I think we need to have a talk

I'm all for class diversity. I will bring any class to boss over a mule if I can find one. I just think DKs should be made valuable independent of HB and not make that a gate to content for half of the other classes. I agree homogenization is bad.

There is definitely a level of optimization involved after 7 years for sure. I think the accessibility of washing as well as over reliance on the HB mechanic to play endgame content both contributed heavily to the HP washing meta. The point I was trying to make is that if "just bring HB" was the simple solution its made out to be, we wouldn't be here having this discussion in the first place. HB shouldn't be scrapped, but it shouldn't be the determining factor in which classes get to play endgame. Not to plug my own idea again, but I only advocated for enough HP to survive 1 hit, and at later levels than the minimum after farming nearly 100 boss runs. A real alternative can be just as hard as washing, but can done so with natural progression doing the thing you would be doing anyway; bossing. Kill weaker bosses to earn HP for stronger bosses vs make a mage and/or HS mule, dump AP into INT, leech to 135 and then drop 8b to have enough HP.

 

Never underestimate the lengths a player will go thru to gain a tiny marginal amount of exp- even if in the long run it'd just be easier to take a DrK and kill a few extra bosses lol

 

well i guess it depends on your definition. if you want to enter boss rooms, the prequests are not optional, but then again, entering the boss room in the first place is your own choice. this game requires nothing of you. you are free to sit in the free market on a level 1 character with default equips. but if you want to apq, you have to collect keys. there are low requirement activities, and higher requirement activities. this is what mmo's (especially old school style mmo's) ask of you. to unlock the things you want to unlock, and if the process is not worth it to you, you are welcome to not to participate. you are welcome to never make a mule character, you are welcome to never hp wash. just because you cannot survive castellan toad does not mean you are being forced to hp wash, you set that requirement for your character yourself.

i don't think you read my post, I suggested several viable alternatives to a heavily washed ranged character. i am working on creating my 3rd melee character (a paladin, actually, which you mock in your next point) which i have mostly trained through party questing, only stopping to leech when it was convenient while training my archmage. i have not bought any leech on this character, and the only hp washing i have done is with ap resets i bought with nx through voting.

if you don't want to zerk there are plenty other classes to play. dark knights have a unique class mechanic and there are many others that i would say are viable, and dare i say, "good". if finding parties that are only recruiting night lords is an issue (which it hasn't been in my own experience, perhaps only anecdotal evidence) invite people to your own run. i'm sure you could manage a party for most bosses only through smegaing and being willing to manage the recruitment process regardless of which class you play.

yes it is. making a character capable of joining zakum and krex runs is simple and cheap. you are looking at a small percentage of bosses that require some investment on some classes and claiming it as a global plague. you try to make it sound as if every single unwashed/low washed character is incapable of anything, when instead it is a choice few, high level bosses.

i have never once opq'd but i did not have much trouble at all finding parties on my latest character. not sure if you just had a different experience or are claiming they are deserted because it's convenient for you.

tl;dr i play warriors and i did not have to have my gameplay experience ruined by hp washing and leech like this dystopian world you are painting.

 

It would be amazing

 

No where in his post did it say to scrap anything...

 

Okay? I guess registering an account to play MapleRoyals is a prequest too. I'm tired of having this discussion over and over again, so I'm just going to quote a previous post of mine on this topic:

"Can we at least reframe the HP wash debate? Instead of all this pointless semantics about what can and cannot "technically" be done, can we just recognize the simple fact that HP wash in its current form has a significant impact on how the overall playerbase engages with endgame content? Like sure, HP wash is optional... in the same way playing this fucking game is optional. Pointing out that obvious fact is neither a helpful nor healthy contribution to this discussion. And sure, you can technically accomplish any goal in this game without HP wash. But that applies to any custom feature of this server. You can technically reach any destination in this game without fast travel tickets. You can technically enjoy a paladin class without balance changes. Yet we continuously discuss these issues to devise and implement ways we believe would best serve the community beyond the technically minimum standard because that's the whole point, isn't it?"​

The irony is that you literally ignored the part of my post that you quoted: "Are any of these things technically actually mandatory? No."

Once again, technically viable alternatives are not reflective of the reality for most players. Sure you can make an inefficient melee DPS class and then go through the process of recruiting and managing your own parties. Or you can take the path of least resistance as most people do and make a washed NL. I personally celebrate those like you who are willing to participate in those alternatives, I honestly think it's great. But the fact of the matter is that there exists a distinctly optimal path to maximizing end game content, and it dominates the current gameplay meta.

