Notice GM Blog: February 2021

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Greetings, Royallers!

It's time for the monthly update, and we'll jump straight into the action for this one, which will mostly touch on recent changes and updates! First up are the recent Staff Changes, which we're sure most of you have noticed by now!

Staff Changes
Continuing on from our last GM Blog; we remain focused on expanding Staff in various ways. Step one has been the recruitment of five new Staff members, as well the promotion of three existing ones! These changes will help offload some critical areas of the game's moderation!

We'd like to welcome the new GM interns @Alan, @Dasha, @Incentv, @Kenny and @Stephen! We are very happy to have them onboard to help with all of the things it takes to run this game and community of ours!

Furthermore, our devoted GM interns @Chee, @Peter and @Soren have proven themselves in battle so to speak, and have been promoted to GMs! This will help them perform even more important tasks in the game! Congratulations!

Keeping this in mind, we still have more plans to expand Staff in other, less traditional (for MapleRoyals) ways! Stay tuned for future notices on this!

And now for some bittersweet news:
A Special Farewell...
...to a big name in the community, @Shane , who has been with us as a Staff member for over two years, and several more as a player. He has (for now) decided to step down from his role as GM, and take some time away to focus on his personal affairs. We all know he was a long-time dedicated Staff member who always passed a fair judgement and was quick to help any player in need. And as the current leader of the Ironman community here in Royals, he has certainly showed determination in the game. We sincerely wish him all the best and do hope he returns when he has attained the goals he is on track for, and we hope you will all give him the recognition that he deserves! Thank you Shane!

The New Experimental Setup
With Update 70, we introduced a new way for the MapleRoyals Game Client to load data from the files. Some of you may have noticed that the folder in which the game resides now looks a bit different. We did this in an attempt to alleviate some common issues with crashing and graphical glitches during bossruns for some players.

We remain hopeful that it has proven to be an improvement for the vast majority of players, but we are also aware of some possible issues with it under specific circumstances. This has perhaps been most noticeable during GM events, where sometimes players have experienced odd crashes when teleporting to or from large groups of players. We are still investigating what exactly might trigger this. In general, we are interested in hearing your experience of the new setup thus far, and we have devised a Feedback Thread in which we invite you to share your perspective! You can find this thread here.

Continuing on the theme of Update 70...
Ellin Forest
A brand new area, revamped from the ground up, in almost every aspect. Ellin Forest marked a new milestone in terms of custom content for MapleRoyals, and we would like to discuss it, and custom content in general, a bit here.

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Previous additions to the game, such as Eastern China and Neo Tokyo, were also characterised by tweaks and changes to the drops, HP- and EXP values, but the changes were minor and did not radically alter the area from its original incarnation.

With Ellin Forest, we wanted to try something different. The original area was fondly remembered by many for its aesthetic and background music, and we agreed that it was an aspect we wanted to preserve and capitalise on. The original gameplay on the other hand would have been, dare we say, wasted potential in MapleRoyals. Not only did the area provide little in terms of quests and lore, but its maps were small, flat, and the monsters in a level range which sees little use in MapleRoyals. We decided that the most important factor to build from was the aesthetic, and tailor the rest to suit the reality of MapleRoyals.

The result is what most of you have seen, reworked maps, mobs, and quests. A lot of time and passion has gone into this area, and we are eager to hear what you think about it! Do you like this approach to content implementation? That is, new content which prioritises preserving the aesthetic and feel of the original area, but with modifications that account for the meta which has evolved in Royals? Let us know in the comments below!

And lastly...
Community Q&A #2
Since the previous Q&A session garnered more than 10 questions, we figured there might still be some others lingering out there. If there is anything you wish to ask us directly, we invite you to do so in the thread that we have set up here. Depending on the interest shown for these sessions, we may or may not hold them monthly; but this remains to be seen.

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That's all for now, friends. Thanks for being a part of MapleRoyals; you are what make the game into what it is! Happy Mapling!

