General General Feedback and Longevity of the Server

Hi Joon, thanks for chiming in. Although I'm of course sorry to see these level of personal remarks when I was merely trying to follow up on the concern of another user (Johnny), I understand that I'm in a position of influence and your feelings of powerlessness and concern for the broader picture are something that concern me, so I'll take it for what it is. I of course don't expect you to agree with Johnny just because you are both endgame players.

Would you like to elaborate on what you mean by this?

Sure we can! I'm not sure what idea my previous posts gave you. I hope it's been clear that I have only made an attempt to ask Johnny what he thinks, and then provide slight alterations to some of his proposals based on what I know is more or less technically feasible to do. If my very participation in a discussion about this concerned you, then that signals to me a feeling of walking in a minefield in the wake of a developer speaking up, and is of course a reputation I'd like to repair.

The concerns related to Auf Haven not being much of a difficult boss if you have the right setup is well-known, yet from what I've been able to read, there's been little consensus on what should concretely be done about it. We are reading all proposals made so far and discussing how to move forward with them.

I believe I have already addressed this above and I'm sorry this is what you took away from my posts.

This adds some nuance to the previous discussion, and I appreciate that.

In general, I'm glad you chimed in, as more inputs from various users are always better. As for the rest of your post: from a development standpoint, while expressions of frustration and general remarks of the sort "X situation is bad", can be good indicators of a general feeling that help spur action, of course concrete proposals for improvements are always better. Nevertheless, you will always be free to voice your feelings, regardless of how constructive they are; just know that I'm doing the best I can with the information I am provided, and the more constructive information I am provided, the better I can hopefully do. There's a lot of information to process, often contradictory, and it takes time to discuss and implement. I know you personally want certain things to change, and I sincerely hope that future additions will be to your liking. Thanks again, Joon.

 

I think this is a good opportunity to gather some thoughts on what could be done to remediate the situation, within the limitations of what is technically and/or practically feasible. Using @Johnny's headings as a catalyst, I would like to suggest:

- In line with what Johnny suggested, I think it's worthwhile considering:
1. Account bans (either all current accounts, or only the account the offence was made) / temporary bans for minor-to-moderate vote abuse, account sharing and RWT solicitation
2. A small team of GMs that work specifically on character issues with set targets, either

a) time-based targets, e.g. 10 hours per week dedicated to character issues (including backlog) spread between ~3-5 GMs
b) job-based targets, e.g. all new posts in 'Character Issues' be responded to within 24 hours, and where feasible dealt with within 7 days​

3. Donation issues are difficult but donation-related inadvertent bans in particular should by default be offered a compensatory coupon
4. Again, I think players should be encouraged to apply for compensation if they are wrongfully banned even if this is dealt with on a case by case basis.

Nerfs and Controversial Changes

Hope something good comes out of this year's anniversary event! Bit too late to suggest changes now.
Things that I think wouldn't work though:
- chair gachapon as a meso sink

Part of the problem here I think is still a generally underwhelming level of testing - staff are typically the last people to find out certain maps are overpowered etc in terms of meso gain
- by the time the duku nerf happened a significant proportion of players had already dedicated hundreds of hours to making 3 low-level archmages/bishops
- ulu was nerfed literally months (and for some, a year+) after people started making 2 archmages followed by 4 archmages to farm at this map
- summon farming nerf happened years after people had already made 200b+ from this method

The trend does make people hesitant to make more bowmasters as Toy Room farmers to fit in with the current trend, as it will likely be nerfed sooner or later.

Some things I think should be considered here:
- I have no issues with people using multiple mages to farm themselves to endgame. I find it terribly boring but I think you should be appropriately rewarded for the amount of effort you put in. Why are people who APQ achieving the same amount of meso gain per hour as the farmers when all they have to do is walk around and hit a few boxes?
- Everyone enjoys the game in their own way and we should respect that - some players choose to sell leech/farm/boss as a way of reaching their goals, others prefer to farm legendary collector on all of their characters, while some others like to pap everyday and then sit in the free market and socialise. So be it.
- The amount of effort you put in should reflect in your meso gain rate/exp gain rate though

The last few updates have been extremely anti-mages who are literally meant to be the best farming class. None of the newer maps are suited to mages/bishops - almost all of Ellin, Neo Tokyo and Crimson Guardians are resistant or immune to the core elements. In one way or another we're basically forcing archmages to cap themselves at 14-15x when they can 1hit petris comfortably because there is simply no incentive to go beyond this unless you're passionate about playing your mage.
- as a starting point, why not make some NT/Ellin maps viable for mages?

