What makes Renewal so bad in the eyes of so many players?

Started by Macoleco, May 07, 2020, 03:13 PM

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Macoleco

This comes from a player who has played mostly Pre-Re, and I would like to experience Renewal. New dungeons, 3rd jobs, and new monsters look badass.



I tried playing on the original server iRO but the problem is its VIP service, P2W/gacha mechanics, etc., which is why I wont include it in my analysis.



I tried playing on a private servers but they all have basically the same problems:

- No teamwork. People only do Gramps. Most of the time any random party will work, no need for team composition. This means there is no sense of danger. Plus, no parties to explore new dungeons together, with maybe the exception of Bio5.

- Warper. This also makes people do everything alone. No need to ask for help to reach certain place. No need to explore.

- Stat/skill resetter: the idea of making a character is to make it good on something specific, and not a "I can be whatever you want me to be" character. For example, you either make a FS HP, or a ME HP. But not both. This causes your character not to feel special and rewarding.

- Eden. This place also splits people because it gives you specific tasks to do. This place should be eliminated to encourage teamwork.

- Cash shop. Many servers are P2W. Cash shop should be changed to something else or simply eliminated.



I think 3rd jobs and renewal has a lot of potential, but it is buried under terrible mechanics. What I want is basically Pre-Re but with 3rd jobs, new dungeons, and new items (with the exception of items that may be considered too strong), and no P2W mechanics. And as far as I know, it doesnt exist, which is a shame.

TLDR: Renewal is bad because the implementation is bad, but the content itself is good.

yC

That's what happen when developer didn't do a good job in balancing the game.  It can take the fun out of a lot of element when an mmo can be played as a single player game.  However, the original RO is made based on the old-korean-mmorpg style where you have to mindlessly grind all day and night to level up.  Nowadays people are too busy with too much choice, grinding means quitting for some.  So RO have to go with the flow and follow the quest type mmo (eden / paradise group) to make it more appealing to the new generation of players.  Then all the reward stuff, daily stuff even stat/skill reset these are all common things that weren't in the original RO 20 years ago. 

RO is transforming itself as time goes, it found new players on the way while losing some old players.  Don't forget, RO with all the classes / builds / equips / items -- it can be overwhelming to new players, this is hard to overcome and it will just get more complex with each new patch update. 

Bakorzero

Some pre-re server take the renewal stuff adopt it and balancing it to pre-re stuff mostly dungeon and monster but sometimes gears and items to their own calculation and sometimes change their effects. Not sure about the 3rd job stuff. I think that's a nice approach to tease pre-re players to try renewal stuff without full renewal system. 
A flower of hope — a bond tying us together
Now grows within our hearts.
Forever unwilting, it gives us the power to go on living

Dazzu

Renewal is rarely balanced in high rate servers due to ridiculous damage scaling. Not to mention some 3rd job skills are inherently broken. The only thing that is redeemable about renewal are the instances and costume gears. It's a lot of work, but it's more than worth it to import both features to pre-re to break the staleness of pre-re servers.

Terpsichore

I'd say renewal had potential at the beginning, but it seems like Gravity quickly threw the towel and went down the easy route of false "casualization", monetization and gratuitous power creep with a heavy dose of dumbing down.

Nowadays it is a fully singleplayer, pseudo-ARPG with next to no depth. The "P2W" aspect mostly revolves around maxiziming numbers for bragging rights since the difficulty of content is close to zero.
The said content is also churned out quickly so its quality, and the creativity involved are very low. It exists to keep players in that ever-spinning, gear-grinding hamsterwheel with no actual purpose as the difficulty never increases to warrant the need of better gear.
The said vertical power curve also obsoletes older content extremely quickly. Needless to mention that anything PvP-related is a massive joke with such power creep involved.

The ship long since sailed so it is very foolish to follow kRO blindly. Pretty much every single update during the past 7 or so years only managed to decrease the overall fun, complexity, difficulty and the need for teamwork while bloating the player's power to levels which would make blush those old high rate servers with level 255 cap and 4 slotted equipment.
The last set of updates quite literally guts most of class mechanics and replaces iconic skills with generic AoE nukes.


