Give players who are lv90/100+ options to level up

Agreed. I really hope the PQ overhaul will make PQing beyond level 85 an option for leveling and making money. Leeching is still the quickest source of exp for level 85+ and if you are washing heavily, it is almost the only way to level up efficiently. Personally I grinded CDs-himes-shaolin to get to the bossing level but I do wish there are other good options beside this and leeching.

 

What is your suggestion?

 

Part of the difficulties of leveling up at lvl 100+ is that monsters grow in strength exponentially but the players don't. At GS2 the monsters are lvl 63 and have 6k hp. At wolf spiders they are lvl 80 and have 28k HP. At Himes they are lvl 100 and have 65k HP. At 110 Skelegons have 80k HP. Yet player strength does not increase at a proportional rate, and is especially null for washed characters.

My nonPQ suggestions (maybe they're possible)-

-Increase the quest EXP reward of ToT quests

-Scale up ToT monster HP and EXP by a greater proportion

-Adapt one of the monster maps in Taiwan to be lvl 100 monsters (maybe mannequins or whatever else)

-Develop and expand BPQ into a permanent, more utilized and interesting feature as opposed to a rehash of Dojo with potions, including bosses that can give good exp (like Crow or Capt. Latanica)

-Super bonkers crazy idea: Dramatically increase the EXP bonus of the monsters that Zakum summons (this way you can bring lower levels into Zakum for nice EXP but don't take any boss EXP lel)

-Increase HH respawn rate

-Rehash a quest line and adapt it for lvl 100+ (Royals does this for Ellin/EPQ)

-Create a zone (like LHC) where party EXP is increased with more players

 

I do think late 3rd and early 4th could use a closer look, mostly because people are still washing at these levels which increases the difficulty further. The crazy scaling at this point will really punish you if you are behind 20-50 levels in AP. Also, the increase in time commitment makes many players quit before they even really reach their 4th job power spike. The 100-134 gap is really the 50 miles of shit that strains out everyone but the most dedicated, degenerate, and/or unemployed.

If grinding through these levels will continue to be the norm, there should be a more forgiving exp curve/exp:hp ratio imo. For example, there could be mobs rebalanced to have less hp to decrease the upper ceiling of EXP gain for high leveled players and leechers but increase gains for weaker players.

Another problem I think is that HS muling basically becomes mandatory at these levels, otherwise you are wasting way more of your time. Having used one myself on many occasions, it just makes the hurdle even more tedious on many different levels. You can’t really enjoy the game the same way as single clienting. Having to reapply it every 90 seconds really disrupts the tempo of grinding. And the labor of creating a character you don’t really have any interest in playing is just such a pain in the ass. There are many ways people have suggested rebalancing HS already, so I’m not going to go into details about how this should be done, but I think the game should be less punishing to single client gameplay at these levels (and in general).

 

Ultimately the journey is what matters. I doubt new players would be more satisfied with a quicker journey, they'd just churn out at a higher level because truthfully there is no promised land after you catch the magical dragon.

Some interesting content to encourage party-play and break up the monotony of certain level ranges would be fantastic, but I don't think the rate of progression really needs to go up. Some classes are fast at leveling, others are not - there are more forms of progression than just your level. These are the tradeoffs players make when they choose their path, and the extremity of these differences is part of what makes old MS special.

 

So, about u losing your friends along the way, its jut how it is. it's lonely at the top.
and about the exp, hahaha u filthy noob, just make an i/l archmage and then you can leech your intlord. True optimal play. get gud.
and about the level 100+ grind. yea it sucks, just try to have dual monitors and watch youtube or something while grinding.

 

i leved my pally to almost 183 rn being much casual and never leeched it, is not hard find a places to grind..
as wk i went in mob fire weak so it reduce the mob selection, but have alot of good places to go

 

"Ultimately the journey is what matters."
What? Yea sure the journey matters, and that journey gonna end early when people dont have the patience to slog through the most boring phase of the game. So much f or a journey that matters when maplelegends.exe is sittin in the recycle bin.

