Review of Return to Morroc (Sadly, more bad than good)

[Minatoaquades]

I said I wouldn't answer anymore on this post. but this is getting out of hand.

Monday, he dropped a patch and told everyone, goodluck! If something breaks, you will have to deal with it until the end of week. Of course, because of his incompetency ( he himself admitted hes not an experienced dev), as expected, few things broke. Now judges and seers are stuck with broken mechanics for a week. No scaling, no cast ready.

-The issues have been fixed within 8 hours of the patch being added. On a weekday. After I slept for 4 hours and got to work.

Patch 1.0 AM was beyond overpowered, and now it's in a good spot power wise. Players from the jobs are being consulted and checked for data, and apart from some specific cases, improvements will be made.

Illusionist had a BUG FIX that put their damage potential back where it should be, withing reasonable parameters. Sinners also had a change that was fully understood by their players after updates.

PRM, contrary to "some people", is in a very good spot, far from perfect, but meta-chasers will always complain when a strong item/build is nerfed and adjusted to be in line with the rest of the game.

While you, or anyone, can claim that stuff happens or is bad, the least you can do is BE HONEST about it.

Feedback is constantly requested on discord. Ideas are discussed, votings are held with the apropriate job channels about specific changes. While some don't understand/won't accept change (and would rather be broken OP to the detriment of the entire game and community.), and I don't do a perfect job. Work is being done fast, and well.

No stuff is "being left broken and I'll fix over the weekend". This is blatantly false and anyone who takes a few minutes to visit our discord will see plenty of notes and announcements about it.

This is pure nonsense and a waste of my time, but since you're so invested in spreading lies, the best I can do is make sure the truth is told.

And for anyone who doubts it, just need a minute to check our discord.

Oh really? Everything is fixed? Thats amazing to hear! Sorry i might have been on a different discord because in the server discord im in, DK and Judges are still not scaling properly, AM are still nerfed to the ground, and the high level sinnere are still unhappy with the changes that some even decided to just quit.

Maybe theres a super secret discord group out there where everyone is happy with the changes that i am not a part of.


You ask for feedback, people give them, you reject the feedback, and instead of compromise you make your own changes that nobody whos playing the class likes. Whats the point of targeting unpopular classes and nerfing them more? They are already unpopular to begin with.

You want this server to be just full of NR and legends? Thats where this is headed lol. Population is almost heavily majority are NR and Lgd. Man if you nerf those classes too, server will be dead.



Speaking of inviting everyone on discord. Those who decide to do so, pls check how the discord interactions are during 1.0, when patch 1.1 dropped and patch 1.1.1


Patch 1.0 - everyone happy, some underpowered jobs (but all admin had to do is buff them)

Patch 1.1 - majority are okay, some are not happy, some jobs died

Patch 1.1.1 - you can see how general chat became less active, lots of people quit the game ( these are high level ones btw, people who invested hours alrdy but just gave up). Made one job go back to mediocre status and destroyed 2 jobs (one is being looked at)


So its not that difficult to see the direction of the server.


For me, patches are meant to improve the game, improve classes and overall experience. Maybe your definition of patch is different.



Anyway patch 1.1.1 made a lot of people quit, its the straw that broke the camel's back, so I think if you a voting poll right now, those who stayed are the happy ones. Which is good for you! Youre one step closer to your projected goal of having 20 happy players 

[Minatoaquades]

Quick addition:


I just revisited the discord it seems that admim is legitimately changing his ways. Some of the atrocious nerfs he did was tuned back a little, I saw his discussion in sinner channel with the members there and ask for some feedbacks, i saw some votings and I saw like majority voted for their only happy with 50% of the changes and honestly i really hope this is a wake up call for him going forward.


I guess he just genuinely believed that his massive changes are great ideas and when the mass exodus and massive amount of complaints he got from patch 1.1.1 opened his eyes and maybe gave him a change of heart.


Are some of the classes still broken and unplayable when it comes to 130+ content? Yes definitely.

