Following on from the convo that got shut down here, specifically regarding Zero's last post, I'm interested in what people would like to see improved on iRO. A bullet list of changes or improvements that our community believes would help the game thrive. Things like advertising, a new host, buffs or nerfs to skills, more quests, changes to PvP, stuff like that, for either of the two servers.
Anything mentioned will get added to the OP, unless this thread gets locked for some reason. Let the brainstorming begin~
Just a quick note, but none of these are 100% consensus "need to happen" ideas. I'm just recording what everyone would like to see. Maybe we could do a vote later to see which ones are the most popular?
[Renewal]
- Revert kRO custom changes to Inubashiri's 3rd class hats. The effect changes that kRO made to these hats has, in many cases, contradicted the intention of the project, which was to both buff and incentivise the use of uncommon builds. It was a real slap in the face to the sheer time and effort invested in designing and balancing each hat. Furthermore, we absolutely did not want buffs to the mechanically broken Arrow Storm skill or the additional 5% buff to Cart Cannon, or the replacement of Grand Cross with Genesis Ray. Push for the original effects.
- Allow expanded classes to reach 175. Apparently in the works but more pushing couldn't hurt. The Kagerou/Oboro class has been rendered useless in a competitive environment, and the Taekwon classes (including Soul Linker) haven't seen relevance since Pre-Renewal. So far as I know Rebellions will also be limited to Lv160, in which case the extension should apply to them as well.
- Better party share mechanics. Specifically raising the % boost per additional party member. A requirement of tapping to discourage afk leeching would be nice too.
- Quest overhaul. Update the old quests to make use of the recently expanded quest system UI, with regards to the clickable navi entries, npc sprites and minimap markers, and reevaluate the EXP reward for completed quests in contrast to the newly expanded cap. Quests are only worthwhile at extremely low levels, at times being lower than the practical requirement for completion. Possibility of quests providing percentages of a character's current level up to a cap? Limits and cooldowns based on account ID rather than quests tied to individual characters? There are also a small number of quests on Renewal that are bricked and unable to be completed due to bad quest variables and broken NPCs, such as Nid Dungeon and the New World access quest.
- Buff WoE FE gods. While strong, they've really lost their "godly" presence in recent years due to the exceedingly powerful gear that kRO has implemented and then trumped with even more powerful gear time and time again. While they remain a status symbol, their effects no longer adequately reflect the difficulty involved in capping and holding forts, wrestling with the RNG for months to years in order to come into possession of the required pieces, and going through the process of creation. Also lower the weight of Sleipnir on both servers I mean my god (lol) they're winged shoes that give you perma AGI they should be next to weightless.
- Nerf the effects of ephemeral god items. I'm on the fence about this one, but it makes sense. If you're not the owner, should you be receiving the full benefit of a godly item? This would encourage players to be more proactive in creating items for themselves instead of relying on items owned and lent by veterans.
- Finish the DirectX update. This appears to have stalled on kRO Sakray. It's extremely important that this gets pushed out to consumption ASAP since RO does not, by any stretch of the imagination, run well on the modern systems that I would estimate >80% of our users currently run it on. Nobody wants to start up a new game and find it runs poorly on their system not because their specs are too low, but because they're too high~
- In-game achievement system. kRO are in the process of devving this as we speak, and it's one of the updates we need to push for as hard as we can. Achievement systems are great for the community and provide almost endless replayability. They're well-suited to PvM which gives those players whom don't care for WoE or PvP something new to strive for, and they provide tangible rewards such as pots and vanities to provide small benefits aside from just having said you've done it. The early achievements also serve as impromptu systems tutorials, which is really great for newer players.
- Costume Tab in Storage. Costumes tend to get mixed up with gear in storage, especially since a number of costumes aren't prefixed with the costume tag. An extra tab would make sorting the increasingly diverse number of costumes implemented in iRO much easier.
- PvP tiering. Taking a low level trans character in for PvP tests or just a bit of fun can be excruciating when a maxed out Sura just speeds up and fists or GoHs you on spawn, or a GX sneaks up and OHKOs you with CI. Now that we have WoE:TE and trans characters are once again desirable this is more important than ever. Tier the PvP room by by 1-99 and 100-175, or even 100-149 and 150-175 in order to give players a chance without getting annihilated by trolls far above their level. Allow lower leveled players to choose which tier they'd like to enter even if above them, but restrict higher leveled ones so they're unable to crash lower tiers.
