Now with temporal boots spell cost being reduced within the next days (its weekend soon, easily to foresee a small patch day), i think most complains are already solved.
Something like this cannot be properly tested by admins to foresee the current outcome. You cannot expect the admins to play their own server for 1 month, farming the instance and then see : "hey, its a little bit too easy and fast. So lets make it harder and a longer process to make sure not everyone and their mother has those ENDGAME GEARS within a month".
I agree that player should not be abused as teh play/test field of the admins with every major change that wasnt being tested internally first. But they are just humans, they cant know everything (or foresee). People are quick to jump to conclusions. Try to put yourself in their shoes sometimes. You want to make endgame stuff fair and not cheese easy. We didnt have any Temporal boots in our 3~4 man party in our first 10~ Old Glast heim clears and it went just fine. We didnt use any temporal boots for our first beelze, ifrit, morroc kills or verus/bifrost/fire basin/nightmare eden quests. If we can do it, other people can do the same. We leveled with 15x rates, before Eden boards were boosted. Giving 1% exp per quest once you hit almost max level. Do we complain now that every now player makes it to max within a few days? No, we dont. But it is essentially the same argument you bring up. "There are changes now, that give a certain group an advatange over others". The first players to join a server WILL ALWAYS BE AT AN ADVANTAGE. Because they joined earlier than you guys. And they had to go through changes as much as people who joined 2 weeks ago.
Every Private server changes its content (or should) over the course of times. Things are bound to happen to the balance. Yea, there were some things that annoy me aswell. Such as certain sorcs running around with +13 gear, because back then +13 was basically "100% guaranteed" as long as you used HD ores. Now were behind in gears. But that doesnt stop us. We are also annoyed by the MVP Buffs that make us change strategies again and again. And trust me. We always go to the admin and tell her how we feel. We give actual feedback and not just sit in prontera spamming #main how shit the server is.
Just my 2 cents.
Now for actual proposed changes and opinions to current suggestions:
- Rebalance Lost Dragon (make it easier and lower the drop rates, which was the reason for overbuff him);
- Rebalance buffed MvPs (random add skills/cast&cd times isn't good for the bussiness);
- Rebalance cost of Temporal Boots and Old GH instance (give the players a fair chance to have it).
1. I can agree with this change. To be honest, we never had any problems with this guy. we noticed he wasnt soloable anymore after his buff. But with just a second person, a tank, we killed him everytime without problems.
Now, not everyone plays like us, not everyone has a friend around. Not everyone is in a guild and not everyone hhas the guts to ask and search for parties. And sadly you cannot make content good for everyone. If we make it easier, it will definitely help new players, i agree. I think a slight nerf to this guy wouldnt hurt, but definitely not the same strawberry cake he was before. As for his valuable drops..eh. Nothing is 100%, except a shitty gold ring. Even the OCA is a 1 outta 3. Aka 33% to get. Is this farmable? I dont know. The instance is annoying and killing this guy at the current level for a 33% chance of an OCA. I would rather farm the cards i need. Will probably go faster and save me alot of time. Not even worth for his ygg drops, piss low chance. If you want to farm him for his drops. Go ahead. I see no logic behind it tho. Btw Lost dragon was level 135 pre-nerf. How will any lvl 99 kill him, my friend? The access level means nothing. This content was made for 120~140 in mind, as far as i have seen on officials.
TL;DR: A slight nerf to this guy to make him more appealing for parties wouldnt hurt. His drop chances are low and not worth farming anyway. Scale the EXP with the reduced HP/Difficulty.
