Avoiding advanced classes to balance a server.

[A92FL0163]

Server is not going to have repeatable quests right?

[horo]

Rather than "adjusting" every single mob which is too much work, I think almost all pservers prefer to use zeny drainage system of some sort for the monsters to combat zeny inflation problem. In a sense, knowing what monster gives good OC loot or valuable drops consistently is part of their advantage as an experienced player to know where to go for these goodies. Instead, it's better if the server has features that suck zeny out of the economy. Afterall, I thought that you prefer less adjustments the better.

The best zeny drain is usually slot enchantment, followed by Kafra warps, but even so some of these monsters, especially Myst Case, Sleeper, Peach Tree, Mavka and Incubus/Succubus will result in up to tens of millions a day if farmed, so I really worry about it. Being able to afford whitepotting your way through anything is no good I think. As for custom zeny drains, I can think of one or two things only, but nothing that would eat up more than a negligible amount. While less adjustments are preferred from the work side, too, I feel that keeping a servers economy in check is really important, well demonstrated by midrate servers where you can farm Gokurin for money.

Server is not going to have repeatable quests right?

I'm not sure, do you consider these overpowered? http://irowiki.org/wiki/Repeatable_EXP_Quests, second table.

[LiteX]

Rather than "adjusting" every single mob which is too much work, I think almost all pservers prefer to use zeny drainage system of some sort for the monsters to combat zeny inflation problem. In a sense, knowing what monster gives good OC loot or valuable drops consistently is part of their advantage as an experienced player to know where to go for these goodies. Instead, it's better if the server has features that suck zeny out of the economy. Afterall, I thought that you prefer less adjustments the better.

The best zeny drain is usually slot enchantment, followed by Kafra warps, but even so some of these monsters, especially Myst Case, Sleeper, Peach Tree, Mavka and Incubus/Succubus will result in up to tens of millions a day if farmed, so I really worry about it. Being able to afford whitepotting your way through anything is no good I think. As for custom zeny drains, I can think of one or two things only, but nothing that would eat up more than a negligible amount. While less adjustments are preferred from the work side, too, I feel that keeping a servers economy in check is really important, well demonstrated by midrate servers where you can farm Gokurin for money.

Server is not going to have repeatable quests right?

I'm not sure, do you consider these overpowered? http://irowiki.org/wiki/Repeatable_EXP_Quests, second table.

IIRC kRO once added a tax system for NPC'ed items (it was like -10% zeny by selling them), putting low taxes on things is a good way to prevent zeny inflation, having a good GM team that bans bots on sight is also a good way to prevent inflations (Rogues can make about 1.5mZeny/Hour with Peach Trees on certain rates, if you have 8 Rogue bots going on 24/7 when your GM team is away can have a major impact on the economy), watching out for bugs is a good way to prevent zeny duping, and becareful of what items GMs give away, as event, or corruption (If the server is x5/x5/x5 and just started with about 25 people and a GM gives an item that drops from a high-tier MvP on the second day, that item will cost will affect the server's future economy), if you have played Low/Mid rates for a good amount of years i think you can know what will happen to the server's economy and prevent that it will turn like the real world's economy, another tip is that if you see an item's price skyrocketing out of nowhere, it is a good idea to make the item more accesible to players, another idea is to decrease the drop chance of items that can be bought on the npc or buff the potions and make them more expensive, but i reccomend these "Pots on 'roids" for leveling only, otherwise it will turn into a potspamfest in woe,

My comment on those quests... the experience isn't much if its not multiplied, if you meant by the rewards then i guess 5 Goats is okay for a 1 White Pot

Even though they are not do-able if you are 85+ soo...

[horo]

I'll be the only GM with @item for a good while, so that's nothing I worry about. Neither are bots, as we've quite a good .exe that doesn't even allow for doubleclienting.

Well it'll be 2x exp rates so that's not the biggest of multipliers, but it'll certainly advocate farming items on one character to level difficult builds like forger, potter etc., and might also be preferable to partying up with other people, which is something I really want to avoid. Do LR servers mostly have these quests, or are they disabled?

[LiteX]

I'll be the only GM with @item for a good while, so that's nothing I worry about. Neither are bots, as we've quite a good .exe that doesn't even allow for doubleclienting.

Well it'll be 2x exp rates so that's not the biggest of multipliers, but it'll certainly advocate farming items on one character to level difficult builds like forger, potter etc., and might also be preferable to partying up with other people, which is something I really want to avoid. Do LR servers mostly have these quests, or are they disabled?

