Another Project Return to Morroc Review!

[osolor]

Good Day Everyone! Here's another PRM review, from someone who loves heavy customs servers.

Ok, lets preface that I bit my tongue, HARD, whenever I heard about the server on the past I would diss it off as a emo/edgy RO made by/for people who wished RO where only the thief job.

But boy, oh I was wrong.

PRM is a server that not only customize old RO, but fundamentally change the way it plays(I will talk about that hyperbole lateR). Gone where the days of mindless teleporting and one clicking something for it to die and repeat it Ad Nauseum to maybe try to have some fun MvPing on the endest of the end games or focusing all your farm for 1 hour of WoE on the weekend.

The game plays like a game, you have to be aware of whats the mobs you're against can do, you must be aware of how the multiple mobs of the map interact with each other and how this can sometimes snowball in lock that you put yourself in that could be easily avoidable (now its clear as day on why the nick of the GM is Ornstein).

So, for those who are on the fence about the server, give it a shot, again I dissed and was very critic, my summer (winter here) recess came, gave it a shot out of boredom and was very, very sad that I didn't did it earlier.

Good things gone, let's talk some s***. And I'm saying everything with the best of the best intentions, this server can easily hit double the numbers that are already hitting (and obviously is not because the things that I'm saying, just a good wish that I already saw happening in other custom servers)(Edit while I was typing, I will only focus on early game, I don't have enough first hand experience on the endgame balance to criticize, and the focus of the review is to praise, not to complain).

I will start with something that everyone will feel when starting on the server, leveling is weird.

This feeling happens for 3 reasons.

1- The Beginning.

The Beginning is for the lack of a better word, a slog, you will do no damage, you will die in few hits and you will feel tooless to deal with it. Yes you have some of the defensive capabilities, but it will turn in a dance of hit and hide that in the beginning doesn't feel good, and since you need about 10~15 levels to get started, it can hit newcomers in a bad way, even more if they try to just figure it out. This completely dissapear after the early game but I can see a new player quit after some hours of slow progression and unrewarding gameplay.

2- Imbalanced combination of XP Table, Mob Density, Target Farming and Overcoming mechanics.

I will go deeper on point 3, but right now the combination of the XP Table and Mob Density is kinda off, even if HATred quests "solve" the problem of maps that no one goes, if you don't follow the "streamlined" leveling guide, you will be looking on a leveling pace I would say 1/3~1/5 the speed of what is the ideal (leveled about 5 chars right now, didn't test 100% of the maps but did what is recommended, look at maps dungeons 10 lvls higher and went it there).

The target farming part is just like point 1, something that you only feel at the early game, but again, it may rub wrongly for someone new. Since you're looking for drops about .5 ~ 4% on gear if RNGjesus isn't on you side you may overlevel the zone (and here overleveling pratically zeroes the xp of the area). Back to the streamlined leveling, you can't even count on the market since an early item wouldn't be worth for someone to farm.

And the Overcoming mechanics part (that is THE BEST feature of the server) isn't rewarding when talking about the leveling, your class maybe have a very nice tool to deal with x or z mechanic, and map y has that mechanic... Too bad that the xp/minute is 1/10 of a split leveling party...

3-Partying is both necessary and unrewarding.

Again, talking about leveling. This last point sums things that I said on the other points. Right now the optimal farming tech is, party up, split up, and everyone go to your side of the map. I will bounce again when talking about balance, but when leveling places where you need to stay together to overcome a greater challenge with great rewards doesn't exist (the closest that I found was Amatsu Dungeon, and even so, with some classes overperforming, they would prefer to split then to help with the last 10% of damage). And even if I already saw people being punished for saying someone was leeching, I already presenced multiple times people s***ing on Dracomancers and Kingslayers for having a more paced, bruisy gameplay.


Now about balancing... I cannot fathom the amount of work that Orn have on its back, but the balance right now seems to counter the design phylosophy of the server. AA and Spammy gameplay reigns the "early" late-game (90+, maybe it start earlier, but 50~90 was GREAT).

Every single place that I went after 90+ AA classes and burst ones would kill mobs way, way before they even cast their first skill. Yes, they where extremely glass cannon, but again, they could kill faster than a rotation, bruise or caster class could, and even one skill that the mob manages to get out, the TTK sometimes would increase fourfold.

And again, I know that Orn is working hard and balance itself is hard as itself, it feels very bad to see something like that, scour ALL the cards, equips and shadow and see a lot of skills with bland support (25%+ damage and go home) and/or very late ones(skills unlocked at base level and the first interaction is 105+ gear) and AA classes with dozen and dozens of options in every kinda of slot from lvl 10 onwards.

I will be ending my rant here, again, for those reading, this critique is totally focused on the early game (1~130).