The balance patch for MapleRoyals has been a long time coming. As far as I know, the lack of dev support and Matt’s absence have delayed it for years. Because the patch has been repeatedly announced but never implemented, it’s created a lot of stress in the community. People are hesitant to invest time or gear into certain characters since they don’t know how things might change. It would probably help to gather community feedback before actually implementing the patch, so you can see how people react to the proposed changes before putting in the work.
Its pretty much the point to not release any information about the balance and other changes to the game before they happen. The point is so people can't prepare for them in advance.
Hello, We understand that the community is excited about the upcoming balance patch and would like more information about it in advance. However, revealing detailed changes ahead of time, such as specific skill adjustments, could cause significant disruption to the in-game market, particularly for job-specific equipment. In addition, plans for balance changes do not always translate directly into the final implementation. During development and live testing, adjustments may need to be made due to factors such as client limitations or shifts in balance goals. For example, announcing that a skill will be adjusted to 300% only to later reduce it to 250% after DPS testing would likely lead to further confusion and disappointment among players. As such, we do not intend to reveal specific balance details ahead of the patch release, as doing so may lead to unnecessary speculation and large fluctuations in the market value of job-specific equipment. We appreciate the feedback and understanding.
At least an estimated date, without too many details? Many of us are excited for it to arrive soon! :3
I think giving us the change list before the patch dosen't matter that much, but a release date might help the situation. Especially when more and more players are worrying about the state of the server, and asking more communications from the admins, while the only answer they got is ''We understand but soon TM''. It was a good sign that a game balancer started a thread about DPS calculator, even though the balance patch should have happened last year.
I think the OP definitely makes a good point about the community's stress and frustration about upcoming patches. The recap blog post made by staff said there would be a phase of skill changes coming "very soon", and it's already been 2 months since that post. I think a good compromise between what OP's suggesting and some of the counterpoints brought up would be for staff to communicate again about when the patch might be coming out, or at least explain why it's delayed with a little bit more detail. I don't think anyone's looking for a full-scope explanation behind the curtain, but some level of transparency would probably go a long way with a lot of members. In my opinion, something as simple as "Hey all, we said it would be coming very soon a couple of months ago, but it got delayed even more because of ____ . Sorry, and we're trying our best." or some derivative of this would at least make the community feel better while they wait.