[Ryuzaki]

So to everyone that's saying the grind factor isn't fun and takes away from the IC?

I recently went through grinding one of my newer characters. But, I decided with GSM that we'd level the twins through sheer IC (All BDPs were done with RP, all gear was acquired properly, our cash was made via selling the stuff we got thus contributing to the economy, I'm going through unlocking alternate class options for my char through ICly training with others.)

Grinding isn't fun, when you do it bland, blank and through OOC. BUT Grinding can be *made* fun, if you turn it into an IC thing. Don't bum-rush to 60. Dev your character from level 1 to level 60 without any ooc grinding, make all your BDP runs, all your spars with others for that 5% TNL training boost IC, do everything you do IC, and you'll find a way to make grinding fun.

Or at least, I did.
Too many people do stuff OOCly in SL2. OOC sales, OOC spars, OOC BDPing, which takes away from those of us that *do* wanna do stuff ICly and entirely ICly.
Not to sound like a hypocrite, I am guilty of some of these things. I've sold stuff via OOC before, I spar OOCly to test my builds if I make changes, or sometimes just for shits and giggles. But, I'd much prefer to do it all ICly.

Rant over. Go RP in a BDP.

[GSM]

So to everyone that's saying the grind factor isn't fun and takes away from the IC?

I recently went through grinding one of my newer characters. But, I decided with GSM that we'd level the twins through sheer IC (All BDPs were done with RP, all gear was acquired properly, our cash was made via selling the stuff we got thus contributing to the economy, I'm going through unlocking alternate class options for my char through ICly training with others.)

Grinding isn't fun, when you do it bland, blank and through OOC. BUT Grinding can be *made* fun, if you turn it into an IC thing. Don't bum-rush to 60. Dev your character from level 1 to level 60 without any ooc grinding, make all your BDP runs, all your spars with others for that 5% TNL training boost IC, do everything you do IC, and you'll find a way to make grinding fun.

Or at least, I did.
Too many people do stuff OOCly in SL2. OOC sales, OOC spars, OOC BDPing, which takes away from those of us that *do* wanna do stuff ICly and entirely ICly.
Not to sound like a hypocrite, I am guilty of some of these things. I've sold stuff via OOC before, I spar OOCly to test my builds if I make changes, or sometimes just for shits and giggles. But, I'd much prefer to do it all ICly.

Rant over. Go RP in a BDP.

Captured everything I wanted to say here, and I agree wholeheartedly with Ryu on everything. It was a much better experience than just blowing through everything OOCly and saying ‘okay, now what?’; doing everything ICly and developing your character is a much more enjoyable experience imo. Maybe you guys aren’t using the right perspective or want to preserve what you have ICly, which is fine, but this is what I prefer.

OOC mob fights have actually put me to sleep (more than once), but when you get IC about it, it’s a lot easier to put up with.

:thumbsup:

[Ryuzaki]

I can confirm GSM has fallen asleep countless times during OOC shenanigans, it's really painful.

[ɐʞᴉuoW ʇsnſ]

Being IC about grinding would be easier if we didn't have to go out of our way to do it. The issue with BDP grinding is that you go into the BDP with the intent to grind, whether it be for EXP or items. There's no reason to enter them for any other purpose. Contrast this to many other RPGs where grinding is less something that you go out of your way to do, but rather something that happens passively during the course of a greater objective, like getting from point A to point B.

Let's look at this psychologically for a second. Traveling and sightseeing isn't something people generally view as "unfun", especially when done with friends. Grinding, on its own, is always seen as unfun. When you're doing something you don't find fun, with your mind on that specific task, you don't want to spend more time on it than you have to. RPing during the grind will make it take longer, and not many people are willing to deal with that. It's doable for the first few battles, but when you know you're going to have many more back to back most people can only keep it up for so long before it feels repetitive and meaningless.

If you were to deal with enemies during your travels on the other hand (look to just about any other RPG as an example of this, Elona in particular if you want an example that also uses a world map), not only is your grinding not necessarily the focus, but it's broken into digestible chunks and streamlined into your actual objective. Your mind is no longer on it, and that means it's no longer something you feel like you need to rush and get out of the way as quickly as possible. The way it is now, if you want to become viable you know you're going to have to go into a BDP at some point whether you want to or not. RP exp doesn't give you items, so you will be lagging behind everyone else no matter what you do if you neglect them. But people want that unfun activity out of the way ASAP, so they dash to 60. There's really all there is to it.

