I'm only qualified to speak about servers that do not have 3rd jobs. 3rd jobs are still broken so I don't play those servers.
----GENERAL----
-people may say they want something easier, but they often don't even know what they really want. something easily obtained is less appreciated. increasing bg rewards/ammo etc. is the move of a dying server, since it gives a short term boost with long term reduction in activity
-whenever someone gets any boss card, have an automatic serverwide broadcast.
-portals that let you skip new world quest and access the various fields. also nydhoggr dungeon, lady tanee map, etc. RO quests suck.
-remove the "instance" on nydhoggrs map so everyone can enter map and chase after mvp
-all pets and the ability to tame any monster
-some forms of gambling as a way to remove zeny from the economy
-massive array of dyes and hairstyles. the more the better.
-make homunculus names centered, if you can't change it and add spaces in front. yes some people care
-have a fully powered gm online immediately after an update, and the woe after it. especially if you make woe changes.
-enable teleporting in yuno and other airship maps, especially if your server has a warper. consider maps like kiehl dungeon and amatsu dungeon
-force vendors to be dispersed or organized by specifying places they cannot vend. for example disallowing vending in the prontera main street, and forcing them on the sides. if you disperse them enough and keep them all from being on the same screen, or even in a seperate vending area, may reduce lag and net traffic.
-make the ingame irc system channels reappear if one of its people relogs server. because you have to use @join every time you login, nobody ever uses custom channels. passwordable.
-if the above is too hard, implement some form of allychat so people can talk between guilds, and to guildmembers who entered battlegrounds.
-alter the delay on @main and irc system to be max 2-3 messages within 15 seconds or so, instead of just one message every ten seconds. very often I want to put two lines in a row but it won't let me, VERY annnoying. this would still prevent spamming.
-DON'T eliminate the hit delay. it affects asurahide, snapdodge, knocking people out of cloak, doublekos, teleporting away from monster dmg, rude hitting mvps, and a bunch of random stuff.
-namechanges for a price, accompanied by serverwide announce.
-gms can rename people with overly offensive names, and the player must pay to change again. namechanges should have a public log.
-gms should be able to get a list of accounts related to a specific ip/mac address, and a history of past offenses. mac ban is preferable to ip ban in the case of college campuses and the like, but do what you must.
-removing the death popup choice ?do you really wanna go back to town?
-if server lasts long enough, you may need a gradual reduction in /alchemist /blacksmith /taekwon ranks.
-increase max party size.
-test your server updates and fixes before you put on main server
-add more possible guildranks within guilds
-make the various ingame chats use different colored text. @main and such as well.
-bypass annoying dungeon quests like kiel, amatsu, new world...
-remove that little skillfail msg from gank autosteal. ugh.
-autocasts should not have any delay or cause normal attacking to stop. they are already weak enough. (injustice/ifrit rings in particular)
-quest npcs never move, never have voice, and rarely talk. this breaks immersion.
-if lowrate, do not enable the smokie pet skill. it makes bio3 luring the mvp easy.
-consider increasing max viewing range beyond 14 cells. its definitely makes things more interesting, however it may increase lag and net traffic.
-head gm should avoid oily food and meat, this makes you tired. eat lots of washed raw greens and vegetables so you can keep coding nonstop on 5 hours of sleep. a good way to get started on this is to replace 1 meal a day with salad that has crushed nuts and tangerines on top.
-hire Thoth as a GM
----NET PRESENCE----
-server clock on the website with woe times next to it. bonus points if it has a world map you can adjust for any timezone
-post ALL server customizations and changes somewhere on the website.
-try to have the website and important information in multiple languages. if you cannot do it, bribe someone in the player community to translate.
-people who post woe vids on youtube REALLY should put a link to the server. seriously
-have a UNIQUE name for your server. servers with similiar names, or the same name as a server that died fail the naming contest, and invite an array of annoying problems. it should be something that you can google easily and find exactly the right server. be wary of what people will abbreviate the name to.
