Minos

I was pleased to see that the items in shop are without luck and that the medals have been nerfed somewhat. Good call! But, I still think that medals reduce engaging gameplay. So far I found 3 chaos, 1 jewel of life, and 8 bless in Devias. But I haven't felt the need to use them. Again I am just waiting for the medals to drop something nice, while selling the rest for zen. Notice the problem with this? Because items aren't scarce, they're treated like garbage, deteriorating a liquid economy. Players should be incentivized to put items on the market. Why not disable the medals and hearts altogether (something less to configure and worry about) and reduce the item drop rate even more, stimulating a liquid economy. Also, the beginner maps are full of AFKers who do not party. Therefore, would it be possible to increase jewel drop rate as more people join your party? Perhaps turn auto party on by default as well. The advantage of doing this is twofold, because these AFKers would now serve as 'Helpers' for beginners as well. [Oh right, the helpers have been removed as well. Love it!] Lastly, I would advise ADMIN everyone to read The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36448501-the-bitcoin-standard. Contrary to first impressions, it's not only about Bitcoin, but a history of money, what makes good money good and bad money bad, and its effects on the economy. I'm convinced it will change how you configure your server while reading this book. I even felt the urge to create my own server again while reading it, but decided to try my luck that Oldsquad keeps going in the right direction. Good luck!

No? Bad idea?

On the test server I realized it supports over a million stat points. I've never seen that before and it made me realize my longest standing Mu Online idea is feasible here. And I wonder what the max stats on items are. Is it 255, or can it go higher as well? This is important because with too much character stat points the items become negligible at some point, and this should never be the case. You can only have the amount of resets up until items lose their significance. Anyway, this once, I'll try to explain it as concise is possible because it's more of an idea than a concrete plan. A server where: You need X resets to get out of Lorencia; monster difficulty increases exponentially with monster level, not map. Exp is high, but item drop rate is the lowest possible. Exp decreases the more resets you have. I think, as long as items remain useful (and customized, as I explain here), this idea could turn out to be incredibly successful long term. A lot of players will be together in the beginning maps, creating a tight community—literaly and figuratively—incentivizing newer players to keep playing, which in turn attracts even more players as the online count grows.

What is at the core of Mu? Kill monsters to level up. Collect loot to level faster. What makes Mu fun? Challenging core gameplay. Now, what makes people happy at their work? Good co-workers. Sense of purpose. Good boss. How does the latter translate to Mu? Co-workers: honest co-players Purpose: feeling like your loot is worth something to the in-game economy, and that your character contributes in parties. Good boss: good ADMIN. How does all of the above translate to OldSquad? What is challenging? And are the players happy at their work? Killing monsters is challenging. Especially the level 400 quest took me by surprise. I did finish it in one day though, but it was rewarding. Aside from the quest, I think the monsters in general felt strong, but after a month I could already AFK at Karutan 2, even with my full command Dark Lord. Shortly after I partied at swamp all my interest dropped. There was no challenge anymore and just felt that my addiction outweighed the fun. It consciously became an AFK grind to the perfect set, and that's it, no adventure, no more pleasant surprises. Sure there are events, but they are not necessary to keep improving. The helper bots kill are a killjoy. They should be removed as they aren't challenging whatsoever. There's an auto party command for a reason: to play with people, not with bots. The events like hunting the golden budge are fun. My heart was usually racing when I managed to find one and tried to kill it before someone else. The Shadow Elf Buff NPC should be removed. There are Energy Elves, Angels, Dinorants for a reason, and you can play with two accounts simultaneously. Again, Mu has an automatic bot to play for you, besides that all things that make the game even easier should be disabled. Collecting loot is not challenging: item drop rate is too high, medals are overpowered. This inevitably results in most items being worthless on the market. For example, I won some BOK+5s on events, and got exc thunder armors twice, which I wouldn't have cared about if I sold them at the NPC. However, collecting jewels is somewhat challenging. But I think this is a bit of a mistake since jewels are a means to an end—better items. Jewels should be liquid. They should drop more than items, so you can use them on items, and lose them when items fail to +xx. This balances out both the scarcity of items and jewels. It's more fun to find and use 20 jewels, and possibly fail, than to find 2 jewels and hoard them until you can buy what you need. When correctly balanced both configurations lead to the same scarcity, but the one with higher liquidity of jewels and lowest drop rate of items is the most fun and challenging. Suggestion: remove the blacksmith for credit functionality, and reward people with jewels instead. This increases the challenge and pleasant surprises of naturally upgrading items, and also increases the value of (upgraded) items because their scarcity will be higher as more will be lost. No set items in shops. Only potions, angels, ale (stackable), uniria (walking is extremely boring in Mu; and Dinorant will still be valuable cause success is not 100% and it needs a chaos), and some other small things I didn't think of. Stuff to increase the usefullness of zen. Purpose: the majority of items being useless eventually leads to purposelessness and broken core gameplay. Easy good items > easy leveling & unhealthy economy > no challenge & no purpose of yourself and your found items > no fun > quit. The following might sound a bit farfetched, but just as in the real world, mostly everything works because of the middle-class majority that 'plays' normally, not the the 1%. If the middle and lower class aren't happy, things will die. An example of this: That should never be possible. A server should be configured so it is fun and challenging, long term, no matter when you join. The co-players are generally nice. I mostly had fun experiences. The administrators are generally good. Infinitely better than those who don't listen or reply at all. TL;DR I think the only way for a long-term hardcore server to work is for the drop rate to be as low, and the challenge to feel as difficult as the official Mu Online. All in all I thoroughly enjoyed OldSquad Mu, and I'm curious to see what configurations will follow next. Sincerely, Minos

