Hey folks! I first played this game back in...oh, 2002 or so. Back then, I thought it was cute, and interesting, and full of potential. But it had little to do other than grind...and grind...and grind...oh, and did I mention grind? Can't forget grinding.
I quit around 2004 or so (guess why), and recently decided to give the game a try again because I have a bit of a soft spot for it, and was surprised that there was stuff to do outside of grinding!
Well, for high-level characters. Third-class characters. Before that, the game is as grindy as its always been, even with Gramps and Bounty Boards. Basically, the game blows hard until third class when you can finally break up the monotony with other things to do, like instances, and siege.
To that end, I'd like this thread to be devoted to ideas aimed at enhancing the low to mid levels (for Renewal and Classic) by giving players stuff to do other than grind for experience, with the hope that they can gear themselves and/or have a way to reliably participate in the game's economy and activities (eg. siege).
Let's get started!
Low/mid-level Instances
The game is slowly adding new instances for high-level players, both solo and group-oriented, which is good! It gives players stuff to do, it lets them work towards rewards, and it lets them experience fun fights and stories. Lowbies could use some instances though, in both varieties! There's a ton of early dungeons that could have instanced versions that players could do for rewards by fighting special instanced versions of the dungeon MVP. For instance (heh):
Instance: Prontera Culvert
Minimum Level: 30+
Description: Enter Prontera's sewer system and deal with the recent Thief Bug infestation!
Boss: Golden Larva
Rewards: Tarnished Golden Gear, Tarnished Golden Mace
Basically, a quick romp through a Culvert instance to kill a baby GTB, one that doesn't drop a card, but drops some items inspired by GTB's regular drops.
Champion Mob Expansion
Champion mobs are kind of worthless right now; they're just bigger, meaner versions of existing monsters on a given map, with literally the same loot tables. I'd like champion-hunting to be a thing that players can do to try and gear themselves or otherwise get cool stuff, so even if they're grinding for bounty boards they can still take small detours every now and then and get something out of it.
Boss Bounty Board
This is a simple one: with added instances for various level ranges, have a bounty board that gives a random quest each day to kill a particular instance boss. The bounty board would offer a quest for low, mid, and high-level instances. It's like Gramps, if Gramps were cool.
I also have some thoughts on expanding the Eden Group further, in particular giving players more gears to acquire and possibly sell. I've seen a couple of people express concern that players just want to jump from Eden gears to the high-end endgame stuff, so I'd like to think of ways to address that, either via in-game stuff (I was thinking having a new Eden currency that you could get from instance dailies and champion monsters), or by discussing the issue out-of-game (Ragnarok's got a lot of gear, and it's probably being outshone by the high-end stuff you see absolutely everywhere).
Anyways, if folks have ideas of their own they'd like to share about making low-to-mid levels better all around, this is the discussion thread for it. So, discuss.
