Talon Ro

[DeePee]

Could you pm me the link to the topics you made or the ticket id?  I'm interested in having a look at them.

We do try to prevent such things at all times (and punishments are quite harsh) but I'm sure you'll understand that we cannot always be there to monitor it. Especially on a server the size of tRO.

[TomTom33]

Honestly after CavaleRO died I had no hope in RO anymore. Honestly though , I always looked at Talon and passed it up on the list because of MVP items. I just started playing though and I love it. Floating Rates keeps the community involved , The populations huge and gives you the OLD RO feel , They have Vanilla WoE which restricts MVP items and OP donations which is more active than their regular WoE so basically the donations and MVP are for PVM which makes PVM fun and enjoyable. Every 2 mins someones looking for a party. It's great. Never gave this server a chance and now I love it.

[Charity Case]

Honestly after CavaleRO died I had no hope in RO anymore. Honestly though , I always looked at Talon and passed it up on the list because of MVP items. I just started playing though and I love it. Floating Rates keeps the community involved , The populations huge and gives you the OLD RO feel , They have Vanilla WoE which restricts MVP items and OP donations which is more active than their regular WoE so basically the donations and MVP are for PVM which makes PVM fun and enjoyable. Every 2 mins someones looking for a party. It's great. Never gave this server a chance and now I love it.

I can see where your coming from, that was me when i first started playing talonro. But to be honest, the 1 thing that completly destroys the server is the ability to get mvp cards so easy. It  defeats the purpose of making a low rate server, and as a WoE fanatic. there shouldnt be vanilawoe or w.e on a low rate server, it should just be woe. But glad 2 see you found ur home.

Something like LegacyRO is my taste.

[DeePee]

Well, there is no such thing really as "should not belong on x or y server". There is personal taste and a personal feeling for balance. We feel that it's more unbalanced on a low rate server that one certain person can completely overpower other players by being lucky and finding an MVP card.
Gravity's method of "balancing" things is basically by making things very rare, which is no balance at all, due to what I mentioned above. Therefore we decided to give everyone equal chances.

Some people like it, some don't. Doesn't mean it's a bad thing per se. There are plenty of people who do like it

[leonliger]

Well, there is no such thing really as "should not belong on x or y server". There is personal taste and a personal feeling for balance. We feel that it's more unbalanced on a low rate server that one certain person can completely overpower other players by being lucky and finding an MVP card.
Gravity's method of "balancing" things is basically by making things very rare, which is no balance at all, due to what I mentioned above. Therefore we decided to give everyone equal chances.

Some people like it, some don't. Doesn't mean it's a bad thing per se. There are plenty of people who do like it

Ah I so have to reply now. The "being lucky and finding a MVP card" Is how it should be, with that you actually had to work for that card. At a 0.1% drop rate it took along time to get it and whoever got it deserves to be a little OP. Gravity's method made it fairish somewhat minus the item up thing but than again it only brought it up to like...0.2%? Anyway still not a Huge change increase on getting it.

Now looking at Talon RO; It's a pay to win server. Talon's method of "balancing" is to make MVP cards donate-able to get. Meaning the rich are now the OP ones on Talon. Hmmm Seams a little off to me.

It's a good server for the most part good population minus the massive amount of vendors. Don't say something like "we only have 200+ vendors" because I highly doubt you've sat in the down and counted every single vendor. However who knows you  could have.

Anyway I threw my two cents in, Good Luck with the pay to win server.

[DeePee]

Ah I so have to reply now. The "being lucky and finding a MVP card" Is how it should be, with that you actually had to work for that card. At a 0.1% drop rate it took along time to get it and whoever got it deserves to be a little OP. Gravity's method made it fairish somewhat minus the item up thing but than again it only brought it up to like...0.2%? Anyway still not a Huge change increase on getting it.

Now looking at Talon RO; It's a pay to win server. Talon's method of "balancing" is to make MVP cards donate-able to get. Meaning the rich are now the OP ones on Talon. Hmmm Seams a little off to me.

