Get beginner mage back

It really always is a damned if you , damned if you don't situation when it comes to balancing these creative strategies

 

i don't really see dk farmers complaining about roar nerf

 

I really like this quote.

Agreed. I feel like those who benefited the most from the DK Farming meta, were all aware they were sitting on the tail end of the latest multi-mage nerfs, and knew it was only a matter of time.

 

Because changes implemented were never intended to fully remove it, just make it less scalable.
Staff could have gone the overkill route by making zero gach drop from full map attack route, but they didn't. That was probably intentional.

 

thus my point stands

 

What point

 

marginal difference between 14k and 20k mage and risk/reward of pursuing unconventional strategies

all the players i spoke to were knowing of the risks and dk changes were an example of a nerf that was simply shurgged off. for most dk farmers, this isn't their first rodeo

 

Ah maybe I misinterpreted something in the previous exchanges, but I agree.
Bringing beginner mages back doesn't make sense because the alternative already exists in normal washing a mage and it carries no downside as it is future-proofed.
The only argument that has any merit is the existence of beginner mages that made it through pre-nerf, but that can be handled in another way.

 

yea i think going in and changing stats is wholly unprecedented for anyone who's washed (like 98% of endgame playerbase)

i could see the job advancement bar for beginner dk, just not for mages as it shouldn't have been done in the first place

 

I can’t speak for others but I know personally I really wanted to undertake a beginner mage project just to see if I could do it. Sometimes you don’t need a reason to push boundaries other than for the sake of pushing boundaries. It’s fun seeing number go up even if it doesn’t make a difference in how effective you are as a runner.

 

Precedence might play a role in enacting judgment on policies, but it carries fairly little weight in game development. If staff wanted to delete beginner mages by standardizing their hp/mp to what's possible within current restraints, they could, and the backlash would come from only a handful of players. It being an unprecedented decision really doesn't matter until it becomes an uncontrollable situation like currently with the heavy wash meta, though even that's not really safe from future changes either. If staff were being nice, they could probably soften the blow by offering forms of compensation like NX differences and restoring your missing SP, but even that's not a guarantee. Like you said, players should always assume risk. Nothing is safe from scrutiny.

This debate around beginner mages only solidifies my opinion that staff made the better decision by nipping things in the bud early on rather than waiting for it to become a much harder thing to manage, where that previous handful of players now turns into 20% of the player base. The nerf was only a "beginner mage nerf" because they didn't act upon it early enough. It was already trending to a point it became obvious to the common folk via the frequent blue texts. Had the implementation occurred before beginner mages tracked, this nerf would have just been seen as an under the radar implementation where players were not allowed to gimp themselves out of SP if they plan on job advancing. I'd reckon that's a super agreeable, uncontroversial change within that vacuum. It's only because there currently exists beginner mages out in the wild that this implementation feels like a beginner mage nerf.

In short, the change prevents players from running into the issue of missing SP which is just a smart, pre-emptive move by staff IMO.

These sentiments exist for anything that has gotten the nerf stick. Would have been cool to try out HH mules. Would have been cool to try out sweeper mules or dexbuccs or naked mages or alchemist NLs. Personally, I'd take the fully playable, future-proofed, regularly hyper-washed mage over the gimped beginner mage 10 out of 10 times. I see a beginner mage similarly to a 30k/30k attacker but with gimped SP for some reason. It's a high price to pay for what's mostly a novelty -- and if it's just a novelty being removed from the game, why the debate?

That said, I don't really care what happens. Personally, I think it'd be funny if beginner mages were made viable again to a point it became normalized, and then a rework comes out that make them basically obsolete. The salt is a guarantee.

I'm STILL salty about alt tab hurricane nerf even though I understand why it was removed. >:O

 

While I also think it was probably the correct move, I don't think it's quite the same situation as those others. HH mules, sweeper mules and dexbuccs are all mules. You don't play them, and you don't really put in effort into making them. They're a tool. Beginner mages had a more interesting washing process that could easily be fucked up, and generally resulted in a character that you would actually play because it was an enormous investment making one, whereas the other mule characters you just... level them, really. There's nothing interesting about making or using one.

