In Discussion Content Rose Garden Nerf/Adjustments

Content won't die if there's enough incentives, a best in slot ring is already a good enough reason for the content to be enticing to do. The extra nx, exp, totem, burning energy added on top of that, even without all the mesos is a big bonus to a single player content as is. It comes down to the fine tuning and the exact numbers where bee values land on, where it's an option to do, but not something players feel like they must do. The game design is at fault when the content feels like it's obligatory to the majority of the player base, tilting the balance of the rest of the content the game has to offer.

 

Oh please, don't make me laugh. That ring is a joke and not enticing in the slightest. Why would I waste my time when I already have decent RoAs? For a few extra stats that will likely get wiped when I cs it anyway? No thanks. Perhaps if they fixed the drop rate and that hilariously ridiculous cost of the ring box I'd consider it. But as it currently stands... Nope. No way.

 

That's only subjective, it does not necessarily apply to everyone else's experience. The choice is given to all to decide whether or not to aim for the ring, but it also doesn't change the fact that the ring is still one of the best ring potentially. The whole point of the thread is for feedback anyways, at least this conversation had good back and forth points that hopefully the devs will take into consideration when it comes to future balance that're in the works.

Personally, 2 bon per box seems fair, but for some, maybe 1 bon per box is also up for debate. As for bees, a 2m value seems like a more acceptable amount, but it can still be fine tuned, be it the cap, the value, or both.

 

2m value would outright kill rg imo. if bee value is anywhere below 3.5m you will be better off doing literally anything else.

edit: quoted wrong post initially, sorry about that!

 

the current value is fine it just needs to not be meso, if anything we need more content like this that has at least 25-50% the efficiency of farming

 

id like to see how much ws/cs prices crash during anniversary before i agree or disgree with this.

 

I don't have much of anything to add to the overall discussion going on right now but reading this comment really hit home in my recent experience playing the game.

I hadn't really played MapleRoyals in 3-ish years but played sparingly for a couple of months near the end of 2023. I excitedly made my way through the LHC area, as it was something completely new to me at the time. It's something that I never experienced in the vanilla game since it came out after I'd stopped playing.

I eventually made it to the Rose Garden. I had no idea what this was. It's something that was recommended to me as a decent money maker so I gave it a shot. Fast forward 30 minutes and I was up 100m plus some additional goodies from the boss. My immediate thought was "Wow, this is amazing! Guaranteed 100m+ for minimal effort while not needing to concern myself with organizing/joining a boss run in hopes that something good drops? What's the catch?"

That's the thing; There was no catch. I was hyped to have something I could just log in and slowly chip away at in order to further my long-term goals. Why stop at one character? I went ahead and did the quests on about 10 characters. This was when the reality and gravity of the situation set in for me. I realistically have zero reason to ever leave the El Nath area.

You can say that it's on me for funneling myself into that mindset and you'd be absolutely correct. I can make my own fun elsewhere. The problem is time. Everything in this game is so extremely time consuming. As we get older, we tend to have less free time to indulge in recreational activities such as this game. I was 19 when I made my account and signed up for MapleRoyals. I'm turning 31 this year. The seemingly nigh endless concept of youth is quickly fleeting.

A few of my thoughts compiled from Discord:

Spoiler

Who was this content originally designed for? Identify what adding this into the game was meant to accomplish and balance it around that concept. Maybe this has already been answered but I can't really be bothered finding it since I don't keep up with updates and such anymore. Apologies if this has been answered already.

Was it designed
- To alleviate some some of the stress on newer players wanting to catch up?
- To introduce some sweet filler content between raids so that more players have a reason to remain online?
- As a byproduct of adding LHC as a whole while trying to keep it from becoming dead content?

What are we specifically trying to to work toward and accomplish within this feedback thread?


TL; DR - Rose Garden is fucking OP, pls nerf

 

@Eli, your post perplexes me, I don't know how to tackle it
You claim that you have no time to invest ingame but also claim that you're willing to spend time to abuse the system by doing 10x RG in a day

Maybe the problem lies here? Or not? Multi char RG is op yes, but, as someone with a single char, RGing daliy doesn't really bring me anywhere at end-game, where the jumps between each CGS upgrade gets insane that you couldn't even upgrade by 1WA in a month of running daily single char RG.. and my CGS are very basic. not to mention players trying to perfect an Auf helm. I am fine the the recent changes simply because I don't run multi-char, it is n0w more time/effort consuming and yet people still choose to do it

Before the recent APQ nerf you could also net ~100m from a single APQ, and some players chose to run up to 10 APQs in a day, how's that any different? They choose to wear themselves out for mesos, it's all about the time you can and are willing to invest for progress... Same as in real life, study harder and get your degree faster, work harder and get a bigger paycheck. I'm currently not for or against nerfing RG but just speaking my mind out. It is really the Game balancer's job to decide on this topic.

 

I don't play the game and stopped logging in not long after doing the quests on a bunch of characters, never having gone through all of my characters in a single sitting. Sorry for the confusion, though I did mention that I played sparingly near the end of last year.

I was trying to illustrate that having that many characters made me feel as though there was never a point in leaving the area because realistically, any time that I had to play would be best spent frolicking in the Rose Garden, as I'd never run out of entries.

