Lets talk about the economy

[SaptaZapta]

The way it works right now, there are two currencies in the market. Mesos and NX. There is no hard conversion rate between them, and the closest you could get is by comparing what an item sells for in MTS versus what it sells for in FM. But this rate is dynamic and can shift. Why does it shift? Because the two currencies are infinitely inflating thanks to actions of the user. User kills monster, mesos are added to the economy. User gives Nexon money, NX is added to the economy. There are ways the currency can be removed, like buying items from an NPC or buying from cash shop instead of MTS, but infinitely inflating currency is the problem of all MMOs. The problem: MapleStory has two different ones with differing relative values. Cut out MTS, and the only infinitely inflating currency in the market would be the meso. Also, someone with a lot of cash has the power to inflate a lot more than anyone trying to farm mesos. It's a lot easier to drop your credit card and get a crapload of NX than to instantly acquire a crapload of mesos from killing monsters.

The problem is that there are people who are either unwilling or unable to purchase NX.
These people will continue to buy it from those who can, thereby creating a conversion factor between NX and meso.
One way is Cash Shop gifting (which some people are suggesting be replaced by Cash Shop trading room. No difference really except in the scamming aspect): "I give you meso, you gift me a Miracle Cube." How many meso for a miracle cube? Supply and demand. When demand for NX spikes, like when potential came out, the value of the meso plummets.

The second way, which could never be blocked, is meso-for-card-code trades. Unless Nexon starts demanding you hold your physical card up to your webcam, to prove you didn't just buy the code from someone else. And again, the higher the demand for NX, the lower the value of the meso would go.

Removing MTS will remove any way of transfering raw NX from user to user (once the card code has been redeemed), making it impossible for hackers to directly steal your NX and for goldselling sites to sell it (other than as card codes), which I suppose is a good thing in and of itself. But it has nothing to do with stabilizing the economy or stopping inflation.

[FoolsLove]

Make a slightly MTS-like system that uses mesos. The free market system is garbage and discourages competitive pricing. Make it easier to compare pricing of similar items. Make it easy to use. Easier than MTS.

The game I played for the past few years, Atlantica Online, has the type of market you're talking about. Although, it still encourages competitive pricing, though it's no where near the scale that Maple has it at. Atlantica even has 2 different methods of selling things, but not like trading/MTS in Maple. In Atlantica (3D game), there are dozens of towns. In every single town, you can access the market for free. If an item is tradable, it can be registered on this market, it can be searched for, and bought all without any cost. It does however have a tax system too, but instead of making you not get the full amount of money when someone buys something from you, it takes money from you when you register an item for sale on the market. The tax varies per town because towns can be controlled by guilds, but it's almost always 1% tax. So, if you register 1 item for 100m, it takes 1m from you. Also if you register 10 items for 10m (totaling 100m, if it sells), it takes 1m from you. There isn't a currency cap in the game like Maple, so you can sell things for far larger amounts than 2.1b. Things go up to 70b, even 100b occasionally in value there. Meaning when you register something for say, 100b, you lose 1b, if the tax is 1%.

The other method of selling in the game is something called "My Store". It's similar to our free market in where you have your own store, can only sell a certain amount of items, but the difference is that there is no tax levied when registering or buying something for "My Store". For a while, this used to be the preferred method of selling things, since there was no tax, but that changed last year when they made it so the market that is available in every town inter-server. Meaning if someone registered something for sale on X server, it could be bought from Y or Z server.

Another thing with Atlantica is that 99% of things bought from the item mall (their version of the CS), is tradable in-game. It's always been like that since it was first introduced.

[Nion]

Server Wipe

Solves everything, right?
Angry players will rise but game would be fixed... if they fixed the exploits too.

[Luxeraph]

Another thing with Atlantica is that 99% of things bought from the item mall (their version of the CS), is tradable in-game. It's always been like that since it was first introduced.

Now that you mention this, how many games have the same crap as MS? Where cash items are untradeable.

From the fews F2P I have played all had the same thing as Atlantica, at much the only untradeable cash items where the ones bought with credit card or with "maple points" (both applid to "free" cash).

Edit: Thinking about it I think why we don't have such system, wasn't maple one of the first F2P? And didn't Wizet just wanted the cash shop to be some clothing mall?

[Beserker101]

Edit: Thinking about it I think why we don't have such system, wasn't maple one of the first F2P? And didn't Wizet just wanted the cash shop to be some clothing mall?

I do believe I remember back in the day, when the cash shop was added, there was announcement saying it would not give an advantage to paying people over the non-paying ones.

[LoveVictim]

This is all dreaming obviously, cause I know Nexon won't do it. I would do the following but I would like players to get compensated because after all, they did invest NX/Money at it soo yeah.

1. Make all current White Scrolls, Safety Scrolls, GM Scrolls and Protection Scrolls untradeable.
- The majority of them were massively duped, so just make them all untradeable. New acquired ones from Gach/other gach-like event should be tradeable.

2. Remove all high attack shoes from the game.
* Compensate the players with a Unique 3 Line VSS/Other shoe and a bundle of untradeable Shoe ATT 60% scrolls and Cubes.

3. Remove all Cravens, Stonetooths, Golden Nisrocks from the game, all of them even legitimate ones.
* Compensate the players with a Unique 3Line Craven or Nisrock or Stonetooth + 9 untradeable GM scrolls for that specific weapon (maybe Nexon can come up with 2h Weapon attack GM scroll for any 2h weapon) + 12 untradeable Protection Scrolls + untradeable AEE's + some Cubes.
- There will be a bunch of these in FM now and probably worthless, but we won't see those hacked weapons in game anymore. And hackers/exploiters will no longer be making money off selling hacked ones anymore.

