Hello, Deles Silam, Kamia'ata, Lordoy, oren pyr,

The end of the year is approaching, along with its decorative trees, its festive meals and Santa Claus, who is so generous with gifts.
On Atys too it's time for celebrations: Atysmas Elves are at work, presents keep piling up, Christmas trees and Atysmas snowhomins are flooding over Atys... And surprises will soon be here.
Aside from festivities, Ryzom teams continue their work in the shadows, bringing the following news:

Developer News

ARCC and Rybambel

• Marauder gameplay is back: Marauders can again use their camp, rite NPC, sap crystal traders, trainers, guild halls, apartments and teleporters. Adjustments have been made on crystals: each crystal will consume charges according to area level (1 charge in a level 50 area, 6 in a 250 area and 10 in the Prime Roots).

• Fame and event titles should be back before Christmas.

• Almati Wood access will soon be available, including for marauders. Access will be provided from capitals and the marauder camp, and return from a point close to the Ranger camp.

• Apartment items won before server merge have been saved, they will be restored and given back to their owners as soon as Rybambel is back. Apartment items remain linked to accounts and will be available to the character of your choice.

WebIG

Event calendars from all three communities will be merged in order to allow a quick view of all events.

Server patch of 18 December, 2012

This patch implemented the following fixes :

• Tryker and zorai tools bricks have been fixed.

• Success rate for tool making is now 100% (however medium and heavy armor still add a penalty). There are no unexpected failures anymore.

• Some marauder camp guards protect players from predators.

• Tools trader from marauder camp now sell tools up to q250 at the same price as in other nations.

• Marauder camp traders now sell items above q250.

• Access terminal to old apartments in Zora have been fixed.

• Access teminals to old Fairhaven apartments have been moved to prevent exit into water.

• Players who happen to have mis-activated an apartment or guild hall access terminal will be able to choose their town again. Players who wish to stay will keep their current access.

Known issues

• Anti-Marauders guards of capitals have become too tolerant, they only attack players with fame of -50 or lower instead of -40.

• Font Characters Rendering is different since last patch. Tests are ongoing to understand why and try to fix this.

• Characters who completed an encyclopedia rite before merge can't obtain the reward anymore.

• Program icon on Windows has changed.

Bug corrected after next client patch

• A display bug appears while buying some stanzas at trainers: A warning message saying that buying this appartment will destroy the older one and all what's inside.

Miscellanous

Some players asked us if it would be possible to deactivate catalysers with paid account. The answer is no, as it is a double experience, and not permanent catalysers. The icon is just a visual help reminding the player of that double experience.

News from animation team

Atysmas

A storytelling evening will take place on December 23rd at the Atysmas camp. Storytellers and poets, this is for you!
Others events will occur during the holydays, between December 27th and 31st. Follow the calendar and the forum for more information!

Resumption of nation events

• Nation events, including assemblies, will start again in the beginning of January. Dates will be added to the calendar during the month of December.

• Town and capital assemblies will take place every 18 days, alternating 2 town assemblies and 1 capital assembly.

• Town assemblies from each of the 3 communities will in general be at the same time, in parallel.
  

National transporters

The guild "To New Horizons" offers to transport homins from a town a another town in the same country. This transport system is very different from the ones of the Higher Powers: it wears out when homins use it. If it becomes too worn out in a region, it won't work properly. To avoid it, homins can participate in the maintenance, by bringing some occupation products to transporters: flowers, water, maps and tools. In exchange, they receive recognition and money.
The rewards vary depending of the needs of materials needed for maintenance: dappers, civilization fame, civilization points. Warning: transporters will only pay for goods if they feel they need them!
The national transport system is free as long as your fame with the civilization is 45 or higher.

News from the communication team

Thanks to your numerous applications, our translation team has been strenghened with translators from french to english, german and from english to russian. We are still looking for translators between french and german, and between english and german. If you are interested, please send a email to tamarea@ryzom.com.

The Ryzom Team wishes you a good game on Atys, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Ryzom Team

[quote]Characters who completed an encyclopedia rite before merge can't obtain the reward anymore.[/qhote]

Um... Does this include sage rites that gave boosts to hp, focus, etc.? If so, can we have our rewards *back*, since they were removed with the merger.

My apartment in Fairhaven, purchased post patch, still has an intrusive Ring Terminal animation in the foyer of the "elevator". That bug is *not* fixed.

EDIT: That was true yesterday, before I wrote this. I have now checked and the obnoxious orange thing is indeed gone. YAY!

Bloody expurgated, deleted...!!!! Now it's back... it seems to phase in and out of existence.

