I have no issue with this change as long as it comes as a "bug fix", since players can find other ways to deal with seduce. However, I do have a problem when it's done as a way to battle mules once again. Why battle the mule meta again? why strip people off their progress? Please have another look at this thread - https://royals.ms/forum/threads/feedback-thread-mules-and-multi-client.187072/ , I think we already established that the way to go is to let people play how they like. The mule meta is not killing the market, but it's the solution to a dead market (smaller parties, better splits). This is the exact reason the same people who just lost their SED mules won't resort to having an active bishop, but instead will find other ways to deal with sed. If you try battling the muling meta you'll find yourself in an endless cycle - nerfind achilles, then adding a few mins to TL cd so people wont use suicide mules and so on... In the future it would be very nice if the focus could be shifted from nerfing mules to further balancing the game (just reminding that a lot of @lxlx 's suggestions on this thread https://royals.ms/forum/threads/class-balancing.187398/ remained untouched). Sorry for going off-topic, it was important to me to comment on that part.
I understand your concern, and it is valid as well. However speaking for myself, when a class that has a heal ability is virtually useless due to the mule meta; something has got to change a little bit to make them just as useful instead of a stationary character designed for hs/mw20/echo. Min/maxing is absolutely great and fine but when it cripples a class that was designed for support simply due to multi-clienting, it gets a bit stale and stagnant because everything can be muled and why run with new players when you can effectively do it yourself/the same friend group? There are both pros and cons to that mindset. I fully believe another contribution to new players quitting is due to reaching bossing level, and simply having nobody to run with them because they have to make mules to participate in good runs. (You can say ‘just smega and make a party,’ but I’m curious to know if those who are saying that have actually taken new players on their runs, or have actually tried it recently as a low/mid level attacker; if you are not an SE, it’s not too great in my experience as both an active BM and a couple other attacker classes that are mid-level.) I apologize for getting a bit off topic again. That can be another discussion for later! I would rather see all classes being used to a degree instead of crippling them completely. That is also not my main focus for this specific fix for 1/1 bugs. (It has been noted and brought up that currently Shadowers with high ping, or other miscellaneous misfortunes are dying because of this fix. It is currently being discussed among Staff we have not ignored it, and we intend to solve that issue.) I find the gameplay isn’t challenging at all anymore, it’s echoed pretty much throughout the forum and in-game subtly, and sometimes not so subtly too. When you’re dealing with v83 and 8 years of activity, things do tend to get a bit stale. While we still have a bit more content left to release; we would have the same problem that is currently happening now, that would still happen later when everything is fully released. Magically releasing PB, VL, or other content we have missed, will not fix the stalemate we are currently at. It will only prolong it and will eventually fall back into the same pattern(s) of not being enough, and constantly running it to the point where the drops are effectively invaluable and cluttered, within the marketplace. But at that point, what else could we do without straying too far from v83…? There is a lot to think about. This change will hopefully bring a sense to be more aware while bossing for every class, while not straying too far away from the bosses’ core mechanics. (As my belief, I do not speak for everyone on Staff.) As I said before, I genuinely thought Achilles was already fixed for 1/1, which is a concern that has already been raised in Staff discussions on how we would like to proceed if we are going forward with bringing 1/1 to the table for every Class to pay more attention to. I have viewed that thread in my free time, and I have been keeping mental notes and things I would like to discuss/debate on during Staff discussions when it comes to both balancing content and skill/class changes. Edit: I forgot to mention this upon re-reading that thread again: We've already implemented #1-4 mentioned in that post. Why are you saying it 'remains untouched?' Change needs to be gradual, we cannot rush into changing classes by making them overpowered right from the start. (See Bucc and Shad's current damage as an example.) We also unfortunately do have client limitations and some of those proposed changes cannot be added at this current time. During the Skill discussion we've had for a couple of months before implementing it we had to rework a lot of ideas and concepts because the client couldn't meet the expectations in it's current shape. I think another reason why it’s assumed Staff don’t like to interact with the players in discussions is due to the amount of pages and reading that is required to actively participate in the discussion on top of GM duties, backend work, Staff discussions, and coming up with a response to make sure the players know they are being heard. I know for me personally it is a lot to manage and takes up quite a lot of time out of the day (which I don’t mind doing— but only when I have extra free time.) It’s a lot to balance for someone who is simply volunteering their time and have irl things too on top of all of that. Staff do read discussions within the community, writing up a response can be viewed in a different light though. Thank you to everyone for taking the time to discuss, and for writing up detailed responses!
