214 replies to this topic

[Kaden14]

I think the whole idea of hunting thousands of early game drops and having to create whatever you're making 1 by 1 for hours in order to use your skills is stupid as hell in general.

There are lots of things they could do to make it less retarded:
There could be lots of different item combinations you can use to make the same items like alcohol, grenades and acids, requiring lower amounts of higher lvl monster drops (for example to make alcohol you could use the old 5 pspore + 5 stem or have several options like 2 burning hair or 2 clattering skull. Maybe even use mvp loot like 1 broken crown + 100 empty bottles + 100 test tubes = 100 alcohol or something.

If that's too hard and requires help from the actual developers then just throw in an npc that exchanges high lvl monster drops for the potting supplies at some fair rate.

Or... there could be an npc that offers repeatable quests for bomb/pot supplies. Something simple like kill 200 monsters within x lvls of your character and get enough supplies for 200 bombs. At least this way you can farm supplies while you're leveling, wherever you're leveling.

Those are just off the top of my head and the amounts would probably need to be balanced. I would think that someone who's paid to sit around and come up with ideas to improve gameplay and dream up new content should be able to do the same or better, but... yeah lol. That's what happens when the people in control of content are way too distant from the game (*cough* lucky boxes and the same two turn in quests we've had for the last year or whatever).

[Nitro]

I think the decrease in drop rate is an awful idea. Think of how this would have worked if World of Warcraft would have did this to you at max level when you wanted to help out guild members. I'm pretty sure they would have lost their millions of subscribers if you couldn't even get decent gears you wanted. Ever.

Please do not put this drop penalty on RO. I think if this drop penalty is removed, you will actually see the economy stabilize a bit on some items. That would be a big deal for any players, new or old, to enjoy the game without needing billions of zeny. Otherwise, I imagine... S> Raydric card c/o 550m A/S 700m.

Seriously, I'm not selling these right now until I get more info.

[ZeroTigress]

I think the decrease in drop rate is an awful idea. Think of how this would have worked if World of Warcraft would have did this to you at max level when you wanted to help out guild members. I'm pretty sure they would have lost their millions of subscribers if you couldn't even get decent gears you wanted. Ever.

That's not a really good comparison. WoW has always made it so that gears you get from lower level monsters are completely overshadowed by gears you get from higher level monsters. In other words, the stronger the monster, the better the gear. Therefore, in WoW, there's no reason for high to max level players to help lower level players get gear because they can get what they need without their help.

RO is completely different in that good gear and stuff comes from low level monsters. Aside from MVPs, pretty much nothing good comes from stronger monsters. WoW players would be totally unaffected by a drop rate penalty, whereas RO players will be very much impacted greatly by it.

What needs to be done is a reevaluation of what items drop from what monsters. I can't count how many times I've gotten a good piece of gear from a low level monster only to find I can't equip it at all because I was 50 levels below the requirement. What's the point of having low level monsters drop high level equips if low level players can't even equip them? That's what always pisses me off, the fact that my low level characters get better equips from monsters than my high level characters and that's one of the reasons why RO is so broken.

[Babbles]

It is so ridiculously hard to kill (far) above your level, that they shouldn't really even worry about EXP and Drop modifiers for stuff above you.

I tried the Poporing tanking thing, just to see if what the "having friends isn't fair" crowd was complaining about. So I will make it simple:

Killing a tanked monster, 20 levels above you is hard. Even if you got 200% EXP, you are better off killing only 10 levels above.

There is a significant penalty built into the attack mechanics for going after something higher than yourself. A penalty that cannot be overcome with a tank. Killing a Poporing with a lvl 10 character is almost impossible. You miss half the time, when you hit you only do 40 damage, even with a Triple Diligent, it takes half a minute to kill. You get 400 EXP points with a 200% multiplier. On the other hand, you can reasonably pwn Thief Bugs, Stainers, or Tarous, get 180 EXP, and do it once every 10 seconds. So 800 EXP / min with tank on +20 monsters with a 200% modifier, or 1100 EXP / min on +10 monsters with 140% modifier, all on your own.

Yes, if you have a TON of blue pots (or a scholar friend) you can Blitz Beat a tanked Kasa to death. You'll need 70+ Blitz Beats, which will take about 1 minute to cast (30 seconds with Strings), and with a 200% EXP modifier, you will get 11,200 EXP / minute. If you go pwn Mermen on your own, you will get 860 per kill, and do that 6 times over in 60 seconds for 5,200 EXP / min. So get tanked in Kasa, or Kill Mermen on your own, Kasa are only 2x as fast, and that's with 200% for killing something 80 levels higher, and 140% for killing something 10 levels higher. Oh, and this only works for hunters with lvl 10 BB.

