The full effect was already evaluated in 2015-16. A lot of us already know how it is for bishops to have such an edge on ams.
Why is my suggestion still about my own gain in your eyes? I'd like to see it be more challenging but I'm not even someone who actively plays the magician class because I see no point in it for myself. The only reason I even got my bishop to 200 is because it was pretty close after leeching exp from area bosses for years and because we were given 72 hours of 2x xp cards. I'm not looking for a challenge for myself. It's not like I'm bored or anything, I'm still having fun everyday when I play. As it stands it's already taken me 3 years to make a level 14x archmage. This suggestion has nothing to do with pushing my own personal agenda. Just because I suggest something doesn't mean that it has anything to do with what I'm doing in game. I was never interested in replying to this thread again since the decision had been made but you've brought up my name more than once.
I think the "hidden agenda" argument arises from various factors: First, the changes proposed by OP doesn't "stop leeching from the source". They only shift leech selling to Bishops and funded Arch Mages. Therefore, the packaging of this feedback thread doesn't really fit what's inside. This probably gives rise to the "hidden agenda" suspicion. Second, let's look at the effect of this thread. We are unsure whether or not the changes will reduce the amount of leeching. However, all of us are completely sure about 1 effect of these changes: an easy way for new players to obtain funding has been made harder. We have all seen old players complaining about petri leech making it too easy for new players to get funded. Even if this sentiment wasn't the primary motivation behind this thread, it certainly played a role, and probably helped this thread garnering support from other old players. Now, even though I hate the disparity between this thread's claimed goal and real effect, I am actually fine with the changes themselves. I assume the elemental amplification buffs in new source will be kept, since Andreas didn't mention they will be removed. As a result, required magic for 1-hitting petri won't go back to the old source value (1290). Instead, the 1-hit magic will be around 1250 (varying a bit depending on your INT). This is higher than the current requirements (1200 for F/P and 1220 for I/L), but getting 30-50 more magic in this range isn't really hard. It may require 1B more funding and couple more levels, which can be gained by farming in ULU2 / Memory Lane 5 or selling 2-hit petri leech. This effort dwindles in comparison to the amount of profit you can make from petri leech. Although it seems inconsiderate of funded players to suggest making it harder to 1-hit petri, they actually have a point. As an end-game funding option, 1-hitting petri is indeed relatively easy to achieve now, and making it a bit harder is justified. What about the balance between Bishops and AMs? I think these changes may have favored Bishops too much, and balance needs to be tweaked later. However, AMs won't be completely useless as some earlier replies suggested. AMs can still 1-hit ULU2 and Memory Lane 5 so much easier than Bishops do, and these are the best solo farming locations if you don't like selling leech. Moreover, as far as I know, telecasting wasn't nearly as prevalent in old source as it is now. Telecasting barely helps at skeles, but improves speed by a sizable margin in petri (15-20%). Therefore, telecasting petri leech sold by AMs will still be the fastest premium leech, and can probably be sold at a higher price than skeles. Of course, all these are speculations, and I may be proven wrong after the update. Moreover, they tried to remove telecasting before and they may actually come up with a way to remove it in the next patch. GG if that happens.
