Hello everyone. As you guys may notice I'm no longer on Staff and just a regular player (Hi). If any of you are in the ironman discord you may have saw me mention that I had some unfinished business I wanted to attend to and this is where I am starting, a feedback thread! Mushroom Kingdom and Kerning Square Mushroom Kingdom and Kerning Square are two lower level areas many of you probably remember from GMS and such. They had pretty good quest lines with small bosses, lots of cool new enemies, the music was AWESOME. I mean, listen to this The tl;dr is I was told there is enough in lower levels to do as is. So, I am asking for feedback from everyone. I feel during low levels, while there is a lot to do- there is a lot of pressure to fly thru the levels, or leech your way thru. More options means leveling alts is more fun, there's more quests for people who like quests to do. More monster cards. Besides eating up some development time, I really didn't see any cons. Perhaps the leveling would be too fast with these areas, but that could be tuned down. While this isn't as exciting as end game content can be, I felt it was very important to not cater to just high level players. Every player, regardless passes thru lower levels, and this content while trivial to higher levels is also accessible to them. Comments from my Focus Group: "The counter argument to people leveling too fast in those areas, is like Orbis etc/ NLC etc. Like atleast you're actually doing something? I can get levels instantly just by buying shit anyway" "If ppl wanna jet to 2nd job, whatever, but rn its pretty much CPQ or go fuck yourself til 51" "I think those would be great additions to the game" "50-70 is kind of a fucking slog"
I love both mushroom kingdom and kerning square. However, there are a lot of untouched contents already in the low-level area such as shanghai, Thailand, etc. I am interested in the feedback from the community as well. What define as the low level? If the staff decide to re-adjust the level range, what level range would be the most appropriate?
I think this would be a great addition to add for the lower lvls. CPQ1 and LPQ isn't always full and it sometimes takes a while to find a party if it's completely dead. Adding these 2 maps would give alternate training grounds and ways for lower lvls to get to lvl 50 without having to depend on CPQ1 or LPQ to lvl from 30-50. I remember back in GMS, I used to train at kerning square from 40-50, cause it was a great place to train and also find low lvl equips for your class if you couldn't afford them with mesos. Also, the questline for both mushroom king and spirit of rock was very fun/enjoyable. I would love to see this get added! Not only because it gives something new to the server, but also because it benefits lower lvls too who struggle to find ways to lvl without having to buy leech or waste time trying to find parties for both CPQ1 and LPQ.
My only counter (being I think as many areas in the game should be added as possible) is that there is already a ton of areas in the world tour/Asian inspired themes currently present. Both Kerning Square and Mushroom Kingdom expand on Henesys and Kerning on Victoria Island. As for level range, I don't think the levels need to be altered too much, but rather the exp from going thru them might be a bit extreme by todays standards. Kerning Square could easily fill in the 40-70 slot nicely with content, and Mushroom Kingdom is a nice alternative to traditional low level grinding, which for me typically was Maple island, slime tree, pig beach, caution falling down/Ant Tunnel, then a slew of stuff in Magatia.
The thing about mushroom castle is that with its intended level range, I feel like players would level far past what the final reward's level requirement is. Since they are just special versions of level 35 (maybe 40) weapons, it might be a little underwhelming, especially with the effort it takes to go against all the versions of king pepe (party of at least 3 I believe, all within level range). I don't think such an area, nostalgic as it is for me since I spent a very long time with many characters there, would be popular for more than a few weeks on this server. People would get bored if it wasn't massively overhauled, which I don't agree with doing. It just wouldn't feel right going through that area at a higher level, since it originally connected directly to the training grounds around henesys. For kerning square, I feel like a place like that would be much more accommodating to change. Since the final reward there for beating the boss was a pair of earrings, the level requirement of the item and stats could be altered much more easily than the items received from mushroom castle. The claw game enemies would be easily farmed by hackers and normal players alike during major events like thanksgiving and christmas if left in their original state, so those would have to be changed.
