A reposted idea, rate my point of view

Started by Suspension, Sep 17, 2016, 10:05 AM

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Suspension

Hello, I posted this a while ago but I'm refining more this idea so I'll post it again. I'm not trying to make a server due to my lack of time, lacf of advertising skills and lack of patience with users (while I enjoy a big populated server, I really dislike management tasks). Someday I'll meet somebody who shares this view and can take care of everything while I develop it - at least I can dream.

The problem:
So the purpose of this server is giving back those feelings we got the very first time we came into the game. Some of current servers try that mimicking official settings but I think it's a bad approach: the game is too old and we already know it too well, nothing surpise us, every class has a defined build for PVM and MVP and mobs are just too well known.

My point of view:
What I want to try to do (if I got the luck of finding some trusty guy to work with) is changing the game a little bit, enough for it to feel fresh and new, while still retaining the essence of this game. Also, I want to update the focus of the game: focus on the fun aspects like boss hunting (as a group, so the difficulty should be raised), PVM, WoE, BG, etc and still retaining the grinding aspect which is essential for the game but, making it less boring and repetive without affecting the economy.

These changes would be very light, as I already said, I don't want to transform the game into something else. These changes only focus on: skill balancing, improvement on various job builds, mechanics changes to make the game less monotonous and fun vs grinding compensation.

My proposed solution:
- Focus: These changes are focused for casual and harcore players that don't demand affinity to the official view of the game. Thus, it's focused on people without too much time that still wants to play this game, but also considers the long run aspects of the game, so players don't get bored without anything more to do.

- Geography: As european, I would focus this server for american/european population. I find the east USA coast the perfect location for the western population.

- Rates: Low experience rates vs higher drop rates. One of the things I'll never understand is why server admins choose always to have high experience rates and low drop rates, it makes you easy to get a naked 99/70 character and then spend ages getting equipment. Boring as hell. I propose something like: 2x for experience, 5x as base drop, and 10x as card drop. Why? Because that way you'll get equipment for leveling up faster and going to more dangerous zones. The way it is now, you are leveling up quicker than the time you'll spend for PVM equipment. Making PVM equipment, useless if not for MVP.

- Seed of fortune: This is an item I have suggested to every ragnarok server admin I have ever known. It would be a magical item that would transform your fun time into grinding rewards. This is how it works: this item would be obtainable via fun-related aspects of the game like MVP, monsters killing (low chance), Batteground, etc. It would be a usable item that would make every mob you kill (when active) drop twice the drop. No, not doubling the rate for that mob, but multiply the drop items by 2. If a poring gives you jellopy at 10% and the card at 0.1%, it could give you TWO jellopies at 10% and TWO cards at 0.1%. Why this way, you ask? Because of usables and items farming, which is needed for woe, for example. This way if you spend 1 hour having fun and 1 hour grinding, you'll have the very same as if you had grinded 2 hours straight. The difference? one of those hours, you had fun.

- Donation policy: Absolutely no pay 2 win. Cosmetics maybe, but only if the server costs are greater than expected, nowadays it's quite cheap.

- Equipment: As for seed of fortune, it would make everybody able to obtain the desired equipment for PVM or WoE rather easily. However, in contrast refinement chances would be downgraded, so high end equipment would still be hard to get.

- Classes: For the sake of making it simple and because I consider 2-2 classes more fun than trans I would focus this to 2-2 classes only.

- Environment: The idea is offering the stock, classic like world we all know from episode 9, to further update it with newer but altered maps, like Odin Temple, Lighthalzen, Abyss Dungeon, etc but with changes suitables for 2-2 classes.

- Updates: Further updates with new content like the already mentioned for the environment, but also offer some new classes like Soul Link or Ninja - btw, I plan on making the Soul Linker also a PVP/WoE offensive attacker, but of course, changing mechanics so it's not overpowered for 2-2 classes.

- Skill balacing: This is were my mind is focused as it's what the player would be experiencing first hand. This changes are meant to favor build variety and classes balancing. Stop making a monk just asura everybody in woe, let's make PVM builds also suitable for WoE, and such. You can see a complete list of changes here: http://pastebin.com/raw/HQmxx4KZ

- Woe changes: Magic deals 50%, ranged physical deals 60%, melee deals 65%. Special focus on making low-vit builds viable.

