking about it in the forums won't change things, due to the team's tiny size. But at the very least, I'd prefer if we called the issues by their proper names. If one won't acknowledge something is potentially an issue, it won't really get a fix anytime soon...

@FyrosFreddy - Maybe it's all a huge miscommunication, but if we can't communicate then we'll never agree.

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@Laoviel - Didn't you read the fine print on the ToS? By creating a character, we all signed on to be Beta-testers because there are not enough devs and volunteer testers to do quality control.

Also, any mission that can be done during any part of the year in under an hour is fair game be a DM year-round and leaves at least five hours a night for any player that isn't a lazy casual who has less than 27 masters. After all, the only players that matter are ones who have the patience to treat a game like a full-time job that requires a 2-year degree before applying.

We do agree that nothing will be fixed anytime soon. The real question is whether or not our feedback actually matters. I have about 7 years of evidence leading me to "No" and very little to counter it.

This is what I have found on or added to the Bugs board. I have collected all tasks related to broken missions (in meaning of missing valid target) under task #9325:



Any new reports are welcome. Please remember to provide mission ID if you are able to get it.

Slight pet peeve: when clicking on the "Mission Booklet" button (in the journal window), you are taken to a page with 3 tabs. By default it goes to the Achievements tab, first one in list. Could it maybe go directly to the "Daily Missions" tab, since that's the one I'm seeking if I clicked the button?

Done

I'm afraid something isn't right. If I just logged and I click on the "Mission booklet" button, I get the following error:



If I click once on the "Daily Missions" tab name, the list is displayed correctly.

Also: if I manually switch to another tab (e.g. "Achievements"), then close the window... click the "Mission booklet" button again... the window opens on the tab I last clicked, instead of redirecting to the Daily Missions. So it seems this fix would only work once (and not even once, right now) :)

No... what does not stand to reason is why factual discussion of the issue on topic is not taking place and instead sidestepping to personal attacks and name calling.  Especially when you previously asked me about your playing time calculations and I explained what I will repeat again.

Before the  attempt at throwing shade for what you choose to think is "playing time", you might have considered that many folks rarely ever log out. Especially, considering your tag line, you may log out when your done playing .. but perhaps you might have considered that not everyone is playing when logged in ? No ?

Have you ever seen ~ Fyrosfreddy in a chat window ? That's because I don't bother to launch rocketchat when I'm at work eating lunch, or whatever, I just alt tab to the game that's running in the background. I may have evolver running 24 hours to develop a new recipe, checking when taking a break from shoveling snow and peek IG to see if I have any PMs waiting.

We go days w/o seeing Sarpedonia and he might be present for maybe 10 minutes over 3 or 4 days. While working, sleeping, eating, volunteering, our toons often remain logged in. Ryzom is played by many folks throughout the world, I often leave my toons logged in for days in a row so as to allow guildoids to leave messages on things that they need or for others to ask questions. You ever think it's weird that ya never see ~Freddy in chats ... you log in from web apps , I just alt tab to a the game instead of Rocket chat.

Finally, thousands of hours were spent creating and revising Bunny Tools over the last 14 years. Originally the math was developed from patch notes and observations only.   Later, after the game went open source, game data was used to refine things.   Also spent 100s of our helping Arc with accuracy revisions to KipeeCraft.  The Forum posts for Race Fame, Tribe Fame, occupations, developing recipes, etc  and other guides ... again, same thing ... development of these items requires one to be in game. And also had many helpers with some of these efforts ... especially the exe mats tool and the still uncompleted PR tools. These were left in PMs on screen as the day went buy and continued while sleeping.

Many tasks are daunting when you first start. A large % of the player base has a master before they even start harvesting. When asked why the most common answers are "It's hard, ... it's boring... I don't like it ... it's not fun" .... sound familiar ? I was one of them.

But then .... I actually tried it and low and behold ... once I got past the early stages, it was not boring, I enjoyed it. That change was not impacted by how many hours I played the game, how many masters I had ... it came from 1 thing and 1 thing only ... I actually made an effort at doing what was the subject of discussion. I had low angle, I had low speed, I had no knowledge with where the mats were and safe ways to get there ...waahhhhhhh ! This is not fun !

