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

[Pikamemnon]

More like the "Walking Dead".

While it could be worse, they do at least acknowledge and try to fix some problems. Maybe not as good as the game could be but not hopeless either, sort of like it is somewhere in the middle. I say not being 100% dead does count for something but that is open to interpertation, I suppose.

[QSCX]

The cubing and potential system completely messed up the pace of the game. With how much stronger players can become with potentials, bosses exploded in health exponentially. The newest content can only ever be accessed by those who spend NX and maximize their equips' stats.

Normal players fell so far behind in strength that classes had to constantly be reworked. Then they had to add these game-altering NX items into normal content for the players. Then all the old content had to be reworked. So much of the game had to change to adapt to the insanity that cubing wrought.

And the economy epitomizes how messed up things have become. I see more NX items than actual game items in the free market. Any non-end game equip is basically worthless. The best equips are in the billions range of mesos---it's incredibly hard to obtain that much without getting NX. A player who spends large amounts of NX is legit over ten times stronger than a normal player. I can't think of any game with that kind of discrepancy.

I feel like Nexon knows that MapleStory is at it's end state. They're milking things out for all they're worth now. MapleStory2 most probably will be their next big focus as they let MapleStory1 slowly die.

EDIT: Just also want to say that the game is still fun, especially when playing with friends. All of the people I play with don't spend real money on the game so we're all on the same footing enjoying the same content. We can still have fun. We just can't enjoy the newest bosses/content (new meaning content released from 3-4 years ago to the present).

[Manifestation]

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?

They don't have to be look at games like Path of Exile

[Ivangold]

I remember when i started playing GMS, itens that i looted in the ground was worth something, i remember selling for like 1m or 2m, now itens that you drop normaly are worthless

[qtipp]

Y'all are some crusty, salty ex-maplers that's all I have to say. It's no wonder SP isn't recognized as a fansite anymore, who wants to listen to old cronies like you guys.

TBH before I clicked on this thread I was expecting OP to be pikmennamom or however you spell his name.

honestly there's so much negativity on this site for this game that I come in around maybe once or twice every other month, you really don't see this kind of hate anywhere else

[Words]

honestly there's so much negativity on this site for this game that I come in around maybe once or twice every other month, you really don't see this kind of hate anywhere else

Is there anything else to discuss? Is there any new content (kinda feel stupid asking that, given OP's title) or an event (that isn't the same shi't as every other event) or something new at all to discuss?

I wonder what other sites are all about nowadays... I just checked basilmarket and it looks like it's the same repetitive questions that must've been answered 100 times and what I should I do threads. I do agree that it can be a bit too negative at times but you gotta admit that there's a reason for it.

[Dark Link]

honestly there's so much negativity on this site for this game that I come in around maybe once or twice every other month, you really don't see this kind of hate anywhere else

The other "fansites" aren't much different.
The Maple subreddit has majority of the negativity get downvoted to high hell so you never actually see it unless you actively search for it.
Basil gets flooded with the same crap everyday that it gets buried under everything else, or it gets deleted cause some mod didn't like it.

Just because you don't see it as much as on SP doesn't mean it's not there.

[PirateIzzy]

Isn't this thread just beating a dead horse at this point?

[Chew]

Isn't this thread just beating a dead horse at this point?

Just like the game itself Kappa

[TidusLoveYuna]

tbh i still love this game even though i hate it at times and know its dying. i enjoy being able to log in and do what ever i want and maybe even see old friends/guildies i haven't seen in a while and it costs me nothing.

maple is like a friend / family member with cancer. you know they gonna die and its no point talking about it again and again, you just enjoy the time you have with them until the time comes.

[Gymleaders]

I remember when i started playing GMS, itens that i looted in the ground was worth something, i remember selling for like 1m or 2m, now itens that you drop normaly are worthless

You could make money as a level 40 player training on mobs your level when you suddenly find an esther shield, or a 60% Glove for Attack scroll. You can't really do that nowadays.

[SaptaZapta]

You could make money as a level 40 player training on mobs your level when you suddenly find an esther shield, or a 60% Glove for Attack scroll. You can't really do that nowadays.

Now you get the worthwhile drops from Elite Mobs and Elite Bosses. Which spawn at any level.

Of course you spend a lot less time grinding to level 100 than you used to, so far fewer monster kills and so fewer good drops.
But unless you spend the whole time in PQs, you should end up looting 3% or even 6% gear you can use, enough spell traces to scroll it all, and enough meso to star-force it. Plus something good from an Elite that you can sell to buy all, or most, of the mastery books you need.

Back in the pre-BB, you had no hope in hell of having enough meso for all your 4th job mastery books, unless you merched a lot, farmed area bosses for valuable scrolls for weeks and months, or somehow managed to join a bossing group that sold z-runs and htp's. Equipment rarely dropped, and scrolls were too rare and expensive to use on your own gear. Yeah, you could get really lucky with that Esther Shield or GFA. Or you could be scrabbling for potion money.

[hadriel]

Unfortunately, they've toned down the potential tier rates for Elite mobs and bosses... at least now I find that the number of Epic potential equipment from Elite mobs has decreased quite significantly... wonder if it's RNG god laughing at me.

