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Pre-re + Renewal = Best of Both. Is it Possible?


OscarScorp

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Hello everyone, I'm here to ask you all about your experiences between pre-renewal and renewal servers, to come up with an attempt of a solution to create the best of both worlds.

Introduction
I've tried to search for what people liked about pre-renewal servers, what people disliked, what are people enjoying in renewal and what many people dislike but still play it nevertheless. I'm currently working on a server but I'm in the phase of heavy experimenting and would like to come up with a mixture of the best experiences from pre-re and from renewal. Even though it may seem impossible, I want to try.

First, I'll talk about what I've seen in forums, comments from friends and my own experiences, then, I kindly ask you to comment your own opinion. What did you liked most of pre-renewal (if you played it) and what do you enjoy most of renewal? and at the same time, please explain thoroughly, what do you dislike about each.

 

Pre-renewal Pros
- Heavy party-looking: People were looking for parties since it looked like the most optimal and viable way to level up. I remember the old times when people were (almost) desperately looking for dps, healer, mober/tank in various maps since those were the most optimal to level up due to experience gained. No quests, it was mainly killing a large group of monsters or keep on grinding for hours for that sweet sweet 0.05% EXP (this might sound like a downside but we'll talk about that later).

seals.png.fbd69a2167e82759d5cbd094f83f3e01.png

Seals: Fur Seals in Kokomo beach (cmd_fild02). Many people were looking for party in a small area with a tent and a hammock, like if it was meant for that. The "safe area" where everyone looked for party, and some protected the players with chat-rooms.

Mi Gaos: At the south of Louyang (lou_fild01). Mages and archers would target the sandies, while high-vit/flee jobs such as Knights or Assassins could protect the range attackers. Priests were always welcome.

Geographers: If you didn't have a party, you can come to the north of Einbroch to grind for some hours, maybe find someone to level up together, even adventure in a party into new areas.

Isis and Ancient Mummies: At the end of Morroc Pyramids, people were gathering at the corner of the map to find people to join their mega-party of 15 players, to kill Isis, Mummys, sometimes fly from Mimics, Ancient Mummies for the strong ones and if you're lucky enough, encounter Osiris for the whole map (or those nearby) to fight him.

Majoruros: Only some jobs could go into the deepest cave of Glast Heim in order to obtain large amounts of EXP when defeating Majoruros in group. You'd need a mober, a Bard and a 2 Wizards (or 1 skilled HW) in order to defeat groups of these bulls.

Skeggiolds: Assassins, Gunslingers and Hunters (believe it or not) had a hard time being accepted to high-level parties, therefore they could gather at Odin's temple. Priests would buff the ranged DPS while give Aspersio to melee classes.

Now for something a bit odd: Thor's Volcano in pre-re: Only the most elite and prepared players could enter a party at this dungeon. Monsters are ferocious. These one-shot you with a fireball, therefore a Pasana card was a must. A Jakk card for the squishy ones.

These areas were magical because people gathered to make parties, to group up and level up together. Players were looking for more at cities, this playstyle made people come together, it was almost obligatory.

- Stats were stronger than equipment, therefore having equipment didn’t have a strong impact on performance compared to Stats. Even if you had a +7 set with cards, a skilled and leveled player could beat you.

 

Pre-renewal Cons
Since the class system was almost obligatory in order to level up, people like Priests sometimes didn’t have a party to play with and it was almost impossible to level up by themselves, forcing them to play another class instead.
The areas to level up were limited by your Job.

Grind-heavy: Hours, days, weeks, months. A player had to invest many hours of their time in order to be successful at the game.

The system worked, but it had its flaws, this might made Gravity thought of their “solution”...

 

Renewal Pros
Changes to monsters made it so the leveling experience was more lineal and easier for new players to follow.
Eden quests for players to level up faster, reaching high level and the most wanted by everyone, 3rd classes. With very strong abilities, now every class could deal AoE damage. Crazy amounts of damage meant not depending on parties. Now many can go on their own.

 

Renewal Cons

Changes to monsters made it so the leveling experience was more lineal and less open. Back in pre-renewal, a skilled player could level up in difficult areas such as Enchanted Peach Trees in Gonryun while still being an Archer. Now in renewal, it is impossible due to the level changes, Flee increment and low experience gain if your base level is too low or high from the monster.
It is less of an open world and more of a linear experience.

