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Reducing Boss Difficulty for Certain Bosses
In the KMS Post Savior Update there were changes to boss which decreased the high difficulty of some unreasonable patterns. Not all of them have been addressed because sometimes the way bosses are implemented are not ported over equally to GMS, due to ping and server latency, Non-KMS content, or poor boss design that has not aged well.
Black Mage Phase 2 and Seren have pillar attack patterns that normally cycle overtime spawning individually which can be dodged with proficiency and mastery. However in GMS these patterns seem to generate all at once instead of generating overtime making into a full map attack pattern more often when comparing to other regions operating MapleStory. In Seren this becomes worse because pillars can be stacked on-top of each other making a double or triple pillar pattern.
Will Phase 3 the attack for the singular leg or "white eyes" where it targets the player's current position. This has a high skill ceiling for teleport classes when introducing server latency or ping making the attack unpredictable to react to where other classes can "flash jump" to avoid this attack with little difficulty.
Princess No Hieizan Temple 1st Floor and 2nd Floor Mikagami and Oda Swordsman takes fixed amount of damage. The Hieizan Temple 3rd Floor when defeating the summoned eels that also take fixed damage does not speed up spawning Oura Shogun. Finally the Hieizan Temple 4th Floor and 5th Floor Miroku and Princess No have the cage skill with low cooldown that cannot be avoided without using Hero's Will Skill or Invincibility Skill. If the cage is destroyed the player is still immobile until the duration ends which is the same time as the cooldown for the cage skill. Princess No also cannot be bound. Classes that do not have generate certain number of lines will take longer to clear and lack of invincibility skills have a harder time to clear. This deters players from challenging Princess No outside of obtaining a Secondary or Kanna's Treasure.
Akechi Mitsuhide has high movement speed with a swing attack that is fast with an insanely large hitbox that does a special knockback. The dive attack has a linger hitbox that does damage longer than it should. The bind counterattack cannot be avoided. Finally the damage reflect cannot be cancelled or negated by Magic Crash. Classes that rely on close-combat have a harder time fighting Akechi forced to dodge attacks with no room to attack back resorting to forcibly taking hits to do damage instead of being able to damage and kite like in other bosses.
Hard Mori Ranmaru's touch damage and attacks are not dealt in hp percentage, but are high attack values that can deal fatal damage to characters that do not have a lot of defense and with a low cooldown seduce making it near impossible to dodge these potentially fatal attacks. This deters from challenging Mori Ramaru even when players have enough damage to clear.
Gollux Phase 2 has a "reverse bomb" pattern that can only be avoided by being outside of range. When hit by the debuff at the end of it the player takes 99% damage. Combined with the map attack that Gollux can cast making it fatal to be under the "reverse bomb" status.
Changes need to be made to said bosses to promote better challenges to the players that can be overcome with skill and not only by brute-forcing the bosses with high damage and invincibility skills or completely avoiding the fight altogether.
Comments
Things I do not agree with.
In regards to what you said about the Princess No Hieizan boss. The boss is not hard, but simply annoying as frick’. To elaborate more on that, I main Hero. My class recently got reworked in where the hits were reduced from 8 to 4 lines. They hit harder, but hit less lines. This makes all stages take twice as long. It’s a pain in the ass. As to dodge the cage skills. For Miroku, simply attack her from below. Her skill will not be able to hit you. For Princess No, you can leave the room by clicking on the portal and re-entering the room making that bind of her completely obsolete. Please see the evidence in this video.
Akechi Mitsuhide has high movement, and just like Princess No is nothing more than simply annoying. There’s little window in where to attack for he’ll keep pushing you away with a swing of his sword. Allowing you to get in two attacks before being pushed aside and getting more stacks. The 30/30 attack can be iFramed and should be done. A common mechanic is using the Ring of Krrrr against him in where you’ll be locked in place so you don’t have to bother with the shove mechanic and can attack him.
Things I semi-agree with. Due to fear of Nexon removing the content.
The bomb in Gollux cannot be dodged. Once its on top of you, you’ll most likely end up dead. Either that, or you would need to cast your iFrame if you have it up after dodging all those instant kill mechanics. Might this be his pink breath or his grabs. Please don’t complain about Gollux though or KMS might decide to remove it altogether making it legacy content. I honestly don’t want that to happen.
Things to what I agree upon.
Bosses need a touch to a certain extend. Simply because I feel most of the statistics Nexon currently possesses are false. Hackers have been using a certain hack in where they would cancel all boss attack animations. Based on the statistics they have from a particular boss, called vHilla, they have been buffing or nerfing classes and have been re-adjusting bosses to fit with the average day Maplers skill set. Please see the evidence in this video.
I would also ask Nexon with their newly created Boss-UI to encourage more party play bosses and boss mechanics. But this is something I’ve been asking for a set-amount of years and will most likely never happen for Maplestory is no longer an MMO as said by the director of Maplestory himself. Well, he said the MMO’s are dead. Please see the evidence in this video.
Edit: I would love the option to select a stage in boss fights to practice certain mechanics. For example, Stage 2 and 3 in Will and Stage 2 in Lucid. Even Stage 3 in where I could check if my party has enough damage output to burst her down.
For Princess No leaving via clicking the portal is more of a bug than it is an intended feature. Eventually it'll be patched and the cage will become an annoyance again.
I don't agree with the brute forcing of Akechi by grabbing Krr Ring as a solution for Akechi in the long run. We are currently one of the last 2 regions that have access to Hyperspace Cube.
I think some of the attacks need to be slowed down and Magic Crash to work on his damage reflect.
Doubt that Gollux will be removed anytime soon due to the revamp. Gollux will continue to be useable content with the Murmur shop at the reward stage Shadowknight Coins for those who have completed the Gollux set.
It is more likely that Gollux will remain untouched.
I don't think that the statistics that Nexon possesses are false. It is more of blatant ignorance and satisfaction that they have done enough work to believe that their game is impenetrable and a recycled formula for new content and events will keep the players. This is the reason why hackers have been able to get away for years and more players continue to leave.
The balancing for classes have been a good start but there are certain classes still lacking changes for the better.
I believe what the director of MapleStory said is wrong to say that MMO's are dead. The only reason why this is true is failing to cater to their demographic which is their playerbase and the gimmicks of events that attempts to promote new players into the game. EXP and Levels only represents a fraction of progression in this game. The main source of progression is equipment and enhancements to said equipment: scrolling, cubing, star forcing, rebirth flames.
Nexon has been in a tunnel vision of focusing on small steps to improve content, but double downs on increasing or unaltering the gap towards endgame. One example is the introduction of Black Flames, but reducing the chances of obtaining any drops from Elite Monsters. Another is changes to Star Force removing the star enhancement drop and destruction from 10 to 15 but increasing the cost to stay the same.
There need to be more resources handed down with more safety nets with less time gates. The journey and game progression needs to be faster.
One way of motivating players for boss party play is introducing more instance drops so players don't have to argue who gets what drop. Fight the boss, get the rewards, move on. A great example of this is Ursus.
This is an excellent idea.