I definitely agree that steps need to be taken to improve and diversify the overall gameplay experience and perhaps shift the neverending focus away from range, HP, and leeching, for an example by improving PQs as a viable training alternative. But I think you’re forgetting that this is an MMORPG after all, there is bound to be a certain degree of competitiveness amongst everyone. Of course new players are not at fault for feeling obligated to fit in, but it seems like nowadays, a large majority just want to get to the endgame more quickly without being willing to put in the proportionate amount of effort. And then whine when things don’t go their way or when they are not taken seriously. You also seem to forget that all veterans were once new players as well, who faced the exact same problems. They didn’t just magically appear at a certain level with their billions of mesos; they’ve just had more time to work harder and play longer. At the end of the day, it’s only a game and you do you. So don’t try to shift all blame to old players.
Dude I'm 100% for improvements. I have never been negative about this topic but rather insisted on it: have you not seen my replies on PQ improvement, Paladin buff threads? No where did I say there is no need for it. I'm not saying this server is perfect and we should keep everything the way it is. There have been great feedbacks here that can improve the game. My reply was entirely addressing this person's complaint phrased as an ignorant question. He said he played this game for not long but assumed there is nothing to do other than what he described. Surely there is a need for improvement on popular features of the game but ignoring the minority and making wrong assumption? Even if that was an exaggeration I can only see it as an ignorant complaint which is completely unnecessary and out of place. Great feedbacks can come from uncomfortable players but that was nothing close to a productive feedback. It would just discourage other people and further reduce active players (which is ironically opposite of what this thread is aiming at) because people can easily get influenced by such assumption. @PhotonSphere, you seemed to have misunderstood my earlier reply as well and to add on the new player adaptation part... I'm aware there are elitists who make the life of newbies miserable in numerous ways, mainly by looking down on them. I have been one of them in few occasions and through feedback, I know how badly that can reflect on new players. I can't expect every new player to have same mind set as me but from my experience, those who remain as high lvls now have gone through all the hardship in the past. Things weren't much different when I joined the server, only missing thing was inflation and popular low lvl leech. There were smegas looking for high range NL in HT, tons of smegas selling high lvl leech and frequent blue message of Horntail slayers. I have been rejected from boss runs plenty of times after providing my range. I remember a NL rage quitting in my 2nd ever zak run when he saw my drk was unable to zerk due to fear of dying. There were some shitty moments that are too embarrassing to mention here but I had to endure them to go up. My buddies shared similar stories and I haven't really met anyone who climbed up without a struggle through the difficult moments (getting looked down by veteran etc). There are exceptions of course but they were either RWT or lucky to have friends or guilds that could spoon-feed them. And not surprisingly we, in our newbie days, weren't informed of how far server has progressed nor got educated for easier adaptation. That's just how this game went. Beginning NPCs didn't provide manuals that taught newbies how to HP wash or acquire high range to get accepted in Boss runs. We had to acquire knowledge through trial and error. I can confidently say 99% of current old player population also share similar history since earliest Veterans (who didn't go through hardship but provided hardship to 2nd generation) would have retired by now. I'm aware you and others are trying to improve the welfare of players in general, newbies especially. But in the end, all I wanted to emphasize was for new players to have a humbler approach to the game, which came out rather aggressively in my previous reply due to my frustration against complainers, because that's what we all went through WITHOUT complaining but I guess that's not something I can force upon others without sounding like a communist . These new changes and improvements are much needed to satisfy the majority but I begin to wonder how older players managed without complaining as much because things weren't any easier back then.
Yeah, I indeed forgot all veterans have gone through this phase as well. Sorry about that From what I see, the new players primarily demand more rewarding PQs and party training, as well as reaching 9.8K clean HP without the horrible process of adding INT, low-level leech, and gathering hundreds of resets. I think these are reasonable demands. If they demand 9.8K HP without ANY effort (like questing) / good gears for free / any other unreasonable stuff, I would speak against them for sure. The proposals in my own HP washing feedback also demand decent amount of effort to reach 9.8K HP. Anyway, I think everyone has good times (spending time with friends, PQ, party training, etc.) and bad times (seeing everyone afk leeching, grinding alone, being looked down upon, etc.) in this server. It's the good times that motivate us to overcome the difficulties. Unfortunately, with low-level leech becoming more prevalent, PQs becoming more empty, most communities except the bossing ones shrink in size, and the gap between newcomers & veterans becomes larger, the good sides have diminished and the bad sides are getting worse. That probably explains the increased amount of complaints. Hopefully things will get better after the imbalances are fixed. Meanwhile, hopefully new players can accept changes don't happen overnight, appreciate the efforts that veterans have put in to achieve what they have, and focus more on their own progress.