It's a good server for the most part good population minus the massive amount of vendors. Don't say something like "we only have 200+ vendors" because I highly doubt you've sat in the down and counted every single vendor. However who knows you  could have.

Anyway I threw my two cents in, Good Luck with the pay to win server.

Ah, you're one of those kind.

It isn't how it's "supposed to be". How things are "supposed to be" is a subjective term. We greatly disagree with Gravity's "balancing by rarity" and instead offer everyone a fair chance to get the items.

No, TalonRO is far from a pay-to-win server. If you think that, you probably have not played it or have played it for a very short time, not exploring its features. Our balancing is by making them available through a Reward System. While donating for them is possible (though quite pricey), it's much easier and more fun to gather them through other means, which we offer plenty of. Majority of the MVP Cards are acquired through our Reward System: people joining events, killing MVPs, doing minigames, voting, monster of the week, etcetera. Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that the best items still have to be hunted or quested for. Just shouting that it's a pay-to-win server is rubbish.

We have around 400-500 vendors online at any time. Is this weird? Not at all. We are probably one of the biggest servers around. With a high player count comes a high vendor count. We already limit this by restricting amounts of shops per connection and by limiting shops in towns. Furthermore, what does it matter at all? Every city is filled with people. Prontera and Payon are crowded. Of course there are many shops but there are plenty of non-vendors, generally around 500-800 on regular days and peaking up to 1000 non-vendors during WoE hours.

Anyway, here are my two cents. Good luck finding a server with 1000 players and 200 vendors.

[Aedra]

just because others can obtain the mvp cards through some work in events and stuff doesn't mean that people still aren't buying mvp cards

ie, pay to win, except with a fair chance for everyone else to work for them without a mindless grind of killing mvps all day every day on a spare chance it might happen that they drop

edit: but i think it over and it's not like being stocked up with ALL DE MVP CARDS really helps anyway except for being OP in talon's PVM department. aren't mvp cards disabled in your woe? never cared to look at talon's stuff specifically

[DeePee]

We offer Vanilla pvp/woe, yes. It's quite active with 200 people in a castle.

If one wants to pay, that's up to him. But it will by far not make him more powerful than others. It gives a nice base but you'll still get your *ss whooped by players who have quested and farmed for items unacquirable by donators.

[leonliger]

Ah, you're one of those kind.

It isn't how it's "supposed to be". How things are "supposed to be" is a subjective term. We greatly disagree with Gravity's "balancing by rarity" and instead offer everyone a fair chance to get the items.

No, TalonRO is far from a pay-to-win server. If you think that, you probably have not played it or have played it for a very short time, not exploring its features. Our balancing is by making them available through a Reward System. While donating for them is possible (though quite pricey), it's much easier and more fun to gather them through other means, which we offer plenty of. Majority of the MVP Cards are acquired through our Reward System: people joining events, killing MVPs, doing minigames, voting, monster of the week, etcetera. Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that the best items still have to be hunted or quested for. Just shouting that it's a pay-to-win server is rubbish.

We have around 400-500 vendors online at any time. Is this weird? Not at all. We are probably one of the biggest servers around. With a high player count comes a high vendor count. We already limit this by restricting amounts of shops per connection and by limiting shops in towns. Furthermore, what does it matter at all? Every city is filled with people. Prontera and Payon are crowded. Of course there are many shops but there are plenty of non-vendors, generally around 500-800 on regular days and peaking up to 1000 non-vendors during WoE hours.

Anyway, here are my two cents. Good luck finding a server with 1000 players and 200 vendors.

"Ah, you're one of those kind." Judgmental are we now?

Also I will apologize I did jump to a conclusion, however Talon can be considered a "Pay-to-win" server sense you do have MVP cards (I could care less about everything else in the shop they all seam good and well to me) to get by donating meaning people  a lot of cash will be ahead of everyone from the start. Talon has a good population so people do like getting some of the games best cards with little to no effort. Ah well it is a pserver.


So you've sat down in the middle of all your big towns and counted every single vendor? right? 400~500 vendors you didn't just pull that out of your bum I hope. 500~800 non vendors again as stated above you've sat down and counted them all? I'm gunna go with a gut and say you haven't. Maybe it's wrong who knows.

