Fixing MapleStory

[Mazz]

I've read countless 'I miss X about MapleStory' threads on many different MapleStory forums and I've been thinking about how different the game has become. I've been pretty active on MapleStory since I started playing back in 2005/6, with a 2 year break during my final year of school, and I've seen the game go through most of the big changes that many of us now seem to despise. I've been thinking about all the comments I've read about the problems that MapleStory faces and am now wondering exactly what could, and should be done to MapleStory in order to 'fix' it.

My primary concern would be to bring back the appeal of party related content, be it training, questing or bossing - since Big Bang many people, myself included, have become obsessed with the ability to create a character strong enough to the point of being able to solo almost all the content in the game, and that mindset has managed to destroy pretty much all the fun I used to find in MapleStory. I like the idea of party play zones, because they're usually very popular maps in the game (LHC, Stronghold) and they encourage partying, perhaps with an adjusted party member EXP ratio (leechers get less EXP than active attackers) it would be more fun and more encouraging to form parties.

I feel similarly about bosses. The system in Unlimited that gives each party member his/her own set of drops is a great idea, but the removal of expeditions is very depressing. Some of the most fun in MapleStory for me was taking part in 18-30 person boss runs, this is also why I'm so excited about the 100 man boss raids that KMS recently announced. If the 'one world merge' is what I think it is, which would mean the 100 man boss squads could be organised across server, then that would be fantastic, but I think it should be like that for more than just one 'super boss'. I also think boss difficulty should scale up (or have an Azwan-esque difficulty setting that you can choose yourself before starting) according to party members, because there's no point taking a large group of people if you're going to kill the boss in 5 seconds.

Just something I've been thinking about.. short summary I guess:

1. Increase the number of party play zones (perhaps all mobs should become party play mobs when a party is created?)
2. Fix damage/EXP ratio for party play zones
3. More large boss squads
4. Make boss squads cross servers (this would be necessary for bosses as large as 100 people, considering it takes so much effort to even gather 10 people for a Chaos Horntail run)
5. Scale boss/mob difficulty up according to party members

I realise this is all very unlikely to happen but I can dream, right? I'm also now unsure if this belongs in the general discussion or in the 'player created ideas' subforum, but it was intended to be a discussion topic rather than me throwing a list of ideas at you, so I guess discussion is more apt.

Mostly inspired by @iAmFear;'s post in the pre-Big Bang nostalgia thread.

[Words]

perhaps with an adjusted party member EXP ratio (leechers get less EXP than active attackers) it would be more fun and more encouraging to form parties.

That's been a problem since forever. If I remember correctly and it actually happened, even with the nerf party member EXP ratio had years ago it didn't stop people from leeching. Except the system wasn't like the one you describe, but I still think that nothing is enough to stop people from leeching. I don't mean that there shouldn't be party play; however, I do think that leech shouldn't be focused on as something that needs fixing because it isn't that big deal and there are more important things to work on. I sorta agree with the rest, but more content can't fix ms.
And still, I'm not sure because I would give up all new content for better gameplay (no random crashes, incredibly stupid bugs, random lag) and less hackers. I enjoy the game, I don't mind spending money on it but those are things that are just too frustrating and annoying to even make up for possibly "awesome" content.

[Curtiss]

To me, part of the problem is that partying will get stale in the end if the areas remain the same or maybe it's just that I get bored too quickly. In addition to what you mentioned above I'd like to propose a dungeon that tests your party's capabilities to the maximum, limits item potential and restricts potion use along with imposing cooldown on skills. It'd probably be something like Supreme but limited to that one area and the mobs and bosses would get harder as you go down with a neat reward at the end of it.

The only one I'm iffy on is larger boss squads since most large boss squads would be done by low to mid-funded players and mass disconnections would bite hard. Six to eighteen is about good enough.