The one thing I'm not exactly pleased with is the extremely high barrier to entry for a Maple Rewards pet. It takes a long time for a new player to amass 6k+ points, which is like 100-150 points a day for every day of the month. Once you do get it though, it's just another 2.4k to revive your pet every 3 months, which is pretty good. Once you start bossing, getting 1 cube worth a day is not bad for a start. Just yesterday I got 4 MCCs from bosses and harvesting. I'd say that, yes the potential system wrecked and skewed things alot, but they can't take it away and at least now they're doing a good job in levelling the playing field. There's a very real chance of you being able to go from completely unfunded to solid bosser (albeit not a top-end one).

Hadriel

[SaptaZapta]

Unfortunately, they've toned down the potential tier rates for Elite mobs and bosses... at least now I find that the number of Epic potential equipment from Elite mobs has decreased quite significantly... wonder if it's RNG god laughing at me.

The one thing I'm not exactly pleased with is the extremely high barrier to entry for a Maple Rewards pet. It takes a long time for a new player to amass 6k+ points, which is like 100-150 points a day for every day of the month.

Star Planet will give you 1500 points a day, even if you're a completely new character unable to kill even Mole King.
Depending on which game you play and how lucky you are it can take a couple of hours, but it's guaranteed if you keep playing.
5 days to get a pet, not bad when you consider that you have Tot's free Puffram until then.

Also, specifically right now (and for the next month) we have Beefy's Kitchen where you can craft a pet for 400 coins. Coins drop from "enemies your level" at about a 1:30 rate. So this is another way to spend several hours earning a free pet. (Not entirely free, though, as access to the Kitchen costs about 5m meso).
The pet lasts 30 days but can be revived with Water of Life. One of these pets even has Auto-Buff skills built in.
Other pet skills can be crafted for 400 coins each, as well, and applied to any pet.


I haven't seen many Epic Elite Mob drops lately, either. Do get some from both Elites and normal mobs, though. And you certainly get enough drops to fuse for better potential, if you're willing to put the time (and meso) into it.
And of course if you can MPE (at 100) you have the guaranteed-epic General Hat, Overall, Shoes, and Gloves.

[hadriel]

I haven't seen many Epic Elite Mob drops lately, either. Do get some from both Elites and normal mobs, though. And you certainly get enough drops to fuse for better potential, if you're willing to put the time (and meso) into it.
And of course if you can MPE (at 100) you have the guaranteed-epic General Hat, Overall, Shoes, and Gloves.

One of the things that bugs me is how mid-levelled mobs drop low level equipment, due to the monster level reorganisation and stuff. MPE is level 100+ but the equipment is level 60. The irony is that when you're building up from a low level, you actually want as low levelled equipment as possible because the scroll stats and enhancements are virtually identical, only the meso and spell trace costs increase. The counter-irony there is that by the time you scroll your gear cheaply and level to 100, you then have to re-scroll stuff again. Which is abit zzzz and funny at the same time.

Yeah I know about the Star Planet thing... just that I play solo for everything so I basically don't touch star planet. But that, and Beefy's Kitchen, serves to add to the view that things are indeed balancing out, and one can conveniently make mesoes through the old-fashioned and conventional way. It's just that if they aren't fully familiar then they can't exploit these things fully.

Hadriel

[SaptaZapta]

Yeah I know about the Star Planet thing... just that I play solo for everything so I basically don't touch star planet. But that, and Beefy's Kitchen, serves to add to the view that things are indeed balancing out, and one can conveniently make mesoes through the old-fashioned and conventional way. It's just that if they aren't fully familiar then they can't exploit these things fully.

Hadriel

What has solo got to do with Star Planet?
It randomly matches you up with opponents. The mini-games do have a Party Play mode, but that one doesn't give any reward points. It's just for fun.

[hadriel]

What has solo got to do with Star Planet?
It randomly matches you up with opponents. The mini-games do have a Party Play mode, but that one doesn't give any reward points. It's just for fun.

Oh is it! Damn! I'm missing out on the good stuff.

Hadriel

[YennoX]

But unless you spend the whole time in PQs, you should end up looting 3% or even 6% gear you can use, enough spell traces to scroll it all, and enough meso to star-force it. Plus something good from an Elite that you can sell to buy all, or most, of the mastery books you need.

And that is exactly where the wall is for non-NX, non-8-hour-maple-per-day players.

[cronnoponno]

Everyone is quick to point out the cash issues in Maplestory, while I agree that there is a SIGNIFICANT imbalance of cash vs free to play, I don't think this is the main reason the game is dead. It's true that legitimately playing the game is extremely discouraging when I can throw in like 5$ of my paycheck a week to get gear that would take me months to a year to get otherwise on a human amount of time invested into the game, but no one often points out the shift in soul the game has had towards it's philosphy and balancing.



