Notice Staff Blog: June 2023 Q2

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Hello Royallers!

It is time for the Second Quarter GM Blog! Much has happened over the past three months. This Blog will cover the major changes and events that have occurred this Spring.


Lion Heart Castle Chapter 3 - Rose Garden:
We rolled out Lion Heart Castle Chapter 3 - Rose Garden to the server in April. We were very excited to release this content, as it allows for a more robust solo grinding experience. Overall, the rollout was a huge success, with players eagerly exploring the new content and providing positive feedback for our team to review.

After reviewing your feedback, we have decided to implement a few balancing changes for the Rose Garden that will help moderate the influx of mesos that have been generated from the new content, while still keeping it rewarding for our community. These changes should be applied during the next major server check/update. Specific details will be released in the update patch notes when they are officially released.


Von Leon:
From a balance perspective, we are mostly happy with the current state of our Lion King boss. Unfortunately we had to swap out his Damage Reflect skill for Dispel, because it wasn’t the threat we wanted it to be. However, in the meantime, our developers were able to make some changes here and there. So watch out for a much deadlier version of Damage Reflect in the future!



Terms and Conditions:
In January, we introduced a new rule to our Game Terms and Conditions under Moderate Infractions called "Handling real world trade goods". This rule was put in place to make it more difficult for real world traders to launder their goods, and to prevent players from profiting off of 'cheap' real world trade deals. See below for specific details about this new rule:

1. Handling real world trade goods - The act of orchestrating high value trades with suspicious individuals for large profits without doing your due diligence on their background.
   First offense also includes the removal of the goods or total of the equivalent value that was traded for. You will not get your original items back.

For the purpose of this rule 'High value' is considered 5 billion mesos or higher. You're expected to do your due diligence on any trade you plan to make that's valued over 5 billion mesos by utilizing questions like the ones provided below:

• What is their forum account?
• Who are their main characters?
• Can they contact you from those accounts?
• Around how long have they been playing?
• Why are they selling what they are selling?
• Does it make sense for them to have these goods comparatively to their MapleRoyals progress?
• Is there a forum thread on this item to get the best offer? If not, why not?
• Any of these points not making sense? inform staff prior to trading

Any of these points not making sense and something feels off? Do not make the trade and feel free to report the user on the forums here.

Players knowingly and repeatedly making suspicious trades with suspicious characters and/or making a single extremely high-valued suspicious trade that had garnered them a significant amount of mesos and/or advantage are still subject to this rule.

You risk the chance to get temporarily banned and have your goods removed without getting anything back if there's no sign of you doing your due diligence and the trade you made was too good to be true with a real world trade related character.
You will not get banned or have goods removed if you made legitimate effort in your due diligence and proceeded with the trade where later on the person you traded with turned out to be a real world trader that had you fooled.
This rule does not include items sold in free market merchants since the limit is 5 billion mesos. Additionally, this rule does not include leech services (pending the service was actually provided).
Staff reserves the right to permanently ban you for your first offense depending on the severity of the trade(s) and their value.


Staff Changes:

• Pure:
  • Throughout his time as a GM Intern, Pure made a significant impact by actively combatting hackers and rule breakers within the game. With his keen eye and dedication to maintaining fair gameplay for all, Pure swiftly wielded the ban hammer, ensuring that hackers and rule breakers were removed from the community. Additionally, Pure's commitment extended well beyond in-game actions, as they played a vital role in managing ban appeals and handling reports throughout the forum.

• Nut :
  • During his time on staff, Nut played a crucial role in supporting and nurturing the MapleRoyals server community. Nut's dedication and expertise were instrumental in maintaining a safe environment both in game and on the forums for our community. With his exceptional problem-solving skills and genuine care for players, Nut fostered a welcoming and enjoyable gaming environment, ensuring that MapleRoyals thrived under their watchful guidance. His diligence and fairness in reviewing cases helped maintain a healthy and safe environment for all players, contributing to the overall integrity of the server. Finally, Nut dedicated extra time to assist our developers with wz editing.

• Karven:
  • As many have noticed, Karven has not been around recently. Due to personal reasons, Karven had to temporarily step away from his duties on staff. We hope to see him return soon, and wish him the best in the meantime!
    • Yeehaw (Yeepog) has taken a more active role in the development of the server. He is currently working on many exciting quality of life changes that we hope to implement soon!
• Ravir:
  • During his time as a GM Intern, Ravir helped not only provide valuable feedback to our team and community, but also with monitoring in game for rulebreakers. We are grateful for his contributions to this server and community! Unfortunately, Ravir has had some real-life commitments that have taken him away from his staff duties. We wish you the very best Ravir!

• Dave Deviluke:
  • We are very excited to announce that the one and only Dave Deviluke has rejoined staff! Dave has rejoined the ranks of Staff to carry on where he left off as a Forum Moderator. Dave is very excited to maintain any trains in the Shoutbox, ensure there is no or happening, and ensuring that our forums are organized and responses are sent out in a timely manner!
• Dong and Bacon:
  • Both Dong and Bacon have been promoted to fully fledged GMs from their internship. We appreciate all of your contributions to not only staff but the community over the past year and look forward to seeing you excel in your new role!

