IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Summary:

• lack of incoming dappers into Silan
• some players do make alts for the dapper reason
• introduce some repeatable missions on Silan
• only way to make a real income on mainland anyway

Hi Everyone,

As we know, many players choose to stay on Silan to help out other players, this is one of the cornerstones of Ryzom.Silan is a training area meant to expose the player to the basics and prepare them for the mainland.

Silan also aims to limit what the player can do in order to give the player a reason to move on to the main land. Example, fewer stanzas are available.It should be communicated more clearly that there are more... later, by the NPCs though (if it was, I missed it).

While Silan does a fair job at proportionally representing the mainland, there are some key teasers missing.The stablehand does not speak to you or inform you that there will be cheap mounts for everyone later on, for example.

My primary goal for this post though is to address the lack of incoming dappers into Silan. On the mainland there are repeatable missions, on Silan there are not.

As a result, if you actually want dappers to stimulate the economy or to buy anything, you need to either 1) keep hoping newbies spend money on you or 2) make an Alt account and do some missions again

While I understand that Silan is not meant to be a permanent home or even a long-term one, please keep in mind that people will always use a system for whatever they want it to be used for, regardless of what the intended purpose of the system was. This is a well known human quality, especially in business. (I can get you a reference from some PhD in some text book if you wish :P)

Facts:

• Many players do make their home on Silan (practitioner)
• Many new players are coming due to steam launch (observation)
• Many new players seek to stay longer on silan (personal observation)
• Some players do make alts for the dapper reason(practitioner)

I'm not saying "hey give me more stanzas" but rather:
introduce some repeatable missions on Silan in the very least.

On the mainland this is basically the only way to make a real income since the dapper nerf for the merchant, may as well get the players involved from now instead of letting them find out the hard way later.

Silan has a few other little omissions that cause big problems.

- Many fresh-from-Silan players have to have the whole TP thing explained to them as Silan gives no indication that there is any way to get around Atys other than running or death-porting.

- The Forager trainer gives no indication that digging ever gets faster than about a mat a minute, leading many would-be crafters to avoid digging in favor of crafting their kills or just stopping people from crafting much, period.

- Item stats are never explained. There is no indication that not all gear of the same grade and Q is identical to all other items of the same type, grade, and Q. And it's only mentioned very briefly that using different mats will get different stats; a lot of people will click right through. This results in some crafting mediocre items because they will just throw whatever mats they loot into crafting an item and call it good.

I know Silan is supposed to be a tutorial, but there is some pretty basic stuff that they gloss over, leading to a bunch of people forming some pretty big misconceptions.

Edited:
For now sticking to one request
dapper missions on silan 

Posting rules of Ideas forum requires 1 idea per thread, and not posting the same idea over and over, check if some of these already have a post.

There will be too many posts if each idea is posted

The general "idea" is a composite remodeling of Silan.
I was directed by email to try posting on the forums so I'd say the "dapper missions on silan idea is safe"

I'll rename the post again to just the missions and write up something bigger later

Thanks Placio=]

I'm not sure what to say on this. Yes, i agree that there needs to be a way new ones can make money. The 'economy' on Atys just does not work for them so the 'Gift' economy exists still, where guidlies give new ones money, because things are so freeking expensive for them. Is this going to be a game of 'Making money,' or a game where they can do other stuff for fun(and there is plenty to do for fun!)?

I never liked the new economy since the change during the server merge. (And i hate to mention this, but I know there is other games out there that charge real money for advantages, such as for dappers in game, I really don't know if this is feasable, advisable, or even a good idea, but it would probably bring in more revenue I suppose, [sorry i mentioned this!]).

So...

There needs to be a fix for this. I suggest maybe dapper missions only new ones can take in the main cities on Atys. How to do this, I am not sure, perhaps it can be based on FAME or something like that. Only low fame players can do the missions, and make lots of dappers, or if you get your fame up in a race, you can make more dappers. The current missions need to be boosted in payoff. anything less than 1000 dappers should be boosted

Perhaps players can be barred or have a LIMIT for exhanging dappers between eachother and have cooldown period of 24 hrs, I don't know, its just an idea to discourage alts from dapper harvesting, or 'gift dapper exchanging'. Just an Idea thrown out there.
 
