Suggestion: Add a 'Party Grinding' Map to Neo Tokyo

I'm also down for testing, even today if anybody is available

 

It's just one of those things I figured we'd never add anyway, especially because it's always requested. It would be kinda awkward to add anywhere once you can do boss dailies because that alone is such good exp to 200, especially if you can shao, and now we have all of NT and boosted grinding bonuses, it's a lot of content to get you to 200 quickly. I was just thinking about it out loud. I don't think level cap would be raised, just a passing comment

 

Its been a few months, so this is before any party exp buffs, but I used to grind a fair bit on melee chars (bucc and drk) at the nibergen map. At level 195-200 it was about 10mins for 1% in a solo party iirc. This was without hs

 

Another example is Shaolin temple floors can easily be insane EXP per minute if utilizing a fire/poison mage's poison mist and a attacker, then running through the floors one by one then changing though multiple channels together.

With the EXP party buff, there's SO MANY options to get so much exp from world mobs. Probably more than bossing. Its just not the meta for Royals. People sell leech, hp wash, boss, then sell their gear when they get bored. Leveling is too easy as it is, so more creative ways to gain hp isn't even given much thought.

The party grind aspect of the game is disconnected from the culture of Royals. Not the mechanics. Throughout leveling to 135, you barely ever PQ or grind with others, and there's little to no incentive to do so. So it doesn't even come into mind after you reach bossing level

I dont think any changes need to be done to current game mechanics in terms of high level mobs. Its just the culture or meta of the game needs to be updated or adjusted to how it was way back in the day to teach players the old ways. A LOT of royals players barely played prebb maple and did not reach high levels, so they dont know much about the quirky ways people grinded exp/mesos back then. The mechanics are there, its just unknown.

I would suggest more low level incentives towards these mechanics of the game. Making all PQs relevant. Quests that require parties or multiple classes to complete. HP/MP gain through game progression. Among some other stuff, to make people realize that there's more to royals than just HT and leeching.

 

Your logic is kinda flawed and I'll explain why with a simple example:
Let's say that there's an island (Mapleroyals) where people eat unseasoned food because there are no spices in that island (this is the "meta"). A sailor (me) sailed to the island and introduces spices to the locals, saying that they can use it to make their food tastier but it's optional and they can choose if they want to season their food or not (this is the suggested change that could benefit the game). The island's chief (you) told the sailor that their spices are not welcomed because in his island people eat unseasoned food and that's their culture and this is what they're used to.
The sailor left the island with his spices and the locals never had the chance to try seasoned food. The end.

 

My previous words confused you. Lets dumb it down to your weird spice sailor island of indigenous people analogy where you make yourself seem like the smart guy even though you did not understand what i said at all.

We have spices. (Party grinding maps). The spices are here already. You dont know about them, and people dont use them because they're set in a way (meta). So you have some more spices, and you want to sell more. (Your idea). But wait, we already have spices. So what the fuck is the point of bringing in more spices if nobody will use it in the first place because they are set in their ways. Maybe we should educate and change culture to understand what the spices are, like we used to use them in the past. (My point)

So get your weird salt out of my island. Haven't you heard? I'm dictator of maple island. Viva la revolución!

And once Pink bean comes out. If it even does. No one is gonna give a rats ass about training in neotokyo anyways...

 

I did already months ago. They're great exp. I used to hang out in ToT/Shaolintemple/mavericks just casually grinding very often. I got to 1-175 on my shad in 2 weeks doing mobs/bosses while using my mages and attacking on shad. But I still dont think people are going to care even if everyone found out its great exp. Grinding isn't something a lot of players like spending their time on royals, its all about minmaxing, nightlords big numbers go Brrrrrrrrrr, and how many mules you got. If people cared about 135+ grinding, they would go do it and already know how to do it. Shaolin temple is possibly better than the neotokyo and ToT maps, but its empty.

 

I'd like to emphasise that my suggestion is not about solo grinding but party grinding. As someone who regularily solo grind at mavericks I can also attest that the EXP per hour there is great (10% per hour with HS with my level 186 Hero). However my suggestion was more party-oriented rather than introducing another solo grinding option. As I previously said, I think there is currently zero incentive in the game to grind in big parties (3+ active attackers) at higher levels since there are no maps/mobs in the game that encourages that. Sure ToT and mavericks are great for solo grinding but this is not the issue I was refering to in the first place.