The changes made it so parties were not popular anymore, at least not for leveling at low levels.
Everyone focuses on 3rd classes and the end game, as if reaching level 125+ was "the real deal". Level up faster, higher rates, the faster to reach 3rd class the better. No desire to level up but instead, reach the end-game and/or focus on pvp and woe. What happened to the adventuring in an MMORPG?

That's what I've learned so far. But please, if you have any opinions, cons, pros, enjoyable experiences or bad experiences on any, please comment down below. I would love to see if we can come up with the best of both worlds for everyone! 

Edited by OscarScorp
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Sounds like there isn't really a reason for renewal going by your list. Unless you enjoy a 100% linear experience and NPCs telling you where to go. But if you like that, might as well play any other MMORPG.

I really gave up on RO after the renewal update because it turned RO from something unique into being just like any other MMORPG just with worse graphics and controls.

The problem with pre-renewal really was only that its stat, class and equipment system really hit a cap. It got easier and easier to reach instant cast, status change immunity or defensive and resistance values so high you hardly took damage anymore.

Gravity had to add better and better gear to keep players playing, but it also slowly but steadily ruined game's balance.

Best of both worlds?

Honestly not familiar enough with renewal to say what I'd take from it. But what definitely should be taken from pre-renewal was the old pre-trans monster difficulty / exp balance. Basically back then a monsters 2 times harder gave 3 times more exp. There was no exp or drop penalty at all because it wasn't needed. The reason you aimed for fighting stronger monsters was simply because it was more rewarding. You could really just go and play in any location you want. That's why partying up was also so much worth it. Due to the free choice of location, there was no "This region doesn't match my level" or "I'm currently in a different part of the quest so there's not much sense for me to join", you could just randomly make up "Today I'm doing a Glastheim party, who wants to join?" and you could easily find people joining from a wide level range.

If they could have just managed to keep that feeling and just improve the game's balance rather than turning the whole game into another WoW clone...

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My opinion...

Good in renewal :

-The stat system. No longer forced to go max in any particular stat - it's still rewarding to do so but instead of going 99 INT/DEX with my wizard or 99 AGI/DEX with my sniper, I can consider adding a bit of VIT or STR or whatever else and it's still viable if I do it reasonably.

-As long as you fight monsters equal or higher level and disable the exp penalty system, the base EXP amount of monsters is more linear which makes every map with such monsters viable for leveling. Not true in the old system where most classes wanted to be on 1-2 specific maps.

-Having exp modifiers for level difference provides a system to offset the above and still make it rewarding to fight much stronger monsters, except it isn't set up to do so by default. Even if you do configure it to reward killing strong monsters, the above advantage remains because ANY "much stronger" monster will be worth fighting, not just a few specific ones with the most outstanding exp reward.

Bad in renewal :

-Drop modifiers for level difference. First thing I turned off.

-The amount of exp modifiers for level difference. While lowering EXP on monsters weaker than you is a good thing, everything else is horrible. To begin with, the EXP amount on monsters doesn't go up so sharply so even without the penalty, killing monsters much higher level than you won't be hurting the game's balance even if there is no penalty. I feel fighting difficult monsters higher level than me isn't very effective because EXP grows slower than the effort needed to defeat those monsters, however, this can be easily fixed by changing the EXP scaling config to add, for example, 5% more exp per 3 higher levels of monsters up to a level difference somewhere around 25-30. This should also make parties more desirable again although that issue can also be solved by changing how much bonus exp is given per party member.

-The stats on most older equipment are not updated to remain useful in the new system. Some new items are too powerful and outclass everything else in the game and many of these are also easy to obtain. That's very bad design that makes all the old areas that drop the older items basically a worthless "Let's get past this ASAP to reach the real game". Many of Eden group's items fall into this category as well. Reading through the whole itemdb and and adjusting every single item is a difficult task but necessary to make the game fun.

Neutral :

-Not sure how I feel about the exp coming from various sources. Having the option to do quests for EXP is a good thing as long as it's not strictly superior to killing monsters. But this is trivial to achieve by setting the correct quest exp rate in the conf file. The real advantage of having the Eden group should not be the equipment and exp, but the fact the NPCs send you towards monsters you can reasonably defeat at your current level. Likewise, MVP exp seems to far outclass normal monster EXP (assuming you find MVPs to kill which can be more difficult on an overpopulated server - even there you have abra and instances though!), but again this can be adjusted by the exp.conf file.

