KokoRO, a great server no one knows about

[Ralgondo]

I needed an hour just to get out of novice grounds because it requires you to reach job level 10 (I'm sure that's official for some servers, but it's really brutal, I'd rather explore the world than being stuck in novice grounds forever).

Just in regards to that part, you can make like 1500-1700 "novice red potions" there, once you make those, and talked to all the NPCs, you just kill a few spores and you'll hit job 10 fast. After that just do the personality quest and you get a nice little starter weapon too for your class.

As for farming everything yourself, yea it's tough. I'd say that's the case about 95% of the time, but we mostly use the discord market channel for trades. Koko has mentioned creating something like @autotrade but it sounds like it would be quite an undertaking.

[Playtester]

Just in regards to that part, you can make like 1500-1700 "novice red potions" there, once you make those, and talked to all the NPCs, you just kill a few spores and you'll hit job 10 fast. After that just do the personality quest and you get a nice little starter weapon too for your class.

Yeah, the lack of Novice Potions wasn't the problem but killing a single spore with 1 STR build also took a minute each. And you really needed to spam so potions so you don't accidentally die.
And you only get a nice weapon for your class if the test result is the class you want to be.

[OrdLordDaddy]

So far I like it on KokoRO, what I dislike though is:

Overcomplicated Airship Ticket system that changes and overcomplicates something that really didn't need to be changed.

Training Grounds Personality Quiz NPC dialog is horrible. Another unneeded change. It would have sufficed to just add that "Novice Adventurer's Suit [1]" to all item rewards rather than changing EVERYTHING and adding personal opinion dialog that does not fit the game.

Same for the NPC that tells you about jobs, they added a "Special Classes" option which all reads like some kid wrote it with their own opinion about the classes, calling them Special Classes over Expanded Classes and stuff like "I can't see that class to be in a guild or in parties".

The Alchemist Novice Potion NPC is OP imo, it makes the start way too easy if at Job 10 you can go back in, get ~2500 Novice Potions and then start playing the game. Those will last up until Base ~40, it's like super unneeded easy mode.

Skill descriptions look like someone didn't even bother.

Multi-Clienting is enabled.


The biggest negative point is:

There is no Offline Vending.
Though I personally dislike custom changes, this is one of the very few changes (next to same sex marriage) that for me is a must mandatory feature for every server.

This is probably also a big turn off for many players? Which could hinder proper activity on the server and the population rising.
Discord is not enough for vending and empty cities do deliver the feeling of a ghost town dead server.

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Other than that, trans classes and lategame maps are already available, this makes the entire experience rather kind of lame imo.
Though the server seems to be online since 2019?, it does make sense that it would have progressed up until Einbroch by now, but I personally am missing the episodic releases of new maps, the item drops changes and all of that.
It does make it slightly faster to reach 99/50 when you can go to Rachel Siromas for example, but that kind of just feels wrong.

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I hope the server improves on at least some of those things, as so far I do enjoy playing on it a lot.

[Playtester]

Overcomplicated Airship Ticket system that changes and overcomplicates something that really didn't need to be changed.

Why is it overcomplicated? The only change I've seen is that you can directly jump from the global airship to the regional airship by using the south exit instead of the north exit. That's a simplification if you ask me.

Training Grounds Personality Quiz NPC dialog is horrible. Another unneeded change. It would have sufficed to just add that "Novice Adventurer's Suit [1]" to all item rewards rather than changing EVERYTHING and adding personal opinion dialog that does not fit the game.

Same for the NPC that tells you about jobs, they added a "Special Classes" option which all reads like some kid wrote it with their own opinion about the classes, calling them Special Classes over Expanded Classes and stuff like "I can't see that class to be in a guild or in parties".

Dunno, maybe it's because I'm not native English, but I thought Koko improved all the NPC dialogues quite significantly.

In fact, I find it incredible how much effort he put into those. Just the Novice grounds feel a lot more professional than even the official servers. The instructors for example warp you correctly to the next person and actually force you to understand the system before proceeding the dialogue.

For me that's actually KokoRO's strongest point other than it being very close to official servers.

The Alchemist Novice Potion NPC is OP imo, it makes the start way too easy if at Job 10 you can go back in, get ~2500 Novice Potions and then start playing the game. Those will last up until Base ~40, it's like super unneeded easy mode.

This is just to prevent people from creating throwaway accounts to farm Novice Potions. The wait time to get these potions should be about similar to rushing through the Novice Grounds on other servers.

Skill descriptions look like someone didn't even bother.