I have no idea and want to find out where you get your stats from. There were decent and increasing number of AM players toward the end of old source. In fact, I had friends who were switching over from BS to AM after tiring journey of upgrading gears yet still failing to achieve 1hit skele. People with long term plans for high goals mostly followed this pattern. This was EVEN before new source mage buff was announced. Although bishops were more popular that doesn't mean AMs were extinct. Census and popularity stats were gathered not based on how many "mained" bishop class but those who possessed bishop as one of their multiple characters. All these statistics make it sound like people only played bishop in royals. A lot of people instinctively chose cleric followed by bishop when they first joined royals, either due to friends suggestion or from reading suggestions, but not everyone continued playing it. As I have mentioned in another post, the journey for bishops to climb to the top of grinding chain were extremely long and tiring that majority dropped out on the way. Although census may show that 1000 people were playing bishop, only few hundreds actually reached their destination to shine as an outstanding leecher like they are described everywhere. We all mention low lvl leeching as a great advantage for bishops but it's highly limited to those who make bishop for the sake of funding another character in mind. In reality, a lot of new players that choose bishop want to focus on lvling before they establish a goal to fund a future att character. Actually, making an archmage + Hs mule was a faster option than bishop in order to become a leech king in old source. These ideas don't only come from my imagination. I spent hundreds of hours in old source grinding alone in ulu maps as I/L and free leeched well over 50 priests and helped them adv to 4th job. I had most of them in my bl for the sake of summoning them whenever I was free hence I had opportunity to witness their outcome once they graduated from free ulu leech sessions. I only remember at max 3 bishops among so many that ended up as "proper bishops" that went as far as 1hitting skeles and funding future alt attacker. Rest either quit during the tiring journey or switched over to AM (vast majority) after realizing there's not much hope for grinding as a bishop. We all know how royals meta was back then and still is. Once new players found out mage grinding was the best option to make proper income, post 4th job bishops also jumped into the grinding scene only to be disappointed by their in-capabilities. Only few and I mean really few had the patience to play a bishop to full potential by undergoing low lvl leeching, bossing and high lvl leeching etc. You are making old source AM sound like garbage but as one who mained AM in newsource, I have to disagree strongly against this opinion. There were plenty of AMs who enjoyed map wiping abilities with higher dmg compared to bishops, on top of others who even switched over from playing a bishop. Not everyone was crazy about selling leech but there were others who grinded for the fun of it. The time and effort a bishop main had to invest to 1hit end game leech map (skele) was like 2x+ of what the AM had to invest before 1hitting petri due to genesis book (~4 friends quit after they failed 2x gen20) cost as well as slower progression through lvls with weak genesis damage. People who wanted to 1hit ulu maps earlier (compared to bishop which took so long) could easily make a hs mule (which only took few days) to happily sell leech and farm cravens with bare minimum funding. Where do you think was the most popular leech map in old source? People would say skele but my memory says ulu2 was more popular because cravens and good equip drops guaranteed stable income regardless of leech availability. I had harder time finding an empty ulu2 map than empty skele map. For the people who claim that balance of archmages should be regarded alone without viability of hs mule, I find it ironic because they want the buffed damage to sell easy-1hit-petri leech WITH a HS mule themselves, not to enjoy the archmage class "as it is". I made a si mule in old source specifically for the purpose of faster training with blizzard after a friend showed me the boosted speed of genesis with si buff but only realized afterward that it was rather meaningless. I dunno where you received this info but the difference in training speed for me was so small it wasn't worth opening an extra client for that benefit next to bishops who were spamming gen at like 2x the speed with si. SI buff was in extreme favor of bishops. Advantages I/L mages held were their ability to effectively multi hit through out lvl 35~200 and to freeze mobs which helped immensely as it prevented knockback from mob aggros.
Thanks for providing the number "1250 magic" for the new changes. This seems more reasonable, I thought the number was 1290 as Eli had originally suggested (which is too much and would betray current AMs..... we've all seen what 1290 did in old source). About the "hidden agenda" argument which has been basically me vs Eli, you pretty much nailed it that the thread is mistitled and garners support from older players while hurting newer players. I don't mean to wear a conspiracy hat, but somebody has to speak for the new players who don't even have forum accounts or even new players to come. At my first mention of the possibility of subconscious motives, suddenly people get all defensive like I'm personally attacking them, lol. In the end I don't think my voice really matters, because the decision has already been decided apparently. But this decision is wrong. Meteor/Blizz 30 are already less than 300mil while gene 30 hovers around 1.4bil. This is completely reflective of the demand and shows Bishops are still more popular than AMs. After the buffs to skeles and the nerfs to Archmages, Bishops will run wild even more so than they do now. Bishops already have ele wands that don't give damage penalties (they did in GMS). I've mentioned this several times but everybody ignores it. These v83 AM buffs seem like they were a decent compensation for that, and removing them is too much when Bishops already have so much. My suggestion is that it doesn't make sense to nerf Archmages without giving them some kind of buff unless the goal is to put them back into irrelevance like in old source. Yes, I can agree AM's having a frontloaded end game is not "fun" and could be improved on. But nerfing them like this fixes the problem by creating a new problem.