- Reshape EXP penalty curve. This was a stupid system to begin with, but it's a little much to ask for complete removal (even though I'd personally be fine with it!). The proposed shaping would be to remove the penalty in -50 +25 range but apply penalties beyond that as usual, perhaps sharper to maintain the curve.
- Implement the Antagonist system. A very user-friendly, opt-in global PvP where players can attack their rival guilds outside of PvP zones. Players that do not wish to personally take part (since the system checks on a guild level, not personally) need only deguild while they're outside of town.
- Implement a dueling system. Similar to the private server dueling function, allow players to challenge each other to duels wherever the fancy takes them, by either a challenge from the right-click context menu, or from /duel "character name" (@duel on privates). While dueling, attacks and skills only affect the designated duelists, even if they're used in town or in congested fields. Duel requests may be blocked in much the same way as PMs, either per-character or globally.
- Increase the vending limit to 1b. Long overdue, would facilitate easier access to and sale of higher end items, would alleviate the burden on players to set up chats and watch them constantly for interested parties, and would provide a point of reference for price checks (assuming Ragial would cater to it). This would also very likely clear out the first floor of Eden Group so that it can finally be used for its intended purpose: party formation!
- Make the Auction House more viable. Nobody uses it for various reasons, foremost being the insane fees you have to pay in order to put up items and the low maximum price (1b iirc?). Having multiple houses over several towns only accessible from that town is also a bit unrealistic and the lack of centralisation discourages potential auctioneers. Removing the extravagant per-hour fees for maintaining an auction would be a start, raising the max price to something manageable for high-end items on iRO's market (30b assuming the vend cap extension has been implemented? It's unlikely most players will have that much pure zeny) and perhaps allowing the zeny to be distributed between multiple characters set at auction time, due to the zeny cap per character. Removing all the auction houses but one and implementing a set of NPCs to access it from all major towns in the same way as Eden, or even via Eden, could be an idea as well.
- Allow Mado Mechanics to keep their mount on death. There are lots of bugs with this class, but one of the most prevalent is loss of one's Magic Gear upon death. The Mechanic must then fight without it, which is ill-advised due to many Mechanics building either pure Mado or pure Axe with no hybridisation due to the unfavourable skill formulas that the class is subject to, or stop what they're doing and return to town or Eden Group to get another. When killed in an instance such as Old Glast Heim or Endless Tower, the Mechanic must then either fight with a serious handicap or quit (and destroy) the instance. In party instances, a Full Support Mado Mechanic will lose its vast array of supportive skills when killed and no longer be of any use to the party. If it's not possible for Mechanics to retain their mounts upon death as with every other class mount in the game, would it be possible to implement an item that summons it?
- Buff MVPs. Given the immense levels of power a character can achieve in this game, dealing millions in damage over a few seconds and taking next to nothing by stacking reductions, the MVPs aren't really that difficult to take down despite serving as "bosses" whose original intention was to take on large parties and/or a dozen roaming killers. Pretty much everything about them needs to be made more universally challenging, to reward strategy and effective teamplay over posbugging and hitlocking, clickspam and endless kiting, and their drops must be revised to suit (so many useless NPC fodder drops!). This isn't simply a request to boost all MVPs' attack power though, which is how MVP abuse has been (ineffectively) dealt with in the past, but rather a boost to all of their statistics (def and mdef, aspd, movement, aggro type etc) and perhaps even the addition of more competitive skills that proc wide status effects, displace party members, nullify certain types of damage or fully heal the MVP.
- Revise WoE fort treasures. Nobody really wants slotted basic gears, random ineffectual weapons and single pieces of consumables and ore from forts when, in order to be competitive in WoE and have a chance at securing a fort for one's own guild, a player must invest millions, and in some cases billions of zeny in PvP/GvG specialised, competitive gear that outvalues the guild loot several thousand times over, which could then be multiplied by up to 56 depending on the number of guildsmen fighting and how much of the guild fund they draw from. Almost every WoE is a monetary loss for a guild should they fail to obtain a god component and, the more hectic each WoE is and the more a castle breaks and changes hands, the lower the chances of receiving such a component. Treasures that are not godly components should be revised to match the current situation of the server, state of the economy and practical viability should the treasures be used (gears) or consumed (items), perhaps with Bellums/WoE Weapon Boxes for Lv4 weapons, WoE gears like Plates and Mants in place of the slotted regular ones, and WoE Pot Boxes in place of the somewhat useless consumables.
