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The Problem with RO


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#26 Prodigy

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Posted 16 August 2010 - 10:28 PM

Heck, I liked what they did in RO DS. You go to the tavern and talk to the bartender NPC to get a list of all quests available in that town. You then select a quest and the bartender warps you to the first NPC of that quest. At the very least, it'll make taverns actually useful for quest-hunters.


That's another problem with RO. We have no freaking idea if an NPC has a quest to give or not. Again, without our fansites, we'd be completely lost. I mean seriously, we can't seriously expect some random noob to figure out how to get to the New World or to Nameless Island (two of the most annoying entrance quests that involve long quest chains).
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#27 NeoSaro

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Posted 16 August 2010 - 10:34 PM

That's another problem with RO. We have no freaking idea if an NPC has a quest to give or not. Again, without our fansites, we'd be completely lost. I mean seriously, we can't seriously expect some random noob to figure out how to get to the New World or to Nameless Island (two of the most annoying entrance quests that involve long quest chains).


Fixed in renewal.

Perhaps they can't fix the Nameless thing, because the quest chain starts very far away than Nameless or Veins. But renewal can help with their dots and !/quest over NPCs

Edited by NeoSaro, 16 August 2010 - 10:43 PM.

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#28 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 12:02 AM

Perhaps they can't fix the Nameless thing, because the quest chain starts very far away than Nameless or Veins. But renewal can help with their dots and !/quest over NPCs

Yet another problem with RO. Aside from repeatable quests, there are no quests that take place in the same area you receive the quest. You always have to travel ridiculously far to get the items you need and stuff. How about some area quests that don't require you to spend at least 50,000 zeny in warp fees to complete?
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#29 ganLOL

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 12:38 AM

how bout' swimming. :lol:
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#30 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 12:40 AM

Aside from Bayalan Dungeon, there's not a lot of places that are underwater so swimming isn't very important in RO.
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#31 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 11:52 AM

- Over-reliance on other characters to perform simple tasks. I believe any character designed to be a legitimate playable class should reasonably be able to reach max level in the game without depending on other characters. Now, special things like dungeons and MVPs are meant to be partied, I do not expect to be able to solo them, but I should be able to level any 9x trans character without endows and assumptio and not have to abandon all hope in order to attain 99/70.
It is a logistical nightmare in RO currently to get a 9x trans character setup to even begin to level someplace, and involves at least two other characters on a separate accounts.

Very true. The developers made it so RO is stupidly party reliant, however, the party system is bad to the point no one wants to party because it's so inefficient to do so.

- Gear: High level players need low level items and low level players need rare items. This is just bad without explanation, I think.
It forces high level players to fight "useless" monsters and puts much of the gear needed to enjoy the game at a basic level out of the reach of people who are just starting. Additionally, traditionally, there is only really one available gear for any particular function. You need an immune. You need a specially carded weapon. You need a phen clip. Until pretty recently, there really haven't been any alternatives to those, and gear does not typically scale very well. The same gear a new player needs when they start is the same gear people who have been playing for years need.

Also coincides with the fact no one wants to forge decent weapons because forging is so ridiculously hard with the stupid success rates.

- Everything the NPCs sell are worthless on all levels of the game. Treasure Boxes are the only thing worth selling to them. With the exception of fats, fwings, bwings, and zerk potions, none of the NPCs sell anything useful in this game unless it is needed for some quest.

Potions are useful, although that's already overshadowed by potting Alchemists if a newbie manages to get him/herself into a good guild. But yeah, for the most part a lot of NPC stuff is useless outside of quests.

- Quests don't make any sense. I don't really care either way whether or not there is a quest log, but the NPCs should at least tell you clearly where to go next. Sure, there is room for one or two quests that make the player search for something, but every single quest in the game does not need to be like this. With the exception of the seal quest to make an icepick and maybe a handful of other quests, no one actually WANTS to do the quests in this game. Most people only do them because they are forced to in order to access new game areas.

