Ragnarok Deleveled Project

[nakano15]

This project were made on a Revo-Classic intended server, so you may guide yourself on Pre-Renewal for almost everything the guide mentions.

Last night, I've been thinking about what were the problem of Ragnarok Online, or at least what could be hurting the sense of freedom of the game, until I figured out that It's Base Levels' fault, then I thought, what If the player didn't had the necessity of leveling Base Level to be able to begin playing the game?

And so begins the story that ended up with me writing this topic. (Skip the quote if you want to know more about the project)

Quote

 

First, I thought about the two facts, one, why most people dislike to play on the original Ragnarok server, second, why most people likes to play on high rates Ragnarok server. Came to my mind, that they don't want to spend long time grinding to be able to begin playing the game, even more since on original Ragnarok Online, you only begin seeying some interesting quests at around level 60, while on high rates server, almost all activities requires you to be at the max level. Then I thought, the base level is hurting the game freedom, and decided to try to do something.

 

Today, I begun the trek for a seemingly impossible idea, removing the necessity of grinding Base Level would be like removing an arm from the game, but since I have no knowledge of C, I had to use an alternative way of doing that, so I begun with an npc, I've made it force the player to be at level 10, aswell as have no Status Points, plus leave the status at 5 points each. Then I set the Base Exp acquisition percentage on the emulator settings to 0%.

 

The first part were done, but I still needed to do something about the monsters, initially I modified the server configurations and made all monsters have only 33% of their health, that made a good number of enemies be beatable even with the cap, but after exploring deeper in the game, like the second floor of the Payon Dungeon, the damages the enemies were dealing were starting to worry, then I had to try to do something about that.

 

I scrapped the idea of reducing the monsters health to 33% and then tried to make a program that modifies the monsters database status by a percentage, based on their base status (STR, AGI, VIT...) plus their levels, after a long time debugging it and fixing errors, I've been able to make the monsters status get values around 60~250 until around level 25, their statuses were fine, or at least the health were, I discovered when my character got instakilled on the second floor of the Payon Dungeon.

So, modified the program to make it modify status (ATK, MATK, DEF, MDEF, aswell as STR, AGI, VIt... But didn't messed with Exp or Drop Rates), and did several, and several testings, then I were able to make the program somewhat stable on the formulas, that the monsters were gradually getting stronger the more leveled they were, but they still weren't too overpowered to a level 10 player, so It's still faceable.

 

Basically, this fixes the level and status of the players to a certain value, aswell as nerfs monsters and buffs items to fit the new "rates".

I've also tested with higher level caps, like 30 (If you didn't read the story, before the cap was at 10), both status and level, that were a cool level cap, very stable, I could go everywhere that the enemies were still faceable, and level 50, the level 50 cap was good at the beggining, but at around the middle and the way to the end game, the monsters turned into bullet sponges that deals high damage to you, so were kind of boring to face them, until I thought that It might be a side effect to the fact that the players equipments aren't strong enough to the challenges, so I implemented on the program the possibility of modifying the items damage and defense based on the level cap (currently, the status boost of the weapon is the value multiplied by CappedLevel / 10), that made the enemies take less time to go down, but still, they are kind of bullet sponges, I'd say that this fits when playing in group.

Beside the Base Level doesn't level up or acquire exp, the status given by the level of the cap are under effect and the equipments, yes, the equipments will help decide how far in the world you can go, instead of just the base level (Beside the classes also helps in other ways, due to their level status and skills). The only things that now causes people to grind in the game, are Zeny and Classes, Zeny because they will have to grind monsters to acquire items to sell (ofcourse), and Classes because I didn't removed their leveling, beside made the classes level up 5~10 times faster, since doesn't make sense to make it take too long to level up, now that the Base level is "gone".

I've also had to do some changes to the item db, to make so all equipments have level requirement of 1, because If for example you cap your level to 10, or even 30, you wont be able to use certain weapons, like the bow Gakkung. The class tests I will have also to remove their requirement level, only leave the class level requirement, and I'm unsure if the program I've made to change the enemies and items status is actually "done" If I say, since there may be more status the monsters have that I may use to do the scaling.

For now, that is all I have to show about the project, I still need to do some tests, aswell as some balances, before I show how to do a Deleveled Ragnarok Online server.

Give me your input about what do you think, or ideas to improve the Ragnarok Deleveled project.

