191 replies to this topic

[Doddler]

This is an unofficial thread not sanctioned by the GM team, but I figured it would be best to keep discussions on this outside of the other threads.

The topic is: What do you like, dislike, and would like changed about leveling up in Renewal, as it relates to solo and party play?

[Clogon]

Well I will start.

1) Please continue and implement the Monster AI they were working on. It made the monsters unique. Video provided from Doddler.
http://www.youtube.c...1/9/s7s7Zs-PQjc

2) Make the tougher monster give exp to match their difficulty. Bio3 monsters, for example, have the ability to party wipe with over 200k HP yet only give 0.03~0.05 EXP/HP. Why would anyone ever go here when it is much safer to kill like Acidus (Gold) that will give better exp/hp even at the high 140's but are easier to kill?

3) Rebalance the maps so that maps with fewer monsters can still generate the same EXP/time as Mobby maps. The reason why everyone is on the same map in the 100+ is because there are only 1 or 2 good maps in that range. And they all choose mobby maps like Juperos because the others aren't worth it. My suggestion would be to make the monsters in the scarce maps tougher to kill but give much more exp/hp.

[Akin]

Yes, please keep working on the new AI for monsters. Currently, the only way to tell that a monster is "harder" is that they have more HP. Otherwise, outside of MvPs, there really is no difference in difficulty. I think the problem is that these are all monsters that we mastered before renewal, fighting them again just feels old and stale.

Also, support characters should be a bigger asset to people than kafra items.

[Hrishi]

Increase the bonus EXP gotten by adding members to a party (even share), so it actually makes it rewarding to party?

[Theoretical]

+1 for more complicated monster AI.
Also, monster spawn rate should be seriously increased to supply the newer leveling system that is completely quantity based.

[Mwrip]

1. Parties thrive on hard, rewarding monsters. In each level category, pick a few maps to be meant for parties. Kick the difficulty up high enough that soloing is almost impossible, and kick the exp up to match. These will become the party maps. Of course, be sure to also leave some maps in each range solo-friendly as well. That way, everyone plays the game they way they want to play it.

2. +10% per party member is not going to cut it. A party of 3 cannot kill at 3 times the rate of a solo players, because you can only find monsters so fast. 10% only very, VERY slightly reduces this penalty, and encourages a "party" of 12 soloers on a map. It needs to be at *least* 25%, 50-60% would be ideal. To prevent parties of 12 soloers from abusing this, it may also be necessarily to not make the share map-wide. This is EASILY done, because kill count quests already do this. If leeching is a concern, close the share gap back down to 10, and make players who haven't moved in 3 minutes receive NO exp until they return.

3. Nukers, Healers, and Supporters need to actually matter. It's perfectly fine for a lock to need a few seconds to pull out a nuke, but if that spell is simply a fraction of a melee's instant cast skill with a cast bar, yeah, no one is going to party that. If healing is so weak that pots are better, same problem. If support types like bards aren't wanted because they're just slowing you down, then rethink some of their buffs so this isn't the case. RO *USED* to do a great job of making classes flow together and party well, and surely part of a "Renewal" should be restoring that.

4. Consider making the instances a bit better.
Nyd: No one is willing to do that asininely long and tedious reports quest twice. Clear that for the account, not the character.
Orc Instance: Redesign the boss a bit, and give him a couple of unique items. It doesn't have to be anything amazing, just enough to make this actually worth running. Also, since I'm sure the 80 cap is still there and the monsters haven't been fixed for Renewal 80, fix that.
ET: This one's fine. In fact, it's a great instance. It's the only one you can regularly find parties for.
Shrine: IMO, the boss of this is really only built around a few very specific classes, and the since the whole point of this instance is that one boss fight, that's a problem. Then again, I haven't seen the Renewal version of this yet, so it may actually be fine.
All: Consider adding some quests TO the instances, in particular, a few repeatable ones with good rewards. This would get them all used a lot more. Also, consider some kind of token exchange, where major instance bosses 100% drop a couple of tokens, and the tokens can be exchanges for stuff. In the cast of ET, replace the now-useless ashes of darkness with these.... maybe 1,2,4,8 tokens per player at floor 25,50,75,100.

