Maplelegends is hostile to new and unestablished players.

You do realize that EVERY game punishes you. Do you not realize that the cost is TIME? Your character is useless now you need spend more time. You monsters in a gacha game sucks and you chose to prioritize the weaker ones instead of the "stronger" ones now you have to waste more TIME to get the "stronger" ones up to par. Hell you can say LoL punishes you, if you don't put in the hours to get better you will keep getting Losses instead of wins. You don't know what that champion does because you didn't research well time to get punished and not know what they do.

You do not have any idea how games are designed.

 

Losing SOME time is entirely fine!
You didn't know Zakum could make you unable to use skills, so you lose a run and whatever time was spent there since you didn't bring enough All Cure Pots and your Bishop died because of 1/1s.
You didn't know Horntail could Seduce, so you just got mass seduced and failed a run, losing some hours and exp.
You didn't know you had to add >>INT<< to your >>Bowman<< until you hit level 70 (That's what happened to me), so you spend the next 30-50 levels adding points almost exclusively on INT because you need to catch up. So after I added 120 points on INT and leveled up enough, it was time to remove everything so I could be as strong as I should. So that's 120 points on INT + around 100 washes. That's 682k NX. That's 136 days of punishment because of bad game design that could be fixed by the admins.

 

J> SeemsGood

 

I'm confused aren't games supposed to be a time sink? Is what you just said not just a long process that goes towards my idea of a "time sink".

 

Enjoyable time sink. Imagine if the 136 days I spent trying to fix my character I was actually playing it to the fullest. How much better would that be.

 

Then while you wait find an ENJOYABLE time sink aka another game or class LOL why is it so hard to understand that you have a plethora of OPTIONS.

Edit: Don't want to play anything other than your class? Well that is your fault for deciding to not find another way to have fun.

 

Maybe you're the one that doesn't know anything about game design, lol.
"Find another game", good way of keeping the player base.
"Play a class other than the one you wanted to", yeah, prime example of good game design.
This game is flawed but it could be fixed, that's my main point. Keeping the bad game design and making the players adapt to it is incredibly dumb.

 

Sorry for the impending wall of text.

I related to a lot of points mentioned both in this thread and by other players and staff, and I've had quite a few thoughts on this. But first, some background:

Relating to the OP's sentiments:
- I'm a 136 NL main (still no bishop/arch mage).
- Went unwashed till my mid-80's.
- Played nearly leech-less (about 6 levels leeched in total) between over 400 total levels between characters.
- Haven't scored a single Chaos Scroll, White Scroll, PAC/PGC, or any single item of value over 20m (I'm still in disbelief).
- Love to meet new and assist new players to acclimate to the game.

But I also:
- largely enjoy playing as efficiently and creatively as possible; and
- if there isn't something more efficient, I'll invent it. I greatly enjoy this.
- I enjoy PQing when the party is efficient or has my buddies/guildies in it.

To note:
- Two things attach me to this game: (1) friends, (2) reaching goals.
- Don't really care about nostalgia; that got me to stick around for a couple weeks - but carried me no further.
- I decided to begin washing at lv80.
- Of the 4 friends I began playing with, only 1 still plays occasionally.
- Of the 50-or-so close friends I made when I started playing, about 2 are still active.

The thing - seriously, the THING that made the difference for me was a guild. I first started in ML with 4 of my friends but, once the game passed it's nostalgic phase, my friends quit. This was Summer 2017! PQ's were packed and we had a good time but the nostalgia wore off and the plain-ol-grind started to kick in. None of us knew all the game metas like prices and grind spots (my friend sold a 106atk stonetooth from perion gach for 1m - RIP) and once things seemed to take too long and their next goal felt too far away, they just got bored. And so they quit.

But I'm still here because around the time my friends and I started to quit (yeah, me too), I joined a guild/alliance (Cafe/Influence). It was really such a revitalization. My guild leader was exited to have my character in the guild in hopes of having me be the next big bosser. Everyone was incredibly helpful with things like training advice, item prices, and everything going on in the game. Not to mention people were genuinely becoming better and better friends with each other. It was such a community and it meant the entire Maple world to us. I went on hiatus to finish my degree, and when I came back, the guild leader had been banned and quit, and basically everyone else followed suit. I basically wandered around, about to quit, when I happened upon a few new friends. Those friends and I went on to create our own guild, California and one of our goals since inception has been to offer a buffer which helps new players to acclimate to the "hostile" and complex gameplay that MapleLegends offers. It's a tough, unfriendly system, especially to unestablished players who join solo - I have no doubt about that. However, I think with the right motivation and backing, it really can be very rewarding. This experience and viewpoint has put me at a middle-ground in this general debate, so:

Through all of my experiences, my personal preference toward the game's state is as follows:
1. If possible, slightly scale PPQ experience to attract higher level players (personal idea is to increase PQ mob exp significantly).
2. Make OPQ's goddess's wristband better or tweak its reward stage. The wristband is difficult to earn and is easily ruined.
3. Offer 'Event Bonus EXP for Parties' during seasonal events.
4. Finally, create a new-player checklist! Join a party, join a guild, do KPQ/LPQ/LMPQ/OPQ/PPQ/GPQ, attend a GM event, play Omok/Match Cards, get famed, send a smega, make a forum account, join the ML discord. Rewards would need to be fine tuned, but you get the idea. If you ask me, involvement is the best way to get a player committed.