-Don't have enough experience with 3rd jobs to judge them. As long as the monsters above level 100 are powerful enough to be a challenge, and the classes are diverse enough in their roles, it should be ok. That was true last time I played a 3rd job character but it was a very long time ago, they might have made them more powerful, idk. I'll figure it out eventually once I finish balancing the non-3rd jobs for my server first.

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Thank you for your feedback!

3 hours ago, Playtester said:

Sounds like there isn't really a reason for renewal going by your list. Unless you enjoy a 100% linear experience and NPCs telling you where to go. But if you like that, might as well play any other MMORPG.

You're right. Honestly, to me, Renewal was all flashy effects, damage numbers and cool sprites.
Bringing new classes to the table was exciting, everything new sounds exciting (I love the Rebellion sprite), but once I started playing for some time, I found it wasn't the same experience back in pre-renewal. I had a hard time understanding the differences, but now the gap is getting clearer.

At the same time, I want to understand what people like about Renewal. I know I like some of the 3rd classes abilities --these specifically seem to fix some of the job's flaws, as if skills such as Clementia, Canto Candidus, Reading Spellbook (without Freezing Spell) and others, were really meant for previous classes. I should've written this down in my original post, my apologies.
If people like Renewal must be because it's fun. Being any class they prefer to play as, which can deal large ammounts of damage, means no more restraints of choosing a specific class. As an RPG player and game designer, the "power-building" or "snowball effect" is present. People enjoy having their character grow, getting stronger, but it seems Gravity made a mistake on trying to mimic other mmorpgs as mentioned, changing the style and resulting in a power-hungry game.

New 1st and 2nd Job Skills
I believe these classes are missing some of the "fun" from higher jobs, therefore I am working on adding new abilities (but not as strong) to them. Making jobs more viable on leveling but not completely independent. I'm focusing on making them fun.
 

1 hour ago, Seravy said:

-As long as you fight monsters equal or higher level and disable the exp penalty system, the base EXP amount of monsters is more linear which makes every map with such monsters viable for leveling. Not true in the old system where most classes wanted to be on 1-2 specific maps.

-Having exp modifiers for level difference provides a system to offset the above and still make it rewarding to fight much stronger monsters, except it isn't set up to do so by default. Even if you do configure it to reward killing strong monsters, the above advantage remains because ANY "much stronger" monster will be worth fighting, not just a few specific ones with the most outstanding exp reward.

Bad in renewal :

-Drop modifiers for level difference. First thing I turned off.

True. I altered my level_penalty.txt to make it so users recieve 10% EXP from monsters with 15 levels lower than them, but to obtain 200% EXP from Monsters 30 levels above, encouraging the high-risk, high-reward gameplay (or simply make parties). I haven't tested this penalty/bonus curve so I'm unsure if it will work in game with many players. I also have to note, that defeating monsters 31 levels above yours, won't grant you more than 10% EXP - do you think I should get rid of this limit?
I also modified the drop modifier to be 100% flat to any level, never liked it.

Quests in Renewal
I was told Eden had its flaws, such as the equipment being stronger than the rest of the items for the same level-range, making them almost useless, but the quests also brought an issue to the game.
Players saw these quests as the optimal way to level up, now almost nobody wanted to adventure themselves to hunt exp. Before, in pre-renewal, I remember many maps being filled with players, now these maps are empty.
When I played in a renewal server and asked where to level up, players always told me to "just go to Eden, finish quests up to lv99 then do these other quests". I found that to be too repetitive and ending in people not wanting to repeat the process not wanting to create a new character since it would be the same boring process, meaning no replaybility.

I am considering removing Eden entirely, but I didn't see the positive points from it, as you said, these quests sent players to hunt to specific maps. An incentive for players to adventure themselves. I can add some quests for this purpose, but not as many for players to only rely on these to get up to lv99. I am thinking of adding one or two quests for lv20-25, then there will be no quests for players until lv33-36. During these gaps, players are forced to search and hunt for new mobs, adventure themselves into new maps, but these previous quests would teach them to use their feet and go into an adventure into new maps.

