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Recent Downfall of Rappelz
Dear all
This is not a spam or a debate. I am simply writing a little help for the people who are thinking of playing Rappelz.
I started playing Rappelz 2 years ago, the game is amazing fun and has such a great feel. There is a lot to do in the game and lots of nice people arround to help out if needed as well lots of nasty people to makes things hard for you.
Gala-Net bring out patches every week to the game so the game constantly has new glitches. Yes, it may sound strange but they are intentionally killing the game with:
- Limitation to skills. (People have been writing for years for skills to be fixed, gala-net does not respond to players or fix the skills.)
- Not fixing years old buggs. (People have been requesting for pet skills to be fixed so they work, Gala-net has been ignoring them)
- Not meeting playerbase/customer demands. (Players and Customers are ignored by the parental company, so the employed "punch bags" aka GMs to take the crap from players.)
- Implementing new penalty system without voting. (Implemented a new log out penalty timer, which is getting people killed and loosing levels. Also dead people will re-spawn in town and start over their 40 minutes journey (avg) again, most of the time people end up dying duo to lags/delays and server crash. As players we see lags/delays every 5 mins and server crash at least 2 times a day as of 29th Jan 2008)
- Forcing players to spend money in game (?). (Let me explain, I have a lvl110+ char in game, The only way for me to lvl is to do high lvl dungeon party (DP) where I will gain approx 6% exp/hour while I need 100% to lvl up. If i was to run to the Dungeon and die I would loose 4% due to death. Dying is very common in this game due to lag/delay and monsters not loosing aggro for as long as you are in sight. Also monsters are faster than players in dungeons without move speed buffs and most classes don't have such buffs. Before the new patch you could click on "Character Selection" and the game would take your char out of the game instantly, this would remove the 20ish monsters that were hitting you or chasing you. You can log back on, consume some HP Regen stuff and carry on. Now they implemented a 10 sec log out penalty, you cannot move within that timer, you have to stand still to select "Character Selection" menu. You would last approx 3 sec standing still beeing hit by 20 dungeon monsters. Gala-Net cash shop has an item to regain the exp you loose when you die, by implemeting this unwanted log out penalty they are in a way forcing players to die and loose exp so that players buy those Cash Shop items to gain the exp back. They have also reduce the prices of those exp gain items to point out this what they want.
- Punishing players for no reason. (randomly players beeing sent to Abyass (a place for punishment as there is nothing to do) for no reasons. Players are released from Abyass once they contact customer services and that can takes days. They claimed to have fixed it, but I have seen it come back many times)
Countless customers including myself hugely upset over this unwelcome forceful change and we are all posting our concerns at community disscussion for it to be removed. So far the news we have got back was "Players wiill get used to it..". This tells you how much they care about theirs customers.
The link below has will take you to that disscussion page. This page has been the longest post made to rappelz forum and you will see how frustrated and upset we the cusomers are over this.
My account will most likely be banned for expressing what is beeing implemented and how it's destroying the game for the customers. But I will accept it gladly to save someone else spending money into the game without knowing cons and pros of the game. Yes I have spent a HUGE ammount of money into this game and it scares me to look at the total figure. I could have got myself a much better car than the current one I drive when I look at the total figure.
Rappelz GMs are talking about making some compensation for this timer, however it will take months for this to take affect, because the it is not in the sounce codes of the game and it will need to be implemented. I would suggest that new comers wait and see if the game retains it's fun environment or keeps gettng more frustrating restrictions.
Well, I do apologise to the people who enjoy this forceful feature of this game and advise to the newscomers to think and try out the game before you spend money into it.
I will update this post as changes happen in the game.
Comments
I dont want to be rude but isent Rapplez a F2P game ? Free to Play ?
From what iv read in your post your basicly saying that you want to play for free you want to be able to abuse the game and the devs should do as you / the players want ?
and your logout penelty iv played P2P mmo's for a long time and i cant remember 1 game that dident have a logout timer. its there so people cant cheat. you want to play a game that has better servers better support and more people developing ? bring out your visa card and select any of the major P2P games out there.. cus thay dont have any of the "problems" you have with rapplez grow up and listen to what your saying. me me me give give give.
It's ok, asking question and finding out things are not beeing rude. It's our nature to gain knowledge. I would be more than happy to answer what I know about this game in a civilised manner.
