IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Good time to all.
I would like this post to be seen by all players and developers of the game for further discussion.
I warn you in advance, there will be a lot of text, several thoughts and ideas, I write through a translator, I'm sorry if there are mistakes somewhere or words that are not clear in meaning. I also warn people in advance who will discuss "Criticize — offer!". Thanks.

My name is Jaymz, I am 32 years old, of which I have been playing various MMORPGs for about 18 years. I have my own list of "favorites", I have an understanding and experience in different worlds, with different mechanics, styles and other "abstruse words" and I would like to share some thoughts here.

So back to the game. Ryzom is quite a curious game in many ways at once, it has its own uniqueness, but…
When I first entered this game (a little over a year ago, or maybe two), I stopped playing pretty quickly, an incomprehensible interface (by the way, it's still the same) panels that differ in size, windows that need to be found, in general, a total of "2000th" in combination with the old design, but that's okay, that's not why I stopped playing, but literally after leaving Silan. Familiar, isn't it? First of all, I was confused, there were quests on silan and it was clear what to do and where to go, once in the city, I couldn't figure out what to do next, how to deal with quests, and why mob levels vary so much around the city, I died several times, wandered around the city for several hours and nothing I could understand. After that, I deleted the character and abandoned the game…

After a while, I decided to try it all over again, and this time, for my luck, I met the guild "Atys Wizards" where I was kindly told about everything I should have known at the beginning of the game. And from that moment I stayed for further study of the game, I started pumping the magician, as a result (with difficulty) I got to level 60 and then it turned out why it was so difficult for me to play, it turns out I had to pump "melee" so that I could increase my HP, it was a novelty, but there was nothing to do — I want to live. I began to pump melee in parallel, having also spent a decent amount of time…

So lvlup. LVLup was carried out exclusively on "plants" because other monsters could attack in a crowd or are very strong by themselves, so I spent all my free time alone, or together with guild members, looking for plants suitable for the level in locations to raise levels on them. I must say right away, I have never done more monotonous actions in my life, i.e. in fact, the game does not offer options other than grind, and after a while I started to get bored, but I still continued, because communication with the guild brightened up this boring time. As for pumping melee, this still leaves a lot of questions, i.e. if I originally wanted to play an archer or a swordsman, I wouldn't have to pump magic — why?
Even omitting this moment, I noticed one interesting thing — an imbalance. So, having a magic level of 70+ (90 hands), I hardly kill one plant, while sometimes I have to heal myself (the chance of success of using a spell has never been lower than 97%, but usually 99%). But everything changes when I take daggers and just hit with a standard auto-attack, the melee level was 60, the same plant, I could kill 3-4 pieces without a break without even healing myself. At this moment, I completely lost the desire to play as a magician, because he simply does not survive, low damage per second, frequent misses and lack of understanding whether I caused "periodic damage" finally killed the desire to continue further.
I was thinking, because people (even if there are a few of them) still play, and I decided to ask around in my guild and in the general chat about the game. As it turned out, everything, absolutely everything comes down to the grind, monotonous raising of levels at everything, and from entertainment there are events (of which there are not so many) and not very diverse daily tasks.

Of course, this is not all quibbles, but what "lay on the surface". There are also bugs that are more likely to come from the game engine, for example, at a distance of over 41 meters, I do not see enemy magic attacks, but they continue to go. The hands of male characters at a distance turn into "paddles", optimization is very lame and if you increase the rendering distance it becomes very noticeable, shadows are displayed only on the ground (i.e. Grass and buildings let the shadow through) and not from all objects, some sounds cut the ear and have too high a DB level at low or vice versa high frequencies (for example, acid spells) and so on…

Well, as they say, "Criticize — offer!"

I don't know much about game development, but I understand that any change takes time and effort, so I will try to concentrate the proposals on "volumes".
My suggestions:

- Redesign of the interface: adjusting panel sizes, changing icons (heal from the guild swears at similar spells) changing icon points (if possible, because they can be made even more beautiful and detailed)
That was where my pain was XD

Combining the map and radar (this idea is already on the GIT, it needs to be tested and simply added to the game).
Anyone who can tell you why? Let me explain - the year is 2023. Getting used to the new interface will not be too difficult, and if it is beautiful and harmonious, and most importantly intuitive, then it will definitely attract the attention of beginners.