So even with a 200% bonus, who would be stupid enough to level on tanked monsters 20 levels above themselves? You can't hit them, when you manage to hit them, you do little damage, and if they switch, you're pwnd.

If you could form a party, and reasonably gang up on monsters 20 levels above yourself, then with a 200% modifier, the party (as a whole) will double their take per monster (versus soloing on +10's), which will help to defeat the party penalty.

Of course, it is necessary to reduce EXP from monsters below your level, but reducing drops from monsters below your level is ridiculous.

Edited by Babbles, 18 September 2010 - 08:18 PM.

[Chucklet]

I think most of the reactions are against this measure. I therefore seriously hope that Heim or someone else will take this thread's replies into consideration, especially since there are VALID ARGUMENTS and not only the 'noes becuz I dunt wantz it to happen!' replies.

Even tho the idea is nice, to let the people move on, I must agree with everyone that this will not work for RO. Quests need low-level items, Crafters need low level items, for some people (me included) the main source of income is from low-level items. Taking this away would require a way to make up for it (i.e. a map with high level monster that have the same drop ratios as *put low level monster name here* to keep your drop ratios normal)... In any case it would make getting items you need alot harder/slower, and I don't think this is what most people need.

As for item drops/exp penalties ABOVE your level... Also, just don't do it. It's an mmorpg, playing together is part of the game, so tanking because you have friends... Well, friends can be made. You might want to put a certain cap on it, but don't make that too harsh. But I'm getting off-topic.

There have been several good reasons or ways mentioned troughout other replies about the drop-rate thingie, so I won't start repeating again.

But...

To implement this as ONLY an anti bot measure would be useless. I have mentioned it before, BOTS HAVE INFINITE TIME, they will not even bother about the penalty as it won't cost them their hard-earned free time. It will really only hit the real players. But I think Heim has already agreed it's no longer just a bot-measure.
Only we can prevents botting by reporting them, untill a true solution is found against any illegal third party programs. Can't someone with skills maybe make some 'posters' that say "only YOU can prevent botting", hilarious as a loading screen imo, and it might actually help, who knows...

But drop-rate penalty? No. Please read all posts above and below ^^

[fenryl]

I think the whole idea of hunting thousands of early game drops and having to create whatever you're making 1 by 1 for hours in order to use your skills is stupid as hell in general.

There are lots of things they could do to make it less retarded:
There could be lots of different item combinations you can use to make the same items like alcohol, grenades and acids, requiring lower amounts of higher lvl monster drops (for example to make alcohol you could use the old 5 pspore + 5 stem or have several options like 2 burning hair or 2 clattering skull. Maybe even use mvp loot like 1 broken crown + 100 empty bottles + 100 test tubes = 100 alcohol or something.

If that's too hard and requires help from the actual developers then just throw in an npc that exchanges high lvl monster drops for the potting supplies at some fair rate.

Awesome idea, and fairly easy to implement. It would also make most bots useless, reducing their income and most likely their population.
I never understood the concept of having to hunt the lowest most boring monsters in game for days to be able to compete in woe.. and now to make it even worse they expect you to have a different character for each monster to hunt the junk you need. The stupidity of this concept is just.. wow..

[Hrothmund]

while this whole drop thing is going on it might be a good time to revisit the guild relay quests i.e. the ones that provide woe related supplies.

Redoing that quest chain could easily replace the need to hunt woe supplies the normal way.

Quests are trickier, since a lot of the headgear quests require quite a high amount of stuff although tbh most of the headgears have been outdated cept for kawaii factors (which is important to RO).

[Rewth]

So....Heim? Anyone? Are our posts and over 100 votes saying no to this going help? Or are you going to ignore us?

Even just posting to tell us to go screw ourselves would be helpful (save me time and i can start looking for a new game now).

[LethalJokeChar]

No matter how you mess with drop rates, it won't affect botters at all. First, think of now.. no penalties/nerfs: status quo is botters are still fairly rampant, rarely items are hunted, but the majority of all necessary items are botted (free server).

Now if we put big penalties on drops if you are higher levels? Bot productivity and player productivity will initially drop. But to compensate, botters would have to make more accounts or just grind longer with higher level characters. This isn't really an issue though. A botter will never get bored of killing the same monster over and over, and on top of this, now the higher level bots will have to use no supplies at all to stay alive. And a few more accounts running are nothing anyway, seeing as hardly any measures are done to ban them in the first place. This all probably still means the price for such items will go up. And a few more players will probably be forced to grind the same low level monsters with the bots. It'll just be more frustrating overall.

