What Every Mapler Should Know

[gamect]

well written.

[Xuey]

Nicely done and good to know!

[Fiel]

RE: #6

"mstshk", a popular Korean Dungeon Fighter player on youtube, had this to say:

"Why Nexon cant think doing these? Stop making pineappleing gamble items. Please use more expensive voice actor and hire video editor(Really sucks about Vindictus trailers...) now. Haa.. they will never change. Because they displaced their company to Japan. For avoiding Korea's pineappleing stupid regulation. Sick."

[Eos]

For avoiding Korea's pineappleing stupid regulation. Sick."

That's one of several reasons they may have done it, but I doubt we'll ever truly know.

[Seanny]

That's actually pretty clever of them!

[CrazyChick]

Well said

[affair]

well written

[keturah]

Thanks for taking the time for this, I hope everyone take the time to READ IT! Its well worth it ^5!

[Locky92]

i have read it!

[MrTouchnGo]

For #4: Same site, different article.

http://maple-news.com/2010/05/11/int...olopment-team/

We were Wizet and NX Games until we finally became Nexon America. It’s funny how people talk about how different things were during the early days when Wizet was around, but Nexon America has always been pretty much the same people doing the same things under a new logo. When the site changes to BlockParty.com, we’ll probably hear about how much people miss Nexon America.

[inemnitable]

I've always had a problem with calling the whole Bigfoot issue a glitch. In my view, a glitch is an effect caused by different sections of code interacting in a way the author did not predict or intend. In other words, a bug.

While it can be fairly argued that the omission of the boss tag from Bigfoot's data was an unintentional mistake, an error by omission does not a glitch make. Furthermore, there was really no way for a player to tell that the behavior was not intended, so punishment for using what was essentially a feature of the game is in my opinion unfair.

In any case, I don't think it's really the best example of a glitch. A better example would be say, the OPQ smuggling glitch.

[Eos]

By your logic OPQ smuggling glitch would just be the coders having forgotten to put a check on you to make sure you haven't gotten an item from the PQ even though you're outside it. A glitch is a glitch. A mistake is a mistake. How it got made is irrelevant. It was working as programmed but not as intended. That's the true definition of "glitch". As for the thinly veiled rationalization; See #12.

[cordsally]

ok i agree

[FrankieWang]

Very good
Everyone need to see this

[jorparkour]

ahaa well thanks for the info =3

[Locked]

#4 is still kind of irritating me because I don't see anything in there that explicitly states bug fixing or anything related to it. The only thing the reference even mentions "Nexon Korea" is development of "new content for MapleStory". Well shit. Isn't that obvious? Obviously the content itself is made in Nexon Korea but the way it's implied in what you presented states that everything takes place in Korea including bug fixes. Which is ludicrous if anything because Nexon Korea doesn't even have the bugs we have. What makes our version unique or special to obtain these bugs if it runs on virtually almost the same infrastructure?

Question: Whenever you create or add new content to Maplestory, is there any type of process you use? If so, what are they?
Answer: Great question! Yes, it's actually a long and complicated process that is planned months in advance. We initially brainstorm ideas, then create a short proposal summarizing the content we want to create. We work with the development team in Korea to refine and fit it within the schedule. We start building the systems to support the new content, do internal testing and finally release it. The process takes 6 to 7 months from start to finish.

Question: Do you guys work directly with Nexon Korea to help us get our content faster, or do you work pretty seperately?
Answer: Our team works directly with our developers at Nexon Korea to create content for global MapleStory.

[Eos]

#4 is still kind of irritating me because I don't see anything in there that explicitly states bug fixing or anything related to it. The only thing the reference even mentions "Nexon Korea" is development of "new content for MapleStory". Well shit. Isn't that obvious? Obviously the content itself is made in Nexon Korea but the way it's implied in what you presented states that everything takes place in Korea including bug fixes. Which is ludicrous if anything because Nexon Korea doesn't even have the bugs we have. What makes our version unique or special to obtain these bugs if it runs on virtually almost the same infrastructure?

Every single "We're working on it" announcement they've ever bothered to make for an issue has reiterated that they're waiting on Korea to fix it.

Publisher != Developer

No one said the situation was unique to us. Other locales do the same thing. JMS is the only one I'm aware of that does anything themselves, or appears to, and we've never figured that little quirk out.

If you want to contest it do it right - Provide evidence it's not true. I guarantee you'll find more supporting it than disproving it.

