Feedback for the Experience modifications from a Party Organizer's POV
Description
I always felt that origins experience system (Unique master account bonus + Tap bonus) was attractive and the staff had something special here and part of the server's success can be attributed to this system.
I have been a party organizer from my guild and have been playing oRO for more than 2 years,
The unique master account bonus system was solid. Even though some people have tried to break the system by asking their guild members or friends to log in their leecher for them while they play OOP, It worked well in my opinion for the majority of the people.
The unique master account bonus created an incentive for us to not dual client, and recruit individual members to play every role in a party. Due to this more people had the chance to meet each other and socialize since we would get 5 friends who want to play together and we would recruit 7 people from the origins community #party channel to fill up our party of 12. Forming a party of 12 was also an incentive since we would get the best possible experience for our time invested.
Overall, The previous setup allowed us to meet 7 new members who we would invite to our discord and sit with them over voice and just have random conversations and play together and have a good time.
The recent changes ask us to limit the party size to 8 instead of 12, Even though there isn't a code change that restricts it, The fact that we get less value from our time invested by having more members creates an incentive to keep the party size at 6 - 8, or often times less than 6 and just run Kim Song with a LOT of dual clients, which is NOT FUN but to get the most value from our time, that option looks appealing.
Suggestion:
My suggestion would be to revert the experience system the way it was before, with the one exception, max the out of party taps to a small number (2, currently is okay). So, those 4 groups people in juperos/abyss3 dont use 12 mages/archers to get an absurd amount of exp.
The staff has raised a concern saying that the people have been leveling faster than they intended given that origins is a low rate server, I can understand that, However, I personally feel that origins had a great pace and casual players as well as the more serious players were mostly content with the way things were except for a few, but that is normal you can never satisfy everyone.
Getting 12 people together to do something is HARD, We should not be punished for working together between us and the origins community. I don't feel like spending 2+hrs to coordinate a bio 3 party (YES, thats how long it took me), If the difference between playing alone or playing with 1 friend and doing bio 3 is about the same.
Rationale
In the past few weeks, I have had a difficult time organizing parties, and I am raising this ticket to voice my opinion, To give you some perspective from my view:
We ran a bio 3 party with 5 members as a test run to see what the new patch was like,
- Person A, playing, In EXP Party Champ and Leecher, Out of Exp Party, High wizard, Bragi, SpSong, Male and Female EXP song
- Person B, playing, In EXP Party High Priest, Out of EXP Party, High Priest, This sound dumb but in practice it makes a lot of sense to have all of the active players in the same party.
- Person C, playing In EXP Party, Leecher, Out of EXP Party, Scholar and Priest
- Person D&E, playing In EXP Party, Leecher, Out of EXP Party, Mobber and Priest
The above setup is stupid and i dont expect anyone but the group of crazies i play with to pull it off, which shows several problems:
Problem 1: We dont have room to invite anyone from the origins community and the chances of us meeting new members that we may want to add to our group are slim to none.
Problem 2: Playing 16 characters between us to level 6 characters is DUMB and no one should be doing that, it is stressful, However, with the way the current system is setup, That option looks appealing to get the most value from our limited time.
Problem 3: We had a successful day of partying between the 5 of us, As of i was planning for day 2, Everyone who participated wanted to join in again, and i had 3+ other people who wanted to join, The current system creates a situation where adding more members to our group worsens what we get out of our time playing together by A LOT, so the options i have is:
- To invite all of my friends to play together and get little or no EXP considering the amount of deaths in bio 3,
- I choose the option of declining my friends, or
- The option which was the one i went with, To just not do any parties, Since I can't tell my friends that we don't have room for you to join us.
We also ran a magma 2 party with 8 members, Everyone was using a unique master account except 1 person:
- Person A, playing, In EXP Party Leecher, Out of Exp Party, Bragi, SpSong, High Priest.
- Person B, playing, In EXP Party ME Priest(Priest, Damage Dealer, Tapper),
- Person C&G, playing In EXP Party, Wizard,
- Person D&E&F&H, playing In EXP Party, Mobbers
Problems with this:
Problem 1: We have room for maybe 1 person to invite from the origins community and the chances of us meeting new members that we may want to add to our group are slim.
Problem 2: Playing 3 characters out of party is stressful, However, with the way the current system is setup, That option looks appealing to get the most value from our limited time.
Problem 3: We had a successful day of partying between the 8 of us, As of i was planning for day 2, Everyone who participated wanted to join in again, and i had 3-4 other people who wanted to join, The current system creates a situation where adding more members to our group worsens what we get out of our time playing together by A LOT, so the options i have is:
- To invite all of my friends to play together and get worse exp than what we can get playing alone,
- I choose the option of declining some of my guild members/friends, or
- The option which was the one i went with, To just not do any parties, since I can't tell my friends that we don't have room for you to join us.
We also ran a Thanatos floor 8 party with 7 members, Everyone was using a unique master account except 1 person:
- Person A, playing, In EXP Party Leecher, Out of Exp Party, Bragi, SpSong, Linker.
- Person B, playing, In EXP Party Scholar,
- Person C&D, playing In EXP Party, Sniper,
- Person E&F, playing In EXP Party, High Priest
- Person G, playinng in EXP Party, Lord Knight
Problems with this:
Problem 1: We have room for maybe 1-2 person to invite from the origins community and the chances of us meeting new members that we may want to add to our group are slim.
Problem 2: Playing 3 characters out of party is stressful, However, with the way the current system is setup, That option looks appealing to get the most value from our limited time.
Problem 3: We had a successful day of partying between the 7 of us, As of i was planning for day 2, Everyone who participated wanted to join in again, and i had 3-4 other people who wanted to join, The current system creates a situation where adding more members to our group worsens what we get out of our time playing together by A LOT, so the options i have is:
- To invite all of my friends to play together and get worse exp than what we can get playing alone,
- I choose the option of declining some of my guild members/friends, or
- The option which was the one i went with, To just not do any parties, since I can't tell my friends that we don't have room for you to join us.
Problem 4: Thanatos floor 7+ parties are extremely hard to run, because you may spend 30 mins doing the quest and walking to floor 8, and then someone will have to leave, and you cant exactly look for replacements, you have to start from the bottom again, so in my opinion its not correct to say that thanatos is a good public party spot where people come and go every 15 mins.
Problem 5: There is only a small number of classes that are viable and usable for a roaming party without being a liability on everyone in most of the maps, A normal party who will go to thanatos to actually level would consist of something like: Sniper, [Bragi, SpSong, Linker] Any 2 of these 3, Priest, Scholar, and something to stand in the front, that really is the bare minimum for the roaming party in almost every party map, the problem here is that this leaves out sooooooooooooo many classes, that dont have a role in this party, standing parties on the other hand have some more flexibility with who can join, tappers, wizards, various different classes of mobbers.
Additional Information
To some people 12 person parties or standing parties may seem boring, repetitive, bad, cheating, etc. but all i want is to have the option of doing whatever i want, Standing or roaming or solo or two person party, With this latest patch I feel like I am being told how I should play the game.
Big Parties are awesome for new players:
- They allow a variety of different classes to join by filling in one of the flexible roles available (tapper/mobber).
- A person with npc gears can easily join a group of strangers and do something with a team.
- Static parties force party leaders to actively look for people from the #party channel to join them.
Established Players may not like big parties:
- The content is repetitive,
- Requires effort to organize,
- Playing with strangers who may not be as well geared as them, therefore they perform a little worse, so the rich guy feels like these noobs dont deserve my time.