Heck, before we go after a laundry list of custom changes, let's work on getting the kRO updates that we're still missing from 2011/12/13/14. Many of them could easily come in one update.
Daily quests to encourage people to log on. Once enough points are accumulated (something high so its not easy, at least for hats or something?) maybe the user can turn them in for kafra shop items, exclusive hats, or WoE supplies.
It kinda sucks though, because everything that's possible has to be made into a way thats not abused by bots =/
Monthly rewards for renewing VIP. Every month a user renews their VIP they get something based on the number of months they've been subscribed (Auto-subscription sorta thing)
When you make new chat windows (renewal) you still get server announcements, which kind of defeats the purpose of filtering chat windows with PMs, gear, exp, quest, party/guild/reg chat, etc.
MVP Revamp. Seriously. They are a joke. They are supposed to be the hardest monsters in the game and yet a 99 biochemist can wreck majority of them. Increase damage, hp, def, and decrease their receiving damage to make them challengin. Exchange MVP crappy loots to actually reward the players for defeating a hard monster.
Better treasure from castles. They are supposed to be given as a reward for getting a castle against an opposition. I don't see how chain mails, robes of casting, crappy level four weapons show that. Remove crappy gear and exchange it for those that actually matter. Perhaps exchange them for more WPS tokens to assist guilds further with supply coverage.
Don't get me wrong, the default Kafra Ladies portraits are one of the better character portrait in the game. In term of anatomy and style, they still hold up, but in terms of coloring they look rather outdated and washed out compared to the more vibrant colored newer char portraits (like the ones in the Academy).
The anime-esque Kafra ladies posted above looks even more outdated, they totally scream generic-early-2000s-anime-design. Not even low budget galge use such style nowadays.
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Adding to the quest overhaul, giving more character portraits to the quest related characters. They don't have to be unique from each other (unless they're the main character/important in said quest or has unique sprite). Some quest already has them, but most don't. The portraits will make searching for those character a bit easier, and also make people curious (why this dude has portrait?) to do the quest. The small picture to show what's going on like in Sara's Memories or Doha's Secret Order is also a nice touch. I mean, A lot of time the characters just stood there with emoticon and simple effects despite the seriousness in their text which kinda lessen the tension.
MVP Revamp. Seriously. They are a joke. They are supposed to be the hardest monsters in the game and yet a 99 biochemist can wreck majority of them. Increase damage, hp, def, and decrease their receiving damage to make them challengin. Exchange MVP crappy loots to actually reward the players for defeating a hard monster.
....
While I'm personally not a major mvper (I can take on some very low tier mvps on my Axe Mech, but that's about it), I do know from running ET parties with guildmates, that high end mvps are too easy. For the most part from what I've seen, a large majority of mvps, even top tier ones, can be killed by a party of 1 to 2. So, my questions is, (maybe I should make a separate thread for this) what sort of stats, skills, ai routines, etc. would a mvp have to have in order to require a large party to take down and not just a lone Gene with CC or AB? Let's make a raid mvp instance that requires a full party of 12.
Daily quests to encourage people to log on. Once enough points are accumulated (something high so its not easy, at least for hats or something?) maybe the user can turn them in for kafra shop items, exclusive hats, or WoE supplies.
It kinda sucks though, because everything that's possible has to be made into a way thats not abused by bots =/
Monthly rewards for renewing VIP. Every month a user renews their VIP they get something based on the number of months they've been subscribed (Auto-subscription sorta thing)
When you make new chat windows (renewal) you still get server announcements, which kind of defeats the purpose of filtering chat windows with PMs, gear, exp, quest, party/guild/reg chat, etc.
MVP Revamp. Seriously. They are a joke. They are supposed to be the hardest monsters in the game and yet a 99 biochemist can wreck majority of them. Increase damage, hp, def, and decrease their receiving damage to make them challengin. Exchange MVP crappy loots to actually reward the players for defeating a hard monster.
