Review: InertiaRO

[Ganondorf]

Hello everyone, I'm going to be discussing my experiences whilst playing the Super High Rate (SHR) Ragnarok Online (RO) private server called InertiaRO.  InertiaRO is a SHR server with minimal customization, so those who do not like high levels of it may enjoy it here.  Donations are balanced, headgears have the exact same stats and effects as the regular ones.  The only difference is that some of the donations headgears look nicer than the others, so donating for them is for pure cosmetic reasons.  All custom headgears have the same effect, shields are 2 slotted while all other equips are granted 4 slots.  Without further delay, onto the review.

Server Rating - Stability: 6/10

- InertiaRO has gone through a number of hosts since my arrival at the server.  Each one coming with their unique "kink" that made the said host not very desirable in some way or another, hence the host changes.  The current host however, isn't much better at most times of the day unfortunately.  Multiple players located all over the globe still lag very often and personally I have experienced spikes of lag every 10-15 seconds most of the time.

Server Rating - Availability: 7/10

- As I mentioned above, InertiaRO has switched hosts a few times over the past while, the first few hosts had some pretty rough disconnection issues going on.  The host that is currently being used is better in terms of less downtime, the disconnections and lag still continue though.

Community Rating - Friendliness: 9/10

- The community's friendliness is one of InertiaRO's strong points in my opinion.  The vast majority of the community is benign, friendly and tight-knit.  There's always going to be the oddball that acts out, but you're going to run into such folks no matter what server you go to.  Overall, you can fit in pretty well if you choose to.

Community Rating - Eventfulness: 5.5/10

- Quite weak to be honest.  Once WoE ends and the GMs aren't around, the mass AFKing begins!  I've seen multiple occasions  where there are more AFK chats and Vendors up than actual players on the server.  The population shows an average of 30-50 players, but there is a startling 25+ vends/AFK folks almost constantly.

Game Masters & Administrator Ratings:

Friendliness: 7.5/10
Availability: 8.5/10
Helpfulness: 6/10

- Some of the GMs are new to the job, which I will excuse, nobody is perfect when accepting a job right from the get-go.

GM Rei: He is the highest ranked of the GMs.  He has complete access to the database.  He's generally decent at dealing with people, and is fun to be around.  Sometimes he can get a bit of of hand when he's PvPing, but I guess everyone can every once in a while.  He does what's necessary.

GM Angeline: She means well, she helps Perry out with adding custom headgear and such, but sometimes she can be a tad too serious about minuscule things such as cursing in town.  One f*** or s*** slipping out from a player in town and they'll be muted without question.  Overall, very strict but she does her job.

GM Cinji: He's quite talkative and he can deal with people well.  He's one of the more forum active GMs and deals with customs  and disputes mostly.  There has been complaints from some players about him catering to certain players over others, but I didn't have issues with him personally.

GM Ninna: Ah, the mysterious GM Ninna, she's like the rare North American House Hippo.  She is shrouded in a veil of mystery to the vast majority of the community as she still has a spot on the GM team, whilst never being seen nor heard from.

GM KittyKat: She's new to GMing.  She is quite friendly, and tries to deal with disputes for the better.  Her events haven't gone so well thus far, but nobody is excellent at something right away I don't think.  An example was her Novice event that she chose to host in the PvP room.  Well, I'm sure you can imagine the outcome once a few blood thirsty players got word of it, lol.

GM Lumi: She's also a new GM.  She has taken a liking to doing events on the forums and helping players with general questions in game mostly.

GM Virt: A new GM on the team, I'm not even certain if that's his name... that's how often I've seen this guy online.  This may be due to time zone differences, but none of the people I talk to on a regular basis have never seen him either.

GM Montauk: He's nice to talk to, but I'm not overly certain as to what exactly he does to be honest.  He mostly just sits in town.

Perry the Platypus (Administrator): Most of the GMs are talkative, including the Admin himself, he has a great sense of humour and is approachable.  He may be a tad too trusting in others though, GM Montauk was a GM for no more than a week before being promoted from level 20 to 50.  While GM Rei has access to everyone's accounts and the database... which also seems a little bit over the top.  The Admin has a life like everyone else, which is understandable.  However, he has a tendency to shove things under the rug quite often.  Simple fixes and tasks can take quite a while to be completed.  The Admin often says that he "doesn't know how this works" or "doesn't know how to do source edits" over main chat, on the forums, and in game as an excuse for a task not getting done.  New players see that and I honestly think that it just scares them off, doing more harm than good.  The Admin and GMs alike are nearly always available, so getting a hold of them is almost never a problem.