There are full threads on this so I won't bother commenting on either - but - curious to know if the meso sinks actually achieved any of the desired effects. What was the original intention of these changes? (because every time Staff comment on this they keep changing their mind on why these changes were made?) Did it achieve its intended goal?

Doesn't this just make newer players want to leech themselves to bossing level more because they now have to spend more to grind?
Doesn't this then just inadvertently encourage new-start RWT where people decide they can't progress their character and proceed to purchase CS/WS/APR/gear from third party websites/apps?
Honestly I would suggest reverting these - not sure how others/Staff feel.

In any case if there is a real push against the leeching meta then I think you need to give people viable alternatives to enable bossing ability.
- The HP requirement needs to be rationalised, as has been discussed in the other thread
- There needs to be alternate methods of leveling with equal if not superior EXP gain, e.g. PQ / Questing / Grinding
- There needs to be a radical change in the way we track, detect and approach RWT particularly in early stages of the game.

As for Auf changes, personally I am against nerfing to 10 slots with everything else unchanged because a perfectly WS 10%ed Scarlion/Targa helmet for anyone that uses DEX/INT as their primary stat is overall more value for mesos (22/54 vs. 47/47) given it costs half as much for 7 more primary stat. I also agree that it's a little late to be making changes to the helmet, but I am happy to weigh in if y'all want my opinion re. what a balanced helmet would look like. Ultimately, for an untradeable item that currently costs 150b+ to make, I feel that the stats of the helmet should in itself be superior to other available ones in the game.

 

Double posting as I just saw this but I believe Joon is referring to the unmeasured time and mesos spent in building pure LUK accessories on the basis that the Auf Haven circlet would have sufficient DEX for night lords to equip their claw. Johnny mentioned the same thing. Hence, nerfing helm stats/scroll stats and refunding players who had finished their helms is not as simple as returning the WS/miracle scrolls involved.

 

Just curious, does this refer to bans for RWT, and account sharing, i.e. permanent for that account only? Meaning players who rwted before can come back? What does it mean to have minor-moderate rwt solicitation? Not that I'm against this suggestion because I believe this could help the player base, but it is also very controversial

 

I think people who are making a joke about how they would RWT their gears would qualify as ‘minor solicitation’. Beyond this I think it generally becomes more controversial as there is generally intent to engage in RWT. In my very personal and honest opinion the players who unknowingly bought items once-off from real world sources but subsequently recognised this is not allowed and admit to this (not that there is any precedent for this) could be offered an account ban and given a second chance on a case by case basis, but this is controversial as you say and I think it’s unlikely that the current Royals culture would allow this degree of leniency.

Account sharing is a different matter - personally I think an account ban is more than enough. In the majority of circumstances I think sustained server damage from account sharing is unlikely particularly if the account(s) in question are banned, but I know very little about this from an admin side of things so people are very welcome to prove me wrong.

 

As someone who is in the midst of scrolling my 87 circlet, I really am concerned about the potential nerf on this helmet. Having spent more than a year looting a 7luk helm, and now I'm reading about all these potential nerfs, is really very demotivating on a personal level.

Is this circlet overpowered? Maybe. But it costs ~150b to make. That should mean something by itself. And also, this content is not locked out to purely NLs. In fact, anyone playing any job can potentially invest in this end game item should they put in effort to do so. Just because a few end game players, that happen to play the job Night Lord completed this item, it's now considered overpowered? Although my circlet is only 3/4 completed, it only sped up my daily auf runs by a whooping 1min or so.

I am against touching the stats and pass rate of miracle scroll as I feel that it would just make auf haven another dead content just like the newly released Ellin forest after the nerf. Remember when Neo Tokyo was just released and the pass rate was 5% with only 1 circlet dropped? Yeah I do, no one even bothered to try for the circlet. Personally, I feel that game content should be made attractive and achievable to players for them to have a goal in the game.

