Star Force (new equipment enhancement system)

[Spadow]

Star Force is the new equipment enhancement system. After months of collecting data, feedback and changes it is finally ready to be released to the public server.
You can use Star Force once you have used up all the upgrade slots of your equipment. This system was designed because the previous equipment enhancement system was horrible. Not to mention the exclusive game breaking Miraculous Enhancement Equipment Scrolls. Star Force is now designed to give all users better accessibility and to rely less on Cash items to enhance an item. Developers have also said they're gradually changing more elements to rely less on Cash items.

The developers have just released the official data for Star Force:



Stage = Stars.

What are your thoughts?

[PirateIzzy]

On top of that, there's a video of a guy enhancing his tyrant shoes in KMST:

[Dudewitbow]

45% success rate at 10 stars is pretty generous

[SaptaZapta]

Thank you. Some questions:

1) Does failure = boom?

2) Does this system give the same stat increases per successful enhancement as the old EE/AEE scrolls do (including the higher values for Superior equipment)?
2.1) Is the amount of stat increase fixed or random?

3) Do EE/AEE scrolls still work?
3.1) If so, do they still behave as they did before?

[Raph589]

Pretty good system, except for the meso costs. Getting mesos from normally playing the game is pretty hard, and while I understand some people swim in a never-ending supply of mesos and we very much need a meso sink, others don't have anything and therefore cannot really profit from this system. In DFO, the system is similar but the money cost, while being fairly expensive, is easily farmable. If there was more ways to earn mesos in maplestory (a functionning auction house and drops that are actually worth something) would be a good start.

[Takebacker]

1) Does failure = boom?

I'm pretty sure the failure column is boom chance. Only 1% chance for 12-15 stars is really low, and if it booms you still have those new equipment traces so all you have to do is scroll the slots again if you had good potential.

Lol @ 1% success rate 40% boom and 100m per try for a 25 star item. And yet i know every KMS "top player" will have 25 star stuff.

[Mazz]

So they've decided to combat Miraculous Enhancement Scrolls with this? A 15 star MEE'd 160 ATT base weapon could hit 509 ATT and a 25 star weapon with this system could hit 443. Sure it's a much better system in general but really what's the point? It's still pretty broken.

What are the stats given to armour and accessories like? Currently they give a random stat +2/3 (ish) per star, I'm guessing they refined that slightly?

[Takebacker]

So they've decided to combat Miraculous Enhancement Scrolls with this? A 15 star MEE'd 160 ATT base weapon could hit 509 ATT and a 25 star weapon with this system could hit 443. Sure it's a much better system in general but really what's the point? It's still pretty broken.

What are the stats given to armour and accessories like? Currently they give a random stat +2/3 (ish) per star, I'm guessing they refined that slightly?

Don't forget we're supposed to get a new high level equipment set to replace fafnir stuff in the september update.

I think we can honestly say with no sarcasm that everyone is looking forward to our equipment being trash again.

[Mazz]

Don't forget we're supposed to get a new high level equipment set to replace fafnir stuff in the september update.

I think we can honestly say with no sarcasm that everyone is looking forward to our equipment being trash again.

At least this time everyone can join in with the power creep instead of just the super funded since the Star Force system seems pretty easy. Yay equality!

[Shads]

So they've decided to combat Miraculous Enhancement Scrolls with this? A 15 star MEE'd 160 ATT base weapon could hit 509 ATT and a 25 star weapon with this system could hit 443. Sure it's a much better system in general but really what's the point? It's still pretty broken.

What are the stats given to armour and accessories like? Currently they give a random stat +2/3 (ish) per star, I'm guessing they refined that slightly?

I think I was reading somewhere that MEE items are going to have a blue name to them and can't be enhanced to more than 15 stars.

[Mazz]

I think I was reading somewhere that MEE items are going to have a blue name to them and can't be enhanced to more than 15 stars.

Seems fair enough. MEEs + Star Force would make for some extremely unbalanced items. Though I don't even know what 'unbalanced' means anymore in terms of equipment.

I'm still not convinced this is a good thing for MapleStory, unless they do just want everyone to be able to hit max damage now so the pay2win thing is reduced. Seems like such a stupid way to go about it though.

Also, I just realised the super high amount of STR on that Tyrant boot in the video is very likely from additional options, which would suggest that the Star Force system gives Tyrant equips the same stats as the current enhancement system, but still not sure about other gear. I hope it gives a fixed amount of stats rather than a random selection from a pool of just about everything.

[Justin]

at the very least it seems like this system is really really good for the unfunded, and makes it so enhancing anything other than tyrants + weapons is actually worthwhile.

[Reddish]

Do the usage limits still apply to (reg/superior) wards? It'd seem like quite a gamble if you couldn't protect your item(s) from exploding as the number of stars go up.

[Dudewitbow]

Pretty good system, except for the meso costs. Getting mesos from normally playing the game is pretty hard, and while I understand some people swim in a never-ending supply of mesos and we very much need a meso sink, others don't have anything and therefore cannot really profit from this system. In DFO, the system is similar but the money cost, while being fairly expensive, is easily farmable. If there was more ways to earn mesos in maplestory (a functionning auction house and drops that are actually worth something) would be a good start.

I disagree. every cost sub 10* is a pretty manageable cost and better success rate than the current system(and you should already have enough equipment slots to get 5-10 stars on each and not have to worry about star zones). If you are worrying about paying for stars at that point, you MUST have done something for your current set of armor already. If you are part of the underfunded group of people, you really shouldn't be looking at profiting from enhance scrolls in the first place. the difference between DFO's economy and MS is that MS' economy is driven by demand, where to profit means to farm high demand event items(e.g unique potential scrolls, protection scrolls, lucky day scrolls) compared to DFO's more general farm as quest items do play in the market and the crafting system is a bit more intertwined with gameplay than MS is.

Rule of thumb in ANY game is that low % success rate high risk stuff should NEVER be for the unfunded in MMO's or similar. its purely designed for the rich.

[Takebacker]

Do the usage limits still apply to (reg/superior) wards? It'd seem like quite a gamble if you couldn't protect your item(s) from exploding as the number of stars go up.

Except great items blowing up carries at least 95% less risk than it used to because of equipment traces.

[MuscleWizard]

Except great items blowing up carries at least 95% less risk than it used to because of equipment traces.

What are those anyway?

[Takebacker]

What are those anyway?

When items blow up you'll get a "scroll" that gives the blown up item's exact potential/bonus pot/presumably neb lines to use on something with the same name.

[MuscleWizard]

When items blow up you'll get a "scroll" that gives the blown up item's exact potential/bonus pot/presumably neb lines to use on something with the same name.

That's actually pretty damn awesome

[Spadow]

Thank you. Some questions.

1) Yes. I edited the image to reflect this change.
2) I don't know what the increases of stats are from the EE/AEE scrolls. I believe the stat increase is fixed, but I am not sure about that. I am going to try the system out tomorrow when it is released. The enhancement UI shows you how much the stats will increase per star. I'll let you know once it is officially released.

3) Yes. No changes were made to these scrolls.

And yes, MEE'd equipment have blue stars instead of yellow. This doesn't matter for other regions since MEE scrolls remain exclusive to Korea.

[Chilly]

An actual table with probability figures? Some transparency! No wai!

Let me see one of these for Cubes please.

Did they change Protect Scroll to work for items with more than 12 Stars? If not, I still wouldn't risk 12+ on my weapon or anything else I scrolled with Anniversary Scrolls. Tyrant, Nova or even Helisium items become far more palatable for YOLO Starring purposes since Takebacker reminded me of Equipment Traces and the fact that those items' scrolling isn't so important or significant.