- Economy: Zeny should be stricty controlled. Zeny sinks like healer, partial job resets, name changes, etc should encourage spending money on NPC. Also, costumes and mounts would be available with a zeny fee.

- Globalization: Every city is usable with a warper, kafra and an adapted inn NPC. The Role playing style should be left intact.

Summary:
These changes are meant to be the opposite of current, classic servers focused on a "pure" episode 8.2 environment. I find those kind of server falling too much in the skills/classes balance part, makes some classes too overpowered and others are just plain useless, which makes the game boring. I focus on fun content, while still retaining the nostalgia feeling.

The population is key in this game and such, a playerbase of at least 100 people would be needed. The social aspect of the game is what makes it fun, so if this idea is so bad nobody thinks they'd join something like this, I'd surely drop it.

Please don't be harsh, I know it's too much text, so I doubt anybody would read it all.
Excuse my English.
Quote from: exii on Jun 27, 2015, 06:07 AM
If you think casting quag is a good idea you or your guild heavily failed to create a viable guild rost.

Cyan Hijirikawa

Here's one, try to look it up. It has all the stuff you have listed above, but it's still under-development. I'm also part of their team, somewhat,but yeah, if you want you could always jump in. Just pm Neffletics.

Link~ Click me!

Suspension

The approach is similar, but I don't see anything regarding 2-1, 2-2 classes, and 2-3 is just too much customization.

Also, as an european, an asian server is a no-no.
Quote from: exii on Jun 27, 2015, 06:07 AM
If you think casting quag is a good idea you or your guild heavily failed to create a viable guild rost.

snowblind

Some thoughts:

- you can never get the old feeling back no matter what changes you make.

- Disregarding the asian community is foolish. They are what's still keeping RO alive today.

- Balance does not imply fun. If you take something away from a certain class, it takes away the fun for those who played it (Monk asura). Instead, bring the other classes up to a level where they can compete.

- From my observation, I've come to think that every single change we make should be regarded as a potential loss of players. At the same time, I think that "close-to-official" servers without drastic changes will always go into a downward spiral eventually. So it's good that you want to keep your changes light, but they have very little impact overall, especially when thinking about advertising.

Personally, I hate grinding. I think it's bad design. You imply that grinding and fun are mutually exclusive as well. But then why do you think it's still necessary?

Suspension

Quote from: snowblind on Sep 17, 2016, 06:50 PM
- you can never get the old feeling back no matter what changes you make.
Although I don't like opinions stated as facts, you do have a point. I consider it could get back some of those feelings (learning how it works again, playing with different builds, etc).

Quote from: snowblind on Sep 17, 2016, 06:50 PM
- Disregarding the asian community is foolish. They are what's still keeping RO alive today.
Don't misrepresent my words. Asian countries are in the opposite side of the world for me, my focus is on Europe and American countries. Think about ping and cultural proximity.

Quote from: snowblind on Sep 17, 2016, 06:50 PM
- Balance does not imply fun. If you take something away from a certain class, it takes away the fun for those who played it (Monk asura). Instead, bring the other classes up to a level where they can compete.
Balance does implies fun in the general view, for obvious reasons. In the asura case, it's a sacrifice needed for the sake of other Monk builds to shine (even necessary for other melee classes to be useful).

Quote from: snowblind on Sep 17, 2016, 06:50 PM
- From my observation, I've come to think that every single change we make should be regarded as a potential loss of players. At the same time, I think that "close-to-official" servers without drastic changes will always go into a downward spiral eventually. So it's good that you want to keep your changes light, but they have very little impact overall, especially when thinking about advertising.
Yeah. These kind of changes has a target audience.

Quote from: snowblind on Sep 17, 2016, 06:50 PM
Personally, I hate grinding. I think it's bad design. You imply that grinding and fun are mutually exclusive as well. But then why do you think it's still necessary?
For various reasons:
- Grinding and Ragnarok online are linked. Removing it is not precissely a light change.
- Achievements and gratification by invested effort.
- It would be hard to remove the grinding aspect of the game with a solution that doesn't look like a poor high rate private server choice.
Grinding is not that bad if kept to a minimum. I consider it bad when grinding takes just too much time compared to other tasks.
Quote from: exii on Jun 27, 2015, 06:07 AM
If you think casting quag is a good idea you or your guild heavily failed to create a viable guild rost.

