[Rant] This game's practically dead in terms of actual content.

It's basically turned into "Spend a thousand bucks on gear, if you want to actually play any of the top tier content" the game over the past few years.

And with how screwed the economy is, to get a foothold, new players basically have to spend money on NX to sell it, because you're not going to make plantain by actually hunting for anything within your power range starting out, because everything either requires cash to trade, or needs such a huge damage investment to manage the kill that you're pineappleed by default.

They keep balancing content around the top percentage of players, honestly 50m should have completely trivialized the endgame content for players that wanted to push that far, it shouldn't be a goddamn requirement to hit that hard to fight these damn bosses.


Terrible game design, zero balance, and a focus on monetary investment as a primary means for stat progression are why I'm steadily losing faith in this game, and I know I'm not alone here.

Building for defense and survivability? pineapple you, we've got one shot boss mechanics and death counters.

Damage over time? pineapple you, it's meaningless, because everything else in the game outperforms it.



Seriously, the game's turned into "Pick a class that has a high amount of attacks per second, because that one can hit more 50m's in less time!!!111eleven"

It's... seriously, bad.

Being far along should trivialize, but I can guarantee that they'd have more people spending money on the game if their monetary investment wasn't equivalent to a goddamn slot machine for gear.

Which is another thing!

This is a game that's basically gambling, for kids!

It's encouraging people to believe that non tangible goods have monetary value, and built around addictive gameplay in order to encourage people to throw their money at the grindwall.

Oh, your weapon's got good scrolled stats? That's awesome, have some potential, hell, lets throw some bonus potential in there too!

Oh! And in a few patches, we're going to release more, higher tier weapons, that people will need to spend even MORE money on to make as good as your old ones! By the way, it was determined that the set bonus for the previous tier of weapon was outperforming everything else in its class, so we nerfed it down a bit.

Oh! And everyone's hitting the absurdly overinflated damage cap too easily, so we're going to nerf everyone's damage, and leave the HP of everything where it was, because every single patch is all about extending the distance to the goal line, after all!


Guh. I am grump, sorry for ranting. It just sucks to have spent so much time on this game, and having it all be meaningless because the goal post keeps getting yanked out of the ground and planted further and further away damn near every patch. :/

It's basically what it has become. Having played the game since 2005, its a matter of time and tolerance to say when each player is wiling to let things go. The problem nexon has for their management is they consistently cater to the 1%. so on average the 99% starts to hemorrhage over time. The problem was that they couldn't push out content for all levels often enough that t he game lost its appeal as content either can be completed ridiculously quickly or content was blocked by a large paywall. Older versions of MS didn't have this problem as bosses generally required several people and larger teams to do an accomplishment (be it a large accomplishment like Killing Zakum for Zhelms, or something small like a Party Quest completion). The moment where armor became % based with potential(roughly around DB release) completely changed the direction in where the game was going. Nexon turned the game from something that was party oriented to surpass a task to something that was fund oriented. I feel the number 1 problem was them NOT addressing this fast enough, and leaving it so armor/weapons give ridiculous amounts of stats (e.g would have been more balanced say, if only 1st line can ever get % stat while other 2 lines are static +stat). This caused content to be designed for the top echelon, locking out 99% of users. "Dumbing down" and lack of reward systems for party quests removed the "community" from the game as everyone went to go solo content (really the only group quest worth doing was like CWKPQ because of reward, which all other party quests lacked). Because of this, population started to hemorrhage, but Nexon continued to make money off the 1% and continued to push out content because of it.

Overtime, it is just the matter for each user to actually slug through the game. Each of us had a different tolerance threshold on where it got to the point on when its time to quit. Nexon did not address this, still making money off the 1%. I myself hit that threshold late last year, where I just felt like playing MS was a chore, and years of content were basically pointless. Currency is basically worthless unless you threw money at the screen. Shortly after I left(I wasn't even rich or super strong, just slightly above average probably, self scrolled 17x(?) attack axe that i never equipped) people who played with me tended to start to quit for other aspirations in life(or other games). 2 of which sold virtually most of their armor and gained thousands of $ from other people who hasn't hit the tolerance on quitting. These were some of the actual 1% people starting to quit, and coincidentally, it was around the same time period when Nexon started doing those "Surveys" asking the most important question "How likely are you to recommend this game to others".

If this was 2005-Pre DB, I would have rated it slightly high. for post Bigbang and a few years after that, it depends(ive done it, so I cant say i don't). In it's current state, pretty much a joke. Nexon does not care for its community. They basically intentionally let the community dwindle down over time. Major indicators would be world merges, and world merges OF world merges, then the polls. They've attempted ways of connecting to the "Community" by making fansites official. The most shadiest move of course was when Southperry lost its "Official Status" away, being the most critical on actions Nexon takes compared to all of the other fansites(due to the average knowledge of each user relative to its population). Coincidentally, virtually every representative who has ever honestly talked with the Southperry community has either quit or been fired. The ones who don't tend to look at SP in a relatively negative way.