Access quests really need to be made optional, not mandatory. If I want to learn about the story of an area, I'll do the quest for it, but don't make me have to do the stupid quest just to get to that area. I've never seen a MMO that does this.
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#32 Sera

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 12:33 PM

As partially taken from here: http://forums.warppo...701-perception/
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#33 s7up1d

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 01:40 PM

I think job levels are quite intuitive, actually. I've never played a game before that used two "levels" (except of course Runescape, but that's still quite different) and I think two levels makes things better.

What I like most is that job levels increase really fast after you job advance to the next stage and it never takes more than an hour to go from job 1 to 15 or whatever. What this means is that we can begin using our new skills, which are tied to job levels not base levels, almost immediately after we job advance. So, becoming a priest or knight or something brings immediate gratification and 15 job points is enough to unlock as much as three useful skills. :lol:
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#34 Heimdallr

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 01:55 PM

Several of the points here are a part of what renewal addresses, or things that we intend to fix once we get our feet under us for renewal.

Party
Point of Smithing

NPC that helps guide you to other areas
cooking being better

those are 4 things that certainly are in the radar scope now.
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#35 Sera

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 02:11 PM

It's not that there's no NPCs to guide players to other areas, it's that the quest NPCs in the game don't give you any idea of where you're supposed to go to complete the quests and that areas of the game are sealed by quests which become increasingly interdependent as more areas are patched into the game.
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#36 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 02:21 PM

Several of the points here are a part of what renewal addresses, or things that we intend to fix once we get our feet under us for renewal.

Party
Point of Smithing

NPC that helps guide you to other areas
cooking being better

those are 4 things that certainly are in the radar scope now.

Adding onto Sera's post, if by guide you mean telling players exactly where to go without being retardedly vague (i.e. find [NPC name] near the Mage Academy in Geffen, [NPC Name] usually hangs around the southern part of [town name]), then that's an improvement. If you're just going to add more quests with equally vague NPCs, that's not really addressing the problem.

The main problem with forging and cooking is that players already have to deal with excessively low drop rates for good material and then have to contend with very low success rates for the resulting product. This causes an extremely tiny margin of player-made goods getting circulated through the market. Add to the fact that you're offering cooked foods in the Kafra Shop and no one wants to bother. Unless you can take out the success rates for crafting activities AND take out cooked food in the Kafra Shop, there's not much you can really fix to make it better for players.

Edited by ZeroTigress, 17 August 2010 - 02:53 PM.

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#37 Kitten

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 02:24 PM

Cooking is made better... For Genetics.

As far as I know, the basic cooking system doesn't change, does it?
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#38 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 02:52 PM

As far as crafting skill success rates, I'll agree, the success rates are stupid. Thanks to many different things, the only really useful crafting skill is potting. Cooking, replaced by kafra shop foods. Forging, carded weps > forged ele. How many Smiths in this game actually forge? In order to even have a semi decent success rate, your Smith has to have its stats so off kilter that it's horrible for anything else. Even with perfect forging stats, success rates are still quite low. When I created my Smith I was expecting to make tons of zeny forging, but then I realized the true success rates and now I rarely forge since even with decently high stats, I suck.

Cooking is made better... For Genetics.

Yet another problem with crafting in RO. Characters have to be specifically built FOR crafting in order to do anything. This wastes character space because craft-specific builds can't be used for anything else.

As far as I know, the basic cooking system doesn't change, does it?

Most likely.

Edited by ZeroTigress, 17 August 2010 - 04:52 PM.

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#39 Krispin

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 04:17 PM

Yet another problem with crafting in RO. Characters have to be specifically built FOR crafting in order to do anything. This wastes character space because craft-specific builds can't be used for anything else.

I hate this with a passion.
It's the primary reason I haven't seriously made an alchemist or blacksmith.

Lets take alchemists.
You can raise your stats for fighting and your acid and bombs will do more damage, besides that you can go cart revo spam and double team with your homunculus.
Ironically the stats needed to make potions, bombs and whatever else is almost the complete opposite of a build that can actually fight, barring the ice falchion and fireblend, making it a huge pain in the ass and a waste of materials to make your bombs and potions.
(and if you're on Valkyrie, it costs even more...)