I meant more the things he suggested in the comments in later pages after further discussion (for example the paladin and hero changes)
I can't help but notice that you've constantly been mentioning 'bishops being useless in the mule meta' in your recent posts. From what i've observed, prior to 73.3, there's still tons of smegas daily recruiting an active bishop for HT/Zak everyday. Is there really a lack of demand for active Bishops? Bishops are easily the hardest class to mule and requires alot of effort and investment to mule effectively in Horntail, as far as I know its mostly end-game trio/quad parties that use Bishop mules in HT runs You either have to: 1. Level and spend billions of mesos to hp wash your bishop between 6k-10k HP for an easier time or 2. pay super close attention your HP bar/dispels just so you won't die in the run this on top of watching for HT's animations so you can timely dispel DEFUP, clearing spawns and also making sure your party is HS/HSH-ed whenever needed in a normal run, all while controlling your main attacker. What % of the playerbase here owns a HT-ready bishop mule and can operate it to its maximum potential while maintaining DPS? Feels like you're really downplaying the role of BS/BSmules in the current HT meta and its extremely demoralising to see that the trend in recent updates is just to nuke the usage of mules one by one.
A majority of my Zakum runs over the past couple of months I've had maybe two or three active bishop's. I'm unsure how many I've participated in, but it was well over 40. The HT's I've been spectating via GM/participated in, the majority of Bishops are still being muled. I recall seeing maybe five active Bishops for HT out of 30+ instances. Just because they are smega'ing for one, does not necessarily mean they will find one. I've had my Zakum groups smega for active Bishops but in the end nobody responds and we just end up muling one to get the run going.
My following thoughts are a little off topic but please bear with me. Becca first off i'm not targeting you in any manner or what - i wouldn't do that to any member of the staff cuz of how hard they work - but that being said, a lot of new players that i know off come from word of mouth (1 person finds out and asks 2 more.. 2 asks 4 so on and so on). Even myself, i was introduced to play royals from 3 friends who stopped, not because it became boring but of how the staff's backend worked. (Anyone here long enough knows what i am talking about). But yet i still continue to play and get more people to join (last guy was 1mth ago). But soon after (<6mths) most of them stop, not because of a mule meta, but rather of #1 HP washing and #2 Changes to certain stuff (can be anything). For #1 i think its pretty unavoidable due to the nature of the server so thats that. But for #2, honestly this year alone, how many controversial changes have staff made so far? (By controversial i mean any changes that have an equal yes/no ratio) Like ill be honest here, yes the changes do appeal to certain crowd while others remain unhappy (cant please everyone), but when old/regular players leave this server in sought of better alternatives elsewhere, royals isn't just losing 1 player but way more than that. Many of which do not use forums actively at all. Like quite a lot of people that i know, didn't know what happened to the June incident etc. So.. please please please stop making changes that frustrate a good portion of the player base. It's not about identity of a server anymore, i think many people can agree 8 years is a long time. But making changes like: 1) Crash 2) NL 3) BM 4) SED 5) NL Stars 6) Pot Prices 7) EXP changes (i guess staff isn't talking about HP:EXP ratio anymore? idk) 8) LHC timer Super controversial and some people will form a cognitive dissonance to royals. (Maybe its just birds of the same feather that flock together but i'll leave it up to you) And yes more positive changes like: 1) Collector Medal 2) Pirate boss 3) RnJ 4) 1024 client 5) Combo orbs not being dispelled 6) Job Advance HP gains 7) Holy Shield Protect stuns <3 8) Reduce HP washing (too little too late? idk) *If you had a choice, you wouldn't want to live in a country with political instability would ya? Same goes for royals* Spoiler: Relevance For anyone questioning the relevance of this, well Becca did bring up the point of swaying away new players which i feel very strongly about. And also this is one bid, and only bid to make royals better. I wont do it again cuz if things will change for the better, you shouldn't need people to beg about it more than once.
Noted and understandably so. Whenever I can find the time to sit down and properly write a post about those topics in another thread I will do so, but for now I will only say this small piece to fit in with what was echoed above: changes that will frustrate the players can also have a good effect overall on the server too. (A most recent example would be the timer on LHC content. It still needs some minor touches, but the overall take has been pretty positive after some time had passed.) However, the reason why I chose to not address the other elephants in the room in this thread was because it would drive this post off course from what it's originally about.