If you give a drop bonus for being higher level, that is also dumb. Higher level players can already kill the monsters faster. What this would mean is that... supply would most likely be flooded. And by then, botters might stop sending so many chars to get a particular item, and also drop their prices. Probably no real players will hunt the items themselves because the items will be so cheap.


Anyway, look. Drop rates has nothing to do with solving a bot problem. Banning bots, botter accounts, and botter IPs is how you solve a bot problem.

[fenryl]

too long to quote

you either didnt read my post carefuly or didnt read kadens.

He suggested that there should be different recipes for some items (edps, runes, bombs etc etc):
for exemple to brew coolitem A, you used to need :
10 jellopies.

his idea is to add npcs that will accept other items to make coolitem A, for exemple items that bots dont have access to, like mvp drops or high lvl monster drops.

The issue with this game, as stated multiple times in this thread, is that a lot of the main skills on RO require items that are droped by low lvl monsters, making botting an easy task. If you allow players to exchange high end loot for said items, it ll balance things out since it's much harder to kill high lvl monsters with bots ( harder cauz it requires expensive gears and harder cauz there s a higher chance for a lvl 100+ bot to get banned than a lvl 60 one)

[Pepperoncini]

I don't really think this needs to be a total war on the iro team to get them to reverse the drop change (they won't). But we have a few more weeks until we actually get renewal on mains, then it will be a while after that before we can see any kind of long term price changes or availability issues with reagents and what not. Actual equipment availability will be completely thrown upside down by the map/mob changes anyways, so it will be a long while before things settle down there. Plus, we have already heard that they are willing to put in other means to getting troublesome items, and also increase the drop rate for common reagents.

This is probably going to be the most negative thing that comes out of renewal, and it is also probably the most blown out of proportion. People need to chill a little and see how things turn out before spazzing. Same goes for the pirate quest; Heim's response on the issue was odd and a little aggravating, but we have been rocking non stop leveling events.

It's going to be okay guys. Group hug.

[LethalJokeChar]

you either didnt read my post carefuly or didnt read kadens.

He suggested that there should be different recipes for some items (edps, runes, bombs etc etc):
for exemple to brew coolitem A, you used to need :
10 jellopies.

his idea is to add npcs that will accept other items to make coolitem A, for exemple items that bots dont have access to, like mvp drops or high lvl monster drops.

The issue with this game, as stated multiple times in this thread, is that a lot of the main skills on RO require items that are droped by low lvl monsters, making botting an easy task. If you allow players to exchange high end loot for said items, it ll balance things out since it's much harder to kill high lvl monsters with bots ( harder cauz it requires expensive gears and harder cauz there s a higher chance for a lvl 100+ bot to get banned than a lvl 60 one)

First of all, I wasn't talking about what you or your buddy said.

And second, it's still a dumb idea that won't stop bots. The way MVPs are set up now, do you REALLY think anything will stop bots from killing them? I can see it now. Extra lv 140+ bots on maps with MVPs. When the MVP spawns, all the bots on the map converge on it, and they even log on priest bots to heal their other bots being hit by the MVP.

And high level items? Again, a level 140+ bot could get items from a level 130 monster easily.

[Hrothmund]

making high demand consumable quests based on mvp rewards is a bad idea. rare mob drops sure, but not mvps.

[DrAzzy]

The talk of ways to get these items in other ways is a clumsy kludge that would be more difficult to implement than the proper solution, which is removing or defanging the drop penalty.

[Kaden14]

I don't think that offering more ways to get these items is a solution to the drop penalty, but instead a solution to another issue altogether. I think the drop rate penalty should be completely removed.

[Talvis]

Well, since it sounds like they're refusing to change the drop penalty, they should redo some of the drops. Make it so that common crafting items, elus, etc are dropped at a good rate from a wider variety of monsters at higher levels.

As far as item hunts for quests, redo the item requirements so that they match the quest level.

[Kadelia]

crafting items, elus [...] are dropped at a good rate from a wider variety of monsters at higher levels.

They are... and always have been. Every monster from 1 to 99 had traditionally had elu or ori in some shape or form. "Craftables" should scale with level according to Gravity's gameplan. i.e. you hunt for items for a quest appropriate to your level with non-penalized rates and you hunt for forging parts for your own item and bring them to a smith-- items which are scaled in difficulty to the weapon you are making, which should be available to hunt for characters your level. etc.

