General General Feedback and Longevity of the Server

Disclaimer: this is just my personal opinion(s) as a ex staff member and a current active player from/since early 2016 on MapleRoyals.

Lack of Player Retention

This is evident through a less active market compared to months prior, online count slowly dipping, controversial changes being made, being unforgiving in ban appeals (ex. being banned as a person vs only account bans for vote abuse, hate speech/harassment 3rd offense permanent bans, soliciting real world trade even if they didn’t actually commit it), long turn over times for donation issues & character issues, etc. Furthermore, the competition next door has been doing so well lately (this past year) and has caught up in online count.

Nerfs and Controversial Changes

1. Event Nerfs (ex. untradeable never melting snow, untradeable anniversary candles)

Up until 3 years ago, I would be looking forward to the anniversary event because the anniversary earrings were best in slot and candles would net a good income if you chose to sell them before, as farming events are just really popular on Royals. Events aren’t really exciting anymore due to these nerfs, at least for me. With the release of Element Pierce and Altaire Earrings, there isn't really much value in this event to me at least.

2. Spawn Nerfs (ulu, duku)

Just sucks to be a legit player looking to make meso’s at a higher rate, and also very demotivating for current farmers/leech sellers looking to transition to end game or looking to make purchases like a high volume of ap resets, high weapon attack cape/gloves/shoes or perfect weapons. I think with these nerfs there should be a middle ground compromise, like adding/buffing other viable maps for players to explore and farm in.

3. Summon Farm + Pet Loot

Was this mainly implemented to counter the abundance amount of botters, i’m honestly not sure because they can just adjust their script? I was a big fan of this farming method because I didn’t particularly like actively farming or selling leech. I guess it got too extreme to the point where people made 10+ clients to hog all the voodoos/jacks/leps maps. Not really much to say but it resulted to players changing to hurricane farming at toy room or just manually looting their summon kills.

4. Shifter Nerf, Potion Price Increase, Star recharge costs

This really just hurts the newer night lords and players looking to start bossing, it doesn’t really personally affect me as much as others.

5. Total Crash Implementation/adjustment

Total crash was a custom skill to Royals that was implement before the big class trio rebalance patch for (pally, shad, bucc) because cancel weapon attack was too long and annoying? Fast forward, and prior to the controversial patch 71, total crash was perceived by the community as the gold standard/premium to muling and it was apparently mandatory to have in other to join a bossing party? I personally think the skill should just be scrapped cause it just encourages muling all together whether it be 1 or 3 crash mules/pallys. I wouldn't be suprised if more people just leveled their lv80 crash mules to lv12x and start juggling crash mules. There's a full thread on this so I won't bother commenting further.

Auto Ban Priority

Pretty much well explained by Shiyui here:

Content that doesn’t fit or make sense on MapleRoyals

Auf Helmet? Who's idea was it to release this helmet unnerfed 20 slots with the godly system? Why was Mark of Naricain balanced so well but this was not? Did Staff really think there wouldn't be players able to finish this helmet...? This helmet has so much value and is way better than upgrading your cape/gloves/shoes if you actually want to invest and main a character. Instead of stopping power creep, it is being supported which is pretty worrisome. Furthermore, Auf Haven is a relatively easy boss and has progressively became easier due to changes. It can be easily solo/duo/trio'd if you understand the mechanics and have enough hp to survive.

End game bossing scene

Both end game bosses (Auf Haven and Horntail) can be easily solo/duo/trio as long as you have enough HP, an abundance of attack potions (Heartstoppers, Onyx apple, Gelt Chocolate , Naricain Demon Elixir) and enough time on your hands. The main problem with the end game bossing scene is that we don't have enough new players buying the bosses valuable drops. A prime example would be triple throw 30, it went from 1b to 30m which makes boss runs less profitable thus, encouraging muling to hopefully bring home more splits.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this sparks a good discussion!

 

I also want to add a few points personally. I don’t think the server is not very beginner friendly.

• It’s very hard to find people PQ/grind with
• Difficult for new player to join boss runs
• Usually require a bishop as a first class
• Possible the need to discard first chara due to hp washing
• Slowly requiring mules for boss runs now
• Lv75-lv85 and lv120-135 is difficult to level

Some points for the veteran player

• The lack of excitement in end game gameplay. It’s very repetitive in either bossing or farming
• The endgame bosses are not challenging
• The lack of reward from bossing (either high supply or low demand)

What I have in mind so far ^

 

I am not as experienced/veteran as many of you people here but I appreciate you put this time and made this thread Johnny. I was not here to witness all the changes, I was not here to witness how the game has changed, but, I have heard a lot about you, both as a GM and as a player and I feel like your feedback should not be taken slightly. I also feel that what differentiates your feedback from others I have read is that it does not address end-game players only. Thank you!