- Implement a Banking System. Currency inflation is pretty much impossible prevent in any longstanding MMO. Instead of, or concurrently to finding ways to remove currency from circulation, we need to be giving our players QoL solutions to deal with the low cap of held zeny per character. Implementing a Bank through which players are able to set up accounts with 200b+ caps, having it persistent over all characters on a WP account, and allowing players to mail to and from their bank accounts (improving auction house viability?) would be a perfect long-term solution.
[Classic]
- Fix the Ninja, Gunslinger and High Wizard animation bugs. Ninjas and Gunslingers have glitched animations when performing many of their skills. Weapon sprites do not show up correctly, and animations on skills like Shadow Slash do not work at all, where the user reappears in a standing pose and /doridori'd. This also applies to High Wizards using Meteor Storm; each applied hit of MS forces the HW into a standing /doridori pose.
- Overhaul the job experience of end-game mobs. A number of mobs in the 90-99 range, such as those spawning in Bio1-2 and Odins give very little to no JEXP. This is odd as job levels are quite a bit harder to get than base at that stage of the game, and with the current AL3 TI many players are coming out with base 99 job 55-60; very JEXP deficient overall. Improving gains from these mobs will diversify leveling spots for everyone and be a general improvement over the "Thors/DG leech or afk" culture.
- Remove Crystal Fragments from Guild Surplus Boxes. Kaite is a fundamental defence in WoE situations. Due to frags being added to GSBs, High Wizards now have a practically infinite supply of them to bypass Kaite when under link, and may fire off their skills on large, buffed groups with complete impunity. This is very unbalanced, somewhat marginalizes the usefulness of Linkers in WoE and must be addressed.
- Fix party buff scroll issue. The scrolls received from recent lucky boxes are bugged. They do not work on players that are not partied, even on the owner of the scroll when used from inventory. While the buff name is shown, and visual/audio effects are played, the buff is not applied. I've lost more than one buff scroll this way, due to not realising I was unpartied while solo hunting and in PvP.
- Implement the Renewal User Interface. The Classic UI is horribly outdated, buggy and difficult to grasp for newbies. The UI system updates that came with Renewal took great strides in usability with configurable hotkeys, the addition of a 4th hotkey bar and the ability to view them all at once instead of cycling one at a time for the F1~9 keys, a chat box toggle that replaces Battle Mode (/bm), storage sorting tabs, a combined equipment and status window with a collapse toggle for the status part, a skill tree that requires confirmation before assigning points, a better collapsible character info window with detachable buttons, a map button that actually works, an expanded options window called with ESC featuring call buttons for the video, audio and hotkey config windows, party menu improvements and the addition of the party booking system. I believe the Renewal UI also fixed the issue where players would be disconnected upon movement while an NPC dialogue box is active. The Renewal UI on Classic would be an incredible QoL improvement, and many private players value the addition of this UI to Pre-Renewal servers since it does not alter gameplay mechanics.
- Fix the Disconnection bug in Battlegrounds. If a player is killed and respawns at exactly the same time as the spawn timer cycles back to 0, the player will DC and lose their badges for that round. It also locks other players out from entering the waiting room for 2mins (concurrent to the quest cooldown) after BG has ended due to the exit NPC waiting for the DC'd player(s). If BG is ever to be taken seriously on Classic instead of just being used to farm, this needs to be addressed. Perhaps removing the cycling spawn timer and having players speak to the healer NPC to respawn would be viable, and/or having a wall of cells (3 thick?) around the spawn point cycle between walkable/unwalkable on a timer instead, so that players may respawn safely but cannot leave that area until it cycles?
- Remove double creations from the God Item quest. This allows players to churn out god items at twice the rate despite a population of ~500 and saturate the server, which has very negative consequences (just look at every previous server where gods have built up). The sheer presence of these items drives off more competition than large guilds and bullying tactics ever could. WoE is very heavily farmed at this point; there are dozens of god items sets and stones waiting to be created belonging to a few people/guilds that have forts in perpetuity. More than half the time one guild does the rolls and opens the event while the others jump in and get free creations, so there's also an issue with zero effort being put forward for considerable gain, and despite the area being PvP-enabled the mechanics of creation make it difficult, if not impossible to challenge other players and inhibit their creations.
