DarksideRO - experience of an old DarkRO player

Started by expletive773, Sep 09, 2017, 04:44 PM

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expletive773

Does anyone even read these reviews?

DarksideRO - a server based on DarkRO, with average of more than 1,000 players and more than 1,200 players at WoE times.

This is my first review here, so do forgive me if it comes out too one-sided. Was typing on the Review section but it only gave me 500 characters, so here we are.

The server is based on DarkRO. Like DarkRO, DarksideRO has Sith and Jedi classes, but they have different sprites and skill icons (actually it looks much better than their DarkRO counterparts if you ask me), however they're stuck with just one sprite color (for now, maybe).


Server Stability and Availability - has occasional crashes, maybe 2 - 3 times a week but it's usually up again 10 - 15 minutes later. There is noticeable rubber-banding lag as well, even outside of WoE times (and is actually worse at WoE times, but they're now trying to find the cause as I type this review). Might be related to them broken undersea cables so you might have to take this with a grain of salt.


Community Friendliness and Eventfulness - community friendliness, your mileage may vary. Depends on who you bump with first, really. Events happen alot, almost every two days (not to mention the epic once-every-month 1v1 events). However, some event rewards might alter the economy a bit (like just how much Credits were given on Credit Shower events, market prices went up to compensate for them).

There are also plenty of automated Battlegrounds events, five times per day that allows you to lose some steam (something that DarkRO severely lacks, of which makes some players cranky and occasionally raids player spots). The rewards are also good, you are given badges that you can use to buy more than the amount of Restorative Items you have used in battle, so there should be no AFK players just waiting to get their badges so they can sell them (there's also an auto-AFK kicking system, along with a manual AFK Reporting system that you can use to kick some deadbeats).

Also present are events that happen every 20 minutes, these events range from automated Dice Events, Disguise Events, Poring Catcher, Cluckers and plenty of Level 1 Novice-exclusive Events.


Game Master Friendliness, Availability and Helpfulness - helpers are mostly online, actually almost 24/7 because they have helpers with varying time zones. They helped alot during my annoying questions and answered promptly, not sure up to when they can keep this up.


Guild Competition - there are only about two castles open every WoE session, and that already makes it hard for fledgling guilds to even capture one castle. But that's not the worst part, a few of the strongest guilds in the game (of which shall not be named) have merged an alliance, basically monopolizing everything.


Gameplay

Now this is where I have more than a few gripes with, after coming from DarkRO.

Class Balancing - they tried their best to implement the balances done from DarkRO, with some tweaks here and there to make the balancing a bit different from DarkRO.

However, it's incomplete. Here are some examples;

Champion Blade Stop still allows both the Champion and the Target to get hit by other players, resulting in alot of ganking situations, not to mention that they retained the 60 second skill duration which is just a major slap to the face.
(In DarkRO, it only lasted for about 7 seconds and it made the Champion and the Target invulnerable to other players whilst this is in effect)

Assassin Cross and Stalker Back Slide has no skill cooldown, which basically means they can teleport out of battle whenever they want in PVP areas.
(In DarkRO, it has a 0.5 - 1 second skill delay to avoid abuse)

Bard and Gypsy Tarot Card of Fate still cannot be blocked by a GTB card, it blocks only the Coma effect instead of the entire skill.

So, you need a Shield to compound the GTB card on, and you need a GTB to block the Coma effect a Tarot gives you, right?

OH WAIT, TAROT CAN BREAK SHIELDS AS WELL (and remember, this goes through GTB).

GREAT.



Donation and Item Balancing

Donators will always have the upper-hand in servers that accept donations, this will never change. The question is, how much is the advantage Donators have over Non-Donators in DarksideRO?

In DarkRO, there was only the Dragon Wings, of which gives +5 All Stats and 10% added DemiHuman damage and a Valkyrie Helm that reduces 10% received DemiHuman damage. They tweaked this in DarksideRO, making three different variants of it with varying colors, a Black variant, a Red variant and a new Light-Blue variant.

