Why would you be forced to boss to level yourself? If they introduced something to curb leeching like requiring the buyer to attack a monster to before it’s killed to get ‘full’ exp, that would hurt your profitability but not your ability to level up extremely quickly.
The person you quoted missed the point of my thread entirely. If you're a mage main then you're the exact type of player that my suggestion would benefit. I think that it's pretty clear in my original post..
Sure it is. Cut off party exp after 1 min of being afk. I honestly can't think of a single reason an afk player should ever receive exp in any situation. If we're really going to have this leeching thing continue, why not save electricity and just let people buy exp from other players with mesos directly? Obviously thats a stupid idea, people would level too fast and it makes no sense. But you can say the same for leeching. You want to "stop leeching at its source", well what makes leeching "leeching" is that one player does nothing. Making them gain nothing would stop it at the source.
If we're going to resort to hyperbole to bolster our arguments, here's an even better suggestion to stop leeching: just delete the server!
The only thing Archmages have over Bishop's is damage so Bishop shouldn't be able to compete with them in that department. What is the flaw in having the leechers get much less exp when they leech? Leech would still have its place, but solo and party training would be more worth it. Mage players would still make a lot of money considering they still have their same attack to hit 15 monsters at once.
Idk if you're kidding around so please take what I'm saying lightly. Your personal responsibilities in life are not a valid justification for having something in the game. You think because you're busy you should be able to level up while not even playing the game? We all have stuff to do, some of us have long work days, some of us have school, whatever. Should we gain exp while offline too because it would be fairer to everyone? Whether you agree or not I think leveling in a game should be an achievement you get by PLAYING the freaking game.
I have a 3 y/o and today I also worked for 10 hrs. This is solely my opinion that if I can afford leech I should be able to buy it. As of now I am leveling up a FP. For starters Im gonna sell leech but eventually hit 200 (hopefully). It is a mechanism that fits into this version of MapleStory. It should stay in my opinion. Edit: If you're to alter or remove the game function at its core then you should alter how NLs or any attacker play as well. Make the AM as strong as NL. I'm not even kidding. Edit2: As previously mentioned by other players some people dislike bossing. How should They earn Mesos? I don't wanna be stuck in FM forever reselling items lol
Even if leech loses its popularity I can still hit 15 monsters at once. Mages will still make the most money even if leech is gone or lessened.
Why though? I think part of the reason you feel that way is because it's been a large part of this server for so long. I'm sure you remember that leeching wasn't such a common thing on this version in gms, and pqs were extremely active (at least up until like 2008). So coming from someone who only joined the server this year (first time playing ms since 2009), I'm telling you that this is less than just not nostalgic, its absurd. In-game currency and exp should be separate. One of the biggest attractions of this game is the uniqueness of your character. The whole experience was that you pick your favorite class from the start. On this server you are financially rewarded heavily for picking mage and financially punished heavily for picking archer/gun/sin. Put yourself in the position of someone who played archer in gms and realizes to do that here he would have to get a mage to 4th job first. How soon before this person quits? Also consider all of the people like me whose highlight from gms was pqing. When we see a hundred smegas per day of people buying leech as low as lvl 30 while waiting hours for anyone to join pq, it really demotivates us and many of us quit. And for what, so you can have a 4th job character of every class while simultaneously managing a busy life? I won't argue against this. I started out mage, and when I was told that 4th job mages just grind I was extremely disappointed. I would never push for every class to have equal damage, but at least let the mages be boss-worthy. Gaching, merching, doing apq, scrolling, etc. Also a great way to earn mesos is through holiday events. The continuous leech market just keeps the mesos flowing from newer players to older players.
Yet this is the most popular server. Did you seriously write that? Wow... FYI it's called ROI. Just like any attacker would. You train and boss. Eventually you sell HT service etc. That's very lucrative. Oh come on. You never want AM to be worthy. You just want to justify that attackers can have fun at bosses, earn cash and leave AMs outside of the economy loop. Gaching is fun but never a reliable source for income. It's purely luck Merching sure. But you gotta have a talent, patience AND time. @TheDel is probably one of the greatest and I admire her APQ is boring. You say that because you like to PQ. Some are fun but personally I dislike APQ I almost quit several times due to scrolling There are many new players whom sell leech. Didn't you know?
