Disclaimer: It's not supposed to be a suggestion I want to enforce. Merely because Reward Points is such a minor element in the game it'll almost never receive such an update I'm writting down. Consider it more like a review with the thoughts of a player which may or may not have enough experience to give a judgement about it. This is also written from a perspective which make sense from a player's view and from Nexon's position. so the 'suggestion' may not be really valuable to a player per se.
Over the past five years my friends and I learned about Reward Points - because we started to play again - and it was kinda confusing but we quickly understood it and generally, those points are pretty handy - you can buy useful items and receive an actual fair discount of 30% for expiring cash items, so things like Auto Pet Buff are a great target to buy cheaper. And the ways you can collect those are actually pretty colorful: starting from doing level ups over doing bosses, participating in events until to additional ways, such as Fairy Bros. And this all sounds good but... many things still feel weird and wouldn't hurt to improve.
I guess nobody really cares for details like those and honestly, you must be very bored if you do that but I'd wish they made the quest names of each Reward Points quest consistent (I speak about the quest in the 'Cash' category). You have most of the quest starting with '[Maple Rewards]' (which is honestly pointless since all those quest are listed in the Reward Points icon on the left and bloats the space needlessly) and where you ANNIHILATE (like cmon, don't be so brutal) many bosses. Then you also have the weird inconsistency where it's not 'Annihilate <boss>' but instead it's swapped to '<boss> Annihilation', and I begin to wonder what made them do this to bosses that were already released in this time. and then you have two unwanted children with 'Annihilating Cygnus' (which doesn't even have a tooltip) and 'Take Down the Yakuza Boss' and seriously,
why.
Giving all names some consistency and more readability is a work of maybe five minutes but can do so much for the sake of
my sanity new players and usage. Get rid of from the stupid Maple Rewards tag at the begin and add something more useful, like '[Boss]', '[Theme Dungeon]' or '[Party Quest]'. I am very sure people may not know who the hell Rex is, and where you can find him. Stuff like
'[Boss] Defeat Hard Magnus' is not only much shorter but it's also more comfortable to read, and that are the small improvements in the game which I enjoy the most because while a lot of people find those useless, I find them pleasing to encounter.
Oh yeah,
this one. It's cool to see we have so many bosses we can clear per day but something doesn't really add up. The following bosses do not reward you with Reward Points, because those have no quests at all:
[*] Damien
[*] Lotus
[*] Lucid
[*] Will
[*] Gloom
[*] Verus Hilla
[*] Darknell
[*] Black Mage
[*] Mr. Chomps
[*] Balrog
[*] Frankenroid
[*] Xerxes
[*] Lord Pirate
[*] Blackheart
[*] Prison Guard Ani (the party quest version)
[*] Pianus (the Kenta in Danger version)
[*] Akechi Mitsuhide
[*] Chief Priest
[*] Julieta
[*] Frenzied Gigatoad
Prison Guard Ani is a weird story because the version you can find in Lionheart Castle rewards you while the party quest version doesn't. And since I am about to give all the other missing Party Quest bosses the trait to reward you with points, I'd do this purely for consistency. Pianus used to give Reward Points back then and I can see why it doesn't do that anymore but on the other hand we have an entire party quest with it as the boss and there it can reward you with a few points too. Akechi neither should be a problem to add regardless of content differences between versions, since we have PNO and Ranmaru. Frenzied Gigatoad currently does not reward you with points, and only the weaker version you'd need to wait out a few minutes, which nobody is going to do, even on a practical standpoint. And yeah, while many of you do not care for the Party Quest bosses, we have a few that already give you Reward Points, such as Rex, Dragon Rider and also Princess No. Every boss starting with Damien do not give you any points, which is honestly hilarious, to think that small theme dungeon bosses like Mole King and Black Viking give you points while the end game bosses do not. And sure, Reward Points might not be super valuable at this point but you can always use those for your lower level characters or for other rewards I'll write about.
