Quests Reward MaxHP: An Alternative Path to HP Washing

I’ve been pondering for a while about how to tackle the HP washing situation. For sure, it’s an issue unique to this version, and will likely always be a side effect of wanting to play on a nostalgic private server.

Maple Legends has but one path for dealing with HP washing, and that is with AP resets via the vote system. I have no real qualms about the system, but I always believe variety is the spice of life and gaming. Being able to choose different paths, even if they are more time consuming(not saying this is or isn't), is still a net positive in my book.

I’d like to also note that I am not really a technical sort of person. As this idea is fairly fresh in my mind, relatively speaking, I don’t have the nitty gritty worked out. This is just a concept, and I believe the concept matters more than the specifics, especially since nothing is guaranteed. Details like that can be worked out over time, can be addressed as they come up, as new meta methods are developed and as the balance team decides what is healthy for the game and what pushes the envelope too far into exploitative mechanics.

My proposition is to add a varying amount of maxHP to all non-repeatable, non-event, non-boss related quests.​

This would not make washing pointless, nor would it reasonably replace washing altogether as a more viable/faster alternative. I wager it would likely have the same effect as the current state of the game, but it would also allow people a sort of starting point in their HP washing without a ton of prior investment. Rather than having to dump 200-400 INT(doing the math, that’s 40-80 levels of purely dumping INT, or at least moving MP into INT), they can actually enjoy the early and mid-game experience that a nostalgic server is supposed to promote.

More of an anecdote, but I can’t tell you how many times I ran a PQ, and someone asked to join and they couldn’t contribute anything to the party. One character isn’t a huge deal, but it sets a precedent that no one really should feel obligated to comply with—the idea that people who want to perfect their builds early should be carried and shouldn’t feel guilty for dragging a party down. It becomes a problem when even just two players can’t pull their own weight. I don’t think players should feel obligated to carry sandbags, and I don’t think players should feel obligated to go to such extremes to nuke their mid-game experience just to be able to play efficiently in the end game.

There are reasonably two ways the balance/dev team could hash this out. The first way is more of a blanket add on, but might make things a bit easier to plan out, you just add maxHP to every quest based on their level. The second way would be to take quests into chunks, group them a bit like quest chains, and the final quest in the chain would give a bonus equal to the amount of quests done plus whatever level the quest is recommended for.

Personally I think the second way has more value, but the first way allows pure customization in which quests you will take. Obviously not every quest out there has multiple parts, but I think it would just be less of a headache to add maxHP to some quests rather than every quest, and making some of those rewards delayed until the end of a chain makes it easier to provide larger rewards.

Inevitably people will value some quests over others, but that shouldn’t be a reason not to do something.

Overall, I would think as low as 3000 maxHP could be distributed through quest completion. An average I would hope to see, from someone completing, let’s say, 60% of all the quests available, is 4500-5000 maxHP.

• All of the Maple Island quests(there are about 46) would give around 50-75 extra maxHP.
• I would imagine by level 30, the average amount of quests completed would give you an additional 350-400 maxHP. Maybe more. This would be a huge bonus for mages, bandits and ranged classes by this point, but isn’t so much that they can ignore damage taken.
• If BenQ were to make a new character and do all the quests again, they would expect to gain 5000-7,000 maxHP for their efforts. Maybe more, I can’t really contemplate how much could be reasonably distributed among over 1200 quests.

The main points behind this concept are to:

• Encourage players to do more quests, increasing the value of quests on an individual level, and making the rewards for doing quests feel like it contributes long term to end-game content
• Give new players a head start in HP washing that doesn’t negate the efforts veterans have already put into their characters, as well as give said veterans an easier time when making new characters that won’t make their older characters feel like a waste of time
• Reduce the amount of time overall it would take to HP wash, but not by an amount that could be quantified by vote time restrictions(such as arguments to make AP resets cost less, or arguments that ask for HP washing to take only 6 months instead of 1 year, etc)
• Encourage players not to invest so much into a stat that is worthless for 80% of classes. Inevitably people will invest In INT anyways, but this makes it so new players don’t feel like they have to start over because they didn’t invest early on, and veterans don’t have to invest quite so much just to hit their goal
• Gets rid of the idea that you have to have 5 accounts to vote with, and play a bunch of classes you may not want to play specifically to fund and grind the one character you actually want to play. I know no one "has to" do this, but it's become something of an expectation new players shouldn't even have to consider, but they inevitably come to the forums and that's the general advice they are given. It's bad advice for what is supposed to be a nostalgic experience.

Thoughts? Discussion is always welcome. Criticism is also welcome, granted it contributes to the conversation. Again, this isn’t supposed to be extremely comprehensive, the major details are meant to be worked out over time, not solved right away. I don’t think the overarching conversation about HP washing has a simple solution, if any at all.