A Deeper Dive into Leech and its Adverse Effects on Holistic Balance

Give us ironman characters.

Add Blessing of the Fairy to them too in some nerfed capacity(10 att on non-ironman for having a level 200 ironman, 20 att on ironman for having a level 200 main?) so we can get back to having an actual community of players at all stages of the game

 

I like all the idea to make things more attractive to new players, but if this get implemented I can imagine new players complaining it's unfair to them they can't create a 30k HP nl.
Another thing is I'm not sure if everyone is really going for 300 int base in all chars. Probably you know a lot of old players and they're probably already have saved NX in some account, or they just have some crazy higher goals as any other addicted player in this server. I mean, it's still a tough process even with leech available.
EDIT: oh and I just saw what nightz said

 

I agree with your leech-wash feedback loop picture, but I'm not sure if the changes proposed (1. Nerfing leeching and 2. Incorporating int into damage) will actually make 2nd/3rd job more populous. Sure it'll be more encouraging for that demographic to grind more but their end goal is still to get to 4th job. And since the time investment to fund an late-game character vastly outweighs that to level a char from 1-120, you'll still see the demographic accumulate at the top.

To make 2nd/3rd just more populous, there needs to be an incentive for ppl to stay within this level range. On top of the two proposed changes, I also think PQs should be buffed to have certain gach-locked scrolls added into their reward pool. That way ppl new and old are encouraged to play low level characters. At least to me, the liveliness of PQs correlate to the liveliness of the server.

 

Well. This is a huge huge topic, touching on everything from leeching, hp washing, ws/cs, NL op(?). I won't really dump everything together because It is hard to start really.
Each of them should have their own discussion really.

The idea is that you want player to stay longer in the pre 4th job to sort of recreate the covid player boom, to lead to a healthier economy like it was. Instead of everyone clustering at HT level now.

I personally I think the boat for this has sailed, majority of the now active players are stuck at end game already.
If you make the early game "harder", it is just further incentives them to not make a new character anymore.
For the few that wants to enjoy the early gaming content, they already doing it anyway.

It might be better to think about how to cycle the economy among the late game players, to make them self sustaining on the ws/cs.
Instead of relying on new players to farm gacha (ws/cs), or brute forcing them with multi mage farming.

 

I agree with this but also feel like we’re too far along this path. Because of leeching 300 INT chars there are so many end-game characters with insane amount of HP that players made on the More Reasonable Wash Scale proposed here couldn’t compete with those players.

LF> second world with no leech to start over.

I thought about this more: What if there was a second world with no multiclient/leech and it worked like account sharing works on the regular server now? It’s reportable and bannable (only on the no multiclient/leech server). There would be no point going to that server and breaking the rule because if you want to multiclient and leech, just do it in on the main server, and you’ll get caught. Could help preserve the culture and community of legends without destroying everything that exists. If you like the multimage leech hustle, do it on server 1.

 

If there is a leech nerf the way i think it should be done is that the party exp formula needs to be changed.

Right now, we have an 80:40 split. That means if a monster gives 100 exp when killed solo, it will give 80 exp to the person who killed it and 40 exp to the leecher (less any level difference penalties). The leecher getting 50% of the exp of the killer is ridiculously high.

I propose this is changed to 90:30. This will make it so that the leecher only gets 33.33% of the exp of the killer, and will encourage actually grinding your character since you will get more exp if you are actually the one doing the killing.

However, it will also powercreep solo grinders with HS because instead of getting 80*1.5 = 120% exp like before, they would get 90*1.5 = 145% exp.

However, the combined exp from party grinding would still be the same because 80+40 = 90+30.


Also, I think that multivote has contributed far more to the points listed by OP than leeching.

 

Hio! I'm a relatively new player that has been given lots of help, especially with character making and in-game decisions LOL

My first character on this server is a beginner and other beginner types. Half a year ago I decided to play Cleric, and now I'm a Bishop and can finally leech my mules!

But this is a lot of time invested of course...

If Leech was nerfed, all my current hard work for my Bishop and newly made mules would be gone.

Although I do understand the issue of leech. Since I started as a Non-Leech beginner.

Most of the Beginner community adhere to NO LEECHING, although for the purpose of WASHING... I've committed leeching LOL

From the stand point of a mildly seasoned Beginner, I'd be all for INT factoring into my total weapon attack! Since my INT Lord Beginner would be happy with more attack range.

• 30k hp on a Beginner needs base INT of 550 and MP washing from level 40 to 150; totaling at 5 years worth of vote cash.
• I'd be sad since 30k hp would be even more insane if leeching was nerfed.
• Then it'd be really impossible to get ECHO at 200, since Beginners can apparently learn ECHO lol (i'd really want to 5-6 leech my beginner to 200 some day)

 

i disagre some parts:
we play a rpg, it neee to be unbalanced
we should have more ways to get hp, ok, but not so much

warrior got easy high hp, but need accuracy and melee, we dont have options to cleave, if we just do more hp to all jobs we will have less and less warrior..

so..
warrior = good hp, poor avoid/acc, low mobility

ranger = less hp but high the other things

you change all game mechanic = do a trash that peoples call "big bang"

about leech, i always farmed by myself in all server i played, but if someone think is Nice pay to get exp, people that recieve mesos is thankfull

 

It's too late in the server's lifespan to nerf leeching since many people have benefited from it in the past 6~ years, it would be unfair for the newer players whom have just started investing in their mages.
I feel like adding more alternatives to washing could lead to fewer players making a mage as their first class, since it would make hp washing a bit more "optional".