I refuse to answer to somebody who insults me. My apology
"...grow up and listen to what your saying. me me me give give give."
being free to play is no excuse for tolerating a crappy game, and if you have ever used the cash shops you know its far from free.
i cant believe they used a log out penalty, i remember the ONLY way to meet your group in a dungeon was to log out to ditch your train. the log out penalty must have droves of people leaving the game.
p.s. if you live in the us or canada come to cabal online feb1st, i ditched rappelz a while ago for other reasons, although with these new penalties i can see you need a new mmo home too.
usa/canada cabal can be found on www.ogplanet.com not the cabal site posted here wich is for EU only.
You are right, if somebody decides to invest into the game then it's not a free game to that person. A lot of people invest into the game because fans want the game to develop, bring out new features, get better servers, employ more GMs, etc. If everyone played for free for life, the game would shut down.
Running to your party in a dungeon with 20-30 monsters behind you (who will never loose aggro, unless you log out, die or hide) is a bad mistake, healers heal you to save you, tanks take on the monsters to save heals, 1 sucrifice for another and things get messy. A lot of the people will sit there and watch you die,a very minority will do EVERYTHING they can to save another from dying. It's a team thing, I would gladly die to save a friend and a some do the same for me too.
Without a beeing able to loose the monster trail, a lot of people just stopped progressing because they loose out more exp due to deaths, not beeing able to loose aggro, boss spawn on party, monsters spawning on party, on going lag, regular server crashes, etc. I takes a lvl11x 1 hour to gain 6% in a party and I loose 4% everytime they die. Due to this timer death has become more frequent than anything else.
Also this rule does not apply to Korean servers, this timer was originally brought out for PKers on non-PKing servers. The original plan exists on Korean servers yet English servers have a different and more strict set of rules. This is really upsetting a lot of the players especially who invested into the game find themselves somehow "Cheated/Rejected". They are customers at the end of the day.
Thanks very much for the invite to Cabal, I live in England and time zones really puts me at a disadvantage. Maybe we'll hook up in Aion if you play it when it comes out.
All the best in Cabal!
Khan! I know how you feel! what you posted really help new players be aware of what to expect from rappelz. about Aion, game that let you fly freely anywhere will usually become really laggy. well, good luck with any game you choose.
For new players! everygame has a downfall, so read those disadvantages from Khan post and keep in mind. however, enjoy the game: rappelz has the perfect pet system.
I am one of the OG (original closed beta player) members too. What i think -Khan- is that we used to how the system works and work around the system but lately these new regular changes really make the og players quit the game. Maybe new players who have no knowledge of how the game is in the past may able to get used to it and able to enjoy it!
For People who don't agree with Khan b/c you think it is a Free To Play Game. please dont waste your time reply his post. There are many good things in rappelz, but what he said is 100% accurate about downfall of rappelz. And since we in the same community; we are all friends, we all know that there is nothing free. all these online games make money in different ways. we -online game players- pay them in way depending on how they sell.
Wow ! one of the original beta testers? You are the first I know of, original people don't play Rappelz much, because they had not fixed Beta buggs yet implementing restriction which really makes those beta buggs a killer.
Thanks for the info on Aion, I haven't though about it like you mentioned, I played Perfect World for a while and flying seem to be lagless so far. What threw me off Perfect World is that you have to pay in order to talk to everyone on the server. Pay to chat in a game? I cannot imagine what they will come up with next.
Update:
Server crashes every 3 to 4 hours. People loosing a lot of money over using CS items and not beeing able to kill to make use of the timed CS item.
A lot of Stamina Savers are beeing wasted all arround the servers.
Gaming just got to the point of frustration right now.
Yah sorry that they are screwing you over, F2P is no excuse to not listen to player feedback, especially since cash shop games are never free. I have however, having played nearly all the F2P out there noticed that there is a real lack of care/communication to the community from those developers. They do use teh F2P model as an excuse, they know that some people will come and spend money even if its just a curious passerby because there is no cost. It sucks, and i have conisdered Rappelz several times, thank you for the honestly, ill be dodging that bullet, and stick to my pay to plays.
Hi MunkyMan1
I am glad my post was helpful to the community and that is the best I could wish for.
By all means do play the game, it is amazing fun when they get things to work, just careful on spending money on it because you money has no real weight to it. Customers are looked in a way of "cows to be milked".
Goodluck with whatever game you play and enjoy.
UPDATE:
Auction House was taken out of the game for bug fixing, rumour has it that there was a way to dupe items using the Auction House.
Auction House has been restored but the server stability has gone worse. Server crash and huge lag spikes caused mass deaths serverwide leaving a lot of frustrating and upset players.
