IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Ok, that sounds unreasonable, and completely irrealistic. Indeed, it is, given the small dev crew and the few cash influx from subbed accounts.

The current situation is a vicious circle of a too small playerbase to develop fundamentally new content, and stagnation or even descent due to that lack. Even some new and nice developments in the existing areas will hardly be able to change that.

A completely new set of regions, on the other hand, may lure back old players who left because there was nothing or not much enough new for them, and also hold and motivate the existing playerbase and possibly attract new players.

So, the question is how to achieve that. First of all, it is a matter of cost. I am not sure whether that is sufficient, but with about 100k€ one might with some luck hire a small crew of idealists, best some already familiar with game architecture and code, willing to work beyond what a not overly generous salary would usually justify. I would estimate something like 3-4 personyears for coding a completely new Ancient Lands continent with several regions, some bosses, maybe missions, and some installations e.g. for Marauders, Trytonists, Rangers, and other homins.It should be clear that paying such amount of work with the aforementioned sum is an outrage and can justified by idealism only. And maybe I fundamentally underestimate the effort necessary.

Second, even if the above may suffice to pay a small crew of enthusiastic coders, still lot of work would be left to volunteers designing texts, providing translations etc., this may even extend to code reviews.

Last question, if all that is not completely illusionary, is how to get so much money. My idea would be a crowdfunding initiative, collecting in units from, say, 20€ on from individuals willing to donate .. or invest. Maybe it could be made a tax deductible investment, i do not know whether such is possible. Anyway, 4k people donating 25€ on average would suffice to raise such a sum, with more possible. I somehow believe that Ryzom has more friends than that.

Ok, comments welcome, even if someone thinks I'm finally gone nuts.

i like what your saying.

i have an idea that's similar to what your asking for, and it's got a large amount of parts needed already in place. and here it is:

recycle the old starter islands that are currently running unused by the player base, to start with they can be reached by a NH like transport system for all non- marauder players, and since the marauder tp system is based on webig (arcc) they can have tp's placed in the "new" lands, the mob level's on the old islands can be changed to higher lvl's, bosses that are not currently used in game can be used here, the cities can be the towns daomei is speaking of, one can be for the marauders, one for rangers, one for trytonists, and the last two (they each have 5) can be neutral (or one can be kami and one can be karavan, and neutral/neutral players can go to all but the mara one, since mara's don't like anyone with positive fame) the zone can be mixed mob's from say lvl 100 to 250 (like some regions of PR) same with mat's.

this is an ongoing idea that i have a small group of players helping me to outline, our idea's are not yet fully ready and i was wanting to wait for it, but this is the 3rd time in less then 6 months that i've read an idea related to our project, as a result i'm putting it out there.

(with our small dev team even this is very unlikely to happen, even with so much of the idea already in place and running on the server as we speak {the starter islands are running right now, with no one using them, what a waste of content that is})

please everyone feel free to comment (and sorry csr's for wanting to steel your hiding places for the rest of the players to enjoy)

I'd finish the kitin nest first
And then maybe get progress to the much rumored dark?moor that pops up here and there (afaik the continent exists but no mobs/items have been set up to now)

The old starter islands would only be something intermediary and in this line there are the olkern lakes and aelius dunes as well (which even have a story background already which could be used for missions there)

Edit: before I forget to mention it... crowd funding needs 1) a crowd and 2) very good/convincing rewards for the backers
It IS hard work and not really as simple as some people might think.

none of it's likely to ever happen, ryzom's not likely to ever see real content updates, there's just no desire on the dev's part to work on it and make it happen, or it would have already happened long ago, and ryzom would be in alot better shape then it is in now.

but hey i'd love to have to eat my words and say i'm sorry and i was wrong, but i don't have any fear of it after the time i spent today talking to the ryzomcore people, even if they do program something, WG still has to approve it, then their dev has to try to add it to the game, so it's never going to happen, enjoy what we've got, and forget about getting anything that's truely new content (nh was a nice addition, but it's not exactly that friendly when it takes 20 minutes and 245 clicks to turn in all your products to the limit, which doesn't include the time and clicks needed to tp around so you can turn all your products in.... sorry off topic again, call me a dog with a bone, i'll chew on it until there is change, lolx)

my idea that my little group was working on used the lake you speak of as well, but like i said i'd not want to take the csr's personal playgrounds all away (so i leave them the dunes)

but it won't happen, i don't know why i keep posting, other then i guess i'm not willing to totally loose hope that it will happen.

