571 replies to this topic

[mixanus]

I think the community is giving their feedback/suggestion naming their shops ingame alright.
Can we have an ETA for the skill rebalance? 

[Zander]

Ok here is my 2 cents feedback.. i tried to play rt for lil bit and its quite nice coz it brings back so much memory when i was playing ro before 3rd classes..However, we can only get excited for so much with this new server. We all know once chaos is back this isnt going to last at all.. and even the population of people trying to find out bugs arent that much( less than hundred people). All im saying is this is a big mistake.. u could have just put all these effort right now to push the mega update for chaos..Instead you are having double jobs working on this server and trying to do the chaos update.( who knows if u even started with chaos update yet). Sure this might try to bring some new player but even if we get few new people, will u even keep this server for them when in the the future its not realistically ok to keep it? (classic and restart, we all know how that one ended). Anyways, im still supporting this game. and i wish u all the best. Merry Christmas. everyone.

Edited by Zander, 25 December 2019 - 06:49 PM.

[Essmikayl]

Based off what metric? I don't know one person who played pre-renewal and post-renewal that prefers renewal. 

its me, now you know one

[ShoLin]

Make auto feeding to all pets

[ZeroTigress]

Let ALL job classes reach the level caps. I wanna see if anyone would try to 175 a Novice.

[jogooff2]

Waiting for dangerous dungeon =\

Edited by jogooff2, 26 December 2019 - 04:48 PM.

[Carothis788]

So i get a error that says missing file no matter how many times i re download the game and install it i cant get past the launch screen without a saexe.exe error iv posted this on your facebook and messaged it and not once did anyone respond. Im not alone in this and you shouldnt advertise the game till these issuss are addressed and the game can run for everyone like any other mmorpg

[gorgoroth1]

anyway how long beta testing usually take? honestly nothing to test around except for pets/vending/refining system, too many limitation  

i thought its gonna be like chaos sakray (lotsa custom npc) kinda beta test, it took me 2 days just to get buckler [1] /pif

[Ashuckel]

i guess beta is proper down now?if so then i should start working on my post then

[Hikari]

1. Experience and Leveling - If this game launches with a classic exp curve, even with bounty boards, there is no way I'd be able to play it. I've started fresh too many times now and if I'm lucky I'll get 2-3 hours a day and only a few days a week. I would personally like a much softer exp curve that's much easier on classes that don't have AoE skills and the sole reason I quit ReStart was because the only way to get characters leveled fast was to build a knight to leech it. If this is going to be a whole new experience, then design the experience around solo questing, travelling, or parties, not about who can kill a million of the same monster faster.

 

2. Items - The drop rates need to be drastically increased. During testing, I felt like I was actually worse off than in the super old school open beta, in nearly 3 hours in orcs, I only got 1 rough oridecon from nearly a thousand orcs. Weapons, as long as they have rolls, need to drop from more monsters, and more frequently that .25%, PERIOD, make them npc for less or 10z if you have to. I'd much rather hunting a hundred copies of a weapon for a nice roll to use safe7/enriched on than spending forever trying to socket enchant NPCed gears because the only I want is locked behind a card drop from a monster I can't even kill yet. Gears could benefit from rolls too, people would want to hunt for a muffler that has more HP for one class, and more damage for another, but no one's going out of their way to hunt anything if it's gonna take hours with gum just to get one, maybe 2 pieces.

 

3. Skills - We really do need the skill rebalance or at least custom cast times, cooldowns, and % damage ratios (and the additional Zero changes such as Preserve toggle and fixes to buffs that disappear when changing maps), it's extremely important to avoid the terrible knightknightknightmonk WoE meta this time around, and gives a lot of other characters a slightly better chance in leveling.

 

4. Cash Shop - I really want to say no potion boxes, but these were also such a godsend when just starting out, and selling silvervine boxes for pennies wasn't much better. I'm probably more on the Pay-2-Win side of this but I feel like anything that makes leveling easier, including gear, could be included, as long as they're just simple slotted gears with an extra 5% exp or 5% less damage from undead or things like that, enough to outclass the basic gears, but nothing to break the meta unless we actually have a conversation about what OCPs would be acceptable on the server and what is not like the bad commons AKA Boxter fodder. Feel free to load us down on costumes though.

