a list of things a server should have

[Thoth]

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.

[Thoth]

----ITEMS-----
-weaken but don't remove overpowered mvp cards.
gtb to resist dispell only- magic will still do damage
gr to 50% neutral resist instead of 75%
fbh to 20% magic boost vs demihuman instead of 50%
incant samurai to 50% def piercing
memory of thanatos add -30% vs demihuman
others...?
-quests for otherwise unobtainable hats, and perhaps items
-somehow giving access to beach manteau combo, skeleton manteau, yellow ribbon/bandana, drooping kafras is essential
-try to put a delay on ygg seed // berry use, or keep droprates limited. especially on high rate.
-at the very least, make kvm/glorious badges account bound, if not other badges.
-make cartridges and quivers buyable from npc. making that stuff is really really annoying.
-slotted midgears are more fun than not
-giant fly wings... if you put them in, make them very expensive.
-npc that sells quivers and bullet casings. so goddamn annoying to make, especially for gunslingers and bow rogues.
-some method of getting hugel medals besides bingo or monster races. that stuff is horrible unless you cheat/bot it.
-fix item descriptions. the korean to english translations can be very very bad.
-npc that sells headgears or even gives a random headgear for large amounts of zeny, to remove zeny from the economy
-lower the drops of Iaras in brasilis dungeon, and mavkas from moscovia3 to prevent massive zeny inflation. reduce other droprates as well, depending on rates.
-delay on spamming ygg berries and seeds, or just lower their droprates
-fix or remove entweihen card from Old Card Album. add dark priest card to OCA
-hidden enchant bonuses of items other than armor. they can and should be something besides just +basestat
-make obscure pet foods obtainable- stuff for those rare pets that can only be abra tamed. edit bacsojin pet to actually have a food. or just make them all eat normal pet food.
-disable dead branches in towns, vending area, maps adjacent to towns, and other places people may idle.
-put bg specific items in either the cash item tab of storage, or another unused tab. perhaps woe specific items in another tab.
-if low rate, DO NOT have a 100% decarder. its bad for the long term economy, and prevents people from vending +4 carded budget items.
-prevent +stat food from dispelling with death. important with +10 stat foods.
-make things like gemstones/bottles a consumable that does absolutely nothing, so that they can put it in their hotkey bar and know how many remain.

---PVM----
-exp rates should be low enough that people will actually have a reason to party, and learn howto pvm together. give enhanced experience boosts for exp taps and party play. exp loss from death should actually slow you down a little. low rate stuff mind you.
-every char gets 5 charbound 0 weight battle manuals on creation. the pros will use to the most effect needing less time to 99/70 for bg/woe.
-renewal monsters like scarabas should be hard enough to merit the experience they give. make sure they have all their skills like heavens drive 10.
-prevent massive zenyfarms like Iaras and mavkas. dracula's minions and loot cards like bomber steak. mi gao multiplying army.
-mvping is a joke these days. make all boss type monsters impossible to hitlock. reflect and counter instinct damage should never go about player hp. champs should lose their balls when entering a portal. satan morroc npc needs a 3 minute delay on re-entering map. there should be no smokie-perfect-hide in bio3. DO NOT have private abra, dead branch rooms, or guild maps. prevent autoloot from working on mvps and offscreen monsters. consider other ways to make mvps harder. make it an epic party experience.
-DO NOT have private abra and db rooms, this just leads to constant abra without hunting the mvps themselves. some of which are far easier away from their original maps, and soloable in such rooms
-make mvping FFA, griefing earning a tempban. too short a time period will not stop people, you need at least 3 days.
-give parties a 20 level exp share difference, and devotion a 20 level difference between caster and target.
-keep people from autolooting stuff offscreen. especially annoying when mvping or chasing Ghostring

---GMS AND POLICIES---
-beware of getting burnt out. the more hyperactive a gm is, the more likely they are to burn out after a while and not care. this applies not just to you but your whole gm team. extra gms are always needed around to pickup the slack, and have very well logged activities...
-be aware of the personal motivations of the GMs you hire. do they want to fix bugs, make cute hats, do events and start their own little cult of personality where players worship them? or do they want power over other players, and to abuse their position? being a good judge of personality is important.
-most important GM should avoid meat and oily food, they make you tired. start by eating salad with nuts and fruit on top 1 meal a day. exercise some too. this really helps the ability to code constantly on only 6-hours of sleep.

