An Analysis of Playerbase Decline (Document)

[Annette]

One final solution could be to implement a scaling global experience multiplier. In closed alpha testing, there was a system in place where lower level players had a higher % experience gain that scaled downwards every 10 levels. For example, a level 1-9 player could gain 500% current experience, a level 10-19 player would gain 400%, level 20-29 would have 300%, and so on. From level 40 onwards, players would be receiving the current experience rate again. This should help with new player retention as they are potentially better prepared for early level monsters.

Good idea, awful implementation. Rushing players to level 40 could arguably be worse than the current system. Rather than easing them into it you're slamming them face-first into the brick wall that is Kaga/Echigo grinding. All this accomplishes is keeping new players around for one or two days longer.

Any experience boosting that isn't on a global level(which I don't think is necessary) needs to carry players up to the beginning of the current end-game content... which, at the moment, would be around level 80. This would level you enough to acquire the Echigo weapons which are practically required to clear Edo dungeons. Requiring tens or even hundreds of hours of straight grinding at any point before end-game is entirely unacceptable.

2.1.2. Drop Rates

I don't think the drop rates themselves are particularly bad for most items(though there definitely are some exceptions, either due to legitimately awful drop rates or the enemy it drops from being a brutal chore to farm.) A big issue, mainly concerning magatamas, is the sheer amount of [often garbage] possibilities that drop can roll as. Another option would be to include some kind of combination function... for example, giving three similar-level magatamas to Kaguya to receive one of similar level in return. For the sake of balance there would need to be a few obvious exceptions; no farming a ton of field marbles and gambling them for oranges.

2.1.5. Guarding

Good ideas here. I'm curious to know how you(the main writers of this document) feel about the differences in block values for each weapon, ranging from 75% for bows to 95% for spears. In addition, would it be overpowered to provide a block-like function for Staff/Wand users? Something along the lines of... while charging SP, damage taken is reduced by (insert high percentage here) but consumes SP equal to (damage taken/SP recovery.)

Max durability in JP is 5000, while it is 2000 in EN. This is unreasonable, as it affects game balance. To be specific, higher ranked skills, and skills that consume a large amount of durability (such as collapsing blade) become much less useful than they previously were. A player needs to build five weapons in order to be equivalent to a player with two weapons in Japan.

Did not know this. I've been making three weapons each time I upgrade ever since level 30 or so purely because of durability issues; two AoE and one focused on single-target skills. Aside from the problems mentioned this also feeds heavily into other issues brought up, such as needing to pause after every few dungeon runs to go repair which wastes time and potentially money.

At the moment, several game mechanics go unexplained. For example, players have no clue if critical force is flat, or percent based, and cannot include it in their builds without first experimenting: they cannot math it out.

Critical Force is no flat damage and it is not based on a percentage of overall damage. It's fairly easy to figure out how it works if you just reduce your damage to 0. I agree that things need to be better explained in-game though.

2.2.3.2. Non-functioning Alcohols
The following is a list of alcohols that are known to have no effect when used.

Rusty Bloom - Unbreakable
Long Life - Continues left: 1 Restore (Works only in fields, not dungeons) [Not sure if intended]
Dancer of Izu - Gain 30 bonus Ryou when base Ryou is over 150
Bandit Chief - Gain 15 bonus Ryou when base Ryou is over 70

Never tested Rusty Bloom. Long Life I'm expecting works as intended because, from what I remember, it has no cooldown and would effectively become "drink this to regain tens of thousands of lost bonus experience." Dancer of Izu and Bandit Chief I tested some time back and they were definitely giving a flat increase of 30/15 Ryou. Was very disappointed because the Japanese wiki stated it was a percentage gain. Were these broken sometime recently?

2.2.5.3. Other Partner Issues and Suggestions

Good mentioned fixes in general. Something I'd love to be able to do is summon the story cast into my group to manually control exactly how large of a party I have when entering a dungeon, without the need to rely on finding an AFK party that wont constantly fluctuate in player size. It makes complete sense story-wise as these characters are considered to be doing the dungeons with you at all times... so why can't your party be an actual party?

2.3.1. Gameguard

I have yet to see a third-party anti-cheat engine that prevents more problems than it creates. I could be ignorant of the situation but are there really enough people "hacking" in Onigiri to warrant incorporating something known to create issues for large portions of playerbases?

Everything else I'm in pretty solid agreement with or is covered well enough that I don't have much to add.

