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how many players left? (no duals)

bothering me a long time:
unnecessary / cosmetic changes
uncorrected errors (encyclopedia)
no idea about the future development
massive exodus of old players (after wipe)
trivial importance fame
trivial significance races
trivial meaning of citizenship
problem of citizenship and guild
outpost - game just for large guilds

I've noticed wherever I go - and I've made several characters now just to nose around, that most of the time I'm lucky to see 10 players total in any given area - even a capitol city. That's not many for the amount of time I play. Sometimes I see less than that.

Game needs some:

Advertising - BIG time.

Little work on racial bonuses/specials - nothing balance killing - just something that sets you apart besides a mask or height or something.

Dungeons - for something to do besides forage/craft/die from a renegade gingo or something at low levels

Mercs to go with said dungeons - since population is a problem - and as a buffer for said gingos would be great since they always seem to be well over my level. They could even cost dappers - X per day/week/month game time, have extra storage (which you lose should you forget to pay up or be broke) as well as be upgrade-able with crafted stuff. If they die - well ... I'll leave you to figure that one out.

This game COULD be amazing - but the number one rule in ANY business = you HAVE to advertise it - and then have something worth the time sink you appear to expect in this game. So far - that last is marginal. "End Game'' as ''the whole game'' just flat sucks.

There's a great start here to work from, but it just needs more. IMO.

Your points are valid and have been suggested repeatedly over the years.

However, Ryzom has extremely limited financial resources to pay for future development or advertising.

There are a lot of free advertising options, Banner trading being one of them that works pretty well - pick pages/companies where gamers hang out, shoot them an offer to trade advertising clickables for traffic generation. I've noticed Facebook et.al. links for further advertising - this is good too. Get review places to try Atys again - reviews go a long way to generate newbies, esp positive ones. Plenty of gamers are willing to invest in a game - so long as they have a reason to expect said game will get better, their suggestions will be heard, and problems will be fixed in due time.

As far as the development goes - there are tons of 3D/programming freelance sites where listings are free. Those places also have people willing to work on commission or for free to get work exp on a 'real' game. Look into it - a lot of talented people just looking for a break.

Options are there - but no-one is gonna do it for you. Like I said - this game could be awesome - the foundation is already there.

You missed the most important point:

dig in PR totally broken.

spending entire whole seasons on a single spot tracked down and getting ZERO mats is no fun at all. And that was just excellent mats.... better i don't speak about supremes.

Have someone ever tried to stay still for real time hours and hours getting nothing but crap wrong messages from the system?

Without a working harvesting, Ryzom is destroyed because digging is the best feature of the game. How many old diggers will leave soon, once they understand they are just wasting time?

As I said in my tickets, i will wait this month, but with no fixes i will close my 2 accounts and i will go play something fun.

i didn't notice PR dig to be totally broken, got quite a lot of supremes (no, not only SNs). Are you using a non-windows client? I noticed nodes still don't refill, which has an increasing impact on gameplay as population grows and reboots get less frequent. One or the other needs to be fixed (simply do reboots every cycle, node refill hasn't been fixed for ages now and i don't ask for it anymore).

sorry for off-topic.

on topic: i think the devs do what they can, and they are trying to include free work into the game. But i also understand that people who look to participate in game development for free to gain experience need a great deal of care. If i were to work with a small staff on a complex grown code base, educating inexperienced programmers would not be among the stuff i'd want to do.

I am not speaking of supremes only.
Actually, track and prospect give different results, between "weather" and "no mats" and suddenly "you have found mats of different class", and if u try to prospect for fixed grade, nothing happens.

I spent hours and hours in under spring and wasteland (why you felt the need to specify you were not speaking of supernodes only?), at season change, zillion of hours now, getting ZERO of wanted mats. Very few excel, some choice, and 50 sups, in almost 2 months of gameplay.

