Getting players to use useless items. (Maps)

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Stephen

To me, this is a serious problem. It shouldn't be possible to max out a character in 2-3 days on any game, unless it's considered disposable.

With 2 players switching between idle-walls in the two prime areas for the correct spawntimes.. you can 0-107 a skill in 2-3 sittings. Me and Conq did it and I got 50-96 wis in approximately 8 hours, then I stopped cause +11 is max. At the same time he got from like 90-103 magic and 10 levels on whatever other stat he was doing, while I got from 20-50 magic. All 4 of these skills at the same time.

All we had to do was set the areas up for farming one time, which took maybe 30 mins to get perfect.. then re-cast our lightning walls every 30-40 minutes.

I personally just played a League game and reset the walls between them... we weren't even playing GK, that's how ridiculously easy this was.
-----

In the case of newer players, the first 50 levels in a stat can be obtained in just about an hour... I ran reapers with my controller (fastest archer/ranger on GK as many have said) for my friend Rams when I got him to login... he got bored after like 25 minutes, yet was about level 40~. And 50 is all you need to messiah reapers yourself.

You don't even need to walk to the x-mas dungeon to max all your stats in a matter of 2-3 weeks.

[Raelyn]

Originally Posted by Conqueror

I've always believed a good hard reset is what we need. Not the only thing we need, but a start. I'd also say remove all the amazing exp opportunities. The 107 mental/agility tricks. The crazy dungeons. Maybe even brutal maps. To the point where 107 of anything is only a dream.

If not a reset, then something else. A lvl cap of 40? Anything to bridge the gap between the old and the new.

I think a hard reset is a terrible idea. I think instead of trying to dumb everyone down to a lower level, we need to design GK with the intention that level 110 is the standard. Players already have an advancement state of a month or more. And just because someone COULD max level in 40 hours of nonstop grinding, doesn't everyone is going to be doing it.

Most new GK players are more casual players, and they will take a month or more to reach level 110, and much, much longer to reach 107 in all skill categories.

GK has already evolved over the past 11 years or so, 110 is the standard, and if you want SIMPLE competitive gameplay, stop trying to nerf everything. Put more huge variety of items in play, bring EAs and IWDs back down from their stupid rare status, and let the new players level up, and gear up, and stop the class division.

Instead of trying to reset everyone, just close the gap and make it less complicated for new players to become just as powerful as older players.



The reason this hasn't happened is simple, older players don't WANT new players to all have the same powerful gear as them, because then it tanks the trade value of everything the older player has worked for. That's what we need though, we need it to be possible for a new player to join, and within 1-3 months of HARD playing, to be able to stand toe-to-toe in Core etc, with the older players.

[scriptless]

Originally Posted by Conqueror

Given the right tools, with the amount of exp that vamps currently give. Someone could easily max out every skill with a buddy in 35-40 hours of non-stop grinding. It's a mess.

But, if this is changed in any form-- it's still a mess, since there's been so many players who've been able to take advantage of this. If gaining experience were to become drastically harder, we've then built a gap between old players who've become God-like, and new players who'll never have the chance to take advantage of good exp opportunities.

Not to say we haven't already built a gap to begin with. Everything from granting massive amounts of exp to giving items amazing stats have brought us to where we are today.

People who come to GK want to be able to compete. Sure, most games have an amount of time where a player must level up for a few weeks before they're able to do so, and that's fine. But in order to compete here, it's really no easy task. And not to say it's supposed to be easy-- but it shouldn't be as overwhelming as it is for something as simple as "competing".

A decade ago the only thing you needed to compete was: a pair of lucky boots, a glok belt, dual RoCs/RoTs/RoS', an ac+2 amulet, a bomy helm, a shiny shield and a flaming sword. Everyone was level 1-40, and got their exp from Lord Hunting and lvl 3 maps. If you had 4.0 speed you were probably a hax0r.

It was simple, fun, and anyone who joined could be competing against the rest after a month tops.

I've always believed a good hard reset is what we need. Not the only thing we need, but a start. I'd also say remove all the amazing exp opportunities. The 107 mental/agility tricks. The crazy dungeons. Maybe even brutal maps. To the point where 107 of anything is only a dream.

If not a reset, then something else. A lvl cap of 40? Anything to bridge the gap between the old and the new.

Very nicely explained. I agree completely. There's o lyrics 2 ways to fix the server and both involve making it harder to level. To fix the gap can be done by either a reset or doing something like allowing 110 to reset and pick from new upgraded classes.

Also what happened to the classes wasn't it planned to do something cool to them?

