Further partitioning buff lines & altering subsequent buff positions

Hi everyone, before getting into the nitty gritty details of this post, I want to start by saying that this thread ultimately will house two separate suggestions which are inherently distinct, but fundamentally tied to one another a core level. While it isn’t unheard of for suggestions to be only partially implemented, I figure it’s worth mentioning this specifically to clear up any confusion for the casual/quick reader.

In the August 13th patch notes post of last year, it was announced that a client modification would be pushed which would cause certain skill/buff indicators to be listed on a separate line from “the more attention-needing buffs”, namely:

• Monster Rider
• Battleship
• Passive buffs from Beholder
• Timer for charged Assassinate

The justification for this change was as follows: "We decided to split the two categories in order to ease the potential visual clutter that comes from mixing buff icons of different nature, hopefully making it easier to notice when an important buff is about to expire.” Lastly, it was stated to “Please let us know if you have any suggestions about possible additions” on the matter, an invitation I’ve been meaning to accept for quite some time now.

I wanted to bring this up before the meat of the suggestions, and feel this preface is needed before writing about tweaking the game difficulty. In an open-ended and long game such as Maple, maintaining consistent difficulty is an important aspect of overall game balance and health, and is something I consider deeply before making suggestions that would make the game easier. While some may say changing anything to improve ease-of-use may be making things "too easy," I don't think that rugged/clunky UI is needed to maintain a challenging game environment. The post linked above suggests that staff feels similarly.

Spoiler: Self-buffs, party-wide buffs, and other buffs

My first suggestion is pretty straightforward: could the UI be further modified to display three lines of buffs/skills (or more if someone has a better structure in mind), partitioned more or less along the following lines:

1. Top: Self-buffs (chiefly skills such as the relevant weapon Boosters, as well as consumable items such as Ciders, Wizard Elixirs, etc.)
2. Middle: Party/map-wide buffs (such as Maple Warrior, Sharp Eyes, Echo of Hero, Party Bears, etc.)
3. Bottom: The four skills/buffs listed above that currently exist on their own line (Monster Rider, Battleship, Beholder passives, and charged Assassinate timer)

Now, this particular segmentation could potentially get a bit hairy when considering that certain party buffs could also be considered self-buffs (if we understand this to mean a buff that is applied by oneself to oneself). Examples would be any buffs which apply at a party-wide level: Dark Knights casting Hyper Body, any class casting Maple Warrior, etc. This potential complication is mentioned for two reasons: first and foremost, because it might be too tricky to modify the client if it does not already recognize whether a particular Hyper Body, Maple Warrior, etc. was applied by oneself or by someone else, as well as because certain classes and characters may have particular interests in having them be organized in one way as opposed to another. For instance, someone who primarily plays a Hero might prefer to have a skill like Rage on the middle line to reduce the number of skill icons on the first line (which could include Sword/Axe Booster, Combo Attack, Iron Body, Power Guard, Power Stance, and potentially other skills I’m forgetting). On the other hand, someone who mainly plays Corsair might prefer to have a skill like Maple Warrior (should they have been the one who cast it) appear on the first line along with Gun Booster, as this line wouldn’t normally be occupied by much for Corsairs (Gun Booster being their only buff), and thus such a segmentation could be a bit more substantial to them.

Another argument in favor of putting party-wide buffs cast by oneself on the topmost line with isolated self-buffs could also be that such an implementation would serve as a built-in, easily recognizable indication of whether one has the “correct” version of a buff applied at a given moment (such as one who possesses Maple Warrior 30 being able to determine at a glance that it has not been accidentally overwritten by someone else in the party, or perhaps whether the correct Sharp Eyes is applied should there be two archers in a party: one with the skilled maxed and the other without the skill maxed). While I personally have some interest in the latter implementation for both the Maple Warrior and Corsair reasons outlined above, I definitely also see that it would be both more tidy and likely much less complicated to implement isolated self-buffs together on one line, and all party/map-wide buffs together on another line, regardless of whether one had cast any of the skills in question.

Though I imagine many people didn’t think twice about the changes made to buff lines last August, I personally found it quite useful as a Corsair, both because I know exactly where to look to reliably see my Battleship’s HP indicator (for those who don’t know: the buff/skill icon fills and darkens as the Battleship’s HP decreases similar to how buff duration progresses for regular timed buffs and their respective icons). Additionally, it made tracking all of my other buffs more reliable, as before these changes were made, the icon would position itself on the far right and shift all of my other icons to the left whenever I mounted, and shift all of them back to the right whenever I dismounted, which made the typical Corsair tasks of skill animation canceling, watching boss animations, dismounting where appropriate, and analyzing my buffs at the same time about as cancerous of a process as it possibly could be. This "small" change was greatly appreciated then, and further changes to the implementation of buff lines would garner similar appreciation from me now.