At this point, most of the arguments against and for the nerf have been made pretty clearly. The only response that we got from the admins are that they will be reverting the buff for AMs and that skele will be buffed. As a result, most of the arguments and analysis were made without knowing if there are any other changes or the main objective of the proposed changes. Thanks to those who bothered doing the maths, 7-12 lvl grind is indeed managable and can be overcome with better gears. Knowing this in advance can really help with preperations for the patch. It’s difficult to keep arguing when the people who are responsible for the changes are not really responding to our arguments. At this point, it seems like they won’t be changing their minds regarding this matter and what can be said has already been said. We will just have to wait for the patch and evaluate again from there. It is in the interest of the admins to make this game more enjoyable and that adjustments for the better can always be made in the future with good and constructive feedbacks.
I stated what the thread was about at the top of the OP and you even acknowledged that after reading the post, it was clear that the entire post was about balancing. I guess that expecting reading comprehension was too much to ask for from some other people though. Honestly I've never seen old players complaining about petri leech making it too easy for new players to get funded. I'd consider myself a pretty old player and I've never seen any of my friends complaining about this. It's true that you make more mesos from leeching now than before but pretty much everything now also costs a ton more so I don't think it's made much of a difference anyway. Higher leveled leech has always existed and players have been taking advantage of it the entire time. On top of that, nothing is stopping anyone who has played for any length of time to take advantage of these same methods right now. To say that this was motivation for creating this thread at all is just incorrect. I'm simply trying to objectively look at this from the perspective on an Archmage who is playing to be an Archmage rather than from someone who is making one to do nothing other than fund another class. The only time I ever really see this older player vs newer player argument brought up is when someone is accusing older players of wanting to "Stay on top". An example of this is the MoN vs HTP thread. A nerf was decided upon which caused a small uproar but I argued that it seems clear that it was for the sake of balancing: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/mark-of-naricain-vs-horntail-pendant.114324/page-6#post-689864 I'm all in support for giving newer players decent methods for making money, as is evident some of my posts in other threads such as this post here: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/make-amoria-pq-great-again.116164/#post-653370 Even in that post I'm supporting the idea that players should be able to be able to make easier/good funds without feeling the necessity and pressure to make a mage when that's not the class that they want to play. I feel that the game has taken an unhealthy turn in how reliant so many people are on their mage mules but I can't create a thread about every single thing that I want to change. I took one very specific idea that I had and tried to make an objective and fair thread explaining my reasons for this idea. As for the indirect buff to Bishops in my suggestion for skeles to be better again, a huge revamp of all of the maps has been planned since the beginning of 2017 when so many maps were accidentally nerfed when we switched from the old to new source code. Petrifighters and Skeles were both buffed in the past but Skeles didn't quite meet the expectations of what they were supposed to become while Petrifighters did. There were so many other important updates to push out at that time that these map/spawn revamps were put far onto the backburner. When talking about magicians in general, I thought it might be a good time for a reminder about these things since they can easily be forgotten about due to everything that the staff is always working on. Agreed
I can read buddy, thanks though. It's clear this snippet from your OP is what you were referring to about balancing: This is the only bit about balancing here, and it's completely wrong. AM's are not "the meta rages to riches class" any more than Bishops are. Kill most monsters in one attack sounds just as much like Bishops to me, and AMs doing more damage is literally their only strength which you want to nerf. The only other mention about balancing in the post is when you compare Bishops and AM in terms of magic numbers required for 1H alone. Let's have a more fair comparison, shall we?: Bishops: Do not require a level 81 HS mule or multiclienting Level 120 Bishop can sell low level leech Level 120 Bishop can self leech attackers, mules, or summon farmers Level 135 Bishop can Zak/Krex Level ~145 Bishop can 1h Ulu 1 Level 155 or lower Bishop can HT Level ~160 Bishop can 1h Ulu 2 Level ~175 Bishop can 1h