149 replies to this topic

[iamvrypwrful]

the logic is strong

[Viri]

The reason the server is the way it is is why I have no interest playing it. If it was as Mich described it classic may be worth playing but as is the hybrid pserver/xellieRO is just garbage.

[Xellie]

The reason the server is the way it is is why I have no interest playing it. If it was as Mich described it classic may be worth playing but as is the hybrid pserver/xellieRO is just garbage.

 

The problem with misch's ideology (which I somewhat subscribe to) is that bots exist and will always be a barrier to that sort of supply limitation.

[Mischelle]

Bots are another thread entirely, but a comprehensive argument regarding that issue with relation to WoE materiel is that they were the unspoken about truth of how WoE was funded.

 

If you want to keep it on topic, try and come up with motivators that give incentive for l 99s to go out and grind monsters.

[Xellie]

Bots are another thread entirely, but a comprehensive argument regarding that issue with relation to WoE materiel is that they were the unspoken about truth of how WoE was funded.

 

If you want to keep it on topic, try and come up with motivators that give incentive for l 99s to go out and grind monsters.

 

Like being able to fund our woe's on level with people that would bot? I'm a 99 I kind of would know what would motivate me. The supplies on the server are NOT going to go away. If they took away the gsb there would be a massively unfair discrepancy. No regular guildie wants to hunt that -_-. Makes more sense to intertwine the goals of the leadership and the plebeian members.

 

It tackles low population too. Kinda tired of being an unseen and having to pick between helping my guildmates level or running woe.

[ZeroTigress]

Since Oda brought it up on the recent livestream, would Classic players like their own version of the Bounty Boards?

- Boards are located in towns for safety and to turn the towns into party-finding hubs.
- Boards reward EXP and money.
- Boards require 150 kills per monster (can be modified for Classic if necessary).
- Boards contain monsters that are located nearby (i.e. Lighthalzen boards would contain monsters that are located in Lighthalzn maps and dungeons).
- Boards are divided into tiers of 20 levels and only players in that level tier can accept the quests.

Future developments will have it so players would only need to pick 4 monsters from large lists in order to get EMBs from the boards (not active in Renewal right now).

I've been considering expanding the Bounty Boards system to Classic for a while now, but unsure of what the response would be.

[Mischelle]

Like being able to fund our woe's on level with people that would bot? I'm a 99 I kind of would know what would motivate me. The supplies on the server are NOT going to go away. If they took away the gsb there would be a massively unfair discrepancy. No regular guildie wants to hunt that . Makes more sense to intertwine the goals of the leadership and the plebeian members.

 

It tackles low population too. Kinda tired of being an unseen and having to pick between helping my guildmates level or running woe.

 

1. If they took away the gsb there would be a massively unfair discrepancy.

 

Yes.  That is just a problem that would have to be dealt with, if the game is to work again.

 

2. No regular guildie wants to hunt that .

 

No sherlock.  That's partially the point.  The obtaining of supplies was never designed to be easy or fun in and of itself.  Just like leveling, farming supplies is a chore that is slogged through.  But you do it anyway b/c you want to win forts, and you put up with it b/c you b.s on teamspeak with your guildmates while you do.

 

Many aspects of this game were brutal.  Those same aspects gave it the charm it once had.

 

3. Kinda tired of being an unseen and having to pick between helping my guildmates level or running woe.

 

Because you should be able to accomplish everything you want in the time you are willing to spend on the game.

 

This is why Viri is not wrong to call it "xellieRo".  The server should cater to what you want.  If an aspect is inconvenient or disagreeable, it should be changed in a way you see fit.  Your statement suggests that you have this way of thinking.

 

For my part, many of my suggestions do suck.  They would make the game "worse".  People say that, but really the word should be "harder" instead of "worse".  What really makes the game worse is patching over all of its flaws with temporary fixes and custom content.  It makes me quite frustrated.  I wrote a post somewhere, about what it would take to improve RO, and the tldr version of that was that the game needed to be taken back to formula.  Otherwise, leave the game in a state as close to the original dev's vision as possible, since that guy was apparently the last one to really bother thinking about how the game should work.

 

I posted in this thread to start with b/c when I see "Improvement" discussions, it makes me laugh and cry on the inside.  Nearly every "improvement" to this game has made it worse.

 

But, in the spirit of contributing, here is a suggestion.  Instead of starting out new characters as novices, start them out as High Novices.  That should encourage new players, since it puts them halfway to max level without pushing them past any of the low level partying/leveling areas.