Quests: think over and make a simple quest system by adding NPCs to cities and neighborhoods that will give quests by analogy with "daily tasks", but with different messages: kill certain mobs or collect certain resources from them, and most importantly, give experience for completing tasks to all attacking branches at once. The same can be done for crafting, you can collect resources from mobs or dig them and also give experience to the branches of crafting and mining. Let this experience not be very big (you need to experiment), but so that you can pump the character by performing such tasks.
It would be ideal to make a "main quest" to get to know Lor, because there is practically no acquaintance with lor in the game itself, to think over a chain of quests based on the maximum attacking level and, for example, to give out clothes and jewelry to choose from for the class as rewards.

Balance: it's not all that simple and you just have to sit and think, there are a lot of ideas, but you need to think through the implementation. I'll take as an example the 2 most popular MMORPGs over the past 18 years, let's see how it's done there? So "combat" usually wear heavy or medium armor, have a decent amount of HP, but the main focus is still armor, physical damage is absorbed by armor, depending on the specialty (tank, ranged damage, melee damage) cause different damage, I think the idea is clear and in principle I did not notice in the game, difficulties with this a branch, maybe just to finalize something. "Magic" is usually light, less often medium armor, have HP slightly lower than in the "battle" branches, but cause increased damage, have mobility and control of the enemy. That's where the questions arise, as in the example above. Ie. in another game, I can "magically" beat the enemy and, depending on the class, either the enemy gets to me with difficulty and dies halfway, or I can run away from him and cause damage at a distance, as well as beat several opponents with "mass skills" (in fact, there are many examples and not from one game, but I hope the essence is clear).
It would not be bad to add an "instant cast" let it have a certain castdown, but the spell itself will be pronounced instantly.
As for HP, I would think about getting rid of HP pumping altogether, so that it would be given automatically from the maximum level of a particular branch, it would be honest and would not require the magician to pump melee (who needs to pump himself).

Events: It would not be bad to also have automatic events, for example PVE, so that a chest appears somewhere on the map, monsters appear around it and you need to fight your way through and take it, or monster attacks on surrounding cities, well, or at least something =)
PVP to make an arena 2x2 3x3 5x5 or something like a battleground, and since there are not enough players yet, make certain sets of skills so that the player's level and clothes do not affect the balance, everyone had ± an equal amount of HP and by choosing a "class" there were several active skills, you could arrange fights for some "bonuses". This would also become unique =)

It would also be nice to see the icons of "buffs" and attacks on the enemy in order to understand whether the aura or periodic damage is acting on him at this time

It would also be nice to think about switching to another engine, such as TinyCore Mangos, but I think it's more difficult than finishing the Ryzom engine, so this question is rather just a thought out loud.

I made a few changes to the files inside the game (changed the loading screens, and started changing the skill icons and the game became a little nicer.

"Left to right:
Aura of life, self-healing, goal healing, running, fear, sep on yourself, roots and cold."



Anyone who says something like "go and play other games" guys, I can easily! But I am interested in developing this game and increasing the number of players, it would be much cooler! Let's discuss this?

These are good ideas. I think the biggest problem is resources. The game just doesn't have a lot of them.

Personally I've always wanted more "instance" type things in the game. Instanced dungeons and the like.

The interface however is one of my favorite things about the game.

Yes, resources are everything, so I would like to invite other players who have experience and understanding, I think many could contribute to the development of the game. And at the expense of the interface, everything is quite simple. It is in a single file and could be modified as an "addon"

There is also a question to the developers, as far as I know the graphics are made in 3ds max and version quite old, is it possible to reconfigure the engine to formats that could be converted from Blener? I think there would be more help in this regard =)

Un point que j'aime beaucoup dans cet ensemble de remarques constructives, c'est l'idée de donner de l'XP lors des missions des PNJ. Pas forcément toutes les missions, mais quelques unes, bien spécifiques et qui nécessitent un bon délais de plusieurs jours avant d'être reprises.

On peut ensuite ajuster cela en faisant en sorte que cette XP ait un rapport avec la mission, voir avec la nation/tribu qui la donne. Par exemple, les missions fyros donneraient surtout de l'XP en combat, les trykers en forage, les matis en artisanat et les zorai en magie, comme ce que semblent suggérer les missions sur silan avec les entraineurs.

I would wonder if crowdfunding additional improvements would be a possible solution. I know the community is small, but perhaps it could offset at least a fair portion of the working hours needed?

