Feedback The State of Dark Knights and Moving Forward

Spoiler: Replies moderation

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Introduction

Hello everyone! Truth be told, there isn’t really a great way to start this post, as formal discussion of this topic between staff and the community as a whole is — as many of you know — quite long overdue. With this in mind, we’d like to thank you all for your patience and understanding with respect to the state of Dark Knights and what changes can and ought to be made in order help address some of the problems they face as a class, as well as for the individuals who play them on a day-to-day basis. Although many, many hours have been put in on our end on the topic, ultimately, we have done our best to be mindful of the fact that the vast majority of these discussions lately have occurred behind closed doors. As a result, the rest of the community simply has not been able to see anything that has been cooking behind the scenes.

Part of the intent of this post is to simply clear the air and mention that topic of Dark Knights has not been ignored: we have been discussing the topic and coming up with potential solutions for quite some time now. However, an arguably more important goal of ours in making this post is to touch base with the players regarding some specific ideas that we have, particularly with respect to the class’s flagship skill Berserk. Although feedback from players on the state of Dark Knights, their role within the metagame, etc., has been essential in guiding our discussions and helping us formulate changes throughout this entire process, we think it is time to come full circle and share a couple of the ideas we have with you to make sure we are on the same page. In order to present the recommendations in the appropriate light however, we need to briefly discuss a bit of how past changes have directly and indirectly shaped the Dark Knight class, especially with respect to Berserk.


Reflecting on History

While the original implementation of Berserk occupies a charming and intriguing position in official MapleStory’s and MapleLegends’ past both as a class-specific mechanic and an overall game-balancing aspect, ultimately, the ever-increasing extent of washing and the gradual addition of harder and faster hitting content meant that the original structure of the skill was unfortunately doomed to age rather poorly. One of the most significant changes made to Berserk in MapleLegends was the addition (and later buffing) of "scaling" damage bonuses. In practical terms, scaling bonuses were functionally damage "buffs" at nearly all HP values. However, the addition of scaling bonuses brought along a few problems that really only became apparent as time went on.

First, the addition of such bonuses meant that the system was of course, no longer binary (i.e., do X thing to receive all Y of your bonus). While this may not seem like such a problem on the surface, from a gameplay perspective, it is important to note that neither this change nor other changes did not really alleviate the fact that players were still being rather arbitrarily - and relative to other classes, extremely disproportionately "punished" due to the nature of their class’s primary damage skill. In addition to this fact however, the scaling nature of the skill's damage bonuses meant that players became implicitly pressured to chase marginal gains in ways that not only felt unsatisfying, but actively endangered them more than the original implementation of Berserk ever did. Although it is pretty clear to see that the intent of implementing scaling damage bonuses was good, the truth is, in late-game content, ‘zerking harder seems to be a matter of damage loss mitigation more than a gameplay mechanic that actually feels satisfying and rewarding to engage with. The other primary issue with the particular scaling implementation that Berserk was given is that the points at which damage gains became more marginal or less marginal was not really intuitive, nor could it be explained in a nutshell. Sadly, there isn’t really a simple way to make scaling intuitive that would ever be more intuitive than a binary system would be.

While scaling bonuses were meant to make Dark Knight players feel less punished in content that hit arbitrarily hard, ultimately, meeting a certain (i.e., low) HP threshold on average would still be necessary in order to keep up one’s damage, though nothing hurt a player's damage more than being dead, which low-HP 'zerking sadly often leads to in late-game content. To put it simply: damage scaling unfortunately proved to be an ineffective tool for players to use to help them in their fight "against" the nature of Berserk.

In evaluating this reality, we came to conclude that tying damage bonuses to less and less HP not only made playing (and balancing) the class even trickier than before, but that the extremity of this change was perhaps too much of a distortion of the original balancing scheme of Berserk. With this knowledge in hand, we began reviewing an immense amount of previously-shared player feedback regarding what aspects were crucial to the Dark Knight’s identity so that we could go back to the drawing board well-prepared, and hopefully not make a similar mistake in our next attempt.