5. Improve the "booking" system.
-Add a text field to the party search system that lets you describe a party. There's currently no way to tell if a party is to level, MVP, or quest... only what map it will occur on.
-Allow people to post that they need a party, not just that a party needs more. In other words, you should be able to simply say "L115 FS AB needs party" and anyone forming a party can browse the list and see who's actively looking.

Doddler, thank you for making this thread.

Edited by Mwrip, 02 November 2010 - 03:03 PM.

[Clogon]

Also, monster spawn rate should be seriously increased to supply the newer leveling system that is completely quantity based.

Hence why there are suggestions 2 and 3 as well. I am pretty sure you don't want to use the same play style (pure Mobbing <.<) on EVERY map from 100 to 150. <.<

[Theoretical]

Well, im sure the Devs want options on how to fix things. I feel monsters spawn, monster difficulty should be a combined increase.

[Tolrin]

I agree with the sentiments about harder monsters in order to make partying more worth while. The trick is to make them hard enough that people cannot solo them abusively (such as kahii reflect damage RGs,) and making them worth enough exp that people would do it instead of soloing.

I don't feel like the party bonus needs to be increased, since theres already almost no penalty for taking people who don't even contribute. If there were a higher bonus, people would bring leechers to parties for no reason other than the extra char in party increasing exp, and thats a bad system.

[Prodigy]

Having an EXP-Share system like ROSE would be nice. Right now, having leechers is the least of our worries. At least with this, people will actually party other people, whether they significantly speed up the killing process, or slightly lag behind everyone else.

[Talvis]

Thank you Doddler, hopefully Heim will approve.

Party mechanics obviously need to be improved. One of two things should be done. Either, increase the exp bonus to 50% per additional player or get rid of the split so everyone gets full exp and possibly leave the +10% per member.

For leveling, the exp. given by higher level monsters need to be greatly increased. An average 150 monster should give say 50,000 and a hard monster should give maybe 70-80,000. Someone mentioned 100k for bio3, but under renewal mechanics that may be a little too much. Monster difficulty should also greatly go up. Perhaps with dungeon monsters being much more difficult(hard) so as to require a party and field monsters more soloable (average). If you're gonna make game mechanics put a 40% cap on 16+ levels, make it so that monsters that far above you are next to impossible to kill, because right now, people are finding they can kill much higher level monsters and complaining that they're not being rewarded for doing so.
There should be Eden like quests for 100+ (I noticed that they're adding 86-99 eden quests now on kRO) The current Eden quests need to have their rewards adjusted to be more worth the time for some. Some are kill 10 of "x" monster and come back. Those are sometimes not worth doing since they're too short. So, maybe increase the kill requirement and increase the exp reward. Also, add jexp to a lot of those since a lot don't have jexp.

[Hrishi]

Honestly, do we have to be concerned with leeching this much? People will always find ways to leech, but we are killing legitimate partying by worrying about possible leeching. In my opinion, fix partying first, deal with leeching later.

[Blueness]

I agree with the "make party share 100% exp for each party member" and possibly leave the bonus in as well, most people simply will not party if it means cutting exp in half or more!

[Puppet]

I say like 75% of Exp you get on soloing to party share, and if it a full party 100% of the exp that you would get from soloing, if it was something similar to this I wouldn't even care if there was exp bonuses from more party members, either way current party system is terrible and does not promote parties, only times parties ever been over abundant is when there were Dragons/Turtles/Ice Titan events and even then most of those parties were not share and most people didnt care that it wasn't share cause the exp got from share was so bad no one wanted it and they just want the EXP from the turn ins which made up for the terrible share system.

[Miii]

I would say:

Party Member 1 - 50%
2 - 50%
3 - 50%
4 - 50%
5 - 50%
6 - 50%
7 - 50%
8 - 50%
9 - 50%
10 - 50%
11 - 50%
12 - 50%

[Wanderer]

33% for each member above 3 is enough, you should be killing at a much higher rate anyways.

Also don't increase individual monster exp at all! Instead just adjust the spawn on the maps according to the map to have 100/150/200 monsters depending on the map size.

