55 replies to this topic

[Campitor]

First off, any post off topic will be removed from this thread. Posts debating on if a certain item is appropriate can be made but, cannot include personal attacks. If you do not agree with a person just state so and why. For example,

I do not agree with Oda that Jellopy would be a good item, because if we let users gather it without combat someone may be able to be the Jellopy kingpin for life.

The question I am looking to having answered is;

What items would you then consider both balanced and to have enough value that you would buy it on the classic server?

[FullSmile]

I'm still waiting to see Fantastic Wigs make an appearance on Classic server, boxes or just kafra shop.

Not sure how the Mercanary boxes work, but if you put any merc in boxes with a weight on it, that would hurt anyone trying to Trans. They would have to get rid of them all before they can. Even if the box has no weight, if someone chooses to open it to use a few and then ends up with some left over, they still would need to use them all up to obtain zero weight.

[Xellie]

Well you could start off by not undermiming people's actual gameplay!!

Take that how you will, it's feedback. Fix the foods. ditch the buff scrolls. Don't account bind things so that non cash-shop players can play with upgrades and don't make items like dress hat super rare so they fall only into the hands of the chosen few. Put in more aesethetic items and stop selling direct power.

The most successful cashshop games out there rely on selling things that are only for looks and go against selling direct power. Take the hint.

[Amazing111]

Well you could start off by not undermiming people's actual gameplay!!

Take that how you will, it's feedback. Fix the foods. ditch the buff scrolls. Don't account bind things so that non cash-shop players can play with upgrades and don't make items like dress hat super rare so they fall only into the hands of the chosen few. Put in more aesethetic items and stop selling direct power.

The most successful cashshop games out there rely on selling things that are only for looks and go against selling direct power. Take the hint.

^this

[Ralis]

My main concern is that we need to have an in-game economy, and far too many Lucky Box items are account bound.

While this might curb down on the people essentially buying all their zeny with WPE, it makes it extremely frustrating to obtain things that are needed to be competitive such as HE Bubblegum and HE Battle Manuals. If they're in boxes, at least, they should be tradable.

I think a lot of the time functional headgears aren't actually needed... Sometimes people just buy stuff for the kawaii factor / to complete their collection. A few cool headgears with crappy effects might not be a bad idea (most Zodiac Headgears, though admittedly some of them can be pretty powerful at high upgrade levels).

Pretty much any one-time use items are fine as well. These are at least used

As I've previously suggested:

Rainbow Cakes
Sesame Pastries
HE Battle Manuals
HE Bubblegum
+10 Stat Food
Enriched Elu / Ori (ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO BREAK THINGS. )

Other stuff that people might be interested in, but aren't insanely OP and/or impossible to obtain in-game:

Elemental Armors
Slotted Undershirt / Slotted Panties
Sigrun's Wings

Edited by Ralis, 14 December 2012 - 02:38 PM.

[FullSmile]

Endow hats would be great, we have them on the renewal servers, why not get them here?
They aren't that OP, don't need upgrading, and some of them are even kind of cute.

[zr0rieu]

HE or X3 Battle manuals
HE Bubble Gums
+10 Foods (Providing that you plan to make these things available only on certain "event" days. These would also need to come in tradeable boxes)
Slotting Advertisement (One where you talk to Troy NPC to attempt to slot an item)
Level 9 Mercenary scrolls (Could also add level 10 mercenary scroll x 1 as high end prize)
Bloody Branch (The list of available MVPs need to be revised to not include those that are not currently available in-game).
Endow Hats (such as Gryphon, Imp hat)
Middle Headgear slotting coupons (Coupons are tradeable but slotted mid headgears are account bound).
Kawaii Headgears (purely for looks)


You may also want to consider continuing Sealed Box + Key system instead of going back to the usual 250-300KP lucky box. You could also go a step further and add in a slightly higher priced box that contains 1 sealed box and 1 gold key (in addition to a box that just contains 1 gold key) for those that can't be bothered to hunt the boxes or buy them from other people.

