Fietsopa

^ This. At this point I have no idea how much mental gymnastics are necessary to dispute that. It's just paragraphs full of assumptions and contradictions and a complete lack of understanding of what the issue is and a fundamental misunderstanding on what level the issue should be solved. I know I'm wasting my time here but thought I'll just break down just one of these to show you. The thing is, low level mobs drops matts to craft low level gear, which is something, that makes great sense. Not necessarily true - some low level mobs drop items that are useful for higher level players and gear as well. Also, it's not necessarily a great strategy to implement that low level drops should be useful for low level only. ROSE works best when the gameplay is developed horizontally as well as vertically. Here's why: having challenging content at lower levels that can yield something of use for higher levels connects the population and creates the necessary social and market interaction between newbies and veterans. It creates an avenue for resources to flow between these two groups, thus establishing access to the supply and demand dynamics of the economy. It also makes sure that low level maps are populated by low level characters, so a new player is likely to level and farm alongside a similarly-leveled veteran player who might be farming. This is opposed to the current state where a newbie player exists in the realm of much higher level characters just blitzing through the mobs while that new player struggles, possibly competing for the same mobs (fundamentally a good thing!), which the newbie cannot respond to in any material way and has almost no chance (objectively a bad thing!). This is bad game design. The problem is, low levels are very ineffective at farming these matts, causing the costs of these matts to be extremely high. No, the problem is not that. The problem is that the current system makes them ineffective. It allows high level players to farm these mobs, so of course lower level players are going to be comparatively inefficient. This is obvious and it is caused by the system. Also, certain mobs have been balanced to take into account high level farmers, thus hurting the natural, lower level farmers for these mobs. If this is the system that you currently operate in, of course you're going to claim that it's inefficient for lower levels to farm these. The problem is that the system inherited from naROSE is fundamentally flawed because it was a bandaid for a problem instead of a cure. However, now you consider it the norm and you're not happy when players with a different viewpoint explain to you why that system is fundamentally flawed from a game design perspective. causing the costs of these matts to be extremely high. UNLESS, High levels farm it, Which lowers greatly the cost of these matts, but then also lowers the cost of the items being crafted. This results in cheaper low level items. Something that is important and healthy for the economy of ROSE. Low levels benefit from this more than immediately meets the eye. No, having low cost items for low levels does not make the economy healthy. Rather, appropriate access to supply and demand by the various participants in the economy makes the economy healthy. The economy is interconnected. I can turn your argument on its head and prove that it is to the detriment of low level players using your own logic. High level players can farm low level zones more efficiently because they face virtually no challenge and are vastly more powerful than the monsters. The comparison between high level players and low level players farming the same mob is not even close. Therefore, if high level players produce a greater supply of Item A for a lower unit of time than low level players can, the value of Item A will adjust to match the effort required by high level players. This means that you create a disconnect between the effort required by low level players to obtain Item A (which will remain high in comparison to high level players) and the value of Item A on the market (which is dictated by the lower effort expended by high level players). Therefore, low level players are completely cut off from making an impact on the supply for this Item A, which is naturally farmed in low level maps - their maps. This means that low level players would get much less compensation per unit of time than they would have gotten if they had more control over the supply by competing among themselves. Yet, these low level players do not operate in the sterile low level item realm that you present. No, they also spend resources to get items such as gems, which are not subject to the same supply and demand conditions as those for low level items. So, even if low level items cost less because high level players farm them, low level players still need to participate in the economy for other items and this is where their reduced earnings will hit them. Therefore, the effect of introducing high level players to low level farming is that low level player have reduced purchasing power in the economy. This is a very long-winded way to explain Economics 101 to you. It is precisely the cause why many businesses failed whenever there was a technological disruption to their industry. If your competitor can produce more widgets than you for lower the cost today, then the value of your widgets will decrease to match that of your competitor tomorrow. But that won't change the fact that you will still buy bread for the same price tomorrow. You will just have less funds and be at a disadvantage.

Childish accusations and assumptions aside, I am glad you enjoy the current state of the server. As to what is laughable and delusional, I guess time will tell who's right and who's wrong. One last comment from me: "pservers were by design, nothing like the direction the original developers of the game wanted to see" - Precisely, the direction of an old legacy MMO such as ROSE should go in favour of what the players want and expect from the game in 2023, not what the original developers wanted years ago. What the original developers wanted years ago is irrelevant. What your audience wants and expects from you now is relevant. Some of that might align with what the original devs wanted, some of it might not. But if you listen to what the audience wants, you will do good.

The naROSE devs created a problem through lazy and objectively bad game design (they didn't deliver the farming content needed for high levels), then they refused to solve it from game design standpoint (by failing to deliver the needed content), and, instead, they just came up with a lazy solution (let everyone be able to farm everything with 1 character), which goes completely against the core principles of ROSE as a game and its economy (specifically where and how new players fit in that economy vs old players), and then they sold that solution to people. Create the problem and sell the solution. It's one of the oldest tricks. It's also one of the reasons naROSE failed. The fact that the most successful private ROSE servers out there are iROSE ones, which focus precisely on farming of the type I've described, is more than enough proof of what the actual remaining player base values and wants. Letting max level characters farm in competition to new player characters in low level zones without any level scaling mechanics in place makes farming frustrating for new players and, therefore, pretty much dead on arrival.

