Update General Patch Notes: Anniversary 2025 Extra

Skål din stolle.


My leaving might seem dramatic. But it was already lowkey official that I would do the same once I hit lvl 200 and mark that I have accomplished what I wanted with ML.

I dont really have much time to play anymore, and with these ridiculous changes I did not feel like spending another 150hours on something I was not enjoying to reach lvl 200.

As someone whos been on this server since Covid. I feel like the server has been on the wrong path for quite a while. The rate at which this server has aged the last 2-3years seems unhealthy for something that's suppose to simulate an Oldschool Maplestory. Having Penips call my items that "decent" should be proof enough how multimaging/multiattacking has bloated the server so that almost everyone can have these perfect items that should imo be almost unattainable.

I also feel like the balancing is so revolved around nerfing the top 1%, and it ruins the game for everyone else. NLs are supposed to have high avoid/shifter, because they were supposed to be squishy. The problem is not avoid, its people having 30k hp.

My 13k HP NL is far from afk at any endgame content. I almost get 1hit by everything and have to constantly pay attention, keep a safe distance and repot to stay full hp while playing at any NT boss or HT/PB.

I made a Pally and compared to my NL its 10times easier. I literally just facetank everything and hold down attack, how is that considered more rewarding and active gameplay wise?

So after many late nights and way over 10.000hours spent on ML you just completely changed what I chose to play almost 5years ago. NLs have seen many many nerfs since I started. Most which feel completely justified. But changing the whole identity of a class is just mind boggling, I did not want to play this type of NL when I left Maple Island.


Whats the end goal? Every class is the same just like GMS? The best part about these old games is class diversity, and some classes will always be better than others. But overall no class is so far behind the other that they are useless.

Sometimes a game not being perfectly balanced is what makes it fun, ever think about that? Some people like to play "suboptimal" classes and enjoy doing so because the gameplay is different. Not everyone plays ML to min/max and get perfect items.

Doing third year demon tower and these balance changes at 10y anniversary clearly pissed a lot of people off. Rightfully so. And doing so when GMS vanilla server was just announced seems like a really sketchy idea. I dont wanna be a doomer, but staff seems to not take feedback seriously and this will most likely be one of the biggest blunders in Maple private servers history if they don't come down from their high horse.

The odds of this post getting deleted because Im "banned" is probably higher tho.

 

asking without malice, did you really think vanilla was better here? Without it being based on affective memory?without having NLC having to go to the fm (without owl unless you paid) look for elixir/power elixir to be able to level up,at the time when there weren't many grind options, staying with the same mobs for many levels wasting money on bad exp simply because there wasn't a better option.then when the game became p2w, everyone paid for more exp, more drops, teleport rock, owl, and even spending on hp wash, please seriously?
Jobs imbalance? There were jobs that only people who used cheats could play and even then it wasn't good lol

 

Again, more multiattack misinformation from the same person.
So fucking annoying.

 

again, the same person trying to derail conversation and providing nothing of substance, only here to belittle others. Please go get some help.

 

Today ppl ask if I have HS mule even though I know they have too. I hope I never reach the day the norm is people asking me solo actually, and leech them even paying splits.

 

-Thinking of how 2015 ~ 2017 ML was-

Nightmare.

Even though not every step ML is stepping over would be satisfying, If someone asks me 'you want to go back to older days?' my answer is 'hell no'. What I truly believe is, such steps one by one is making our beloved game better in future.

 

Most of the initial changes made by the server made the game more fun and improved quality of life in many ways, and I really appreciate some of the changes made to the Thief/Shadower class that made it more enjoyable to play. They were great during the first half. At some point, though, it seems like the direction shifted toward making the game less fun instead, and it’s funny to me that such strict balancing is being applied in a PvE game. I would much prefer to see all the existing underwhelming or even practically useless skills improved and explored, rather than constantly fixing or revamping existing skills with added complexity that makes them less fun to use.

According to the balance notes, the devs is trying to address avoidability leading to passive gameplay and making muling more efficient. That led to a global avoidability change across every aspect of the game, which, while it may solve the issue being addressed, is also creating problems in other areas, such as classes losing their identity and maybe unnecessary complexity mechanics added to a casual game.

The BT doesn’t have to take on all the balancing tasks by themselves. It’s also not ideal to spend all that effort only to end up with something nobody asked for. While they ultimately decide what goes into the game, it’s clear that the community is more than happy to provide feedback and ideas to help improve the game we all love and come together to play.

I would suggest that the devs share what the main goal of the server is and what they are focusing on balancing next, so that the community can start giving valuable input before the BT proceeds with what they feel is the solution. The problem right now is that we are not getting a clear picture of what the devs want. While we do know multiclienting is here to stay and Kimmy has provided an excellent explanation for that, do the devs still want muling to exist? And to what extent is it acceptable to them? These are things we do not know. It feels to me like the devs are using some sort of approach to let certain playstyles die off “naturally,” rather than imposing a hard stop on them.