There is nothing new about DMs. They are the same missions that have been here for 15 years. No doubt the 1st time folks discovered Rites, "these are hard, how am I supposed to find the NPCs ?". But then the walkthrus were placed on the forums and now the stuff that was too hard has been completed by almost everyone.   Some people won't tackle a task till there is no effort involved.  Just like that song .... "That ain't workin' that's the way you do it; Money for nothin' and your chicks for free". Occupations are a great example. Figuring out all the recipes was "too hard" ... but then it kinda got "fun" once all the recipes were posted and no effort was involved.

Every choice in game will be decided by whether the reward is worth the time, effort and resources. DMs are no different in this regard. Some folks won't want to bother until you can read a step by step "to do list" on how to complete the mission w/o investing any T & E.

My acceptance of DMs had nothing to do with how long I played
.. how long I left my puter on and toon logged in while living a normal life as a business owner, father and community / professional volunteer, how many masters I had or hpow long I had actually played the game.  The only thing it did have to do with ... and hence the actual difference in our experiences is that I had actually done missions that weren't on a list somewhere.

There are parts of the game that have nothing to do with earning rewards or grinding levels.  AsmodeusMogart set a goal of completing every mission in game.   Why ?  Ask the guy who climbed Everest  ... because it's there.   Having already accomplished the goal of having a safe haven in every camp, I set out to get max fame with all tribes.  Why ?  because they are there ... its "content".  And that is the "crux of the biscuit' so to speak ... they why which explains the different experience.

Just like digging ... once you have the mats flagged, one you know the safe paths to get there, once you know where the NPCs that give the high paying craft missions, the rules to Kitin lair, it's ceases to be "hard" to do any of those things.  You just have to make the time investment in learning the ropes ... Just like occupations, if you actually did the work, it was hard ... then it wasn't.  If you didn't do the work, just benefited from others T & E ... well welcome to earning ya way.

Again, time spent in game, number of masters is irrelevant.   The time you spent digging in a region made it easier to dig in that region because it's the very thing, the specific thing that gains the necessary knowledge that makes it routine or easy.   Of course if you never or rarely did it, it's harder because you don't have the experience doing that ONE thing.  In other words, missions are just like everything else in the game ... the more you do it, the easier it gets.   Starting to complain the 1st day in doesn't really supply one with a valid PoV.

Yes, it's more difficult in the beginning ... it's supposed to be.  I had problems finding NPCs ... that made it hard, now i have all the spots flagged ... easy.   And I didn't have the benefit of blue flags, .... I had problems finding Mission Mats, but with the aid of BM / Silenda and asking other players I can find almost any mat.    I was spending about 2.5 hours a day at the start ..earlier this week, had my best day w/ 31 minutes.  Some days I just do quick ones as too busy to be in game (still logged in tho),  otherwise engaged or just not motivated .

But to date ... (DMs IIRC were put in game Dec 2)

January Broken Mission Rate:  3.30%
Febuary Broken Mission Rate:  3.90%

Total No. of Broken Missions Reported in 250 regions:

Loria: 7
Void:  2
GoC: 1
Desert: 1

With 11,000 missions in game ... not really a big thing

In closing, I had the same frustrations as you when I started doing tribe missions ... Rob+ was a great help in and later Asmo.  The exact same experience I had with digging ; hated it till Jesse got me started and gave me tips ... by level 60 it was bearable... before my 1st master I was amazed how much easier it was the more knowledge that was absorbed.

EDITED: Typos

If we can stick with the issues in the game and set aside the personal comments, I don't see this being an issue.

As to whether it matters, I would think Ulu's and Moniq's answers address the topic better than I could.

1.  Season Restricted Mobs:  Yes they do exists ... I have yet to encounter one in DMs.  if this occurs, I think we can agree that it would need to be fixed.  That will only happen however if players rport tham.  There are forum threads to do this:

https://app.ryzom.com/app_forum/index.php?page=topic/view/30214/1

2.  Learning Curve: I understand the point ... but how did you experience diugging ?  I hated it, I didn't understand it ... in starter island I went loooking for wood in areas where there were trees ... logical but not IG reality based.  Getting started like most things in Ryzom will involve showing new guildies / players the ropes.   I do see an issue with new players in that at most they are leveling 1 or 2 craft trees and harvesting in only one region .  But then again, how many of these folks were doing occupations when they came out.  This will no doubt need some attention as time goes on.