 

5. Quests - Need bounty boards and Eden warpers for sure, but anything a new player could do to restock on novice reds or orange potions or alternate consumables (or launch with event hat with +% healing with npc foods)

 

6. Chaos Renewal after hiatus - We need some MEAT(CONTENT) with this update, though the UI and QoL are nice, but we need something, even if it's just an illusion dungeon for now(kRO got Illusion Payon, Geffen, Ice Cave, and Turtle Island in 5 combined months, we're at a year and a half plus now from when we got the first one and we still don't have TI.), though 185 cap and matching leveling maps or older missing instances/enchant systems would be ideal.

Edited by Hikari, 26 December 2019 - 05:11 PM.

[Themes]

The game is not ready for the public in its current state.

 

Please look into appropriately balancing monster power. This is a pretty exhaustive task but there's no reason a character should be getting 1 shot (or almost) by things that are level appropriate. Beyond that hit and flee rates also need checking out. This is a HUGE task but is tremendously important as it will discourage people from branching out and trying new maps forcing people to continue to all be doing the same thing on the same maps moreso than usual.

 

The experience curve needs to be looked at. This got tweaked a few times, either via rates or exp requirements changing before you added free levels. But it's painful and slow in the wrong parts of the leveling experience. 

 

There is a ton of other words I could write about equipment options, cash shop and other things that we just don't have any information for. But these are two of the most important things you should address first because if people are unable to make it past level 50-60 because of how big a slog it is, the rest does not even matter.

 

If you want some assistance looking into the monster power stuff I'm happy to give some guidance or do some testing if you can make it easy to do. But I'm not going to be testing from Poring to Baphoment visiting every map on a level appropriate character to find out what is "too strong" for you.

Edited by Themes, 26 December 2019 - 08:56 PM.

[Jard2]

I really would like to elaborate the my comment but other people have already mentioned it. I share the same feedback and thoughts with TwilightsCall, mixanus, Themes, Hikari, and Ashuckel.

Overall, we need skill rebalances, item drop rate changes, not relying on cash shops items but have it for convenience and as an option for other people, curving the exp rates especially on low levels (1-70 to 80).

Edited by Jard2, 27 December 2019 - 08:53 AM.

[Ashuckel]

 Sooo, I've probably put more hours into this than in the past few months of Chaos. Did both regular leveling to an extent with 2 characters (a thief>assassin and a swordie>knight) and a few jumps into higher lvls when the NPC was added in, as well as a bit of "endgame farming" for a few low drop rate items.

The playing experience in general:

 It was pretty awful. Not gonna lie, i wasn't having fun for 90% of the time, and did it mostly out of wanting to give feedback on it. There are so many stuff that needs adjusting, tweaking, changes in general gameplay and progression. The pacing is terrible, and if the infinite Mastela and Honey supplies weren't there, as well as the BMx3s on the npc, the swordsman that i created 2nd wouldn't have made it to 2nd job in less than 30~40 hours of gameplay, being kinda generous. That's way too long for the initial portion of the game. Being grind heavy at the back end when your class is already functional with the build you wanna play is fine, being gated for this long from even playing what you want (let alone the time it takes to then unlock the skills as your 2nd job) is not good.

 

 

Experience:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube....h?v=ZpwoUrwGWL0
 

 Playing on multiple days throughout the beta and experiencing the different exp rate values (renewal table+event at start of day1, revoclassic at 2x, then revoclassic at 3x, at 5x(BMx3) and then finally 1x) almost the entire game could use a 3~4x boost to their experience values at the very least. This is an special issue to Job EXP, most monsters will give anywhere from 1.5 to 5x the amount of Base EXP compared to Job EXP, even boosting the entire game's rate by 4x, reaching something as simple as 2nd job will still take way too long because job exp is not in line with base exp.
 The leveling pace felt okay ish only in the first 30 or so levels, but that was only using the most effective place for that range, wich currently are Wolves(2 south of Payon). Their exp doesnt feel bad even at 1x, but can definitely use a 2x for the current table.