----CHEATING POLICIES---- rather than waste your life trying to ban cheaters, fix the root of the problem.
-have packet encryption, that you can change the encryption key when necessary if its cracked. important to stop botting and wpe.
-make sure you fix wpe related exploits anyways, because someone will decrypt it sooner or later
-to counter speed hacking, implement serverside delays on: sonic blow, arrow vulcan, arrow shower, ganbantein, kaupe, kaite... this is probably the only way you will stop speedhacks, all the anti-hacks fail.
-don't bother using antihack to try blocking certain programs like speedgear. your attempt to block will be blocked.
-include ROext with the client so multiclienting and minimizing RO doesnt use rediculous amounts of CPU
-if ROmedic and such bother you try reducing item spamming delay. default seems to be about 7 pots per second, try reducing to 5?
-give support for notexture style grf edits to reduce lag. strongly consider putting reduced wizard spell effects into your server client.
-DO NOT attempt to ban ahk users. any attempts to do so will prevent top guilds from posting youtube videos advertising your server, and you will never detect/stop them anyways.
-strongly consider giving public ahk support and scripts for your server, and introduce the loop script. if ahk button mashing increases net traffic, set harmony kick them if they spam beyond human levels. make certain that this does not interfere with homunculus/mercenary AI.
-if you use harmony, MAKE SURE you configure it correctly so a large scale woe does not lag. harmony lag kills servers.
-be wary of bait-n-switch type dupes, usually involving npc trades and @storage or @mail. prevent these from working when talking to any npc
-guild banker has some kindof dupe involving kicking a guild member and withdrawing money
-make it clear that whoever reports a bug or exploit will be rewarded depending on the serious of it, and anyone who abuses it will be punished. carrot and stick...
-fix /dice so players cannot use rigged /dice
-prevent unguilded players from entering woe castles
-tempban people who use blank guild emblem in woe. screenshot should be enough to punish.
-prevent autoloot when someone goes afk for more than 1 minute to deal with afk farming
-automate kicking of bg afkers after 1 minute. prevent multiclienting in bg by checking MAC address, NOT IP (families, businesses, or schools may share 1 IP address)
-tempban vendscammers with nothing but a screenshot. the most obvious example is selling sunglasses at sunglasses[1] price
-disable the use of @storage and mail when talking with npcs, or simply remove them. these 2 things are the most common methods of duping items. kafra cards can perhaps be an alternative.
-disable @die in pvp, its lame.
-pvp exit npc should have a minimum 5 second timer of inaction before it warps you out
-if autopotting and ROmedic worry you, try to reduce the item use delay (its about 7 items per second). 4-5 sounds more human.

---BUGS TO FIX--- why isnt this stuff fixed yet anyway
-fix the gunslinger cracker to work in pvp situations, so they can actually do something when wearing a sheild
-NPC_SELFDESTRUCT to fire element. this allows summone marine sphere stacking (they damage each other much less) and generally makes the skill more useful. it also weakens vanil bioexplosion somewhat.
-slow grace forever bug, if anyone can figure out how that happens
-song flashing on dissonance, and dance flashing on ugly dance. the songs take effect the instant they are started, later in that same instant turning to dissonance. the order needs to be switched around, so dissonance become a viable offensive tactic (or defensive in the case of slow grace).
-someone fix mercenary scapegoat one of these days
-absorb spirits in champion @duels
-female stalkers using flying side kick and throw zeny, when /effect is turned off, will turn invisible. this is because they are lacking the 6th frame for the casting animation, unlike their male counterparts. add an extra casting frame to fix this.
-centipede larve card, entweihen card, others...?  remove from monster drops/OCA, or make them work.
-ninja lightening jolt, it never actually hits anything, ever.
-ore discovery skill on whitesmith. is anyone ever gonna fix this? lol.