You won't have the same problem - you're pitting (close to) equally leveled characters against each other where the deciding factor is gear and skill. This is game design 101 - when competition ensures, let the newbies lose out due to gear and/or skill, which are two things they can control and/or improve on. The ability to get better in a material way in a reasonable amount of time keeps people playing MMOs. What doesn't keep people playing MMOs is losing out very early on in your journey when you never have a chance because your opponent is 150 levels above you and has many times the capabilities that you have. This is a quit moment for players and is objectively just bad game design. Also, you'd have a much, much easier time balancing the content to be challenging and fair to characters of the same level. Unless you implement a dynamic level scaler in the game, which ROSE does not have, you will never have a balanced yet challenging farming. You actually will do more damage to the game balance if you try to change things to accommodate low and max level farmers of the same mob, and the end result is bosses in the lower maps with a million points of HP, simply because you're trying to balance this one mob to be farmed by a level 250 character and a level 80 character. The point about alternative farmers is somewhat legit, however, ROSE is and has always been a game of projects and tools. I'd argue that the charm and richness of the game lies precisely in the fact that to achieve X you often times need to start a project (a new character) and acquire the tools (gear for that character). Most of the community is used to that and, if the barrier to entry is not prohibitively high, new players are also OK with that. I've dealt with a lot of newbies on other servers who enjoy this type of project managing. You can juice so much extra content out of the game by having dedicated farmers and it can be enjoyable if the leveling is paced properly. But the balance has to be such as to allow you to become more efficient in making these alternate farmers as you snowball your gear and zulie. If it's always a tedious, repetitive process, then such a design strategy doesn't work.

Don't try to shoehorn high level characters into low level maps. This creates inherent conflict with low level players that doesn't exist normally. Also, it cannot possibly be balanced in any way that works well for both groups given their differences, unless you introduce a very robust level compensation system to de-level higher level characters, which kind of defeats the purpose of using a higher level farmer. The solution is to create appropriate content for higher levels, repurpose existing content, or shrink the max level (e.g. max is 200) so the number of existing maps can offer a reasonable range of alternatives to this shrunk max level.

I'm pretty sure most of the people open to a reset actually want problems to be fixed before resetting. There are probably very, very few people who are foolish enough to believe that a simple reset, without first fixing the underlying exploits and bugs, will change something. The point being made, rather, is that certain items and resources appear to have entered the economy in vastly increased quantities because of various exploits, abuses, or lack of balancing. Depending on the depth of the problem and the population of the server, it might legitimately take a long time to drain out these items and stabilise the rate of obtaining such items to a value that makes sense for progression. Aspects like the availability of uniques or refining materials have a direct effect on player retention and engagement - if new joiners have access to the higher tier of gear immediately because so much of that gear has been generated via exploit, abuse or simply by lack of proper balancing, then you essentially cut off a large chunk of the sustained progress these players should experience as they level through the game. Also, you hit pretty hard any "nostalgia" players who join to see not only vast changes to the core game features they remember and love (e.g. buffs) but also a market that resembles a long-running private server instead of a fresh "official" server. Regardless of whether you favour some form of reset or not, pretty sure all agree that step one is resolving the outstanding issues. Only after that can you take stock of the situation and see how to tackle the damage caused by what you just fixed. But there is an element of timing that is crucial here. There is a time window where you need to work on this before you bleed out.

Well, I guess most people benefitting from this will keep quiet about some of the more game-breaking exploits such as possible dupes or quest/disassemble abuse, so until someone grows a backbone to spill the beans the status quo will continue. That's why I think committing to no reset when you know your game will launch with a considerable likelihood for game-breaking exploits is a bad idea from a dev standpoint. I see three possibilities and each of them is damaging in different ways, all stemming, in my opinion, from the no-reset-even-though-it's-early-access mindset. The exploits are fixed but nothing is done to fix the damage already caused, so the game "launches" with an oversaturated economy, which potentially kills interest for new joiners. The exploits are fixed and something is done to roll back exploits but no reset. This would be incredibly hard to do if there no proper database to follow items and is complicated further when, for example, a dupe is sold to someone who legitimately farmed the zulie to buy a "clean" item. This sounds unrealistic. The exploits are fixed and there is some type of reset (e.g. parallel server opens up on launch and encourages the "Early Access" server to merge over time).

Sounds promising for the future of this server! https://tenor.com/7xxl.gif

Wait, wait, let me get this straight... Instead of having to do multiple character projects for certain types of farming, which, let's face it, most of the ROSE player base left enjoys at this point, you can farm everything with 1 overleveled character, albeit with a small drop penalty? No need to level up a few farmers, thus ensuring lowbie zones remain more active later in the game's lifespan and providing more content to players? No need to invest in new gear for each farmer project, thus keeping the market active, or minmaxing in any tangible way? No sense of danger or challenge or skill because you are 100+ levels above the mob with no level scaling applied? Idk man, sounds perfectly reasonable game design to me!

