PQ and Zone Rebalancing

I apologize if what I'm about to type comes off as random, and full of thoughts driven in different directions (Maybe?) After reading the thread about players wanting to run OPQ for longer, Im going to bring up the Topic of rebalancing PQ's and training zones and maybe improvements to the somewhat sour relationship some players have with each other.

I'm passionate about Royals, and wish nothing but the very best for the server. While I'm currently not playing as I've gotten a bad itch for League that I cant seem to scratch enough of, that doesnt stop me from following Royals progress. There is no other server that I ever want to go to. This is my home. And as a result I want players to experience the very best that Maplestory has to offer, and while my opinion is certainly my opinion, I feel it is one that comes from a place of experience. I like many others played heavily during this time of Maples lifespan, and while we all have different experiences and stories, many of us can agree that not everything about Royals is perfect, nor do the guys who run Royals claim it to be perfect.

One of the things that Royals can do better on is options and with options comes a better community enviroment (in theory) . Now that I know OPQ isnt broken, and some players actually want to run it, I feel even more disappointed GS2 and Ulu exists the way it does on here. Thats not to say, I dont think they should exist, as it SHOULD exist. I'm for more options, not less. But with GS2 being a thing, where its the best place to train for every class from 50 to some point in your 70's its made OPQ and all the content around it almost obsolete. Theres many other examples like GS2 that are litered around the game. Places that are far superior to all other places for certain level ranges making a good chunk of the game a place many players will never go to. When is the last time ANYONE set foot in KFT? Or did any of the quests? Not only is it a pain to get to thanks to Dolphin taxi not knowing he should send you there, and the elevator in Ludi is broken you gotta walk there as a result and aint nobody got time for that. Since it was OPQ that really made me rethink things, I thought id explain to those who dont know. OPQ was the place V.64 players leveled up at from 50-70. I spent countless hours jumping on ropes, collecting records and killing Papa Pixie all so Wonky would hook me up with those delicious XP points with my friends. Some of my most memorable moments were spent running PQ's like OPQ. When I grew tired of PQing, I'd make my way to MP3 or GS 3 or 4. Or kill luster pixies in Oribs, STD's in Mu Lung, or just work on Quests around that area. Exp was very similar. GS2 wasnt even that great of place to train as the spawn was pretty slow. To me its important that PQ's exist as viable options, if not the more viable option to training area's. To me PQ's are important for developing a community atmosphere. They're a place players find themselves working with other players, and it can develop a connection to the community and to the game. Grinding zones on Royals provide little to no interaction, or community building opportunities since there is so much value in not only XP but Meso associated to the maps. Players would rather sell a popular map to a player than just give it over. Many people look at each other as complete strangers where they only have their own interests in mind. Players have only a certain goal in mind, but dont care about the story they write to get there. Thats what made Maple GREAT. The story you wrote on your journey to accomplishing your goals involved the people you came in touch with. The entire way Royals opperates is very solo player oriented. It just feels like we have more emphasis on solo, singlular player attitudes then we do on teams and groups. We've all had the dicussion about Leeching and its impact on the economy and server's community. PQ's played a important role in keeping leeching in check as the better off players took advantage of Leeching. Poor players had the ability to run PQ's and gain XP at a slightly slower pace for absolutely no cost. Since everyone is on equal footing on Royals, players will go the quickest route, which in many cases is Leeching and grinding maps. Theres too much emphasis on Meso, XP and solo player mentalities and not enough on community and spending time accomplishing goals with people who actually give a shit about you

Edit: I really struggle to piece thought into coherent sentences, so my bad. But basically I just want there to be more options while leveling up characters and going about experiencing the game. We all had this discussion a few months back, and some of the things mentioned were good, nothing has really changed.

 

so tl;dr you wanna nerf gs and make other areas and PQs more viable? Good idea, because in GMS, Ghost Ship spawn was terrible compared to what it is in Royals.

Edit: The way I look at Royals is, it's the one server that can fix the mistakes Nexon made in terms of balance and design, and create the MapleStory that we all wanted but never got.

 

I want places like Grupins, Pixies, KFT, The entirety of Aqua road that isnt around Pap Omega sector to actually have a purpose like they did in GMS. If that requires nerfing places like Ulu or GS2, then Yes. We have this huge world where only a small section of the maps are actually viable, and PQ's like the Moon Bunny PQ arent even looked at as places to train. Players are all cramped onto the same handful of maps and nobody gives two shits about each other because they're all worried about if they're able to get a map or not.

