Why ~bosshp should be brought back & nostalgia vs gameplay

With the new source update, some features from the old source were removed in order to make the game closer resemble old GMS. Amongst the removed features is the command "~bosshp". There are several reasons why I and many others think this command should be brought back, mostly around its impact on how Horntail is taken down on this server.

When killing Horntail, it has always been important to keep track of the arms' hp due to mass dispel and seduce. With ranged single target attackers, such as bowmasters and nightlords, it's easy to avoid this problem by attacking one target at the time and never hit arms. With melee attackers on the other hand, it's a lot more difficult. Classes like heroes, dark knights, shadowers, or dare i even say it, arch mages, all rely on hitting multiple targets to maximize their damage output. Having no way of monitoring arms' hp makes it a lot more risky to attack arms, something all multi target classes used to do back in the old source. Removing ~bosshp is therefore an indirect nerf to those classes, and is likely to make those classes less desired for Horntail, making them less popular and less played.

Multi target classes aren't the only classes who are gonna suffer from this change. In every single Horntail run i went to in the old source, the bishop would leave party before each part dies to avoid leeching experience. This was done so the attackers would get as much experience as possible. People more often than not do not care about gaining experience on their bishops and therefore leaves party before each part dies. That is no longer possible, seeing as there is no way to know when a part is about to die. This also applies to Zakum arms, but that is not as big of an issue because killing zak arms usually doesn't take very long, so kicking the bishop after hs-ing the party is a lot more doable. Having an extra character leech experience from Horntail might not sound that bad, but when Horntail is to many people their main source of experience, this is gonna make quite a significant difference in terms of leveling speed for attacker classes.

The removal of ~bosshp is also gonna hurt mages ability to do Horntail. Seeing as mages have really low hp, and only a handful people hp wash mages, magic guard is gonna be required to survive. As many people know, head B starts dispelling every 5 minutes when below 60% hp, and every 3 minutes when below 30%. Without ~bosshp, people are either gonna have to guess when the dispel is coming, or just nonstop hold down magic guard in hopes of not dying, both of which are pretty stupid.

It seems like ~bosshp was removed due to not being a part of the original game and not having a nostalgic value, maybe even ruining the nostalgic feel of the server. I can honestly understand this. It's a custom command, making the server feel more like a private server than old GMS, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think Royals used to have a good balance between nostalgic gameplay and fun/rewarding gameplay with features like the fm button, infinite apq and no mandatory boatrides, which i believe is what made the game so attractive to so many people (there's a reason there are no successful 1x servers around). Now on the other hand, it seems like the server is trying to move in a different direction, removing the above mentioned features in hopes of a more nostalgic server that closer resembles old GMS, and I honestly think that is going pretty badly so far. None of the GMS like changes or fixes has made the game more nostalgic (atleast not in my eyes) and has only made the game more tedious and annoying. I'm not saying the game should never be changed to be more nostalgic, but i do think there is a line where such changes hurt the game more than than they benefit it, and i believe the removal of ~bosshp, as well as several of the new changes has crossed that line.

I honestly feel like my feedback on this topic is not gonna be taken that seriously. I'm a high leveled player, I'm about to reach lv200 for the third time and i am way past the first nostalgic phase of playing old school maple. That must mean i only want ~bosshp so i can spam ht more, without caring about the nostalgic aspects of the server, right??? No, i do care. I think the server being nostalgic is part of what makes it so great, but i still think certain features should remain like they were in the old source, despite not being the most nostalgic, in order to preserve the great game Royals once was, for both the noobs and the pros, for everyone. A simple command or feature wouldn't significantly hurt the games nostalgia anyway, the same goes for other features such as fm button and no boat rides. I therefore believe it would be in the servers best interest to reintroduce ~bosshp as a feature to the game, and strongly hope the administration will reconsider their previous decision to remove it. Thank you.

 

Can I ask a simple question? How were all these issues you cited overcome in GMS with Horntail when ~bosshp didn't exist?

 

We aren't GMS, that's the difference. We're a well established private server with 4 years of history, 4 years of habits and rituals and gameplay ingrained in how we do literally everything.

