SubscribeFinella’s comments about SMT: Imagine and re-doing the dungeons until you get to level [xx] reminds me of Rappelz and the concept of dungeon parties and how fucking stupid that game became in Epic 4. Rappelz is this (shitty) Korean (grinding) MMORPG that has a focus on a pet system. There are 3 races, the Deva, Asura and Gaia, and each race has 3 archtypes, a Warrior, Mage, and Summoner. Warrior and Mage archtypes are self-explanatory, Summoners are pet-centric classes. I started playing Rappelz during Epic 2 as a Dark Magician named Karsten (name very randomly picked, everyone thought I was German… Ich moechte eine Bier bitte~), and at the end of my time on Rappelz, I was a Battle Sorc named frailty. Also like I made movies of my gameplay because my friends and I had this “LETS USE FRAPS AND TAKE MOVIES!” fetish and then I’d spam Valkyrie Profile 2 music in the BGM. It seemed cool back then, shut up, etc.
The way that Rappelz’s system worked in Epic 1-4 is that the only real long range offensive mage was the Dark Magician. Cleric’s and Kahuna’s were called “mage classes” too but they lacked the offensive magic power of the DM. I got to Lv 100 in Epic 3 as a DM by using magic. Fire Slap was the shit, it was your only “spam spell” and magic always came from skills. However Fire Slap was very short range, so you’d have to use a longer range skill (Fireball, Lightning, Splash Lightning… fuck, even Energy Beat which was good only with high cast speed). Also usually you only used a lower level because it was an MP consuming whore, but I soloed using very high level of it. I set up Zephyr’s Cleric on my laptop and abused the Cleric’s Recover MP skill on myself and consumed blue pots I got as drops (it’s not traditional that you actually use potions in Rappelz because potions have a shitty CD and didn’t restore much). But grinding as a mage really sucked because if you got hit like like 5 times you were basically dead, especially against Lv 105+ mobs, which is what I was grinding on to get up to Lv 100.
This means that you couldn’t be an idiot when you were playing, there were certain spell patterns you would keep up with and take advantage of your spell range. Like when I wanted to Life Leech to restore my HP because I was below half, I’d want to stun something first so it’s not hitting me while I’m casting and potentially killing me making the whole point of the process null. Splash Thunder had a higher stun rate than Lightning but was way longer in CD, so typically you’d save Splash Thunder for when you really wanted to get HP back.
But that’s all solo play. Solo was not really fast, you would get like 7-8% per hour solo. Most people quit leveling after they hit a point where they couldn’t get much EXP in dungeon parties anymore, and would wait for a higher level dungeon to come out. It was always cheaper to dungeon party after all. I mean, I could only solo because I had a friends Cleric to abuse and a laptop to dual box it, good gear (mage PDEF was seriously fucking shitty back in Epic 3), good skill cards, free time, and money to blow on Rank 5 soul chips. Chips were always needed for grinding because they raised your damage and made stuff faster. In dungeon parties, everyone would buy less (like 50-100) and contribute to whoever was the designated chipper. Whereas when I soloed, I’d buy like 1000 and go camp out for a while. Back in Epic 3, the highest level monsters in the highest level dungeon, Crystal Valley, only went to Lv 90-ish, so you’d only have to buy Rank 4 chips, which were of course cheaper than my Rank 5’s I needed to solo.
Getting the most EXP for your buck is emphasized in Rappelz because of Stamina and Stamina Savers. Stamina would grant you double EXP each time you killed a mob, but some of it would be removed after. Stamina Savers are a cash shop item that prevents this, so effectively you get double EXP for one hour using a Stamina Saver. When I soloed, I made use of things like chips and Zephyr’s Cleric and attempted to grind quickly because the time on your SS ticks away.
Parties can have a maximum of 8 members and you’d want to fill all 8 slots back in Epic 3. The way the dungeon shit worked, there are 2 instances of the same dungeons sitting around, you’d go there and find a spot (usually one near a controller, because those had mini-bosses that gave better EXP) then you’d grind there together. You’d pick a “safe” spot, where mobs didn’t all spawn, then go near the controller to pull the mobs back to the other people. The task of getting 8 people together and going for hours in a dungeon party grinding away was kind of tiresome, but it happened. Also because Time = Money = EXP, when you’re in a dungeon party and someone pops a Stamina Saver, man that’s it. You’re stuck there for an hour. If you leave because… Oh I don’t know, your house is burning down, you are like the biggest shithead on the face of the planet and you’re getting blacklisted from ever joining a dungeon party with these people again unless you are the last person on Earth.