Bue

I've felt the same way for years since ragnarok renewal was release. I don't think you're alone in that regard because we all played Ragnarok as kids, but then, the real world.

If anything, you're going to have a hard time putting together a team and properly coordinating the efforts between your developers, artists, and content creators. Of which, you need at least one core and web developer, and a server administrator for assembling and building your tool chains and infrastructure.

Getting a well-oiled machine and an engineering team is hard; you would have better luck working with an existing server and convincing them to implement your ideas instead. So just butter up the arrogant server owner and influence the staff to get your way. But you rarely see that kind of ambition and sneakness nowadays. (Hence the lack of drama.)

DarkDevine

Yes, yes, make another Renewal, that seems to be a good idea!

I think there are too few servers anyways.
TotalRO - 10x/10x

Bue

It sounds way more like a pre-renewal reboot with new equipments and items, enhanced monsters and skills, and standard quality of life systems than another renewal. He also included content pacing by recommending sane experience to item drop rate ratio. All of it can add up to a change in the meta game, i.e. new player builds and strategies or training locations, with pre renewal game mechanics.

I am not saying its a bad idea, just very difficult to execute. (And a lot of work. lots of it.)

Suspension

#8
Quote from: Bue on Sep 17, 2016, 11:12 PM
you need at least one core and web developer, and a server administrator for assembling and building your tool chains and infrastructure

No, I can do that. Artists and designers would be a nice enhancement if I plan on updating classes sprites, but it's nothing necessary per se.

Quote from: DarkDevine on Sep 18, 2016, 03:55 AM
Yes, yes, make another Renewal, that seems to be a good idea!

Yeah, changing skill formulas is so similar to revamping the entire game as Renewal did, right?

Quote from: Bue on Sep 18, 2016, 04:38 AM
It sounds way more like a pre-renewal reboot with new equipments and items, enhanced monsters and skills, and standard quality of life systems than another renewal. He also included content pacing by recommending sane experience to item drop rate ratio. All of it can add up to a change in the meta game, i.e. new player builds and strategies or training locations, with pre renewal game mechanics.

I am not saying its a bad idea, just very difficult to execute. (And a lot of work. lots of it.)

Hmm no, I never said anything about new equipments and items, or modifying monsters. Although I find bosses need a rework to make them not solo-able.

These changes are very light, and can be done rather quickly. I might as well add something later on for some diversity, but as it's now as starting point is a simple task.
Quote from: exii on Jun 27, 2015, 06:07 AM
If you think casting quag is a good idea you or your guild heavily failed to create a viable guild rost.

snowblind

Quote from: Suspension on Sep 17, 2016, 08:36 PM
Balance does implies fun in the general view, for obvious reasons. In the asura case, it's a sacrifice needed for the sake of other Monk builds to shine (even necessary for other melee classes to be useful).
Fun may imply balance, but it doesn't work the other way around. Pong may be perfectly balanced, but it get's boring because there isn't enough depth to it. I guess I meant to say that while balancing is important, preserving the depth that is already there should take priority.

You could make it so that melee classes can either tank Asura or can outplay it, like giving them an SP drain effect on an item or one of their skills. There's also Absorb spirits, Hide, Dispell, Safety wall, Traps, Spell breaker/Hitstun which offer some ideas to play around with. I just don't see how removing one build in favor of another would create more build variety and how that necessarily equals more fun.

Quote from: Suspension on Sep 17, 2016, 08:36 PM
- Grinding and Ragnarok online are linked. Removing it is not precissely a light change.
- Achievements and gratification by invested effort.
- It would be hard to remove the grinding aspect of the game with a solution that doesn't look like a poor high rate private server choice.
Grinding is not that bad if kept to a minimum. I consider it bad when grinding takes just too much time compared to other tasks.
Good points. But I wouldn't exactly call 2x exp rates a minimum of grinding.. Unless you offered exp rewards from Battlegrounds, or significantly cranked up the Exp given by MvPs, or if you implement the higher level dungeons right away. Also, you can invest effort without making it feel like work. Hunting cards is so incredibly dull, especially when it's a mob that provides zero challenge to you. Same with farming zeny/supplies. The fact that they are mostly solo activities makes it even more dull. If I were you I would try to make sure that farming in a party is ALWAYS superior to farming alone, and that it is very easy to get into right from the start. Suddenly it won't feel like such a grind anymore, and you've strengthened social bonds which (hopefully) makes people less likely to leave.