[Jaffer]

Can we just go back to when things were actually sold via the Kafra Shop?

Like, you know, just put the damn dress hat in the kafra shop, and you click it, and it costs some amount of KP, and you click okay, and bam. You have a Dress Hat.

It took me 30 boxes to get a Dress Hat. That's nearly $80 for a single piece of gear, not to mention I'd need at least a +7 or +9. Furthermore, people like Ralis got 2 or 3 Dress Hats in just 10 boxes. Why is my Dress Hat worth $80 when theirs is worth $10?

Lucky Boxes should just provide early access these items, not be the only possible way to obtain them. It's stupid that these items come and go in such a quick fashion. What about the guy that just joins/makes a Monk in 2 months and now needs a +7~+9 Dress Hat? His only option is to dole out an absolutely retarded amount of zeny or RMT it. But if instead of throwing everything away after a lucky box event, the GMs actually put the items into the KP Shops, it would change the variety of p2w this game has.

Essentially it should be like this:
December - Lucky box event for Dress Hat
January - Nothing
February - Dress Hat is added to the KP Store for 600 kp

This still gives people a reason to spam $$ at the Lucky Box events. They will have an advantage for two months with the most up to date gear -- +9 Maestro Dress Hat will give them a huge advantage at MvPs, just as +9 Maestro RWH will in the future. This is just like the "Access Keys" that were on Valkyrie back in pre-RE days, where only the players willing to pay would get an advantage because they have access to the latest content.


I would honestly not care if I had to throw 10,000 kp at the Kafra Shop to buy enough Dress Hats to make a +9 on my own. But the simple fact that I just recently threw 9,000 kp at it, got ONE Dress Hat, all the while seeing people that spent an equal amount of money getting 5-10 of the item is dumb.

The gold key event, the original one, was probably the only time RO has ever gotten a p2w event right. The box was the ONLY way to get:
HE Gum
HE Manuals
Pirate Dagger
Fish in Mouth
Well Chewed Pencil
Buff Scrolls

ALL of which are ALWAYS useful. You did get burned sometimes, but there was no "rare drop" that screwed you over. You were almost guaranteed to get a pretty good item from these boxes. People bought such vast amounts of these because the contents justified the cost. Sure it took me 30 boxes to get a WCP but I got the added benefit of having Buff Scrolls that I still use in WoE and big PvM Parties, as well as getting the other headgears (in such quantities that I don't need to transfer these items between characters.)

I don't mind spending money on this game and honestly, lucky boxes don't actually effect my spending. I allocate $xxx each month, and I spend that much. Never more, rarely less. I'm not a lucky person. I've been playing RO for years, including iRO, and I've never seen an MvP Card drop (did get an apple from Eddga, of course). But I'm fine with that. Drops should depend on "luck" (read: PRNG God). But when it comes to this item, a Dress Hat, and more specifically, a +9, the fact that the only way I could possible get it being throwing arbitrary amounts of money at this company in the hopes to get a chance at then, then again doing it in the hopes of getting a +9 (Enriched) is just stacking the odds against players.

Hats should be a certainty. I would be much more willing to buy Dress Hats directly and Enriched Elu directly and try my luck at the refiner instead of having to stack the odds of getting a Dress Hat with the odds of getting a +9, driving the chance to effectively 0. I'm sure plenty of others that benefit from this item would be just as willing, as well.

Run your lucky box events by all means. But provide us guaranteed access to the items eventually.

You can start by putting WCP, Pirate Dagger, and Fish in Mouth in the Kafra Shop. Wrapped in trade-able boxes so people that aren't willing to buy WP still have access to them.

