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SW:G Veterans Review
WraitheOza
Member Posts: 4
I can't post reviews just yet on here, on the tab pages of the clickable information links. But I wanted to write up a review from the perspective of a former Star Wars Galaxies player. Just a little background, I plyed SW:G from just before publish 9 to one month after the NGE hit last November. I am a roleplayer first and foremost. Loving the PvE styles and dabbling lightly in PvP here and there. I did just about everything in SW:G, and loved every minute of it.
Why a review from a former player of SWG about Saga of Ryzom? It's simple. Ryzom is a beautiful game, with a rich and detailed history about it's planet and people. It's complex and diverse. It's different and easy to lose yourself in the game. I wanted to write something up to bridge the gap between both games, becuase there are untold countless players from SWG looking to catch a little of the magic that there used to be in the galaxy of Star Wars. I searched for a long time, looking for something that was as engossing as the Galaxy once was.
First off, there seems to be alot of similarities between the two. Open ended gameplay and customization. You start off thrown into a world with a few tools and advice to help you get along. The charatcer races are diverse and unique, the customization is a bit above what SWG used to be. Each has their strengths and weaknesses as well. In the starter Island, which is huge and lush with fantasitic graphics, you will spend many, many hours getting to know your way around and where everything is and all of your basic gameplay mechanics can be fleshed out. There are four things you can be: Mage, Warrior, Crafter, and Harvester. You can choose to specialize in just one, two or all of the classes mentioned. Each class can branch out of sorts, to further specialize in say magic defense, basically forcusing on being a healer of sorts. You can go to be a flat out warrior only, slicing and dicing if thats your game and never touch any magic. The great thing is is that no matter what you do, you won't gimp yourself in the overall view of things. Want to be a crafter with some melee skills to survive in the jungle? You can. And you will have fun. Just want to weild magic as a offense and be a hravester to make some money? You can do that too. The only thing that limits you is your time and imagination.
The professions as I have said, are deep and involved. Once you learn the mechanics of the game you can start dabbling in recreating your attacks, spells and commands by remaking your stanzas. If for instance you wanted to reduce your spell cooldown you can, you just need to insert the right things into your spells or attacks. Or remove them. It takes a bit of learning and trial and error to do so, but it's not so overly complicated that only rocket scientists can figure it out. The person you create will be unique, from the general way they look to the spells and attacks and healing they have. It's all up to you. There are no typical "levels" that you attain, but individual level of whatever you decide to specialize in. Remember from SWG when you were proud to display a title like Master Brawler or Teras Kasi Mystic? It has the same type of feel to it in Ryzom.
The setting in the world is definately science fiction, moving away from the glut of fantasy MMOs that saturate the market. Although there are swords and magic involved, it will remind you more of weilding those weapons in a sci-fi setting like Galaxies, or using your spells in a different fashion. The wolrd is a huge jungle type, with many different creatures and things to see. The creature AI is so advanced and each type of thing exibits its own behavior pattern, you will see them run in packs or moving in mass herd across the landscape. It's not uncommon to be trudging though the jungle and happen across something that was left form an earlier civilization or race that once ruled either. The mainland is much more intense than the starter island, with many more locations and areas that differ from one another. There is just simply so much to see and do. You can even have mounts once you reach the mainland, or have your own apartment. Everything ramps up once you decide to leave the starter island, it a beautiful place to play in.