Better treasure from castles. They are supposed to be given as a reward for getting a castle against an opposition. I don't see how chain mails, robes of casting, crappy level four weapons show that. Remove crappy gear and exchange it for those that actually matter. Perhaps exchange them for more WPS tokens to assist guilds further with supply coverage.
Don't get me wrong, the default Kafra Ladies portraits are one of the better character portrait in the game. In term of anatomy and style, they still hold up, but in terms of coloring they look rather outdated and washed out compared to the more vibrant colored newer char portraits (like the ones in the Academy).
The anime-esque Kafra ladies posted above looks even more outdated, they totally scream generic-early-2000s-anime-design. Not even low budget galge use such style nowadays.
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Adding to the quest overhaul, giving more character portraits to the quest related characters. They don't have to be unique from each other (unless they're the main character/important in said quest or has unique sprite). Some quest already has them, but most don't. The portraits will make searching for those character a bit easier, and also make people curious (why this dude has portrait?) to do the quest. The small picture to show what's going on like in Sara's Memories or Doha's Secret Order is also a nice touch. I mean, A lot of time the characters just stood there with emoticon and simple effects despite the seriousness in their text which kinda lessen the tension.
as an addendum to the quest enhancements, can we get some of these forever broken quests fixed? some off of the top of my head:
nidd nest quest (can't complete it) comodo cheese and doomed swords (should be easy, just restore the npc you need to chat with for the executioner creation back in izlude) onward to the new world (would eliminate the need to use the gimped teleport npc bandaid)
and i'm sure there are more.
also, other enhancements:
why do we still need 5 people to access TT from floor 3 and above? I can't imagine it's still that way in kRO, especially since it's much harder for them to multiclient there.
Looks private server-y. The color is too intense to blend in with the other colors of the game. I can think of a real black hair color, but it wouldn't be like this.
Before the GMs get the notion that the entire playerbase is on board with or supports these ideas, let it be known that some of us do NOT agree with all of these ideas.
Spoiler
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).
[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?
[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!
General fyi, my account is under probation right now. If suggestions are made and it looks as though I'm ignoring them, I'm actually not. It's very likely that I've added them to the list and quoted your post but everything I do requires mod approval till the probation period is over, and won't show up till approved.
Personally, while I do support some of these changes, I also take issue with quite a few of these so-called "improvements".
Revert kRO custom changes to Inubashiri's 3rd class hats.
On the one hand, yeah, I can see how it's annoying that changes were made. But on the other hand, it's not like Autumn headband works in WoE. Plus, I'd feel better for the players who own or were looking to sell them, and suddenly, their item is summarily stripped of most of its zeny value with a single patch.
I'll have to disagree with this, unless it's some kind of very gradual phaseout, where the items is given the originally intended effect, but retains the kRO effect for a time and that effect slowly diminishes over a long period of time. Like, the attack bonus on Autumn headband is reduced by one tenth, every three weeks, and so by week 30, is reduced to zero, or something along those lines. In any case, it should be a gradual transition, not an immediate one that screws up the market.
For the record, I don't own any of those headgears (except a +7 ordinary magician hat, which I never use) so it's not like I have a vested interest, but I know people who do own such items and I'd feel bad for them if their investment was immediately destroyed. Especially all the rangers who got it for the arrow storm boost.
Buff WoE FE gods.
Not just NO, but HELL NO. Completely Disagree. I see it as a GOOD thing that god items are slowly being superseded by new content accessible to more players, and not just legacy players who were able to farm god items in the distant past. If god items were as easy to make now as the were before the god item piece drop rate nerf, then MAYBE I'd support the idea, but this is not the case at all, and most of the god items on the server were created years ago, and are hoarded by a few choice people and guilds. The last thing these guilds need is to become even MORE powerful.
Not to mention, WoE already has too many "one-shot kill" attacks these days. We don't need even more of those by buffing Megs.
