Zodiac - A Foreshadow of Maloria
 

I'm posting here because my words on the Zodiac forum hold no weight there and it's high time the Graalian community knows a few things. As it stands right now Zodiac is in disrepair, there are multiple bug issues. Class imbalancing and a very hard lack of actual Player Relations/GP's. Development time's are anywhere from 4-6 months for simple updates and dungeon development is at an all time low along with Level's which only seem to be done by 2 people. 1 of which doesn't really LAT. The Manager (Fowlplay4) has lost interest entirely in Zodiac, which in itself is a fine RPG server. However there is very little order and players run rampant. Zodiac had a very golden moment 3-4 months ago when someone posted on Reddit about how our server was dying.

Well it's still dying and Management (FP4) doesn't seem to really care about what happens. Our current head of Graal Police is MIA (Raven613) and our current GP's are only on tag once in a blue moon, so cases of harassment and other issues go unsolved and ignored. These problems are not only destroying the server, but they're driving players from it. It would be in Global's best interest (in my opinion) if they stepped in and looked at the server. Our last update was the Summer Dungeon which came out about a week or so ago. That's driven the player count up quite a bit. But no where near what we used to have. 100+ players daily.

If there is a possible way to save Zodiac or to some how restructure it so it doesn't collapse on itself, then please let me know. Because in the direction of which it is going, it's going to end up a lost cause much like my old server Maloria.

The current real issues are the following.

Inactive Staff, players who are inactive for about 5-7 months. Yet still have rights. When they do return there is no removal of rights.
Abusive Staff, no server is free from this. We've had staff that have been corrupt. Our last LAT/GFX staff members almost destroyed the server by abusing an NPC Script.
Player Harassment, It's become common place here on Zodiac. Our remedy? Place them on Chat Ignore. Which is our block function. We also have a Ignore/Blacklist, but that does only so much. Players can get on alternate accounts and just continue to harass others. There is no GP intervention unless it's putting the server itself at risk. Players who do these kind of things should be barred from the server to lessen the toxicity of the server and increase the overall enjoyment of the current playerbase and new players who join the game in hopes of finding a server they can settle down on.
Development Issues - Our server has lost most of it's development team. Currently from my knowledge only 3 people are developing things. But only 1 of them is non-staff and works on events. Head of Development: Ketsomaru and the assistance Developer, Symmasolan. These are the only 2 people who have been working on the server. We have lost about 3 devs. 1 Quit. 1 Fired. 1. Resigned, then fired after abusing rights.
Player to Staff Interaction - There is very little player to staff interaction. Not that this is mandatory, but it helps if the staff members can be more involved with the player community and vice versa. We have plenty of talented individuals who would be willing to work on the server, but staff tend to turn a blind eye.


Thanks for your time. - Xenoith :p

Maybe I'd be more active if they stopped being *******s and reverted their blanket nerf that completely ****ed monks over. No point in playing when the only class you play gets targeted and the rest of the classes are uninteresting/dumb.

Either way it's nowhere near the point where PWA have to get involved.

i think everyone should have the same skills

Kinda is when staff are literally letting the server rot. Raven is missing so 0 discipline is being handed out to people who are openly destroying the game via e-bullying. Sure you can go "Get a thicker skin." But some people shouldn't have to be subject to these kinds of people. It's why the player count takes nosedives.

Plus there isn't enough active content to keep players interested. The devs don't think of the players, they really don't. They push updates on us with little concern for our input and then they wonder why we lash out. They then turn around and go "Well if the players weren't so mean to me I'd actually want to get things done!" Well ya know if you actually listened to the community for once, maybe we could get the game to grow and prosper, not rot and die.

The changes to Monk. A prime example. People suggested for months that Monk got a nerf, but that was not the right way to go about it. It not only killed the class into obscurity, but made it useless. Right now Dark Knight is the easiest faceroll class in the game. It's been nutured/babied and overall spoiled by the devs. The classes are heavily inbalanced. If a global were to step in and just come check the server out for let's say a week, then they'd get a rough idea of where the server is at. I'm more or less looking forward to when N-Pulse comes back.

monthly salary and ill transform zodiac into something cool!

Zodiac is self-sufficient for the most part, as are most MMORPG systems. The only problem is when garbage is added and not reverted (remember how many people quit after Ryu's FL?)

