Nibergen

I agree! Like you I had no idea that fighting from the right side counts as "aggro abuse". There had not been made any announcements of this. Today we were told in an announcement, a reminder of the aggro abuse rules. They, however, do not apply to Nibergen since it states "2.11 Aggro Abuse - Any form of aggro abuse that causes a monster or boss to no longer attack at all is forbidden." When standing on the right side of the clouds in Nibergen, you still get hit from the body. It has very low accuracy though, so it mostly misses.
And after watching that old JMS clip, where it's allowed, I really think it should be the same here c:
It's not game breaking imo. It's nice that unwashed players are still able to participate in Neo Tokyo.

 

Fighting Anego at the top of the cash register (safe spot) isn't aggro abuse, because Anego is a boss that you can pin, and if you're within range she will attack. However, with Nibergen, he becomes completely null in that spot (shown in the video as well). While JMS had no rule of such aggro abuse, in MapleLegends we do and it is abuse cause the Nibergen does absolutely nothing. You can still go to the safe spot but as long as Nibergen is casting abilities and attacks it is not considered abuse.

You do not get hit from the body, but you get hit from the clouds. The body will probably 1-hit unwashed players. Yes you don't need to wash for this boss at all, just do it in a party if you're unwashed to avoid future aggro abuse.

 

You agreed to the terms of service upon registering, and the rule is explicit in what it means. Also patching this spot would create more HP-washing complaint threads and we all know how those threads end up going (looped discussions and unnecessary fighting).

As for this part, it means exactly what I said. As long as Nibergen is casting his attacks and spells continuously as he is supposed to, it does not matter where you are located in the map.

 

GS2 staircase puts the player in a spot where the mobs are incapable of casting their attack. We should ban every priest ever made. And every ranged class who sat on top of the hummer in MP3 to snipe. Spirit Viking snipers are also abusing their agro, pulling in mobs into spots where they can't hit the player. Newties are in the same boat. And some Shaolin spots. And so are some people at Windraiders.

If people are going to be banned for using safespots then at least do it uniformly, rather than allowing people to accept that these are valid methods before banning people who try to use these methods in the endgame. That's one of the issues I find with this ruling; it puts one thing in the wrong while there have been numerous instances of it in a morally grey-zone, and there isn't a lot that would imply that what this is is wrong.

This "abuse" is not even making nibergen freeze because he doesn't even move. He doesn't attack because nobody is in range of his attacks. Anego doesn't use her attacks because generally there are no players in range of her attacks either. This isn't a malicious use of game code to gain an unfair advantage, this is using two of the boss's intended functions, his inability to move and his fixed attack range, in order to complete him. In all likelihood Neckson did add this purposefully, whoever coded it likely knew the range of the attacks he/she was coding and their affected regions. This doesn't look like it was added accidentally as a bug, just as the left wall in Vergamot is also a safespot entirely through the 3rd stage. This was an intentional design.

Personally I don't find this ban justified. If the methods discovered 9 years ago are still added, without mention from the GM's, what should follow is a warning when they are used, not an outright ban.

 

Minor contribution, doesn't this mean that mages who stand on the right book case and cast their ultimate all days are aggro abusing since the mobs don't attack back?

Also, if you were to drag Kacchuu Musha all the way to the right, mages are able to cast their ultimate to kill it without getting hit at all

 

mapleSEA also allowed all players to fight nibelung at the bottom right
those who has enof hp they can choose to fight at the left side for more fun/challenging..

 

I don't usually comment on this kind of thing, but honestly I find the whole "aggro abuse" thing stupid as hell. It's like telling a builder he can't use his hammer because it would be "too easy" if he did. It's limiting to the player for no good reason. What purpose does it really serve? To arbitrarily increase the amount of time and mesos it will take for me to HP wash? If it's part of the game's mechanics, then what's the harm in letting people do it? If you don't want people to aggro abuse bosses, change the bosses so it can't happen! And if you can't do that, then don't make it a rule. It would be incredibly frustrating to know I could easily solo, but now I can't because the big bad GM's said we can't use the safe spot that you literally GAVE us!

I'm not sure how well I really articulated this, but I hope I was able to get my point across.