There is no clear quantification for us to understand what the devs are trying to achieve. For example, is the goal to prevent any mules in expedition bosses? Or to prevent a certain class from being able to solo a boss with six characters controlled by one person? The devs can clarify at what state would make an issue not an issue anymore.

Personally, I feel that part of the game design philosophy is to make the player feel that their character is impactful, satisfying to control, and rewarding to grow. Balancing should enhance that feeling, not diminish it. Charging up Dark Sight for that huge Assassinate damage feels satisfying, and not needing to use Dark Sight to cast Assassinate makes the skill feel much smoother. Spamming Genesis at Skelegons feels therapeutic, and adding a cooldown for the sake of balance would take away a major part of what makes old-school mages fun. Pressing a key to activate Shifter does not spark joy. I’m also sure Bowmaster players appreciate the QoL change that lets them use potions while channeling Hurricane, making the skill feel even better to use without interruption.

And again, I feel we don’t have to be so strict with balancing in a PvE casual game.

 

I think wanting community to give feedback during the process might sound good in theory, but won’t work in reality. The vast vast vast majority of players either have no interest or probably won’t comment in discussions until they come out in pitchforks when their class is nerfed.

What percentage of players have scrolled through the suggestions threads on forums?

instead, the suggestions threads are mostly dominated by the people who are really passionate about the game, and of those, a number of them are part of high level community who have put the most time into the game.

then you’d find that the average player is underrepresented etc. I think the reality of the situation is that people don’t give feedback until it negatively affects them.

 

also, balancing economy and other such things are related to making players feel impactful too. For example, can a person ever make meaningful upgrades if other people are earning a lot and there’s price inflation?

in the past before coins, a common complaint was that bossers felt as though there was no world in which they could keep up with multimage production, so they felt compelled to make multimage just so that they could upgrade gear to do what they really want, which was boss on their attackers.

Whether balance team changes always hit the mark is a separate question, but these are also considerations. If a class feels smooth to play but any character progression feels out of reach, it still doesn’t feel good. Being told that you can’t join content because your dpm is too low doesn’t feel good.

There is A LOT of discussion that goes on behind the scenes and sometimes it’s not helpful to have community wide discussion every step along the way, or else everything gets slowed down way too much and too bloated, and takes time away from other things (ppl complain about late events and repeated events etc… imagine if they were even more delayed!)

staff and balance team aren’t always right but there’s a lot of stuff to… balance (pun intended)

 

I don't think those complaints should be lumped together as if they are the same type of complaints. Changes made to a machine to improve its performance, there might be people who complains about how they miss the clunky and bad performance of the machines.

Then you have a machine changed and downgraded. Now not only the performance decreased, it has become harder to use as well. Won't there be complaints as well? I don't believe they should be treated the same.

Also, the changes are always only targeted to the endgame metas, making sure that it is more balanced. However, didn't that result in only the endgame slightly more balanced, but everywhere else is horribly unbalanced?

Have you seen the power difference between a Crusader and White Knight? A skill that gives 140% damage, but needing to charge to reach that level versus skills that enable different elements that give straight up 175% damage and even gives 20% element advantage at correct places.

Now shadowers have 75% stance coming from a Third Job skill, passive and undispellable. Warriors only get stance at 4th job, and need to add point to stance with precious 4th job SP, only reaching the same levels at around level 17-18 points of stance. This means that shadowers already get to enjoy the full utility of stance at level 135 for zakum (and bosses like pap etc from level 120) whereas warriors, the only classes that should have stance, only get to enjoy it after maxing their core damage skills and then adding 17-18 points of stance to even reach the same level as shadower, meaning around level 150.

There are many more scenarios where endgame meta changes actually results in more unbalanced state for anywhere else, such as HP challenged NLs, but I don't think further clarification is needed as they are already stated multiple times in multiple threads.

That brings the question of whether nerfing a class that people have worked on for a few years is fair. If reverting all 30k hp classes to hp challenge levels will invalidate all their efforts, isn't changing their identity to something different from what they are expecting after years of washing the same type of unfairness, which is to say, their years of commitment invalidated?

 

The idea is to shift the feedback from negatively impacted players to before the process even begins.

Right now, the process goes something like this:

1. An issue is identified and discussed internally
2. A solution is implemented internally
3. It’s released and receives negative feedback
4. The team explains why the solution was implemented
5. Adjustments are made afterward

What I’m suggesting instead is:

1. Share the issue publicly and explain why it’s a problem
2. Propose a solution and what it aims to fix
3. Receive feedback, especially from those who would be negatively affected
4. Make adjustments
5. Then implement the final version of the solution

 

While I share your sentiment that this would feel like it gives players more say in the process, I'm afraid it won't end up contributing much.
Any change that nerfs a specific class is likely to receive outrage from a whole bunch of players before they even get a chance to test the change or see what it feels like.