As far as dapper missions on Silan, I am for that wholeheartedly since it is only for new ones there anyways.

Also, I liked your idea of more information given to new ones like "Hey, you cannot buy a mektoub here on Silan, they are only tamed and riden on the mainlands. Go there!" :)

Thank you so much for writing in Naema, you're very kind.

Please don't feel the need to apologise. If we want the game to prosper, we need to be candid about it. Everything has it's good and bad points!

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a gifting society which loves to help one another out. However, the player should have the choice, opportunity, even the right, to make their own path as well. This is an MMORPG sandbox, so there ought to be ways to generate income from the world.

That said, the dapper-missions make sense, they serve as a supply. However this supply is only on the mainland. On the mainland, you are expected to use these missions to gain your supply, but the player is not allowed the opportunity, or educated about it on the starter area.

I would hope they do not decide to limit trading on silan to prevent alts. Alts are made for a purpose, to circumvent a system that needs some small modifications. Why make an alt if there was a mission? Why trade to alts when you can just store mats in the merchant? (which you can)

Thank you for your support of the idea to introduce dapper missions on silan.

I would hope that buying dappers is not permitted, but I respect your knowledge on the fact that some games do make this possible. I don't think it suits the community but also... it would encourage illegal gold selling as already happens in many games. To get around this, runescape allows you to buy membership with real money and sell it as an item in game, it's basically safe gold buying and would really work for ryzom BUT we need to make a NEW topic for that :)

In my personal opinion, I'm not sure how increasing dapper income would help Silan. I make over 20k per max level jewel set on Silan at top price and I sell many a day. As there is nothing for me to spend dappers on (no specialized gear, no OP to defend, etc.), I usually spend my dappers clearing items off the merchant that no one would otherwise buy in an effort to give back the dappers I gain to other players so they can spend the money on the mainland. I attempted once to give these jewel sets for free.....most refused it. Dappers on the mainland is easy to get at low levels if you find someone to show you how. I am in favour of more stuff and better tutorials on Silan regardless of dappers given. I would like to see some more fame options on Silan instead but that's a whole other topic....

I appreciate your feedback =) My jewel sets have also been selling but my contention isthat there's no definite inflow.

Perhaps we can decide that there are enough newbies with enough dappers flowing in to fun our jewel craft. I then use that to buy things such as heavy armor which I do not yet make...

Primarily I buy materials to make more items for others and to level more so I can again make more items than others.

My issue though is that newbie inflow should not be expected to be the system that is relied on.

I don't really expect anything to happen but if it does not, I will simply do as you do

If sap crystals were a thing in Silan, I would agree. If digging were productive enough to get enough amber/seed to make even one full set per hour, I might agree. As it stands, the digging in Silan is atrocious enough that only the most dedicated masochists will get many craft levels between the time they finish the Craft missions and hitting Mainland.

However, I think that having a Lance Corporal (one step below Corporals like those found in Mainland capitals) in Silan would solve a few problems, not the least of which would be getting newbies in the habit of looking for someone with a miltary rank for a title in order to grab missions and get a few dappers.

I can do a set in about 20 mins...but I am level 82 in forest dig so I get about 3 mats per spot...With a care planning alt or helper is a breeze.

Silan is a starting zone, it's only supposed to give new players a taste of the game mechanics. I think Gidget's lance corporal idea is great, it would make the transition easier as it would give the player something familiar to do right away and encourage them to explore a little. I think the dapper system needs some work as a whole though, such as having special items that can be bought but not made....to give dappers more use.

Summary post for any ryzom staff reviewing this at some point:

Lance corporal (killing quests?) repeatable for dappers on silan have been proposed and suported

(I would like some crafting missions also)

It's a representative sample of the mainland in this way

Why not add missions which requires team-mates to complete quests and give dappers?


How about being able to get a NPC-healer for 1 hour per 1000 dappers?
Animals already do a good job staying out of a predator's range if they were faster - and the healer could be ressurected by you too or respawn.

The mek thing should be explaned together with appartments.
It should be explaned that there is a difference between packers and mounts with dapper-cost, inventory-size and F2P/subbed accounts - not only on Silan but near every stable.