Developer’s notes about v328 part II

The Player Experience

We have been reviewing the feedback from the community in regards to how the feeling and speed of play has been changed with the recent experience changes. With the recent feedback regarding the changes, we quickly understood a different approach was needed. So we viewed the player experience in terms of time and feeling of accomplishment and whether it felt rewarding or not as many of you gave a strong opinion on the matter. Whether it felt worthwhile or not was a reoccurring source of opinion.

In regards to the experience changes, the initial update was an admitted “oops” on our part as we now look back and see that there were several things we did to counter situations that yielded too much experience, which after those aspects were addressed, the added global experience reduction was caused a much harsher reduction than intended. Now having some mechanics to prevent the situations which were causing the high rates, we took a review of the experience yields in a new light, taking the new monster difficulty in to play as well as the removal of the bad situations. Experience is going to end up being increased above what the rates were before the initial update was put in place. Because monsters take a little longer to kill, the experience rate per minute, hour, overall was reduced. So to help give back that lost time and put down a bit of the feeling of extreme grinding, the new rates we are looking to implement will be in fact, greater than before per kill. But with the change of monster difficulty, should bring it close to the feeling of speed than before.

Now even with this, we did want to speed up some of the introduction to game play as well both by monster experience and questing. We are able to immediately affect monster experience, so that is being implemented in the near future. The introduction to ROSE is going to be overhauled and designed so that a new player can quickly be introduced to many of the fun features ROSE has to offer and get them in to the more interesting aspects of game play sooner.

For the high level, near end game content players, we also have plans on making new repeatable content that you can enjoy while we continue to create expanding content in the future as well. All this will take time to create, though we work as quickly as we can to complete it we hope to also bring out smaller updates on the way to help create interesting content for all.

1 ~ 50 rate of leveling	1~220 rate of leveling

Bonus Stats

We have heard and understand many complaints in regards to the recent changes to bonus stats. Something we wish to explain further is why we targeted bonus stats, what the intention, considerations and design was and the end goal.

First, why we targeted bonus stats, is because the community has been long asking for game balance and we have witnessed many complaints and situations within game play that have undesired results. This was generally accomplished by stacking a single type of bonus stat. Because of how much was being given through bonus stats depending on some situations or conditions of level range, some players were significantly stronger, to the point of surpassing higher levels monsters or players.

We like the idea of players being able to gain strength, but how much was something that we as a development team didn’t actually know. Because we have taken over development from a previous team, there are still aspects of design to ROSE that we are discovering no longer apply to our current style and mechanics to game play. There have also been standards that we have established internally in regards to game play so when we create new content, we have guidelines to follow so that the content feels more consistent remains enjoyable. The idea of bonus stats we have is that they strengthen a character to an extent. Because many of these values are static, they increase as higher level ranges are reached so that the benefit continues to remain on the same scale of strength increase. However we also saw that certain types of bonus stats were completely undesired. One reason we found behind why, were they did not give the same impact that other stat types gave. For example, 100 HP does not have the same impact as 10 accuracy. Depending on level, it became even more of an issue. So what we did was create a means to see the rate each type of stat would naturally generate from a player as they leveled. The basis of this was that if 1 point of STR, generated X amount of HP, 1 point of CON generates X amount of accuracy and thus at minimal, these values would be of equal value. We understand that even with this, some stats are more valued because of the style of game play than others.

At this point, it becomes your decision, the player, what style of game play to choose, the build of a character you create and enjoy, as well as the skills and passives that enhance those bonuses further. That 100 HP for a Soldier gives more because of passives that boost HP. However, for a class like a Muse or Dealer, who aren’t primarily strength focused, that 100 HP could mean more than they would get naturally. To us, this was a manner of whether a player would decide to focus on stats that their class is strong with and designed for, or to cover for some weaknesses the class may have.

If we only gave stats that offered a faster way to kill, there would be a loss to strategy of game play when faced with unique builds. What we want is for there to be more than a single build, so there can be a little more diversity between classes and builds. The intended effect is that because the bonus stats are closely matching in how they are generated, that class passives and builds would further separate the value of those stats depending on class and build. We understand that there are still issues of balance needed to be addressed between classes, but we believe that those issues are now located between passives. We do have it in mind to conduct an overview of class balance, because even now we hear complaints regarding certain classes being overpowered, un-killable or dominant above all.