These quests do kind of help the server's economy, I don't think it will hurt much, since you have to obtain 25-50 of a kind of item to do it, not very abusable

[Ayu]

Remember that the best economy fix is still to increase server population so there's actually people to hunt items. In the beginning when you start the server, "absurd price" is unavoidable. When there's like 50 people around (or even less) and that 1 bathory card pop up, that thing is going to cost you 10 mil+ at an item rate of 10x at least. So to immediately add in supply through the GM team just because there is an "absurd price," I recommend against that. It's especially true for armor elemental cards. Without assumptio, it's even more necessary to have the proper elemental armor on at all times against the MvPs as you can't tank them with brute force alone anymore. Pasana, swordfish and bathory's prices will fly through the roof with the nature of this server.

Custom zeny sink doesn't have to be neglectible amount or only stuck on taxes, which your player base will quickly whine about. It's much better to have them willingly spend zeny than forcibly take it away. Cosmetic improvements are always an easy one and definitely won't imbalance a server. There's bound to be players out there going "KAWAII~~ <3 <3" and dump a mil or two on the latest palette/hairstyle (especially if you purposely release them slowly one at a time.) Again using heRO server as the example for where I GM at, there's the Great Fairy Auction and one of the item we sold off in the past is an unique new female hairstyle not yet released to public, and it comes with a guarantee that the hairstyle will not be accessible to the public for a whole half year. At that time heRO server has maybe 150 players on at a time, and it sold for 12 mil zeny, which I would classify as a significant amount for a 5/5/3 server.

Battling inflation isn't always about taking zeny directly out of the economy. Ultimately you are only trying to stop players from stockpiling zeny to the point where they have so much zeny, it is useless to get more because zeny can't help them with getting more items. Another plan that heRO server chose to do to battle server inflation is an economic shift to change zeny from the hands of established player to new players (who can really use the zeny for basically anything, and thus an indirect "drain"). Through a repeatable custom feature which I won't go into details about, players are asked to get 5 "common cards" in order to start the quest. We set these common cards to be places where low-mid level players tend to train and the cards are widely considered useless, such as poring card, lunatic, wolf, ant eggs and etc (in addition, we customized poring to drop its card at 0.6% instead to further strengthen the deal. All other cards remain at 0.03%) High end players are often too lazy to go hunt it in person, yet they need endless amount of it to do the quest time after time. What it results is a net transfer of zeny from high end players to new players who are almost bound to run into one or two of these cards. Again for comparison value, in the beginning when this is just implemented, Poring Card and these other 'common cards' rose to 500k. Needing 5 of these cards to try the quest each time resulted in an estimate of 2.5mil transfer from high end players to newer players. Of course after nearly a year of this implemented, these card prices dropped, but that's mostly due to increase in population so there's more people who may run into these cards now.


Really there's lots of ways to approach a problem. Being creative in solving common server problems will help your server stand out among all the rest, and this uniqueness will be an important key to help your server grow.

[horo]

@LiteX: I have been browsing iRo/euRo forums a lot in the past days to look for what pro-players do, and basically it's nothing but repeatable exp quests to level up to 86, where they do Biolab and Rachel quest, or hunt these enemies to sell exp items (Anolian skin sell for 5k+ iirc). I did some calculations with 2/2/10 rates:

Frilldora have ~2000 hp and give 1000 base exp, with exp quest 3400.
Anopheles have 100 hp and give 200 base exp, with exp quest 5200.
Alligator have ~7000 hp and give 2800 base exp, with exp quest 9600.
Levaska have ~3100 hp and give 3000 base exp, with exp quest 12400.
Goat have ~11000 hp and give 6700 base exp, with exp quest 17100.

This would basically make any other leveling spot useless and you could pull any build up easily by quests, so I'm leaning heavily towards taking them out.


@Ayu:

I've (at least for now) settled on 10x droprates exactly because as you say, equip is far more important in an environment without Assumptio and whatnot. After looking at Ifrit, Beelze and Valk being killed in a few minutes each on iRo by a single DD, I do think anything is better than that though. I would go mad as a hatter trying to fix advanced classes.

Auctioning off unique items and such sounds like a great idea, and I definitely want to use some of the equipment in the database but not available in game in such a way. I've made lots of low level drops mixing ingredients for headgears already, so hopefully that will help. Unfortunately we don't have scripters as godly as yours, so options are more limited 


This thread is really a tremendous aid in ironing out a lot of problems and uncertainties for me, so thanks again to everyone that's posting.

[A92FL0163]

Make other repeatable quests with mobs that aren't really a option to level? Making people go to more place than "If you're level 80, you MUST go to Ice Cave" and make it more "You can either level in Ice or at X mob, get it drop and trade it with the Y quest".

