General General Feedback and Longevity of the Server

Not my battle anymore, im finding it hard to have the energy for it anymore. If you want details you can PM back on discord, but im not going to do this on the forum, didnt really want to make the post I did, but well, frustration is one hell of a drug and seeing the staples of the community leave is depressing as ever living shit.

 

I hope the staff is looking very closely at a certain new private server on Gtop 100. They have a lot newer features than Royals and could one day challenge Royals, but I'd argue Royals has more experienced owner/management and an incumbent advantage.

I think Royals should study the new server closely and adapt by improving something in the features department. This could come in the form of a new class like Aran, more end game content, and/or Pink Bean and Timeless weapons. However, autoban should be a priority too. Imo Royals should train some of it's most loyal/technically competent GMs to be developers because having only one probably has some drawbacks.

 

Speaking of, I find it unacceptable that reports are getting leaked left and right to the point of reported players ban evading just to insult the reporters.
Me (and many other players who regularly report) are forced to report to Tim in private.

 

Appreciate the hard work you've provided to this server. So when's Pink Bean going to be released?

 

I have awoken from my slumber, and am very surprised to see that this thread is still going strong after a few months. At this point, not sure if it's still worth fighting for anything, anymore. Recently I noticed a server popped up and clinched 3rd position within 2 weeks being released. What did they do so right over there? Maybe it's something for Royals to study.

Anyway, I agree with you on the ban stuff. Bans shouldn't be revealed for any reasons, that has always been protocol (well I'm also not surprise if she is given extra entitlement). But for my case it's rather public and I'm fine with it. Also, hope you @Matt are actively monitoring a particular GM I reported to @Tim. This guy/girl is a little tricky, so it may take some time.

Peace out.

 

I would like to flag that whilst Matt appears to be deeply offended by your post I think this section is for the large part accurate. This server, its players and its economy have thrived on bannable activity over the years and I think there is very little done beyond acknowledging that vote abuse and RWT exist. Once you take away the friendship groups built over time there is little to no incentive beyond genuine enthusiasm for the game to actually contribute to meaningful, legitimate play.

I note that a majority vote type system currently exists within the staff chat. I see this as problematic for the following reasons:

1. Multiple pings to catch certain staff members' attentions is very suggestive of staff inactivity and chat spam. Neither are very professional, nor are they particularly efficient. This also begs to differ from the multiple occasions where staff have (in vain) tried to reassure the forum community that their members are active.

2. It would not come as a surprise to me if only certain ideas go forward to voting, whereas other thoughts and opinions get talked down very quickly. It is natural for groups of this nature to manifest in dominant voices especially when the timezone distribution amongst staff is skewed.

3. Again I think the voice of staff who have broader exposure to game experience should be valued more, as it is difficult to offer an educated opinion on issues for which people have limited exposure to. There is very little to offer beyond hearsay and guesswork.

4. Multiple issues tend to be discussed simultaneously without dedicated agendas to outline their priorities.

5. Minor issues tend to get very little attention unless particular staff members stumble across them.

6. It would be very common for issues to be forgotten about and when this happens, no matter how little time was spent, this would be a waste of time.​

Overall the system for implementing game changes confirms my suspicion that there is a real absence of work efficiency within Staff and very little team-based management involved.

Instead, a lot of jobs currently rely on brute force - imagine guess and checking each and every permutation every single time because you didn't know the formula. It's time consuming, inefficient, and predicts burnout. For example:

- manually stalking maps for hackers, handling hacker/botter reports
- being a shoutbox/discord bot
- redirecting private/public messages to different members of staff
- scrolling through vote logs to identify minor and major vote abuse
- individually checking nonexistent trade/drop logs, billion coin logs to identify possible and probable RWT​

These are all things that ultimately make it really difficult to be an 'active' member of staff because the tasks are so mundane, repetitive and sometimes archaic in the current day and age. Unfortunately, the follow-on effect from this is that there are very little barriers to someone RWT/vote abusing then ban evading when they eventually get caught. There remains a certain population of new and old players who regularly participate in selling RWT. The intermittent smegas we get from ?Crowley, the QQ accounts that seem to have every WS weapon under the sun, the well known RWT websites that seem to sell endless volumes of CS/WS/APR are testament to this even if you choose to blame endgame Auf helmet scrollers for the persistently elevated CS/WS prices.

Are there things that can be done to improve this server's future? Of course there are. Have they been suggested in the past? Of course they have. How many of these suggestions actually make it into staff chat then onto the painfully pseudo-democratic process? It's hard to know, but I can't help but think very little.

What can you expect though? The staff of this game thrive on drama as much as the community does. They find opportunities to complain about the community both publicly and privately; they initiate flame wars with community and ex-staff members alike; they continue to make the conscious choice of defending their opinions based on the apparent lack of specific examples - and when these are supplied, it's now considered to be directly targeting of staff and thus 'negative criticism'.