[Mazz]

@Words; True about the leeching, it'd be nice if there was more incentive to not leech though, not that it's an urgent problem as such. More something that could be fixed indirectly with another change or two. I agree 100% with the crashes/disconnections/hackers.. they could add hundreds of new fun content but if the game isn't stable it'd all be pointless. I don't know how that could be fixed though so I focused more on actual content rather than fixing problems with the way the game works.

@Curtiss; Something like that would be good. Potential has far too much bearing on the game currently but making it less useful would be a huge slap in the face to people that have invested heavily in it.. not that I don't think it should happen, but I'd be afraid of the backlash it could cause. It would be awful for something like that to be put in effect to try and bring players back, only to have more quit as a result. I really liked the idea of a Supreme server and I'm disappointed that GMS has no intention of implementing it anytime soon, but more challenging bosses (potion cooldowns, skill cooldowns even, ability to dodge attacks and a 1hko if you fail to do so) would be a lot of fun.

Kind of reminds me of how Geist Balrog was supposed to be in Amoria PQ. A boss in a jump quest sounds like so much fun.

[Alloy]

To me, maplestory's problem is that there's certain stats on your equipments unobtainable without spending copious ammounts of cash. Like legendary tier, and additional potential.

There's literally NO WAY to get those stats without the use of NX. Something like giving cubes when leveling up could be interesting. Something like every 10 levels you get a cubing reward like:

(all untradeable)
lv 50, 1 occult cube
lv 60, 2 occult cubes
...
lv150, 10 occult cubes
lv 160, 5 normal cubes
...
lv 200, 10 normal cubes
lv 210, 5 legendary cubes
...
lv 250, 10 legendary cubes.

Might seem overpowered, but if you think about it, it's a limited supply per character. And to get any good results, you'd have to get to... lv 160 to get anything better than epic. A nice way to earn stuff in my eyes.

[Curtiss]

@Mazz; The direction KMS has been having with adding easy modes is a good one since it means you can choose the setting that's best for you instead of being forced to cube until you can do that one version. I would say in fact that the problem with potential can be fixed without nerfing it, it's just a matter of constructing battles that will rely on skill and good timing along with giving options to less-funded players as the main problem MS has as a whole currently is that you're severely limited in how high you get unless you can spend.

Aside from boss modes, why not make a special solo mode that's much harder than even the hardest mode that you might tackle in a party? That way people who have an urge to spend still get their kick and everyone else has their fun partying as there's a lot of reasons why people might not like parties, I know I have awful luck getting people organized.

[Words]

@Words; True about the leeching, it'd be nice if there was more incentive to not leech though, not that it's an urgent problem as such. More something that could be fixed indirectly with another change or two. I agree 100% with the crashes/disconnections/hackers.. they could add hundreds of new fun content but if the game isn't stable it'd all be pointless. I don't know how that could be fixed though so I focused more on actual content rather than fixing problems with the way the game works.

Figured, considering latest fail thread on that topic. Other thread mentioned that everyone knew how to fix those issues, but how impossible it was considering costs and whatnot. Unless you mean a more realistic solution? Which there is none. Still, more content is just a way to grab people's money and attention for a while without doing anything substantial to rescue a game that should, I wish, be dead already.

[SaptaZapta]

To me, maplestory's problem is that there's certain stats on your equipments unobtainable without spending copious ammounts of cash. Like legendary tier, and additional potential.

There's literally NO WAY to get those stats without the use of NX. Something like giving cubes when leveling up could be interesting. Something like every 10 levels you get a cubing reward like:

(all untradeable)
lv 50, 1 occult cube
lv 60, 2 occult cubes
...
lv150, 10 occult cubes
lv 160, 5 normal cubes
...
lv 200, 10 normal cubes
lv 210, 5 legendary cubes
...
lv 250, 10 legendary cubes.

Might seem overpowered, but if you think about it, it's a limited supply per character. And to get any good results, you'd have to get to... lv 160 to get anything better than epic. A nice way to earn stuff in my eyes.

In Hebrew we call that kind of reward "mocking the poor".
Seriously? 5 whole normal cubes for level 160?
I assume you've cubed stuff before. What, exactly, do you get with 5 cubes? 95% of the time, nothing at all.