The Dark Knight Identity

Although identity is inherently subjective to a large extent, we want to summarize what we found to be among the most common and most compelling aspects of what players felt was part of the Dark Knight’s identity, all of which were gathered from people who played the class (do note that this list is not an extensive list of everyone's feelings; again, it is simply what we believed to be the most valid aspects of the class’s identity, and ones that we felt could be maintained in some respect while also serving as a backbone to potential changes):

1. Dark Knights should have the ability to be the tankiest among all of the classes in the game, especially among three Warriors (in a vacuum)

Spoiler: Details

This idea is commonly mentioned by players due to the nature of HP scaling and class-specific skills in GMS circa version 0.62. Examining the various classes, their HP scaling, and their skills does indeed seem to suggest that Dark Knights — at least in certain contexts — could indeed be the tankiest characters overall, and it seems likely that this was the intent given the nature of Berserk. Now, evaluating "original intentions" can be tricky at times since the intentions may not necessarily have been good or may have aged poorly as time has gone on, though this particular concept not only seems reasonable to try to emulate, but it is our belief that this tankiness can be (and kind of already started to be) mimicked in a way that makes sense for MapleLegends with some careful balancing decisions.

We'll get into this more shortly, but for now, the table below considers all classes’ base HP at level 200 (assuming average level up/advancement gains, no washing, no AP assigned to HP/MP, and the earliest possible maximization of any relevant "bonus" HP/MP gain skill), as well as the upper bound of damage that such a character could withstand without dying (while under the influence of only skills/buffs that they themselves possess).

2. Dark Knight gameplay should involve a level of risk that is appropriate for the game we have

Spoiler: Details

This has proven to be one of the trickiest ideas to grapple with, and it is made complicated particularly by extremely subjective definitions of "risk". While the original implementation of Berserk could have been appropriate circa the release of version 0.62 when considering original scaling, the nature of bosses, etc., the actual "risks" which Dark Knights have faced and continue to face in MapleLegends have become more apparent over time as washing has taken hold and more harder-hitting content has come into the game that has considered this reality. In any case, the notion of the class involving "risk" is something that has been brought up time and time again as an essential aspect of the class by many, many people. But again, the "risk" that Dark Knights currently have to face given the structure of their skill Berserk is just not appropriate for the game we have, and needs to be adjusted.

3. Dark Knight gameplay should be active and require skill to play well, and doing so should be both rewarding and fun

Spoiler: Details

This idea is somewhat tied to the previous point, but with more emphasis on the fact that the class ought to have sufficient avenues for skill expression that reward active and skilled players with things such as more damage or cost savings. However, this notion also seemed to underscore that the current discrepancy between the "floor" and "ceiling" of what a Dark Knight can be is perhaps too large, and thus the class disproportionately relies on player skill in comparison to every other class.

4. Dark Knight gameplay should scale more similarly across different contents than it currently does to ensure that the class is well-represented in various contexts (particularly in places where their presence is more valued)

Spoiler: Details

A big problem with every iteration of Berserk is that Dark Knight gameplay has always been either too easy or too difficult for most players (and this aspect depends largely on how hard and how often a content hits). We found substantial merit in the notion that the barrier for entry for the harder content was often far too significant for Dark Knight players when comparing to those who play other classes, and that this aspect was one of a few substantial ones that has led to players moving away from the class in favor of ones which are more forgiving. While making the barrier for entry less punishing has been a priority, we also want to make sure we are still adequately embodying enough of the "risky" identity that players seem to value of the class.

5. Dark Knights ought to have more independence than they currently do, particularly given their importance to others

Spoiler: Details

While inter-class synergies should always be valued in a game like Maple where party-based content is the central gameplay gimmick, Dark Knights occupy an extremely perverted niche, as they not only scale so hard off of other peoples’ buffs, but they are also themselves essential to the survival of others due to Hyper Body. Ultimately, we found value in the notion that Dark Knights ought to have their reliance on other buffs more appropriately align with their role as indispensable party members to a large number of different characters. Beyond this, when considering how Dark Knight is often a "first character" for many players, we feel that it just makes sense for such individuals to have a reliable, reasonably independent character that can serve as the foundation of their tenure in MapleLegends (similar to the independence of Mages).

Again, while these concepts were all gathered from opinions and ideas shared by players, these were but a few of many we encountered, and ultimately, we had to interpret which ones seemed the most reasonable and most important. Thus, some amount of synthesis of ideas and concepts was done on our end to provide a cohesive starting point for us to work from and to present to you all here. With this in mind, we do still want to gauge whether players – particularly those who regularly play, have regularly played, and/or want to regularly play a traditional Dark Knight feel like these adequately summarize the core values and core identity of what a Dark Knight should be.


Exploring Potential Systems

While we pondered a number potential solutions (again, all of which center around changes made to Berserk), we wanted to discuss just a couple at the moment, while mentioning that we still have some questions we've been asking ourselves throughout this process, such as:

• What is an appropriate level of difficulty for Dark Knight gameplay?
• What sort of risks are appropriate given the game we have?
• When considering the necessary skill required given the risk involved, where should Dark Knight fit in with respect to other classes in terms of damage output?

