god items discussion

[Kiaro]

Everyone STILL seems to be clinging to the idea that God items being hard to make justifies them being anyway they like. Let's take a closer look at this, because it seems to be the number one idea for people:

Either, you believe that God items are fair, or God items are fair at the low rate they will come into the server. If god items are just inherently fair (like a feather beret) then every person on the server having one will be fine. If everyone had access to megs, obviously str classes would be the predominant part of the metagame, everything would revolve around being or preventing a double meg from winning. So let's discard that. Let's say that god items in super dilution, one per server every few years is okay.

Now, note at this point even the advocates of god items are not saying the god item isn't terribly terrifying: just that it isn't BAD ENOUGH to warrant killing off. What I want to get to the heart of is, what about this dilution justifies it? Okay, I would say 'competition', but most people here seem to say 'effort'. I want to propose that all it takes to get a god item on this server is effort which is a bad thing - on a real server, it would take competition.

Firstly, effort. Imagine being trapped in a jail cell, and escaping by grinding away at the cement with a rusty spoon for 4 years (the guards are unobservant). This is the current situation with god items - slowly but surely you make your escape. No one has noticed that as time goes on, every jailmate with a spoon is going to escape, and all it takes is time. Some guilds have bigger spoons than others, but really, we're staring at inevitability. This is not a good way to hand out god items.

Alternatively, there is competition. This is like a chess grandmaster competition. Everyone knows how hard a chess grandmaster competition is, so instead I'll describe how hard RO is on a big server: Trying to keep up with how long each guild has been in each castle/gather intel on who has what god items. Forge and discard alliances as it is appropriate to get certain god items and to stop people getting certain others. You MUST get enough pieces to make a god item before the seals are open so that you at least stand a fighting chance at getting a god item and stopping rival guilds getting one. It is very hard work, and every woe you are in nigh constant combat going through a flood of consumables. This is while trying to maintain a tight well formed and gearded competitive trans guild. Only in these raging fires will a champion be forged, and the winner will have certainly earned a god item. Is there effort? Yes, but the correct KIND of effort. Competition.

Kadar slightly misses my point: I know god items wont flood the server any time soon. But is it right to have such powerful mechanics on a simple time release? It's like sitting waiting for a machine to crack a lock combinmation on a vault stacked with money for a few years then taking the prize inside. Competition is like setting up a successful business and on your merits rising above the fierce competition going around.

Hero is too small to facilitate a competition worthy of earning god items. The issue of whether or not the items would be diluted enough is almost irrelevant: Do we release we are giving out god items to people just for being on the server for a long time? It's inevitable. Even if you can hardly get your commerce off the ground, there's simply not a real level of competition. The server is split into too few guilds for the castles to create a real struggle to get god components.

Belial: Yes, the god item quest is hugely inappropriate for hero. That's why I'd not suggest including it, but without it there is a huge gap of effort lost. I mean, even if the weapons were removed the mass pvp element indeed would not exist, as you say. That is the problem with the population, and it seems to me to be the seem as WoE:SE. WoE:SE is designed for servers larger than us. Did we throw it in regardless, despite the negative impacts it'd have? No. We might have a custom modified WoE SE style event every so often, according to something Pandora posted at some point... but we recognised a feature for servers larger than us. I'd say the god items quest, and the god items themselves, are the same.

Also, no one but me seems too worried about this but I'd like to ask again:

Is no one else worried about the consequences of having a feature that gives god items on a time release function when, as hero is a growing server, it will only serve to create a barrier to woe competition that cannot be caught up in pvm? Levels, +7 gears, cards, guild co-ordination. None of this requires competiting in WoE. The current difference between LW and <insert smallest guild on the server> is a simple matter of earning zeny and gear and levelling, 40 new people could join tomorrow and, with work, usurp us all with their incredible dedication and co-ordination. God items are not like that. They require that you go to woe for a long time. Say enough players show up to turn the server from 'effort' getting god items to 'competition' earning god items. How is it fair that guilds that sat around and got spoon fed god components for playing at all should have those in the face of the competition that suddenly exists and is required to get god items, with the influx of players? (or one of the castles closes, etc etc).

That is a real game-design issue to consider, and it hardly seems excusable.

Oh and lastly, apologies to pandora. That discussion was the spark for this thread, but the kindling was already well in place. I'd heard a lot of 'well just don't talk about it' or people generally being uncomfortable talking about current states of god items and that struck me as bad. So don't think I was tring to have a go at you, that was not my intent.