Power-hungry & Grinding
I have seen some RO channels and, honestly, I'm tired of watching the same behaviour on every video: "Here's a new instance with stronger equipment. Forget the previous ones obtained from 2-3 instances ago". I'm tired of seeing the only goal of becoming stronger and stronger, getting +20 equipments with 3+ enchantments which empower your character to have +200 DEX for a few seconds to finally solo every instance. My head hurts everytime I see this.
But isn't this the point of an RPG? To become stronger? This is why I'm confused and lost of how to bring balance to Gravity's mess.
I don't want to have a server where I must add new instances, mobs and stronger equipments every month in order to entertain people, or is this the real goal of modern Ragnarok Online? Was it better to make a x2 rates server where people had to grind for months to become one of the strongest in their server, until eventually more players become that level cap and then getting bored because there is no more content?

Now I'm not just a player, but a developer as well. I want to deliver the fun and greatness of Renewal and bring back the joy of the true Ragnarok experience from pre-renewal (without the flaws of both).

Edited by OscarScorp
Pressed Enter by mistake and posted too early -__-'
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Quote

Gravity had to add better and better gear to keep players playing, but it also slowly but steadily ruined game's balance.

This. Have someone read aegis sources? I did, they have a business plan on each item drop from any monster. I'm not kidding here.

I think they did the best thing what they can do for 18 years old game. Next step will be - lowering session time, and rebuilding players sessions to short gameplay but with more abilities of the RO with wipes of the game servers time to time.

Edited by anacondaq
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Quote

I also have to note, that defeating monsters 31 levels above yours, won't grant you more than 10% EXP - do you think I should get rid of this limit?

Yes, definitely. EXP doesn't rank up sharply enough for this to be warranted. Let's say someone manages to find a way to kill a monster 50 levels higher. So instead of 140 they get 700 EXP (compared Creamy to Sidewinder), that's 5 times more (or 10 times if you include the 200% bonus) but this monster has roughly 8 times the hit points so it also takes this much longer to kill so EXP/time isn't really different, unless the damage output from the character is so high that fighting same level monsters can't really use it. This is unlikely for single player but is true for parties, so stronger monsters will be as efficient for parties as weaker monsters for single players. I think that's the desired goal. This however only considers the time it takes to kill monsters. It doesn't consider the fact that the stronger monster hits harder so you need to actually play better to survive. Skilled players can generally avoid taking damage (by smarter positioning, better use of skills or better equipment), and parties requiring players to know what they are doing is good for the game, so I think overall it works out.

For Eden I think the best solution is to keep it and nerf the equipment / reduce the EXP rewards. If the quest exp only serves as a convenient free extra EXP you can get while you stay on the map for the long term hunting monsters, then it's fine. If it's high enough that it's worth going back, report the quest and go back to hunt again, that's bad. So basically a quest like "hunt 10 Merman" should give like, half the exp you're getting from actually hunting the monsters. Not worth leaving the map for, but worth taking the quest before you go there. The equipment is also useful - buying the most basic NPC gear is not trivial for a new player, simple weapons and armor cost 30-50k zeny each. But the equipment has to be strictly worse than things you can get from the NPCs, fortunately "no refines" help with that - you can have for example an Eden Dagger thats only 10 ATK worse than a Damascus but as soon as the player has some Oridecon and possibly an Andre card, the Damascus will still be 55 ATK stronger instead, making it both "just as good" for players starting the game, and inferior to everyone else at the same time. But removing Eden entirely can work too -  the world map does tell players where to find monsters of the correct levels, and it's easy to modify the job change quests to provide some beginner gear.

Becoming stronger is okay but it should be something not achievable by grinding. There should be extremely rare uber items (like MVP cards), and ofc refining also helps with this (as high refines are rare by definition and the refining system ofc also needs a redesign as Gravity's is entirely Pay2Win.), but gear obtained from farming dungeons should just be "appropriate" for the levels intended, not strictly superior to other dungeons of a similar level. However this is really for PVM players. PVP is what breaks the whole concept. If it's a long term effort to get good gear, older players will dominate, and others will realize it's hopeless and leave, then with no enemy to defeat the old players leave too. So PVP and PVM are kinda mutually exclusive, PVP demands the best gear in a short amount of time while PVM is the opposite. A server that tries to focus on both PVM and PVP will likely fail. It either has to be a PVM oriented server which has PVP as a thing you can do but it isn't really a main goal and rewards are not that great, or it has to be a PVP focused server but then your PVM gameplay will suffer because strong equipment has to be available easily and adding new content becomes difficult (a single new item can completely wreck PVP balance in unforeseen ways by making different classes dominate, even if said items only offer a seemingly small effect that would be barely noticeable in PVM). I believe WOE does manage to do the "PVM server where PVP is a thing" reasonably well - it's not overly rewarding but fun to do and with enough open castles even the small fish can get some of the fun - meanwhile for the veterans, the possibility of making god items is there. But that won't satisfy PVP hungry players, they will always seek the other type of server instead. I guess this isn't purely a PVM or PVP more like a generic player archetype difference : Those who enjoy the thrill of the battle and don't care obtaining gear, and those who enjoy the process of obtaining gear itself and growing stronger on a long term. However the former type will naturally find PVP more interesting because it has more variety - monsters once you learn how to first, are repetitive and require some effort to keep interesting (for example by trying different classes or party compositions).

