Fly Wing Weight 0?

[Satos]

From a server management perspective...
Instead of creating an Infinite Fly Wing, why not just adjust Fly Wing's weight to 0?

As a player, I'm just curious why most servers opt to create a custom item, make it cost an exorbitant amount of resources/zeny, and then manually reduce the selling price of half a dozen items to compensate for inevitable zeny-creep.

It seems like making Fly Wings weigh nothing would be easier to code.  Would satisfy players' desire for an unlimited tele playstyle.  Would be accessible earlier on in the play cycle.  And would be a small zeny-sink, since players will need to restock continuously.

Thoughts?

[Playtester]

It saves you the time to go back to a store.

You could also fairly easily code it so that using the Infinite Fly Wing substracts 50z from your money each time if you are worried about lack of Zeny sinks.

[2k2]

This item (and Teleport skill) needs to less accessible, not more.

I never liked the F2P official servers (vs the old P2P ones which user the original RO formula), but one thing in my opinion that they did correct, was make Fly Wing, Butterfly Wing, Teleport (skill) and Warp Portal very expensive. Fly Wing costing 3k on NPC, Butterfly Wing 5k, Teleport costing 100 SP (not balanced imo, should be something like 5+1 (+2 for 2nd classes) per Base Level, so 1st classes are not too limited in using it due to their low SP pool, while still being a high cost at high level), Warp Portal using 10 Blue Gemstone.

I understand many people like teleporting around one-shotting stuff, even more when there are stupid busted things like Autoloot (which massively buffs ranged classes. Should work only for melee range, like 5x5 or less), but the game is super beautiful and sorta balanced in a way that it expects you to walk and explore. Those annoying monsters such as Mimic, Rideword, Cramp, Hunter Fly etc were purposely made hard to be dealt with (either by neutral property, high def, high vit, very high dex, very high agi, high damage and super fast attack speed) to be a stone on your way and put a challenge, but with the abuse of Fly Wing people can infinitely ignore them, which is not cool.

Also there's the biggest balancing issue imo which is low vs high ping players. On a regular engaging situation, the ping difference is not that bad. When it comes to teleporting though, is where it's nearly impossible for low ping players to compete with high ping ping players, as the delay from the ping is applied on each screen refresh. I've played with very high ping and it's very demotivating. You can notice this problem more with the fact that you barely encounter low ping players competing on high end PVM, because it's nearly impossible for them, while most players in PVP (including the ones in the top rankings) are low ping players because since teleporting doesn't take a place in pvp, they can compete at almost the same level a low ping player can.

The game would be much better, feel more organic (less robotic) and people would stumble each other more if teleporting wasn't so accessible and the way-to-go for max efficiency.

My opinion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Satos]

It saves you the time to go back to a store.
You could also fairly easily code it so that using the Infinite Fly Wing substracts 50z from your money each time if you are worried about lack of Zeny sinks.

Valid point.  But there's a mental satisfaction aspect to consider.  Using a consumable item that I'm restocking, versus using an infinite item.
I've recently played on a server that made the infinite fly wing cost zeny with each use, and... it just felt bad.

It's all in my head, I know.  But having an unlimited item that costs money per use just felt wrong, when I knew there were other servers out there that were almost identical in rates/content.
So I quit the one that cost per use, and went to one that was free.

But...
I played on iRO for 10 years.  So, restocking on fly wings with every trip to town felt fine.  And I had no ill feelings about spending the money on restocking wings in all my years there.

I know it's messed up, logically.  But it just feels different.
I'm sure if I'd given more time to that recent server, I would have gotten used to it and thought nothing of it.

This item (and Teleport skill) needs to less accessible, not more.
The game would be much better, feel more organic (less robotic) and people would stumble each other more if teleporting wasn't so accessible and the way-to-go for max efficiency.
My opinion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I agree with you, that current RO lacks an organic, community play/feel nowadays.  I miss that.
I LOVED Ragnarok back in the day.
I made several friends in real life from playing it.
Without the play style that it offered then, I never would have made those friends.

But I am also a big fan of modern convenience.  And the infinite tele play style is the king of convenience.

