These good days - Private Servers in the past

[JustCinek]

Hello Ragezoners

I am developer of Fly For Fun. I want to discuss about some things which are connected with FlyFF in the past.

Do you remember these Fly For Fame good days?
We was getting fun by leveling not too fast (25x EXP), hunting, GW'ing and everything. Also community was one of the best on that server.

What are you thinking about recreating it? For example pure v11/v15 server, with some improved quest system (party/guild quests), guild wars(capture the flag and so on), parties wars(3v3 or 5v5), solo wars with some prizes, with places to hunt new, custom items and so on? Also improved end-game and etc?

I know that community wants features now, but part of you want these good old times.

Please post your ideas and your feelings about creating this server, because if you tell me that you want to play on such server, i'll do my best to create that type of server with you. Lets say it will be community-created server.

 

[MikeDecibel]

Although I like your idea I don't think that it'll work since most of the players are lazy as .. these days. I'd love to play on this kind of server but I don't think that alot of players would join me.

 

[JustCinek]

All right, thank You for Your opinion.

Come on people, I am waiting for more opinions from You

 

[Mootie]

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen this sort of post...

The effect you're looking for is nostalgia. V19 really doesn't differ much in terms of gameplay from v11-v15. If you want slower leveling, that's understandable. However, I don't understand why you would want v11/v15 other than for the effect of nostalgia, which will only have short-term effects.

I'd argue the quality of the updates increased in terms of the graphics and effects in general. You can argue that most of the updates prior to v10 were based on cash shop. This is somewhat true, but that doesn't mean these updates hurt a private server, considering most of the items sold in cash shop can be found in NPC.

There are a few key points that using older server files would offer, such as v6 PK, or forcing players to level in madrigal, but these are points that can easily be added to a server running v19.

I sometimes feel like making a long post explaining why the idea of running old version servers is bad and just linking everyone that suggests this to that post.

 

[JustCinek]

Mootie, You are somehow right in what you wrote but...

There are still some of players, that doesn't want v19 because of overload of features. I am sure that's not that much, who wants all features from vXX and some more, but if we will concentrate on developing Quest System or somehow better end-game it will bring players to such server.

And yeah, I'm collecting all of opinions, so thank You for Your one.

 

[TheWordless]

The nostalgic feeling is of course a big part of it as Mootie said, but I honestly believe that a server with less messy features like our latest version had would be better. A server that focus more on the old contentt and how to make use of it, old dungeons, old equip, lower max level etc. and then as for their own feature, a good end game for both pvp and pve. I myself miss a old school server, with lower amount of features and more solid gameplay.

 

[Fenris]

Old post somewhere;


1.) Customization:
First of all, it is a "private server" with the source code and some tools released. There's stuff like simple model converters, sfx editors; however, no one uses these. The furthest customization I ever see is the same weapons that one server has started to use back in the past rehashed. It isn't a bad idea, but no one has taken the extra step of customizing earlier levels; probably because all servers are too high rated. Customization and creativity is a big thing in my mind. Things can be done, so why not try or learn? Rebalance the corruption with these methods rather than changing some little values and expecting it to go perfect.

2.) Play to Play Aspects
Secondly, I do not really believe in "paying" to play. I believe that hard work and dedication in the game is the key to being successful in game. Thus, every item obtainable whether through cash shop, events, should not be exclusively for those. By some chance, whether 1% or lower, these items should be obtainable through in game styles. For example, maybe a random chance box drops and it gives you an item to change your name. This also means that if someone "wants to pay" for items that can drop, then they should be allowed. This is where balance comes in to play with pricing and dropping. Donations are 'gifts of money for a cause' and the cause should be mainly server costs and then some to the developers / owners for their work. No one will donate for nothing, thus if almost everything is obtainable as well by paying, then people will be lazy and pay. However, a normal player has the chance to be better than someone who donates through effort and time playing. This is something I like.

