Make HeRo more sexy

[flamehaze628]

Hi i been playing here on and off for about 2 years, and recently with leaving of some veterans the server seem kinda...dead. I don't know about any other period, but the population is the lowest compare to all the periods i were active on the server.

Anyway i just want suggest perhaps 2 major change to server to attract and retain new players.

HeRO job changer:
This perhaps has been brought up before but of all the newbies i met over the year, 9 out of 10 are disappointed when i told them server don't have job changer and they have to do job quest. This in my opinion is a newbie killer.

Rates:
Well i don't have much of a case with the top 3 low rate right now being 5x, but if they were increased to 7x ~ 10x base/job exp i think it can attract more people who simply don't have time to grind with real life obligation, or those who found mid-rate too easy but 5x too hard. It also encourage people to create more characters without having to think too hard about grinding again.

Just my opinion.

[former-GM-Pixel]

I think both suggestions have been made in the past, if I remember correct most of the GM team, as well as the players didn't want those type of changes.

Population is usually going up and down, there are always time periods where people are less active or some people leaving. I agree with you that the population seems a bit lower then usual but i guess we should also keep in mind that this is an old game. A lot of the veterans who have played for years have outgrown this game, not to mention a lot of people are having their finals so they have to focus their attention on school now.

Of course its sad to see them go but the least we can do is trying to get people to keep playing here and also invite friends and others over We are currently trying to promote players to get people to join the server, you can find more information in this topic.

Daily voting and leaving a review are also good ways to attract more people to the server.

Thanks for the suggestions! Just so you know I am only stating what i remember and what is my own opinion, I do not speak for the whole GM team

[formerGM-Lassander]

Disclaimer:
The views in the following message are mine, and do not reflect the opinions of the HeRO staff as a whole, sometimes my ideas are bad so they should be taken as just ideas. You may not even want to read it as they probably wont matter in the long run.


I actually have always agreed with the idea of adding some sort of job changer to HeRO, These days it's next to impossible to find servers without them and there is a good reason, veterans to the game have run all the quests at least once, and don't want to do it again, by not having a job changer it provides a very early gate to new players and turns a lot of people away before they see the great features HeRO has to offer, new servers these days are a dime a dozen and rather then hold out and see, most people would rather just go there. I'm not saying that HeRO should adopt the same style of job changer as everywhere else, but some alternative to the quests would be nice.

As for rates, although it is arguable that higher rates would mean more players, new servers these days are a dime a dozen and in a couple months there may be 3 or 4 servers with the same rates as whatever we change it to. Its harder to drop rates then it is to raise them, and we would eventually get stuck in an upward spiral. Not to mention a lot of servers have floating rates and they float into that range anyway.

[Session]

It would be nice to see an option to do either the job quests or not. For example, if you were to do the thief quest over simply using the job npc [Which, could have it's own set of requirements a la the reset-man], you may earn yourself some neat thief-specific gear. Same would go towards second classes, if it wasn't too big of a hassle to insert. Thus making it alluring towards new players to do the quests,??to experience them especially if they never had before.

That was my particular experience. Being forced to do the job quests after being used to never even knowing they existed, I somewhat enjoyed them. [Although I hate questing in this game, for the most part] It'd be the same experience for most high rate/midrate people that come here looking for something new, fresh, and challenging.

Part of the allure of HeRo has always been that it does have a certain amount of dedication needed, as well as time and effort. Whether it was being poor and walking/using kafra to towns a long while back, or having a hard time with some access quest- it required more than most other servers demanded.


What would be really cool is if every account made, the first oh...three characters on it required job quests. people might pick an "easy" quest to do three times, before playing though, so eh. But that'd be their choice.

There are what, 12 slots per account? 9? It'd get new players into the "feel" of HeRo, while promising things to be a little less tedious after, when they decide "I feel like making a Crusader, never played one before!" as their fourth toon.

Like myself, I have a sage and gunslinger on my main account that are 8x. I could easily retrain them again, yes, but I severely don't want to do the job quests again. So they keep space on my main acc, until some rainy day I play them again.

It'd certainly secure HeRo as the niche challenging lowrate server, while also inviting more attention to it for having the option to do some custom quest to change jobs.


Knowing HeRo's team, they could come up with something exciting and unique as a custom job-changer, I bet.

