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Just a few examples on what people do as end-game content, what they strive for, as an explanation.

Ryzom is a sandbox mmo, and that means you have to pick your own goals (it doesn't mean there are no goals worthwhile, it's just designed in a way that you can pick what you want to do and still not be in a vast disadvantage).

1. Good gear (starting with this because you mentioned it and this is useful for any other goals)

In Ryzom this is an effort in many layers. We think about what we want gear for. Then we design a receipe to match the purpose(s). Then we go and try to find those boss mobs, find a team to kill them, and hopefully get those bodyparts we want. And/or go to dig in prime roots. After we got all the materials required we need a crafter to make the gear. There is another level of even better gear that can only be created by chance (we need LOTS of raw materials to make these).

2. Hunting

Hunting is so much fun on itself. Of course there are some established tactics but in the end it comes down to improvising your way through a boss fight. Ryzom offers a good variety of different means to do so, vastly changing the tactics that can be used to kill that boss. Hunting comes in various forms too: hunting for nameds in a team, hunting for bosses in a team, scouting boss places to find some alone. Hunting gets a lot better with better gear (1).

3. Digging

Surface digging is appreciated by those who want to do something that does not fully occupy your mind. You can get large amounts of materials to become a good crafter and supply average/good gear to your friends and/or (sell to) strangers. Prime roots digging is a completely different activity, it's more about staying alive in a most hostile environment, waiting for the right moment to run somewhere and dig the most precious resources there. PR digging is sometimes done in teams (few diggers and lots of guards).

4. PvP

It's always something very exciting to directly compare to other players. This requires a lot of player skill and equipment (1,2,3). Goals in PvP can be pure fun and/or owning outposts. I agree there could be more pvp in ryzom.

5. Trekking/Sightseeing

I think that's a very wothwhile activity too (some disagree). Learning how to walk the lands and survive, how to handle large groups of people, finding and showing nice places to others.

6. NPC boss hunts

Teams of 25...40 people frequently gather to kill npc bosses (marauders). Some hunting groups have tactics similar to those you applied in other game's instances. Some don't (and need more people). Personally i don't like this one, but i know many who enjoy it very much.

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You might think now 'oh yeah, nice activities, but no goal, as i said!'. But is doing an instance 200 times waiting for the random uber drop a goal? The goal is never to get all those drops so you can move on to your next toon, because there is nothing left your main would want. The journey is the reward.

Oh... and teamwork. Very important in ryzom, teamwork is not limited to teams! For example: if you want to make good gear, you want both digged and quartered materials to make them. And a trustworthy crafter to make it. And it's (almost) impossible to grind up all those skills yourself. You will need other people to rely on - and other people relying on you.

Roleplaying on the different levels of roleplaying perfection is also big fun for many players. Trying to find a role that fits into (or collides with?) the society you live in, giving your character some personality different from your own, seeing where the game carries your character.

Sorry for not being well organised on this topic, there are so many worthwhile activities i like in ryzom.

An update (mostly for the benefit of other people considering Ryzom - not so much for the existing playerbase): 

I fell for the politics possibility about a week or two ago and decided to subscribe. Should have done my homework first (and by homework, I mean a lot of searching around archaic forums for information on the concept, since it's not readily available elsewhere and/or the information that can be found is a bit out of date), since it turns out I'd have to dump my guild in order to participate or be forced to choose a religious side in the game (you call 'em factions, I call 'em religions - potato, potahto), neither of which appeals to me.

But I decided to give it a go anyway. I probably won't be doing it again after my Ulitmate Game Card points are all spent. Here's why:

* THERE IS A VOCAL MINORITY ON THIS GAME THAT ACTIVELY ATTEMPTS TO QUASH ALL CHANGE. No joke. There are actually people here that vote against ideas just because they would change their game world. Standing up to 'em just gets more grief. Why would I want to pay for that?

* THERE'S NOTHING MEANINGFUL TO DO IN BETWEEN SILAN AND THE HIGHER-LEVEL AREAS. Just about everything Ulykus mentions is part-and-parcel with everyday gaming on just about ANY game. Good gear? You're gonna need that wherever. Hunting? How else is one gonna gain fighting experience? Digging? Boring once one learns there's little (if any) difference between one Choice piece of Sha from one area and a Choice piece from another, and especially dull once ultimate recipes are discovered and stored. I mean, really, when's the last time anything changed on that front?

PvP doesn't happen anywhere near enough to be entertaining (and when it does happen, it's between long-time players that have managed to gain several masteries - booooooooooring), Boss hunts are pretty much the same thing as regular hunting with the numbers increased, leaving only trekking as the game's more enjoyable pasttime - and that ends pretty quickly, because it's not terribly difficult to join a sightseeing tour and look at these areas. Nothing changes, so there's no point to repeat journeys except for more mindless grinding.

