Maple Memo: Addressing Recent Changes and Content Closure

http://maplestory.nexon.net/news//36847/

Hi Maplers,

Over the past few months, we’ve made several changes to the game that exhibit the overall direction we would like to pursue for Global MapleStory. While it hasn’t been very clear to you why these changes were being made, we’d like to try to explain a little bit better the discussions we’ve had and the reasoning behind some of the changes. One of the main reasons we wanted to provide this insight now is to also give more context to our decision to remove Singapore area maps and content in our v199 update this week.

Over the many years that MapleStory has been available, we have added unique content and exclusive features that were intended to provide more enjoyment and fun for our players. We believe that we have been successful in doing that so far. At the same time, it is also our responsibility to continuously change and refine content according to MapleStory’s main content and growth flow, which constantly evolves and undergoes revamps. The reality also holds that some of this unique content is making it very difficult for us to both maintain the game’s stability and to make improvements by looking into potential conflicts with future content. We are placing a lot of focus and effort on these two things and we believe that, despite not being able to maintain some of these exclusive features we have added in the past, we are moving in the right direction.

An example of this direction is the recent addition of 25 stars and Bonus Stats. We implemented these to minimize the differences in power between existing content and new content being added. However, we also needed to find ways to have this change blend well with GMS-exclusive content, such as Gollux and Sweetwater equipment without causing too many issues. We recognized that some players may not be happy or agree with these changes, but we needed to make these difficult decisions in consideration of the long-term progression of equipment and maintenance of the game.

The recent closure of Mr. Lee’s Airlines, and upcoming closure of Captain Vaga and Singapore, are also a part of this effort to try to optimize the experience of the existing content as well as future content. Again, we wanted to focus our team on the areas of the game we feel provide more meaningful value to all players in the long term.* This doesn’t mean we are planning to remove all unique content and changes that have been made in Global MapleStory. We are trying to identify areas of the game that we feel are outdated, that conflict with upcoming content and changes we are preparing, that are difficult to maintain from a technical standpoint, or provide too much opportunity for abuse with illicit activity.*While we understand that our communication with our players has not always been timely, one of our goals as a team moving forward will be to communicate our direction more clearly and inform you of any major upcoming changes as soon as we can.


In the end, our focus will always be to do our best to provide all of our players with enjoyable content.

Thank you,
Dennis "SavageAce" Bernardo

*

yes, excellent
this is precisely what i wanted, more content removal. perfect. amazing
guess i need to get my ghost ship badges on everyone now

thankfully excellent content like twisted aqua road gets to stay forever

Well now a bunch of bots are gonna be spit out into more common maps or they'll just bot malaysia you know cause byebye station is also a mini dungeon which is dumb and shouldn't exist.

I find it hilarious that JMS removed Twisted Aqua Road but we for whatever reason keep it, you know cause there's 1 meso farming spot in the entire area.

Yes, lets just bulldoze content with little warning instead of fixing it.

I wonder what will get deleted next? I won't be surprised if this trend doesn't stop.

Yes, lets just bulldoze content with little warning instead of fixing it.

I wonder what will get deleted next? I won't be surprised if this trend doesn't stop.

I'd bet my my shirt that Jett, BT and Sengoku would be removed from the Character select screen for reasons, but I'd be like Fiel.

I knew as soon as the New Level 200 Badge was released, Korea was gonna do something about the Pottable Badge. I havent played this game in so long but I wonder if Sweetwater and New Leaf City is still around.

It would have been so easy to just make the Black Mage badge potable in GMS.
It wouldn't break game balance because, considering the low low drop rate of the other dark boss accessories, maybe 2-3 people in all of GMS will get it in a year. And all of them will probably already have a potentialled badge (since they're not removing existing ones).

Putting new players at a disadvantage (both regarding the badge itself, and regarding meso-farming in Reboot), right when Nexon is hoping to attract new and lapsed players back with the final battle against the Black Mage, is a bad idea in my opinion.
But removing people's existing badges, or removing the badges' potential and stars, would have been worse.