There is no way in reviving the game at this point. Honestly, the game should just end, and its probably better for Nexon to gamble on a westernized MS2 release and advertising(as well as actually listen toe the community day 1) than keep up MS any longer. The community has tried to help Nexon. Nexon even tried attempting to do the "Community" better by increasing cube drop rates and removing more bad lines in cubing. The problem is, its too damn late. Nexon should have made these adjustments five years ago you know, when big bang was released. You don't fix the game after the community leaves, that just makes them very greedy as they basically are squeezing the 1% off for cash. These are changes that should have happened ages ago. This is one of those situations where the longer you wait, the worse the backlash is going to be, and well they are feeling the full front of their blind eye to the community purely for short term profit gain.


At least for me, the moment i severed myself from the game, I felt like i gained a lot of freedom as things became less tedious, as i didn't have to log in and kill 300 mobs to do some dinky attendance(which got better, then severely worse overtime) when I hit my tolerance point. Got to spend more time on other games where I feel more accomplished in or never got to really play due to amount of time i had to do things. At least I know that not just me, but a handful of us at this point don't even play MS anymore, we stay here for its community.

As an ending, I would like to say that I'm pretty much done with Nexon as a whole with their game line up, their intentions are pretty much clear, purely for profit until the game is significantly dieing, while they try to squeeze the last amount of cash from the userbase. They let one of the most popular games in the world(Dungeon Fighter Online) die under their management(which makes more money globally than Maple for NexonKR). Watching the current state of MS is just going to be another repeat of DFO(just much more slowly) as each person day by day passes their tolerance limit on staying in the game. People are tired of seeing single boss, New class, Rebalance patch, aniversary content and repeat pattern which is only leading more people to their limit.


God my wall of text rant

Is this new to anyone? Big Bang cemented the games fate, especially in how Nexon let the potential circus keep rolling, but it started in smaller parts even before it.

The worst part is that we, the players, are to blame. We bought into it so heavily that Nexon would have been stupid to not keep it up. Money now is always preferable to longevity in todays business world, especially when the later couldn't have been guaranteed, and by the devil, Nexon raked in money.

I do concur that, nosing around these days, in some ways it gets exceedingly painful to play the game, especially because of latency and the immense wall to get that massive DPS needed to kill some bosses. Even my Luminous isn't doing very well these days...

Hadriel

I've already sold off my gear to a few remaining people who still spend their money on this thing for some reason.. made over 1.5k USD >_> There are still plenty of whales, unfortunately. But I still don't think this game will survive to the next anniversary. If it does, it'll literally be on its last legs. They need to just announce MS2 already. Hopefully they don't screw that one up and make it BuyACar2Win as well.

I started back in 2005 when I was still in primary school. I think the thing that killed Maple was making everything streamlined and easier. Yes, streamlining parts of the game was a good idea and speeding up some of the levelling helped accessibility. But there was a tradeoff with the social aspects.

Back when it took you a week of grinding from lv 30-40 @ Land of Wild Boar, you saw the same people at the same times logging in every day. At some point you were going to chat them up. Same with LudiPQ. It was tedious, yes. But you started getting a few friends out of it towards the end of it. Same story with Dead Forest IV.

Nexon needs to ditch the 'unless it's endgame, it's worthless' mentality. Levelling should be slower. Monsters need to be harder. Party Quests should be integrated into a central storyline and be MANDATORY. You are playing an MMO, so why play solo? Beef up the rewards along the way. Give people a reason to upgrade and scroll gear before level 150 so they're always getting satisfaction from their achievements along the way.

Start ANY new MMO at end-game levels and I guarantee you will be bored out of your mind. This is what MapleStory is. Everyone is at endgame level after 2 days of play. There is no emotional attachment at all and that's what's killing the game.

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Originally Posted by YennoX

Nexon needs to ditch the 'unless it's endgame, it's worthless' mentality.

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Hell, even the players need to ditch this.
If an event or new content doesn't give tons of mesos or damage for little to no effort, or isn't geared towards Lv210+, people immediately write it off as useless. Case in point; the current Honey Butterfly event. I've seen so many people complain that the event's "pointless" just because the titles aren't permanent, and therefore there's no permanent damage boost. Not many people seem to care that you get a free permanent mount that you can customize out of it.

And there -is- a decent amount of content, the problems are that:
a.) People level too fast for it, which brings us back to the EXP curve (and GMS' frequent 2x events).
b.) Players these days care too much about "hurr durr best exp". so they stay holed up in the same "best" 5-8 maps from 10-250 and whine how bored they are.
c.) Players these days are lazy and care too much about their damage and money to do things for the lore, unless again, it offers significant boosts for little to no effort.
d.) A lot of content is short-lived and can be completed in an hour to a couple days at most, then no new areas or expansions for months to years at a time. How long have KFT and Neo City been closed now?

