On Donation items

[lrellok]

* Lrellok equips Lucius's Fierce Armor of Volcano w/ Ktullanux card, Jakk Mantue, and triple Pasana Katars of Frozen Icicle*  Ok, Anti Flame ready.

(note to admins.  No i am not a GM, but this is from a player to the GMs, so it is here)

I have recently been hopping servers a lot, trying to find one that suits me.  Many of them seem to be having issues surrounding their donation items, either that they are blatantly overpowered, or the server advertises as no overpowered donation items and they are somewhat overpowered, or the server says no donation items at all and gives things like OCA's and Ygg berries as donation items. 

As a player, this is very annoying.  Yes, i know that you have very expensive servers you are running, and would like people to help pay for them.  However, not paying, or paying only a little, should not impede or even impact your ability to play the game.  So, i have reached the conclusion that a donation item/ quest item guide is necessary. 

First i would like to define what each is.  A donation item should be defined as any item awarded in return for a donation to the server, whether server specific or not.  A quest item is any item received as an award for the completion of an ingame quest, whether awarded by NPC or GM.  Event items are any item awarded for the completion of an event. 

A donation item should be an item that while interesting and notable, does not convey any powers that would give any player an advantage over any other player.  I would consider unslotted powerless headgears of interesting shapes to be good donation items.

Event items can be a little more powerful, but not to the point of a permanent bonus.  Things like white pots, Authoritative badges, cooked foods, quivers of rare arrows, all make good event awards.  On high rate servers, Ygg seeds and even Ygg berries can be given, but even then things like OCA and DB/BB should not be.  These can give rewards far exceeding the time or effort an event takes to complete.

Quest rewards are the highest category, and this is where the server specific equipment should be given.  I divide Quests into two sub categories, Grocery Quests and Stand Alone Quests.  Stand Alone quests are for things like Zerlitish mask.  They give a powerful item, and you only need to do them once or twice with any given character.  Z mask is actually an excellent example of the difficulty any server specific standalone quest should be. 

Grocery quests are, i fear, sadly underutilized.  The are the equivalent of the Juice quest, where common drops are exchanged for healing or recovery items.  I have actually suggested several of these on various servers, with poor reception.  In any case, they allow players to gain recovery items from farming creatures they should probably be farming anyway, and help low to mid level characters ease their financial burdens in game.  suggestions i have made are;

     The town council of Geffen is concerned with the incursion of demihumans into the area.  They will trade a (1) Royal Jelley for 20 orc vouchers OR 20 blue hairs. 

     The situation in the prontera culvert has become critical.  The town fathers are offering a yellow potion in exchange for every 10 insect feelers brought to them. 

     The arrow makers of payon are desperately short of supplies.  They will trade a orange potion for every 20 stumps of any kind brought them. 

     The church or Prontera wishes help with its inquisition.  The will reward an old card album for every 100 evil little wings brought to them.

     The Town Guard of alderbaran are worried about people accessing the clock tower.  They are trading Authoritative badges for keys to the underground or keys to the clock tower at a 1 to 1 ratio.   

In conclusion, doner items should be the least useful items on a given server, serving no function except ornament.  If you desire to create a four slotted headgear of demi human annihilation, that should be a quest item, never a donor item.   

[Pandora]

While I understand where you're coming from, there is no one sure way to balance donation and please everyone (including server owners).

The owner wants help with the server fees, the donators want to be rewarded for their money and the non-donator do not want to feel that the donators are overpowered in comparison to them. It's nearly impossible to find a middle ground to satisfy everyone.

What is acceptable and what is not will differ from one person to the next. I think the fairest thing an owner can do is decide what rewards they give for donation if any, and then make it clear and stick with it (aka not change donations later on).

That way players can read before joining and see if it satisfies them or not. If you join a server that give +20 stats wings for donation only, well that's kinda your problem in a way, don't come whining after. I personally find that kinda reward completly wrong of course, but it's not my business to decide what other server owners give.


