The new launcher/installer having already been presented during the previous Ryzom Forge meetings, I won't dwell on it and I just want to give you here a small state of play and progress about it.
• As far as Windows is concerned, several big annoying bugs have been fixed, but a major one remains. After its correction (and if no other big bug is discovered by then), we will be able, I think, to propose the launcher in beta test to more players.
• As far as Linux is concerned, nothing special to report. But as this OS has a lot of versions, note that the untested ones are probably numerous too.
• As far as macOS is concerned, it is the least tested OS at the moment. So we have called again for testers who use it regularly and if some here want to join the ongoing tests, they are welcome, especially if they use its older versions.
So we are quite close to a release for beta testers (to whom it is recommended to save their data before starting the test... you never know). But we can't specify today the date of this release, since, among other things, the decision to localize or not the interface in the five languages before the beta test is not yet taken.

What are your feedbacks (opinions and suggestions) on the new features and improvements brought by the patch applied on February 11th (see here for its features)?
For those who can't see the link above, the patch in question was about :
  • Updated textures
  • Marauders Fame
  • Improvements
  • Updates with Integrated auto-translation (DeepL)
  • The Course
  • Marauder gameplay
  • Test OP at the Nexus

The OOC events for the Refugee Days (Easter events) will take place from Friday, March 26th to Monday, April 12th.
Details will, as usual, be posted on the forum beforehand.

First of all, I would like to thank all the volunteers of the Ryzom team who, by giving their time and energy, by bringing their ideas and their dynamism, contribute daily to the life and progress of this game that we all hold dear. THANK YOU!
• As for gameplay, this year the team's goal is to finish the projects underway and implement long promised features, without neglecting the Storyline, which will bring new content. We also plan to rework Silan a bit in order to better guide new players on this tutorial island.
• As for roleplay, we will continue to offer regular events, at the rate of one per week, whether or not related to the Storyline.
• De plus, suite aux retours des testeurs, le mode de fonctionnement de l'équipe de test est en cours de révision avec la mise en place d'une organisation plus structurée et plus simple.
• Lastly, in order to facilitate the work of volunteers, the Devs are creating or updating various internal tools :
    – a tool for CSRs, including a new ticket system;
    – a tool for testers to simplify their task;
    – a tool for translators to facilitate translations and corrections of in-game text;
    – a tool for communication (broadcasts, announcements on the WebIG).
I leave the floor to those who want to react on this subject.

Agenda

[Feedback] Your opinion about the Refugee Days OOC events
[Information] Progress of ongoing projects: new launcher, marauder gameplay, OP refactoring, AIS changes

The Refugees' Day events have just ended, so we would like to get your feedback on them.
What did you like about these events? What do you think could be improved?

Fearing that a later addition would be problematic, we have wanted to take the time to add functionality to Ryztart before its release.
To wit: Ryztart now allows you to log in with your account name and password without having to enter them when launching the game and it will automatically retrieve the list of your characters and that of the servers (Atys, Yubo and/or Gingo) your account is granted access.
The objective of this addition being to make the launcher more secure, most of the work was to design a system that avoids having to store account name and password on the computer. Thus, Ryztart now only stores a token, which allows, and allows only, the connection to the game. Ryztart can also create shortcuts on your desktop for your characters that, too, do not contain either the account name or the password. Last, these shortcuts or Ryztart itself can launch the connection of a character without going through the "Character selection" step. (NB: this is already possible for those who know what parameters to provide to the current launcher).

The OOC events for the Refugee Days (Easter events) will take place from Friday, March 26th to Monday, April 12th.
Details will, as usual, be posted on the forum beforehand.

We've strated the work on the outpost battles refactoring project.
As some may have noticed, four outposts have popped in the Nexus, of four different "levels" (100, 150, 200 and 250).
Their names suggest that they are not "like the others" and will not function in the same way at all. In fact, their ways of working will evolve following the avancement of the refactoring project.
At first, their conquest will be the object of GvE battles (a single guild fighting the NPCs defending the outpost), none of them will be owned by a guild (nor will they host any drill). That in order to test the impact of the projected shortening of the battle duration (from two hours to one) in the best conditions.