Edited to add : This has many more uses than just horntail, too. ~bosshp was useful to see your DPS per minute to an exact amount. You could make the most out of HS by HSing right before zakum arms went down and leaving party on the bishop - bishops would trade off losing exp for gaining mesos from drops instead. You could use ~bosshp in a map to see if a boss had spawned in it in larger maps, which is even more important now that you can't see someone across the map to see if they're there. (Relatively annoying problem at anego/bigfoot).

HP washing wasn't really a thing in GMS because it costs money. But it's a big part of the server here. Gacha was a rare thing, itcg was uncommon. Barely anyone had NX clothing. Etc. Daily play on GMS was a lot different than we are and have been for the past four years, and I'll forever agree that we are not GMS and should not compare ourselves to it. We play Royals to play Royals. Not to play a GMS lookalike.

 

It's not about whether or not its possible to take down Horntail, it's about it being significantly different than what it used to be, and that people who have spent thousands of hours making for example a hero, are gonna find out they spent all that time making a hero just to attack one target at the time at Horntail. Of course horntail isnt the entire game, but it plays a big part as its currently the end game boss on Royals. I'll also say that GMS was 1x exp. Yes, people still got to lv200, it wasn't impossible, but that doesn't mean Royals should change to 1x just beacause its how things were in GMS. The 4x exp rate is a good representation of the difficulty of the server, and i'm sure i'm not the only one who thinks the difficulty shouldn't randomly change 4 years into a servers lifetime. These things were set when the server started, and it would be stupid to just change it after the server is so well established. For years people have been leveling off of Horntail without the bishop leeching, and regardless of what the original purpose of the command was, taking it away is gonna result in leveling being significantly slower for attackers. It's almost the same as straight up lowering the exp rate...

 

While I can understand that, matt, my personal opinion as a player is that its benefits and the ease of use it gives outweighs the negatives. It's something we grew used to for 3 and a half years, and I don't see it as much of a negative that players found a way for it to help them out in other ways too.

I liked to use it to see if there was a boss in the map before I even entered it. I could walk into Twisted Paths and ~bosshp to see if bigfoot spawned, if it did what % HP was it at and how much damage had been done to it. If it had only been touched once and only 100k damage was done to it, you could ~mapowner and see who owned the map. I had it on a macro with haste, so I would literally enter the map, haste, darksight and judge from there.
You could tell if they died, or if they just happened to hit it a few times and decided it wasn't worth it before leaving.

You could use it at zakum (which is definitely not a difficult boss fight by any means) to maximize the use out of HS. (Which is perfectly fine to do because if you made the character, you should be able to use it however you wish within the server rules.)

I liked to use it at oblivion 5 to see if a Lyka was in the map, so I didn't have to barge in on someone who was killing it.

I barely HT'd, but it was annoying enough even with ~bosshp. It's only not a "difficult" boss for the top players because of the overall power the players have on the server. (Which is why Targa/Scar for 18x+ can be considered, a buffed CWKPQ could be considered, and PB as further end game content). That's something that will never change unless you wiped the server, which we already know we wouldn't ever do. With 4 years of growth, you're going to have players who are trying to perfect the already-perfect. But you'll always have people who are just coming in and going HT for the first times, too.

I think it boils down to that, in the end - we have 4 years of history on the server. 3 and a half of that was with these things that people are protesting changes to. While some changes are understandable to make, others really have helped shape and mold the server that we all play and love, and that's how /I/ feel about it having played new and old, with and without. I honestly, honestly miss ~bosshp even more than warp to FM button, it provided information that really gave no harm in its use.

 

There is a reason there are no successful 1x servers, and a reason why Royals has been successful for 4 years.

There is also a reason why GMS died.....
Don't over-update, don't mess with things that worked!

And Royals worked, even if it was 'not GMS-like'... it worked, because it was Royals.


Added conclusion:
---------------------
Bring back core things of ROYALS, such as ~bosshp, fm button, etc.

Make Royals Great Again.
Make Royals Royals Again.

 

I don't think bosshp makes horntail easier to kill, its just different. Bosshp makes runs more interesting, rather than just having to attack 1 target at a time in the same order every time we could monitor what parts we need to put more or less dps on and move our party accordingly. I see how no bosshp will make runs slower and thats it, I don't see how slower runs are harder or more fun.

With that said I'm willing to try out horntail whenever it is released even without bosshp.

