First of all, I would like to say that this is not meant to be a negative or aggressive criticism. I truly love MapleRoyals and I appreciate all the work the team has put into keeping the server alive over the years. This feedback comes from someone who genuinely cares about the server and wants to see it continue to grow and improve. We are almost in March, and the Christmas event is still active. I understand that managing events and updates takes time, but situations like this can sometimes give the impression that the server is a bit abandoned or lacking active development. I don’t know the internal challenges the team might be facing, so I say this with full respect. Another concern is that every year the schedule seems very similar, with few noticeable changes or new content. It sometimes feels repetitive, and many players might be hoping for something fresh or different to keep the experience exciting. Additionally, Pink Bean and class balance changes have been mentioned for a long time. I understand that these things require testing and careful planning, but from a player’s perspective, it can feel like they are always being promised and never arriving. It may not be as simple as it sounds, but the long wait without clear updates can be discouraging. Again, this is not meant as an attack. I just wanted to express, in a humble way, that some players may feel worried about the lack of updates and communication. We care about the server, and we want to see it thrive. Thank you for your time and for everything you’ve done for the community. I hope this feedback can be taken as constructive and supportive.
This is a much better feedback post compared to your other one about rangechecks, and I also generally agree with your sentiment here How many unique theme/event releases does the game have? New Year Valentine's Easter Anniversary (this one is unique year to year, right?) Summer Fall Halloween Thanksgiving Christmas (is there even a "regular" release?) My limited understanding is the differences between these themed releases is: moving assets around (are NPCs a client-side or server-side thing? or both?) themed maps (like FM, lounge, towns) maybe enabling/disabling things server-side? Taking all that into consideration, is it not possible to implement CI/CD for the game? Implement changes on one monorepo, push them, CI/CD does all the packing/release management for the 10 different themed versions, configured for Tespia test server for the regular development branch. When you take in changes on a prod branch, that releases installers configured for Scania production. The way things feel like based on delayed releases is this is all currently a manual process. I also recall reading Matt has potato internet, which was the reason for delayed releases during maintenance as well (last minute fixes forcing Matt to remake a release and re-upload to all the download links taking time). It also doesn't help that when MapleRoyals players needed Karven most, he vanished - and they seemed to be a major contributing driving force behind all the changes and improvements happening on the server, at least when I started during the pandemic. Maybe the community can help with improvements here to increase developer velocity. Where can we learn about the current state of how mushroom game development works? I know that if I'm shown how people work on mushroom game, I'd try to help figure out how to make development timely by making releases easier to manage, if that's (likely) a problem. Can't comment on this, but only thing I want to mention off the top of my head is bring back golden zhelms The software engineering/open source world has a term for this: https://communitymgt.fandom.com/wiki/The_Big_Show And while this specific mushroom game isn't really a open source project, it might be useful to have regular GM blog post where the developers say hi and chime in on how things are going - we have 2 other developers than Matt, right? It's fine to report that there's been stumbling steps or regressions, but I think players won't feel as forlorn if the developers at least say hi once a while. Much better feedback post compared to last time, agree all around!
Thank you for the thoughtful reply, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond in detail I’m glad my post came across better this time. My intention genuinely isn’t to criticize for the sake of criticizing, but to express concerns in a way that opens room for discussion. And yes… golden zhelms would definitely make some people happy In the end, I think we all want the same thing: for MapleRoyals to stay healthy and keep improving. Hopefully discussions like this can contribute positively. <3
You are right, I have the same feeling that the server devs are struggling pushing updates. Regular event updates shouldn't always be canceled/postponed, but this unusual situation is becoming usual in Royals. Hope things will get better...
The decline in communication between the GMs and players, the merging/delay of multiple events has become frequently in 2025. The possible reasons may include: The server has been experiencing attacks. (e.g. DDoS) The GMs have become significantly busier in real life. The GMs may be unwilling to invest more effort into maintaining an already aging server. The GMs might be secretly testing a major update but are encountering numerous technical difficulties. Regardless of the reason, I believe it is essential to maintain communication with players—at the very least, with a small group of representative community leaders.
I don't think attacks are a factor here, especially given users are expected to figure out their own workarounds (changing networks, adjusting MTU) instead of staff expending effort to solve the root problem. The latter points you raise are more likely. But also agree that communication is key!
For me, the biggest issue is the lack of communication from the administrators. It sometimes feels like they step back and don’t really share updates, just letting things run on their own. Like I mentioned before, we’re already close to March and the server theme is still Christmas. I’m sure they have their reasons, no one here is trying to judge or criticize, but it does end up feeling a bit discouraging, especially because we all genuinely care about MapleRoyals. I’m sorry if this comes across the wrong way, but from my perspective, it seems like the admins might not have as much time as they used to to keep us updated, or maybe they just don’t feel as motivated to keep changing and updating a game that has been running for so many years. Again, this is just how I feel, and I say it with respect.
With all due respect, I don’t personally feel that implementing a boss like Pink Bean, working on class balance, or creating new events would necessarily be an impossible task. I’ve seen other servers manage to add different bosses and custom content over time. That said, I might be completely wrong. I’m just sharing my perspective. From the outside, it seems like it could be more a matter of limited time or maybe shifting priorities. I say this with no intention to criticize, only because I care about the server and would love to see it continue to grow
MapleRoyals is at a stage where it can start embracing community-driven development. Giving players the ability to contribute on their own time, through an open source model, could be a real accelerator for growth. The key is doing it without exposing security vulnerabilities. This could work through a microservice architecture, where community contributors build isolated features independently, and Matt reviews and integrates the ones worth shipping into the main codebase. It keeps control where it needs to be while letting the community do what they love. Faster updates, more content, less bottleneck on a single dev.
Agree - given Royals has an existing large population already, even if other people use Royals source to start their own servers, they won't ever compete with Royals. The only way Matt could possibly mess up going open source is if the incumbent Royals doesn't accept popular feature requests, and derivative servers implement those, enough so to the point where a critical mass of users decide to switch. That's not what microservices are. Working on separate isolated features independently is typically called feature branch based development. But agree, going open source and accepting community help based on community sentiment and feedback would increase velocity. But if staff don't want to accept volunteer developers even on a private basis (staff applications) for whatever reason, then unfortunately this idea is dead in the water.