This enigmatic wording actually refers to the additions made to the server to improve the artificial intelligence (AIS) that is managing the actions and abilities of the creatures and NPCs evolving within it.
These additions, I'm sorry to have to tell you, have given ideas to our dear Teanwen which will make you sweat a lot.. For they result notably in the extension to the NPCs involved in punctual events of certain abilities until now specific to outpost NPCs: launchers, bombs, healing, etc. Thus, as she was in the past, Teanwen will again be in charge of designing and driving animations and events where players will have to fight "mini-bosses" able, this time, to use a launcher, to heal themselves, to throw bombs or gas...
These mini-boss events will be announced in advance by in-game broadcast. Note that the AIS modifications have greatly increased the technical possibilities: be prepared, therefore, for many surprises during these little events!

Agenda

[Presentation] Ryzom's marketing plan: increase player loyalty
[Presentation] Silan Refactoring project

A 2021 marketing plan has been developed by the Ryzom Team, which pursues three goals:
1. Win players' loyalty
2. Get more subscribers
3. Attract new players
We will detail today the actions undertaken by the team to achieve the first objective, and your suggestions to enrich them will be welcome.

We are losing too many players, including high-level players, because of the lack of new content to motivate them to log in, because the long-promised additions are still overdue, and because the pace of maintenance remains slow.
That's why we decided to focus on the projects already underway and on maintenance. Specifically:
• To complete ongoing and long-announced projects: new launcher/installer, Boss refactoring, outpost battles refactoring, Marauders' gameplay, balancing of range weapons (see information given during previous Ryzom Forge meetings).
• To add new events to the Storyline on a regular basis, each leading to new permanent gameplay content.
• To not neglect maintenance: fixing bugs, adding new rewards, etc.
The upcoming patch will begin to put some of this content into play, with the activation of the test outposts of the Nexus and the gradual addition of the new Bosses.
• To encourage roleplay which, while remainining of course optional, is one of the raisons d’être of the MMORPG Ryzom. So, to make roleplayers want to stay, the team is working on two axes:
• School of initiation to role-playing (in project)
• Regular (weekly) events, impacting or not the History of Atys

Do you have any questions or comments about these actions?

In order to increase player loyalty, in addition to offering more attractive game content, we will work to better guide new players. We actually lose a lot of them shortly after they arrive on the tutorial island of Silan. After investigating the causes of this, we agreed on a possible remediation. This is how the Silan refactoring project was born, which will not result in a big change but only in various adjustments and improvements.
The objective of this refactoring is twofold:
• on the one hand, give the desire to new players to go further (at the moment very few of them take the step - i.e. pass to the continent);
• on the other hand, try to make the global experience of the game more homogeneous (at the moment, as Dorothée – may she be thanked – pointed out during the RT meeting preparing this one, there are too many differences between the game on Silan and the one on mainland).
Said Improvements and adjustments are planned for:
• The map of Silan Island. To make it more useful for beginners it:
   • will no longer be shown to players alone, but with the general map of Atys;
   • will allow the player to zoom in on the Ranger Camp (as is the case on the mainland towns);
   • will display icons showing the location of NPCs useful to players (at their stage of progress).
• Texts describing missions that are currently unclear, such as those that present a team-building suggestion as a necessity to players who cannot (or do not know how to) form a team.
• Damages from creature attacks near the Ranger Camp. They will be reduced as it currently causes too many deaths. Character dying too frequently suggests to players that the game is not for them, or that they have misunderstood the rules, increasing the risk that they will abandon Ryzom without delay.

Actually, few players take the time to read everything (this is natural: the excitement of discovering a new game pushes them to immediate action, not to think about its mechanisms).
So I'm going to show you what we have planned to overcome the disadvantages of this understandable haste.
We won't rewrite the mission texts: it would require too much time. But I've noticed, when accompanying players who don't know Ryzom in their first session, that displaying an adapted screenshot on their screen was often more efficient than giving them a long speech to explain them such or such gameplay mechanism.
This is why we will introduce the concept of schools (or academies) whose function will be to provide in-game "Academic Knowledge" that will be available, at any time, to all players and delivered in the form of practical lessons that will guide them, in a visual and playful way, in the accomplishment of the missions as well as in their actual learning. Each school will contain several pieces of information about a gameplay topic (e.g., the mastery of magic or that of jewelry) or a more general topic (e.g., the game's interface, or even, as mentioned above, role-playing).
Below a prototype, for the school of "Melee fight mastery", of a window showing in game the information made available by a school.



