f13.net forums - Saga of Rysom to Resurrect (again)

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July 21, 2025, 05:04:35 AM

we're back, baby

i've been on for an hour and so far i'm not impressed. There wasn't really anything that interest me in the game world and most of the time I'm just throwing acid balls at wolves to ding.

Seems they added more this morning.

Quote from: Reg on August 29, 2008, 12:54:31 AM

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

Use the torrent, over 100 seeds and its faster than any of the FTP links. YMMV.

Yup the torrent quickly maxed out my available bandwidth and went at 500k per second.

They have 1608 accounts available! Says how many on the sign-up page.

Quote from: Lantyssa on August 29, 2008, 08:54:49 AM

They have 1608 accounts available! Says how many on the sign-up page.

Yep, they add some every day. Last night, when we signed up again, it was down to 5. =)

I was reminded all over again why i liked this game. Skill based sandbox. Much of it feels like SWG Pre-cu. Good times. I'm sure i will hit my non-sticky-wall again.

I'm unimpressed so far. I'm on my second newbie mission and spent an hour wandering around looking for different animals of various ages and types. The mission window is so crappy that it doesn't even tell me which ones are left that I have to find. If they can't even inject some fun into the newbie experience it's no wonder they're a failed game.

I may end up emulating Margalis and uninstalling before I make it out of the tutorial.

Quote from: Reg on August 29, 2008, 11:14:06 AM

Grab a diffrent quest from a diffrent sphere trainer, you'll complete that one by proxy.

Maybe I'll try that if I get bored enough to log back in. But really, in this day and age I just don't have the patience for this kind of crap. I managed in UO, I even played EQ and got myself killed by my first quest-giver and fell off of Kelethin like every good newbie should. No more. If the fun doesn't pop right out and kick me in the butt I'm not going out of my way to look for it.

Just wanted to post this. But anyone checking this out, you should really look at the Ryzom ring, and the "Create your own skill" systems. If nothing else.

Quote

Flexible Skill-Based Advancement

Although you earn experience and gain levels, your advancement is measured on a skill tree. There are no classes in Ryzom, and you can advance in any tree as far as you'd like.

At the beginning, you only have access to the four most basic skills - Fight, Magic, Craft and Harvest. As you advance, these skills will begin to unlock new ones below them on the tree, each getting more specific than the one above. You finish and masterize a specific skill branch when you reach level 250.

* For example, fighting with a mace will first gain skill in the basic Fight tree, then the more specialised Melee Fight branch, and all the way down to Master Mace.

Each of these skills allows you to train in different Actions. The more specific the skill gets, the more powerful the Actions learned are.
It may take a long time to be able to completely learn an entire skill branch down to one of the most specific skill levels, but it's not necessary to do so to become capable. In some cases it might even be better to generalize and work on several branches.
This skill tree also makes it possible to give the benefit of flexibility to veteran characters, while still allowing newer ones to be effective. Because you never forget a skill once it has been learned, and because there is no penalty for learning multiple skills, the more skills learned, the more options that are available.

img_action2

* Note: you don’t need to create a new character to explore another skill branch; you can do everything with the same one.

Customized Actions and Stanzas

Modular Action System - Ryzom combines every action you can do within the world into one unified game mechanic, called the Modular Action System. This system holds special combat manoeuvres, spells, material prospecting and harvesting, and even crafting.

Stanzas - Each individual Action is made up of a number of subcomponents, which are called Stanzas. These Stanzas each have different abilities and costs associated with them, and once you learn them, you can combine them into your own custom actions.

New Stanzas are learned by receiving training in different skills. For example, in the case of magic, you start with only one basic offensive magic spell, Acid Damage 1. After advancing a bit, you can learn Life Gift 1, which gives you additional Stanzas. The actual Stanzas for each of these spells are below:
'Acid Damage 1'
'Life Gift 1'

By using the Modular Action System, you can then create your own custom spell, naming it whatever you would like:
'Free Acid Bolt'

Although it may not be very powerful, and has a serious range penalty, it does have the advantage of being completely free to cast. This makes it great in situations when you are already in close and don't need that extra range.

Of course, this example used only two different spell abilities. The more actions you are trained in, the more Stanzas you have access to, and the more possibilities there are to create ones perfectly suited to your play style.

Link to above.

The game is free to play for anyone right now. At least that appears to be the case on the Ryzom site. Now, if only I had the time to play again...

I'm digging being able to play a game with a skill system. Unique monsters and a couple of other tidbits such as being able to design my own skills make me happy.

The joy may not last, we'll have to see how the rest of the game shapes up, however this at least has the basis for a lot of what I want in an MMO.

Reading regional chat makes me want to kill small furry animals. I haven't seen a pack of vicious, elitist, egotistical, circle-jerkers since high school.

The game is interesting in that quint sense, and I love the in-depth skill system. Don't quite like having to walk 5 miles to get around a small fence, though.

If you look past the slightly dated graphics, the skill based system seems to have plenty of potential. Will try it a bit more over the next few days, but definitely worth looking at if you are sandbox advocate.

Unfortunately, while the skill system is solid, it's what you do with it that ends up lacking unless they've massively changed something. Wen I left it pained me that the world was fairly massive and well-designed and not just the same goblins-riding-wolves Tolkienesque; nevertheless the interesting visual and environmental design was wasted on a by-the-numbers get a group and go to so-and-so Vale and grind on Pissy Kippies for three hours.
Since a good 50% of the mobs were shit that you would never want to grind on because they packed some kind of devastating negative status (like a flatulent, infectious reek PBAoE that would move from group member to group member as fast as you could cure it), the balance of the sandbox went to waste except for the occasional invasion, group run to a foreign teleporter, of raid on massive desert insect. I know that they added the Ring, and there were things that were going in in a broken form when I quit (I seem to remember something about an encyclopedia, not sure if that ever made it), but last time I dropped by I didn't see the major changes that would make it more sticky. It had a lot of interesting fiddly bits (and don't get me started on the joy of a pure-crafting no-loot-drop world) , but it all got very samey after a while.

