Saga of Rysom to Resurrect (again)

[Mrbloodworth]

Dear brothers and sisters of Atys,

In order to keep you informed of what is going on with the new team of artisans working hard in the shadows, we wanted to first tell you that we are really very happy and very proud to work, and for some of us - work again, on the magical world of Ryzom.

We also want to sincerely apologize for not having been able to talk to you earlier. Unfortunately we had a lot of work to do to revive our fabulous planet; tonnes of terrabytes of blood, sweat and tears... hard drives to recover, check, and deal with... countless Kami, Karavan, Kitins and tools to find and put in place... all in an effort to prepare for your next visit.

We are all really pleased to share our joy that now the hardest part is behind us.

Along with your new entrance tickets to Ryzom we have also decided to redo the website, which will soon be made public.

But we must warn the old members among you: do not expect major visual changes; the new site will look much like the previous one, but in fact it has been redeveloped and entirely rebuilt. This site will be much lighter, faster, cleaner and more efficient in order to bring in and not to scare away our future adventurers, all with the slogan: "Less is more".

At the same time, the servers have been revived in a testing phase for several weeks now, and with the help of our great CSR team, we have worked hard to repair Atys to its former glory. We mowed lawns, trimmed hedges, pulled weeds, and fed the Yubos which were feeling very hungry and abandoned.

Our next step in the coming days will be to re-open the servers for free - a VIP access to all our former Homins to thank them for their patience (to be specific, all the players who had a paid account at the time of the closure of servers).

Then, for the second step, we will allow new adventurers and travellers to come and tread the soil of our beautiful planet Atys!

Thank you once again for your loyalty and above all for your patience; the new Ryzom team bids you a very warm welcome and is looking forward to seeing you again in our world...

The Ryzom Team.

Link

[Signe]

I'm sure it'll only die again.  It's totally boring! (although the migrating critters who pee on your leg were sort of cute)

[Mrbloodworth]

There are a lot of redeeming qualities about this game i liked.

I won't argue that if your not a sandbox purist, thats its not boring.

The make your own skill, Skill system is awesome, the make your own adventure (The rysom ring) is awesome, the crafting system, also awesome.

The complete lack of quests after the initial trial isle, not so much.

[Signe]

The Stanza sounded much better than they ended up making it.  It turned out to be very meh. Crafting was interesting, but harvesting was unnecessarily complicated and tedious.  I found "tedious" to be the perfect word to describe the game, actually.  I never got to try out the whole Ryzom Ring thing because the game was too tedious to go back and check out.

I'm not quite sure what "I won't argue that if your not a sandbox purist, thats its not boring" means.  Not being snarky, I'm really having trouble understanding it.

[Mrbloodworth]

yeah, it was oddly worded to begin with. I mean to say, unless you are a sandbox purist, it probably was boring on the whole.

I just always found a lot of the system really cool, and the art was fantastic.

[Signe]

Heh - I'm not any sort of purist, I don't think, and I did find it boring overall.  I also thought that Stanza system could have been something special and I think I even said so on F13 ages ago. Hopefully, this time around, if they can last, they'll use the clever ideas and make them way more fun than they did initially. 

[Mrbloodworth]

well, the only thing i could every think of that would be a more quick fix to the "fun" is quests, after the trial land, the mainland was devoid of quests. The ring does make up for some of this (or it did), but its user generated content (very structured, but user none the less).

Its the first mmog that i know of that had has an entire tool set for users to make there own scenarios with, that others can do.

Surely this new team wont just let it be in its original forum, i wonder what they plan to do to make it have more mass appeal.

[Nebu]

I gave this game an honest try. Signe is right about the boring part. 

[Mrbloodworth]

So am i the only one that played around with the ring?

[Yegolev]

So am i the only one that played around with the ring?

What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom.

[UnSub]

So am i the only one that played around with the ring?

What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom.

 

... ahh, so many possible jokes ...

