Remove what didn't age well, improve what is already good
Luna Obscura is built on top of the idea that RO was always a great game but had issues, like any other.
While providing a new world and game is important, respecting RO's legacy is essential to bring together what once made the game great and take a chance to work on what needed to be updated.
Here we will cover 2 types of changes:
- Quality of life and preferences
- Removed from the game
Quality of Life and Preferences
RO had well-known, glaring issues with how it did some things. It's only fair to work on those and provide a better game.
Use your skills with decent SP recovery
SP regen is greatly increased and you get extra SP by auto-attacking, so you always have SP to use your skills.
You can see an example here attacking at minimum attack speed and without any bonuses.
You can also reset skills anytime and use the skill points from the previous job on the second if you prefer.
But its always good to remember that 1st job skills can be useful or essential sometimes!
No point giving everyone a greatly enhanced combat system and no new tools to use!
Appropriate supporting NPCS
Gone are the days of "Healer", "Warper" or "Job Change" NPCs that are all gathering around the center of Prontera, while their functionality is kept and adapted into the flow of the game.
All NPCs in Luna Obscura that can be found at the Headquarters have their functionality while fitting the theme and lore of the world. They might even provide their own quests, systems and interactions!
Leonard can take you to multiple regions you visited before, a Healer is no longer necessary as you respawn with full HP/SP, and healing items can be setup to be refilled automatically on return by talking to Lucy, along with many other changes. Job quests have small, but engaging interactions that will help you understand your job before you can make a final decision too.
You can find more details about some of them on the NPCs Page.
Resources were created to be used, easily
Cards were ever a key part of RO, but they came with crazy low drop rates that made them premium items to spend on. Being impacting as they are, our intent is that not only you can build around any card you consider, they are easily accessible.
Cards have a minimum drop rate of 1%, and bosses usually have even higher drop rates. With so many cool cards to use, its important to make them accessible. We even added brand new card types like regional sets and our special Arcana Cards.
Not only that... you can remove them anytime, straight from the menu, and ensure you have all resources available to be used elsewhere!
Details can be found on the Cards Page.
Gear progression that is customizable
Gone are the days where you could make your mage Lv99 with a simple knife/rod and a cotton shirt! Orchestria has unique challenges that will require constant and appropriate gearing.
With this, essential changes are required so keeping your equipment isn't annoying, detrimental in the long term and interesting.
You are encouraged and expected to drop an item and checking out while thinking "Dang, check out this cool effect! I wanna build around it!" And still find something fun and viable to play with.
Managing all that is made easier with a large storage and easy access to it straight from the inventory (usable only on safe areas), without searching around.
More details can be seen at the Equipment Page.
Party and Guild Updates
The Party size has been reduced from 12 to 6 players maximum, and guilds reduced from 16 +4 per guild extension level, to 30 members fixed size (5 full parties).
This was done in order to properly design the game around these compositions, and avoid zerging to some degree, with less people, active interaction and roles are more relevant, and more balanced for those who prefer to try solo or smaller parties.
As an extra, making a Guild does not require an Emperium item, and can be done anywhere, anytime.
Access and Challenge with Bosses
while fighting MVPs in RO was always fun, they had specific issues that made it a negative experience for many:
- Requiring extensive parties to be doable (or later in the game's life, easily one shotted by a single person)
- Competing with other players to find them, or using cash shop items to track their spawns and locations.
- Completing repetitive instances to fight a boss at the end
- Some being extremely overpowered while others were flat-out useless. One shots and cheap skills being common, with no reaction times.
We address these issues by making a massive overhaul to how bosses are handled:
- Bosses will always match the power of the map they are in.
- Bosses can be found roaming the area, or summoned directly using our Relic System, where you can farm for items to summon the boss on the map.
- Instanced bosses are reserved only for the massive fights, specially with the Maidens, and come in two versions: One for your appropriate level as a solo fight, and a high-level version for parties.
- Boss rewards are unique versions of items in the area, with new enchantments and some extra, alternate details. Not to mention all boss cards now share the same item slot, making them a key piece of building, while being very accessible.
Excessive reliance on buffs and consumables
It was normal to need multi-client in order to keep your character working at its peak, not to mention needing 2-3 full columns of buffs that push you way beyond the limits.
In Luna Obscura, we are against the idea of wasting hours upon hours of your game time gathering materials or items to have your fun time. This includes, but is not limited to:
- SP Regen is greatly increased, can be improved easily with stats and gear and auto attacks also regenerate SP by default.
- Healing items are refilled whenever you are in a safe zone, with a specific recipe properly set by you, or using a default, easy to use one.
