Make the Challenges System level-gated (level ≥100) instead of job-advancement-gated

Make the Challenges System level-gated (level ≥100) instead of job-advancement-gated

Currently, the Challenges System, a new mechanic that is intended to replace HP washing for PCs who cannot or will not wash, requires the PC to be either 3rd-job or 4th-job. This restriction is not only completely unnecessary, but is actively harmful, and often totally excludes those who need the Challenges System the most.

The Challenges System is already level-gated (it starts at level 100 at the lowest). The fact that it also gatekeeps PCs based on their job is thus redundant at best. So why is the job requirement there?

I suspect — but cannot prove — that the job requirement is intended to mitigate theoretical (or pre-theoretical/speculative) exploits similar to the so-called “beginner-mage” build, wherein a PC job advances very late in order to benefit from HP gains that they can only obtain (or can more easily obtain) at jobs lower (i.e. lower grade, e.g. beginner < bishop) than their intended target job (the “intended target job” being some kind of 4th-job mage, in this case).

However, there is apparently(?) some other reason, because if this was actually the concern, then the Challenges System would only need to be gated to 2nd job or higher, rather than the 3rd job or higher that was chosen. Nevertheless, we will show that it is easy to incorporate 0th-jobbers, 1st-jobbers, and 2nd-jobbers alike into the Challenges System, thus removing the harmful & unnecessary built-in discrimination.

How?

There are two parts to this change, although the second part is not really a “change” so much as it is a clarification.

Part 1: Voluntary job-locking

This part is simple: If anyone who gains MAXHP from a challenge is thenceforth permanently prohibited from taking job advancements — with the obvious & important exception of 4th job advancement! — then the issues are removed.

Here’s a little Q&A for part 1:

• Q: Isn’t doing a quest that permanently prevents job advancement pretty weird?
  • A: Yes, but here’s something even weirder: doing such a quest (challenge) already permanently prevents HP washing, and indeed prevents the ability to put anything into MAXHP/MAXMP at all! This would be the first time that a quest interferes with MAXHP/MAXMP allocation, but not the first time that a quest interferes with job advancement: job advancement quests cause job advancement when fully completed, and such advancements are both irreversible (e.g. a PC who advances from magician to I/L wizard can never go back and choose to be a magician again), & eliminate higher advancement possibilities (e.g. a PC who advances from magician to I/L wizard cannot choose to advance from I/L wizard to F/P mage at 3rd job advancement).
    
    Also remember that doing the challenges — and accepting specifically the MAXHP rewards — would be totally voluntary, and players would be warned in advance that they are preventing themselves from job-advancing.
• Q: What if I negligently forget that accepting MAXHP from a challenge prevents me from job-advancing, and I ignore all warnings, and then I permanently screw up my character?
  • A: This can only happen if you are both level ≥100 and are a 2nd-jobber, 1st-jobber, or 0th-jobber (beginner). If you get to this point, you are at least 30 levels late for your job advancement, and you certainly know what you are doing. The risk of permanently screwing up your character by inadvertently (or purposely, only to find out later that it was a bad idea) disabling HP washing for yourself is far, far, far more likely.
• Q: Isn’t this overly strict?
  • A: Yes, it can be loosened by only disabling 1st & 2nd job advancements (advancement from 0th job to 1st job, and advancement from 1st job to 2nd job), as these are the problematic transitions. The HP thresholds (which are what dictate how much MAXHP you can gain from the system) do not observe distinctions beyond this point, with only two exceptions:
    • It treats brawlers(/marauders/buccaneers) differently from pirates(/gunslingers/outlaws/corsairs). This one is simply a non-issue, as brawlers/marauders/buccaneers have the Improve MaxHP skill, so their HP thresholds are much higher and have nothing to gain from “beginner-mage”-style exploits.
    • It treats bandits(/CBs/shadowers) differently from rogues(/assassins/hermits/nightlords). This one is actually significant, as a rogue could hypothetically put off 2nd job advancement until some level ≥110 of their choosing, in order to benefit from the “other” category of HP threshold, which is more advantageous (read: larger at every level from 110 onwards) than the “shad” category. Then, they would take 2nd (and 3rd & 4th, in most cases) job advancement once they reach their MAXHP goal.* This means that, ceteris paribus, eliminating the ability to do 2nd job advancement upon receiving MAXHP from a challenge is necessary.
    Furthermore, it’s possible to loosen things even further by only preventing the PC from making the specifically problematic job advancements, namely ⟨Beginner → Magician⟩ and ⟨Rogue → Bandit⟩.
    
