Thoughts about new players' well-being

Hi,

According to the latest balacened changes thread https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?threads/november-2023-balance-changes-explained.52097/

I would like to throw some thoughts of mine. Hope my thoughts are logical and not too personal.

In conclusion, I think there should be more content similar to APQ.
By similar to APQ I mean, content with low entering threashold (low requirements in gear and levels), requiring real time playing instead of something like daily voting, and could enable new players to have a way to grind in a similar ratio of time : meso/assets to end-game players' gameplay (bossing, farming).

Here comes my long arguements and thoughts.

About inflation IRL

It's generally considered (in my knowledge) healthy if a currency's inflation rate is between 5-8% a year. The reason for it is that when money can buy less things in the future, people will tend to use it instead of stack it, and consumption will promote economic growth, making the entire economic system more dynamic to attract more market participants.

The reason for the existence of inflation is that the organizations or institutions controlling the issuance of currency, assuming they issue currency in proportion to the newly produced goods based on the original ratio of goods to money, theoretically, the inflation rate could be zero. However, they choose to overissue currency to maintain the depreciation of money, stimulate consumption, and thereby promote economic development. This is my superficial understanding of the phenomenon of inflation in an individual idealized economy system, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or add new point to it.

About in-game economy balancing

With above info, I conclude the inflation in-game is because all players total gain from the system is meso > assets(gear/scroll/consumpotions/p coins).
I think it's important about "where is the extra meso coming from" that caused inflation.

1. If it comes from everyone grind more meso from system equally, old players benefit gets hurt, because ofc some of their fortune in forms of mesos or meso related, this parts become less valued.
2. If it comes from end-game content, which means new players' benefits hurt. They can't make more meso, but have to afford the market price goes up.
3. If it comes from some special method to grind, everyone except players who abuse that method hurts.

Normally, most p2w game will push balance changes in form of 1. to squish more money from players, but about this kind of change itself, I'm not sure is it postive or negtive to the total economy system.

The most abstract strategy I could think of balancing this is, as an old Chinese saying goes: "Adjust water and flour as needed." I think the past balancing patch notes match it.

When too much meso generated than assets, consider if it is some of the grinding methods too broke that deserves to be nerfed, OR maybe just other grinding content due to the participation frequency limited by time (bossing, APQ), or maybe generally let players feel "the output from it is not worth the time doing it", like too tough to pass, or too tough to recruit a party, or too boring, or not enough valuable drops, etc.

I have a feeling that I saw more general nerfing than general buffing. My explation to it is, maybe with more end-game content adding to the server, there indeed needs some balance on limit players' grinding speed so that server could stay low-rate. That makes some sense, but still I have my unsatisfaction from the new players' well-being perspective.

New players have to face a tougher adventure due to balancing

I think those balancing changes in ML mainly influenced by old players' gameplay output, instead of new players'.

I don't have statistics back me up, but according to my observation on the past patch notes and past threads, it seems to be quite a lot nerfing changes about something considered too broke or too popular, or in a similar manner. NPC pots price raise. All multi-target skills droprate nerfed, and some of the bossing content due to a higher participant rate than other bosses get nerfed. Gold pouch can only be picked up by attakers (is it a dedicated nerf to multi-mages?), and etc.

Seems all these nerfs are not about something new players could abuse of, but new players would definitely will go through a tougher time than old players used to be after these nerfs.

General nerfing is always hurting new players now and in the future. Because older players all benefits from those unnerfed content in the past, or at least partipate the marketing during that time, therefore though they may not directly getting benefits before those nerfs but still generally got benefit from them. New players not only hard to chase up due to old players played for longer time, but also need to go through the path old players all been through with even longer time, which, sounds not very charming and indeed feels not good.

Setting up goals is personal, I myself as a new player am not blocked away or too frustrated. But generally speaking, this balancing trend is potentially going to block more new players out instead of welcoming them.

Into my suggestion point

I understand buffing back these things are bad ideas, first of all may not align with the low-rate idea, secondly the purpose of "makeing new players easier" is hurting old players benefit as well so there will naturaly to be negtive opinions. But I would still kindly suggest everyone including me to put our current benefits aside but considering what is better for the health of the server for our future gameplay.

What I would like suggest is, as a compensation to those general nerfs, maybe we could have more content added/adjusted to APQ like.

For instance, the PQ rework is generally fitting this idea, and I've seem many threads about ideas like improve low-level PQ rewards, better loots and EXP, make PQ no lvl limitation and etc, those are very positive to new player base and also postive to the total server enviroment I recon.

BPQ from this year's halloween event mostly fit the idea, but there's no restricition about time in participation, which may lead to being abused of (which I did, and earned quite some meso/assets).

Further more than PQ, I would also glad to see all changes make all players life easier without hurting new/old players specificly more. On top of the list of those potential changes, the best would be the challenge system with no doubts. Thanks to all staffs' work to implement and polish it. Great work and keep on.

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I hope I didn't straw manning a lot in my above arguements, if there are I'm happy to discuss futher. Ty for reading.

There are quite some people voted "kind of disagree". Wondering if it is only a feel so, or maybe there's any opinion that could be shared and discussed here?

I do like to see varieties of views.