Alot of other MMO games let you reset yourself for some added benefits. And if you really want what you can do is make it only harder to level to 110 the second time around. So your not gaping the lower levels making it impossible to "roll over" levels.

[Supaman771]

Originally Posted by Raelyn

Most new GK players are more casual players, and they will take a month or more to reach level 110, and much, much longer to reach 107 in all skill categories.

The thing is.. you reach 110 by just maxing a single skill. And in reality, only 1 (or 2-3 depending on your goal) skill(s) even need to be maxed to compete. Once you reach 110 and your hp/stats are maxed, your experience doesn't matter as much and you will realize the pointlessness of continuing to grind. Overall this can be done in 2 days on a minimalist's budget, or maybe a week to get all the core-skills done. As I said before, 2-3 weeks to 107 them all.

-Agility is completely and utterly pointless since traps aren't used and you can't steal meaningful items. Ignore this.
-Magic can be stopped at 18-20 where you can learn every single skill. This can be done in quite literally 15 minutes. You could spend a hour and get level 50~ if you want your walls to last awhile without killing your mana costs.
-Personality is completely and utterly pointless since you can summon monsters. Ignore this.
-Mental is pointless unless you plan on writing scrolls or doing alchemy as a source of income, though you can just buy scrolls for cheap and platinum isn't needed for anything really. Should you want to, this is the easiest skill to max and can be done in a matter of a day (it took me about 7 hours after gathering/being given the materials). I'll say 2 days since you gather the materials.
-Physical is the only really required skill to compete in the game, and is the second easiest to level, cause once you hit the 50~ break-point you can do it yourself without needing a party to leech from you. All you need is a Messiah Bow of Bile, and it can be maxed in 2 sets of reaper spawn. So 2 days, or 1.5 if you offset the spawn times.
-Wisdom is iffy. You don't need it in any way, you can just pray to your god with grace gear, get your spells, and be done. But if you want to bless things (really has less value now than before.. since everyone has maxed with different gods, and they bless for basically free/1 tig) If you do want to max it, you only need to go to 88/96 depending on your god.. which either way ignores the toughest bit of leveling. By now you should have a few friends since you played for at-least 2 days maxing Phys... idle-farming can get this done in 15-20 hours depending on your god. Oh and holy-P I guess matters in PvP, do this.

Basically, it shouldn't take a month to reach 110 even if you did it the hard way and did a bit of each skill legitimately (without just partying). Hell this might actually be faster since your exp/hour wouldn't decrease as you hit the breakpoints. And 107 in all skills is completely irrelevant to the point of competing in the game where it matters. You only need to do 1.75 skills fully to be on the same level as Conq (who has 107 everything) in a PvP scenario.

[Raelyn]

Originally Posted by Supaman771

Basically, it shouldn't take a month to reach 110 even if you did it the hard way and did a bit of each skill legitimately (without just partying). Hell this might actually be faster since your exp/hour wouldn't decrease as you hit the breakpoints. And 107 in all skills is completely irrelevant to the point of competing in the game where it matters. You only need to do 1.75 skills fully to be on the same level as Conq (who has 107 everything) in a PvP scenario.

Are you all forgetting, the one change that started this whole downward spiral. When GK was originally released, on players death, they lost a percentage of XP.

Why don't we just bring back XP loss on death, and let it sort out all these problems of max level players idling and complaining because they have nothing to do?

While you're at it, make all players above level 50 permanently battle mode, and increase the rates of items dropped on player death.

[scriptless]

Originally Posted by Raelyn

Are you all forgetting, the one change that started this whole downward spiral. When GK was originally released, on players death, they lost a percentage of XP.

Why don't we just bring back XP loss on death, and let it sort out all these problems of max level players idling and complaining because they have nothing to do?

While you're at it, make all players above level 50 permanently battle mode, and increase the rates of items dropped on player death.

Because there idling in bomboria which is a safe zone. I never seen exp loss It must have been before 2003.

[Dinji_Jinto]

Originally Posted by Raelyn

Are you all forgetting, the one change that started this whole downward spiral. When GK was originally released, on players death, they lost a percentage of XP.

Why don't we just bring back XP loss on death, and let it sort out all these problems of max level players idling and complaining because they have nothing to do?

While you're at it, make all players above level 50 permanently battle mode, and increase the rates of items dropped on player death.

No thank you. I'm usually bmode nowadays for the xp bonus, but never being able to change out of it is ridiculous. For one thing, I'd be getting killed constantly. I'm not in a place to hold my own. Plus, having an xp loss on death will make this game a lot less enjoyable for weaker players, especially if they're getting preyed upon by one of these "bored idlers."