It presents a teaching plan with four sections (or lessons), which can be activated (if your progress allows it) or not (greyed out) so that you do not get lost in a long list. When you activate a lesson, a list of exercises to do (presented in the form of cards) will be proposed to you. Once you have completed all the exercises on this list, you will be offered a reward.
You will find below a prototype, for "Elementary Movements", of a sheet describing such an exercise.



It is composed of four parts displaying respectively:
• A title with a short explanation in subtitle
• An illustrated goal, optional (button to click for acceptance)
• A small reward, optional (button to be clicked for recovery once the goal reached)
• A set of pictures to make it easier to understand how to reach the goal.
Why, you may ask, propose an objective and a reward and not only the explanation and the illustrations? Quite simply because proposing an action in exchange for a reward is more motivating and fun, much more so than a long explanation text.

Do you have any questions?

Agenda

• [Feedback] Last patch
• [Information] CoC update project

Below are the links to the latest patch applied:
    • Patch 868 of April 17, 2021
    • Patch 873 of April 20, 2021 (fix of patch 868)
Pour information, le contenu de ce patch est désormais complétement actif sur Atys.
Thus, we have added, among others :
   – lessons and rewards for the entire Storyline;
   – allegories that produce effects and Storyline missions to improve those effects;
   – activation of Nexus Minor outposts.
Please note that the form of the lessons (illustrated guides to the missions) from the Storyline will be used for the projects:
   – Silan refactoring (tutorial lessons)
   – New Encyclopedia (guide to the Rites lessons)

Are there any questions, remarks or feedback?

Regarding multiboxing as well as sanctions, we would like to update the Code of Conduct in the near future. So I'm going to tell you what we're planning to change.
As a reminder, the current Code of Conduct can be found here.

1 - Multiboxing and PvP

We currently have a problem of inaccuracy and even contradiction within the Code of Conduct (CoC):

• In PvP zone, players not wanting to be attacked are asked to leave the zone. ==> Attacking a player in Nexus with 4 simultaneous accounts is therefore allowed.
• Multiboxing is limited to 2 simultaneous accounts in Storyline events. ==> Attacking a player doing a Storyline mission in Nexus with more than 2 simultaneous accounts is therefore forbidden.

This, in addition to not taking into account the case of Super Nodes, also causes tricky tickets to be solved in Nexus.
So, to clarify the Code of Conduct, we will extend the 2 simultaneous accounts limit to all PvP, so to PvP on outposts, in PvP region (Super Nodes and Nexus included), and everywhere on Atys.

2 - Multiboxing during off-peak hours

The limitation of multiboxing in the CoC has had a positive impact on gaming during European game hours, but also a strong negative impact on the number of players during extra-european game hours (peak hours of play in countries like the USA, but during which the number of players connected to Ryzom is very low).
This last point poses an intractable problem for Ryzom in terms of marketing, which has financial repercussions.
In concrete terms, while the limitation causes no problem of play during European hours, the low number of players and the numerous time zones make it impossible, during off-peak hours, for you to access the high level game (Bosses, Marauder Bosses) unless you use more than 2 simultaneous accounts.
This makes us enter the vicious circle: Lack of players during off-peak hours ==> Not enough people to access the high level game ==> Unsubscription and leaving of the game ==> No one to welcome the new ones ==> Departure of the new ones ==> Lack of players during off-peak hours.
So, to give off-peak hours players access to high-level play again and to give us a chance to repopulate the server during these hours, we will be testing, during 1 month, the tolerance of 4 simultaneous accounts for everything but PvP during off-peak hours, from 22:00 UTC (0:00 CEST) to 05:00 UTC (07:00 CEST), the time when this tolerance is needed to be able to play at high level. If the community reception and impact on the number of connections/subscriptions on off-peak hours of this provision is positive, it will be added to the CoC after the test month, which will run from June 15th to July 15th.

3 - Addition of a penalty scale

Currently, the CoC does not provide for any intermediate sanction between 1 month suspension and lifetime ban: we will remedy this by adding a one-year suspension sanction (more details to come later).

I'll let you react on the three points: first on the first one (multiboxing and PvP), then we'll go on with the other two.