"I doubt new players would be more satisfied with a quicker journey"
Guess again. Theres more things to do when you're lvl 135+ and can start bossing. There's more quests to do to unlock your abilities. More places to grind. More places to farm. More things to have fun with, you know, like you should, in a game. There's nothing you can do at lvl 110, or at 120 when youre basically still your 3rd job but are just staring at the empty skills you cant use yet. People play v.62 or v.83 servers for the nostalgia, and to be able to achieve the things they never could as a kid. So if they get stuck at the phase right before they can do the things they want to do? Haha gg lel

"Some interesting content to encourage party-play" Agree, there needs to be interesting content that encourages party-play.

"old MS special" is not a reason to allow gameplay to be horribly imbalanced, annoying, slow, and boring for players that leads to them quitting. ML is not old MS special. If it were, we would not have all these post v62 bosses and features that were clearly meant for people to play by getting past lvl 120.

Oh and "old MS special" is actually faster than current ML: 2x exp event, 2xp coupon, family reps (depending on what year). Kids back in the day didn't play everyday all day, so when they made use of the events and resources available to them, they definitely leveled faster than players do now in ML and they'd be definitely less bored. Any kind of reasoning that justifies people not playing the game or quitting the game due to boredom (especially when they haven't even experienced anywhere c lose to 50% of the game) is the very antithesis of having a game for people to play.

 

personal opinion, but i believe that buffing mobs, or creating new meta mobs, will not solve any of the stated issues.

take this for example: a lvl 135 hero/pally/shadower may have some motivation to grind the meta map, 7F at the start, which is the fastest way to gain experience, and arguably even faster then HT if u take all the considerations of signing up and organizing in. But after awhile, around lvl 145-160, most people's motivation will be lost due to how monotonous (and to certain extend, lonely) it is like how gallos/himes are. is 7F still comparable to HT? yes. is 7F faster then zakum and krex? Yes, still faster by 2 times. But most would rather go for zak and krex instead. While I can't speak for everyone, but at least for me, it is due to some sort of social interactions that one gets in these bossing.

Tbh even PQ itself is quite monotonous, and is harder to get it running compared to grinding mobs. But at least there's some social interactions there, which imo is the main driving factor for maplestory

 

ML is a game that requires patience and planning. If hitting 135 and doing content ASAP is a priority, there is the freedom to choose a build that can hit 135 quickly. New players might not know of these builds/strategies from the get-go, but that's part of the learning experience and motivation to engage with the community. Costly mistakes or miscalculations are a common theme in this server, and something the player will have to learn to deal with sooner or later.

Either way, the novelty of bossing and doing content will wear off. It's a tale as old as time, catching the dragon is never as fun as chasing it.

A 120 attacker will feel weak, but a 120 mage is going to be having a blast. Different classes have different power spikes.

Card hunting, meso farming, voting, party grinding, field boss hunting, making alts, etc. are all things you can do during level ranges where your character is relatively weak.

Annoying, slow, unintuitive, and highly punishing yes; But in what way is the gameplay horribly imbalanced?

Disappointment stems from a mismatch between expectation and reality. A lot of players will quit for a lot of the same reasons that highly engaged players keep returning. This is the nature of a private server for a notoriously grindy 20 year old game.

 

There is nothing about lvl 100-130 being slower than old school GMS that makes players want to return.

People want low rates sure. People don't want it to be slower than what they were used to as a kid.

Again, none of what you said matters. A boring game with a very boring phase = players don't play. All this hoopla of praising traditional maplestory and boring gameplay makes people quit. A game should not be designed to make people quit due to boredom before they've experienced more than half the content that the game has intended for them to experience.

There is no sane justification or reasoning to having players wanting to quit playing your game because it's boring. It's a game. People are supposed to have fun.

 

bienfu what are you advocating/trying to drive at aside from being negative lol

 

Personally I find early-mid game(from like 70 to 130/140) to be the most functionally broken period of play and is probably the portion that needs the most work. It also hasn't helped that any buffs they've received have been misplaced at best, and at their worst have enabled the styles of play that are harmful to third job in general.

Historically, buffs have more or less just been to the number of spawns, and that's a concept that deserves to be picked apart and dissected. The increased spawn is helpful for some classes, harmful to others, but ultimately it has mostly made for drastic improvements to leeching all the way through 3rd job in record speed.