Do some classes still overperform than the rest? YES. Definitely

Are some MVP cards still "must haves and build enabler" ? Yes.


But these are all normal for a new server and as long as the admin is willing to ask community, listens to them and actually inputs their good ideas going forward then eventually it might become a good server.

Some nerfs are still out there like the AM nerf which i believe to be excessive but maybe in time he will also fix that.

Now I just hope this isnt just a 1 time thing from the admin because of the mass exit that happened, and that he will continue doing this with future changes he may do with the classes.

Overall, future seem a little bit brighter but only time can tell if this behavior continues going forward.

[Blinzer]

don't you think your incessant jabbering is somewhat unjustified, considering you are dealing with living and breathing server modifications? you seem extremely unfamiliar with the process of improvement.

[osolor]

I for one think that nerfing the top classes is a good way to go, anyone who saw what the "Race to the top" of daRO made out of the game (you can check it now, pretty much dead for new players). But nerfing classes/builds that already where low tier was sad to say the least.

[Playtester]

In game design you learn that players are really good at telling you what's fun and what isn't fun, but they suck at telling you what to change. This feels a bit like such a situation.

I can only advice players to focus more on explaining what they didn't like rather than giving specific changes and almost demand them to be done like this. This will often not lead to good results.

I for one think that nerfing the top classes is a good way to go, anyone who saw what the "Race to the top" of daRO made out of the game (you can check it now, pretty much dead for new players). But nerfing classes/builds that already where low tier was sad to say the least.

DaRO is actually closed.

[chimaeragryph]

I just revisited the discord it seems that admim is legitimately changing his ways. Some of the atrocious nerfs he did was tuned back a little, I saw his discussion in sinner channel with the members there and ask for some feedbacks, i saw some votings and I saw like majority voted for their only happy with 50% of the changes and honestly i really hope this is a wake up call for him going forward.

This is actually the way Ornstein has worked for the entire time that I've watched him. He's always been responsive to feedback but still acts on what he believes to be best for the server (so voting doesn't always mean he'll do what was voted for, it's to gauge opinions). Nothing here is new, he always listens to the community but sticks to his own vision, he makes mistakes then fixes them.

Source: Been watching development in that Discord for 11 months.

[Minatoaquades]

This is actually the way Ornstein has worked for the entire time that I've watched him. He's always been responsive to feedback but still acts on what he believes to be best for the server (so voting doesn't always mean he'll do what was voted for, it's to gauge opinions). Nothing here is new, he always listens to the community but sticks to his own vision, he makes mistakes then fixes them.

Source: Been watching development in that Discord for 11 months.

I think thats pretty dumb though. If he knows he will make mistakes and then fixes them, when he couldve just listened in the first place and avoid mistake altogether.


Anyway youre right, thats why i am still not too keen on the server improving. If he just responds but do not take action / follow what the community wants then its the just lead to server dying or becoming just a niche server. 



In terms of not knowing what to change, that is not the situation of rtm. Tons of experienced players in their respective classes already told orn what to change and how to change and to just compromise but he wouldnt listen.

Example of this is illusionist one of the bottom dwellers in terms of class dps, he added unknown gloves and made them become mid tier, decided they should stay bottom dwellers so he nerfed the whole class instead of just the gloves.

[Minatoaquades]

Update

Admin went full R. Lol. He is no longer accepting feedbacks from the community and given how atrocious he is from his past fixes, I am sure balance on this server will forever be garbage. He doesnt play the class, he have 0 experience on progression of classes. He only test classes via gm command.

Goodluck to all of you!

[sate]

Such toxicity is unwarranted no matter how unbalanced a server is IMO, as clearly works are being done to remedy the unbalance. Did he do something nasty to you to warrant those insults? 

To be honest, with all the drama, I'm now intrigued to at least try Return to Morocc, lol.

