My Ideal Ragnarok Server

Alex# · Dec 18, 2014, 01:06 PM

Hello everyone.

I'm Alex and I'm here to talk about my passion on Ragnarok and my thoughts on playing servers or creating my own.
My probably only disclaimer is: There will probably be a good amount of english errors, be it grammar or coherence errors.
Disclaimer made, I'll go on.

So, I love Ragnarok. I played this game a big lot and for 6 years until now I'm quite unhappy with big aspects of 1. mainly official servers 2.most of private servers. Since I discovered myself unhappy with these, I wanted to make my own server but I have always been afraid of one thing: My server will be illegal. So, if my server goes real big and surpass the official ones - I dream, I know, but I'll move on - I'll have to shut it down and pay a big "fee" or go to jail or lose a lot of money...

Basically, my unhappiness about Ragnarok Online Servers are:

1. Bots.
2. Cash

1. About Bots, that's the thing: Bots ruin the experience of effort-reward of the bot's user bot, most importantly, it ruins the community experience, be it WoE or PvP or MvP or Market Prices or leveling up or drop-hunting...

Official servers are infested by bots. period. Their managers "cannot" or don't want to eliminate permanently the bots, which could be achieved by captcha or other "humanity checkings".

Private servers have bots too, but my biggest concern is about cash on them, and that's the next topic.

2. Ok, Cash now. I believe cash is bad for the effort-reward experience too. My ideal server format is Pay-to-Play, so you pay to the server's owner(s) to play the game, quite simple. You don't pay to have something that others in the server don't have or, even if others have, pay more to have more than them. I don't like this idea.

That said, no Ragnarok Online Server is Pay-to-Play only. None. Zero. Nor Official nor private. No way. Does not happen. No occurrences. Nope. Nah. Zilch.

Ok, no such server exists right? SO how can I solve this problem? Well, I can't. I cannot create a Pay-to-Play-only private server (or can I?? help me). Be it because no one will play(?) or because it will be "even more illegal" (?) because I'll actually charge people to play in my server of a game that is a intellectual property that I do not own. (?)

Be welcome to talk about anything I brought here or related to it. And please, if you can, help me about the pay-to-play-only issue. There's a private server like that? There's an actual official server like that? Can I make a server like that? How? What do you think about it? You like it? Why? No? Why? Thank you all.

EDIT: I thought about the old Trial Mode too. I thought about 30 days free (instead of old 7) and then pay-2-play. Maybe 7 days. There's a lot of thought to put into it but there's no point if I can't even make a Pay-to-Play server.

Playtester · Dec 18, 2014, 02:06 PM

There are plenty of servers existing already that neither have bots nor overpowered donation gears. Might as well play on them if you are afraid of making your own one being illegal.

Triper · Dec 18, 2014, 03:16 PM

It happened in the past and I remember one friend to show me one of those servers where you had to pay 20-30 bucks monthly to play that was sort of decent [200ish players] but nowadays it hardly works since almost nobody wants to pay monthly subscriptions unless is something that is a sure thing to be always alive in the omg, awesome! status like WoW servers [no, I don't play it, it's not my style of game but I understand why people pay and play it, it has a lot of stuff to do with friends] or PS+, for example.

The way used nowadays@RO is to add the "VIP" status - you pay monthly a small amount and you get one month of some "cool" bonus instead of monthly payments. If someone wants to Pay2Play, they will go that route.

Personally, I don't like the name used, makes it look like you're better than the rest and that's wrong, Supporter would be a better word, specially without exclusive content.

Alex# · Dec 18, 2014, 04:32 PM

Quote from: Triper on Dec 18, 2014, 03:16 PM
It happened in the past and I remember one friend to show me one of those servers where you had to pay 20-30 bucks monthly to play that was sort of decent [200ish players] but nowadays it hardly works since almost nobody wants to pay monthly subscriptions unless is something that is a sure thing to be always alive in the omg, awesome! status like WoW servers [no, I don't play it, it's not my style of game but I understand why people pay and play it, it has a lot of stuff to do with friends] or PS+, for example.