Let's take the current shad situation for example. I imagine the changes from last week would've been boo'd to hell and back, and the latest adjustments made would've been insufficient to change the negative sentiment.
While in the current situation, there might still be some negative sentiment, but a lot of shads have gone out and actually tested what shad feels like now, resulting in them being alright with the changes. (Granted I think there's still a good number of shads missing the old shad)

If there was any change I'd like to see in the process, it would simply be for BT to occasionally feel less stubborn about hammering changes through.

Sometimes a change flops and the direction you've taken a class just wasn't it. Accept it, revert, go back to the drawing board with the heap of newly gathered feedback, try again.

 

Having the outrage before development gives the team more feedback to work with, and hopefully, that helps lead to a more refined solution. Even if the feedback doesn’t end up contributing much, it doesn’t require any implementation effort. In the end, the BT still decides what goes into the game.

A solution can be implemented in different ways and still achieve the same result. For example, if we want a character to perform worse against a specific mob, we can either make the character weaker or make the mob stronger against that character. Making the character weaker may solve the issue, but it also makes them weaker against all other mobs as well.

The avoidability changes seem to be balanced around expedition bosses. While they do address the intended issue, the change to avoidability values now affects the character across all content, not just in bossing. Perhaps applying a debuff specifically in expedition boss maps could achieve a similar result without affecting the entire game?

Taking suggestions early doesn’t mean giving more power to the community. If the BT decides that the avoidability nerf is going to happen, then it will. But how it is implemented is where the feedback comes in.

 

Thank you ChatGPT.


Long ago, Horned Tail was the pinnacle of terror—a dragon so powerful it took thirty of the strongest adventurers to bring him down. Songs were sung of the battles waged deep within his lair, and the mere mention of his name sent shivers through even the bravest of warriors.

But time passed. Strategies sharpened. Equipment improved. And what once required a legion of heroes is now reduced to parties of five or six, descending into his cavern with confidence, even arrogance. Horned Tail, once a symbol of dread, became a farm.

Again and again, he was summoned. Slain. Disrespected. Humiliated.

But something stirred within the dragon’s heart. No longer a passive relic of the past, Horned Tail began to change. His rage festered. His essence, tainted with ancient darkness, began to seep through the walls of his cave.

Now, a sinister aura radiates from his form—an oppressive pressure that weighs down the air itself. Even the nimblest adventurers find their reflexes dulled, their agility suppressed. The cave itself rejects their confidence.

What has evolved is not just the player… but Horned Tail as well. He no longer waits idly for death. He imposes his will. He corrupts the very battlefield. He ensures that within his domain, you fight on his terms.


Horned Tail’s cave now applies a -20% Avoidability debuff to all characters.

 

I actually wonder how many casuals scroll forums vs play the game. I personally scroll forums almost every day, but don't even log in some months. I haven't even downloaded the latest patch xD

 

I'm sorry, what?

 

If you want something like this it would be better in my opinion to make the map have an avoid cap, like “HT cave now makes it impossile to have a higher avoid than 550” so the low avoid ppl (sair arch) don’t get hit even more due to their avoid being tanked aswell.

 

The only problem with this is that it disincentivizes people to look towards exceptional gearing in order to push their character limits.

 

Just wanted to chime in on the Shadower changes from a purely mid-game bossing and grinding perspective.

I am in love with the active shifter mechanic. Having it capable of dispelling stuns and lasting for 20seconds has opened up another option on when and how I decided to charge assassinate for the full buffs it gives me.

Do I use shifter? or do I smokescreen?. In situations where stunning is likely. (Zakum, Papu, et.c) it has also opened up a nice change of attack style too because now I can choose to dispel the stun, charge nate, and let loose with a crit dash to reposition while dealing honest damage.

Coupled with being able to use pots in dark sight has significantly decreased my anxiety levels. Previously i'd either have to stay in dark sight and pray to RNGesus that i didn't get dispelled or 1:1'd when all i'm trying to do is get that sweet purple buff.

Also it wasn't mentioned in the patch notes but apparently after every successful nate dash the cooldown for active shifter reduces by 1 second. This has given me more reason to really try and finish the full nate skill since i'll be rewarded for it instead of just holding down the button and spamming it.

Lastly, the changes to smoke's cooldown also means I can actively use the skill instead of relegating it to bishop ress support. In my opinion the 120 second cooldown is perfect. However I would like to suggest increasing the duration maybe to 15~20 seconds because sometimes it's been a struggle for bishops to go and ress in time. (they will get hit, stunned, etc. while trying to tele to the spot, and then it's not enough time and the smoke clears).

Oh and as for the stance effect given by the shield. I've always felt like it was so wierd that this class can hold a shield yet can never stand their ground and actually brace for impact. I know the endgame shield we use is technically a fancy dual-wielding sword but still from a theoretical perspective it bugged me. So it's nice to see the shield mastery actually having some use.

I know it isn't for everyone, and change is always scary. But frankly I see this as a win.