 

Hampa brought up a great point. Removing ~bosshp (amongst other unfortunate things new source brought us) makes the game more tedious, more cumbersome, and genuinely less enjoyable. I venture to say that any feature introduced in a game that makes it less fun is bad game design. But considering how that wouldn't be enough justification to argue for the reintroduction of ~bosshp, let me give some insight into how Horntail runs will be different. In old source, the standard was a 5 or 6 party Horntail, comprised of 1 bishop, 1 BM or MM, 1 hero or Dark Knight, and the rest as attackers, usually Night Lords, sometimes sairs, even less commonly additional BM or MM. The reason why Horntail runs sought out at least one warrior (as a disclaimer, warriors in this post don't include paladins), and often enough had two warriors, was because the run was most efficient with a melee attacker hitting Left Hand and Wings before tail had died and Right Hand, Wings, and Head C after the tail had died. The ranged attackers would kill legs and tail and when tail had died, go to Head A. So the party was split for almost the entire run, until Head C died, leaving only Head B and Left Hand to be killed. The party members actually had different roles and different functions in the boss fight. You had to diversify that classes you taked for the most optimal boss run. And now, what purpose do warriors serve in Horntail? Sure, some midgame players would need a warrior, almost always a hero, for the sed mule. But at endgame, we can all dual client even a sed mule. Sure, some midgame players would need a warrior to kill Dark Wyverns. But at endgame, it's increasingly more common for players to 1 hit the Dark Wyverns with their bishops. And, in fact, five Dark Wyverns spawn at Horntail and warriors cna only kill three at a time. Bishops are the better solution for this problem, if they can 1 hit. There's no reason to take a warrior as an attacker at Horntail because their niche role in bringing down the HP of Horntail's right side parts is no longer viable. So warriors are, effectively, not an asset anymore. They're a liability. As a decently experienced Horntail bosser, I genuinely cannot see how bringing a warrior on a Horntail run would add anything because I, and others at this gameplay level, just bring a sed mule character to dual client anyway and just 1 hit the Dark Wyverns. And that's really sad. I do understand warriors still can attack Horntail parts in the old source style. But it's very precarious without the ability to monitor ~bosshp. If the strongest character in the party is the warrior, there's the distinct possibility that Left Hand will drop below 60% for the silent dispel (a very dangerous silent killer for even experienced bishops, failing the entire run), Right Hand will drop below 30% for mass sed (which will kill the entire party, including bishop). This all doesn't concern just endgame players. This is also very bad for midgame players who don't have the damage and muling ability of endgame players. The order of Horntail part kills goes: legs, tails, melee on Head A while ranged kills wings, so wings, Head A, Head C, Head B, Right Hand, Left Hand. To people who haven't Horntailed, this seems fine. But it's not. As everyone is attacking Head A, you cannot see the wyverns that spawn at the bottom middle of Horntail's body. Dark Wyverns spawn when Head A, Head B, and Head C are below 60%. Dark Wyverns will fly up towards the party and do their dispel attack. This attack both hits for about 2000 damage and dispels at the same time. For low HP bishops, it's an instant kill. And for those who can survive the Dark Wyverns' attack, they must spam Magic Guard if they're not able to kill the Dark Wyverns themselves. This would be at LEAST half an hour of spamming Magic Guard. Just to make sure you don't get dispelled and then die to an attack from Horntail itself. It makes dual clienting a bishop nearly impossible if you can't kill the Dark Wyverns yourself, since you can't hold down Magic Guard while attacking on your attacker unless you have separate computers. Dark Wyvern management at midgame makes Horntail much more annoying, not harder. When we had ~bosshp, warriors would stay at Right Hand while the rest of the attackers were hitting Head A and Head C. For more than half the fight, midgame players were able to do Horntail and manage the Dark Wyverns effectively because at the platform where warriors hit Left Hand and Right Hand, their screen shows the wyverns upon spawn. Up at Head A and Head C, you can't see when the wyverns spawn and don't even know they're there until they fly up. So killing Dark Wyverns now without ~bosshp, having warriors up at Head A and Head C, is a pain. Constant dispel hits, bishop in grave danger, attackers having to rebuff and call for SE, SI, etc etc. It's just more annoying. Our Fryslan Horntail video is in the spoiler below. I post it because of how happy that day was for me, and how much fun the game was for me then. But also to give some advice for future Horntail bossers. 22:20 shows how Dark Wyverns spawn at Horntail main body. At 29:00, you can see how inability to see wyverns disrupts the party, and these were only Red Wyverns. At 30:18, you can see how even the platform by Head A makes you unable to see wyverns. And to bishops, at 30:07, learn this animation. Head B dispels with this animation, and it has a sound to it too. I didn't record the sound in this run, otherwise I would've uploaded the original video I have. Regardless, without being able to see ~bosshp, watch your buffs when you see this animation and immediately Magic Guard. You have at least a 3 minute safe period from dispels after dispel hits, but be vigilant for the next one at your 3 minute window ends.