2. MVPs are fine, except for the Teleport on Idle bullshit. Endgame content requires a strong party with decent gears, or a great party of strong few individuals. I havent seen anyone solo Beelze yet. Now with the Kaupe addition you cant cheese MVps anymore. Such as valkyrie, ifrit and morroc. I really like this change. I love playing sura, but with these warper friendly times, a change was needed to make the content not trivial because of how easy it is to asura mvps on the entrance of their level. I can whole heartly say, that once you are max or near max level and got some proper PVE cards, you can clear any content as long as you use what the game offers to you. A WW Ranger with no cards or gears + a Steel Body tank in eden gears will not be able to handle it anymore. Changelog would be very well welcomed. Low level mvps may be completely bias level. Personally i like them buffed. Because with the 175 content they really turned into Arrow Storm or Asura bitches and their loot is way to valuable. To be fair. Once you hit max level with decent gears you can still solo most of them without effort. For leveling you can still use low tier mvps, such as Eddga, Phree or Maya if you have the party for it. I dont think MVPs were ever designed to be solo content for new palyers. They shouldnt be, they wont be. The random attack/aggro bullshit makes it really hard at the moment tho for new players to tackle low content MVPs. (Especially Eddga needs various skils to be tanked and DPS'd. Right now, without LP and Steel body, SW'd Dedicated Priest and a Long Range Sniper i dont see anyone killing this guy in a proper party setup. Good Luck!
TL:DR: Remove random Teleport Crap. Keep Endgame MVPs strong. Low Tier MVPs are up to bias. Some like it strong, some like it weak. MVPs are not meant to be solo-able in general. Cant make everyone happy. Bring friends/party.
3. Terp already said that the spellcost will be reduced with the next small patch/maintenace. Aside from that i suggest adding another few hours of cool down to the instance. im coming from a half biased opinion here. Lowering Spell cost + adding a longer CD to the instance gives players more breathing room to try other content and go for other valauble drops or goals. Right now were going OGH day after day and we barely have time for anything else. Now you could say "then dont go". But sadly there are still people who need the crystals and spells to get their boots in our group, so were kinda "forced" to do it. Also i dont think many people are farming this instance as hardcore as us few nubs, if any at all. A 36 hour cool down would give more breathing room in trying out other stuff, without really affecting anyone. Do you really go in there every 23 hours? Probably not. With the reduced spell cost coming up it will create a balance between Time/Reward. Hopefully it will not be a low as before, because that was seriously way to easy. a 12 man party, generates about 40 crystals and 70~80 spells per run. That is atleast one full enchanted temporal boot attempt per day. Way to easy, way to fast.
4. Spell Damage 2 high. Not really. I have compared elemental damage here, with how it is on iRO (if you want screens or videos @Psor @Anyotherprooforgtfoperson, please send me a PM and ill provide it) with another person.
Theres 2 major things that come into mind. Spell Damage seems crazy, because you are naked or have 0 Hard MDEF. Secondly, water ball is bugged, really. It is way out of proportions and im sure the admins are working on a permanent fix, but it isnt always so easy. However, when we tested Bifrost tower monsters hitting for 1k~1.5k x 5 fire bolts. We saw that its exactly the same as on iRO. The moment i put on some reductions, it went down to 2.5k per firebolt, easily potable and healable. The waterball was always a problem and that was my main issue from the beginning. However waterball damage was highly reduced by terp with the last mainteance. Swordfish and other monsters barely deal any damage with it anymore. Even without wearing a water armor. There may be some monsters she overlooked and im sure we can tone down some early level monsters that eden wants you to kill. But aside from that, it seems to be fine. As for the MATK inconsistency with MVPS. Yes we have noticed Valkyrie dealing 74 dmg per LoV tick. Something is definitely off, but the MVPs are still a challenge, so for now i dont think its bad. Getting hard-MDEF early is bar impossible so thats why things hit crazy early. And ofc people rush levels, not reduction gears.
5. People comparing MVPS to officials and how easy shit is there. Stop doing it. just stop. Officials are not privat servers. Officials dont have healers, tool dealers, warpers and all these custom items in every town. It is impossible to compare officials to privat servers. You can only take stock/base values from them, thats it. On officials everyone is overgeared with gears that are farmed by bots and zeny traders. Everyone can pay a few bucks for easy +12 upgraded weapons that trivialize any content. Chippy and his Super novice could probably kill wounded morroc on officials. This broken they are. Do not compare them, just dont.
Sorry for long text. But i care.