I really hope the dev(s) are not reading, because it's soul-crushing to have your work criticised gratuitously.

Consider that the large titles out there have full teams of devs, artwork people and so on before you carelessly accuse a "lack of desire to work". Anyone who has ever looked at the code base understands why, it's a titan's work to do anything solo in a project of this scale. A simple code modification could trigger unforeseen bugs in the most obscure/remote parts of the codebase, and could necessitate days/weeks of hunting them and fixing.

Hell, consider that a lot of bugs have been fixed in the Ryzom Core by now - but the fixes were not copied in the official client. Pe peeve of mine: issue #15, "Renaming map markers may load/save wrong marker"; fixed in September, all it takes is 6 lines of new code. Why aren't these fixes copied here? Lack of time and manpower, undoubtely. I'm quite sure whoever is in the backend, they're working frantically to get at least some stuff done.

So .. criticize management, if anyone. Management seems to foster this "keep afloat" mentality, with no risks taken, and no gains either. Considering a server merger was needed 12 months ago in order to stay afloat, I'd almost understand them. Except you gotta take risks in life, swim or sink already.

Going back to Daomei's proposal, you're nuts indeed :) Short of a team of volunteers magically appearing and working for free on improving the game, there's nothing to suggest the Higher Ups would dare risk money.

But at least we have Facebook contests, lol. /endrant

A lack of manpower can't really explain the failure to adapt the Ryzom Core changes back into Ryzom proper. I mean if I lacked manpower I'd grap every chance I get to have other people do the work I can't accomplish.

I wouldn't bother trying to do anything new myself, I'd scramble to get everything togetehr that's already been done, it would move development forward in leaps and bounds.

And whatever happened to the Ryzom Ring?

It was a full blown editor accesible from every Capital, where every player could create their own instances and share with other players. You could create maps from tiles and monsters NPCs and missions.

The rewards were limited, no XP for example, to avoid cheating, but it was readily used for RP scenarios.

Nevrax even hired some of the creator for their event team.

I remeber the Ring being very similar to the editor they have on Ryzom core and I guess it's pretty much the same thing the dev and the event team are using right now.

Their reward is new content and the game they love not dying from lack of players.

I'd happily donate more than €20 to back something that would enhance Ryzom.

A new continent won't really make much difference. A new continent would be an old continent after about a month. There's plenty of places on Atys already, biggest problem is lack of people (in MMO terms).

There's other reasons this game doesn't keep people and it has nothing to do with not adding more land.

Plenty of space. I would rather have more content;
-PvP rewards
-LA NPC bosses (planned for the future)
-More bosses (creating more possible recipes)
-More events;
1) Kitin invasions
2) Goo mobs
3) Wars between civs

€20 won't even buy a cookie crumb.



Rollocks
Guardian of the Dead Camper

Removed harassment 
GM Tiximei 

how many players stopped playing ryzom for lack of progress in game content, lot's, how many of them would come back (if even for a few months) to check it out, more then likely a large number of them. (just a guess)

as for picking on the dev's i don't mean to do that MJ, the dev works hard, but your right it's management that's not doing anything.

also i must agree that there's already lot's of people on ryzomcore that have worked on things, and they all do it for free, they in the past tried to add things, but the management refused to use them, so they gave up on working on anything for ryzom, and now are only aimed at making the code work better for the next game.

the ring, was a great idea, it allowed "new" content to be created by players and shared with each other, sure there was a few limits to it, but still it was a chance to offer and see ideas of players as to what could be done.

sure all new content will be "old" in time, but that's why there needs to be some from time to time, so there's something new to do for everyone, and based on how hard ryzom is, i believe that if it's done right, it would take more then a few months to be "old" (even the little NH addition was new for 4 months, before it was quietly tucked away as a everyday part of the ryzom world, though it could use a little tweaking now that it's a year old, like the fact that you have to click so many times to turn in 35 products, what is that other then a time eater to slow down what a player can do in a day's play time?)

