I just want another world with decreased exp rates and some new v75-83 content. I think it would be interesting
These forum polls aren't very accurate because only a minor fraction of the active players visit the forum on a regular basis to participate in any type of census and those who do are mostly old, end game players with a similar mindset. An in-game poll in the form of a Quiz quest with a tiny reward might gather a better form of data.
new world - will reduce the feeling of royals being the most popular server, even with the increase lately, there is more then enough content, and it is still happens that a lot of times you will struggle, either if you are a new player or an experienced players with friends to find a party for bosses and specific pqs, if you want to "increase" the content, make abandoned pq's and training spots more viable, you are tired of leeching? increase the reward for training as a duo, mathematically it is so simple to figure out a formula that can reward grinding better then leeching, same with pqs, for example, how about just taking a pq like ludi and making it 70+ and boosting its xp to be viable up to lvl 90? people buy leech because there isnt something that justify investing their time. leeching - my general thoughts about leeching is that its okay, you work 1 hour to achieve 100-150m which is barely 0.1% of your end game goal (obviously varies between different players). 1k hours its about 2-3 hours a day for a full year consistently every DAY, show me a competitive game that you would invest that amount of time in and you wouldnt be super far ahead of everyone else. not only that, players that play this server, for the most, are players that played old school maple, and players that played old school maple are not 14 years old, most of us have many responsibilities, and its not like we were young way back then and didnt mind to invest a full month for 1m, we adapt and try to make as much as possible with the time we put into the game, so there is a good aspect leechin and it is the feel of reward you get for the time you invest, this feeling should be achievable in different ways(ill explain more on that later), so it is only natural that after 7 YEARS it will feel that the meta have grown into some thing selfish, which leads me to the point i do hate about leeching, it hurts the social aspect of this server so much its almost beyond recovery, minority grinds together, minority bosses together, and i truly believe that the cause to that is simple, people do not know how to value their time and have a big misunderstanding to what leeching is: the way i see it there is a formula - enjoyment+reward-time spent=interest i will demonstrate for example: 1 hour ftp1 leech 70-72 - 0+10-0=10 ppq 4 70-72 - 4(personal opinion, but i think most would agree)+5-10=-1 apq in general 8+8-10=6 those numbers are obviously not meant to be accurate or picture the reality in anyway, i am showing this because this is how players think when they r about to do something, when a player is about to invest his time in anything, he uses this formula in his head, we all do, we might not realize it, but its only natural that we would. so my point is, players do not understand what leeching really is because it is not a real 10/10 reward, in reality you spent AT LEAST half an hour to earn that money that you are using to pay for the leech? so its not really that you are not spending time, you did spend time on the money that your are giving the seller, what im saying is, that instead of spending your time making money and then putting it into leech you could just spend you time to grind with friends, but for that to happen the enjoyment value must go up, also the reward MUST go up, you must make it more appealing to choose this path instead of making money and buyin leech to actually just grinding with friends!, make pqs viable make grinding viable, make dead things viable. about muling: terrible imo(again social aspect is hurt), perfect if would have been disallowed in the first place, would have been so much healthier, but now... if you remove muling you hurt all of the players that spent all their money on buying leech to level their mules which leads to imbalance in the economy, might as well wipe the server this remind me of league, where one would otp a champion and it gets reworked, oh well good luck bud. as a solution, i would probably say to limit it to 3 per mac address, yes i know this sounds funny but there are people that use more then 2 mules, and those people usually have enough money that they wouldnt get hurt as much if you bring this change, as i said limiting it to 1 would just hurt massively a lot of people that invested in those mules, its literally like going and taking their items they invested in, unfortunately... hp washing: ughhhhh i just wish it wasnt a thing, yes it has value, imo it does make this game hard to a perfect point, i have to say if hp washing didnt exist the server and the game would have felt