[scriptless]

Originally Posted by Dinji_Jinto

No thank you. I'm usually bmode nowadays for the xp bonus, but never being able to change out of it is ridiculous. For one thing, I'd be getting killed constantly. I'm not in a place to hold my own. Plus, having an xp loss on death will make this game a lot less enjoyable for weaker players, especially if they're getting preyed upon by one of these "bored idlers."

Agreed.. you would scare new players away.

[Raelyn]

Originally Posted by scriptless

Agreed.. you would scare new players away.

see:

Originally Posted by Raelyn

make all players above level 50 permanently battle mode

New players wouldn't be affected.

[scriptless]

Originally Posted by Raelyn

see:


New players wouldn't be affected.

Since I'm on my phone I'm not going to try and quote the comments above stating in the first week your basically 110 because of leaching. But you certainly wouldn't have gear to protect you against the oncoming slaughter that will happen. I even see people that don't have enough hours to use the freebie system that helps noob whom are already 110. Unlike the past you can't say wow level 4 your not a noob.. you have to look at online time now too. And then assume they didn't idle most of it.

[shrimps]

Lets us not do forced B mode, thanks. Level 50 isn't even anything, overall level means nothing, and frankly it's a terrible idea. Very few people even PK and you'd just make nobody ever leave trade because they'd be PKed constantly with such a small playercount.

[scriptless]

Originally Posted by shrimps

Lets us not do forced B mode, thanks. Level 50 isn't even anything, overall level means nothing, and frankly it's a terrible idea. Very few people even PK and you'd just make nobody ever leave trade because they'd be PKed constantly with such a small playercount.

My point exactly. Even level 50 phy isn't that great. I am in the 90 phy.. I have a 26 it'd sword that if I could equipt, lol, I would still struggle to not die every 5 seconds. The last bmode update was great. I think pk then run I to trade and still being bmode is a nice update.

[Conqueror]

Originally Posted by Raelyn

Are you all forgetting, the one change that started this whole downward spiral. When GK was originally released, on players death, they lost a percentage of XP.

I wouldn't say this has anything to do with GK's downward spiral at all.

As stated in my previous post, there was a simpler time where level 40 was legendary status. But bad things happened.

- The distribution of party experience in its first phase was flawed, as a member of the party could keep changing Gods and "losing" exp granting higher exp to the other members. Many people abused this and got physique levels to 70+.

- The infamous Jagen spawning brutals to his close friends.

- Using the stealing skill 10000x against a single Bomy Lord to level agility ultra fast (and then eventually leveling it even faster through magic runes)

And other game-breaking events that weren't the original intent of the servers creators. But they happened. Players complained because many of these things were fixed afterwards, and they couldn't reach the same status as some of these players who abused said tactics. So, the complaints were heard and exp was gradually made easier to obtain (at first through seasonal events, but now full-time access).

At some point in time, staff realized players were reaching end-game status far too quickly and would leave GK out of sheer boredom. Obviously the goal is to keep the players here as long as they can. So to prevent this, EA's and IWD's became incredibly hard to obtain (I don't agree with this method, but it happened) in hopes that future players might have a harder time reaching end-game status.

If all of the game-breaking events never happened in the past, I think we'd have a much healthier playercount today. As players would always have something to level-- as I doubt many players would have the tenacity to reach lvl 107 physique solely on Lords (well, maybe Marion Hunter).

Even if a reset was a "experience-only" reset, it could do so much good for the server if all of the easy 107 routes were fixed-- especially with the upcoming facebook release.

I already know however that this won't happen, so there's no need to pick apart this post. This is just me vocalizing my opinion (we all have one).

Over the past decade, many of us (myself included) have all made the same suggestions/arguments you're currently advocating (making EA's/IWD's commonplace again, mob drops, broader selection of items etc), but they always seem to get rejected. Mainly because of the amount of work versus the amount of workers I believe.

[Draenin]

Originally Posted by Conqueror

I already know however that this won't happen, so there's no need to pick apart this post.

"There's no need to talk about how wrong most of my post is. Carry on."

The things you're talking about might have been exploited at one time, but they're not the cause of why many players have left over time.

[Conqueror]

Originally Posted by Draenin

The things you're talking about might have been exploited at one time, but they're not the cause of why many players have left over time.

Not the sole reason, no. But they played a part in the chain of events that lead us here.

EDIT: (Here as in the growing gap between new to experienced players mentioned in my previous post)