Background: I have never washed a character. My first character was an archer that I started back in 2018 and eventually reached 170, and currently I play a Night Lord nearing 180: arguably two of the most HP-gated jobs in the game. In 2018, being unwashed archer was very discouraging. The furthest you could realistically get was Zakum and Krex, while relying on HB to do anything else; obviously not ideal due to dispel and other mechanics. I ended up stopping play all-together, since it seemed like my other options were to play jobs I wasn't interested in, or start the long grind again while washing. It has improved since then, but I think it could be improved even more. I think the majority of players agree HP washing isn't a good system. The first step to making a rogue or archer shouldn't be "make a mage" or "sit on your account for a couple of months to vote for NX, so you can afford leech because your character with 150 base INT can't participate meaningfully in anything." This isn't compelling gameplay. I'd go even further to say that HP in general is very uninteresting mechanic. Just another number to be above before you can participate in something. And while currently it's finally realistic for jobs like rogue and archer to participate in more than Zakum and Krex, it's still too slow. For example, my NL is sitting at level 178 currently, and I have 11,500 HP. I can HT comfortably, and with some HP gear I can even do Shao. But I don't have anymore repeatable HP quests to do, so I'm gaining about 30 HP on average a day. This is still very discouraging. I'd like to do other content, like Neo Tokyo, Toad, or even Von Leon. But at this rate, that would require potentially 3 months or more of questing, and that's based on every day play. To further the problem, most BiS gear in the game doesn't have HP. I've actually reduced my HP by over 500 points because I upgraded my gloves from OPQ gloves, my eye accessory from ludi glasses, and my pendant from MoN to HTP. And I could reduce it further when I eventually swap out earrings or rings, adding more weeks of potential HP quests. And that doesn't feel good. I was actually enjoying the leveling experience on my NL up to a point. I was grinding, able to do PQs, I started doing area bosses like HH around 90; actually playing the game. However now, even though there's still content to do like HT, it does feel bad knowing I have so much time ahead of me before I can experience more of what Royals has to offer. Now my thought is more, "I guess I should have just washed after all." But that isn't the kind of game I want, where you hang on a rope from 1-135, or just give up on doing certain things with some jobs for months while your HP increases by 30 a day. Leeching should be more for people with extra money, not mandatory in most cases. I think the repeatable HP quests you can do is a good solution. It feels more "Maplestory." Traveling around the Maple world and questing, grinding monsters. so TLDR: I'm offering this feedback: uncap it even further. Maybe instead of it being completely repeatable, it can be done 3 times a day; near 90 hp a day on average, for a time. Maybe even add some HP increasing potions to rewards for Tokens of Teamwork; PQs could use some more love.
Staff's previous response to this is that they're gonna keep the quest as is, and add more ways to get HP instead, with the most recent ones being rose garden hp potion,
I never washed any of my chars (except shad), I got a NL, BM and some easier chars hp wise (bucc, drk, pali), I can say that the current situation is 100% good enough. More diversity would be more fun, and I do think it is something that should happen, but the current situation is quite good. The cap gets you to around 13-14k hp on a NL if we include olaf, elinia and some gear (the one you already have, not things you work specifically). This is enough for most content in the game, Then if you grind daily, you get around 1k a month on average, so in 3-4 month you can do everything on the game. I don't think there is a problem with that, this is balanced, hp is part of the royals balanced, some.class have it easier, some classes don't.
You can scroll your pets to get hp; master colector isnt so hard to get and gives 500 hp or go to the next one which gives 1k ; you can do some washing just with extra int from zhelm belt and pendant; can get some extra hp on rose garden. While still no ideal its not as hard as before to get hp with some work ,dont really need to leach all the way.
I only washed my BM up to 21k but with this quest of Olaf + Ellin + Magatia + Rose Garden +Equips, it has been rewarding, you can even go further, if you don't lose faith, you get an auf +800 hp/mp that they give you, so cheer up, patience is a virtue. today got 30k hp
I'm unwashed so I dumped 50 AP into HP just to join HT, but there are so many HP gears available these days I'm +3123 with regular equips I do think ~4 months investment is good for content/longevity--the best groups aren't range-checking you
I'm walled on hp atm as well. Done everything available, all the quests, equips, pets, grinding collector. Still not enough to VL at 200. If PB is higher than 17.5, then there simply needs to be more hp content. Washing is frankly a negative on the game and community overall, staff need to stop trying to bridge both methods, it's an ancient exploit that should have never been carried over. Ruel needs to softcap higher, and be 2x a day after softcap. RG potions are insulting, they should be 5HP and 5MP combined for the same price, or 2 bees, or, a random anount of HP like in ruel. Grinding an additional 40 minutes a day, and sacrificing your totems, on a char that needs HP, meaning it collects about half as much bees as other classes, is horrible ROI. If I'm 170+ and need hp, it's honestly insulting and off the table. I've stopped RG entirely at 200 bc I don't golem anymore, and the 1 hp per bee when the most bees I've gotten in 30 levels in rg was record 14, but it's usually 7-9. The bee mechanic is the real issue. If my char, who's plenty strong, struggles to get 10 bees, it's the mechanics of RG, not my 200 MM. If I could get 20 or more bees in 40 minutes, I'd consider it, but 40 minutes is twice as long as an average ruel quest, and averages less than half as much hp potential, and that's if I magically max bees. So no, rework RG, as everyone has the same critiques about it. It's uneven for classes and not worth it at all for HP, just because it's there doesn't mean I'm going to delude myself and think it's remotely worth my time, much less fun. It's a mess and I don't get it. Higher lvl chars need more HP options, 170/180/190, I even endorse 200+ hp quests (olaf 10 should reward HP too). 