I really do have a lot of fond memories of the game, since I ran with a really great bunch of folks on the server I was on, but it just didn't have any appeal when I tried going back. It's like that stripper you dated in college just because she could hold herself up on the pole using nothing but her thighs....A hell of a change of pace, but there's no way you could go back and deal with any more of those goddamn bikers.

Well, I stuck with it and am having a pretty good time. I'm out of the newbie area and in a guild of fairly nice people. I might even be willing to pay for it if they start charging.

I Tried it. Made a character, got the kill 10 foozles quest, killed 10 foozles, then wandered around for 20 minutes because I couldn't figure out how to make my compass tell me where the quest contact was.

Then I uninstalled.

Walking between quest givers is my least favorite part of any MMO; I would seriously rather just grind mobs and forgo quests altogether except that that's not viable in most MMOs because quests are worth so much more xp. Is this the case here? If the combat a little later is mildly entertaining/rewarding in its own right I might try it again, but goddamn do I hate quest running.

I understand your temptation to uninstall and give up. I felt exactly the same way. I ended up staying in the newbie area and doing all of the quests though and they actually did teach me a lot about the game. Don't be shy about asking questions in the Universal channel.

You absolutely don't have to do that though if you don't want. You can go to the mainland at any time. I've found that the high levels are all mind-bogglingly friendly and anxious to give out free stuff to newbies.

They probably think giving stuff away to nubbies will help get a decent population. It won't. I beta tested this game and played it for a month, then I recently checked it out again. It's as numbingly boring as it ever was for me. Clever ideas are nice and all but useless if you don't know what to do with them.

I gave this game a try and was expecting not to find anything much, but fortunately it's actually very good.

They've added a Newbie Island to teach you most of the basics that you'll need to know by the time you hit the mainland.
And it does indeed teach you pretty much what you need to know. If you have enough intelligence to read what they are asking you to do.
If that fails don't be afraid to ask in Region chat as many players actually stay in the Newb Zone just to help the greenhorns along with their first steps.
It reminds me pretty much of the kind of reception I got in SWG, when you got players with a little bit of game experience grabbing hold of the new players landing in Tatooine for the first time, having no clue what to do, and taking them through the basics of doing missions and showing how to use the transportation, weapons, heals etc.

What it doesn't do, is treat you like a sheep getting your ass shifted from this area here, now get over to this other area for another mindless repeat of the same shit you did 5 minutes ago.

It's a sandbox. It's much more open game and it actually lets you do some weird things like explore and try stuff for yourself.

Some of the things that always piss me off in some MMOs are gladly missing here.

Mobs that automatically agro you more because you are lower level. Whoever introduced this idea should be shot after at least some mild torture. Well the mobs AI in Ryzom isn't done this way. If someone with maxxed out everything walks right up to a Hungry Carnivore right outside the newbie town, then the thing will attack. Why shouldn't it?
What this means is that if you ever wanted to challenge yourself to a real adventure, like treking through some dangerous zone, you can do it. Doesn't matter much that you are 20 minutes into the game or 2 years. An adventure like this will be dangerous and rewarding for anyone. Of course you won't have the option to kill everything in your way, but you could still do it.
The mobs have behaviour that changes depending on the seasons and all manner of things. They kill other types, they help others, they act like real animals. This means that if you study the way they are operating you can get around them eventually. Try this in WoW and see how far you get.

There's depth to every aspect of the game that isn't obvious from the first glance. The crafting system is deep and even the foraging is interesting once you get to know how it works.
You can invest the time in crafting with the confidence that all the effort isn't thrown into the shitcan by some of the drops. All the crafting has purpose as you will be changing gear as you get more powerful. Also the way things are sold is very neat too. Walk up to any NPC and right click on trade. You have the option to sell to the NPC or sell to players. The sell to players automatically displays the goods for sale to others, but the great bit is you actually get the money you would off an NPC and if some player actually buys the item, then you get a nice bonus on top. Basically the only time you want to use the sell to NPC option is if the items have been used as damaged goods can't be sold to players.

Every character can be a Caster, or a Melee, or a Healer, or anything they want to be, you can just train up in any of the skills anytime you like. This is golden!
Forget the alts, you can play the same character for anything. Forget the thinking of some new names. Forget the grinding the same shit over and over again just to try a new build. You can even build up some of these skills at the same time by popping a spell then whacking something. The xp would be shared out between the skills but the options for how you play are all yours.

The skills building out of blocks that you can edit anytime you like is a bit confusing to the new player, but it also means that all the players with higher skills won't actually all be the same. It's not rocket science hard but it does give you something to do with all that xp and a chance to try something different.

This game doesn't suit everyone.

If you love the Gear > Skill type of thing, move along. If you need to be completely guided along and don't want to think for yourself, you're in the wrong game. If you hate being sociable and just want to solo the whole game without ever bothering with other players ever, buy a console. If you loved SWG pre CU and you haven't enjoyed that kind of feeling since, you should check out this game.

Rather accurate review.

I loved SWG pre CU (except all the broken and unfinished bits) and dislike Rysom. Either I'm broken or the game is. I'll continue to blame the game.