There are some drawbacks, which I should include. Some may be a detriment to your gameplay. The game seems to haver more of a feel toward cooperative play, in teams. Soloists will find themsleves hurting sometimes in combat or out in the open harvesting in hostile territory. You can solo although, it's just some of the better missions you can run or things you can do have a leaning toward grouping. I don't have a problem with either, groups are easily put together and can accomplish things smoothly even with diverse players. Also, the animations are a bit lacking at first, but soon ramp up a notch when you start spending your skill points on different attacks and spells. Most games of this type have increased animations as you progress, but this one really doesnt have alot. There is a difference between using a two handed sword as opposed to dual weilding, but you wont see it much until you get down the road. Yes, there is ranged as in "guns" and "bow" types, but you wont see it until after you reach the mainland. Final drawback to me was the lack of direction. Even the most open ended games out there give you indicators or push you in different directions, Ryzom hardly does. You will feel lost sometimes, without knowing what you should be doing or even want to do. Once you begin to get a feel for the game and who to see for what, things will progress. It just nobody or noone will hold your hand for anything.
Summation: Having spent many many hours of my time in SW:G, Ryzom will remind you of former glory. From the crafting system to combat. Learning the quirks of the AI to finding your way around brought back many memories and feelings from the Galaxies. You will find yourself running from a pack of wandering nasties, or standing toe to toe with a giant creature that can swallow you whole. Along my travels I did see many things that made me say "wow", and I havent had that feeling since I was first dropped in Mos Eisley way back when with a melon and a few credits. It's not a clone of SW:G, not even close. But it is something that you as a former player of SW:G looking to capture the magic of a new world will enjoy. I have left out many things about the game that need to be experienced first hand, but gave you the basics of what I have seen. The communtiy is top notch, and as a former player of SW:G looking for a fresh start in a new galaxy will not be disspointed.
The trial island is free to play, and is available now. Go get it, you wont be dissapointed.
Comments
(although I must admit the total 'fresh' look and lore of the game made it even more fun then old SWG, as everybody knows the background of that. (And lets not start about elves and trolls)
Great review, good post. Slightly biased but I think that only shows that you really enjoyed yourself in the game and have found something that interests you.
Otherwise, very honest, clear cut recollection of your experience and a must read for anyone considering playing SoR.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
C
The solution to grinding is very, very simple:
Don't grind.
-----------
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
I think the reason the starter island is more quest based then the rest of the game is to use those quests to help teach the basics of the game to new players instead of just throwing them in the deep end.
Like your comments,
It's a kool game and I really like how you can skill up. Hope more people start playing the main land soon.
I think Help from the GM's and other players is great. Lot's of chat going on.
Hope to see you there ...
I do what I enjoy. I don't worry about what skill level my character is at.
C
Good write up, and very accurate. I have yet to try ranged weapons, and would like to see a Creature Handler profession, or skills added to the mix. The creature AI is like nothing I have ever seen before. The world really does seem alive.
I am pondering returning to SoR after my Sub runs out again on SWG. It seems like a fun game, and is a helpful and mature playerbase.
Yay, thanks for the great review mate
It´s realistic and fair, and that´s what alle reviews should be.
Only one thing. *grin*
As you advance in combat and magic there will come times when your actions change.
The animations varry with each stanza you build into your action. For example if you create a "attack after doge" Action, then your charakter will dodge/sidestep the incomming attack. And then you may activate the next attack action.
Most folks miss this featureetirely by simply creating ONE attack stanza and cueing it, hitting the mob over and over and over again with the same action. Their charakter doing the same animation over and over and over again...
Yeees, that might be just a bit boring after a while.
It realy helps to use different attacks in combat, not only with the animations, but also with the fun in fighting a mob. If you have to considder wich action to use on your next strike then combat becomes realy enjoyable.
And it helps keeping your stamina and HP high.
In Magic there´ll come a time when you may be able to use doubble spells and combine different spell effects.
Granted here the simple combination of one spell effeckt with the animation of another isn´t that nice but fun to look at nonetheless. For example you can create a real "Kame Hame Ha" Stlye Magic Strike
Just combine Rott with Lightning/Elelctro and the spray effect and the Animation looks realy Son Goku like
Just try it
MaDSaM
Do you dare to adapt?
WARNING: Ryzom is not for SW:G entertainers.