    An alternative, even more superior (read: even less overly strict) solution to the “late advancement to Chief Bandit” problem prohibits the ⟨Bandit → Chief Bandit⟩ advancement, instead of the ⟨Rogue → Bandit⟩ advancement, and then lumps Bandits in with “Others”. The reason for this is that permabandits do not get access to Meso Guard (and are naturally extremely short-reach).
    
    However, I am posing this in an overly strict version just in case it’s necessary for reasons unknown to me, and the implementors (read: MapleLegends staff) can decide if loosening is possible, and then loosen it if so.
• Q: I don’t care.
  • A: That’s not a question, but okay. I will not attempt to convince the reader to care if they refuse to be convinced; I will simply note that this oversight severely discriminates against an important part of the playerbase for no reason, and thus will be seen as a severe blow directly inflicted upon them, with the only apparent reason being that they are simply neither wanted nor welcome on this server. If that is an acceptable outcome, then so be it.

Spoiler: Footnotes

*This exploit is certainly worth eliminating, although it’s also worth noting that it’s hard to really benefit from. At this rate, the bandit/CB/shad would rather just HP wash than spend even more resources (including lots & lots of SP, something that these classes don’t have many, if any, to spare) just to get a modest MAXHP boost! You would also have to do 2nd job advancement at about level ≈180 at the latest, if you actually wanted a substantial benefit without the drawback of giving up MAXHP gains from higher-level challenge completions.

Part 2: Clarify the HP thresholds

Currently, the HP thresholds look like this, according to the official source:

Levels	Mages	Warriors	Bucc	Shad	Others
100	1,520	7,000	5,600	3,200	3,200
110	1,720	8,350	6,750	3,700	3,950
120	1,930	9,850	8,050	4,300	4,800
130	2,150	11,500	9,500	5,000	5,750
140	2,380	13,300	11,100	5,800	6,800
150	2,620	15,250	12,850	6,700	7,950
160	2,870	17,350	14,750	7,700	9,200
170	3,130	19,600	16,800	8,800	10,550
180	3,400	22,000	19,000	10,000	12,000

This is actually totally fine as-is. We just have to be clear what the headers of each column mean:

Spoiler: Table headers, clarified

• “Mages” encompasses the following classes:
  • 1st job:
    • Magician.
  • 2nd job:
    • Wizard (Fire/Poison).
    • Wizard (Ice/Lightning).
    • Cleric.
  • 3rd job:
    • Mage (Fire/Poison).
    • Mage (Ice/Lightning).
    • Priest.
  • 4th job:
    • Arch Mage (Fire/Poison).
    • Arch Mage (Ice/Lightning).
    • Bishop.
• “Warriors” encompasses the following classes:
  • 1st job:
    • Swordman.
  • 2nd job:
    • Fighter.
    • Page.
    • Spearman.
  • 3rd job:
    • Crusader.
    • White Knight.
    • Dragon Knight.
  • 4th job:
    • Hero.
    • Paladin.
    • Dark Knight.
• “Bucc” encompasses the following classes:
  • 2nd job:
    • Brawler.
  • 3rd job:
    • Marauder.
  • 4th job:
    • Buccaneer.
• “Shad” encompasses the following classes:
  • 2nd job:
    • Bandit*.
  • 3rd job:
    • Chief Bandit.
  • 4th job:
    • Shadower.
• “Others” encompasses the following classes:
  • 0th job:
    • Beginner.
  • 1st job:
    • Archer.
    • Rogue.
    • Pirate.
  • 2nd job:
    • Hunter.
    • Crossbowman.
    • Assassin.
    • Gunslinger.
  • 3rd job:
    • Ranger.
    • Sniper.
    • Hermit.
    • Outlaw.
  • 4th job:
    • Bow Master.
    • Marksman.
    • Night Lord.
    • Corsair.

*Bandits ideally should be in the “Others” category, although this requires the job-advancement caveat suggested in the previous section.