- Consumables are limited in scope and stacking, so you can choose one that better fits your gameplay style, while not feeling mandatory or spending a lot of time gathering or managing them.
- Other job buffs and supportive roles are more active, making them rewarding as long as they are played actively. They also are not mandatory to succeed, but greatly enhance the party interactivity, while bringing a much needed safety net on harder content.
More Details on Consumables available in its page.
Removed entirely or Reworked into new things
Cash Shop
There is no cash shop in Luna Obscura. The plan is for the game to be funded by the Patreons, with no in-game benefits or rewards.
There is a strong misconception that running a RO server is expensive, and while costs do exist, there is a line to be crossed between "Covering costs and getting some extra" and "Using it as your wage, living improvement and making a lot of money".
As such, the plan is to keep the game without a Cash Shop, in the future, if any is needed, we have a compromise to properly discuss it with the community to decide on what would be the best approach (while keeping it fair). Previously in Return to Morroc the approach was tradeable costumes only, with 80% of the costumes available still droppable ingame.
It's important to notice that development takes time and money, and having monetary resources help us bring better content overall.
Quick Swapping of Equipment
Except for weapons, equipment cannot be changed outside safe zones.
This ensures you are carrying a proper loadout for farming a specific area or monster group, and avoids cases where you feel compelled to carry 500 item pieces to swap every single time against every enemy.
The game is more about the action and how you engage with it, and less with how many gear swap macros you can setup with overly specialized gear, less time messing with items, more fighting.
Fly Wings and Random Teleports
These would not provide any meaningful gameplay, but was basically required due to the expected amount of monster killing needed, exp curve, inconsistent map design and overall slower movement speed.
With the improved movement speed access, tailor-made maps on smaller dungeons with less floors and longer monster fight time for considerably larger rewards, we removed this mechanic from the game entirely.
Not only that, Fly wings meant positioning, risks and traveling was just a spam of cheap consumables away on skipping, making the game world non-interactible.
Finally, Butterfly Wings are no longer necessary, as you can return to safe zones, Nocturne and the Cathedral of Blades anytime through the Return skill.
Removed Item Weight
While there were a lot of attempts at modernizing it, including creating a system where it applies to what is currently worn, the weight system was just an arbitrary limitation, on top of what already existed.
As such, all item weight was removed. Inventory capacity is now the only limitation to what you can carry.
For stackable items, the limit is 9999 of the item, and for individual slots, the inventory capacity is 100 items by default.
@ Commands
While they are very common in most RO servers, they also are a blatant band-aid on design and accessibility.
Luna Obscura implemented most of their relevant features as in-game systems or mechanics. A good example is the @refresh, which was common to solve cases of RO jank. While its greatly mitigated, you can still refresh the screen with the appropriate button on the settings menu.
This also obviously includes the lack of any VIP NPC, or VIP only commands... as there is no VIP at all.
Many other functionalities that didn't exist even through @ commands have been added in other ways.
Gear Progression Loss
Equipment won't break during refining. And refining itself is not planned to be implemented in the traditional sense.
With the free removal of cards, variety of enchanting and modifications on equipment, there is no risk or heavy cost for experimenting new ideas and builds.
There is no way to simply lose your item, your farming time and effort is respected.
More details are available on the Player Progression Page.
Kafras, Porings and RO itself
While we respect RO for what it is, the idea with Luna Obscura is to provide a new world with new concepts and ideas, not bound by any nostalgia or cute factor from its time.
Resources from RO are re-used in new ways to provide a new theme and game, while respecting the gameplay we all love, but bringing fresh ideas. Luna Obscura should be good enough to stand on its own merits.
You can however still check the Menus for ways to re-enable a more classic UI experience and original damage font for example!
Hit Chance and Flee Chance
These 2 stats were removed due to the more active combat dynamic, as they would provide arbitrary checks for attacks connecting or not.
By default, all hits in Luna Obscura always affect the enemy, and the evasive stat (Dodge) applies only to basic attacks.
This means damage is predictable and should be planned and built for, both dealing or receiving it.
Complex formula interactions
Formulas in Luna Obscura are straight forward and easy to understand, in order to make building more intuitive and encouraged.
When you have 40 ATK, and the monster has 50 Hard DEF, that means 20 damage. And if the enemy has 10 Soft DEF, thats 10 damage.
If you see a given skill deal 300% damage, your 40 atk now becomes 120 damage.
Not only this, the smaller numbers make flat values essential to boost % modifiers from higher bases.
Details are available on the Status Points Page, including a unique calculator for points and leveling up.