1. EXP rate
The way I see it, decreasing the EXP rate could either be a plus or minus. I personally think the EXP rate last era was perfect because of the exp stages; once you hit I think it was like level 250 or 300, the exp rate became very slow. Any slower than that and I feel like it would be to slow; people would get tired of the endless grinding. I understand that most of the quests/tasks have been reworked to give some more exp than before, but unless you are always doing a quest/task it won't help as much as you think because unlike quests/tasks, hunting is something you constantly do which is a consistent source of exp but a quest you can only do once, a daily quest once a day, and repeatable quests most likely won't yield the greatest exp and takes time to complete. I'm just saying that if at level 250, it's slower than the previous ERA (which was really slow) then something is wrong and it will become a major grindfest. Like hehemidu said Ascalon was meant to be a mid to high exp server and lowering the EXP to much will cause people to quit due to the boredom.
2. Dungeons
I really like the idea of dungeons but it was poorly designed. First of all, like Aerro stated the goal of the dungeon was to run around the designed map in order to kill every last monster. The problem with this was
the atrocious mapping... especially with the underwater dungeon. It was a huge map that was underwater and took us FOREVER to complete since you moved so slow and the map was huge. I don't mind having the goal of killing every monster in the map as long as the mapping is well designed and thought through. Another problem, like Aeroo stated, was the lack in variety of dungeons. It was so boring just going in and moving across the entire map to kill all the monster, it eventually got tedious. There all all type of dungeon ideas you can come up with.
I don't like how you were able to get mounts from dungeons, it was just plain stupid and effortless to achieve. You already get EXP and items, mounts are a bit overboard. Another problem is that people would always have to fight about who gets the taming item and it was fu*cking annoying. Not to mention depending on what mount it was you had to use the taming item on the mount itself which prevented you from getting another taming item. The only way I would see mounts working in dungeons is if instead of getting a taming item from the mount you have a chance to get the taming item for that mount at the end with the rest of your items and then you simply click it to get the mount.
The main point of having no level restrictions for dungeons is so that high levels can go back and do the lower level dungeons if they missed out on a mount and then over leveled. If you remove mounts from the dungeon this won't be a problem anymore, and there won't be any reason to do lower level dungeons if you're a high level. A low level should not be able to party up with high levels because I feel like there could be some abuse in that.
3. Recipes
4. Donations
The way I see it, decreasing the EXP rate could either be a plus or minus. I personally think the EXP rate last era was perfect because of the exp stages; once you hit I think it was like level 250 or 300, the exp rate became very slow. Any slower than that and I feel like it would be to slow; people would get tired of the endless grinding. I understand that most of the quests/tasks have been reworked to give some more exp than before, but unless you are always doing a quest/task it won't help as much as you think because unlike quests/tasks, hunting is something you constantly do which is a consistent source of exp but a quest you can only do once, a daily quest once a day, and repeatable quests most likely won't yield the greatest exp and takes time to complete. I'm just saying that if at level 250, it's slower than the previous ERA (which was really slow) then something is wrong and it will become a major grindfest. Like hehemidu said Ascalon was meant to be a mid to high exp server and lowering the EXP to much will cause people to quit due to the boredom.
2. Dungeons
I really like the idea of dungeons but it was poorly designed. First of all, like Aerro stated the goal of the dungeon was to run around the designed map in order to kill every last monster. The problem with this was
the atrocious mapping... especially with the underwater dungeon. It was a huge map that was underwater and took us FOREVER to complete since you moved so slow and the map was huge. I don't mind having the goal of killing every monster in the map as long as the mapping is well designed and thought through. Another problem, like Aeroo stated, was the lack in variety of dungeons. It was so boring just going in and moving across the entire map to kill all the monster, it eventually got tedious. There all all type of dungeon ideas you can come up with.
- Go through X amount of floors in a tower and kill the boss at the end. The floors would very simple and once you have killed all of the monsters on that floor a teleport would appear taking you to the next floor, eventually reaching the boss. You could even add in a chance for rare floors to appear which yield treasure or trap floors which can execute you if you're not careful.
- Protect NPC ____ from the attackers. Basically there would be waves of monsters that would come and try to kill an NPC. Your goal is to hold off the hoard of monsters and protect the NPC at all costs.
- Destroy the 4 elemental shrines and after the 4 shrines have been destroyed an Elemental Boss spawns with 4 elemental forms.
I don't like how you were able to get mounts from dungeons, it was just plain stupid and effortless to achieve. You already get EXP and items, mounts are a bit overboard. Another problem is that people would always have to fight about who gets the taming item and it was fu*cking annoying. Not to mention depending on what mount it was you had to use the taming item on the mount itself which prevented you from getting another taming item. The only way I would see mounts working in dungeons is if instead of getting a taming item from the mount you have a chance to get the taming item for that mount at the end with the rest of your items and then you simply click it to get the mount.