Here’s a little Q&A for part 2:

• Q: Doesn’t this award too much MAXHP to permabeginners who complete the challenges?
  • A: This would put the typical permabeginner on par with, say, a completely unwashed archer. Being on par with an unwashed archer is not exactly “massive survivability”, especially when you’re a permabeginner, and thus largely rely on being extremely close to your opponent at all times in order to deal damage. It is true that permabeginners have naturally smaller MAXHP pools than archers do in the absence of both HP washing and the Challenge System; however, this basically just pans out (in pre-Challenge-System MapleLegends) as “permabeginners just have to wash way harder than anyone else”. If permabeginners really absolutely need a nerf here, then the “Shad” category can simply be expanded to “Shad or beginner”.

 

In almost all cases, there is functionally no difference w.r.t. this system, so you have no need to worry about playstyles nor goals. By “almost all cases”, I mean most 1st-jobbers & 2nd-jobbers, which fit very naturally into the HP threshold table that you have already posted (and that I reproduced above). This is why I included the “Table headers, clarified” listing that you see in the first post of this thread. For example, a Spearman (2nd job) should be treated identically to a Dragon Knight (3rd job), and a Rogue (1st job) should be treated identically to a Night Lord (4th job). The only weird edge cases are Pirates (1st job), Rogues (1st job), and Bandits (2nd job), but I already handled those cases above. Pirates do not have access to Improved MaxHP, and Rogues do not have access to Meso Guard, so they should be treated as “Others” (with the job-advancement caveats that I already outlined above). The only truly strange edge case is Bandit, because it seems “obvious” that they should be treated like Shadowers, and yet they do not have Meso Guard. Bandits may be treated as “Others” if they are prevented from 3rd job advancing (this is probably ideal, but I don’t feel strongly either way), or “Shad” otherwise (which is how I have it above, but I may edit it to reflect the former possibility).

That leaves permabeginners. Again, I already talk about them in the post above, saying that they naturally fit into the “Others” category — after all, it does say “other”, and beginners are indeed an “other” class. If this is absolutely too strong, then my recommendation is to lump them in with Shadowers. If you are worried about playstyle, I already made the most salient points above, so I will again quote myself:

Permabeginners are naturally starved for reach (the least extreme example being LUKginners, who use event claws; but note that they are still unnaturally short-reach, as they lack Keen Eyes entirely) and only rarely have the luxury of not taking touch damage from whatever it is that they are fighting. Other than that, their goals will be very similar to casual (read: probably not doing ultra-hard content like PB/NT/BGA/BGB/TB, but hoping to be able to participate in other things like Capt Lat*, HH*, Rav, Pap, Zak, Scar/Tar, and even HT, with the caveat that they may have to ask for HB of course) bossers of other naturally squishy classes like e.g. archers (read: Bow Masters & Marksmen). Permabeginners who want to go further (less reliance on HB, the ability to participate in PB/NT, etc.; these permabeginners do exist but are rarer) will accept that they simply need to HP wash extremely hard in order to reach their goals, so there is no need to accommodate them with this system alone. This is why I personally believe that permabeginners are most aptly “Others”. Even with this change, they will still be at considerable defensive & offensive disadvantage compared to completely unwashed archers.

*I can already predict people giving me weird looks for including Capt. Latanica and Headless Horseman here. These are very important bosses for permabeginners, and are already doable by washed permabeginners as we speak, but they are worth mentioning as I have frequently had to worry about permabeginners surviving (or rather, not surviving) in my Capt. Lat/HH runs.

 

Heya! I’m going to respond to this post, but I suspect — although once again, cannot possibly prove — that it is in bad faith. I will simply assume that it is in good faith anyways, and respond exactly once (1 time), as I don’t believe in unproductive conversation such as this; my intent is to clear up any confusion for casual readers who are unaware of the meanings & contexts of the terms used here.

Except that this is not self-imposed at all, so this argument completely fails; no one intentionally decided to “Challenge-System-lock” themselves (at least, not yet).

This restriction is based only on whether or not you are ≥3rd job, and has nothing to do with being odd-jobbed per se. Lots of odd-jobbers are 3rd job or 4th job, and there are perma-2nd-jobbers on this server who are non-odd, because they play in an area (Victoria Island) that lacks 3rd job advancement and thus disallows all chars (odd or not) from advancing.