The time spent making the items was paid off in enjoying and using them for the period of time that they were effective. This is by no means a perfect analogy, but just because you grind at work for 3 years to pay off your 2007 model sedan does not mean you are entitled to go to the dealer or manufacturer and ask for it to be updated to match all the fancy stuff included on the latest cars to make it as good as the new model vehicles being released in 2013, 2014, & 2015. Your current car was good "back then" and you got your use of it and enjoyment during the time you drove it.
Again, strong NO to buffing old items, even if they're god items. Strong YES to seeing these items continue to be superseded by new stuff (which I see as a good and natural course of a MMORPG, and makes for a healthy game in the long-term). It rewards players who keep playing, and thereby acquire newly released stuff, rather than rewards some guy who got 3 megs, and a sleip with his guild 6 or 7 years ago, and decides to come back to the game today and all his stuff is like "WoW, AWESOME, DoooOOOoooD". Forget that. Gear needs to lose it's usefulness over time.
I agree about reducing their weight though.
Nerf the effects of ephemeral god items.
NO. Illogical. Considering it takes a guild to make an item, why the hell should it only be usable at full power by a single member of a guild? If the suggestion were "Nerf the effects of god items if used by anyone not in the guild that made the item" then yes, I'd actually be on board with that. But the proposal as it stands is flawed.
In-game achievement system.
I actually dislike stuff like this, but if it's already in the pipes, then I suppose it's too late to disagree.
Costume Tab in Storage.
Agreed.
PvP tiering.
100% YES. Long overdue.
Implement a dueling system.
If we can block it yeah, but I can't see it working out well. Reason being, exall and ex 'character' are already not persistent, you relog or change servers, and suddenly your bombarded with spam messages again. Who the hell wants to be bombarded with duel requests when your /noduel command fails to be persistent too. Not I. Leave it out for now, unless they can guarantee persistence of blocking.
Increase the vending limit to 1b.
100% agree. We needed this patched years ago.
Make the Auction House more viable.
The per character zeny cap really limits the ability to fix this... It'd be nice to have, but it's just not doable with the current coding.
Allow Mado Mechanics to keep their mount on death.
YES. And fix the damned coluseo heal bug already. How long must we wait?
Buff MVPs
I don't usually say stuff in support of the kRO devs, but in this case, I say leave it in the hands of developers. When the devs decide to send us a patch with buffed MVPs, then that is when our MVPs should be buffed. Let's not race to make them really difficult, and then end up screwing the balance of them in the process.
Revise WoE fort treasures.
Completely agree. This has been talked about for years though, with no action taken. I mean, a slotted mant was leet a decade ago, but is now superseded by frikkin EDEN GEARS, of all things. The whole point to having gear like that drop back then was to help a guild gear up its members to do better in WoE. So a logical change would be for WoE Set armors to drop instead. A slotted mant should be replaced by a WoE Mant, a Field Plate [1] replaced by a WoE Plate [1], and so on. Perhaps something like a 3~5% chance to drop an armor from a WoE treasure box would be reasonable. People who do WoE investment for these armors would whine, but the logical fix would be to make them a rarer drop from investment, in order to preserve their worth on the market.
Furthermore, there should be a chance to drop certain Bellum Weapons (at a lower rate than the armors though) and the lowest drop rates would be on the most valuable of Bellum Weapons. Can you imagine the joy and celebration some small, newish guild would have if a Bellum Katzbalger or Bellum Claw dropped from one of their treasure boxes? It could really turn the tide in their next WoE battle. Items like these would need to be roughly a 0.1% drop rate (one in a thousand). It might be similar to the joy a guild might have felt back in the day when a god item piece dropped.
Additional options could be certain Shadowgears, like Cranial Shadow Shield, Hard Shadow Armor, etc would also be good candidates. Again, though, at a very low rate, especially since those are Kafra shop items (although +10 foods are KP items too, but can also be made in-game, so it's not without precedent). Basically, any gear like that which can make some difference in WoE would be a good candidate to drop from castle treasure boxes, with increasing rarity depending upon their usefulness and with an eye towards preserving the market in these items.
