Where do we begin?

[IImaplers]

Regardless of what we as players would choose as one of your options, there's no hope. And thus there's no point to discuss it anymore, because Nexon doesn't care and there's no valid outcome other than beating a dead horse. I know there's a niche minority who actually finds discussing this topic interesting, but it's like discussing how to prevent World War 2 after it already happened in my eyes (not to be confused with discussing how to prevent a WW3 by using lessons learned from WW2). Most people don't care because it's completely out of their control as to what happens.

[Takebacker]

I made it

Of course i know that. I'm thanking you for the reference.

[dowie]

Kinda sucks when you constantly report a well known hacker that smegas and brags about the stuff he does and threatens people. Then you see him doing the same crap every day on and on. It's stuff like that that really just drives you away from Nexon's promises. Why play legit and pay money when you can just do it for free? Going to get banned? Eh you'll be free in a few days hurhurhur.

[Sephie]

Maplestory isn't structured properly for release outside Korea. As Sapta said, the deterrents for hacking just don't exist outside KMS.

However, in this case, people hack because they have something to gain. Maplestory's pay model involves selling power/damage/convenience. Hackers pretty much have access to Nexon's pay model (selling power/damage/convenience) and all they have to do is find a way through the game's security every time Maple's patched. As long as that and the barrier to entry being nonexistent is intact, we'll continue having another entity profit from players. We can't "fix our sins" because that would be changing human nature. In other words (as I interpret it), it is a quality/tendency/trend of a person/audience/demographic that we simply observe. A proper, adaptable business is built around those for profit and is ready to change whenever trends change. The problem Maple has is that the current model allows more than one party to profit from our "sins" and there's nothing Nexon is really doing to stop it. At the same time, if they wanted to do something about it like making new deterrents, it would probably take some serious restructuring of this game which just isn't feasible for them.

This is not saying that the original pay model isn't exploitative and devious while it pushes our mental habits/tendencies to dangerous levels... just saying that hackers are along for the ride.

Changing other aspects of maple like cubes/potential, acquiring gear, NX reliance, would uhhh, be pretty nice... I'd probably play again. I don't know how to go about doing that without changing the foundation this F2P game was built on or whether less-profitable-objectively-more-moral approaches would be profitable. You would probably want to make another game... Maplestory 2? ;s

[Typhoon]

Kinda sucks when you constantly report a well known hacker that smegas and brags about the stuff he does and threatens people. Then you see him doing the same crap every day on and on. It's stuff like that that really just drives you away from Nexon's promises. Why play legit and pay money when you can just do it for free? Going to get banned? Eh you'll be free in a few days hurhurhur.

That reminds a few years back when a hacker in Broa would smega about packets while GM events were going on, just to spite them. Then would go to the GM and map crash him/her. As well as kill a few HT's while GM's were on doing events. It was pretty sickening.

Nexon needs to just hire a programmer with a hacking-mentality and say, "Here's our game, find holes."

Nexon I think is well beyond their last possible save point though I think. Too late in the game to make a drastic change. Hackers did make up a pretty good chunk of their player base, and now that coders aren't as willing to create decent programs for hackers to use, the players using those programs aren't willing to play the game legit. Nexon let too many players become too reliant on hacks a couple years ago, instead of nipping it in the bud when they should have.

I'm pretty confident in saying they can't "save" the game, they should just let it run it's course and hope MS2 is as successful as they hope.

[dowie]

Shoulda seen last few weeks /months of DFO. Absolutely hacker filled for end game dungeons. In all the y ears I've played it, I've never once seen a GM in that game. I honestly think the reason they shut DFO down was because they just gave up on it.

[IllegallySane]

Shoulda seen last few weeks /months of DFO. Absolutely hacker filled for end game dungeons. In all the y ears I've played it, I've never once seen a GM in that game. I honestly think the reason they shut DFO down was because they just gave up on it.

Those were such sad times. I shoulda bailed when I saw practically no GMs ever popped in the game to even say hello; coulda save myself several hundred hours of my life playing something with more life/promise.