[Mrbloodworth]

Dear Atysians and Newcomers,

Recently we posted that we were very happy with the way the VIP phase is progressing in Ryzom; because of this we have now decided to expand the access to our servers to everybody who already had an active account, free trial included. Yes, even if you previously only had a free trial you can now once more log into Ryzom for free with all your stored characters ! The only restriction still applied to the free trial accounts will of course be the geographical limitation to the starter island "Ruins of Silan", but this restriction will not last long either! We will keep you posted on all of this when the time comes.

ATTENTION for those of you waiting to step onto Atys for the first time, please don't forget that we are still in a testing phase. This means that Ryzom is still closed to newcomers as the creation of new accounts is not yet permitted. If you don't already have an active Ryzom account you won't be able to play Ryzom yet. Don't worry though, we plan to reopen the account activation pages shortly; once again, we will let you know as soon as it happens.

Before you can get started, you must first prepare your game client to access the new servers. To accomplish this, there are two methods you can use.

1. If you still have a Ryzom client on your computer:
- Download and install the fixer from : ryzom_fixer.exe (<60KB).
- Launch Ryzom.

2. If you don't have a Ryzom client on your computer:
- Read the instructions on the download page of ryzom website

Now that you have a working client, you should be able to connect to the servers with your usual username and password. If you have any trouble preparing your client for the game, please don't hesitate to contact a CSR in CeB. You can find more information on how to connect to CeB on the forums.

Once you have got to the character select screen, you should see that all of your old characters are there; please feel free to play with as many as you wish. If you encounter any problems, you should use the support ticket system to report it directly to your server's CSR team.

If the ticket system is not available for any reason, please send an email to support@ryzom.com. When you submit an issue, please try to be as detailed as possible and include all relevant information.

Thank you once again for your loyalty and above all for your patience.

The new Ryzom team bids you a very warm welcome and is absolutely delighted to see you again in our world Smile

The Ryzom Team.

[Krakrok]

They got it for $324,000. Bargain.

[Mrbloodworth]

They got it for $324,000. Bargain.

Where did you get that number?

[Glazius]

I tried Ryzom. The stanza thing - frankly, I had no idea what most of the blocks meant. If I'm trying to put something together then I should know what kind of weights to give the components. Especially since there were like 50 level-gated versions of every stinkin' block you could put in there.

Same thing goes with their vaunted crafting system. 10 different armor variables and every resource affects like 6 or 7 of them? Obtuse. There was just too much going on to really get a grip on.

[KallDrexx]

DOES NOT COMPUTE

"Hey we have this game that failed once, lets get some retarded investors interested and relaunch the fail again!"

[Oban]

Suggestions for dealing with Ryzom this time around:

Place coin in mouth, decapitate with ax
Bury at crossroads
Chain to grave with wild roses
Boil head in vinegar
Cut off and burn head
Stake through heart, nail through temples
Pile stones on grave
Pour boiling oil on, drive nail through navel
Put poppy seeds in grave
Remove heart, cut in two; garlic in mouth, nail in head
Cut off toes, drive nail through neck

[Krakrok]

They got it for $324,000. Bargain.

Where did you get that number?

Ninja school.

http://sor.warcry.com/news/view/82027-Ryzom-Ryzom-Possible-New-Owners

[Stormwaltz]

They got it for $324,000. Bargain.

WTB Asheron's Call 1.

[schild]

Bargin? What makes you think Ryzom is worth that much? Art assets? Not a chance. It's outdated tech, outdated art, and a pretty boring game.

AC1 however? Yea, I'd buy that for $324k. Just to own AC1.

[Mrbloodworth]

Bargin? What makes you think Ryzom is worth that much? Art assets? Not a chance. It's outdated tech, outdated art, and a pretty boring game.

In an age where everyone is trying to create mmos that run on anything, "Outdated" Tech is not a bad word. The art for that game was always amazing to kme, it may use old tech, but the art style, and execution was always quite well done for that game. Made for some stunning visuals. The particle system is also nothing to sneeze at. The swarm system was also impressive, even today. The combinations of fantasy, Si-fi and alien was really well done IMO. The hearding system also put a very nice feel to the world, and i would love to see this in other games instead of the static "Come kill me, im here all week" mob system of other MMO's.