What it means to server owners? I'm not sure at this point, trying to make any sense out of it and adjusting things to be reasonable is a big ordeal which I don't see anybody undertaking at this point when the game is at its lowest and there's close to no interest.
I keep doing it because I can and out of habit as I enjoy seeing the few remaining players who still care about the game engage in my creations. Otherwise it is both a thankless and very draining task to try and kick the game back into shape.

As for renewal vs old game mechanics, I'd say that both sides have their pros and cons, although renewal has been steadily devolving over the years as everything became about your raw damage output.
When it comes to content, there's both decent and really awful content, the overall quality has been declining steadily though. What matters is the quality and purpose of content, not the amount.

vesper

I've played renewal server, since I love to experience new things(such as new job and new dungeons)
However as player I think renewal update was bad decision.

There are several visible changes when I look into renewal mechanics, and I think that is what Gravity wanted to be.

1.Most of recent dungeons are now updated as instance dungeons.
2.Many essential cash items(for headgears / for consumables / for shadows)
3.Many jobs have skills with same usage : AOE skill for everyone / damage filler for everyone

and all these features made people do soloing.


1.instance has limited reward(as drop) so you need to do solo hunt MVP instead of partyplaying with someone.

2.For official server, it is almost impossible to grow character without cash items because the balance is balanced with cash items. to make visible change, cash items made as overpowered.
You can resurrect yourself, you can bless/agi up yourself, you can regenerate your HP by using cash potions.
NO NEED priest at all.

3.In pre-renewal, there were clear differences between jobs. bard was buffer with few 1:1 skills, no AOE.
Gunslinger was AOE dealer with small HP, Assassin cross was super strong 1:1 dealer with EDP.
That made each jobs lack something; Assassin cross was weak for AOE, High priest soloing build wasn't efficient, Sniper didn't have any kind of survival skill.
I think that is main reason why people had to do partyplay : to support each other with their own strong point.

Unfortunately for renewal mechanics, it is very easy and no need to do partyplay at all when you get enough gears.
so player have less possibility to meet someone because most of main dungeons are instances, and no need to make party because everyone have everything.

Overall I think renewal features are interesting but when it is looked in detail, it hinders partyplaying.

Lili

I am going to write down everything right and wrong with classic RO and Renewal here:

    Classic RO problems:
    • Low rates broke the economy with GrindFest
    • You need dual clients, friends effort and TIME to play
    • You are always weak without gear. Want to swipe Thor? Get cards, gear then go. Want to farm Gefenia? You can't solo without ice pick, best you could try is acid bombing. Make a party with bragi, SG and rdps

    And that's about everything that was seemed wrong when renewal was being designed. So they broke the game by "Fixing" those problems with disbalance.

      Renewal RO problems:
      • No more grind, all you need is a ranger to spam Arrow Storm. Seriously, it's AoE Asura. Can be even elemenal property enchanted. And all classes have strong AoE now, which is stupid AF.
      • Now you don't play with TIME, you play with Money. Which means spend a week at work and make cash to buy things that you'd have needed years to grind in RO.
      • You are too strong now. You can solo MvPs in minutes. Even tough MvPs can be soloed.
      • The content is amazing, because it's new, not because it's balanced. Remember when Mora coins were introduced? People farmed them 24/7 with all alts because the gear and enchants were that overpowered.
      • Almost Every new boss card is just too strong.
      • Which makes every old card just too weak.

      Did players stop playing together? Did they start playing solo because they wanted to(less play time, different time zone, job and IRL)? Or did the game follow other games and  pushed players to be solo players? In the end ALL games became pay to play solo.

Neffletics

Renewal made partying less important since you can OHKO (one hit knockout) everything.

Ragnarok's main selling point isn't gameplay, it's the bond players make when they play together and that's what keeps them playing.
solacero rip

Nekoruchii

I'm pretty much one of the 1% who enjoys renewal.

Tho, I won't deny that renewal is completely broken unless the staff does the necessary actions to do tweaking/nerfing stuff to make it "balanced" and be able to promote team play or so.

While most private servers from pre-re to re have the following: job changer, warper, stat/skill resetter; therefore I don't understand why this is an issue where low rate pre-re have this stuff as well.
It is rare to find a server with a decent donation shop that won't lead it to p2w at all.