Skeles Bishops have the highest book prices (Gene 20 at 800mil, Gene 30 at 1.4b) indiciating they are the highest demand class. Bishops also, egregiously do not get penalties from elemental wands as they should (intentional bug?). Whoever designed Royals must seriously love Bishops. Archmages (F/P): 1. Have to make a HS mule to sell leech 2. Level 130 can sell ulu 2 3. Level ~160 can sell PetrisHas cheap skillbooks (Meteor 20 worthless, Meteor 30 at <300m) indicating this class is low demand. Archmages (I/L): 1. Have to make a HS mule to sell leech 2. Level 130 can sell ulu 2 3. Level ~165 can sell Petris 4. Level ~175 can sell Obv 4 with MW 20Can freeze enemies. Has cheap skillbooks (Blizz 20 worthless, Blizz 30 at <300m) indicating this class is low demand. AMs have no utility. AMs cannot boss period. AMs require a HS mule. AMs have fewer leeching locations. With the future nerfs to AMs and buffs to Skeles, Bishops will be once again superior to AMs at leeching. Additionally, F/Ps will be completely inferior to I/Ls. I understand wanting to make AMs more challenging so it's more "fun" from a gameplay perspective, but nerfing them will just make them obsolete and return us to BishopStory. Now to address your claim that your post was all about balancing...... Clearly all about balancing. All except for a misleading title ("Stop leeching at its source!"), a subsection called "Stop Leeching", and few (or a lot) of personal opinions such as: And then finally.. Yes, this all sounds very objective, you're really convincing me you care about balance more than personal preference. On the topic of personal gain, I really could care less what characters you have. I was just throwing it out there that the only people in favor of this change are veteran players, while nerfing AM comes at the cost of hurting new players who don't really have much of a voice around here on the forums. If you really are all about balancing why have you been functionally unable to answer my posts listing many grievances with this change with respect to balancing?
The first part of the title was just meant to poke fun at the current drama revolving leeching and HP washing. The "Stop Leeching" subsection was meant to explain that I didn't think that entirely stopping leech was a possible solution since I did mention it in the title. I did however mention something that will slow down much of the demand for it in general. If it matters, you can just remove the word objective and focus on the perspective on an archmage main if it bugs you. The thread already had an official decision before your first reply so I wasn't planning on replying at all anymore since things have already been set in motion. I have nothing left to say about this topic since it's out of my hands. I'm not sure why you're wanting me to reply to your posts about a topic that's finished in this thread. You're listing your grievances to the wrong person. I'm not part of the team that decided to go through with the changes. I replied because my name was mentioned in a way that could potentially paint a bad picture in the eyes of readers so I wanted to defend myself in saying that I had no malicious intent in creating this thread. I was going to reply to your post that was in disagreement that I have nothing to gain from this but I decided to not respond to it since it would be pushing the thread more off topic than it already was as that point(In regards to what my reply would have been). As Arise mentioned, those responsible for actually making the change aren't responding so it's best to wait for their response or evaluate the situation after changes happen. As a former member of staff I can promise that everyone's voice matters when they're making decisions, whether it's popular opinion or not, 5 day old forum account or 5 years. I'm mentioning this because I saw that you said that you doubt that your voice really matters. Things can always change later and everyone's feedback is always appreciated.
Yea Im starting to feel the pointlessness of us arguing here, waiting is really all we can do. If the update is shit i hope the GMs will revert it. If the nerf works out then ill eat my hat and enjoy a more balanced server, so all is well.
@FireHeart has raised the most obvious grievance that most of us have: that AMs will lose their relevance in the mage meta. AMs are already unpopular as can be inferred by skillbook prices and its not hard to think why they are not the go-to mage for most people. It requires more effort to train an AM + hs mule and their utility is very specific. They aren't as useful as bishops as listed by others in previous comments of how AMs are useless in bossing, low level leech etc. Most of us will agree that, perhaps, the barrier to leeching is indeed far too low due to the new source buff to AMs and reverting it is indeed fair. What needs to be addressed, however, is the balance between BS and AM. If anybody really cares about balance, we should be looking at a parallel nerf to bishops as well. Either in the form of -% dmg when using elemental wands or reducing genesis base attack.
