I will try to throw my opinion, once again (hopeful my english can be understood properly).
I think the things must change, always: in better. Keep in mind improvement as must is necessary. Perfect server don't exist and will never do, but since we are playing a pserver we can reach a result that can be adjusted gradually (read: with multiple attempts) to let us enjoy the game in a balanced way. This means I think official RO is not balanced, I consider Gravity mother-imbalance itself. Why? Official RO is a game to generate profit, high profits ... if the game is balanced nobody pay to get advantage/re-balance the game. Here donations are for server bills, machine specs improvements, exclusive features implementation and such; I doubt Rikter, Terpsichore and Byte aims to get rich running this server. This was a needed introduction (cause of "original" statement, meant to be "official").
This is something I'd like more people to consider before throwing around the "officials" card, those servers revolve entirely around cash shop right now. The game was also made singleplayer pretty much as all content is soloable there.
Sometimes you just see people bitching about problems they can solve themselves or overcome by putting just a little bit more effort than almost no effort.
This seems to be the case pretty often as I see very small groups of players putting some effort into it and killing everything just fine while many are content with complaining and never actually trying.
Many people bitch about monsters being too hard and eventually quit because no other server has so strong monsters so they assume it's some bug or custom change.
The main gripe here seems to be MATK of mobs, with quite a lot of people believing this is a custom change or a bug, it isn't, the exact formula is not accurate (and will be adjusted soon) the damage will be lowered but that won't make spells not hurt at all like it happened with pre-renewal formula, mob spells do hurt in renewal, keep that in mind and prepare accordingly, there are plenty of gear options to deal with this. Getting some VIT is also a good idea, it's perfectly normal that your 0 VIT, 0 reductions hunter drops to a couple of spells.
I have a feeling that direction and goal of server isn't very precise.
The goal is to make everything as good as technically possible while bringing back things that the current level cap and skills took away, such as actual difficulty and MMO aspect, we don't want Leika to be another singleplayer server with wrecked economy. We didn't start working on this and spent months of our life to present another generic broken server that offers nothing of value and interest.
1 - Be extra wise for nerf, avoid to the maximum
Sometimes nerfs are needed as things are simply broken and there's no way around it.
2 - Make early PvM easier - Remake Matk monsters formula and nerf early-mid tiers MVPs
About Matk you have heard already, nobody likes to go lving and be raped by one-shot spells, Gazeti must be a S-class killer at this time.
As stated above the formula will be adjusted but people should get used to mobs actually dealing damage with spells, this is how it works in renewal.
About MVPs, people come from another server rapping scrubs MvPs, then they come here expecting it to happen, and not otherwise.
What's the point of over-buffing shit MvPs? I can not see the "big plan" in this change, and I do not even hunt MvPs to be crying about it. Old MvP drop a lot of garbage, if the idea is to avoid drop of cards, I don't see the point, the cards are there to be droped, and from what I remember you even have banned some cards in WoE, then what the players problem soloing scrub MvPs easily?
The plan was to make all those old abandoned MvPs that drop garbage and give no EXP actually relevant and worth hunting again, all our MvPs give a lot more EXP and drop additional loot. Is there any point in having "MvPs" that die to one anything and give nothing of value? They're there just for lone card hunters as there's no other reason to search for them. This change also directly makes Endless Tower more appealing, which in turn promotes parties. This is a constant work in progress and they're getting tweaked and adjusted to be challenging but doable and rewarding enough.
For a record, I'm actively monitoring the entirety of PvM aspect and taking player's feedback, it takes time to fine-tune things.
I could revert those old MvPs to their "official" state, so they would give no EXP and drop nothing of value (of course, they wouldn't be dropping stuff like enriched ores, kawaii coins, lockboxes and other additional loot anymore since they're effortless to kill). This is something I actually proposed to a few players but it seems like they want both all the new rewards and the old laughable stats and this isn't how it works.
3 - "This is not carebearRO" but it should be.
A information that does not to be clear enough for some people. Most people do not like being treated like shit.
If you care about comunity growing, then you have to take care of you already have, GM's need to be extremely polite and friendly (WoW again shows how well this works), even when the player its a fucking retarded.
And that it's something that Terp need to redouble her attention. Since I entered the server, Terp seems to be the GM more active and who gives more support for server issues, however, I've seen arguing about insignificant thing with players in #main, and treatment with users is far away from polite and friendly. Do not take it personally, I know I've had my problems with you, but I really respect your work and dedication, only that your social skills are problematic if you do not have patience for this sort of thing I would advise to avoid as much possible discussions.
I was actually way too polite considering the guy was insulting me and outright lying, I'm fairly positive he would have gotten smashed by a banhammer pretty much anywhere else, but we aren't like that.