Renewal has lots of instances as well, either, you would still need people to do those, you can't still solo some iirc. Its just a matter of finding a good community too and a guild who promotes party play.

And nowadays, it is very hard to find a good renewal server that will tier up with how good these three servers were: CasualRO, Chu!RO and Woon Renewal.



tmleavitt

Quote from: Lili on May 13, 2020, 04:09 AM
I am going to write down everything right and wrong with classic RO and Renewal here:

    Classic RO problems:
    • Low rates broke the economy with GrindFest
    • You need dual clients, friends effort and TIME to play
    • You are always weak without gear. Want to swipe Thor? Get cards, gear then go. Want to farm Gefenia? You can't solo without ice pick, best you could try is acid bombing. Make a party with bragi, SG and rdps

1. Grinding is what makes the game fun in my honest opinion, especially with the card system. It's just boring NOW because we all have had experienced the leveling course many times.
2. You don't need dual clients. Dual clients actually ruin the game for me, because I don't use it. I find it a way to exploit being OP with lesser effort. you can very much focus on one character and still enjoy the game. Although playing with friends enhances game play (pretty obviously), it isn't a requirement. You can still level up on your own. Effort and time is needed for almost any mmorpg out there. Tell me which game doesn't need those.
3."You are always weak without gear". Yes. Greater gear does upgrade your character. 1+1=2.

Completely useless points imo. If I were to give negative points of Pre-renewal, it would be that its not noob friendly. Since it's a very old game, most players know what they're doing and can easily farm zeny, level up relatively compared to someone who has to follow a guide.[/list]

Imperial Regalia

The biggest problem with renewal is that it takes everything unique about RO, and normalizes it into something nice and linear and predictable. The asymmetrical strengths and the exponential nature of pre-renewal is what gives the game depth, personality, and makes it so timeless.

Graceful Bee

It's not bad per say,it's just different. I tried it and didn't hate it,but didn't love it either.

For me the pre-renewal gameplay has the nostalgic appeal too,it's more familiar and more party-friendly.

Sinistrum

Timegating content to Instances.

It just adds to the "Vanilla" Grind.
You go Instances, on Cooldown cuz youre locked out and miss your chance otherwise.

Playtester

So the reason I liked pre-re RO so much and it's basically still my favorite MMORPG is that it gave you full freedom and had a great sense of exploration. You didn't have any quest markers or quest lines you had to follow, basically you could just go anywhere and do anything you want and it's still kinda worthwhile.

Another great thing was the dependency on partying. Basically every party needed a Priest and every Priest needed a party (before Anubis). That plus the fact that people aren't bound to quests, you could basically always find a party.

Also the equipment system in RO was great. Basically every equip was useful in some situation. Even very early game drops could be useful for endgame. It wasn't so that every 10 levels you have to get new equips or anything, you could aim for your final equipment set right from the get go.

All of these was destroyed by renewal. Quest lines, quest markers, exp/drops penalty on level differences, heck the world map even tells you where to go at which level. The classes also got a lot less party-friendly.

Yeah, the renewal content might be good, but RO's game design went downhill already way before renewal came and keeps going downhill. I often dream about completely remaking the game trying to keep it as true to the original design as possible, but it's too much work for a single person, plus there isn't really that much interest in it (these days hardly anybody plays RO for the exploration and partying).

mateusb12

Bad number scaling and exp/drop penalty.

When i'm deciding where should I farm/level I want to be free. I hate being restricted by stupid penalties

Mitsuna

Ragnarok Pre-Renewal was always a team game where you needed several people to take down monsters or level up. It was also pretty grindy and it took you months to get some decent gear. You could play this game for years and you were still not done. You could stick to the game and grow with it.
It's fun and still after many years its nice to get this nostalgia back.

Renewal just focuses mostly on people who don't have time. Old and new players don't have the time to grind anymore because of work, school etc. You can pretty much get everything through the item shop.
You don't need any party members or a priest anymore. Scrolls can be bought, you can oneshot many MVPS and run instances alone with the gear. And its just a huge pay2win since you only can get better through cash shop, shadow gear and stuff can't be dropped. (offical server)
Also every class was needed and there were clear differences.
And the Gear Upgrade is just infinte now. Getting stuff up to +20 and the best enchants with 5 enchant options, and this is also possible only with cashing.