IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Ignorance is no sin, if it is recognized and compensated by curiosity and readiness to learn. Combined with arrogance, it is turning ugly.

Tell me:
- Why are wildlife mektoubs not attacked by carnivores, usually?
- Under which circumstances they will be attacked, anyway?
- Do carnivores attack herbivores all times?
- If not, when and why they will do?
- Do herbivores attack intelligent plants?
- How do herds react on season change?
- is carnivore occurence equal during all seasons everywhere?
- Do herbies react on approaching homins, and if yes, are there region specific behavioral patterns?

I do not mind if you do not know the answers, but your tone is somewhat annoying, to be honest. I am playing this game for nearly 6 years, and do not claim to have explored everything about.

And well, tell me another game where I could claim similar - not to have "played through" in half a year or so (ok possibly with help of some gold traders for cash).

If your only concern is that you cannot achieve a master in less than a month at a rate of 2hrs playtime a day I simply fail to see your point.

@Daomei: I admit it was a gross exaggeration from my part to imply the exact skill level "250" is needed for those activities. Instead I should have said a high level that is close enough to 250 for the math to work in your favor. Your mileage may vary, but 225+ would be a good base (with the exception of competitive pvp and Pei-Ruz, you do need 250 for those).

But to me you saying things like players with less than level 100 going on an NPC boss hunt (just to pick one example so this reply doesn't get too long) and being useful means we have very different understandings of the word "useful" in this context. Maybe I should have made myself clearer. In the open public hunts the players go in with a massive number advantage. It's an over kill. An activity that was designed for a guild to tackle is being done by the entire server. Try to do Aen with 14-15 toons and see if that lvl 100 will be as helpful.

I've been playing this game on and off for almost 8 years and I feel the same sometimes as well. I'm not saying your original OP suggestion is the best way to go about it, but I see nothing wrong with the idea of minimizing the grind and making XP faster in principle. As long as there's enough fun stuff going on in the game to keep players interested and using those skills.

Most of the disagreements I see against your suggestion seem to be either:

1) Making XP faster is against the difficult, challenging nature of Ryzom. That's what I've been trying to rebuke with my posts. Or;

2) If XP is faster, players will finish all skills too quick and won't have a purpose in playing anymore. That's also a bad excuse to me, and that's why I cited EVE as an example of a highly successful game (the most successful sandbox at that) that doesn't require you to grind skills in order to keep you logged on playing. The idea that MMO's should be about grinding skills and levels is a very antiquated one.

@Daomei:

You would have a point with your questions if the answers would be game-changing for a significant amount of players. As it happens, the ugly truth is that very few people out of a group would actually care to learn the answers. You can play in most situations just by knowing which class attacks which (carnivores > herbivores).

Instead, what people DO notice is how fast you level, how fast you can gain access to content, how boring or interesting content is, and so on. No, a nature documentary isn't interesting for a lot of people.

For a completely personal example, I never got into GW2 due to two reasons: one is that I dislike the endless quests at the start, and even if I could get over that, the XP gain is pretty slow. The person I'm watching play has been putting in maybe 1 hour daily, and three months later they're still 52 out of 80. Granted, that's the only skill to level, instead of 63 trees, but consider what the average player's expectation is.

Daomei: I am sorry if I sounded a bit harsh. I did not intent to hurt you.
Mjollren: Again, I agree with you. Thanks for drawing the attention back to the actual topic.

And in some cases, you may be able to pull of things that most people would think only possible through the sheer brute force of power-levelling. For instance, tanking for a plod team with Daggers and a CC skill of only ~120 is easily doable with some player skill. Admittedly, dagger is not the best choice for plods due to the DPS, but so long as you remember that a tank's job is more about keeping the casters from being eaten than about dealing damage, and you have enough healing support to even have a plod team in the first place, even F2P players can be very useful in 250 zones.

I think that that right there is where the problem is. It seems that many of the players who have issues with Ryzom play almost like it's a single-player game with a chatroom. Or maybe it's just pride that makes everyone feel they NEED to be 150% self-sufficient, if not the Ultimate Uber-Master of All Things.

Do you know why I am only half-heartedly levelling craft? It's because most of the stuff I use can be crafted by guildmates, and whatever they can't craft, I have friends outside of Rift Walkers who can. That means I don't have to do anything; I do what I want. Some would say that I "should" be mastering a dig other than Lakes, but I'm in no rush to do so because anything I can't get myself can be obtained just as easily with interpersonal skills as with character levels.

Yes, the last couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of digging, but it's by choice. I've done quite a few other things recently as well, like occupations, treks, hunts, SNs, an OP battle, giving the Kirostas in Loria a campfire so they don't freeze at night... things that are not grinding! I do not feel bound to grind away single-mindedly until I hit 250; I do a few levels here and there whenever I feel like it.

Zooming out a bit, I think that this discussion has done a great job at highlighting the difference between the old-timers who are used to getting a level every few weekends and those whose RPG experience is mostly computer/console-based. How many of you old table-top RPG players ever got to "endgame content" at all? And those of you who did, how many did it in under 20 hours of playtime? I think @Rikutatis is a great example of that difference because of this line;

Rikutatis

The idea that MMO's should be about grinding skills and levels is a very antiquated one.

Round wheels are an antiquated concept as well. But how is it that you personally have ever improved anyways? I mean, I know what I know about many things through study and experience. I didn't just say, "I want to learn electrical engineering!", wait a few hours, and suddenly have the differences between Delta and Wye transformers pop into my head; I had to do some studying and put in a bit of time and effort.

Some of us gamers consider that sort of "effort leads to improvement" thing to be more immersive than just having competence based on how long since you clicked a button that said, "I want to learn ****". It's the fact that many other gamers agree that the model even still exists. (Well, also the fact that it's easier to monetize, but lets keep the business side out of it.)  And given the heavy pay2win aspect of EVE, I think it safe to say that much of what works there would not work here anyways.

Then again, I treat my RPG characters (MMO or otherwise) as psuedo-real people in an alternate world rather than as some omnipotent being. I think MMORPGs are different from single-player games like Deus Ex and thus don't feel that I need a set storyline that I follow on rails and reach maximum character development by the time I'm 10-15 hours in. So of course I have far different expectations from those whose idea of MMORPGs is closer to "Counterstrike with crafting".

In any event, it's simply impossible to please everyone. The XP cap apparently was higher at some point in the distant past and was lowered to 6k for reasons. I'm not sure what those reasons were, but given how many homins have done well despite that cap and the difficulty of taking out things >20 levels above me without having enough teammates to nerf XP anyways, I'm not convinced that there is really any need to raise the cap either.

I am not into these type of discussions and to be honest I haven't even read the the topic but @Daomei's questions attracted me so I'll try to answer and hopefully you correct me :)

- Why are wildlife mektoubs not attacked by carnivores, usually?
Because they're too quick (speedy)
- Under which circumstances they will be attacked, anyway?
If they get rooted or somehow slowed down.
- Do carnivores attack herbivores all times?
Based on the exemple above, no.
- If not, when and why they will do?
They'll if they over speed them.
- Do herbivores attack intelligent plants? 
No.
- How do herds react on season change?
They move from a spot to another, no idea how (explain, please:)
- is carnivore occurence equal during all seasons everywhere?
No (explain why, please:)
- Do herbies react on approaching homins, and if yes, are there region specific behavioral patterns? 
They do. Behavioral patterns.