Spoiler: Append new buffs to the left

The points of particular skill icon positional reliability as well as less overall buff icon repositioning segue conveniently into my second suggestion: could subsequent buffs be appended to the left side of the line of buffs where they exist instead of to the right side (the buff lines would themselves still exist in the upper right corner of the client window)? As it currently stands, a character with no buffs applied who casts a skill which grants one will gain an icon in the upper right corner of their client window, and every subsequent buff gained thereafter will append itself to the right side of the list of buffs, shifting every existing buff over one spot to the left.

As mentioned previously, difficulty is an aspect of this game which I treasure, and as frustrating as it can be at times, tracking cooldown timers adds a layer of difficulty that in general I think is a very good thing, but currently with buff icons and their associated timers, I think it is much clunkier than it really ought be. In order to better outline why I think this is the case, I will take a moment to discuss another cooldown timer system: boss skill cooldowns.

Though it isn’t always readily apparent, many bosses in this game have cooldown timers (whether strictly time-based or based on a numerical amount of other skills that must be used first before they can cast a particular skill again). One of the most notorious examples for endgame bossers is Aufheben, a fight which has anywhere from three to five separate skill cooldown timers running at any given time, most of which additionally have different durations (main body seduce, damage reflection, and dispel being 30, 60, and 90 seconds respectively, and clone DR/DP each having it’s own 60 second timer). As for why boss skill cooldowns are relevant, well, it ultimately comes down to the fact that the duration/expiration of these timers is intentionally obscured from the player: tracking these cooldowns, if one so chooses, must be undertaken in some other way, often by maintaining timers manually (even figuring out their duration in the first place was something which had to be determined by players through repeated fights, with this information being disseminated subsequently thereafter). This is brought up for the particular purpose of contrasting such a cooldown system with the buff timer icon system, one which readily and intentionally provides relevant cooldown information to the player. This is to say, buff timer icons are information that are meant and ought to be quickly and easily digestible.

With this all stated - and as an astute reader will have recognized by now - changing how and where buff timer icons position themselves relative to one another would not fix the issue of buff timer icon shifting entirely: in the event that a buff already exists on a player and it was not the most recent buff applied to them, the same buff being re-applied will cause all buffs between it’s old position and new position to shift one position to the right in this new, proposed system, and one position to the left in the current system. However, this system would entirely eliminate the shifting that already exists in the current system as new buffs are being applied. As a minor point, it would also ensure that the longest-existing buff on the player will always be in the same absolute position on the screen (the far right of the line of buffs). Though in the current system such a buff will always exist on the far left of the line of buffs, the far left side is not necessarily always in the same absolute position on the screen, as it’s location is determined by the number of buffs the player currently has. This may seem trivial to some, as finding the left side of the line of buffs is hardly difficult, though again, if/when further buffs are applied, the icon will not shift as the player attempts to gather and subsequently interpret this information.

While it is true that there are other potential solutions which could eliminate shifting entirely - such as having the player manually determine where skill/buff icon timers will exist in the event that they do exist - any implementation that I could think of that could do so struck me as being simply too much work for a single developer (big fan by the way Pasta ).

Anyway, that about wraps up what thoughts I had to give on these matters - feel free to drop a comment if you identify a fatal flaw with either of these suggestions or have a way to improve them.

Happy Mapling everyone~

 

I had bolded the suggestions themselves so they could be easily seen at a glance, but it seems they were still a bit hard to identify. I updated the post and underlined them as well, hope that helps o7

 

Oof I've read that Buccaneer guide too and thought this was on the concise side - guess not, sorry guys Added some spoilers to give it the illusion of being shorter than it actually is.

 

Oh yeah sure so if the implication isn't clear in this regard: as it currently stands we have two lines for buffs. The second, smaller line being buffs that could be regarded as "clutter" and then a line for... literally everything else. I'm suggesting to break this line into two along based on whether the buffs are self-buffs or party buffs, this way when one wishes to check on a specific buff, it's a bit easier to know where to start looking. Perhaps if one knows that they should always have 5 self buffs, they can always tell at a glance whether they have the right amount applied regardless of how many people are in their party, what buffs they are getting from their party, etc. Conversely, when they want to make sure they have a specific buff from their party members, they can tell so more quickly by looking at the party buff line.

The rest of the stuff in the post just talks about the ethos of doing this sort of thing, etc. Hope that helps clears up any confusion