---TOP PRIORITY GAME BALANCE--- because gravity is dumb
-make all homunculus, or at least all vanilmirths, demi-human. do it yesterday. its rediculous strong pvp wise, stronger than AD vs battlegrounds sets.
-make kaite reflections hit the caster's devo instead of caster. this allows classes that don't have wizard's soul link to use magic in WoE SE.
-elemental sword is overpowered. strongly consider change its bolt chain to lvl2 bolts instead of lvl3. if you do this, consider making cold bolt 5 scrolls bg available (its worse that cold bolt 3 for the chain because of cast time)
-pressure Thoth into publicly releasing his homun/mercenary AI

---LOW PRIORITY GAME BALANCE---  theres alot of trash, useless skills that shouldnt be so damn useless.
-renewal skillchanges to weak skills that nobody ever uses because they suck. http://ro.doddlercon.com/wiki/index.php?title=Renewal_Skill_Changes
best examples are: Thunderstorm, Fire Ball, Throw Huuma Shuriken, Lightening Jolt, Final Strike, Piercing Shot, Spread Attack, Ground Drift, Land mine, Blast mine, Claymore trap, Spear quicken, Holy Cross, Venom Splasher, Volcano, Deluge, Violent Gale, Sightless Mind, Back Stab, Acid Terror, Demonstration (NOT ACID DEMON), Lullaby, Clashing Spiral, ?Soul Destroyer?, Magic Crasher, Counter Instinct
-other trashily broken skills are hermode's rod, backstab, tracking, bullseye...
-LK charge atk should work like FSK in woe and move them to the target. you never see LK in SE.
-Whitesmith sucks in WoE. but I can't think of anything except improving their iron skin neutral resist...
-enable all star gladiator skills except leap in battlegrounds, and ignore map restrictions on bg/woe/pvp maps.

----THINGS THAT KILL SERVERS---
--a lack of staff, so that when the one nolifer super haxor GM disappears or suddenly get a life/girlfriend, everything goes to hell
--the GM couple who start the server ARE boyfriend // girlfriend, and breakup. that couldnt possibly happen right? at best when it does, they hate each other and neither wants to log server. at worst one of them ****s the server to get revenge on the other.
--some GM indulges in corruption, selling mvp cards and junk for $, summoning mvps for their guild, giving themselves god itams for woe, etc. spying on others and finding top tier mvps with gm powers is among the least offensive of this. keeping detailed logs (and checking them), and limiting powers helps prevent this. one should also be a careful judge of what type of person they hire, and what their motivations are for becoming GM.
--some GM starts censoring and banning people they don't like. there will also be people claiming they are banned for no reason. all bans should be logged in forum with evidence like screenshots to prevent this, and only server owner should have moderator powers in said forum.
-- theres also alot of people who complain about "carebearing" and want to be able to throw out vulgar offenses all the time- these guys really should be censored. if some is gonna troll, they should learn to do it without spamming four letter words. I should be able to play RO without seeing someguy with an offensive name talking about his **** all the time.
--someone DDOS server, hack it, take it down, etc. these are often timed whenever they think the GMs that could fix it have a real life and are on a plane trip or something, for maximum damage. take precautions, make backups. any downtime at all is bad, being down more than 2 days can be devastating.
--server implements alot of cool custom features, only to lose them when it updates, and simultaneously reintroducing bugs that they already fixed. I mean, seriously? keep track of your customs, edits, and fixes
--server implements harmony, doesnt configure it properly, causes wtf lag for everybody in bg/woe for more than 2 days
--server changes anything woe related at all and gm isnt online to make sure the woe actually works
--gms ban people who post woe vids that would advertise their server because they are using ahk
--gms try to ban people for using ahk at all. if you wanna limit ahk and romedic, there are serverside solutions like limiting item use rate
--gms ban speedhackers instead adding of adding serverside delays for the affected skills (arrow shower, ganbantein, sonic blow, kaupe, kaite, etc...). instead of bucketing water out of the boat, how about blocking the leak?
--server packets are not encrypted, so any old smuck can auto-asurahide or instant switch to fire armor when firebolted
--server packets ARE encrypted, and server doesnt patch wpe related exploits because they think they are actually safe.
--server does something with vote points for stuff ingame that becomes horribly exploitable. PHP stuff...
--server is vulnerable to sql attacks
--server allows people to multiclient in battlegrounds. protection should be automated
--server fails to kick battlegrounds afkers. protection should be automated
--server has "blah blah weekly event thing" that isnt automated, so when gms are inactive...
--not enough gms to handle @request stuff
--gms change game mechanics, because one ingame faction wants and b**** about it
--making mvping and pvm too damn easy, with overly inexpensive bombs and mvps that still actually get hitlocked, among other things.
--server owner changes to "a better host" which isnt actually better, lags alot of players. then they change back, pissing everyone off. test this stuff ahead of time.
--server owner does a wipe because he wants people to buy more donation itams
--headgm f*** up, gets ultrahatespam from community, has emo breakdown and deletes server, blames hateful RO community, instead of rising to the occasion
-- theres any problem at all, and gms blame ro players instead of looking for a solution.