way easier and way less challenging, and people would quit really fast because they got to their goals too fast( i believe in "what comes fast goes fast"). but it still feels lame explaining to my noob old school maple friend that he needs to forget about his lvl 90 that took him 3 weeks to lvl, because he has no future, i read becca's comment and i would be more then glad to be proven that there is actually a way to survive in end game bosses without washing and still have a decent dps. bottom line it increases and helps maintain the difficulty of the server while also being a feature from old gms, but it just doesnt feel good for anyone i know to wash, havent met a player yet that was like damn bro feels so good to buy leech and buy int gear for 5b, do apq for months cause my main char is unplayable, i feel so GOOD, ofcourse there are solutions and workarounds, but it feels like some kind of an in game design flaw that just costs players a lot in order to fix it, i think that if you remove hp washing and adjust bosses damage, its identical to what i said about muling, a lot of players will get hurt, and because its not all players, there will be a huge imbalance, i think that if you do decide that it is necessary you might as well wipe, which is why i think hp washing will stay the way it is unless we see a bigger reason for a wipe. like enticing said, i too did not mean to come out arrogant at all, this is just my opinion after all and everything i type comes from a place of caring, i feel like a noob compared to how long most of the people here been playing the server but i truly want the best for this server, i am passionate about seeing it thrive to better places, being 7 years old doesnt sentence it to be a selfish game, we can change it with good feedback, we have an amazing community that can allow that.
I'm usually a long time lurker when it comes to forums so forgive me for formatting and such. I've just recently come back to MapleRoyals as I wanted to re-experience the nostalgic feel of playing maplestory. I've even brought my wife and her sister along for the ride. I wasn't a super hardcore player before. I made a DK and got it to lvl 85 then quit when my brother stopped playing as well. Basically I wanted to try and give my 2 cents from a newbier player perspective of the hot issues I've been seeing around the forums. HP washing is something that is kind of a deterrent for me as a newer player. Not only is it really confusing on how to do, reading through guides on the forums and trying to decide on what class I want to play as I wouldn't be able to make a Sair, MM, BM, or Sin right from the beginning and expect to be able to do higher level bosses without dying despite having HB. I've read through some of the suggestions of how this can be fixed without breaking the economy. Out of all the suggestions on the Master list for HP washing solutions (https://royals.ms/forum/threads/master-list-hp-washing-ap-reset-feedback.118864/page-2) I liked the idea of being able to increase your max hp through killing bosses. It doesn't feel like your exploiting a bug to get yourself a little bit more tanky. Granted you shouldn't be able to get 30k hp off of doing this. There should be a cap, but just enough to be able to survive late game bosses with HB. HP washing should be a luxury and not a necessity. The reason why I chose to play this over a post BigBang server is the need to rely on others. leveling up and going through the game It seems very empty as I've only come across a few new players at popular training sights like wild boars and teddys. It would be nice to be given an incentive for party play that makes training faster when you're with players around the same level. I don't think necessarily that leaching is a bad thing. I know that with hp washing to 30k it is almost a requirement that you spend lvl 10-135 leaching to get those ridiculous stats. That is fine! I dont believe that the server needs a whole lot of change. I just think it needs incentives to keep newer players to keep playing. so that when your friend that you introduce to royals gets to lvl 90 he doesn't feel like he needs to restart because his character is "trashed". Min-Maxing is toxic. I feel that the community has it ingrained in the brain that you NEED to mix-max to be relevant in this game. Going onto the forums I only feel discouraged when i see that I need to be a hp-washed NL to be an attacker in a boss run. This game is meant to be played casually is it not? people who want to be hardcore players can do so! I just feel like its so hard to play casually and feel included. While training my new character I ran into a couple trying to train but couldn't because he was playing a dexless unfunded warrior. I kind of ranted TLDR: Give incentive for casual players to play the game and not feel a need to min-max. Buffs to party play and dead pq's like LPQ. Give options to newer players so they can survive end-game boss-runs so new players don't have to restart.
