Has anyone in Nexon ever taken a Marketing class?

If so, why would they ignore the principle that it's so much easier and cheaper to retain old customers as opposed to trying to gain new customers? That's like marketing 101, and its sad to see a game run so poorly. They wonder why they have to rush new content into GMS because we're unhappy with it? 90% of the new content either doesn't work correctly, or the new content ruins old content that we love. For example, Big Bang. First of all, there's many people that can't even enter the Cash Shop. Error 38: end of file stops them. Second of all, Big Bang trashed bossing completely on all summonable bosses. That leaves us with, what? ToT for anyone over lvl 140. The good of Big Bang is that its easier to lvl until 140, creating a new soft level cap which has been mentioned here in other threads. The bad is, the amount of glitches far outweighs any good that Big Bang could bring.

It just makes me wonder, does anyone have statistics on the size of Nexon America? How many programmers are actually employed by them?

"If you don't like it, leave it."

The game's been made much more streamlined for the lower levels, and that gets them sunk deeper into the game much quicker than before. They will fix the errors when they fix them.

Making a complete glitch-free game is pretty much impossible. Have you ever taken a computer programming course?

Glitches suck, but they're bearable. They'll be fixed with time so just have some patience.

Making a complete glitch-free game is pretty much impossible. Have you ever taken a computer programming course?

Glitches suck, but they're bearable. They'll be fixed with time so just have some patience.

Did QA for games myself and I can fully agree with the fact that being glitch free is near impossible after releasing games that had a history of 13,000+ bugs over the course of the testing, however there is an expectation within the market. In the classification system we used, "A" Bugs were classified as bugs that crash the game or limit any forwards progression in the game at a certain point. Games cannot be shipped with any "A" bugs remaining (also the bugs that dealt the the ESRB). "B" Bugs were ones that were obvious within the course of standard gameplay, but did not hinder or get in the way of general progression. Those had to be minimized, but were not entirely erased. Then there were "C" bugs; anything that would not likely be pointed out in standard gameplay and didn't affect a whole lot (mostly visual stuff here). This one ended up anyone's guess based on deadlines.

Now, I can understand leaving glitches in a game, as you said, it can be expected. However, there's a limit to what should be pushed onto the public market in the name of deadlines. Leaving those bugs in that cause the game to crash is just not professional.

Now then, on topic. They've been doing it for years, it is nothing new. However, it does seem like they are getting to the point where they want to milk it for all it is worth before it dries up.

Every game's going to have its glitches.

However, i will admit that Maple Story has them WAY worse than other F2P games i've played with and they do deserve any criticism given as MS brings in way more money than they could ever hope.

Here's the thing though, MS is the only case i know of where the bugs affect random members of the population, some can get in cash shop just fine, others i've heard can boss just as well too. It just may be extremely tricky to deal with because the bugs may not be fully within the program (like the Zakum HP bar issue Fiel noticed), but in how it interacts with various hardware its used on (Memory leaks and graphic card freakouts). We have seen SOME effort by nexon though; with the release of a error report system set to activate when MS crashes. Late yes, but no time like the present.

Click for ultimately pointless speculation.

 Spoiler

I don't personally know, and i don't think NA has ever revealed staff information (given how obsessed some upset players may be its probably for their safety) but i really think at this point they're pretty small with a focus on localization and all actual development is probably overseas. If they were here, they'd probably have the bugs fixed by now as they'd be able to hands on try out one of our PC's in america to see what the problem is. I don't really imagine Nexon to be that lazy to WANT these bugs to exist; im more willing to believe they're just not putting much money into the effort if anything.

Every game's going to have its glitches.

However, i will admit that Maple Story has them WAY worse than other F2P games i've played with and they do deserve any criticism given as MS brings in way more money than they could ever hope.

Ever play anything run by ijji?

Ever play anything run by ijji?

Actually, come to think of it. I wanted to play online for the first time ages ago and stumbled across Gunbound.

So the answer is I TRIED to play something run by ijji.

I could not get it to run for the life of me, no matter what i tried. I gave up on it and looked a little more for a F2P online game...

...And that's how i came across Maple Story for the first time.

Wizet, the company which develops Maplestory, was founded in 2001, so that should give you an idea of how small they were when kMS started in 2003(kMST). They should have grown a lot by now, but I am not sure. I saw something which hinted at an American branch having a dozen or so people a while ago.

Wizet was then bought by Nexon, who does all of the advertisement and what not. I believe the agreement is similar to how Activision works with their developers. (IW, Treyarch, Bungie, etc.)

