What do you think will make heRO better?

[Trapper]

I Don't Think there is no need remove fish or nerf it.
Though it should be blocked in pvp and woes.
Although i don't pvp myself.
As Every Player in Hero have used fishes to lvl up.
Whoever are Giving the idea of nerfing fish.
I wanna ask 1 thing.
Didn't u use fishes to lvl up?.
No offence to any Players.

[GM-Ayu]

Sigh, didn't really want a 2nd great wall of china, but meh...


WALL OF TEXT ALERT



1. Fish is 'necessary'

.
Whoever are Giving the idea of nerfing fish.
I wanna ask 1 thing.
Didn't u use fishes to lvl up?.

No, I honestly didn't for lvling up.

I got 80 int on my hunter and used the bwing/healer method to spam DS fast enough that I scared half of the map away from me in moscovia. Then terrorized aliza (and god punished me with 40 aliza doll in my storage) using 18% sp regen bonus equipment along with a rudra to self heal. Somewhere there used the zeny there to buy the earth deleter card, which became my new source of sp fuel for my sniper. Before that, I used a SL and Priest, both classes that got no obvious problems with SP, to establish my economic foundations to fund a monk, who grinded at sleeper (the "hill wind of the day") for more zeny. How did monk get SP? Warp and teleport myself whenever SP is out.

All characters *for me* are carefully planned and chosen to avoid SP problems. You see me play my knight least, because there is no way to avoid the SP issue (I played 2h knight, which costs the least SP as the only SP usage is 2h quicken).

Point isn't to brag. The point is: there are certainly 'methods' to show that fish isn't a 'necessity' while not being broke from buying pots, cause with careful character planning, you bypass both. However, the problem to me is this: how is a newer player suppose to know this? See later on in this post.


With that said, are we purging fish out of server entirely?

We did *consider* this, and you can ask Mystra any time over the past 3 years that it'll always be his position. So, GM isn't "blind" to the issue. I personally consider that radical, and honestly why is there a division that "either the pot goes or the fish goes!" I personally, think that with the right tweak, the two can healthily co-exist in such a manner that you *need BOTH* while achieving the goal of helping new comers with some hp/sp issue in a balanced manner. Hopefully my personal proposal for fish will be approved by rest of GM team so I can share my personal view (and explanations) of fish reformations with all of you.



///


2. WOE threads imply lack of 'research' or 'seriousness' from GM on the issue?

Seems to be an indirect accusation at the doubt of my (admittedly brief, as I only judge by forum/irc channel activites and didn't download their client to try their server for few days or what not) reviews over other server and their WoE. If it's pinpointed to the fact that a forum is 'necessary' to have flame-baits and trolls to promote competition, then the counter-example is why does RMS have so much demands for civility and maturity in server as well. Few other recent reviews in servers in RMS spend part of their precious 500 character to talk about problems of 'forum trolls' lately as a direct reason of deduction of their community score. If the two aspect of competition and forum-flaming must be co-exist, then there's certainly a lack of evidence for this according to those 'search for review' or server reviews.

I don't think a lack of dedicated thread is any reason or explanation why woe is at the state that it is now. I think that it's other reasons.

Instead, those who claim to be well versed in woe, pvp, and how other servers handle these issues... did you look at any mechanics change? anything they did in particular to promote woe beyond the usual "forum and/or video posts"?

Did you do your "research" enough that a server tries to disable *all* healing item used directly via item usage (chemists can still use pot but only via skills) in woe in order to 'promote true skills by rewarding those familiar with armor switching'? Another server tried to revive woe by making the emp be an unique monster that is affected by skills, yet its maximum hp increase by 1% every second? Yet another server changed woe on the total opposite extreme making SP very easily accessible with free buffers, so that everyone can fight on what they consider as 'optimal position' (reasoning for them is that some guilds don't have the population for buffers and support classes... buffing NPC bridge the guild population gap for this server.) You think I haven't considered all the different approaches that other servers have tried in both theoretical and technical perspective to figure out what is a 'best WoE' if such thing existed? All of them are equally 'plausible' and fitting for some (or "woe-blasphemy) for others, depending on what's the target audience of those particular servers...