Account bound log-in rewards.
Disagree. It's a band aid (and a crappy one at that) to artificially boost population numbers. Logging in and playing a videogame (you know, something you do to have fun) should be its own reward. A game that has to bribe people to play it does not deserve to continue to be played by anyone. This has been done before and it was (rightly) removed. We don't need it back in the game ever again.
Additional benefits for VIPs.
NO. VIPs get plenty, and I say this as someone who currently has multiple accounts with VIP. Stop spoon-feeding.
PvP rewards
I agree in principle, but worry about what the rewards might be. Ideally, it should be something like nice consumables or foods. Nothing over the top, like giving some nice gear away. Without a doubt, rewards need to be transient items (expires once used or expires after a set amount of time once acquired).
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.
I've never been a fan of games that keep such detailed statistics, and especially dislike the ones that make them public. It just becomes a way to shame and bully other players. The last thing we need is to drive the less hyper-competitive types off the server. I actually LIKE that death counts are not displayed. I've played other MMORPGs in the past, and the ones where deaths were tracked always made me obsessively try to keep it near zero, and if I couldn't, then it wasn't long before I gave up and quit that game. I've never lasted more than a few months in those types of games due to the stress, and the last thing I'd want is for RO to go that route and make a death count public knowledge, or even just known to the player. I can't see myself continuing to play if a change like that is implemented. RO is a very gear-based game. It's not like an FPS where everyone is pretty much on an even playing field. The MVP and god-geared players will dominate, not necessarily the players with the best reflexes. It'll just boil down to "hurr hurr, my gear is better", fap fest.
Account-based friends and mail.
Agree
Persistent buffs between zone servers.
Completely agree. This should have been fixed long ago. Especially given how certain skills have a significant cooldown once used (such as Rising Dragon), yet vanish the moment you happen to move between servers. So incredibly annoying at times.
Allow characters of both genders on the one account.
Completely Disagree. Accounts are free to make. Don't like your gender?, then make a new account (or pay for a genderswap). RO got this feature RIGHT. It does NOT need to change.
New hairstyles, hair colours and outfit dyes
Agreed, and I would add to this, new skin tones. We're NOT all pasty white. Even just 4 or 5 selectable skin tones would be a step in the right direction.
More full-body costumes.
That's fine, as long as costumes continue to remain disabled in WoE. I think it's bad enough that players can change into porings and deviruchis in WoE. I wish they'd make it so you get the stat bonuses of changing into a monster, but keep the original character class sprite in order to keep things more reasonably balanced. Once you step into a castle, the costumes and monster transformations need to (visually) end, while keeping their stat effects.
Allow for the filtering of global announcements
Yes, but new players should be forced to see the "don't fall for such and such Skype scam" for at least a couple weeks before they can disable it. Just so they don't turn it off right away and then get scammed by someone on Skype. And returning players (after long break) should have to see, for at least one week, any important message relevant to things that were added while they were gone, before they can disable it.
Note, I have not read the replies since the first post, so I may have been redundant, or perhaps might have seemed to inadvertantly copy off others in some of what I wrote. Unintentional, if it indeed occurred.
Sometime soon (probably in a few days) I'm gonna put up a vote so we can determine the popularity of these ideas. Let the community judge the worth of each idea individually, which is much more accurate than one person ripping and paraphrasing. Don't take anything said as gospel, especially not at this stage.
I really welcome your crits though. No idea is fully formed when first created so constructive criticism is imo the best way to iron out any present flaws and oversights, and turn a good idea into a great one.
Revert kRO custom changes to Inubashiri's 3rd class hats.
On the one hand, yeah, I can see how it's annoying that changes were made. But on the other hand, it's not like Autumn headband works in WoE. Plus, I'd feel better for the players who own or were looking to sell them, and suddenly, their item is summarily stripped of most of its zeny value with a single patch.