As for blacksmiths...
Would you call someone who can't smith things a blacksmith?
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#40 Sera

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 04:23 PM

No, you call them Hollgrehenn
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#41 Krispin

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 04:56 PM

Touche'
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#42 Mwrip

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 06:45 PM

What sucks is that they COULD fix all of these problems easily (they being kRO of course, iRO obviously doesn't have the same resources).

No trade skills
We have mining in the game. It works. The problem is that all it does is get you Cat Hand points and the occasional sage enchant stone.
We have forging in the game. It works too. It's just completely useless because you get a grand total of TWO things you can do to a weapon (element and "very"), and there's vastly superior weapons to anything a smith can make. Also, you can ONLY make weapons, all other gear types are off limits.
We have cooking. It just has a terrible success rate, makes nothing but stat food, and makes stat food that no one will ever use because what little value it had was destroyed by the KP version. Additionally, the chef hat to start the skill requires such an asininely long list of stuff to make that most won't bother. Guys? It's a CHEF HAT. It it takes more than 10 minutes to get the stuff to but a poofy white piece of cloth over your head, there's something wrong here. If a chef hat somehow uses hundred of DRAGON SCALES, there's something very, very, VERY wrong here. :lol:
We have fishing... but like mining, it serves no real purpose except Cat Hand points (and the occasional OPB if you're super lucky).
We have potion brewing, and even have a special mass crafting system via link... but all it does is make the normal pots, with a bonus if you manage to get ranked.
We have an absolute crapton of furs, leathers, metals, ores, and all sorts of other materials dropping from various monsters, and while there's a couple of "why the hell does he drop THAT?!" ones, for the most part, they put some serious thought into what drops what. In spite of this, most of these items are either used by a single headgear NPC, used in a single quest, or are flat out vendor trash.
We have components that could easily be used for other trade skills. We have ink, we have feathers, we have a ton of dyes, we have multiple kinds of paper, and we have various kinds of gems and magical reagents. How hard would it be to add scroll crafting, using stuff already in the game, and making scrolls that are already in the game? Hell, the sage even kinda sorta has scroll crafting built into the class - it's just used for a whole 1 type of item.

To fix:
Mining - Add more metals that can be mined and used for forging materials. Put mining sites on more than 3 maps. Add a mining skill that levels the more you mine. Higher skill levels will decrease the chance of getting a stone instead of a real item, and can give a chance of getting a double roll from the mine. Remove the daily limit on mining, and instead simply remove the Cat Hand quest ore from the drop table once you've gotten your 3 for the day.
Forging - Instead of just "elemental" and "very" add a whole list of things that can be put on a weapon. The 3 forge slots still apply, so you have to carefully choose what you want. Having forging success rates improve the more you do it, and make some very powerful gear that *must* be player-forged, but requires rare stuff (which will mainly be provided by the best miners.) Add crafting for things that aren't weapons on the 3rd job, or better yet, make them side skills like cooking.
Cooking - We have a gazillion food items in the game, but only the stat foods are actually cookable. Come up with logical ingredients for the other food items, and put some in each of the 10 levels of cooking. Make the L6-10 cookbooks much easier to obtain. Add a few rare, but powerful, cooking items that you need to find a recipe for. Make some new food items too while you're at it - they're not hard to code. Make cooking failable only when you attempt something way beyond your cooking level. Instead, give stronger versions that have a chance to roll, with the chances increasing the more you level the skill. Show a level and exp instead of hiding it in a formula we have to look up on a wiki.
Fishing - Add more than one kind of fish, and use them in cooking recipes for various effects. Make the skill levelable, and increase the chances of good fishing rolls as it improves. Remove the daily limit on fishing, and instead just make the Cat Hand tails and marlins just stop rolling after you get so many in a day.
New Skills - I already mentioned how a scroll crafting skill could work, but it wouldn't be hard to think of others as well. There could even be the ability to craft cards.

The thing is, none of the above is even difficult! They could easily throw all of this into a single update.