Yup. It destroyed the server. Right now what's destroying the server are a lot of the old players. They're trying to dictate how people should enjoy the game. If someone doesn't like you, they "OSL" you. Endlessly PKing you until you decide to quit or log off. Which is a passive aggressive way of bullying someone into doing what you want them to do. "Either sell me this item or I'll OSL you Noob." This kind of behavior is why Zodiac is currently in shambles. No new person wants to log in, see that and continue to be there under the pretense that players are just generally toxic and selfish, doing things for their own benefit. We even have players who have USD or in this case RMT (Real Money Trading) and nothing has been done about it over the past 3-5 months. The ends never justify the means in Zodiac. I am simply asking for a Global to login for just a week, see how the playerbase is and then give a good judgement from there. In my opinion, either the server is reset or deleted. No need for a server if it's not going to be developed. PC Graal as we know it is in ruins and one more server for the chopping block won't phase it at all.

So it's high time either Zodiac is shut down and it's mobile iVersion comes out or globals actually step in, reset the server and cut off all the cancerous lumps of toxic players. There has also been wait too much bias in staff hirings, as we have a few staff who do literally NOTHING. They don't even talk to players and or help them, yet they have full staff rights. These players need to be removed from staff, Zodiac honestly also needs new management. Jerett or Fowlplay4 only shows up like once every 2-3 months. He doesn't answer player questions and only caters to a few individuals who know his personally.

Let's take a look at old servers that died off.
1. Zone
2. N-Pulse
3. Delteria (Came back.)
4. Atlantis
5. Old West
6. Maloria (Where I am from)

A lot of these servers should've been given over to new management. Maloria made me sad, since it was such a good server and I loved it. There was so much RPG elements in that server I didn't think it'd ever go down. If Maloria were to come back one day I'd drop Zodiac in a heartbeat. I miss my Spirit Mace. But sadly, the server was left in the hands of I believe Joshua Xanadu and Smirt. The server ended up going into ruin, when so many players loved it.

@Elk - If you can't contribute to the topic, delete your post and leave the thread. You're one of the main reasons why Zodiac is like a dying cancer patient right now. Nobody should have to pay you, if you don't want to work on Zodiac, relinquish your staff rights and quit and go work on the mobile device servers.

I can also give a full on list of account names who should be banned but are not. All for the reasons below.

Severe Player Harassment
Sexual Harassment
Verbal/Racial Slurs.

Did I forget to mention the N word is a common insult on the server now.

i do very much enjoy working on levels, graphics and overall everything on graal, i enjoyed it the past 13 years, but at some point in life you cant just work for free anymore when you know someone is majorly profitting off you without you getting anything in return aside from grattitude, you cant live off it

i very much agree that its the current players that prevent the server from growth, i would have made updates that would have had them gone, but gaining a fresh playerbase

and no, zodiac is not a dying cancer patient because of me


i cant think of anyone being cappable of taking over management of the server with the effect of flourishing


there is no need for me to relinquish my rights as it bears no harm

My question to you is this, what exactly have you been doing the last 2-3 months. I see you sitting in the corner of OSL idling all the time. You seriously can't tell me you've been working on the server. I also have a fresh list of players who need or should be removed from the server entirely, without the need of a full reset.

A lot of the players Elk have gone rogue from gaining gear and every day it's someone **** talking someone else and it just has to stop or Zodiac isn't going to get any better. I've been asking for quite awhile now to actually be hired as a GP and I even did an application. But Raven refused to hire me due to personal bias and I quote. "That account has been passed around more than a New York hooker." Symmasolan, after talking to Raven613 about hiring me as a GP. Those were the words he told me that Raven said to him. So because I move around a lot and my PC/IP Changes, doesn't mean I'm not the account holder. I've used this account for the past 10 years I've been on Graal as a whole.

People need to stop being so secluded from the community (staff) and need to start giving chances. The closest thing I had to staff position was ET and even then people enjoyed it when I hosted simply because I actually listened to the players. Which is what they need, they need someone to make their voices heard. Now mind you, a lot of those voices are negative, but they can be sifted through. There are a lot of good players who enjoy the server but there are others who purposely go out of their way to make people's lives miserable while they play.