 

Yeah what I meant by precedence is that it'll affect sentiment to all washed characters, no matter the class. Most players play on characters with several times "natural" hp values.

Actually in the case you're talking about, they gave him his skills, only to take it away afterward. It was not preemptive, but actually retroactive.

 

Except HH mules, sweeper mules, and dexbuccs all have ways to reverse their mule status through player-oriented methods (AP Resets). My HH mule turned into my current paladin. My sweeper mule turned into a sed mule but is a fully playable shadower. Never made a dexbucc but my SI/TL mule still remains an FM mule simply because it wasn't washed. It can become playable again through the challenge system, but I've grown weary of waiting and just made another bucc that will be fully washed and playable.

A beginner mage might be playable now, but they could become unplayable in the future. People were sacrificing SP on skills that might seem useless now, but could potentially become a staple in the future. That's the problem I mentioned in an earlier post - players are only responsible for the present state of the game while staff are responsible for both the present and future.

Not really. If staff wanted to single out beginner mages and beginner dks in a targeted nerf, it doesn't necessarily set in stone nerfs for all washed characters. The only precedence that remains true is that Kimmy & Co. has full reign on the direction of the server, for better or for worse, and it's problematic if players think they've created some sort of immunity for themselves by staking a flag and deeming it permanent, unhealthy for the server, etc. I'm guilty of doing this too with multiclienting, but you'll find these types in any nerf thread where players threaten to quit unless they get their way.

Sherman was an earlier case and that was before the beginner nerfs (no job advancement past 30) were even implemented. IIRC, he made a beginner mage, advanced, and then noticed he was missing SP so filed a request via @gm. The GM gave the SP to his character then reversed it once confirming with rest of staff on how they were going to proceed with beginner mages as a whole. I think this was back in 2021? The pre-emptive part of this change was to cut all new beginner mages from advancing so that there is now zero new beginner mages. The retroactive change would be if Staff decides to revert current beginner mages bonus HP. Personally I don't think it matters, but it does for some others. If people are using the argument "Since a beginner mage exists, people should be able to make more", a response could be to just delete all existing beginner mages.

 

Yeah they can do as they please, but i'm sure they're aware of the secondary effects of such a change.

Also if you dump 3m nx into some project, it doesn't cost much to do a test or two. Staff only made an announcement after Sherman's case.


staff made the announcement about 1 month later (i think it was after mid jan):


Regardless, the point of all this is that there's almost no practical difference between a fully washed 14k hp mage and a 20k+ hp beginner mage.

 

There's no difference between a 14k hp and 20k+ hp mage... yet. Just as we used to say there was no difference between a range that survives 2 hits to vs 3 or more, the "flex" values become meta due to the required hp creep necessary to keep up with players washing.

So no, I do not believe that in the greater picture there is no difference between these two mages. I also have no sympathy towards players wishing to protect their assets that continued to make beginner mages even after the first failed attempt at tackling them.

 

I mean the only reason this is an issue is the fact that we’re sitting at a crossroads and can’t proceed. Either the mage rework happens in which case great nobody wants to make a beginner mage anymore, or the beginner mage restrictions are rolled back in which case anyone who wants to make one can. The only problem that exists right now is that some players have a neat toy that nobody else can get anymore, and the primary justification that people are using for why that path shouldn’t exist is purely theoretical.

also before someone says it, I understand that these processes take time and we’re unlikely to see a mage rework for realistically over a year, but these conversations would be irrelevant if either direction was committed to (beginner rollback or mage rework)

 

flex is all that's there tbh bc starting like 6k hp you don't really benefit any more from magic guard - unless you want to count niche situations such as cwk jump quest and dying on the bean. this is really just a question of the difference between 44k hp (14k + 30k mp) and 50k hp

but yeah, you're entitled to your opinion but that's also a very slippery slope.

edit: starting at like 7.5k hp*

 

Are we really at a crossroads? Seems pretty clear to me that staff doesn't want to deal with people missing out on SP, so beginner mages -- or beginner anythings -- are a no from here on out. Players can proceed by making their own regularly washed mages and watch longingly as the few who slipped through the cracks either dissipate into irrelevance or somehow get nerfed into oblivion in the future.