-a players online counter on your website
-put the rules on your website
-mention any and every customization on the website
-have a control panel with Rankings. this is important, and players need the egotrip. the more detailed the better, including rankings for damage dealt, damage taken, kills, deaths, items used, skills used, ammo used, etc...
-avoid having too many subforums with nothing and no reason for their existance. individual forums for each player class are unnecessary, for example.
-consider an IRC channel where gms and whatnot can be contacted if forum/server get knocked off the net
-DDOS protection. a server isnt good unless its survived a ddos attack.
-ventrilo/teamspeak/raidcall stuff for players
-make your server forum ACTUALLY LOOK GOOD, and have little popups when someone else logs in forum
-have a public listing of mvp and boss cards obtained.
-random statistics, like what monster was killed the most that day, how many mvps died, who gained the most lvls in one day... top records as well
-random player interviews asking totally offtopic questions
-suggestions area of the forums where people can post stuff like this
-show player count on website/CP
-have a hidden garbage forum where spam can be moved to instead of letting forum moderators delete stuff. if they are the evil cheat-then-censor everything moderator, then owner can read what they deleted.
-require people to register before they can post in forum, to help keep the bots out
-make sure you have multiple links to client/patcher (in case one is unavailable in some country or goes down), and make it as painless as possible. torrents are great.
----NPCS----
-Job changer and platinum skill npc. god those quests are annoying.
-if you really decide to have a healer in town, make it charge 5k like the inns. bless and agi are usually tolerable, but any more buffs than that is a mistake.
-a npc in main town that has a countdown clock to the next WoE
-reset npc is ok, but make it actually cost something so its prohibitive to reset everyday. 50k DOES NOT COUNT.
-do something about the auction hall stuff? NOBODY ever uses it
-if your rates are high enough to have warpers, healers, etc. put them in every town
-do not let the warpers go beyond dungeon entrance
-if low rate, npc exchange 100 of any mix of cards for some useful item. good way to combat inflation later on
-massive array of dyes and hairstyles. the more the better.
-put a refiner that goes up to whatever +rate you want without extra popup prompts
-put an ore refiner that refines rough oridecon and elunium in bulk, with just one click
-put a mass identifier npc for dealing with large amounts of unided items. more important on mid-high rate
-tool dealer sells red gemstone at 1200 and yellow gemstone at 2400 just to make things faster (an annoying exchanger npc already exists)
-if you don't have a warper, put battlegrounds recruiters in every town.
-healer npc heals homunculus and mercenary
-feeling map and hate target reset npc for star gladiators.
----GRF AND CLIENT----
-DO NOT put some glitzy pop song or death metal in your patcher. dear god no. just use something without words if you must have music.
-use the renewal client. rumors say eamod is buggy.
-remove screen shake, kaite blurr, and hallucination effect (the blurry wavy thing bapho jr. used) from the client. this stuff annoys/makes lag.
-customize your default skin. make it work with bg quest popup.
-customize your loading screens.
-make sure people can skillevel select teleport(grf thing), and there is no stupid popup choice(server setting).
-include in grf skill level selecting for all kinds of skills, like quagmire, land protector, grimtooth
-npc that allows you to choose which commands will automatically be used on login. @aloot rate, @battleinfo, @noks...
-include ROext with your client so minimizing ro doesnt waste all your cpu and multiclienting is tolerable
-include RCX with client and give support
-make the size of barricades smaller in the client so people don't stand on them and become unclickable
-include minimaps for all woe maps
-include minized effects for storm gust, meteor, lord of vermillion
-have notexture grf available (but not by default) for those who want to woe/bg with bad computers.
-colored text for hidden enchantments on gear, and make sure the enchantment at least is visible without clicking in vend shops.
-remove the blinding graphic of star gladiator demon (it makes players emo and want to kill themselves), then block blind removing grf changes.
----@COMMANDS---
-@autotrade
-@whosell
-@whomap. tends to increase competition for mvps. disable this on woe maps
-@noks. prevent killstealing. disable on mvps.