 After job changing into Knight, it took way too long to gain job levels, and thus unlock any meaningfull skill. Many classes only unlock their build defining skills at late 20s job lvls, and due to how slow these levels were, that means spending another good 10hours, mostly autoattacking since 1st classes don't have meaningfull skills or sp to back it up, just to unlock them. After unlocking my AoE skill I took the knight to the Bathory map (Geffen dungeon2), wich has a good amount of monsters to use aoe skills, and is one of the best places to farm for exp for a character at my power level. Well then, even with infinite supplies, it just takes way too long, using a BMx3, to go from a simple 61>61, and jobs 17>18. I spent a few hours there with constant infinite supplies, 3x rate and barely got 2 base and 3 job lvls.

 

 Leveling to aquire your second job shouldn't take this excruciating amount of time, neither should unlocking the first few skills after you job change. So revising the EXP requirement charts for a "soft cap" system where it's on the easier side to go from let's say 1>70, then 70>80 starts to pick up pace, and then it becomes the actual endgame grind. Same thing for job experience, reaching job50 as first job being easy, and doing it as early as the mid 40s base level, and making the first 15~25 points of second job also very trivial to get, pick up the pace for the next 10~15 levels, and then grind the rest out. Let people reach the class and build that they want, before imposing the heavy grind.

 

I could really use reaching that job 50 about 10~15 base lvls earlier, not to mention it took way too many hours of playing the game for it.

I'll go more on monster specifics later on.
 

 

 

Skills and character power:

 

Spoiler

 You probably already seen enough people asking the updated skills, so i don't feel the need to repeat it. It's imperative that the game plays different than it used to, skills balances are the most straightfoward way of accomplishing this, as it literally changes the classes gameplay. I very much vote for not messing with anything on skills, cast times, delays, cooldowns, sp costs, power, etc until we receive the updates. What exists currently is obviously not the best balanced experience the game can have, but it's better to deal with the freak we know than to have to deal with the repercussions of any custom changes made.

 Being renewal based, that means a good chunk of a characters raw power comes from gear, specially the weapon, wich i'll go into more specific detail later.

 

 

Monster stats and difficulty:

 

Spoiler

https://www.youtube....h?v=wF2hRLYl_qs

 

 You can easily cut the ATK values of almost every monster in the game by half and in many cases it will still not be enough. While it is fine to have dangeours monsters in the game, they need to appear at the correct time, and not have monsters that can 100>0 you in a single skill throughout most of the leveling phase. 

 Monsters Flee and Hit values are way too high. You see, a big part of what makes the "meta" leveling places as optimal as they are, it's not the monsters exp values, even though it plays a part in it. It's the fact that those are the only monsters that you will reasonably achieve a good chance to hit, as well as dodge change for flee based characters. Toy Factory EXP drops off really early, but you are forced to stay in there because every other place that's just a tiny bit better on the exp side will require you to have 40 to 50 more Hit or Flee to reach their caps.

 Experience values are the worse it's ever been. Not in a sense of, there's no place to level up. But in a sense of, there's only 4 or 5 places to level up. Those will be Wolves right out of training grounds, toy Factory until 2nd job pretty much, depending on your class you can branch out to a specific monster like Geographer, or go to a mobby area like Bathory, but as soon as you can do it/higher levels you will want to go to High Orcs on Clock Tower.
 Monsters/maps that are not the above are 100% not worth the time of day, for a combination of all points above. They will require Hit/Flee values you will not have at that point, and when you do, their exp already dropped off. They will deal way too much damage for that level range, and in many cases 1shot you with one of their skills, or their exp is just flat out lower than of those listed above, that are much easier to deal with.
There must be other places, even if they don't become meta, or are not 90% equal to the best ones, but you need to be able to branch to more places/monsters and not feel like it's a waste of time for doing so.

 Most monster stats, atk, hit/flee, exp/job exp, drops(will go on it later) need to be adjusted. There are 2 ways of tackling this. One is straight up as it says, individually go for each monster and adjust them, the other came up while talking on Blue on the irowii discord, wich is to use monsters Renewal stats, and then adjust the few that would be out of the lv99 cap. Renewal does a fine job at balancing monsters throughout the leveling progression, both in power and exp values, with hit/flee rate being the main thing to take a second look at.

 Btw, it's cool that MVPs are powerfull and, but currently most of them deal damage to the point you cannot deal with unless you are a monk in Mental Strength, even if you were to use reduction gear and be a knight investing into vit, most of the time you would still get 1shotted. 