[Leonheart]

Play into a fully customized server need maturity. If you are not ready, better not jump into such server. You need to understand that the owner has his own goal and vision. And how to get there is up to the owner. If you dont want things go wrong or sudden change destroy your main classes for quite some times, well its not for you then. Start the classic or else. I played some fully customized server like AL and PRM, the ego of the owner is the fuel of the thrilling new concept. They will occasionally listen to community tho.

[Minatoaquades]

Play into a fully customized server need maturity. If you are not ready, better not jump into such server. You need to understand that the owner has his own goal and vision. And how to get there is up to the owner. If you dont want things go wrong or sudden change destroy your main classes for quite some times, well its not for you then. Start the classic or else. I played some fully customized server like AL and PRM, the ego of the owner is the fuel of the thrilling new concept. They will occasionally listen to community tho.

That is true on most cases not on this server lol.


The owner kept on tooting his own horn on how he thinks he has done wonderful job on the server despite balance still practically non existent. Its one thing to work on things and improve it and its another thing to keep on destroying classes without improving other aspects.

Hes basically all talk, no work. He keeps saying that he wants ALL CONTENT on RTM to be soloable by everyone, he wants every mob to be "souls like" which means mechanic heavy and fun experience to fight.

What we actually get is only 3 or 4 classes can solo end game dungeons 2 of those requires ultra expensive gears, we have mobs that are basically just pure stat sticks no mechanics.

Some of the classes are still broken up to this day, but hey! Who cares? 3 more new classes are coming so amazing job for the owner! He is so amazing he considers releasing new classes should be prioritized than balancing the existing ones!

I also like the fact that he kept on insisting how some classes are in a goodspot but without proofs lol.

Kinda like a salesman saying check out this bmx bike it runs faster than a ferrari but you just need to trust me on that one.


I did give it a chance, sadly, with the way things are going, The server will never achieve the good vision the owner has all because he doesnt want to put in the work to achieve it.

He definitely will become a good politician in some third world country though, with all his promises for a great future and zero work.

[baphomet123]

That is true on most cases not on this server lol.


The owner kept on tooting his own horn on how he thinks he has done wonderful job on the server despite balance still practically non existent. Its one thing to work on things and improve it and its another thing to keep on destroying classes without improving other aspects.

Hes basically all talk, no work. He keeps saying that he wants ALL CONTENT on RTM to be soloable by everyone, he wants every mob to be "souls like" which means mechanic heavy and fun experience to fight.

What we actually get is only 3 or 4 classes can solo end game dungeons 2 of those requires ultra expensive gears, we have mobs that are basically just pure stat sticks no mechanics.

Some of the classes are still broken up to this day, but hey! Who cares? 3 more new classes are coming so amazing job for the owner! He is so amazing he considers releasing new classes should be prioritized than balancing the existing ones!

I also like the fact that he kept on insisting how some classes are in a goodspot but without proofs lol.

Kinda like a salesman saying check out this bmx bike it runs faster than a ferrari but you just need to trust me on that one.


I did give it a chance, sadly, with the way things are going, The server will never achieve the good vision the owner has all because he doesnt want to put in the work to achieve it.

He definitely will become a good politician in some third world country though, with all his promises for a great future and zero work.

I don't know your background or experience regardling to the server but some of your statement is im moderately agreeing. The admin is doing his best but not all best is going for good result, some updates are really bad and vice versa.

The word soloable by every class for is not really true sadly because of the called "Class Identity" this server is not regular RO that every class is DPS battle (Even HP/Support can deal billions of damage lol).

I'm solo player and my class is really tanky and can do some End-game content and im still on mid-end game items, I can see some underwhelming class doing end-game content for sure it has the most expensive gears and that's the perks of it I guess.

[2k2]

Like Minatoaquades said, server owners of these type of servers are more ego than anything else.

Many times these servers look super good on paper and you get super hyped but sadly almost everytime it's a big disappointment due to admin listening to circlejerks only, admins ignoring actual true feedback with proof, admins refusing to address emergent bugs/exploits, admins not keeping up with their word after something unique happens because of outcry of salty members of the community, or admins being straight out idiots not doing the math or testing stuff oftentimes resulting in release of broken numbers that the may or may not try to address it in the future, possibly creating the biggest shoot in the foot of creating super unique items.

