November 2023 Balance Changes Feedback Thread

remember to spell check ur title

 

Your points on CWKPQ seem to have its issues that I agree should be fixed however I think the rest of the balance changes are pretty well done and staff did a good job.

Hopefully staff hot fix the problems that people are experiencing in CWKPQ.

 

Nice start.

1. I think the APQ rework is quite good, except from time to time I could see people stucked in apq sending megaphones. Let's put technical issue aside. Now APQ's preparation is eaziser, the drop rate raising for keys is quite sensable and could feel the difference obviously between the past and now. Needless to say remove gender restriction for portals at stage 1, to make APQ staying align with the no gender restriction on marriage. I haven't done my data collection, I guess there will be slightly more apples than before per run since the boxes are more. All positive changes. But I had a concern about maybe these changes lead to apple price goes down a bit. I guess that's not a big problem to worry about, new farmer at apq will not get influenced much but old farmers who stacked a lot of apples to sell might be hurt.
2. The mages' balancing changes. At first I'm excited, but after seeing further calculation and test done by other players, it seems to be a change that mainly take impact on current bossing attacker mages, and mainly IL I suppose? I feel this change itself won't shake the current meta (big enough to lure more people into mages) or change most of mages current gameplay and future decisions, as in, though the dmg improves for end-game mages, still mages are not get higher priorities than other original optimal attacker classes. I'd say I like the trend the changes are proposing, I'm eager to see it goes further to make some real difference.
3. And about the data visualization part. I recon last years' methods slightly better than this year's since there are even detailed statistic sheets (thx for fartsy mentioning them) https://forum.maplelegends.com/inde...r-event-2022-balance-changes-explained.46741/ I personally prefer seeing data more transparent instead of throwing the final analysis result only. That's only my personal preference, objectively speaking, that'spretty nice work done and very useful infomation shown to us.

Thank you!

 

I liked Cody's quest where you can get the etc by doing core and other content like cwk, I tested the new cwk and I did relatively well in box (8/10)

 

I am sorry but it seems a little bit patronizing of you to declare that the other thread was a train wreck. Personally, I felt there was a healthy discussion going on in there. Let's go back there please.

 

Thanks for making this post, I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but the significance of the CWK bonus stage nerf has flown under the radar so I’m just going to rant into the void again here as someone who’s run hundreds of mostly 3 man CWKs:

I use my NL to loot 3 man boxes. It’s already hard to get all 10 boxes with SI + Haste + PSB + FJ, many even experienced looters miss including myself because it could just take 1 mistake. Without mobility, looting got 10x harder. It does not feel good when the primary income strategy on my character that I’ve spent thousands of hours building just became 10X harder without any explanation or acknowledgment from staff.

When you are a late game player trying to make gear progression, the EV:hr of any content is the most important non-social metric for determining whether or not you run it. 2/3man CWK comes at a massive opportunity cost because you’ve allocated all your mules, levels, funding, and attention into this activity. You are choosing to run a PQ instead of just AFK-multi farming because CWK is a rare exception where you get to play the character you enjoy against a boss that might come close to the EV of farming, especially as a Hero/DK who cannot efficiently fight not just most bosses, but also can’t match the leech/farm/multiclient capabilities of Mage/Shad/Sair or even in some cases NL

What I’m trying to say is that while missing a few drops from CWK bonus due to this patch might not sound like a big deal, in terms of the viability of Hero as a character (i.e not a Shout/Crash mule), this patch is a killing blow. Unless your squad is clearing CWK FAST and get all the loot all the time, you are better off having spent your time and effort on anything other than a Hero.

Now of course there are ways to loot 3 man boxes and 3-man runners will adapt like always, but this nerf right after the DK roar nerf is a serious feelsbad

 

Im gonna comment only on cwk bonus changes since its the only change that made any impact on me.
I havent heard a single player in this community that complained about the bonus room being unfair. Flash jump advantage can only matter maybe on 2~3 man runs.
But in reality, i dont think anyone can loot all boxes on duo runs, and 10 boxes are very likely to be opened on 3man runs, even while getting the further platforms without FJ.
This is said specially because 2~3man runs already consist of experienced players that can handle the bonus room.
Flash jump is completely irrelevant in 4+ man runs. If so, what sort of equality this change brings? the only thing in common for everyone
in the bonus room right now is everyone is pretty much fucked.
Miss 1 jump crucial jump, you will probably miss some boxes, Where before missing a jump is a rare occasion.

