draconius Wrote:1. The game allows and encourages this. There is absolutely no way a mage can pay for ultimate spamming without either spending NX on 2x drop and pets, or by selling leech. People selling leech makes it more expensive to buy upgrades in the magician market, which in turn is a positive feedback loop that only makes it more enticing to leech. If mages could afford to train without losing millions of mesos per session, chances are there wouldn't be nearly as much leeching going on as it is right now.
2. Then there really is no point to this game is there? I presume you've been playing for a while now, and I'm assuming that you know how slow it used to be. The only "challenge" in this game is to level. It's already considerably easier to level now, and removing that impetus doesn't encourage playing...it just encourages a situation where people constantly desire an easier and ultimately bland game.
1. Exactly, your argument proves my point of this design flaw. Everyone want to level at the pace of a mage who spams ultimates. But it's costly, so they exploit this system of selling leech, which is supported by the game's design.
2. Yes I have been around for a very long time. And I'm saying that this "challenge" is the same force that both drives people to quit and to leech. I'm not saying to remove this impetus entirely. But let's look at it this way...
a. From levels 1-30, a player can arguably level this fast in a few days if they knew what they were doing. 1 hour/level isn't hard with 2x card.
b. From levels 31-50, you have the repetitive CPQ that can make 31-50 in a matter of a few days as well.
c. From 51-70 onwards is where it starts to slow down noticeably. You have LMPQ for maybe 1%/minute as opposed to 1 level/hour (almost halved in speed).
d. Past 70, however, it's another halve in the actual training rate...and you get down to 20%/hour. Incidentally, at 7x is where leech levels start. They jump and shoot up to 60%/hour again, and thus people continue to leech, thinking they can keep leveling fast.
e. Then at 10x where they're down to 30%/hour leeching, they start to get discouraged again.
f. At 12x they essentially stop leeching, realize that they're at as good as 10-12%/hour, tries on their own, get bored, and majority of them quit (and you can prove this by just looking at the handful number of non-Mage people who make it to 15x-16x if you try to organize new HT runs).
My point? This game already has a drastically changing rate of an EXP curve that makes many people quit even just past midway through the whole game in terms of raw levels. That isn't indication enough that it's flaw in design?
And while I'm on topic of design, I just had a presentation in my class yesterday about a research on video game design in which the designers are supposed to strive to make games where the gamer 1. plays hard, 2. do not quit (before beating the game), and 3. plays forever (even after beating the game). That's the idea and definition of good video game design.
The play forever factor is what Maple aims to get at in order to get the most profits in the long run. But they're currently losing out people to #1 and 2 of this design.