Suspension

#10
I really like discussing these topics, great to see this.

Quote from: snowblind on Sep 18, 2016, 09:01 AM
Fun may imply balance, but it doesn't work the other way around. Pong may be perfectly balanced, but it get's boring because there isn't enough depth to it. I guess I meant to say that while balancing is important, preserving the depth that is already there should take priority.

You could make it so that melee classes can either tank Asura or can outplay it, like giving them an SP drain effect on an item or one of their skills. There's also Absorb spirits, Hide, Dispell, Safety wall, Traps, Spell breaker/Hitstun which offer some ideas to play around with. I just don't see how removing one build in favor of another would create more build variety and how that necessarily equals more fun.
Balance implies fun in this case because it creates diversity, different kind of scenarios and uncertainty about the opposite player's build and skills is fun, imo. The pong example is bad in this case because it has zero diversity, while this change in particular estimulates the pressence of other melee/damage dealer jobs in the woe scene.

I'm tired of current classic servers because they're just too predictable: I see a Monk, he's gonna try asura me. I see a Sage, he's gonna dispell me. I see a Hunter, just laying traps. I see no Rogue, no Assassin, no Alchemist, they're useless. There's no depth.

Even so, this change doesn't remove the Asura build. In fact there's no Asura build, it's just a skill. The so called Asura build is what was called spirit build (fast cast times for TSS, OI and of course Asura). Every Monk will be able to use Asura, just not that often. Here's my arguments for this change:
- It's an ultimate skill by design. Gravity just f*** up and let it be as spammable as you can as long as you have SP items.
- It's overpowered. In the WoE scene is the only physical skill that matters. Every other physical skill is shadowed by it.
So if you have a 20 ppl guild, you would do more with 5 Asura Monks than with 3 assassins, 2 Rogues, 2 Blacksmith, 3 Alchemist and 2 Combo Monks. Who would like to go the Combo, the crit or the Spirit way when you can have Snap and throw Asura every ten seconds? Which guildmaster would like to have an assassin that deals 800 damage per sonic blow instead of an asura monk who can 1 hit KO almost every class in the same span time? This change really improves diversity overall.

Absorb spirits, Hide, Dispell, Safety wall, Traps, Spell breaker/Hitstun, etc also applies to others offensive skills as well, and again, it also applies to Asura in this case, just not that often.

Quote from: snowblind on Sep 18, 2016, 09:01 AM
Good points. But I wouldn't exactly call 2x exp rates a minimum of grinding.. Unless you offered exp rewards from Battlegrounds, or significantly cranked up the Exp given by MvPs, or if you implement the higher level dungeons right away. Also, you can invest effort without making it feel like work. Hunting cards is so incredibly dull, especially when it's a mob that provides zero challenge to you. Same with farming zeny/supplies. The fact that they are mostly solo activities makes it even more dull. If I were you I would try to make sure that farming in a party is ALWAYS superior to farming alone, and that it is very easy to get into right from the start. Suddenly it won't feel like such a grind anymore, and you've strengthened social bonds which (hopefully) makes people less likely to leave.

In this case, by grinding I mean getting items/cards, but you talk about experience rates. For me, leveling up and seeing my character evolving and becoming more porwerful is fun.
Quote from: exii on Jun 27, 2015, 06:07 AM
If you think casting quag is a good idea you or your guild heavily failed to create a viable guild rost.

snowblind

Oh glob this became really long, hope you like pointless discussions as much as I do.

Quote from: Suspension on Sep 18, 2016, 10:14 AM
Balance implies fun in this case because it creates diversity, different kind of scenarios and uncertainty about the opposite player's build and skills is fun, imo. The pong example is bad in this case because it has zero diversity, while this change in particular estimulates the pressence of other melee/damage dealer jobs in the woe scene.