@sparky95 Those things you listed aren't really content or features. Those are ways of playing people had to come up with because what is available isn't enough. I also love how you call me ignorant, while assuming that I give a fuck about 'wanting to fit with godly equips/hp washed players'. My complaint is that those things you mention people do aren't being rewarded properly while leeching, playing around AP resets (buying or selling) and bossing give pretty much instant gratification, so it's no wonder people gravitate towards those and the rest get neglected.
I personally disagree with this opinion though. When I joined back in 2015, I started off as a spear class/drk. Ch1 KPQ, and LPQ/LMPQ area were full with many recruiters from multiple different parties. Not only the PQs area, almost all channels of FoG, ghost ship, wolf spider, ulu1/2, hime/dreamy ghost, skele, petri, etc are occupied with grinding parties. In other words I had no problem to just CC and look for grinding party with strangers. I made tons of friends and had tons of grinding partners on my BL. I had a blast grind my way to 15x before i took a break. I came back in 2016 from the year long break. The PQs and grinding party population drastically reduced, as well as all the popular grinding maps. I took another break between 2016 and 2017 because of the new source. Today the PQ and grinding parties no longer exist. You have to smega to maybe start one if you're lucky. Needless to say, things aren't the same to me today compared to when I first joined mapleroyals.
Yes this is quite accurate. I'm sorry I have to admit I left out the PQ and party grinding part in my consideration. I mostly solo grinded all the time and didn't notice how crowded those areas were in old source. First of all, those options of play-style I mentioned have existed for a long time pre-newsource when there were plenty of population and popularity for PQs and party grinding, like Jake mentioned. There could have been LESS in old source ofc but they were always there because minority don't always go for same trend that majority seek. No matter how rewarding those neglected features become, there always will be people who enjoy variety of play style. Do you still think I'm fighting to keep the server stagnant? Regardless of all the possible ways you could have passed on your precious yet uncomfortable feedback, you decided to throw a sarcastic question of "what is there to do in this server except bossing and HP washing". Did I not answer your question by mentioning different play styles? You didn't ask what other features there are. You asked "what is there to do". You mentioned how other servers have more WORKING features but royals doesn't really LACK essential features except few. They are just less popular. If your complaint was "What else can be as rewarding, satisfying or entertaining as bossing/hp washing" then I barely had anything to object against. Maybe you were expecting others to realize it's a rhetorical question only accentuating how unbalanced current features are but phrased in such a way... I'm well aware that majority's attention mediate toward the options you mentioned. Surely one can give an opinion if they feel that's wrong but my complaint to YOU, the same way you complain at the server, is NOT regarding improvements on the server but the way you addressed that opinion in a feedback by making disdainful comments on the server's status that can easily affect many others in unfavorable direction for the server: hence came the word ignorant. For e.g Matt recently confirmed that "online" player count isn't a joke and doesn't provide accurate stats because there are different time zones for different players. This is what makes me wonder with what purpose complainers make feedback. If I'm not mistaken, the aim of this thread is to "retrieve as many active players". I'd expect anyone giving relative feedback to do it in support of OP's objective not go reverse. If I was a newbie who was considering whether to stay in this server when your feedback came up, I would most likely have come to a negative conclusion because according to you, there is nothing to do other than what you mentioned but how would a newbie tell it wasn't serious or was an intended insinuation? Yea a lot of people could get disappointed anyways while trying to fit to the main trend but there could have been positive people who'd still try the server in different approach apart from the main trend. Are you actually trying to help out the server? If that's the case, I don't understand why you would phrase your feedback like that. Maybe I'm having too much expectation as an optimistic person but pessimism is one thing I just struggle to pass by.
The only thing we need is more content and a tiny tweak on class imbalances which I think the staff are looking at. Everything will be fine.
I think the current situation is mostly due to the time of the year. Right now, many people are in school, and when summer comes where people start their breaks, more people will come on to play. I remember in summer of 16 I couldn't find any empty himes ch to grind at! Back then everywhere seem to be full because there were less channels. The leeching aspect was also in the official servers, where leeching was faster exp than grinding at 3rd job. This was why big bang happened and mages had their "ultimates" have CD. What can be improved are the pqs. Lmpq was nerfed when they should be buffed, and pirate pq should be adjusted to the correct level- 55+ instead of 70+ only. To make things more newbie friendly, the inflation issue should be addressed. Sure we are able to make more mesos per hr selling petri leech, but the prices of items other than ws/cs remained the same. Right now chaos scrolls and white scrolls are easily sold for 580m in stores overnight, perhaps GM should host 2x vote nx event or gacha rate increase event, or maybe make some boss have very low chance to drop these scrolls? More content is always nice, cwkpq release should be able to bring back some of the inactive playerbase. I actually think Scarlion/targa should be implemented from a commercial standpoint. The biggest competitors to our server have this content, and without this content we are losing out on potential players. I know that the goal of this server is too keep everything "nostalgic", but adding scarlion/targa I feel is not too far of a stretch.