Gearing, Item Drops and farming in general:

 

Spoiler

  In the current model of Ragnarok, gear drops from monsters tend to be in the low 0.X%, since gear stats are static once you get the gear, you are done. With the random options, you are not looking for your gear drop only anymore, you want optimal stats. Taking a look at many Zero videos as well it's pretty easy to tell that gear drop rate is much much higher, it may be in the 1~3% per monster, and almost every monster drops at least one kind of equipment.
Shifting to that model has some effects:
- Gear drops can still be exciting, you don't know what options you will roll, and you just might roll a gem of a super nice combination.
- With gear dropping more commonly, it's easier to gear characters at a basic level. Be it yourself grinding for your gear upgrades, or higher level people discarding their "useless" findings, that are pretty good for others still.
- Gears zeny values adjusted on vendors to make up for the increased drop rate. Not by much, but it slows down the zeny aquisition on the entire server.

- Due to gears being more commonly found in mass quantities, it is also easier to risk upgrading them. When upgrading something that is a 0.05% drop rate of an uncommon monster, you don't want to risk losing your special drop. With it being more common, you risk refining more stuff, and that will inevitably take more zeny out of the market due to upgrading costs, as well as making the upgrading market more active.
* Supplies of refinement material needs to be vastly increased to acomodate for the increased upgrading demand. Zero tackles this by offering Ore rewards very commonly as instance rewards for example. 

Spoiler

 Before the Crimson Weapons removal of the drop table, i've spent a good few hours in the Pasana map, as they drop two of them, wich are a 0.5% drop as per renewal table. For a weapon that has the power potential of a Crimson Weapon, the 0.5% felt appropriate, as well as considering it's spawn rate was also fair. But it's very low for monsters that drop "npc weapons". Monsters that drop weapons/gear at stupidly low chances, aka 0.0X% also need to be bumped up.
The game farming model changes from "I'll farm till i get the gear", to "I'll farm the gear until i get the perfect option combination". Include many/most of the NPC gears throughout most monsters drop table, as well as the versions with extra slots. NPC versions on lower level/easier areas, better versions on tougher areas.

 Regularly dropped gear having a chance to roll more options is also very appreciated. It happens on Zero already, regular gears drop with a white pillar of light, signifying only 1 option, and it may drop with 2 options as well, with a blue light pillar to indicate it.(don't care about the light pillars, but make gears drop with possibly more than 1 option)
 

 

 The beta currently has infinite consumables avaiable, and that is not representative of RO's reality at all. But RO's default avaiability of consumables is also very lacking. While health potions can be bought at npcs, sp consumables are incredibly rare, and forces many classes to play autoattacking for 80% of the time, and using their build defining skill the other 20%. It doesn't need to be made abundant, but at least somewhat possible to farm in decent quantities for self use to sustain say a 50~60% upkeep of playing your build.
On the note of consumable drops, even if monster damage gets adjusted, it's still very rough that all healing is dependant on you spending your zeny on npcs just to keep yourself alive, and not on upgrading your character. So monsters could use some random healing item drops. Nothing that makes it a second thought, but something that alleviates the worry of keeping yourself alive, like say a 30% drop rate of Piece of Cake from Mystcases at toy factory goes a long way already.


I wouldn't mind if card drop rates are brought from 0.01% to a 0.03% base, but that's just wishfull thinking. So long it is more avaiable for everyone and not just a select group of players, it's fine.

If i remember anything else, i'll add it at some other time.


In it's current state, i cannot recommend this for anyone, even if the person is keen of "fresh server starts". Give Chaos all the crap you want, it is still a much better experience than this.

Edited by Ashuckel, 27 December 2019 - 06:26 AM.

[InusT]

Pretty much what Ashuckel said, with emphasis on the job exp curve for second classes. I don't mind first class taking a long time, it reminds me of the old days, but the first job levels in 2nd class should be much much faster so that people can actually play the game without wanting to pull their hair out / quit. If you want to curve the job exp to the abysmal pace its at now, do it at around job 30 2nd class so that classes can actually get their fun / defining skills. As he said, many of the first skill points you are forced to put in to builds for some classes are prereq skills that don't really contribute to your character much but are required to unlock more important skills. 