[Hanabira.Kage]

Kind of reminds me of how Geist Balrog was supposed to be in Amoria PQ. A boss in a jump quest sounds like so much fun.

A PQ that's comprised almost entirely of jump quest-esque stages (save for the boss fight at the end).

The boss chases after you after you trigger a trap (or whatever) at the start of the first stage.

Your party has to dodge the boss and various traps along the way; boss's touch damage and melee moves kill instantly, ranged moves are easy to dodge, possibly scripted, but players are stunned/slowed if hit. Traps could share the stun/slow thing. Players that die will have their screen follow the slowest player, with like a 5 second timer on their screen counting down to their respawning; they respawn where the slowest player is at that point, unless the slowest player is in mid-air or something, in which case they'll respawn on the nearest platform.

Utilises the Death Count system (a shared one); the boss you fight at the end gets stronger for say, every 5 deaths. It's the same boss as the one that's been chasing you, just that it doesn't one-shot you because say, it got weakened by some kind of powerful laser beam shot or something from your allies (story-wise) so you can kill it.

[Mazz]

@Alloy; if they're going to give cubes away they'd have to give more than that.. Occult cubes especially are awful for actually increasing damage since they can lower the potential tier =/ 15 legendary cubes, 10 normal cubes and 13 occult cubes from level 1-250 isn't really going to get you anywhere, unless they remove almost all of the useless lines of potential (which actually would be a really good idea considering how awful cubing is currently).

@Curtiss; Easy mode bosses seem like a good idea, I don't understand what easy mode Zakum is for though considering a party of unfunded level 110s could take out normal mode without much difficulty already. Boss battles that require skill and timing should already exist (Magnus is an example of this, but the death count kind of ruins it when he has a few skills that are completely unavoidable that one hit KO you if you're unlucky)..

@Words; There are numerous ways to fix the hacker situation in GMS without it costing any money, MWLBv2 for example (which sadly almost certainly isn't going to happen), but there seems to be little push from Nexon to get them started. I would happily log an alt/MWLB type character in on channel 12 Cygnus Chamber and leave it there while I work at my computer and ban any hackers that enter, and it wouldn't take more than 20 minutes to cycle some of the more common botting maps to ban meso farmers. It isn't that Nexon aren't working on banning hackers, it's just that there are so many of them that no one can really appreciate the work that is being done. RE: the disconnections, I have no idea about how that works so I can't comment on it. =/

[Thorr]

My idea for cubes has always been the same as I have for MMBs - Make all of them class specific.

MMBs - Make the selection list of MMBs be determined by the class of character opening it. Include Maple Warrior books. This gives you a little bit of randomness yet makes the market stable for everyone.

Cubes - sell class specific cubes (or a single cube that uses your Job to determine the available potential pool, or at least eliminate a portion of it). This makes cubes more useful but still has the randomness that drives sales.

EDIT - One other thing. Change random skill book drops at Zak. Make it so there is a quest from the 3rd job instructors that gives you a 100% chance of a skill drop for your job. That way you still have to Zak for your skill but you don't have to do it potentially forever just to get the skill. The removal of the skill quests should have brought a change to these skill books, too.

[Niernen]

I think the biggest problem is Maple is scaling, whether its party exp, to boss hp, etc. the game is not scald properly or effectively as it could be. Scaling bosses depending on the party (since scaling on damage would be difficult)...

[Curtiss]

@Mazz; Well, suffices to say no one really knows what's up with easy Zakum, haha! I do have another alternative for bosses though:

Let's say the boss is really tough and the 12-man party is not quite enough, but what if swapping between parties gives the party a significant boost that help? I'm mostly relating this to a system in a game known as Mana Khemia where you used three members as your main party but you could change members with a certain cooldown period and they would enter with different support abilities or attacks depending on their type. Like say, if a Paladin could grant complete invincibility for an entire party for just one attack and the boss has such an attack, you could ask the Paladin to switch in when you know this is going to happen.

