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.

 

Ty, that's very nice point! I mentioned too many aspects at once and didn't make very good arguement on each of them.

I'll make asummary for my point for view for how these 3 aspects together influence new players' gameplay here.

If just leaving inflation(a) happening without taking any action(b), it'll leads a clear result that new players' gaming life gets harder, since:
1) they don't have savings, they need to farm from the system or sell their work force to other players (typically: leech), as in (c).
2) The income from farming hourly also will not increase with the inflation directly, only part of the farming (gacha) will increase in value.

I kind recon this leads to a result that being a FM merchant seems to be the best grinding method for new players lol.

As an ultimate result, they had to sell most of their gacha rewards to gain the meso to support them participating the market, the meso they earn from system directly is merely nothing. This scene is not entirely imaginary. It happened in CMS, in WOW, and many other MMOs that have FM. In CMS, there are massive hackers and they generated uncountable mesos, eventually results in meso can not be used as trading currency because everyday it became more worthless.

About your arguement, I agree the part "give new players more ways to make money have no correlation with B", but actually I'm suggesting give new players more ways to gain both meso and assets which won't necessary leads to inflation rate increasing rapidly. And I do agree simply by giving new player more meso won't change a thing, but worse the economy.

 

And an additional thought about leeching and FM merchant.

Acutally these behavior won't and shouldn't have impact on inflation increase at all, since these behaviour doesn't generate anything from system (even costing more meso in terms of trading tax). If being merchant do influence market price enough to be mis-considered as inflation, these merchants are half steps into monopoly I believe.

I remember seeing it somewhere people compare multi-mages to leech, actually they're quite different things.
Multi-mages have the potential to cause inflation greatly due to massive meso generating per hour comparing to all other grinding method. I'm currently planning on give it a try because I believe without practice, there is no right to speak.
Well, at least selling/buying leech is not a bad thing for sure in my opinion.

 

That's interesting to me since I don't have further data nor experience on it (I'm new).
I on owlrepo checking on scrolls quite often, I remembered that most scrolls' price went up slowly, some of them are stable in the past few years, which makes me believe the inflation number.
And I don't quite get it, what's under the category "goods"? I thought it means everything that sells in market that can be search for.

Besides, about leech services, any chance the phenomenon that it's harder to raise price because of other content reward shrinks so more players choose this path, making leech selling work force > buying needs?

And like I said above,

I believe leech shouldn't contribute to inflation increase at all and don't get influence by the total inflation much, bacause the price for leeching is mostly decided by how many people selling/buying.

I as a new bishop, seeing almost all other leech sellers with mw20, rarely with mw10, even saw selling low-level package with mw30 but charging lower price than market avg.

Thank you for your input, I'm just checking on all possible explanations.

 

I'm kind like haven't found my final goals yet. I would like to try harder to earn more, for example multi-maging, I don't think it's an easy path but a general good path as in "spenting more effort getting more". Does the set up cost worth it now?

I'm glad to hear why multimagers deserves these 2 words "goddamned" and "eh". I don't get what's wrong.

 

ty for the info! May I ask what specific changes make it more difficult than former?

 

Thank you for you input, I agree some part of it but have more different opinons. I'll explain.

I remember seeing an analyse thread about "the income of Bishops", statistically gacha makes up 40-60% of total income of a bishop if I remembered correctly? Hope someone know the thread I'm talking about, I can't find it for now. I would say the value of this part is raising with the inflation so the income stays the same but the other part - meso from system decreased since pots price raised and Ultimate droprate nerfed and also meso less valued because of inflation. So these adding up still a general loss in income comparing to old days. For mages, the Ultimate damage comes more from int instead of magic att I believe? And the HP wash needs makes mages' scroll overpriced than real mages need. The only cheap things mages can aquire is weapon scrolls.

And, tbh, mages are almost the most optimal choices new players could consider right? And it is what it is now.

Again as above, pots cost raised, drop rate nerfed, so leeching's income is not only comparatively less but also numerically less than former.

Actually I'm constantly think about time spent vs final gain. From this perspective, the new players still get harder because their workforce is cheaper, the avg gain becoming less or cheaper, but everything else raised. I don't think from time : gain perspective new players are easier.

Yes I agree with you about this, but it and my arguement are not contradictory.
1) Experienced players, if not take they get funded/help from old chars or from friends, it is still comparably harder than before I think?
2) New players are generally harder to reach the same goals comparing to old players used to be, that actually has nothing to do with how old players could using their knowledge raising a new char easily, isn't it?



Btw, recently I noticed low-end int gear price seems to be dropping (maybe it‘s survivorship bias maybe not), but scrolls not. Assuming that is actually happening, I think it is because of new bloods are becoming less than former, and as former new players grows they better geared, starting to sell their former low-end gear, selling > buying, leading to price goes down. That's my theory.