Now i dont want only to complain without trying to provide any beneficial input.
The actual problems that this pq had or still has, that can be changed to make it better:
- Sign bugs where expedition leader cannot be identified after leaving map / disconnecting ( FIXED )
- 12 mandatory signs, 2 from each class, completely unnecessary ( FIXED )
these 2 points are the least major problems, but the following imo are an actual changes that can change the pq:
- pirate boss is only reliably pinned by 1 class in the game (SE), and from that same class, MM sometimes struggle doing so
- pirate boss cant be handled by more than one person without the boss spamming knockback attacks
- archer room is significantly harder and longer compared to the rest of the room, causing a big time sink and making everyone wait
- DC bugs for cleaves the hurt pirate boss. Hard to recreate.

Instead of changing the only part in this pq that was never an issue, how about trying the following:
- Make pirate reliably pinnable by more classes, idm if its only ranged classes
maybe add a teleport really close to the pirate to allow cleaves to pin it and have the abillity to dodge DP attack?
will bring a non afk aspect to the run and open the boss for more classes than BM.
Also let multiple people hit this god dam boss without it spamming shark attacks
- Move some of the mobs from archer room to warrior room
reduce the waiting time from everyone in the class room stage and help lower level archers not to be a major setback to the run

Please revert bonus nerfs

 

As much as I do dislike cwkpq 3man being nerfed, im not sure if supply of those scrolls/items from cwkpq will be greatly affected. It's a lot more accessible now; I often had to bring like 4 mules to my own runs, as some of my friends only had 1 or 2 characters. Now they don't have to worry about finding enough signs even when I'm not there. I do agree cwkpq looting stage can be a bit stressful, even on 4 mans, so maybe adding teleport or even giving more time would be nice.

As for the mage change, i think it's great, and given that even for NLs of same "attack" they can do different damage depending on dex/luk distribution, i think its fair for mages to have same problem depending on int/luk distribution. I'm glad mage bossers got buffed.

 

Thanks for reading. Every other update to CWK from the November changes was excellent, especially fixing some of the "lose instantly" conditions such as expedition lead leaving. This is going to save new parties so much pain and suffering.

As far as feedback beyond the November patch, for reasons Endorphinss mentioned, the strength of your pirate pin is a massive bottleneck in this PQ - both for clear speed as well as actually forming a party. Most archers want to heavily wash especially BMs who want MP for Hurricane. By the time an archer washes out and is strong enough to clear archer room + pirate boss, the world is their oyster and CWK is not a priority content pick because the EXP is weak for them and the monetary gain is moderate unless you run fast 2/3 mans. Your party can get around this by having multiple weaker archers which will be good for the Archer Room, but Pirate boss itself is better handled by a high lv NL who won't get destroyed by the Shark spam which feels like going against the spirit of the PQ.

I also wish we could ride mounts in CWK. I understand for class identity reasons, PQs are designed to exaggerate fantasy archetype differences, but it's almost 2024 - NLs are the tanks now meanwhile the budget classes have been getting flogged for poor mobility since KPQ. Even with Silvermane, Warrior/Bucc/Shad/SE still have subhuman movement compared to NL/Mage, allowing mounts in CWK would bridge a bit of that QoL gap without breaking immersion - not to mention everyone has to wait for the slowest characters anyway.

Another small pet peeve of mine is that if you play on anything smaller than HD Client 2, on the JQ with the Fire and the Bats you can't see the sigils unless you go to the closest column of platforms which is suboptimal because it's easy to fall off and not every class has something that lets them stand on the obstacle. This could be fixed by adding some kind of visual to the closer edge of the sigil platforms.

 

double shot and final attack with booster+si for pirate pin right ^___^