Player Growth
We spent a great amount of time reviewing the rate of how the game play for ROSE was being experienced and through all that research we found that a large portion of the content within ROSE is being rushed or sped through at alarming rates we were anticipating. From a designing point of view, moving through the game’s content at such a high rate does two things. It for one, in a way, cheats the player out of being able to enjoy this beautiful world we spent the time to create and two, makes us have to rush out content just to try and keep up with the rate it is being exhausted. The rate of exhaustion hit a point where we could no longer keep up with it and causes game play to feel like nothing new is happening and becomes stale and less enjoyable.
What we have as a goal is that by slowing down the content exhaustion rate through the above explained changes, we will be replacing with new content over time. New content that we expect will restore the feeling of progression of game play but with accomplishments of questing, task completion and other new innovative ideas that have been brought up in brain storming sessions and lunch talk.
The unfortunate reality is that we weren’t able to include that replaced content, but didn’t want to put off introducing the balancing changes because we felt that it was a bit of a necessity to help start the process of slowing down content exhaustion and selfishly, buy us some time to come up with that content so when it does you can feel the rewards for going through it.
Monsters
Throughout many of the past updates, monsters have been left behind in growing with all of our updates. Players and their abilities have progressed in their growth that monsters were less and less of a challenge. When we introduced a change to combat mechanics, monsters were relatively untouched.
This caused monsters to steadily become easier and easier to defeat, as players became stronger and stronger.
It was intended back when we first made the change to mechanics that monsters were to adopt the new mechanics. Unfortunately they didn’t get the change that fully adopted new mechanics. So that’s what we’ve done with this update. We applied monster stats to the updated design of mechanics so that game play could regain some of its challenge and strategy.
So what was done and the goal of the change was to make monsters feel a little tougher because it seemed like monsters in general were pretty much pushovers. How we went about doing it was finding how a player would grow without things like refinements or bonus stats and kept it to the basic stuff like how much HP would a player have minimally if they didn’t increase stats as they leveled. Knowing a fuller range of how player growth progressed let us create a chart and use that for monsters to know what we’re putting you up against. Now we wanted to make combat feel more like combat and not a boring chore of pick a target, push a button, pick a target, push a button. What we were looking to accomplish is that as a player, you would need to pay at least a little attention to what’s going on or it could have a bad outcome.
Situations we wanted to start seeing was, when you get mobbed unexpectedly that you feel the pressure and have to make the decision to stay and fight it out or run and regroup yourself to try again.
Ultimately we wanted to see combat mean something again and make it a game, not a chore or some mundane process that had no excitement or challenge to overcome.
Monster Experience was reduced because that is ultimately one of the major deciding factors behind how fast a player is able to progress through levels and game play. The initial amount of experience that was cut was immediately unappreciated, which we were expecting because we knew it was a pretty nasty cut. But as explained in a further topic, we have the intention of replacing much of that loss to the immediate gain from monsters and putting it in to questing. Unfortunately we found ourselves unable to provide that content in time to meet the release of the change. The reason why we went ahead with the implementation before that content was ready to be available was because in the grader scheme of things, content is still being exhausted too quickly and for the greater good of the long term life of ROSE, slowing that down now would be better for the future of ROSE.
Drops
Over the course of the year, we noticed that many items that were intended to be amongst the rare, such as blue items, were being obtained at a much higher rate than we would have liked to see. The rates blue equipment was dropping at caused them to be less special, to the point they were almost normal. The idea of rare was lost.
To address this, we took a wider look at how items were obtained, their use and effect to game play and what kind of ideal design structure we felt could let players enjoy casual play, but still reward those who wished to hunt for the best or parties who take on larger challenges.
The goal for the drop system was to make items that were seen as higher desired or game impacting, to be rarer than the less impacted or desired items. There was also the consideration for new players who may want to partake in some of these aspects of game play but were not yet able to because most of these items were only obtainable in higher level areas. Also, something that was kept in consideration behind it was a hated concept of the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, or in our case, the strong get richer and the richer get stronger. With how the ability to farm and gain items was, it left little room for new players to be able to enter in to the game and become part of the economy.
