31/1 - Characters' max level is increased to 250!

Absolutely all of this.

I'm really struggling to see how many of you claim this will solve the game's rampant "power creep" issues. Please. It's not and hasn't been an issue of "power creep" for the last 3 years, but a "power overload." How many of you can OHKO anything that moves in the game that's a non-boss monster? Even major bosses are getting OHKO'd now by the best funded characters in KMS. Doesn't that seem like an issue to you? And if so, how is giving players more levels and power going to solve that?

IIRC Spadow mentioned a change to mobs, like a 25% increase in level/HP/etc. all-around. What does that solve? All it does is make them even meatier EXP meatsacks to parallel the level change. It doesn't make the game more balanced, or much less, fun.

This game has and always will have an enormous host of balance issues thanks to Nexon not addressing the main concerns of power, mostly class skill imbalance issues (especially between newer v. older classes) and the incredibly out-of-control potential system.

All Nexon is doing with this change is buying more time and creating more meatsacks so you keep doing the same thing you've always been doing. Months later, when everyone is at 250 and all their Lv. 160 gear is upgraded to the max and whatnot, the game is going to play THE EXACT SAME as it does now. You're going to kill everything in one hit, nothing will be a challenge, and you'll be clamoring for more updates and higher damage caps because golly gee your 5th Job skills can do so much more than the 99m they're hitting now!

So all this does in the end is piss off a lot of people who worked hard back in the day to reach Lv. 200 when they did. Honestly though, everyone who has said "this is an MMO, it's what happens" is right, a level cap was bound to happen soon, but to underscore my contentions and to further echo Sapta's, it's a pointless change if not brought about strategically in tandem with other necessary game updates. But as we've seen from Spadow's recent screenshot, and from Nexon's track record over the last 10 years, that's most certainly not the case.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go screenshot my rankings for posterity's sake.

Thanks for defending us "old veteran players" Dan.

There is a reason why most of us players who did what we did to get our ranks are frustrated. I'm going to share 2 stories from my own personal experience. First ill introduce myself. I'm the rank 2 player in my server and ranked 39 in gms (should be 40 but i guess someone's char got deleted) And my pirate is the rank 329th overall (should be 333) and ranked 33rd in my server Khaini. Personally i am a bit frustrated by this because of all the work put into the game. And before i begin my story i can't begin to imagine how many insane stories other old veteran players might have had. On the other hand i'm a little excited only because i love challenges.

My first story was when i was training my bishop at the 15x lvls at himes before 4th job was even released. I raced my friend chris to see who can get the most experience in a day. We trained 20 hours on 2x cards and 2 of those hours were 4x because of the yearly thanksgiving event. We were lucky to get 2 events in a year back then. we both made 150m exp that day and thats about how much exp it took to lvl at 150, he was lvl 167 at the time.

The second story was when i trained my Buccanner. Pirates came out 2 months after my bishop reached 200 back in 2008. I took part in the race for the top rank pirate in gms. I ended up as the 5th rank and 1st in my server. I kept losing internet for 2 weeks at a time back then because we never payed the bills. In total i probably lost about 2 month of time i could have been training. Anyway the last time i lost my internet i was the 4th rank pirate in gms. after i got my internet back i was the 7th rank and at lvl 190. At that point i started training 23 hours a day instead of 20. I had 1 hour worth of sleep and made my siblings wake me up. If i couldnt wake up i would take my finger and bite it as hard as i can until i did. i made it to the 5th rank and the 6th rank person was on my tail. Funny thing is i lost my internet when i was lvl 199 and 99.98% so i went over to my cousins house downloaded the game and just lvled as quick as i could. People were suprised that i had not one but two lvl 200's back then. It took about 6 months of nonstop training but the satisfaction was great. [COLOR="#FF0000"]BTW just so you know i wasn't in great health after training 23 hours for 2 weeks i looked like i was on the verge of death.
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After all that over time level 200 became a joke. There was no more satisfaction of being 200. Honestly a person who reaches lvl 200 now would probably be lvl 90 back then. Now the cap is being removed undermining all that work. It's as if 3 years of wasting your time training to get to 200 has been replaced with a 1 week effort. Do we receive any compensation? no. But that's right we don't play anymore so we don't deserve those ranks. But the truth is that's all we have left to show for the wasted 3 years of effort now there is nothing left except stories.

But there is a reason why our generation died out. The game is nothing like it was 4 years ago. It's true i kept my rank for 5 years. But yeah hopefully these stories serve as a wake up call. Who knows how the game is going to turn out 5 years from now. would be nice if they kept the old ranks but i doubt it matters. But part of me is also actually excited. Either ill join the race to 250 or ill just do it just to accomplish it.

Things i regret: Spending 3 years to accomplish something that later became undermined.
Things i do not regret: Meeting a handful of friends like Dan who i see twice a year now.