Fixing MapleStory

I've discussed this topic before and provided a lot of detail.

Here it is for posterity:

The idea of a specific server is silly, but a start from scratch kind of approach like "Big Bang" might be better. I haven't looked at any of your posts to see what your ideas were but if I had the ability to change the game I would do the following.


Remove the massive amount of potential in this game.

Potential ruined the challenge in this game but also allowed things to get "stronger" in the sense that the bosses might be perceived more difficult should potential never have been there in the first place. A good solution to circumvent the issue of power creeping would be to change the limit of potential by introducing a weight system. The weight system would vary from class to class, with warriors being one the ones able to hold the most weight.

Weight System:

• Beginners would start with 10 weight.
  
• Archers and Thieves would get +30 weight
  
• Magicians would get +50 weight
  
• Pirates and Warriors would get +80 weight
  
• Second job gives you +20 weight
  
• Third job gives you +50 weight
  
• Fourth job gives you +100 weight
  
• Level 200 would give you +200 weight
  

This would give Archers and Thieves a maximum of 410 weight, Magicians would get 430 weight, Pirates and Warriors would get a maximum of 460 weight.

How Weight would be used:

• All-Stat% items would be 15 weight per %. e.g. 6% all stat = 90 weight
  
• Primary stat% items would be 20 weight per %. e.g. 9% STR = 180 weight
  
• Secondary stat% items would be 10 weight per %. e.g. 6% DEX = 60 weight
  
• +STAT would just be their respective additive stat per weight divided by two. e.g. +10 DEX is 5 weight.
  
• %Boss Damage and Total Damage% would be 5 weight per %. e.g. 40% boss damage = 200 weight (You should get it by now)
  
• %Ignore PDR would be 2 weight per %.
  
• %Attack/Magic ATT would be 15 weight per %.
  
• +Attack/Magic ATT would be 2 weight per their respective stat. e.g. +10 attack = 20 weight
  
• Other potential categories would either be removed or cost no weight.
  

Potential would be accessible via an enchanter that you would pay mesos to get random stats for up to 10 times per item per day at about 1m per enchant. You could use NX to possibly bypass this limit to be 20 times per day but nothing more. Also I would probably lower everything to one line or two.

Dojo itself would be reworked in the sense that it would have the best potential:weight ratio to encourage people to dojo.

Dojo Revamp

Under the assumptions above, I would make dojo awards have one more bracket. Prizes would be split to 1st, 2nd-10th, 11th-25th, 26th to 50th and each glove would cost a certain amount of weight rather than each individual stat being worth something.

Weight and Stat of Gloves:

1st Place Glove:
Cost: 90 Weight. Actual Weight: 450 Weight. Ratio: 20% of actual.
Stats: +30 All Stats, +25 Attack/M.Attack, +250 W/M.Defense, +200 Accuracy/Avoidability [+15% Total Damage, +15% All Stats, +30% Boss Damage]

2nd-10th Place Glove:
Cost: 80 Weight. Actual Weight: 325 Weight. Ratio: 25% of actual.
Stats: +25 All Stats, +20 M/W.Attack, +200 M/W.Defense [+10% Total Damage, +10% All Stats, +25% Boss Damage]

11th-25th Place Glove:
Cost: 70 Weight. Actual Weight: 275 Weight, Ratio: 25% of actual.
Stats: +20 All Stats, +15 M/W.Attack, +150 M/W.Defense [+10% Total Damage, +10% All Stats, +15% Boss Damage]

26th-50th Place Glove:
Cost: 45 Weight. Actual Weight: 150 Weight, Ratio: 30% of actual.
Stats: +15 All Stats, +10 M/W.Attack, +100 M/W.Defense [+5% Total Damage, +5% All Stats, +10% Boss Damage]