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Originally Posted by CarrionCrow

Is this new to anyone? Big Bang cemented the games fate, especially in how Nexon let the potential circus keep rolling, but it started in smaller parts even before it.

The worst part is that we, the players, are to blame. We bought into it so heavily that Nexon would have been stupid to not keep it up. Money now is always preferable to longevity in todays business world, especially when the later couldn't have been guaranteed, and by the devil, Nexon raked in money.

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Sorry but no without Big Bang and evolution the game would of shut down a LONG time ago the thing killing it is the poor optimization,removal of party play training and all the bugs. On top of that the slow content release in recent years it's been mostly event after event. I guess you can add bs changes like link skill limits and stuff.

During the start of Big Bang the population was at an all time high!

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Originally Posted by OrionTempest

a.) People level too fast for it, which brings us back to the EXP curve (and GMS' frequent 2x events).

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This is pretty much the root of everything. No point in investing in gear or doing events because you'll get something much better 2 hours later. Back in the old days, upgrading to your next tier weapon actually did something. Scrolling a weapon meant you could use it for a while.

You're never starved for damage in the early levels, or at any point (until you suddenly get to a boss and realise you must instantaneously go from clean equips to 200%+ boss damage -- which is highly demotivational). Noob levels are too easy and end game is too hard. Other games allow you to run dungeons to build up your equipment slowly but steadily. In Maplestory, there's no such progression. Plebs will always be plebs and the rich will always be rich.

Just another one of THESE threads. People look at this a different way. I am someone who has not spent money on cubes and yet my characters hit enough damage to get me by and do boss. I do bosses daily, I get my cubes FROM BOSSES and I cube my gear. I got there through hard work. Just because more than half the population decides to throw money at the screen to make it easier doesn't mean we all do. This game isn't dying for a while. I know the population of southperry wants it to die but it's not.

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Originally Posted by SwordStaker

I know the population of southperry wants it to die but it's not.

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I don't honestly believe most people on SP want it to die, but it's just the fact that many people feel that they've been slighted and regret spending obscene amounts of money on the game.

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Originally Posted by SwordStaker

Just another one of THESE threads. People look at this a different way. I am someone who has not spent money on cubes and yet my characters hit enough damage to get me by and do boss. I do bosses daily, I get my cubes FROM BOSSES and I cube my gear. I got there through hard work. Just because more than half the population decides to throw money at the screen to make it easier doesn't mean we all do. This game isn't dying for a while. I know the population of southperry wants it to die but it's not.

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They expect f2p a f2w game and QQ about it.

It's either pay to get where you want, or work really hard; that's how free2play games are isn't it? :goggle:

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Originally Posted by inSAMMIty

They expect f2p a f2w game and QQ about it.

It's either pay to get where you want, or work really hard; that's how free2play games are isn't it? :goggle:

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Yeah, but maple's free to pay, because for the longest time, we didn't even HAVE cube drops, or are you forgetting that massive length of time when progression was tied solely to nx investment

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Originally Posted by inSAMMIty

They expect f2p a f2w game and QQ about it.

It's either pay to get where you want, or work really hard; that's how free2play games are isn't it? :goggle:

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Lol. There's a difference between putting in an adequate amount of time and playing it like it's your 8 hours a day job. No one here is expecting to reach end game in a month, but what you're describing just simply is not the case for maplestory. Hell, you could do just that - work hard and play for 8 hours a day, all while paying nothing to make progress, and guess what? You are still at the complete and utter whim of RNG. Cubes can still completely pineapple over any and all effort (time!) you put in.

The proportion of time it takes to make progress in this game as compared to how much faster you'd make progress working a minimum wage job and throwing money at the screen is astronomical. If you're going to seriously argue that, then be my guest, but you're only fooling yourself.

Do note: they are making changes to alleviate this - I will acknowledge that. But it is potentially *snicker* far too late for that. But we will see I suppose. There's still a long way to go, but that reboot server is looking pretty cool.

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Originally Posted by MuscleWizard

Yeah, but maple's free to pay, because for the longest time, we didn't even HAVE cube drops, or are you forgetting that massive length of time when progression was tied solely to nx investment

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But that has changed.
We now get cube drops, and we get cubes for Reward Points.

Nexon is changing its approach to MapleStory. According to my Korean guildy, the previous Director of MapleStory in NexonKR is known for milking games dry (he's ruined a few before coming to Maple), but the new one is known for saving dying games. It does take years, but they clearly have long-term plans for MapleStory. They wouldn't be investing in a new animation engine if they didn't. Or in Reboot world. Plus the new system for transfering potential and stars from lower level gear to higher one looks interesting (although not transferring scrolling does take away much of the charm).
Yes, some things look like the same old same old: class rebalance, followed by hyped new class (is it OP? I haven't really heard); Dojo revamp that still favors pay2winners; endless filler events, attendances, coin shops; half-baked content and events; bugs galore; ... it does get tiresome.
So, we'll see.