What I do wish to see is developers design future game content around this end game item, be it Pink Bean, CZak, or CHT which was mentioned by others in this thread so I'm not gonna repeat them. End game players' lives matter too. All the recent updates have revolved around mid game content, while end game players are either considering quitting the server or stuck in the farm life because there's no new end game content to do.

Bottom line is, stop with the nerfs. No one likes nerfs. Instead, introduce alternatives that are comparable in terms of meso:stat ratio, be it with buffs to current content or releasing in new content. I prefer the latter.

 

I think a simple fix for the auf circlet is as simple as removing the boom% on the 60% scrolls. The mega rich can still go for the 80+ allstat. While the less rich can grind towards getting a 60+ single stat item. This gives more people a reason to go for Auf circlets. Warriors that only need STR, mages that want more Int, etc etc. I think this balances auf circlet in a way that doesn't nerf it. That boom percentage makes the 60%s quite useless.

In terms of longevity of the server. Nerfs bad. But making things worth doing, good. Add substitutes. Add content. Try to minimize nerf adjustments.

 

Just stop releasing content that suits perfectly to NLs LOL. The helm by itself has enough cons, just 2 Helm drops daily vs 4scar+4targa or from 6-10 zhelms daily, wich make harder to get an perf circlet over these 3 options, not to point that is an untradeable item and its extremely expensive. A half made circlet its better than a perfected zhelm with +10 60% , thers just a tini tiny difference of 50b investment f3......OFC it increases the difference between hyper rich ppl and regular players, but lets face it, ppl who are currently making these helms are already waaaaay ahead those players, so it doesnt matter that much. There will be a point where these items can be accesible to more and more players, nevertheless there will be some time till this community will reach that point, for now we should focus in other more important problems that the server has, because if those are not fixed, i higly doubt the server has much future.....

I dont think this would be a good idea, perf circlets does not make zhelms or scarga helms pointless because there a huge difference in terms of investment...but removing boom would cause those become pointless.....

 

scarga/zhelms would still be a stepping stone until you can get an auf helm. Auf has many obstacles such as HP, prequests, preferred level to run. From 50-175 scarga/zhelms would still be very useful and players would still get it. Not useless. Especially if you need multiple stats such as shadowers.

 

Indeed those will not become entirely pointless just because theyre lvl 50 and 80 respectively, but their relevance will undoubtly drop, you dont need to be lvl 175 to get 1, you just need to enter at lvl 146, those are lvl 130 to use..sooo, its gonna depend of points of view i guess, as someone who has soloed the entire questline twice and managed to survive once(ok,I tried 3 more times b4 that, but still..) with an unwashed bishop and using a drk as atacker, i dont think it would be that hard to survive with a 146+ washed char, and the pre quest do not justify have acces to such an easy 60+ stat helm....Boom chance is not such a bad balance tbh....maybe another reduction since 30% for 20 slots leaves little chances to not boom, but anything less than 20% chance seems kind of OP to me....

 

I apologize for my previous reply, probably due to my frustration at how demotivating the game is for the past 6 patches & how many players are moving out from the server we all love right now.
It's indeed a poor way to share my views on the importance of the coming update & economy fix.

I'd get straight to what I can share and my opinion of the Auf helmet.

-

Dex Mask, Top & bottom.

Players such as myself already have agreement on sales with buddies that are farming for the mesos to make the purchase
or even completed liquidating several gears that are irreplaceable to an extend if a nerf were to occur. example 87 dex into something lower example 47 (10slots)

These tops & bottoms are usually chaosed in such a way that Luk is +5 and have outstanding dex, completed with 10% ws, and finally fit perfectly on the dot, 150 dex to equip the DPS.
TLDR to this? Gears are custom scrolled for our end game extreme NLs that fits perfectly while equipped with example a 42 dex zhelm, is extremely difficult to come by.

Let's just say if the server remove 10 slots passed on a helmet, and make it +10 (10slots remaining) and adjust all scrolls back to 5%.
All these character would be in an awkward position until these gears are remade.