Thank you to Pure, Nut and Ravir for your dedication to this server! We wish you guys the best as you continue to thrive in this community and throughout your personal lives!


Party Quest Changes and Token Improvement:
This has been on our to do list for quite a while. It is clear from feedback that there are many quality of life improvements that could be made for PQs. In addition, there are other proposed changes that would serve to motivate players to PQ more often, whether that be new token rewards or buffs to PQ rewards themselves. We are still open for suggestions in threads like this.
Here are some sneak peaks for y’all while we work more on this!



Adventurer's Assignment Questline:
In the thrilling Adventurer's Assignment questline, players embark on a captivating journey filled with challenges and unique rewards as they progress through a series of tasks. This dynamic questline allows players to showcase their strength and knowledge. From slaying monsters throughout the realm to partying up with fellow players for party quests, every Assignment presents an opportunity for players to demonstrate their skill and determination. With each successful completion, players gain valuable rewards allowing them to tackle even more formidable foes. The "Adventurer's Assignment" questline offers an immersive and rewarding experience, fostering a sense of accomplishment as players level up and forge their path towards greatness.

This was another big milestone for our server, as we introduced new ways for players to shape their paths, gain new items, and increase their HP/MP! We hope everyone has been enjoying this questline, and always appreciate any feedback provided by our community!


MapleRoyals 10 Year Anniversary:
On May 17th, 2023, MapleRoyals officially turned 10 years old! Still too young to play its own game . To kick this off, a few words from the one and only Matt!:


"It's hard to believe that it's MapleRoyals has now been around for 10 whole years. A decade of leveling up characters, questing, bossing, PQ'ing, exploring, and most importantly building friendships, some of which extend beyond the borders of our game. This has been such a big milestone for us, and I hope you have all been enjoying the recent 10th Anniversary events.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to extend a massive thank you to every single one of you who has been part of this journey so far. Whether you're a seasoned veteran who has been with us from the beginning or a fresh-faced newcomer just starting out, you've all contributed to making MapleRoyals what it is today. Together, we've built more than just a game; we've created a enthusiastic community that's truly one-of-a-kind.

I'm truly grateful for all the feedback, suggestions and invaluable discussions that have been had throughout these years. They've helped shape the game into the unique experience that it is today. Your passion, dedication, and love for the game never ceases to amaze, I am thrilled to see the game still thriving after such a long time. This is your achievement as much as ours, and this anniversary is not just a celebration of the game but a celebration of you, the players who have made it possible.

Looking forward to the future, we promise to keep the spirit of MapleRoyals alive, with many more adventures, challenges, and surprises waiting for us in the years to come.

Once again, thank you for an amazing decade of MapleRoyals, and here's to many more!"


Next, to celebrate, we've released our typical anniversary events that many enjoyed throughout the years along with new and fresh content. We hope everyone's enjoying our new PB themed activities along with our event exclusive Golden Zakum Helmet designed by @Joong. We're also hosting our (Re-)create your MapleRoyals Memory Forum Event to give everyone a place to share their own tributes, memories, and homages to commemorate their time spent with Royals.

Finally, we wanted to give a special thank you to @Joong for his very thoughtful MapleRoyals 10 Year Timeline. This was a very special post, so from the bottom of our hearts Thank You!


MapleRoyals Website and Forum Updates:
Our very own Yeehaw (Yeepog) has been hard at work rolling out a brand new website design! This includes better security, additional features, and a whole lot of potential for the future!

Additionally, we will be adding some new Pepe emotes. Shoutout to @pragmasaurus for some awesome custom designs

alongside some fresh original ones!


We are very excited to see what Yeehaw has in store for our website and forum moving forward.


The Future:
Von Leon, Rose Garden, the 10th Anniversary, and the Adventurer's Assignment Questline were certainly major milestones for us this year, but by no means is it our final chapter. We have many things in store for 2023 and beyond! Here are a few things we are continuously working on:

• Class Skill Balance - We have been diligently working towards implementing the changes discussed around forums, and particularly here. The big challenge for this project is that some of the popular requests require heavy or tricky client work to implement correctly.
• Staff Moderation Tools - As Matt identified with his response to your feedback on ban appeals, our developers will continue to work on a more broad tool set that will hopefully help increase response time for appeals/other support requests. This one is tricky however due to the sensitive nature of much of our player data. Many requests that require Admin attention involve searching through logs that only our Admins should have access to. Finally, as Matt identified with his response, bringing new Admins on board is not as easy as it seems. One of our top priorities is to protect our user's data which includes their personal chat logs in game, etc.
  • You may have noticed that Kenny (Developer) has played a more active role with certain ban appeals that would normally require Admin intervention. Kenny has elevated access to certain logs that have allowed him to assist with various tasks that an admin would otherwise need to accomplish. We hope that this has helped in the meantime as we look at further ways to promote better response times.
• Our friendly neighborhood Pink monster?

There are other projects, big and small, that we are also working on continuously. We are always combing the feedback section for ideas, and player feedback is always factored in when designing content, so keep it coming!
Speaking of that, we are once more requesting your feedback on a change we have recently been discussing internally. This time it’s about the item color system of our game highlighting items in grey, white, orange, purple or yellow. Let us know what you think about the proposed idea here.


Happy Mapling!
-The MapleRoyals Staff

 

@Cynn Try now