 

Sure thing! ^^

 

Thanks for the emphasis. I was in a party. Either with myself on alts or with other players. I never said I was solo grinding.

There is incentive to party grind. It's bonus exp just got buffed, and it was arguably strong before the buff. And it is net meso positive, meaning that you do make mesos very quickly from drops without any investment other than some pots.

I would like to emphasize that you really gotta read what im saying. The incentive is already there, its really good. You just gotta learn the strategy. Its a little more complicated than just mindless killing in one map. You can use poison mist in many maps and channels. You can use meso up. You can use B-step to stun then Heavens Hammer to drain, then mages to wipe map. Changing channels, using multiple maps in sequence, diversify the party classes. To completely ignore spawn rates, you can really utilize changing channels and different skills. In the "other server" people do this at endgame levels, and its VERY efficient, but they came up with these strategies since its a lower EXP/drop rate and mobs drop Gachapon tickets. The mechanics are there in Royals. Just the people don't do it, and maybe the added incentive should be high level mobs drop gachapon tickets. But I suggested that already in another thread.

 

I'm not quite following what you're trying to say. Let's say I'm a casual player with a level 18x-19x main Hero with a weak HS mule, and I'm not into minmax strategies with alts and I just want to mindlessely kill mobs in a party with other attackers just like in the old days.
How do I do that in a way that is actually better than solo/duo with a HS mule?

 

Look, you can play the way you want. If you want to do play the game the easiest way, do it. But if you get creative, form a diverse party of different attackers, and understand the strategy of using multiple maps/channels, these maps are already VERY strong. Back in old maple, I didn't mindlessly kill mobs in one map in a party at endgame, some people did, but it was nowhere near as fast as using poison mist/HH/CC'ing/multi-map strategies. I only used my alts here in Royals because finding others to do this is near impossible. YOU should adapt to the mechanics that are already in place. I can't link you guides on how to do this kind of mobbing/grinding since they're for another server, but if you go look up how, or use some creativity, you'll find that this party EXP buff is OP as hell. Most people are just lazy and wanna hold down one or two buttons at a boss run for no MW to drop. Throughout the history of royals, metas have evolved and been discovered. If people just did the actual content, I'm sure they'll discover something awesome instead of asking for more. Then once it is discovered and becomes the meta, it will get nerfed lol

 

I don't think that a specific top-player strategy should be our point of reference but rather how the ordinary player plays this game. Sure, that strategy might be too op but with that logic in mind we shouldn't add anything new to the game becauase the top 1% are 'exploiting the current content'.
This way of thinking is exactly what led to the poor notion of reducing theif's avoidability, because the point of reference of the one who came up with this idea was the top 1% who were too op, rather than thinking how this nerf would affect the overall players, which most of them are casuals.
The ordinary casual player just wanna play in a semi-optimal way and not be dictated by specific strategies that some players can pull easily.

 

What the hell are you on about? It's party grinding. Find an F/P, find a BS, Find an Attacker, go to Shaolin temple. Make the Mage fart all up and down the temple, then when he's flatulated in many rooms/channels, coordinate with party members to clear the mobs while in the map together. Clear multiple channels of Temple in minutes, get a dumb amount of EXP/Mesos. Can do similar or completely different techniques at maps like Crimson Guards, NeoTokyo, ToT, Petris/Dukus, Skeles/Newties, Gobies, Himes, Giant Vikings, the list goes on. Same mechanics and efficiency of exp/meso gain that has been in the game for decades. How is that not casual gameplay, it's a 15-year-old 2D mushroom game with arguably the simplest mechanics of any MMO. Do you really want admins to just spoon-feed people smooth brain content so you don't have to think hard about using multiple maps and strategies? But it's creative people's fault for figuring new things out or literally doing the same things when we were 12 in Maplestory.

I'm probably gonna get censored but dude, you're proving my point further. It's not exploiting anything, it's easy as hell to efficiently party grind in MANY maps already. People just don't figure it out or care at all because this server is set in a tradition of bossing is the only endgame content or want the admins to solve every problem for them.

