Talon Ro

[leonliger]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ahha I see what you're doing, giant walls of text that could be broken down into so much less and making me not want to read it... so I skimmed everything.

You can win with money~ You get those cards/items fast and with those cards/items you hunt for better items and thus putting you far far ahead of any new player who doesn't p2w. But that's how the world works you get further ahead with less time spent into a char.

Just answered "to what point, you can't win with money and If you're comparing yourself" in one little thing.

I'm talking about PVM and WoE content. So you go into this GM event and you know the location of the MVP right where it is don't have to look for it or anything... yeah it'll give you a lot guild/teamwork, however the only problem I would see is people getting used to knowing where everything is in the MVP events. No surprises that pop out of nowhere and do some very harmful damage to the team which is what they'll experience on WoE.

GTB isn't really all that useful in 1v1s. I'm talking about more of a WoE thing or team vs team stuff. If you would like I can go into detail on how 800+ people with 50~100% magic immunity screws things in terms of strategy and class balance during WoE.

RMS balance thing I could care less about, it's more from people who play the server and not from people who quit that are rating it.

I'll have to disagree with you on the PvP/WoE. 1v1s maybe more challenging considering the massive equipment swaps you'll be doing during the match. WoE on the other hand with a entire guild fully decked out in MVP cards I can alredy think of a dozen or more strategies that would get an entire guild through a castle and to the emp with little to no people dying, thats with the opposing team being fully decked out in MVP cards as well.

Short straight and mostly to the point, you're answering most of my questions I've had about tRO. Maybe you should start a new thread with all these things we've said it would give people a look see from the viewpoint of a iRO player and a tRO player. Anyway Peace for now

[Aozora]

Ahha I see what you're doing, giant walls of text that could be broken down into so much less and making me not want to read it... so I skimmed everything.

I do this because it's easier to address individual points like this and retain a good degree of readability.

You can win with money~ You get those cards/items fast and with those cards/items you hunt for better items and thus putting you far far ahead of any new player who doesn't p2w. But that's how the world works you get further ahead with less time spent into a char.

But again, this same content is available to everyone with no donations whatsoever. You get a ahead, and then you hit a wall, and then those who didn't donate reach you eventually. Not to mention there are plenty of other people on that wall already. As I said, compared to a completley new person with no gear whatsoever who doesn't donate; yes you get a headstart. Compared to the server, you're just another average player.

I'm talking about PVM and WoE content. So you go into this GM event and you know the location of the MVP right where it is don't have to look for it or anything... yeah it'll give you a lot guild/teamwork, however the only problem I would see is people getting used to knowing where everything is in the MVP events. No surprises that pop out of nowhere and do some very harmful damage to the team which is what they'll experience on WoE.

Where the MVP is? o_O What?
The MVP's spawn on random location on the maps in these GMC's. You won't know where it s unless you can see the future. In fact I'm pretty sure the mobs spawns on all floors are random, you don't know where they are any more than you know where normal MVP's are.

In any case, finding the MVP and dealing with these "surprises" as you said, is never the main concern. If it is then it's a poorly designed MVP. Rather the question is how to mitigate damage, what's the best method to tank this, what's the ideal gearset for the tank, can we SW tank, how do we deal damage, Asura? DPS? AD? MAgic? How do we make sure no one dies? How do we deal with the mob spawns? How do we positions ourselves relative to the MVP? And so on, those are the real concerns in MVPing.

GTB isn't really all that useful in 1v1s. I'm talking about more of a WoE thing or team vs team stuff. If you would like I can go into detail on how 800+ people with 50~100% magic immunity screws things in terms of strategy and class balance during WoE.

You could, and I could then go in detail on how it doesn't. Because it seems to work fairly well in tRO. See there are basically two main cards people generally put in shields in tRO. GTB and Toad, toad grant you 35% demi human reduction. This creates an interesting situation; running into HW's cast wearing a Toad will probably get you killed fairly quick thanks to the fact that with bragi+instant cast spamming spells is extremely easy. The role of a wizard becomes that they force a GTB on the attacking guild thus decreasing their damage resistance and giving a chance for the heavy hitter and DPS classes to take them out. We could also throw in a prof to drop in a LP to stop the AoE, then run in our heavy hitters with toads on to try and take out their wizards in order to allow the team to advance. There's a lot more going on obviously like ion normal WoE, traps, Loki's Veils and all manner of other nonsense.