There are people on Zodiac who go "Stop being such a baby over a game." Yet they're the first ones to flip out after you kill them. The logic is completely backwards. These are also the same players who will get their friends to harass you and just make your experience on Zodiac very miserable, since that is their goal. How would you like it if every day you left work, three or four thugs just beat you up. Just because they could do it? That's how it is on Zodiac. The fact that the entire Gmap is a PK Area is ridiculous, there are players who don't enjoy PKing and enjoy being outside with their friends. But that's here nor there. The point I am trying to make Elk is that the majority of the higher end players with the good gear. Are the most toxic, they berate, belittle, bully and verbally abuse players weaker than they are and it simply has to stop if anything the GP's don't do their job and when you sit there and say it to them, they can't handle it or make it a personal issue.

I understand the work is counted as "free" but if Zodiac gives scripters/editors a chance to improve their work in a gaming environment, then they should be happy. It's better than going into a field of that same work, scripting and your boss goes, "What the **** is this?" At least Graal gives you enough leeway to script and if it helps a community game. Even better.

tl;dr - Too bad. Read it. Not writing one. ^^

http://i.gyazo.com/b88cab2424e03e9acdabbaf834c3b807.png

im not even online most of the time, only at critical times

That still doesn't answer my question. What exactly have you and Ketsomaru been doing as of late? I don't even know what you do. Most of the time it's Ketsomaru who is putting in the work to do class balancing. You're kind of back there, twiddling your thumbs. x_x You're a developer, but what exactly do you work on in your spare time?

You're not even aware why it is and was a mess before as far as class balancing goes

If many people play around with class balancing, it obviously gets messy

Classes never were my responsability, I created content, and please dont make me list the things I made the past 10 years on Zodiac, its too much

Of course you dont know what to do, thats why you make a thread out of desperation trying to get things rolling, but thats not easy for adults

In my spare time, I do things that are fun. Making high quality AAA game assets for free isnt fun. In the past 1-3 years I just happened to have time occasionally to do things on graal, only ever when I felt like doing so, its not my duty.

Thats why I said I would need to be paid to do such things


Of course I would know how to get things on a way better course than it's going right now, but as I said before, when lots of ideas collide, it takes so much more time for evaluation

Alright Zodiac has had people saying it was going to "die" for a few years now yet it peaks #1 on playercount every evening. Even though it probably won't reach 100+ players like it used to it's still pretty popular as far as Graal servers go. I'm not active enough to give a current opinion but whenever I'm on a different server I do press f8 and see Zodiac #1. Anyway on regards to staff... FP4, Raven613 and other staff do a lot of stuff behind the scenes but people are too ignorant to see. It's just ridiculous because people talk smack about them even though they do a lot of work for the server they just don't publically tell anyone what they've done.

However I would like to see Zodiac start publically hiring Developers because we are in a lack of them compared to other servers. I think this would help us improve the game and also having rules of the server enforced. I mean the stuff me and other people get away with saying is ridiculous and deterrents new players from playing due to all the toxicitiy and GPs not doing anything about it. I would also like to see more noobie quests for players to help them get a legit full idea of the server and where everything is. Maybe add a notebook to their inventory which has notes of basic information in case they forget e.g. which island is which, how to see what dungeon you should go to on what level (Open map+Hold D) etc.

gg

Sticking Together.
 

This. Now I'm not saying I'm a perfect person. I'm not , nor will I ever be. It's just human nature. If you get angry you're going to lash out. Regardless if it's online or offline. For people to sit here and say, "Don't take it seriously." Then don't make it a serious matter. People go overboard with their insults and make them "personal" i.e - Talking about someone's real life. That's a line you're not supposed to really cross.

As for the staff not keeping in contact with the players. They "should" keep in contact with us, but they're not obligated, I mean they're doing work for 0 pay and nobody wants to do that. But at the same time, if staff go "Oh hey, we just finished this. Here take a look." Then players would on the other hand go "Sweet! You guys made this! Keep us posted on what else you make!" It gives staff the proper recognition they deserve and it does feel nice when someone tells you you're doing a good job or yuou did something cool that the players appreciate. The community has lost that Dev to Player connection. So while were kept in the dark, sure staff are working. But we don't see that, then when a buff or nerf drops on us out of no where, are we supposed to really be happy about it? Since we had 0 input on the matter. Were the one's who end up having to play the game, the least staff could do is listen to our input and consider the options given.