Good thoughts, we need to think about it. Indeed, this will give a certain result and diversify the increase in levels. 4 skills 4 factions are reasonable =)

By the way, a good idea, it would be possible to divide the trainers into factions and NPCs with quests, so it will be easier to understand what you are doing. And in this case, the NPC that gives a quest of a certain aspect could match the level of this skill. Let the quests be in different locations and send you to different locations as well, sometimes it's nice to run. I would also like to discuss nerf mobs, so that the player can kill a couple at a time having a certain skill in the game

There is another suggestion regarding teleportation. What if we do it by analogy with GW? There are points of cities that "open up" like as places for revival open up here. What if you open teleportation locations in the same way and when you click on the map on the desired teleport, you would be offered to write off the "amount for teleportation". I will explain why this is so, firstly, it is sometimes difficult to search in a bag among a bunch of teleports you need, secondly, a person who may not remember all the cities spends a lot of time to remember which teleport is in which place thirdly a place in the bag

Translated with deepl.

There is a lot to say, however I will focus on a few main points, and mainly on the point where I have the most expertise: the contribution to the game.

For the past ten years I've been seeing good (and not so good) ideas, people motivated to implement them, and sometimes even improvements that actually end up in the game. The pattern remains quite similar over time.

There are two points to keep in mind: Ryzom has a very long history, and as many liabilities to overcome. And the overall complexity of the project makes it complex to grasp.

Regarding the history part, although the game is partly open source, it has been organized as a labyrinth of secrecy. It's fun if you like to snoop, it's less fun when you want to build, because you have to deal with scattered information (and sometimes only in the head of a contributor long gone), extremely tormented chains of command, and if I summarize: there is a stasis to overcome that is worthy of the biggest French administrations. I specify that the problem is systemic and independent of the individuals who compose the system. In fact, a lot of work has been done to simplify this organization, but it remains very, very far from an environment where contribution is easy. This almost impenetrable system discourages the majority of contributors; those who remain have a tendency to either become jaded or to become totally allegiant to the system and thus perpetuate it (I oscillate between the two, and when it becomes too unbearable, I run away!) If this has always been a problem, I fear that it is becoming even more critical today: in the past there was still enough money and motivation for the numbers to compensate for the losses, now there are really too few expert contributors (= knowing the ins and outs) to effectively accompany the newcomers. It's all the more sad because there is really a lot of work that has been done to simplify the contribution, but the step is still huge.

If you find Ryzom's grind painful, the experience mechanism in the contribution will give you another idea of the word "difficult" ;)

Because it is not only the social system that blocks. It is possible to get the whole code, to have access to the proprietary part (datasheets and primitives) if you show your credentials, and then? Then the trouble starts. I remember my despair when trying to untangle the Webig overhead, which is an easy part: 20 years of accumulating frameworks and poorly finished internships had created a polycephalous monster, and cleaning up this mess would have sent Hercules and the Augias' stables back to the rank of "ordinary housework". There are parts of the code where the expert devs will tell you "don't go there, if you touch anything, everything will fall apart". That doesn't prevent some things from being refactored over time, but the work to get it all back together is just incompatible with Ryzom's resources. It's all the more complex because some things are well thought out, and touching a part that seems trivial can lead to an imbalance of the best parts.

One of the parts that I particularly despair about is the lack of competent gamedesigners. I ended up training myself on the job (10 years of training, of course you learn a bit?), but I wouldn't risk a complete analysis of Ryzom. Some parts are easy to criticize (the economy? I can talk about it for hours), others are admirable and I shudder every time I read a proposal to touch it (the crafting... its balancing is really delicate and rather successful). And while we're on the subject of balancing, you should know that it's one of the most complex parts of a game to work on. When you have millions, or even billions, of players and therefore all the resources to do it well, well even then it's long and complex. Ryzom doesn't have these resources and empiricism on this kind of work gives very bad results (let's talk about the economy again, no? Don't touch the economy anymore, please). My point? As players we have lots of ideas about what would make us happy; but we need to be able to see these ideas in the overall context of the game, the impacts that the changes will have on surprising games.
An example with the grinding of Ryzom. Well, I hate it. I really hate it. So, if tomorrow we get rid of that, that you can get your level 250 in 5 nights of play, I'll be the first to dance. However, almost all of the gameplay mechanics in Ryzom revolve around this grind, and always having one more branch to climb. If I take a step aside, we are in a game that has more in common with Asian games than with Western games. Let's take a step back: it's a question of target and market. Some players like repetitive tasks, the optimization they require, or the fact of doing without optimizing and getting there by persistence. Ok, I am not one of those players. Yet I stay on the game, despite this mechanic that drives me crazy. Why? Because of the side effects of grinding. It's annoying, yes. So? So it leaves room for socializing. In fact, you said it yourself: when you came back, you found people, and that's what made you stay. That's also what brings me back to this game, even though I've played a lot of other games that are more dynamic and nice in terms of mechanics. Yes, but here, in fact, there is no choice, you *have* to take your time and be with the people. You don't play "the game", you play "with people". And if you can't make those connections, you leave. Can we keep this social aspect without grinding? Yes and no. It requires such a deep transformation of the game that it will no longer be "Ryzom", but something else. Am I saying that we should leave the grinding? It makes me sick, but... yes. Because if you want another game, you might as well do it on the side, without taking Ryzom away from those who love it as it is. I still dream that the universe will be freed one day to make this alternative Ryzom without grinding ;)