200+ exclusive hp quests is something to look forward to. I knew all the way to 200 I don't and won't have enough hp to participate in VL and certainly not PB. But knowing there are ways for characters who hit 200 long ago, or even years from now, is something all players can make a goal of, without abandoning their char or the server entirely, if there is end game mechanics to help unwashed players as well. And to be fair I zoomed to 200 because of the 2x pq event in December, and bc MM are freaks in golems and I've had lots of free time. I don't necessarily think I personally should have 17.5 at 200 perfectly after softcapping ruel and all the other methods. Players can get pretty close to VL goals, but even if I had legendary collector, which should never be a factor in end game hp goals bc it is extremely time consuming and imo only worth it for shads bc MG is op, I'm still far away from 17.5, and whatever pb will be. Daily only ruel is a huge burnout and I rarely do it bc it's going to take so long, and there's a huge content unlock that's not accessible for that entire grind, which is demoralizing. And I would still need to mp wash to finish the job, which means it's not wash optional. 200+ is a good goal to keep ppl doing daily runs with something to look forward to and feel like they aren't spinning their wheels when they log on. I've made lots of chars but I really only focus on one because they all require the same amount of effort in the end, so I play the ones I like, I'm not going to do it all again to be hp locked the same way because I'm against washing as a method to unlock content
I am all in for more hp quests and such but we need to remember HB still exist and it is the whole point of the skill , peaple just need to bring a drk for the party.. unless you cant do solo content with your current hp than its really a problem.
The main reason you'd need to wash to high HP values is for Auf and VL, where HB isn't really feasible due to dispels (and in VL's case, jailing too), so just bringing a drk doesn't really solve the issue of HP requirements there.
Making HB undispelable and maybe inceasing its time could solve this i guess. #Make diversity partys great again.
the time doesn't change anything, and it shouldn't be non-dispelable. dispel is an annoying mechanic (but needed to make the game more interesting). technically with the recent change to dispel animation being delayed its probably more realistic to rely on HB but people don't like it because its annoying.
I agree with this. The alternative methods for gaining hp have been improved over the years but I think they're still lacking. They don't do a good enough job of competing with the hp washing meta. Because even if ppl hate it, it's still the better option and most feel forced to do it. We still see ppl recommending to delete a char and start over if you didn't add base int. We still see the APR business thriving. Olaf is in a good place imo. Reuel and Rose Garden pots are not. The issue is that they're both less optimal AND also time gated in a way that hp washing is not. By less optimal, I mean that if you just do bossing or sell leech (or even mage farm) and then dump those profits into APRs, you'll spend far less time to get much more HP than you would if you spent that same amount of time doing Reuel's or RG for hp (especially RG, those hp pots are a complete skem). But worse is the time-gating (it being limited to once daily), because HP washing has no time-gating. There's no limit to how long you can mage farm for, and there's no limit to how many APRs you can buy and use in a day. A common argument I see is that "it's ok for it to take 4 months to get the hp you need for VL/Auf, it's endgame and should be a grind to unlock". But then why is it ok for someone to just bypass that with hp washing? If we really want that 4-month grind (which I'm not sure I agree with anyways), it should apply to hp washing too. Should we limit how many APRs you can use in a day or something? Also why does it only apply to some classes and not others? That's not fair. Why should OP classes like buccs and shads (with meso guard) get to participate in VL almost immediately but then already-struggling classes like archers have to grind Reuel for months?
Agree or disagree with whether or not there is a problem with hp related mechanics, this sounds like a good change, especially the hp potions from tokens of teamwork. PQ's are mostly only done for Olaf quests and it would be nice to have them as a leveling option with a reward to encourage no base/gear int play!
I completely agree with your post. Furthermore, HP washing hurts new players (and new characters) the most, and I think keeping a healthy server means bringing in new players. Let HP washing exist for veteran players who have the funding for it. However, I still think the current HP alternatives are still too slow. I think this is stifling the game. I think we would see more job diversity if the obstacles for starting certain jobs was not "spend billions on APR and leech." Or even, "spend several months grinding Reuels." But the game is not quite there yet. I'm not really advocating giving every player 30k HP, or making reuels infinite up to 30k. Just to consider uncapping it a bit further. Or as others have brought up, add something else for high level players who need more HP for NT/VL and the soon(tm) Pinkbean.
Well said and I don't want or need 30k, I want my char to ride the edge of whatever I need, especially when I was leveling, it was more fun to boss when I had just enough to survive, 30k just means don't run out of pots and optimize your internet connection for your pet, which is fine if you want that comfort. Similar to @anglerfish1, washing has no limit, you can just max out hp if you want, it's just allowed, and you can leech and be set. But if I want to, it would take an obscene amount of time irl. An amount of time, where it's unlikely the same people still play the game. I know--I've stepped away a few times. For anyone to quest their hp to max, you would have to play this game every single day as most anyone else you know and game with have come and left, twice. I'm unsure those prospects sound enjoyable to any new player. The alternative is a very convoluted, archaic, min/max routing of playing the game with just yourself and using other people to get there, which is just not appealing or fun to me and it's why I don't support or wash my characters and never will, unless an mp wash is the last thing that could help me VL, which will also cost me a big chunk of funds I shouldn't need to pay to play