* THE GAME IS PLAGUED BY STRANGE MECHANICS: I can double-click on my Range Fight stanza and go full-auto, but I can't do the same for my spells. I can only practice the Water Carrier occupation once every 20 freakin' hours. Finding a safe sniper spot for solo leveling is a wash because half the time, you don't even get the experience points for it. The few non-filler quests there are have strange bugs and/or instructions so vague that a walkthrough is *required* in some cases. (Fyros Story 2 is an excellent example. The Daggers quest in AA is another.) Suggest any of these to be fixed, though, and you get the Change Gestapo up your butt. 

It's VERY frustrating. Not worth paying money for at all, in my view. So what I want to know is this:

Are there good explanations for any of this, or am I just going to be told to shut the hell up and deal with it like everyone else that dares to suggest something needs to be changed or fixed with this game?

Because I'll tell ya right now - if it's the latter, this time I'm firing back. I've been rather nice about some of the attitude I've received while playing this game. I won't be this time. So if you're wanting to discuss this issue with me, I'd strongly suggest keeping it to the game itself and not attacking the messenger.

This time, the messenger's swingin' back. Don't force me to do that. Discuss the concerns civilly or step off.

My advice would be not to bother, buddy. Criticism of this game apparently is A) not welcome at all and B) taken WAY too much to heart by a vocal minority that prefers we newer players just sit down, shut up, pay money and never have any ideas, request any changes or raise any concerns about ANYTHING involving this game.

Kinda sucks, but I guess that's the way Winch Gate wants it.

So Dainan, when will your points all be spent? Just marking the sad day we won't see you again with this account.

Oh, and: Threatening us? Yeah, _that's_ going to get you a well-mannered discussion.

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Lemme guess - just couldn't be bothered to even ATTEMPT to formulate a response to the concerns noted? Just couldn't WAIT to attack the messenger?

Why on earth would I expect a civil discussion out of someone so willing to fire first, ask questions never?

Oh, and you're so delicate that you feel a declaration of self-defense is a THREAT?! Ha! Maybe I'll just stick around for the sake of skating the line of law and making your life miserable. Since, y'know, it's apparently THAT easy.

We gonna do this all day, or do you want to try tackling the concerns noted?

Nah, I just cannot be arsed, because I do not care about you. And why would I? You are the kind of personality that considers wasting money to piss off people. Stick around all you want, cry all you want, expect things to change because you want them to, I'll just stand here and actually have fun for the money I pay.

P.S.: Try to understand what a messenger is before calling yourself one. Moving on just seems to be too hard for you. You seriously think that people care about your concerns or that if you keep on bitching long enough, that things will magically change, that everyone will change their minds, that the bullies will disappear and that the game company will suddenly have enough funds and motivation to give the game a major overhaul. Try some realism for once.

Adorable. In order:

* The first step of change is recognizing that something needs to be changed. This can't be done without raising concerns and gathering consensus. Call it whatever ya like.

* These aren't "bullies". They're jacktards. I'll handle them as I see fit. Just as you chose to do with me.

* Bug fixes and removal of nonsensical restrictions aren't major overhauls. They're regular maintenance.

Much better on the second attempt, though. Kudos, chief.

As long as we won't have to read your smarmy remarks in unichat, all is good.

You haven't had to read anything since I put you on my ignore list for acting like a jerk just because I said "later tater" to someone.

Which reminds me - is there an ignore feature for the forum, too? Might as well just copy over my ignore list, since I already know no one on that list is capable of civil conversation. Just a bunch of baseless attempts to boss people around and ignorant attempts to call others out for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Well I as a New Player can definitely see where Dainan is coming from although he seems to be very angry about it which is not something I share. I'm trying to be more of a 'When in Rome' type of person here.

Although I might be failing as reading back at my previous posts I could maybe had written them a little better. My problem is I tend to get frustrated very easily which is believe it or not, a complement to this game. It means I like it and want it to be better but I think I could express it differently and I am sorry if I insulted anyone or came at this subject in a bad way.

(when I say 'Vets' I mean old school players ;))

I don't think its really about the Vets not wanting their game to change as its more like they really don't want another World of Warcraft. I can understand that as that would take away from the charm (being the uniqueness) of this game. Now I would argue that there is a reason that 10 million people play WoW but again this is a different MMO. ( I want to make sure to be clear here. I am not a WoW fanboy. My total time playing WoW in the last 8 years is about 2 total months of playing. But I do play other MMOs and the first thing I notice in any game is its mechanics ).

