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A New Experience System

One generally consistent factor among private servers is the experience system. Specifically, pre-renewal servers fall into the trap of using the base database rates for experience and modifying those rates by applying multipliers. However, changing the multipliers to effect experience rates is not truly a means of balancing or improving gameplay. At Payon Stories, we have parsed the experience tables of each monster and regressed them against HP values, skills, and other factors to give each monster an indexed score that explains its risk/reward ratio. Thereafter, we went through each monster and rebalanced the stats, HP, and experience granted by those monsters to provide a more linear, consistent progression that players will be able to use to vary their playstyle and try new zones for leveling.

While this may sound similar to the Renewal system, we are keeping the old experience requirements for level ups and leveling will take roughly the same amount of time you would expect on other low-rate servers. That said, old grinding spots such as killing “Wolves” in the 30-40 level range or Toy Factory mobs in the 40-60 level range will no longer be your only efficient options. With the rebalancing, there will be multiple options that provide similar rewards and difficulty for varying level ranges.

We acknowledge that this system may not be perfect out the gate, but we are committed to making adjustments to improve the player experience. Coupled with the questing systems we will later introduce; we envision a well-rounded game that will more closely match the improvements made in the last 20 years to the MMORPG genre as a whole.

Monster Locations

In combination with a new experience system, we also wanted to introduce some linearity in monster spawn locations. While some maps may remain relatively untouched, other maps do not cater well to our goal to provide more options for players.

For example, have you ever been on a map with good, but challenging experience rewards only to be met with a hunter fly that completely disrupts your leveling? We assume that these mobs were added as a lazy way for the official game to passively combat botting. However, many security improvements such as Gepard Shield have eradicated the ability to bot on servers like Payon Stories, leaving behind mobs that are no more than a nuisance. We want all players to have fun and level where they want. Therefore, mobs seen merely as annoyances will be move to locations more suitable and mobs with high levels of variance in difficulty will be moved to provide maps that are more balanced. As with the experience rates, we will be monitoring the monster locations to provide better progressive balance for our players and cohesion with new quests.

HP and SP Regeneration

Downtime has been reduced by increasing the speed at which HP and SP regenerates. When considering things that make Ragnarok Online less enjoyable than other MMORPGs, we considered the downtime caused by slow resource generation to be one of the biggest factors. The ability to use skills provides players with a way to dynamically change the way they play, but if this is stifled by abysmally low regeneration rates, then play is often interrupted. Alternatively, players may forego using some skills entirely due to their SP cost. Therefore, we have decided to make the following changes:

Weight Limits

Relatively minor, though important for fun gameplay, we have decided to increase the maximum weight limit before HP/SP regeneration penalties are imposed to 70%. We feel that 50% is too punishing for all classes and especially those that do not put stats into strength. We think each player should build a character however they wish and prefer weight limits to have less of an impact on builds so players can create characters that are fun to play and not disadvantaged by a largely outdated, unnecessary system.