It would be nice. We had worked on it in 2013, and even released money for it (but clearly not given to the right people). Currently, Blender can make static objects for the game, so that's something. But unfortunately the graphics pipeline is a very big piece, extremely complex. We've turned this around, and the answer is always the same: either you need a lot of money AND extremely competent people (and there are not many of them, and they are expensive...), or you have to start from scratch on the graphics part. There is some tinkering to add things in game, but some parts will remain complicated with the current system. This is clearly a part that blocks the contribution. What is cheaper, adapting or starting from scratch? I think it's worth it, and it would probably be in the millions if we paid people.

I hope this post gives some ideas about the work that these proposals require and the difficulties that can arise.

Structurally, that's why I want to understand more deeply what can be changed in the game without major engine changes. In principle, 85% of what I have proposed can be applied without resorting to a strong change. Work on the balance, make quests (by the way, I didn't talk about pumping in 5 days =)) However, this needs to be done to break the vicious circle.
The vicious circle that I see looks like a small number of players bring a small income because of which the development of the game slows down, so the more players there would be now, the more it would be possible to invest in development.

If I had millions of dollars to spend on this game it would go into porting it to iOS and Android. THAT is how you would get a big influx of players. Gamers that play on PC now-a-days are not going to be attracted to this old game no matter how many graphics you update. Thats just reality. But, like runescape (which is also quite old) as soon as they got mobile done they got a huge amount of new players.

People will say "The UI is to complex for mobile". To which I completely disagree. Runescape managed to make it work and their UI is really complex as well.

But, having said this, the money just isnt there unfortunately.

You know, I even got it to run on my Librem 5 with small tweaks already. The UI scaling wasn't too far off from being workable. If the game had a click to move function and some means of accessing right click menus, it would've been almost playable with very minor alterations on that platform; As it is, I've managed to make it work when connecting a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

I have to disagree, if only because Runescape initially had a lot of players, so you should not hope that with the release of the smartphone version, players will rush here. Yes, they will definitely be added, but it will look the same as now. Dozens of new accounts appear here every month, but they don't linger, that's the problem.

So back to the topic. Changing the engine would probably be interesting, but as it turned out, it takes a long time and has a whole bunch of pitfalls that can simply change the essence of the game, so we will put this question on the back shelf of our thoughts and return to the Ryzom engine as it is.

For myself, I have already decided that I will study the Ryzom engine (at least superficially) in order to better understand the stuffing and try to make changes that I think could pleasantly diversify the game, and most importantly (yes, this is the goal of my entire mission) to increase the number of players! It would be nice if 300-400 online players played here, ideally to bring it up to a thousand and above! So let's move on to the discussion.

First. What can really be changed from the text that I wrote earlier. QUESTS, RAISING LEVELS and CLASS DEPENDENCIES!

So the proposal as a whole does not change much and after a little reasoning I came to a certain system (offer options, a fresh look is always better), why is this the first? Because it doesn't change the system much, which means it won't take too much time, but it will give good results.

Quests, in the first location it is well implemented, I suggest doing so in all locations and cities. Place a dozen NPCs in each location that will offer (on a daily basis) quests for leveling. NPCs should be of different races for different pumping and, accordingly, have different tasks, whether it's killing mobs, collecting or crafting. For completing quests, give experience for magic / crafting / attack / or loot, depending on the race of the NPC that belongs to these branches.
For example, the Fyros NPCs raise the level for close combat
Mathis raise the levels in the assembly
Tryker — crafting
Zoraï — magic

The essence is to diversify the grind with quests and runs through locations. The only thing that needs to be done somehow is to make the system so that quests are issued under the player's leveling level (here we need to think about a script for the server).

Dependencies of classes, I ask you to study this question as much as possible, because (again, I wrote above) when pumping a magician, you need to pump melee because of HP, I think it would be wise to remove HP pumping (only HP pumping, without touching regeneration) and make a calculation of the number of HP only from the maximum level, so you can remove a certain dependence in extra body movements when pumping a certain class.
This will require (most likely) resetting points and skills so that the player can intelligently reallocate the free points and spend them wisely. How do you look at it?