Naturally you’d want a healer/buffer (a Cleric), a puller of somesort (a Dark Magician or an Archer), and then 6 random damage dealers who aren’t mentally retarded. DM’s and Archer’s were pullers because they were long range, but you’d typically want at least one DM in your party because they had a buff that raised damage for melee people (I don’t think this ever made sense but hey). But then there were some pretty stupid DM’s, like ones who would use fucking Flame Burn (a damage and DoT spell with higher threat) to pull mobs which made it harder on to take aggro off the guy and then next you know 1/2 of their HP is missing. Or like the ones who would use a Soul Chip (typically your damage was good enough without soul chips to contribute to damage in dungeon parties) and then use the biggest nuke the DM had, Darkness Arrow, and wonder why the hell they’re dead 5sec later.
If you had a bunch of idiots, then after everyone’s Stamina Saver is out… haha, that’s it. That parties disbanding. But if you had a nice party and stuff went smoothly, then people would want to stay. If you got a nice party going for a couple hours, and someone goes, “Man I’m out of Stamina Savers, anyone have one?” it wasn’t un-common that a wealthier person in the party start handing them out for free or far cheaper than the usual selling price (Oh, and Clerics got bribed to stay an hour for a free Stamina Saver).
I miss BloodHound’s LM2FISH69 parties. Someone would always log out at the Fish 69 spot, and you’d just keep rotating people in and it was like, endless. I think that some people logged out there on purpose, knowing that Blood would have a group there if they logged in later. :p (But then I joined Berserk and like holy shit AliceElliot dungeon parties were awesome. He was a fucking awesome Cleric.)
The first signs of the next Epic, Epic 4, were on the Korean forum called PlayForum. The big thing that Epic 4 was going to add was the 2nd jobs. As they were showcased on the Korean test servers, I found a Japanese translation of the DM 2nd job skills which I then translated into English. Hell, I still have it. I thought the Dark Mage class sounded cool because of shit like Mind Control and the chip protection. I was high level, and what awaits high levels is PvP and Dungeon Siege, so picking a class that sounds more focused towards that I thought suited my interests.
But the videos from Epic 4 didn’t seem to “fix” the problems of Epic 3. It had its share of balance issues though. Like tanks, the Deva Warrior class, were pretty worthless, and Breeders, the Deva Summoner class, were also pretty worthless. Everyone who wanted to be a strong pet class picked the Asura one, Sorcerer, because they got Creature Life Leech. Everyone wanted to use a Skeleton pet because of their attack speed. Eventually everyone on the Korean servers were re-rolling as Sorcs, and it hit the devs that change besides adding in super powered 2nd jobs was required.
They completely scrapped those old 2nd jobs, and a “new Epic 4″ was born. When the new Epic 4 went on the Korean test server, I was one of the people who found an unused KSSN and decided to try it out. TurboEther went along with me, and we were in the English guild on the KTS with people from other servers. Basically they complete re-did the game, and tried to fix the balance issues of Epic 3 for the new Epic 4. In reality, everything went to shit and I can tell from the recently implemented Epic 5 that they’re slowing trying to un-fuck some of the things they fucked before. Rappelz was never really that brilliant, but making it worse is like “lol wat.”
In Epic 4, melee became so much better than magic (or rather magic got srsbsns shitty) that I got to Lv 120 on my Warlock, a mage class, by poking things with a dagger. The Red Pixie pet was a better magician than the 2nd job mage classes. In the infancy of the Korean Test Server, I was actually a DM using a bow (yeah what the fucking hell) because the DM’s got an attack speed buff and bows were like the best weapon ever. Holy Warriors got a movespeed debuff that worked with long range weapons for god knows why, so eventually everyone was just using a bow. I found that a Vit/Wis soulstoned DM worked very well with a bow. You had an aspd debuff (a carry over from Epic 3), and the stuns (Lightning and Splash Thunder, though their stun chance was way lower). Then they nerfed bows.
When Epic 4 went live on the English servers, I rolled Warlock anyway, as the skillset was somewhat derived from the Dark Mage’s, and I was pretty sure that the other 2nd job DM, the Chaos Mage, was going to suffer from high MP consumption/low damage output problems. (The majority of the complaints of Epic 4 CM’s can be summarized as what I just said btw.)