The Stats these wings give are slightly obscene (not to mention that they retain their 10% received DemiHuman damage reduction), if you pair it's similar colored Valkyrie Helm with the colored Dragon Wings, they give +30 of their respective Stats (+30 STR for Black, +30 DEX for Red and +30 INT for Light-Blue). This basically means that donators have an extra 30 stat points in either STR, DEX or INT (Sure, you can obtain these items as well but you're gonna have to sink some serious time in the game to get these).


But the worst part is how they handled the LHZ Boss Cards.

LHZ Boss Cards in DarksideRO aren't much different from DarkRO. However, since you may have noticed from the way that the Dragon Wings have been changed to give additional stats is that they built the server around the fact that you do not need these LHZ Boss Cards to be effective in PVP (with some common card effects changed to give additional damage to specific skills like Double Strafe using a Bow Guardian Card).

Any class can kill without the EDP factor an Assassin Cross Card gives, and that's great.


But, THE CARDS ARE STILL AVAILABLE IN-GAME WITH ACTUAL WORKING EFFECTS (also of which are untradable to other players as of now).

Basically there are these "chosen" ones that have got these godly and untradable cards killing everyone with two Bowling Bashes, or some asshats wreaking havoc with their Whitesmith cards, unfairly destroying everyone's items in Battlegrounds (where you have no way to FCP unless you have a creator present, or a much-less-desirable dummy buffer of which also takes one slot on your Battlegrounds team).

Seriously, WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST DISABLE THEM?  /wah


In Summary - the server is indeed the best server I've played yet (maybe because it's still new). But it's not balanced to the same level as of DarkRO yet, and maybe never will. It will probably balance itself in different ways, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE JUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE LHZ BOSS CARDS!

Home Page: http://panel.darkside-ro.com/
Forums: http://darkside-ro.com/forum/

RistrettoJoe

I stopped playing at this server when they added Asprika when people, including me, were grinding Nidhoggrs Garb (was the best Garment) in game. Basically, I saw it as a pay to win update. Other "BASIC & necessary" items was already hard to get. Or atleast u gotta spend so much time grinding which I don't have the luxury of. I was eager to play and grind for the "basic & necessary" equips but after that update, I tagged the server as PAY TO WIN

Jedi Doge

Quote from: expletive773 on Sep 09, 2017, 04:44 PM
Does anyone even read these reviews?

DarksideRO - a server based on DarkRO, with average of more than 1,000 players and more than 1,200 players at WoE times.

This is my first review here, so do forgive me if it comes out too one-sided. Was typing on the Review section but it only gave me 500 characters, so here we are.

The server is based on DarkRO. Like DarkRO, DarksideRO has Sith and Jedi classes, but they have different sprites and skill icons (actually it looks much better than their DarkRO counterparts if you ask me), however they're stuck with just one sprite color (for now, maybe).


Server Stability and Availability - has occasional crashes, maybe 2 - 3 times a week but it's usually up again 10 - 15 minutes later. There is noticeable rubber-banding lag as well, even outside of WoE times (and is actually worse at WoE times, but they're now trying to find the cause as I type this review). Might be related to them broken undersea cables so you might have to take this with a grain of salt.


Community Friendliness and Eventfulness - community friendliness, your mileage may vary. Depends on who you bump with first, really. Events happen alot, almost every two days (not to mention the epic once-every-month 1v1 events). However, some event rewards might alter the economy a bit (like just how much Credits were given on Credit Shower events, market prices went up to compensate for them).

There are also plenty of automated Battlegrounds events, five times per day that allows you to lose some steam (something that DarkRO severely lacks, of which makes some players cranky and occasionally raids player spots). The rewards are also good, you are given badges that you can use to buy more than the amount of Restorative Items you have used in battle, so there should be no AFK players just waiting to get their badges so they can sell them (there's also an auto-AFK kicking system, along with a manual AFK Reporting system that you can use to kick some deadbeats).

Also present are events that happen every 20 minutes, these events range from automated Dice Events, Disguise Events, Poring Catcher, Cluckers and plenty of Level 1 Novice-exclusive Events.


Game Master Friendliness, Availability and Helpfulness - helpers are mostly online, actually almost 24/7 because they have helpers with varying time zones. They helped alot during my annoying questions and answered promptly, not sure up to when they can keep this up.