But i would love to know what they are going to change to make it  "ahem" - less boring for the masses.

[Signe]

Some of the art is about the only thing I found to be interesting in Ryzom.  Some of the ideas were clever SOUNDING but they did a horrible job of everything, ultimately.  I don't really see any point in launching this game again.  Maybe some really clever people could salvage the bits that sounded clever and actually make them clever and use them in a new MMO.  This one was over before it started.

[Jamiko]

FWIW, I loved the Ryzon Ring. I wish all MMOs provided something like it.

[Mrbloodworth]

FWIW, I loved the Ryzon Ring. I wish all MMOs provided something like it.

Truly an awesome feature that hearkens back to MMO roots of pen and paper gameing and Game Masters.

[Krakrok]

Bargin? What makes you think Ryzom is worth that much? Art assets? Not a chance. It's outdated tech, outdated art, and a pretty boring game.

If it takes 100,000 man hours to make an MMO that means they picked it up for $32.40 an hour. The Hero Engine is somewhere around a million dollars which would put it at $100 an hour and you still have to build all the graphics. On top of that it is a complete working MMO without the 2+ years time it takes to build one from scratch. Graphics are expensive as fuck.

They could:
-License the server out for $1k each.
-Sell all the graphics individually.
-Implement a Diabloesque fighting and loot system for their own version.
-License out the game engine w/ graphics for $50k-$100k a pop (though isn't it open source?).

Arbitrage for the win. Of coarse they probably won't do any of those things. Fail.


Edit:

Just as an example. I received a quote from a Chinese browser game company which would clone this www.fantage.com for $200k-$250k and would take 4-6 months.

[Glazius]

But i would love to know what they are going to change to make it  "ahem" - less boring for the masses.

Well, since you asked so nicely.

1) Fuck the skill system. No, seriously. Adventuring XP and Crafting XP, a la EQ. Two level tracks. Adventuring XP comes from killing and quests that require killing, crafting XP comes from harvesting and quests that require harvesting or crafting.

2) Take a cue from CoH on the blocks system. You no longer have 500 different "power attack" blocks, you have ONE "power attack" block which scales with level. Also normalize endurance, mana, and focus points to 100.

3) There are no more "cost" blocks. Once you've factored in all other blocks, a skill costs an amount of endurance/mana/focus proportional to what remains. Lifetap blocks hit for a percentage of max health to provide a fixed discount.

4) Light "classes". At character creation you default to progressing 8/8 in arms/magic per adventuring level, and 8/8 in harvest/craft per crafting level. You can tweak these to 9/6 in either direction.

5) Point reductions. As you increase your arms/magic/harvest/craft, you get X number of points you can place in any skill you build. Putting in 1/3/7/15/31 points will drop the cost of a skill 5 points at a time, or halve it if it's 5 or below. You can also use the points to slightly increase the size of any power bar or boost its regeneration, capped by your adventuring/crafting level.

6) Crafting revamp. Crafting works like harvesting in that it's an ongoing task that you can use different skills to input into, at the cost of focus and/or lifetap.

7) Block unlocking. Some blocks open up as you progress, others require you to complete quests. Probably put in some in-game mechanic to let you retroactively change any choices you make here. (like, choose a weapon to specialize in at Arms 50, or do a quest for an axe master to get Beheading Strike or Knockdown Sweep)

That's just some off-top-of-head stuff based on what I remember from the beta forever ago.

[justdave]

But i would love to know what they are going to change to make it  "ahem" - less boring for the masses.

Well, since you asked so nicely...

Speaking as someone who was playing this up until WoW critical mass dragged me away...

What the hell is a 'block'? 

1. Cover the randomized quest mechanic a little better, for god's sake!...Don't break the covenant!
2. Dispose of the pure kill grind, and let some of the excellent art direction work. So many of the mobs no one would touch, because they barfed out some ungodly negative status, and that impeded the killgrind...Oh, yeah, and come up with advancement that's not pure killgrind.
3. Don't be so afraid of balancing your unconventional implemented features (Stanzas, in particular) that you make them useless out of fear...so you'll have to nerf something, welcome to hell!