Hell, let me give you a prime example. Now mind you these guys aren't games. But they started from the ground up and are now pretty damn famous over Youtube/Twitter and everything else. Epic Rap Battles. These guys did their first Rap Battle 2-3 years ago. John Lennon vs Bill O'Riley. It was their first shot at something they've probably never done before. Turns out it went over very damn well and you know what they tell you at the end? "Who won. Who's next. You decide." It's a developer to community connection they make. Which is why people support them and their ideals. Some people have even donated money to them for doing such a good job. Now I'm not saying we should just open up our wallets/purses and just shower Graal/Zodiac with money, no. But if staff do something positive and come open into the community and go "Hey! We put this together for you guys. Tell us how it is and we'll go from there." Then I think Zodiac would get a better overall health as a game/server and community.

Hell. Even Triple A MMO companies do that. Prime example, Final Fantasy XIV. Every month or so, we get "Letters from the Producer." Where Naoki Yoshida goes onto the Squareenix forums to answer player questions, give them feedback and show them what's coming up next, what changes are being made. What things are being put into the game. Without that bond from Dev to Player, the game wouldn't be where it is now. Go look at FFXIV 1.0 and that's a prime example of a developer not giving a ****, which is why the game almost bombed and hit rock bottom. Yoshi-P picked up the game, trusted his community with their feedback and it is now the most talked about or recommended MMO to date.

This is what Zodiac needs to start doing. Ketsomaru/Symmasolan/Raven613/Darkus. They all need to be more interactive with us players. I mean Ketsomaru talks time to time, which is a very good star. However Raven doesn't talk at all and I've never even seen Darkus talk unless he's trolling around with his shop. (Which is a Rickroll...) But overall, the only interactive staff I have legit seen has been Symmasolan and Natey. Mostly Natey since he is well liked, even though he does LAT work, he is liked all the same due to his funny nature and overall jolly good sense. If the other staff took up Natey's overall good nature, then trust and believe Zodiac would be in a better place than it is now.

Hell. Look at Indie games, these are small time developers who make their own games and ask for feedback from the community to make it better. A good player of these Indie games is Markiplier. He's a very good example, he tells Indie game developers to keep trying and work harder. Hell I think if we even tried hard enough we could push Graal itself into the Steam Market as a Free MMORPG. The Steam Community would eat it up. It's a Zelda-like classic MMO and the community would give ratings right off the bat. It's just these small things that can lead to much bigger things and give Graal itself more longevity. Indie developers usually are looking for work, I think it'd be a good idea to start finding Indie Game developers to come script or try to script for the Zodiac server. I have no problem going to forums and asking around for developers/scripters or whatever is needed. I love Zodiac itself, the game is fun. The cute pixels and the ability to make heads/bodies/weapons and upload them. That's freaking fantastic, I've never been in an MMO where we could do things like this. Which is why I usually keep coming back. It's one of a kind and Graal itself is a jewel in the rough.

Josh and Nate, to be fair. I also hijacked it from them and have been running it on and off since late '07. I got it back to the Classic list in '11 in case you missed it, but during my very unfortunately timed 1 month exam break right after we re-released, it fell apart because none of the staff were capable of keeping it floating and globals took it back down to under construction.

Since then I haven't invested as much time until lately, but Maloria is still being actively developed. Unfortunately, we're just a 2 man team at the moment though, but you're more than welcome to logon and take a peek whenever you'd like!

Sorry for thread hijack ^^

Wait! It's back in development?! :D That's so exciting to hear! If you need help finding more staff, please let me know!

Regardless of what is done to address this, don't do some foolish nonsense like completely scrapping things to start over. That almost never works.

Servers are not allowed to reset so thats not even the subject here and was completely off topic. I'll be spending some time on zodiac to see whats going on.

Didn't know server resets were up to people who don't even play the game, cool

Well when do come to visit, feel free to take your time exploring the server for a day or two and try to get some levels in to see what the new system feels like. I'm not sure when you'll be coming so just show up whenever I suppose. ^^ Looking forward to your evaluation.

I was apart of Zodiacs Manager for sometime, I'm sure I know how it works. Zodiac is the only server I actually played (when I did), since 2002. It is overall a great server. Hopefully Jerret is just busy with life, but these type of jobs are volunteer after all. So you really can't expect them to dedicate there time 24/7 to the server. But some seldom updates would be very nice.

Oh I know. But when updates come within a 3-6 month period there is something wrong or the devs just don't care. Jerett had spoken about not really wanting to even bother working on Zodiac any more. Which is why I am here now. If it could be put under new management I think it'd go in the right direction.