If you say so, ill fully admit that most of my understanding on old source comes from friends from my older guild when i chatted with them on old source. So when you lay it out like that, i honestly have no ground to stand on
Just a few things i wanna comment on: Arch mages can also sell low level leech as well as self leech attackers and mules. I've done it myself and most maps have safe spots you can easily use to cc hs with an hs mule. Sure its slightly more inconvenient but its really not that bad. A lot of people also don't realize but fire and ice demon can also be good for leech as they are better than ults for leech in some flat maps. About bishops being able to "krex" at 135 (lol), all you do is hs twice, which, i mean, you can do with an hs mule aswell xd. And yes, arch mages can boss. You'd be surprised at how much damage a well geared arch mage can do at horntail. Just because no one does it, it doesn't mean it cant be done. I don't get why you say arch mages have fewer leeching locations? I cant think of any map where arch mages can't effectively leech but bishops can, rather quite the opposite. I can think of plenty of maps (basically every high level map that isn't skeles) where arch mages have an advantage over bishops. Petris, dukus, newts, and all the ToT maps to name a few. I don't really get what you're freaking out about here. Unless skeles are buffed an unreasonable amount, arch mages will remain the best farming class and the best class to sell leech from (not to mention they look objectively cooler than bishops). The only difference is that it's gonna be slightly harder to 1 hit petris as an arch mage, which isn't really a huge deal if you ask me, as it isn't really that hard to get 1250 magic, and it's definitely not unreasonable considering you're looking at 1 hitting the strongest mobs in the game after all. If anything, as a mage player i'm glad that i/ls and f/ps are at least gonna get evened out. I don't see a reason why i/ls would randomly do 5% less damage with their ults, especially considering their wands are already worse. It's really just a middle finger to any serious i/l players. Freezing mobs doesn't really mean anything either since it's so darn easy to 1 hit everything anyway, and you can't freeze bosses... You seem to be very upset about the fact that bishops do not have any penalties when using elemental wands, and it doesn't seem like you understand this, but the reason for that is because the game was based on v62 for 3.5 years, and just randomly screwing over every single bishop who has invested in elemental wands almost 4 years into a servers lifespan wasn't that great of an idea. Not to mention, just because it was like that in gms, it doesn't necessarily mean that that would be a good change to the current game. I mean, we're all here in these feedback threads arguing about useless classes for a reason right? Its not like nexon's balance in v83 was godlike, so whats the point in pointing back to balance changes nexon made as a reason to have the same changes implemented here in our game, which, in case you haven't noticed, also has a different meta and playstyle than 2008 gms did? If you ask me, skeles being subpar is enough of a nerf for bishops, considering skeles are the only reason bishops are able to compete against arch mages in the leech selling market, and unless whoever is in charge of buffing skeles buffs the map way too much, i don't think there are gonna be any issues, as there will still be plenty of reasons to pick arch mages over bishops.
You mentioned that A/M have advantage over bishop in petri leeching, but you also unintentional point out that bishop have advantage over A/M at low level leech (Bishop can sell full leech while A/M can only acquire half a price, plus you have to suicide your mule to keep it level as low as possible). Plus bishop able to join a boss party with low fund while A/M never welcomed to a boss party, a boss party is what all end game of maple story about. With the upcoming buff of Skele map, It may outshine petri leech and a bishop with almost same equips as A/M can 1hit there. so what the point to play an A/M when the only thing they good at, bishop also can do it too. Dont complain about gen20 or 30 price, the nerf to A/M make many of them quit or switching to bishop and result in higher demand in already high demand for bishop. I say we deserved it. I dont see FireHeart upset about no damage reduce for bishop with e.wand. I see hes upset about bishop, despite have those advantage over the original version and A/M, still complaint and whats more, they ask for nerfing the only thing A/M good at which is worst 100 times than ask for their own buff. We feel pointless to arguing because we as those who choose archmage dont have our voice listened. Since who support the nerf are GMs, former gms, veteran players who have high level bishops or their friends who support them - who also veterans them self.