 

[Just a note: My views in this post are my own ]

After having read through these posts and having considered the issue, I think that whatever may happen in regards to this specific issue of Nibergen, the ToS regarding aggro abuse should probably be updated to be more precise. What that may look like is beyond my ability to see right now, but reading through all these concerns (and hearing a few in-game) backed up by some good examples and arguments, something ought to be done... not only for the sake of a regular player's experience, but also so that we staff members don't have to deal with headache situations like this.

It seems like revising or clarifying things for bosses would be the priority, especially if they are instanced, since instanced bosses are usually the ones people are fighting/farming the most.

Since I did not have a hand in testing Neo Tokyo (except for one small piece), I cannot say what the attack/aggro mechanics for Nibergen are supposed to be. However, I do think I can throw out a couple of ideas relating to the concept of aggro abuse and maybe pose some theoretical changes to what constitutes abuse:

1) If it does not function this way already for a particular boss (highest priority being the instanced/major bosses), a boss should look for new aggro targets if their current target is out of range when they would otherwise cast an attack.
2) If that change is possible (or if a boss already functions this way), then a more precise aggro rule would be that it's aggro abuse at bosses if there are attacking players in range of boss attacks, but the boss attacks are not triggering. This presumes that the code change in point #1 is working as intended.
3) This means that a solo-er on the right side of Nibergen would still be fine, since he is out of range of the boss attacks (like any other instance we see of attacking mobs while out of range of their attacks).
4) This means that if someone was on the right side of Nibergen, out of range, and people were on the left side, in-range of attacks, it would be aggro abuse if Nibergen wasn't attacking those players who were in-range.

My points could probably be tightened up a bit, but right now I think discussion takes priority since it is clear that many of you have valuable comments related to this aspect of the game.

If the change I proposed in #1 isn't possible, I still think that the spot on the right hand side of Nibergen was intentionally put there, and attacking there as a solo bosser just falls under the category of attacking monsters when nobody is in their attack range. If that's bad, then Nibergen's attack range needs to change, but not the spot.

There's definitely some ambiguity on the topic of aggro abuse. I would be interested in seeing some of you try to re-formulate the rule in the Terms of Service so that it's iron-clad and doesn't have any confusing potential interpretations while still remaining reasonable. Whether or not it would actually change is beyond my power to do, but I think that some brainstorming is not harmful at all.

 

I wish... I wish so much...

 

it sucks that this happened to ryan. we werent really clarified about nibergen and where to stand. im pretty sure people heard it from me mostly where you can and cant stand. but banning someone just to prove a point it sucks for him. tons of people solo nibergen when hes frozen and just dont get caught. as the same for vergamot, whoever has the aggro and lays down, it freezes. tons of people do this, but havent been caught. maybe in the future, notify everyone about its potential aggro abuse vs simply banning someone.

Tip: if you want juicy exp, have your bishop buddy left side and spam gen so Nibergen attacks still. have all attackers on the right side, so the ship is still attacking. im not 100% sure, if range attackers can stand bottom left of the clouds and attack, because if you stand there, the ship still attacks/summons mobs and SOMETIMES, JUST SOMETIMES, the ships dips down and hits you -_- (i died and learned the hard way LOL)

but Ryan/Jess isnt the type to intentionally aggro abuse...

 

I just want to say that I think everyone here doesn't understand what it means to "aggro abuse". What exactly is aggro abuse? To me its when you are supposed to take aggro for hitting the mob but you don't so the mob/boss doesn't do anything while you get to attack it for free.

Think of it this way, when you hit a mob what does it do? It follows you showing clear "aggro". So if you hit Anego/Kachuu and have it pinned obviously its not going to hit you unless you are in range BUT when you stop it is going to run towards you or your general area. (This shows YOU clearly that its aggro'd) This shows you are still aggroing the mob/boss so therefore no abuse.

Lets start off saying this, You can not compare JMS with ML those two servers have different rules. In fact JMS do not have an aggro abuse rule while ML does. Now lets take a look at Nibergen/Vergamot. You are able to hit these bosses without it retaliating back and sure you can say that is because you are not in range of its "only attack range", but think of it as HT first pre-head. The one with aggro can stay at the top of the rope and the rest of the party members can freely hit it without it retaliating or firing off any attacks DESPITE the rest of the group being in its "attack range". This is obviously abuse because the mob/boss shows zero sign of it being aggro'd on you or targeting you.

I do agree that this should have been clarified/warned from the start so players would know so before attempting to solo the bosses in the most safest way possible.

Edit:I think all aggro abuse bans should start off as a warning first though.