Royals already made numerous changes to accommodate casual players so they can survive high-level bosses with HB. My feeling is that you haven't actually attempted them but got overwhelmed by reading through the mission-impossible novels from the complainers in the past. The only exception is Castellan Toad which according to Royals lore, was kept this way so that only tanky melee classes may raid it. Since you mentioned Sair, Archers and Sin, I'll illustrate them with examples. Let's look at some of the high-level bosses people say you cannot survive as an unwashed ranged attacker. Wulin Yaoseng (Shaolin): ~12k HP required to survive magic dmg Horntail: ~10k HP required to survive magic dmg Auf Haven: ~16.5k HP required to survive touch dmg Corsair naturally has higher HP than archers and Sin and these 2 classes have identical natural HP and MP so I'll only work with them. Assuming you raid them at the lvl you can gain pt exp Shaolin entry lvl -> 145 Horntail entry lvl -> 155 Auf Haven entry lvl -> 175 According to Shiyui's HP chart of unwashed characters (lvled with 4 base int and without washing) Archers and NL have 5183 HP at lvl 145 5403 HP at lvl 155 5843 HP at lvl 175 HP quest gives +500 HP Ergoth's Bane medal (GPQ) gives + 500 HP Black belt (Mulung dojo) gives +300 HP Blackfist cloak gives +100~ HP Mark of Naricain pendant gives +300~HP These equips can be gained at any time of the year with effort and time investment. They add up to 1700 HP. Spoiler: Shaolin For Shaolin 5183 HP + 1700 HP = 6883 HP But every class ends up with slightly additional MP than the min MP at a high level. The average MP of lvl 145 NL/Archers is 2654 MP. The min mp of lvl 145 NL/Archers is 2178 MP. Without lvling with any int gear or base int over 4, you will have 2654 - 2178 = 476 extra MP over min MP each HP wash for NL costs - 12 mp and gives + 22 average HP. 476 MP / 12 MP = 39.67 = 39 22 HP x 39 = 858 HP --------------------------------------- 6883 HP + 858 HP = 7741 HP 7741 HP x 1.6 (Hyper body) = 12385.6 HP which is enough to survive the magic dmg Archers get ~18 average HP per hp wash so they end up with 12136 HP under same calculation which is also enough to survive the magic damage. Spoiler: Horntail For Horntail 5403 HP + 1700 HP = 7103 HP 7103 HP x 1.6 (Hyper body) = 11364.8 HP which is enough to survive even without any washing. Spoiler: Auf Haven For Auf Haven This boss' magic damage deals max 11.5k from my experience. You are doing something horribly wrong if you ever make physical contact as a ranged attacker because you are meant to kite it, not kiss it upfront. 5843 HP + 1700 HP = 7543 HP 7543 HP x 1.6 (Hyper body) = 12068.8 HP which is enough to survive the magic dmg even without any washing.
it's a good thing every single point you brought up is OPTIONAL. don't wanna leech? plenty of pqs to do until you can train in temple of time. hp washing? play a melee class. and your point about chaos scrolled gear being a central part of the economy, why is that a problem? if you are not trying to have an "end game" character you don't need to touch a single chaosed equip until you have 20-30b worth in gear. it's a shame instead of addressing what i would consider a "real" issue in voting and the economy around items obtained through gachapon, you attack mechanics that are not only old school (been around since the beginning) and unnecessary to central gameplay (completely, totally, 100% optional and avoidable). forgive me if i am wrong, but i almost get the impression you don't want to buy leech or hp wash, yet are unsatisfied with the options available to that playstyle i listed earlier! that is a viewpoint i would describe as entitlement, which does have a place in a discussion about game mechanics in my opinion. to be clear, i'm saying you are entitled to play however you'd like, but you are not entitled to criticize mechanics simply cuz you "don't like them".