They definitely could be improved, but iRO's aren't better. Most private servers have more details in the skill descriptions, though, I agree with that.

Multi-Clienting is enabled.

Koko explained this with it being pretty much impossible to fully prevent multi-clienting anyway. People who really want to do it will also find a way.

The main reason I hate multi-clienting is because it makes it hard to find a party and attracts min-maxers. But luckily on KokoRO, just asking on Discord usually finds me some people who are willing to party with me all the time. I'm only playing an FS Acolyte on that server, no other character at all, and still I always found people to play with every day I looked for them.

Don't like multi-clienting? Well, just don't do it.

There is no Offline Vending.
Though I personally dislike custom changes, this is one of the very few changes (next to same sex marriage) that for me is a must mandatory feature for every server.

This is probably also a big turn off for many players? Which could hinder proper activity on the server and the population rising.
Discord is not enough for vending and empty cities do deliver the feeling of a ghost town dead server.

Yeah I agree with that. I know offline vending is very hard to implement on this kind of server build, but if there is even the slightest chance it could work, in my opinion, adding this should be Koko's #1 priority.

Discord is pretty good for vending though, since people are very active there. Of course there aren't many players, so it's very unlikely someone will have any super rare item you want. It might not even exist on the whole server.

The biggest problem is that the towns feel empty, I agree with that part. Also just browsing shops is fun.

Other than that, trans classes and lategame maps are already available, this makes the entire experience rather kind of lame imo.
Though the server seems to be online since 2019?, it does make sense that it would have progressed up until Einbroch by now, but I personally am missing the episodic releases of new maps, the item drops changes and all of that.
It does make it slightly faster to reach 99/50 when you can go to Rachel Siromas for example, but that kind of just feels wrong.

I might be wrong, but I don't think KokoRO is an episodic server at all. It is 11.3 an always will be 11.3 afaik.

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For me the two most negative things about KokoRO are actually:

- Party item share only works in melee range; this is similar to official servers but I prefer the map-wide share from private servers a lot more as it's 100% fair; luckily so far I could trust everybody I partied with to equally share the loot at the end, but it could lead to conflict is any super rare is ever to drop

- No exp balance / events; episode 11.3 has in my opinion severe balance problems, Wolves and Anubis being the worst offenders; many regions and monsters are just not worth it unless you want a particular drop; on previous close-to-official pre-renewal servers I played on there were at least regional exp events that boosted unpopular regions or monsters for a week; this allowed parties a change of scenery and it made the servers also feel more populated as people would frequently meet on those event maps; unfortunately Koko is not a fan of any events at all, so you only chance to explore the world is to find like-minded people who would tag along on your journey even though the rewards suck


Overall KokoRO is still an amazing server. Basically "Like official 11.3, but more polished".

[Inspector Clouseau]

There are a number of ways to handle the novice potions issue. The most streamlined way would just be making them undroppable, untradeable, and unable to put in storage. Why the admins chose to make it possible to take thousands with you and completely trivialize the early levels is baffling. It rather ruins the 1x experience, in my opinion.

I also don't agree that it is impossible to curtail multi-clienting, and the argument of, "If you don't like it, just don't do it" is an old, tired, and bad one.

[Playtester]

There are a number of ways to handle the novice potions issue. The most streamlined way would just be making them undroppable, untradeable, and unable to put in storage. Why the admins chose to make it possible to take thousands with you and completely trivialize the early levels is baffling. It rather ruins the 1x experience, in my opinion.

Well the potions were tradable on official servers and Koko didn't want to change it. He is actually fairly strict on keeping things as official as possible.

I also don't agree that it is impossible to curtail multi-clienting, and the argument of, "If you don't like it, just don't do it" is an old, tired, and bad one.

Why is it a bad one in this context? In my opinion choice is almost always better than no choice.

[Inspector Clouseau]

If choice is as big a factor as you say, then you are likewise free to choose a server that allows multi-clienting rather than one that doesn't.

The fact is that multi-clienting is a playstyle that offers massive advantages to the ones practicing it at the expense of community well-being. It's not a simple as, "If you don't like it, don't do it" because if your preference is to not multi-client while most other people do, you fall behind economically and competitively. Not everyone agrees with multi-clienting or even likes it, so it only makes sense that we wind up with different servers with different rules.

But that said, it is a lie that it is impossible to prevent multi-clienting. Of course there will always be those who try, but you can make the process far more difficult, and eventually they will be caught.

[Playtester]

I agree with what you said, but my point was that on a server where there's no competition in the first place, it doesn't matter. And it's up to the players if they want to exploit the mechanics to the max or just play for fun.