Understanding Maplestory and how amazing it actually is from a average gamers view.

I personally think their primary issue is within infrastructure of the company itself with the side issue of not enough QA. As a former QA tester myself (it's 9$ an hour for more or less untrained people by the way, averaging 25-65 hours a week), I can understand that games have bugs due to their nature. As an example, the console titles I worked on averaged 23 thousand bugs in the database before release. Granted, a large number of these were from Alpha and the incomplete nature of it, but still not something to shrug off. The way we were structured had us directly next to the developers in terms of location except when licensing outside titles or getting a company that made a contract with us for production under our name for getting our aid on production. Even in those cases, the communication between departments was key on timely progress.

Now, MS is an online game with continually updated content which means changes in code at all times. In these cases, I'd like to think that the ties between departments are even closer; but in NEXON's case, I highly doubt it. With the developers overseas, you'd want them to have an entire department just for communications between the parties, which again, I doubt is the case for NEXON. Given the extreme time zone difference, I assume that it takes a while for them to convey things if there is a problem, so they probably have some in house devs for patch work when needed. If they do, we already know they aren't at the level needed. Sure, I know as a coder that it is fairly difficult to read another's code to look for issues since everyone has their own style, but in a professional environment, they should be expected to band-aid things properly at least until they can contact the primary devs. If they admit that they aren't capable, the company as a whole should take the responsible course of action and close the game in the meanwhile (assuming it is bad enough).

As it is apparent by their history, something needs to change. Be it infrastructure, adding to the in house QA, or just adding more comment lines to the code for new recruits to understand going on that can be stored in a backup while the official version has it removed for space saving sake.

But all this is coming from someone with experience in the field, so let me put out the obvious stuff. When a skill isn't working, it isn't that hard to notice. When you're shooting through an enemy with no apparent evidence that they should be avoiding your attack, something is wrong. And flash based? Have people forgotten sprites in their entirety?

While I may sympathize a struggling company in the financial aspect, Nexon is anything but. They recorded huge profits. Unfortunately, those profits given to them by players didnt get translated to quality services for the hands that fed them.

As for maintaining their code base, it doesnt matter where you got your code from. If you're going to maintain it, then you need to make sure you CAN support it. Hiding behind their "free to play" motto is just a low blow. They have little ethic in their operation.

I remember reading something about how the idea was pitched by NEXAM to KMS developers or something of the sort. I'm not too sure about it though

Yup. I'm pretty sure that NEXON America staff doesn't code at all. It's NEXON Korea which does everything, which also explains why some bugs are addressed so late: they probably send reports to NEXON Korea, they fix the bugs for them, and send back the fix.

I agree with people who say that it should be rewritten from scratch because of all the security holes which they don't seem to be able to fix and much more, but hey, it'd be too long and expensive even for the creators of MapleStory themselves. It wouldn't be worth it. But that's why they're planning to make a MapleStory 2. Rewriting the current game would just be too expensive and maybe useless.

I skimmed over a bit of the discussion. While this is not related to the current discussion I feel it's pertinent.

Main thing is everything looks amazing from an outside perspective. I used to work at a bowling alley for a while as a mechanic (pt job at college) and everyone who came back there for the first time was fascinated by it. It was nothing fancy, a lot of complicated looking parts came together to get the job done. From an outside perspective everything was mass mayhem coming together to make the pins come down and the ball return and it was amazing.

Same case here. When you deal with it everyday that's just how things work. Thousands of lines of code are just what's needed to get the job done, same as every other game out there. Take a peak behind the curtain for the first time and it may look like a lot.

Regardless of immense amounts of code to wade through or lack of communications, Nexon America has a responsibility to it's customers. It's all about customer service. Server checks, fixing game glitches, keeping hackers at bay, etc. are critical to keep players interested.

A good paortion of players are paying customers even if they only buy a shop permit, and deserve to be treated better. Bans for no apparent reason or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time coupled with no effective way to protest is just wrong. Marketing gachapon gambling to kids is, imho, unethical.

I respect the players on this board. They know what they are talking about. It is their right and resposiblility to keep Nexon informed and, if need be, pressured into doing right by it's customers. But that's just my opinion.

Obviously all serious games consist of a lot of code, but that's why Nexon exists and why they hold programmers. Saying MapleStory is complex and hard to maintain is like saying building a house is difficult. It obviously is, and yet most companies manage to do it flawlessly on a regular basis, because that's the only thing they exist for.

I've done solo projects that can be compared to the amount of work required for one of the three parts of MS (server, client, editing tools) and have seen projects much bigger than maple done by one or two people. A successful gaming company like Nexon should be holding at the very least tens of programmers, preferably close to a hundred.

I am an average gamer (probably below average, actually).

I don't think Maplestory is amazing.

What did I say about the BrazilMS source? All of the code for PQs are in Lua scripts on the server which are just as easy to diagnose.

The PQs/events for BrazilMS Binaries are encrypted in BMS .WZ img format, not many have seen how it was coded though except for the NPC/Reactor scripts [.s format].
Although a couple of people have the tool required for decryption. Snow, Bui, etc..

It's funny, that's what Odin/Vana were (well, they didn't have to write the client) but from what I can tell they had much quicker responses to bugs. And if what Fiel's said about the BrazilMS source is accurate, Odin was also better structured. Bug in the KPQ? It's all in js so it's easy to diagnose & fix.

No, almost every PQs/Events are poorly coded.
Most of the so-called "developers" (Not every one of them) for OdinMS have zero knowledge in cleaning up code, cleaning up references [memory issue] but by copying + pasting from the already scripted ones. As long as it's working, they are fine with it no matter how badly coded it is.

Vana is an exception since it's well maintained by dedicated developers.

The PQs/events for BrazilMS Binaries are encrypted in BMS .WZ img format, not many have seen how it was coded though except for the NPC/Reactor scripts [.s format].
Although a couple of people have the tool required for decryption. Snow, Bui, etc..



No, almost every PQs/Events are poorly coded.
Most of the so-called "developers" (Not every one of them) for OdinMS have zero knowledge in cleaning up code, cleaning up references [memory issue] but by copying + pasting from the already scripted ones. As long as it's working, they are fine with it no matter how badly coded it is.

Vana is an exception since it's well maintained by dedicated developers.

I think my IQ dropped in about 4-5 points while reading this.

1.WZ files hold the details about maps, mobs, npcs and all that. The actual functionality of the PQ is coded mostly on scripts and partially on the server itself.
2.The tool required for decryption? The scripts are text files, the WZ files are... well, simply WZ files, and the server binaries have their PDB's with them. What more can you ask for? the source code? you got most of it anyway.
3.Are you talking about OdinMS's developers or the script kiddies that think they are cool because they created an NPC?