Thankyou for your work in producing the game we know and enjoy today. I hope to see this game and community continue to grow and thrive. However based on my experiences/observations and many discussions with people from all different clans/locations/stage-of-game-progress etc, here are some fundamental/core issues that appear to be causing several once-committed players to stop playing due to discouragement, frustration and/or boredom. It is my hope that in writing this post that you will consider making necessary changes to take Ember out of ROK’s shadow and stop the leakage of good players coming and going before its too late. Once the player base is burned/gone, its game over.
All following observations are based on the one simple premise: The more fulfillment and satisfaction a player finds in the game, the more motivated they are to keep on playing. (Conversely, the more frustrated/discouraged/bored they feel, the more demotivated they are to keep playing). This may seem obvious to everyone…. but the following are core game dynamics that actively display a complete disregard for this premise (and which I am therefore suggesting need rethinking/changing).
Issue #1 – The OAD Loot System.
This is honestly a very antiquated and ineffective system for current gaming and lifestyle needs. Requiring 6-10 players to mobilise/wake at odd spawning hours, spend 15-30mins farming keys and 1+ hours running an OAD zone/boss for the reward of 1-2 item drops to be somehow split between the 6-8 players is just plainly ineffective at encouraging player motivation whichever way you look at it (not even mentioning the discouragement for the 4-8 people from a competing guild who bothered to mobilise but lost the key battle and didnt get the chance to run the OAD). The system creates issues with people’s real life commitments, it causes perceptions of inequality based on spawn times, it encourages drama in loot distribution and mathematically it means lots of ppl are putting in effort for no reward/fulfillment on any given day/run --> basically this entire system fosters more discouragement, frustration and or boredom in more players than it achieves in fostering player rewards/fulfillment.
Possible Solutions to Issue #1 (suggested by myself and others):
- 1. Get rid of OADs as a loot system and revamp to diablo style system with random drops off monsters (and afflixes to make items more unique)... or really almost any other loot system employed by contemporary RPG games!
2. Have more OADs be able to be run in 15-20mins by parties of around 3 players
3. Randomise OAD spawn times each day and have a soothsayer mob that you can run a quest for (eg gather random items from around the realm) to find out daily spawn times
4. Have bosses/minibosses drop a “summoning stone” that can be used to summon the final OAD boss at a time and place of choice (allows people to do it at convenient time when party is assembled and bored… but risk is they need to find somewhere private so others don’t come and steal the boss they summon)
5. Some sort of split reward system (like Crimson Scales or Thanatos death hexes) so that ppl contributing to OAD keys or run can each get a crafting item to save away for future item creation rather than scratch heads trying to split 1 sword
Issue #2 – The Guild System.
Most players are forced/incentivised to join big established guilds for access to OAD gear or protection from PKers. This leads to the current (predictable) super-guild oligarchy/arms-race we have. However this puts great strain on the super-guilds to organise themselves and keep everyone happy etc which creates unnecessary drama, frustration, disenchantment etc. This eventually causes some people to get demotivated by the drama of dealing with other players they are ‘forced’ to play with by the current guild system, and leads to them quitting or playing a lot less than they once did (have seen this happen a bit lately). Basically more guild diversity helps retain players to EO by giving them options to avoid other players they don’t want to play with, while still having some have hope of making progress within the game.
Possible Solutions to Issue #2 (suggested by myself and others):
- 1. Fix OAD/loot system so belonging to a large guild isn’t a necessity
2. Introduce ‘guild diversity incentives’ of some kind (to incentivise ppl to risk starting more guilds themselves)
3. Implement a hard cap on number of characters/accounts that can belong in each guild (forcing focus on ‘quality’ rather than ‘quantity’)
4. Associate guilds with towns so multiple small guilds can still be connected/allied with a larger “town chat” but also be abit more independent also….. this could lead to interesting Game of Thrones-esque dynamic of cooperation between guilds
Issue #3 – The Character Creation System.
Basically the problem here is someone creating a character they think will do well (based on Rok perceptions or otherwise) only to find out hundreds of million EXP later that it’s actually a crap build. This is often very demotivating as people have used the name they want on a bad character and don’t want to bother leveling a 2nd char of the same class just to be competitive etc. The 100% inability to salvage investment in EXP and redesign character (e.g. change to more suitable race) also raises lots of emotional baggage whenever re-balancing occurs as some feel they have invested lots of effort in a character build only to see it ‘nerfed’ in their perception. All these ‘character creation’ related issues are another great cause of frustration/boredom that I’ve seen eventually lead to players quitting.
Possible Solutions to Issue #3 (suggested by myself and others):
- 1. Have an in game “Scroll of Reincarnation” item that allows people to keep all their EXP but re-design a lvl 25er of a particular class (possibly change race, picture and gender also). This should obtainable via questing (not easily mind you, but possible) rather than paid with real money. This also helps when inevitable game-rebalancing is done and certain races etc get nerfed (which cant be changed with current Realloc functionality)… Changing name can be done with a separate scroll that could potentially be charged real money for (cos we don’t want ppl trying to mask identity all the time by changing names). Changing class should not be allowed by Reincarnation scroll as this is something people are unlikely to have made a mistake on (plus we don’t want ppl levelling an ‘easier’ class only to change it to a ‘harder’ one)
2. Have a “Create a Test Character” functionality were you can essentially spawn a lvl 25 version of the character you are thinking of creating on a quarantined test zone/area (wearing OAD level test equipment) where you can test the effect of stats on things like druid morph bonuses, bard song bonuses etc and PVP/PVE against other mobs or test characters. This gives ppl a solid vision of what they are working towards when they decide to invest in 300-350m worth of leveling.
I know that large scale changes cannot be rushed without careful thought and community consultation and this is not what I expect. However I do hope this post will open the discussion for others to comment on the suggested issues/solutions and/or suggest their own core frustrations. Hopefully this will give NH the confidence that the player community does indeed want EO to evolve from the core of ROK’s flawed shadow and therefore make needed changes before EO dredges up enough feelings of frustration, discouragement and boredom under the current system to effectively burn through all of the ROK-nostaligia-induced goodwill that is currently sustaining the player base.
Sorry for the long post - it’s been a long time coming. Peace.