Hmm I actually love grinding, but my career and my family are now my top priority. I used to be able to grind the living day light outta maple when I was in college. 36.5 hours of straight grinding during 48 hours of Christmas x2 exp event back in 2009 was my longest grind (36.5 hours was not including holding the skele map for 6 hours before the starting of the event), and I did 1 or 2 exp x2 cards (4 hours each) grinds regularly. Not leeching has many downfall on royals such as hp washing is readily available, so grinding limits the potential of star, arrow, and bullet users' end game bossing potential. Harder and harder to have HB in the bossing party at all time. Join the dark side!!!
I'm in a guild with other people who train with me. I socialize in FM and meet people who go and train with me. I ask every person I see roaming about training areas if they want to party. I can almost always find somebody to train with if I want to train with someone.
I think your second little paragraph kinda just shows where I think some changes need to be made. I doubt they ever will and I do not know a solution for it as of rn, but this is a "Nostalgic" server, part of the nostalgia to me is searching for that one person with HB. Or looking for that thief that has DS, I think that is all a part of it. One of the best things about this game is how balanced everything was, and how everyone had specific roles to play, the most effective party was never just an entire mob of NLs, but a mix of every class in the game. High amounts of attackers to deal out damage, Bishops to revive and heal those attackers, DK's to kill the mobs that spawn and provide HB, it's all a part of the nostalgia that I think many people and servers are losing imo. I still love this server and will continue to play it because of the community, but I think HP washing especially and other things that make certain classes obsolete whilst making others much more powerful ruin the "nostalgia" that they are chasing.
My highest level character is 180. I've gotten to this point via a mixture of ironman, grinding, and bossing, and will continue to level by ironman/grinding/bossing, because I find leeching boring and unrewarding. If other people prefer to leech, that's entirely their prerogative. I'm more concerned with them enjoying the experience of playing Maple than I am converting them to my way of thinking. I'm actually not at all concerned with converting them to my way of thinking, because I realize that everyone has different tastes, and that difference is what makes human interaction...well, rewarding.
I would like to think a lot of players that play on this server have already experienced the grind from back in the early days of GMS (or other versions). I personally leveled multiple characters to 18x, 15x, and 120-150 without leeching back pre-BB when I had more time and patience to do so. Now that I am in my 20's and decided to play this server, I honestly don't want to deal with the grind again. Leeching is much more convenient and I can level up other characters while I leech on another. I think the main difference between the OP's mind and majority of Royal players' minds is early game vs -end game. Since majority of time in this game is spent on end game (120-200), most people would prefer to get there asap, because end game feels more rewarding to play than early game.
I was a top tier KSer back in the days, doing daily KS with my KS guild. KSing is in my blood. Damn, KSing is so nostalgic. Imma find OP and KS the shit out of him! Not getting KSed is the wrong way to play a nostalgic MapleStory game!
Congrats on the ironman leveling, I agree that people that want to leech can leech, my larger goal is just to try to grow the community of people who train themselves. I have some friends I train with but there are times where training with a party can be fun and none of my friends are online. It would be cool to show up at gs6 or skeles or any map that is heavily populated at any level and instead of almost every person getting leeched, where you then get abandoned to your own lonely little map, there are more people grinding, and looking for a party to train with. The end goal here being a larger community for those that prefer grinding over leeching, not necessarily the complete demise of the leechers, but instead a rise from the ashes for the community of those that enjoy the grind and enjoy the pain that comes with it.
This is really interesting to me. I've grinded out every single 200 of my levels on my bishop, and afterwards, I bought leech for my second bishop and my four priests. I do agree that there's a unique sense of achievement in reaching level 200 after all the hours put into earning every last exp point. Although I guess I didn't really earn that exp myself when I would mob all the himes to my CB partners from levels 90 to 120. Point still stands though. For most people, myself included, there's no gratification in grinding itself, but the euphoria is in when you hit level 200. Granted, there are some people who truly enjoy grinding, and one guy who commented here has spent hours grinding at Temple of Time on even his night lord and bowmaster, just two of his soon to be six 200s. But I think for many people the magic is in hitting level 200, by whatever means you get there. And it's really only something you can experience once. After your first 200, doing it again doesn't have the same anticipation and excitement. So it's food for thought, that some people actually have hit level 200 without leeching and there's no point in doing something you already earned all over again, so with money to spare, it's more fun to pay some low level bishop and leech your characters to the level they'd be fun to play yourself again. At least that's my take on it. I'm both not lazy and the laziest person ever depending on if you consider my first bishop or the five others that I paid leech for since they were level 8.
If you're serious about inspiring people to try grinding instead of leeching, I suggest a change of tactics. Referring to them as 'lame', and using hyperbolic terms like 'parasite' and 'disease' to describe leeching is insulting, and most closely paralleled IRL by a religious evangelist standing on a streetcorner, yelling at passerby. Whispering people who are trying to buy leech is going to annoy them, while doing absolutely nothing to make them think about trying grinding. We have a subforum for setting up parties that doesn't seem to get much traffic, but maybe you could breathe new life into it. Or, you could set up parties in game and smega. Maybe have some kind of incentive, and make sort of an event out of it?
Being a beginner but leeching takes away from the whole point of being a legit beginner lol. Kinda just degrades the achievement of those who have grinded every last level with nothing but a one hit attack. I don't know how much you've leeched but any leech at all as a beginner is quite simply... lame.
Ya know, I honestly never thought or intended this thread to go anywhere, and thought it was going to be a place for funny encounters but I have loved the feedback from everybody good and bad and didn't realize this would be such a hot topic. I whispered some guy earlier buying leech and he said "hey you're the guy from the forums" and he came out to windraiders and trained with me. I think I will start something and to gain a following for this. Now if only they could fix guilds...
You could always make an up to date training guide to show people grinding is possible (people know it is, but the old guides are from old source, aren't updated, etc), try to form a group who level exclusively without leeching could also work (there's a few out there with different variations of restrictions)
I guess it all goes down to how you value your time. It is different for everyone. Some may want the achievement feeling as that's how they get their fun while some may just want to advance in the game so they can do other things they feel are enjoyable.
Btw, @Soggy Nerps, I bet you play one character with two hands. That's so lame. Let me help you: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/one-hand-control-your-whole-mapleroyals-life-has-been-a-lie.100483/ Your welcome!