So in conclusion, removing ~bosshp just makes the game LESS FUN, NOT MORE DIFFICULT. And it just baffles me why this is all done for the sake of nostalgia, or usage not as intended. People liked and had fun with the old system. Was it gamebreaking? No. It made us enjoy the game more with all these amenities, that MapleStory never had. Royals was BETTER than MapleStory ever was. And all these little things getting pushed through despite clear community opposition make me very sad. Yes, it is your server. It is your money that you put in to keep this up. It is your choice what you do with it. But why fix what wasn't broken? Why take away what the community liked and loved? Why make all these changes that make it a worse, less fun game? I don't think I'll ever understand why.



@Martin and all others who YouTube blocks: https://ca.proxfree.com/permalink.php?url=s54aaHA/aGsaD5vHs0QZLcUclS/cUxrnNZwEMCiA0I/FFXMNqJliIB5+DBvpDo186cmvfbwG+okcB4UrVGQtZqEH4uxrtUCSFxn/t/8lC6moQXBcQIRo0sMBx4Ya4QqQWn5xwnfWdnDlLX/gP4Anq0imxLkiYkbLSsMJAGw8ZSA=&bit=1.

 

I totally agree with @John & @Matt .
As a veteran player in Maple (2005-2011), I would like to say that it reminds me of the days when parties actually played as A TEAM. This team also consists of having a good leader that can create strong parties and strategies to guide his/her team through boss raids. When I found Royals and read "FEEL THE NOSTALGIA" I thought: "demm bro my childhood back" and thought about all the expeditions, runs, quest, etc." Obviously, Royals had/has their own setups and people have been accustomed to it being a ONE FINGER GAME, which can be boring.

Sometimes when I read about people talking about “carries, cores, support jobs” and then hear about people bossing while watching TV while pressing 1 button I wonder, “IS THIS ACTUALLY A JOB OF A SUPPORT?” When I compare this game to other games like dota2/lol/hon I think, “demm bro I’m wasting 40 min of my life just pressing 1 button without using my brain -feel dumb af lol -“.

In the old days, when I used to be Bishop (1st squad in PB Scania) I remember being an hour in with my squad (f*k 1 hour focus on a game dude) and we would actively participate by talking to others on Skype to strategize the order of skill from warriors, pirate, NL’s and what not.

Nowadays, you can do “DUO/TRIO HT” put a movie and go afk, do ~hpwash, change the target while watching TV so in the end, is this really fun for you? Well I hope that new features can enhance the game with or without ~hpboss.

Regards,
Bryanz aka HoitSvR.

 

As a strong supporter of the ~bosshp command I have to say that having the ability to use it actually promotes the leadership and party play that you desire. Having the ability to check the HP of each body part at HT opens doors to add strategy into it by being able to instruct everyone on when/where to split up and when they need to stop in order to kill it most efficiently. In all of the many runs that that I've been on, not once has there been a lack of strategy and leadership. While it's true that people can and do watch shows during boss runs, ~bosshp was not at fault. The lack of ~bosshp will take away all of the strategy that once existed, turning HT into nothing but "Everyone smack this one body part until it's dead" and to me that isn't fun. I've been through many HT runs on quite a few different classes and I'd have to say that one of the most fun for me was bishop because rather than sitting back almost AFK and HSing everyone when bodyparts were going to die, the downtime from playing on a non-dps class gave me time to lead and instruct my parties.

 

removing bosshp command makes it even more mindless, you just have to kill one part at a time. Theres not even an option for a squad leader to check the progress and re-arrange the party for a better/more efficient run. Only big difference without bosshp is that its not as viable to bring warriors to runs anymore.