Hope they fix things so players can enjoy the game once again.
I can't even believe you're complaining about the logout penalty. That is a feature that should be in every game from day 1. How is it fair that you can pull mobs onto you and just aggro reset any time you wish? To me, that almost sounds like abusing a glitch, that they fixed with the logout penalty. All your other points seem valid except for this one.
Do you know for certain?
I've been playing rappelz for some time and I agree with you, Khan, except about the logout timer.
People used to avoid aggro and pvps logging out, it doesn't make sense. Still, gPotato said they asked for the logout timer even before those cash items you mentioned were available.
About the instability, it's really annoying. I've stopped to play, because everytime I log in, I play for some minutes and the server crashes. When it returns, there's a rollback (about 5 minutes, but enough to loose a nice drop, for example).
Some days ago I found some screenshots of the game, but with a different UI and some new pets. It was in an asian language, but I'm not sure if it is already running or just a preview. So lets hope they are not working on the same old bugs cause there will be major update, like epic5 (ok, i has to include bug corrections too).
That is is a bugg, you should not have mobs from the very first room of the dungeon following you to the very last room of the dungeon. You should not have a huge ammount of mobs chasing you untill you die, kill them or get out of sight. In general high level mobs are faster than a healer without any speed buffs (healers do not have speed buff).
Also getting replacements to a grinding party has become a mission and a lot of people loose 30miins worth of grinding after 1 death. With all the server crash, lag spikes and dissconnecting people die enough as it is. Log time does not work if you are lagging, if you click log out while you are lagging the game will will not countdown for a log out, instead it will wait for lag. If you get dissconnected and you have clicked logout, there is no way to shut downthe game. A lot of people doing a hard reset and nobody likes that. Everything just ads up at the end, but this log timer has not been been a possitive impact on the game play.
Have a look at the thread link I have provided for information, majority of the people are not enjoying the game as much as they did before. I just want to help people who are thinking of starting up a game, everyone will tell them how good it is including the game homepage but not many will tell them what to watch out for.
May I ask what level are you? Have you been to PP Dungeon SS room? Try it and you will know what I mean by Log Timer does not enhance game play. You see people get frustrated from dying which is not their fautl, they accepted that it happens. But now Log Timer is a garantee to make sure you die when you go to a dungeon grind if you are not an Assassin class.
The log-out timer is used to stop exactly what you state. People from progressing/manuvering to a certain grind spot and logout without no penalty. I understand you were used to this option because it was there for such a long time, but in no way should it have stayed. Are you really trying to tell me skipping mobs in a dungeon to get to the good stuff should be exceptable? That has to be the most ludicris thing i have ever heard. Yes you are correct for what it was used for, until people like you abused the system and thought it was ok and should stay that way. Now that your easy life has been taken, how about a challenge? For anyone who reads this, take the OP's words with a grain of salt. There is no downfall because they fixed something. The only downfall is that the OP had to make it known to people who already know. Either keep playing or quit. Its f2p, you are a needle in a huge haystack. But as far as everything else BESIDES the logout timer, your correct. CS service has always been shotty when it comes to f2p's. This is evident on any f2p forum who thinks they have some amazing community.
I played Rappelz for a few weeks. It had huge problems so much so that I stopped playing. Not only was I not going to invest time into this game but certianly not money. You have played even longer so know these problems much better then I could ever know them. Anyone who puts money into a game either through subscriptions or item malls should know a few things. Is the game worth the money, can they be trusted, and your budget. You claim to have sunk enough money into Rappelz to have been able to get a car much better then the one you drive. If this is indeed true you may have an mmo addiction problem. No game I repeat no game is worth that type of money or time. I love mmos but I also love life and the variety of things life outside a game offers. I am not putting you down in any way. You may need to stop playing mmos all together. As an older gamer I have found the balance. I limit both my time in mmos and the amount of money I will spend on them. I play and love them but I am also a college art professor and a showing gallery artist. Find the focus and find a game that does not force you to compromise your RL. If that can not be done it is time to simply stop playing them.
Pulling a mob to and logging is not what people are complaining about. When people start running to a grinding spot deep inside the dungeon for their level, the mobs from first room will follow you whereveer you go. Meaning you will end up with anything from 10 mobs to 40 mobs behind you when you arrive at your grinding spot.That is is a bugg, you should not have mobs from the very first room of the dungeon following you to the very last room of the dungeon. You should not have a huge ammount of mobs chasing you untill you die, kill them or get out of sight. In general high level mobs are faster than a healer without any speed buffs (healers do not have speed buff).