Big example of such things was Asgard Legends: Insomnia (admin) gathered feedback here on rms for years, with the idea of a very promising server. It actually delivered a good and unique server (for its time, back in late 2018) and the opening was very successfully, for a period. Gameplay-wise the server was amazing. The mix/shake of episodes and content availability made it very unique, balance was very good too, as he managed to make every class useful in a party setup (other than non-AoE-DDs just acting as mobbers) and most able to straight solo content.

Few days in and problems started to surface, mostly oversight or lack of a beta test: the numbers on the chance of getting multimod items was too big, making people who played early on accumulate way too many massively overpowered gears. OCA content table was not balanced for the server and had card drops from unavailable episodes, which a group managed to get a Salamander Card (which was fine for the admin, just like people got their hands on multimod godly items), players from one specific guild kept crying to the admin about it and he decided to manually remove the card from them because of this guild. The group who got the Salamander Card and many more players who witnessed the results quit the server after it. It was the first big drama on Discord.

As the server that had an opening of almost 500 players, kept quickly losing players by the day, this same guild kept pushing the admin to make changes to benefit them or undermine other groups, with Insomnia most of the times listening to them.

Second big drama was when I and some other players reported (with lots of evidences) that the rank 1 monster killcount character, which was a rogue, was botting for about 18h/day. He was one of the leaders of this guild that had their claws on the admin. Despite the mass reports and evidences, Insomnia refused to ban said player and then he botted 24/7 afterwards. Another big batch of players left after this.

At this point, the server was already small (~90 avg throughout the day).

Third big drama was the Bio3 MVP exploit (another big oversight by the admin), who got reported too late to address, refused to ban the said exploiters and remove the items, which made the server become a joke at this point. There was so many Bio3 MVP drops that people where mass selling Combat Knife, Dragon Slayer, Ice Pick for 1z on autotrades. Thing is, people had been reporting the two guys that exploited this since th very beginning of the server, as they were causing lots of problems, fights, breaking rules and BMing in MVP competition. After the bug exploit fix, they left the server making a huge drop party where they dropped hundreds of each Bio3 MVP drops. These items never again had any value in this server anymore.

Fourth big drama shortly after this, was when I dropped a Deviling Card and linked it on global chat. I'm not a MVP/Miniboss/Porings camper at all, I just have massive luck and got the card in one kill while I was traversing Yuno fields. Insomnia himself said and confirmed multiple times months before the server release and many times after it was already online that the MVP and Miniboss Card balance was 100% done and would never change (he changed some of the card effects without changing its intention, mostly buffing useless ones), but, as always, the ones people kept asking for his confirmations were Deviling, Golden Thief Bug and Ghostring Card, which none of them had any change in numbers other than removing the Reduced HP Regen on GR and allowing Positive (Supportive) Buffs work through GTB's effect. Deviling was the way it is officially. After I dropped my card, the server (that was already a very small community or ~50 autotrades and ~40 playing characters) most of the players tried to buy it from me, some with insulting offers, many with RMT offers, and some with decent offers, but didn't matter as I had no intentions to ever sell it. Some of the players got upset (guess? They were from the guild manipulating the admin) I didn't sell them and started to harass me throughout the game, in everything I'd try to do, whether it was MVP, leveling, grinding, questing etc. They'd take turns into getting in my way doing things and show up with 12+ players (on a server or ~40), even more when they saw I started camping some specific MVPs. Insomnia knew, saw, read through discord, read the reports and all and still refused to do a thing. The players were openly mocking and admitting what they were doing and their intentions on Discord, yet the admin didn't do anything.