 

Monster stats are really out of whack, particularly for MVPs with magic skills. Granted, I was testing without proper reducs, but with some napkin math things like orc lord would still one shot my 99/50 knight regardless. I understand that these bosses were buffed over years worth of patches in the game as they became easier and easier to farm, but consider nerfing non-endgame MVPs a bit since this will be a fresh server without gear and trans/3rd classes. EXP values could also be adjusted significantly upward for basically every monster with no adverse side effect.

The skill rebalance is really important for a lot of classes. It needs to be included or a lot of people probably won't play.

For future content, I would like to see fever maps/dungeons put in with stronger mobs to reward party play (and the random armor effects) but fixing the core levelling experience should  take priority. For fever dungeons, the iconic ones would be payon cave, bylan island, magma dungeon, and orc dungeon perhaps.

Edited by InusT, 27 December 2019 - 08:22 AM.

[CaptainSunbear]

Probably no surprise to some of you but I have been either playing offline or streaming the new features.

Not only did I showcase new features as they were (closed beta disclosure of course) but I also went off to farm offline to collect those weapons and try leveling.

 

Leveling:

Day 1 exp (before anything was changed) had a very speedy hoppy pace that was almost enjoyable because I could go to willows, boas, pecos, elder willows, byalan island and basically enjoy any leveling area.

Day 3 exp after changes and adjustments were made, I felt the difficulty of leveling, even at Toy Factory as a level 35 swordsman getting very little exp and end up getting one shot by Cookies Cold Bolt and Holy Light.

I did not get to the 2nd job because I was hoping to know about changes that would be made to the exp. Needless to say after that I spammed mastelas and Honeys at high orcs just to get job 50 (because they were added then)
Despite the difficulty, the monsters continued to hit hard and the exp was somewhat decent, but I believe we were on boosted rates still.

 

Drops:

The new mechanic of weapons dropping with options were wonderful. Being able to get +18 hit on a low level weapon while being out and about gave you the opportunity to get the additional HIT required for mobs that 1. You could take on but didn't have enough HIT 2. Mobs that were in your EXP range but required a bit more stats (HIT in this case) to deal with  and 3. Opened up the doors on having an available weapon for any pesky high flee mob, basically a swap.

I also saw this on magic weapons as well as a bow, Flee options and Variable Cast Time Reduction options simply made it great, but the drop rate was low, spent about an hour to get a bow, and it was the most difficult to thing. Not to mention I went ahead and tried to farm a Two Handed Sword at  Raydrics to see what kind of options were available and needless to say I spent maybe 2 evenings trying to get the Two-Handed Sword[2], dropped with CRIT +8 but I mean, two evenings maybe 3-4 hours total time and well. I cannot imagine what it would be like to refine this, let alone find a decent bonus for it to fit my character's builds needs.

 

Overall I feel the weapon hunt is also way too grindy for what it is. Truth be told, the weapon mechanics are really amazing for the early game and are still a great thing to look forward to in the late game but drop rates are just incredibly low. Maybe counter this by lowering the price of such weapons and increasing the drop rate. Of course this would need to be up for discussion but it seems more realistic to drop the price of these weapons and and boost the drop rate to search for the "perfect" enchant, since refining is also a thing that will be part of the process. Certainly the better stats have a slightly lower chance of appearing, right?

 

These are the things that I personally had tested and can comment on, so,, there you go.

Absolutely way too grindy for what it is worth. I found it difficult in the current server settings to play and enjoy the game

[Shardz]

Thanks for opening a thread and actually listen to us, so, i asked my guild mates what they were looking forward and what they were NOT looking forward in this new server and here is what i got (these are compressed opinion of about 50 players)

 

WANTS

 

-Highlight rarer drops with colors, it is easy to lose them in the midst of so much trash [aka pillar of light effect

-Story quests as introduction (new tutorial scheme)

-Daily side quests (that reward with potions,fly wings, materials, etc)

-New refinement UI system

-Special monster summoning system where when you kill many of one type a stronger one is born in the map

-Special custom maps with stronger versions of mobs, the known fever/aggresive maps 

-Optioned equipment

-Instances(inc Dangerous dungeons?)