To relate to Xellie's post, cash shop items should never be superior to their in game variants. Equal, okay, superior, no. Look at the Alice Doll/Gigantic Majestic Goat for example. GMG provides 12% to Demi and +ATK based on job. It has defense and it can be refined. Now the Alice Doll: 10% to Demi and +1 STR. It also comes with a slot which in very rare circumstances could make it superior to the GMG (such as putting a Vanberk Card in it and hitting a STR bonus unobtainable with GMG.) Neither is definitively better than the other, they're both circumstantial. But the GMG is preferable because it provides more power without reliance on stats, whereas the next update could invalidate your Alice Doll build.

Palette Swaps are also popular. Not everyone in the game wants to look the same as everyone else.

[Zeca]

bring back the zodiac helms and takius blindfold/sigrun wings
but yea, stop with this whole account bound

[Studmanly]

down with account bound

[Kadnya]

Less account bound items. Remember that only a few people will spend on your cash shop, and once those people have bought everything buyable they will not buy more. But if you let those people to keep buying items and the other players who will not buy anything with cash to buy from people with zeny, you have happy payers and happy 'freeloaders'(who are not really freeloading since they buy indirectly.)

I'm looking at something like slotted mid gears: these are the kind of strong items which are better either avaible to everyone, or not avaible for no one.

[EnkiAO]

HE or X3 Battle manuals
HE Bubble Gums
+10 Foods (Providing that you plan to make these things available only on certain "event" days. These would also need to come in tradeable boxes)
Slotting Advertisement (One where you talk to Troy NPC to attempt to slot an item)
Level 9 Mercenary scrolls (Could also add level 10 mercenary scroll x 1 as high end prize)
Bloody Branch (The list of available MVPs need to be revised to not include those that are not currently available in-game).
Endow Hats (such as Gryphon, Imp hat)
Middle Headgear slotting coupons (Coupons are tradeable but slotted mid headgears are account bound).
Kawaii Headgears (purely for looks)


You may also want to consider continuing Sealed Box + Key system instead of going back to the usual 250-300KP lucky box. You could also go a step further and add in a slightly higher priced box that contains 1 sealed box and 1 gold key (in addition to a box that just contains 1 gold key) for those that can't be bothered to hunt the boxes or buy them from other people.

Can we just go back to when things were actually sold via the Kafra Shop?

Like, you know, just put the damn dress hat in the kafra shop, and you click it, and it costs some amount of KP, and you click okay, and bam. You have a Dress Hat.

It took me 30 boxes to get a Dress Hat. That's nearly $80 for a single piece of gear, not to mention I'd need at least a +7 or +9. Furthermore, people like Ralis got 2 or 3 Dress Hats in just 10 boxes. Why is my Dress Hat worth $80 when theirs is worth $10?

Lucky Boxes should just provide early access these items, not be the only possible way to obtain them. It's stupid that these items come and go in such a quick fashion. What about the guy that just joins/makes a Monk in 2 months and now needs a +7~+9 Dress Hat? His only option is to dole out an absolutely retarded amount of zeny or RMT it. But if instead of throwing everything away after a lucky box event, the GMs actually put the items into the KP Shops, it would change the variety of p2w this game has.

Essentially it should be like this:
December - Lucky box event for Dress Hat
January - Nothing
February - Dress Hat is added to the KP Store for 600 kp

This still gives people a reason to spam $$ at the Lucky Box events. They will have an advantage for two months with the most up to date gear -- +9 Maestro Dress Hat will give them a huge advantage at MvPs, just as +9 Maestro RWH will in the future. This is just like the "Access Keys" that were on Valkyrie back in pre-RE days, where only the players willing to pay would get an advantage because they have access to the latest content.


I would honestly not care if I had to throw 10,000 kp at the Kafra Shop to buy enough Dress Hats to make a +9 on my own. But the simple fact that I just recently threw 9,000 kp at it, got ONE Dress Hat, all the while seeing people that spent an equal amount of money getting 5-10 of the item is dumb.