 

this this this this. wasnt long ago where I was a new player, and it was extremely hard to get over the fact that the entire game seems to be entirely leech based. It is insanely hard to find any PQs, anyone to level with that doesnt require leeching. I made a warrior, but instantly realised I would be screwed without making a Bishop so I can fund this spearman, since well, all of the things said above. It's really demotivating tbh. If you're unfamiliar with the server, its infinitely easier to quit than to keep going unless youre high off nostalgia, and even that runs dry after a while

 

Auf helmet is definitely too good to be in the server. I know it may takes almost unlimited funds to scroll it perfectly, but some (very few) people can afford it. saw a 86 all stats auf helmet few days ago. wtf?

 

To add to the list of issues there are trillions of mesos worth of RWT happening and Tim is more aware of this than anyone. And there’s nothing we can do about it because you could literally lodge a report saying someone’s trying to RWT a 95att DPS or 60att gear and it wouldn’t even be dealt with by Tim for 2-3 weeks, let alone the response will invariably be “there’s not enough evidence” because there are just so many of these items lying around everywhere.

It’s perplexing to know there are apparently more than 50 22att shoes in Royals because I don’t even think I’ve seen 5 in the market or on smegas in the 3 years I’ve been playing this game. Just how many 19/95 DPSes are there in this server when the only source for supply is meant to be Kerning gachapon and Horntail? What’s even more perplexing is that instead of re-evaluating priorities the response during my time here has been to continuously nerf legitimate players and legitimate methods to make mesos. Meso sink after meso sink are created which ultimately hurts new players the most - and when players are turned away we end up in this situation where there’s not enough people to PQ (or keep up mastery book demand) anymore.

The leeching meta is at least partially fuelled by all the RWT and hacker-related meso injection we have because no way will a brand new player randomly have the 5-6b needed to leech their first character all the way from level 30 to 135. It’s ridiculous.

 

This is merely an impression I've been having, but I feel like a lot of the "general feedback" thread conclusions end up as a mixture of "there's a lack of qualified staff" and "we need autoban".

All the meso sinks are made undone by hacker injected meso, the leech meta is in part funded by hacker and RWT injected meso, the bizarre state of the market is the result of hacker and RWT injected meso, Royals' reputation as having all these hacker and RWT related issues is deterring new players, a lack of new player influx inadvertently dulls down the endgame (no consumers to sell boss spoils to) + reduces the amount of potential participants for Party Quests and Bossing, lack of potential participants reinforces the muling meta, the muling meta deters even more new players to bother with the server at all if they feel overwhelmed by/can't be bothered to adhere to its meta ("yeah man to play all the end game content you basically need 3 different characters to start off") and the cycle continues.

The core of this cycle always comes back down to "we don't have autoban yet", and staff's repeated generalised attempts at minimising the damage dealt by the inability to have autoban functional is in turn also deterring more players who feel they're receiving the punishment for cheaters who barely break a sweat to get past said generalised measures. The only thing that could actually increase the ability of staff to minimise the damage is to have more capable people on it, whether that be people with technical prowess to speed up the progress on the autoban itself or just more raw man power, but all I see is that our mods inevitably give up on the server via burn-out and get replaced by interns who inevitably suffer the same burn-out once they're full GMs just in time to get replaced by the latest batch of interns, keeping the raw man people aspect of Staff effectively constant, while the more technical aspect simply receives no additional people, well, ever. (Has autoban still just been the work of just a single person all this time?)


The worst part about it is, going back to that impression I mentioned having: I feel like dozens of people have already said the exact same thing I just said many times over the past few years, but nothing ever significantly changed despite our awareness of it.

 

HP washing continues to contribute to new players quitting when they realize their first character is not very useful. The Magatia HP quest takes forever to get a reasonable amount of hp and so does legendary collector that the players who would do that are the ones who already decided to wash their next character anyways but just want to top up a little more xp. A ranged player should be able to reach 10k hp by 175 to do auf and toad without leveling with base int + int gear or taking weeks to do the repeating HP quest.