[Ryxa]

One final solution could be to implement a scaling global experience multiplier. In closed alpha testing, there was a system in place where lower level players had a higher % experience gain that scaled downwards every 10 levels. For example, a level 1-9 player could gain 500% current experience, a level 10-19 player would gain 400%, level 20-29 would have 300%, and so on. From level 40 onwards, players would be receiving the current experience rate again. This should help with new player retention as they are potentially better prepared for early level monsters.

Good idea, awful implementation. Rushing players to level 40 could arguably be worse than the current system. Rather than easing them into it you're slamming them face-first into the brick wall that is Kaga/Echigo grinding. All this accomplishes is keeping new players around for one or two days longer.

Any experience boosting that isn't on a global level(which I don't think is necessary) needs to carry players up to the beginning of the current end-game content... which, at the moment, would be around level 80. This would level you enough to acquire the Echigo weapons which are practically required to clear Edo dungeons. Requiring tens or even hundreds of hours of straight grinding at any point before end-game is entirely unacceptable.

It was simply a suggestion. Another thing I've seen some games do is if you are a certain percentage of levels under the average of the server, you'll gain a tiered experience booster. Not really sure how to explain it though. I do think that the overall grind in all aspects of the game is hurting the population though. I'd like to hear what you think about solving the experience grind issue without making it on a global level.

2.1.2. Drop Rates

I don't think the drop rates themselves are particularly bad for most items(though there definitely are some exceptions, either due to legitimately awful drop rates or the enemy it drops from being a brutal chore to farm.) A big issue, mainly concerning magatamas, is the sheer amount of [often garbage] possibilities that drop can roll as. Another option would be to include some kind of combination function... for example, giving three similar-level magatamas to Kaguya to receive one of similar level in return. For the sake of balance there would need to be a few obvious exceptions; no farming a ton of field marbles and gambling them for oranges.

Honestly, we weren't sure what the complaints about drop rate were. After enough hours of farming, you'll notice that your drop rates become very standardized. The only problem is when players hit a huge streak of bad rolls, but that's an issue with pseudo-RNG in the first place and it's not something that can really be solved. As such, we mostly just took what we've seen in the forums (Including posts from up to 4-5 months ago) and did what we could with it. I'll be sure to bring up ornamentation rates in some form when we start on the magatama balancing document though.

2.1.5. Guarding

Good ideas here. I'm curious to know how you(the main writers of this document) feel about the differences in block values for each weapon, ranging from 75% for bows to 95% for spears. In addition, would it be overpowered to provide a block-like function for Staff/Wand users? Something along the lines of... while charging SP, damage taken is reduced by (insert high percentage here) but consumes SP equal to (damage taken/SP recovery.)

I can't speak for the others, but I personally think that blocking is just blocking. The goal of blocking in this game is mostly to turn one-shot kills into a small hit (ie. Blocking Satan's sweeping beam will cause it only to deal damage in the 2000s for just about any weapon) and as such, the actual percentage doesn't really matter as much. I'd rather see all weapons (including staff and wand) have a block that is limited by some resource but cannot break until said resource is consumed, whether it be mana drain, as you suggested, or a stamina meter, as we suggested. As for reducing damage while charging sp, I like the concept, but an issue that would quickly arise from this is that wands and staves already have fairly high sp consumption. There's no reason to take more sp away from them.

Max durability in JP is 5000, while it is 2000 in EN. This is unreasonable, as it affects game balance. To be specific, higher ranked skills, and skills that consume a large amount of durability (such as collapsing blade) become much less useful than they previously were. A player needs to build five weapons in order to be equivalent to a player with two weapons in Japan.

Did not know this. I've been making three weapons each time I upgrade ever since level 30 or so purely because of durability issues; two AoE and one focused on single-target skills. Aside from the problems mentioned this also feeds heavily into other issues brought up, such as needing to pause after every few dungeon runs to go repair which wastes time and potentially money.

At the moment, several game mechanics go unexplained. For example, players have no clue if critical force is flat, or percent based, and cannot include it in their builds without first experimenting: they cannot math it out.

Critical Force is no flat damage and it is not based on a percentage of overall damage. It's fairly easy to figure out how it works if you just reduce your damage to 0. I agree that things need to be better explained in-game though.

We've done some testing with critical force and we're certain you gain critical force at every 10 dex up until you have 100 dex and that it is a combination of flat and percent. The issue though, is the fact that we are uncertain. Crit force is just one of the mechanics that aren't completely explained. Another example would be how player guards break right now. Is there some sort of RNG involved, a damage threshold, a hit threshold, or what? Some more detailed information would always be nice.