[Chemical Crush]

Fyi, I doubt anyone is going to read this tidal wave of text.

Just lettin ya know.

[Thoth]

Fyi, I doubt anyone is going to read this tidal wave of text.

Just lettin ya know.

their loss.

[Aurora™]

Not really. While every player's opinion matters, a single person, especially a person with the type of opinion you have (based on your posts in the guild package topic).

Not to mention, considering your topic is exluding third classes (which by the way, them being broken is only a matter of opinion, not anything factual, seeing as not only have they been more balanced on the officials, but many servers are beginning to be in development that have actual balanced third classes), a lot of people are beginning to want to try third classes, and considering more and more server owners are beginning to not only adopt third classes but the Renewal mechanics and changes all together, I don't really think a lot of this would be that informative.

I've also noticed that a lot of your opinions are geared more towards what a mid rate or even a lower high rate would hope to achieve. For example, you say the dungeon entrance quests suck, but I'm obliged to disagree. A lot of RO players do still enjoy the feel RO is supposed to have, which includes questing and, oh what's that? walking. Some players do still want to enjoy that, and some players love questing. So, especially for LR owners, that would be a very misleading opinion. While it's true that midrate mechanics are all-the-rage right now, not everyone wants that.

Plus, I did read through the whole thing, and while I do agree with some points here and there, at least every two out of three suggestions are based on making life easier for WoE lovers. What if a server is not geared towards WoE? What if someone does want an easy-going, "carebear" server? What if someone wants a strictly PvM server? What if someone wants a strictly aesthetic server? What about GoM and PoM; why not? That actually puts some competition into the mix for certain people, especially for low-rates that are geared more towards PvM.

I don't doubt that you put a lot of thought into this, as like I said, I agree with some of your points, but others are just out of the question for the type of servers a person like me and many other types of players go for. Maybe for a mid-rate geared more towards WoE, but not a low-rate geared more towards being the way RO is supposed to be.

All in all, though, good work on the list.

[Thoth]

Not to mention, considering your topic is exluding third classes (which by the way, them being broken is only a matter of opinion, not anything factual,

last I knew it was a fact. not all the skills/game mechanics are coded yet correct?

[Triper]

-remove the "instance" on nydhoggrs map so everyone can enter map and chase after mvp

You forgot the "add slaves to the nidghour mvp" thing, without them is a joke of a 5-10 secs kill that isn't even fun to do :|

-autocasts should not have any delay or cause normal attacking to stop. they are already weak enough. (injustice/ifrit rings in particular)

Doing this can end in hit lock in some cases...

-if server lasts long enough, you may need a gradual reduction in /alchemist /blacksmith /taekwon ranks.

I would prefer a "if you don't do nothing to go up X points after Y time you're out!" feature, it would make people active and would kick quitters even if it's sorta bad to kill the hard work of people to get there...