Edited by Wanderer, 03 November 2010 - 10:32 AM.

[Resplendent]

33% for each member above 3 is enough, you should be killing at a much higher rate anyways.

Also don't increase individual monster exp at all! Instead just adjust the spawn on the maps according to the map to have 100/150/200 monsters depending on the map size.

Uh, no. 200 bio 3 monsters is not going to be any better exp than however many there are now. Adding more monsters only makes the problem WORSE. EXP/Difficulty (level and HP) ratios need to be adjusted, not the amount of monsters.

[Akin]

Honestly, do we have to be concerned with leeching this much? People will always find ways to leech, but we are killing legitimate partying by worrying about possible leeching. In my opinion, fix partying first, deal with leeching later.

I agree. just limit EXP to those who are on screen when the monster dies (similar to kill count quests), or block EXP from people if they have been idle for two long (3-5 minutes).

And 50% for each person in party no matter if it's 2 or 12 is good. Then you can get rid of silly things like bonuses for taps (doesn't work for most support characters) and increases in EXP per party member.

No matter what happens though, it should be made so turning away someone who wants to party just because they'll drain your EXP/hr will no longer be an issue (unless you choose to solo).

[Wanderer]

If you only give exp to the people on screen spread parties would be pretty much impossible, and spread parties seems to be what it works now to increase killing rate instead of camping.

Whatever, another thing to address is monster replacement in certain areas, like arclouzes (lv107 in a lv80ish map x,x) in CTHO those bugs belong to GH sewers based on their level, I suggest replacing those at CTHO with more orc archers (just for the orc archer bow which is desired now) or more high orcs. That's the example that comes to my mind now but I'm sure there are other cases of monsters out of level range for some maps.

Edited by Wanderer, 03 November 2010 - 04:10 PM.

[Akin]

The reason spread parties are what's 'in' is because the party system is broken. Having 8 solo killers in 8 parts of the map isn't partying, it's sharing EXP.

[Talvis]

If you only give exp to the people on screen spread parties would be pretty much impossible, and spread parties seems to be what it works now to increase killing rate instead of camping.

Whatever, another thing to address is monster replacement in certain areas, like arclouzes (lv107 in a lv80ish map x,x) in CTHO those bugs belong to GH sewers based on their level, I suggest replacing those at CTHO with more orc archers (just for the orc archer bow which is desired now) or more high orcs. That's the example that comes to my mind now but I'm sure there are other cases of monsters out of level range for some maps.

As Akin said, the spread parties are done because it's the only way to get useful exp partying under current settings. But, we're talking about changing party settings so you can have a normal party and come out ahead of soloing.

[Talvis]

Premium servers should increase to 3x.

F2P servers should use this exp chart instead.

As I said on the other thread, are you a sadist?!? And we're not a pserver.

[morphine]

Ah, I don't know if this is appropriate for this thread, but would it be possible for quest EXP rewards to be scaled according to level so that doing them is actually... rewarding? They've always been more or less a waste of time at 90+ and now, at 100+, they are all pretty much pointless to complete. It makes me kind of sad, since it is nice to have a little vacation from the monster killing once in a while. At higher levels especially, instead of being something to do when you want a break from levelling, it's just a chore to open a dungeon or get an item (and even then, the reward isn't worth the trouble most of the time). When the quest is only once per character, it would hardly be game-breaking to get a reasonable percentage of a level for your trouble. Considering that some of these take hours to complete, I think giving them a boost would be great. ;n;

And to agree with some other points, both more challenging, higher-reward dungeons for parties and a larger bonus for additional party members in share would be spiffy.

[Akin]

What they need is a set of guild EXP quests. And by guild I mean RK guild, Mechanic guild, Church sponsored AB guild, etc. Repeatable or multiple quests sponsored by your classes guild that can help ease the monotony of leveling from 100-150. This way, people will also not have to do the same quest on 9 or 18 characters, except for duplicate classes they might own, unlike quests now where you have to do it multiple times and read the same story over and over again.

[TGNeku]

Premium servers should increase to 3x.

F2P servers should use this exp chart instead.

You, sir, are an idiot.