The boss timer lengths contribute to how easy it is to duo/trio/solo a lot of the content on the game. In the closest server on vote count, where players are on average much weaker due to the lack of a godly system and until recently a lack of any attack shoes at all, they have a 2 hour timer for HT compared to the 12 hour timer here. There's no reason auf haven should have a 4 hour timer, zakum no timer, etc. Scarlion and Targa were adjusted to be lower so players had to party up to do them instead of easily soloing, why not other bosses as well?

As much as players love making money doing nothing by voting, having tradable APR and gach tickets from voting contributes to the terrible economy of the server. I know of people who literally don't play the game outside of casually getting characters to 50 when they're bored to vote abuse and rwt on. If they get banned what do they care? They just get a new vpn + mac/hwid spoofers and go back to making money while ruining our economy.

 

Events?
Chinese new year event & valentine event got nerfed real good.

How many of us were looking forward to these events back then?
How excited are your player base knowing that CNY & Anniversary event is approaching?
Seems like staff forgotten what's the point of these events huh.
Go ask around, your veterans, your players hungry for progression & your new players. Are they actually excited as us back then? Will it ever be?
Probably Never.
Will there be more rewards? Sure more chairs.

-​

Game design?
In which way is the crash buff right now nostalgic? Who actually approved this???
Consistency is key?

Spoiler: Magic crash even after BB

Now let us ask ourselves a little, is adding Aran into royals really that bad? Why are we not even daring to venture into this class?
Oh, it's not nostalgic for some? Guess what. Auf helmet & paladin isn't too.
Too overpowered? It doesn't take rocket science to rebalance it.

-​

It could've been 87 if anything.

-​

Now, this is one good list of problems @Kenny listed.​

Is the 12 hour limit for Horntail actually needed?
Why are we still delaying Pink Bean?
CHT / CZak?

Once again auf, how easy is this boss right now?
Is it too late to readjust the nerfs to auf?
Auf was a lot more aggressive and deals 23.5k touch damage, you actually need a paladin + guardian with holy shield chain to KB it.
Barrage missing every hit and still able to KB it isn't a bug royals can't fix.
Sorry but this boss doesn't have the difficulty & beauty it deserves.

End game bossing is repetitive, but that is okay. But repetitive with horrible rewards?
Is there any incentive for lvl200 to actually do even a 5 man horntail? None.
APQ is more rewarding in the long run, how sad is that?

-​

Breathe life into PQs?
Is there anyone doing PQ now? isn't it still dead?
Trying to close the gap between veterans & casuals?

Can't PQs be an alternative to a fast way of gaining HP? New players would want to wash effectively, veterans with "throw-away" attackers can finally participate and work their character up. HP quests just sound ridiculous, and we can finally proceed towards a non vote-to-win system.

There needs to be a reward that's solid enough so our players will actually be intrigued to do it.
Not some crown of flowers..

If MapleRoyals actually becomes #2 due to poor decisions .. it will be so fucking sad.

 

Agreed completely with the issues that have been structured out. I think there are a few categories of changes I would engage the community and staff to think about, in addition to the great ideas shared above.

1. Increase new players & player retention.

These would include reducing the constraints of HP washing, increasing the benefit of party play, etc. Rather than nerfing existing methods, there are many ways we could encourage alternatives to the current meta. A few suggestions:

• Make HP quests easier and scale the rewards based on current HP (i.e., higher HP gain reward when you have lower HP), so that players can reasonably achieve minimum HP thresholds to boss without being forced to create a new character, all the while not eliminating the work that hard core veterans / players who choose to wash to 30K have put in.
• Make PQs a more rewarding way to level with better exp, and consider HP gain rewards as well (i.e., MC tokens may be able to be exchanged for HP?). This would provide a good alternative to the current meta of Orbis Exchange --> LEECH to 135+ --> wash out and boss, that most players adhere to.

2. Use events as an attractor to engage new & old players alike

Thinking about the events with the most community engagement, Christmas/LNY/Valentines come to mind.

These are three events which provide the opportunity to attain either a BIS item and/or increase the reward for gameplay and farming. Consequently, these events make newer players feel like they can bridge some of the gap on their characters to the end game, while providing value for veteran players to engage with. Create more engagement by increasing the value and excitement around events.

3. Economy & RWT

All of this fundamentally boils down to the lack of autoban. Surely with the spike of players and donations over the past year, there is some flexibilty for Matt to consider paying and hiring a developer to support Karven and expedite autoban, without it coming from his own pocket? Reducing or even eliminating the majority of hackers/botters will significantly reduce RWT as a consequence and help to normalize the economy. I don't have any stats here, but I would assume most, if not all RWT is happening between botter/hackers and players, rather than amongst active players themselves?