So what has been done is items were divided in to a rarity system, where the greater the item’s impact to game play had, the higher up the tier of rarity it was placed. After that, a level range was set so that also as players reached higher areas, the levels of impact would also progress so that it wasn’t solely on rarity.
Now after establishing how items were to be associated by their rarity, we established rates of frequency that tier of rarity were accessed by monsters. We naturally felt reasonably, the harder the monster the better rates of rarity would be allowed.
Since we previously established monster classing and stats, rarity was assigned based on the monster’s class of strength, so better rates would come from more difficult combat.
How item rarity was broken down:
Common: Crafting materials, low rate chemicals and catalysts, the HP & MP quick restore items and items of that nature.
Uncommon: Basic armors and jewelry, Mythril Drill, slightly better chemicals and catalysts, standard equipment refine items (bindrunes, etc.) and some simple [1] gems.
Rare: Basic weapons, Blue Armors, Orihalcon Drill, better chemicals and catalysts than uncommon, unique refine materials (Ancient Scarabs, etc.) and some other [1] gems.
Ultra Rare: Blue Weapons, Adamantium Drill, highest grade catalyst and chemicals, some [2] gems.
Epic: Epic/Unique style equipment, Aurum Drill, other [2] gems
Legendary: stuff even better than epic, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves as this is future plan still in the making.
How those rarity tiers were assigned to monsters:
Basic Types: high rate of common, low rate of Uncommon
Leader Types: low rate of common, high rate of uncommon, low rate rare
Captain Types: low rate of uncommon, mid rate of rare, low rate of ultra rare
Sub-Boss Types: mid rate of Uncommon, mid rate of rare, mid-low rate of ultra rare
Kings/Boss Types: high rate of rare, mid rate of ultra rare, low-mid rate of ultra rate
Bonus Stats
For a good while we’ve been hearing that certain pieces of equipment were more powerful than others. In the beginning we took it as personal preference, but then we started noticing that certain pieces were being brought up more frequently than others, which then lead us to look deeper in to those stats and why. We then also began to research the trends behind what were the most desired stats and why.
One of the goals of the rebalancing of bonus stats was to help level the playing field of their effect and their desirability. So again, we looked at the player growth and created another chart to view and see how bonus stats were in relation to player growth. An additional goal was that though bonus stats help make a player stronger, we didn’t want to make it so that a single piece of equipment would cause complete dominance over others. So, stat types are applied differently to certain pieces of equipment than others, rather than having flat bonuses on all equipment depending on their level range. For example, you would get a bigger bonus for attack speed from gloves than you would from shoes if both have the same bonus type applied to them. Another example would be getting a bigger Max HP bonus from chest armor than you would a headgear. This was to help create the idea of looking for ideal pieces for stats you desire and split the overpowering act of stacking a single stat, unless you truly wish to push that one stat. The overall bonuses you could achieve wouldn’t cause this over-stacked, overpowered result which is what we were recognizing to be one of many causes feeding the issue of players being stronger than we wanted to see. This affects both the rate that players were exhausting content and areas of PvP where one build dominates over all else. We would like to see each build have strength, but not without a weakness that another could use against them so that there’s always a pro and con to think about.
The vicious cycle
All that said above, the vicious cycle was found to be that monsters were easy to defeat. Once defeated, the high rate of rare equipment and amount of bonuses on that equipment would then make a player stronger, which then made the monster even easier to defeat, which the monster would drop more gear, which made the player stronger, which. . . well you get the picture.
So we had to devise a way to make this cycle not be so vicious, but still remain rewarding because ultimately yes that is the natural cycle of playing an MMO such as ROSE. To make this clear, it wasn’t the cycle we wanted to stop, it was the speed and amount of strength that was gained with each stage of the cycle. The ease of obtaining better equipment made a player immediately stronger, the bonuses on the equipment made the player even stronger where it eventually just would hit a plateau because there’s nothing better to get, till you hit a level range, which with the amount of experience you gained wasn’t a very long wait.