sparky my sair is "unwashed" 166lvl with 8.1k HP (40~AP resets done MP>HP and i think i can do 20more before i hit the minMP, HP quest done+500,bfc+125hp,blackbelt+300,MoN +314,7th ani ears +45,rudolph face +50,zombie army ring +100HP) and am still under 10k and far below 12k ( yes i miss the +500hp medal and +150 hp 2carat ring but that wont change much HP for me so i don't bother do but i will get that eventually) also i don't complain i knew from the start how limited-bad unwashed can be , i made the sair for fun and i enjoy bossing with it as much as possible , i feel so privileged to run duo shao with my drk friend i wouldn't make that far without that and i know many other that get stuck at lower lvls with same bosss due to lack of DrK or boss standards to run only solo-duo shao,trio-quad BG, solo-duo BF... if i washed my sair i would have quit that job by now, runing with int skiping alot of content by leeching myself or buy leech is not fun, tho am down to do more boss or quest to get more HP PS: NO TO SERVER WIPE the 2nd world idea is interesting to have just like haveing islanders/ironman on side
I'm not as widely experienced as much of the other staff or players so I'll keep my input brief. For leeching, I think the best thing to do to address it is to introduce ways to gain EXP faster in a party play style, grinding and leveling with friends near your same level. Perhaps a two pronged response to it by also lessening the amount of EXP gained as an AFK party member. I don't feel that leeching should be pushed away entirely, but it should be more attractive to play the game in a more social way. That's how it was back in the day with GMS. I think we ultimately need to find ways to make the journey more fun than the destination. But that's a tough nut to crack. The response to HP washing woes shouldn't always be 'bring a DrK' because that's the same as 'HP wash your attacker'. To be forced to play a certain way because of the class you choose isn't fun. I think there should be alternatives to gain max HP, but they should be difficult enough to make up for the bypassing of 'traditional' HP washing. It would also be nice for the tankier classes who can easily wash to get more of a benefit from being what they are, perhaps with improved defense (or making current Defense numbers actually matter). DrKs are also put in a bad spot having to always be at half health to be as strong as other melee attackers. It's a lot more risky to play as a DrK compared to a Hero or Paladin, and I respect those who do for having quick reflexes and planning ahead at heavier hitting bosses. As for muling, I have said before I think a limitation to the amount of clients allowed open wouldn't be terrible. As someone who has never 'muled' or leeched, I feel it would be an empty playstyle to have characters just sitting on the sideline giving your others a boost. The only time I have more than one client open (aside from my one with my GM) is when I am transferring stuff around between my characters, sharing equips and such. Honestly barring players from more than 2 clients per MAC would be ideal in my opinion. That way you wouldn't have one person with a good computer soloing all the hard bosses with SE, SI, HS, HB, and whatever else two letter acronyms are helpful these days, along with 'crash mules'. I think muling is my least favorite part of this game and I get upset when I see so many SMegas recruiting for boss runs requiring someone to bring an extra character of their's for a skill boost. Ultimately the game is being played the way the players want it, and you can make it more arduous, yet rewarding, by changing your playstyle. Look at Ironman characters. They're hardcore and have my utmost respect for their dedication and perseverance. However, incentivizing more social play may help shift the meta and put the MM back in this MMORPG.
Dont quote me- but I think it would be possible to enable something at character creation that would drop the rates to 1x, etc. Perhaps if enough people want that challenge it can be looked into- similarly a more "official" ironman mode where trading/stores are disabled and so on, etc.