You can of course go into as much detail in analyzing how a GTB screws over the gameplay, but as you've demonstrated; You are quite clueless about the custom content and the degree of customization TalonRO has. While you may be more than qualified to comment on GTB's role and how it affects things on a normal RO server. TalonRO is not normal, the gameplay is different. And unless you've actually played it and know what you're talking about, commenting on it is quite silly.

RMS balance thing I could care less about, it's more from people who play the server and not from people who quit that are rating it.

From what I've seen quitters usually drop a rating too. And even if they don't; it still demonstrates that the large community of players in TalonRO finds the server to be fairly well balanced.

I'll have to disagree with you on the PvP/WoE. 1v1s maybe more challenging considering the massive equipment swaps you'll be doing during the match. WoE on the other hand with a entire guild fully decked out in MVP cards I can alredy think of a dozen or more strategies that would get an entire guild through a castle and to the emp with little to no people dying, thats with the opposing team being fully decked out in MVP cards as well.

I'm pretty sure you're once again talking about the standard MVP cards, and not the custom cards TalonRO actually uses. As I've said; majority of the MVP cards are customized. The original effects for a lot of the cards are just ridiculous.

[leonliger]

I do this because it's easier to address individual points like this and retain a good degree of readability.

But again, this same content is available to everyone with no donations whatsoever. You get a ahead, and then you hit a wall, and then those who didn't donate reach you eventually. Not to mention there are plenty of other people on that wall already. As I said, compared to a completley new person with no gear whatsoever who doesn't donate; yes you get a headstart. Compared to the server, you're just another average player.

Where the MVP is? o_O What?
The MVP's spawn on random location on the maps in these GMC's. You won't know where it s unless you can see the future. In fact I'm pretty sure the mobs spawns on all floors are random, you don't know where they are any more than you know where normal MVP's are.

In any case, finding the MVP and dealing with these "surprises" as you said, is never the main concern. If it is then it's a poorly designed MVP. Rather the question is how to mitigate damage, what's the best method to tank this, what's the ideal gearset for the tank, can we SW tank, how do we deal damage, Asura? DPS? AD? MAgic? How do we make sure no one dies? How do we deal with the mob spawns? How do we positions ourselves relative to the MVP? And so on, those are the real concerns in MVPing.

You could, and I could then go in detail on how it doesn't. Because it seems to work fairly well in tRO. See there are basically two main cards people generally put in shields in tRO. GTB and Toad, toad grant you 35% demi human reduction. This creates an interesting situation; running into HW's cast wearing a Toad will probably get you killed fairly quick thanks to the fact that with bragi+instant cast spamming spells is extremely easy. The role of a wizard becomes that they force a GTB on the attacking guild thus decreasing their damage resistance and giving a chance for the heavy hitter and DPS classes to take them out. We could also throw in a prof to drop in a LP to stop the AoE, then run in our heavy hitters with toads on to try and take out their wizards in order to allow the team to advance. There's a lot more going on obviously like ion normal WoE, traps, Loki's Veils and all manner of other nonsense.

You can of course go into as much detail in analyzing how a GTB screws over the gameplay, but as you've demonstrated; You are quite clueless about the custom content and the degree of customization TalonRO has. While you may be more than qualified to comment on GTB's role and how it affects things on a normal RO server. TalonRO is not normal, the gameplay is different. And unless you've actually played it and know what you're talking about, commenting on it is quite silly.

From what I've seen quitters usually drop a rating too. And even if they don't; it still demonstrates that the large community of players in TalonRO finds the server to be fairly well balanced.

I'm pretty sure you're once again talking about the standard MVP cards, and not the custom cards TalonRO actually uses. As I've said; majority of the MVP cards are customized. The original effects for a lot of the cards are just ridiculous.

Straight to the points please otherwise I just skim... unless you don't know how to explain things short and to the point.

Not sure about what well you're talking about. Even if you own a lot of good items there's always something else you can be trying to get.

I'm guessing in these events the maps are relativity smaller than normal areas with MVPs on them. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Those "surprises" can do more harm than you think. MVPs can be predictable with what monsters are around but there are those with stupidly strong monsters around while you're looking for the MVP that can take you out with some "surprises"

Lets take it to a WoE perspective. Take a huge guild coming into a castle followed by some allies giving you around 35~40 people coming in to take a castle; whole your guild has around 25 people. With those "surprises" you can easily take out a good 15+ people before they reach the emp. If you've ever defended a castle with a good guild you'll know defending is a lot easier than attacking so those 25 people now coming in attack vs your 25 defending; the favors on your side.

Do you have a list of all the MVP cards that have had their effects changed?

