You may remember my rant about how to make a private server appealing to players which was, in fact, my first post here. But you probably don't. So you really don't know what you're getting into now, 'cause here goes another one!
There's as much private servers as ever, and just like always most of them suck majorly. One of the many reasons are some of the customs - people just don't seem to realize how many of them affect the game. So here's a list of customs with descriptions and my Professional Advice on whether to implement them or not. Yes, the list is purely subjective and yes, you really are wasting your time reading it. Also note that this concerns low rates only, high rates have much bigger problems than this anyway. So without further ado, in official RMS order:
Healer
Level: Low
Description: A dude who stands in the cities and heals you for free or for zeny or for clicking five times on worthless dialogue. Just think about Asura monks zapping in and out between MVPs and these SP tanks. Also makes death a little better, you just pump up and go at it again. But all in all his effect on the game is rather minimal, though this raises a question why have him in the first place then?
Skill/Stat Resetter
Level: Medium
Description: I am told these are for people who experience sudden seizures when putting in stat/skill points which causes them to spread them all over their characters randomly in blind fury. I'm not buying that at all though, and I still say they're a tool to use leveling-efficient build to get to 99 and then to switch to PvP/WoE killing machine build(or a pure forger/brewer). So that's pretty much totally lame thing to do as many PvP/WoE builds are hard to level up because they're PvP/WoE and that's how it should be dammit.
Job Changer
Level: Low
Description: You talk to this guy and he voodoos you into another class. No need to wander around dangerous(at that level) maps to gather items for quests and stuff. Purely class-dependant. Most first jobs have it short and easy, most second jobs have it long and hard, Ninjas have it pretty much impossible. But seriously, are you really in such a hurry?
Platinum Skill NPC
Level: Medium
Description: A man-fairy waves his wan...d around you and paf, you have all quest skills for your job. Same as Job Changer really, gets slightly higher rating as the quest skills are usually harder to do and can be quite powerful(Moving HP rec, Sonic Acc, etc.).
Town Warper:
Level: Low
Desciption: A blue chick with a book stands and warps you to other cities for free. Probably an example of ultimate laziness, Kafra does same f*** thing and it's already in the game. And you get Kafra points. Money? It's like 500-1000z, it's not an issue at official rates, much less on yours.
Dungeon Warper:
Level: Medium
Description: A blue chick with a book stands and warps you to dungeons. It's half as bad if she warps you to the entrance, but there are some who shamelessly warp you to various levels too - these get High rating. Ugh, where do I start? Death is already a joke at private servers due to higher rates, but at least the fact that you need to walk all the way back to your leveling spot makes it somewhat unpleasant. This and Healer means you can just forget about pots alltogether and go crazy. It also opens up some stupid power-leveling techniques like Archers going to Thor and killing Kasas dying 15 times in the process, and it makes many items easier to get, etc. etc. It's a bad custom and you should feel bad.
MVP Arena
Level: Zero
Description: You can do it two ways, either you don't have it and dumb people will spawn MVPs in well thought-out places like Prontera S and W or on top of others creating massive amounts of grief or you have an MVP arena and all other maps are flagged for no DB/BB. If you do make an MVP arena though, make a goddamn proper MVP arena and not just de-flag Izlude FFS.
That's all customs RMS lists. But there's more:
Dual Clienting
Level: Don't ever do it
Description: Allows people to run two clients on your server. Absolutely s*** custom, means everyone runs around with a pet slave high priest(and occassionally SL) buffed through the roof. Makes leveling ten times as easy, makes Priests a worthless class, makes parties a joke, and is generally an example of total asshattery.
Card Remover
Level: High
Description: Removes cards from carded items, usually for zeny. If you have one, cards will quickly accumulate on your server, lose all value, and your economy will go down with a whimper. Your choice.
Alchemist Item Seller
Level: Medium
Descriprion: Shop with all the items Alchemists need to make their killer potions. Make one and Alchemist population will increase by 847%.
Actually...
n Item Seller
Level: Medium
Description: Shop with all the items n need to make their killer x. Make one and n population will increase by 847%.
Rates
Level: Varies
Description: lol wut, rates are a custom now? They are. Everyone knows RO has 1/1/1 rates, but not everyone realizes that RO has 1:1:1 rates. What do I mean? Your 5/5/3 is a pretty big custom which means players will have higher level, but they'll be twice as poor as they should be*. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your life philosophy, but seriously, next time you change drops just so one MVP won't have something at 100%, punch yourself in the face.
Stylist(and five billion palettes)
Level: Zero
Description: The original RO dye quest is a joke and everyone looking the same is dumb. So get a Stylist. Dyestuffs are still needed in some of hat making quests so this doesn't really break anything.
Multi Level-Up
Level: Low
Description: Allows you to gain several levels at once. Remember my comment about Archers, Kasas and power-leveling? This is a big part of what makes it possible. So you can just disable it. If anyone complains, call him/her a whiner because seriously, having to kill two more monsters and complaining about it is just whining.
Kafra Shop
Level: Medium
Desctiption: Whether you simply sell them for money like RO does(Raise the level to High then, and jump from a high building into a fire next) or give them away for "Event points" or whatever, the fact is almost all of these items are ridiculously broken. So either skip them all alltogether like most pservers do, or if you really really want them include them as castle/high level MVP drops for everyone to get.
Alternate Headgear
Level: Low
Description: Headger which looks differently than it actually is, some servers include it as an aesthetic/donation thing. Problem is, headgear is the only part of enemy equipment you can see and so I reckon it matters a bit in PvP/WoE. Example? If I see a Valk helm, I'm can be pretty sure it's a set and that I shouldn't bother divesting. Now if that Valk helm looks like a Blue Ribbon, I can go OMGWTFBBQ, It's not that big of a deal though.
* - It's actually much more complicated than this as the max is always 100% so they don't scale well linearily but whatever.