Here's another example. Eruwater. Paladins/Shads absolutely MURDER them, and if paired with a mage it is VERY high exp/mesos. One evening, My dumbass forgot to accept the quest to initiate the rare drop for NT questline, so 2/3 of us killed eruwaters for like 4 hours, cycling through 2 channels since their spawn animation is so long. Gaining a surprisingly large amount of EXP and then I sold around 7,000ish ETC lasers for 100-200k each = 1-1.4B for bossers to speed through collecting 300 of them to just grind Aufhaven every day for ~150m per 1hour run and barely any EXP.

Party. Check
Grinding. Check.
EXP. Check.
Mesos. Check.

Do I make some guide about how OP or fun that was? HELL NO. MY MESOS. I don't want the competition and now that I said it, there goes that gold mine. But that was also the height of COVID, so good luck getting people to buy them now or grind there since the player count is in a downslope. @Zancks and others that want to see calculations or whatever, just go do it. It's fun IMO, & it's profitable. I wish I didn't self-ban to see how even better it is now since the party buff. Ya'll have fun without me.

But is it easy for casuals to figure it out? YUP. I'm a military idiot with the IQ of a frog, yet here I am mindlessly killing eruwaters for 1b per 4 hours and getting 150% EXP at lvl 180, exactly like you want, with content already in the game. Not sure what the hell the thief nerf has to do with this but hey, whatever argument you can scrounge up I guess. Sorry if my tone is yet again condescending in another thread. I try to keep it civil since I can be a dick, but since you went the all "I'm a smart sailor spice man, why don't you like my spices, you island boy" I'm gonna have a bit of a "tone" moving forward.

 

@Zancks and I tested the Dunas V2 map and compared it with duo grinding at Mavericks. The results are as follows:
At Imperial Guards we got around 13m EXP after 15min of grinding while at Mavericks we got around 13m EXP after only 10min, which means that duo Mavericks is 1.5x better than duo grinding at Imperial Guards at the current Dunas V2 map layout.

During the testing we came to the following conclusions:
1. The EXP party system doesn't work well when grinding Imperial Guards since the active status only last for 30 seconds and it takes more than 30 seconds to kill a single imperial guard, thus the bonus EXP is gained only for some kills.
2. Killing the same monster with a party member doesn't activate the EXP system as well.
3. The spawn rate is abysmal and there are only 6 Imperial Guards in total on the entire map a duo grinding party is not optimal whatsoever.

Even though so far this doesn't look promising we do think there is still potential and I'll explain why using the map's layout:


The numbers on the map show the location of the Imperial Guards and as it shows there are only 6 in total.
Because of that, and the map layout, a party of 6 can be formed consisting of 4 single-target attackers for the 4 Imperial Guards on the top platforms, 1 multi-target attacker for the 2 Imperial Guards at the bottom and 1 HS mule that can stay at the safe spot.
A grinding party of this kind might be a better alternative to duo Mavericks grinding but this needs to be tested.

@Zancks and I are looking for additional attackers to test this option, so if you're interested you can write your name here or contact us in-game

 

Good luck finding a f/p and a bishop to grind lol. This server hates high level mages so most just stay at 130-155 and I bet it is way faster to get there selling leech and making money on the process.

 

I'm one of those who prefer grinding over bossing. And I main a 17x NL (ik some of you might think I didn't choose the right job but I like nls moves, especially on grinding maps.)
Finding a grinding party is so hard I don't bother trying anymore
A new way to level up at a high level would be awesome. Definitely!

 

I prefer it when games cause a slow big slope when it comes to grinding.

If you implement a grind map that makes you level 200, you'll have the harsh stop of recent MMORPGs where you hit a wall at Mach 5.

You grind, hit level 200, then full stop crash like a test dummy.

You no longer grind, and find this big empty void that was meant to be filled with friends you were supposed to meet during the journey.
It's equivalent to running a mile and then sitting down... you feel horrible. You need to walk a little and use up that energy.

This is why people jump to other games when they hit max level, because otherwise it's just jarring. They're not taught to just stop a second and chill.