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In regards of PVM (Monsters):
I'm thinking on commenting all Renewal's lv1 to lv90 monsters from the database (mob_db.txt) and using the pre-renewal mob_db.txt instead. Do you think it will solve this issue? (additionally to the file changes I've already mentioned).
This would mean in a pre-renewal experience from lv1 to lv90, afterwards it would be a renewal experience.

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Pre-renewal and renewal stats don't fit together at all. Renewal monsters have like 5 times less ATK and on higher levels give a lot less EXP. Besides, all the monster levels have been changed.

Also pre-renewal exp was already pretty unbalanced towards the end. The addition of Anubis, Thor Volcano, the increase of various old monster Exp all resulted in there only being certain regions worth leveling in anymore.

Also as said the problem is that Gravity tried to make new things more and more worthwhile. Most equip drops from old monsters became useless. While keeping the player base interested in new things might have made sense for official servers which exist for years and mostly contain veteran, for the overall balance or new private servers that's completely counterproductive.

Not to mention that the exp tables themselves are also a mess (you reach max job level way too early and then are stuck with not getting any skill points for 80% of the game).

------------------------

That being said, if you just wanted to solve the monster exp issue in a pretty easy way, then I'd just use a spreadsheet program that calculates a monster's potential (defensive and offensive) which results in a recommend HP:Exp ratio, then take the Base Exp:Job Exp from pre-renewal and automatically calculate the perfectly balanced Exp/JExp values of each monster.

I actually had this as a project once. It's fairly easy to calculate defense and damage per second of a monster, where I got stuck was the skills. Monster skills can have a huge impact on their potential. And it might even depend on INT, but only for those that have strong spells (though I guess spell potential isn't very high in renewal anymore?). Plus you would also want to consider monster speed, because if they can be killed from a safe distance, then it's like the damage per second is zero. So plenty of more complex things to consider which isn't that easy to do with a simple spreadsheet formula. You could try to ignore the complexity and just see where it leads, though.

-------------------------

Of course nothing beats carefully handcrafted balance.

But then again, even if I accomplished the perfect balance by putting in hours and hours of work, it will not really be worth it for a private server these days. Why? Because they lack population. What's the point if every single map is 100% balanced? Then players will simply spread around the whole world of Ragnarok and you'll never see any oter person again. The fact that there are only 10-20 useful maps in pre-renewal at least made people meet each other frequently.

-------------------------

@Seravy's approach is already a much easier solution to the problem. Give more exp the higher the level of the monster is compared to yours.

The only issue I see with this is that renewal is WAY too easy early on. If there's no exp penalty for killing monsters above your level, then you can easily go and kill monsters 30 or more levels above you. This is especially true for monsters that are immobile or very slow. The system doesn't account for this at all. It consequently also gives an unfair advantage to ranged classes, which will still just go solo and wouldn't be interested in partying up at all.

I guess excluding immobile monsters from the bonus and maybe having a lower bonus for slow monsters could work. Or only make the bonus apply in teamwork.

At the same time monsters should also deal more damage when they are above your level, so you can't easily survive any that are far above.

Though will still result in pretty boring exp values because renewal exp is streamlined (same level monsters often give same amount of exp) and jexp is still way too high.

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Actually monster spell potential is okay in renewal, but up until late 2018 the database had incorrect MATK stats for the monsters so they couldn't deal much damage. It wasn't the fault of Renewal, it was RAthena's. Then there were those bugs in stat recalculation which also affected monsters, in fact some still exist, my pull request for one of those is still in limbo after months. It's kinda shocking how serious bugs in basic PVM gameplay in this emulator are not prioritized.