Honestly these threads are fairly annoying, I come from a different place, what you guys say sounds alienated to me, KMS right now and even before this summer is flourishing.
What @SaptaZapta; said is fairly accurate.

In fact this summer is fairly promising and every moment I've spent thus far in KMS during this summer is a blast.

Toad hammer shifted the economy (Which I may add, at least over here it isn't dying it's 100% fair to everyone.) and made it even slightly better than before, Kinesis is fun and has a pretty interesting concept, The new skeleton system is amazing not even once I've lagged while playing Kinesis, The maps that got the new skeleton system although there are a few of them look great, the re-balance was ok and fixed some stupid things, Mu Lung might not be so much greater but it is nicer, Memory consumption problems and bugs are nearly non existent.

How are you even complaining when cubes drop like from every boss? I do not fathom that, I wish that'd happen in KMS as sudden missions are random, and hint GMS is way easier than KMS, yes you've heard that correctly.

I'd go into full wall rant mode about these threads but what I say would be irrelevant, what you see from there isn't what you see from here.
tl;dr maple is fine and well, it is not dead, reboot is filled 24/7, luna is filled 24/7, scania, bera, elysium, croa etc. And surprise surprise people are having fun with the content that's available right now.
You want someone to blame? Blame Nexon AM and yourselves along with the pomegranatety director KMS had previously.

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Originally Posted by TheBlackMage

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Well.. SP is mostly filled with global players so I'm not surprised if majority of the posts here are referring to the gameplay situation in GMS. I mean, you can say all these nice things about kMS but the situation in mapleSEA is entirely different.. Suspicious Cubes didnt drop from bosses(like zakum and horntail) up until this year. When we got elite mobs, the yellow and purple cubes didnt really ruin the economy at all but they still nerfed it to hell and back.

Is kMS dying ? Apparently not, but mSEA is definitely losing a pineapple ton of players by the day. Market pages on facebook are now flooded with quitting sales. Despite Asiasoft repeatedly saying that they are going to follow the new kMS approach in running the game, they still pineapple up alot.. and believe me when I say players are not happy with it at all..

if the game died it would be like taking a vegetable off life support...

but i would like the game to revive.

good to see the changes coming in korea to repair game

also the fact that one area of content greatly overpowers others. everyone just grinds same area. Magatia pq roid grind is so overdone and boring. i think they should limit the number of roids that spawn. like 20 roids, and the two doors open after you kill them all. then this cursed roid grind will be gone forever

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Originally Posted by Untradeable

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Then that is more of a personal problem than a game as the whole. I will not sit here and defend the idea that the game doesn't have pay2win elements or any of that nature but that's sort of just how f2p games are. The only time you get away from this is MOBAs and even then you have SOME even how minor it is p2w elements with skins having smaller hitboxes, larger skill animations and so on. Granted those are beyond minor but still there and to skilled players might not mean much but to a general populous it could. It's just how it is no matter how wrong that idea is.

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Originally Posted by SaptaZapta

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Don't quote me on this but didn't they say that the new engine was suppose to help them develop content faster and better? I will give the benefit and say MapleStory has been out 12 years now and new original content could be hard to come up with due to the limitations of the game and what not. Which is why I'm hoping this new engine will fix it. I'm glad the new CEO is doing good things though and I've been really pleased with Artasi as CM and the direction Nexon America is going. Taking BlackGate City as an example, it's nothing special or really even good but I guess it at least shows SOME type of effort to add something in outside of what KMS has. (Granted they have untapped potential with Tynereum and Masteria but that's a whole different rant)

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Originally Posted by TheBlackMage

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I didn't know the skeletal system was in effect yet. Could you post a video of it? Or is it just for Kinesis. It's great to hear KMS is doing so well! I can tell Scania in GMS is doing pretty fine too(Idk about other worlds but they seem to be doing okay.)

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Originally Posted by SwordStaker

I didn't know the skeletal system was in effect yet. Could you post a video of it? Or is it just for Kinesis. It's great to hear KMS is doing so well! I can tell Scania in GMS is doing pretty fine too(Idk about other worlds but they seem to be doing okay.)

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It's just in some kinesis maps for example here; http://i.imgur.com/Q2bqm8F.jpg - the ruined road parts move and such, Kinesis' character selection has the skeleton system the've made it animated with it

Along with this and there are a few more.

Also all (Or at least many of them) of his skills use it, for example the train ultimate at 3rd job doesn't affect the memory or the vram and it's very smooth and well done.

It does show a lot of promise with invention from Nexon's side.