 

I want to point out a few things below that you've mentioned in your wall of text which I disagree with, however I won't add too much onto the discussion of balancing zones / party quests.

When it comes to party quests we're working on balancing them and it's not something that will be perfected within a day nor should we expect it to be, however when it comes to balancing training maps I don't think there's any point in doing that yet as the new source will have a different spawn system as far as I'm aware.

Swimming through 7 maps past the Dolphin taxi isn't that hard

Spoiler

It's not broken as far as I'm aware, I've used it multiple times. The only times I've seen the elevator not work was when channels broke but I haven't seen that happen for a while.

 

How open are you to upgrading other maps beyond Singapore maps like Ludi and Magatia maps?

 

Could I suggest reverting LMPQ back to the same exp gains and making OPQ for levels 72-100? With EXP and difficulty adjustments made to OPQ to accommodate the level change. OPQ for those levels could be an alternative for those with insufficient funds to level quickly without having to pay for leech.

 

Id like to chime in and add Orbis to this as well. There is literally nothing in orbis that people go to train at. The Jr. Maps have slower spawn rates, the Pixies actually have a good spawn rate in some of the maps, but their base XP pales in comparison from other maps of mobs of the same level. The rest of the maps are pretty much low spawn, low XP, and empty.

 

While you're at it, here's my list of monster that could use a major overhaul:

• Spawn rates/XP ratios at Mu Lung
• Mr. Anchor
• Buffy/Soul Teddies
• Dark Klocks and pals
• PPQ XP upgrade (64k for 70+ is abysmal)
• Kerning City Mall
• Leafre maps near town
• Balrog PQ
• El Nath maps
• Sleepywood Dungeon maps

 

What map or rate do you consider the standard threshold before you deem too overpowered?

 

Would it be possible for certain maps to have bonus exp when in a party of 3 or more? Basically a party-play map like perhaps maps like Mp3 that have potential to actually house a party of 3/4 or more.
The ludibrium maps have good potential as well, etc Dual ghost pirates and its counterpart.

 

For leeching your own characters after you've leveled one up already, I don't mind that- as it is your own effort the bears fruit, and the tedium that you forego is proportional to your investments.

I never understood the concept of leeching to be honest. You might as well just buy powerlevels from chinese sites in the official version of games- or have the game play itself with a button press or anything really to have it all done by someone else other than yourself. You're getting experience while being AFK; if the incentive is to level up fast, the normal server is already like that- so why play this server. I could never feel satisfied buying a NX package that gave me a level 70 character to start off with or anything akin to feeling a sense of worthiness if I was just ushered a friend's account with a level 200 on it. I also feel nothing if someone just logged in and leveled 10-20 times for me while I am on vacation. If the arguement is that you want to try out new skills immediately for the sense of novelty, there's already high rates out there.

It being a RPG however, meso, EXP and any achievement-orientated related progress is essential to making players return and continue to play a game. A sense of mastery, achievement or goal usually entices players to stay around longer.

For discussions about the game, most people by now already know everything or could search up the answers very quickly. This at least might be one reason why the sense of novelty of community (with respect to maplestory) isn't as strong as before (when everything is new and it was a shared experience together).

It's good to have variety of party quests to increase the number of associations with other people. Generally though, the party quests that involve standing or doing things other than killing can promote this shared sense of cooperativity better than just linear straight-up killing PQs. Having lots of PQs is somewhat of a bad idea for a small playerbase, since rational players would choose the PQ that is the most efficient and lowest in complexity, leaving the other content, obsolete by omission.

It would be better to opt for a rotation-PQ system that randomizes whatever PQ you choose via selection through a NPC. The experience is always proportional to the average level of the party at a scaled percentage of that average level weighted; meaning the higher the deviation from the mean party level, the less experience awarded, however at the same time, party play is promoted by keeping experience gains competitive with other maps. It also makes less sense to level-gate content for a smaller playerbase because the playerbase typically follows a double inverted-V pyramid population density (most active players are higher-leveled, and those that are lower-leveled with the lowest around mid-level, given that achievers play more because they get more gratification from progression and that more players come in an influx than outflux at lower levels with the middle layers either progressing upwards or quitting). Content is meant to be enjoyed, explored and played generally- but at a relative difficulty proportional and scaled appropriately to a subset of players (it's no fun if everyone OHKOs everything). It would also have the benefit of all PQs being played and any player could learn it.