Guild Competition - there are only about two castles open every WoE session, and that already makes it hard for fledgling guilds to even capture one castle. But that's not the worst part, a few of the strongest guilds in the game (of which shall not be named) have merged an alliance, basically monopolizing everything.


Gameplay

Now this is where I have more than a few gripes with, after coming from DarkRO.

Class Balancing - they tried their best to implement the balances done from DarkRO, with some tweaks here and there to make the balancing a bit different from DarkRO.

However, it's incomplete. Here are some examples;

Champion Blade Stop still allows both the Champion and the Target to get hit by other players, resulting in alot of ganking situations, not to mention that they retained the 60 second skill duration which is just a major slap to the face.
(In DarkRO, it only lasted for about 7 seconds and it made the Champion and the Target invulnerable to other players whilst this is in effect)

Assassin Cross and Stalker Back Slide has no skill cooldown, which basically means they can teleport out of battle whenever they want in PVP areas.
(In DarkRO, it has a 0.5 - 1 second skill delay to avoid abuse)

Bard and Gypsy Tarot Card of Fate still cannot be blocked by a GTB card, it blocks only the Coma effect instead of the entire skill.

So, you need a Shield to compound the GTB card on, and you need a GTB to block the Coma effect a Tarot gives you, right?

OH WAIT, TAROT CAN BREAK SHIELDS AS WELL (and remember, this goes through GTB).

GREAT.



Donation and Item Balancing

Donators will always have the upper-hand in servers that accept donations, this will never change. The question is, how much is the advantage Donators have over Non-Donators in DarksideRO?

In DarkRO, there was only the Dragon Wings, of which gives +5 All Stats and 10% added DemiHuman damage and a Valkyrie Helm that reduces 10% received DemiHuman damage. They tweaked this in DarksideRO, making three different variants of it with varying colors, a Black variant, a Red variant and a new Light-Blue variant.

The Stats these wings give are slightly obscene (not to mention that they retain their 10% received DemiHuman damage reduction), if you pair it's similar colored Valkyrie Helm with the colored Dragon Wings, they give +30 of their respective Stats (+30 STR for Black, +30 DEX for Red and +30 INT for Light-Blue). This basically means that donators have an extra 30 stat points in either STR, DEX or INT (Sure, you can obtain these items as well but you're gonna have to sink some serious time in the game to get these).


But the worst part is how they handled the LHZ Boss Cards.

LHZ Boss Cards in DarksideRO aren't much different from DarkRO. However, since you may have noticed from the way that the Dragon Wings have been changed to give additional stats is that they built the server around the fact that you do not need these LHZ Boss Cards to be effective in PVP (with some common card effects changed to give additional damage to specific skills like Double Strafe using a Bow Guardian Card).

Any class can kill without the EDP factor an Assassin Cross Card gives, and that's great.


But, THE CARDS ARE STILL AVAILABLE IN-GAME WITH ACTUAL WORKING EFFECTS (also of which are untradable to other players as of now).

Basically there are these "chosen" ones that have got these godly and untradable cards killing everyone with two Bowling Bashes, or some asshats wreaking havoc with their Whitesmith cards, unfairly destroying everyone's items in Battlegrounds (where you have no way to FCP unless you have a creator present, or a much-less-desirable dummy buffer of which also takes one slot on your Battlegrounds team).

Seriously, WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST DISABLE THEM?  /wah


In Summary - the server is indeed the best server I've played yet (maybe because it's still new). But it's not balanced to the same level as of DarkRO yet, and maybe never will. It will probably balance itself in different ways, BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE JUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE LHZ BOSS CARDS!

Home Page: http://panel.darkside-ro.com/
Forums: http://darkside-ro.com/forum/

Thank you for your honest review. About the LHZ Boss cards, we noticed that as well. This is why we temporary make them untradable. But we are more looking into SinX Card rebalance, other LHZ Boss cards seems fine in the battlefield.