This discussion has been rehashed over and over again throughout the years in this section and the bottom line is: optional does not truly mean optional. DPS characters are mandatory to participate in bosses. HP wash is mandatory to build up DPS characters. Leeching is mandatory to effectively HP wash DPS characters. Are any of these things technically actually mandatory? No. But are all of these things unofficial requirements if players want to be able to effectively participate in end-game content? Absolutely. The fact that this mindset has defined the current metagame of this server--regardless of whether any of it is actually based on quantitative evidence--is an undeniable fact. I mean, there's literally a feedback thread right below this one discussing how unviable Dark Knights feel during bosses, and that thread managed to reach 9 pages of extensive discussion in less than a month. And saying Paladins are viable for bossing must feel like a joke when they've been relegated to crash mule status and anyone would much rather have another washed ranged DPS--whether a particular party is willing to bring you despite such setbacks because they are your friends or they are just cool people is besides the point. Just because vote abuse and RWT are significant issues that this server is facing doesn't mean that other issues aren't "real." This is not only reductive argumentation, but it's simply dismissive to so many members of the community who have been advocating for fixes to the current cancerous metagame of washing/leeching in order to ease burdens for new players and restore old-school playstyle for years now. This isn't just a matter of something that people "don't like." This is a matter of something that directly impacts the core gameplay of this server. To add onto this, I've been advocating for buffing the main line of major party quests (KPQ; LPQ; OPQ; PPQ) since the day I got here. And I believe at this point every single one of them has received a major buff, if not multiple. Now I don't know if people have done any of these PQs recently, but they actually give damn good EXP. Yet they are deserted. I pity the fool spamming smegas to gather a party for PPQ only to end up dumping their hard-earned mesos down the drain. At a certain point, we have to admit the fact that incentivizing party play just isn't the right solution anymore. Because in this server HP wash is widely available, and has become widely accepted as the norm. And as others have pointed out, this pressure to conform to that norm has led to the normalization of leeching as well. We can buff party play as much as we want, but unless we feel like destroying the feeling of "challenge" attached to a low rate server with those buffs, disincentivizing whatever this current meta of washing/leeching is remains the only honest solution. I mean jesus christ there is an entire economy built around mules for leeching at CPQ.
Another option is also just "nerfing" the exp parties get from multi target attacks. For example: in the classic leech scenario 1 mage and 1 whatever class. The whatever class gets the lowered party exp from up to 15 mobs per attack, I think a good way to encourage party play is to scrap this system entirely. If I kill a monster everyone in the party gets the same exp, however if I kill 5 mobs with a multi target attack, I get the full 5 mob exp, but everyone in the party only gets the full exp from 1 mob. It will simultaneously buff all non mage classes in terms of party contribution while also nerfing how broken mages are (to parties), and they maintain their insane grinding speed for themselves. Also shouldn't affect bossing (would actually make it better since everyone able to leech or attack would get more exp- which... may be broken I havent run the numbers) but since its one mob (usually) theres no chance of a mage killing both and everyone only getting exp from one, etc. it would be difficult to code tho (ive been told). Just thinking outloud.
What if we were able to get the party search feature going properly? Do you think that might help make it easier for the less popular PQs and grind playstyle to be shared?
Yes, and I would consider that a disincentive to the leeching meta. But while we've reached this point in the discussion I might as well remind everyone that if any of these leeching nerf suggestions are implemented, we should also be ready to reckon with a renewed wave of discussion around the state of AMs. Marginally, yes. It can only help and it certainly won't hurt. It will help out new players searching for grinding parties more than anything else. But at the end of the day, it won't really change the fact that people just don't really have a reason to do party quests. I think people smega out recruits for PPQ because it is the only one with any amount of marginal interest (except KPQ, but at least half the players I've met in KPQ are Bishops leeching their HP wash characters anyways), and it is a bit far out of the way for people to easily check manually (unlike LPQ or OPQ, whose entrances are right next to their respective towns). People simply don't party quest because they either can't do them (due to absurdly high INT on a DPS character) or they might as well just leech, which is faster and easier.