Then again, I'm just a non pvp nub who doesn't know anything in the end perhaps. I don't even know what's the effect of the mini-valk card, so maybe I really didn't look at enough servers yet. I'm certainly no great HP player that can do the work of 4 other HPs as well.

(to be fair, a self-degrading section: angry mob justice can testify to my abysmal woe performance: GM-Ayu still cannot tell the difference between a whitesmith and a creator in war yet, until after AD is already in the air far too late for pneuma to work. They both have carts and the male version of them is too similar for me to tell them apart >< Likewise for what's the difference between paladin and LK and even their non-trans if they don't use the basic palette or if the peco isn't the regular color... You'll expect a gm who is talking about woe to know who's who at least, hmm? Guess not.)


///


3. Server Rate- Defense

The simple approach is: why would you join a server with a rate beyond what your real life constraint allows you to handle? We certainly didn't lie about our rate of 5/5/3/2 (2 being quest.) If your idea is to reach the end game as soon as possible at the least time possible, the very idea of low rate isn't directed at you to begin with. It's the wrong group: wrong target audience.


Now question: should heRO change the target audience in order to get a higher population which can in turn result in more pvp/mvpers?

I think "no." You shift your target audience, you'll also lose some cause now they are no longer your target audience. It's also tough for the server as a whole to know what's the 'new focus' of the server.

PVM application: Are we trying to just rush to the end game content, or are we a server that goes on "be glad how you reached so far over such a long journey" type of thing? Remember why you decide to try a 5/5/3 in the beginning: how was it like to realize that you can actually walk from geffen to aldebaran? PVMers should have an even easier time to swallow the fact that our target audience are those who value 'the process to get to the end.'

PVP application: Do we define skill or 'worthiness' of a castle to be related to abilities only and the gear/lack-of-a-particular-gear is a 'hinderance' to the demonstration of pvp skill? I know a few players will say "yes this is exactly the problem: gear is pwning skill" but at the same time, most people will also go "O_O" if we suddenly pop up a mall with pvp end game gears so people can go right to the end to show their very best performance. This type of pvp game play isn't "stupid" or weird at all. Lots of other places have this type of approach, and their ideals are coherent with how the server runs so they really thought about this carefully. But it's just not how we run, because we don't share the same target audience. We value the extra step of reaching that point (note: we value this on varying degrees for most of our players. Some say it's too long, and Jack Skellington there obviously said it's almost bit too short. But most of our players will say that this step should exist.)


///


And done with defending heRO server, and on to self-criticism of my views of what's wrong with heRO... :


///

1. The "2" in Server Rate makes no sense

I talked about the 5 and the 3 up there. What doesn't make sense is the "2".

Is quest like, this undesirable, underhanded method of leveling or something? Compare to all the other exp method, you have quest exp at a measly 2x. The 15 minutes you use to TU 30 anubis is equal to doing the entire nameless quest series *combined*. As much as I keep ranting on and on about anubis being overly easy exp, I *could've* nerfed their exp badly as I mainly look over monster database in heRO, but I didn't and leave it be recognizing that it's gravity's choice to get 144k exp with 1 click.

If we want to emphasize and encourage people to do quest, especially custom quests, then these exp needs to go up. Why would I do quests, when I can hill wind or anubis for 15 minutes to get the same result as some lengthy annoying quests? Old quests got no exp period... I understand how exp as part of a quest is a relative new feature, and it's understandable how they don't have exp back then. heRO is a wonderful server with lots of custom quests. We often promote and is proud of all these quests of different flavors, yet sadly the 2x quest rate and lack of quest exp seems to be a contradicting policy. Given today's standard, it's time to go back and do some minor revision to give custom quests some exp bonus as well.