-

Funds & loans for the auf helm

Mesos right now in the server is really difficult to come by, even farming 8-10 hours daily for months and months, selling all these orbis ETCs and depleting almost all my year work leaves just to invest into CNY event barely allowed me to complete an auf helm with good luck.
I even had to liquidate @Xem0boyx RC & 14wa shoe as a loan with a due date of 1st May 2022 to simply complete this auf helmet.
Arrange sales for my 15dex mask, Top and bottom.

I believe there are other hardcore players liquidating left and right only to gamble for that few slots.

How much dedications do you need to invest, how much favors you have to burn, how many equips you have to liquidate and finally the amount irl stuff was sacrificed to finish this helmet.
This isn’t just 160bil we are looking at, this single digital item in a private server cost alittle.. too much.
Those who finished it & those who are working on it will understand.
Yet to see nerfs or adjustment to this? It will hurt. Alot.

-

Overall & Headband.

Players have already invested in gears such as Katinas / Garina which usually are quite useless. Unless to be paired to fit with this 87 stats auf helmet.
Currently, with a Garina of mine, mine is scaled to 159 dex, obtain 1 dex from somewhere and to be ready for the Lampion.

For example, the stats are adjusted into 67 all stats.
What would you advise these players to do with completed katinas/Garinas?
Their value will pummel no?

Toad headband
This requires daily relooting & active CS-ing just to get an example johnny's 12luk headband.
The amount of effort & luck required is not little.
Will we be returning to farming and buying another dex mask?
Our time invested into this supposedly BiS will probably be wasted.

-

Auf
To even get this decent setup way is too easy.
1 Se mule , 1 Bishop mule. 1 Bucc player Done.
This boss deserves to be the #2 expedition/raid on our server. #1 being Pink Bean.

My speculation, change to the next update that will improve the economy

- Auf haven will be sedding left & right instead of just one direction will make this boss harder.
- Increasing its HP = higher chance of death & mistakes.
- additional fine tuning for its difficulty

Will we actually see auf haven turn into a raid after update 72?
The server's playerbase will redirect itself forward towards completing a auf helmet (800HP & 87 All stats) instead of 60% ws zak helmet as a progression meta.
Then after the auf helm is completed to invest in timeless equipment sets.

Auf Helmet
This helmet is indeed strong, Is it bad for the server? I don't think so. I actually think its a good game design.
Simply leave it as it is, and use it as a opportunity to move on from our current stale metagame of spending 20bil in a single weapon atk upgrade.

This is the unique selling point of this helm afterall.
If anything, it just screams, “Get ready players! There will be more challenging content to come.”

Serverwide HP buff for unwashed players to 9.5k
There should be a large influx of new players + welcome back covid lockdowns, you guys should really advertise this change. Hard.
2000 players once again? I sincerely hope so.
Existing players will probably make use of this opportunity to remake 30k characters after this change.
Prices of books might increase, but not a lot.


Improve Anniversary event into a farming event
Please make candles tradable again with a decent drop rate from monsters.
Not red envelope drop rates please.
New end game rewards, the anni earrings used to be such a high-demand item, yet it's just no much different than a weak EP now.

This will make all players go wild & boost your veteran’s morale for example 14 days.
Random idea, might be good, might be horrible, might also be too late.
Similar to witch hats, but a Royal's birthday event specialty earring that is a competitive option against the element pierce that only comes once a year.

2 all stats, 5 slots untradeable earrings.
Tradable anniversary earring chaos scrolls. 100% pass rate. X amount of Candles each.

Here you go a scroll with a Maple Leaf instead of a ? in the middle & a white alternative.
Please use them if it fits.

Thank you for your reply, i strongly believe update 72 will be the turning point of royals once again, I've seen royals suddenly reviving from similar situations like this such as Christmas 2017.
To ignite the server back into something lively once again, sacrifices have to be made. I'm sure our player base is okay May 38th if your team needs more time.