This can always be resolved with a HP/damage scaling factor to mean party level, and by increasing the number of non-killing obstacles/stages of PQs that involve cooperative actions. The second factor that would alleviate a strong preference for not leaving a PQ and doing another one could be a decrease in experience per same 'unique' PQ completed per day after completing it so many so times (i.e. 10).

The third factor would involve just decreasing the frustration experience that ensues after someone disconnects with a quest item by having it reinstated if you talk to the NPC again and no one in the party has that quest item.

Generally though, there is no need to spread players to 100 different maps when there are only 500-1,200 concurrent players. 3 or 4 different map choices that are optimal for EXP gains per hour is sufficient; 1 causes a bottleneck issue of high competition for no particular good cause. The rest of the maps can be sub-optimal.

If you want to incentivize socializing, then you need to allocate the resources to do so. If I have to spam a button every second, there will be no time for talk. If you decrease the spawn rate to 1 per 24 seconds or a delay after x amount of waves are killed (i.e. 3) but increase the EXP gains by some appropriate factor, there is some time for a line here and there. Secondly, any centralization of information in one place that reduces the search cost time of players will go a long way in increasing interactions. If people have to travel 18 maps and wait an hour or so, they will not. If they can open a UI, go to a big city hub with all the players there, or anything of that sort and get the information needed (players around your level that are not AFK)- they will be more willing to interact with one another to get some benefit (getting PQ members/training members). You also need to promote it as such a function, it's not enough for it to just 'be' an option.

If you decrease the emphasis on damage needed for things, then this also decreases the limitations in the size of pool availability of players for any particular action-orientated objective.

Lastly, custom player events costing NX item + mesos to start would also work. Something as simple as
~setup question 1 [line] [X]
~setup question 2 [line] [O]
~setup question 3 [line] [O]
~startevent
X player has started event [name]. The event closes in 600 seconds, type /joinevent to join. The reward is [item name].
could be used to interface with a system that sends out people to /joinevent [playername] after some server-wide notification.
There are plenty of maps and ideas to float around, but the key idea namely being something other than killing and that there's a tangible fixed award or custom award by the player would increase player interaction.

Anyhow, whether social interaction is needed or not is up for debate. Lots of players are content playing the game solo and don't mind just leveling, grinding, buying equips off of FM, scrolling, bossing and quitting. Other players are more apt to do things together. There is no need to divy up the community into two factions and it's plausible to satisfy both groups of players, thereby making MRMs even more successful as a server.

Personally, I'm not too fond of being a socializer of maplestory min-maxing or real-world events/subjects in-game and find more joy in running a party effectively and efficiently. I don't like a long, tedious and arduous grind for no gain but a hand silver-platter spoon-like experience is not satisfying or worthwhile either. A simple mechanic to have people switch maps is to experience-gate the map, by hugely penalizing players over X level from gaining any notable gains if they are in the same party or map. A 8-12 levels leveling zone is alright, a 30+ levels leveling zone is plain bad since it kongregates so many players into one space and causes an overlap of niches with no respite for logging in. Also scrolls, high-duration high-boost potions, equipment around your level (secondary statless and secondary stat prerequisite), NX are some incentivizing factors for anything really. Attaching a time-based condition, a complete X amount of times, do X for hours (i.e. stay logged in), or any other function will usually move players to your desired player behavior. How the management decides the vision of server to be entails the necessary changes associated to be made to make it possible.

In essence, the main factors to consider are, the time cost-search player availability, the frustration probability cost, the learning-complexity trade-offs and the qualitative gains of rewards for party quests.

For general training maps, it is the marginal penalizing factor per player added, maintenance cost for maintaining that party's efficiency, map availability, map substitutes possible and quantitative reward gains in short intervals.

For players, it is the interdependence factor on task-completion, diversity of player-types and time-search interaction costs that decide any particular outcome. Decreasing the former two, and increasing the latter will always bias a game towards a solo-environment. Making an enemy have more HP encourages damage-up seeking behavior, making it immune to one attack but not the other, or making its buffs/debuffs/attack patterns change to a preferable state (i.e. it does less damage, it increases EXP gained) when multiple interactions are required (i.e. item dropping, number of times hit, a specific attack pattern done on it) will promote 'interdependent play'.

 

I don't think that nerfing places such as Ulu, GS, and Windraiders is the best solution. Sure, it's the easiest, but I don't think it's the best.