Edited by Mischelle, 25 November 2014 - 09:20 PM.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

1. If they took away the gsb there would be a massively unfair discrepancy.

 

Yes.  That is just a problem that would have to be dealt with, if the game is to work again.

 

2. No regular guildie wants to hunt that .

 

No sherlock.  That's partially the point.  The obtaining of supplies was never designed to be easy or fun in and of itself.  Just like leveling, farming supplies is a chore that is slogged through.  But you do it anyway b/c you want to win forts, and you put up with it b/c you b.s on teamspeak with your guildmates while you do.

 

Many aspects of this game were brutal.  Those same aspects gave it the charm it once had.

 

3. Kinda tired of being an unseen and having to pick between helping my guildmates level or running woe.

 

Because you should be able to accomplish everything you want in the time you are willing to spend on the game.

 

But, in the spirit of contributing, here is a suggestion.  Instead of starting out new characters as novices, start them out as High Novices.  That should encourage new players, since it puts them halfway to max level without pushing them past any of the low level partying/leveling areas.

 

Subjectivity incoming:

 

You think our server can get away with making fundamental aspects of the game more of a "chore"? If GSBs were to vanish so would the population. We're all too old to farm WoE sundries for hours every day, and there simply aren't enough real players to do the farming even if they wanted to. Should you ignore the worst case scenario of players simply leaving Classic for a private (the skill and awareness of the average player on this server is pathetic compared to some privates, so it's not just an issue of leaving for WoE mats and junk), you can be absolutely certain that the farm bots would get fired up again to supply for the type of WoE that this server is used to and interested in fighting.

 

In fact, even WITH GSBs it still takes quite a bit of time and manpower to grab all the necessary materials to support a moderately sized guild. If you saw a list of consumables and catalysts that an active guild consumes per WoE you'd probably throw up in your mouth a little and then wonder how the hell people manage to collect that much crap every week for not just one but two WoEs. It's usually a combination of personal farming and buying off the market, with huge, hours long and very unhealthy farming sprees conducted till the player burns themselves out and/or meets their quota.

 

So, you could just buy them, as there are a -_-ton of GSBs floating around atm, but where the hell does the money to buy them from market farmers actually come from? Classic's economy is dead because nobody really PvMs and NPCs the loot to inject zeny into the server except for bots. Although that zeny is eventually disseminated into the public through various methods (which is 99% of the reason bots and gold sellers are still around despite the dwindling pop; they have people to sell zeny to and whom are willing to pay for it), it ends up in narrow circulation. A lot of people on Classic are VERY asset-rich with little in the way of pure zeny. It's hard to make direct purchases. Quite a few guild farmers hoard GSBs on the side and withhold them from their guilds, instead attempting to sell them for a personal profit in order to make zeny to actually afford -_-.

 

Which leads into what Xellie said about a conflict of personal desires and commitment to the guild. Leaders are stuck behind the scenes for the majority of the week prepping -_-, brewing and farming. They can't level with their guildmembers as high and low level guild functions are mutually exclusive. You can't get GSBs at any meaningful quantity outside of a few, boring as bat-_- dungeons that aren't even remotely optimal for leveling, or often even partying. Need to farm to keep the guild alive and WoE but need new members due to our server bleeding its playerbase at an alarming rate, not to mention the seasonal -_- that has a lot of younger guild members unable to play due to irl commitments. You'd think that less players means less farming and less potting but that's only if the guild scales back its WoE presence. If not they'll still burn a lot of materials, arguably more, due to being outnumbered. lol if you think about it, with our dismal population the game's still pretty -_-ing brutal even with GSBs around as a QoL solution.

 

Don't even get me started on the sheer amount of time some people spend in this game to make their guilds function even at a base level. Most guildies are selfish -_-s, oh yes they are.

 

About the High Novice idea~ it's already been suggested a few times. Seems to be zero interest from Oda and Camp, or at least no visible interest.

[Gn1ydnu]

Summary from above...

 

The average age of the players on iRO (classic) server is high enough that jobs/school/life activities really limit play time. Things need to be balanced to reflect the general population.

 

Only issue I have with the above statement is "Quite a few guild farmers hoard GSBs on the side and withhold them from their guilds, instead attempting to sell them for a personal profit in order to make zeny to actually afford ." and "Most guildies are selfish -_-s, oh yes they are.".