By more leeching locations for Bishops, I am including all the low-mid level leeching options and there are a ton. Bubblings, Teddies, Jr. Wraith, Platoon Chronos, Master Chronos, Wraiths, Book Ghosts, GS1-GS5, Sagecats, Windraiders, Wolfspiders, Stormbreakers. Also for unique high level spots, Skeles and I would also include gobies but those things are long gone. You are technically correct AMs can sell leech in low level maps, but it's pretty annoying having to CC, enter portal, lounge, etc. It's just a giant pain on many maps. All AM has is two unique locations, Petris, Ob4, and a few locations nobody uses like Dukus, newts, all other ToT maps. Also, I'd argue Bishop is good for ToT in it's own way because it can provide HS for quests (91-135) and high level grinding while HS mules cannot. So overall, I think Bishop has much more diverse leeching locations, not to mention more diverse gameplay options because they are coveted in boss runs rather than being troll picks (let's be real about AMs bossing). Another thing to mention is Genesis casts faster than Blizz/Met and Bishops don't have to cast Spell Booster, though I'm not sure how much faster Gene is. I can agree that the proposed changes by Andreas are not so bad. I originally thought it was to 1290. With 1250 magic required, that's 10 more levels for FP and 6 more levels for IL. But I cannot agree that it's fair for this on top of IL and FPs getting evened out. ILs ult applies freeze and ILs have the lucrative end game leeching spot of Obv 2-4. Now, FPs are absolutely inferior minus their wands being slightly better. FP players will feel the pain and this is a pretty big middle finger to FPs lol. On elemental wands, I did mix up my versions. I thought the damage penalty existed in all versions, as once I heard the damage penalty in release Royals was bugged so it didn't exist and they never bothered to fix it as players liked it. But, even Nexon realized Bishops were too strong by buffing AMs base damage and adding a damage penalty to elemental wands for Bishops in v83. I think there's still something to be said for that. PS: The mention about Krex in addition to Zak was by habit more than anything. Yes obviously it's pretty useless for Bishops and could be kind of a joke lol, but it's at least something for them to do if they want while AMs by themselves are nothing without a HS mule.
Bishop's are still better at low level leech is the point. An hs mule is from the Bishop line not the mage one. Saying Bishop's can't Krexel at 135, but they can actually Krexel at around 90 is a terrible way of getting your point across. A well geared mage can do good damage to Horntail while a well geared Bishop can do ok damage to Horntail while making the entire boss run succeed with his many support skills. Because when both Bishop's and Mage's can 1 hit kill a mob it's clearly in the Bishop's favor. Low level leech means both parties 1 hit kill and Genesis consumes less mp, is faster, doesn't need to activate any booster and they have hs on hand. It actually blows my mind how Bishop's have the best support skills in the entire game and people want them to be near side-by-side with Mage's in damage. You can heal people, bring the dead to life, teleport party members back and fourth from a map back to a town, avoid/remove ailments, correct the terrible experience party members receive from each other and attack 15 monsters at once pretty much 1 hit killing most normal monsters in the game. You think that's enough for a class? Nope, a lot of people don't think so. Bishop's and NL's getting all these buffs that almost come out of nowhere while there's so many threads of Paladin/Marksman buff suggestions where most of the community is blowing it off. This isn't even a developer or veteran thing. People subconsciously just want to see the best classes stay at the top and that's how it has been for over 4 years. edit: I guess I may as well also mention that Bishop's are more tanky, can give 20 accuracy to warrior's, are great in CPQ when potions aren't around and do good are very useful in Dojo when it comes out.
There is no point against the nerf now as those who support it are GMs, former GMs and veterans who have high level bishop since old source. And they all want bishop while still being needed in every content, have the ability to make money from selling leech like A/M and even better than them.
