2013-05-21, 06:05 AM
As someone who's gotten tired of the game, it's pretty easy for me to rant about maple's problems. This is from the point of view of a player who has reached endgame, so it might not fully address things like lower level content and Nexon's agenda.
Get rid of the potential system
Shared by Locked and many others in this thread, this one is pretty obvious. The exponential nature of the potential system just makes the gap between the rich and poor enormous. This makes it impossible to create content that fits both the rich and the poor. New boss for the poorer players? Killed in 5 seconds by the funded players. Super boss for the funded players? Funded players can't take it down for months; newer players can't even dream of touching it.
What's difficult about this problem is that you can't fix it by simply adjusting values because there's always going to eventually be this huge gap just due to how the system inherently works. The only solution is to completely change the system so that it becomes more linear or has a cap like Locked suggests. However, that's not so simple either, because that's basically screwing over everyone who has paid for the potential system and its increased benefits for a few years now. I don't have any numbers to back it up, but I'm pretty sure these same players make up a large percentage of the players that are still playing maplestory and a very large percentage of Nexon's income from maplestory. IMO, fixing this problem and keeping your best customers happy is pretty much impossible, so the decision Nexon would have to make would have to do the opposite of what they've done for the longest time now: forgo short-term profits for a better game, increased player base, and better long-term profits.
Make in game gear improvement more significant and CS-based improvements less significant
Anything you can do, I can do in a few clicks in the CS. This is sort of relating back to the gap between the rich and the poor. A game is designed to reward your effort with a prize that is worthy of that effort you put in. Understandably, Nexon runs a business, so it has to be making money back that it doesn't make from sales, but they go too far with it. Because of the wards/shields/guardians/returns/stamps/everything in CS, it makes perfect/good/godly items too easy to obtain relative to how strong they are. This not only makes the nxless players with crafted earrings and 60% scrolled gear less significant, but it also messes up the market even for people who buy a moderate amount of nx/have moderate amounts of meso. It pretty much undermines the concept of spending time/effort for rewards because the rewards you get from doing that are so miniscule compared to dropping a few k nx on your items.
The solution is pretty easy. Just stop making EVERYTHING obtainable from CS. Right, now, quite literally, everything that requires effort/luck/anything can be solved by something in the CS. Removing some of those things will make godly items rarer, and therefore, increase the value of things that are not top of the line, decreasing that gap I keep talking about between the rich and the poor. Hefferheffer spent 20b on 27 atk BWG? There's only one or two and making it is not worth the reward until you have money to throw away. 14 atk WG's were still "godly". Hell, even 10 atk WG's meant you were significantly above average.
Stop making so many classes. If you do make classes, stop making them all good at everything
Basically, every class right now is Lebron James. They can play every position. Every new class and every revamp makes it so every class is mobile, strong, sturdy, good at mobbing, good at single target, good at everything. Physical advantages besides DPS are essentially irrelevant; the other criteria for choosing a class nowadays mainly involve just aesthetics. This sort of defeats the purpose of classes. In addition, this has the indirect effect of making party play for bossing/training less relevant as well.
Classes need to be more unique and have WEAKNESSES. That's what makes playing/choosing a particular class fun/different from the others. Actually, this should extend to everything in maple. Everything that has to do with classes/equipment is too linear. There's pretty much only one way to play most classes and one way to gear them. There needs to be places where decisions can be made that can differentiate yourself from other players, whether that be in the classes, skill tree, in gear, or in stat allocation.
Make better bosses; be more creative
Maple bossing right now is pretty much throwing your Deeps at a sandbag till it dies, occasionally stopping/counting for DR.
The ideal here is that bosses require both a little mechanical skill and a bit of strategy/decision making skills. In addition, classes should be able to either perform specific roles at certain bosses or just be quite good at a boss that other classes have major trouble at. Again, just something to make classes matter outside of damage. Magnus and RA are recent bosses that are moving closer to that, but they still don't have it right, especially in the party play aspect.
Make leveling harder; make strength gains from leveling better
Reaching the "end game" aka level 200 is a little too easy now. Getting to 200 can basically be a chore you set aside for one day after a class comes out. Leveling needs to be harder and the resulting gains from leveling need to be adjusted to make leveling worth it/significant again.
If the goal is to stop the grindfest that was old maplestory, then provide more EXP from bossing/quests. 5th job for new skills on the new 250 curve would probably solve this problem for a long time, so I'm hoping for an announcement soon on that.