This is a pretty dead content even in official server back then (not sure was it the same for other official server that i’m not in) since its release, players just go there for a single map, the disc ones, stay for a few levels and gtfo. I wonder how active is the shanghai & thailand maps but theres a possibilty it would just be another map similar to it, eventually to be another home for vac hackers & more maps for staff to patrol.
Imo, a poor reason to not add content, might as well remove large chunks of orbis, leafre, ludi, etc if the concern is hackers. With autoban (eventually) thats less of an issue, but even so, most new areas added become dead unless they displace top grinding or leeching spots, or have a boss. But thats sort of why im suggesting this. It had fun quests, more monster cards, and mini bosses, not major ones that become another daily grind for high levels, while the majority of the content is ignored, but simply passed thru for the boss. Im trying to keep these feedback threads to 1 topic per, but this directly ties into an ironman mode ive been suggesting for a couple years (which Joel mocked up a great intro for), and a strong belief that we cant just add higher level content and that updates, and staff need to be cognicent to the fact that not everyone is a high level bosser and thats okay, we have to represent all players, and that means some new lower level areas. But ill add more for all the other random crap i want to address when i make threads for it. The content would most definitely need go be tuned, but nearly all areas released thus far have been so its not new, or really all that difficult.
Imo, still a good reason to not add more. I even think remove large chunks of orbis/leafre/ludi etc map that no one goes is a good idea LOL. (Jk) Is it nostalgic? Yes, but it will eventually be a half dead content in less then a week only to be time to time visited by a smaller percentage of our community. CPQ1 with its party play, PVP , sales & purchase of cpq leech is pretty damn fun, popular and interactive compared to solo low level questing & low level bossing. Overall, CPQ1-2 is definitely the go to choice for our new players in our community This should be widely popular for a long time to come since players comes and go from this content. Instead i feel putting attention to our end game content which is on the verge of burning and crashing should be taken as priority. Spoiler: Players affected will understand Until autoban is officially in place working even more “swimmingly”. Additional hacking countermeasures have been activated. This is one map that shouldn’t be included just yet imo, BUT! If royals would really like to introduce this map. It should be heavily rebalanced or in royals terms “revamped from the ground up, in almost every aspect.” like ellin forest and adjusted to 70-120 partyplay area (LHC party bonus style) this might be popular. Could be shelfed for the future.
we also have LPQ/OPQ/LMPQ/CPQ1&2/RJPQ... and much more for low lvls and higher , but because of mulestory-multiclienting and poor balance-nerfs all that is left behind royals is slowly geting overloaded with contnet for the sake "we have it " and dosn't matter if working
Speaking personally, PQs get boring quickly, having done them ad nauseum, along with bosses in the past here and on GMS. I guess im simple, i like grinding mobs, collecting cards, and doing quests. As for the other thing, i agree. But... realistically there are bigger issues staff are dealing with (or ignoring) than fixing old content that was pushed put out to attract players (cant say this isnt true for this proposal, attracting new players is important but this has been a personal and intimate update ive wanted for a long time, so call it a passion project). Which is also why I have almost zero expectations this will be added, even if i had overwhelming support of the community. I will make my feedback threads either way, end of the day the discussion is important even if nothing comes of it, I at least tried.
I think its a pretty cool idea to eventually introduce more content but definitely would not recommend implementing it until autoban is fully functional or if the areas was gated by a ton of prerequisites like ellin forest. From my experience as a GM, there was rampant amounts of hacking in the newly added lower level maps at the time such as Shanghai & Thailand and I bet it is still the same to this day.
Couldn't agree more. In fact, ideally these would be planned long term. Having a sort of roadmap gives people something to look forward to. Autoban --> Mushroom Kingdom --> *cough* fix the mod panel and read only access *cough* --> Pink Bean + Timeless Weapons --> something something important behind the scenes secret stuff --> Kerning Square --> Etc Having seasonal events mixed in, along with stuff like Design a Chair sprinkled in, it could nicely pad the entire year plus more.