Even iRO's last attempt at a Pre-Renewal server contained an infinite fly wing and an infinite group wing, that were free to use, and only cost like $2.50 USD to rent for a week. (They even gave them out, free, as an attendance reward during the open beta.)


Granted, that server failed miserably...

But even the official servers adapted to fit the time schedules of their aging player base, based entirely on the quality of life changes that had been a big draw to private servers.

It's like a Pandora's Box.
I only get about 2 hours of playtime on my free nights (which are only 2-3 nights a week).
I don't mind killing 2000 Peco Peco Eggs for a card.
I just don't want to spend most of that time walking and sitting.



Thank you both very much for your thoughts.
I enjoy getting to hear from other players that view things differently than I do.

And 2k2, I've very much appreciated a recent PSA you posted.  I feel you saved me some wasted time.

[Metan]

To answer OP, infinite FW means 1) you won't need to restock, ever, and 2) you won't need to spend zeny on 30k FWs now and then. It's basically eating the cake and having it too.

I understand many people like teleporting around one-shotting stuff, even more when there are stupid busted things like Autoloot (which massively buffs ranged classes. Should work only for melee range, like 5x5 or less), but the game is super beautiful and sorta balanced in a way that it expects you to walk and explore. Those annoying monsters such as Mimic, Rideword, Cramp, Hunter Fly etc were purposely made hard to be dealt with (either by neutral property, high def, high vit, very high dex, very high agi, high damage and super fast attack speed) to be a stone on your way and put a challenge, but with the abuse of Fly Wing people can infinitely ignore them, which is not cool.

Here I disagree completely.

Far from being something exclusive to RO, autoloot (whether naturally, or through a looter pet) has been a thing in so many other MMOs, and this is the only MMO that comes to mind where such a basic QoL function somehow divides people. And that's because 1) monsters in this game drop a lot of loot, even in a 1x drop rate scenario, and foremost 2) playing this game as melee f*** sucks. The pathing is obnoxious due to client limitations (only one position check per sec) and gets even worse with mid to high ping; monsters may cast stuff which you may not have the means, or the reflex, or the patience (as in, s*** gets tiresome after the 1000th kill) to dodge and may f*** you up (quick damaging spells, Quagmire, instant debuffs like Dec Agi, SP burn...); just one melee class has any reliable natural self-defense mechanism (Blacksmith), and few others have to pray for RNG (Crusader, Lord Knight (2h only), TK/SG); stacking HP only truly helps when paired with other defensive mechanisms, Flee is not a good mechanic as it doesn't help vs magic and is capped at 95% regardless of the level difference  between you and the target, PD and MDEF aren't that easy to stack lots of, high DEF may require a big investment; finally, the few melee jobs with access to any sort of AoE also have it against them in one way or another in base game: BB and Gutter Lines, Brandish sucks, GC gets crippled if targets stack on the same cell, Grimtooth got destroyed by anti-stacking mechanic, Meteor Assault sucks, Raid sucks, Warmths are not mobbing skills anyhow, lmfao @ Monk/BS. And they still suffer the most while mobbing without autoloot due to 1).

It's obvious that ranged and magic classes benefit the most from autoloot. But it's not that the game is biased to favor them: the game is heavily biased against melees. Ragnarok is a deeply flawed game in this and so many other regards.

As for those annoying monsters, they're not there to make your life more interesting while walking across maps, they're anti-bot measures. Why do you think they made Mimic such a goddamn pest (high movespeed, stark min-high atk, medium MDEF, hard to freeze/petrify, high Flee, Auto Guard, seldom drops anything of worth)? Why do Hunter Flies need Teleport? And why would they be placed in so many maps where they definitely don't belong? It's pure annoyance. Wanna kill Clocks in peace as a lv50 Mage? Catch this Mimic/Rideword/Elder. There's nothing balanced or beautiful about this, it's just koreans making you suffer.

[OrcLordDaddy]

Or you could just implement a /teleport commant that you can put on the hotkey bar or in the ALT+M menu so when you press ALT+1 it'll teleport you as if you've used a Fly Wing.

[Metan]

No need! That's basically what @warp does, if you don't input map name or coordinates. I don't remember if you can restrict its use to players so it only works as a free FW, though.