I would have loved something like Rose Garden when I was working on my first character. That's why I asked who this content is supposed to be designed for because I have to imagine that it was designed with that in mind. I'd never call it abusing the system to switch characters to repeat the same content. It's just how the server works.

APQ requires a lot more planning and coordination than simply logging in, speaking to nobody, profiting 100m+ and potentially just dipping 30 minutes later. The profit from APQ also isn't just injecting pure mesos into the game, a serious problem that I both didn't address in my post and don't really plan to talk about.

 

The main issue of APQ vs RG is how the money is given out.

Pure meso is toxic in nature, meso was rapidly starting to be devalued (ex: kanzir clean going to 20b, 19/91 RC/119KC hitting 29-30b, CS/WS slowly rising back to 560-580).

If theres too many people APQing and not enough people bossing and using the apples, apples will naturally drop. Pure meso isn’t like that, there isn’t a market for it to work around.

If RG for example gave you no mesos/bees, let’s say it gives you only purification totems, it would be less damaging since totems/bwg/ws/cs are items that’ll be regulated by our economy. Most likely totem/bwg would drastically drop if instead of 20bees, you got let’s say 200 totems, and cs/ws would probably still be around 500-520. Not only because of increase of supply, but the amount of players printing 300-500m a day in pure untaxed mesos would be drastically decreased.

 

Meso does work the same way, it is not currency backed by anything in this game so it's just like any other item. Add a lot of it, and its value goes down. Add less of it, its value goes up.

 

Golden bee generation rate has decreased along with the server-wide drop rate adjustment.

While I have no particular opinion about nerfing/buffing RG, I must say that RG now is more RNG dependent, especially for lower-geared players.
I have a 50wa cgs set with somewhat decent weapons on my Shad and DK. Sometimes I make it up to 20 bees easily with 5-10 minutes left, but sometimes I don't even get 20 bees with the same character, which I think is very unreasonable and even unpleasant at times, especially when the seeds and keys do not drop after 10-15 minutes farming in the map. I believe the situation would be worse for newer players who are still working on their progress up to higher gears.

I don't know if this change was an intended nerf on RG or not, but if this change was an intended nerf on the content, I wish it was nerfed in some other ways (decreasing the bee cap, decreasing the meso, or w/e) instead of resorting to RNG on drop items.

 

• remove the one player per ch limit, totally pointless
• take the timer down to 20 minutes
• bees can spawn on all maps from the start including boss map
• remove the explore the garden options and map and npc, just keep the three room progression.
• you lose all the bees if golem isn't killed before the timer is up
• bees have increased spawn if the boss is alive
• you are teleported out when times up, and can get your quest rewards from the npcs outside w/o any npc chatting or talking inside after the boss kill.

Makes it more of a Shao like challenge of killing the boss while collecting bees at increased rate, and trying to balance that. Takes less time, same results, less finicky of a user experience. No one really cares about the npcs or lore of the castle, it's extremely bland and hamfisted content and rose garden is kinda awkward and frustrating. I skip it all the time because it takes so long and is a frustrating time/reward experience

 

What if the option to sell bee powder to NPCs was removed, and instead you could exchange 100 powders for a ws/cs or taru totem. This would get rid of the raw meso injection and put more ws/cs/taru into the game. Players will still get basically the same value from RG but it won't hurt the economy.

 

Drop rate revert has hit RG but it's still crowded. People just hold channels hostage for longer since they need more time to clear. E.g. my bishop went from 27-30 min clears on gizer to 30-33 min; I had 38 min with bad RNG once. The crowding will continue to worsen as players get more active gardening characters. Sure RG fatigue exists, but never underestimate the most dedicated players.

I do think the mesos need to go but whatever replaces it must be relevant, e.g. cs/ws/attack pots/clean endgame items be it via lottery or an exchange system. Untradable scrolls is one possibility. 15% scrolls like the one that drops from Windraiders?

I also like the group PQ option, especially since it could run in a separate map from solo RG (slightly helping the congestion) and help newer players who might not have strong characters. And arch mages may finally get group content for once. We just have to ensure it isn't viable to solo it for a really strong player.

 

Anything that is heavily RNG dependent, it works in theory, even numerically it looks like it does for a while.

However, the health and mental state of always being at the edge of a knife of letting the dice decide tends to make many people neurotic.
And it's not just online games, it happens with gambling in casinos.

As times goes on, you see it bleed into the community, bitter in rng systems. Remember the community in Maplestory 2 in crafting +15 items in the long run?

 

This is the best part, RG was too easy prior to that leading people to run up to 10 chars... this solves it. No more easy money.

 

To follow up on this a week later:

I've seen more smegas for RG channels than normal.

Technically the bug fix drop was not meant to balance RG, but to just fix the bug rate drop. But it feels like people are doing it just as much and just taking longer

 

Well before. Higher drop % faster 20 bonus , faster leave.
Now people struggle to get bees and even at 40min timer you haven't reached 20 bees.

Before change I could be done with 30-35min.
Now at 40min I haven't passed 18 bees yet.

 

3/4 of the characters I run on are level 200 already. If I was below level 200 on them, it wouldn't be such a bust going all 40 minutes. RG just makes me tired of doing it now, but I still do it because the guaranteed mesos. I would assume that is why so many people still run it too. Just that people take all 40 minutes now is rough. RG is still easy. Its just now more time consuming making it tedious but still good mesos.