The fatal flaw with the current business model.

>Years of playing

Do you know how ridiculous that is, that you have to play years to get these opportunities just to looting/healing less tedious, or being able to move through, downright useless maps. on one character, not account, character, It's stupid. Nexon's very model is a contradiction, they focus on getting people to make some type of charge, being dependent on the high turn over rate, yet discourage players who start, and you can see that with the population dips. .

As i said i never realised until quite late in the game how useful certain things were because i was dead set on never paying for anything. So my years of playing didn't pay off until i already had like 4-5 characters over 120, which was after i stopped, came back, took a break, then came back again.

agree it takes quite alot starting fresh for new comers, the learning curve as i would call it is kinda high. Looking at the other game i play however that isn't so far from the norm for me, Dota also takes a while to get into, you WILL get pineappled on first couple of weeks of playing, it's only after some studying and coaching with some friends, or playing with other newbies your level for a good while that you start to come into your own as a player and really start to grasp the vast concept of dota as a whole. Some games have high walls of learning, and that's fine, to some people it makes them feel good that they were able to overcome that hurdel, we all have the option of not going through it, that's the main point. You choose what you want to invest into.

If a person can't realise that and ends up spending their whole retirement fund on a game then that's their problem, if a person decides they want to spend 5+ hours for 365 days getting to a certain point in maplestory guess what...that's also their choice. They are loads of the same type of schemes in the real world, hell even an entire nation was built on it, Las vegas. WE have a choice WHAT we choose to indulge in, whether the game is rigged or flawed or sucks money out of us, it's up to us to determine if it's worth it or not. As i said i'm quite enjoying the recent updates and free giveaways recently and though i don't spend money on the game like alot of ppl i know/knew in my server i'm happy with it so far. Can it be better? Hell yea. Can it be easier to get into and not have such a dumb looting system? For sure. Can they make it alot easier to fall into the trap by making it easier to upgrade in the lower levels without spending money especially when starting fresh? Indeedy do. But that's their choice if they want to make it more attractive or not. Only thing i have to care about is how i manage with what they are currently putting forward, and don't give me that oh your just condoning what they are doing and not seeking to make things better, come on i'm pretty sure they are adults, i'm pretty sure they have teams of people dedicated to understanding what works and what doesn't, i'm pretty sure they are hearing the cries of maple players all over, if they wanted to do something about it they would have done it. They aren't ignorant, they just have different objectives, and that's fine, i have my my own as well.

Now for your second part, i'm a new member to SP (been guest browsing for years but saw this thread and finally decided it was time to give my input on this forum and not just basil) so i'm not sure how to get the multi quote thingy done lol so i'll just say this is in reference to w/e else you said. Put simply as i said before, it's their choice, the way you talk it would appear as though they are the government raising taxes or some other detrimental economic burden they are placing on the taxpaying people of the nation. I get what you are saying, believe me i sure do, the game is hard and kinda unfair/ unproportional for the rewards you eventually get out of it, really disproportionate and all that, but guess what, no one has to do it, people choose to do it. That's the biggest point and most important when it comes to a game, which is a want, NOT A NEED, so anything you say concerning their tactics and what we have to go through is completely irrelevant, because we choose what we want to go through, we are capable of reason and making choices that make us happy, that's part of the definition of the human condition, the search for gratification. As a person who hobbies in anthropology and psychology, i have seen that people will do what they w/e they want that makes them happy as long as they can get away with it without any negative consequences (subjective to them as what they see as negative) depending on a person's intelligence to discern long and short term consequences.

Maple is a want, no one forces us to play it, your arguments are nice and make alot of sense, but when put to the realization that this is a game and we can stop at any time......then it just sounds like whining because you want something but can't get what you want but truth is you really don't need it at all. Anyone who is willing to go through what they go through in maple can simply pick up at anytime and find a game more suitable to their needs. Humans do what they want to do. If people want to be stupid and waste/invest their money then so be it, that's their right as a human being, If nexon wants to ignore our cries for easier stuff then so be it, game will either continue to float or sink eventually. It's their choice. I made my choice not to waste large amounts of money on it because i want to have life outside of it. That was my choice.

Let me say this to all those who might not know or too young to understand, the world sucks and is not fair, research what you are getting into and prepare for the consequences. Don't wait until something happens (in this case maplestory) such as you get unfairly banned, get scammed, get hacked, rewards aren't what you thought they were or whatever else, to complain and wonder how is this right or i should be refunded blah blah. The game has a history of being unfair, look it up, if you still decide to push on knowing this, then it's your own dam fault if you get "screwed over", no one else's. Go play something else.