You left out 1 thing in your arguments: leech buyers pay mesos for their leech. Maybe they gained those mesos by farming on another high-level character. In that case, they did PLAY the freaking game. They are just using the mesos earned from their previous play time to level up there character now. Maybe they voted for a month and sold AP resets. In that case, although they didn't play the game as much physically, they contributed to the freaking game by keeping MapleRoyals #1 on GTop, which is probably the most important attraction for new players. I get that you like party grinding and PQ. I get that you personally don't like leeching. I get that you want meso and leveling to be disconnected. However, leeching is just another play style, and there are players who enjoy and depend on that play style. A good server should accommodate a large variety of play styles, instead of completely killing some of them and narrowing down players' choices. Currently, the problem is that leeching is a bit too fast and affordable, while grinding and PQ is a bit too slow. The solution should be finding a middle ground somewhere. For example, EXP of active party training can be buffed a bit to close the gap to leeching. EXP and item rewards from PQs can be buffed to give more motivation. Arch Mage ultimate damage can be nerfed slightly to raise the bar of 1-hitting, thus increasing the price of leech (this is OP's suggestion). All of them are much better choices than making leech completely not viable. I don't agree with the statement above. The leech market is the only reason why new players can keep pace with veteran players. I don't know why you listed gaching and scrolling here. The market balances itself so the average net gain of gaching & scrolling is around 0, compared to the "steady climb" approaches like selling AP resets, clean items, and scrolls. You may get very lucky and make huge profits from gaching / scrolling in the short term, but that's because you beat the odds, and it's not a viable long-term funding source. In the end, when new players get through that "complete newbie" phase and start to get serious, selling leech is the most viable way for them to accumulate funding. I know a new Bishop who failed gen20 twice (back in February 2018), and he didn't quit simply because he could sell low-level leech for 10 hours and buy another one. If low-level leech was not a thing, then he needed to farm in ULU2 for 20+ hours to buy one. In that case, he would certainly have quit. I myself is another example of how leeching benefits new players. I started in June 2017, and managed to fund a washed NL with enough damage to join most Zak / Krex parties within 11 months. How did I obtain the tens of billions needed for that? By selling hundreds of hours of petri leech. If petri leech is not a thing, then I need to grind in ULU2 for that meager 60M / hour NPC money. In contrast, veterans can easily make much more than 60M / hour by selling HT books, slaying area bosses, and investing their vast assets into event items. Wouldn't the gap just get bigger in that case?
@Rimfrost It's the most "populous", but a large portion of the players are passive players, not active players. Can you really call this an active server when everyones afk all the time? This isn't the same as spending hours playing the game, leveling up, and getting to bossing level so you can sell htp. Having one mage shouldn't grant you the means to quickly level an army of 4th job characters. I know one guy who literally created twelve 4th job characters. Idk why you're so surprised that I think it's absurd. Why would I not want mages to be boss worthy? My only 4th job character is a mage. And even if it weren't, I'm not here arguing this because I want anyone to have less fun for my own benefit. But just because someone enjoys something means we should let them do it? Should we allow hackers to fly around everywhere? @PhotonSphere I don't consider leeching a "play style" because you're essentially paying someone else to play for you. It's not a style of playing, it's not playing at all. I mean you can say hacking is a play style too, but it still wouldn't be beneficial to allow it. I believe that earning mesos on another character is great for buying equips and stuff for your next char, but having mesos shouldn't allow you to skip the first half of the game. You're right about scrolling, my mistake. How is gaching profit 0 or negative though? The initial investment is free nx. Do you mean compared to selling aprs? If mages were capable of bossing then anyone would be able to earn money bossing. In early game, NPCing equips and selling rewards from pqs is plenty to fund a new character. Actually I rarely meet new players who complain about lack of funding, the main complaint is no one to pq with. If someone dislikes bossing, apq, merching, farming items, and holiday events, they really should just find another game to play. I'd love for there to be more content for 4th jobs other than bossing and grinding but that doesn't mean we should keep leeching around.
Not everyone wants to make their money bossing. Some people like to farm, who like to play their mages the way they were designed. No one is calling leeching a play style, but the problem is you shouldn't really be telling people how they spend their time. Who says they're only AFK? When I get leeched (till I was unable to provide good conversation... *cough* @Swanky *cough*), I was grinding on a different character. The underlying issue, IMO, is the washing meta, and I'm hopeful the changes coming will help change that a little. But that's my opinion of course.
Getting kinda off topic since this wasn't meant to be a full on discussion about various ways to stop leeching, about the ethics behind leeching or whatever else just happened above lol. This is just a thread to present my suggested change and receive feedback having to do with the content in my first post about archmage balancing.