Edit:. The experiement is quite successful, but after removing the base level from the game, it exposes Ragnarok's precariety on other content to actually enjoy with, unless you get a quest to craft some gear, or do some of the few quests in the game, you either will move towards grinding job level to max it out, or do some PvP or GvG activities, like WoE.

Edit2: You may test the project on the download page of it, just be sure to follow the steps in the ini, so in case you want to revert the server state, you may be able to, aswell as to avoid doing mistakes or misisng something.

Edited August 6, 2018 by nakano15

[nakano15]

Day 2.

I started the day setting the base level capped at 30, aswell as setting all status to 30 aswell, then made a mob db and items fitting for level 30, I've made a new character, another archer, and been playing the game quite alright, but later it started to bore out because the enemies were taking way too long to die, so had to nerf the monsters levels to 15 and status 30, and they ended up somewhat soloable for an archer, played with the character until I reached Bard Level 45, until started to wear out because the leveling were way too easy, the enemies in Umbala, some of them were dealing good damage, but others were dealing way too little damage, so I changed the level of the monsters to around 20, and the game turned somewhat dangerous and bearable, at least for a solo player.

Anywhere I went, monsters were beatable, I felt like had the chance of defeating enemies, while I were grinding around the Elder Willows, Dead Branches were dropping, all monsters that spawned from it, I were able to face, and recieved an satisfactory damage from their attacks, alongside their exp, I could kill them all even though my character were still an Archer, and weren't at maximum level, even a Plasma and a Mutant Dragon spawned, and I could beat them.

Even though the monsters like Plasma and Mutant Dragon appeared, they were beaten with 3 arrow shots, which is kind of weird, I believe the scaling of the program still needs some work, even more since the exp given by them is way too generous compared to how easy they were to beat. Talking about the exp, since I didn't added a scaling to the exp given by the monsters, the game gives more exp depending on the more leveled the monster is, meaning that comparing the exp given by the Mutant Dragon, and the exp given by the Poring, obviously the Mutant Dragon will give way a lot more of exp than the Poring. That may give a good side effect since means exploring dungeons and far places is good, but on other hand, If the monster is easy to beat, nobody will stay for too long on early maps.

The fact that the player class influences on the tougher the player is, is being a trump for the Deleveled mode, because the player can go farther in the game with less problems with a second class, than with a first class, but If the player with first class decides to go farther in the game, can do so too, beside may be somewhat dangerous certain places due to the low status of the player. At least when I saw a npc telling me the recipe to make a hat in Lutie, I instantly thought "I can gather the items to make it", even though my archer weren't a bard or minstrel at the moment.

The fact that the level never changes the status, makes so potions have persisting effects non depending on how far you are in the world, in my case, until Bard Level 40, my best friend were the Novice Potion, yes, the Novice Potion were helping me with low health issues, after Level 40, I had to rely on... Meat! Yes, the Meat were doing the job of the White Potion in my case. If there were a way of changing the potions healing effect, I would attempt to make it lower the restoring power based on the level scale.

Talking about loot and exp, before beggining to play with my newest character, I've changed the job exp to give 50% more exp than usual per monster kill, It doesn't make a "breeze" to level up, but at least doesn't make the class level leveling be a substitute to the base level, the drop rate of Items I had to change too, changed to 25% more loot all, and the loot were being way too generous, at least I could do the testing of items and equipments without much problems.

What kind of hindered the testing somewhat, were the fact that my Izlude map is currently with npcs, portals and spawn points out of place, so I had to @go in and out of Izlude, the other thing that kind of hindered were the fact that I forgot to restore Morocc outskirt maps, since the old Morocc maps has strong enemies that I could use for testing, and Satan Morocc made the pleasure of destroying it all.

I kind of think also that the program I've made to change the monsters status based on level will need a few tweaks, since setting it with the rules from the server makes the monster be a sponge of hits, or maybe, I could add a function to setup the difficulty of the monsters, so the game nerfs/buffs enemies depending on the server owner.

For today, that's all the feedback I've got about the progress on the project.

[nakano15]

Day 3

Well, been playing with my archer again, this time I got it to evolve to Transclass, and turned into a Clown class, but on the way, I noticed that the grinding shifted from the Base Level to the Class Level, finding the highest exp giving map to get class exp turned into a thing in the game, so yes, the grinding didn't ended.

On other hand, the changes I made to the program that caps the monster level did good effect on the server, I've made so monsters have status based on 30 summed base status, alongside around level 30 of status, then made the difficulty be scaled to 60% of difficulty (which depletes the level), the game were actually somewhat enjoyable, some tough monsters like the mentioned above Mutant Dragon got tougher to beat, also, It's skills turned him into a dangerous enemy to face, since as an Archer, If my character is hit by the Magnum Break skill, It dealt enough damage to insta kill my char, so yeah, an Archer role is still about not being touched.