 

It is hard to not be "established" and dedicate all of your (limited) time to helping a guild. Not everybody can appreciate guild leaders and what a guild can offer them until they lead a guild for themselves or go guildless/bad guild. The other problem is they need to afford their own gear for WoE. "Borrowing" characters/gears is really lame and not personal. It makes sense, but it isn't fun like playing your own character or using your own gear. It is hard and expensive to fund a character with limited time to invest and help support a guild. 

 

^That is not disagreeing with you. Just shows that balance is needed to tie guilds and general pvm together and shed some light on the guildie bashing

 

Honestly though, its going to be the same people that do all the work. This has never changed.... (because others don't log in at all, period... until woe)

[Zoltor]

You know, I just thought of a easy way to fix this, no edp, no ab, and definitely no slims in WOE at all(stop sucking so mush, that reg whites aren't even enough).

 

Also you stupid guild leaders need to start using your heads. You spend like 400m per WOE, when the odds of the castle even allowing you to break even, is not even 1%. do you people really think It's worth it. By the time you pull all the pieces to make a God item, you already spent more zenny, then what the God item would cost, just to buy it off someone else.

 

You don't need edps, abs or slims to get castles anyway, and It's even easier to defend a castle.

Edited by Zoltor, 25 November 2014 - 10:34 PM.

[Gn1ydnu]

You know, I just thought of a easy way to fix this, no edp, no ab, and definitely no slims in WOE at all(stop sucking so mush, that reg whites aren't even enough).

 

Also you stupid guild leaders need to start using your heads. You spend like 400m per WOE, when the odds of the castle even allowing you to break even, is like 1% tops. do you people really think It's worth it. By the time you pull all the pieces to make a God item, you already spent more zenny, then what the God item would cost, just to buy it off someone else.

 

You don't need edps, abs or slims to get castles anyway, and It's even easier to defend a castle.

 

If what you said was the absolute truth, castle loot > 2 hours of WoE... Then nobody would ever log in besides the last 15 min. It would be stupid, from what you described, to econ a fort since you would have to supply people, so just log in last 15 and grab a fort and make gods.

 

IF that was the absolute truth then we wouldn't have issues like the ones we do now. There is a very large population in WoE that do not care about castle loot and just want to fight for the sake of fighting in WoE. No other game has a system as perfect as WoE for large groups of players (or small) to fight against each other. It is what makes Ragnarok Online what it is. Considered by many... removing the "funnest" part from Ragnarok, which is WoE action, just for castle loots is insane. 

 

If you want to compete you have to pay/invest time in it. Anybody can get castle loots for logging in at last 10 min of WoE. I did this week, solo....

 

Bridge the gap between PVM and WoE (GSB) to make it so that guilds that would like to compete have the ability to. People can freely farm castles as described in the quote, but pretty sure the overwhelming majority would like to have some action in WoE and supplies/gears/levels/pvm are required to do so.

[Zoltor]

If what you said was the absolute truth, castle loot > 2 hours of WoE... Then nobody would ever log in besides the last 15 min. It would be stupid, from what you described, to econ a fort since you would have to supply people, so just log in last 15 and grab a fort and make gods.

 

IF that was the absolute truth then we wouldn't have issues like the ones we do now. There is a very large population in WoE that do not care about castle loot and just want to fight for the sake of fighting in WoE. No other game has a system as perfect as WoE for large groups of players (or small) to fight against each other. It is what makes Ragnarok Online what it is. Considered by many... removing the "funnest" part from Ragnarok, which is WoE action, just for castle loots is insane. 

 

If you want to compete you have to pay/invest time in it. Anybody can get castle loots for logging in at last 10 min of WoE. I did this week, solo....

 

Bridge the gap between PVM and WoE (GSB) to make it so that guilds that would like to compete have the ability to. People can freely farm castles as described in the quote, but pretty sure the overwhelming majority would like to have some action in WoE and supplies/gears/levels/pvm are required to do so.

 

True, RO has the greatest large group PvP system ever created, nothing even holds a candle to it.

 

However you don't need to spend jack on supplies, and indeed you shouldn't, if people are doing it for fun. If you're not so dead bent on god item glory, then why spend a fortune on supplies to beginwith? The fortune you spent on your gear should be more then enough to be effective against others, and have fun with.