I certainly don't claim to have the perfect balance, but here's what I give for donation on my server:

* For every 1$ donated, receive 1 Allegiance point (Light or Dark)
Those are also obtainable with special quests and events.

* For every 1$ donated, receive 1 OBB (Old Blue Box)
Obb is also available from regular monsters + drops from the fishing system and can also be farmed while wearing the "Easter Hat" (which was obtainable with the Easter)

* For every 2$ donated, receive 1 OPB (Old Purple Box)
Opb is also available from regular monsters + drops from the fishing system and can also be farmed while wearing the merchant card combo.

* For every 5$ donated, receive 1 OCA (Old Card Album)
Oca is also available from some MVPs + drops from the fishing system at low rate.

* For every 30$ donated, receive 1 Hat Voucher (*new*)
Hat voucher lets you bypass the hatter quest and obtain a special headgear.

Some people find those reward to be too much, others too little. But overall, everything is obtainable in game if the person wants it, so the donation are just a shortcut way of getting them rather than working in game for them.


On the previous server I played, donations were rewarded with a special item called "EP", short for Event Point at a ratio of 1 EP = 1$. Those EP were given as rewards in events also, and were the only way to obtain the custom +10 stat wings, headgears and MVP cards.

While I didn't find that system to be perfect, it had its good and bad points, regular players could earn the custom gears but were limited by the events being held, or forced to buy the EP from other players, the prize was around 200k zeny for 1 EP when I joined, later on it was up to 500k+ and eventually I even saw 1M for 1 EP. Wings were 100 EP if I recall. This created an EP economy and devaluated zeny, high end items were not sold for zeny they were offered in "EP only" trades. Anyway, first off selling mvp cards and +10 gears was a sure way to unbalance a server, be they donation or not, but that's another story. Point was that they offered gears to both donators and non-donators, which was their way to try to satisfy everyone.


Some servers give nothing in exchange of donations, while that is probably the best and frankly the true meaning of donations is that you get nothing in return, other servers give such insentive as to make players used to receiving something, but much props to the server owners who do it this way and afford the server's fee from their pocket.

[Valiance]

O_O Why would you make a 4 slot equip.. if you do I laugh @ yo face

But yeah, more or less I agree, except I think most donation items should be quests, not just the "godly items as quests and the crappy items I worked hard to pay for to support the server with are only donation items" But i do get where you come from on this

[Pandora]

4 slotted stuff are common on high rate, why anyone would unbalance a low rate with them is puzzling, but I'm not surprised to hear it exists.

[Apologized]

Well its a 2 face problem in a way.

Some people would do donate to a server without any reward if the server is either been up for long and is stable or is just kind and enjoy donation to aprove his satisfaction. Somehow when it comes to a donation item selection and puting *Donation Only Features* that where the unstability comes, since not everyone can afford donations even if they are 1$ since you require of a credit card paypal or a way to send the money which most of the times require certain age or trust. So basicly you can make similiar items questable to make non donators comfortable, yet you can make the donations in different colours just to make them appart from the questable ones and give them a little skill usgae than could help the players and making it satisfyed without overpowering them. Infact, adding 10 to all stats and maybe more i guess it i overpowered all depending on max stats and server rates ect, since some class, gicing them that stats boost might affect the server and may make class umbalanced, so it's not recomended, maybe asking the community of what they think before releasing donations, that would make you sure that most of your community will aprove them and feel more safe. And yeah, thats pretty much it.

[lrellok]

4 slotted stuff are common on high rate, why anyone would unbalance a low rate with them is puzzling, but I'm not surprised to hear it exists.

the four slotted items i have seen where on high rates, and they where still unbalancing.  3 archangels +maya purple + whatever the headgear does.  UGH

[Tears of Blood]

Agreed. 4 slots is insane.

I don't see a place for donation items on any server. Period. Players come to private server so they don't have to pay. I say we don't keep in-game items away from them simply because we want money. Sure, I want people to donate, but I'm not going to exchange game items for it. Rediculous concept in my eyes.

Sorry if that post sounds harsh.