"Don't say something like "we only have 200+ vendors" because I highly doubt you've sat in the down and counted every single vendor." Where did I say in there I was looking for a server with 1k+ people and 200vends? The 200 was an example of what someone might say as they pulled numbers out of their bum.

Again I do apologize for jumping to the conclusion of a p2w server. To a point it is p2w if you have the money.

[Aozora]

Pay to win is an interesting phrase actually, and often used incorrectly.

Pay to win refers to granting an extensive advantage to those who pay money, i.e overpowered items and other nonsense like that. This gives them an advantage over the rest of the population that the other population cannot reach, thus creating an environment where donators dominate the gameplay. However this only holds true as long as these advantages are not available to other players in a reasonable amount of time. If everyone has access to these things, then it is no longer pay to win, since paying does not make you win. If you can purchase items others can get in a reasonable timeframe, then you're no longer paying to win; you're simply paying to get a headstart. In fact you won't even get a headstart since majority of the population already has these items, you'll simply start at the same line other people are at. You won't win by donating in TalonRO.

Now if you look at at what tRO offers, you notice that there's a variety of ways to actually obtaining Talon Coins. Starting from plain and simple; buying them from other players. Just as you can buy any other gears and items sold by the reward guru. You can also play the reward games, monster of the week, participate in events and plethora of other things that let you farm the reward point and then translate them into Talon Coins. Most of these things are designed in a way that lets new players play and farm them to easily provide a fairly steady supply of Talon Coins into the economy.

Now what I find quite fascinating about some of these posts is the defense of the traditional drop based system imposed by Gravity. Now in Gravity's method you do indeed have to work for your loot, but then again you can literally grind an MVP for 8 months, only to lose your card to a champ who killed it once. Is that fair? You can argue that, that is how it's supposed to be. But that doesn't make it a good system, it makes it extremely random, unsatisfying and simply based on a random chance. That's poor design, if a player is willing to spend months farming an MVP, should he not be entitled to some sort of reward for his efforts?

Now compare this to how TalonRO does things, the reward system they have in place gives a fairly steady supply of reward points to those who are willing to farm the system. These reward points can then be translated into Talon Coins which can then be used to purchase the item you want. This ensures that given a certain timeframe, you can always get the item you desire. In essence the two systems are the same, they both require your effort, the difference is that TalonRO rewards you for your effort regardless of how lucky/unlucky you are. While the system based on chance is random and can completley screw you over no matter how long you keep farming.

You basically have a system with a guaranteed reward in a certain timeframe, versus a system based on chance. This is like comparing farming zeny from mob drops against farming zeny by overupgrading gears. One gives you a guaranteed return, while the other is fickle and random with no guaranteed return.

[DeePee]

So you've sat down in the middle of all your big towns and counted every single vendor? right? 400~500 vendors you didn't just pull that out of your bum I hope. 500~800 non vendors again as stated above you've sat down and counted them all? I'm gunna go with a gut and say you haven't. Maybe it's wrong who knows.

No need to count. A source mod shows us exactly how many shops there are.

[leonliger]

No need to count. A source mod shows us exactly how many shops there are.

Ah well mods are not always right and neither are humans~

Pay to win is an interesting phrase actually, and often used incorrectly.

Pay to win refers to granting an extensive advantage to those who pay money, i.e overpowered items and other nonsense like that. This gives them an advantage over the rest of the population that the other population cannot reach, thus creating an environment where donators dominate the gameplay. However this only holds true as long as these advantages are not available to other players in a reasonable amount of time. If everyone has access to these things, then it is no longer pay to win, since paying does not make you win. If you can purchase items others can get in a reasonable timeframe, then you're no longer paying to win; you're simply paying to get a headstart. In fact you won't even get a headstart since majority of the population already has these items, you'll simply start at the same line other people are at. You won't win by donating in TalonRO.