You're putting words in my mouth. I have repeatedly accepted that alternatives exist; they are simply not considered completely optimal by the majority of the community.

The past two days I haven't been able to find a single party in LPQ even during peak hours, and I had been checking regularly because I was otherwise training at the top floor of Eos Tower. It is actually deserted, as is OPQ. You are able to regularly find a party in KPQ if you are willing to wait, and you most likely will not be able to find a party at PPQ unless someone is willing to smega and recruit actively--and even then it's a coin flip at best. Keep in mind that I'm not referring to CPQ. Not sure if you just had a different experience or are claiming that you didn't have much trouble at all because it's convenient for you.

TL/DR: I'm happy for you that you're having a good time but your experience is not reflective of that of most players. Furthermore, I'm all for dramatic language but your habit of dismissing other people's opinions as "entitlement" and their experiences as "dystopian" is not only a detraction from your argument, it's rude.

 

was the whole premise of your argument not that a washed nl is not the path of least resistance, but rather a grueling, boring, even toxic task that ruined the game? and of course there will always be an optimal path. i just personally don't think the gap between a 30k nl and an 18k paladin is a dominating meta that leaves people with no option.

this i will give you, i did misunderstand which party quests you were referring to and i did not lpq, but i did have a pretty straightforward time finding groups at ppq. i do miss lmpq that was fun but i do think cpq 1 and 2 are both genuinely fun and not super problematic for being dominant.

of course it's entitlement. you are asking the parameters be changed to your standards rather than adapting to the current standard. what is that if not entitlement? i do not claim the current standard is perfect, sacred, and sacrament to be adjusted, i mean to say i don't think it calls for drastic measures.

 

I would definitely like to see more thoughtful changes/improvements to Royals. As of my comment, we are like 840 votes down from first place. Currently (from what I have seen in the forums), the common stance of the GMs/Admins/Matt is that we shouldn't "copy" or "imitate" what lower rank servers do. Well, we are no longer the top server so this is not the type of mentality we should be keeping.
First priority? Major development onto auto-ban, considering that the rivaling server(s) literally advertise "minimal hackers" in their name/title. Only afterwards should we consider everything else like MuleStory, balance, etc. In fact, I wouldn't mind having the next event postponed or even cancelled if it meant that auto-ban is implemented.

 

It's three days in, and even so, the current top server has all the same perceived issues as royals, but with an arguably even worse barrier to entry as AP resets can't be traded and Washing is 100% time gated, unlike royals where you can work for them.

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works

They are also in a vote event and multi voting is allowed, however I'm not sure how much impact this has on gtop rank.

Either way, taking gtop rating as an indicator of anything right now is silly.

 

Why do you think the hacking and RWT problem is bigger here? It's because Royals is much more popular.
The first few days of voting on GTop always skews the results but when we have an online count hovering around 2,000-2,500, that's about double of the next server.
Also, this thread is not about pinpointing the blame of current issues on the admins and trying to tell them what to do, it's about a community coming together to piece together some ideas to resolve the issues in the most agreeable way. You seem to think that there is no back end work being done on a daily basis, and it's all just events and new cosmetics that we do.

 

That server is currently doing a double vote nx event that started on the first of august and runs till the 5th. They dont hold the same concurrent player count so once the events over theyll drop back to around where they were before for votes. Royals is still very much top dog.

To anyone reading this take it from me a guy whose never been staff here, that the stuff we dont see can be exhausting work. Ive dabbled in gming other servers before and if anything that experience gave me a much greater understanding and appreciation for the job anyone volunteers to do. Theres so much work that goes into keeping a server ecosystem functioning that nobody ever sees. Gming a 100 player server humbled me.

 

1. The Royals population is only several hundred more than the next server (~1800 vs ~2200) at the time I wrote my previous comment so the population difference isn't too significant. Yes, popularity is an attractive element for hackers but so is feasibility. Would a random hacker choose a server that relies on manual investigations or a server with auto-ban that detects majority of hacks? Probably the manual ban server regardless of popularity just because it is easier to get away with.

2. I'm not pinpointing blame to anyone. The current issues are due to systemic issues during the making of this private server. You can't fix WashStory or MuleStory 7 years down the line. There is no way the staff could've known ahead of time that the server would even last this long to begin with. I don't know how you came up with the idea that I'm blaming the current problems on staff.

