So i have read in this thread that Sarkas wants to get suggestions, that are widely agreed upon by the players. Let's give it a try shall we.
-note; i haven't played for like 2 months, although i logged in a couple days back to see what's up in rom to quickly log off again-
So you are wondering what needs to be changed in rom? Let me what changes would make the game more enjoyable (and consider returning to) for me personally.
1)
Class balancing. Classes dont need to be perfectly balanced, BUT there should Always be a viable combo to play for whatever mainclass + race you play. This right now is not the case, think of a Priest for example, they are in no way viable compared to a druid, apart from some really specific situations. Make Mage an actual class to play? from what i remember this class is even more dead than the priest. There is plenty of threads/post that go into deep detail about which classes, combo's and races are viable to run, so ill leave it at that for now, theres for certain work to be done here.
2)
Grindability (is this a word?). Give people an incentive to play the game. When i played (maybe because i was endgame) people logged in to do nothing all day waiting for enough people to form a party and run an instance. Create content for people to do in the meantime when there are not enough people to run an instance. I myself used to solo Dreamland, but i think this is very niche and highly class dependant. People need to be able to grind out their equipment other than having to run the daily minigames and quests.
Playing time varies alot. In the weekends most people might have more time to play than during the week, therefore they get "punished" for not playing during the week (missing minis/dailies), and get bored during the weekend -> i done my dailies/minis and theres no party up, ill just go play another game in the meantime that i waiit for other players to log in.
--> One of the many suggestion i have to make this better is to bring back normal mode stat farming. Bring back a useful way to spend mementos. Stats and best in slot equipment were perfect for this. Now the jewelry slots are locked behind HOE which is really difficult for players that are gearing up to farm it. Also mostly comes in low durability so that the general player gearing up has to spend a ton on gold hammers for learning instances (you could go with a lesser set, but then you might not be accepted in instances)
I remember farming a boatload of stats in Bone Peak normal mode, this resulted in a lot of gold to get me to endgame fast.
3)
Speed up the process of becoming endgame. I know it's highly dependant on the current highest instance, so right now it might not be too hard, but the general burn instances requires near perfectly statted optimised gear. The general player base gets stuck in what i call the midgame, since it is so expensive to optimise just one piece of gear, let alone a full set of it. Also there is almost no gear progression possible, you dont scale up in this game. You are either good enough to run the latest instances, or you are not. Instances in between are dead. Players only do them for the set skill, but that is character bound. The cost of ABLs makes it so it is not possible for lower tier players to make a profit out of lower instances to afford stronger gear. Also the way to achieve the insane boost you get with Ironblood Will is rediculous. I don't know the math, but it takes a dedicated player like 2 years to achieve this gamechanging skill.
--> To make this better you remove the bound on pickup of items dropped in lower instances, so players can profit off of it. Implement before mentioned normal stat farming. Shift away from the amount of days it requires in favor of the amount of hours it takes. This way players are more flexible with their time. The highest percentage of players doesnt get to run the latest instance while making a valuable contribution to the raid, this has to change if you want players to keep playing ROM. Why release new instances when most people cannot run it in hardmode, and the other modes are not worth doing. Again, make mementos worth farming.
4)
Siege War. Although this shouldn't be the primary concern in ROM you have to acknowledge that there is a great amount of people that play ROM solely for Siege Wars. I do not have much suggestions for Siege War itself, as i havent played it other than to farm the much needed buffing/debuffing titles for running instances. I myself feel like this is the core problem as well. The people playing SW aren't on the same page, there are people trying to aquire PVM skill, and there's people that enjoy playing SW in the sense of teamwork, strategy and leaderboards. This clearly devides the players. On the one hand you want the extra amount of people in SW that are going for PVM titles so that SW isn't dead content. On the other hand the diehard SWer gets really annoying with the laidback approach a titlegrinder has regarding the actual war.
--> with great hesitation i would suggest moving away from the need for PVMers to partake in SW. Make the PVM titles grindable via mementos or some other actual PVM method. Rework the SW rewardsystem so that it is not so much focused around the amount of merrits collected. Give SW badges another purpose if shifting PVM titles to mementos. im not sure what a worthy reward would be, maybe something like diamonds or proofs of myth? There have been many suggestions about this in the past from people that are more involved in SW than i have ever been, so they should probably come up with a fitting reward. I also like the idea of a ranking system where the top SW teams get additional rewards for being in the top ranking slots. Also there needs to be some balancing classes for PVP purposes from what i remember, but again, SWers are more suited to come up with suggestions regarding this.
5)
MAKE EVERYTHING CHEAPER. As has been said many times in the past; its better to have 50 people spend 10 euros than to have 2 people spend a 100 euros. The game is way way way too Pay2Win, and also you have to spend way too much IRL or ingame money to get a set of endgame gear. Make it easier and more affordable for people to reach the endgame. Its so expensive to make one set that it takes years to reach endgame, and with ROMS current environment who knows how long this game has left. Its almost a certainty you wont reach endgame status if you start now before the game closes down for good. Even if you reach endgame (gz, you are one of the few!) you most likely have like 4-6 classes at the level cap from which you cant use the majority of it. Its hard enough to upkeep the one combo you primarily use, let alone try picking up a second class. With ROMs unique class combo system there is so many great combos that you would wanna try out, but with the insane costs of gearing its impossible to do so. People do wanna try new stuff, and test there limits and expand the "meta ", but its just way too expensive to even consider in most cases.