Now if you look at at what tRO offers, you notice that there's a variety of ways to actually obtaining Talon Coins. Starting from plain and simple; buying them from other players. Just as you can buy any other gears and items sold by the reward guru. You can also play the reward games, monster of the week, participate in events and plethora of other things that let you farm the reward point and then translate them into Talon Coins. Most of these things are designed in a way that lets new players play and farm them to easily provide a fairly steady supply of Talon Coins into the economy.

Now what I find quite fascinating about some of these posts is the defense of the traditional drop based system imposed by Gravity. Now in Gravity's method you do indeed have to work for your loot, but then again you can literally grind an MVP for 8 months, only to lose your card to a champ who killed it once. Is that fair? You can argue that, that is how it's supposed to be. But that doesn't make it a good system, it makes it extremely random, unsatisfying and simply based on a random chance. That's poor design, if a player is willing to spend months farming an MVP, should he not be entitled to some sort of reward for his efforts?

Now compare this to how TalonRO does things, the reward system they have in place gives a fairly steady supply of reward points to those who are willing to farm the system. These reward points can then be translated into Talon Coins which can then be used to purchase the item you want. This ensures that given a certain timeframe, you can always get the item you desire. In essence the two systems are the same, they both require your effort, the difference is that TalonRO rewards you for your effort regardless of how lucky/unlucky you are. While the system based on chance is random and can completley screw you over no matter how long you keep farming.

You basically have a system with a guaranteed reward in a certain timeframe, versus a system based on chance. This is like comparing farming zeny from mob drops against farming zeny by overupgrading gears. One gives you a guaranteed return, while the other is fickle and random with no guaranteed return.

I don't know about you but I'm going by what the words say. Pay to win~ you pay money to win something. Unless I'm mistaking something and "Pay to win" doesn't mean that and if that's so we might as well switch to a different Language.

"you can literally grind an MVP for 8 months, only to lose your card to a champ who killed it once." Yes that would suck but if you think about it; killing that MVP for those 8 months getting a lot of gears/ other items from the MVP that usually don't drop off normal monsters, you would've made a pretty penny and thus would just get it from a vendor that might be selling one. No you're not really getting screwed over. It actually evens out in it's own way.

[Aozora]

I don't know about you but I'm going by what the words say. Pay to win~ you pay money to win something. Unless I'm mistaking something and "Pay to win" doesn't mean that and if that's so we might as well switch to a different Language.

And what I'm saying is; You can't pay to win on TalonRO. Which is what I Was saying in my post as well....

You can of course spend hundreds of dollars to buy kahos and every single MVP card on the reward shop. Only to face the reality that majority of the playerbase already has this stuff, and in fact has better stuff than you have, and you can't get this best stuff through donations. So how exactly do you win in this case? You will simply be another average tRO player with his stash of MVP stuff. Just like a huge majority of tRO's playerbase.

EDIT: If you're talking about my statement that Pay to win is used incorrectly. What I meant was; that in RMS it's often used for anything involving donation items. Regardless or not if these items actually give you an advantage. If they're actual ingame items with stats and crap, RMS folks often just lump them in with the pay to win stuff, even if you can't get an advantage over normal player with the donation gear.

killing that MVP for those 8 months getting a lot of gears/ other items from the MVP that usually don't drop off normal monsters, you would've made a pretty penny and thus would just get it from a vendor that might be selling one. No you're not really getting screwed over. It actually evens out in it's own way.

But you're not getting what you're farming for, you want that card. The zeny is just a bonus but ultimately meaningless since you can't get the gameplay advantage you were after.

But the funny thing is that you seem to be fine with buying MVP cards from players? And you assume that said MVP card is available to buy from a player on a server where these drops are excessively rare. I'm pretty sure that on most servers you simply can't find too many people willing to sell MVP cards just like that, aside from TalonRO obviously. And if you can it's on the range of several hundred millions most of the time. While you may get zeny from the MVP grind you're doing, you most likely also spend zeny during this 8 month period, there's no guarantee that you will even be able to afford an MVP card even after extensive grinding of a single MVP.