Edited by Zoltor, 25 November 2014 - 10:44 PM.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

It's all for the sake of winning. People seem to care much more about "winning" than fighting. All you ever see is "oh we didn't play so well but we won and that's all that matters". "Yeah I'm an awful Scholar but we won who cares". Consumable and gear limitations would be amazing and a great way to balance WoE, but it needs to be something implemented in the backend. Gentlemen's agreements do not work on RO. Someone will always seek that edge.

[Gn1ydnu]

Why spend time and zeny? Because it is fun. That is the whole point if playing this game. Win or lose it is about playing a game with a group of friends and having fun.

The point of this thread, my opinion as well, is the amount of time and effort that is currently "required" is much heavier then the amount of fun in the game. It typically falls on a few select individuals to do an outstanding investment of time to provide "fun" for a guild.

Bridging the gap and making PVM more rewarding to helping guilds may or may not reduce the insaine amount of time that a few individuals spend making the game fun for everybody else. I think it will help to a degree and some of the surgestions in this thread are great. However, I still see very little hope that the "weekend warriors" will log in and help. I am uncertain of how big of an impact it would actually make, but it is defiantly worth a try.

When that small group of individuals who do all the work no longer have fun, they stop or quit. Without those few people the guild will quickly fall. Some people will be absorbed into other guilds and all the others will quit. Take this example and let it run repeatedly through time and you get the classic server we currently have.

So, increase rewards for time invested for just actively playing the game. It will hopefully give people reasons to log on and help make obtaining the fun aspects of the game easier. The worst it would do is give people an incentive to actively play more of the game and might cause the server to be more active overall, which would be awesome.

Edited: phone likes to spell "of" as "if". Lolol

Edited by Gn1ydnu, 25 November 2014 - 11:05 PM.

[Xellie]

It's all for the sake of winning. People seem to care much more about "winning" than fighting. All you ever see is "oh we didn't play so well but we won and that's all that matters".

 

You REALLY need to get on for woe so I can correct this mentality.

[NorthenBeggar]

Rule of debates: Generalize sheets and you're done.

 

You know, there are people who do WoE like Almr said, but there are also who don't. You can argue against any. It's just logic.

Edited by NorthenBeggar, 26 November 2014 - 04:30 AM.

[Xellie]

Rule of debates: Generalize sheets and you're done.

 

You know, there are people who do WoE like Almr said, but there are also who don't. You can argue against any. It's just logic.

 

Thanks for your response, but if a guildmember of mine has that perception then there are things in the guild that need attending to.

[Scuba]

Leveling improvement:

Spoiler

 

Make a place for people to go like this. This is post Troy event, it used to be a lot more crowded.

[Mischelle]

They can't level with their guildmembers as high and low level guild functions are mutually exclusive.

 

 

 

Leaders are stuck behind the scenes for the majority of the week prepping , brewing and farming.

The average age of the players on iRO (classic) server is high enough that jobs/school/life activities really limit play time. Things need to be balanced to reflect the general population. 

Changing the game to meet the desires of the current playerbase.  Check out how well that has worked over the past decade.

 

As for what leaders do with their time, that is their choice.  A leader who wants to win is going to have to treat the game like a job.  That is the price of admission for those who want to lead hardcore WoE.  If the work isn't worth the reward, the logout button is always right there.

 

A good game doesn't cater to the playerbase.  True, a good game is attractive to play, but like a honey badger, it doesn't care.  A good game has an identity to itself, mechanics, and graphics that define it.  Those things don't get tinkered with because player XYZ thought it would be better.

 

This gsb discussion, for example.  Many people have said how essential they are, because of how hard the supplies would be to get otherwise.  They are the same people who WoE.  I play this game also, though, and I only PvE.  From my perspective gsbs are terrible, they drive down the price of the materiel I gather.  Just to be clear, I don't care about whether or not anything actually happens to gsbs.  I just want to make the point that perspectives from players reflect their desire to make the game better for themselves.  Make the game more desirable for one player, makes it less for another.

 

Games are supposed to be tinkered with by devs, people whose trade is to sit around and think about the game arbitrarily.

 

As a suggestion, just to give this post something to do with Xellie's OP:

Why not change party exp to a multiplier instead of a divisor?  Instead of dividing out exp and giving a fraction to each player, why not give the full exp plus a small bonus based on the number of characters in the party to each player?

 

If you knew you would get more exp while partying rather than less, wouldn't people party more, and go to more interesting, party focused maps?

[Gn1ydnu]

Changing the game to meet the desires of the current playerbase. Check out how well that has worked over the past decade.