there's lot's of things that need work in ryzom MJ i agree with that, and IF they would use more then a few choice bug fixes from ryzomcore they might find that they could do alot more, but then that's the owners that are choosing to ignore a good potential source of help they so desperately need.

the idea of adding content seams to be against the ideals of the owners, i think, what does that mean, that ryzom will crawl along for another year, putting money into the pockets of a few owners, while the game survives by a thread, and sooner or later enough players will leave that they will loose that. I only hope that when that happens they release the entire code to the ryzomcore, so that all of us that love this game can find a open replacement that is sure to gain far more then because they'll have the working ryzom to build off of and work on fixing for the better of all players and persons involved.

as for the issue of bugs, and not knowing what could happen if this or that is done, well, we all play everyday with so many bugs now, how hard would it be for us to play with new bugs related to new content, it wouldn't be any different then it is now, only that we would have something new to enjoy, and in the process we the player base would help to find and identify the bug's in question, and ryzom core could offer help if they were the source of the new content.

Talk --

There's only one problem with taking the ryzomcore fixes and applying them willy-nilly. The first time one of them breaks the client or causes another bug, even more people will be up in arms than you are.

New content is only good if it is close to bug free, and we know that the engine and the client *love* to interact to cause bugs. (Really, they do.)

As for NH, your rant about "x many clicks..." is getting old, tired, and the horse was dead ages ago. YES it's obviously meant to slow people down and to keep people from grinding NH for large amounts of money. This is, imho, a good thing. I think too many people are concentrating on money as it is. ((I agree the economy is broken, but we've been over that.))

If you want new content, get a team together and make it. Make some new mobs that are relevant to the Lore. Make a land where the Goo changes with the seasons, make it all so that it is compatible with the current code. Then push it. Advertise it. Push the dev(s) to include it. We know there aren't enough artists, riggers, skinners, or programmers in the ryzom team to do it. Don't just bitch ... get to work.

By the way, for those of you who haven't been following the Ranger meetings, there is a scouting expedition to the Old Lands that will be setting forth once the termites and mounds events are over. We have been told in so many words that this is NOT a revisiting of the old islands. I doubt that it will be a whole continent, but it is new.

(feeling grumpy tonight for some reason)
Bittty

Thanks, Bittty. I was of course aware of our expedition into unknown bugs^H^H^H^H lands, and the reaction of practically everybody who heard about was one of the reasons why I made this proposal.

In fact, everybody was excited, wanted to go to the new region as soon as possible. This extended to players recently unsubbed.

I well recall when the Dark Mines had been made accessible. Practically all players visited this region and explored it, figured the behaviour of the NPC, size and limits of the area opened. I know about resubs for that reason only.

Surely, new regions with new content are not the only thing possibly able to extend the player base, but it is an important one. And it also has to do with issues of more bosses and additional boss spots. The existing regions are not too large, especially the 200+ regions. Given that the playerbase is mature with a large overweight of high level players, the higher regions are particularly crowded. And littering 20 or more bosses with 60 or even 100 or more additional spots onto this regions would not be easy and free from unwelcome interactions. Therefore I thought, indeed, about a continent with 200 and higher regions only.

Also, other aspects of the game are affected. The Trytonists need kind of a home, and a home region. Marauders could get a capital (maybe changing place like the famous tent capital of Djengis Khan). The new area might be not as easily accessible as regions in the new territories, forcing to plan longer stay, not just popping in, killing a boss or leeching some sup, or grinding some plod, jab, jug, or horncher, then going elsewhere. It should definitely not be a beginners' region, though open to all who like exploring and do not mind dp.

It would also allow to explore new things without sacrificing old habits or activities of the playerbase. As long as it would not crash the game too often, and the consequences remained local, even a certain amount of bugs would be easily tolerable.

This is why I feel that extending space would be a good idea.

I'm just quoting the amount suggested by Daomei, so how about being constructive instead of being the type of person that causes people to leave?

ye gods - do try your best to address the suggestion and leave homin bashing out of it - Rollocks is a homin who adds spice to my game!