[Ayu]

To be honest, I only find a few of the repeatable exp quest to be truly that attractive, mostly the two goat quests just because it also drops empty bottles with herbs all at the same time, making it an ideal quest to get brewing alchemists up. Moscovia itself is easy and is part of repeatable quests, but if you're starting with the most updated svn, then that means there is a huge series of extremely annoying quests to go through. By the time you unlock it, you're probably over lv 60 to do the quest >_<; For example, Frilldora looks nice on paper but with only 20 of them on a map and 10 of them are probably using cloak, and when you're low level without the sight clip, hunting them is not practical compare to good old muscipular for an easy 2000 exp or mobbing wolves who drop healing items for you as well (at 10x, you almost always get meat to restore your hp afterward.) Anopheles is also a royal pain because there is just no good map to find them on to begin with, and their flee makes it difficult for most characters. But not a life/death situation to me if you take them out. If it isn't for no reset and we are thinking about the poor forgers/brewers, I'll say take them out. As much as grinding may be "boring," this server is a lot easier to hit the 'top' because there is no trans so you are 'done' once you get lv 99. Making it too easier to get there may make it difficult for you to retain the players. At the same time, the brewers/forgers there is no way to train them except leech if there is no repeatable exp quests, and without dual client (which is a good thing that I personally support) it's almost impossible to train them since the population is too low for leeching party when the server starts. You may see little to no brewers/forgers for quite awhile until population reaches a point where it can support leeching.


Not sure how does iRO really have a single DD handle beelzebub... don't always base your observations on youtube videos, as most of the time those things have unrealistic equipments that private servers without donations will probably never get.

[horo]

@Parameter:

Maybe. As Ayu mentions, they are the only alternative to straight leeching when it comes to leveling forgers/brewers, just a little too good as of now in my book.

@Ayu:

There's a field with 45 frilldora, but you obviously need to be an Archer or Mage to really take advantage of them. I think the field surrounding AL dungeon is nice for Anopheles, but their flee definitely screws most classes.
A lack of brewers/forgers at the start is definitely an issue as availability of elemental weapons is quite important for some classes. I hope guilds will take it upon them to leech these up.
Players hitting 99 too easily is a big concern, but I feel like I couldn't successfully market 1x exp rates or increased exp per level to a potential playerbase 

As for the Beelze thing, it doesn't require any outrageous equip but taking advantage of Clashing Spiral's stunlock, since a MVP's mob is always in the same state as the MVP (idle when stunlocked): Video. As for Valkyrie, she's simply killed with Crusader stacking reflect damage equip on top of Reflect Shield and equipping gear that heightens Randgris' Sonic Blow damage: Video.

[Sarin]

Clashing spiral (aka spiral pierce) is trans skill....but you made the point I said before, never underestimate the resourcefulness of players...

[Ayu]

Reflect by design is a problem for any servers. iRO Sealed Shrine Baphomet is killed in the same manner. You'll need to tinker with the natural skills of MvPs to fight off some of these problems. *However* is this something to "fix" or is this a proper reward for players who know these 'tricks?' You'll have to decide as the admin. If you really want to mess that trick over, just give MvPs the ability to use ganbantein 5 often in idle mode so they will break the ice wall to smack the wizard and the priest who is ressing the suiciding-sader. But then again, to me it sounds as valid as luring valk to be right on the portal, and then asura-cide her off abusing the 1 second of immunity due to walking out of a warp (only more setup and luring required than reflect.)

As an admin, you will have to decide what is "intended" and what is "a bug." However I don't think that this is an immediate problem for your server. Deciding on the "trans equipment"'s fate is still your primary concern, as that is one of the two main defining characteristic that separates you from all the other retro-feeling servers.

[horo]

So I hear in regards to Sealed Shrine Baphomet, but I'll leave it alone for now since there are many tricks like it in game, and once you start nerfing the first skill, it'd open the gates for all kinds of trouble.

After watching MVP being done 'properly', I've decided to leave Beelzebub and Valk drops as is, and only take out the curse wands. What I can't decide on are Ifrit's rings as Concentration, Asura Strike and Pressure are entirely too good, but removing them means removing Ifrit's only unique drops, and thus his worth as a MVP, so I might have to replace these skills.

[A92FL0163]

Aren't the 'hard' mvp already getting it's drops raped? Also, that I recall, The Great Evil Baphomet only drops Tengron as a good loot?

[horo]

Aren't the 'hard' mvp already getting it's drops raped?

Can you clarify?