I'm tired of current classic servers because they're just too predictable: I see a Monk, he's gonna try asura me. I see a Sage, he's gonna dispell me. I see a Hunter, just laying traps. I see no Rogue, no Assassin, no Alchemist, they're useless. There's no depth.
Imo, depth comes from an opportunity for counterplay. Maybe it's possible to create build diversity in such a way that you need to actively try to figure out an opponent's build and react accordingly. But that doesn't really happen in vanilla RO, so it would require drastic rather than light changes. That's why I'd prefer to give every class unlimited skill points, for a start - more opportunities to adapt instead of using only a single skill which your build dictates.

If you're talking about woe, then I guess you're thinking about roster diversity. To be honest, WoE is a lost cause for me because there is always so little room for adapting in the middle of a fight. Your changes might allow more classes into WoE, but imo it comes at too great a cost. Nobody likes to get nerfed.

Quote from: Suspension on Sep 18, 2016, 10:14 AM
Even so, this change doesn't remove the Asura build. In fact there's no Asura build, it's just a skill. The so called Asura build is what was called spirit build (fast cast times for TSS, OI and of course Asura). Every Monk will be able to use Asura, just not that often. Here's my arguments for this change:
- It's an ultimate skill by design. Gravity just f*** up and let it be as spammable as you can as long as you have SP items.
- It's overpowered. In the WoE scene is the only physical skill that matters. Every other physical skill is shadowed by it.
So if you have a 20 ppl guild, you would do more with 5 Asura Monks than with 3 assassins, 2 Rogues, 2 Blacksmith, 3 Alchemist and 2 Combo Monks. Who would like to go the Combo, the crit or the Spirit way when you can have Snap and throw Asura every ten seconds? Which guildmaster would like to have an assassin that deals 800 damage per sonic blow instead of an asura monk who can 1 hit KO almost every class in the same span time? This change really improves diversity overall.

Absorb spirits, Hide, Dispell, Safety wall, Traps, Spell breaker/Hitstun, etc also applies to others offensive skills as well, and again, it also applies to Asura in this case, just not that often.
Yea, I was around long enough to recognize the term spirit monk. =D
Asura was an ultimate skill in the past because you didn't want to spend tons of resources unless your guild was botting or something. And it was probably hard to level, like most WoE builds. But now, it pretty much is just an asura build, and some things need to change to keep things interesting.

I think I understand your intention at this point, and I've told you why I feel that nerfs are undesirable. So I'm just going to throw some ideas around. Note that I haven't actually played in a nontrans setting, although I would like to. My perspective mainly comes from a few thousand trans BG matches and watching pretrans woe videos from different servers. Also I've been BG'ing as a monk recently cuz I was too lazy to level. But eh.. here you go:

I agree that asura overshadows every other melee class. Not sure about knights, I guess it depends on the server settings. If the goal is to create more diverse interactions during combat, but without directly nerfing anyone, my first idea would be to significantly reduce heal from potions. As much as is necessary for a crit/grimtooth assassin or a double strafing hunter to get some kills. Heal, sanctuary and potion pitcher immediately become viable. The first problem would be that bowling bash would overpower other forms of DPS. I would try to balance the damage output of each class by carefully selecting the available weapons and items. BG weapons, stat foods, new equipment, etc.. This wouldn't exactly be a pure classic server. Ofcourse you could simply change the skill formulas, but I'd rather try to avoid that. I think it's better to have a custom item that increase damage on Acid Terror than to mess with the skill settings everyone is familiar with. But either way works.

Actually, I've just read the rest of your skill changes and I quite like them, apart from Asura. With lowered potion recovery and better DPS, there is already a good reason to have DDs other than monks in your guild roster: They can deal damage continuously, rack up kills more quickly and apply pressure in a way that an Asura monk cannot. Monks are easily disabled and take a while to recharge. This conflicts with the lowered cast time on call spirit, so I'd probably remove this buff but let Finger offensive only consume one sphere. Monks are also the only melee class that has to deal with cast times, which is another unique weakness that could be more pronounced. If you increase overall Aspd of melee hitters, a Monk will never be able to cast an Asura on them without getting interrupted. Unless they were caught off guard or the monk has devotion, which again creates some interesting counterplay. Okay, that's assuming a less organized and smaller scale BG setting. Overall it takes less changes to make every class viable in BG than to make them viable on a WoE guild roster. But for pretrans, I think it's doable.