Also getting replacements to a grinding party has become a mission and a lot of people loose 30miins worth of grinding after 1 death. With all the server crash, lag spikes and dissconnecting people die enough as it is. Log time does not work if you are lagging, if you click log out while you are lagging the game will will not countdown for a log out, instead it will wait for lag. If you get dissconnected and you have clicked logout, there is no way to shut downthe game. A lot of people doing a hard reset and nobody likes that. Everything just ads up at the end, but this log timer has not been been a possitive impact on the game play.
Have a look at the thread link I have provided for information, majority of the people are not enjoying the game as much as they did before. I just want to help people who are thinking of starting up a game, everyone will tell them how good it is including the game homepage but not many will tell them what to watch out for.
Ok i was playing Rappelz back when the game was first released. Back before anyone was even a level 30.
But after reading this post of yours i have to wonder if you even understand what an instance is ? The fact that idiots decide to run and drag aggro to get to a "Grinding Spot" means that you all have become lazy gamers. Go play other MMOs if you think you should be able to train aggro without any sort of penalty. Basically your whining about not being able to cheat an instance from what it is suppossed to do, that is its suppossed to provide a serious challenge to players and groups.
You want to camp in a dungeon then you need to be able to get through the beginning, middle and end in order to get to the good stuff. The Logout to loose aggro and to avoid PvP was a pain in the ass at this games inception, i would assume it was still annoying long after i left.
Instanced dungeons are suppossed to be difficult, there suppossed to produce mob trains, go play another MMO if you can't figure out how to get around this "NORMAL" aspect of instanced dungeons.
Ohhh and just a list of a few of the games i have played where Instanced Dungeons produce Mob Trains and have logout penalty (only a few off the top of my head)...... Anarchy Online, Archlord (F2P), CoH/CoV, DAoC, EQ1&2, Lineage 2, RF Online (F2P), SilkRoad Online(F2P), Vanguard, World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, Perfect World (F2P). Note the F2P games.
I could go on and on with more games that do exactly what your whining about but i see no need, the fact of the matter is its a common mechanic and you are a lazy gamer. Get over it and adapt to how most games with instanced dungeons behave.
Oh and before i forget, i am not advocating that Gpotato should not be implementing reimbursement for cash shop items lost due to server instability, i think they have to be more open with said items and there loss due to there poor servers. I am mainly referring to how the players used logging out to wipe aggro to get deeper into a dungeon where a guild group is sitting and pulling mob after mob after mob in order to grind out levels.
Ok, Log out time is not that serious. I guess there are lots of things to be done/fixed.
I've been searching for some screenshots of rappelz and I found these:
http://newodin.gamer.com.tw/showpic.php?SN=8174&t=12&n=3&c= (lots of screenshots here)
http://www.4gamer.net/news/image/2005.02/20050210174929_14big.jpg (nice pets O.O)
http://www.cybergen.hu/files/tartalom/rappelz/hawkman_againkicsi.jpg
http://www.pcgames.com.cn/netgames/xwkx/gjww/0502/pic/pcanxw021623.jpg
http://www.4gamer.net/news/image/2005.02/20050210174929_2big.jpg (Nice UI)
http://www.pcgames.com.cn/netgames/xwkx/gjww/0502/pic/pcanxw021622.jpg
http://silpir.net/zboard/data/onlinegame_news/rappler050114.jpg
I wonder if new updates will come soon. As I said, lets hope they are working on them, and thats why there are so many downfalls lately.
Honestly the way F2P Korean or should i say eastern developed MMOs are implemented is indicative to how most players of these games end up feeling about them.
Meaning, the very long development times and lack of concern of the western players expectations towards a polished game. I get the strong impression players of these games from the eastern part of the world do not get as worked up over bugs and exploits as we do in the west. The fact remains though that before the western 1/2 gets updates these updates first have to be made for the eastern version of the game.
Western players see certain bugs as game breaking, and expect said bug to be remedied A.S.A.P but very few understand that most of there calls for fixes fall on deaf, or maybe broken ears. All the bug reports that we might issue over on the western sice of things has to be collected, translated, then sent to the developers.
I dunno, i guess this to me is fairly obvious but seems like too many gamers do not grasp the concepts of how a bug is squashed in the course of a MMO's life. F2P games are just that, and players need to understand that long before they invest the time and energy into them. So far i have yet to find one that has held my attention long enough in comparison to P2P games have.