4. Something has got to be done about those weapons that lost enhancements through a server check. The problem is, the list is never ending, from VIP Claws, Kataras, Daggers and etc.

5. Hire a GM Staff for all 3 shifts - Day, Night, Overnight. Patrol the hot spots and Expedition maps in all worlds and permanent ban the hackers. These hackers don't deserve a second chance, they can literally level a farming character to 4th job in a few hours so just ban them until they give up hacking.

[happylight]

It's easy. Release equips that are more powerful than current duped equips as event items so everyone can get them.

Done.

[Shidoshi]

It's easy. Release equips that are more powerful than current duped equips as event items so everyone can get them.

Done.

You'd break the game though, if everyone was as powerful as the current duped equips everyone would be able to kill bosses and stuff in a few minutes...

[iiStevche]

#3 hit me today ;(

RIP DS/hero/merc/mage/MTS mules 4 life

NOOOOOOOOOOO :( WTH SIMON LF> TALK IN BELLO NOW !

[Killmeplsok]

You have no idea how difficult/impossible it is to remove a dupe exploit.

Er......

Maybe GMS can refer to MSEA for that. From what I see in the market, dupe exploits are almost non-existence here. We do had a lot of illegit items but most of them were proven coming from other exploits.

Changing channel, opening shop, trading, dropping items etc...save your character status. Quite effective in my view.

Well, we still have duplicate items sometimes though, mainly due to server crash, which seldom happen, at least, server crashing rate in SEA is like 1/20 of GMS.

Also, reaction of MSEA to exploits are generally faster and stricter. At least, there was no leftover from the UA exploit last time, and none got wrongly banned. They would also delete an item from the entire server if they found out majority of them are from exploits, as oppose to what GMS done lately.

Not saying MSEA is good, but they're better in certain cases.

[sverreerik]

I would love nothing more than a Server Wipe followed by Nexon releasing every limited event item in order, and giving enough char. slots to get them all. That would be fantastic.

[CrazyNomad]

You have no idea how difficult/impossible it is to remove a dupe exploit.

the only game i know that have a lot of duping is maple.

nexon just need to make the game more server sided, like afrobean and other saids.

heck, on wow, you can't send packets outside the client, people already tested sending a normal packet using a packet editor, and the client crash.

it is possible to stop any hacking/dupe, nexon just decide to not fix the game.

[LiquidSwing]

You'd break the game though, if everyone was as powerful as the current duped equips everyone would be able to kill bosses and stuff in a few minutes...

The game is already broken, son. All that is happening is leveling the playing field between the "haves" and the "have nots."

[CarrionCrow]

The game is already broken, son. All that is happening is leveling the playing field between the "haves" and the "have nots."

That's just way to simplifying. And even if it was absolutely true, where should the advantage lie? In the hands of the paying customers that keep the game free for everyone else, or the dirty little cheaters that will, in this pace, bring about the death of the game years prematurely?

[KhainiWest]

We shouldn't take this as a "how to" but more of a theoretical "should".

1) Rid of duping
2) Intense research of any item clearly illegitimate, comb through all of that shyt.
3) Free market observance.

[bast963]

Nexon secretly sells Maple to Valve.

Valve buys a sample of ALL the vip hacks.
They remake the entirety of Maple with the same file types as tf2, and fix all the hacks they bought through reverse engineering in the process.
Then the rest of the time is spent doing bugfixes instead of keeping up with KMS. VAC instead of hackguard, because anti-hacks were supposed to be server sided, not client sided (this way there won't be over 9000 injectors).
They can call it "Maplestory 1.5: the safe edition."

[Shidoshi]

The game is already broken, son. All that is happening is leveling the playing field between the "haves" and the "have nots."

I can still play the game and find challenges and look for upgrades to my gear without having to use hacked equips or blowing out my wallet. If suddenly I could just kill all bosses alone and have the most powerful equips I'd lose motivation to play.

[CarrionCrow]

2) Intense research of any item clearly illegitimate, comb through all of that shyt.

This would not even be that hard.
9 slot item with more than 45 att/matt on a perfect base and no stars, investigate. If att/matt exceed 63 on perfect base (20% 7 att scrolls), delete.
10 slot item with more thn 50 att/matt on a perfect base and no stars, investigate. If att/matt exceed 70 on perfect base (20% 7 att scrolls), delete.
If items have stars, add the appropriate att/matt per star and if it differs from formula above, delete.

Delete every single VSS with attack. Delete any accessory with 5-10 att that has no base att.

I'm sure a script could be made that deal with this, deleting impossible items and notiying an investigator on the iffy ones.

[KhainiWest]

I wouldn't go as far as every VSS with attack. Before this dupe crap went around I did manage to get a 10 attack VSS (chaos with a 60% shoe) it cost me like 4b to get the scroll but yeah the event did exist so there is that possibility

I think it's safe to say any shoe higher than 18 attack should be 100% deleted, there isn't much variety to speak of to begin with.

[SaptaZapta]

Same with accessories with attack.
Guildy of mine was able to create 7 attack earrings with 15% accessory attack and chaos (both from the Eregos event, which he farmed diligently). Obviously 20 attack is excessive, but I am not sure where to put the line for legit ones.

I would say, though, any attack accessory of which there are more than 10 in the entire game, should be deleted. (Even without item id's, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it's beyond improbable for 10 different people to scroll gold emerald earrings and end up with exactly 4 dex, 6 int, 20 attack, and 45 magic def. And when the number isn't 10 but 1000...).