 

LOL 2-3 weeks. Why is 1 man taking care of ALL the admin work when there are so many Staffs who could help out.

edit: I know there were some issues in the past but let bygones be bygones and help Royals reach its climax again

 

Increase auf accuracy to maximum so that it doesn't miss on nls

 

I'll add a few points:

[-] Better grinding spots
- i.e. Better training spots for lv50+ and lv7x+
- Leprechaun reverted
- Ulu1 reverted
- Gallos exp returned (make it alternative training spot/leeching spot to ulu2)

[-] Rebalanced PQs and PQ rewards
- LPQ has PQ Warp npc in kerning city, right next to spiegleman
- OPQ has secret mission every PQ with slightly lower exp to account for this; better rewards for the pq
- CPQ2 viking exp increased from 1/4 of original exp to 1/2.
- Lmpq just doesn't harbor interest so either disable or rework this into a {high lv} 3rd job pq (i.e. lv100+ maybe)
- PPQ give a slight scaling exp; PPQ quests give good exp and worth doing; Make doing Angry pirate give bonus exp.
- R&J becomes lv90+; exp better, rewards reworked; pendant is reworked

[-] Mu Lung Dojo improved
- better point distribution at later stages: namely Leviathan, Papulatus, and Panda; your daily points tracked; more hp on Black Belt
- Dojo boards put back into Victoria Island
- Can use mount in Dojo

[-] GPQ being improved to be worth doing

=====

[-] Classes getting rebalanced not just in 4th job but pre-4th too

[-] Total Crash skill removed and bosses that had weapon cancel get reworked for harder difficulty
- or revert Crash skill to previous alteration and make it have a minute cooldown so only one cr mule/paladin needed.

[-] Add Orbis Magic Stone to Orbis entrance walkway; Make Orbis rock scroll quests give more scroll or have OPQ give you a perma/timed Orbis Rock talisman that freely allows you to switch between the magic stone spots

[-] Better alternative HP gains
- HP gain on Elixir of Life quest increased (would mean also going back and increasing the HP gain for the people who completed numerous times too)
- HP "mastery books"
- Boss challenge quest

[-] NLC Potions reduced in price

[-] Boss timers for Horntail / Auf reduced

 

i have to strongly disagree with the narrative that new players can't or had hard time to "progress" in royals
(royals base exp/drop/meso rates is allready way higher then actual pre-BB server )

despite that last 11months + - ~ thanks to duku and few other broken mule methods,events... new players made so much wealth (quick 1-200 leech-powerlving etc etc )
new players got to endgame fast,aged the game content (R>NL pm mules for penta,quad/trio/duos, leech,wash...) , with that meta they made it boring and broken themself
those who didn't want to take part of that broken eco system went to servers that offers team raids and true MMORPG gamestyle

about infamous nerfs i don't want them aswell (noone wants them) but most of them are poor band-aid "change" that got implemented to save the market from further and faster crashing
(just imagine prices on some of the items today if players that were doing summon farm on 15-20 clients got the PC part on time to do 30-40clients)

about EVENTs most of the events are fine just need a litle bit more fine-tuneing to be balanced and fun for all class equally as much as possible
GM events in my opinion used to be fun and great to do untill bad things started to going on
like poorly organised schedule, hard to see notice ingame,dc/crash,RR event favoritism, wall rules and instruction copy-pasted notice that noone has time or chance to read it so hold esc to avoid dc/crash from the notice UI spam...

about autoban(hackers,rwt,vote abusers) , i know is impossible to make tool that will just ban on is own and case close (i know from GMS that they failed so many times with autoban and often results is falsbans... even KMS fails but their advantage is they have now fully closed system where players are asked for KSN,phone... and major ToS break can result jail time )

we need to ge together i just have hope in the community to help with reports and GMs powers
we can't throw the blame to eachother all the time without helping and geting together


tdlr:
royals as nostalgic server like most of us expect and for longevity the prime focus should be on clean players engaging content for all not just on meta min-max playerbase that most don't care (especially new players )
if someone wants that in GMS solo takes like 24-48h play time to reach 1-200lvl,decent gear to "1shot" zakum,HT,CHT,PB... and get spamed with crazy numbers all over the screen
why make royals that aswell ? but i don't mind if most of the players or staff think that thats the way sure let it be

 

@MaiAh You cannot call mules broken when you use the same method to farm HS with several mules.