Finally; my sentiments on HP washing. I think that, with the addition of the Ellin Ring and Monster book ring, washing is at a decent state. Yes, you still need to wash to HT at the most optimal level (155), but only to a minor extent with a few HP equips which will barely affect your damage. Did you know you can fairly easily create a 100 HP rat mouth? You generally only need 1 zhelm/scar helm with stats. By the time you're lv155, you'll have bossed enough to have plenty of extras for the one you're not using - and you can scroll that for HP! Sure your attack will not be at its most optimal for HT, but we're talking about a pretty minimal stat sacrifice here for 200 additional HP! Add a dep star, ellin ring, Monster book ring, and washes from 4 base int + shitty int equips, are you'll do fine.

TLDR; guilds have been my maple salvation. PQ's should be tweaked just a bit. HP washing is overly-complex but OK if you have buddies/guildies to help you out.

 

If that is the case you can just keep playing the "hindered" class of yours still and enjoy your time, stop thinking because you have to wash you can't enjoy or play your class. I only say those two things because you seem fixated that your character is "unplayable" so what other options is there if you aren't going to touch your character? Quit thinking that there's no options left for you. Every game have designs that you will like and don't like.

I do agree that HP washing mechanic is broken and it sucks and takes a lot of time but it is what it is and it enables so many things once you are done doing it. It is still optional and it shouldn't be the sole reason you are not enjoying your class.

 

MY MAN,
If you deadass think that THIS was toxic, then you're going to be crying wolf to mommy a bunch of times still.
I ain't gonna lie and say this game/server/whatever the fuck isn't toxic but if that's honestly a problem to you go play a different game. There's rivalries, there's arguments, shit happens in a competitive game lmao

 

Haha, if only the title could be a changed to sound a tad less misleading.

a) I think HP washing is actually at a decent place - the issue is awareness (hence why I always promote joining a friendly guild to find friends and people willing to help)! If you get a zhelm or scar helm by lv90, get your dep star around lv80, and have a few cheap int equips by lv100 (a 3m earring and a 5m bathrobe will do), you can actually manage HT by lv155 with a few HP equips which won't affect your damage by much.

b) The leech issue is a point you, Kimmy, and I can all agree on. It's a really lifeless factor to the game. Though I think a couple PQ's could be tweaked, I think many people fail to consider the vast amount of training options - I can list out 5 different places to train at any one level for any class for different results (good mesos, exp/hr, party training, solo training, semi-afk'able, etc). In the end, I still think PQs are deserving of some tweaking, but I don't think they're in a terrible place - the difficulty lies in needing a larger userbase to populate them (and Kimmy and staff are working on that by trying to boost our GTOP100 rating).



To the other posts regarding toxicity:
There's no way around toxic people other than to surround yourself with people who aren't toxic. Toxic people will always exist. The best you can do is try to better them through example by being the better person. The least you can do is avoid them. But most important of all, don't submit.

 

With the addition of hp rings, hp washing rly shouldnt be that much of an issue now. At least absolutely nowhere near as bad as it used to be. If people are worried new players are gonna quit due to ignorance of class/hp washing requirements before picking a class...then just add a massive warning sign + a hp washing overview at the character creation screen....

As for the god awful player interaction experience throughout 3rd job lvls, i don't really see how there's an effective way to resolve that since it's not exactly a single problem causing this. As many before have mentioned, it is a mix of lack of playerbase at that level, varied timezones so its hard to find people at PQs and/or lack of efficiency since leech is better and people just prefer the lazy hang on rope "gameplay" rather than actually grinding together and chatting or doing a repetitive pq that provides a fraction of the exp leeching would give.

v6x maplestory is mapleleechers, it's interesting to see how people think they can "resolve" a core mechanic of a 3year old server that influences practically everything in game by bringing up the issue that's been brought up 10024958425922255x before but have no tangible solution for it.

 

If you are reading the same thread as everyone else has, i'm pretty sure we're trying to solve the leech issue by increasing opq and ppq exp from 51-100 but everyone seems to be against it.

 

Since your guildies do opq and ppq, could you ask them why they do it then? Is it for the exp, gloves, etc or are they just trying to grind it out until 65 to leech we. And when you talk about '''leech economy" it will only affect 65-100 since that's when pqs stop. If you care about leeching and making money so much you can still go to skeles and I doubt prices will drop enough that pot cost alone will outweigh money gained especially for arch mages like yourself.