Ultimately, all three of these questions are highly subjective, and it is this subjectivity that has led us to make this post, as we would like to gauge how some systems are perceived by the community at large.

The first system we'd like to share can be thought of as being somewhat similar in structure to the "50% Active, 50% Passive" one-after-the-other system that currently exists, but with a couple of key differences: by engaging with the activation system in this first example, one would be able to receive all of their Berserk damage bonuses and maintain these bonuses 100% of the time as long as the player is playing the class well and actively. While a passive (potentially even scaling) system would be maintained behind the active system for a variety of reasons, engaging with this passive system would essentially be completely optional, and at no point would a player be "forced" to engage with extensively it if they played their cards right (currently, the need to do so presents huge problems, as the interplay between having to spend half of the time incurring 1/1 damage and half of the time incurring "regular" amounts of damage means that setting up pet potions is neither rewarding in terms of damage output nor cost efficiency without excessive amounts of manual healing).

[NOTE: We want to reiterate that this post is chiefly concerned with changes to Berserk. However, other skill changes are being considered as well, some of which will have (hopefully all positive) impacts on Berserk-related gameplay. Thus, please keep in mind that these proposed systems are not the full extent of the changes we are looking to make to Dark Knight, these are just the aspects we are looking for feedback on at the moment.]

Click the spoiler below to see more details about what such a system is imagined to possibly look like:

Proposed System #1

Spoiler: Proposed System #1

Activating Berserk would simultaneously grant the player a 20 second debuff ("Berserker’s Torment") and a 60 second buff ("Berserker’s Might") that will run concurrently:

The 20 second debuff "Berserker’s Torment" would essentially grant the negative aspects of active Berserk as it currently exists, with a few minor alterations:

Spoiler: Berserker's Torment

1. Players will lose all defenses, avoidability, and damage mitigation from skills such as Achilles and Elemental Resistance

2. While below 50% HP, every hit from a monster will set the player’s HP to 1, but all damage received would be reflected at a rate of [30,000 - damage received]

Note that the damage reflection would be removed from where it currently exists (on Aura of the Beholder) to here. This serves a number of purposes, though primarily this is supposed to hearken back to (and be the extent of) the notion that "less HP = more damage", but it should embody this to an extent that feels more appropriate, while also eliminating unintuitive competition that currently exists between players' desires to both do more damage and be as cost-efficient as possible​

3. While at 50% HP or above, hits from monsters will be calculated "normally" (accounting for the loss of damage reductions/defense)

The motivation for adding this threshold is twofold. First, it is intended to improve overall accessibility by making the class playable at high amounts of HP (while also serving as an additional "get out of jail free" card before a hit will set a player's HP to 1). Second, players should now have an easier time choosing whether to focus on cost efficiency/damage (such as by using Red Potions on their pet auto-pot) versus being able to "chill" a bit more (such as by using Honsters with their autopot/HP alert threshold set to 50%) while still reaping most of the benefits of their primary damage skill​

4. When "Torment" expires, the player would be healed to full

This change would mainly be intended to prevent those awkward situations where both active Berserk and the player’s invincibility frames are expiring at the same time and they have to figure out whether a manual heal will allow them to avoid insta-dying to a hit they cannot tank or just be a "wasted" potion if they end up incurring one last 1/1 hit. Quite frankly this situation was seen as just being needlessly uncomfortable, and providing a free full heal should alleviate the insta-death situation entirely and give players a clean slate to enjoy their un-Tormented period of “Might” (while also hopefully serving as one of a few visual cues that the player is no longer in a potentially dangerous state)​

The 60 second buff "Berserker’s Might" would essentially grant the positive aspects of active Berserk as it currently exists, with one further alteration:

Spoiler: Berserker's Might

1. The player would have "maximum" damage bonus from Berserk while this buff is active (currently this is 120%, but as with all values in this post, is subject to change)

2. The magnitude, duration, and range at which Hyper Body and Iron Will applies to party members would be amplified

It is important to note that this would likely entail a nerf to the base magnitude of Hyper Body, which for balancing purposes, would maintain its current bonus of 60% in this new system when applied to party members so long as the Dark Knight distributes the buff while the "Might" buff is active​

Berserk activation in general was imagined to be given the following traits as well:

Spoiler: Berserk General Traits

1. Activation would have a 40 second cooldown (again, with "Torment" having a 20 second duration and "Might" having a 60 second duration, with both "Torment" and "Might" being simultaneously applied to the player upon activation of Berserk)

2. Both "Torment" and "Might" would be undispellable by monsters

Given the short duration and cooldown of Berserk and how these serve to create a rather busy "active" gameplay loop, we want to ensure that the focus of the class's gameplay is on engaging with this loop and handling the risk that it comes with without being punished excessively for the nature of the skill as having a cooldown​