3.  Kill a Spawn Thing:  yes this exists, but I have yet to encounter in doing DMs.  If it appears, it should be addressed.   I expect it will be if reported.

4.  Expectations:  I don't really "get" why there was an expactaion of spawns being anything other than what golks observe.  I notived it when using BM tool and electing a mob to grind on, ater i killed 3 of the targeted level ... they wouldn't respawn till we killed their little brothers and sisters. Ask the question; remeber the answer.

5.  Above and Beyond:  Im a bit thrown off by the expectation that eveythiung must be accomplishable on any given day.  I initially raised the issue that I can't be expected to kill a plod, but when I got the answer.  I ahd no answer to that question .  is  it wrong that sometimes I can dig a mat in PR sometimes and other times I can't ?  Is it wrong that sometimes I can solo or trek in a team of 3 to any region sometimes and sometimes i can't ?  I certainly have the desire to complete every mission I am assigned, but when devs answer that a player should not expect to be able to complete ever mission solo, I can accept that.  I'd like for every one ofr crafts not to agreed, but devs decided Im only going toi succeed 85% of the time.  However as time has gone on and more folks take up DMs, I find myself helping others and they help me in return.  Especially true with crafting ... dig your mats together with another player v... then you craft the tings they can't and they craft the things you can'r ... yeah teaming ... not a popular concept of late.  But id this helps great.

6.  Frustration / Dubious content:  I am having trouble seeing the point here.   here's my take.

a)  Doing Level 2 WC and MC occupations over and over and over again, never varying , never using the products, never advancing to higher level skills and never getting better rewards by advancing and just handing them in to "get stuff"  was our lot in life.

b)  Doing mostly different stuff every day for more rewards + secondary rewards (from the mission and from the DM Bonus) and wherby the more you advance and the more diversify the bigger the rewards is a bad thing.

7.  Calling the Issues / Issues:  If ya notice... there's a series of threads on the forums for the issues to be reported.  But what if an issue is not an issue ?

a)  A player reports that they took a mission to take a largen parcel somehwere.  They get thee anmd they can't hand in ... wait it's not there to hand in.   Is the mission broken or did they not notice that the parcel was too big for the little space they had available in bag as was stated in sysinfo  ?  two perfecty viable answers.   But if we say that yes, the should hav ebeen a more onbious warning .... doesn't that also mean that when fighting an NPC bpss... should there be a more obvious warnng that if ya 20m away, you see your spell fire, you see it hit, but because you aree soi far away, you are doing 0 damage.  I never heard anyone complain ... you were told about it, do you still need the warning ?

b)  Can't find NPC:   I made the fame table you see here in February 2017 ...

https://app.ryzom.com/app_forum/index.php?page=topic/view/25037/2 5

I have been looking for Lookaash since then.  had missions to deliver stuffm to them and, as you likely know... no blue flags for green missions so I dropped them.  Then I get a craft mission to deliver to him and there's the blue flag.  yeah, now i gote him.  Why had I not found before ?  BM and Silenda had his name spelled wrong.

Again the % of broken mission is very low.  Yes we should expect missions to be fixed.   More so we should try and help eathr other to determine from other's experiences whether they in fact need to be fixed.  And report them so this can happen.  Since DMs began, like 12 missions have been reported.

With 11,000 missioins in game ... while I see that as a rather small thing, yes each one should be fixed .  I have yet to see where anyone has said othrwise.

My first go at the Daily Missions. I set Fight, Craft, Forage and Craft filters for 200-250. I took seven Forage Missions (it gave me no options for other types of mission). I set all fames except Kami to not go down. I lost Kara fame. Each mission in Sys Info said I got 40,000 Dappers but I only got just over 1 million total for the seven missions. Is everything working as it should, and I have misunderstood?

I really wish I could adjust the foraging missions more to my levels as they are quite different. Using the lowest possible one of course works but is a bit sad :)

Probably one could argue similar for crafting.