I'm aware that horntail perhaps wasn't working as intended even in the later stages of old source. But even in gms there was a safe route you kill part a then part b... so on till all parts are dead. The big difference here is that a lot of us have an abundant amount of hp and our dmg is quite a bit above what people had back in gms around the time.

 

Not necessarily true, you can still get a good sense of how much damage your party is doing and when to stop hitting certain parts of horntail (or any boss for that matter) without bosshp. When you run with the same group of people everyday, over time you'll begin to develop a mental timer of when and how long everything should take and and what to do after these many minutes have passed. So in that sense bosshp makes it easier to keep track of everything thus actually making horntail easier. If you want to be greedy and not take exp on your mules by kicking them right before certain parts die or not trigger mass seduce you're gonna have to build that skill by trial and error.

Another thing I'd like to add is that bosshp is part of the reason why we have this "mule culture". Bringing buff mules to boss runs and kicking your bishop was never supposed to be a thing but all of this was possible due to bosshp. Being able to easily know when to kick your mules and bish by typing a simple command encourages this. Since you know horntail isn't going to cast mass sed as long as you don't get the arms below this % of hp and know exactly when mass sed is going to happen when head b falls below this hp % you no longer need a dedicated bishop because there's no fear of something going wrong. I'd argue that a good party leader is needed more than ever without bosshp if you continue to fight horntail the way we did in the old source.

It's not that bosshp makes the game easier or harder, it's that it changes the way we fight bosses. Personally I'm neutral on bosshp, whether it comes back or not I'm fine with either way.

 

You're right to a certain extent IF your goal is to beat ht in the fastest time possible you could go with the same squad over and over and take the time/mark the hp bar for when certain things start and so on. My prediction is that the changes will heavily promote that you take the safest route as seen even before these changes. There might have been faster ways to beat horntail that we didn't really venture into like having warriors kill arms completely while heads were still alive to take advantage of their multi target as much as possible. however this was not considered safe and I guess only ever done by inexperienced squads or when something went wrong.

Having a consistent squad of people who can run is good if you can do that but its not that easy, however it is not that hard to just go the safe route. Using mules is still as easy as ever before just make sure that they're under level 155 and you don't have to leave party or anything.

 

Tbh I don't think it'll be that much harder to kill horntail compared to the old source. The reason I say that is because people tend to run with others that are close to them in terms of funding so your damage should be on a similar level as everyone else's and that's the key, your damage relative to your party members. A party with an average level of 190 will have the damage of a 190 and will likely not look for 160s to fill the last attacker slot. As a warrior you can gauge how much damage you've done to the arms in the amount of time it takes for your party to kill the legs, tail and wings. With enough experience, figuring out when to stop attacking shouldn't be that difficult but only time will tell I suppose.

People will always try to take the most optimal path so the argument of trying to clear horntail the fastest doesn't really apply because who doesn't want to kill it as fast as possible? Let's say if most people do decide to take the safer route, well then that gives experienced players the opportunity to flaunt just how good they are and create an example for new parties on how a good horntail party should be ran or something for people to look up to which I think is pretty neat.

Anyways, regardless of what happens I think it'll be interesting to see just how much impact bosshp will have on horntail when it gets fixed.

 

Learn2format pls =(

Warriors(Hero/Drks) won't become obsolete at Horntail. At least one warrior is desirable to clear out Dark Wyverns because there few bishops in this server who can 100% 1 hit Dark Wyverns. One warrior in the party would probably maximize DPS.


3 NL, 1 SE, 1 Warrior, 1 Bishop would probably be the optimal setup.

Everyone starts legs. The warrior will hit Left Arm/Wings/Legs at the same time.
Once legs dies, the ranged attackers will switch to Tail while the warrior continues attacking Left Arm/Wings.
Once tail dies, the ranged attackers will attack Head A while the warrior attacks Right Arm/Wings/Head C.
Ideally, the ranged attackers will finish Head A while the warrior continues DPSing 3 body parts and clears Dark Wyverns when they spawn.
Once Head A dies, the ranged attackers will switch to Head C and attack it with the warrior. Head C should die around the same time as Wings.
Once Head C and Wings are both dead, then everyone should switch to Head B.
Once Head B dies, switch to Right Arm and then Left Arm.