But regardless, if you're defending Gravity's way to do it, then you should be able to provide reasoning as to why it's a superior system. Since all TalonRO does is take out the randomness of it. What you seem to be saying in your argument is that "Well yeah but you get the return since you get zeny and can buy the MVP card". So how is this different from grinding say reward games for Talon Coins and then buying the card that you want?

[leonliger]

And what I'm saying is; You can't pay to win on TalonRO. Which is what I Was saying in my post as well....

You can of course spend hundreds of dollars to buy kahos and every single MVP card on the reward shop. Only to face the reality that majority of the playerbase already has this stuff, and in fact has better stuff than you have, and you can't get this best stuff through donations. So how exactly do you win in this case? You will simply be another average tRO player with his stash of MVP stuff. Just like a huge majority of tRO's playerbase.

EDIT: If you're talking about my statement that Pay to win is used incorrectly. What I meant was; that in RMS it's often used for anything involving donation items. Regardless or not if these items actually give you an advantage. If they're actual ingame items with stats and crap, RMS folks often just lump them in with the pay to win stuff, even if you can't get an advantage over normal player with the donation gear.

But you're not getting what you're farming for, you want that card. The zeny is just a bonus but ultimately meaningless since you can't get the gameplay advantage you were after.

But the funny thing is that you seem to be fine with buying MVP cards from players? And you assume that said MVP card is available to buy from a player on a server where these drops are excessively rare. I'm pretty sure that on most servers you simply can't find too many people willing to sell MVP cards just like that, aside from TalonRO obviously. And if you can it's on the range of several hundred millions most of the time. While you may get zeny from the MVP grind you're doing, you most likely also spend zeny during this 8 month period, there's no guarantee that you will even be able to afford an MVP card even after extensive grinding of a single MVP.

But regardless, if you're defending Gravity's way to do it, then you should be able to provide reasoning as to why it's a superior system. Since all TalonRO does is take out the randomness of it. What you seem to be saying in your argument is that "Well yeah but you get the return since you get zeny and can buy the MVP card". So how is this different from grinding say reward games for Talon Coins and then buying the card that you want?

Yes I was talking about the incorrectly thing. It is pay to win to a point but after that seams legit~

The zeny is a last ditch effort or a "Hey look someone's selling the card" if you get lucky one day. Other than that you go back to killing the crap out of the MVPs.

I never said it was a "superior system" imo it just works better. Ex. iRO you can't get a Berzebub/GTB cards without having a good team/guild together you'll mostly not have a chance against them and with working with a team comes you gain experience on what your class can do in RO if some lucky bastard get a MVP card s/he just made that team/guild a stronger and they learn to work with it.

tRO, Ex. Berzebub/GTB; grind some events get the card. Awesome, now you and around 800 other people have 30% less cast time or 60% if you have two; and are running around with 50~100% immunity against magic. (dependent on the server and what kind of effect they have on the GTB)

As a veteran player of RO, tRO seams to....easy. Than again that would attract some people. Also no world championship.

[Aozora]

Yes I was talking about the incorrectly thing. It is pay to win to a point but after that seams legit~

To what point? Everything you can pay for is also available in game with no donations required whatsoever. Are EXP boosters also pay to win? Since they help you reach levle 99 faster than those with no exp boosters? The concept here is the same; evne with no donations you can still get everything a donator can. It just takes a bit longer.

You can't win with money in TalonRO, that's the whole point. In PvM a lot of people have these gears so you won't have an advantage over majority of the server population.
In in unrestricted PvP/WoE everyone once again has these gears so you won't have an advantage over anyone.
In Vanilla PvP/WoE no one has the MVP cards, kahos or any other custom gears so you won't have  an advantage over anyone.

If you're comparing yourself to a completely new player with no items whatsoever. And a player who donates for everything. Then yes, you will have an advantage, but only for a certain amount of time until this non-donator can get the gears you have without donations, and even this advantage vanishes in Vanilla environments. But even so, you won't be able to win on the server, since you will never get an advantage over majority of the server population simply by donation.

