[Non-Renewal] Ragnarok in 2013, and what we can do to grow the community

[Playtester]

Just discovered repeatable exp quests. This thing should be banned. Less motivation to play with a team.

Or even better: Replace them with the newer kill-count quests and always let a kill count for all party members in view range.


And yes, TalonRO is very well managed. Too bad it has too many customs for me.

[Strudel]

It's for those poor souls that have nobody else to play with yet.
Btw, they were replaced by Eden Quest System.

What puts me off at TalonRO is the fact that you sell mvp cards in a low rate server, it's just "wut?"

[DeePee]

Like I said, the server is very customized due to its past and is far from perfect. But despite the players (and us) having to deal with those items being ingame (the downside to having no wipes), people still play it. However, that does not really matter though. What matters is that people do not join because of the large population and they do join despite some of them not even liking the customs, even when we were down to 12 players. And from my point of view, that's mostly due to having patience and not giving up so quickly. And that's what most server owners do. Ragnarok is an old game and people play it on and off. They want a server they can rely on, not one where the admin gives up after a while.

A server can be full of potential and have awesome features, but if the owners close it after a while because they do not have the patience to wait for more players, it was not all that great.

[Overplayed]

A server can be full of potential and have awesome features, but if the owners close it after a while because they do not have the patience to wait for more players, it was not all that great.

I can agree with that. People want somewhere that they can play for a while even if they need to take a week or two break for whatever reason. I think that a big issue is that many servers don't last long or even make the promise that they will last long. Most servers are usually run by people who want to try it out and aren't actually dedicated to creating a long lasting server.

I can also agree with the no customs part to an extent. In order to stay unique and compete with other servers you have to offer different. However, that doesn't mean you need to introduce a bunch of new, OP gear and custom maps that totally change gameplay. You have to offer customs that leave the RO gameplay relatively the same. Once you start adding in custom equipment, wings, monster spawns, OP quests, etc. you start changing the fundamentals of the game. I don't see that as a good thing. So many unbalanced custom servers is what I think separates the remaining pre-re community.

[Bomboleriot]

This very difference that custom should, in your opinion, create, is already warranted by :
- Rates. This one point is already enough
- Things like (non-)renewal, etc.

No customs needed from there imo.


Addendum : By the way, i don't think systems like mercenaries are healthy. It departs from teaming.
Also, Battleground. Always had a grudge against it. It makes quite easy to heave gears you'd normally have to work hard to get your hands on it. It makes a lot of stuff obsolete (for example, tidal wool becomes suddenly dull). On the other hand, it enables everyone to get easy access of a nice pool of (very very) decent stuff.

[Playtester]

I also think that customs are not really needed to make a server interesting for players. Of course players also want new content, but might as well be official content or custom content that's there "just for fun" without changing the normal gameplay.

Just think about it: Why does the majority of the players don't play on official servers?
1. Official servers have 80% bots. Really. Hardly anyone talks with you because it's most likely a bot.
2. Official servers have stupid restrictions, like not being able to change to 2nd job without paying. Also your storage is small as free player.
3. More lag because Aegis is not as optimized as eAthena.
4. Rates for free players are just sadistic, 100% exp and 3% death penalty. VIP with 150% exp and 1% death penalty already starts getting acceptable, put requires you to pay monthly and then we are back to why private servers originally were made (avoiding monthly fee).
5. iRO does weird custom changes themselves that makes it kinda feel like a private server as well and kRO is of course only in Korean and you're not allowed to play on it anyway.
6. Not really a big issue but the lack of autotrade and thus forcing players to always let the game running can be a reason as well. Plus private servers are a bit better with making rules on where to create shops (like sidewalk only or at least 2 tiles away from an NPC).
7. Some players just want to do PVP, but it's endgame-only in RO and some people don't want to go through the tedious grind (main reason for existence of high rate server).

I'd claim hardly anybody will quit official servers and look for a private server because he thinks it would be cool to have custom overpowered equips or because he thinks RO doesn't have enough different maps and certainly not because he thinks the spawns are stupid.

So I think just aiming to make a server like official servers that just fixes the main problems of the official servers is already a good aim.

Plus you have to look at it this way: Because there is currently no successful close-to-official private server at all, this is like a "market gap". So it would be special even if it didn't add anything special.

[Edward EG]

IMO, it also depends on WoE guilds. They are the most important element that make up the server's population. All they need is a server that offers consistent stability (no lags, no DDOS, no gravity errors). Because a single mistake in managing the server can cause them to leave which eventually cause a drop in the server's population like what i've seen in most servers these days (I'm not gonna mention who they are)

[Astraeos]

Alot of times with Customs, servers make that content essential and make it so people without this "custom" gear stand less of a chance at competing with these same people that have them, since most the time customs require either donation in some form, or ridiculously long quest requirements.

iROs problems is how they've handled the repeatable quests. At first it was pretty decent and got people together to level, instead of having most of them just AFK forever. It also helped players expand their horizons in the classes they could play at a more effective level. The problem it got to was when P2W model got incorporated and you could use Reset Stones ($1) to reset the timer on the quest and do it again (Even I abused this buying Kafra Points from other players with Zeny). When you complete these quests you get Eden Badges, which is fine on it's own. Eventually the GMs did the dumbest thing ever and let players exchange these Eden Badges for End-Game gear at a VERY low price. This killed the economy on the side of these gears and quickly set a gap between P2W players and players that didn't want to outright pump money into the game just to compete.