In my experience, a warrior shouldn't be able too single handedly drop an arm below a dangerous threshold. The Left Arm is dangerous below 60% because it will start casting dispel. The Right Arm below 60% HP only casts curses more which are a minor nuisance. Both Arms should never be below 30% unless the Arms are the only remaining body parts because they will mass SED below 30% HP.

Excluding a massive disparity between a single warrior and the ranged attackers, the warrior shouldn't be able to drop Left Arm below 60% before Legs and Tail dies, or drop Right Arm below 30% before Head A & C and Wings die.

Warriors won't become obsolete in Horntail, 1 warrior will still be efficient but bringing 2 warriors will be inefficient because they will have to limit their attacks to 1 body part much sooner to avoid causing untimely dispels + mass SED.


One person will still have to be the SED target and it's usually the Hero. Even without PG reducing magic damage, they'll still be the best choice to tank SED due to higher HP and PG reducing physical damage. It's possibly for a NL with high HP and possibly HB to tank SED if there's no Hero.

For veteran players it won't be an issue. They'll find a way to make their party work somehow. If they want to bring a DRK instead of Hero then there might be some NL who can act as SED target. There are a lot of high HP NLs these days.
It might become a hassle if 2 warriors want to join.

Players who are just starting off will have a much more difficult time and their Horntail runs might become much longer to create a reasonable level of safety and success.

 

I consider that it doesn’t give that ability to a leader to analyze that offers the "boss" as goals, achievements, and behavior within the game. It does not allow you to come up with a more risky, novel or fun strategy because we have accustomed our players to follow a single way of doing "satisfactorily" the run: legs>tail>headA/headC-wings-lefthand/>etc. So what leadership do you mean if the end-game "boss" is extremely easy.

DO NOT. It does not open the door to anything: to know what will happen in the future, to keep "pushing a button" for the next 5minutes, and to have the "culture of mules" we currently have because there is a decrease of difficulty that must present an "End-game boss" for any MMORPG. What other MMORPG do you know that keeps your players as robots without thinking at the push of a button? Endgame bosses are designed for their achievements and behavior (degree of difficulty). The behavior of the boss is something that the player should not know, you must experience it.

Every time I have gone there has always been a kind of rule for "HT", subjectively correct for many, because ~bosshp has allowed it. What does being a leader entail? Doing ~bosshp and moving people is all it takes to be a leader? For me, that can be done by anyone. A leader must engage with the boss, pay attention to the changes, be willing to take the pressure that an "end-game boss" must present. At the end of the run, the leader must feel the satisfaction of achieving it, of having his party succeeded because that's why the boss was designed and much more if it is the last and only one in Maple.

A thorn that once existed? There has never been a strategy. The only way to make a "satisfactory run" has been raised/imposed by the old players and inherited by the new ones. ~Bosshp does not allow you to concentrate on the game so you don't enjoy the experience of "fight and then defeat" something that is considered to be the hardest boss. Nowadays, HT becomes monotonous, routine, boring. What is fun for you? If you now do duo / trio, watch television, bring mules, stay afk. I have fun when I find the difficulty and I overcome it, I have fun when the game presents me with something new.

Opinion personal:
I've read a lot on this topic and I think what really bothers people is breaking that established "status quo". No one wants to risk a new experience with a single end-game boss. I remember when before was actually an accomplishment to do HT and even if they say "royals" have better players forget that the average players are 1500 today of that total as much pro / godlys players are 100 (7% of the population Royals) while in GMS we were millions, there was the purchase/sale of mesos (legal), RWT that made people also exist top, even with "HP wash" and even I can assure that their rank atk was not so far from the pro-Royals players. There are ways to make "satisfactory" runs. And yes, yes, the number of fail runs will increase but that's good, it's good for players to understand that HT is a difficult boss, that he feels that HT is the only end-game boss in Royals fam. If you are running, pay attention to your run, have fun with SED, feel the pressure and get to "stress" healthy so at the end you feel that you achieved it, that it was complicated but u made it.

Regards,
Bryanz

 

In case the command returns and people wishing to live a different experience (more difficult in horntail run) they can simply decide not to use the command

 

I don't really get your point here. You're saying that having ~bosshp in the game takes away the strategy from Horntail, promotes using mules, takes away leadership and makes maple into a one button game, yet you say nothing to back up those claims.