Jedi Doge

Quote from: RistrettoJoe on Sep 11, 2017, 08:25 PM
I stopped playing at this server when they added Asprika when people, including me, were grinding Nidhoggrs Garb (was the best Garment) in game. Basically, I saw it as a pay to win update. Other "BASIC & necessary" items was already hard to get. Or atleast u gotta spend so much time grinding which I don't have the luxury of. I was eager to play and grind for the "basic & necessary" equips but after that update, I tagged the server as PAY TO WIN

I am very sorry to disappoint you. But as of now, there are no complain about the Shadow Garb and Asprika. :)

expletive773

Quote from: Jedi Doge on Sep 11, 2017, 09:16 PM
Thank you for your honest review. About the LHZ Boss cards, we noticed that as well. This is why we temporary make them untradable. But we are more looking into SinX Card rebalance, other LHZ Boss cards seems fine in the battlefield.

Yes, the other cards are okay (even the Sniper card of which was changed to +200 HIT instead of that annoying Perfect Hit Rate, or maybe this is also subject to change?), but if some are still in the process of being balanced; shouldn't they be disabled until they are considered "fixed"?

Battlegrounds is a mess when one of those people joins them, they clean up entire teams by themselves. At WoE, I can see someone even using the Punching Bags to trigger his EDP and then immediately warp to WoE and basically turn everyone into meat fodder.

Getting portal deff'ed in WoE is bad enough, but it's worse if you don't even have a single second of pushing those hotkeys to your Fish Slices and Yggdrasil Berries to survive those damn EDP users.

RistrettoJoe

Quote from: Jedi Doge on Sep 11, 2017, 09:18 PM
I am very sorry to disappoint you. But as of now, there are no complain about the Shadow Garb and Asprika. :)

Good to know.

Your server is good nonetheless. Maybe I just don't have the time to play it or generally, anymore  /no1

MrSplashy

Well if you want to do PVP and WOE then you have to donate them. Though you can farm for weapons and armors but some maps aren't available and at the same time as a LK I need that particular armor/garment/accessory and yet it isn't available. Though I could farm at the Gold Room for 2 - 4 hours to get the money still you can get the equipments you need but as the OP said. The Donators will always have the upperhand no matter how hidden it is, they will always have the upperhand. /oni_light

expletive773

#7
Quote from: RistrettoJoe on Sep 11, 2017, 08:25 PM
I stopped playing at this server when they added Asprika when people, including me, were grinding Nidhoggrs Garb (was the best Garment) in game. Basically, I saw it as a pay to win update. Other "BASIC & necessary" items was already hard to get. Or atleast u gotta spend so much time grinding which I don't have the luxury of. I was eager to play and grind for the "basic & necessary" equips but after that update, I tagged the server as PAY TO WIN

They now basically added new "Dragonforce" weapons that are basically slight upgrades to Icarus weapons, this is kind of a typical MMORPG elongation move.

Whilst there's still no balancing nerfs to the classes a month later. Blade Stop still lasts 60 seconds of which just horribly waste your Restorative items when you get ganked, Body Relocation still has no permanent cast time and cast delay making Champions basically impossible to catch at WoE times, Acid Demonstration and Whitesmith Card still has 10% and 7% Weapon and Armor break chances, of which at 197 ASPD, is just plain broken and the obscene INT stat bonuses you get from Mystic Sets are still there, with the many percentage based MATK increase items a wizard can get, with my 300k HP, I die to two Jupitel Thunders (not sure if there was Mind Breaker present but this always happens on BG).

I also just found out that you can farm Arena Points so you can get self-cast Assumptio Scrolls that just basically rubs me the wrong way.

They're kinda too focused on adding bling and Costume Headgears without fixing the core imbalances first, but I guess this is also what I would do if I'm running a Donation-based server. I would also probably cater to my paying customers first, guess it's just typical.

Jedi Doge

#8
Suggestion is open in the forum so other players can comment their opinion about the suggestion you want for the server. Being the owner of a High-Rate server is hard, once you failed on your new update or let's say 20% of the community doesn't like the update you've made; your server is done. Especially when you have 70% asians in your server populations.

PS: There are a lot of players who doesn't even spend a single centavo in donation. But still, one of the richest in game.