So we slowed down the cycle by making monsters have a little more effort to kill, the equipment they drop be harder to get and the bonuses that the equipment gave have appropriate bonuses for their level range. Granted the bonuses weren’t all reductions, which put some power back to the player and that’s alright because we knew that these bonus allocations were set to the right amounts for their level and with that intent, help players have more choices in where they wish to place their strengths or cover for their weaknesses.
well it didnt come up the first time
long story short (sicne i do not plan or reposting what i wrote teh first time) you just lost someone who bought lots of IM points and I expect to see the game close within a year.
Thats all not fair…u should make announcement before make big changes like this..
Now every 1 scream..what do u think?
this is ridiculos
I agree that a lot of what you said is good however some things:
1> The cat is out of the bag. You have so many people sitting at 220 right now in a holding pattern that they still maintain a total dominance that is now much harder to reach.
2> Some classes just didn’t need nerf, so much nerf. My boyfriend’s Artisan is all but worthless now for battle as it’s only strength aspeed was removed. No AOE, no aspeed means no parties means horrible levelling of 1 monster at a time.
3> The drop tables in certain area were not only changed, they were gutted…people are confused why pink powder is the best drop you can get on orlo.
4> Choke points. 1 monster apparently drops Epic weapons. There is 1 clan camping all 3 spots and the chance of others getting one are 1/10th of a percent of nothing. There are several kings on orlo that should drop epic weapons. Epic should be very rare, epic shouldn’t be impossible unless you exist in a big clan of nonstop players or have 2 billion to spare. FAIRNESS please?
5> Perhaps space the brutal changes out a bit. A whole lot of which is negative change is very hard to swallow. People have reacted very negatively and many just don’t play any more.
i think this is gay because its not fair for newbies to lvl up like people who played since beta because we get more exp. The changes on attack power on equips sucked
After Calanor left ROSEonline, it gets pretty hopeless, you know the feeling where you don’t even know if there is any developers left to run this game anymore.
You guys are trying hard to find out the ultimate solution to the current problems we have in ROSEonline, rushing through planets and exhausting content too fast. And the most important thing of a video game, challenges. It’s great, I appreciate how you guys still take your time to fix this game, but I can tell you what and where the real problem behind all of these, it is the Item Mall. The huge damage has done on ROSEonline since the vena/pluto refine update which happened 2 years ago, and then another catalyst refine update now another refine interval update again. Game runs on with Item Mall sales I know, but the thing is…the day which venarune/plutorune still exist, your game is still crap, no one is going to believe that this game is worth the time and effort to challenge, if you are to reduce exp for the sake of challenging feel, it’s not going to work, instead people will just rage quit. Another major flaw of ROSEonline game is the way the developer bring in new stuff, your developer bring in new stuff by making these items desirable, in other words with overpowered stats, the ironic thing is you guys take it back to default mode. Not going to discuss everything about Item Mall, the most important thing is “You Need To Balance The Items On Item Mall Beforehand, Otherwise The Economy Will Become So Unstable, Hence The Epic Sentence That You Have Mentioned, Richer Become Stronger, Poorer Become Weaker”
Look at the Item Mall buffs? All overpowered compare to cleric’s buffs.
Look at the PvP and PvM aspect? Egg (non-vena/pluto users) vs. rock (vena/pluto users)
Look at the Refine System? You don’t stand a chance if you don’t use those venarune/plutorune.
Refine System is the soul of the gameplay in my opinion, everything you do in ROSE heavily depends on equipment refinement, the economy, PvP, PvM, Boss hunt used to be the pathway to the ultimate gear and rare items which depends on your survivability, I’m sick of seeing noobs spend money on Item Mall for venarune/plutorune, then make (15)’s and sell for billions and become billionaire, regarding the required materials (talisman, bindrune, apotrope and catalyst) which is also heavily influenced by medal of fortune as well. Though, these medals are still ok if they are actually expensive. And the Item Mall costumes, carts are all good but the new RedJellyBean Stew…
If you want to bring back a game with challenges, you need to rethink about your strategy how you should sell things on Item Mall, and if every time you bring in new tiers of weapons and armors just for the sake of boosting venarune/plutorune sales, then your whole passage regarding v.328 is redundant, nobody would like to grind in this game if this refine system continues.
