Quote:
Originally Posted by HippoNipple
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But the whole point is that people are not on this server. It is one of the lowest population servers there is. There are more people playing several of the standard servers. This server potential is 20x greater then what it has realized. Some people may be to harsh on this server, we all like things about it, but you are a fan boy that is stubborn and in denial.
Dragon loot has nothing to do with pvp kills, not sure why you brought that up.
Exp rate is not good on this server, I don't care what you say it is and everyone else agrees.
Two boxing allows people to do content they can't do alone and with a small population. It never has a place in raiding or PvP other then a couple buffs maybe. It doesn't replace people. At max level 2 boxing in PvP will just get you killed.
PvP does need a sting. It also needs a reward. As I mentioned in my post the current system is neutral/lose. Having pvp stats and global recognition is a great way to do that. If you want it hardcore, then some sort of item loot. Exp penalty is not a good system. Putting up items in PvP fight is fun, putting up time grinding on mobs is boring, frustrating, with no reward for the winner. Also, no one even knows of your victory since there are only 20 people on in the server. Empty, pointless, frustrating.
The server has all the things a server needs to be great that takes time, effort and talent. It is missing some easy, key aspects though. You can say it is perfect all you want but that shit box LoZ with all its problems, has 5x as many players on it because of insight on what is fun in a game. If you want to say there are 2 boxers on it, then you can say it has 3x as many people.
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What this guy is saying is correct.
Positive changes were made on R99 insofar as gameplay mechanics go. Unfortunately, the holes were being patched when the ship was already 80% into the water. Communication/transparency has never really existed here outside of Null being open about the resist system. When the server was hemorrhaging players daily from 300 concurrent (January'ish), was when it needed that most.
There were a couple of very good patches out of the blue (I think Feb and April), but there has never been any management of expectation/direction or open dialogue with the players.
This isn't to say that we're entitled to any of that on a free server, but I'm bringing it up because I think it's fundamental to success with any attempted red server. With a blue server, you can get away with going hands-off. What's the worse that's going to happen -- an item drop isn't in or something? Ice comet does slightly too much damage to NPCs?
Red is a different ballgame. It's volatile as hell. Things that would be minor on blue are major on red. Snare landing too much, for example. Kind of a big deal on red. A weapon proc landing too much or bugged - same thing. Rechargeable items. Red also isn't blue where the social aspect of the game can function as well at relatively lower populations (EC hub). The point I'm making here is that red requires more oversight by nature. The player experience is much more fragile, and people will just quit if things go unchecked for too long.
One last thing: several of you keep bringing up the exp rate. Lemme say something about that: I personally don't give a
fuck whether the exp rate is 2000% or 2% of what was "classic". The only thing that has ever mattered to me was that I'm able to supplement my PvE with more-than-equal amounts of PvP. That is "classic red" in its purest form, and that was not possible for me to do on this server when I played (not even close). I spent ~10% of my overall playtime on pvp, if that. Classic red was getting jumped by five guys right when you dinged level 6. Here, you were usually looking at dozens of hours of grinding and you'd be lucky to encounter more than a few players to fight. This is why I maintain that servers like VZTZ and LoZ are truer to classic 1999 red servers than this one currently is.
They increased the exp rate here? Great. Double that. Then double that again. Take the top levels (51-60, or 40-50 -- whatever) and load up the classic grind there. Hell, make it slower. I proposed this months ago. They sort of implemented it with the scaling exp rate, but it wasn't nearly enough. LoZ did this right. 51-60 is classic slow-as-fuck. 1-50 is a breeze. No one gives a damn about solo grinding 1-50 in empty low-mid level zones. It's a conscious design decision that makes perfect sense. Daxum didn't say "you know what I think I'll do here with this red server? Make it really
EZ" with VZTZ in 2007. He realized that a server like this wasn't going to have anywhere near the volume of players as what the Zek servers on live did, so he'd have to make adjustments to provide an environment which closely resembled that. Hotzones: same thing. LoZ has them. They work exactly as you'd expect - it makes a low pop server so much better and more "classic" when the # of players in zones is more than single digits.