I have so many ideas to make a private server, but I don't have the time, experience and (especially) money to run a server, so it will never happen.
Some of my ideas are:
- 80 cap, Chinese only with mastery limit on 240 and without SRO-R skills
Why Chinese only? Personally I always liked Chinese and it's also the easiest way to achieve a balanced gameplay with minimal changes.
- Experience rate from 1-40 at 2x and 41-80 at 3x
- SP rate from 1-40 at 4x and 41-80 at 6x
Why low rate? It's a low cap server so it doesn't really need high rates. On top of that you gain SP at a higher rate than experience. This reduces the farming needed, which was the least fun part about grinding.
- Minimal skill changes
Why? Chinese only are already very balanced in my opinion, but one thing I would change for example is making snow shield only available for INT-based characters (even the lowest level one). I also have some ideas for some buffs/skills that could be used for party play against challenging uniques, but the idea would be that they can't be used in PvP. Unfortunately I have no idea if that's possible.
- If possible only have Jangan as map (+ 2 or 3 dungeons and maybe some special areas for events or guild wars and stuff like that)
- Spawn rate would get increased to 2-3x that of iSRO to allow people to grind in peace on a small map
- No botting/power level/multi-client allowed
- Mobs only drop gold from 1-30 and very little amount (e.g.: general mob = 1 gold, champion = 2-3 gold, giant = 5-10 gold, etc...), after 30 they drop nothing (to counter gold bots).
- Items dropped from mobs would have no resell value or an extremely low one (e.g.: no gold for reselling low level gear and 8D gear selling for 1 gold at NPC). This is also to counter gold bots.
- Obviously the entire economy would be balanced so that gold is totally different than on iSRO (e.g.: highest potions sell for 1 gold/each, 1D 2 handed weapon from NPC sells for 5 gold/each, 8D 2 handed weapon from NPC sells for 5000 gold/each, elixirs can be bought at the NPC for 250-1000 gold depending on the type, etc...)
- The idea would be that having 10mil gold for example would make you a rich player.
- Several end-game sets (all with same stats) that can't be earned through grinding (to remove bot problem), but can be earned from several end-game activities. This way everyone can choose their prefered activity and it adds difference in end-gear.
- A maximum of only 3 uniques that don't spawn that often, making them truly unique.
- JG cave would be one of those dungeons where the end boss unique is located. A bad ass unique that appears only once a day and requires 50-100 FF max levels co-operating (or more depending on how popular your server is). His attacks would be annoying as hell, targeting 30-50+ people at once, giving lots of bad statusses, etc... He would also spawn a terrible amount of mobs that really need to be taken care of before continueing with the unique.
- Only Bandit Fortress enabled
- Guilds hold a maximum of 25 members and a union consists of maximum 4 guilds. (Again this depends on server popularity to make it challenging)
- Remove all the item mall items from the game that give an advantage to silk buyers in terms of strength in PvP (devil spirit, damage increase/absorption scrolls,...). Item mall items would be for example cosmetic items (avatars) or basic items that make your life easier (silk transports, reverse return scrolls,...)
- Only keep 50% speed potions in the game, this adds an advantage of taking lightning as skill tree.
- Remove vigor potions and remove all grains from the game
- Remove zerk potions from game
- Remove some useless items from the game (example: stealth/invisble potions since there are no EU's)
- Astral stones completely removed from game
- Immortal/Luck stones removed, but keep these blues as possible blues on item drops (making these drops worth a lot)
- No advanced elixirs, etc... (Simple old school alchemy, no fancy new stuff.)
- More difficult alchemy, but only a maximum of +7. (up to +3 = common, +4 = NICE, +5 = OMG WOW DUDE, +6 = alchemy god, +7 = you must be cheating)
- Glows would be either old SRO (transparent, purple, gold, blue) or later SRO (same colours with sparkles added)
For example: +0: nothing; +1: transparent; +2: purple; +3: gold; +4: blue; +5: purple sparkles; +6: gold sparkles; +7: blue sparkles
- 5% or 10% stones from NPC and mobs. Some challenge should be added, that's why I don't choose 0% stones like most servers.
- Only keep useful quests like inventory expansion but better rewards (inv. exp 1 = 20 slots; inv. exp 2 and 3 = 10 slots/each)
- Make new quests that don't require tons of work and that give useful rewards (SP, gold, silk transports, choice of silk attack pet,...)
- About trading... This is in my opinion the thing that was so unique and awesome about SRO, so it should be a big part of end game content. It should also be the place to be if you want to make money on this server. (It should give the best amount of money out of any activity on the server, but still require work.)
- Special job suits buyable only for high level jobbers (and untradeable so that you can't have someone else buy it for you)
- Add a transport to NPC that goes fast, has very low HP and very low carrying capacity (meant for 1 star safe trades)
- One of the trading routes would be from JG city to the ferry, where they require materials for building the ferry. As if you were still in an era before Donwhang was discovered. It would add the possibility to open the ferries to DW if more room is needed and give the impression to players as if they helped build it through a series of quests.
I know I forgot a lot and there are some things I maybe don't want to tell
but these are a few points.
10 or x12, still not sure.
.