The gold key event, the original one, was probably the only time RO has ever gotten a p2w event right. The box was the ONLY way to get:
HE Gum
HE Manuals
Pirate Dagger
Fish in Mouth
Well Chewed Pencil
Buff Scrolls

ALL of which are ALWAYS useful. You did get burned sometimes, but there was no "rare drop" that screwed you over. You were almost guaranteed to get a pretty good item from these boxes. People bought such vast amounts of these because the contents justified the cost. Sure it took me 30 boxes to get a WCP but I got the added benefit of having Buff Scrolls that I still use in WoE and big PvM Parties, as well as getting the other headgears (in such quantities that I don't need to transfer these items between characters.)

I don't mind spending money on this game and honestly, lucky boxes don't actually effect my spending. I allocate $xxx each month, and I spend that much. Never more, rarely less. I'm not a lucky person. I've been playing RO for years, including iRO, and I've never seen an MvP Card drop (did get an apple from Eddga, of course). But I'm fine with that. Drops should depend on "luck" (read: PRNG God). But when it comes to this item, a Dress Hat, and more specifically, a +9, the fact that the only way I could possible get it being throwing arbitrary amounts of money at this company in the hopes to get a chance at then, then again doing it in the hopes of getting a +9 (Enriched) is just stacking the odds against players.

Hats should be a certainty. I would be much more willing to buy Dress Hats directly and Enriched Elu directly and try my luck at the refiner instead of having to stack the odds of getting a Dress Hat with the odds of getting a +9, driving the chance to effectively 0. I'm sure plenty of others that benefit from this item would be just as willing, as well.

Run your lucky box events by all means. But provide us guaranteed access to the items eventually.

You can start by putting WCP, Pirate Dagger, and Fish in Mouth in the Kafra Shop. Wrapped in trade-able boxes so people that aren't willing to buy WP still have access to them.

To relate to Xellie's post, cash shop items should never be superior to their in game variants. Equal, okay, superior, no. Look at the Alice Doll/Gigantic Majestic Goat for example. GMG provides 12% to Demi and +ATK based on job. It has defense and it can be refined. Now the Alice Doll: 10% to Demi and +1 STR. It also comes with a slot which in very rare circumstances could make it superior to the GMG (such as putting a Vanberk Card in it and hitting a STR bonus unobtainable with GMG.) Neither is definitively better than the other, they're both circumstantial. But the GMG is preferable because it provides more power without reliance on stats, whereas the next update could invalidate your Alice Doll build.

Palette Swaps are also popular. Not everyone in the game wants to look the same as everyone else.

hmm, not baaad...

[Sithy]

Personally i would like to see a little more in the pool of items that you can get. I mean right now you have a pool of like 6 items and 5 of them being very very bad and useless Why don't like with the other boxes add a few nice things that wont break the game all together like put OCA's or something.

[Halation]

Zodiac Helms
Heavy Lifter Box
Neualizer
Siegfried,Kafra Card, & Insurance Box (Vendable in a box,5 of each maybe)
Robo Eyes Box
E.Elu & Ori Box
A brand new headgear
Fix the merc scrolls

[Hrishi]

HE or X3 Battle manuals
HE Bubble Gums
+10 Foods (Providing that you plan to make these things available only on certain "event" days. These would also need to come in tradeable boxes)
Slotting Advertisement (One where you talk to Troy NPC to attempt to slot an item)
Level 9 Mercenary scrolls (Could also add level 10 mercenary scroll x 1 as high end prize)
Bloody Branch (The list of available MVPs need to be revised to not include those that are not currently available in-game).
Endow Hats (such as Gryphon, Imp hat)
Middle Headgear slotting coupons (Coupons are tradeable but slotted mid headgears are account bound).
Kawaii Headgears (purely for looks)

Agree with everything but this, please keep bloody branches off classic. Thank you. If you don't want MvP cards to flood the server, keep the MvPs to their natural spawns and ET.

It would be good if hats which were offered in the lucky box also had a way of acquiring them in-game. For example, a quest that rewards you at the end with a 24 hour cooldown. That way you could potentially slowly get them through questing, but you could get them faster through boxes.