I did suggest this to Pandora which she said to be in consideration, but I sincerely hope that this easy implement (code is simple to reward exp in a quest) will be added very soon.

///

2. Test/Dev 'Bottleneck' Terror

It took test/dev a year to get @warp, and even now we still don't have @item. It's not so much that we don't have people testing, but we aren't really giving them much access either... they need GMs to be online to help them, and so we lose much flexibility there in how fast we can do testing.

And the 'dev' part of it... an idea has to be posted, then brainstormed by other members, then wait for pandora's seal of approval to get started, then need aki to provide potential name of variables/other resources, go through me if monsters are involved, then go to aki/cucu for uploading on test server for testing, book a time with any gm for *supervised testing* (due to problem stated above). At this stage though, usually it's a weekend cause gms do have week day jobs, and if it's a weekend, you got a 25% that there's some major event going on for that day so testing needs to shove again... after the testing, *then* you still need aki to transfer to pandora who acts as the final check/balance, and finally, it reaches the main server.

Problem: if one of the bottlenecks, which is aki, pandora, or myself, in this process is busy for whatever reason, the entire process needs to be stalled and wait.

Even typing that is a long process... imagining going through it. Careful to the extreme with so many GM gate checks, but I think losing small bits of checks in exchange for much greater speed and flexibility is overall more efficient and beneficial. It'll also be nice if the more senior staff such as GM-Aki can help out in some decision making in terms of what will be allowed and pass out those stamp of approval faster... so that not all balance changes/small additions need to be go over with Pandora all the time. It makes her crazy with 4 GM meetings setup throughout a week across timezones, so really let Aki or other senior staffs lend a hand in the decisions making processes...

(Note: we know that we can fully trust GM-Aki being the staff already in charge of all passwords and all item databases... like really, if she wants to screw you over, she doesn't need to do it by making a quest purposely faulty via test/dev. I strongly, strongly recommend GM-Aki as I'm sure she got the ability to step up for this task.)


///


Solving the quest exp and the bottleneck problem should solve a lot (not all) issues:

-faster grinding towards the top without losing focus of who our target audience is
-faster speed on fixing what's missing/broken
-greater efficiency and flexibility in gm team and test/dev development, which also indirectly points to potentially more new content
-less dependency on the current 3 GMs who are 'bottlenecks' of the system

Once you have some essentials fixed, then new players got a reason to join and try, and once you got new players, in theory there's new blood fed into the woe population as well. Like a chain reaction really... once stuff is fixed/added, then more people will join, and some of the newer people are bound to at least, not mind pvp.



However... the one thing I really don't have a clue about:


The "unsolvable": Gap in Gears

You can argue for putting AR/GR back into OCA so new players can obtain them again, whatever. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that we put it back. New players can now get AR/GR in them again.

However, old players can also get AR/GR from them too, which means they'll have *even more* as well, and that means they got spare copies to pass around to others in their guild.

You can argue for AR/GR back into OCA, but it doesn't really bridge the gap between old players and new players. If pumping stuff in doesn't help, then the next attempt is to destroy. However, is this fair to the old players though...? They worked for it legally, so why are GMs taking it away? biased against veterans of their success? If you try making access suddenly easier to saturate the vets while letting new players get it, then it's still the fairness issue of why newer players get better treatment while veterans are cast aside (and this is *already* a common criticism from heRO to GMs.) If you only increase access a little, then you don't really bridge the gap similar to the OCA/AR/GR problem.

Exp gap is naturally slowly bridged as gravity got nameless as their symbol of faster leveling. All newer maps are clear indication that leveling is meant to be faster. If we add in higher quest exp, then this in theory is worked out. However, gear gap will always seem to persist... it's a scary though when you are just working for a marc, and your guild leader goes, "go in and take down those GTBs and GRs and spanking +7 gears!" It's really intimidating thought for new players even if they do want to woe... which leads them to leave and go for a brand new server instead where such gap doesn't exist. New players also fear that even if they do put in the effort to catch up and when they get their own +7s, the vets may have upgraded their gear arsenal too and suddenly those +7s may have turned to even +9s.