Of course the generic "less monster attack" in renewal applies to magic just like physical attacks, but magic doing a fraction of physical damage was the result of bugs. At first monsters having lower attack worried me but so far (my highest level character is 94) it worked well. Simply put those extra high attack monsters in pre-re were not reasonable. They should have been higher level content but 3rd jobs were not ready yet to have those levels in the game. Very skilled parties could still defeat them (or not, if we killed more than 10 normal mobs in our LH3 parties that was good) but I can't say it was reasonable. It felt like going into a level 150 dungeon with a 99 character. You can still do the same thing except now those monsters are correctly labeled level 150.

Ranged classes and immobile monsters was always a thing, I leveled my wizards on geographers like everyone else. From Mage level 30 until high wizard 99, and Geographer was a level 60 or something monster so my point is, while it's an issue, it's nothing new. However Renewal monster EXP amounts don't raise as sharply. Too much level difference means killing the monster will take too long (due to hp and vit defense) and killing multiple lower level monsters is more effective, even with the bonus. I could still go and kill geographers but it's not worth it. (okay I admit I haven't tested. But I would be surprised if I got faster exp from them on a low level mage than from fire bolting poporings or fireballing skeletons.)

To play it safe, reducing the base exp value of immobile monsters might be a good idea. It's not like they are difficult to kill so lower exp is fair. (unless someone with a melee class tries to kill them but that's his problem. You must be mad to level your swordsmen on geographers. )

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Well, for me Pre-Renewal best times were when my guildies and I made parties and invited whoever wanted to join, and we'd go to Juperos or Abbey (that is, to places where you could go along others, even casually at times, without necessarily being the most pro group of players or heavily equipped) and we didn't care much about the items or not, just about having fun x3 Although Abbey was one of the best and most entertining places to level up, specially since one of my favourite jobs was High Priest. I think in Renewal this is kind of lost, and people focus more on the places that give either the best items or the best experience. Therefore, I think it'd be great if other areas became a bit more difficult so it poses a challenge for the 3rd jobs, had their drops improved or were expanded upon, instead of simply focusing on going exclusively to the newest area, such as in Renewal (This is one reason that one of my personal map projects is about expanding certain dungeons, but that still won't be finished in a while ^^;).

What I love about Renewal though, that I wish we had in Pre-Renewal, is the possibility to continue making your character grow, to be able to use more skills and have new jobs. Some of the new job sprites (specially the jRO ones, not so much some of the kRO ones) look REALLY GREAT as well ❤️ and there are so many more things to do, collect or wear implemented that it's also a good experience for when you're a bit bored of reaching the end of the game in the classic RO.

Edited by Mina-chan
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One more thing to add, recently realized, Renewal disabled a lot more maps than I thought. Restoring those and filling them with monsters is definitely a good idea, in fact I recommend adjusting monster spawns in general. A few problems I identified with renewal monster spawns :

  • Monsters tend to be overly mixed. While there is a primary monster there are many of, often there are several other monsters present at relatively high counts (like 70+30+30+20). While mixed maps is nice to have occasionally, on maps intended to hunt a specific monster, it's better to have a only 1-2 other monsters with lower counts.
  • Some maps actually have monsters of inappropriate levels (too high) present or low level monsters are only available on maps that also have very high level monsters. (Minorous+Anubis for example. It's better to move Anubis to the last floor and Minorous earlier as it's the lowest level monster in the dungeon. Makes no sense it appears on floor 4. I've also got murdered by a Cramp (83) on the map for Myst : level 49 monster)
  • Some monsters don't have a good map to hunt them as they only ever appear at medium counts or less and always mixed with other monsters at higher quantities. Obviously here I mean monsters meant to be possible to hunt, not "rare" monsters. Example : Orc Archer, best place has like 20 of these and 50 High Orcs. Demon Pungus is another example, there used to be a map where we had a lot of these, not anymore.
  • Some of the spawn locations simply make no sense. Why lots of Harpies at the entrance of Yuno? A non-aggressive monster like Goat would be better there, it's the only way to leave/enter the town.
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I would see a high monster variety as a good thing. And to some extend stronger monsters on the map can also be interesting (if there aren't more than say 5). Then it has these "Oh shit, there's a mimic over there" kind of moments.

I agree that all the maps should be readded (and these could be used to give the remaining monsters their dominant map). And also to have easier monsters near towns.

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I agree with Playtester on having 1 or 2 high level monster on a map with low level ones, this to add the surprise effect and to be cautious while playing. No zombie-playing allowed, you gotta be ready to use your Fly wing whenever that Mimic appears nearby! Although, I would say it's a problem if there are 5+ high level monsters on a low level map.