Here I would have talked how certain bosses aren't that valuable to reward you with points, speaking of Easy difficulty bosses. But for my surprise I found out almost all Easy variants do not reward you (anymore, as it used to be the case for Magnus for example). The only boss that specifically refers to the 'easy' variant that currenty rewards you with points is Cygnus but this boss could be merged like they've done to Gollux, or remove entirely. The only other boss I don't see any reason to stay up is King Castle Golem. It's field boss that randomly pops up in the Garden area of Lionheart Castle and is the only boss that isn't a Main Theme Dungeon boss, a PQ boss or a major boss. Plus, as an addition, it's quite a tiresome boss no one (even me) is bothering about it.
Also to clarify why I left out certain bosses: The Pianus you can find in Aquarium used to give points but was removed without further notice and generally it didn't make much sense to be fair, since it could be considered as an field boss, like the Snack Bar and Stumpy. And no other field boss (except for King Castle Golem) gives you reward points. I also skipped the Party Quest bosses (King Slime, Papa Pixie, Poisonus Stone Golem) from the Party Quest rotation since those aren't always available and that is kind of contradicting when you're supposed to complete a quest. Lastly I skipped Chao (being a side-story boss in Elin Forest) since we have Ephenia and is similar to King Castle Golem which I'd see removed.
I'd talk about the distributed points you get for each individual bosses, and the one I suggested to add. Currently we're in a range between 10 to 50 points per boss, which is sorta reasonable as some of these bosses are definitely more worth than others. But I believe it's right to say that it's pretty badly balanced. Zakum gives on both difficulties, Normal and Chaos, 50 points each, considering how tough CZak gets over time. Then on the other hand you have such an early boss as NZak which
gives you 50 points. And with the increasing amount of items we get in the Rewards Shop in the CS you really want to optimize your Reward Points earn. Surely, you could just spend Cash instead and get Reward Points as a bonus but not everyone is willed to do this. So as I said first, it's not a suggestion of the usual kind but more of a review where I suggest things
I would like to see and how I would do it. This is a table of points I'd reward the bosses individually:
1,000 points - Black Mage
600 points - Verus Hilla
550 points - Hard Darknell
500 points - Chaos Gloom
425 points - Hard Lucid/Will
375 points - Hard Damien/Lotus
325 points - Normal Darknell
250 points - Normal Gloom
200 points - Normal Will
150 points - Normal Lucid
100 points - Normal Damien/Lotus
95 points - Chaos Papulatus, Hell Gollux
90 points - Chaos Vellum, Hard Magnus, Akechi Mitsuhide
80 points - Chaos Zakum/Crimson Queen/Pierre/Von Bon, Princess No
75 points - Hard Gollux, Cygnus
70 points - Hard Hilla, Chaos Pink Bean
60 points - Normal Papulatus/Arkarium, Hard Von Leon/Ranmaru
50 points - Normal Magnus, Chaos Horntail
45 points - Normal Pink Bean/Von Leon, Julieta, OMNI-CLN
40 points - Dragon Rider, Perfect Visitor, Rex, Frankenroid, Xerxes, Lord Pirate, Blackheart, Prison Guard Ani (PQ), Pianus (PQ)
35 points - Gigatoad, Frenzied Gigatoad, Yakuza Boss, Tarantulus, Chief Priest
30 points - Normal Crimson Queen/Pierre/Von Bon/Vellum, Normal Gollux, Ephenia, Ravana
25 points - Normal Horntail/Ranmaru
20 points - Normal Zakum/Hilla, Elite Boss (each Job Branch individually)
15 points - Mole King, Captain Darkgoo, Black Viking, Demolishizer, Targa, Scarboss
10 points - Mr. Chomps, Balrog
0 points - all Easy Boss variants, King Castle Golem, Prison Guard Ani
This list is based on my experience, the recommened boss list in-game and based on their relevance (ie, you'll run the RA bosses much more over most other bosses purely because you benefit from running it more often than other bosses, like Normal Horntail), and to make Party Quest bosses a bit more rewarding, those get a significantly higher amount than they currently have. It's unlikely you'd grind those on a daily basis but it'd be a small bonus you gain while running certain party quests. As you can see the scaling is pretty constant till the late game bosses while Black Mage still gives a very poor amount of points (21x Normal Mag gives more than Black Mage in a month..) but is still reasonable for people to be rewarded.