Maybe some kind of compromise needs to happen with the Vets and the Noobs. I have definitely noticed that any suggestion from myself is basically answered like "No, we do it like this" and I really think that mentality could be better.

For example one thing I would like is for the name of each member of a Team to be a different color (when looking at team boxes on the side) and then tiny arrows (like the compass arrow but smaller) added to the compass with those colors so that you can easily head towards any member of your team at a glance.

Now the answer to this will probably be: "you can right click the compass and select the member" which is fine and that does work but IMHO is not the best way to do it and could be better.

Thats just one example of what I'm talking about. I would like to maybe see just a little bit more of "Ya, maybe there is a better way" rather than "We can already do this albeit in a less sufficient way"

I think I will try to check out the features and suggestions part of this and see if I can contribute positively there.

Take care and I look forward to seeing everyone in game.

Tgmage, what you are seeing can partly be described as us not expecting much. There are plenty of good small suggestions, that is suggestions that don't try to change the game as a whole but just improve it (like your compass thing), but we also know that it does take a long time for any suggestion to gets implemented.

But the real "no thanks" mentality I see isn't really about such small changes, at least not from a majority of the players, but about bigger changes that go in the direction of "let's change how game mechanics work on a fundamental level".

I only got angry about it because it's been nothing but grief and drama since Idea 1. I hope you're a bigger person than I am about it. I sure wish I could be. But I can only take getting kicked around unduly for so long before hitting back.

Not a recommended approach for everybody. Maybe someone nicer and more mature will come along and help me to tone it down. (I'm not holding my breath after Dom and Roll, though. Roll I expected, but I thought Dom was bigger than that. Oh well. Live and learn. Good luck, guy.)

"* THERE'S NOTHING MEANINGFUL TO DO IN BETWEEN SILAN AND THE HIGHER-LEVEL AREAS. Just about everything Ulykus mentions is part-and-parcel with everyday gaming on just about ANY game. Good gear? You're gonna need that wherever. Hunting? How else is one gonna gain fighting experience? Digging? Boring once one learns there's little (if any) difference between one Choice piece of Sha from one area and a Choice piece from another, and especially dull once ultimate recipes are discovered and stored. I mean, really, when's the last time anything changed on that front?"

I took my time to point out some of the end-game features of ryzom, because i did read your posts carefully and i thought you were asking for that. _Please_ read my answer carefully too, and ask if you don't get anything. You can do that using PMs if you don't want to be seen as a guy asking questions.

Thanks.

You were actually talking to TGMage, not me. I did read your post carefully, though. I just don't see significant difference between what you suggested as end-game goals and what can be done on comparable games. Gear-chasing, loot-finding, and mob-hunting are all basic staples of games of this genre, for the most part, and crafting isn't enough to sustain my interest in the game between Silan and being able to chase the higher occupations in the higher-level zones - which I don't want to do now, since there's a baffling restriction on pursuing them and some people (not yourself) seem rather hell-bent on being jerks about the matter rather than attempting to discuss the concerns.

You really should have. But you totally missed the most obvsious and easy way to research, ask us old timers (a few of us in your guild :D) and you would not necessarily have to completely search through an "archaic" forums system - See Ryzom DOES make good changes! :D

As for the rest of your post, I can understand how you see it that way.. the typed word is always easy to misconstrue and hard to hit it spot on. I could read almost every post in this thread in a different voice to give it a different perspective (anger, questioning, helping, etc.). Keep that in mind not only for the replys to you but from you as well.

The entire reason the idea boards are there are for players to discuss the ideas. If someone likes your idea, they might or might not post saying so. If someone doesn't like the idea they have every right to say so as well. It is not griefing but a statement of opinion. Perhaps they do like something the way it is, just because you have a new idea does not mean that the current way is invalid. As far as those offering the ways it can be done (or different manner) they are just trying to be helpful, knowing you are new and may not realize that it is an option, they are not trying to quash your idea by offering such advice.

As far as "meaningful" things to do, again, that is in each of our perspectives. There is a lot of things to do and there is a lot that each of us can do to make the game more meaningful. Besides what has already been mentioned, Ryzom can be highly RPG centered and the way that we, the player, can affect the storyline is pretty unique (there are a few others that let players affect a storyline, but not on the level Ryzom does) and it was only mentioned briefly in another post. You can become part of the political process, interact with live event characters that respond to you, not just some pre-set mission that EVERYONE can do to get the same results, and make a mark on history. These RPG events are what drive the story of Ryzom, not the missions. This also means that each of us have the ability to add our own content (perspective) to the storyline - look at all the wonderful stories written in the Roleplay forum.