Errmmm no actually we were asking for the double XP to be turned off; which I doubt is hard to turn off. If it's too hard, please ask a dev to explain why. Surely it's just a database field e.g. 1=double, 0=normal?

I don't think it's that easy. Very likely they've linked the double xp to the database flag that stores if you're on a paid account or not. If you want to give players a choice, you'd need a _new_ database flag that says double xp or not. You also need to think about whether that flag has to be linked to one account, or whether there has to be one flag for each character in an account.

Then you have to add some kind of gui element for players (or for characters) to switch than on and off.

It's not something one can do in an hour. Since it has popped up in quite a few threads, I would think that the team has noticed. Imho, fixing the bugs and adding more to gameplay is more important than this request - but that is highly subjective, of course.

Glad to read that all your comments are focused on double xp....

and don't consider at all all the broken mechanics the game has now, and even not mentioned in this topic.

How ironic is the Issue: "Program Icon on Window has changed" !!

So important issue to be mentioned in the notes, while the most important issues, that affect the whole balance and the most important mechanics of the game, are still hidden.

Do you think double or single xp is what drive new people out of ryzom?

Unbalance and broken mechanics are the real responsible, not exp.

And so while they are, or are not, working on those "balance issues", they aren't allowed to fix anything else?

They can do anything they want. Even joking us speaking about "program icon on windows" as a "known issue".

I don't care. What i had to do, I did. I ticketed and spoke with gm's, as always i did in 8 years. I supported ryzom for almost 8 years, always subbed.
Many many players are waiting the game fixed, and what Tamarea speak of? "Program Icon on WIndows has changed"? Something that needs 30 seconds of junior programmer to fix?

I stopped my subs, because i don't like being joked by the devs.

DOn't worrie Dominikus, it's easy: be part of 2-3 big guilds or the marauders and you'll get the fun. You and the others 100 players that will stay here and don't care of the broken gameplay.
Just hope WG can take the server online with 100 subbed players.

Gilgameesh, while I can understand anyone's frustration if his/her chosen gameplay no longer is supported by the mechanics, or hindered by a bug, I think it is unfair to focus on the statement about the icons. Tamarea communicated quite a few changes that will enable lots of things. The windows icon may be a minor thing to you. But, I'd say, like the webpage on ryzom.com it's one of the first things players encounter - and if those basic things are not done right, there will be players complaining about that, too. And yes, someone may decide to not even enter the game if the webpage looks outdated, a support forum cannot be found, and after installation there's not even a standard icon.

As Dominikus rhetorically asks, I believe it is a major improvement that we now regularly have a communication about what's changed/changing/going to change. I can see no "developer's joke" in that. And we can see that even though the dev team is small, things are being worked on, bugs are fixed, and new stuff is implemented. If you're with us for 8 years, then you have already noticed the sometimes painfully slow progress in fixing and improving things. More importantly, you've witnessed worse times.

Irfidel, communication is important, good communication is what makes a difference.

It's good to have monthly updates on what's going on, but this doesn't means we are not allowed to express our opinion on the content of the update.

The update was written after i asked something in the previous Tamarea's post, and got only one reference on my questions (broken rites), while all the most important stuff was totally ignored.

As you said, maybe my gameplay i no more supported by the game. I hope there are just bugs to fix, otherwise well, i'm sad I no more enjoying a game i loved for so many years.

If all the changes are done on purpose, it's okay, but if they are caused by bugs, then it's not too hard to understand that any delay will nullify all the balancing actions taken for the merge.
The more time passes, the more unbalanced the game will be, exactly the contrary of what the devs wanted to do, destroying everything pre-merge.

If no one aknowledge that broken harvesting should be in the very top list of anything the devs have to do, well, good luck with your game.

And be sure to show the correct icon on Windows, otherwise whole gameplay will be affected.

Hey Gilgameesh,

I guess the news is not that fresh you know.
It was probably written a week or more than a week before its publication.
First it had to be written (get content from the different teams, anticipate questions, etc.)
Then It had to be approved by the higher ups.
It had to be check then sent to translation... into 4 or 5 languages (I don't know the exact number)
Then it has to be published for every community.

So it's kinda normal that your questions are not addressed immediately but will probably be later on.
Plus, don't forget most of the comm team is made of volunteers (who are doing that during their free time) - as a lot of the teams mentioned in the news btw.

I guess the language thing is also one of the reasons why then events have a slow start. Each event has to be prepared in different languages to be followed by as many persons as possible. Also, Ryzom had no translator team whatsoever before the merge (just check the earlier news asking for translators.

And if you consider we had no communication at all a few months back, it's somehow a big leap...