- The MapleRoyals Staff

 

Thank you @Shane!

Spoiler

 

Will say I'm very happy Ellin Forest was implemented the way it was.

I've seen some sentiment around here and there which puts a large emphasis on Royals being, let's say, "authetically nostalgic". That is, all content in the game is implemented how it was 12-10 years ago on GMS (faults and all) and to deviate from that would be deviating Royals' supposed 'brand' as a nostalgic server.

I'm glad staff opted for maintaining merely the aesthetic and atmosphere of Ellin and made it fill a (in my opinion much needed) niche within the current game progression and meta. I vividly recall my experience in the 90-120 level range, and my stubbornness on refusing to buy leech made that part of the game a real big drag once I got a ways into it: The game basically runs out of quests to give you at that point (not even giving any for Dragon Forest mobs or similar), Neo-Tokyo is still a ways away, and Temple of Time works but getting the quest EXP there is a very patient task. In the end I had to abandon my principles and buy skele leech just to make the dash to 4th Job because I genuinely felt like I was out of content to play there (Crusader not having much going for it as a 3rd job probably didn't make my experience much better).

Ellin Forest's placement would fit perfectly in that little drag gap I experienced, and it's PQ with it's nice rewards and good EXP rate is another great thing to have in between Pirate PQ and going full-on Bossing.

In the end I'm very happy this area ended up being implemented from a gameplay-need perspective, and not just another low level area which is permanently abandoned by all population besides Card Hunters (looking at you, Floating Market/Shanghai). Here's to hoping the future areas that are still missing as of yet will continue to fill these niches (Golden Temple being a 120+ area?).

 

Ellin Forest is AMAZING. I never had the opportunity to do through it on GMS since I quitted before it came out, but on royals it feels like a beautiful zone with a great storyline and well the quests are... okay.

The party quest and rewards are great too, the ring and earrings are definetely a great option for unfunded players.

I have asked for customized content like these for years. GMS messed up hard with too many op new classes, whole map attacking skills and crazy damage. But the maps are totally copyable and implementable on Royals, I would really love to see more customized zones like Ellin Forest. Maybe we can have a "Design a zone" contest some day?

 

When will be the buff on APQ bonus stage?
I thought its started 13feb, but u know its not

 

The custom Ellin Forest implementation is great, and I mostly have fun in that area.
You've done a great job!

The one thing I find really annoying is the mobility:

• Many times, the platforms are very small, and if that's not enough, some are so close to each other it makes you fall off on the way to the next portal (and I'm not very bad at jump quests). Really feels like a jump quest sometimes.
  
• I think a VIP cab to Epinea and Chao would be great, because getting there on a daily basis can be exhausting , especially with the small and close platforms as mentioned.
• Also, I would add more teleports across the maps. In some of the maps, there's no teleport from the bottom to the top, making you climb up your way.

 

I havent had the chance to play myself but I am so happy that my suggestion was implemented in the game! I have not done the pap quest yet so I wasn't able to enter, but I saw many users enter the portal. It is amazing to see an originally overlooked content being utilized by many users. Hopefully it will be more than a early phase hype and be a major, permanently established content.

 

I love how Ellin forest was implemented and I'm so happy that you guys took my suggestion and used the alternate poison forest theme for areas deeper in Ellin forest, such a great song for a great place

 

Just wanted to say that I am super thankful for the hard work that went into this effort/continued effort of upgrading the stability and performance on the game client. After consistently being part of DC/Left gang during GM events, I can noticeably feel and see the difference as crowds amass within a small map. I’d previously experience heavy lag and occasionally DC even with just one client, but now I’ve noticed I can run a couple in the background without feeling the same lag before.

I’m a developer myself so I find it super awesome when performance and stability is upgraded and improved across applications, especially in the context of a MS private server where development tends to be mostly feature related and not much on the core features of the game itself. Great work again, and looking forward to an even more performant client as time progresses!