[GM Faith]

A lot of people dislike our reward structure, suggesting that MVP cards are overpowered to be offered as reward.

(In the case of LH3 MVP cards, this is true, which is why we don't offer them.)

We're a low rate server, but we want people to be able to enjoy the use of MVP cards and custom items in a balanced environment.

Look at it this way, if you don't offer MVP cards to everyone, what happens when someone gets a GR card? They instantly get placed in a separate tier from other players and become obscenely powerful. Making such things available to everyone shifts it all up a gear.

"Donators are overpowered" ..perhaps true, but we're working on several methods of earning rewards that are fair towards everyone with a little work.

With regards to super quest items, these are not available via donation, only through a quest sequence.

I'm not sure where I'm really going with this post, I'm sure i definitely had a point..

I think what I'm trying to say is..

It's all relevant.

It all depends on your game dynamic.

[Lore]

Look at it this way, if you don't offer MVP cards to everyone, what happens when someone gets a GR card? They instantly get placed in a separate tier from other players and become obscenely powerful. Making such things available to everyone shifts it all up a gear.

The only time MVP Cards should ever be offered in donation is in high rates where MVP cards are easy to hunt anyway.

Your point about the ghostring is interesting. When someone gets a GR they do not become obscenely powerful (uh keep an elemental weapon hotkeyed..?) but they do in fact rise above the normal playing field of normal players. This is when a person is called "pro" or "advanced player" it is by no means, a bad thing in a server. Adding MVP cards to even out the playing field is absurd and doesnt solve the problem(?) GR Players cause. Now instead of the GR tier of players you have:

1. MVP donors + Players who hunted GR tier
2. MVP donor tier
3. Players who hunted GR tier
4. Normal players

Hurray?

we're working on several methods of earning rewards that are fair towards everyone with a little work.

I hope that balancing your server is doing will work out.

[Descent]

I refuse to have Donation Items on my server. All of our Customs are obtainable via "Ancient Zeny", which is a 100% drop from MvPs. This means that every player on the server has the chance to save up their AZ and spend it on the Custom Items(Wings, Helms, Auras, etc).

The only thing you CAN donate for is Ancient Zeny, but there's zero pressure to donate. To be honest, we've only gotten maybe three donations since the server opened in April, but I'm not exactly running the server to get rich off of donations. CorrosiveRO is a (sometimes stressful) hobby but the rewards are countless:

- Actually making players happy by providing a safe and friendly gaming environment
- Watching the community grow
- Being on the "outside looking in" in @hide, observing how players interact with each other
- Creating what every server Admin does: Make their own little world and customize it to their tastes.

That's enough for me. I don't need money on top of it(especially with System In Place's great prices).

I personally hated servers that forced you to donate for certain things. One server I played locked the max level at 254 unless you were a donator: then you were allowed to reach 255. Wings, Megjingards, and Sleipnirs were donation ONLY. You couldn't even make these from castle drops. Same for Lighthalzen 3 Cards, you had to spend 50$ to obtain one instead of actually doing some hard work and hunting the monster itself.

[GM Faith]

Like i said, its all relative to the game dynamic.

Along with the reward system we're developing, plenty or donors sell MVP cards. And at ~20m zeny for an MVP card, its by no means inaccessible to non-donationg players who're willing to make the zeny.

Its a game dynamic that i've been playing/Administrating in for more years than i care to remember and it works.

Its just a different way of doing things i guess, but it isn't strictly a bad system.

[Descent]

There's also the fact that you're not *forcing* your players to donate, Faith. It's a very respectable course of action.

The problem I described was the fact that the donation items cost so much(50$ USD a pop) that if players wanted to sell them, be ready to fork over at least 800M in Zeny to buy one.

I'm sure you'll get it all figured out. Judging by your signature, "Impossible is nothing...", you've got a great attitude.

[GM Faith]

Thankyou, I take a great deal of pride in the way the server runs.

If it makes anyone else anywhere near as happy as it makes me, That's the biggest reward that I could hope for.