A little excerpt from the Wizet Wiki page:

Prior to joining Nexon America, Min Kim operated the successful launch of Maplestory as the Vice President of Global Business Development in Wizet Corporation. Min started his career in video games as a senior associate of business development at Nexon Corporation pursuing new business opportunities such as a social networking service, a board game business, and online game licensing, eventually becoming the Vice President of the Nexon America branch

they retain costumers u think they want some old ones back

Actually they don't dish out new content that often. This isn't a PvP game, things don't change much, and it gets boring real fast. If they don't get out new content things would get stale and people would quit.

It's hard for them to segment their market which consist of huge population players that come from various places.
Some players might be fashion-conscious group (who likes, aware of, and keep demanding new contents), some might be conservative group ( who prefer existing things with improvement)..so it isn't an easy task for them to best-suit all players' preferences.
I believe most things come with a little drawbacks or defection, that's fact, nothing is perfect lol. Try to see things from various angle, and try not to blame for anything and everything that done by others like you didn't make mistakes before D:

Couple of comment I agreed with and a couple I didn't. I have taken a few very BASIC programming classes and I agree, glitch-free in a decent deadline is near impossible. As was said though, I'm so frustrated with the amount of glitches knowingly left in for the sake of deadlines. I guess overall it's a two-way street though. To improve service from Nexon, we as players need to cut the amount of tickets/ bug reports in the forums to about 10% of what they are now, and if someone else has already made a bug report on the forums, you need to support theirs.

As far as new content goes, I just personally felt like this whole year was rushed. nothing for 6 months really, and then potential, enhancement, big bang, and now resistance in one year? I feel like they could have spent a year and a half or even 2 years on that and focused more on glitches/programming than deadlines. Also, you think Nexon retains customers? about 8-10% of the people I played maple with when I started playing again in december of 2008 play now. thats like 90% in 2 years of MY friends that they've lost. As far as Big Bang goes, thats almost purely to try and pull in new customers and not really retain customers. I say this because in my opinion, everyone I know that's played maple for more than 6 months has a char over 140, if not two. Again this is from a relatively small sample, but still.

/ my 2 cents

It's hard for them to segment their market which consist of huge population players that come from various places.
Some players might be fashion-conscious group (who likes, aware of, and keep demanding new contents), some might be conservative group ( who prefer existing things with improvement)..so it isn't an easy task for them to best-suit all players' preferences.
I believe most things come with a little drawbacks or defection, that's fact, nothing is perfect lol. Try to see things from various angle, and try not to blame for anything and everything that done by others like you didn't make mistakes before D:

This may be my favorite post. I dont' expect perfection, and it's not a matter of not liking it enough to leave it, I just sometimes get annoyed and wonder. The insight is brilliant though.

Everyone at NexonAM need to take a Customer Relations course to learn how to deal with people.

Everyone at NexonAM need to take a Customer Relations course to learn how to deal with people.

Even if they could deal with people though, go look at nexon forums for the bug/glitch reports. 100s of new topics from big bang, and there may be quite a few of them that they hardly have the answer to at all.

Even if they could deal with people though, go look at nexon forums for the bug/glitch reports. 100s of new topics from big bang, and there may be quite a few of them that they hardly have the answer to at all.

This is one of the biggest problems imo. I can only imagine how many tickets they get in a day, and maybe only 5% of them are actually worthwhile.

It's like reporting people. Out of all the ones that are actual botters/hackers, how many more out there are just like a KSer or some kid who didn't get his way so he/she reported someone.

This is one of the biggest problems imo. I can only imagine how many tickets they get in a day, and maybe only 5% of them are actually worthwhile.

It's like reporting people. Out of all the ones that are actual botters/hackers, how many more out there are just like a KSer or some kid who didn't get his way so he/she reported someone.

For sure. Some of the blame definitely falls upon us as a community.

For sure. Some of the blame definitely falls upon us as a community.

love the beaten wife mentality in this thread

love the beaten wife mentality in this thread

Lmfao, my bad. I'll be the first to admit that Nexon has fucked us where the sun don't shine till we bled. I just think all the 13 year olds submitting tickets like,

"OMG MY CHAR CANT GO IN CASH SHOP! I BUY LOTS NX, YOU DON'T FIX? I QUIT! pineapple YOU NEXON@@@@@@@@@@"

aren't helping the problem at all, because they make an army of idiots and fill Nexon's ticket system full of tickets like that with horrible grammar and probably misspellings.

mb, double