Again, this is not self-imposed, but an arbitrary restriction that no one asked for and that was not even intentional (see xiaoyaoz’s informative post above). Furthermore, people did not create their characters before the announcement of new quests thinking “I’m okay with being a [insert <3rd job class here] and missing out on Challenges”, because the Challenge System was not even conceived yet!

I won’t try to engage with the wholesale dismissal of unusual styles of play, other than to say that even on servers where I do not play oddly at all, I am keenly aware that if there aren’t other people out there doing it, then the server is not healthy — in many cases, it has become a power-player fest where only the sweatiest players (and/or the IRL richest pay-to-winners) are the only ones who have any reason to continue playing.

Again, I will simply reiterate that playing in a way that is off the beaten path is not an indication that one is begging to be excluded from ordinary content. If this is somehow a strange statement to you, consider the following example: Permabeginners have been doing quests for rewards (some good, some not so good) since at least as far back as 2003 in KMS. The Challenges System proposes to add new quests that, like the quests that MapleStory has always had, have level requirements and give rewards. If we went back and changed all of those classic quests so that the ones with a level requirement above 10 required the character to be 1st job or higher, then those permabeginners would no longer be able to do the classic quests. You could say: ah, but you chose to be a permabeginner; a class that has historically been neglected by Wizet/Necksawn! But consider if the Challenges System was available not to 3rd- and 4th-jobbers, but rather, to all jobs that aren’t Rogues/Bandits/CBs/Shadowers, for fear of “beginner-mage”-style exploits. You could say: ah, but you chose to be a Shadower; a class that has historically been neglected by Necksawn! But I doubt anyone would buy that argument; the argument only sounds vaguely convincing if you target jobs (viz. odd jobs) that people poorly understand and thus cannot fully understand the argument.

If that doesn’t convince you because those quests were not added by MapleLegends (viz. they were added by Wizet), consider some quests that were added by MapleLegends: the ten Monster Book Ring quests, each one of which awards another tier of the Monster Book Ring. No outlanders are excluded from these quests per se; it is just content that you might or might not be up to the challenge for. Permabeginners, and 4th-job magelets (or whatever odd-jobbed characters you like) are going to have a harder time of card-hunting than, say, a completely non-odd corsair. Is that wrong? Do you have a very serious issue with that? Card-hunting is considered — both inside and outside of the oddball community — to be valuable content to the game, which gives people (1.) another activity to do besides grinding, bossing, questing, PQing, etc., and (2.) meaningful rewards that change the way that people interact with the game.