On 5/8/2019 at 9:52 AM, Seravy said:
  • Some monsters don't have a good map to hunt them as they only ever appear at medium counts or less and always mixed with other monsters at higher quantities. Obviously here I mean monsters meant to be possible to hunt, not "rare" monsters. Example : Orc Archer, best place has like 20 of these and 50 High Orcs. Demon Pungus is another example, there used to be a map where we had a lot of these, not anymore.

I've also noticed popular maps such as the ones you mentioned being cleaned from monsters and even the warp access (to gef_fild14). I'm unsure why this change was made in Renewal but since I really like the synergy of players x mobs in this map, I've added it back. I also plan on bringing the Demon Pungus map back because I used to see it as a place to farm Witched Starsand and where High Priests would level up with Magnus.
But I have a concern in regards of this subject, I've brought back the pre-renewal Orcs located in this field (West Orc Village), but I see they're lower level than the renewal ones. I thought it would be fine leaving these here, but would it be a problem with the Renewal modified damage?

This is actually my main question I've been having since a long time.
So I don't remember Pre-renewal having anything complex in regards of Missing and the ammount of Damage dealt from Player to Monster if we compare their levels. I remember having a +7 gladius with cards against elemental/race and dealing large ammounts of damage to specific monsters (i.e. Archer with 4-card Composite Bow dealing 6k damage to Enchanted Peach Trees), which I think it's fair and motivational to the player, getting strong equipment to reach the best possible way to level up /farm on specific maps against certain mobs, but I see it differently in Renewal.
In Renewal, it appears players miss very often against monsters with a few levels higher than them, and when the attack hits, it deals low damage. Once the player reaches the same level as the monster, the Missing is almost gone and the damage seems fine. Monsters deal more damage to players which their base level are lower.
My question is: Is this an official thing from Renewal? I don't find it fair to any player and if there's a possibility to change it, please let me know. I don't think making my server pre-renewal would be the best thing, but changing this specific feature would work, in my opinion.
I remember someone telling me about a server which the player is free to choose to play as Pre-renewal or Renewal; I'm surprised how this can work but I don't think it's the "best of both" option.

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Yeah I'm okay with some higher level monsters if there aren't many but there are exceptions. The map where Myst appears is one example, it's pretty time consuming and annoying to get there and the level difference is just ridiculous (80 something vs 40 something). In general if it's hard to reach, far, and it's the only place to hunt that specific monster it's better without high levels in my opinion. Cramps are also very fast and similar to Taoru, if you aren't expecting one you can die before even using the Fly Wings. (Ironically Mimics seem to be lower level than the other monsters on the maps in most cases nowadays - that's kinda sad.) I think if a strong monster is desired, the "champion mobs" should be used for that purpose, if necessary, give them better stats. I rather die on the Myst map to a Furious Myst than a Cramp.

Personally for me it felt that monsters have much less hit points and are generally easier to kill in Renewal, while they also don't do too much damage, at least on the lower (1-70) levels. I don't think I have seen the level affect my damage output, although it obviously affects hit rate because HIT and FLEE increases by 1 for each level - not entirely sure but I think that was the same in pre-renewal? Overall it's a bit hard to judge the damage because I played pre-renewal over 8 years ago, but it felt reasonable. You can still use an upgraded weapon with cards to do more damage, that's unchanged, but I was doing fine even with some very basic weapons. Like always, if missing is an issue, you can fix that by raising your DEX or using Mummy cards. Hitting targets works mostly the same in Renewal, that new nonlinear formula doesn't seem to exist anymore. Overall I think the monsters are fairly balanced on the lower levels, haven't made enough progress yet to fight the stronger level ones to have an opinion on those. Characters strong at soloing have no issue hunting high level monsters, for example a Hunter or Wizard can easily kill something 20-30 levels higher as long as the monster isn't ranged.

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This may sound like a crazy idea but I want your feedback on this:
Pre-renewal system with 3rd classes but the max level will remain 99. Once the player has reached Transcendent class lv99, it will turn High Novice (again) > High 1st Class (again) > 3rd Class at level 50, with a max level of 99.

Edit: Nevermind, I was thinking of dumb ideas to fix Gravity's mess @_@.
Ragnarok is a great game with many fun features but at the same time, all these updates and changes made it a complete mess, which, instead of fixing what was wrong, more features were added, making it a game which now seems the same as any other MMORPG but without reaching their level of refine.