I like the Dazzler change, it gives Blacksmiths a place to be. I also like the crusader buffs, venom splasher, grimtooth, backstab, matk on refinements.. hmm not sure about critical hits on skills. It's kind of an assassin thing, in the past it put them in the role of taking down tanks without consuming expensive SP pots. I feel like you could build on that. Although I like that it gives every physical hitter a bit of build diversity with only a small change. Maybe you could further increase critical damage on Katar Mastery.

About the traps.. What's the benefit of moving them? To create tighter clusters?

Okay now I'm really getting carried away but here's another idea: Remove green potions and other similar recovery items, or instead of being an instant recovery, make them work 3 seconds after you use them. Small change, but Poison and Silence status instantly become viable.


And finally..
Quote from: Suspension on Sep 18, 2016, 10:14 AM
In this case, by grinding I mean getting items/cards, but you talk about experience rates. For me, leveling up and seeing my character evolving and becoming more porwerful is fun.
At lv 95 or so, you've basically hit a plateau when it comes to character strength. After that it becomes a grind. Some players obviously enjoy that, but has there ever been a pretrans server which didn't die because players got bored at the end? I really think you need some interesting endgame content and not rely so much on prolonging the early stages. Endgame equipment in RO is pretty underwhelming and uninteresting as well outside of pvp. Not just in pretrans but also in trans episodes. So there is no way to boost your character in an impactful way once you've got to a high level. I feel that this is the main drawback of "close-to-official" or "classic" servers. Players with that preference tend to get bored quickly, unless they are somehow lured into a trap of custom content and get addicted to it.

I might try a server like this. But you'd have to give me an alternative to grinding mobs all the time =p

Bue

#12
Quote from: Suspension on Sep 17, 2016, 10:05 AM
Someday I'll meet somebody who shares this view and can take care of everything while I develop it - at least I can dream.

Oh shit. Blinzer might just be the guy you have been dreaming for, waiting for, and hoping for all this time.

DarkDevine

#13
Quote from: Blinzer on Sep 18, 2016, 11:06 PM
Bunch of kiddo crap

Was this sarcasm? Please put /sarcasm tags in there, people could actually think you mean it.
Maybe rather work on implementing all Weapon sprites, it will only take a few days, won't it?!


Quote from: Suspension on Sep 18, 2016, 06:33 AM
Yeah, changing skill formulas is so similar to revamping the entire game as Renewal did, right?

Go think for a second why people disliked renewal. Because they have to search for new farming spots? No.
It's because it's simply not what they used to have.


You want to change the wrong things. Sure, you get 20 interested players that test all your s*** for 2 weeks and then they leave, because they actually wanted to play RO, not some weird donkey bastard kid of RO.
People built up knowledge on RO over a decade, fought thousands of PvP and GvG fights with the same skills over and over again.
Why do you think people want new content or different skills. RO has one of the most excessive content amounts of any MMORPG out there (Take out WoW, it's simply not comparable), heck, most people don't even know about it. Why would they, their warper brings them to every stage of every dungeon and every field, no need to walk anywhere.

You don't even realize most people don't even know what content RO already has. Through private servers, only a few people ever finished things like the New World quests, the only reason people ever visited Manuk and Splendide is because the monsters give good EXP, not because they wanted to explore the content it has to offer (Given that much of the content is going into Third Class direction)

Warpers, Skill- and Stat-Resetters, Platinum Skill NPCs, hey, go and kill more priests with Buffers, go and kill more Alchemists and Blacksmiths with awesome Shopping Malls, go and restrict Merchants by placing special vend zones in towns and prevent any kind of last-minute supply of dead merchants in dungeons.



Quote from: Suspension on Sep 17, 2016, 10:05 AM
Stop making a monk just asura everybody in woe

Did you once, in your whole life, play something different than Super High Rates?
It's pretty easy to counter monks, in a multitude of ways. Heck, a f*** Thief can counter Asura Strike by Hiding. But of course, Max-Level 255, Max-Stats 200, Insta-Cast at 130, go get bashed by One Hit Asura Strike (and go try it on a Pala with Reflect build!).