*note: this isn't only about AR/GR... for example, the only owners of dragon wing bow right now are those who stayed in heRO long enough to fight Sniper mvp when Sniper doesn't mob any slaves for example. So don't think that this only applies to pvp and nothing to do with you social/pvm guilds.


And I'm sure Krim's solution to my "unsolvable" is the wipe. => NO WE AREN'T DOING THAT. The wipe is just an extreme version of destroying, which I already mentioned why you suffer the same type of unfairness issue which is what you are trying to solve with the wipe itself.

(note: wipe does have that property how fairness is reset from that moment ONWARD and that it's fair how everyone starts at the same place at exact same time again, but it doesn't answer any fairness issue to the people who are here *now* before a wipe begins. Wipe has just as much gains and flaws as other approaches.)

[Naruhodo]

Sorry, I couldn't help but add my own two cents too

Fish
Fish aren't necessary, but they are a huge help for newer players of many classes. It really helped me get through that tough patch of being brand-new to the server as a struggling combo monk with no better way to quickly and cheaply heal my hp and sp.

Now that my poor monk is a much less poor champ, I could afford to get my BS a Light Epsilon and a rare lvl4 weapon that gains 2sp per attack and 20sp per kill for certain monsters, which basically means infinite hp and sp when grinding. However if my first character was BS I don't think I would've been able to get that gear, and fish'd be a big help.

WoE and PvP are pretty much the high-end staples, where people are usually strong enough to afford to find something besides fish to rely on. So, as I said before, changing things for PvP makes sense but not so much for PvE, imo.

The Need for "Institutionalized" WoE Flaming
I personally am against a WoE Troll Board on the forums. The reason I've barely tried PvP and never thought of WoEing up to this point is that I'm not a huge fan of the trolling culture of PvP. I can have fun joke-trolling as much as anyone else, but on the forums and in-game I constantly see it toeing or crossing the line of becoming "srs"-trolling that actually insults people and causes really bad arguments. Why can't it just be a fun game and not a pissing contest?

Server Rates
As much as I loathe leveling at the point I'm at in heRO (96 Champ and 93 BS), I think the heRO rates should stay the same. heRO is a true low-rate, but we have lots of things like fish and hatter cards to make the long, hard climb to 99 a lot more fun and accessible for new players.

I thought that the increased rates they had for the heRO birthday was a really fun and interesting idea, and maybe this could be used on other occasions for short periods of time, to make events really special for players. Also, perhaps GMs could secretly choose one or two days each month to make the rates higher without telling any players, so players will always be kept on their toes anticipating and wondering about when the "lucky day" is. I think that would be a lot of fun for all players.

Gap in Gears
I actually totally agree with GR/miniboss cards having been taken out of OCAs permanently. It's a bit sad because it makes OCAs less fun, but it does make the game a lot more balanced. I guess the older players are just lucky.

Perhaps for ToH the item checker could restrict players from taking miniboss cards and MVP cards with them to ToH, so newer players who made it to 99 but didn't have the "OCA Advantage" will still have a fighting chance at ToH PvP.

For everything else though, the lucky bastards who got their GR/DR/AR cards from OCAs should still be able to use them I think because they "earned" them legally. (despite very, very cheaply )

[azurerogue]

Gap in Gears
I actually totally agree with GR/miniboss cards having been taken out of OCAs permanently. It's a bit sad because it makes OCAs less fun, but it does make the game a lot more balanced. I guess the older players are just lucky.