One idea would be to add another upgradable ring similar to the monster book ring that people could work towards and upgrade every few levels through doing a certain number of quests / killing mobs without being in a party / completing party-quests or paying mesos to skip the quest.

More alternatives to hp washing could get people to focus on training one character instead of self leeching.

 

I'm generally for removal of the leech regime, if for no reason than to shake things up. The afk check hardly stopped players leeching during that event though. If one were implemented, we'd just have leech buyers whacking a mob in the corner, circumventing all restrictions. It'd be more annoying on the players leeching their own characters (but not impossible).


There really is no way to make leech impossible. At least not without killing party play altogether, which is not what anybody wants. In essence, leech is just a degenerate form of party play taken to an extreme. If the goal is simply to deter leech, it just has to not be the best way to get exp on a character. Even for most fully geared/non-washing characters, the rope is the fastest way to level. And if it's the fastest way to level regardless of stats, then there's no reason NOT to wash to obscene levels (at least that's the mentality I took when I made my first character).

Vanilla 3rd job sucks, and leech provides a way to get through that content and break into 4th job. Don't read me wrong, I think providing a way around poor 3rd job content and facilitating one of this game's largest meso flows are the only positives to leech. If washing players only had more damage, then they would still leech. If leeching was also removed, then players would complain about having nowhere to level and ask for leech back. To encourage players to actively content in 3rd job, it *must* be better than leech alternatives, and it *should* be a bit closer to what leech currently gives to preserve quality of life through the 3rd job lull. This implies leech must either be nerfed to some degree, or non-leech party play must be emphasized.

There are a few easy ways to nerf leech as it currently is. Almost all leech play is centered around the ultimate. A hard hitting, huge range, 15 mob attack is going to do that. It's well documented that I believe the ultimate holds back the rest of the design of the entire mage class, even without talking about leech. While a straight nerf/removal of ultimates would not fully remove leech, it would kill off the easiest and most accessible method of leech exp gains. A server without mage ultimates would still have other potentially viable tools to explore including: roar, air strike, hh. If we add a weakened ultimate to the list, leeching would not be strictly impossible, just impractical. To make such a change work it needs a few things at once imo (and probably more):

1. a buffed/varied 3rd job experience for non-exploders/misters through good pqs/maps/monsters/hp:exp ratios that can't just be abused by LULMage.
2. Buffing/redesign of the rest of the mage kit to compensate reduction in ultimate potency. Demons/ar/cl/para/big bang/slow/seal/magic damage scaling all present opportunities to do more than ult/leech bot with these classes.
3. Introduction of another form of meso trade. The economy could easily become stagnant without buying/selling of leech. Bring something to bossing/pqs to facilitate trading of goods for meso.

Tackling the leech menace is a big task with many moving parts. Just removing either the leech itself or the vehicles of leech would cause more harm than good, especially in a server where it is already commonplace to the playerbase. Even adding damage for base int (which may help but still sounds really jank), would not be enough to salvage the 3rd job experience. Attempting to deincetivize leech may be a difficult endeavor, but it also presents an opportunity to shake up the game as a whole.

 

Oh yeah sure when -ovv suggests adding INT to the weapon formula it's a good idea but when I do it I get dunked on, I see how it is

Special shoutout to Nightz777 btw (my post vs this post)





(<3 u maarten)

 

I had to bust your balls lmao, I'm just glad you were able to see the light

 

Active/inactive is far too binary of a scale to be useable. It requires too much of a "perfect world where nobody abuses anything" mentality. How does such a system judge a player that takes a few too many hits to kill a mob? New players in 3rd job aren't necessarily going to be one-shotting mobs like their bishop/archmage buddy. I've personally seen some REALLY weak players like i/l at gallos that take forever to kill a mob (and this is a non-washing class). If the system doesn't mistakenly flag users "inactive cause weak", then it only serves to move leechers from the rope to futilely attacking a mob in the corner and leech remains unchanged in potency for all but those trying to solo leech 5 of their own characters (and even they could devise a workaround). If it does flag them as inactive, that only serves to cause a massive headache to real players attempting to play the game and would not be received well.

Without a proper, working definition of what "inactive" truly means which doesnt impact real players, an inactive player should always recieve exp.

Fwiw, I disagree with the idea as I think it sounds as jank now as it did back then, and hope there's a better implementation to discover. If it's truly the only way to get players to kill stuff on their own characters rather than depend on 4th job characters (mages), then so be it.