Thoughts on Mu. What makes a good long-term hardcore server?

[Minos]

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: 

    On 1/28/2019 at 11:41 AM, ADMIN said:

    and it can be late for starting here.

     

    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

[meljoef]

I am with removing HELPER, it is really easy to make a lvl 340 character without effort, but for some players who can't join the HELPER party, they make so much effort while being with helper makes laugh at them supposedly.

I won't donate if my intention is to make a RF/MG/DL character at Level1.. I can easily make it in one day with the help of Helper by making me lvl 200 and create RF,MG,DL..

But total experience is excellent in this server.

Cheers

[Gion]

On 2/10/2019 at 3:58 PM, Minos said:

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

I agree with some of your points of view, we will take into account some of your suggestions. 

Ty