And the precedent set, is frightening. Is Gollux next to go? Should we hoard its accessories while we still can?

KMS' jealousy is going to destroy GMS.

P.S. I don't buy the excuse about illicit activity for a minute. Obviously the bots will just go elsewhere. They don't care if their meso rates go down, they'll just charge more real-world money from their buyers.

It would have been so easy to just make the Black Mage badge potable in GMS.
It wouldn't break game balance because, considering the low low drop rate of the other dark boss accessories, maybe 2-3 people in all of GMS will get it in a year. And all of them will probably already have a potentialled badge (since they're not removing existing ones).

Putting new players at a disadvantage (both regarding the badge itself, and regarding meso-farming in Reboot), right when Nexon is hoping to attract new and lapsed players back with the final battle against the Black Mage, is a bad idea in my opinion.
But removing people's existing badges, or removing the badges' potential and stars, would have been worse.

And the precedent set, is frightening. Is Gollux next to go? Should we hoard its accessories while we still can?

KMS' jealousy is going to destroy GMS.

P.S. I don't buy the excuse about illicit activity for a minute. Obviously the bots will just go elsewhere. They don't care if their meso rates go down, they'll just charge more real-world money from their buyers.

Yea, i just don't know why they could make the KMS badges potable, i even thought in the past some medals could be, yet seens they are super relutant to do anything that make players too strong, it's just not really good honestly, people won't play the game if they can't progress in a good pace, even now with Jin Hilla and Black Mage.

Even if you add the variable of HUGE playerbase of Korea, i still think making badges and even medals potable could be interesting.

i even thought in the past some medals could be

There was a glitch a long time ago that made everything able to have potential, but it was fixed very quickly.

P.S. I don't buy the excuse about illicit activity for a minute. Obviously the bots will just go elsewhere. They don't care if their meso rates go down, they'll just charge more real-world money from their buyers.

Was thinking about this yesterday, along the lines of "there's so many bots in singapore, what do we do to fix it? remove the area obiously that way they'll go away. brilliant!"
Also I don't put it past them to continue removing areas and even blocking the creation of new nonKMS classes instead of trying to fix them(looking at you beast tamer), heck I bet the only thing keeping most of this content is china and japan, once they stop playing we'll be lucky if GMS becomes a copy of KMS.

Wanted to edit but it wont let me.
I just notice the stellar detectives notifier is missing, they updated the patch notes to list it as a bug but with the recent events it makes you wonder if it is actually a bug.

Wanted to edit but it wont let me.
I just notice the stellar detectives notifier is missing, they updated the patch notes to list it as a bug but with the recent events it makes you wonder if it is actually a bug.

Why would they pretend it's a bug, if they actually intended to remove it?
They made no pretense about Mr. Lee, Captain Vaga, or Singapore. Not even a "We might bring it back at a later date, if we can find the time to fix what's wrong with it."
And I doubt anybody would give them grief over Stellar Detectives, anyway. Ever since the Krrr ring got nerfed, it all became dead content.

Why would they pretend it's a bug, if they actually intended to remove it?
They made no pretense about Mr. Lee, Captain Vaga, or Singapore. Not even a "We might bring it back at a later date, if we can find the time to fix what's wrong with it."
And I doubt anybody would give them grief over Stellar Detectives, anyway. Ever since the Krrr ring got nerfed, it all became dead content.

What I meant was that perhaps nexon korean meant to remove it(maybe they thought it was part of captain vaga) but nexon america didn't ask for it so they see it as a bug when it was actually patched out(I think maybe it's still there and just the notifier was removed), I guess time will tell if they add it back or not.

I see soon the following content removed:
- Masteria
- Zipangu
- The China exclusive map.

Seems that KMS wants to fuse with GMS... something is coming on that

I see soon the following content removed:
- Masteria
- Zipangu
- The China exclusive map.

Seems that KMS wants to fuse with GMS... something is coming on that

I've been looking for excuses to quit. Killing Masteria might finally do it for me.

Killing off the map where I came from? Good. Bye. I'm jumping over to MS2 in a couple of days then.

Hadriel