Horntail - Optimizations

Enokumo · September 2018

to the Mods: Feel free to merge the post whenever someone made a list of these ideas in other thread(s). Was searching for previous requests but haven't found anything about this.

So I was trying to carry my friend through Chaos Horntail and guess what, I crashed. I know MapleStory is not coded well at any point and complaining the game should not crash won't lead me anywhere. However, I would like to see some optimizations regarding Horntail making it not so awful to bother for them, since they are dropping equipment the majority wants to use at some point.

First of all: Do NOT make count runs as entries but as clears instead. At any point when crashing it is just extremely annoying you have to wait until the next day to try them again, IN HOPE you are not crashing again. That it pardons you in case you're dying won't make it much easier or quicker to get their items simply because whenever your range is too low to run Normal/Chaos Horntail then it just won't help you can try them over and over again until you defeat them - this is considered for people that are way too weak to fight Horntail, check the next point regarding this. I also read that this may lead to abuse of dcing intentionally to farm Horntail over and over again. The only solution I see is to give the whole exp at once when defeating Horntail but it would still collide with other bosses with a similar build, such as Zakum.
Second, I don't know for now if any other boss has a SINGLE try for any Horntail but it's the only boss that gives you a single chance for all three maps to defeat them. Give it 5 Deaths since 10 is probably too much nowadays. Also especially for their dangerous attacks such as seduce and their extremely strong attack with the tail it is a more stressful fight than necessary on this level. Allowing this would not benefit to players beating Horntail that easy and give (much) weaker players an easier way to get their exp/equip quicker.
Third, make the differences of all types of Horntail relevant: The only item you exclusively get from Chaos Horntail is the Chaos Horntail Necklace. The respective items could have a much higher chances compared to the rest to be dropped: Easy drops the Necklace, Normal drops the Necklace and Ring, Chaos drops the Chaos Necklace and Earrings. I am not asking to increase the drop chance but to make every type of Horntail relevant because currently there is no reason to run Easy or Chaos when you get your items from Normal. Which is uh, pretty dumb.
Lastly, get rid of from the absurd "pre-quest": It has been a thing in the past when you needed parties to run Horntail. This is today no more and the pre-questline has been taken out to 90% at least? Anyway, it's pretty much obsolete and can be skipped by letting people instantly inside of HT, which also means one more free ETC. slot you don't have to occupy for the certificate.

Additional points:

Daxterbeer wrote: »

I wish you can see through the cave structures when items or your character is behind them.

if anything else can be added or should be corrected then please leave a post.

Daxterbeer · September 2018

I wish you can see through the cave structures when items or your character is behind them.

YinYangX · September 2018

Enokumo wrote: »

to the Mods: Feel free to merge the post whenever someone made a list of these ideas in other thread(s). Was searching for previous requests but haven't found anything about this.

So I was trying to carry my friend through Chaos Horntail and guess what, I crashed. I know MapleStory is not coded well at any point and complaining the game should not crash won't lead me anywhere. However, I would like to see some optimizations regarding Horntail making it not so awful to bother for them, since they are dropping equipment the majority wants to use at some point.

First of all: Do NOT make count runs as entries but as clears instead. At any point when crashing it is just extremely annoying you have to wait until the next day to try them again, IN HOPE you are not crashing again. That it pardons you in case you're dying won't make it much easier or quicker to get their items simply because whenever your range is too low to run Normal/Chaos Horntail then it just won't help you can try them over and over again until you defeat them. It wouldn't be as awful if we still had two entries per day but this is long over.

Second, I don't know for now if any other boss has a SINGLE try for any Horntail but it's the only boss that gives you a single chance for all three maps to defeat them. Give it 5 Deaths since 10 is probably too much nowadays. Also especially for their dangerous attacks such as seduce and their extremely strong attack with the tail it is a more stressful fight than necessary on this level.

Third, make the differences of all types of Horntail relevant: The only item you exclusively get from Chaos Horntail is the Chaos Horntail Necklace. The respective items could have a much higher chances compared to the rest to be dropped: Easy drops the Necklace, Normal drops the Necklace and Ring, Chaos drops the Chaos Necklace and Earrings. I am not asking to increase the drop chance but to make every type of Horntail relevant because currently there is no reason to run Easy or Chaos when you get your items from Normal. Which is uh, pretty dumb.