As for how to fix this, if you do see it as something worth changing, a few hoops would need to be jumped through to stay faithful to the lore (to my knowledge monsters can't leave the BDPs), but I don't see why that would stop us from adding some... non-monstrous encounters to the map itself. A bit of local life, if you would. If we were to derive inspiration from Elona, just as an example of what could be possible, we have an overworld with road tiles that could be used for weaker enemy encounters (up to 5 levels below the party leader), grass tiles for stronger enemies (party's level+1d5), and forest tiles that, while impassible, could function similarly to water in the jammer caverns in that they could give special encounters. There could even be ways to enable random, map specific boss encounters.

But those are just my thoughts, and I think this post has already gone on for too long. Thanks for your time and adieu for now.

[Snake]

So to everyone that's saying the grind factor isn't fun and takes away from the IC?

I recently went through grinding one of my newer characters. But, I decided with GSM that we'd level the twins through sheer IC (All BDPs were done with RP, all gear was acquired properly, our cash was made via selling the stuff we got thus contributing to the economy, I'm going through unlocking alternate class options for my char through ICly training with others.)

Grinding isn't fun, when you do it bland, blank and through OOC. BUT Grinding can be *made* fun, if you turn it into an IC thing. Don't bum-rush to 60. Dev your character from level 1 to level 60 without any ooc grinding, make all your BDP runs, all your spars with others for that 5% TNL training boost IC, do everything you do IC, and you'll find a way to make grinding fun.

Or at least, I did.
Too many people do stuff OOCly in SL2. OOC sales, OOC spars, OOC BDPing, which takes away from those of us that *do* wanna do stuff ICly and entirely ICly.
Not to sound like a hypocrite, I am guilty of some of these things. I've sold stuff via OOC before, I spar OOCly to test my builds if I make changes, or sometimes just for shits and giggles. But, I'd much prefer to do it all ICly.

Rant over. Go RP in a BDP.

But can you keep doing this for over five years? You did this to "one" of your chars, my man. The oldbies have done this too, multiple times probably. I can bet anyone ranting here must have gone to a BDP RP'd in them atleast once. OOC actions come when you don't find an IC reason to do it, be it IC or OOC.

I personally tried to do so, keep a BPD IC. So fun, indeed. Until you go past the third floor. Things get instantly stale, people will opt to stop typing if they have a pint of sanity left, knowing that those things are long as fuck. Eventually you'll reach a floor with 10+ mobs to kill on the same floor anddddd OH BOY, HAVING TO WAIT FOR PEOPLE TO TYPE THEIR EMOTES BEFORE SWINGING (if they're madmen), KNOWING THAT THERE'S 9 MORE FIGHTS TO GET TO THE NEXT FLOOR. OH BOY, IF WE ALL ARE TANKS WITH NO DAMAGE. AAAAAAAH. G R I M A C E.

The first thing that comes in mind in such situation is "Why didn't I take a grindmage/high damage char here? This will take so long to-- Oh... IC. Guess I'll AFG and tab back when it's my turn."

It's a kind of metagame that's more on OOC levels. You expect what it will happen. It happens exactly like you think. Nothing new happens, nor you can take any alternate routes around it to make it slightly different than your expectations. And even if you do, eventually you run out of ideas to make it fun. (I tried many things already, even a bare fist challenge on a char with 10 STR that eventually cost me 4200 Murai, because I forgot to pocket them away in ASAGO.)

I tell you, man. You're just a fresh guy. Enjoy while you can. Eventually you'll run out of ideas to make SL2 enjoyable and join us in this rantpocalypse.

Oh, right. I'd like to make this a point too. This could come as a suggestion for high level BPDs too?

Dungeons could all use a Cave's pattern so they're not annoying as the everliving heck bamboo to navigate, and more generated depending on how many people are in the BDP. I wouldn't mind 10000 floors, as long as I don't get god damn lost in a noodle maze. It's stressing as shit, not fun.

New traps and new shit people at LV60 should be aware of (like poison tiles that chomp away a 10% HP if you don't resist/have blessing? A trap that makes a Super bomb appear on your next fight? Some trap-solving requiring Urazawa's command input in less than 1 second or so?)

Maybe make all dungeons with a level equal or above 55 be always 'Crazy'?

Maybe also have minibosses with a LOT OF HP every even floor to keep you from progressing, and you 'must' interact with it to get to the next floor, so people don't simply clean up the zone for everyone to jump in after them?

Maybe also one mob that you need to be running from constantly like 'Death' in Persona, unless you have a party with enough strong characters to take the risk?

And then low level dungeons would be what we have for high levels. Long and tiring, but somewhat rewarding in the end. The only 'meh' part is that they're randomly generated and we have to pray for them to appear while playing statue in borelands arena. If only we players could make our own BDPs in houses if only just for events or challenges. It would cut a lot of work, but in the end, be nothing but a band-aid fix.

And recalling the OP, I can say with 100% certainty now that people only want 'ez pez' EXP because most of the game's significant changes are aimed at PvP.