Forgot the most important thing, “STOP messing around already!”
The champion class has been overpowered for a year, we have long huge threads going on regarding this matter, and you just reluctantly nerf the “charge” skill, nobody uses that skill, the thing is they got way too much movement speed passive which makes other fast moving class useless. A balance update is urgent in my opinion, but we all know you will make certain class overpower anyways…
On v.328, you reduced all the stats, however you reduce the attack speed stat drastically, I mean what the hell? Attack speed already nerfed to hell for hawker class, and you also enlarge the accuracy stat and reduce the dodge stat, what are you thinking actually lol?
I am actually glad to see that you guys are working on making the game more quest oriented. I prefer quests over mindless grinding.
Though, the outrage and chaos that will come from decreasing the experience rates BEFORE adding the quests….well, this should be quite entertaining
* Level 1-10 EXP gain ~0% lower
* Level 11-50 EXP gain ~0% lower
* Level 50-100 EXP gain ~0% lower
* Level 100-150 EXP gain ~0% lower
* Level 150+ EXP gain ~0% lower
Fix your game. Thank you.
I think you miss the point of playing games. Graphs and charts are for been counters not players. You have succeeded in making levelling utterly pointless. you succeeded in making farming utterly pointless,Whats left for a player when experience is hopeless at high level. If you die its taking an hour to regain lost experience and if you are already 220 farming is so unrewarding people will just quit. There is uw oh you crushed the stats on equips another pointless effort.
Introduced a new server link for patch 328 and restrict the current leonis server to accounts created at certain date before. In that way, we’ll not be slapped twice, by maxed players and game owner. They’re already numerous bored maxed player even before patch 327, they’re kicking our ass everyday but let it be that way for a few weeks or months. What you’re doing is prolonging newer players pain dealing with those super annoying low lever killer/bully.
Been playing this game since the beta of SHO. These sort of system changing patches tend to split us gamers into 3 obvious groups; haters, lovers, and the don’t cares. Those that love it are generally the ultra high level/high powered people who see it as the game being challenging again. The ones that hate it but don’t outright quit are generally the lower level people who already found the game challenging and tend to rush through the game to try and get to the point of being high powered. If the developers see people striving to get to be high powered as a problem they should work towards making a different goal for the game cause currently that is it.
Im etremely pleased to see that you guys have come out and explained the ‘why’s and what’s’ of the patch that everyone hated.
i was an extremely pissed off player when i found out about this stupid patch, i’ve played since 2004 and this game has been a nostalgic childhood memory for me. i’ve grown up with it on and off for nearly half my lifetime and its a game i can escape to no matter what. i’d even consider rose better than wow.
the problem is people expect too much in this day and age. even i admit i do aswell.
i think, the best option for you guys would be this: and PLEASE take this into consideration and i would love to discuss it if you guys replied to my email address with thoughts.
Merge Draconis and Leonis – i understand why there are two servers, but i strongly believe that a bigger community on one server would promote more community events etc. union wars would be incredible, other pvp events could be realised and etc.
Balance the classes! – so many people as u would have seen on the forums complain about this and that class etc. maybe to a complete revision of the class builds and what benefits each receives from every stat allocation.
Reduce the exp levels back to the old days! – reduce the exp by half, and people will still complain, players worth their salt will continue to play and another reason is explained below:
Give lower gear reason! – I believe blues should be VERY difficult to find.. so that when u see a player u can be like “o wow that guys put some effort in, that shows some signs of a good player”.