For this to happen though, bosses would need to be restructured and scrutinized since it would be tricky to coordinate but this could add a dynamic element that makes everyone have to pay attention instead of cheap tricks like LOL DARK GENESIS.

[Setsuykie]

I just really miss the old system for PQing. I remember spending entire days with groups of friends actually having fun and working together to do PQs. LPQ was my favorite. Now, there's nothing fun about any of them since all of them were changed, and it seems like the only point of the PQs now is to move through them very quickly in order to repeat them over and over for EXP or whatever you're looking for/questing for. It isn't fun anymore. :\

[Teigri]

I'd like to see hacking abolished. And I think party quests, dojo and bosses should grant a small amount of maple points. Even if it hurts their profit a bit I wouldn't be too upset personally. One might argue that the strongest players would stop spending as much to keep upgrading... but they probably already do that by using boss rewards as their income. I honestly believe if you fund yourself enough to be one of the strongest players (without hacking or use of/profiting from illegitimately created items) you deserve to be able to continue to fund yourself adequately without pouring more money into the game. Buying NX will still be an option for those who want fast gratification.

I'll admit if hacking and cheating isn't taken care of in advance this kind of system would be a very very bad idea.

[MountLag]

Like many have said, hackers need to get banned more frequently. They should also chain ban since banning one botting mule or boss hacking mule doesn't do anything.
A lot of hackers also get their permanent bans lifted just by sending a ticket in admitting that they hacked and claiming they won't do it again and will buy lots of NX. Yeah that needs to stop...

Most of the problems in the economy are caused by botters farming/generating large amount of mesos and hackers farming/generating large amounts of items. Actually dealing with these hackers goes a long way.




Maybe something else they could try is throw KMS's cash trading system in. IDK

No idea about fixing bosses and damage lol. Unless they make everything in Cash Shop free I don't see that happening.

[SmilingCurse]

Cross servers...
I think that's MAYBE one of the updates for RED?
Like the 100man boss raid? Maybe that's the cross server/merge servers thing?
I read that somewhere but I forgot where on the stream thread

[Sephie]

IMO, players are way too strong and when you get past a certain amount of funding, having a party or playing in a group becomes redundant and unnecessary. When you have a game where the players can function alone somewhat okay when funded but benefit greatly in a party regardless of funding, you have a game that promotes people to actually play together. Party Play Zone is a mechanic that artificially promotes co-op play; it is a lazy response to the increasing strength of the average cubing player with revamped classes that are self sufficient in all the important areas of gameplay: sustainability, damage, and mobility.

The classes today are all highly mobile, long reaching, durable killing machines where the concept of a job or weapon is simply a theme rather than an actual gameplay mechanic. The reality is that a bow is no different than a sword/fist/staff/axe/etc in this game: they can hit one, hit more than one, hit once, hit many times, hit close, hit far, and shoot lasers. The only difference is the colors and effects really... Every new class released will be the same killing machine we have now, except masked with a new theme and weapon.

The older classes that existed since the beginning of Maple haven't been able to easily transition to this "one-size killing machine" concept and thus had to be revamped constantly to keep up with this power-creep induced mess. I remember the day where Paladin Charge Blow hit once in a small concise area in front of me; nowadays, Charge Blow is like a giant laser hitting six times in front of me... Oh how similar this concept is to all these new classes I'm playing... where it feels like I'm spamming a giant laser hitting six times in front of me.

As soon as I saw the new KMS RED update where they're going to revamp adventurers, I had a feeling that in the future I would inevitably have a new giant laser to play with. I hope I'm wrong ;s.

[Jamesie]

I just really miss the old system for PQing. I remember spending entire days with groups of friends actually having fun and working together to do PQs. LPQ was my favorite. Now, there's nothing fun about any of them since all of them were changed, and it seems like the only point of the PQs now is to move through them very quickly in order to repeat them over and over for EXP or whatever you're looking for/questing for. It isn't fun anymore. :\

I wouldn't mind them making PQs longer if they adjusted the experience as well. I did really enjoy the original Ludi and Orbis PQs, but at the same time they're really time inefficient and the rewards really aren't worth spending 30~45 minutes.