--> Make diamonds and IS items cheaper. I dont know the diaprices these days, but i remember paying 250-350k per diamond generally, with prices going up to as much as 500k with a special IS promo and no diamonds promo. With diamond prices only going up and up and up and up the situation of gearing is only gonna get worse and will take even longer for new players to get a good set of gear. make endgame gear affordable.
------>> if it were to cost a 100 euros for a toptier weapon, and somewhere between 25 and 50 euros (this is already pretty expensive) for a piece of endgame gear players would actually get endgame gear (theres Always those players that wanna be better than others and spend crazy amounts) and run instances. People could go for a second or even third set of gear once they dont have to spend as much since they can farm their own items. They would play more content, use more of the classes available and have a ton more fun doing so. Gameforge would probably earn just as much money when you offset the few amount of player spending alot of money against alot of people spending a lower amount.
6)
Perfect Jewels. Try to move away from all the gambling that is Runes of Magic. While making gear is already way too expensive, players might not mind spending a bit more on perfect Jewels, to Ensure they do not have to risk making their equipment worse, where they will have to pump in more money again, just to get to the same level they were on before. This is highly frustrating and the reason a great chunk of players leave the game. Is it not time for a fairer approach? As easy as you spend X and you know you will end up with equipment with +Y, this way players can make a better judgement call on whether they want to buy diamonds or not.
7)
Ingame and forum events. From what i remember is that on the forums there were alot of competitions, where there would be winners from most regions, but not from EU. why is this? it's a matter of rewards. I recall getting like a really low reward for participating, and the big prize being a permanent mount that is available in the Item Shop. This is not rocket science. Ingame there is no notice of the forum events, so only the players that visit the actual forums discover about these forum competitions. Which players do visit the forums? that would be the "nooby" player looking for advise while questing for his life so he can reach the level cap (busy with leveling) and the absolute endgamer who wants to have more insight about the game. The leveler will be busy with questing, and the endgamer has no need for yet another mount. The typical midgamer will not visit the forums since he will just log into rom, do his dailies and minis, talk to his guild, do a SW or normal or lower end instance, and then log off again. The audience that MIGHT wanna compete in such a forum competition is not reached this way. Also i think even midgamers have a mount already, so for them its like whatever.
--> Come up with unique rewards that people wanna have, but that do not give a big advantage over others (so its not required for endgamers to partake). A special good looking skin for example (not shetty, recycled and recolored skins). People like skins in ROM. A special title maybe, that gives an unique bonus that is not OP, but still worthwhile to have. You could also give the winner a set of durability drillers or other convience items all players have a need for. But mounts to me seems really strange, as a mount is generally a one time purchase (i know there are mount collectors, but there are not many of them).
Ingame events are really hard to balance, since noone will come if the reward isn't good, and people will only come for the reward if its too good. Its also a matter of what audience you want to reach. Do you want the midgamer to attend a special gathering with his midgamer guild? Or do you want to interrupt endgamers in their instance grinding? Be clear about what crowd you want to attract, and more people might come. Maybe use a poll system INGAME, or via a link ingame you get when logging in, about these sorts of things. Make it easy for players to find these things.
You can poll what kind of events players want, when they want it, what rewards they want to get. Small things like that. Its too easy to say the players got to let us know what they want. Promote player held events, award that with diamonds or something. Organise a AA (cant remember the name, that battleground where you start at lvl 1) tournament with a nice prizepool.
TLDR: make it cheaper and easier to reach endgame, shift away from DailyROM, players can manage their own time that way. Seperate PVM from PVP. Give PVP a worthy reward for their contribution. Balance classes in both PVM and PVP. Make more classes viable. Bring back mementos farming. Keep players engaged.
Additional suggestion: make guard dog meat unbound again. it was to stop players from botting guard dogs, i doubt theres many botters left in this somewhat dead game. Good for starting players to farm some money. Smoother way of leveling during a bonus xp event. This will make more people buy Daily Quest Tickets (reduce them in price) and less people leveling in instances (no dias are sold then).
This is all i got for now, as i said, i haven't played in a while, so this is just what comes to mind. There is alot of other stuff that needs attention too, like zodiacs/dracos and Instance testing before releasing content, but lets not get into that. These are the main changes i would like to see and i would consider coming back to this game. I've played this game for many years with a great passion, but it keeps on getting worse and worse and that when you lose players.
I know all these suggestions will make exactly zero change, but since i had some time on my hands and my man Sarkas specifically asked for it, i thought why not try it one more time, for old times sake. Hope the people that still do play this game are having a good time with their friends and guild, because thats what made this game so enjoyable for me all these years.
Oh i couldnt find a way to post this in suggestions, hope someone fixes this for me, thx.