The only reason there's a noticeable gap in GRs between old and new players is because heRO is literally flooded with OCAs, and has been since I joined.??In a server where OCAs are only rarely obtained through events, or from MVP drops, the less than 0.3% chance that an OCA used to have of dropping an Angeling or a GR would not have been a big deal.??Since, in the past, it was not only possible, but fairly routine for players to be opening 5-10 OCAs / week (sometimes WAY more - before fishing got nerfed) the server received WAY more rare cards than would normally be expected.

The issue, in my mind, is not that AR/GR USED to be in OCAs, but how common heRO made OCAs.??And yes, adding them back in would allow older players to get more as well - I'm not saying it's a perfect solution.??But most new guilds trying to WoE will be a little disappointed to make a Creator/Champ only to find that (when they fight older guilds) nearly every other person they Asura will tank it (hyperbolic, but whatever).

[Général_Argos]

(note: wipe does have that property how fairness is reset from that moment ONWARD and that it's fair how everyone starts at the same place at exact same time again, but it doesn't answer any fairness issue to the people who are here *now* before a wipe begins. Wipe has just as much gains and flaws as other approaches.)

If you annonce the wipe long enough before the actual wipe, you will leave the players with the choice of playing knowing that their character will be wiped, or to just back away on another server.
That way you give the players the choice.
*By long term, I really mean long term-> something like 6 months.

NO WE AREN'T DOING THAT.

I won't dig old arguments in old threads in favor of the server wipe or start a third wall of china; I will only quote a famous proverbe: ?Il n'y a que les idiots qui ne changent pas d'avis?

[Naruhodo]

Would it be possible to nerf old GR cards? So that the neutral reduction is 50% instead of 75% for example? Then even old players would be motivated to try to get new, un-nerfed GR cards the hard not-cheap normal way, and it'd make things a bit more fair for newer players who never got to OCA-farm GR...

I don't know much about scripting, but from the little I know about programming in general, there's probably no simple way to single out all the "old" GR cards, so this is just a thought...

[Zaratus]

There *might* be old GR cards which were dropped from GR itself. Additionally that would be a stupid idea. People don't have only gotten GR cards from OCAs but also from buying OTHER people's GR cards. It just doesn't work to nerf old GR cards. HeRo now has a lot of GR cards and there is no way to change it without hurting the "older" players.

[Naruhodo]

So I guess we just let the imbalance stay as it is... I'm almost starting to see Krimlin's point... almost.

[GM-Ayu]

Gravity's approach to solving the GR gap (and AR gap) is holy armor and ghost armor scroll. We did consider it and unreleased version of muspel used to have armor scrolls too, but then Marc GR was honestly a moving fortress... =/ Obviously took it out at the end.

Another GM has suggested to make mini-GR or mini-AR that provides that elemental armor of some sort with customized drawback so that players can utilize them for their main function, but "it won't be as good" as real thing. On that discussion though, there is no real agreement or consensus on that idea...

[Sakurato]

....what is with people complaining about "gap of gears."

You join a 4-year-old server be ready to accept the fact that people have far better gears than you do. If you don't want to do the work, don't complain.

Even if we server wipe, inevitably we will be right back where we were before, so why bother?

A lot of the GRs now are slowly going to go away anyways now that they are taken out of out OCA. Time will fix it. Same goes for AR.

I don't understand what the huge deal with GR is anyways. I still get stripped, Froze when I switch to GR for 2 seconds to avoid asura ( I still die) and I get stripped (2 times cuz it's THAT annoying die plz azha). GR isnt the end-all kill everyone never die armor. MANY ways to get around it. Please, learn some strategy.

Revenga doesn't have 7 GRs ( I think ;O ) and they do just fine in woe. Great proof that all it takes is hard work and team work to get with the competition.

Another GM has suggested to make mini-GR or mini-AR that provides that elemental armor of some sort with customized drawback so that players can utilize them for their main function, but "it won't be as good" as real thing. On that discussion though, there is no real agreement or consensus on that idea...

I hope it stays that way. To many people already view hero as having a giant "Care bear" attitude. This would just push it over the edge. I don't understand why people just want their hands held and to be given everything.