I never said it was a "superior system" imo it just works better. Ex. iRO you can't get a Berzebub/GTB cards without having a good team/guild together you'll mostly not have a chance against them and with working with a team comes you gain experience on what your class can do in RO if some lucky bastard get a MVP card s/he just made that team/guild a stronger and they learn to work with it.

So now you're arguing that team effort should give you superior rewards and teach your class? This seems mostly that you're talking about end tier PvM content, and the MVP cards being rewards for this content. Even though majority of the MVP's evne on official servers are in no way endgame.

I do agree that endgame content should reward players, but I don't agree on that these rewards should give you such extensive advantages that you're on a completely different level from the other players. Not to mention that your team effort is not rewarded by a team reward; you only get one card in one of thousands of possible kills. I would not say that it's an appropriate reward for a team effort, since majority of the team won't get anything out of it.

As for learning your class, this can be done in far better ways than incentivizing MVP parties with enormously overpowered rewards based on random chance wher the reward can be stolen by any passerby who might kill the MVP once. TalonRO in fact has endgame PvM content in the form of GM Challenge. Where each GM designs a short dungeon filled with mobs and MVP's  and finally a custom MVP designed by the GM. This is a team effort and requires at least 6 player party to even get in. The challenges are quite challengeing, for example GM Shirs' challenge is somethign majority of the players have never beaten, I'm not evne sure if it has been beaten by anyone.

the nice thing about the GM challenge is that it's
A) A lot more difficult, exciting and intensive than a normal MVP run
B) Rewards the entire party in the end.

While the GM MVP's have valuable loot on them, everyone in the party also gets a reward on their character. Which encourages parties a lot more since you know that you won't be left with nothing.

tRO, Ex. Berzebub/GTB; grind some events get the card. Awesome, now you and around 800 other people have 30% less cast time or 60% if you have two; and are running around with 50~100% immunity against magic. (dependent on the server and what kind of effect they have on the GTB)

This is entirely a balancing issue, and in no way tied to the Reward system TalonRO has. From what I hear players talk in tRO, most find the server to be quite well balanced. GTB is a concern only in 1v1 environments in PvP. And even so Mage players have found ways around it and wizards can regularly beat players wearing a GTB card. What you need to understand about tRO is that the gameplay is not like other servers. A huge majority of the MVP cards are completely custom and offer a completely different gaming experience than traditional RO.

Even veteran RO players are introduced to completely different kind of metagame than the kind they're used to. Because the game ultimately plays differently with these cards. How broken/good/bad this is, is of course open for debate. But arguing that it's bad simply because they're MVP cards is silly and shows unwillingness to get to know the mechanics and the metagame at all. In RMS our class balance is rated at 8.8, donation balance is at 86%. From what I know, those are fairly good.

As a veteran player of RO, tRO seams to....easy. Than again that would attract some people. Also no world championship.

In PvM sense, I can agree with you to some degree, i.e the basic PvM grind can be pretty damn easy if you're decked out with gears. MVP runs can be a lot easier in tRO when compared to say official server, given that in both cases there is a same sized team. But at the same time a lot of PvM content is tackled in smaller teams and numbers than in officials, in smaller parties the high end MVP's can still prove quite challenging. There's also the GM challenge which, as I've said, is quite challenging even with the degree of MVP cards available.

In PvP/WoE sense I disagree entirely. It's nowhere near easy. It's just as challenging, if not harder than on any other server. You can't just run through and kill everything even if you're fully decked out with the best gear in the game. It still requires tactics, strategy, teamwork, communication and everything else you'd expect. It's still challenging, and in fact proves even more challenging to most veteran RO players who come from more standard servers simply due to the completely different gameplay and metagame tRO has.

If you're talking about "it's easy to get everything" It's not. It still requires time and effort, and even after getting all the MVP cards, there's still gear beyond that which requires you to complete a long and difficult quest along with getting quite a bit of money nd items to make the gears. Getting MVP cards is easier than on most other servers yes, but only because they play an integral part in tRO's gameplay. And denying fairly easy access to gears that are integral to the gameplay, is just bad design.