[Polantaris]

The goal here isn't to discuss how to get rid of cheating in general as a whole, but rather how to make it so that no player feels like they have to deal in these risky type of business' in order to achieve a threshold to enjoy all of the game itself.

That, unfortunately, is an impossible goal. There is no way to make no one want to cheat. There will always be cheaters.

However, if your goal is to reduce the amount of people that have been lured to cheat because of the unfairness of the game, that's a more admirable goal, and certainly far more possible (although I'm sure more than a few people have been "lost").

In my opinion, the only way to get to that point without remaking the game, is to have another Big Bang, which in the end will pretty much result in a remake if done correctly anyway.

There's too many things that are wrong, there is no happy end to this. When I realized this over a year ago is when I stopped playing. There are too many core mechanics in the game that require money that to revoke these, or to make them easier to obtain (at the scale that is necessary to fix the game), will anger the people who currently keep Nexon afloat. It's like if you had a life insurance company, and then one day you decided you're going to shoot anyone who walks in the door from now on.

[KhainiWest]

That, unfortunately, is an impossible goal. There is no way to make no one want to cheat. There will always be cheaters.

However, if your goal is to reduce the amount of people that have been lured to cheat because of the unfairness of the game, that's a more admirable goal, and certainly far more possible (although I'm sure more than a few people have been "lost").

In my opinion, the only way to get to that point without remaking the game, is to have another Big Bang, which in the end will pretty much result in a remake if done correctly anyway.

There's too many things that are wrong, there is no happy end to this. When I realized this over a year ago is when I stopped playing. There are too many core mechanics in the game that require money that to revoke these, or to make them easier to obtain (at the scale that is necessary to fix the game), will anger the people who currently keep Nexon afloat. It's like if you had a life insurance company, and then one day you decided you're going to shoot anyone who walks in the door from now on.

I feel maplestory could be saved even without going into deep investments. Although my perspective is based on an assumption, I feel like I misworded it. There has to be a power advantage for those who spend NX, but as other veterans have pointed out, nearly 1000x stronger is the MAIN poison of the game. Most players who turn to hacks, in general, are looking for a quick turn around. However with the gap being so large with nearly little to no options, it brings more allure, not to mention since the company is seen in a negative light, there's little to no reason to feel any remorse.

With all that being said I feel the greatest impact to both getting a stronger, dedicated player base, and making the path of cheating less alluring, would be to significantly change that gap so that NX spenders have at most maybe a 75% advantage.

[Polantaris]

I feel maplestory could be saved even without going into deep investments. Although my perspective is based on an assumption, I feel like I misworded it. There has to be a power advantage for those who spend NX, but as other veterans have pointed out, nearly 1000x stronger is the MAIN poison of the game. Most players who turn to hacks, in general, are looking for a quick turn around. However with the gap being so large with nearly little to no options, it brings more allure, not to mention since the company is seen in a negative light, there's little to no reason to feel any remorse.

With all that being said I feel the greatest impact to both getting a stronger, dedicated player base, and making the path of cheating less alluring, would be to significantly change that gap so that NX spenders have at most maybe a 75% advantage.

I agree completely. The issue is that if they move that 1000x stronger casher benefit to the 1.75x casher benefit that you suggest would mean that everyone who spent the money that keeps Nexon afloat would stop playing because, "They cheated me," and all that. Nexon can't really afford to alienate the spenders with the slim chance that it will bring more/better spenders back.

That's why I say the game would need another Big Bang. Big Bang refreshed everything - Builds, monsters, bosses, everything. Everything would need to rescaled if they're going to fix the problem, but because of the previous paragraph's points, it would never really ever happen.

[dowie]

Things can be done. Discussions can be made. In the end it is up to Nexon to do something about it and well that probably or rather most likely isn't going to happen :/.

[Jamesie]

Things can be done. Discussions can be made. In the end it is up to Nexon to do something about it and well that probably or rather most likely isn't going to happen :/.