Pre-BB Maple was unfinished and not entirely polished, I'll admit that much. There was a significant amount of imbalance in the game, the top-level training area usually favored bishops ult spamming, they were simply ''better mages'' because they were actually desirable in parties unlike mages and there was no thought put into the fact that Genesis costed less MP than meteo and blizzard, and the fact that in order to even compete with a bishops damage(in undead-weak areas, which at the time skelegons were good training) they had to use element amp and pay up double the MP on top of their already more-costing ultimates, White Knights had no realistic role to play in the game among other things.


What Pre-BB did have was a much better vision in their game design, you can tell there was a lot of thought put into the finer details of the game, bosses required parties of people to beat and you can see by the early-boss designs that they were balanced with this in mind. Zakums arms were all uniquely resistant to certain things and many jobs had significant parts to play in the party, they were pretty much vital. Soloing Zakum was not only impossible, it wasn't feasible to even consider trying, Nexon didn't hand players the potential to do trillions of damage, with elixirs that healed 5billion percent of your HP while you could literally stand inside of Zakum and spam some overpowered skill that virtually reaches the entire screen. and Zakum had an appropriate reward for besting him, it was actually something worth achieving.

Once fourth job came out, there was a significant weapon-type imbalance, axes for example were utter crap and they definitely should have fixed that(looks like they are just now putting an effort into fixing this). They still suck compared to swords but at least they're not as glaringly useless, but there were a lot of options for each classes. People often complained about ''statless'' builds, but those types of builds added another layer of depth to the game for people who cared, they should have balanced regular armors to have their own pros and cons compared to sauna robes to give more choice either way, but you can tell for a time they were actually welcoming of this, they released many items that were designed just for people who wanted to try going statless and in my opinion much better than the brainless act of clicking ''auto-assign'' points to a single stat.


In current Maplestory, almost every new class has what you would expect. Giant, screen-encompassing skills that utterly decimate mobs and clog up the screen with Dragonball Z esque vigour, some bossing skills, ridiculous mobility skills that made traveling the maps pointless and ruined another layer of depth that was good for the game, giving every class a flash jump equivalent and possibly even more like zooming up ladders and gliding/double jumping upwards took away the realistic sacrifices players had to consider when picking their class. There is no depth to half of the new characters, a character-swapping mechanic is okay but the character they allow you to pick that can do it starts off halfway finished with the game already and is given action-game tools like, immediately past the tutorial, it's just so weird and out of place with Maplestory and in my opnion belongs in a devil-may-cry game.


They've made some really good changes post-BB, giving mages a realistic formula to compete with other classes was a good idea that they should have done way earlier, nerfing ultimates and now giving them a utility purpose to put more depth into damage rotation was also a very good idea and made it to where classes with a -one of a kind- skill that they mindlessly spam had some more to do to add more spice to their gameplay, as well as adding similar mechanics to jobs liker Heros where you are rewarded for giving enemies status ailments, the improvement to the wild-hunter class and allowing you to command the jaguar differently from the player-character was what I honestly felt the class should have been like in the first place. Post-BB wasn't entirely bad, but with the changes they added came a price. Pirates became mindless blast-beam spamming jobs that lost any appeal they had when they were first introduced. When pirates were introduced they felt like a REAL expansion to the game, they each had very unique elements to them that no other class had like managing your ship and utilizing invincibility frames and energy training to circumvent pot-burning, which at the time was a much bigger deal because they didn't hand out elixirs like they were candy. Now every new class is just some tacky character with some stupid aethstic equipped like ugly wings you can't remove easily and given buff skills that makes them light up as if someone shoved a bunch of NX-effects up their ass to make them light up like a christmas tree, with different animations than other classes but overall the same general concept.


Now you just solo bosses and mostly train in solitude with your little God-of-mass-destruction toon with whatever class Nexon pomegranates out at that time of the month. Pre-BB definitely felt like it had more soul and vision than what it is today. Fixing the paywall isn't going to fix that this game is simply not what it once was, I personally wish they would have taken like a few handfuls of good updates and incorporated them into pre-bb and removed like half of these redundant classes. What the pineapple is a Kinensis? Some stupid telekenetic one-off guy who throws trucks at people? Yeah that looks like it'll be fun for a few hours but what is it actually going to contribute to the game? Most random idea for a class if I ever heard one, likely just there to show off their new skeleton system, another okay update but nothing really meaningful. I didn't start playing Maplestory to see some bushes being animated or see a boss move in a non-sprite animation but whatever floats your guys boats.

[SaptaZapta]

And that is exactly where the wall is for non-NX, non-8-hour-maple-per-day players.

Whereas in pre-bb, non-8-hour-maple-per-day players just never made it past level 50, NX or no NX.
And while there's nothing wrong, per se, in staying lower level, it did keep one shut off from most of the content of the game. Unless you had darksight or really enjoyed dying as soon as you set foot in a map that's too high level for you. And of course you couldn't take on any bosses beyond Mushmom, with or without a party.

I daresay the percentage of content open to casual players today is higher than it was back then.

Difference is, back then you had the motivation and the time to grind 40 hours a week for one more level on the slow slow road to reaching "endgame". Now you're older and busier and don't have time to grind 40 hours a week for one more 15% spell traced slot on your weapon on the slow slow road to reaching "endgame".