The way used nowadays@RO is to add the "VIP" status - you pay monthly a small amount and you get one month of some "cool" bonus instead of monthly payments. If someone wants to Pay2Play, they will go that route.

Personally, I don't like the name used, makes it look like you're better than the rest and that's wrong, Supporter would be a better word, specially without exclusive content.

Yeah, your "Supporter" idea really suits me! I thought a bit about it earlier: A private server without any Cash Shop but with the "Suporter" status, that you can adquire for a month by paying an amount of money like 5$ or 10$ or 15$ or more or less I don't know yet. I want to make a low-rate server, my first thought is 1x/1x/x1 and fully updated, renewal etc. Mainly about the damage formula, I don't know which official servers use the "low-damage" ones, but that's what I want for my server.

That gets me thinking about the Supporter title. What can the Supporter have that one who plays regularly and can afford paying the Supporter Title cost will want and will pay? I don't like the idea of limiting(?) standard in-game features. Maybe a good idea would be limiting the server "exclusive" features for Supporters only. For example:

I don't know about others but in bRO, one can buy, for ROPS, a ticket to change it's clothes' colors. Apart from the original cloth colors(palette?), each class has two more. Maybe it would be nice to have a NPC that can show you the two different palettes of your class and evolutions and can show the palettes of all classes as well but can only change the palette if you are a Supporter. - I liked that name a lot, thank you.

Another thing I like is the Broadcasting System - the message one can send to everyone in the server. I would like a NPC that you can input your broadcast in a queue and the NPC broadcasts the first message of the queue every 30 secs or 1 min, for example. One account would only be able to broadcast once every 30mins, 1 hour, 1 day, I don't know, and one can only broadcast if it's a Supporter.

Just initial thoughts, I'll keep thinking...

Thanks for your feedback and please, everyone, give us your thoughts!

EDIT: A thought: I don't like Job Changer. I think it's just not a good feature. It's a shortcut, that's all.

Nano · Dec 18, 2014, 04:45 PM

Pay to Play?

Renewal?

No thanks.

Alex# · Dec 18, 2014, 05:29 PM

Quote from: Nano on Dec 18, 2014, 04:45 PM
Pay to Play?

Renewal?

No thanks.

It will not actually be Pay to Play, but a nice part of the server will require the Supporter Title, so it's like a "VIP" that a lot of servers adopt, but without anything that's directly better than when you don't play, but with some nice features. Some people will not want or be able to be Supporters, but their experience won't be cut out a big lot. On the other side, some people will enjoy the server and appreciate the features that the Supporter Title offers and, being able to pay for it, will pay. I believe it's a better system than the Cash system in a lot of ways.

About the Renewal, some standard features of it can be disabled or changed in benefit of the game experience like jRO does (?).

Thanks for your post, it got me thinking about those aspects.

Bue · Dec 18, 2014, 05:59 PM

Sounds like you have more passion than sense.

Ever heard of Silkroad online?

Yeah.

Alex# · Dec 18, 2014, 06:45 PM

Quote from: Bue on Dec 18, 2014, 05:59 PM
Sounds like you have more passion than sense.

Ever heard of Silkroad online?

Yeah.

Sense? Enlighten me, please, then.

Bue · Dec 18, 2014, 07:23 PM

Sure thing, Alex#.

You see.

A long time ago, RO was pay-to-play.

And Gravity will not ban paying customers.

The end.

Rider · Jan 31, 2015, 01:46 PM

There are several reasons why P2P wont work and one of the major reason is the option of have other alternatives. There are hundreds of servers out there so why would anyone want to pay to play on a privately owned server? P2P might work if and only if you are able to provide content no other RO server ever managed to accomplish and would be the most balanced gameplay ever. But even still don't expect a huge player count.

End of the day, it's Ragnarok and you're not making something new here. It's been around 12 years since eAthena and the community have grown used to private servers so much that the majority resent servers that are run for money with a passion, not because they don't want to spend their money but because they have experienced enough with good server closing down due to greedy admins.