[Both]
- Advertising! Cheap ad space isn't exactly hard to find, and the other official servers do it. Why don't we?
- A new host. We get some awful lag compared to other servers with an equal or greater population. Renewal in particular has people rubber banding around everywhere, even in towns where most characters are sitting idle. WoE is just... there are no words.
- Account bound log-in rewards. Things like a standard BM a day for logging into your character. The rewards could increase by day and reset weekly so that the 4th to 6th consecutive days get you HE BMs and every 7th day nets you a BMX3. Something that can't be sold and so isn't desirable to botters.
- Additional benefits for VIPs. VIP is great for leveling but uses wane for players that are maxed out. Buffer NPC perhaps. I'd quite like to see a partnership between WP and one of the proxy servers for latency reduction like Lowerping, WTFast and Battleping, where VIP would cost a little extra but would come with a subscription to one such service for the duration. Perhaps incremental rewards such as bonus VIP days could be offered to players that pay for unbroken VIP time over a period of weeks to months, or renew their VIP time regularly, in a sort of "customer loyalty" program.
- PvP rewards for kill streaks and periods spent in 1st place Time Attack mode. The infrastructure exists and it would incentivise PvP beyond kicks and giggles. Burning your own supplies in there can get disheartening, especially for newbies. The rewards could be bound as with the VIP suggestion.
- Leaderboards. Best of level, fastest to level, most MVP kills, most kills/deaths/longest streaks in PvP and KvM, most breaks in WoE, most Bounty Boards and Gramps TIs taken, things like that.
- God ownership list. Who owns what gods and when they were received. Being divine artifacts, you'd think there would be a record of them! It would be interesting to see the stats, to be able to congratulate new owners on their items, and see who the most "godlike" players are. I'd like to note that it should just be for ownership, being the name on the gear; who is using the items doesn't really matter.
- Revise gear description translations. Run through everything, from weapons to armours to headgears, consumables and miscellaneous items. Make sure all translations are accurate to the original intention of the Korean text, and that uniform terminology is used throughout (can't stress that last part enough, since nobody likes seeing three or more different terms used to refer to the same mechanic or effect; "attack speed" falls victim to this a lot, as does the "formless" race). Start small if the project seems too overwhelming, like working on daggers one week, then axes the next, swords the week after, etc. This should be a high priority, as it really turns new players off to see Google Translated weapon descriptions with indecipherable effects, such as with Death Guidance[2]. Also ties in with...
- Revise NPC dialogue translations. Fix up NPC dialogue to be somewhat less impossible to understand. A number of quests require trial and error to make sense of, and a few of the newer ones almost seem to demand prior knowledge due to omitting crucial information on quest items and whereabouts, or at times straight up lying to the player and telling them something completely untrue (healbomb fire-element mobs?). Very few of them read naturally. On Renewal, start from Izlude and the Criatura Academy as all new players get their first impression from this area. On Classic the NPCs are rather good, they just need to be combed for mistakes.
- Card Album system. Implement a personal card album that can be used to store unused or junk cards to save in storage space.
- Account-based friends and mail. Unified account-wise friend lists and mailing for better community integration. It's far easier to stay in touch this way instead of duplicating your friends on the list by adding mains and alts. Mail is easily lost by forgetting to check on all of your characters, which is both time consuming and somewhat costly without abusing an NPC to get in for free.
- Persistent Boxter list. Retain older items on the list for players to cash in with should the market become unprofitable for them (essentially reducing their value to 0 and dissuading further box purchases). Retained items could possibly have depreciated brownie point value to maintain a balance with newer items.
- Overlook-style and Challenge dungeons for Classic + additional Overlook-style dungeons for Renewal. Classic could very much do with a content injection, a few more ways for low-to-mid level characters to grind and make zeny, and it's doubtless that the population goes wild when a fun and lucrative dungeon is added. Dungeons of cycling elements would be a great idea so people have a bit of variety and can't rely on a single set of gear. New hat or gear implementations could be pushed out onto the server via count or MVP killing quests in these dungeons, and Classic Janeway could tie into them very nicely. Exactly the same rationale for Renewal, and having access by VIP-only is always positive on WP's end, for additional paid time and additional incentive for buying it.