Thanks for the comments tho, I appreciate every comment you posted in this thread. I'll keep all your comments and suggestions in my to do list.

tohruchan

#9
Quote from: MrSplashy on Sep 23, 2017, 09:11 AM
Well if you want to do PVP and WOE then you have to donate them. Though you can farm for weapons and armors but some maps aren't available and at the same time as a LK I need that particular armor/garment/accessory and yet it isn't available. Though I could farm at the Gold Room for 2 - 4 hours to get the money still you can get the equipments you need but as the OP said. The Donators will always have the upperhand no matter how hidden it is, they will always have the upperhand. /oni_light

Actually you don't need to donate to get the items you've wanted because you can obtain them through quest and I believe this will close the gap between donators and non donators. Gold room is not a path to become rich but a source of fastcash to buy basic items and supplies but if you want to get rich then I will recommend you to do the Token Quest.

QuoteChampion Blade Stop still allows both the Champion and the Target to get hit by other players, resulting in alot of ganking situations, not to mention that they retained the 60 second skill duration which is just a major slap to the face.
(In DarkRO, it only lasted for about 7 seconds and it made the Champion and the Target invulnerable to other players whilst this is in effect)

Blade Stop original effect last for 60 seconds there's no debate in that. Only Dark-RO customized their own effect of Blade Stop that last for 7 seconds with invulnerability and I believe there's a reason why the admin of Darkside-RO retain the original effect of the skill besides you can cast Asura Strike and run when you feel you're being ganked.

QuoteI stopped playing at this server when they added Asprika when people, including me, were grinding Nidhoggrs Garb (was the best Garment) in game. Basically, I saw it as a pay to win update. Other "BASIC & necessary" items was already hard to get. Or atleast u gotta spend so much time grinding which I don't have the luxury of. I was eager to play and grind for the "basic & necessary" equips but after that update, I tagged the server as PAY TO WIN

I know how hard to hunt Garb since it has only 5% drop but the update gives you and opportunity to get a Garb and Aesprika in an easy way. We should not look the updates in a negative way because at the end of the day you will realize that the GMS are doing their best to give you the best RO experience.

QuoteThey now basically added new "Dragonforce" weapons that are basically slight upgrades to Icarus weapons, this is kind of a typical MMORPG elongation move.

Its not an upgrade to Icarus weapons but new weapons to be looking forward to.
Are you looking for new home server for your guild then join our server.

MrSplashy

Quote from: tohruchan on Sep 27, 2017, 09:27 PM
Actually you don't need to donate to get the items you've wanted because you can obtain them through quest and I believe this will close the gap between donators and non donators. Gold room is not a path to become rich but a source of fastcash to buy basic items and supplies but if you want to get rich then I will recommend you to do the Token Quest.

Blade Stop original effect last for 60 seconds there's no debate in that. Only Dark-RO customized their own effect of Blade Stop that last for 7 seconds with invulnerability and I believe there's a reason why the admin of Darkside-RO retain the original effect of the skill besides you can cast Asura Strike and run when you feel you're being ganked.

I know how hard to hunt Garb since it has only 5% drop but the update gives you and opportunity to get a Garb and Aesprika in an easy way. We should not look the updates in a negative way because at the end of the day you will realize that the GMS are doing their best to give you the best RO experience.

Its not an upgrade to Icarus weapons but new weapons to be looking forward to.
Mhmm, that's true I can just go and do some token quests.

expletive773

#11
Quote from: tohruchan on Sep 27, 2017, 09:27 PM
Blade Stop original effect last for 60 seconds there's no debate in that. Only Dark-RO customized their own effect of Blade Stop that last for 7 seconds with invulnerability and I believe there's a reason why the admin of Darkside-RO retain the original effect of the skill besides you can cast Asura Strike and run when you feel you're being ganked.

I was stating this at the perspective of you fighting the Champion instead of being the actual Champion itself. If you get caught in it, it's just a massive waste of Restorative Items since you can still get hit and you can't do s*** about it for sixty entire seconds while his friend whacks you incessantly until your Berries and Fishes are gone.