The main point of having no level restrictions for dungeons is so that high levels can go back and do the lower level dungeons if they missed out on a mount and then over leveled. If you remove mounts from the dungeon this won't be a problem anymore, and there won't be any reason to do lower level dungeons if you're a high level. A low level should not be able to party up with high levels because I feel like there could be some abuse in that.
3. Recipes
- Recipes should have random values. By this I mean if a boss drops a crit recipes it can range from being 5%-10% instead of just one value of 7. This adds more customizations.
- Add a wider variety of recipes. PLEASE add in a ton of new and rare recipes for BOTH low and high levels. There were some recipes for low levels like mana regen, but no mana regen recipes for higher levels.
- Take a look at the bucket of water used in crafting.. because I swear the chance of it braking is like 80% and buckets are not cheap. It got very annoying and expensive.
- Add in more recipes for helmets, legs, boots, armor, etc... because most of the recipes are for weapons which is lame. There only a few recipes for equipment (excluding weapons) such as 500 HP, or guardian angel.
4. Donations
- I didn't like lotto tickets at all because it lets people get high grade equipment which seemed rather unfair. I see there is a poll to remove G7/8 items which should hopefully help with that.
- DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE THE PREVIOUS OWNER DID; there was a short period of time where people could donate for gems/ability stones and that was just stupid.
- Donating for outfits/mounts is a good idea, BUT you should make it so that normal players have a way of achieving them as well since outfits/mounts give bonus.
- The warp rune and transmuting wand are both VERY useful so I think it would be awesome if there was a non-donation version of both items obtainable in game, but they come with drawbacks. For example, the non-donor warp rune could have a X amount cool-down, or cost X amount of money each time you use it. The transmuting wand could give an X% less money than the donor one. This way those who don't donate are still able to have some of the same abilities as donors but of course with limitations.
- Fix the skulled monsters that spawn to be more beneficial. I can not tell you how many times I've killed skulled monsters and got NOTHING or at most 1 gem, no items or ability stones. Those skulled monsters take a long time to spawn (you have to get pretty lucky) and then when you finally get to face one they give you nothing.. they should ALWAYS give you at least something even more so if it's a red skull.
- Add more rare, unique, and collectable items to monsters. I don't know about anyone else but I love it when monsters have super rare items they can drop, it just makes it exciting! even more so when it's indicated in some way such as the huge blue arrow that falls upon the dead monster. I can easily grind on monsters for hours if I know they have rare items they can drop.
- Make some monsters more challenging. Most of the time I just smashed hotkeys while running around and it gets boring very fast. Yes you can just make monsters hit more, but it would be more interesting if some monsters had unique spells that require you to pay attention while you're fighting so you can dodge them, or else you could be facing death!
- Maybe you could add in some rare items that only skulled monsters can drop like event tokens or something.
- Take a look at the vocations and see what you can improve.
- Examine ALL of the passives and try to make them as balanced as possible. There were certainly some passives that were a lot better than others.
- Add in more spells! It gets SUPER boring when you have to use the same spell for 90% of the game. It would be even more awesome if there were different methods to gain spells instead of just leveling up. Maybe there could even be some secret spells.
- Check out the formula for armor penetration and rework it so it functions properly. I know for a fact that previous era armor pen was pretty much useless which hurt sharpshooters.
- Please take botters seriously and don't let them off the hook. It should be something like 1st offense 7 day ban, 2nd offense deletion.
- Is there any systems implemented to prevent botters? I'm not sure why last era that one system was removed. I guess some people complain it was to "annoying" but if you can't spare 10 seconds to stand still everyone once in a while then you have no patience..
- Hire staff that will actually monitor players and take action when necessary.
- Hire professional and NON BIASED staff. (cannot stress how important this is)
- The staff you hire should have some type of presence on the server. People like to see the staff online otherwise they feel like the staff doesn't care about the server or never get on.
- Some of the staff members should be on from time to time to monitor players and catch botters.
- Like Aeroo said, you should remove the outfits you gain from premium; it's literately wasting outfits that could be used for a greater purpose.
- Create a variety of ways to get outfits. Right now you basically get outfits just by gathering creature products which is lame. Why not create some other methods, you can even make some secret ways to get some outfits.
- Take a look at the outfit/mount bonuses and see if it needs altering.
- Maybe add in secret ways to get creature outfits? I think it would be pretty cool and it would add to the pool of outfits.
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