 

Honestly, the broken thing about auf helmet is mainly the huge amount of investment of time and mesos needed to put into an untradeable item. Players that can actually afford going for perfect ones are highly likely extremely funded endgame players with multiple 200 characters or RWTers. Now, if you had multiple characters, wouldn't it suck to spend that much monetary investment & time on an untradeable on one character? My point is, auf haven circlet kinda forces these players to just focus on one character, reducing their motivation to play their other characters, given the amount of investment needed. And if you are a player that aspires to own a perfect auf helmet but isn't really funded, i guess you can only dream about it or spend ungodly amount of hours for it . Also, with auf helmet around, there's no variety in end game helmet choices anymore. At least for pendants, there's some players going for MON, some players going for HTP, but for helmet end game, there's only really auf helmet, effectively reducing diversity as it removes zak / scar/ targa / pilgrim helmet relevance as an end game helm, which imo, makes the game one dimensional at least in the context of endgame.

Even though I don't advocate nerfing auf helmet any longer, for what it's worth, ill just say what i think should have been done to balance auf helmet.
- 20 slots of white scrolling shouldn't be a thing, it's ridiculous no matter how i look at it. Should be down to 3 slots with 15 base stats with godly system.
- Auf helmet scrolls should have been made untradeable, and only attainable through quest, like after slaying auf haven 5 times, you can turn in a quest to receive a auf helmet scroll.
- The scroll is 100% success rate, and works like chaos scrolls except its -10 to +10.

This would see that with enough grind, auf helmet is easily the best helmet with best case scenario +50 to all stats. Some players might end up with 20 dex 50 luk auf helmet or 50 dex 20 luk auf helmet and we would see more gear diversity as they will need to tweak their gearset depending on the rolls of their auf helms. It is also well within reach to any player in the game, and also leaves potential for other helms to shine if people prefer grinding other bosses or already have a godly alternate helmet. Then, there's the issue of auf helmet being the only viable option for warriors/buccs/thieves, this can be remedied by introducing helmet for str/luk scrolls? Just my two cents.

 

For what it's worth, most people on other servers (the potential playerbase) dislike Royals for 4 reasons in particular, HP washing, Leeching, the Staff/Rules & enforcement, and lack of content. So if you want to draw in new players, those would be the things to focus on above everything else.

 

This also push other people to try other servers because of friends banned for "joking about RWT" with no mercy or some guy who didn't knew about voting rules in here (since in other servers you can vote more than once a day as I know now that I'm trying a new server) and got a perma ban because voted twice a day for a few weeks. I think this server needs to remove some perma bans and also make some other account ban instead of a drastic "You are not welcome here as a person, nor your roommate is, or your mom, nobody's in your cyber/school/house/work is welcome here because you voted twice yesterday so you all get out of here" and that's one of the reasons why the server next door is catching up many of royal's players.

 

One way that MS always used to improve longevity of the game was to add fresh servers (Scania->Bera->Broa...). Has this been considered? Maybe it's time.

 

100% agree and have thought this since release. Making the 60% able to boom makes the helmet a gimmicky "feast or famine" equip, where you're either in the top 10% of wealthy players who can throw down 150b to perfect it or you're not and it's completely pointless.

I would even go as far to say that the 60% should add 4 to a single stat as opposed to their current value of 3. As of now, if one were to simply throw 20 60% Auf scrolls at an average helm (2 all stat), the expected result would be hitting 12 scrolls, which equates to +36 to a single stat. Adding in the 4 total stat in the helm, you come out with a 40 stat helm, which is pretty garbage considering the amount of effort to do all that when you can loot 30-40 stat clean Zhelm/Scarga helms for minimal investment. I think allowing the Auf helm to be an incremental step in a player's progression and not requiring WS to be worthwhile is a good move, personally.

 

Strong disagree with +4 single stat on top of no boom. What’s the point of scrolling all 20 slots with miracle scrolls then? Just get enough secondary stats and WS + 60% the rest

As for changing the 60% scroll to no boom, this seems like mostly a buff to classes with no or low secondary stat requirements, which is not crazy. It does feel a bit strong for warriors though (and mages).

 

Thats a good thing though. That's a very small buff for a group of classes that arent overpowered.

Edit. Idk, maybe +4 is pretty good after reading @UrbanJuggernaut explanation.

 

Well, the point of scrolling with miracles would be the 80+secondary stat of course, freeing up other equips to be scrolled for main stat which in turn provides more damage. Might be extra strong for classes that don't need a secondary stat like Warriors and Mages like you said, but they could use the boost tbh.