2.2.3.2. Non-functioning Alcohols
The following is a list of alcohols that are known to have no effect when used.

Rusty Bloom - Unbreakable
Long Life - Continues left: 1 Restore (Works only in fields, not dungeons) [Not sure if intended]
Dancer of Izu - Gain 30 bonus Ryou when base Ryou is over 150
Bandit Chief - Gain 15 bonus Ryou when base Ryou is over 70

Never tested Rusty Bloom. Long Life I'm expecting works as intended because, from what I remember, it has no cooldown and would effectively become "drink this to regain tens of thousands of lost bonus experience." Dancer of Izu and Bandit Chief I tested some time back and they were definitely giving a flat increase of 30/15 Ryou. Was very disappointed because the Japanese wiki stated it was a percentage gain. Were these broken sometime recently?

Rusty Bloom has been tested by many people and known to not work. As for Long Life, assuming it is working as intended, it's very misleading and links back to explanation of game mechanics. The two Ryou Gain alcohols were broken recently according to testing done by AtmaMoogle/Freesia.

2.2.5.3. Other Partner Issues and Suggestions

Good mentioned fixes in general. Something I'd love to be able to do is summon the story cast into my group to manually control exactly how large of a party I have when entering a dungeon, without the need to rely on finding an AFK party that wont constantly fluctuate in player size. It makes complete sense story-wise as these characters are considered to be doing the dungeons with you at all times... so why can't your party be an actual party?

Although that sounds like a good idea, I'm afraid that would just turn into all the strong players making solo parties with 5 man difficulties and the weaker players being left out as a result.

2.3.1. Gameguard

I have yet to see a third-party anti-cheat engine that prevents more problems than it creates. I could be ignorant of the situation but are there really enough people "hacking" in Onigiri to warrant incorporating something known to create issues for large portions of playerbases?

Honestly, I don't think third party anti-cheat engines are the best. They help a very small amount, and are easily broken, but it's the idea behind it. As of right now, I believe GMs have to manually investigate whether a player has been undertaking suspicious action or not, and many people get away with cheating unless they are reported or made some obvious mistake (Such as back when there were a bunch of people speedhacking with Cheat Engine and did it TO SHOW OFF).

Everything else I'm in pretty solid agreement with or is covered well enough that I don't have much to add.

On a side note... I like how you quoted stuff. "A Series of Tubes", etc. xD

[Annette]

It was simply a suggestion. Another thing I've seen some games do is if you are a certain percentage of levels under the average of the server, you'll gain a tiered experience booster. Not really sure how to explain it though. I do think that the overall grind in all aspects of the game is hurting the population though. I'd like to hear what you think about solving the experience grind issue without making it on a global level.

The idea mentioned is fine, the level ranges just didn't work. Aside from experience boosts based on brackets one of the simplest fixes would be to change the experience gain formula for anyone under level 80 or so.

For example... against a level 105 enemy, the difference in experience between being 25 levels below and 24 levels below is less than 1%. The current formula only allows for drastic changes in experience from level to level as you near the target's level(where experience gain starts to dip -fast-.) The dungeon levels up until Edo are very well paced so if the formula was changed to provide massive benefits for anyone drastically below the dungeon levels(something that is currently happening) it would, at the very least, keep players within a certain range rather than leaving them in the dust. This would also greatly encourage grinding different areas rather than finding the one with the most densely packed enemies and committing genocide until that specific dungeon is no longer efficient. Again, this would only be in effect up until a certain level. Edo grinding is just fine as things are(though one or two extra channels would be more than welcome.)

Honestly, we weren't sure what the complaints about drop rate were. After enough hours of farming, you'll notice that your drop rates become very standardized. The only problem is when players hit a huge streak of bad rolls, but that's an issue with pseudo-RNG in the first place and it's not something that can really be solved. As such, we mostly just took what we've seen in the forums (Including posts from up to 4-5 months ago) and did what we could with it. I'll be sure to bring up ornamentation rates in some form when we start on the magatama balancing document though.

For most things it's fine. You can spend an hour farming Toudaiki's with your log in boost and not see a single Burnt Talisman but the next hour without any form of boost you get three or four. Random drops are random, etc. That will balance out fairly quickly.