Item Drops

Firstly, we would like to acknowledge the strong feedback of complaint over “low level” items, dropping in “high level” areas. This was an intention of the new drop design that items that dropped were more relevant to the area and level range associated to.

Not to ignore the issue of grey and such powders dropping in Orlo, that was not intended and will be addressed as quickly as possible along with any other drops that may be found to be incorrectly associated. But to expand on this topic, some items are not associated to level, in fact some items are level-less. Catalysts have no level association to them. They are useful to all ranges of players because of their effect towards success with refining.

Chemicals were given a similar treatment so that new and beginning players would have the ability to become part of the economy with the aspect of high level players purchasing common chemicals for the low tier, easier gems.

To go further behind the new design intentions, we have made some very distinguishing factors in regards to the types of drops.

Common drops are based on the area, which contain items like the HP & MP boosters, basic crafting materials, a couple of the lowest quality chemicals and a couple items that could be used for selling to NPCs for a zulie. This tier of drop is always going to be based on the map that you’re on. Simple basic monsters are going to have a high rate of yielding items from this category, as they are the most abundant in-game. These types of monsters would be used to farm for crafting materials most commonly. The higher tiers of drop categories are based on the monster itself and from these categories the items will always be consistent from that monster, if an item drop rolls from this list.

Uncommon drops, being based on the monster are less frequent than the common group, especially the basic simple monster types. As a monster becomes more difficult, such as a leader, the uncommon group becomes more frequently accessed and the common group less. Captains and higher don’t access the common group, but have much higher rates are the uncommon and even rare and ultra rare. Uncommon drops consist of typically basic equipment for a class, the simple jewelry, slightly better chemicals than would be found in the common group, Mythril Drill, standard refine materials (bindrunes, talismans, apotropes).

Rare drops begin with Leader types, which contain basic weapons, blue armors, Orihalcon Drill, better catalysts and chemicals, rare refines (Ancient Scarab, Protective Amulet, Mystic Charm) .

Ultra Rare drops begin with Captains and consist of things like blue weapons, Adamantium Drill and higher quality catalysts and chemicals.

Epic drops are limited to only kings and bosses, but at a low rate. Items within this category consist of items like the latest epic weapons and other such armors and equipment as they are created, the Aurum Drill, the highest quality catalysts and chemicals and items along the level of high desire and impact to game play.

It is a lot to take in, but what we were aiming for was a simple system when experienced within game play and altering the expectation that when you fight a harder monster, you have a chances at better drops. And how we are setting up monsters is in a similar manner, where their natural difference in strengths is what sets their drop rates.

The basic types such as Guard, Fighter, Warrior, Ranger, Hunter, Magician would have a high rate of common, low rate of uncommon.

The leader types would have a low rate of common, high rate of uncommon and a low chance of rare.

Captain types would have a high rate of uncommon, low-mid chance of rare and low chance of ultra rare.

Sub-Boss types would have a mild rate of uncommon, mid-low chance of rare and low-mid chance of ultra rare.

Boss / Kings would give you your best chance at rare, ultra rare and begins the low chance of epic above all the other types of monsters.

On top of all this, the leader, captain, sub-boss and kings have been also given styles, which we hope to further help players identify with in-game when hunting for certain types of equipment. When you want to hunt for specific equipment, you’ll want to hunt certain types of monsters

The monster type will affect the type of class equipment that will drop from them. This is encompassing to all monsters:

	Guard types drop equipment for :	Soldier / Muse
	Fighter types drop equipment for :	Soldier / Hawker
	Warrior types drop equipment for :	Soldier / Dealer
	Ranger types drop equipment for :	Hawker / Dealer
	Hunter types drop equipment for :	Hawker / Muse
	Magician types drop equipment for :	Muse / Dealer

Leaders, Captains, Sub-Bosses and Bosses all have these basic types associated to them, which was said earlier is planned to be updated in-game so that players can see their basic associated types, in addition to their Leader, Captain, Sub-Boss and Boss status.

The experience updates will happen all at once across all areas and levels, but the drop updates will continue at weekly intervals starting at the highest leveled areas and migrating down to encompass all areas of ROSE. We are expecting to be done with the drop updates by early April if all goes smoothly.