There is one dance move - it lasts 4 seconds at most and it spams a message into spatial if you repeat it as a way of dancing (and GMs respond poorly to the spam). There is no other entertainer content in the game whatsoever. Compared to SW:G's nearly twenty thousand entertainer flourish/instrument/dance/song/effects combinations that is worse than pitiful.
So if you're an SW:G entertainer who likes a game to have some music or dance content, stick with SW:G at least until Africa Online comes out (it is supposedly going to have loads of entertainer content). No other current game has anything like the content thatSW:G's entertainer profession has.
Basically, SW:G entertainers are in a bit of a pickle, as SW:G is run by a bunch of incompetents who have inherited a fantastic and innovative entertainer class but have no idea what to do with it.
Anyway, I just thought I'd add this info. If it wasn't for this, Ryzom would be a great place for any SW:G refugee to go. I'm enjoying Ryzom, but it can't do what SW:G's entertainer profession does. Mind you, neither can any other game, and if combat or crafting is your thing, Ryzom beats SW:G hands down. The only other thing in which Ryzom isn't quite as good as SW:G is harvesting: Ryzom's harvesting system is rather unintuitive and clumsy, but once you get the hang of it it's bearable.
Not to sound any elitist or whatever some may call me, but you seem to know only half of the harvesting truth.
As with any other skill harvesting improves with time.
And that does not only mean that you get more materials from a source.
Nope, it means that the way you´ll have to harvest changes amlost completely, from the clumsy beginnings of .. well a beginner, to the skillfull tasks of a master of the profession.
Sourcemodes change, weather conditions and lands play a great role. So does your abillity to harvest agressively, or gently, or both. Harvesting at first levels IS rather boring and clumsy, yes.
But that´s becase it´s the BASIC Stuff you learn. Later on you´ll sit in front of your PC and concentrate on hitting the careplan at the right moment as not to spoil the queality, or have the source blow up in your face.
If you do it right and get it right, then you´ll be having great ressources to choose from. If not, well you´ll have to learn some more.
As with all Skills in Ryzom, it´s not just the programming and coding that makes you a good Player i. e. accuring the right "Charakter-Skills", it´s how you use what you´ve been given to be a great Player, i.e. accuring the right Player-Skills. Like a calm hand and a good eye for detail.
And yes, I´d love to have some musical contend too. Never played SWG, but I like the concept of such a thing.
Regards
MaDSaM
Do you dare to adapt?
I am also a swg vet still lookimg for a mmorpg ,i'm going to give this a try as someone else has just mentioned this game in a thread i have just posted .
good stuff. I played this weekend and it does remind me of swg, pre-cu. I am stil a rank n00b but already have a two handed sword and a full set of light armor. I carefully examined the stats on it and it's all different quality, sometimes at the same price. The crafting element seems pretty well developed based on what I've seen on n00b island. Without the "super jedi" element it looks like a very promising game.
There is a little bit of a grind but it seems to be more effortless than swg. I haven't done any quests yet. I'm still having fun running around exploring stuff and testing my kit/skills against new creatures I find.
I like having the ability to script fight combinations. It's one of the things the CU nerfed. There's nothing worse than button mashing the same sets of buttons over and over and wearing out your keyboard, especially if there's no cool animations to go with it. pre-CU TKM was (and still is) my favorite character class in any game I've ever played. I had some really nice macros for that, and other moves which would kill the macro and insert themselves, allowing me to react to any changes in the fight. Something similar to TKM/Master Pike/Master Brawler is something I would love to be able to build in a new game. It's just a fun class combination to play and very visually satisfying.
Question to the vets. Are there "dungeons" or complexes to explore? That's one of the things I liked about SWG, the various caves and complexes they had scattered all over the place which dropped loot not found anywhere else and had puzzles to solve. Some even gave you badges. You needed to do a fair amount of exploring to find them and some were pretty dangerous to get to. A couple of my favorites were the Geonosian Cave, Corvettes, and Death Watch bunker, which we actually completed.