Edited by OscarScorp
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While my overall goals are different, it seems as far as fixing Renewal mistakes go, it's the same as yours.

Not sure if it's any help but this is my server side repository https://github.com/SeravySensei/rathena https://github.com/SeravySensei/rathena/commits/master

My plan is to make a single player server people can download and play on their own computer easily, one that offers balanced and enjoyable PvM gameplay, and server side AI allowing players to still play in parties despite having no actual human players to party with. I expect it'll take a year to dig through all the items, scripts, classes, skills, etc and fix them all but I am making good progress.

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On 5/13/2019 at 4:58 PM, OscarScorp said:

This may sound like a crazy idea but I want your feedback on this:
Pre-renewal system with 3rd classes but the max level will remain 99. Once the player has reached Transcendent class lv99, it will turn High Novice (again) > High 1st Class (again) > 3rd Class at level 50, with a max level of 99.

I actually thought about such a system before.

Basically after you transcend and reach 2nd job you can choose between 2nd job trans or 3rd job non-trans version.

Of course you'd need to completely rebalance the skills. Not just by reducing damage, but by giving them a utility other than pure force that puts them apart from the 2nd job trans skills without overpowering them.

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In regards of Monster's Magical attacks, since in Renewal enemies deal less damage with magic skills, is there a way to boost it?
Swordfish inflicting Waterball, now in renewal, anyone can resist a few of those without proper equipment. In Pre-Re you were forced to obtain equipment such as cards in order to be able to level up freely in these maps.

EDIT: Got it fixed in: 

 

Edited by OscarScorp
Matk edit fixed.
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To continue the subject, I've watched some videos talking about this and found these two:

Waffle's opinion on Pre-Re vs Renewal (improvised talk so it's a bit messy): 

Recap:
Waffle compares classes between Pre-re and Renewal systems specifically talking about WoE.
He has a good point in mentioning that in Pre-renewal, Jobs had a very limited Role, meaning players would be limited to play a specific class during WoE. You can mess around in PvE but the optimal builds where few and for WoE most likely won't accept you in a guild unless you are a specific Job with a specific build to fill the role needed. No freedom in builds.
Meanwhile in renewal, almost every class has a role and there's more freedom in how to build your class for WoE.

Beard and the Hair talk (chat between friends so audio is not the best): 

Recap:
These guys talk about their experience in Pre-renewal gameplay. An experience where people come closer together, resulting in strong bonds (closer community), even mentions how people made relationships within the game which resulted in marrying each other in real life. You can ask someone where to get to Prontera and most likely people would group up with you. Compared to renewal where players most likely go solo or won't talk to strangers and make parties just to get to a city.

Who has seen this behavior in Renewal servers? I haven't and I miss those days.


Arranging Thoughts
I talked to a friend about this and he says RO had these moments of a closer community and stronger bonds because it was a new world for players, one of the first MMORPGs for many. There wasn't much information on the internet so players had to rely on asking for help. The need of a closer community was there, but time has changed and so Ragnarok.

Newer generations of players are not patient enough for games, specially for a 15+ year old game such as RO. That's why Renewal is quicker to level up. There's no patience to be asking for parties in order to reach a higher level and the next class.
New players grew up with a new mindset, meaning they will not experience what we had, the old-school players.

I'm a bit disappointed on hearing this, but then I watched this video of someone who is an old-school WoW player, talking about the same thing, but now experiencing it in the newest Classic WoW server to be released:

Force Gaming's Classic WoW Experience [May 2019] (It's no RO but subject is very similar):

Recap:
Force plays Classic World of Warcraft (2019) and finds out players are actually nice, teams up, demonstrates a closer community compared to the new version of WoW which we can say Classic WoW is similar to Pre-renewal while Retail WoW is Renewal.

Conclusion
Is it possible to bring back the good experiences from Pre-Renewal, fixing the wrong with Renewal features and to actually be played by many players nowadays?

Let me know what you think! I'll be looking at this thread every week ?

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playing on super low rate server with bunch of people speaking portugese

go to seals cause im a sage, notice a bunch of leechers

i just farm with freecast authoritative badges and kill steal the people mobbing

ask for invite ofc no response

get bored and start luring packs of seals behind them and fly winging out

watch them spread like wild fire and quit 

 

I just wanted hang out 

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