You claim ~bosshp makes maple into a one button game, but what would we do without bosshp? mindlessly attack one target until it dies. With bosshp on the other hand, we have something else to do while we hold that one button (and tbh if you don't like just holding a button, i advice you to not play a hero in maplestory). If anything, royals is afk-able because of hp washing and pet auto hp, not because of bosshp.

You also claim ~bosshp is at fault for our mule culture, because bosshp makes Horntail too easy. May i ask how does Horntail's difficulty have anything to do with mules? People bloodwash their mules to 20k+ hp and have pet pot, meaning the mules almost never die from Horntail's attacks, same with the actual attackers. How is ~bosshp supposed to make having mules easier? The reason people can bring mules is not because being able to monitor individual parts' hp makes Horntail easier, but rather because 4x exp and easy multiclienting makes it really easy to make and use those mules, it has nothing to do with bosshp (with the exception of hs mules at ht, but i talked about that in my original post). I used to play bishop a lot at Horntail, and even though bosshp made it possible to only hs before parts die and to bring hs mules, not bringing a dedicated bishop still had several disadvantages. A dedicated bishop could dispell, keep people alive and kill wyverns to increase the attackers dps, so its not like a bishop mule was any real substitute for an actual bishop. Especially considering powerguard no longer affects magic attacks, dedicated bishops are probably gonna be required for Horntail anyway, so bosshp wouldn't change that.

You also say ~bosshp takes away the leadership in Horntail runs. I don't know what leadership you're expecting to see at Horntail. The difficulty in bosses in maplestory, at least in older versions like v83, used to be around the bosses having lost of hp and hard hitting attacks/seduce/dispel. They aren't difficult because you have to dodge/land attacks and stuff like in other games. This is not some rts game where a leader is required to move around his/her troops strategically in order to defeat the enemy. Bosses in maplestory are just meatwalls with some fancy attacks, and having bosshp, allowing people to utilize multitarget attacks for optimal dps while being careful to not lower certain targets hp too low, only makes the game more interesting. I don't really see what leadership is required here, other than maybe the very first time a boss is taken down, but most people know the strategies used at Horntail, and new players learn from the ones who know (and just because a strategy is used a lot, it doesn't mean there's no strategy at all. We just don't think about it anymore). How would no bosshp increase leadership required anyway? Does only bringing ranged attackers and never hitting arms open up to new strategies? If anything, a strong boss squad leader in maple organizes the runs and distributes the loot well, and ~bosshp doesn't change that.

There's been alot of discussion around ~bosshp in horntail in this thread, and while most of whats been said is true, it's not the entire story, and it's not the only point i wanted to bring up in this thread. The real reason most of us want bosshp back along with other removed features, is because the meta and the game we all fell in love with is changing. I can see what Matt is going for here. I honestly think a completely GMS like server could be really fun, but i also think a completely GMS like server would get really boring after the first 2 days. People come to royals for the nostalgia, but stay for the gameplay, and what we had in the old source clearly worked. I mentioned in my original post that 4x is a good representation of the difficulty of the server. We aren't as hard as GMS was, this isnt 1x with shitty skele spawn. Royals had its own ways, its own rules and game mechanics that formed a game that we all loved to play. I personally left a server with boatrides and other "gms like" features for royals, because i found royals to simply be more attractive as a game, and that is exactly why royals is so successful, since it worked so well as a game. Nostalgia may be the book cover that attracts us, but the gameplay is what we love and play this server for, and making these changes, even though they are made with the best of intentions, is screwing with the game we all loved. No one came to royals to ride boats and wait 6 hours between apq runs, we started playing because we liked what the game presented to us when we first played. Matt said he wanted to wait and see how these changes affect the game, and i'd be lying if i said i don't agree. I can see how it is better to wait and see what effect the changes has on the community and game first rather than instantly changing back to how things were. I can see how some things are in need of change, but i and many others also believe that several of the changes made in the new source have just moved the game too much in a different direction, one that we don't like. It moves the game away from what we liked into something us players don't like as much. Old royals wasn't perfect, but neither is new royals. I'm really hoping the game will eventually find a balance point between old royals and new gms like royals, and when that time comes, i'm sure Royals will be an amazing game, both as a nostalgic game, and as a fun and rewarding game.