- Persistent buffs between zone servers. This is most definitely a kRO dev thing, but quite a few self buff skills such as Wind Walker and Cart Boost do not persist between zone servers. This necessitates a rebuff and costs the player additional SP or consumables, which can and does just get extremely annoying. Allow them to carry over as with other buffs and we're all happy. May also need to request code for an NPC that strips buffs if we don't already have one, to facilitate events and such. This would be useful on Classic as well.
- Allow characters of both genders on the one account. Not sure if this is an AEGIS limitation or just a publishing decision but it would be kinda nice to have mixed gender accounts. This would render the Gender Change VAS pointless though.
- Dungeon Teleport expansion. Increase the coverage of the Kafra and Cool Event vote warpers to maps and dungeons that are not presently included in either. Perhaps limit the full coverage to VIP-only and use the KP Port Scrolls as a kind of advertisement for it. You can buy these port scrolls, but if you were VIP, you could also use in-game NPCs! Or something to that effect.
- Additional BG modes. One of the biggest drawcards of many privates is the expanded BG system that they all use/steal from one another. Gameplay modes like Rabbit (chase one "it" player down, the killer becomes the rabbit, points scored for the rabbit staying alive) and CTF (just take the flag back to your spawn or a flagstand, usually). These additional forms of BG are extremely fun, good team-building exercises, a time-sink for characters (as many players build characters specifically for BG on these servers, much like unique PvM, PvP and WoE builds), and development should they reward badges, medals or some other form of misc item tradeable for consumables or gear. However, most servers that have expanded BGs invent in their rewards too heavily and become reliant on them to the complete detriment of PvM. Balance needs to be struck in the rewards if expanded BGs are to be a viable option. BG modes with PvP physics (full damage and knockback) are also very fun.
- New hairstyles, hair colours and outfit dyes. To improve the (admittedly lacking) customisation elements of RO, especially with regards to Classic which does not support to visible garments, new hairstyles and colours beyond the 27 and 8 already available would be fantastic. A large majority of the hairstyles are quite ugly to look at, so custom styles and colours would allow for a bit more diversity. There's absolutely no excuse for a maximum of 2 custom outfit dyes either. Please consider catering to your #swag #yolo #nofilter afk hat whore demographic (I'm allowed to say that because I'm one of them), otherwise known as every female player in this game! Also potato hats.
- More full-body costumes. They're fantastic seasonal novelties and, as with the hairstyles and dyes, offer much needed visual diversity. Perhaps test demand with a single full costume in a lucky box and see where it goes? Aesthetics are everything in RO.
- Timers for buffs and skills that don't have them. Buffs such as the short-term endows provided by elemental converters do not have visual timers. This makes it difficult to manage such buffs effectively, and honestly seems like an oversight. Timers for such buffs would be extraordinarily helpful in managing SP and consumables.
- Prevent highlighting of the chat box on teleport or map change. If teleporting or changing maps with text in the chat box, the text will be highlighted upon regaining control of the character. If the player then presses enter for whatever reason, such as to progress an NPC or skill dialogue or call up the chat box/cycle battle mode, the text will be sent to chat, or if a hotkey is pressed assuming the chat box is hidden the text will be overwritten and the hotkey will not function until the chat box is manually closed. While only a minor QoL issue, this can be annoying.
- Unique sprites for weapons and shields. A few older gears and certain iconic weapons have unique sprites, such as the Iron Driver, Twin Swords, Light Epsilon and Evil Bone Wand, and in the case of Shields, Buckler, Guard, the eponymous Shield and Platinum Shield, but the vast majority do not. Frankly, this just makes the game look unfinished. We're all sick of the godly item Mjolnir being a wooden bat with nails in it!
- Allow for the filtering of global announcements. When playing or leaving the client unattended for a while, the server messages can really pile up, pushing important things such as PMs, sales, pub, party and guild chats out of the chat box history. Allow these messages to be filtered in new and existing chat tabs like everything else.
- Give more quest NPCs character portraits. Pretty self-explanatory. Character portraits make the game more engrossing and bestow importance to those NPCs that have them. If all quest NPCs had portraits maybe finding NPCs related to specific quest chains wouldn't be so difficult!
Edited by AlmrOfAtlas, 30 January 2015 - 06:22 PM.