[Aozora]

Straight to the points please otherwise I just skim... unless you don't know how to explain things short and to the point.

I prefer to go into detail rather than just quickly explaining something.

Not sure about what well you're talking about. Even if you own a lot of good items there's always something else you can be trying to get.

Indeed, and these items are not available via donation. But the thing I'm trying to say is that you cannot pay to win in an environment where majority of the people own the gears you're paying for and all of these gears are available to the players without any donations whatsoever.

I'm guessing in these events the maps are relativity smaller than normal areas with MVPs on them. Correct me if I'm wrong.

They're copied maps from real dungeons. In one GMC it's Ant hell, another uses LHZ3, 3rd is using some Thaantos tower  maps, 4th is using some Morroc pyramids maps and so on. Finding an MVP in some of those can be an issue since there is a time limit on this.

Those "surprises" can do more harm than you think. MVPs can be predictable with what monsters are around but there are those with stupidly strong monsters around while you're looking for the MVP that can take you out with some "surprises"

But that ultimately has a minimal impact on anything. Most of the time the best way to search for an MVP is to have a HP/Champ go to the map and just port around rather than rum through the dungeon with a massive party. If you die while seeking the MVP the punishment is non existent if you're max leveled and something easily shrugged off if you're not. Then you just head back in there and look for the MVP again. And any reasonable party will then proceed to the MVP's location as  a single group, and a group of 10+ people can easily take out any normal mobs on any dungeon.

And anyways, these surprises do happen in TalonRO's endgame PvM content as well.

Lets take it to a WoE perspective. Take a huge guild coming into a castle followed by some allies giving you around 35~40 people coming in to take a castle; whole your guild has around 25 people. With those "surprises" you can easily take out a good 15+ people before they reach the emp. If you've ever defended a castle with a good guild you'll know defending is a lot easier than attacking so those 25 people now coming in attack vs your 25 defending; the favors on your side.

Ambush and a surprise are two entirely different situations. A PvM surprise versus a WoE ambush is a very different scenario overall. On one you get a highly coordinated attack against a group of people, on another you get a mob rush that is 90% of the time extremely easy to defend and fight off. Applying what you learn in a PvM surprise to a coordinated ambush in WoE doesn't do anything else except hone your perception a bit. Defending against an ambush is not a striaghtforward task like defending against mobs is. Ambush is much more dependent on the people attacking and what classes and builds they use. You won't defend the same way against a couple of snipers, Bio and a HP than you do against couple of HW's, LK and a champ.

Do you have a list of all the MVP cards that have had their effects changed?

http://talonro.com/customfeatures.php

But I'm not here to really talk about the balance of the server or how well the MVP cards are tuned and so on, since the metagame can literally be discussed for an eternity. So that's an entirely different discussion. If you want to discuss balance then drop me a PM, or go to TalonRO forums and ask around. I'm mostly here to talk about TalonRO's reward system vs Gravity's system along with the "pay 2 win" impression you seem to have.

[leonliger]

I prefer to go into detail rather than just quickly explaining something.

Indeed, and these items are not available via donation. But the thing I'm trying to say is that you cannot pay to win in an environment where majority of the people own the gears you're paying for and all of these gears are available to the players without any donations whatsoever.

They're copied maps from real dungeons. In one GMC it's Ant hell, another uses LHZ3, 3rd is using some Thaantos tower  maps, 4th is using some Morroc pyramids maps and so on. Finding an MVP in some of those can be an issue since there is a time limit on this.

But that ultimately has a minimal impact on anything. Most of the time the best way to search for an MVP is to have a HP/Champ go to the map and just port around rather than rum through the dungeon with a massive party. If you die while seeking the MVP the punishment is non existent if you're max leveled and something easily shrugged off if you're not. Then you just head back in there and look for the MVP again. And any reasonable party will then proceed to the MVP's location as  a single group, and a group of 10+ people can easily take out any normal mobs on any dungeon.

And anyways, these surprises do happen in TalonRO's endgame PvM content as well.

Ambush and a surprise are two entirely different situations. A PvM surprise versus a WoE ambush is a very different scenario overall. On one you get a highly coordinated attack against a group of people, on another you get a mob rush that is 90% of the time extremely easy to defend and fight off. Applying what you learn in a PvM surprise to a coordinated ambush in WoE doesn't do anything else except hone your perception a bit. Defending against an ambush is not a striaghtforward task like defending against mobs is. Ambush is much more dependent on the people attacking and what classes and builds they use. You won't defend the same way against a couple of snipers, Bio and a HP than you do against couple of HW's, LK and a champ.

http://talonro.com/customfeatures.php

But I'm not here to really talk about the balance of the server or how well the MVP cards are tuned and so on, since the metagame can literally be discussed for an eternity. So that's an entirely different discussion. If you want to discuss balance then drop me a PM, or go to TalonRO forums and ask around. I'm mostly here to talk about TalonRO's reward system vs Gravity's system along with the "pay 2 win" impression you seem to have.