=========================
There's way more, but I'm going to stop because I realize my post is turning pomegranatety. These are just the issues that personally affect me the most. Thanks to the OP for making this thread so I have an excuse to ramble...!
Get rid of the potential system
Shared by Locked and many others in this thread, this one is pretty obvious. The exponential nature of the potential system just makes the gap between the rich and poor enormous. This makes it impossible to create content that fits both the rich and the poor. New boss for the poorer players? Killed in 5 seconds by the funded players. Super boss for the funded players? Funded players can't take it down for months; newer players can't even dream of touching it.
What's difficult about this problem is that you can't fix it by simply adjusting values because there's always going to eventually be this huge gap just due to how the system inherently works. The only solution is to completely change the system so that it becomes more linear or has a cap like Locked suggests. However, that's not so simple either, because that's basically screwing over everyone who has paid for the potential system and its increased benefits for a few years now. I don't have any numbers to back it up, but I'm pretty sure these same players make up a large percentage of the players that are still playing maplestory and a very large percentage of Nexon's income from maplestory. IMO, fixing this problem and keeping your best customers happy is pretty much impossible, so the decision Nexon would have to make would have to do the opposite of what they've done for the longest time now: forgo short-term profits for a better game, increased player base, and better long-term profits.
Make in game gear improvement more significant and CS-based improvements less significant
Anything you can do, I can do in a few clicks in the CS. This is sort of relating back to the gap between the rich and the poor. A game is designed to reward your effort with a prize that is worthy of that effort you put in. Understandably, Nexon runs a business, so it has to be making money back that it doesn't make from sales, but they go too far with it. Because of the wards/shields/guardians/returns/stamps/everything in CS, it makes perfect/good/godly items too easy to obtain relative to how strong they are. This not only makes the nxless players with crafted earrings and 60% scrolled gear less significant, but it also messes up the market even for people who buy a moderate amount of nx/have moderate amounts of meso. It pretty much undermines the concept of spending time/effort for rewards because the rewards you get from doing that are so miniscule compared to dropping a few k nx on your items.
The solution is pretty easy. Just stop making EVERYTHING obtainable from CS. Right, now, quite literally, everything that requires effort/luck/anything can be solved by something in the CS. Removing some of those things will make godly items rarer, and therefore, increase the value of things that are not top of the line, decreasing that gap I keep talking about between the rich and the poor. Hefferheffer spent 20b on 27 atk BWG? There's only one or two and making it is not worth the reward until you have money to throw away. 14 atk WG's were still "godly". Hell, even 10 atk WG's meant you were significantly above average.
Stop making so many classes. If you do make classes, stop making them all good at everything
Basically, every class right now is Lebron James. They can play every position. Every new class and every revamp makes it so every class is mobile, strong, sturdy, good at mobbing, good at single target, good at everything. Physical advantages besides DPS are essentially irrelevant; the other criteria for choosing a class nowadays mainly involve just aesthetics. This sort of defeats the purpose of classes. In addition, this has the indirect effect of making party play for bossing/training less relevant as well.
Classes need to be more unique and have WEAKNESSES. That's what makes playing/choosing a particular class fun/different from the others. Actually, this should extend to everything in maple. Everything that has to do with classes/equipment is too linear. There's pretty much only one way to play most classes and one way to gear them. There needs to be places where decisions can be made that can differentiate yourself from other players, whether that be in the classes, skill tree, in gear, or in stat allocation.
Make better bosses; be more creative
Maple bossing right now is pretty much throwing your Deeps at a sandbag till it dies, occasionally stopping/counting for DR.
The ideal here is that bosses require both a little mechanical skill and a bit of strategy/decision making skills. In addition, classes should be able to either perform specific roles at certain bosses or just be quite good at a boss that other classes have major trouble at. Again, just something to make classes matter outside of damage. Magnus and RA are recent bosses that are moving closer to that, but they still don't have it right, especially in the party play aspect.
Make leveling harder; make strength gains from leveling better
Reaching the "end game" aka level 200 is a little too easy now. Getting to 200 can basically be a chore you set aside for one day after a class comes out. Leveling needs to be harder and the resulting gains from leveling need to be adjusted to make leveling worth it/significant again.
If the goal is to stop the grindfest that was old maplestory, then provide more EXP from bossing/quests. 5th job for new skills on the new 250 curve would probably solve this problem for a long time, so I'm hoping for an announcement soon on that.
=========================
There's way more, but I'm going to stop because I realize my post is turning pomegranatety. These are just the issues that personally affect me the most. Thanks to the OP for making this thread so I have an excuse to ramble...!