where have all the bishop mains gone?

thanks to the surveys/censuses collected in 2014, 2017, and 2020 we can take a look at how class preferences have changed over the years
thanks @Galactic, @Stan, and @ilyssia, respectively for the surveys

all classes as a fraction of self-reported 'mains'

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loss of bishop, mage mains and a rise in buccaneer and pally mains

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we can also look at how the playerbase age is changing .. a sober reminder that you have been playing maplestory for almost 15 years

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they made atkers after selling leech for 3 years
or more realistically, quit after leeching too much n getting burnt out

 

Interesting data to compare the surveys side by side! Personally I was making mesos 2015-2016 as a bishop and since returning to the game a year ago I mostly play attacking classes.

Side note: also great to see a better balance of the attacking classes. Overtime there seems to be more even representation. MM is still underrepresented, but with recent changes (removal of alt+tab hurricane bug; MM buffs; introduction of LHC) I suspect we will see a small uptick in the next census. Still sucks to see so few arch mage mains though, hopefully they get a proper buff.

 

The resources needed to make BS relevant outside of leeching is too much (I didnt even sell leech at all tbh). I moved to Pally. After Pally I will probably create another class that is rarely seen.

 

makeing i/l or f/p capable of 1shoting mobs with almost 1/3 of fund needed as bishop
+ mule meta like makeing 3 of them instead of makeing 1 bishop main and fund just to be mule for ress,hsh,hs and dispel greatly discouraged bishop mains

and is to late for any change at this point

 

my sis was a bs main she was so excited to get to 4th job but quitted soon after cuz nobody seems to need her like in gms =x

 

It's because mages don't really have much endgame content and most people will just play them to fund their other characters

Bishops so have more content than archmages but they are still mules in the majority of bosses

 

Although I'm not a bishop main, but I would like to share some of my thoughts on this class.

Mapleroyals is entering the Multiboxing era (refers to playing multiple separate characters concurrently in an MMORPG), where you have to play different roles to make a successful run. From my past experience, if you own a washed Bishop, you are most likely to be the one who are recruiting the run for end game contents like HT and Auf.

I did invest tons of time and meso to heavily wash my bishop. And It was the most rightful decision that I have made in mapleroyals. I am very glad that I overcome the painful process of collecting APRs (@18m each back then f..) to wash my bishop because it provides me the ability to host a run, rather than passively waiting and rely on others. It is almost guaranteed that you will be invited (or asked) to a run due to the extremely shortage of washed bishop in late game content.

In the future, we may expecting more challenging bosses to be released, where I believe that bishop will shines more.

 

I don't want to derail the thread too much but I think it's important to mention that not only bishops, but all mage mains basically halved when comparing 2014 to 2020 census. From my perspective, as someone who owns both i/l mage and bs, it's because there is no enjoyable content for a mage main. I can't boss, farming is too tedious and I hate leeching to the extent that I rarely even leech my own mules... There really isn't anything to do on my mages.

 

Even with the release of more challenging boss, bishop mains will only be recruit in the initial release. It’s only a matter of time they get bench and become mules again.

It is what it is, bossing is the main end game attraction, NOONE takes archmage to boss, and majority of the players prefer to be an attacker rather than a Bs.