Our GPA (Raven613) has also gone MIA, so were in need of a new one for rule enforcement as well. Our current GP team is near non-existent. I do have a few candidates in mind who would go well with GPA. Since a GP's job is to get rid of the negativity/rule breakers in the server. It's not meant to sort out personal vendetta's. Which is what is currently happening when the GP Team is being hand picked. These players are using or are being used by other players for their powers and sorting out personal issues with other people. Whether it be jailing them over and over or just banning them for no reason.

But in hindsight, Zodiac needs a fresh head of staff members who will not only work, but be more close to the playerbase. Which is something the players do want, the last staff member we had who was close to the Zodiac community and actually PK'd with us, was Smirt. Since his departure we've since lost that connection.

I also propose if I may, other globals or even players from other servers come in and take a peek at Zodiac.

Let me make this very clear, Zodiac doesn't need new management and thats the lease of our concerns is trying to replace zodiacs management. Best thing we can do is give them a bit guidance. The first solution should never be "lets just replace zodiacs manager". That should be the last solution if a solution at all.

That would very much help. So much that I think you should just reside on Zodiac. :P Also it helps if you turn on /Shout to check the chats and stuff.

Constant changes in management can be very destructive to servers, but so can inactivity. It's always important to keep people motivated. :D

Zodiac as a server is doing fine anyway, lol.

Monk.

And yes, inactivity will eventually kill any server. If nobody wants to be there, then things get out of hand and nothing will get done. Carlito has his RC there so I think him having an ear to the ground will help Zodiac.

Are managers no longer permitted to request server resets from the PWA?

One inherent problem with server resets is that things will invariably return to the way they were a few months later unless actual changes are made to the game itself. The only thing that server-wide account resets tend to do is clear rare items and other earnings off of players and make them start over.

That is not going to keep players around. It's going to infuriate them and make them quit, because some of them have invested a lot of time in it.


Honestly, Zodiac needs to keep expanding its content. There's plenty of room on the overworld map, and the level cap has never been raised beyond 60, probably due to the presence of endgame dungeons.

There's also a very limited amount of quests, and few other things besides PvP activities and Events to keep players busy when they've maxed out their levels and specialized their statistics.

However, I would suggest doing small releases over time and not massive 'V#' updates, because that takes way too long, and there's a higher risk of failure involved.

If I were manager and the content already being prepared to ensure longetivity in respect to all game studies related subjects for an mmorpg, I wouldnt even ask a PWA if I am allowed to wipe, as long as it doesn't oppose any harm to the entity

of course it would need to be agreed with by the entire staffs, or only some

If it meant flourishment, I would gladly sacrifice steppingstones for the potential (as many riskfactors eliminated as possible) growth of the game.

It's next to impossible to have everyone agree to changes, especially when it comes to wipes

I know, but the playercount is still there.

Then some sacrifices are going to need to be made. You can't appease to everyone. People will quit, let them. But there are plenty of outsorcing areas, like reddit, tumblr places like those where social media flourishes. Zodiac and PC Graal in general needs a tailwind. If anything why not try to put together a server wide screenshot. Better yet, make it a contest, for people who have the best screenshot and submit it to be used.

Also the only thing that's an issue with Zodiac, the PvP aspect. In terms of class balancing a lot of the classes are indeed unfair. Some of the classes mechanics need to be reworked. We completely scrapped/locked Freelance. Which in my opinion was a very fun class, it gave a lot of useless gear meaning. I think Freelance should make a come back, but under a blanket nerf until the skills can be properly tweaked. It was rather unfair to Ryu to have the man work on the class, only to have the rug ripped from under him like that.

The other thing I notice doesn't happen is enforcement of the rules. People get way out of hand with the insults, it doesn't need to go "that" far. When you're being borderline racist or just plain racist. The GP Team we currently have mind you stands idle as these things happen. We need some form of foundation for the rules. Era, GK and other servers have rules. Why is Zodiac an exception to this?

The reason I am asking this is because players who even sign up to be ET get harassed by players over and over. GP' don't intervene to put a stop to it unless you literally tell them to do so. It shouldn't have to come to someone freaking out for a GP to go "Oh hey I should do something." When the Shout channel is being blown up with insults left and right.

It's why I don't bother posting on the Zodiac forums. Hell, one of the staff members changed my title to this. Isn't this amusing? I don't know which staff did it, but I do have a pretty good idea. This is why we need trusted staff members. So they're not pulling stuff like this. It's not funny and honestly it's sad. I get called Toxic, but yet the players running around dropping the N word constantly. Zodiac staff honestly cater mostly to their friends and close friends and it's about time it stopped or it's never going to actually go anywhere.

http://i58.tinypic.com/6oickm.png

You should learn the value of updates, patches, and hotfixes.
Doesn't require account resets to fix, though. Zodiac already has a pretty solid system for storing and resetting player stats but if you reset their accounts instead, they will lose literally every class they've worked on.
Oh please.