• If odd-jobbers are “excluded” from the Challenge System in any actual way, it will (or should) be because the Challenges are too difficult for them, and no one is going to complain about that; some odd jobs have severe weak points, and people know that when they choose to be that job! This is the “spirit” of odd play that you seem to have such a hard time finding for some reason; odd-jobbers are not only more than okay with, but intimately familiar with their limitations! This is completely different from being arbitrarily gatekept based on the moral equivalent of an obscure legal statute that observes whether or not you happened to job advance beyond a random grade. Which again, I may note that many odd-jobbers are 3rd or 4th job, so they are fine as-is — your “coldly say[ing] with little remorse” doesn’t even apply to these odd-jobbers, and why? Many of them are much “weaker” than their job-locked counterparts. Is there something else that you care deeply about that you just aren’t using any words whatsoever to express?
• You seem to be conflating “suboptimal” and “odd-jobbed” and “perma-≤2nd-job”, when these, in reality, only overlap slightly. I have talked about this many (and I do mean many) times — and at great length, I might add; I will once again apologise for my writing style — in my diary, and I am a little bit tired of sounding like a broken record. Nevertheless, I will say it again just in case the casual reader is confused: many suboptimal characters are non-odd, many odd chars are optimal for what they do (and are thus not suboptimal at all), not all odd-jobbers are perma-≤2nd-jobbers, and yes, not even all perma-≤2nd-jobbers are odd (although this very last point about non-odd perma-≤2nd-jobbers is far too subtle to be relevant here; I only mention it for completeness).
• One of the things that you point out is that playing an odd-jobbed character (or, more generally, any oddball character that is off the beaten path, regardless of whether or not it is odd-jobbed) is voluntary, and a playstyle choice. This is, as it is, very correct, but twisting this logic to become un-logic is only confusing to you and everyone involved: if a player decides that the Challenge System is not appropriate for their character/build/job/path, then they can simply voluntarily choose not to do it. That is a playstyle choice — make no mistake. Similarly, if a player decides that the Monster Book Ring quests are not appropriate for their character/build/job/path, then they can simply voluntarily choose not to do it. Similarly, if a player decides that LPQ* is not appropriate for their character/build/job/path, then they can simply voluntarily choose not to do it. And so on…
• People have made arguments exactly like the ones that I am making, long before I ever started playing on this server. That is why we have some of the nice things that we have, like — for example — the fact that the level 70 mount is not 3rd- or 4th-job only (it has no job requirements; you just have to be level ≥70). And yet, somehow, I have yet to see an argument like the one that I am replying to; no one said any of this about weird job-restricted chars getting to use mounts, even though Necksawn did that one (i.e. it was not MapleLegends’ fault to begin with; they just kindly undid Necksawn’s sloppy job). The level 70 mount has been available to these job-locked characters for a long time now, and still to this day, I hear people openly being thankful & grateful for it; in your view, this was apparently a mistake that was presumably only prompted into actual in-game implementation by entitled whiners. And yet, when non-odd players ask for basic, seemingly reasonable things in the same manner, their job (odd or not) is never called into question.
• You say “forced inclusion”, but this is completely backwards; it is “forced exclusion”.
• You say “making suboptimal playstyles optimal” as if it’s somehow ridiculous, but you do not listen to what comes out of your mouth. Rest assured that, although this does not apply to absolutely everyone who has ever played an odd-jobbed character that can be considered “suboptimal” in some sense, many of us (myself included) sweat pretty damn hard to optimise our characters within the constraints that we have laid for ourselves. This is the spirit of the oddball, once again in case you were still missing that spirit. A highly-optimal permabeginner is a beautiful thing to behold, and if whiting Capt. Latanica with your peers because of all of that hard, grueling optimisation work that you put into your permabeginner isn’t beautiful to you, then that’s totally fine. A lot of people don’t even like MapleStory at all, much less a particular playstyle within it! No one is asking you to like it; none of the posts in this thread (excepting this one) are directed at you, nor do they concern you. What also doesn’t concern you is how much someone else decides to optimise their character within the constraints that they have chosen for themselves.
• If these posts sound “entitled” to you, note that I often feel the same way. I absolutely loathe writing these things, and it gives me immense anxiety to post them when I know that it’s hard for outsiders to interpret them in the correct light. But the reason why I do it anyways is simple: if the MapleLegends staff don’t go and ask odd-jobbers (or questers, or paladins, or whatever…) about these things, they are going to get it wrong some of the time. That’s not an indictment of the simple fact that they got it wrong; mistakes happen, the MapleLegends staff members are ordinary human beings like anyone else, and I acknowledge that, so I just try to help fix those mistakes! The problem is that this can create an unhealthy relationship that is based on secrecy; if MapleLegends staff are secretive about what they are considering or about what they think, and they don’t consult anyone, then we just get surprised by it. This case is better than most, because the Challenges System is not released yet (at least, not fully). So there is time for feedback! And that’s what this post is for: feedback. If it comes off as pointed, that is partly my writing style (I seem to have a bad habit of reading too much nonfiction), and partly the fact that these “surprises” are a common occurrence for the oddball community, so it starts to become harder to attribute to innocent negligence (even though it is innocent negligence, including in this specific case). If comes off less as “pointed” and more as “too entitled” or “too whiny”, then I can just stop engaging with the server; you do not need to tell me twice (I vastly prefer to just play the game, myself)! I am just here to help, and you will have to believe me when I say that this gives me absolutely no pleasure. Again, I will once more apologise for my writing style, and I hope that my idiosyncratic style — fueled by my odd choice of literature to read — doesn’t make my points any less valid.

*In the past few months, I made a character myself that is effectively quest-only, so I skipped LPQ entirely (as it is not tied to any quests, so I cannot justify doing more than zero runs). This character happens to be of an odd job, but note that these two things are completely separable: the “quest-only” challenge would still be completely coherent even if I were a 110% non-odd character, and the “odd-jobbed” part would still be completely coherent even if I didn’t do many quests, and did other stuff instead.

tl;dr yes, and this question just so happens to be totally irrelevant to the conversation (although the answer, if you were wondering, is indeed “yes”).