One huge and gaping flaw in .62's framework is that, as you pointed out, some maps are simply far superior to everything else at their level range. Why would anyone train on any other monster when GS2 provides by far the greatest exp/hour from level ~50 to ~75? This, to me, is a flaw and it pigeonholes most classes into training on one single monster or map for any given level range, and I like MMOs which have options on how to play them, rather than forcing you to play a certain way. I don't like how in .62, skeles and petrifighters are virtually the only training options in 4th job, and how each only has 1 single map that everyone fights over.

To an extent I do believe that certain places should give less exp/hour. Take miner zombies bone fish for instance: definitely not the best places to be training in terms of %/hour, but the tradeoff is that they're fantastic for making money. So there should be some sense of balance in this regard if you ask me. I'd say make america great again the spawn rates on maps such as Pixies, Kitties (cellions, lucidas etc), and Omega maps higher; monsters like these don't give great exp nor loot, so the best way to make these monsters viable for training is to either buff their exp or buff their spawn rate. Either way, it'd encourage players to train there and would create good alternatives. Conversely, there are also certain places that should give a bit more exp/hour. Windraiders and coolie zombies are very out of the way and take awhile to get to, so naturally, they're a bit better than alternatives like Forest of Golem which is really easy to travel to. This is a minor factor which goes into map balance.

Of course though, the only way to absolutely balance out maps and make training completely fair would be to radically alter the framework of .62, and I'm not certain if that's the route that Royals wants to take. I'd be in favor of it, it'd be fairer and would solve a lot of problems, but hey, nostalgia so whatever.

 

As ive said before, i just want more options. We have several zones that most players dont even consider. Kft, Omega, Orbis, Aqua Road, Most maps around Leafre not skele, most the maps in NLC, Mu Lung. These were all viable places to train back when i played. And they arent here for one reason or another. I think @Matt has done a great job building what hes built up to this point and only wish to see it continue. As the server has gotten bigger and hopefully continues to grow map availabiltity will continue to be a bigger problem. And hopefully some slight tweaks to training where it opens up more possibilities i think is a big benefit.

 

Back in .62, the places you're mentioning were not viable places to train in comparison to everywhere else.

• The only KFT map that comes to mind is the Samiho map, and even then, that's only for FPs, and is outclassed by GS2 and FoG.
• There were no good Omega maps for training. All of them had very awkward layouts, bad spawn rates, bad drops, and mediocre exp/hp ratios.
• There were no good Orbis maps for training, except for maybe Jr. Kitties, but even then, most people would stay at Wild Boars or go straight to CPQ, thus rendering kitties rather useless.
• The only aqua road maps that people like are the squids and goby maps. The low level aqua road places, while fun to explore and travel through, were awful for training.
• The only NLC maps worth training on are Wolf Spiders and Windraiders (if you consider that a NLC map).
• Mu Lung/Herb Town monsters had awful exp/hp ratios, and you either didn't care about %/hour or were a complete idiot if you actually trained there to level up. Sage Cats, for example, have 4,200 more HP than Slimies, and give merely 5 more exp per kill, while also boasting piss-poor spawn rates.
• Leafre is all right for training, with the only maps I can think of outside of skeles being the Birk map, Blue Wyverns (only for WKs and FP though), and the Kentaurus maps. Even so, the Ulu Maps outclass these options by a small margin, and most people would train on Wolf Spiders through their 80s-90s, thereby rendering Kentaurus somewhat moot. Additionally, most Leafre monsters have awful hp/exp ratios (such as beetles) or have awful maps/spawn rates (rexton, cornians).

I agree with you that more options would be nice. But like I said, the only way to really make training fair is to drastically alter the framework of .62 (i.e: completely change monster hp/exp values, radically buff the currently poor spawn rates, or completely change loot tables).

 

Bring back the Boomer glitch!

 

Would it be possible to make quests more efficient? Quests are great, they make you explore the map and do new things, but the rewards just aren't that great in terms of exp. Could quests get an exp boost of 6x maybe? Or for every 5 quests you complete you get a reward.

 

Quest definitely need a buff. It's nice that the 4x exp applies to them, but they are still much worse than classic grinding. I personally enjoy questing a lot in maple, as it makes you explore the whole world, and I would like some proportionate exp rewards for the difficulty of the quests. The "kill 999 mobs" quests shouldn't give the same amount of exp as a quest that requires you to deliver an item to an npc. I understand that would require quite some work, so I would also be fine with a simple increase like the poster above suggested.