[Locked]

Every single "We're working on it" announcement they've ever bothered to make for an issue has reiterated that they're waiting on Korea to fix it.

Publisher != Developer

No one said the situation was unique to us. Other locales do the same thing. JMS is the only one I'm aware of that does anything themselves, or appears to, and we've never figured that little quirk out.

If you want to contest it do it right - Provide evidence it's not true. I guarantee you'll find more supporting it than disproving it.

Well I didn't mention anything about publisher vs developer relationship so I have really no idea where that came from. If there's anything I don't understand is why it's forbidding for them to do their own work under that situation. Could they not fix the bugs themselves? Are they not intelligent enough? Do they lack the manpower? I just don't understand why they have this system in place that is just so inefficient. The source provided states that the process itself takes 6-7 months to process. While I don't know how Nexon handles or manages its time how does this apply to the bugfixes announced in this patch? They are most very recent, some from the patch beforehand. Do they plan these out beforehand just to give themselves a pat on the back?

[SaptaZapta]

This is the way I understand it:

The source code, and the programmers, for all versions, are in Korea. This does not mean that "KMS programmers fix GMS bugs". There is a "GMS team" in Korea (and employed by NexonKR), who work (almost?) exclusively on code for GMS. However, if they run into difficulties, they have the KMS programmers (who are more familiar with the infrastructure, presumably) there to consult with.

[Eos]

Well I didn't mention anything about publisher vs developer relationship so I have really no idea where that came from. If there's anything I don't understand is why it's forbidding for them to do their own work under that situation. Could they not fix the bugs themselves? Are they not intelligent enough? Do they lack the manpower? I just don't understand why they have this system in place that is just so inefficient. The source provided states that the process itself takes 6-7 months to process. While I don't know how Nexon handles or manages its time how does this apply to the bugfixes announced in this patch? They are most very recent, some from the patch beforehand. Do they plan these out beforehand just to give themselves a pat on the back?

You answered your first question with your second question.
What prevents them from doing it is they're not the developer. You're asking why the guy at the counter at McDonald's isn't going back there and making your food for you so it gets done faster. It's not his job. He's there to hand you the food someone else makes. If they fuck up the order, he's not going to go back and do it for you, he's going to pass that info back to the "cooks" and they're going to fix it and he'll pass the new version to you.

Nexon America does have a rudimentary development team, which is really more of an implementation team. They mention the server engineers and whatnot in the dev blogs as partnering. They're the ones who take what Korea gives them and install it. Just because you can screw a light bulb into a socket though does not make you an electric engineer capable of building a better light bulb, or even capable of understanding why the bulb isn't working the way the person you got it from said it should.

Nexon confuses the issue themselves by using the word "developer" too loosely. It can mean both the actual programming people and can refer to the entire creative design staff that come up with the ideas and those two are pretty different. Take Eurydice here ; http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php?t=41629 "Next week Ill be travelling to Korea to talk with the other MapleStory developers about future plans." That can have two very different meanings. Is E going to discuss technical aspects with other programmers? or is E going to discuss overarching thematic design with the creative team to figure out how to incorporate Nexon America's exclusive content into the presently evolving paradigms and themes? That simple statement and the questions it raises right there casts doubt on exactly what E has meant all this time by claiming to be a "developer". What they describe the developer as doing here http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php?t=39014 ", the developer is delivering all of the new files and a list of changes to the server engineer and the producer" sounds closer to actual programming, but is ambiguous as to whether or not they're referring to a person who's actually physically present or one who is online FTPing stuff across to them. Even the "Once the maintenance is over and the game is stable, the developers and server engineer go home to sleep." doesn't really clear that up.

As to the overarching question of why. Why are they so ambiguous? Why does their paradigm seem so stupid? You'd have to ask them, but you have to consider that MapleStory is a franchise. It's not several independent companies running their own game willy-nilly. Everything that gets merged into the game has to be potentially be merged into all copies in all locales or they run the risk of forking too far to be compatible with each other. Centralizing development ensures that everything that gets added in has better chances of of remaining interoperable than it would if you set 10 developers down in different rooms and let them go on a different copy of the source for three years then tried to put what each of them came up with independently back into a single coherent game. Even in Korea they're broken out into separate teams for separate locales, but because they're physically present with each other they can better interact and try to avoid stepping all over each other. It does not always work as we've seen numerous times, but it has a lot more chance of success where the teams are together than if they were scattered.