C'mon bois

Okay, I want to reiterate that I truly find this server exceptionally enjoyable, because whenever I post here, it's usually a suggestion or criticism about certain economic negative aspects which are hard to pinpoint. It's a rewarding server. In spite of the non-liquid economy, collecting the set you want is hard, and getting new stuff is rewarding in general. Even though it skips over the reward of finding non-medal items. There's a decent amount of honest normal players. It's actually been over 10 years since I've made a guild and actually made an effort to find nice guild members. To my surprise, I succeeded, and am actually predominantly partying with them, and having real conversations that are not Mu related. The GMs and administrators actually answer people. I frequently think to myself days after having written some criticism: "Hmm, this ain't so bad after all." It's kind of silly that my list of pros isn't more extensively written than critical posts. I guess that's me being at fault for taking things for granted. I'll update this list when other positive aspects come to mind, because the reasons are plentiful. Some aspects could be a lot better, but others could be a lot worse. Overal, this server deserves appraisal. Thank you.

If your idea gets implemented verbatim, a population decline is almost guaranteed. It's nothing personal, it's human psychology.

I have no idea what PVM points are currently used for, but they should indeed have a use. However, exchanging them for items you want breaks one of the mechanics that makes this game fun; the unpredictability. Whenever you can say, I'll do X, Y-times, then by Z-days I'll have the item, you remove unexpected surprises from the game. The chase is better than the catch; exchanging for items with 100% certainty seems cool—I would use it—but it comes close to Pay 2 Win and ultimately ruins the game. Being able to exchange PVM points for BOKs (or jewels) however, that could work.

The regular stuff, make sure all your drivers are up-to-date. It could also be that your system is running a scan; downloading updates; doing something else. You also need to have the vcredist files installed (check the map FixGameCrash in your OldSquad folder). Perhaps disable ingame overlay in your NVIDIA GeForce Experience settings (right click the NVIDIA logo down below on the right, on the taskbar). Maybe I should have said this first; have you tried turning it off and on again?

If you're running on a laptop make sure it is not using integrated graphics (battery saving mode), but 'powerful NVIDIA-processor'. Right click on your desktop > NVIDIA-config > General settings > Prefered graphics processor > powerful NVIDIA-processor.

This is what started it all for me. Short but immensely powerful. The music is to die for.

Quick update, I've started playing a Dark Lord with Raven + Horse, and I partly take back my opinion that medals are overpowered. Turns out for some characters they are (I was spoiled by my BK defense and attack), and for others, they aren't. Or I have no idea how to play a Dark Lord because my goodness I'm fragile. Even on the testing server with a Light Plate set +11, level 400, and points added to agility, I'm weaker than my lvl 360 BK. The pets aren't maxed, but still.

Necrobump for posterity. I also find the dark horse unpleasant to the eye.

What if auto pickup is disabled, and jewel drop rate is increased? It incentivizes active gameplay without the need of events—events which are mostly dominated by the best. The overpowered medals can be disabled because people will be inclined to upgrade their items more, as jewels become less scarce. Brings life to the economy because people will be willing and will need to trade more. Simplicity is divinity. I think this simple tweak could fix a myriad of problems.