Then you suggest something, since it seems what I say doesn't exactly "appease" your ideal interest. So please come up with something.

Sure thing.


Class Improvements

First of all, if the classes and pvp stuff is so terrible, skills and stat assignments need to be adjusted for those classes. If a skill lasts too long, or is too potent, you nerf it. If it's not powerful enough, you boost it by adjusting the values it has been assigned.

This might require character stats to be reset, but it doesn't mean user accounts need to be reset. Zodiac actually has a built-in 'Character Reset' function for taking stats off of players and allowing them to re-assign them. That means that players will not lose their levels or items, and can continue playing as normal with the new changes in place.

Dungeon Improvements

As I've mentioned before in previous posts, one problem that Zodiac and many other servers have is that there's not a lot to do near the end of the game. The level cap was set at 60 when Zodiac released, and has never risen.

There are a few endgame 'raid' style dungeons that are meant for high level players, but the rewards are simply just gear. Most people will take the easy way out by just buying the set pieces they need instead. And once they're all decked out, they have no reason to revisit old locations.

One solution to this is to periodically release new dungeons and gradually raise the level cap, while providing extra incentives for revisiting old locations can help as well. For instance, Graal Kingdoms introduced its randomized 'chest' system in dungeons to make running them more worthwhile. And it has definitely paid off.

Also, if players are now 'OP' enough to farm enemies in the game's most difficult dungeons, that needs to end as well. Difficult dungeons are more engaging than easy ones, and Zodiac developers should not be afraid to fill them with monsters that can swat down even the strongest tanks in a few hits if they aren't being assisted by a healer or two. Doing so will also make it easier for developers to raise the drop rates on some items, because tougher fights mean a lower chance of success anyway.

Quests and Achievements

I am a huge fan of achievement systems, and firmly believe all servers should adopt them if they can. Achievements give players extra things to do at the end of the game, and provide the opportunity to do 'side quests' and earn bragging rights. They can be tailored toward any type of task, and give players concrete goals to strive toward.

Achievements can also be put in place for groups of people as well, like Guilds and Nations. This gives multiple people a common cause to fight for, and strengthens their ability to cooperate.

And while quests are important, the fact that most of them can only be completed once can be detrimental. Zodiac should definitely look into things like providing more randomized dailies, and reward players for completing them. This can be done either through direct rewards, or players could earn points with an NPC faction in order to purchase special items from their vendors.



These are just a few things which could be done to improve the server without needing to do anything foolishly drastic like forcibly wiping all accounts.

There are plenty of alternatives to these issues, and server-wide account resets do not solve the problems that faulty game mechanics create.

The best thing to do is to look for the source of these problems, and start there first.

1. PvP adjustments have been going on for MONTHS if not years. Dark Knight's overall DoT damage and skill kit can still bring down even moderately geared players. Ninja right now is the new meta due to the Corrosion % which reduces armor by 15% on top of it being able to stack a Poison that ticks for 800. Crono can speak on my behalf when we got the new critical update it literally destroyed Monk. There are 0 Monks on the server except for Crono and yo_momma85. This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is wrong with most of the classes in the game.

We've also opened up multiple threads debating classes and damage on skills in the past. We literally have 1 man balancing over 24 classes in the game. I think he needs help or at least an assistant to help him but he refuses to outsource and seek help. So class balancing has become a major issue. If you want to lend us some scripters for balancing by all means do so.

2. We've only gotten maybe a handful of new dungeons in the last...year. One of them which is going to be closing today actually. Summer Dungeon. Not to mention that the newest dungeon we had awhile back (Terrum) now has broken mechanics which make the dungeon literally unplayable.

We've gotten a new "dungeon" which was a poor man's project that Ryu (Jiroxys7) started but didn't really get a chance to finish/spruce up. So there's that.

3. Quest now have ridiculous requirements. Example, getting 2,000 Fish for a weapon which does horrid damage. Or better yet, quest items such as Ash/Cedar Logs which range up in the 300-400 range just so you can get to the next quest. Or like 100 Cores when the drop rate on cores is 0.1%. Here let me give you our Scavenge Formula compared with our current drop rate. Courtesy of Nikwal.