I'll say it again, an average Auf helm scrolled with the current 60%s only gives 40-50 stats, compared with average Zhelm/Scarga which come 30-40+ stat clean and are leaps and bounds more available than an Auf helm. Leaving this as is, even with removing the boom, still relegates the Auf helm to a gimmicky 80 stat meme helm that's only available to those with tens-hundreds of B coins to perfect it. Given the very high level requirement, length of the prequests and boss run itself, high HP requirement, difficulty in even obtaining 20 Auf 60%s through running/buying, I'd expect a better reward than a piece of junk that requires a further 100b to be worthwhile.

I think this is a big part of why Auf isn't very popular, except among small cliques of extremely wealthy players with the means to make the helm useful, and has failed to become the "new endgame", as most players just don't even bother with it. For a vast majority of the playerbase, there is just no reward, as opposed to something like HT which has greater benefits to a wider audience. Its a shame because Neo Tokyo is easily some of the best content released on Royals imo.

 

When I started on Mar 23 this year on this server there were about 2k-2.2k active members a day. That number is decreasing slowly to the point I see only 1.1k active a day on dead hours and 1.5k on average, rarely they get up to 1.9-2k. I'm no mathematician expert here but something tells me that the playerbase is slowly but constantly dropping. On one side I see problematic bans due to major vote abuse. I feel the voting system doesn't promote active play since anybody can save NX for whatever amonut of time and get a fresh start with huge resources with just voting once per day. If you guys want to increase your playerbase you should add stuff that encourages active/daily play instead of logging once a day just to get that damn vote. Which leads to #2 and #3 which are Vote2Win and VoteAbuse. No game should ever let you give you an easy income without even actively engaging the game at least some hours a day. Problem #3 which is the vote abuse rule not being consistent. What warrant a permanent ban? Exceeding 8k daily? 80k weekly? 320k monthly? Why does that even matter? Permanently banned accounts are non-refundable which means that once the abuser gets the ban they lose EVERYTHING. There is no specific limit and this seems to be really subjective rather than objective but the best thing to get rid of vote abuse is to removing this nonsense of Vote2Win System and instead make player win their stuff by ACTUALLY PLAYING THE FREAKING GAME. Point #4 No new content, they just keep fixing minor bugs and even major critical bugs like Pet AutoHP/MP not healing sometimes should be priority one and they do nothing to fix them. Random dc's kept happening at Boss runs (Zakum, HT), and even at event rooms like the Maple Tree PQ which the game will randomly crash and sometimes giving you random errors or even worse you don't get any error message at all to file in a report bug. Problem #5 Ban Evasion. I know. This is gonna sound like heresy. It is. I do believe there is good people just like there is bad people. Permanently banning players when they commit major infractions leads them to two choices: Abandon the server or ban evading. Since they are no longer welcome to the server, it is not unreasonable for them to go to another server, but in the case they still engage this server, they no longer have a reason to obey the rules because the act of Ban Evading will warrant another permanent ban regardless of if they behave well in their ban evade attempt. This should not be like that. Not all vote abusers will be repeat offenders, much like RWTers or those people that claim to have been jokingly hacking or whatever and they get banned anyways. By all means their account should be banned because they broke the rules and they deserve their bans. But what if instead of warranting permabans on everyone who did a major infraction, you could give them a second chance? Those that are not *REPEAT OFFENDERS*, will appreciate this as they can have one more chance to play the game without fear of being permabanned again once they get caught. Repeat offenders don't get affected at all because they will keep making more accounts and will do whatever they can to evade the ban and don't get caught until someone figures out who it is and reports them. I think this ban evasion rule is silly and players should be allowed to start from scratch. If you find the same dude breaking the rules twice despite being given another chance, then yeah, I guess they should be permanently banned. But while Ban Evasion is there to prevent those banned players from coming back, this affect also legit people who messed up, but it specially affects them because those are the people that either are forced to ban evade and try to behave good to only get caught ban evading and gets kicked again. Repeat offenders like hackers who grinds mesos from illegit sources don't care about the rules and will keep breaking the rules regardless of how many times they get banned, it's like business for them and this RWT stuff should be fighted in some other way because I don't think that is really working at all.

Note to reader: I'm playing and I'm somewhat lazy to finish this properly so It may look messed up, will try to reduce this walltext post to something more readable.