I'll subscribe if there's content to find. If it's just whacking mobs for xp, I don't think I'm too interested, though the gameplay and community are great.
-Viza
C
Nice review, that.
I could add a ton, but I won't be putting a strain on your eyes - for now
As for the harvesting...
Gathering raw materials is veeery tedious at the start -especially if you know how smoothly it gets with experience. That will truly make it hard to jumpstart on anybody not really wanting to harvest.
But, the whole harvesting concept is so entirely different and more complex than in any other game out there, that it was primarily harvesting (and the comm) that kept me playing SoR after Beta. Although they made harvesting more *cough-cough* user-friendly a long time ago with Patch One, it still is superior to other product's concepts - if you are the harvester type...
I'll also add, maybe as a warning of sorts, that after the starting island there are hardly any "quests". There are some called riites with shoals of missions as prerequisites but they won't give you XP or items as a reward, rather actions, stanzas or other goodies of more persistance. No questing...
Summing it up (from my POV ofc
),
Ryzom is for
Ryzom is not for
*waves*
...now, where's that EvE veteran's review thread?
...activating morph from silent reader to active poster...
...pending...
...pending...
...pending...
I am also a SWG refugee. I have been looking for something to fill that gap. Ive payed, CoH/CoV, EVE, Guild Wars, and even WoW. Nothing I have tried so far has came close to what SWG was to me. But based on this very informative review I am downloading the Free Trial as I type this.
Wish me luck and thanx for the great post
Not to sound any elitist or whatever some may call me, but you seem to know only half of the harvesting truth.
As with any other skill harvesting improves with time.
And that does not only mean that you get more materials from a source.
Nope, it means that the way you´ll have to harvest changes amlost completely, from the clumsy beginnings of .. well a beginner, to the skillfull tasks of a master of the profession.
Sourcemodes change, weather conditions and lands play a great role. So does your abillity to harvest agressively, or gently, or both. Harvesting at first levels IS rather boring and clumsy, yes.
But that´s becase it´s the BASIC Stuff you learn. Later on you´ll sit in front of your PC and concentrate on hitting the careplan at the right moment as not to spoil the queality, or have the source blow up in your face.
If you do it right and get it right, then you´ll be having great ressources to choose from. If not, well you´ll have to learn some more.
As with all Skills in Ryzom, it´s not just the programming and coding that makes you a good Player i. e. accuring the right "Charakter-Skills", it´s how you use what you´ve been given to be a great Player, i.e. accuring the right Player-Skills. Like a calm hand and a good eye for detail.
And yes, I´d love to have some musical contend too. Never played SWG, but I like the concept of such a thing.
Regards
MaDSaM
Are there things like Automatic Harvesters and Shops with personal NPC Venders you can set up? I loved that about SWG... Serveying the land and droping harvesters. I loved logging on too see how many resources I gathered over night... Spending a couple hours maintianing my Harvesters all around the Galaxie and restocking my vendors. I hate camping one spot for hours on end collecting resources, I want machines to do it for me.
What does Ryzom have in terms of Harvesters and NPC Venders?
Nope, the inhabitants of planet Atys are much more primitive than even the Star Wars Wookies, no automation but getting your hands dirty while you risk your life for just a few more Supreme Zun Ambers.
The merchant system is not very good, unfortunately - and best crafted gear is kept within the guild. As a result, he in-game currency, Dappers, isn't very useful and is mostly used for teleportation and feeding your mount. There are far more valuable things than money in Ryzom.
Crafters rule Ryzom and are very very rich. We have legendary crafters who has experimented and found secret recipes to make really great gear. Though they have more money than they can ever spend they always seem to hunger for more supreme materials; Zun Amber, Kitin Larva, Big Shells, etc...
Edit:
Just a few bosses drop items, and some of these are worth materials from weeks of harvesting if they ever hit the market.