Few quests, little storyline
The Sign, KH, and the Swartvalt lines all had interesting plots to them, but there's not much else. There's the occasional nod to the manwha, like when you find out that the Geffen fountain no longer goes to Alfheim because they bailed out and moved to the New World, but a lot of the quests seem like almost an afterthought.

RO actually has a very robust quest system. There's a ton of objectives it supports, and if they actually used what they coded, they would absolutely blow WoW away with their quest content. Instead, they make a whole 3 quests every 4 months, most of them don't tie into storylines at all, and they seem like almost an afterthought in most cases instead of a major part of the game.

Making new quest *types* involves a lot a code, but once they're in, you can easily make hundreds of interesting quests by mixing and matching the types, thinking up some good plot lines, and giving appropriate exp and items for the effort.

Additionally, the game *has* a quest log, yet it almost never actually uses it. Yes, I realize this is because it's a recent (relative to this being an 8 year old game) addition, but how hard would it really be to make sure all of the old quests actually use the log? There's what, maybe 100 total quests to do?

Lack of stuff besides grinding and WoE
What REALLY sucks is with some Korean games, you look and say "bah, this is always going to be nothing but a grinder, the game supports nothing else". RO's not like that. It HAS support for epic quests, detailed trade skills, instances, minigames, and a huge array of other stuff which - especially paired with the depth of character customization, could result in an incredibly popular game in the west. They just almost never actually USE any of what they've coded.

An interesting question is this: is it possible for the iRO staff to try to kick iRO more in this sort of direction? You added the REQ system to make the game more party-friendly (which was a great idea), so you're clearly allowed to make *some* changes to help this version thrive. Would it be possible to make more actual quests, and more trade skills, even if you have to half-ass it by storing levels, stats, etc on an NPC (you can do things like make the scroll crafting NPC be a desk, so it's not obviously hacked together)?

Edited by Mwrip, 17 August 2010 - 06:47 PM.

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#43 Krispin

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 07:08 PM

I like your cut of chops Mwrip.

Since each region seems to be getting their own customized version of renewal, maybe we can convince them of some of these changes in our version when it comes.

Edited by Krispin, 17 August 2010 - 07:10 PM.

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#44 Sera

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 07:16 PM

This one game I'm playing, all you do is afk fish all day. Is a pretty fun and engaging game.
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#45 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 08:41 PM

Very nicely said, Mwrip. http://forums.warppo...tyle_emoticons/default/fing32.gif There are many aspects of RO that are obviously unfinished and I kept playing year after year hoping that kRO Gravity would finally implement some of the stuff you mentioned and more. But 5 years of playing and the game hasn't gotten any better at all. If iRO Gravity has the power to implement some of these ideas to make our version stand out, it would take RO that much closer to being a potential WoW-killer.

This is a big problem with foreign MMORPGs such as RO. Developers are so focused on the leveling aspect that making binding stories are nothing more than an afterthought while other things that encourage player interactivity like crafting and partying are half-assed or not done at all. Quests only serve to help players level up, not make them more engaged with the game itself. They don't give players the tools they need to customize their experience because they'd rather have them grind to death. What's wrong with having minigames to keep your playerbase playing rather than just have them go head-to-head in PVP all the time? Put some fun in your games, gosh darn it!

Edited by ZeroTigress, 17 August 2010 - 08:44 PM.

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#46 Sera

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 09:01 PM

No writer working for a video game company is going to be a good writer.

I mean, Dean Koontz is widely published and hailed as a great modern writer, and have you read the :lol: that man writes?
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#47 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 09:02 PM

kRO Gravity still has Lee Myung-Jin, don't they?
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#48 Sera

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 09:03 PM

I think we have different opinions on good writers.
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#49 ZeroTigress

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 09:04 PM

It is subjective, yes.
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#50 Sera

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Posted 17 August 2010 - 09:07 PM

But my point is, I find video game stories to be almost roundly bad, and so I don't even bother to read the quests no matter how relatively well written they are.

While having good writers for the quests is nice, keep in mind that you have to do these quests on at least 9 characters, and a lot of people really are only interested in experience and money.
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