-@battleinfo. tells you who you kill and who kill you in pvp/bg/woe
-@refresh. essential, too much position lag in RO
-@autorefresh. I heard this is really good, never seen it
-@go. implement if you have a town warper. add the bg waiting room to the @go list.
-@request. as a method to contact gms. all @requests should be logged for reference. spamming @request = tempban. you might even automate this.
-@duel. remove the delay on entering a new duel.
-@mi. monster info, important. consider removing the entries on monsters that have no drops.
-@ii. item info. need it occasionally
-@whodrops. tells what monster drops what item. important.
----WOE TIMES----
-whatever times you choose, give priority to the locations around the host as they have better pingtimes.
-be aware of daylights savings and sunday churchgoers (or friday muslims?). its probably best to use daylight savings unless you host in asia (does ANYONE host in asia?)
-the following is an example of woe SE times. I think these are the best times if your host is in the western hemisphere as it gives priority to the people there with the best ping times.
because some people are churchgoers, less important woes like FE and baby woe can take up late sat and sunday morning.
this example allows for 1 SE asians can attend and 1 SE europeans can attend with all available for the western hemisphere.
use daylight savings. asian countries (india, oceania except australia) become 1hour later in spring.
5pm friday westcoastusa. 10pm brazil. 1am UK. SAT 6am pakistan/india. 9am china/philipinnes. 11am sydney aus.
7am saturday westcoastusa. noon brazil. 3pm UK. 8pm pakistan/india. 11pm china/philipinnes. 1am sun sydney aus.
----RATES----
-if you want any good pvming on your server, set the exp rate LOWER than the item rates. PVM should be about epic parties not soul-crushing grinding for cards. indeed, item rates too low will invite the botters.
-do not set mvp droprates above 10x
-do not set boss card droprates above 10x
-increase the droprates on woe related cards like thara, horn, raydric, alligator, noxious, matyr, green ferus, horong, smokie, status weapon cards...
-give some charbound 0 weight battle manuals to every character on creation. players who already are very skilled at their class will not have to spend as much time on what they've already done.
-increase the exp bonus for party exp taps.
-low droprates on mvp cards is not enough- you MUST either disable or weaken the worst offenders like gtb, incant, fbh. do this before the server opens and make sure players are informed, so you don't lose players later.
-at least 20x pet, homunculus, and mercenary loyalty rates. higher works, just don't put it so high people use vanil bioexplode every 2 hours.
-on server opening, set rates at +50% exp
-increase exp for a certain race each week, and have it AUTOMATICALLY rotate.
-increase exp reward for doing quests. especially the non-repeatable quests.
----EVENTS----
-NEVER have a "guild of the month" thing. ever. "player of the month" is dangerous too. all judgements will be seen as arbitrary and cause bad mojo.
-much better alternative to the above, one can have someone act as an announcer or newspaper for major or random events on the server (new guild shows up in woe, gambling tournament was won by lucky bastard A, a massive group of supernovices invades bg, etc...)
-reward players for helping make custom content, loading screens, player guides, etc.
-best screenshot event
-best video event?
-poring soccer
-group dancing contest
-russian roulette or abra type event, last survivor wins
-automated pvp tournament. dispell on entry. if you disable healing items, also disable healing skills.
-event where you try to kill a super fast monster in a small area, that uses "run" (beelzebubs run away thing), npc_stop, and teleport. even better if its a walking green plant.
----PVP,WOE,BATTLEGROUNDS----
-castle drops are just horrible, improve these. disable god items.
-baby woe is 9000 times smarter than non-trans woe. the extended classes often fill niches and are somewhat usable in woe, babies never are.
-castle amounts should be low enough(or high enough) that people are forced to fight each other. suppose there are 3 castles FE and the 3 guilds never fight each other. the other guilds get forced out. the obvious solution is to reduce castles to 2. however a less obvious solution would be increase castles to 5, and have the noob guilds fight it out while the big guilds try to make a grab for 2 castles (and thereby risk leaving their homebase open.)
-limit max guild size to 30ish. reduce guild expansion bonus per skill level accordingly.
