English is not my first language, so I’m sorry for potential grammar mistakes. When I first found MapleRoyals, and experienced the nostalgia of old school Maplestory, my excitement was trough the roof. I made a character and started just exploring and making friends, which was the most fun I’ve had in an online game for a looong time. I progressed slowly but steady, and learned more and more about the server. At the time I was playing as an assassin, my favourite and most played class in Maplestory. I remember I was doing a PQ when somebody asked me “hey are you washing?”, and as I didn’t know what that meant, he send me to read about it on the forums. I started reading trough some great guides on the topic. This is important: I found the idea of being able to upgrade your character’s survivability for money, to be very positive; I didn’t and I still don’t disagree with raising your HP as an expensive luxury. I DON’T THINK HP WASHING SHOULD BE CHEAPER OR REMOVED, ONLY REWORKED. Now comes the mechanics about HP washing that started to decline my MapleRoyals experience. I found out that if I wanted to experience this luxury, I was going to do 3 things: A: Use alooot of mesos on it. B: Have that money available BEFORE making the actual character. C: Not really playing on the account before level +120. A: Use alooot of mesos on it. This is where I agree with the way HP washing works on the server right now; being able to raise your HP should be a VERY expensive luxury, where it would take a long time to gather mesos to get noticeable higher HP. I think the mesos per HP scale should be the same or even more. B: Have that money available BEFORE making the actual character. The whole idea of having a MMO, where the end game limits are determined before you make the character, is very backwards I think. See, If I’m making a new character, I would have to make certain choices that’s going to determine the future of this character. One of these decisions would be the class of the character. If I make a warrior, that is a choice that takes me down a certain path, and a different path than if I would make a mage. This is a good mechanic for a MMO. Having something like a mechanic that gives your character objectively advantages over other people, that they can then NEVER reach and would always be inferior, is a bad mechanic for a MMO. This is why I think it’s bad that HP washing is to be limited by the planning and funds BEFORE making the character. C: Not really playing on the account before level +120. Now say that I make a bishop and play a class I don’t want to play for several hours, so I can make enough money to create a character that can HP wash. I would have planned out everything and would now be able to make my real character I was going to play and enjoy. This is where HP washing as it is right now, fails the most – remember what I said in the start about enjoying the game as a noob again, exploring the world, make friends and just have a good time? All that wouldn’t really happen if I were to HP wash, I would add all my SP into INT, so I wouldn’t be that powerful. Levelling a INT assassin would be so painful that I might aswell (and most people do) just leech it with my bishop. What’s the end result? A level 150 something Night Lord with a lot of HP – but a character without a history. It might sound corny and lame, but I loved/love classic Maplestory because it is so much more about the journey. In a good MMO experience, someone would start like me; create a character with a job that sounds the best to you, experience the game and slowly learn and progress, not really worrying to much about “endgame”. Later when you reach higher and higher levels, you might start to look at things like bossing and generally being a powerful character. Here you might realise that you added a bit too much dex on your Dark Knight, or forgot to max an important skill on your Bowmaster, but that’s what AP and SP resets are for. I can’t imagine how many people that most have stumbled upon this server, made a character and had a blast levelling it up to whatever level, only to find out that this character, with these friends, these found and scrolled equips, this guild and just this journey as a whole, would never end in a character with that HP advantage. My changes: Keep HP washing in the game, but make it so that a 140 Bowmaster with no INT while levelling, would be able to add to his HP pool, if he had the billions to do so. I don’t know if this would be done with a NPC or some other mechanic, but just make it so that someone would have the ability to go from a noob to a pro, and not get to 3rd job, delete his character, make a bishop and quit because he didn’t want to sell leech for months before making the character he wanted to play, just to only play it level +120. Having a weak Night Lord with low HP is not a problem, when you enjoy the class and know that if you work hard on the character you enjoy playing, you could slowly improve its damage aswell as it’s HP. I realise that this idea realistically isn’t going to be implemented in the nearest future, or at all – but would just love to hear people’s opinions on this.
If you ask me, I will say rework the boss damage would work. The whole reason why hp wash exist is because of damage done by the boss and unable to even take 1 hit it bad enough for the team when resurrection is the only skill (free) to return the attacker back to front line
Unfortunately hp washing is part of the nostalgia, it's a no from me personally to change anything (and it is not because I've already washed my characters, it's because I used to do it in gMS so for me it is part of the game). To get to an acceptable level of hp for bossing, you don't need to wash THAT much, people are washing to high numbers just because they can.
problem with MS is weap/magic def is utterly useless in the game. One of the only mmo game that def is meaningless. For HP washing,i suggest that a +HP/MP only item that cost 20Mil that increases the same way of adding a hp stats once. 2x of AP reset because of mp/hp washing. problem with this is that the new players market will crash as theres no way for them to gain fast Mesos anymore. But this might increase the odds of people gacha. (More Item, More Trades/Sales, More tax) put in WS/CS as well to sink the meso market.
I wanted to play a nightlord so i made one and i had fun. Now if i ever want to have more HP i can just use the money i farmed on him and start a new NL. I can lvl through orbis exchange, PQs and buying leech and then continue where i left off. There are plenty of people doing this. The game was mostly designed to be unbalanced but fair, some classes boss early, some late. Some can tank the boss, some have to tank smaller monsters to get post hit invincibility to survive the boss attacks. If any of the bosses can't be done this way(new bosses) then that's a problem with the design of the boss, not the core mechanics of the game which always worked well in the past. The bosses should be changed, not HP washing(which should be removed)