-if lowrate, do not enable the smokie pet skill. it makes bio3 luring the mvp easy.

It's the same for any 99/70 rates without sinx mvp card easy to get lol

-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.

I prefer salad with apple cubes instead of tangerine And milkshakes all the way at the snack times!

-do something about the auction hall stuff? NOBODY ever uses it

Tweak it to be used as vending and kill vending 8D Damn, I super love how auction hall works on Rusty Hearts!! COPY IT TO RO NOW!! Nobody cares about venders really except they look bad and fake too much of population lol

-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.)

5 will never work, good guild fights are better then trying to see some crap guilds trying to get 1 castle and get owned by 1-2 players of a good guild which they will start to qq in most of the cases or make that player look like a legend when he's not at 100% and the others just suck ...

-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.

NOOOOOO, they should be available to every guild that has a castle, pvp with monsters ftw! Kill or get killed while trying to kill =P Nothing can be more fun then getting a maya purple card and get killed at the same time as the monster lol

-coins or other currency that allows people to shop/trade their donation points ingame

I disagree on this point if the list of donations is imba[giving one item that is impossible to get in any ok way in game = imba enough] because people will use it to make it the currency of the game when it should be zenny/card/items, not the other way around as in I got money I win "tee hee"

- +stat orbs, that can be used instead of hidden enchanting armor. if these are not a donation item, then make them only +2 stat.

No, it's a good zenny sink

-megaphones

Heck no. It will end as some official asian RO and people hate that thing because it will be more used for spam then for what is would be good for.

-enriched elunium and oridecon is a must

Not in a crazy rate like I've seen in some servers... make it be rare and not a I've money I spam to get refines

-+10 stat foods (prevent foods from dispelling with death if you want this to be worth anything)

2muchpay2win, +7 packs would be ok like 5 of one type with increased time duration

-weaken but don't remove overpowered mvp cards.
gtb to resist dispell only- magic will still do damage
gr to 50% neutral resist instead of 75%
fbh to 20% magic boost vs demihuman instead of 50%
incant samurai to 50% def piercing
memory of thanatos add -30% vs demihuman
others...?

Tweak the mvps instead imo, harder challenges making it worth to fight for the card in a party/guild and not the joke it's of a log and kill lol

-lower the drops of Iaras in brasilis dungeon, and mavkas from moscovia3 to prevent massive zeny inflation. reduce other droprates as well, depending on rates.

I disagree on this because Gefenia is not on this list lol

-hidden enchant bonuses of items other than armor. they can and should be something besides just +basestat

No, renewal has them in weapons in 2 slots too and is already super broken. kRO has stat enchant for certain headgears, super broken too.

-DO NOT attempt to ban ahk users. any attempts to do so will prevent top guilds from posting youtube videos advertising your server, and you will never detect/stop them anyways.

There are smart ways to detect that and just ask to have knowledge of the game =p but sorta agree in this since is the way of playing nowadays for some people

-disable the use of @storage and mail when talking with npcs, or simply remove them. these 2 things are the most common methods of duping items. kafra cards can perhaps be an alternative.

This can be evaded if the gm team just make changes on how the scripts work and add no @commands while talking to npcs

Bugs of neuro like cracker, ore discovery, lightning jolt from ninja

Bugs of neuro aren't present on all the servers and some of them work fine at eathena, blame instead people who use eAmod svn

-make all homunculus, or at least all vanilmirths, demi-human. do it yesterday. its rediculous strong pvp wise, stronger than AD vs battlegrounds sets.

-1 players that default non-kmv bg sets are dumb, this makes them learn how to swap gears according situations
The only homo pets that hurts are vanil and filir and filir you just need a shield swap, vanil you can even just swap armor/garment. If people rely on the evo skills of them it will just be/should be like once each X hours/days, nothing OP that way, it's called last resort skill to win then they will jump back to the defeat stage.

-make kaite reflections hit the caster's devo instead of caster. this allows classes that don't have wizard's soul link to use magic in WoE SE.