The only argument I have seen against the drop penalty that holds water is stuff like EDP and Acid Bomb ingredients, but it makes 100% sense that you are forced into buying those ingredients off newbies that need money than some 150 shadow chaser bot's shop. Additionally, these skills were meant to be rate-limited by supplies which just hasn't happened. A drop penalty seems in order, to me.

I want to add that RO has always been organized around 'economy' unlike many other mmorpgs. I think its fine with Ayotoya quest requiring niff loots you may be unable to hunt for the necklace charm or etc as it requires you to shop pront for someone selling those items or petition friends or guild to assist you. This is one of the fundamental mechanics of RO that force people to be social. BOO HOO if a quest asks for Jellopy and you're so far above Poring's level that you get a 50% penalty. So what! It drops from 90% to 45%, but you kill soooooo much faster than a level 1 novice hunting those poring. It evens the-_- out.

Edited by Jaye, 21 September 2010 - 05:37 AM.

[Tyre]

I read a few of these things, but I have to be going now... pretty much the complaints are coming in like it's going to be imposible for you to get the items you need. The rates are dropping 50%.. they're not becoming 0 D:... if you can kill monsters 2x faster or 10x faster then you're still going to get the items as fast or faster than someone intended to be leveling there... HOWEVER the people of the proper level will still get enough items to be competitive in the markets. It's not perfect and I have a lot mre I'd like to say on it... but it's not impossible, just mean you have to kill 2x as many monsters (unless you're a rogue or a sin and you steal drops anyway... then you'll probably get 80-90% of the drops you're used to)

[LethalJokeChar]

The fundamental issue is questioning the motives for penalizing higher level players with a 50% drop rate. It doesn't stop bots. It's not "fair". The only purpose it seems to serve is to help keep players tied to a train which progressively forces them to fight the appropriately leveled monsters, which is meaningless once players reach level 150 and have nothing better to do besides train MORE new characters.

There's MAJOR issues with the drop penalties though. Imagine you want to hunt scalpel[3], tidals, wool scarves, or just any gear that has above .01% drop rate and comes from a monster much lower level than you. NOW, you have to hunt twice as many. 1/5,000 chance becomes 1/10,000. BOO HOO my ass, jayed. If you want 500 stems, instead of killing 555 mandragora, you kill 1111. It just wastes more of your time.

Another thing you all seem to forget is that it takes time finding the monsters. If you are lv 150 hunting a lv 110 mob and kill 3x faster than a typical lv 110 player, this means that you do NOT simply get 3x more kills per hour. Let's say it takes 15 seconds to kill a monster for the level 110, and 5 sec for the level 150. But it takes, on average, 10 seconds of walking around to find a new monster. This means the level 110 kills a monster every 25 seconds. The level 150 kills a monster every 15 seconds. The higher level player is killing monsters 1.66x as fast, but NOW we factor in drop penalty. Wow, guess what? Now the higher level can only effectively get items 83% as fast as the lower level.

EVENS THE *** OUT? Bull-_-!

[Heimdallr]

1 Factor I would push about why the higher level player shouldn't get drops from too low of level monsters is the idea of keeping high levels off of maps with the nubs. The nubs to the game should have some market value in that what they hunt is what you would want to get, if a 150 with a giant AOE had the same chance to get the item as the lvl 20 swordman poking mandragoras, what is the point of buying from the low leveled people?

The drop rate adjustment will get modified somewhat, but it can't go away and preserve the intended map balancing. Getting the common items is not a hard thing to fix, even in quantity.

[Rewth]

awesome...we post what we want the players voices are clear and they don't seem to care...

great costumer service guys!

[Shinobi]

There aren't enough "nubs" to supply the demand of woe items imo. You will just force normal players to make low lvl charas for certain items(Ymir) and people to buy off of bots(valk). Goodluck with that though.

[Heimdallr]

I said the the quantity items like WoE supplies are easy to fix via quest rewards. The whole system was NEVER up for removal, only adjustments. So any requests to completely remove it are not possible to consider. I am trying to adjust your expectations. The game can't handle the old drop method and still go forward with the other balances, I agree that the drop penalty is "off" and needs tweaking.

[Viri]

Just don't make them real dollar rewards <________<; Seriously. We don't need to turn into pRO with boxed Ygg berries, EDP, coats and bomb supplies, srsly.

[Doddler]

I don't really think it'll be a big issue with the kRO 30/60 level range for drops, which one way or another should make it to iRO. You might have to change the way you play a little bit, but it's not that restrictive when the range is extended to that degree. Yeah, you can't take your level 150 character and hunt mandragoras super effectively, but they don't want you to be doing that, and quite frankly I don't either.

Edited by Doddler, 21 September 2010 - 12:27 PM.