Uh the log out thing , my cleric with a pet , any pet can solo most mobs in the dungeon , even 3 on 1 up to 6 on 1. Havent seen the new dungeon release , pretty sure you could fight your way through if you wanted to.
The monsters arent harder they just got more hp.
-------------------------
I ve got a couple of c/d letters from gpatotoe for duping , abusing bugs , and generally causing havoc. Most of the duping they cant fix, the fraud they cant fix , and they have no access to control console. The game is perfect to abuse , they dont ban ips , they dont block credit cards , they allow banned or suspended folks to make a new account.
You can even use the same banned email addy and banned credit card to buy something.
Game has been furbar for a long time , its not gonna change , clinging to hope that it will isnt going to make things better. You account for a tiny dust mite in the grand scheme of things to the developers.
Asian market has had pets to the ent things on thier server with skills for a long time. They ve even demo(ed) the new pets , on the test server (the 3 headed dog and unicorn for example) with working pets,
You really think they care you are upset? Remember during egg event the servers would go down for hours or totally disappear. Hell they didnt even bother fixing them when it went down at midnight (eastern time) and it was like 9 pm there time. They didnt put the server back up til the mid afternoon time.
They arent worried about duping , and I tell how it was put to me "cubes have low chance to increase enchantment , the more cubes the players have , the more likely they will buy e protection things"
Its a rigged system , they only get pissed if you defraud them out of a couple hundred dollars , then they try to threaten you. Which really works well , I m sure they scared someone...
Think of FFfly and rappelz are carnnie game , the rings never fit on the bottles , you cant beat the system. End of story , move along now , you easy mark.
I don't think the problem is being Korean/eastern. It happens with all the F2P games.
The only diffference is that eastern servers are frequently updated, cause they are very close to the developer. Western servers have to wait for translation and adaptation. When theres a bug, they have to report, wait for an answer, test the possible fix, and if it does not work, report again...
Anyway, saying that all eastern games have the same problem is not fair. Those who played Lineage2 in prelude and in C4 or later, know the difference. The gameplay was substantially improved (I know it is still not good - but much better than before), geodata bugs where corrected, while new items, places, skills were added. I can also mention Perfect World, which is F2P, uses the same engine of WOW and LOTRO (if i'm not mistaken) and is quite polished, comparing to both.
I'm almost sure they deal more damage too.
Implementing new penalty system without voting. (Implemented a new log out penalty timer, which is getting people killed and loosing levels. Also dead people will re-spawn in town and start over their 40 minutes journey (avg) again, most of the time people end up dying duo to lags/delays and server crash. As players we see lags/delays every 5 mins and server crash at least 2 times a day as of 29th Jan 2008)
Actually that was voted on, and the loggout newbs lost the vote, QQ you cant logout mid combat to avoid anything anymore
If I was to pull a mob and log out that is waste of my time. Not the game's since it is running whether I am online or offline. How can this affect anybody else in the game. Sure you can be annoying by pulling and logging someone else's , but having to sit there wait for the log on screen is more annoying than anything else. I see your point of having to pull a mob and log. But you fail to see the point when it is a MUST in order to loose 20 monsters who should not be on your tail to start with.
The biggest complain is that mobs do not have a aggro area. They aggro a player from 1 end of earth to the other end of hell (basically once a mob aggro you going past there is no way to loose it unless you kill it, out run it, log out or get disconnected). I have not seen 1 complain about "he/She pulled 2 mobs and logged out", if anyone was affected by people logging in and out then it would have ben a huge post threat like the Log Timer thread.
Look on the otherhand, how many people are saying it is hindering their game play and how many people saying it is helping them enjoy the game more? How come the servers are crashing so much?
How come it takes 2 hours to make an R5 DP now? It's because people are moving away from the game, it's because they introduced a timer without fixing a bug related to that timer. I am one of those people who can see this log timer is making a current bug (endless-aggro) even a bigger bug.
hmm... it's really difficult to explain in words why log timer is stopping people from going into DPs, best would be to run with somebody and show them ingame.
Well... Log Timer has been Temporarily Disabled and server are much stable. On Rappelz forum, a GM stated that they have disabled the Timer on a temp basis because they believe that Log Timer was causing the server crashes (I personally belive players hit them with their wallet like many promised they would. Who cares what I believe, game is once again playable with the aggro-bug and that's good enough for me resume playing.)