Edward also has a point on how WoE guilds effect the overall population of the server.

[eflow]

Iunno, a lot of the discussion so far in this thread only touches briefly on the WHY people play/love RO.

Personally for me, its RO's game play mechanics and systems. The combination of allocating stats that mean something + skills interplay with equipment + CARDS = there isn't ONE build for every situation. There are multiple OP spikes along the optimization curve depending on the situation.

And that's what makes the game fun for me. As someone mentioned previously, this is a game that thrives on imbalance.

The problem I find is that well... as time passes, RO just feels more and more dated. Stuff like UI where to transfer items from window to window you have to click and drag x N compared to the modern day shift_click or right_click.

Customs, no customs, one server, multiple server... none of that seem as important to me compared to "updating" RO's feel.

[nile]

Private servers have to not only compete with one another but also with official servers. Official servers have certain advantages, and at the end of the day it's THEIR game people want to play. Private servers just offer a certain form of convenience that official servers do not. I think a lot of people forget that and try to add a lot of monotonous content and it drives a wedge between players' desires, and ultimately player's no long have fun on that server and look for another one. I help come up with content for DivinityRO and I always question how the concept I'm coming up with can be improved for not only the current players (both old and new) on the server, but also to others that want to try out our server.

I saw some of my friends just stomping in WoE on divinityro and they were the only decent guild, a few guildies mentioned that the name should of been changed because many of the WoE guilds around right now won't even consider playing there because of the reputation the name has (I'm not going to go into detail because it's in the past).

IMO, it also depends on WoE guilds.

It's an element and generally playing WoE is a big thing even for casuals. The main problem with RO is that we have a very split player-base of the casual/not-good-enough and the veterans. Veterans are not satisfied without good competition, the problem is half of the competition are casual/not-good-enough. When you have a scenario where 90% of players WoEing are casual then it's great because they won't leave as fast when problems arise and they'll stick around longer with the same enemies. But for them it sucks to be rolled over by better players and it sucks for those players because it's too easy. Then there are rates and customs and donations. A lot of veterans will not tolerate low/mid-rates without a good reason and they dislike custom items (and they need to know the server has/will have competition).

That's assuming the server has gotten past the problem of starting up a server and not having it fail instantly or having zero population. If people are at all interested in a new server and it has problems the moment it opens then people will look elsewhere very fast.

Super WoEs were great and showed you what competition there was (I had no idea how many South Americans played this game for a while) but even they had serious problems.

Maybe the difficulty of needing a relatively experienced/knowledgeable person set it up is the core problem. Also we make servers implement @nodelay and they have to deal with ddos on top of everything else.

tl;dr Setting up a server and having everything go smoothly (no lag etc) is a common problem

[serebii01]

Just make a server same like EternityRO. There would be many players to play on that kind of server.
Nowadays all servers have customs(except EuphRO), I am talking about healers, skill/stat reseters, not mentioning ridiculous items like glasses[1] , wings and such...
If EuphRO would make a wipe(sometimes a wipe is necessary to renew the balance between new players and old), and maybe raise rates to 7x, also maybe if it would add a town warper, people would come back to play.
EternityRO v4, would had a lot of players if Karei wouldn't had stole donated money and lied about doing something...

[Playtester]

EternityRO was best in v2 anyway.

EuphRO is still around?

[serebii01]

EternityRO was best in v2 anyway.

EuphRO is still around?

eRO v2 was best because Karei promised so much in eRO v3, and nofthing good came out of that, also they cheated in WOE SE, by helping some guild giving them khiel hyre card, to keep good competition, and later all the guilds somehow found out that and left...

EuphRO is still around, 90+ players, half of them are merchants, well in my opinion, if EuphRO would want to attract more players they should do a wipe,( make an announcement 1 month before the wipe)...

[Varzog]

Hello!

If I should be honest : I would say that what Ragnarok Online is lacking.. is mainly players, and also, new features, new ideas.

When i'm trying to find a private server, i'm never going on a server which proposes me the same content as usual with only a few more mini-games ( If I could add my 2 cents on it : What's the point of mini-games where there isn't any players on these servers? ), or any server that proposes me to settle myself fast.

What i'm generally heading for are unique servers which conserve the main idea what Ragnarok is, but, also bring with them their new concepts, their new ideas, and i'm not talking about new way of managing the players with events, or anything like this, i'm talking about core gameplay ( Another way of flee'ing, parrying hit, or even new way of damaging your opponents, just something new.. ) that would actually bring new way of see'ing a class, new way of building it around with custom equipments.

No wonder why ragnarok online gets emptier and emptier with these popular servers being so conservative with few customs ( to not "unbalance" the game, when you can never balance a game perfectly, even pre-renewal servers are far away from what we could call "balanced", seeing what are the main classes people are actually choosing ).

PS : Sorry for being pessimistic, though.. :p
PS2 : Also, could you forgive me about my english? I'm still learning, I guess.

[Playtester]

Uuuuh that sounds more like you are looking for a game different from RO1. Why not just play one of the other 200 MMORPGs then? Or at least the 20 unique ones.