Every time we come up with strategy to play the game creatively and more effectively, it’s looked at as an advantage over other players why can’t we have fun?? How was it a bug? It didn’t hurt anyone? No one asked for this. I agree with your magic guard/Achilles analysis. Seems like calling it a bug fix is just an excuse to dispose of the shadower meta in the name of class balancing and limiting mules/multi clienting but it’s having quite the opposite effect. We’ve become much less likely to have attacking shadowers be sed now and much more willing to bring a sed mule to die in our place. Now the thing is players with sed mules will be prioritized over players who don’t. Being able to kill arms first in HT was one of the biggest appeals of shadower parties and the so called bug fix has sucked all the joy out of that I doubt players are leaving because shadowers were immune to 1/1. Players leave because we don’t feel heard by the people who have control over changes being made in the server.
I don't play any classes other than warrior but I would like to pop in here really quickly to beg staff to not nerf Achilles pls!
Nah, I dont think so, regardless of that ive actually see warrior users to ask deadly atacks to surpass achiles, actually make that change would be the stupidiest idea ever(not trying to insult anyone, sometimes smart ppl say dumb things), whoever that actually play a warrior will see the big problem this would be(unless they didnt gave much of a tough)
There wasn't any explicit suggestion to nerf Achilles but the topic was brought up to rebuke the Staff's reasoning for "fixing" Meso Guard; which was for Deadly Attacks (“1/1”) to affect all classes the same.
I dont get this meso guard change, if the whole point was to just eliminate sed mules from ht ppl can just bring in 2-3 death mules into ht for sed assuming they get 2 resurrects during the run thats around 50 mins of sed time. Also in old gms when the player gets 1/1 meso guard blocks half the damage so if we're really protecting the "nostalgic feeling" why did we make this change at all?
This bug gave the Chief Bandit and Shadower classes an extreme advantage over all others in boss fights, and has given rise to a HP-washing mule meta. We do not wish to promote either by intentionally keeping this bug around. We understand that this is a controversial change. However, in order to make use of the very limited balancing features and gameplay mechanics this version of the game has to offer, we want Deadly Attacks (“1/1”) to affect all classes the same. It is essential to our ability to design and balance current and future content correctly. This was the official reason(s) quoted from the announcement on Update #73.3 but I believe this thread rebukes it substantially.
I don't quite understand the idea of imposing these changes onto shads now when the future content planned hasn't even released yet. We currently just have a big change that's bleeding out much of the playerbase with no compensation. For devoted shadowers, there's no reason to wash more than 15k now (30k with meso guard). A 15k shad is pretty much just as un-killable as a 30k shad in any of the content we have. The side effects that it has in HT I think are very undesirable from a balancing standpoint. Sed is not a fun mechanic at all. There's no avoiding it with any "good gameplay". The best we could do to survive that doesn't involve muling was to have a washed shadower/NL or a bishop timing and healing the sed target every 3ish minutes. But requiring a bishop main into an HT party just to time and spam heal is not a fun mechanic either.
Yeah, I have halted my shadower for weeks since this "bug fix" happened. Assuming myself about washing my shad to high-tier blood is bloody nonsense! Shadower havent been a go-to class for everyone and please dont eliminate us - devoted shadowers - out of this gameplay.
not enough attention has been garnered by fellow shadower mains (as opposed to the change to avoidability/luk). Guess the developer won't do much about it anyways
I just want to share my experience today as an active sed target at HT, with an active bishop. Our bishop died sadly, not sure how it happened. He was doing great and then it just happened, not his fault. I got sed and was immediately hit with a 1/1 with no MP rendering my hero's will useless. I hit my death timer limit and was warped out and sed was passed onto our BM with 20k HP. And somehow he's surviving much better than I did. But it won't be long until he dies and passes it on to the next person, a vicious domino effect! LOL I'm aware that leveling out the survivability of classes will make current and future bossing more balanced. I like the idea and I appreciate the effort the staff has put into this. Personally, I hate that shadowers are no longer immune to 1/1, but if it's not revokable, please eliminate the need for MP to use Hero's Will and make the cool down shorter so it's not russian roulette.
I'm necroing this because I don't feel like another thread is necessary; How do shadowers feel about the change? I took a break but when I return I wanted to work on a shadower, not sure I still want to with the change, just seeing how shadower mains feel about it