PS: Also, you got a little brown on your nose there.  /heh

Quote from: Jedi Doge on Sep 27, 2017, 11:08 AM
Suggestion is open in the forum so other players can comment their opinion about the suggestion you want for the server. Being the owner of a High-Rate server is hard, once you failed on your new update or let's say 20% of the community doesn't like the update you've made; your server is done. Especially when you have 70% asians in your server populations.

PS: There are a lot of players who doesn't even spend a single centavo in donation. But still, one of the richest in game.

Thanks for the comments tho, I appreciate every comment you posted in this thread. I'll keep all your comments and suggestions in my to do list.

I know the feeling all too well, but I guess there aren't many people who are appreciative of a well-balanced game.

I currently play Clown and I'm perfectly fine with having the (intentional or unintentional) nerf to the Song Buffs, whereas they don't refresh the 20 second duration when you try re-casting the Song over the Song Buffs.

But you have to understand how broken some things are, but of course as I stated; this is a server that accepts donations, so do as you must to keep your livelihood, I guess.

tohruchan

#12
Quote from: expletive773 on Oct 04, 2017, 11:37 AM
I was stating this at the perspective of you fighting the Champion instead of being the actual Champion itself. If you get caught in it, it's just a massive waste of Restorative Items since you can still get hit and you can't do s*** about it for sixty entire seconds while his friend whacks you incessantly until your Berries and Fishes are gone.

Dude its not about my perspective or your perspective im just telling you about the skill description of blade stop. So far you are the only one complaining about the skill and that's your problem. AND I play champ more often and I use bladestop to counter sinx and jedis. I have my own trick on my sleeves to cancel the effect of blade stop whenever i use it. I hope you does.

QuotePS: Also, you got a little brown on your nose there.  /heh

Same as you  /heh

QuoteBut you have to understand how broken some things are, but of course as I stated; this is a server that accepts donations, so do as you must to keep your livelihood, I guess.

I agree with you that there are some things in the server that should be taken care of properly and I believe Jedi Doge is doing his best to fix some of the broken stuff in the server.

Are you looking for new home server for your guild then join our server.

expletive773

#13
Quote from: tohruchan on Oct 06, 2017, 10:57 AM
Dude its not about my perspective or your perspective im just telling you about the skill description of blade stop. So far you are the only one complaining about the skill and that's your problem. AND I play champ more often and I use bladestop to counter sinx and jedis. I have my own trick on my sleeves to cancel the effect of blade stop whenever i use it. I hope you does.

You're not reading my posts properly, I said in the perspective---okay I'll stop using that word then. I meant WHEN YOU'RE USING ANOTHER CLASS AGAINST A CHAMP, do you have an option to counter it then? Of course, aside from being a Champion yourself and just using Chain Combo to get out of it, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER CLASSES?

Another thing is that you might bring up the fact that the game was made with the character classes countering each other with their own strengths and weaknesses, BUT COME ON, there's a big difference to actually wearing a GTB to counter a High Wizard's high damage output to SOMEONE JUST FRIGGIN' GRABBING YOU BY THE BALLS (for an entire sixty seconds) AND HAVE HIS MATE JUST FLOG YOU TO DEATH WHILST YOU HOLD ON TO YOUR DEAR LIFE (and berries).

PS: I also main Champion, and even I found it just plain broken. Also, no one's actually complaining now because the server is already filled with Champions abusing the Blade Stop duration.

There's a reason why a server of 12-years old is doing the changes it did to itself over the years, isn't it better to learn from what they did and use that as a basis as to how you can make it better instead of leaving the skill effects AS IS from the original Ragnarok Online? Hopefully it's not due to nostalgia.

The original Ragnarok Online didn't even have ASPD that can reach 197, hence why they had obscene percentages on break chances on both Meltdown and Acid Demonstration. But this server CAN reach 197, and it STILL HAS these obscene chances.

/end_rant

Quote
Same as you  /heh

I can't be brown-nosing cause I'm already being passive-aggressive towards the admins themselves, in fact I'm probably doing the exact opposite of brown-nosing either intentionally or unintentionally. I swear, this is gonna, unfortunately, turn into flaming real soon.