Edited by Hrishi, 14 December 2012 - 03:57 PM.

[Halation]

It would be good if hats which were offered in the lucky box also had a way of acquiring them in-game. For example, a quest that rewards you at the end with a 24 hour cooldown. That way you could potentially slowly get them through questing, but you could get them faster through boxes.

Good idea ^^^. Make it long & item intensive, I don't care, just make it possible to obtain.

[mintypudding]

Putting the Dress Hat - which pretty much demands to be refined to +7 to be useful - inside the Lucky Box at such a ridiculously low rate is a major fumble. On Renewal, I did not mind having powerful hats at S-class (which is like 5%, right?) because of the existence of safe upgrades. As long as you finally got the hat, you were home safe. However, in this case, where you likely have to burn over $50 to get the hat and gamble a ~1/3 chance to successfully reach +7, the Lucky Box system needs to be carefully examined and tailored for Classic's different standards.

Honestly, I'd rather just have the hats be available in the Kafra Shop for like 300-600 KP, like you have been doing with a few hats. Perhaps the best of the best headgears could be reserved for Lucky Boxes/Sealed Boxes, but the rates need to be improved or something or nobody but the wealthiest of players will get everything they want from the boxes.

Also, I think there should be more headgears in the boxes. They don't even have to be good, but at least interesting. I kept a lot of useless-but-cute hats solely for their charm.

[Senkasa]

I would accept something as simple as Fish In Mouth since i missed out on the box hunt extravaganza. A few couple things that could be included could be like people said, purely aesthetic hats, or a combination of hats with one being more useful than the rest among some consumables like HEBMs/HE Gums, stuff like that. I'd like to name off specific hats but I cant think of any for the time being...

[cybernetic]

MEGA RESIST POTIONS !!

[Senkasa]

MEGA RESIST POTIONS !!

This too. The potions arent exactly OP but the extra resistance is VERY nice to have on classic.

[StyxNL]

It is very hard to describe items that would be balanced and still have value enough to purchase without knowing the % chance they have to come out of a Lucky Box.

The problem with the Dress Hat is that it offers something extra at +7 or +9 refine.
It is logic that players become aware that the Lucky Box is disturbing the balance.
Jaffer showed it very clearly. Getting just 1 Dress Hat for $80 dollar is scaring your average customer away, it is out of reach of their budget.

So, the Dress Hat is not reason enough for the average player to purchase the Lucky Box, the chance is too low.
Also because you end up in 60-80% of cases with scrolls.
I will not repeat the Mercenary Scrolls enough said about those.
What do you think yourself about 20 Agi/Bless scrolls, are they worth 300KP?
How will your average customer feel spending his budget and end up with maybe not even 1 Dress Hat?
Meanwhile he is getting aware that a +9 Dress hat has come available for an elite with this Lucky Box.
I apreciate you want feedback from the players, but it will not be sufficient they will divide and mention all different things.
It is your marketing strategy problem, you have to solve this yourself.

[DonkeyPunches]

^ this. I keep hearing stories of the rates. Besides the fail rate of the hat, u get 4 things that are useless...buff scrolls without assump, rudolf nose doesn't work, and merc scrollls are not only useless but are not displaying the right quantity.

[HayrohsLegacy]

Got bulks of lame merc lv 7 scrolls, i want a recycler or just make them lv 9~10 /swt

Edited by HayrohsLegacy, 14 December 2012 - 10:19 PM.

[sighhro]

Orleans Gloves. One of the few rare things I don't give a-_- if the rest of the server has, I just want them for myself too.

[Kradel]

basically items that share the same functionality as in game obtainables but with different looks for aesthetic purposes should be fine. Give people the choice of either spending hours and hours in game to look for gear or spend cash to buy it, but don't make it so the best items are only obtainable with real money.

Well, at least that is how i feel a cash shop should be: spend money for convenience and vanity, not for overpowering others with unobtainable items.