Rework how bosses are done in this game

Currently bosses are too easy or offer gimmicky (I hate this word) challenges. I would do something such as make bosses have raids as a requirement with different types of combination of classes to discourage soloing. Such a boss would be one that has different types of "weaknesses" or HP bars that can only be triggered by certain classes or skills. For example, a boss that has 3 weaknesses that one requires a bowman using hurricane or ultimate strafe to diminish their HP, a thief attacking however they want to, or a magician can only damage the boss if it's currently DoT'd. Or the boss could only be damaged using the environment variables or under a certain type of debuff such as stun. If someone is too weak to do it on their own they could do some sort of spiritual bond with their team members to allow the team members to pierce through their weakness for a certain amount of time, if such a case would be a problem. Just a couple of ideas, it could make boss battles much more interesting and cooperative.

Revamp the entire monster system

Monsters are pathetic in this game. Training with regular monsters is completely asinine and extremely slow because it's overshadowed by things such as Lionheart Castle and Stronghold. I think LHC and SH worked out the concept of teamwork pretty well, so why not scale the experience appropriately for regular monsters in such a way that those "soloing" would get a fair share and add more areas like LHC and SH to make others happy? It'd be a win-win situation.

Increase the meso-cap

I'm unsure why we're using signed integers. Why can't we use uint32_t or something to make the cap 2^32-1 rather than 2^31-1.

Make NX more accessible for the common player

Most games already know how to do the Free To Play concept way better than Nexon. Games understand that money shouldn't be the only way to get things, rather it should be an easier way of getting things. For example, in LoL champions cost money but you could always wait for the champion to be available, or in TF2 all the items could be bought via the store but you could always get it via random drop or trade for it. It seems insane that we still can't do this in Maple and that NX remains something the "cool kids" can only get.

That's all I can think about currently. I'll add some more stuff in this post later if I can think of something.

Now, this post it 6 months old. A lot of stuff has happened and changed since then. I also stopped paying attention to Maple a lot more, despite quitting a while back. For starters, the meso cap was actually raised! Quite amazing actually how they managed to add 64-bit variables into the game and in the process fucking things up. But that's something else entirely. Another thing they added is something called an "Occult Cube" I believe that is basically a noobified cube. Progress I suppose but definitely not something worth using for the most part.

I like to think that my original propositions still apply though, with the addition of these few things:

Make SP Assignment Easier

Might be somewhat controversial, but clicking a lot of SP is quite tedious. There should be buttons such as "Max All" that puts all your current SP into a skill until you max it and one that pops up a dialogue window to input how much SP you would like to manually add to your skill.

PQ Revamp

The way current PQs are handled is pretty poor. The experience is pretty good but it's unfortunately limited and they aren't that great as they were when the concept was revamped initially. The way I propose this is fixed is to remove the daily limit and increase the experience a bit more. Possibly add more PQs in conjunction to the new level cap. Since I am assuming my own perfect maple world, we will assume that the monster system is revamped as well and that removing the daily limit isn't exactly "too broken"

Add raids

Pretty similar, and I believe Nexon is doing something similar to this in the upcoming MapleStory RED.

Add higher leveled content

Currently this game is way to centric on low leveled areas such as 30-100 and they have been continuously adding stuff to this range even now, consider Fairy Academy. I think it would be a good idea to add more content to the game that would target the higher levels like 110+, take for example Neo City and the like. They have so much more content to offer and rewards are seemingly pleasing even for those who are poor. Extending these types of quests and content to other levels would be absolutely lovely.

Ditch the master book system

The masterbook system has been FUBAR since the beginning of MapleStory. The entire concept has always been quite dumb and I can tell they're trying to improve upon it. I feel as if we should go back to our pre-Big Bang roots and do quests for either our skills or increasing the mastery of the skill to max level. That way when you max a skill it would actually feel rewarding rather than a money sink based on luck. This would also disallow bots from farming these items, so sub-sequentially removing lower cost of them (albeit with it removed it doesn't matter)

Fifth Job

Quite obvious. With ~90 left over SP and now with the increased level cap you know we need an extended job.