I'll have to disagree with this, unless it's some kind of very gradual phaseout, where the items is given the originally intended effect, but retains the kRO effect for a time and that effect slowly diminishes over a long period of time. Like, the attack bonus on Autumn headband is reduced by one tenth, every three weeks, and so by week 30, is reduced to zero, or something along those lines. In any case, it should be a gradual transition, not an immediate one that screws up the market.
For the record, I don't own any of those headgears (except a +7 ordinary magician hat, which I never use) so it's not like I have a vested interest, but I know people who do own such items and I'd feel bad for them if their investment was immediately destroyed. Especially all the rangers who got it for the arrow storm boost.
Make the Auction House more viable.
The per character zeny cap really limits the ability to fix this... It'd be nice to have, but it's just not doable with the current coding.
Note, I have not read the replies since the first post, so I may have been redundant, or perhaps might have seemed to inadvertantly copy off others in some of what I wrote. Unintentional, if it indeed occurred.
In response to your comments about the two suggestions I've made:
The third class hats. I'm not going to get into the whole "omg! nerf AS!" "nuuuu! It all we has!" debate. However, it was stated that when we got the hats, that changes were imminent. I could give two flying poring s**ts WHAT is decided. I'd just like for them to be concrete and viable.
I have an RG, Baby Ranger and an RK that are third class already. On top of those, I have a few other characters which are almost ready to go third class as well. For the ones that are already 3rd class, it's already too late to get a free skill reset for the hats. For the rest, all I'd need is a stat reset if need be. I have several of these hats, including the Black Ribbon, the Autumn Hairband, Lyrica and the Divine Guard hat among others. Seriously, aren't you tired of an OFFICIAL server having pserver animations? Look at my damn avatar! Doesn't that look like something you'd see on a crappy pserver? Can you actually see a reputable company coming out with this junk the way it was implemented, and left that way for more than half a year?! Aren't you ready for this to be finalized instead of being ready to jump on the side of the "dun nerf AS!" bandwagon? There's going to be someone complaining no matter what the effects are. Let's get this done so the ones that don't get their way can cry and let's be done with it.
And fyi, I'm planning on having 3 types of Rangers. AS, trap, and an agi/crit falcon for kicks, when I get around to leveling them all. But even for my future AS Ranger, I'd still prefer the hat to get nerfed.
The Auction house idea. Obviously, as you said, you didn't read all the posts. So here's a recap of what my idea about the auction house was. In another game I used to play, there's a building in every town called the "market". In this market, you can view a list of all items being sold and buy what you want. Also, you can put up items for sale yourself. Once you do, the item disappears from your inventory and gets placed into the market until it's sold or you take it out. (much like what we do with items and Kafra storage.) Once an item is sold on that game, the money is then sent to your bank account. However, since we don't have that, it can be mailed to you to protect you from running into the problem of having too much zeny on you. This was an idea I had that was inspired by people wanting to be able to vend without having to be online. You could also take your vend slaves out and level them just for kicks as well.
The idea wasn't a way around the vend limit, trade limit, nor the character zeny limit. Just a way to vend while offline. The cost of the Auction house is what mainly killed if, from my understanding. Reduce the cost at the very least, and it'd be okay...
No, thats why i am playing in the official server of ragnarok
if you want nurutus chinese sprites better play in a pirate server i preffer my generic official weapons.
Just a brief fyi but a large proportion of the things suggested have already been implemented on kRO, which is strictly "vanilla". This includes the DX backend update in development, new weapon sprites, new hairstyles, the achievement system, more costumes, buff timers, EXP overhauls, the antagonist system, and plenty of other things that have not yet been listed, and that I won't list since the What To Look Forward To thread has it covered.. With such a negative predisposition toward change you should probably go back to the Glast Heim update and then hide under a rock.