Another gear idea would be to make refining low level gear and weapons and back pieces and all that sort of thing WORTH DOING!
the slower exp rates would make ^ a much more reasonable idea, especially if the monsters that are yellow for the players level are still difficult, the player can refine his gear, maybe gem a [1] gem or 2 and see a difference! that would make players more sought after to party with each other and promote player interaction ingame.
make zulie harder to get or more in value.
i think you’d know that a hell of a lot of people have the gold cap, or more in worth of items etc, zulie has become obsolete to some.
Revert the servers – do a massive patch, much like evo, and start everyone from lvl 1 again, if for example all said ideas above were implemented, every player would be experencing the brand new world of rose and its new systems, and every player would have a fair shot. players would only accept this idea though if they knew the changes were going to be worth it.
Thats my 2 cents worth anyways. im more than happy to discuss anything above as i said earlier! thanks guys! dont ever give up on this beautiful game
Dear Roseonline development team,
As a relatively new player, 2 months, I have not seen too many changes but this new update is I believe going in the wrong direction.
1. I believe the main objective in any game is its ability to entertain me the player, also known as fun. I may be wrong after reading many mmo sites, but most rpg players are drawn to games that allow them to level quickly. It is addictive and rewarding. ROSE best quality is just that, leveling quickly. With fast leveling, I am always able to see the light at the end of the tunnel (i.e. the next level) and therefore pickup new stat and skill points. Is this repetitive? Sure it is, but that is what makes ROSE unique. If ROSE wants to change to a new direction, the development team has that right, but the game will become not necessarily ROSE anymore, but something similar to WoW or D&D. If I wanted WoW, I would be there already.
2. New players vs Old players. After reading for the past two months on the forum, I have seen some older players complain of this game allowing players to level too quickly. On the other hand, I have yet to see any new players argue that they wished the leveling to be slowed down. So why the difference in opinion? I can only guess. One guess is that new players that reach max level quickly are less respectfull to the older players. They are more aggressive, especially in the limited farming areas for max toons, such as Orlo and Ruins. The heart of the Rose economy are artisans and as many artisans know, maxing an artisan is the most difficult job to do. Slowing down new artisans, benefits those who already have maxed artisans. I will continue this analogy further, by saying that with any heart of the economy (artisans), a heart needs life blood, in this case material drops is the blood that allows arts to function. This update decreases material drops, an art’s life blood. As seen already, less supply drives up prices, and only well established toons can afford to compete in this type of market place.
3. The developers own words: “moving through the game’s content at such a high rate does two things. It for one, in a way, cheats the player out of being able to enjoy this beautiful world we spent the time to create and two, makes us have to rush out content just to try and keep up with the rate it is being exhausted. The rate of exhaustion hit a point where we could no longer keep up with it and causes game play to feel like nothing new is happening and becomes stale and less enjoyable.” Using another analogy, I would compare what the developers are saying similar to J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series) asking her readers to not read through her book too quickly or she would have to write another book before she felt like it. Although I may empathize with the developers’ difficulty, as a publisher I would find that unacceptable. Who would tell a reader or a gamer you shouldn’t finish the product too quickly. That approach lays blame on the gamer/reader. Do the team realize this can be very alienating. Like a book, a game can be finished multiple times quickly and still be enjoyable.
4.Where do we go from here? As I stated earlier, slowing down ROSE and more quest orientated would make the game more similar to WoW. This is not a bad thing, but thanks to internet forums, any game, even WoW can quickly be finished (max level) in one or two weeks with the right help and equipment (veteran players). The “cat is out of the bag” as they say, so is quick leveling and any attempt to slow things down at this point would seem artificial and have more of an effect on the newer community. Decreasing drops has a similar greater effect on a part of the community. So how do you prevent a game from becoming stale and less enjoyable for the veteran community? This I believe is the heart of the problem for all game developers and the main issue that should be addressed by new content, which is not easy to do as versus the easier and less creative option of slowing down game play. There is already many great ideas in the suggestion forum and I believe in slowly adding Epic quest for the max level characters, so no toon stays still for too long. End rant for now.
Best wishes Kestrel
This should be done to all games. People always rush through stuff. Then get bored and complain about how there is nothing to do.