Excellent should refill after a while.... actually i spent 6 hours yesterday staying still prospecting at a place, and 4 hours this morning.... getting ZERO mats.

After 8 years and 3 master dig, almost never using bm site (except for mission mats), but tracking and prospecting, because i love the system, i can say the dig is totally broken.

Unless you decide it's fun to spend 10 hours to find a dozen excellent mats.

I think the prospect results have been buggy for years. But with the chaotic reshuffling and placement of mixed season non related mats at same spawn point the problem is more apparent. See this bug report:

http://dev.ryzom.com/issues/1501

I agree and think that an unfortunate convergence of "well intentioned" changes has essentially broken the PR dig mechanics:

1) The merger has increased competition for PR mats.

2) Less frequent reboots (at least compared to Arispotle's history) means nodes refill less often. Rebooting has long been the workaround for the failure of seasonal refills to work correctly.

3) The shuffling and stacking of cho/exc/sup locations has exacerbated the detrimental impact of Tracking and Prospecting Message Errors that have always existed. This makes it harder than ever to locate the few mats that do actually exist.

My concern is that the developers are not really cognizant of the magnitude of the problem. For example, although recorded 2 months ago, the fix to #3 has not even been assigned to anyone.

Finally, Jola got the point and understand what is the real problem and why I'm trying to speak anywhere about it.
It seems devs don't understand the importance of this issue, giving priority to other stuff that really don't have an impact on the gameplay.

As I said in my ticket, dig is the core of the game, if you destroy it, you destroy Ryzom.
Devs, please, fix it asap.

I have spent hours in PR and while I have found supreme mats, there is not anything more to it than blind luck in some cases. I position 20 minutes before a change to a known supreme spot and only to find it doesn't refill. I think this is the main problem....the only time they refill is on reboot. This makes regionals pretty much a waste of time unless you know there has been a reboot recently. I even use tracking to find spots....to get a message saying...weather...then no raw materials....then a different class.....then while still waiting because I am confused about what all these conflicting messages mean....POP I get something. So how do we know if something is there, or no? Why can't I just get the old "depleted" message so I can move on satisified that it is gone.

I really don't care if I go to PR and find someone else was faster than I. But at least put the right messages out there so I know!!! Anyone who really digs 250 PR notices this Casy, even while getting Sups we notice it's broken.

i feel a little bad assisting to hijack this post from original topic but!

my preferred way to find sups now is really easy, first, don't stress about it because even if you are the first person online when the season changes either: a) someone else is already camped on the spot and logs in, b) it's going to give you a bunch of fake messages (as mentioned) such as not here, weathered, different class,

now once you have decided not to stress, and think of it more as a fun experience where you can practice your vorax dodging skills.... what you do is:

get a few sup prospect stanzas set up, 100m 200m whatever you want... sometimes you can be on a spot and try each distance and only some of them will say it is nearby... now once you manage to find a spot (recommended that you use material spec so that you dont pop mission mats...)

pop around alot with max range and if you find something great, if you don't, move on to the FUN way!

fun way = look for the biggest baddest aggro that even you cant possibly kill or entirely dodge on your own with 100% success no matter if you are awesome. then. walk as close to them as possible. bonus if they are a pack of vorax or kinchers but even better if you find the "combo spot" where there are 3 types of mean aggro all within sight just outside of about to come eat you

NOW pop sup stanza at multiple ranges till you find something. 9/10 times i have found mats in these areas, (i call them kincher eggs, vorax eggs, etc :))

or you could just look for the blue dots and follow them to sup spots... there will be at least 10 people on sup zun spot, you'll find it

or the most boring way : go to the sites that tell you what mats are up on what days/times/seasons and have all the flags up already, (sorry i think this is really a killjoy way to go!)

