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Hello, Well done! Mu Oldsquad is the best I've played in years, but I have a couple of concerns. These may be caused by my ignorance since I have only been playing for about two weeks, but I think they are legit remarks. Medals, etc. Problem #1: the items dropping from hearts and medals are way too good and abundant. For example, the first day I played on this server, I haphazardly found a Celestial Bow+11+Skill+Luck+4 just lying on the floor of Noria. If this item is worthless for someone, there is something wrong with the economy. I started as an Elf, and this immediately made every other bow I found myself useless. Only when things are scarce, they are valuable. (Problem #2 [uncertain]: the fact that for some characters a Bronze set +11 (i.e. an energy mage maxing agi & ene) is already considered a good late game set, whereas for other characters it's worthless, is a bit too unbalanced I think. Every class should have some trouble to attain their best set.) Solution: Disable luck and options on items in medals. This increases the value of regular monster drops, and doesn't overpower the medal items. For example, you find Leather Gloves+7 from a medal, great! I look shiny now! But as you grind monsters, suddenly Leather Gloves+5+12+Luck drops. You don't look as shiny, but the item is way better than some cheap medal drop. This stimulates the economy Decrease the max possible item level in medals to +8. This increases the value of luck on items. You got to do some work if you want to look super shiny. Don't put super nice items in medals, like a Celestial Bow. This makes hunting or lurking for items way more fun, and stimulates the economy, again. Items in shop Problem: similar reasoning as above. Solution: Remove the luck from the items. It's not luck if you can easily find or buy it. Uniria, dinorant, angel, etc. Problem Uniria: Useless for running speed because of the (nearly instant access) to small wings at level 80. Impale (such a beautiful skill) is useless as well Solution: remove the small wings as an easy level 80 reward; there can be a much better event or box for such a cool item as wings. Suggestions: Buff the impale skill; higher drop rate for Uniria and make them combinable to Dinorant without chaos. Or not, but then buff the Dinorant skill as well. Problem Angel: rare, useful, but not really valuable. Solution: should be in shop for a reasonable amount of zen. This make zen more useful, and Angels make the game look better. Problem Imp: rare, valuable and useful, but hoarded. I have five of them now, but I'm not using them because they are too rare and they die so fast, just like Angels. Yet I don't want to sell them, nor would I want to pay jewels for them. I'm just waiting for the moment that never comes so I can use them when they die very slowly. Solution: I'd put Imps in shop as well, for a price that could be described expensive, but not too expensive so no one wants to buy them. Doing this should increas the value of zen and the value of Imps. And now using Angels or Imps is a choice like choosing a stat build. Drop rate Problem: I think the drop rate of items is between OK and too high. It took me one day to collect a Great Dragon Set by just standing near parties who were killing monsters I'm still too weak for. Moreover, I got the Great Dragon Armor+1+8+Luck for free from someone who initially asked two chaos for it. I told him it wasn't worth that much, because it isn't, but it should be! This problem is closely related to the overpowered items to be found in medals: because I easily obtained a random set of items +9, +10, +11, it was easy to survive near much too strong monsters. Solution: decrease the drop rate, but increase the chance on luck or options. This stimulates active non-afk gameplay, because you have to be active to see your desirable items drop. Jewels I have never had such a hard time finding jewels, which is awesome and how it should be! But it's a double-edged sword. Because items from medals are so good and abundant, and jewels are so rare, I'm hoarding them and not using them. I'm not even going to try and make wings. I'll just buy the few items I want, and keep hoarding jewels until I can buy the item I want, without buying or leveling up any intermediate items from the market. (Nobody is buying my items as well.) ~Solution: Increase the likelihood of finding Bless by increasing the drop rate, or more recurring events specifically for Bless, and maybe a bit more Soul. The latter is the best option because it also stimulates active gameplay. [The events in this server are remarkably good; it's been years since I was motivated to participate in these events. They are challenging, fun, and necessary for jewels.] Finding more Bless, and fewer items, will stimulate people in actually using it to level up items and buying intermediate items on the market. It comes down to this: early game it should be reasonably 'easy'/encouraged/fun to level up items to +7, +8, +9. mid game it should be 'moderate'/challenging/fun to level up items to +10+11+12. late game it should be 'difficult'/challenging/risky to level up items to +13+14+15. Instead—what happens now I think—is that early and mid game is lost, and jewels are hoarded to save for the late game. This is boring. (Anyway, I've hosted a private server myself once, and the economy is incredibly difficult to get right, so this is just brainstorming.) That being said, I think if finding Bless was 'moderate', Soul was 'hard', and Chaos the 'hardest', then it would make early, mid, and late game more fun while remaining a challenge. I have more ideas and suggestions, but the somewhat broken economy is the most pressing for me right now. And it's getting late, so I'll end it here.