I'm not overly certain as to why, but two GMs were recently fired for seemingly no reason.  One GM (GM Kamiki) was a major contributor in creating the InertiaRO Wiki, the other one (GM Troll) was quite active, and aided the Admin in balancing PvP.  The random firing of these two GMs made no sense to the majority of the community, especially GM Troll, because the Admin admitted on numerous occasions that he hasn't PvP'd before and therefore relied on this GM for balancing.  However, there is a particular GM (GM Ninna) who nobody has seen online for months now, yet she still has a position on the GM team.

Economy: 3/10

- The economy is sadly nigh a joke on InertiaRO.   It completely revolves around donation headgear, Tao Gunk Card, Kiel D-01 Card, Gloom Under Night Card and Bloody Branches which are very time consuming to make.  Zeny is never used at all, new players attempting to create a gold party (I will explain why) end up feeling as though they're shouting in the murky abyss, because nobody ever wants to bother.

Something unique about InertiaRO is the Gold Room.  The more party members that you have on the map, the more Gold everyone gets per mob kill.  This is all well and good, but unfortunately nobody wants Zeny, it's all about Bloody Branches and high-end MvP cards.

Guild Competition: 8.5/10

- Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's rather boring.  Lately, however, things have been picking up quite a bit since a few players decided to create guilds of their own and battle it out.  Overall, not bad for a SHR.

Class Balance: 7/10

- The SinX formula remains for the most part.  There are classes that can put up a fight, but SinX is the milestone.  When built hybrid, they can utilize everything too well and create sets to run down any opponent.  There are a number of tweaks that make most classes a tad more useful than your typical SHR server, but it's not quite where it could be I don't think.

Conclusion/Total Score: 68/100

- InertiaRO has a great community, decent WoE and an approachable Admin.  However, I feel that the GM team is way too large for the amount of people that are online most of the time and that suggestions get swept under the rug far too often.  Some of these GMs aren't really necessary/needed.  The economy is terrible and class balance is pretty decent.  The lag can be very problematic and random D/Cs aren't unheard of.  All in all, it's worth a shot depending on what you look for in a server.

EDIT: Added a more descriptive section on the GMs.

[Silverbaine]

I been here about a week, I dont think economys that bad.. plus I see parys of 10-15 in goldroom all the time...
as for random firing.. I'm sure was a reason... maybe they did something that Admin deemed as not right? is alot that goes on in the "staff" part of the game you know.. so dont just assume you know everything...

Not to mention all headgears quest/zeny/donate/event/vote are all the same, just different looks... but same stats...
quite balanced imo

as for zeny not being useful... I see it used constantly, in fact I buy and sell using zeny/pc/quest gears/mvp cards constantly...
oh let us not forget woe drops...
and community eventfulness?
is always active, if people not all milling about in town, they most likely in an event or farming, or in pvp

again about your desc.s of the staffs.. its good to be strict, keeps players inline ;p

[Perry the Platypus]

Hai. <3

So, for the lag issues, I am actually working on that - I only started hearing about them recently (like two days ago), as I've never noticed any lag personally, apart from very small amounts of it on the odd occasion. I've been informed it's mostly in the morning which would explain why I haven't noticed it (I'm at work in the morning). But yeah, I'm looking into it now to see what can be done to improve that.

As for the AFKing, that's something that's on a lot of servers - we are looking for ways to encourage more actual activity, but there'll always be those people who for some reason think logging out instead of going AFK is too much effort.

The economy could be better, sure, but most SHRs are like that. At the moment the economy mostly revolves around Poring Coins and MVP cards, which is fine in my opinion - as more players join there'll be more Gold parties, so Zeny will start to be more common at that point.

Class balance as well is something we're working on, although it's a slower process because I don't want to totally break the gameplay in an attempt to balance everything all at once. So pretty much we're just making small changes over time, mainly based on player's suggestions, to slowly even things out. Champions actually have a pretty good chance against Assassin Crosses already (I've seen Champions win PvP events more than once).

Now the GM section, yay. :O Well, actually, most of what you said was relatively accurate anyway. But I can cover my own review and the last part, at least.