In the end, it's important to remember that staff were once (some may still be) players. No one can definitively say they would be able to do the job better, but like all things in life there is always room for improvement. The person complaining that there is never enough funding for elective, non-lifesaving healthcare could be the same person sitting on the other side wondering why the players in this community never stop complaining that we're just not good enough.

There are two sides to a coin. There are many different perspectives to one story.

 

I begin a bucc with 0 gears,
in two months i got lv 151 without leech or make other char, anyway i make it up to 14k hp, the problem is not hp wash or vote, the problem is people that don't like to farm..

 

HP Washing is already a flawed mechanic in most V62-based servers. It adds nothing but more artifficial barriers for the average players that just want to enjoy the game content, which unfortunately requires washing, and in some cases requires an HB buddy to be able at least to tank one hit without dying.

HP Washing is a 1-time process that the higher its your level, the less viable its to start washing. I started washing Late like at Lv90-100 and got nothing but a small bunch of MP to barely tank BF, Shao and Anego (on physical hit). Still can't do Toad without HB by the time I reach 175 and I have to invest a lot in APR just to remove all that dumped base INT. Once a player is high level enough, it's no longer viable to wash because it will yield a much worse MP gain so isn't worth even trying. The current workaround for this is the HP Quest which is intended for high level players when washing is no longer optimal.

I would like to suggest anoher alternative method that complements the HP Quest, but instead of gathering random stuff to give it to a random-ass NPC, instead make it involve funds just like regular washing requires investment. Farming meso = time resource invested. Which means players either have to waste time in either one thing or another and get the same result.

Wash is basically pay2winhp in the sense that any player with funds can wash. Of course this should account for the total investment you have to pay for leech and total amount of AP Resets used in the AP Reset calculator. Gathering funds is by no means an easy task so this means players has still to invest their time into something to achieve the same goal. I am just suggesting this because I'm more inclined towards farming and I could use my funds to directly buy whatever that would help me gain more HP, if there were another method that makes use of your saved funds.

That way high level players who have never washed can have a second alternative choice to gain HP besides the HP Quest. It shouldn't be that hard to implement. And it would reward players who constantly keep farming to gather funds for whatever purposes.

 

Yes, a quest to gain extra washable MP could be something we could start with, but shouldn't be too grindy like the HP quest because the player still has to gather funds to be able to convert that extra washable MP into HP.
If I think of it, would be something like:

HP Quest: You get +HP for collecting random ETC stuff. Easy, but grindy and could take some time. And also it's free.
MP Quest: You get +MP for doing even easier stuff in even less time. But the player still needs to have enough funds to be able to afford the AP Resets and then convert that ExtraMP into HP. It's not free and if you're unfunded or low on funds you don't want to do this one.

 

It seems clear from the last implemented HP quest and the discussion threads about it that anything implemented in this direction will be completely useless. Remaking the character to wash it properly will remain more efficient (by using funds from selling leech). Or just make a bucc/warr for cheap.

 

I really hope things on staff have change positively within. If that is true I'm happy to hear it.

However i can't help but feel a bit wary. Ive had the privilege to meet some great people in my time here, and some of them even ended being former staff members. I've had a chance to talk to many of them about all sorts of things. Some politics, some video games, and some life related things. Ultimately with a lot of them the conversation eventually makes its way to Royals. Some keep their reasons why they left private and I've always respected them for it. The others were more willing to talk, and our conversations often became sort of therapeutic for some of them.. The thing that's always concerned me is how most of them have in one fashion or another left for 3 main issues. Respect, communication and teamwork. Some others left for other or additional reasons that I won't share out of respect for those individuals but a good majority of them have collectively left due to the 3 above mentioned problems. Some of these people were even at one time the staunchest supporters of staff often defending any decisions made, any time the community nit picked something, Before they too succumbed. In many cases the staff who I spoke to in many cases wouldn't even know another former staff member and their stories would be eerily similar. Its always lead me to believe that the issues are systematic and have and will never change given how many different people have come and gone and the stories remained the same. But since I been away during a good portion of covid I lost touch with many people in the community and do not know as many of the staff these days where I think we could talk out of game as much as I have with others so i cant speak for them.

If things on staff have truly changed as you claim where more feedback is given and received universally, where a more equal share of work is dispersed acrossed the staff instead of handled by a few eager do gooders who get burned out , where staff are respected and treated equal then I am truly excited and happy to hear it and look forward to seeing what a united staff can do long term.

But if not, and this is just an attempt to try and paint a rosy picture for us the community so we may stop criticizing ,you may fool us in the short term, but you only fool yourselves long term by not actually addressing the long standing issues from within.

I say this all as an empassioned member of the community. I just wanna see us thrive.

Peace and love and all that stuff.

 

more base int, more mesos spends on apr and int gear, more time to get level, more work..

 

Did that with my ironman marksman, i played with her to lvl 130ish with base int until i washed it all out, and grinded my way to 4th job. now i have 9k hp on her. it was a long project, but it is definitely doable