-Skill rebalance

-Some cards and mvp cards rebalance

-Item that enables the greed effect available in some way, even if is from cash shop (aka arealoot, not autoloot)

-Automatic recurrent in-game events

 

DO NO WANT

 

-Exp/Drop penalty

-3rd class

-Bots roaming around

-p2w cash shop

 

I want the server to succeed, if you want it too, make sure to not leave a bad taste in ppls mouths, restart shall not be repeated, most want a new experience, not just a new server.

[AaronP2W]

They could balance everything real quick by releasing a classic server 

Edited by AaronP2W, 27 December 2019 - 08:55 AM.

[supeprboss18]

What Ashuckel said. I level a swordsman>knight up to the 80s before the added level jump NPC. It was fast the first few days before the exp change. Then it went to a halt once the new exp table kick in at level 80. I was mob grinding everywhere with millions and millions of Mastela Fruit and Honey just to gain a few % of exp. This is utterly impossible on a official launch and with Bowling Bash broken, it's not fun at all.

 

Also,you should be able to change to a knight at job 50 even if you have activated the quest at job 40 and not have to force to do that stupid archaic hunt quest, or make something new that's actually fun.

 

What player base are they targeting with this? If you want new players, change your ancient grinding system and rebalance the skills to make leveling actually fun and provide easy access to HP/SP supplies. No one is gonna even bother with the same old game with just a few mutated changes from Zero or whatever.

[xSwain]

For what i'm reading here, the main reason people want a higher exp rate and drop rate isn't the lack of time to play, but because the game lost its fun with bugged skills (bowling bash), broken classes (Holy Cross paladin), broken monster exp, etc.

 

This is more than enough to make the staff consider polish the game for a long time before its launch.

 

Play RO is not fun anymore and all I see is people talking about the competitive aspect of the game like WoEs, PvPs and MvPs, where you have other players making the fun, but the game itself lost its purpose.

 

Well, I would ask for a Classic server with EAC and a pay2fast cash shop with cosmetics maybe, but its my opinion, not every player would enjoy that. What I've certain is that the server is just dying before its release. The core concept that hyped a lot of people was skill balancing/fix first then enchanted weapons, but the main aspect of the CBT is try to balance the broken monster exp and stats.

 

Since it's a CBT, people would come back to try again on release, but if they get bored there, its really hard to get them back even after all the core systems get implemented.

 

I would really appreciate that WP Staff just sit and discuss what the server is and what isn't, cause if every member just knew that, we won't had a renewal map with classic monsters spots using renewal stats and characters with re:start skills on Classic level cap leveling too fast or too slow every day.

Edited by xSwain, 27 December 2019 - 03:30 PM.

[jajajohn]

They could balance everything real quick by releasing a classic server 

 

Going to have to piggyback on this. Ashuckel also had a very insightful post.

 

I've been playing since 2003 and have seen the demise of many servers on iRO, and I can tell you that a lot of dedicated players left these servers due to how poorly implementations were thought through. I'm not sure how much grief people have to post on here, but we absolutely do not need to reinvent the wheel or break something that isn't broken.

 

Here is what I've seen over the years:

• The first implementation of the cash shop on Chaos/Loki/Iris+Valk server introduction made a lot of people quit. Why bother farming if people could buy their stat foods, buy zeny by cash shop proxy, and buy broken items only obtainable by $?
• Many core "classic" players and guilds quit with the introduction of Renewal because it's just boring. Although it really is just opinion, there was no option for people to continue playing with those mechanics. Renewal is just a different game.
• When the 1st Classic server was introduced, the cash shop provided extremely broken items. The items were pulled from the cash shop too late, bots ran rampant, and people eventually gave up out of boredom.
• RE:Start...AKA Ragnarok bots online...the economy was horrible without any zeny sink, and WoE pots forced every player to use a knight to leech their character. It was much faster on this server to level with 6 knights+6 leechers. Wizard parties did not exist.

 

After playing the beta of RO:T, I can't recommend this server at all.

 

First, the server was being hyped way too much without any followthrough. "Server launches Monday, December 16th," but when? No information was released until the afternoon of that day. If you cannot provide information until the very last second, that (to me and many others) seems like staff is quite careless about it, especially if "thousands" of players have signed up for the CBT. I also don't understand why keys were needed to log in. People were turned off knowing they couldn't log in 1st or 2nd day from not receiving the key in their email.