3. Right-click canceling "Torment" would automatically cancel "Might" as well

This is simply to prevent players from gaining all of the upside of Berserk activation at no cost/risk​

4. Activating Berserk while "Torment" is applied to the player would function the same as right-click canceling "Torment" (as long as the player is not Seduced)

The purpose of this would be to allow players to more smoothly anticipate/react to incoming Seductions. Although this can already (and would still be able to) be achieved by right-clicking the buff icon if the player is already Seduced, such functionality is much more clunky and occurs outside of the normal flow of the game, and thus is perhaps more fairly viewed as a last-ditch "workaround" for players who do not react in time to cancel it in this new manner​

5. Both "Torment" and "Might" would be on the second line of buffs in order to ensure their placement on-screen is consistent so that players can easily find them at a glance

6. Activating Berserk would have a negligible (ideally 0) cast time, and it would be able to be cast while other skills are in the process of animating (again, to allow it to be used reactively)

Although the first system was structured deliberately to allow for both "chill" and "sweaty" gameplay avenues in order to improve accessibility and make the gameplay feel less punishing (and ideally, more rewarding) — all while hopefully embodying the various aspects of Dark Knight class identity that we felt were important to work with — one consideration which came up in our discussions quite a few times was whether such a system was too complicated at a surface level relative to previous iterations of Berserk, as well as whether it made Dark Knight too complicated relative to the rest of the classes.

Spoiler: Some "Behind the Scenes" Insight

Ultimately, when system #1 was originally proposed, what is resembled was far more complicated than what you have read here. We ended up iterating over this system numerous times in order to hone in on and streamline what we felt were the most essential aspects of what we sought to do, and this first system we have shared was the result. With this in mind, we as a staff team have gone over the details of this entire system (again, many of which are not being shared in this post) numerous times, and so we have become quite familiar with it. As such, we are curious to hear from others apart from ourselves (i.e., fresh eyes who have not seen how this system evolved) to gauge overall perception, especially with respect to complexity.

As a result of the discussions we had regarding complexity, we ended up devising an alternative system that sought to prioritize accessibility and intuitiveness over all else, while greatly narrowing the gap between the "floor" and "ceiling" of a Dark Knight's expected damage output.

The details of this system are as follows:

Proposed System #2

Spoiler: Proposed System #2

In this system, Berserk would grant a certain baseline damage bonus "passively" as a function of the skill's level, while having "active" functionality that would exist on top of the passive system, and engagement with this system would grant an additional (but relative to the passive damage bonus, much smaller) amount of damage bonus for a period of time and at a small cost/risk.

Spoiler: Passive Functionality

1. Leveling Berserk would grant passive, baseline damage bonus to the player as a function of the skill's level (for example, up to a maximum of 100% "Berserk" bonus at level 30)

Again, this bonus applies passively: it will exist at all times. There is no need to be at low HP for this. There is no need to engage with a system you don't want to in order to obtain the overwhelming majority of "your damage". You simply level the skill, and you passively get most of the bonus. Simple as that.

Although we provided an example of 100% damage bonus, we want to emphasize that this is merely an example we are providing to illustrate a point later on: the specific value is subject to change.​

As mentioned, the skill would also have active functionality as well, which was imagined to be as follows:

Spoiler: Active Functionality

1. The skill would only be able to be initially activated while under a relatively low HP threshold (such as under 35% HP), and successful activation would heal the player to full

2. Activation has a 60 second cooldown

3. Activation grants a 30 second buff, which:

• Applies an additional amount to the Berserk multiplier (e.g., an extra 30% added on top of the passive 100% for a total of 130% during this period)
• Applies the player with a negative modifier to their damage reduction skills (such as a -30% modifier which would be calculated with respect to other damage reduction skills, such as 15% damage reduction from Achilles and 40% element-based damage reduction from Elemental Resistance)

Although the numbers mentioned in the examples are still subject to change, these values were used specifically to illustrate the system as these figures would lead to a difference of ~7.5% between the floor of a Dark Knight's damage and its ceiling in an ideal/"free-fire" context (with the "floor" being represented by a player who is not engaging with the activation system at all, and the "ceiling" being represented by a player who maintains maximum activation uptime of 50%). In practice however, we would note that the damage gap between a more-skilled and less-skilled player with identical gear would likely be larger than this as the content in question becomes more difficult.