But there is more! Not only bosses should be the way to farm Reward Points on a good level but doing content should reward you as well. Only very few things aside from Bossing and Cash purchase gives you Reward Points and especially long quest lines should additionally reward you with points:
-) Black Heaven/Heroes of Maple (only when completing all chapters) - 500 Reward Points (once per character each)
-) Masteria Through Time/Mushroom Shrine Tales - 300 Reward Points
-) Moonbridge/Labyrinth of Suffering/Limina Quest Line - 250 Reward Points
-) Vanishing Journey/Chu Chu Island/Lachelein/Arcana/Morass/Esfera Quest Line - 200 Reward Points
-) Heliseum/Lionheart Castle/Silent Crusade Quest Line - 100 Reward Points
-) Theme Dungeon Completion (Gold Beach, Elodin, Partem Ruins, Mushroom Castle, Ellinel, Kerning Tower, Riena Strait, Fantasy Theme World, Golden Temple, Colossus, The Afterlands, Elin Forest, Magatia, Korean Folk Town, Crimsonheart Castle, Three Doors, Commerci Republic, Hiezian Temple, Shaolin Temple, Henesys Ruins, Omega Sector, Kritias, New Leaf City, Detective Rave's Case Notes, Twilight Perion, Phantom Forest, Fox Valley, Haven, Masteria, Asura Crisis, Monad, Reverse City, Yum Yum Island, Sellas) - 50 Reward Points
-) Clearing Monster Park 7 times a day - 25 Reward Points
-) Defeating an Elite Mob - 5 Reward Points each (can be done 20 times per world and per day)
The rewards - especially the Theme Dungeon one - scales greatly with the boss rewards and gives people a small incentive to do content. It is still optional and not broken but rewards you nonetheless. Black Heaven and Heroes of Maple gives that much because Black Heaven is a lot of time investment and so is Heroes of Maple if you through all chapters.
As a Reboot player I can only speak about the need of a Reboot player and even now, we either have too many reward points to spend it properly, or too few. And the later problem can be solved with some optimizations while the first problem is still a design flaw for Reboot. I'm impressed how much more the regular servers have, with even minor things like Slot coupons and Buff freezers. Yeah, those things can be bought with meso and it is practically better to buy those with meso instead but we still lack of a few items we can definitely need there:
- Pet Snack
- Beauty Salon Face/Hair Slot Coupon
- Buff Freezers
- Fusion Anvil
- Medal Fusion Anvil
- Normal Familiar Booster Pack
- Fatigue Reset Drink
- Chalkboard
- Miracle Circulator
- Shielding Ward
- Shield Scroll
- Condensed Supernova Dust
- Stellar Cosmic Dust Soldifier
- Cosmic Dust Shifter
While half of the items aren't even available in the Rewards Shop right now, there is a good reason why I listed so many of these things that can be useful depending on what case you're. Just think about it as a Reboot player: if you end up having no use for Water of Life and Monster Park tickets (for obvious reasons) or don't need to upgrade your equipment over cubes anymore, or you're a Kanna so you don't need to buy totems you end up with a chunk of points that eventually expire some day. Having other items that may not be urgently functional but fun like anvils is an option to add variety what you can buy. maybe you have the need of a few more Buff Freezers and you really don't want to buy them for 5mil each (on Reboot). Or maybe you can just save some money by having the Pet Snack available over Reward Points. I believe a lot of items have been disabled for Reboot for no particular reason and since the stance to Reboot has been clarified it's not entirely Free to Play, it really doesn't hurt to include those items I've listed above. It neither breaks the balance between playing on regular server or on Reboot server since Reboot has its pro and cons.
My last point is simply: The Reward Points cap is absolute dog and can be solved over other ways. Currently you cap at 46,000 Reward Points after that you cannot claim more points until the next month and we had cases where this happened easily, ie Maple Relay where you got approx. 1200 Reward points per day, and if you want to grind a few more points aside from them you eventually hit the cap and had to stop at this point. The points you get by spending cash are included in this cap so it makes it even more annoying. Just increase the cap to an absurdly high amount (100,000 should be enough) or remove it entirely, and cap the reward points you get by spending cash instead. that may make more sense but isn't really necessary either.
I'm actually done with my brain for today and will just end here my
rant review. Maybe you share some thoughts with me, or not. That's all I have to say.
- Enokumo