This is precisely where the change of buffs shows its impact. Let's face it - the basic grind in ROSE is fairly boring if you don't have a full set of buffs. It's slow, it's monotonous, the PVE combat (at lower levels especially) lacks depth and "meat". Buffs act as a stimulant, making the players feel strong and turning a subpar gameplay loop into something palatable, even enjoyable to some. So, when you remove a key stimulant like strong buffs and repackage it as something considerably weaker (at those levels), you end up highlighting just how mundane and boring the normal gameplay loop is. You can't simply remove the stimulant that gives player the feeling of power and do next to nothing to make what you are left with better, and then expect to have compelling content. There is the fact that the game may not be for you. That's true. But there is also the undeniable fact that the game might have been for you, if certain changes were not done.

Hope everyone had a nice time so far during the holidays. Just bumping this to see if we can get some answers, in particular to the first question as it's still unclear to me whether the leaked data is partial or could be whole. The email sent after the Discord post was essentially the same, so it didn't provide an answer. If there is interest in answering the remaining questions - awesome. If not, then at least people wondering about this can get some closure that there won't be an answer by staff. Wishing everyone safe holidays.

Let me start by saying that I am not active on the ROSE Online Discord, as such I have been fed information from people active there, mainly through screenshots. Having heard about the security incident and data leak, I have a few questions swirling in my head that I think other players might be interested in knowing the answers to as well. While it is good to see that the team is actively communicating with the player base on this, I would like to point out the obvious here: this is their legal responsibility by virtue of the applicable data protection legislation, especially the GDPR, which is a regime that covers my personal data as a citizen of the European Union. This level of communication is the bare minimum needed to meet the legal obligations imposed on data controllers and data processors. As such, I urge players to avoid commending Rednim on doing its legal obligations in this case as that is expected of them by default. Also, players should have some patience as the team works through this mess - having been involved in data leak incidents in the past, I am well aware of the amount of work needed to address them. I do hope that the good communication we've seen from the team will continue, together with any additional legal requirements, filings and notifications required of them pursuant to the applicable legislation. The last Discord post I have seen is the one below: Here are my questions: At the start, the Discord post states that "If you logged into the game anytime between December 13th and December 20st your email and, potentially, part of your password may have been leaked". Towards the end, the Discord post has a list, and one of the points reads "if the player's email and password combined were less than the 24 characters then the full credentials could be leaked". These two statements do not make sense together - is the leak only of partial passwords or is the leak of full passwords as well? Although I have used burner passwords on both my accounts, this is perhaps pertinent information for some players. The post states that "our systems HAVE NOT been compromised", however, is the login server not one of your core systems? Or do you mean that your systems have not been breached, but rather data access was "tricked" by external actions? Your team has to be very careful with your wording here as you don't want to give people affected by the data leak the wrong impression. This is particularly the case where you make posts claiming that Y has NOT happened. Please understand that people reading such posts would hang onto every word and something as simple as "our systems HAVE NOT been compromised" may be misinterpreted by them to mean "I'm safe". There have been quite a few references to "old code" and "inherited code" throughout the Discord and Forum posts I have seen. When I first heard of this server launch, and particularly when it was confirmed that the server will be "official" (and the server was advertised as such), I naturally assumed that the server will start on the basis of the modern naROSE code, which should have had these issues patched long ago. Can we get a confirmation if this is the case or not? How old is the code that this server is running? How old was the piece of code that caused this incident and why did Gravity not provide an updated version, assuming one exists, for such a key feature/fix? If the server is running much older code, why has the label "official" been continuously pressed? I do not mean to offend here, but please understand that a lot of players would naturally link "official" with the naROSE version given the alleged permission obtained from Gravity, ergo certain expectations about the age and state of the code would have been made by these players. For example, I had an expectation that the most up-to-date code would be run and this is what Gravity brought to the table when they agreed for Rednim to launch this server. My experience at launch (not talking about the network issues - these are to be expected) was of a much, much older version of evoROSE, missing a ton of QoL features present in naROSE for quite some time. Is my assumption about the code used and Gravity's input wrong then, and can you please clarify? If the game and servers are prone to security vulnerabilities stemming from old code, shouldn't a closed/semi-closed, controlled beta be run first before early access release? Do you have any plans for that? For the people who will jump at me from the rooftops - early access is not the same as a beta, no matter how much indie companies on Steam like to push this narrative. Early access means "this is ready for release from a core technical features standpoint, but the content is not there yet". Beta means "both the core technical aspects and the content are still under development". Crucial difference with a big effect on users. Things like personal data security should trump any desire by players to get their hands early on an unfinished product. While you might enjoy the game 3 months earlier, someone's life could be ruined by identity theft from leaked data. It's not worth it, so please don't debate on this. Thanks a lot for reading through this and I hope we can get some answers on these points. Good luck with the fixes!