[Locked]

I've discussed this topic before and provided a lot of detail.

Here it is for posterity:

The idea of a specific server is silly, but a start from scratch kind of approach like "Big Bang" might be better. I haven't looked at any of your posts to see what your ideas were but if I had the ability to change the game I would do the following.


Remove the massive amount of potential in this game.

Potential ruined the challenge in this game but also allowed things to get "stronger" in the sense that the bosses might be perceived more difficult should potential never have been there in the first place. A good solution to circumvent the issue of power creeping would be to change the limit of potential by introducing a weight system. The weight system would vary from class to class, with warriors being one the ones able to hold the most weight.

Weight System:

• Beginners would start with 10 weight.
• Archers and Thieves would get +30 weight
• Magicians would get +50 weight
• Pirates and Warriors would get +80 weight
• Second job gives you +20 weight
• Third job gives you +50 weight
• Fourth job gives you +100 weight
• Level 200 would give you +200 weight

This would give Archers and Thieves a maximum of 410 weight, Magicians would get 430 weight, Pirates and Warriors would get a maximum of 460 weight.

How Weight would be used:

• All-Stat% items would be 15 weight per %. e.g. 6% all stat = 90 weight
• Primary stat% items would be 20 weight per %. e.g. 9% STR = 180 weight
• Secondary stat% items would be 10 weight per %. e.g. 6% DEX = 60 weight
• +STAT would just be their respective additive stat per weight divided by two. e.g. +10 DEX is 5 weight.
• %Boss Damage and Total Damage% would be 5 weight per %. e.g. 40% boss damage = 200 weight (You should get it by now)
• %Ignore PDR would be 2 weight per %.
• %Attack/Magic ATT would be 15 weight per %.
• +Attack/Magic ATT would be 2 weight per their respective stat. e.g. +10 attack = 20 weight
• Other potential categories would either be removed or cost no weight.

Potential would be accessible via an enchanter that you would pay mesos to get random stats for up to 10 times per item per day at about 1m per enchant. You could use NX to possibly bypass this limit to be 20 times per day but nothing more. Also I would probably lower everything to one line or two.

Dojo itself would be reworked in the sense that it would have the best potential:weight ratio to encourage people to dojo.

Dojo Revamp

Under the assumptions above, I would make dojo awards have one more bracket. Prizes would be split to 1st, 2nd-10th, 11th-25th, 26th to 50th and each glove would cost a certain amount of weight rather than each individual stat being worth something.

Weight and Stat of Gloves:

1st Place Glove:
Cost: 90 Weight. Actual Weight: 450 Weight. Ratio: 20% of actual.
Stats: +30 All Stats, +25 Attack/M.Attack, +250 W/M.Defense, +200 Accuracy/Avoidability [+15% Total Damage, +15% All Stats, +30% Boss Damage]

2nd-10th Place Glove:
Cost: 80 Weight. Actual Weight: 325 Weight. Ratio: 25% of actual.
Stats: +25 All Stats, +20 M/W.Attack, +200 M/W.Defense [+10% Total Damage, +10% All Stats, +25% Boss Damage]

11th-25th Place Glove:
Cost: 70 Weight. Actual Weight: 275 Weight, Ratio: 25% of actual.
Stats: +20 All Stats, +15 M/W.Attack, +150 M/W.Defense [+10% Total Damage, +10% All Stats, +15% Boss Damage]

26th-50th Place Glove:
Cost: 45 Weight. Actual Weight: 150 Weight, Ratio: 30% of actual.
Stats: +15 All Stats, +10 M/W.Attack, +100 M/W.Defense [+5% Total Damage, +5% All Stats, +10% Boss Damage]