Last drama around the time I quit the server was when that rogue botter that got mass reported weeks ago, showed on discord and in-game the gears he acquired through botting: so many multimod (remember early on when monsters had massive chance to drop items with 3-4 mods?) with %neutral resistance, %demihuman resistance etc that he was able to reach 100% resistance in said stats, turning his character 100% immune in PvP or basically immortal for PvE and MVP. People feared and warned Insomnia about the creation of super unique items, even more when we noticed there were botters farming gears 24/7, but since he ignored it all, the problem surfaced. Imagine tanking MVPs with a 1/1 Novice. Or soloing a guild with a Lv40 thief wielding an Ice Pick. Yeah, that was what the server became, since he didn't ban the botter, didn't delete the items and didn't listen to the feedback of people playing his server.

He'd always says that he's going to "stick to his vision" (although he'd always cave in to the outcry of that specific guild) but ended up dooming the server for good.

I heard though that the server had a surge of players as soon as COVID started and gained some traction to the point of reaching ~200 total concurrent.

Legitimately a super good server that was ruined by the admin's arrogance and refusal to act quickly on problems.

Edit for TL;DR: Avoid such server when the admin shows narcissistic behavior. Give it a few years, and if the server is alive and in a good state, maybe they made something right. Don't waste your time on new servers or servers where the admin is a psycho.

[ADM Ornstein]

Like Minatoaquades said, server owners of these type of servers are more ego than anything else.

Many times these servers look super good on paper and you get super hyped but sadly almost everytime it's a big disappointment due to admin listening to circlejerks only, admins ignoring actual true feedback with proof, admins refusing to address emergent bugs/exploits, admins not keeping up with their word after something unique happens because of outcry of salty members of the community, or admins being straight out idiots not doing the math or testing stuff oftentimes resulting in release of broken numbers that the may or may not try to address it in the future, possibly creating the biggest shoot in the foot of creating super unique items.

Big example of such things was Asgard Legends: Insomnia (admin) gathered feedback here on rms for years, with the idea of a very promising server. It actually delivered a good and unique server (for its time, back in late 2018) and the opening was very successfully, for a period. Gameplay-wise the server was amazing. The mix/shake of episodes and content availability made it very unique, balance was very good too, as he managed to make every class useful in a party setup (other than non-AoE-DDs just acting as mobbers) and most able to straight solo content.

Few days in and problems started to surface, mostly oversight or lack of a beta test: the numbers on the chance of getting multimod items was too big, making people who played early on accumulate way too many massively overpowered gears. OCA content table was not balanced for the server and had card drops from unavailable episodes, which a group managed to get a Salamander Card (which was fine for the admin, just like people got their hands on multimod godly items), players from one specific guild kept crying to the admin about it and he decided to manually remove the card from them because of this guild. The group who got the Salamander Card and many more players who witnessed the results quit the server after it. It was the first big drama on Discord.

As the server that had an opening of almost 500 players, kept quickly losing players by the day, this same guild kept pushing the admin to make changes to benefit them or undermine other groups, with Insomnia most of the times listening to them.

Second big drama was when I and some other players reported (with lots of evidences) that the rank 1 monster killcount character, which was a rogue, was botting for about 18h/day. He was one of the leaders of this guild that had their claws on the admin. Despite the mass reports and evidences, Insomnia refused to ban said player and then he botted 24/7 afterwards. Another big batch of players left after this.

At this point, the server was already small (~90 avg throughout the day).

Third big drama was the Bio3 MVP exploit (another big oversight by the admin), who got reported too late to address, refused to ban the said exploiters and remove the items, which made the server become a joke at this point. There was so many Bio3 MVP drops that people where mass selling Combat Knife, Dragon Slayer, Ice Pick for 1z on autotrades. Thing is, people had been reporting the two guys that exploited this since th very beginning of the server, as they were causing lots of problems, fights, breaking rules and BMing in MVP competition. After the bug exploit fix, they left the server making a huge drop party where they dropped hundreds of each Bio3 MVP drops. These items never again had any value in this server anymore.

