IDEAS FOR RYZOM

I was reading this forum thread [X] and someone had an idea for removing silan and having new players start in a city (perhaps the city of their chosen race).
Just wondering what peoples' thoughts are on this idea.
Personally, i enjoyed silan but i can see his/her point... seeing the older players run around would be motivating - yet at the same time so is knowing you can slay everything in silan :P
I think it would make the main cities nice and populated rather than sparse but obviously lower level mobs would have to be introduced as a lvl40 yubo is not gonna die by the hand of a lvl5 toon.


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I kinda wish they'd get rid of the starting island altogether, and work the beginner tutorials into the main racial cities instead. When I've played, there was always active, experienced players in the cities - more than I'd see at any time on Silan. I think it does a huge amount of good for a new player to see other players around who aren't newbies like themselves, especially if they can catch them in the higher level armors, dueling with higher level spells, etc. It instills the confidence that "okay, this is an active game, and people do play it for a long time".[/p]

Silan, to me, is boring. I don't know why, but I've never enjoyed that place. Maybe it's fine to others, I dunno.  I just know I've left there any time I've tried a new character. The racial cities are much more interesting. I love the main Matis city (forget the name at the moment).
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If the Silan missions were available in the ML then the training could take place, that is true, but I think that there would be a lot more half-trained homins setting forth without the skills needed to make the most of the areas around the cities. I also think that the mission-driven nature of Silan, which is already difficult for some players to wean themselves from would become even more difficult.

I found/find Silan to be an interesting introduction to the *scope* of Atys while keeping the success rate of encounters high enough to maintain interest. YMMV, etc.

The difficulties in transporting the code from Silan to all four central cities is irrelevant to the discussion of whether this might be a good idea or not, but is relevant to the question of "can it be implemented if it is a good idea."

silan has it's perks, but saddly many people don't stay to do the missions there anyway, they want to rush to where the action is, and then are let down because it's not as full of people as they might have thought, i can see what your saying marce, and while i like silan, i could see where your idea could offer merit to new players seeing high players, but we're often known for spoon feeding fresh from silan homins everything they need, and that would be worse if there was no silan to buffer us vet's from overly helping the new players (but i know lot's of us vet's have silan vet alt's to help noob's with)

Yep, i wouldn't petition to have silan removed. I enjoyed my time there and i think it's best that newbies do start separately. Silan is a great introduction to the story of Atys... for the people that bother to read the dialogues, i think it's beneficial in helping a new starter make up their mind about how they want to play the game, i.e., which path to take and which side to choose (if any).
I was just wondering what other people's thoughts were on this guys idea/opinion.

Also, as bitty pointed out, the coding thing simply would not happen so we have nothing to worry about. :P

Sadly, this idea would turn away even more beginners than Silan does.

Let's take this thread, some might remember it - "Why I will never pay to play Ryzom". It raises a lot of valid points about defaults and expectations.

Could a zorai newbie run straight into Knot of Dementia, just by walking some 200m north from the Zora welcomer? Yes, they could, and would get promptly killed. Not so fun.

Would they attempt to kill a level 200-ish mob with their bloody level 1 dagger? Sure thing. The game purposefully hides mob level from you, and very few people end up asking what the region level is, what the stars next to the mob name mean, etc.

Will they have less rez chances, given that they aren't all in one place, but divided in 4 different capitals? I think so. Will there be discussions about the "most lively city", but now with people fearing they outright started in the wrong place, with the wrong race?

Would newcomers bitch & moan about losing their mounts, after they spent all their hard-earned dappers on them?

etc etc

hahahahaha! i'd fogotten all about that thread. Tumbleweed stole the show :)

Also not to mention there is only about 10-20 newbs on in Silan at any given time, so if you split that up into 4 cities, thats only 2-5 new players in any new city.
Also, I enjoyed my time in Silan, I think its boring for some Vet players who make alts to go through it again of course, and sometimes I like the whole experience of going through it again just to help newbies. I find them cute sometimes :D

One huge advantage of Silan is the access to other players, new & old, of all the races.

If you're joing with friends & everyone chooses a different culture, starting in your racial city would mean an intendrd grouping was broken until almost everyone had been trekked at the earliest

Or a most of said newbies being somewhat discouraged by the high cost of the local armor crafting buy-in.

OTOH, if you all start on Silan, you can work together, get tips & hints from the veterans who're hanging around, & hopefully be advised to all go to one city, & why that city rather than the others.

(The above comments being based on my interpretation of what I have seen happening with a specific group of newer players).

Reminds me of when I was trekking a couple of fresh-from-Silan homins and decided to take a little detour to get then the Dyron/US respawn. So there we are in PR, staring at the Jublas, watching Yelks slowly walk by, and just taking in the scenery.

One of them decides to try their luck on a Jubla despite a Melee skill of 32. I rezzed him about three seconds later after the inevitable happened, and he tried going after a Yelk. After a second rez, he wondered why all the mobs there were so tough.

Not all newbies are like that though. The other one looked at the size of the things there, noted that I wasn't casually nuking things like I was in Dyron, and had the common sense to not pick any fights.

So even just those two are different enough to prove that we have a wide range of players, whose levels of wisdom, willingness to ask questions, and ability to learn vary considerably. And since we alienate fewer people by giving wise/experienced gamers "remedial training" than we do by having a newbie-hostile steep learning curve, I think it best if we keep the current system where there is zero chance of a level 6 homin from doing something like blundering through the Desert New Horizons to Dyron and winding up as Cherkin chow. Silan serves that purpose, and I think it should continue to do so.