Why do you think the SP reg is disabled for 5 minutes and all SP are drained by Asura Strike? I can tell you: So that you have to implement Yggdrasil Berries in your stores and move drop rates up greatly, as farming is annoying, right? Having a s*** of Grape Juice available for almost free also helps, really!


Quote from: Suspension on Sep 18, 2016, 10:14 AM
I'm tired of current classic servers because they're just too predictable: I see a Monk, he's gonna try asura me. I see a Sage, he's gonna dispell me. I see a Hunter, just laying traps. I see no Rogue, no Assassin, no Alchemist, they're useless. There's no depth.

I've seen pretty well working Combo Monk builds, Monks can also be used pretty well as tanks and lurers. Sage has LP and Volcano/Deluge/Gale, Hunter Arrow Shoer, DS, Detect, Backstab or Strip Rogue, Soul Link SB Assassin, FCP Alchemists are a must have in GvG.

Dude, do you even play RO?
Go and ask Asura-Monk on low-rates how long they have to farm in a week to stock up on enough SP items to last for a whole WoE.



RO is dead. What killed it?
It's easy to say Gravity killed it.
Then again Gravity made this game in a special way and the way it worked was the reason why people stuck to it for so long, millions of people playing it world-wide. Today they sit there and say "I miss RO. But what is a good server? Where can you play without losing your s*** after 2 weeks or getting ganged by players with GM-granted items? Who can we trust?".

Why did Low-Rates without any extras have up to 5.000 players and your mid- and high rates struggled at a maximum of like 600. Ever thought about it?


I suggest you go and play official servers for a bit and then open your mouth regarding what RO lacks and how to improve RO. It feels like you never played it at all or simply roamed from Mid-Rate to High-Rate thinking you're _playing_ RO.




Now, I don't want to look like I got all the answers, but I'll tell you what RO lacks.
RO is old, the technology is poor. You walk a straight line and it resets back 4 fields. You change directions and it walks in the other direction. You spawn in the game and have no idea where to go. You attack your first poring, die and don't learn that you have to put stat-points and equip your equipment without actually reading the NPC texts (Who the f*** reads that). A Blacksmith can forge anything, but not Katars or Bows. You use Double Strafe, but it keeps auto-hitting, you have to walk a cell or e.g. use First Aid to reset the ASPD-Delay to actually trigger your skill. You start a quest, it told you to go to some NPC in the third window, talking to it again he's telling you "What's up?".

Another problem I already mentioned above: Who to trust?
Most people are simply in it for money. How to find out if a server is worth it?
Download rA/Herc, go to Script Section, download the first page completely, throw them in the NPC folder, spit on it, set up the donation page (Everything else is WIP of course) and then go to RMS and post that you're making a huge, awesome beta in the shoutbox and your server is different from any. other. server out there.


There's even a simple solution to that: Love.

Sounds weird, but you simply have to invest love into the game.
Play it like it's supposed to be and improve it at points that make people smile on their faces, not have a greedy grin.

Start embracing RO. Go through the NPC sprites and realize what level of detail Gravity invested into them. Check out the new content and watch how Gravity still didn't lose the love for this game (Only the right path, as they'd really want to be like Blizzard lol).

The content is there and even the balance is there. Start working on the smaller things. Make every NPC have a proper, colored name. Improve NPC messages to actually state useful stuff. Replace Training Grounds with a proper tutorial that teaches you how to equip and use stuff. Give the player useful guides and hints. Use the new Renewal client features like navigation, quest icons and links (ITEMLINK, URL, NAVI, ever heard of it?). Fix bugs. Not only those that you implemented, but also those that have always been there. Shine more light on already existing features, give it quest icons and let people be navigated through the vast content of RO.


People: It's the small things. The details.

Stop wanting to make RO not RO anymore.

TotalRO - 10x/10x

snowblind

Funny responses. Keep going guys, RMS still has excellent entertainment value thanks to you.  /heh

One guy thinks he is a god for developing his own game based on copying years of work from both open source and closed source. But it's not very popular. The other guy thinks official stuff only is the way to go, when clearly it hasn't been working out ever since Renewal came along.

Then this third guy comes along and wants to change things up but is a little more realistic about it. And somehow it makes them furious. I have yet to understand how a human mind can work like that.