-whatever you do, encourage the growth of multiple factions. nothing is as dull as a 1-2 guild woe
-FE should always have more castles than SE
-keep pets from entering bg/woe, so people don't hide under the invincible sprite
-battleground broadcasts should not be global, except the start of match
-have seperate pvp rooms that have no pots, buffs dispelled on entry, unrestricted. homunculus should also be dispelled.
-allow the changing of guild leaders ... for a price. npc or @changegm command can do this. disable changegm during woe.
-instead of guild packs, consider giving nerfed, charbound, 0def versions of bg gear on char creation. 80% total stun resist hat + armor, for instance. bare minimum to fight with, but if they want the good stuff they must pvm for it. if this is done it must be done by someone who understands what every class needs for woe. in any case, the feeling of being left out, and favoritism is a big problem with guildpacks.
-if you have @whomap and @storage commands, disable them in woe
-if someone logs out/disconnects in a BG match, do not let them log back in for 3 minutes.
-if it can help lag, remove 99 auras in bg/woe
-bg/woe/pvp only consumables in exchange for bg badges to keep the action going. these should work on any pvp map. edp, gems, speed potions, bottles, cobwebs, elemental converters, elemental resist potions, condensed red(lif homun) and white potions, blue pots, earth spike scrolls, boxes of sunlight(low amounts). mastela is a mistake. also avoid any item that can be sold to npc in bulk for large amounts of zeny.
if high rate, seperate, fewer amounts of nonbg consumables. if low rate, add brewing ingredients to bg reward
-access to all battlegrounds and kvm items through bg
-commands like @emergencycall or @battleorders to allow use of guild skills with a macro hotkey
-emergencycall should be on a different delay than all the other guild skills. otherwise these other guildskills will never be used
-killing spree sounds and announces within bg. I really liked these. ones for multiple kills in a short timeframe, killing alot of people without dying, and ending someone else's killing spree. dota type shouts...?
-repair,bless,agi up,heal in an npc within bg death area. make it automatic so no need to click.
-a bg "happy hour" when bg rewards increase. to get as large a bg as possible, choose the timing wisely
-change woe castles every 2 weeks or so
-consider putting "skulls" in someone's inventory everytime they kill someone in pvp, and making it a healing item
-reduced the strength of BG guardians to FE level, its absolutely insane and unkillable. especially with a linker buffing it.
-disable all automated events in woe
-remove the flag npcs in battlegrounds/woe so people don't hide underneath them and become unclickable
-nightmare pvp room without the pvp flag, so people must use @duel...
-lower the vit and increase HP of emperium, it breaks waaay too easily
-all guilddungeons should be accessable, by someone taking a castle. if there are only 2 FE castles, then at least each one should lead to 2 different guild dungeons. adjust as needed.
-remove the bg quest popup thing as it tends to crash people with non-default skins
----DONATIONS----
-have a disguise npc that allows players to put the sprite of any headgear on over their hat. be nice if the sprite is maintained when switching headgears, unless the npc is told others. have the ability to "try before you buy" and check different looks temporarily.
-coins or other currency that allows people to shop/trade their donation points ingame
-enriched elunium and oridecon is a must
-gym passes for woe/bg folks
-hats that are not otherwise obtainable
- +stat orbs, that can be used instead of hidden enchanting armor. if these are not a donation item, then make them only +2 stat.
-megaphones
-an item that makes the player extra big. disable for bg/woe
-an item that makes the player extra small. disable for bg/woe
-customized auras seen by other players
-universal tamer (if you made all monsters tameable)
-+10 stat foods (prevent foods from dispelling with death if you want this to be worth anything)
-avoid infinite fly wing, infinite bwing. do not make an infinite giant fly wing.
-NEVER have boss/mvpcards, lord kaho horns, angra manyu, overpowered, GM or God items on donation
-never have a donation item that gives more than +5 to any stat. unless its luk. nobody cares about luk.
-Do Not make someone gm if they donate enough
-if you have custom guildmaps, I strongly suggest you DO NOT enable abraing
-vote points that have a similiar function to donations. if you do this, be very wary of script injections and don't use php.