Compared to other servers, Royals isn't that good in terms of content and there are already many servers that removed stuff like washing, muling and leeching and added a lot of extra content royals don't have. So I don't see a reason to rejoin royals after the wipe if there are many other servers that offer the same things The reason Royals is successful is the population, people would rather play in a big community with 2000 online instead of one with like 50 online Basically if you wipe you remove that population advantage as a lot of people will be angry and join other servers instead, or just quit maplestory altogether to play other games or focus on work/school etc
Nobody was debating whether or not its possible; we've seen this same math over and over again. The real question is why are we locking endgame content for half the classes in the game behind a party buff? A buff provided by a single class that isn't as represented in endgame scenarios in part due to over reliance on their buff to play the damn game, thus causing a meta based solely around circumventing its necessity. It would be like making NLs hit 1s if they don't have SE, or making party exp 0 without HS. Buffs should be a supplement not a requirement. I've yet to see a sound argument for this being good game design and why we should continue using this poorly designed system of balance. Royals has already shown that its willing to change the original formula to better fit today's standards and make things a lot more fair than back in the day, so why are we just ignoring this? If people have spent 7 years, hundreds of hours, millions of NX, and billions of mesos just so they don't have to rely on this system, it speaks volumes on player opinion.
I think that any nerf to leeching would require a change to archmages to make them viable for bossing. Right now, the primary role of an archmage (and most bishops) is a leecher, removing that would put archmages in a extremely bad state compared to the other classes. There would need to be a powershift for archmages if leeching were to get nerfed to make them end-game viable. Honestly, I think the biggest issue for this server comes from HP washing. I know that a lot of players say it's optional, but like iEatEmoKids has said it's pretty much mandatory if you want to be accepted in the majority of bossing parties outside of Krexel and Zakum, and I don't blame them. You're taking additional risk by having a player who could potentially die on your run ruin it. People's attitude towards bossing has made HP washing mandatory whether we like it or not. Solutions like bringing a DK are ignoring the core issue that people don't want to incur more risk than they have to when running a boss and buffs like HB put the party at risk at something like Horntail where they can be dispelled and end the boss run if the DK isn't paying attention. Let's examine HP washing's relationship with leeching. HP washing goes hand in hand with leeching since putting that many AP into INT and Mana makes grinding on your character incredibly difficult beyond a certain point. If we offer additional alternatives to get players to the level of washed characters I'm certain that the demand for leeching will go down since it won't be required to get your character from level 70 to 120. Leeching has also become the defacto way to generate money in this game outside of bossing. If we increase the amount of players who can do bosses like Horntail (which has the potential to generate the most income out of any boss I think) we can reduce the prominence of leeching as an income source. The problem is that most players are gated by the HP requirement for Horntail, which comes back to HP washing becoming necessary to access one of the best income sources in the game. This makes leeching the best/consistent way to fund HP washing. I honestly don't think leeching is that big of an issue outside of its necessity for HP washing. Everyone plays the game their own way and if somebody wants to spend meso's to speed level a character that's their prerogative. I don't think it hurts anybody in any way unlike HP washing, and removing it/nerfing it causes a slew of other problems with HP washing that would need to be addressed.
To be honest and as dumb as it sounds I like having this content "locked" behind a party buff gives the necessity for class diversity and a need to be a part of a community. Otherwise we would all be playing NL-Story (or maybe we already are?) It is something that separates PBB from BBB. One problem I've heard from another mapler that terrifies me is that there is a problem with buff mules; taking the need out of having diversity in the game. The mapler had quit his Paladin 120+ pally because the need for magic crash was filled by someone else multi client crash mule. If there is no demand for HB, the content could be stonewalled for non-washers.
Because the accessibility of washing here is the reason HB isn't used as much. However, we are also, as you said in the 7th year. We have started to hit the critical mass where even regular casual players with enough time can wash and it's not gated behind insane wealth. Either way, just because people would rather spend hundreds of hours and billions in mesos instead of bringing a DrK to a boss run doesn't mean it should be scrapped. As for why class diversity is good, I can direct you to any number of games that "homogenized" the gameplay and have now released 'classic' versions of the game after overwhelming disapproval with how shit everything was.
Would love to party up with you guys sometime I'd like to build up a group of friends with a similar mindset.