3.) Balance
Thirdly, the server would need to have balance. Now, people normally think balance is just with "classes". In all reality, balance is with every single thing in the game. There is supposed to be a 'ying' and 'yang' to games. Most games screw this up, especially private servers. There needs to be a certain tongue when leveling, an 'eloquence' when leveling. Leveling can not just be moving a piece of paper to point a to b, and then attempting to push a boulder up a 60 degree angle up to point C. There needs to be a sort of exponential growth influenced by a rounding to certain y=mx graphs depending on the displacement from point A. Some servers with rebirth act like a parabola, going fast down hill, but then trying to climb up the hill to level. This is part one of balancing! Pick a level, pick a time frame, pick an exponential growth, and pick limiters. "What do you mean?" In a FlyFF private server, it takes one hour to get to the third job, which all together is equal to 190 levels. However, starting then, to get the extra 45 levels, it takes hours upon hours. You were getting "20%" per kill, but now you get "2%" per kill. This transition happens over ten levels. If you look at other games, you'll notice their transitioning to slower leveling is much different. In fact, a lot of games nowadays rely on a questing system to do the majority of leveling. However, it all has a balance to how fast you level at lower ranges, to higher ranges, doing dungeons to not doing dungeons.

Next thing on balancing is drop lists and the currency in game. This is another thing that is mainly overlooked by 99.99% of the servers out there. People want a lot of drops, which screws up whatever the currency is. "Everything that is worked out in peoples minds are graphs, and mathematical equations, just simply thought on the spot without realizing it", my old sensei used to exclaim. Whenever someone thinks of a large quantity, they think more about larger percentiles and quantities. Have you ever joined a server where hunting items takes ten seconds, but it sells for 500% of the time farming? A server where items are easily obtainable; however, prices are x5 on top of the rate? This is what tends to happen when larger quantities enter. I've probably have lost you by now or you're thinking "that doesn't happen". If you played with me at one point in time, there was a server where I farmed for 30minutes and gave away all the gear and said "they aren't worth selling". "Once you farm the lowest, you're set". Servers overlook the fact that people do not care about supply versus demand anymore, meaning they are getting more greedy. This is why it needs to be balanced. Currency needs worth. Drops need worth, and there is need of a currency sink, to sustain and prevent the over fluctuation of money. Technically, all these "multipliers on rates" could stay at 1x, if you change and alter other things.

Lastly, is the overall balance of gear, classes and skills. Servers that say "balanced" aren't really balanced. PvP is a literal blur. By that, one hit kills and no chance of survival. There are no DoTs. No skill required. Asal one hit kills. People spam infinite healing items to make it last longer. Adoch is overpowered. There's no elemental bonuses to PvP: And people call this balance? Last time I recall, balance in PvP / Gear / Class means each class has their strong side and weak side, and how you utilize them is how you win. If you play other games, you'll notice ways to escape and add distance. You'll notice how something as simple as poisoning and other DoT's can kill a tank. You'll notice that a healer has a chance to kill and live without any 400k pvp damage shield. You'll also notice that each class has a roll in PvE, and dungeons. In servers, blade and maybe healers -> All you need. In retail -> Full stam RM to prevent the boss mobs from switching. Also, no one in retail can tank hits from bosses. These substantial differences should be altered and balanced. A roll of all classes should be applied. Or else, it will be the same fashion fest, money hungry game like it is.

 

[Mootie]

1.) Customization:
First of all, it is a "private server" with the source code and some tools released. There's stuff like simple model converters, sfx editors; however, no one uses these. The furthest customization I ever see is the same weapons that one server has started to use back in the past rehashed. It isn't a bad idea, but no one has taken the extra step of customizing earlier levels; probably because all servers are too high rated. Customization and creativity is a big thing in my mind. Things can be done, so why not try or learn? Rebalance the corruption with these methods rather than changing some little values and expecting it to go perfect.

Fair points, but I don't think customizing the lower levels is a good idea. As you said, private servers usually have high rates. Unfortunately, this is a norm that isn't simple to change. You can run a low rate server, but if it doesn't have over 50 players online regularly, it will lose the MMORPG aspects. I'd sacrifice level pacing for a community any day. Most players consider leveling to be boring anyways. It's possible to revamp this, but I don't believe this should be a high priority. Players want endgame content, for good reason.