 

Upon logging into this beta test, there were several basic things missing such as the hunter job test, Kafras, wrong portals, etc. This game is 17 years old now? These things should have been available from the start, and it left a bad impression on many beginning CBT players. Is this an ALPHA test or BETA? I purposely did not report things on this server just because the server as a whole seemed sloppily put together. These include many maps with teleport disabled, all of the Alberta dock NPCs misplaced (possibly wrong map as well), Prontera perimeter maps (fields surrounding the city) showing the 'new' Prontera, and probably much more.

 

Gameplay? It's honestly incredibly boring. The first night of CBT was a fun refresher, and it only took a few hours for a few of us to get job 50. It felt familiar to RE:Start, but I didn't notice any of the new features we thought might have been implemented. It started to feel dry, especially that the job change NPC was missing. I did level some other characters, but the exp changes (the most recent) made it feel very slow and unrewarding. I tried the level up NPC as well with different characters. MVPs are extremely overpowered, and elemental physical and magical attacks are hard to endure from monsters of similar level. This means fighting these monsters will require very specific gear/cards when grinding to get to 99. Pet testing was whatever--I don't think that is crucial to making the game fun. Homunculus just seem worthless--I get that alchemists are not easy to level (this is my 'main' class in RO), but they are on par of being worthless with these mechanics.

 

Overall I had a very negative impression of RO:T; however, your team has the potential to make amends to lost iRO players. Remember a few months ago when another company created a "Classic" server of their popular game? Well, there is a reason why that is very successful and still has thousands of players.

 

If you are unable to make changes to the game with the staff you are given, please do not try to make custom changes on your own. I think you should start with things you know work first and build on that. If this server is released in its current state, you will not have players sticking around for very long.

 

Concluding thoughts: rerelease another Classic server and add the RO:Z skill changes/memorial dungeons/other fun changes or just release RO:Zero. I don't think players should be left with the burden to exhaustively test iRO's custom changes (like monster levels, exp, etc.).

[Hrishi]

Quick feedback from me, not going into huge amounts of detail.

 

1. There is no need to make custom drop rate and EXP rate changes. The lower the drop rate, the longer it will take before gear drops is worthless. I see people wanting drop rates as high as 5%, which is stupidly high. The drop rate might not be correct according to zero rates, and if so it can be made to match. But do not make custom adjustments to drop weights based on feedback here. Same with EXP, no need to make custom changes because some people feel it might be too difficult.

 

2. No cash shop ways to make leveling easier. I realise Battle Manuals are going to be hard to avoid, but no potions from the cash shop of any kind. We all saw what that did to restart. Do not make that mistake again. No rental gear from the cash shop, there is no need to trample on the natural gearing process of the game. I cannot believe I need to argue to lower the amount of p2w in a game in 2019, but there it is.

 

3. The first/second class balance patch needs to be added. Base renewal versions of those classes are just not very fun for a number of reasons, such as really high fixed cast times on some spells. Adding the balance patch will give us a new way to play and create a new metagame for people to explore.

 

If you want to capture older players and bring them back to play this server, the server cannot offer a very renewal-like experience with hunting boards and all that stuff that came with renewal. Remember that is the game many of us quit from. This needs to be more classic-like in it's feeling.

Edited by Hrishi, 27 December 2019 - 07:57 PM.

[TwilightsCall]

The 1~5% drop rates are Zero rates. That is the reason for the feedback here.

 

I understand the fear of making gear drops worthless, but that is a given sooner or later regardless. But with the implementation of the weapon option system, you can either boost the drop rates so people can use it (as Zero chose to do), or leave them atrociously low so the system is dead on arrival. With the way drop rates are right now, people will hunt slotted Axes for potting and forging and...probably nothing else. There is just nothing on the option table that justifies spending dozens of hours to get a single reroll.

[Panteperu]

Are you seriously disccussing for a 5% rate drop equipment, wow. If the gms listen to those ideas this server wont even last 1 year.

[xSwain]

Well, since everyone is doing a postmortem, i'll leave my feedback too, but now as a game designer (yeah, I left engineering school to graduate in Game Design/Development).
 
What it should have been:

Spoiler

I could notice since Classic that WP is lost about their server's core-concept. Its when all the staff sit together and after decide that they need to open a new server, discuss what is RO, why people left previous servers and what players want.
So they brainstorm the new features and try to look at the new server as a player ( may with personas ).
 