I currently play Ryzom and played SWG in beta and for about 8 mths following. At that time at least, getting top resources required endlessly surveying the galaxy to locate them b4 the next spawning of randomly generated mats appeared. Ryzom has a fixed number of mats with fixed properties in fixed locations which we must dig by hand - the time is spent in manually collecting them, rather than in locating them. I left SWG b4 survey droids were introduced so perhaps the time required to locate mats was greatly reduced, but pre-droid SWG took me no less time to gather mats than Ryzom does, and I prefer the Ryzom system for several reasons.
If I don't dig mats at a particular time I don't forever miss out. This was a huge problem in SWG as some servers didn't get some mats at all - was a rifle on Intrepid that couldn't be made at all until 6 mths after release as one mat had never been spawned, others where decent stats had never spawned (gah fibroplast), and threat that if one took a week off it could be 6 or more months until opportunity to get a decent mat would come around again. So crafting was hamstrung on some servers due to poor quality or none at all of some mats and most of a crafter's game play was survey survey survey with gimped skills since not enuf skill points to have high survey, craft, and fight to negotiate Dathomir and Lok where most of the better mats spawned.
Dig is not my favorite pasttime on Ryzom, I tolerate it as I love to craft, but despite having to be actively engaged in a pretty boring activity, I prefer the Ryzom system as if I put in the time I can access any dug mat I need and crafting is never gimped or dependent upon a random number genertor.
There is challenge to it, as all mats come in 5 grades: basic, fine, choice, excellent and supreme, the latter two are dependent upon seasons and weather, usually accompanied by increased aggro, and Q250 supreme mats can only be obtained in the prime roots which requires leveling dig there in addition to any region's dig skill you may have developed. So not like woohoo, supreme is here and I can just go and dig to my heart's content. Numbers available are limited also, but it is do-able, unlike SWG where the random mat generator could undo any amount of work one put in.
There are "bazaar" terminals on Ryzom, but no individual shops - tho there may be possibility of setting one in ring scenarios which have just been launched, but would be dependent upon you being online to do the trade unlike SWG.
Zeka
Speaking as a legendary crafter who has 15 crafts at lvl 250 and far as I know is the only person on any server to find the recipe to craft a 10 parry a 2h ax, I can authoritively state, and also on behalf of many of my legendary crafter friends, that crafters are rich is a frequently cited nonsense. I have both borrowed money for tp tickets and lent money to fellow 250 crafters in similar circumstances, and I currently have 40 million which in Ryzom terms is less than many lvl 100 players have, and more than I have had for near all of the 20 months I have played. We are poor BECAUSE we craft!
The reason is that an obscene number of mats are required to level craft, and it costs many times more to buy grind mats than we can recover from selling the grind. You have to craft in Ryzom because you love to craft, both as the grind to level is significant and also as working out recipes takes a surprising amount of time - 50 rl hrs on ax recipe eg. Ppl see crafters selling top gear for large amounts of cash (dappers) or mats and think wow, this a lurk! But what they don't realize is what a crafter is getting is a mere fraction of the cost and time they have invested in making the item - you seriously have to do it for the love of doing it.
Selling mats is where the money is in Ryzom, and it will also give u access to the top gear, most of which crafters can't provide the mats for themselves - why someone stated accurately that best gear is kept in guilds. The best gear requires mats from bosses and with low drop rates and bosses on 3 day timers, it isn't possible for crafters to collect enough to sell to the general public for the most part and when we do, what we want is mats so we can continue to craft.
Q250 grind mats are the most often used actual currency in the game, and most crafters will craft if u supply the boss mats needed. Have a look at bazaar section of Ryzom forums to get an idea as to what mats have high value is best way to go to the person who wanted advice on starting an enterprise. Selling mats is definitely the road to riches and uber gear in Ryzom, and crafting most definitely isn't.
Zeka
aka Zysha, Arispotle Ryzom