Only to a degree. Gameplay and pay-to-win can be solved through Big Bangs ad infinitum (and Nexon has been drawing back the pay-to-win model, somewhat). The hacking problem isn't going to be fixed without rewriting the game. At this point, that's just an unviable solution especially with MapleStory 2 around the corner.

[xparasite9]

With all that being said I feel the greatest impact to both getting a stronger, dedicated player base, and making the path of cheating less alluring, would be to significantly change that gap so that NX spenders have at most maybe a 75% advantage.

Well they pretty much gave up on that when they said "pineapple you" to the MWLB.

[RayGun]

fighting exploiters will be a never-ending task, since it is a free game and you can make as many accounts as you like.

obviously if they charged per account, there wouldn't' be that many hackers. but there would be less players also. also I would quit since I don't' play constantly.

I think advertising was a lost opportunity. I totally thought they would use more adverts after the duade reade and target etc appeared in game.
a bit of text advertising could be tolerable, but no smega style stuff or stuff which lags the player

with additional revenue from adverts nex could lessen their dependence on cubes and other upgrades, which will slowly kill the game, by reducing the population and discouraging new players. though cubes are very profitable since there is really no limit on how much a single player can spend.

if the player base increases they could make a decent profit stream from adverts.


as for a simple idea to make it slighly less pay to win, they could hand out cubes for like doing a repeatable once a day or week quest. so free players wuld be able to slowly cube their junk, but if you want a good pot quickly you need to buy nx.

[dowie]

Make it less pay to win by repeatable/daily NX quests :O

[KhainiWest]

as for a simple idea to make it slighly less pay to win, they could hand out cubes for like doing a repeatable once a day or week quest. so free players wuld be able to slowly cube their junk, but if you want a good pot quickly you need to buy nx.

I think a better solution would give PQ's an NX reward proportional to the completion.

[Takebacker]

Mileage in U&I will fix A LOT of problems.

[KhainiWest]

fix=/=barely any mitigation

[ponsez]

About the hacker issue.

3 months ago EMS changed a small part of their ToS and has started to give hackers and exploiters link bans as the common punishment rather than a simple permaban to the account from which the infraction took place.

While this doesnt completely solve the hacker and exploiter issue, a lot of exploiters and hackers(especially the average botter) have nearly completely dissapeared due to this, either because they have got punished this way or because of being scared of the losses that they would achieve if Nexon caughts them. For example Chineese mesofarmers have completely dissapeared from the game since this took place and even the advertisers at FM entrance and Henesys are almost non-existant nowadays.

IMO other MapleStory services should implement this as well, especially the ones which are suffering from hackers and exploiters the most, like for example GMS and MSEA.

[bast963]

Where to begin? WHERE TO BEGIN? ARE YOU SERIOUS? WHY IS THIS EVEN A QUESTION?

Look at Runescape and League of Legends. How many hacks do they have compared to Maple?
A trillion mouse botting methods for Runescape? Which isn't even hacking, it's botting, since it's the same speed as human players except 24 hours instead of 8.
Whatever crap can happen on that Adobe AIR client League uses that isn't even the game itself? The only thing that came from that is a masteries hack I'm sure everyone knows of. But there's none of that "use injector during game startup and enjoy teh hax" like Maple has, which would allow crap like 10.5 attack speed at lvl 1 or whatever once the game finishes loading.

Why can't they be hacked? Well, they're both REALLY REALLY SERVER SIDED. That's why. Maple is the exact reverse of those two, Maple is as client sided as those two are server sided. That's the whole reason why all that injector crap goes through, why people hex edit and the server believes it and let's you do 15 times the damage, fly, godmode, or some pomegranate.

Solution? SPEND A WHOLE YEAR REPROGRAMMING. Redo the whole damn code and keep the data. If that isn't possible, then just make a Maplestory 1.5 starting from whatever patch we're at and tell everyone they have to start over, but it's guaranteedly hack-free.