3. I am pointing out the observation that I have seen GMs shoot down valid suggestions based on the fact that the thread writer referenced the idea from another server. It really does suck when an authoritative figure in the community shoots down genuine threads solely because "we're better than other servers" and not because of logical arguments. Maybe it was a bad suggestion, maybe it didn't make sense. Regardless, I'm saying this dismissive attitude to feedback is detrimental. Does it happen all the time? No, but I have seen it happen and from different members. Are the current problems because of this attitude? No and I never said it was. I'm just hoping this attitude disappears as another private server rivals this one.

4. I know GMs work daily to ban hackers and investigate claims. But that's all that I know. That's why I suggest the dire need for auto-ban so you can do other things than ban hackers. Of course I have no idea what else you do. There is no transparency or communication. Have you told us what you do in the back end as a GM?

Have the staff told the community the general idea of what is being worked on? Do the GMs even know what is being worked on?
Have the staff discussed the thought process behind changes with the larger community? Was it because of one comment in one feedback thread? Was there a larger public/private discussion?
Have the staff given the community a list of suggestions that are never going to be implemented?
Have the staff given the community at least a vague roadmap or a list of priorities you are currently working on?

So yes, you are right in that sense. I have no idea what you do or what you are doing. As a matter of fact, most of us have no idea what you do because you never told us what you do.
Rather than projecting what you believe I seem to think, how about you directly tell us what you do?

The title of this thread speaks truly to this particular issue at hand: we need better communication between players and staff.

GTop rating is definitely a valid indicator of how many players play and vote in the server. Besides player-base, this is the only statistic used for comparing server growth. And does the fact that another server was able to survive and climb all the way to the top (with similar features and rates) despite the preexistence and popularity of Royals not speak to anything at all?

 

I think the HP washing and leeching problem probably go hand in hand. Most people enjoy min maxing, changing the game probably won't change that mindset. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but maybe we can change the PQs to encourage party play even if players are washing.

Make a separate version of all the major PQs (LPQ, LMPQ, OPQ, PPQ) where everyone just does 10 dmg like in cakes. Adjust the hp rates so that it's actually doable and encourages party play by rewarding comparable exp to leeching when finishing a PQ. Make the PQs have normal level limits so that when people level, they will explore higher level PQs. It's cheap and probably will encourage party play if you make the PQ available to everyone regardless of HP washing. Right now this is just an idea, so I don't know all the downsides, but this would make HP washing probably more enjoyable and cheaper since you don't have to buy leech anymore. It would just encourage HP washing, but maybe would make it more accessible to casual players.

Please let me know if you think this is a good idea.

 

If you haven't seen one as an intern then I guess I was browsing some old threads from 2+ years ago. Hopefully things have changed.

I understand there are some things you can't disclose as that would give a route of vulnerability. We would still like to know the general gist of what's happening though, possibly through some very broad vocabulary. I am always grateful whenever we get mini update threads on what's being noticed and what's about to happen like the Archmage buff post after the potion price increase update (bless Karven on the extra descriptions above patch notes). It is just very demoralizing as a player to see a lot of feedback threads with no staff acknowledgement.

 

Since i started to play mapleroyals 2/3 years ago i made an Ice lightning mage. I love to strike lightning and freeze their butts!
In GMS (2006) i commited to play a Bishop. I surely want to play that one again but only to HEAL people at bosses and not just to sell some "leech"! Same problem i have with my I/L mage now. People think i made this char because i want to 'work' for them when i log in to the game! If i whisper some peeps when i see they're teaming up for a boss run, they reply 'go sell leech, you're not an attacker'!
That's like where the fun ends In my free time I don't want to have the feeling that i need to work...
So the only thing i basicly enjoy the most at this time is doing APQ! because surprise surprise, I get picked for that :3

I recently starded to play a Cleric, but damn indeed not a single player at Ludi pq! Maybe we should restrict the levels from party quests! Like ludi pq realy only from 35-51. not done it before this level, to baaddd no glasses for you :3! since noone was at Ludi pq i went to CPQ guess what ? teamed up with a sin with 200int. He just hanging there... Felt again like i had to do al the work for him.. Kinda making it more fun to hang at Hene and just talk to the people But that's not why i joined thi community!

I want to be part of it not a slave of it! I just love them mage classes but to play with it, not to sell leech

I hope you get my point? if not sorry my english writing skills are not as good as the way i speak it F3

<3

 

I am physically upset that i was not mentioned by name!!!

 

My thread was updated to reflect this egregious mistake on my part. I miss ya boshy boy