[azurerogue]

I'm not sure eliminating the job changer is necessary. It's not really particularly tedious, though if people really clamor for it I wouldn't object. I personally think the job change quests are almost interesting (even after doing them so many times). If we eliminate a feature because people have done it a lot and don't enjoy it as much anymore then we should eliminate leveling (not being sarcastic). This game was built on a business model meant to keep subscribing players invested for as long as possible while still giving returns (example: the reason for the exponential-like increase in both experience required and power based on stats - but a linear increase in stats themselves). That's not as important of a feature for a free server.

But changing the rates? Probably not really necessary, but I would support it. I would rather see an item rate change if anything. I've never totally understood keeping item rates under experience rates. I know that it keeps items from flooding onto the server, but it also increases the above-mentioned "grindy-ness."

Just my opinions.

[Egggz]

job changer would be nice

maybe hero is lacking sexy content
I saw 1 server had a gambling system with 3-carat diamonds, this is kinda like hatter but you can buy the diamonds, it would be an interesting money sink
I heard rumors of a sexier BG, that might draw people, if it turns out awesome we can brag about it on a RMS review and that should bring us more ppl
for now making a 1v1 BG possible would help bridge the gap between new players and veterans

The rates are fine, changing a server's rates this late in the game could be disastrous

[Adrillf]

I don't see the problem with having to do the quest for jobs. None of them are too difficult, and worst case scenario you go onto RMS ( http://ratemyserver.net/quest_db.php?type=60000 ) and look at their complete walkthrough to every single quest including the insanely difficult sage quiz. All in all, they're not that difficult, and trying to get the items and stuff required for the job quests are actually helpful for new players. If you're a veteran player, store stuff in Kafra, pull it out on your new account and skip the item gathering on your new character.
I don't get what the problem is with the quests, they're not that hard. What's so difficult about them? The part where you have to walk to 5 NPC's and spam enter as they talk to you? The part where you have to walk down a hallway without falling into a hole? Or the impossible quest of walking down a hallway and not accepting bribes from fake monsters? Maybe killing mushrooms, or the thought of delivering a package and remembering 4 numbers is just too much for you. If that's the case, then I can understand your argument, but if that's the case then I wish you the best of luck when trying to do any quest (especially the custom) in the game.??

As for rates, part of the reason that people play low rate servers is because of the low rates. If we wanted to play a higher rate server, we would move to that server. I like Albus' idea of raising up drop rates to exp rates, but that's about as crazy as I would get with playing with the rates of anything on the server.

[yacsef]

Job changing quests are far from a pain to do. As a RO beginner, i really enjoyed doing them, deleting this feature may be a bad idea.

And for most of the people at the moment, it's exam time! It's pretty normal that we have a bit less people online. Don't worry, i think most people will come back after their finals.

[formerGM-Lassander]

I don't think anyone said delete them, the suggestion was for an alternative. As it stands most RO players wont put up with no job changer, you may say from this thread that clearly there are some people who like job quests, but they're already here. When it comes to pulling in new players, you don't want them to be disenfranchised by something right off the bat. Most people won't read the wiki/forums to see what other features HeRO has, we get a lot of players who we see in game once, they realise there is no job changer and leave.

If you remember back when those random people did a review of HeRO it was one of the things they noted as being really weird not in a good way, and I think you'd get that response from most people outside the HeRO bubble.

For HeRO's population to actually jump up there'll have to be a lot of things changed to attract people from outside HeRO but inside the RO community. Some of these changes are already in the works, this is another one that could be beneficial. I don't think anyone thinks the job change quests are hard, that's not the issue, they're tedious and most players from within the RO community outside HeRO wont actually be patient enough to see HeRO beyond the fact they have to do the first job quest.

Now, what could we do to make job quests more appealing to existing players and new players who actually want to do them? Increase the reward, right now it's terrible. Make changing from first to second job on a job changer cost zeny, but not so much as a new player couldn't find a way to afford it, say 250k. Force people who didn't do the quests on their way to trans do the quest post trans, by that point they've seen what HeRO has to offer and can make a better informed choice as to if they should stay or not.

[azurerogue]

Even 250k feels high to me. If we're adding job changer as a feature that is meant to bypass these quests because they are not something all players enjoy then (in my opinion) it should be free for both first and second jobs (maybe still require people to do the transcending part) but if you CHOOSE to do the job quests I agree that increasing the rewards would be a good way to make people want to do them. Although I suppose the fee would nicely balance out the potential rewards added to the server for people who actually do the quests.