As a 2nd job DM in the new Epic 4, I found that it was harder for me to die. 4-5 hits no longer meant “you’re dead”, which was what it meant in Epic 3. So I could be up way closer to mobs and not give a shit. However, my magic was way weaker. And even though my pdef and hp were considerably better now, they were still bottom tier compared to other classes. So basically, a DM had shitty hp, shitty pdef, and shitty magic power. Ultimately this was because Epic 4 was very melee-focused, and this shafted classes like mages who were used to playing mages.
Magic is always a skill-based thing, so if you make skills shitty, then a class that revolves around magic is… going to be shitty. Skill cards also did nothing except lower MP cost in the beginning of Epic 4, so you couldn’t even try to improve your magic. A lot of cards had “hidden” effects, so there was a fun roulette of trying to find something that improved your magic a little bit sort of kind of maybe.
Kahuna and Cleric buffs stacked, and this created more physical/melee-centric buffs. In Epic 3, Clerics had patk/pdef/mp regen/move speed/matk buffs, and Kahunas had patk/pdef/move speed buffs. The spells they casted gave the same buff, so they overwrote each other. This was no longer the case in Epic 4. Kahunas kept their same 3 buffs, but Clerics were changed to buffs which raised your base stats (str/vit/int/wis), along with a corresponding composite stat (respectively, your patk/pdef/matk/mdef).
(Non-jargon version: You could now get 2 patk buffs instead of just 1.)
DM’s kept their buff which raised physical damage, and also got a buff which raised attack speed. DM’s were basically now looked at as physical buffers. No one who invited you to a dungeon party wanted you for damage, your role was now completely utility. Warlocks got it even worse, and a chart from the English GM’s actually showed that Warlock was the least played class, making up what was then about 3% of all of the servers combined. Chaos Mage’s got Lv 6-10 of the physical damage and attack speed buffs, so everyone wanted a Chaos Mage in the party. Warlocks were taken into DP’s because 1) it was your guild and they pitied you, or 2) when a CM couldn’t be found, or 3) when there was already a CM in the party.
Because of the dominance of physical buffs and reduction to magic power, it was now easier and quicker to just beat shit up with a dagger. DM’s melee weapon was dagger because of a passive which raised your patk when you wore a staff (…) and a dagger, for Clerics it was a 2h Mace. Kahunas have always been melee, and always used axes so no shock there.
Epic 4 added a new dungeon called Palmir Plateau. Running through Palmir to get to a good spot was the shittiest thing ever. Honestly I think Palmir really killed dungeon parties. A dungeon party was no longer “get 8 people together and go chill somewhere.” Dungeon partying was now like a struggle to find 7 others to party with. This could take like an hour. Then you had to run through Palmir, which could be another hour.
I still have this map I made for my guild when we tried to time attack Palmir. (But since the guild I was in for the majority of Epic 4 was a bunch of idiots, naturally none of them bothered to look at my map and thus constantly asked which way to go during the time attack.)
Traditionally you would meet up with others in the dungeon lobby and run to a spot. In the lower level dungeons this wasn’t a really big deal. It was harder in the 3rd dungeon, Crystal Valley, but I’m not going to lie: People who partied in Crystal Valley back in Epic 3 were rich and had Feathers of Union up the ass.
But when Palmir was implemented, it made running through Crystal look like a joke. Palmir is too fucking big. It made dungeon parties a pain in the ass. You would run deep into the dungeon to one spot and start. Then if someone had to leave, you’d have to get a replacement, and it’d suck for that replacement because unless someone had a Feather of Summon, you were running through that shit on your own and it’s like “tough luck” if you die on the way. Then of course you can get angry and leave, then the dungeon party will get all mad at each other afterwards.
About the cash shop feathers: Union Feathers would summon a whole party to where you are in the dungeon. You’d assign a runner and give them the feather. Summon Feathers would do that to a single person. During Epic 3, the price of feathers was very, very cheap. Notably, Stamina Savers were too. Like 200k each. Srsbsns. Then gold farm inflation occurred and Stamina Savers were like 7-8mil and feathers were up in the millions too and it fucked up dungeon partying.