I think the default eathena svn has this like that but not sure, need to test it

-elemental sword is overpowered. strongly consider change its bolt chain to lvl2 bolts instead of lvl3. if you do this, consider making cold bolt 5 scrolls bg available (its worse that cold bolt 3 for the chain because of cast time)

NO, instead fix that stupid thing that makes 2 work together because they shouldn't stack. This is also called a exploit abuse imo

-pressure Thoth into publicly releasing his homun/mercenary AI

Only if it makes homunculus atk players on pvp

theres alot of trash, useless skills that shouldnt be so damn useless.
-renewal skillchanges to weak skills that nobody ever uses because they suck. http://ro.doddlercon.com/wiki/index.php?title=Renewal_Skill_Changes
best examples are: Thunderstorm, Fire Ball, Throw Huuma Shuriken, Lightening Jolt, Final Strike, Piercing Shot, Spread Attack, Ground Drift, Land mine, Blast mine, Claymore trap, Spear quicken, Holy Cross, Venom Splasher, Volcano, Deluge, Violent Gale, Sightless Mind, Back Stab, Acid Terror, Demonstration (NOT ACID DEMON), Lullaby, Clashing Spiral, ?Soul Destroyer?, Magic Crasher, Counter Instinct

Some of this skills are already nice, wtf are you saying? Thunderstorm stacks. Demonstration reveals people who touch it. Holy Cross is super spammable, do people even try this on a hybrid stalker for pvp ._.? Volcano makes HW being OP and deluge makes randgris being able to get dmg from Storm Gust to be stupidly easy to kill her in a team[you should add this to the fix this too part imo]. Soul Breaker is already OP enough with the right gears, the problem is the delay that is huge and should be, SBK[with the right gears] with bragi is OP lol but I agree on some of the changes to be added to pre-renewal.

-enable all star gladiator skills except leap in battlegrounds

Hi One-Shot FSK in eAmod BGs


@Chemi: I made that 8D

[Aurora™]

It depends on what Mod you use for whether or not the skills are broken.

For example, RceAM, some of the skills are in fact a little buggy. 3ceAM mixed with RceAM (which I'm fairly sure is what eA Mod uses), the skills are not broken (though there are some weird skill description errors, rofl). The only issue with third skills now-a-days is the issue of balance, which is to be taken upon the owner/developers of the server to fix. Unfortunately, most of the servers that adopted third classes when they came out not only were too high of rates to successfully run third classes, but did not adopt the Renewal system. They merely took the interface and the classes and had their way with them, which is what caused players to hate it. Third classes would be broken without Renewal, which was why it was released before third classes were finished.

That's why I'm totally against people trying to develop their own second classes ninjas. Developing third classes pre-maturely caused people to hate Renewal without even actually being able to experience Renewal, and caused a lot of negative bias towards it. That's what happens when developers try to pre-release things before Gravity has even released them. Next thing we know, people are going to start hating extended classes because they're being released too early.

[Chemical Crush]

@Chemi: I made that 8D

You made what, I'm lost @_@

[Strudel]

I've been considering what to say (contribute) to this topic.
And the only thing I can think of is, TL;DR, is there an audio version of this?

[Aurora™]

Yeah. Let me go get Betty White.

[Triper]

You made what, I'm lost @_@

Fyi, I doubt anyone is going to read this tidal wave of text.

8D

[Chemical Crush]

8D

I figured you would read the wall of text. Tbh I saw it and I was like, holy crap not going to read.  I guess because I figure not all of this can honestly apply to every single server since people always want something different.

[Lysander]

A bit high-brow, but you should get the point. Really, this is why there are over 9000 servers out there. Everyone thinks they know the perfect formula, and most fail spectacularly. (Not that yours does, but theory is much different than practice, and nobody agrees on everything, else everyone'd be on the same server)

[yC]

That's very informative but within better formatting my comment is concluded from reading only the first line of each section.

I recommending a better format so everyone can benefit from it.  Or you could make it as a blog post on http://write.ratemyserver.net/ you can take your time there by saving it and come back to the post until you are done.