Rework how bosses are done in this game

Currently bosses are too easy or offer gimmicky (I hate this word) challenges. I would do something such as make bosses have raids as a requirement with different types of combination of classes to discourage soloing. Such a boss would be one that has different types of "weaknesses" or HP bars that can only be triggered by certain classes or skills. For example, a boss that has 3 weaknesses that one requires a bowman using hurricane or ultimate strafe to diminish their HP, a thief attacking however they want to, or a magician can only damage the boss if it's currently DoT'd. Or the boss could only be damaged using the environment variables or under a certain type of debuff such as stun. If someone is too weak to do it on their own they could do some sort of spiritual bond with their team members to allow the team members to pierce through their weakness for a certain amount of time, if such a case would be a problem. Just a couple of ideas, it could make boss battles much more interesting and cooperative.

Revamp the entire monster system

Monsters are pathetic in this game. Training with regular monsters is completely asinine and extremely slow because it's overshadowed by things such as Lionheart Castle and Stronghold. I think LHC and SH worked out the concept of teamwork pretty well, so why not scale the experience appropriately for regular monsters in such a way that those "soloing" would get a fair share and add more areas like LHC and SH to make others happy? It'd be a win-win situation.

Increase the meso-cap

I'm unsure why we're using signed integers. Why can't we use uint32_t or something to make the cap 2^32-1 rather than 2^31-1.

Make NX more accessible for the common player

Most games already know how to do the Free To Play concept way better than Nexon. Games understand that money shouldn't be the only way to get things, rather it should be an easier way of getting things. For example, in LoL champions cost money but you could always wait for the champion to be available, or in TF2 all the items could be bought via the store but you could always get it via random drop or trade for it. It seems insane that we still can't do this in Maple and that NX remains something the "cool kids" can only get.

That's all I can think about currently. I'll add some more stuff in this post later if I can think of something.

Now, this post it 6 months old. A lot of stuff has happened and changed since then. I also stopped paying attention to Maple a lot more, despite quitting a while back. For starters, the meso cap was actually raised! Quite amazing actually how they managed to add 64-bit variables into the game and in the process pineappleing things up. But that's something else entirely. Another thing they added is something called an "Occult Cube" I believe that is basically a noobified cube. Progress I suppose but definitely not something worth using for the most part.

I like to think that my original propositions still apply though, with the addition of these few things:

Make SP Assignment Easier

Might be somewhat controversial, but clicking a lot of SP is quite tedious. There should be buttons such as "Max All" that puts all your current SP into a skill until you max it and one that pops up a dialogue window to input how much SP you would like to manually add to your skill.

PQ Revamp

The way current PQs are handled is pretty poor. The experience is pretty good but it's unfortunately limited and they aren't that great as they were when the concept was revamped initially. The way I propose this is fixed is to remove the daily limit and increase the experience a bit more. Possibly add more PQs in conjunction to the new level cap. Since I am assuming my own perfect maple world, we will assume that the monster system is revamped as well and that removing the daily limit isn't exactly "too broken"

Add raids

Pretty similar, and I believe Nexon is doing something similar to this in the upcoming MapleStory RED.

Add higher leveled content

Currently this game is way to centric on low leveled areas such as 30-100 and they have been continuously adding stuff to this range even now, consider Fairy Academy. I think it would be a good idea to add more content to the game that would target the higher levels like 110+, take for example Neo City and the like. They have so much more content to offer and rewards are seemingly pleasing even for those who are poor. Extending these types of quests and content to other levels would be absolutely lovely.

Ditch the master book system

The masterbook system has been FUBAR since the beginning of MapleStory. The entire concept has always been quite dumb and I can tell they're trying to improve upon it. I feel as if we should go back to our pre-Big Bang roots and do quests for either our skills or increasing the mastery of the skill to max level. That way when you max a skill it would actually feel rewarding rather than a money sink based on luck. This would also disallow bots from farming these items, so sub-sequentially removing lower cost of them (albeit with it removed it doesn't matter)

Fifth Job

Quite obvious. With ~90 left over SP and now with the increased level cap you know we need an extended job.