 

see if i use mules => aHh yOu uSe aSwElL YoU CaN'T SaY Is bRoKeN
if i don't => aHh yOu dOn't kNoW,yOu aRe nOt cOmPeTeNt eNoUgH To tAlK AbOuT It wHeN YoU NeVeR UsEd...yAd dA YaD Da

you got me good on that one

 

I’m sorry what? I can’t read middle school.

>gets called out for hypocrisy
>responds lIkE tHiS cause can’t refute (see “TLforMaiAh”, “SEforMaiAh”)
>???
>profit

 

Wat @Johnny saying is very True

Royals which part can attract new players now? autoban? pb? friendly server? pqs?
Those Drama threads related to staffs when new players come and see, how they think?

Game is NOT balance
How come buff auf 5% scroll >>>10% , and then nothing nerf on Auf helmet states or slots?
Staffs might think no one will make? Come on , compare to Att gears 1 att 30~40b in the end , auf helmet only 150~160b in average (20att range for NL with op avoid , this is why server only have +20auf on NLs right now)

Hero/MM are crying now, especially hero was top 3 attack job last time , others jobs getting buff , hero are weaker.

About Multiclients
This is how legit players to beat hackers.
I dk why @MaiAh keep want nerf mules? How u afford those ws/cs when u can't multiclients like 6mage pepe , 4mage ulu1 , 3mage ulu1 +1mage ulu2 , 10 chara farm stoppers.
Even sell leech , only bs can single client, mages need 2 at least.
How come u call this is broke? Can u teach me how u earn mesos? how many hours it take for u to buy a ws/cs 510~530m right now.
It is obviously full of rwt/hacks now + fewer new players , mid game items keep drop also

Why not we add more Roles to staffs?
No one is perfect to do all things , and no one have interest to do all things
It means to arrange appropriate work for people according to their individual abilities and characteristics better
1. balance team
2. Bug/update test team
3. Cash shop items team
4. hacker ban team
5. Rwt ban team
6. .........
definitely more roles can help staffs team


Autoban progess?
I don't have hope for this anyway
always soontm or in progress , say is one thing , do is another.

Most of mine friends quitted or quitting , those game changes (nerfs keep killing and punishing legit players .
WS/CS still same price , Why we keep invest time here? when we need spend a lot more time than used to be to reach our goals.

 

What if there was an event a couple times a year for new players where theyre able to claim a "new player starter pack" which might include things like 100mill mesos, 100 free untradeable apr, maybe some kind of medal with hp on it?
I think this could incentivise new players to continue playing royals if they receive help/perks while at the same time not destroying veterans hard work hp washing/ the apr selling market. This is just a basic idea, im sure it can be more fleshed out or improved upon.

 

is not hypocrisy
thats was the talks back then to all who were against mule farming you don't have mules you can't speak how hard is or anything about it and that to me is fair enough
we could not get fair value for our items when we did farm on single clients
what happend ? meta changed all of us joined the mule farming, players started make unions to keep price up but it didn't work
then drop rate got nerfed to stop that rapid price crash
but it didn't help much people just made more mules to combat that nerf
then stronger nerf happend with pet loot that can't loot from summons and other skill nerfs

legit players beat hackers with multiclients ? what ? the only way legit players can beat hackers is by reports
all other methods makes things worse
also i never said i got all perfect gear or even close to it so there is no need for such assumptions-"insults" that am RWTr or something
i do it slowly and with the chars i got each day, i don't chase that exrteme broken meta, why would i do such extreme multimage farming i rather quit if that becomes mandatory for all of the royals content

ws/cs is due to vote abusers and rwt but also because of auf helm and huge need to make shoes/capes/gloves because there is alot of meso in the market
now all of a suden after evryone knew from day 1 that auf helm stats was overpowered ?
why we let auf to be done like that and with mules eazy?
how are you going to balance that now?
good luck nerfing that now and make more drama with players that invested alot to make it perfect

the point of nostalgic maple is to never or almost super slowly reach that all perfect items while enjoy in huge party boss raids

anyway...
we just hurt ourself with nerfs just to keep that market stable?
why instead of mule farming abuse at lower lvl we don't go team farming or ask better drop rates and maps as char progress in lvl and funds on single client and use mules just to transfer items and things like that... ?