[Glazius]

Well, since you asked so nicely...

Speaking as someone who was playing this up until WoW critical mass dragged me away...

What the hell is a 'block'? 

I think they renamed them stanzas before launch, or the name was always stanzas and they were introduced to me as "blocks".

Because they're the fundamental building blocks of every power, is why the name stuck. "Stanza" just doesn't sound as right.

But was it still like that? Power Attack 1-20, Accuracy 1-20, Arm Aim 1-20? And you had like 5 or 6 different cost stanzas in geometrical progression?

Anyway, does that make more sense?

[justdave]

Ohhhh, yeah, that sounds similar. Basically, a hotkey was made up of individual bits, so you would create an action based on various parts, each of which would provide an effect, but would have a corresponding sap or stam or HP (or focus, if you were into farming) cost and you would have to balance it with stanzas that soaked up enough of the required stat, in sort of a zero-sum system.

Yes, it does; thanks. :)

[Mrbloodworth]

But i would love to know what they are going to change to make it  "ahem" - less boring for the masses.

Well, since you asked so nicely.

1) Fuck the skill system. No, seriously. Adventuring XP and Crafting XP, a la EQ. Two level tracks. Adventuring XP comes from killing and quests that require killing, crafting XP comes from harvesting and quests that require harvesting or crafting.

2) Take a cue from CoH on the blocks system. You no longer have 500 different "power attack" blocks, you have ONE "power attack" block which scales with level. Also normalize endurance, mana, and focus points to 100.

3) There are no more "cost" blocks. Once you've factored in all other blocks, a skill costs an amount of endurance/mana/focus proportional to what remains. Lifetap blocks hit for a percentage of max health to provide a fixed discount.

4) Light "classes". At character creation you default to progressing 8/8 in arms/magic per adventuring level, and 8/8 in harvest/craft per crafting level. You can tweak these to 9/6 in either direction.

5) Point reductions. As you increase your arms/magic/harvest/craft, you get X number of points you can place in any skill you build. Putting in 1/3/7/15/31 points will drop the cost of a skill 5 points at a time, or halve it if it's 5 or below. You can also use the points to slightly increase the size of any power bar or boost its regeneration, capped by your adventuring/crafting level.

6) Crafting revamp. Crafting works like harvesting in that it's an ongoing task that you can use different skills to input into, at the cost of focus and/or lifetap.

7) Block unlocking. Some blocks open up as you progress, others require you to complete quests. Probably put in some in-game mechanic to let you retroactively change any choices you make here. (like, choose a weapon to specialize in at Arms 50, or do a quest for an axe master to get Beheading Strike or Knockdown Sweep)

That's just some off-top-of-head stuff based on what I remember from the beta forever ago.

Wasn't asking you, i was wondering what the company that is relaunching it was going to do. Your suggestions rip the soul out of the game and even make me not interested in it. 

IMO, there was nothing wrong with the crafting or skill system (some polish would be nice) or the combat or anything. The game lacked Grats/Ding/Loot/quests.

[Glazius]

Your suggestions rip the soul out of the game and even make me not interested in it. 

Hey man, if the soul of the game lies in bonking giant insects on the head 500 times with Power Blow 6 and Insect Bane 10 just so you can run halfway across the world to bonk giant insects on the head with Power Blow 7 and Insect Bane 11, it's better off gone.

[Soukyan]

Outdated or not, $324,000 USD is a bargain for that game. You could not buy all of the art assets for it with that cash. Running the servers will be the costly part. If I had known the price was that low, I might have tried to purchase it myself. I would like to purchase AC2 and make it AC1 with the new graphics. That would be a win.

[Vinadil]

Apparantly they are giving away accounts for a limited time... if anyone is interested in looking at this game again.

http://forums.ryzom.com/showthread.php?t=32434

[NiX]

Those accounts were all gone a week ago.

[Reg]

They must have added more I got one a few hours ago and am just waiting to do the big download.