In terms of me being too trusting - Montauk has been my friend for years now, and was a GM on the last server I ran, which is why he was promoted quickly in comparison to the other GMs. And Rei has access to the database because he's the website designer - he occasionally needs to add/modify tables, or check the tables to set up queries for specific website pages. As far as suggestions go, I'm not too sure which suggestions you're referring to - the majority of accepted suggestions have already been added, and the ones that haven't been added are the time consuming ones that I haven't had the time to complete yet (although they're all still on my to do list). As for not knowing stuff, it's kinda impossible for me to know absolutely everything about the mechanics of RO - when needed I can look at the source to confirm that kind of stuff, though. And I've never said I don't know how to do source edits - what I've said is that I don't have much experience with them. I've edited the source quite a few times.

As for the two GMs that were fired, there were reasons for that. Cinji and I spent a while discussing it before making a final decision. Just a quick thing to point out - I didn't say I haven't PvPed before, I said I don't have a lot of time these days to PvP because when I do actually have free time I'm generally using it to work on updates. And Ninna...to be completely honest, I just forgot to comment out her section on the staff page a while back (thanks for reminding me =P) - she's been too busy with stuff in real life to GM at the server, which is why she's been away.

[Ganondorf]

I been here about a week, I dont think economys that bad.. plus I see parys of 10-15 in goldroom all the time...
as for random firing.. I'm sure was a reason... maybe they did something that Admin deemed as not right? is alot that goes on in the "staff" part of the game you know.. so dont just assume you know everything...

Not to mention all headgears quest/zeny/donate/event/vote are all the same, just different looks... but same stats...
quite balanced imo

as for zeny not being useful... I see it used constantly, in fact I buy and sell using zeny/pc/quest gears/mvp cards constantly...
oh let us not forget woe drops...
and community eventfulness?
is always active, if people not all milling about in town, they most likely in an event or farming, or in pvp

again about your desc.s of the staffs.. its good to be strict, keeps players inline ;p

Perhaps all the Gold partying occurs on another time zone then, because when I'm online, the new players looking for Gold parties end up getting desperate and resort to spamming on main chat to get attention.  Perry usually has to recruit on his legits to get people in there.  As Perry said though, perhaps as the population increases this will change.

I already stated that all of the HG had the same effects, and additionally have already stated that they are balanced.  O_o

As for the particular GMs being fired, yeah, I don't know everything that goes on behind the curtain, you're right.  However, I'm just stating that their dismissal was quite a shock to the vast majority of the community is all.

No, Zeny is not useful.  The stuff you see in town being sold is tim-bit Zeny.  People would MUCH rather get PC/BB/other MvP Cards/donation HG over Zeny for their items any day, not to mention that certain items are priceless in terms of Zeny, such as Thanatos Card.  The general consensus for a Thanatos Card pricing is that it = approximately 10 donation HG.  More PC = more FCP Scrolls, Elemental Converters and the likes.  More BB = chances to get more MvP cards.  Trading other MvP cards if obviously better than Zeny as well, but MvP card trading is common no matter where you go, so it's fine.

Enforcing the rules is important indeed, but being overly strict can make you come across as a complete care bear; no, very few people likes that actually.  It scares people off and makes them feel as though they're walking on eggshells around those particular GMs.  Nobody wants to feel that way whilst playing a game.

As for Perry's response, thank you for clearing some of the shards of the unknown up.  As I stated, these are simply things that I observed over time personally, my apologies if any of these observations came across as rash.

[Perry the Platypus]

People would MUCH rather get PC/BB/other MvP Cards/donation HG over Zeny for their items any day, not to mention that certain items are priceless in terms of Zeny, such as Thanatos Card.

Just wanted to quickly point out, economy doesn't have to revolve around Zeny, and I think that may be where the misunderstanding is here. Zeny is part of the economy, yes, but trading items is also economy. Using a real life analogy, back in the old days they traded furs instead of money. Pretty much the same idea as Poring Coins or MVP cards or headgears being "currency" in the server.

Enforcing the rules is important indeed, but being overly strict can make you come across as a complete care bear; no, very few people likes that actually.  It scares people off and makes them feel as though they're walking on eggshells around those particular GMs.  Nobody wants to feel that way whilst playing a game.

And if we aren't strict enough then players think they can get away with anything. Things were getting out hand with spam in town/main chat, so I told the GMs to start paying more attention to that, and hired Angeline to be a GM whose main focus was policing. I do try to keep an eye on how GMs handle those kinds of situations though, and give them suggestions on how to deal with them better.

As I stated, these are simply things that I observed over time personally, my apologies if any of these observations came across as rash.

I'm not the kind of admin who freaks out over negative feedback. =P I appreciate any kind of feedback - negative feedback just shows me what things I need to focus on more for the server.