I have mixed feelings about these contents. First of all, I'll say that I'm extremely nostalgic for both of them, and would love to visit them again in royals. But in terms of balance, both maps each have their own flaws that would need addressing before implementing into the game. Lets start with mushroom castle: In gms, this area was a lvl limited questline, ranging from lvl 30 to 38, and it was balanced accordingly. Royals is a 3.2x exp 2x rate server, so the balancing of this content which was carefully designed so people will only finish it all at around lvl 36~38, would not work here. If we want to give the oldschool experience of enjoying this entire area, and growing at the pace of the mobs, most of the mobs would need to scale up in difficulty and reward faster. So instead of scaling the mobs slowly from lvl 30 to 38, mobs should scale up to lvl 45~ (with fitting exp and hp), and if the lvl difference between the old one and the new one is big enough, maybe increase the level of the equips the mob drops as well. And because this content comes in this late, it would be only fair to completely remove the level cap of the area, and the final boss. The final reward used to be one of the most important parts of the content (next to the medal i guess, 2+ all stat), a lvl 35 weapon that has a special 60% scroll that only drops from the boss itself. In gms that made sense cause getting a weapon was super hard, and scrolls were very tough to get when you didn't know where they drop from, and the droprate was absolutely pathetic. In royal, this is beyond useless. First of all, raising the weapon lvl to a lvl 45 weapon (including the lvl 45 looks), and massively increasing the scroll droprates would be needed to justify even a new player's time to get their class's weapon, and to upgrade it. Maybe even adding the king pepe weapon scrolls to normal mobs in that area, so players will be able to amass some scrolls as they quest before they reach the end boss. Now, Kerning Square: Because this content doesn't have the same level cap design, this area used to be very popular for its maps. In terms of balancing, this area does feel like it would work better as a higher level map, with all the flat maps and high spawn rates that usually only maxed aoe skills can benefit from. But at the same time, leaving them in the same levels would not be terrible either. it can stay as a lvl 35~50 area, or maybe changed to be a lvl 50~70 area, both sound good to me. The real issue with kerning square is the leech meta, these maps are perfect for leeching, which is kinda troubling when the spawnrates are that good. A solution I thought of for these maps is simply increasing the height of the floors, so that ultis will only hit one floor at a time. That way, spawnrate could remain good, and encorage party grinding [splitting the floor]. Increasing the distance would also make the maps look better, cause in gms there was no high res client, which means in our client we will see more black space in the map, and the floors will feel clastrophobic in comparison. The second issue, is the claw game mobs, When they die, they spawn in 3 small mobs from them that each can drop items. This fucks up with event drops, and would probably lead to people camping these maps in events like red envelope or whatnot. The solution would be to make these mobs to spawn only one or two small mobs, or to reduce the spawnrate of the master mob while keeping the mob cap of the map the same. The questline itself is great, but if they'll decide to fit this area to a different level range, this should also affect the level, and reward of the questline.
30-70 is overloaded with content as a result these levels are easy to speed through and it results in PQS for these levels being dead. (LPQ OPQ and now CPQ2) from a gameplay perspective i don't feel like more areas are really needed for these levels
Lowkey wishing the Taiwan map (Formosa& Taipei 101) will be implemented instead of Kerning Square. Just like Neo Tokyo was implemented instead of the nerfed version Neo City
My opinion is to stop implementing new areas until autoban is out, but that shouldn't stop the team from implementing it first and simply disable entry to it. Also, Shanghai and Thailand is pretty dead, if you don't consider the tons of hackers that are roaming around. MapleRoyals don't need anymore new contents for now. What it needs is a system that can ensure fair gameplay.
i think we already have a lot of content. what we really need is PVP like in runescape and if u die u drop ur items
I agree that kerning square should be implemented, but also agree wait till auto ban is out like @Kai said.
