2015-08-11, 11:43 AM
TheBlackMage Wrote:About party play, I don't think Nexon knows how to do a decent/OK party play.
MS2 is the best evidence, so far I've noticed no reason to party up with someone and kill stuff, Let me elaborate... nothing changed from solo play, Do mind that since the moment I got out of lith harbor I was in a party of two.
However I didn't feel like the party benefited us much, I didn't feel like the exp was better or worse, our map coverage was alright and nothing really changed.
But ignoring mobs, let's talk bossing.
MS2 and MS1 suffer from the same issue. Bosses are poorly designed. If MS1 has stupid scaling wait until you see MS2... 2 million HP on level 15~20 bosses, not even that late in the god damn game, WHEN YOU HIT 100's on the darn things.
Forcing you into "party play" bossing isn't a good thing either, I was actually very happy back when you fight that Bear boss with 8k hp in lith or was it the previous place before lith? Anyways it was fairly challenging and fun, but then the next boss you encounter has 2 million hp?! What the pineapple Nexon? I don't want to go to CH1 and search for 100 people circlejerking around the damn boss and "feel" like I am doing some party play, that's not the damn answer.
Even with 10 friends it would take too much time. See? Scaling is an issue for them.
Sure you shouldn't expect to solo everything but there's a line for off-brand "party play" as well.
MS1 still has somewhat decent party play without forking people entirely, two not so funded players can still have fun bossing.
Both games are the far edge of the spectrum but somehow I feel like MS1 is closer to the middle.
They used to know how to do it.
From the legendary Gobi parties, through Newties and Skeles, and right up to Lion King Castle, training in a party had definite benefits over training alone.
The key was big maps, low mobility, or high enemy HP. You couldn't possibly kill everything on your own, so having someone else (or several people) killing on other parts of the map gave you more experience than you lost to them.
It can still happen today. Warrior Grounds, for example, is big enough for two. But the per-kill exp there was nerfed so hard that people would rather solo SDH.
I've tried the new Scrapyard and while solo it's horrible exp for me as a Hero, I believe that if I could get a party where each took charge of a platform, it would be much better.
Unfortunately, again, SDH is so much easier for people (and their HS and Kishin mules) that few want to go to Scrapyard, alone or in groups.
It doesn't help that Scrapyard apparently has glitchy anti-hacking measures that disconnect people who kill too fast.
As for bossing, again, they used to know how to do it.
Remember HT? Remember when you needed warriors to kill the tail, because it would smash anyone else to bits? Remember when you needed someone really tanky for sed mule, and a healer to keep them alive? Remember when an NL didn't go anywhere without a bowman to SE them? Remember when it mattered which HT head reflected weapon attack and which reflected magic attack?
Classes had roles then. You needed a whole squad for HT, not just because it had too much HP for one person to defeat in reasonable time, but because each part of the fight had a class best suited for it.
Remember PB, and all the strategizing going on before it was finally defeated (and after)? Windia didn't just send their 30 top DPS'ers to whack at it 'til it died. It wouldn't have worked. They, again, had different classes do specialized things at just the right time.
The closest thing we have to that now is bringing 3 different binders to keep the boss sedated while the one capping attacker drains its HP.
I don't know whether they can bring back true class roles. We'll see when Ursus shows up, whether it's just a big sack of HP with %HP moves, or something requiring cooperation of different abilities.