How to solve washing, attracting new players and having fun while retaining veteran achievements

This was originally going to be posted as a reply to a thread. However, it got so long that I decided to make a new post. Here it is:

How to solve washing, attracting new players and having fun without trivializing the achievements of veterans.

First, there’s been a lot of talk about nerfing leeching as the answer to: washing, making the game fun for lower lvls, and attracting new players. I don’t believe nerfing leeching would have those effects, and I don’t think it’s the main culprit. If I could, I would play new characters all the way to 4th without leech, but that’s impossible/so absurdly inefficient with 250+ base int.

To me, the real issue is the Int itself. It both makes characters unplayable and requires players to put in an incredible amount of forethought to create a new character. I’d recommend solving both of these issues by removing the ability to HP and MP wash entirely. Make it so you can’t add or remove from HP and MP, or at least can’t do so without losing stats (i.e. bloodwashing).

The replacement for washing would be the ability to buy +MP and +HP tokens directly from the cash shop. This would allow us to play new characters without being saddled with Int, without having to calculate out base int across 160 levels, and without needing to save up 1m+ NX before starting a character to avoid carrying around unnecessary base int in 4th job.

People would just be able to start a new character and wash them as they played, maintaining full strength throughout their game progression and leveling free from the dread of having to remake because they need or want more HP.

How would this affect current players?

If implemented well, it should not take away any of the achievement for the years of voting current washed players enjoy. However, it will do away with the difficulty of having leveled with base int, as that won’t be necessary anymore.

The solution to maintaining parity would be figuring out the approximate NX price of HP and MP with current washing mechanics. You then charge that rate, per HP/MP, for +HP and +MP tokens. This could be job constrained, as it differs between classes currently, and we may want to conserve the difficulty of washing different classes.

Excessive HP/MP

With traditional washing it’s extremely difficult to wash to high HP/MP amounts on certain jobs. Washing a 30k NL for instance. Our new system should aim to change as little of the spirit of washing as possible, so we should preserve this progressive difficulty. We could do so in a number of ways:

• Make +HP tokens work as a percentage of remaining HP to 30k. (Nice because it allows you to quickly wash to moderate amounts of HP, but gets harder as you get more HP).
• Make +HP tokens work in tiers, i.e. 50hp per token until 10k, the 25hp until 15k etc… (Same benefits as above, but with more control over the HP curve)
• My personal favorite, lock HP tiers behind mesos. A NL at 15k HP, for example, may need to pay 1b to unlock 18k. (This would also create a nice meso sink).

I particularly like the idea of option 1 or 2 being used in conjunction with option 3. This would make washing to high levels progressively more difficult from both an NX and a meso standpoint, and could result in washing being MORE difficult than it is now, but also more engaging and preferable for new / returning players.

Conclusion

When designing this system, the ideas I kept at the front of my mind were:

• Base Int is what causes excessive leeching, stops people wanting to play through 1st-3rd jobs and hinders newer players.
• The goal of the system should be to get rid of base int, while also being simpler to understand than current washing mechanics.
• We need to preserve the achievements of veteran players. Likely by requiring similar amounts of NX to wash as we currently have.
• We need to preserve the washing difficulty curve, making higher amounts of HP and MP increasingly difficult to earn.

Finally, to get all of you veteran players onboard, I’d like to point out that implementing this change would also give you the opportunity to gain HP/MP without Kalash washing.

Thanks for reading my word vom and please post feedback, improvements and analysis about the system. Have a great day!

Edit: I’d also like to add that this system should extend the content available to any single character. Rather than being forced at creation to decide the amount of HP your character will have (assuming people would remake before kalash washing), your character can continue to progress as you gain more NX, levels and mesos.

 

Hey everyone. Thanks so much for your replies, I’ll try to address them as well as I can.

Also, I’d like to assure you that any numbers you see here are just examples. Any actual changes in game should include analysis beyond what I’ve written here.

Great question! I mentioned the amount of HP/MP gained being class specific as an option and your reply definitely makes me think this should be the case.

Ideally we should preserve the difficulty and the amount of NX required to wash each job. So it should not be any easier for a new player to HP wash their mage, or any more difficult for them to hit 30k MP on that mage (in terms of NX resources).

That’s a very fair point, and it could be a good idea to further balance leech for 75-120. I think that’s a separate and more contentious issue though, and I’d like to stay away from it as I think it would derail this topic.

However, I don’t think poor grinding performance (especially when compared to leech) for most 3rd job classes detracts from the overall point that base Int makes the game unplayable without leech. A new player entering a world where people start leeching at level 10 is a very different experience to one where they start leeching when it becomes time-efficient to do so (around WS, maybe a little earlier for CDs).

And of course, the system should provide other benefits beyond making more of the early game playable for people wanting to have high HP in endgame.

Thanks for your input. To address your points as I understand them:

1. All players are less likely to level without leeching if they have high base int. Grinding at say, level 40 without any base primary stat doesn’t make sense, its far slower than buying leech or self-leeching. And yes, this may be more difficult for newer players that have a limited budget, which would then make them less likely to make a character that can achieve high HP and would contribute to them needing to remake their characters.

2. I can assure you I don’t hate NL’s. Like many people, they are one of my favorite classes and the most nostalgic to me. I used them as an example, but I was not suggesting only NL’s should have to pay to increase their HP cap. The 1B number was simply to illustrate the concept, and I think classes of similar washing difficulty should pay similar amounts. Of course, only if this portion were added, because it is not necessary for the system.

3. As for players with base int already, I don’t know the best solution. Perhaps the implementation of this system would necessitate a server wide full AP reset for all characters.​

Thank’s for your comments everyone! I hope my answers were helpful because I know I haven’t covered all the edge cases here.