Anyway, when I reached the Transclass, the leveling got somewhat easier, since the enemies were dealing significantly less damage to my character, and so I could breeze until I changed the class of my character to Minstrel, I even got the final levels of Archer Transclass inside the first floor of Thanatos Tower.

One thing I forgot to mention before on the logs, is that the mvps status are still quite absurd, some of them can still be beaten after spending a number of minutes with a horde of clones attacking it all at once, but mvps like Baphomet just refuse to let their health go bellow 90% of the bar,  I wonder If I'll have to do a few changes on how the status of the mvp is calculated.

The fact that the game shifted towards class level grinding (would be zeny grind aswell If I didn't rised the drop rates) is now the worrying fact, beside due to the fact that the game has very limited number of content to distract myself with, grinding is almost likelly the only alternative, I still didn't tested instances, beside I believe that Pre-Renewal servers doesn't really have playable instances, and Endless Tower, the only problem would be the Mvps on certain floors. Anyway, I believe the only issue I have at the moment, Is try to think on how to make the game more sandbox, since the player can go anywhere right now, just need content to give a reason to go there.

[nakano15]

Day 4

I kind of delayed on this one, I did the tests some days ago, but you know, busy life... Anyway,  this time, I tried to level up a Merchant, things didn't went really well due to the fact I had to skip some maps due to my emulator being broken at some portal placements, but still, I were able to level up fine the Merchant, but didn't reached job level 50 yet, I've even added a npc that offers a simple quest to get the Halter Lead/Boarding Lead, which allowed me to travel faster through the game world, and as I said before, the grinding of the game shifted towards the Class Exp, this wouldn't be so evident if there were side activities in-game to do while progressing in the game, anyway, the equipments still are proving really useful, they extend how far I can go in the game world, but the real challenge will be when I test the game with base level cap of 99.

I've also tried to make use of the bonus script on my login capper npc, the problem is that as stated on the script commands document, It doesn't last for too long, so item restoration percentage, aswell as mana cost didn't were capped to the level for too long.

Anyway, I noticed that this project haven't caught the interest of people, so I'm going to stop updating it, later I may release the tool I used for scaling the monsters level based on a certain level cap, but first, I need to make it do a backup once of the mob and item db when opening on the first time, and when telling it to do the scale, replace the mob_db.txt and item_db.txt with the scaled changes.

Well, until next time.

Edited May 23, 2018 by nakano15
I forgot a little fact

[lllaaazzz]

have fun with it man, mine would probably look like : 

 

day 1 :

thought about giving up today

day 2: 

why am i still doing this

day 3: 

made some progress but already sank 30 hours into this

day 4:

thought about giving up again

 

im on like day 30 and i still think about giving up LMAO

[Emistry]

In my point of view, this topic look just like a normal diary or your daily log rather than a project.  Not interesting at all as it doesn't look like a project to everyone.

 

 

Edited May 26, 2018 by Emistry

[nakano15]

I was going to release the project stuff in the future when I get some concrete results, beside I'm still going, but there are still some tweaks I need to do on the program that calculates the monsters and items levels based on a certain level.

I had pretty much a lot of freedom while playing with the monsters status capped to around my character level, I could go everywhere in the world without much problems, playing it was like listening in loop the music "Wanna be Free!" over and over, but the problems are:

1. Not only the grinding role went to the class level (not only because I still had to grind it).
2. Ragnarok Itself doesn't have much of other content to do other than grind, so grind is the only option.
3. When setting the level cap to a low level, like 10, the player would most likelly have problems with mana, due to the fact that first and second class skills demand some sp to be used, and when the level cap is set to a very high number, like 99, the game turned evident the fact that the status are unstable, possibly a problem with the scaling system.
4. The mana status could be avoided if there were a way of setting the server mana cost rules of skill to reduce the cost by a percentage, aswell as do the same about the potions healing value, so at low levels Novice Potions aren't as useful as White Potions.

In this case, this project success could be of benefit for servers where the host doesn't want it to turn around leveling, let's say, some Mid/High Rates server, or just an unbound adventure server, where the player can spawn and go anywhere to explore.

Ps:. Thanks to writing this answer, I found out a possible issue causer on the monster status calculator, Yupi!

Edited June 5, 2018 by nakano15