Scavenge works like this:
Drop rate * 1.xx = actual drop rate

1.xx if 100> Scavenge > 9, 1.0x if 10 > Scavenge > 0 and 2.xx if Scavenge > 100 (and then applying the first two rules again).

Example: Drop rate is at 0.5%, your party gathered a Scavenge rating of 78 (even the ones not in the room count): 0.5%*1.78= 0.89%

As for the drops, it used to roll from drop to drop, like "SotT 0.01%, rolled 84%, onto the next in the list" and so on until it hit the right number (usually on armor). Thus, a lot of drops were hardly obtainable or others were more frequent. By now I think it rolls a number and if there are more than 1 drop in that percentage range, it chooses a random one.

We also have something new called Dungeon Tickets, which are dropped from bosses when you defeat them. You get 1 per. No more no less and this is our Ticket Shop. Here is the numbers for some of the best weapons in the game.

http://i62.tinypic.com/5v7zvp.png

Please note the jump from 750 to 3000. A 2,250 marginal ticket increase. When Cane of Isis is the best Mage weapon in the game.

So this is where our development is at right now. 1 Ticket per boss and you 7,000 Tickets for 1 Weapon. Which will take you well over a few months if not a year of farming to actually acquire ONE of those weapons.

Let's do the math on this one. 7000 - 750 = 6250 marginal increase. Now mind you our drop rate on these "Legendary" weapons are so low that doing the tickets seem plausible and more sane than anything else. We're also in dire need of an actual Marketboard system so players can put up items over night and sell them without being logged in, currently you need to be logged in to sell those items and items in player shops can only be sold up to a cap of 3 million. Where if you put in a Marketboard, you can sell it for how much you want.

Then that would get you fired, and we would roll the server back anyways thus making your attempt pointless.

See, this is the kind of discussion that needs to be going on instead.

Server-wide account resets and 'new versions' of servers don't always solve these problems if they are inherently built into the game.



One thing that can definitely help with balancing statistics alone is the use of 'spreads.' What this means is that you take a 'total' amount of points that you want to be available on items, and then create variance between them by distributing stats in a different way.

Let's say we want a piece of armor to have a maximum of 10 stat points on it, but we don't want it to be superior to all other armor pieces in the game. Rather than just doing a lot of guess work, the 'spread' of points can be used to determine the relative power of each item for easy comparison.

Consider the following:

Iron Helmet

Strength +2
HP +5
Armor +3

Bandit Mask

Agility +4
HP +3
Armor +3

Wizard Hat

Magic +7
HP +2
Armor +1

These non-existent items are slightly unbalanced, but their composite stat totals always equal 10. So although they are very different from each other, they still have the same amount of points distributed between them.

Absolutely perfect balance can make for a very dull game, and there needs to be a little bit of wiggle room for imbalance. But when classes, items, skills, and so on are too far out of balance, it creates gameplay issues later on down the road.



It's very good practice to look many different aspects of the game and ask questions like:

"Are the numbers getting too out of control? Does the math work out?"
"Is there something about this particular skill that makes it less useful? Is it redundant?"
"How long could a player survive this amount of damage?"
"How long would it take for a player to earn this? Is that amount of time reasonable?"
"Do these rewards merit the amount of time put into earning them?"
"Is there too much currency in the hands of players? Is that affecting item prices?"
"How can we make sure money is regularly destroyed to avoid impossibly high item prices and inflation?"

And so on.


Once a server has been launched it needs to be maintained and revised, not continuously knocked down and rebuilt. It's counter-productive.

Reseting the server may make people want to quit but they will eventually return, this is likely the only way to encourage newcomers to play on this server otherwise the new players will leave after getting smashed by 8 lv.60 players that are equiped with a set that takes atleast a year or longer to obtain.

Increasing level cap would make some builds extremely overpowered, this is why the level cap should no increase.. they must do alot of work to adjust the levels again.

It's true that some build are favored, warrior only needs lv.42 levels and it gives them 18 whole points to build into 12 monk 6 gladiator for a damage boost or 6 thief 12 scout for stealth and sprint.

a scout or a monk however is forced to build lv.52 so they only have 8 remaining levels to build into whatever they can.



The dungeon ticket shop's pricing should be adjusted, with this change it will still take some time to obtain the weapons, it should not have such a large gap with Cane of Isis.