While we toyed around with a larger baseline difference between the floor and the ceiling, we recognized that the goal of formulating this alternative system was ultimately structured around ensuring greater accessibility. Due to this fact, we felt it was essential to raise the floor to a certain level to ensure that players wouldn't be "punished" for seeking more chill gameplay, especially while grinding or when learning a new piece of content. Additionally, given that this system faces far less risks in general when compared to the first system, we wanted to make sure that the damage someone would gain from optimal casting of their skill would not reward them too heavily for what is ultimately required. Thus, we settled on the 7.5% difference for the time being, but again, this difference — along with the overall damage that a Dark Knight would be doing in this system — are still subject to change, and we are looking for feedback in both respects.

As a final note on the two systems, we want to specifically mention that any underlying system that we perceive as making the class require a lot more skill to play well will likely result in Dark Knight's having a higher damage ceiling both with respect to an easier underlying system (such as the second one) as well as with respect to many other classes depending on the context (though the degree to which this is the case is certainly not set in stone, and can/will be re-evaluated as time goes on). When formulating your feedback, please keep this in mind.

EDIT -

Naturally, the presented options did not include every single possible change that we have been brainstorming internally. Some of the other ideas were not listed mainly because they weren't part of a full and viable skillset yet.
However, with the current provided feedback in mind and after more discussion, we'd like to present a third option.

Proposed System #3

Spoiler: Proposed System #3

This system tries to answer the need for more "substance", both for the utility and the survivability aspects that we've seen brought up.
Additionally, the "risk" component is changed - from a life-threatening risk to a damage-threatening one, so to speak.

• Aura of the Beholder
  
  Spoiler: Effect (option 1)

  Every X seconds, Beholder's aura stuns the monsters around you.
  Skill levels affect the stun cooldown, and the amount of monsters.
  Spoiler: Effect (option 2)

  While Beholder is active, grants the player a degree of Sharp Eyes effect.
  Skill levels affect the values of crit rate and crit chance.
  At max level, the effect would be weaker than Archer's Sharp Eyes.
  Spoiler: Explanation

  The current Aura effect (damage reflection) does not synergize with a kit that promotes dancing around low health levels, so a change seems inevitable.
  The two proposed options allow for either team utility (improved crowd control to keep boss summons in check), or for extra independence (minimized reliance on Sharp Eyes).

• Achilles
  
  Spoiler: Effect

  Further reduces damage taken.
  Achilles' damage reduction increased to 30% (up from the current 15%).
  Spoiler: Explanation

  Giving a bit more survivability is helpful in this new suggested skillset, as you will notice from the Berserk mechanic.
  This additional resistance also offsets Paladin's and Hero's Power Guard extra damage reduction (while Elemental Resistance is more situational).

• Berserk
  
  Spoiler: Effect

  Passive: under 55% HP, grants the player bonus damage.
  Active:
  

  • Grants the full passive damage at any HP, plus extra bonus damage.
  • Player loses the defense from Achilles and Elemental Resistance.
  • After dealing X damage, gain status immunity and +% bonus damage for Y seconds, and reduce skill cooldown. This can stack up to Z times.
  Spoiler: Explanation

  In an effort to reduce Berserk's overly-punishing mechanic, we decided to try playing with a different type of interaction, more focused on rewards.
  The passive effect goes back to a vanilla-like one, and the active effect highlights the need for constant damage dealing and scaling.
  
  With this design, we aim at making the class approachable by, and viable for, every type of player - be it one who enjoys simple casual play with friends, or one whose goal is to force us to buff Pink Bean to balance their bloodthirst.
  Ideally, the skillset won't make a player risk becoming a liability to the whole party (nor alternatively being forced into a mule role), but at the same time, won't force a dull gameplay on players who like challenging themselves.

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Our Questions for Players

Although what we have shared in this post is ultimately a smaller piece of a larger picture that we are working on, we want to reiterate one last time that the purpose of this post is to discuss the primary skill which will be reworked: Berserk. While many tweaks to other skills have been and will continue to be discussed, what these changes end up looking like exactly will be dependent on what Berserk ends up looking like.

To conclude, we'd like to ask the following questions, particularly of those who have actively played a traditional Dark Knight, do actively play one, or would like to actively play one given the right circumstances:

1. What do you think are the most essential aspects of a Dark Knight's identity?
2. Given the desire for increased accessibility, what do you think is an appropriate skill floor for Dark Knights?
3. Are the gameplay risks of the first and/or second system appropriate given our playerbase and the current structure of content in MapleLegends?
4. When considering the necessary skill required given the risk involved (particularly in the suggested systems as opposed to the current one and past ones), where should Dark Knight fit in with respect to other classes in terms of damage output?

We look forward to hearing your thoughts!