Every time I see someone suggest to "just farm for that Magatama" I want to choke some sense into them. It is not at all practical to farm for most magatamas if you only want a specific drop. It just isn't. Out of my last recorded 45,000 kills I've only seen one Banana Magatama. One Cancer. One Fuuri. These are not strings of bad luck; I have plenty of numbers that go weeks, even months back and this is just about par for the course. Telling someone to go farm for a 1/52000 drop is not practical. You can't even offer to work out a trade of some kind with a majority of magatamas because they're either unwanted or sell for minimum price at best while others run an easy 30-50oc or more. These drop rates are so low and the sheer number of possibilities so staggering that no practical(or even impractical) amount of farming will ever get you close to being able to create a decent set of magatamas with your own drops without the aid of OC.

If I were to sell everything I have in stock for prices I know I can get I still would not have enough OC to stand a mathematically favorable chance of obtaining good(not even perfect, just above average) ornamentations on all four magatamas. I realize this has fed into multiple topics but really, allowing some way to skew the randomness toward something personally desired would go a long way to providing self-sustainability.

I can't speak for the others, but I personally think that blocking is just blocking. The goal of blocking in this game is mostly to turn one-shot kills into a small hit (ie. Blocking Satan's sweeping beam will cause it only to deal damage in the 2000s for just about any weapon) and as such, the actual percentage doesn't really matter as much.

With a bow I take about 5k damage while blocking that particular attack. Even with a Lightning Gore equipped for an additional 44% reduction that number would be near 3k. A spear user would take 1k without any lightning element. That tiny 20% base block difference results in a 400% damage difference.

Mind you, I'm not complaining about this or anything. I think it's interesting that different weapons have different block values. I'm just making a point that "block and tank the damage" is not viable for everyone in every situation... which can be troublesome since, as mentioned, dodging is often times not an option. A blocked crit could one-shot one player and barely tickle another entirely because of weapon differences.

I'd rather see all weapons (including staff and wand) have a block that is limited by some resource but cannot break until said resource is consumed, whether it be mana drain, as you suggested, or a stamina meter, as we suggested. As for reducing damage while charging sp, I like the concept, but an issue that would quickly arise from this is that wands and staves already have fairly high sp consumption. There's no reason to take more sp away from them.

Knowing when your block is going to break would be very nice. As for my suggestion, even if you matched Staff/Wand to Bow's 75% reduction, with 500 SP recovery(which any Wand or Staff user should have by that point) Satan's laser would only burn 10 SP. I didn't intend for it to murder SP, merely to mimic every other weapon's very small, gradual SP drain while blocking. I'm fairly certain that formula would scale decently well at any level so long as it's the main weapon with the stat points to back it up.

Although that sounds like a good idea, I'm afraid that would just turn into all the strong players making solo parties with 5 man difficulties and the weaker players being left out as a result.

I considered that as well, I'd be surprised if someone would pass up the opportunity to be fed a constant Invigorate though. I just really hate juggling party members to get the ideal party size for what I want to do at any given time.

[Ryxa]

For most things it's fine. You can spend an hour farming Toudaiki's with your log in boost and not see a single Burnt Talisman but the next hour without any form of boost you get three or four. Random drops are random, etc. That will balance out fairly quickly.

Every time I see someone suggest to "just farm for that Magatama" I want to choke some sense into them. It is not at all practical to farm for most magatamas if you only want a specific drop. It just isn't. Out of my last recorded 45,000 kills I've only seen one Banana Magatama. One Cancer. One Fuuri. These are not strings of bad luck; I have plenty of numbers that go weeks, even months back and this is just about par for the course. Telling someone to go farm for a 1/52000 drop is not practical. You can't even offer to work out a trade of some kind with a majority of magatamas because they're either unwanted or sell for minimum price at best while others run an easy 30-50oc or more. These drop rates are so low and the sheer number of possibilities so staggering that no practical(or even impractical) amount of farming will ever get you close to being able to create a decent set of magatamas with your own drops without the aid of OC.

If I were to sell everything I have in stock for prices I know I can get I still would not have enough OC to stand a mathematically favorable chance of obtaining good(not even perfect, just above average) ornamentations on all four magatamas. I realize this has fed into multiple topics but really, allowing some way to skew the randomness toward something personally desired would go a long way to providing self-sustainability.

I've never personally farmed magatama on purpose, so I'll refrain from commenting about magatama drop. The majority of magatama I obtain just happen to be dropped while I was grinding for xp or ryou or some other drop. If you don't mind summarizing your opinions on it, I'll link it into the document under drop rates. Same thing regarding experience rate changes.