If you do that your post doesn't get entirely read by the person/ persons you're talking to.

the "surprises" give you a small amount of incite on the surprises in WoE which than you can build on~

Alright let's take this to the pms so we can get off the fourm post... Good Day

[Seri]

Only pay to win advantage I've seen on this server is some player donating a thousand dollars and buying few thousand EDP bottles.

Other than that, donations don't get you an incredible edge over other players besides the fact you do speed up your gearing timeline.

There is also a vanilla woe/pvp that bans mvp/custom items, which helps allievate the first concern. However, since most vanilla gears are available via donations (and cheaper than MVPs), there is room for donator's edge there as well.

Not everything is perfect, but the system does give longevity to the server (owners get paid = keep server alive) and still creates a competitive & dynamic setting for players (new & old). I would recommend trying out the server before making judgements based on theories.

[Judgement]

Pay2win is in any server.  Sure, they don't have things like MVP cards for sale, but you can always just sell the cash points for some zeny to players and buy top gears and supplies.  TalonRO has vanilla WoE which disables MVP cards and custom s***, so no problem with MVP cards.

[Silverbaine]

Its a "private" server correct? private servers have thier own rules... only the "Admin" has any right to say what those rules are imo...

[Zeny Hu]

TalonRO is the best server low rate server out there. It's #1 on the rating charts for a long time & has been around since 2007? you won't find a better low rate server than TRO.

[Mushu]

I've been playing RO for a long time. Played Anima from around 2004-2008. After quitting I started playing servers that haven't been customized and considering I've played Anima/Talon in the past unlike the critics here who are super biased, I can tell you that with the changes they have made such as vanilla woe, ability to get mvp cards without donating, not having bad admins (</3 Harken) actually make the server more balanced than "normal" private servers.

PvM isn't just a sniper fest of people DS+teleporting because they need to pick up the loot on tRO, so melee classes are worth something in hunting gear.

The only thing that is really "ruined" is MvPing but seriously, instead of taking 2 mins to kill Valk using "official" gears, they take 1 minute. Cool story.

The BEST thing about the server in my opinion is that it has a REAL economy. No, it doesn't have high inflation like other servers because it has no autoloot and it's tough on bots. I'd even say the economy is better than iRO's (can't think of any other private servers that I can say this) which is totally decimated by bots and bad management/

I applaud the GMs of Talon, especially DeePee for sticking with it so long, especially when it seemed dead with less than 100 players on one point. It's NEVER been wiped. I don't think you guys understand that. The same character that I made as a seventh grader is still on that server. I can't think of ANY other server that can say that. When Talon and DeePee got the server it was in shambles because it was previously used as a donation farm by an old Admin (Debbie), so it was bound to die but it has fixed all of it's problems unlike Animus, Talon's brother server which is now in extreme decline with 301 players online as I'm typing this compared to the 2,000 that it had 5 years ago.

That being said, am I going to play talonRO? Hell no. I'm no longer in middle/high school. I don't have 6-8 hours a day to grind niffleheim. What I will say though is that if you are willing to devote a lot of time to playing on any server, it would be stupid to choose any server other than talon.

TL,DR: DeePee is doing a great job.  Play the server for a month if you want to see if it's balanced or not, theorycrafting isn't going to work.

[Bacur]

I do not like Boreas, 'cos he is a really close minded person, but tRO is probably the only server that actually looks like a RO server.  And i prefer it to be like this instead of becoming just another RoMedic+Grayworld+AHK+Nodelay or gtfo server.

On the other lowrates people were crying over overpowered donation items ruining their pvp experience.
Now people want Vanilla WoE to be disabled 'cos they can not use their overpowered donation items at it.

On the other lowrates people were crying over AHK and bots.
Here they are crying over not being able to setup their bots and deal 20 millions of damage per WoE with thier lookatmeiknowhowtosetupanAHK snipers.

People are crying over everything.

People are crying.



BTW LoL unfriendly community? Come to an any GvG server, and i will show you an unfriendly community. I think one casual conversation should be enough for you to quit using Internet.