Having a solid base of what they want, now is the time to release the famous topic "We're opening a new server with those specifications, what do you want to see ?". Players will just give all feedbacks about their RO experience, then the Staff should filter what is related with their core-concept and what isn't, like: Some players want a Classic server, but this is outside the scope, so no chance.
 
With that, they would realize that people wanted skill-balancing and functional enchanted weapons before pets, improved UI and new homunculus system, so they could task that as priorities even before ask a new build from "The Studio".
 
Then is the time where the Team play the alpha test, and may ask a few old players to test as well. People would check the big stuff like if the exp/drop rate, monster spots/stats, are OK. No fun here, just make sure that players can flow through the game without a bug barrier.
 
Check if these personas you created would enjoy playing the game with their goals and, if not, which actions take to change or at least minimize that.
 
Now is time to open a Closed Beta Test, so players would catch minor bugs like a NPC missing, a text bug, an unintended item drop from few monsters and discuss about the features you implemented, drop rates, skills, classes, cash shop, etc. Since you said what is expected to your server, they'll have a base for their arguments beyond their personal interests ( If you know that the server was made to be leveling in groups, you know that if you're having less exp leveling alone, is because you are not following the server's idea ).

 

 

What it was like:

Spoiler

They released a Teaser Video of a new server using the same video as RO: Zero teaser.

 

Created a topic calling it an "improved Zero", but without any detail, the relevant stuff was new homunculus system, new pet system and new anti-cheat. So people started to ask for the most important features from Zero: Skill change, enchanted weapons and fever maps.

 

The staff then realized that people really wanted a Zero server (oh really ? With Zero teaser video and 2 months hiatus on other servers, would people be happy with a new Re:Start with pets ?) and created a new plan (obviously the scope was so fragile that they needed to change everything, you couldn't see any solid base for the server, just a random build from Gravity The Studio).

 

CBT came with an extremely high exp-rate even without the 200% buff, so people started to think that if RO players now have jobs, an easier leveling experience would be nice if the end-game had something fun. Surprise !! A day later they just changed the exp-rate to something extremely broken where you needed 5 hours to level from 1 to 15 and 3 hours to level from 80 to 87.

 

Navigation bugs, no Kafras, job NPCs missing, NPCs on different spots, tons of anti-cheat bugs, people still trying to get a beta-key... people just suffered to help the company find bugs for free.

 

Enchanted weapons came, highest point of the beta IMO, people now just realized that Zero stuff could really come, but not a single "manual". Come on guys, if this is not a 1:1 server, at least tell us how to play with the toy.

A higher drop rate (1~5%) will make people try BiS combinations, since it would be 0.01% chance to drop the weapon you want with the 3 enchantments you want and having high values.

A lower drop rate (0.01~0.25%) will make people try different weapons, even a level 1, weak weapon with a good roll can overcome the best one available, so farm where you can kill much more weaker monsters to try high rolls would be the meta. Overs would be much more risky too.

If you don't tell us what is the plan, how can we discuss ? Our feedback will be based on what ? Our personal interest ? So I want a Classic server.

 

Now they know what players want, but lost a huge time and resource to discover that. We all hope that in OBT, the server will be much more organized and with a clear core-concept:

- Estimated leveling time from each stage, 1-60; 60-85; 85-99

- Which items should we focus for end-game ?  Lvl 1 weapons [4] with 4 enchantments, level 3 weapons [2] with the best enchantments, blacksmith weapon ?

- Combat pacing: Skill spam ? Low delay with high cooldown on best skills ? Will blue potions be available to leveling using skills ? Will I need to focus on basic attacks and sit for a longer time as skill-dependent class ?

- Will the server have all the castles available for WoEs or x castles for every y active players/guilds ?

- What will have in cash-shop that won't make players leave the server ?

 

Staff should know strongly this kind of stuff, so if players want a higher/lower drop rates for enchanted weapons you can explain how it was meant to play.

Edited by xSwain, 28 December 2019 - 08:29 AM.

[TwilightsCall]

Are you seriously disccussing for a 5% rate drop equipment, wow. If the gms listen to those ideas this server wont even last 1 year.

 

Just saying that's what kRO Zero has, and it seems to be working fine for them. You got a problem with it, take it up with Korea.