2013-09-14, 01:08 AM
Unfortunately, I guess we can't really know Nexon's full balance sheet. I would think that thousands of players spending $25 each to look cooler would be better than a dozen of players spending thousands to be #1, but there's no real way to know exactly how many "I'd pay $25 if it weren't for Nexon's horrible pay2win system" players actually exist. Obviously, the cube system has brought them some profit (at least in the short term) because they stuck with it and kept expanding on and pushing it.
But Nexon is really stretching it. We know that the more the system becomes pay2win, the fewer people are willing to invest at all. And theoretically, they're past the tipping point where they need to back it off and reach out to the "I just want to pay a little bit to look cute" crowd who otherwise gets turned off by BUY CUBES BUY CUBES OMG BETTER STATS HIGHER ODDS SALE BUY NOW (but still $10 worth of cubing most likely doesn't get you any higher than the 6% stat you could possibly achieve without cubing).
And I honestly do think the mild spending, anti-pay2win crowd counts a lot more than people realize. Why? Because when someone leaves and/or swears off NX, nobody notices. Even if the person makes a big deal out of it and tries to start a boycott (which will get deleted from all the popular Maple Story sites, especially Nexon's own site), people laugh them off and be like "yeah it won't work lol noob". Yet, whenever someone posts 400% stat, 15-star's a tyrant equip, or +10's a weapon with Pinnacle Scrolls, suddenly it's a big deal. Then people make 10 page topics filled with a mixture of disgust at the spending, defending of "they can use their money however they want", complaints about Nexon's pay2win, "omg u jelly bro?", etc. The result? We constantly see and hear about the, oh, thirty people who have nearly limitless wallets and a drive to be #1 at any cost, but then the thousands of people who quit and don't spend ten bucks on the game are totally overlooked and not given a second thought.
But Nexon is really stretching it. We know that the more the system becomes pay2win, the fewer people are willing to invest at all. And theoretically, they're past the tipping point where they need to back it off and reach out to the "I just want to pay a little bit to look cute" crowd who otherwise gets turned off by BUY CUBES BUY CUBES OMG BETTER STATS HIGHER ODDS SALE BUY NOW (but still $10 worth of cubing most likely doesn't get you any higher than the 6% stat you could possibly achieve without cubing).
And I honestly do think the mild spending, anti-pay2win crowd counts a lot more than people realize. Why? Because when someone leaves and/or swears off NX, nobody notices. Even if the person makes a big deal out of it and tries to start a boycott (which will get deleted from all the popular Maple Story sites, especially Nexon's own site), people laugh them off and be like "yeah it won't work lol noob". Yet, whenever someone posts 400% stat, 15-star's a tyrant equip, or +10's a weapon with Pinnacle Scrolls, suddenly it's a big deal. Then people make 10 page topics filled with a mixture of disgust at the spending, defending of "they can use their money however they want", complaints about Nexon's pay2win, "omg u jelly bro?", etc. The result? We constantly see and hear about the, oh, thirty people who have nearly limitless wallets and a drive to be #1 at any cost, but then the thousands of people who quit and don't spend ten bucks on the game are totally overlooked and not given a second thought.