Suggestion for embedded skill showcase videos on YunaDB + significantly more accessible SP resets

[tryninji]

Hi Yuna and team,

I've recently started playing MapleStory again (the last time I played was probably over a decade ago) and I fell in love with this server. The issue is, as a rusty though still fairly ignorant player overall, I tend to rely on skill builds/guides developed by the community. As YunaMS has a radical take on class balancing (which I find highly refreshing) it also means that there is no avenue where there's going to be a valid guide that can keep up with the constant changes of skills. Even referring to similar servers with similar versions results in a drastic change in parity for skill builds. Due to this, I want to try to experiment with my own skill build but the cost of SP resets is so expensive that I can't really afford to experiment--not if I don't want to waste my time. In fact, right now, I'm using a GoogleSheet to plan my upcoming skill allocations because I'm not following a guide and misallocating SP is expensive in time and energy (it takes ~7 days to afford a skill reset).

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And so my suggestion is three-fold:

It would be amazing to introduce a system to easily reset SP points in order to experiment freely with skill distribution. This heavily encourages experimentation. To mitigate repercussions for on-demand skill resetting abuse, perhaps this system could be tied to a once-a-week Jarvis command that resets all skill points (as voting each day for 7 days is how you afford an 100k SP Reset (All) already); this is to prevent potential situations for abuse like being a lower level priest maxing out HS to cast once before resetting your skills back to a more practical kit to farm/leech.

Secondly: I have no idea what these skills most skills are solely based on the text on the Wiki. It would be cool to showcase the skill in question with an embedded video or GIF alongside the skill level progression text (which I think is already a really cool addition for a wiki).

Lastly, to pair with the suggestions above: It would be cool to have a section of the Wiki for a "skill builder" calculator to plan your build ahead of time.

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I ask this because I've familiarized myself with the patch notes and explored the wiki in-depth before committing to the server. It may not mean much but I can see how much time, energy, and love you've put into this server and it shows. I also suspect experimentation is a dynamic that you may value in your players. Thanks for your time in reading this; keep up the great work!

- Tryninji (IGN Spren)

 

[yuna]

This is a wonderful suggestion, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness behind it (as well as calling out some of our work!).
Will definitely look into a good way to address your suggestions once I have some time!

One thing I'm curious about is how is best to UPLOAD these skill animations, on top of actually getting them.
Do we have any ideas for the best way to do this? Perhaps some shared resource that players can upload a short clip to.

If anyone has any additional feedback on this suggestion, please post here!

 

[tryninji]

Awesome. Yeah, take your time--do what you gotta do! That's a really good idea in terms of outsourcing community help. One problem I see is that though it engages the community, the whole of the project would be lacking. More unpopular classes would be underrepresented plus any changes that these classes undergo would experience a delay in updates in the upload/update process. Not sure. Another problem would be a consistent standard of quality (What tools would they use to record the skills?) Also fringe abuse cases like: Could players get doxxed for having their name in the photo in a weird abuse case? Could having a "portal" for sourcing crowd data lead to a vulnerability for the website (e.g. executing malicious code)?

I'm not familiar with the extent one can modify OSMS into private server features so forgive my ignorance; another avenue I see is focusing the efforts of this project into one GM (for an evening or a week) with the ability to enter a 'practice mode' of some sort to be able to cast every skill in the game for documentation. This would eventually need a resource (like a live document) to match parity with your patch notes changing skills (This is a source of frustration for me for game development--Games like Hearthstone are so large with so many elements that many elements that should have parity do not. Consistently inconsistent. It just generally weakens the image of the game).

Appreciate the incorporation of 'we' in the statement! I don't expect this suggestion to have any substantial update on the skill documentation end yet but it really would be cool to be able to experiment with my SP now (i.e. I can just level the skill I can't see in the wiki and see it for myself). Have a good one!

- Tryninji

 

[yuna]

Working on this too, calling on the community to provide videos if they have a class showcase they can provide.
See the ongoing thread on Discord by clicking here!