Fourth big drama shortly after this, was when I dropped a Deviling Card and linked it on global chat. I'm not a MVP/Miniboss/Porings camper at all, I just have massive luck and got the card in one kill while I was traversing Yuno fields. Insomnia himself said and confirmed multiple times months before the server release and many times after it was already online that the MVP and Miniboss Card balance was 100% done and would never change (he changed some of the card effects without changing its intention, mostly buffing useless ones), but, as always, the ones people kept asking for his confirmations were Deviling, Golden Thief Bug and Ghostring Card, which none of them had any change in numbers other than removing the Reduced HP Regen on GR and allowing Positive (Supportive) Buffs work through GTB's effect. Deviling was the way it is officially. After I dropped my card, the server (that was already a very small community or ~50 autotrades and ~40 playing characters) most of the players tried to buy it from me, some with insulting offers, many with RMT offers, and some with decent offers, but didn't matter as I had no intentions to ever sell it. Some of the players got upset (guess? They were from the guild manipulating the admin) I didn't sell them and started to harass me throughout the game, in everything I'd try to do, whether it was MVP, leveling, grinding, questing etc. They'd take turns into getting in my way doing things and show up with 12+ players (on a server or ~40), even more when they saw I started camping some specific MVPs. Insomnia knew, saw, read through discord, read the reports and all and still refused to do a thing. The players were openly mocking and admitting what they were doing and their intentions on Discord, yet the admin didn't do anything.

Last drama around the time I quit the server was when that rogue botter that got mass reported weeks ago, showed on discord and in-game the gears he acquired through botting: so many multimod (remember early on when monsters had massive chance to drop items with 3-4 mods?) with %neutral resistance, %demihuman resistance etc that he was able to reach 100% resistance in said stats, turning his character 100% immune in PvP or basically immortal for PvE and MVP. People feared and warned Insomnia about the creation of super unique items, even more when we noticed there were botters farming gears 24/7, but since he ignored it all, the problem surfaced. Imagine tanking MVPs with a 1/1 Novice. Or soloing a guild with a Lv40 thief wielding an Ice Pick. Yeah, that was what the server became, since he didn't ban the botter, didn't delete the items and didn't listen to the feedback of people playing his server.

He'd always says that he's going to "stick to his vision" (although he'd always cave in to the outcry of that specific guild) but ended up dooming the server for good.

I heard though that the server had a surge of players as soon as COVID started and gained some traction to the point of reaching ~200 total concurrent.

Legitimately a super good server that was ruined by the admin's arrogance and refusal to act quickly on problems.

Edit for TL;DR: Avoid such server when the admin shows narcissistic behavior. Give it a few years, and if the server is alive and in a good state, maybe they made something right. Don't waste your time on new servers or servers where the admin is a psycho.

While I know this happens, may I ask, have you given PRM a try or going by what the person said?

minatoaques is a known troll that rages over everything and blatantly lies. While PRM is not perfect, its getting better everyday.

No game breaking bug exists currently, all jobs can play on all content to varied degrees of success (in fact, I posted a video today of the "community voted weakest job" running multiple endgame dungeons solo, without macros or multiple equip swaps.)

So yes, the server is not perfect. But work is done constantly (for an admin that doesn't work but pushes patches weekly and added a new GvG, new dungeon and new job in a single month, I'm sure I'm all talk eh?) and I stand by my statement: you can play the entire game with any job.

No game will ever be 100% balanced, thats utopic, but salt is very clear on the troll posts. The current bugs that do exist are at most typos on an npc here and there, or a costume disabled (you can actually check our PUBLIC bug report list on discord.)

All of the data mentioned and provided is public to anyone on discord. You can see for yourself or trust a person who has been drowning in salt since our launch.

Claiming an admin "is all talk and no work" when we have weekly patches with fixes and content is a sick joke that I will continue laughing at when I come back here. This poster is clearly on a crusade to tarnish our server with lies and deceit.

[ADM Ornstein]

I just got reports that Minato is the guy who worked with Lai in the past.

Suddenly it all makes sense. What a joke.