Aside from the running time, the reason why putting a dungeon party together became more annoying is because you now “needed” certain classes. It wasn’t just “1 cleric + 7 randoms” like in Epic 3. Now it was like, “1 priest (bishop if you couldn’t find a priest) + 1 kahuna (either worked) + 1 cm (warlock if you couldn’t find a cm) + a chipping slave (often an assassin, this was never a pet class now because of dual summon) + dd’s (for optimal kill speed, you’d want pet classes).” And then you know, when you get pet classes, you’d want specific ones, like a Battle Sorc has party toggles that buff all pets, but they can only use one, and there were 2 that were really good so like you’d want to invite 2 Battle Sorcs. Then Soul Breeders had pet stat buffs that could be used on everyone’s pets, so you’d want a Soul Breeder too. (Then being a Soul Breeder was annoying because you’d have to stop to stat buff every single motherfuckers pet.) Oh, and being a DM who had to buff shit was annoying too because the fuckers would dual summon every 90 seconds and be like, “Hey re-buff my other pet” and the party list interface never really properly supported dual summoning so you had to search around for a pet.
Around Halloween, they changed monster stats and this raised monster MP. This was a very good time to be a Warlock, because a skill of Warlock’s, Mana Burn, now did ridiculous damage to bosses. And suddenly dungeon parties changed. Warlock’s were now boss killers and due to their stupid damage, could also tank bosses. Thanks to Shield of Nightmare (pdef) and Magic Skin (dmg to mp conversion), I could tank the Lv 110 bitch boss, Takin, in Palmir, and this was feasible really only because he died fast, and he was dying fast because soul chipped Mana Burn was making me do up near 2mil damage to him. This was not a glitch, Mana Burn removed mana and did health damage based on a % of the monsters mana pool, so if had more mana, it did more damage. But then they disabled Mana Burn (instead of lowering monster stats) and re-did the skill to be some dumb piece of shit no one cared about. And then status quo returned, and no one cared about the Warlock anymore.
I hit 120 (shit took 4 days for 118 -> 120 in November, versus 100 -> 118 taking 4mo of dungeon party reliance), logged off, then heard they were selling job change scrolls during December. I bought one and job changed to a Battle Sorc. Funny thing: I was the first Lv 120 Warlock on my server, and also the first Lv 120 Battle Sorc. Even though I had only job changed a month after I hit 120, no other Sorc was close because of dungeon party reliance.
Something that happened with the job reset scroll item was that people re-rolled to pet classes, in specific people who were Deva race re-rolled to Soul Breeder. One of the things that Epic 4 did was change the most underrated class of Epic 3, the Breeder, into one of the most powerful of epic 4.
Then Epic 5 part 2 came along, and now Soul Breeders get their asses kicked in PVP by Dark Mage 2nd jobs and whine about it on the forums, because now magic doesn’t suck as much.
In Epic 5, the developers attempted to actually un-fuck magic and actually succeeded there as it’s no longer cool to be a dagger using mage because magic actually does respectable damage now. But while Epic 5 fixed that, it did something else that’s considerably dumb: It changed pets so drastically. It tried to “standardize” all of them. Their skills all follow a pattern now, and it totally killed some pets. Siren went from being a surprisingly good pet in Epic 4 because of their Whip skill, to being a complete shit pet in Epic 5. All pets now have stats associated with them, and their skills reflect this. Orcs in example are associated with pdef and patk. They have a buff which raises pdef/patk of the Orc and the character, and a debuff which debuffs pdef/patk, and can make an item which produces a potion that raises pdef/patk, etc. But the Siren is associated with damage over time spells, and her associated stats are pacc/macc. This is extremely un-useful.
There’s a thread on the Rappelz English forum, here, where the developers talked about future implementations and… doesn’t look too bright. Some of the gameplay is like… “Do you guys think ahead?” The English community seems to be upheld by the GM’s being LOL SO RANDOM xDD (the newest server is named after the head GM), however these community things didn’t really happen until later in Epic 4. The attempts the GM’s are making to create a community experience at the moment is following in the footsteps of a previous GM, Lupus, who was the first GM to really try to have like… a personality. I remember telling him about Yaoi in a chatroom. 
However Lupus was also involved in some player/GM drama explosion occurred on the Tortus server, and it wasn’t surprising to see him gone after. I guess the other GM’s, during Epic 4, got the idea that maybe you should follow Lupus’ example, except not get so involved with the players to the point where you’re caught up in their drama. Much like the attempt to “fix” magic a year after Epic 4 had been implemented, although fixing magic fixed it (although to be honest it’s like overpowered now) and GM’s being LOL xDD amuses players, I think it’s kind of like, “too little, too late”. Actually, I think that phrase is a nice summary for the whole game.
Karasu 
Metro 
nuke 
Sakagami 
nitoro81 
that game sucked, I quit and gave some random guy my account in Katan.