As for what leaders do with their time, that is their choice. A leader who wants to win is going to have to treat the game like a job. That is the price of admission for those who want to lead hardcore WoE. If the work isn't worth the reward, the logout button is always right there.

So your surgestions is for leaders to quit/logout?

I see the point of this thread as a way to brainstorm ways to make the server more active, help guilds out, help new players/returning players, have options to bridge the gap between woe/Pvm player base, and save leaders sanity.

Wouldn't it be nice to see more "woe" players in Pvm and actually party with people? Kill two bird with one stone. Get the server more active in all aspects well making guild leaders lives more manageable at the same time, yet still requiring time investment that could be shared amongst more people.

@gsb making your life difficult. Try hunting something else or just hunt gsb. Plenty of people will buy them and when I spent time hunting them I could make 500-1000m a week just from gsb. It would make sense to hunt gsb rather then starsand for example.

Let's be honest for a second. This is a business and a very large and arguably majority of the players are woe oriented in one way or another. If all of these people took your advice to "logout" then the business probably wouldn't survive. I can name off half a dozen guild leader (I still talk with them all) of guilds between 30-50 players who quit (along with most of the guild members) due to a rediculous amount of time investment with minimal rewards. That adds up to a very large amount of people who no longer play and make the server active.

Something has to give, it isn't 2004 anymore. People do not have the same amount of time to invest as we did before.

Bridge the gap and promote ways to multitask Pvm and assisting guilds.

[iamvrypwrful]

We can give suggestions and ideas all we want, but since the GM's/Administration doesn't really play and understand the game I don't see the server ever improving.

 

Good Game, RIP, Oh well.

Edited by iamvrypwrful, 26 November 2014 - 11:29 PM.

[iamvrypwrful]

 

I play this game also, though, and I only PvE.  From my perspective gsbs are terrible, they drive down the price of the materiel I gather.  

 

 

If you're not botting then I feel bad for you. The profit per hour hunting those materials is terrible (with or without GSB).

[needmorezleep]

 

Good Game, RIP, Oh well.

I c what u did thar

[AlmrOfAtlas]

Changing the game to meet the desires of the current playerbase.  Check out how well that has worked over the past decade.

 

So MMOs should never be updated? Of course people aren't going to like it when the status quo changes but they'll never pull in new players and keep existing ones if they stagnate. Imagine if WoW stopped updating after Lich King. No new quests. No raised cap. No new races. No new gear and, while the existing stuff wouldn't ever get rebalanced or nerfed, bugs and such wouldn't be fixed either. The game would've stopped being competitive and players would've just shuffled off to the next innovative MMO that came along.

 

The reason RO is doing poorly isn't purely because of progression. It's because the stuff they're adding is fundamentally unbalanced and extremely cash-shop oriented, and instead of fixing what exists they're adding new things in as replacements, which completely invalidates the past achievements and action plans of their players, who end up feeling betrayed. Progress is great; it's just that Gravity have no -_-ing clue how to build for existing content.

 

As for what leaders do with their time, that is their choice.  A leader who wants to win is going to have to treat the game like a job.  That is the price of admission for those who want to lead hardcore WoE.  If the work isn't worth the reward, the logout button is always right there.

 

You are insane for thinking that people need to treat a game as a job in order to succeed. It's obvious that you've never led a guild either.

 

A good game doesn't cater to the playerbase.  True, a good game is attractive to play, but like a honey badger, it doesn't care.  A good game has an identity to itself, mechanics, and graphics that define it.  Those things don't get tinkered with because player XYZ thought it would be better.

 

What if player XYZ was backed by 80+% of the server? What if the game is so fundamentally broken on account of being made for a population 20 times what it presently is, that it simply cannot function without adjustments? Does it matter then?

 

This gsb discussion, for example.  Many people have said how essential they are, because of how hard the supplies would be to get otherwise.  They are the same people who WoE.  I play this game also, though, and I only PvE.  From my perspective gsbs are terrible, they drive down the price of the materiel I gather. 

 

Why are you gathering mats that don't have any demand in the market. More to the point why aren't you simply farming GSBs instead? Keep in mind that one of the major points in this discussion is expanding GSBs to the drop lists of monsters in other areas which, as a pure PvMer, should interest you greatly.

[Mischelle]

If you're not botting then I feel bad for you. The profit per hour hunting those materials is terrible (with or without GSB).

 

I don't pvm to hunt materiel.