IDEAS FOR RYZOM

My personal book has so many annotations scribbled in the margins that the original content has been obscured. I'm afraid that if I tried, I'd inflict a serious case of information overload and scare people off. While I'm good at 1-on-1 tutoring and tweaking the curriculum to suit a particular student, I doubt my ability to write up a lesson plan with a wider target audience.

That said, if anyone wants private lessons in how to spread chaos then I'll be more than happy to give scenic tours of Atys :)

@Bitty okay silan became easier but still there are missed things.
Thats also very good there are description in wiki in bmsite but if 99% of beginers dont read then good for nothing.

What i suggest (Ittzy told me) is a link in welcome messeage or somewhere else what beginers wont close in 1 sec. Ialso feel bm site too long, i write gladly a short description about the important things (dont dig in the middle of javings where the game wanna send u).

In my opinion give the q15 amp before rendor mission also important becouse of the actual population of silan
I also feel a pointless thing that the crate mission u only can complete solo... Cause only problems without giving anything.

Thats also a problem old players must go back to produce the jewels etc, i dont think thats a big thing to change the products of jewelery cheaper and give HP bonus to them.

And finally u can say its all good if u like 90% of players give up the game on silan cuz its too hard, if u dont like it then suggest good ideas, or give an explanation why im wrong but not like that after 3 years experiance with double xp i can run across silan, thats only the description of urself. We speak about newbies who dont have the slightest idea about ryzom.

Silan is good enough in my opinion.
Maybe fix some missions and add explanation on enchant might be nice.

But the issue with Silan is the same than mainland : The leak of players, population is too small to make it working properly.
So yes, there is things to fix on Silan to make it more "solo game".

And saying, see bmsite ... is really bad, cause when you are new players on a game you wonna try the game not scroll multiples website while playing. Explanations should be in the game.

I've always viewed BM as more of a reference work (maps, mob levels, mat stats...) than anything actually instructive.

I was a newbie once, and didn't have any of the stuff in modern Silan and I am not a person who joins teams easily (I'm only a little better now.)  At the time I couldn't get past level 20 without going to the ML and I couldn't go to the ML.  I stayed because the game fascinated me, not because it was easy.

I'm not saying that all is perfect on Silan.  However, I only think only a few small additions are needed, not a massive change.  Ryzom is not a game that holds your hand.  Newcomers need to figure that out.  (This is why I say that the transition to the ML is "harsh".  It goes from Silan with a well-defined mission setup to the barely-needed mission chains of the ML that give you no bonus xp.)

For instance, the famous q15 amps mission to kill rendors.  It teaches you two very important things that you won't learn if you get them before the mission.
1.) There is often another, easier, way to do something that seems hard. (I.e. kill the rendors with your melee weapons.)
2.) Bigger is not always better.  Using the less than highest spells using the q10 amps with the bonus gives you more killing power than using the higher spell and not having the bonus.  This lesson will be important again and again on the ML.

As for jewels, it would be nice if the vendor jewels had hp on them and didn't cost as much, but some jewels and some armor is always on sale from new people doing the missions.  I think that would be a nice change, but I don't know how easy it would be.

Having an easily available link to a runthrough / explanation book is a good idea (I said so earlier, and I meant it). Having a message that says "Please use Universe chat for questions and play nice," rather than the current message would be nice. Changing a few introductory balloons might help.  That being said, everything that an NPC says has to be translated and checked in four or five different languages, and that takes time. It's not going to happen overnight.  (I don't know how it works, but I suspect that it's not even that easy, since long known typos in NPC speech have not been corrected even with a wider helper base in recent years.)

Finally, Ryzom is not a game for everyone. If we are keeping 10% of the people who come to Silan, then I think that's a reasonable number.  There is no way in this day and age that we are going to keep more than about a third even with a "perfect" setup in Silan.  Even WoW doesn't get anything like 100% retention.

It appears that the message displayed to new players when they first click on the Universe Channel tab has been changed, it now reads:

The Universe Channel is first of all intended for players asking help about the game and for those helping them. It's a friendly channel that also can be used for general chatting. Misuse of this channel will be dealt with by Support Team.

This was a good idea!

realy? That is good news, took me about a week or 3 to ask my first question there, just becaus of the warning...

I noticed it by accident as I am recording a video play through of Silan and adding comments and explanations while editing, I had planned to make a comment about not taking the original message too seriously and realised it had been changed :)