Nostalgia of Pre-BigBang Maplestory

I can't deny that there is a degree of monsters not necessarily being weak as well, but overfunding plays the biggest role. Additionally, if taking a couple more hits to kill a monster constitutes an incredible enough of an increase in difficulty that we have to sit in a circle and talk about "when monsters were strong," then that's a completely different problem. So yes, monsters did get weaker. However, you sitting on 200% mainstat is probably the biggest culprit. (That and maybe the free +1500 HP (and more) from character cards.) I don't know about you, but the vast majority of my characters can't kill Crockies (or much else with comparable HP) in two hits.

"This generation sucks, the seventies were better"
"Generation I of Pokémon was so much better than Generation V"
"Final Fantasy pre-merger was so much better"
"The original Yu-Gi-Oh! series was the best"
"Pre-BB was better than Post-BB"

I don't know how you can argue about difficulty in MapleStory when literally all it is is time. It's not difficult for me to press buttons ad infinitum, perhaps if I had a physical or mental disability, but I don't. All MapleStory was pre-BB was a time suck. You spend hours on end to gain ten percent, and when you got ten percent ten times, you did it again. If perhaps your fingers slipped and you died, add some more time.

There's things that I do think were dumbed down such as the accuracy system being standardized and monsters becoming a lot less threatening, but overall I agree with all of this. Maple has always been the game I play when I need just a little skill and read timings to prevent a wipe-out by DR and it's also the game I play when I just want to see items drop; in that sense it has a very simple charm to me and that 'simple' part hasn't changed from the time I first logged in until now.

Also, like you almost none of my characters are strong. The only exception is my Phantom who I use for bossing and MPSH hunting these days.