Much of the spawn buff philosophy just ignores what makes maps good when the tools players have to accomplish killing are left behind. High speed slaughter is the most important factor for maps being good, and increasing spawn doesn't actually increase most players' damage, meaning any buffs are first and foremost for the individuals capable of utilizing the increased spawns; e.g. mages with their ultimates.

There are two major maps that are utilized in both leech and training, CDs and Ghost Ship. What these maps have are large quantities of low HP mobs. They are easy to kill, and because of that, their value is significantly higher than any slower to kill options. Kills/hr is gacha/hr, it's equips/hr, it's pure mesos/hr. Those are all factors that are tied together that have made GS and CDs the successful maps that they are, and one can even forgive lower exp because the rest of the benefits far outweigh other options. These are the maps that ought to be looked at when looking to implement any buffs to 3rd job content.

The metric of kills/hr makes the new scroll drops worth mentioning as well. Personally, I don't find any of them to be remotely tempting on a 3rd job character because of the significant decrease in kills/hr is a massive loss of profit and gachapon that is not made up for by the new scrolls. Phantom Watches may be a 30-40% improvement to exp for a newer priest compared to GS2, but you'll be killing less than a quarter of what you were at gs2, meaning you're earning only a quarter of the gachapons, equips, NX, and on top of that you're spending a load on potions without heavy washing. Most of these maps appear to be a poor tradeoff in money that cannot be compensated for without utilizing mage ultimates.

Overall, the healthiest solution I can think of for reworking 3rd job play is to decrease both the HP and exp of selected mobs. A decrease of 30-40% HP and 15-20% exp is enough to make play properly rewarding without continuing to pave of the way to leeching. Overall, it's possible to do everything to benefit 3rd job trainees, the decrease in HP is an increase in profit, the lesser exp drop with the decrease in HP is an increase in exp, and the drop in exp is only a loss for those who have fully maximized the kills/hr of the area.

 

I'm just pointing out the absolute ridiculousness of people upholding the status quo for the sake of it being the status quo.

Justifying a meta that would bore people into quitting or not interacting with the game because it's special is the antithesis of the point of a game.

 

but you dont need to himes from 95 til 120.
go grind for cards, do some good scroll quests, do some brainless grind somewhere else you like. all these options gonna return you mesos and you can buy leech if you think your grind isnt rewarding enough, this is strategy and can make things easier for your on certain levels depending of ur job.
who said a quicker grind will make those quitted ppl return? maybe they will just get bored on their next difficulty. dont think thats the only reason that made they quit.

 

People here are unironically saying card hunting is relevant for gaining EXP at these levels. I don’t think it’s even possible to gain more than 5 levels at 100+ before you get tier 10. Most of the mobs you would reasonably card hunt are garbage EXP, recently I have done tier 5-7 and I think I got like, 80% of 1 level at 110 on one of my characters. I also know leechless people who have gotten tier 10 and arent even over level 100. Quests for that matter too. You can complete every quest available to you in the game and you would still only gain like 3 levels at 110+.

Lets not joke around here, there’s few options to get to 120 besides leeching, or spending hours upon hours grinding (or hours upon hours upon hours if you don’t have HS available). If you are funded and unwashed, or have strong friends who don’t mind carrying you all the time, you might also be able to BF or Rav for EXP but I don’t think most people can go that route until the 120-125 power spike.

 

A bunch of classes can farm HH's between like 95-110 for pretty good exp. It doesn't always have to be the optimal grind to be effective.

 

We live in the age if instant gratification. If reaching level 100 takes too long, then players will quit. If reaching level 120 takes too long, then players will quit. If reaching level 140 takes too long....

I hate to break it to everyone, but this game is a grind all the way through to 200 and beyond. Late 3rd job is just sharp contrast as its a gap between pq and boss (which usually is glorified pq anyways). Sure its been shown that every single pq is worse than grinding, but at least having the option there is nice.

Game's still gonna be a grind though, unless we mean to make 4th job even more free than it already is. Then the players complaining about being unable to reach 120 will complain about being unable to reach the next level tier, and so on...

 

Of course you are feeling tough leveling by not having a mage/hs first which is the optimal way to play the game. lv90-100 are literally the easiest and fastest level to leech at ulu2.
They even nerf grinding further, by 2x your potion cost, resulting you barely earning or even loss meso when you grind.

You are complaining the game being tough by choosing the tough path, which is kinda duh?