Knowing when your block is going to break would be very nice. As for my suggestion, even if you matched Staff/Wand to Bow's 75% reduction, with 500 SP recovery(which any Wand or Staff user should have by that point) Satan's laser would only burn 10 SP. I didn't intend for it to murder SP, merely to mimic every other weapon's very small, gradual SP drain while blocking. I'm fairly certain that formula would scale decently well at any level so long as it's the main weapon with the stat points to back it up.

Sorry, mind explaining your idea a bit more? From what I understood, you'd block a % damage then reduce a flat amount of sp equal to damage taken. For example, a 10k damage blocked by 75% would be 2.5k taken. SP consumed = damage taken would be 2.5k sp drained, would it not?

[-x-SongNhi-x-]

With a bow I take about 5k damage while blocking that particular attack. Even with a Lightning Gore equipped for an additional 44% reduction that number would be near 3k. A spear user would take 1k without any lightning element. That tiny 20% base block difference results in a 400% damage difference.

Did you try to equip a spear with your build and block to see the difference? perhaps that spear user is full of VIT and has higher defence? Cos when you compare yourself to another user, then there are too many variables in place. But if the block difference is so great just by swapping your weapon then something should be done.

Just to add to this, I absolutely hate why staff users cant block?? even when used as utility, swap out to staff to invig or buff, and cant even block when something hits, have to quickly swap back to an offensive weapon to block, thats really absurd!! Its like giving staff users a big fat slap in the face saying they shouldnt be in the midst of action, just stay back and far away, which isnt possible with bosses that do a sweeping laser on you and your team, while u have to be close enough to buff/heal. Really stupid and unjust game design/decision.

[Annette]

Sorry, mind explaining your idea a bit more? From what I understood, you'd block a % damage then reduce a flat amount of sp equal to damage taken. For example, a 10k damage blocked by 75% would be 2.5k taken. SP consumed = damage taken would be 2.5k sp drained, would it not?

Damage taken further divided by the SP recovery stat. So 2500/500, 5 SP consumed for the block. This would make SP recovery less useless than it currently is and add a bit of a defensive counterpart the way HP recovery is. I'll get back to you on the summary stuff.

Did you try to equip a spear with your build and block to see the difference? perhaps that spear user is full of VIT and has higher defence? Cos when you compare yourself to another user, then there are too many variables in place. But if the block difference is so great just by swapping your weapon then something should be done.

The damage difference is purely due to difference in block values between weapons. Try it out if you don't believe me. Raitei makes Satan's damage laughable and it's a level 32 Spear that can be farmed in minutes.

Bow - 75%
Twin Swords - 80%
Sword - 85%
Odachi/Axe - 90%
Spear - 95%

Damage reduction from blocking caps at 95%(though it can still be reduced further by natural defense and elemental defenses) and I'm fairly certain that the "Guard Effectiveness" stat does not stack. With two 10% bonuses my block only raises from 75% to 85%; this does not make sense multiplicatively so I can only assume the second value is not being added. Whether or not this is intended I don't know.

Edit: The numbers in case anyone is skeptical.

3636 Base damage from Seko's spear throw
Bow - 909 - 75%
Twin - 727 - 80%
Sword - 545 - 85%
Axe - 363 - 90%
Odachi - 363 - 90%
Spear - 181 - 95%

3767 Base from Seko, +10% Guard Effectiveness(x2)
Bow - 565 - 85%
Twin - 376 - 90%
Sword - 188 - 95%
Axe - 188 - 95%
Odachi - 188 - 95%
Spear - 188 - 95%

19119 Base damage from Satan's sweeping laser
Bow - 4779 - 75%
Twin - 3823 - 80%
Sword - 2867 - 85%
Axe - 1911 - 90%
Odachi - 1911 - 90%
Spear - 955 - 95%

[Firon]

I wrote a lot and deleted it as it was just about the same thing... here's the summary
-I think weapon swapping should be prioritised over cd reduction because weapon trading, particularly those for multiple weapons with similar skill sets, make up a significant portion of the onigiri markets.

[Koba]

I think they just went back to watching porn and or thinking of momo without his towel on in the bath house -does rhythm do that everyonce in a while-

[Theknowledge]

C$ cares

[Taakun]

It just crossed my mind, but I don't think it would hurt to suggest adding the name change item to the cash shop.
It wont contribute to the sustainability of the player base, but players who have quit for various reasons and went through the trouble of deleting a character can free up names. The sale of a name change item is something relatively easy since the item already exist and could lead to small profit for the company.
I would imagine if I had a funky name because all my other options were taken, I would invest a small amount of OC to change it to a more attractive/proper name in the future.