Lastly, get rid of from the absurd "pre-quest": It has been a thing in the past when you needed parties to run Horntail. This is today no more and the pre-questline has been taken out to 90% at least? Anyway, it's pretty much obsolete and can be skipped by letting people instantly inside of HT, which also means one more free ETC. slot you don't have to occupy for the certificate.

if anything else can be added or should be corrected then please leave a post.

Problems-
1: CHT gives exp for parts killed, meaning you could high farm exp and "dc" out without clearing to rack up exp in lower lvls.
3: Exp scale, power crystal, (insert something I probs forgot).

AKradian · September 2018

As YinYangX pointed out, each HT body part gives exp. This could be abused if entries were counted instead of clears.
You're contradicting yourself. In the previous bullet you basically said "if someone gets killed by HT it's because they're not ready for it yet, and retrying won't help", yet now you want a death count, on the assumption that one would not just keep dying?
I think the accessory drop rate is higher from CHT. The CHT pendant is also considerably better than HT pendant. And there's the EXP, meso (crystal), and buff, too.
My guess is that the requirement for the medal is buried too deep in the spaghetti to safely remove, which is why when they got rid of most of the prequest they just turned it into "talk to the NPC to get the medal."

I agree with Daxterbeer's complaint about the drops being hidden by rock formations. Those would be good candidates for that transparency trick Nexon gratuitously inflicted on our UI windows.

I expect that HT will get revamped soon, similar to what happened to Zakum and Papulatus. I doubt Nexon would bother making any changes to it before that complete overhaul.

My suggestion to you is this:
If you use boss teleport to get to Horntail (or any other boss or content with limited entries), wait two minutes before entering.
GMS has a persistent issue I call "cc-dc" - disconnect is a LOT more likely within the first minute or two after changing channel (including to/from Cash Shop, Auction House, Monster Life, Private Channels, logging in, or switching characters) than at any other time. Boss teleport forces a channel change. So it's best to wait and make sure your connection survives that channel change, before entering anything you'd hate to dc from. (Or, for that matter, using any buffs that might be lost on dc).

Good luck!

Enokumo · September 2018

Daxterbeer wrote: »

I wish you can see through the cave structures when items or your character is behind them.

Good Point! gonna add this to the list~

YinYangX wrote: »

Problems-
1: CHT gives exp for parts killed, meaning you could high farm exp and "dc" out without clearing to rack up exp in lower lvls.
3: Exp scale, power crystal, (insert something I probs forgot).

I see the problem you're pointing out for the first point. This may require some adjustment or special condition as in when you're eligible to retry and when not.

AKradian wrote: »

As YinYangX pointed out, each HT body part gives exp. This could be abused if entries were counted instead of clears.

You're contradicting yourself. In the previous bullet you basically said "if someone gets killed by HT it's because they're not ready for it yet, and retrying won't help", yet now you want a death count, on the assumption that one would not just keep dying?

I think the accessory drop rate is higher from CHT. The CHT pendant is also considerably better than HT pendant. And there's the EXP, meso (crystal), and buff, too.

My guess is that the requirement for the medal is buried too deep in the spaghetti to safely remove, which is why when they got rid of most of the prequest they just turned it into "talk to the NPC to get the medal."

I agree with Daxterbeer's complaint about the drops being hidden by rock formations. Those would be good candidates for that transparency trick Nexon gratuitously inflicted on our UI windows.

I expect that HT will get revamped soon, similar to what happened to Zakum and Papulatus. I doubt Nexon would bother making any changes to it before that complete overhaul.

My suggestion to you is this:
If you use boss teleport to get to Horntail (or any other boss or content with limited entries), wait two minutes before entering.
GMS has a persistent issue I call "cc-dc" - disconnect is a LOT more likely within the first minute or two after changing channel (including to/from Cash Shop, Auction House, Monster Life, Private Channels, logging in, or switching characters) than at any other time. Boss teleport forces a channel change. So it's best to wait and make sure your connection survives that channel change, before entering anything you'd hate to dc from. (Or, for that matter, using any buffs that might be lost on dc).

Good luck!

The thought was that people that are WAY too weak to encounter CHT when they need just too long or are just too weak to bother defeating them. The idea to give a Death Count is to allow mistakes since any other Boss do allow them. For the drop rate from my experience and my friends' experience CHT and NHT do not differ much except of course the CHT necklace and the value of the Crystal. This is imo still not a good compensation as how the current drop rate is between all three types. And I probably believe this is the reason why we still have the small pre-quest.

I also heard about the idea of reworking Horntail but this news were from last year so no idea when this is going to happen. I guess it will just randomly happen since it did to Papulatus as well.

Horntail - Optimizations

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