i found some sup seeds and dug them all but was later told its not really very desirable mat (shrug) doesnt matter, still happy i found something. reading this post, it seems i found it because no one dug it in the previous cycle either (presumably true that its not really a desirable mat)

i havent felt like looking but when season changes i will try my find-big-mean-aggro method, the devs have made sure that all the mats are now in the worst possible aggro fields (or in areas that have almost no aggro, go figure)

i feel bad for the players who find this to be a huge part of what they enjoy in gameplay, i cannot empathise with you but i do sympathise. i realise that it is enough to want to quit because tracking doesnt work and spots dont pop when they are supposed to and i know alot of things have not worked in a while but

i really hope that you wont leave because then you are going to be one less player in atys, which is one of the miseries of the original poster. if everyone leaves there wont be anyone to push for fixes, keep ticketing, keep reporting, keep taking screenshots or even video of the problems you find, submit them, no one knows if they will be fixed or when but it's really the least we can do

Eruv,

we are not here to cry because we don't get sup mats. It's awesome you find your workaround, but the point of my post is to have the devs aware of the problem.

As Sarifina also said, I don't want to go to PR and after 5 minutes find supreme mats.

And the problem is much more evident if you try to dig just excellent mats.
I found materials, excellent and even some sup, but it was totally casual and not because i did a good use of my skills.
And when you spend almost 10 hours searching excellent and find zero mats, something is wrong: can be track, giving me wrong "field"? Can be prospect? Materials not refilling? I don't know, but for sure, something is totally broken.

I just want the harvesting system working correctly, giving us all the tools required to do our digging game.

Actually I found another bug but not in PR, on surface. I ticketed it and I got aknowledged by a GM, so I am aware now, the devs know the problem exists. This, on surface, is a minor bug, not affecting the gameplay much, still this is a confirmation that something strange happened with the merge.

We don't want harvesting easier than before, we want just it working. And it's not just a matter of time to spend digging.

It's very different to stay still trying to dig something not knowing if you are really at the correct "field" or not.

I spent at least 4 hours in Loria trying to dig excellent shu, mats that are in a very crazy spot, filled by aggro.
At the end, after many hours i found a way to dig them and finally got the mats.
Despite the high number of hours spent, it was very fun for me, because i was confident that i would have been rewarded for my efforts if I could find a way to move thru that heavy aggro. I was confident because on the surface the harvesting still works, even if not perfect.

So, i didn't wanted a workaround, i wanted to know if the devs were aware of the problem, and that is a very high priority problem, and now i know they are.

Now, I just hope they find where the bug is hidden and fix it.

About leaving or not, well it all depends by what is the main part of the gameplay you like.

Ryzom is a game resource centered, so harvesting and crafting are the core, while combat is needed for the Boss Hunt, that means, other resources....
Even the pvp, with the exception of the stupid digger killers, is focused on resources.

So, do you like to play tennis, but you find it hard without the net in middle of the field.... you can do it using your eyes and of your opponents, but... will be it fun?
Maybe for a while, once you realize the field will never get the net in middle, you call for another place to play.

This is a general consideration, just to tell you that your specific case cannot be generalized. What is needed is just to have the mechanics working correctly, for the good of the game, not to appeal some specific player.

Gil! I love your candid posts, please do not misunderstand my intent... all i meant to say is that it does not affect me as much as it affects you but i do try to sympathise, i want the mechanics to work as they are supposed to for all of us but my point is too- i hope too many people do not quit because of it, we need all of you

it is hard to see one thing after another not work, or not work as intended but you are one of few it seems who still tries to ticket things, many players think ticketting is useless (i disagree) so I hope it does get resolved, it has been noted as something needing fixing on the dev's site as was stated - a while ago - hopefully someone will be assigned to it soon if not already and the dev post is just lacking an update to reflect this

i did not work hard on my PR master to be annoyed by the mechanics either, i just only recently got it and it has not started to make me too upset yet but surely it will when i want to participate in this great element of gameplay which is, quite fundamental to atys.

2 months and no response?
how many players have gone before you realize that something is wrong?
completely useless gaming news and ignoring suggestions