2.) Play to Play Aspects
Secondly, I do not really believe in "paying" to play. I believe that hard work and dedication in the game is the key to being successful in game. Thus, every item obtainable whether through cash shop, events, should not be exclusively for those. By some chance, whether 1% or lower, these items should be obtainable through in game styles. For example, maybe a random chance box drops and it gives you an item to change your name. This also means that if someone "wants to pay" for items that can drop, then they should be allowed. This is where balance comes in to play with pricing and dropping. Donations are 'gifts of money for a cause' and the cause should be mainly server costs and then some to the developers / owners for their work. No one will donate for nothing, thus if almost everything is obtainable as well by paying, then people will be lazy and pay. However, a normal player has the chance to be better than someone who donates through effort and time playing. This is something I like.

I agree on this issue, but I do not agree on this solution. My usual solution for making cash shop items more accessible for non-donors is to ease the transactions between donors and non-donors. I believe a good solution to this is creating a trade-able representation of donation value. This allows players that have only donated a small amount to immediately sell their points to non-donors. This method reduces the risk for selling donation value, and in turn, increases the donor to non-donor transaction volume. This obviously will reduce the value of the donation points due to supply and demand. In the servers I've made, you can easily make enough penya to purchase $10 worth of donation points with an hour of farming endgame or dungeons.

3.) Balance
Thirdly, the server would need to have balance. Now, people normally think balance is just with "classes". In all reality, balance is with every single thing in the game. There is supposed to be a 'ying' and 'yang' to games. Most games screw this up, especially private servers. There needs to be a certain tongue when leveling, an 'eloquence' when leveling. Leveling can not just be moving a piece of paper to point a to b, and then attempting to push a boulder up a 60 degree angle up to point C. There needs to be a sort of exponential growth influenced by a rounding to certain y=mx graphs depending on the displacement from point A. Some servers with rebirth act like a parabola, going fast down hill, but then trying to climb up the hill to level. This is part one of balancing! Pick a level, pick a time frame, pick an exponential growth, and pick limiters. "What do you mean?" In a FlyFF private server, it takes one hour to get to the third job, which all together is equal to 190 levels. However, starting then, to get the extra 45 levels, it takes hours upon hours. You were getting "20%" per kill, but now you get "2%" per kill. This transition happens over ten levels. If you look at other games, you'll notice their transitioning to slower leveling is much different. In fact, a lot of games nowadays rely on a questing system to do the majority of leveling. However, it all has a balance to how fast you level at lower ranges, to higher ranges, doing dungeons to not doing dungeons.

Next thing on balancing is drop lists and the currency in game. This is another thing that is mainly overlooked by 99.99% of the servers out there. People want a lot of drops, which screws up whatever the currency is. "Everything that is worked out in peoples minds are graphs, and mathematical equations, just simply thought on the spot without realizing it", my old sensei used to exclaim. Whenever someone thinks of a large quantity, they think more about larger percentiles and quantities. Have you ever joined a server where hunting items takes ten seconds, but it sells for 500% of the time farming? A server where items are easily obtainable; however, prices are x5 on top of the rate? This is what tends to happen when larger quantities enter. I've probably have lost you by now or you're thinking "that doesn't happen". If you played with me at one point in time, there was a server where I farmed for 30minutes and gave away all the gear and said "they aren't worth selling". "Once you farm the lowest, you're set". Servers overlook the fact that people do not care about supply versus demand anymore, meaning they are getting more greedy. This is why it needs to be balanced. Currency needs worth. Drops need worth, and there is need of a currency sink, to sustain and prevent the over fluctuation of money. Technically, all these "multipliers on rates" could stay at 1x, if you change and alter other things.

