How badly did thief mules affect the game?

tell me more

 

adapt

 

Oh, absolutely! Because nothing says “healthy class balance” like every Bishop being reduced to a buff-dispensing vending machine. Why bother recruiting real players when you can just alt-tab between your army of mules? Clearly, the real issue is that people aren’t rolling enough NL/SHAD to solo everything themselves. It’s definitely not a community or balance problem at all. Fault for not embracing silo gameplay in a social game!

 

This just seems like a terrible assessment of what the 'problem' is. It's not that bishops aren't welcome in content like Zakum - they actually do quite well during arms phase which is effectively half the fight, and they provide things like shield and can heal to provide better pot economy. The issue is that the majority of players have advanced past these levels. The game doesn't revolve around level 135 content, and a majority of people who are running content at that level are on their replays trying to progress their attackers.

I've seen bishop players host zak runs successfully without much trouble. It isn't that hard. Zakum is an easy fight that doesn't really have strict composition requirements or DPM.

And it's not hard to find a player with a bishop mule. The problem lies in that a majority of the player base wants to progress their attackers, not their bishops.

Forcing people to play bishop sound like a stupid idea.

 

You’re actually reinforcing my point: Bishop treated as a mule role. Players can use all these skills you mentioned along with attacking skill: example Triple Throw. Genesis, shield during magic cancel, and even heal on a second PC or in between attack macros. Bishops are valued more for their utility, mulable utilities.

The fact that some single-client Bishops can find parties doesn’t invalidate the experiences of those who struggle to do so. Even mentioned where people are searching for a Bishop for hours. These situations aren’t mutually exclusive, they both point to underlying class viability and balance issues. Relying on HS mules or endless smegas isn’t a healthy solution compared to improving class viability.

No one here is forcing anyone to play a specific class, your interpretation is off. The current state of the game, and to an even greater extent its culture, pushes players toward certain roles due to skill and class viability.

 

If the concern is about reward:effort ratio, surely we're looking at all styles of play, not just bossing, right?

 

I gave you very specific reasons as to why the bishop class is already viable and capable of running their own social content if they desire to do so. Changing the class or content to fit into the shape of whatever ideological mold you think it needs to be won’t change the fact that most players will simply continue to play the game how they want to play the game, and pushing the narrative that these methodologies of playing are bad - is toxic and a net negative to the server health. Again, the problem is and always is that the time frame you seem to be basing all of your arguments around - the early-mid game - doesn’t exist because it is designed to be short. You ALREADY can run content how you want to in your later levels if you choose to do so. You already have that agency - go play the game with your friends however you want to.

'Finding an active bishop' is also just a reframing of the same discussion above. By choosing to be selective in search for an active bishop, you're essentially saying "I don't want the attacker that you might want to play but instead, I want only your bishop." If someone has a bishop mule they're gladly willing to bring along to content for its benefits, what exactly is the benefit in forcing someone into your ideological play style that all players must be single-clienting? And if all else fails, run without a bishop. Nothing's stopping you from doing so.

It seems to me like you guys are attributing some sort of negative connotation to a problem that doesn't really even exist. Where exactly are the active bishops players that are lining up to run content?

The direction of this discussion seems to suggest in nerfing bishops for their utility which would be fucking hilarious.

 

When I see comments about lack of content, sometimes I don't even question whether the person actually plays Legends, or if they play wrong, I play the challenge with ItzLea without being able to use my other characters and since I got lv 120+ every day I find a party to do boss (rav/pap/chao), the other day I sent smega and received 5 responses, there is certainly no shortage of people to make content.

doing an analysis of zak itself, I agree with Nemo's comment about leech, but the problem with that is with zak and not with the job, bishops are definitely welcome, especially in pt ranged dominants with nl/se, genesis MAKES total difference in arms, but leech/skele will bring more exp and more money, In the pre-Prestige Coin era, I played up to 7f and it gave more returns than Zakum
(and anyway it's not wrong, since zakum is the entrance boss)
. about HT for sure having hp and/or having experience for 6 man and less there is no lack of invitation

 

in 40 min 2 smega:

 

hahaha claiming that R>active bishop is forcing their "ideological play-style" and is somehow anti-mule is so funny and narrow-minded. Like, half the discussion was about the benefit of active bishop, but suddenly R>active bishop is claimed to be due to ppl's anti-mule beliefs?

but overall, i do find this discussion fascinating. From my rather large experience running 5-6man zak, most ppl don't mind bish mules actually, but rather ppl R>bish specifically already have 5 attackers in pt or....they're too lazy to mule their own bishop xD (or they just recognize having active bishop is quite nice for the run like we were saying)

 

seems you are well-awared about current issues going on in ML. Would you please provide two or three resolution or plans to deal with thid problem?(Issue : Not easy to find bishop on 4~6man zak and bishop is muled almost everywherr)

 

that a sample of two is not good for much hehe
but my point with the print was not to prove anything,j ust to show that have oportunity for new play that think there is no opportunity in 40 min that I played I saw 2 smega recruiting.
for a stronger bishop who is not a novice it is probably not worth it

 

It’s quite sad really, that you can’t even make a comment jokingly without people flipping it to fit their narrative.

I do notice that conversations here flip extremely fast and viewpoints either change quickly, or are hard stuck beliefs that won’t change no matter what facts, evidence, opinions are introduced.

For the most part, a lot of comments here was very insightful and I do believe it was good discussion.

When I first started this server, I was a Dk / bishop main. Running bishop, majority of the content up to zak was extremely easy for me to find a pt. Dk was a little harder.
Once I got to krex / cwk, that was when I started feeling the effects of being gated from content. I was indeed upset about it, but I had a good friend group that I got to know while leveling up that introduced me to the content that I was unable to join, and teach me how to run it.

Admittedly now, i see why i was gated out of that content as a bishop. HOWEVER, I cannot fathom people stating that they are not able to find a zak, horntail etc group to join. In all the zak runs Ive been in, the only time we mule a bishop is when we've been smegaing non stop with a ready party with no response. Horntail and zak, 100millionThousand% Id much prefer have an active bishop than to go through the trouble of muling a bishop.

For the people stating that they are unable to join runs, my best advice is to look for a friend group, guild etc that is active and are running daily content that you can go with. If you enjoy the social aspect of the game, be social.

 

oh all good, my comment was not replying to you at all. i see a lot of ppl R>bish for zak as well.

 

Explain to me the differences between:

• Running content as 5 man without a bishop
• Running content as 6 man with bishop
• Recruiting for hours and running content as 6 man with bishop
• Not running content because you can’t find bishop

 

yah i agree, probably bishops that can't find zak run is looking when no one is running during dead hours or maybe party is picky and they want bishop with MW20 or something.

 

1. Xp horrendous and depending on the content, less QOL in terms of heal and dispel.
2. Typically a more well rounded PT (hopefully) and depending on content usually runs smoother.
3. Disspairge
4. Happens to me too often

 

im not Floron, and in fact im fairly okay with the status quo on muling, but i guess there are some factors to consider.

I think one of the important one is, we don't want to affect the leech economy (it seems BT doesnt want to change leech economy too much; they got rid of gatekeeper leech super fast, for example)

And, I think one of the only few ways to make bishops less muled is probably by increasing their dpm, and this prolly means we'd have to nerf their utility in bossing without changing the bossing situation too much....? sheesh seems hard.

This is also why i think bucc situation is tricky; without solid DPM, bucc will be rendered into a muled utility class as well.

 

If you compare the individual exp split from 5 man without HS, it's not that far off from 6 man exp split with HS.