I think you just inadvertently supported my arguments. For example, the Excellent items I found so far were—personally—mostly useless because of the overpowered items in medals. Items from medals should be transitional, or as you said: 'consumable', not the monster drops. Instead, medals render 99% of the regular monster drops useless. Excellent items used to be "Holy fuck I found an excellent item," now it's just "Meh, let's see what option it has." About socket or ancient items I can't comment because I indeed have no experience with those. However, that's not necessary for my points to be legitimate. Some people play slow or infrequently, others play a lot. If an economy is mainly focussed around end game items, it's only 'fun' for hardcore players. Similarly to my elf, I've been using a Sword of Destruction+10+4+Luck from the first day I started playing with my knight. In the meantime I've found items from monsters that I would've have been psyched about to find if it weren't for those medal drops. What makes gameplay fun is pleasant surprises. These medals aren't. Now it's just a deluge of items that mostly go unused, or just sold in shop. I'm no economist, but I think if items were much harder to find, then the economy would work both ways, jewels from beginners to experienced players, and items from experienced player to beginners. I feel like infrequent or beginner players have nothing to contribute or nothing to look out for. Newer players—personally speaking—don't want to catch up, they want to get good, with pleasant surprises and fun gameplay. If the latter conditions are true, they will catch up anyhow. What this server does well is rewarding active players more than AFKing, but it could do it even better. Brainstorm Idea #1: drastically increase price of AFK mechanism so AFKing can't be done indefinitely on monster zen drops alone. This makes zen more valuable. AFKing should still be relatively easy, but doing so should stimulate the economy, not deteriorate it. Idea #2: I think the helper bots are silly (but the intention behind it is honest). Just as the struggle of weight lifting followed by eventual success (or practicing any other skill) is the cause of satisfaction, so should be the struggle of leveling. When you're small and weak you look at people bigger than you and think "Damn, I want to be like that. If I work hard at it I can be like that as well." Sadly, what is fun about standing next to a bot until you're level X? Yes beginners level up faster, but it leaves a part of the economy, and fun, untapped. It also disincentivizes exploring maps for good spots that are suitable for your skill level. The more you hold people's hand, the more they'll want their hands to be hold, but counterintuitively, the less fun they'll be having and the less inticed they'll be to stay on the server. Idea #3: What is unique about Mu? Not the rarity of jewels, but the vast amount of possible combinations of items. Everyone can look unique due to the amount of different items, and the beautiful shaders of upgraded items. These item shaders are still better looking than any modern MMORPG in the world. You should take use of that. The fact that over the years the game has been added with many more features is a reason we've got to get past the idea that a single bless and soul must be extremely rare. Instead, let Bundles of Bless or Soul +30 be the new benchmark for rare. Only put beginner +7 (without +luck +option) items in medals, and beginner items +0 (without +luck +option) in NPC shops, and let the players make stuff +11 and beyond. This is what's fun, and because of it people will start using zen and jewels for trading more as the chaos machine costs zen, and failing costs items. Swearing and quitting doesn't solve anything. Having a healthy in-game economy is incredibly hard to pull off. Admins or players are not doing this maliciously. Did you know that games like EVE Online employ economists to make their in-game economy work? Anyway, this was all written in short bursts, off the top of my head, so pardon my occasional incoherence.

i just love your avatar, BLACK ADDER never dies ! and Boldrick as well ))