Lastly, is the overall balance of gear, classes and skills. Servers that say "balanced" aren't really balanced. PvP is a literal blur. By that, one hit kills and no chance of survival. There are no DoTs. No skill required. Asal one hit kills. People spam infinite healing items to make it last longer. Adoch is overpowered. There's no elemental bonuses to PvP: And people call this balance? Last time I recall, balance in PvP / Gear / Class means each class has their strong side and weak side, and how you utilize them is how you win. If you play other games, you'll notice ways to escape and add distance. You'll notice how something as simple as poisoning and other DoT's can kill a tank. You'll notice that a healer has a chance to kill and live without any 400k pvp damage shield. You'll also notice that each class has a roll in PvE, and dungeons. In servers, blade and maybe healers -> All you need. In retail -> Full stam RM to prevent the boss mobs from switching. Also, no one in retail can tank hits from bosses. These substantial differences should be altered and balanced. A roll of all classes should be applied. Or else, it will be the same fashion fest, money hungry game like it is.

I agree with the balance of leveling an item drops being important, but this is not something done simply, especially by people that have trouble implementing basic features into the game. Balance of leveling is more reasonable, but the balance of drop rates throughout the levels is a tricky issue. Due to the high rates on exp, people blast through the first 90 to 120 levels. This makes gear under lv105 mostly useless. I believe in uselessness of items, not all gear should be most useful in some area. That's why it would be foolish to make lv75 gear overpower lv105 gear in some way. The accessibility of trading is again a possible solution to this, although it's one I haven't explored greatly. The PvP balance portion is good, although it's hard to nerf asal without overpowering tanks. Tanks are generally superior in PvP even when their damage is low. The chance to get killed or almost killed in one hit weakens their power greatly. I've nerfed healing items such as Remantis Laccotte to have a cooldown and limited healing powers. I believe this is a partial solution only though.

This post is coming from someone that has worked on private servers for over 3 years. As you can see, despite my long experience in this area, there are many subjects that I have not explored much. That's because there are so many complexities to look at when you're working on a private server. In the last 72 hours of working on my private server, I've gotten hit by multiple large DDoS attacks and had to fix two item duplication issues. Unfortunately, server security is more important than improving game play. People want to be able to play the server when they want to. This problem is tacked in most mmorpgs by a large development team. In private servers, this really isn't an option. People always look at the situation and believe there are such simple solutions to these problems, but they are very complex when you look at all of the factors private servers have to deal with.

 

[MaxZeus]

In the past everything was easy, because making servers wasn't a task for anyone, because you needed to work hard to get something going on, nowadays with all those plug-n-play packs, everyone can put a gameserver up...

 

[FtwHoly]

...

As for curiosity, do you think raising the buffs level to 40 while keeping the buff pang buffing only of 20?

Would that give RMs a new life again?

In the past everything was easy, because making servers wasn't a task for anyone, because you needed to work hard to get something going on, nowadays with all those plug-n-play packs, everyone can put a gameserver up...

Not every server will succeed tho.

 

[Mootie]

As for curiosity, do you think raising the buffs level to 40 while keeping the buff pang buffing only of 20?

Would that give RMs a new life again?

I think that's a possible solution, but really, what sort of life is that? In a dungeon, the RM would have to give up to seven people a large number of buffs. I believe that Seraph and RM buffs can be utilized to give them a more active role in the party, giving a few AoE buffs as well as healing and using Holycross on monsters. Also, I've long held the opinion that Holycross is one of the most powerful skills in Guild Siege.

 

[FtwHoly]

I think that's a possible solution, but really, what sort of life is that? In a dungeon, the RM would have to give up to seven people a large number of buffs. I believe that Seraph and RM buffs can be utilized to give them a more active role in the party, giving a few AoE buffs as well as healing and using Holycross on monsters. Also, I've long held the opinion that Holycross is one of the most powerful skills in Guild Siege.

That can easily turn a boring job, actually. Perhaps, as you say, having more party based skills would work better.

Based off of my knowledge, these skills are available on higher levels, right? That might need to be adjusted.

As for the guild siege and holycross, I partially share the same opinion. It isn't all blue tho.

They could, again, easily turn into weak points to gain points, unless the system didn't count the points from a ringmaster and by a ringmaster (unbeatable class) even knowing that a guild without an RM would be less powerful but that's not a big deal because that's why the RM class exists. Quick ideas from the top of my head.

 

[MrTarky]

Hi JustCinek, there is any way that i could contact you. I wanna talk about this with you. Also i sent you a pm, hope you see it.