2015-08-03, 03:02 AM
Everyone is quick to point out the cash issues in Maplestory, while I agree that there is a SIGNIFICANT imbalance of cash vs free to play, I don't think this is the main reason the game is dead. It's true that legitimately playing the game is extremely discouraging when I can throw in like 5$ of my paycheck a week to get gear that would take me months to a year to get otherwise on a human amount of time invested into the game, but no one often points out the shift in soul the game has had towards it's philosphy and balancing.
Pre-BB Maple was unfinished and not entirely polished, I'll admit that much. There was a significant amount of imbalance in the game, the top-level training area usually favored bishops ult spamming, they were simply ''better mages'' because they were actually desirable in parties unlike mages and there was no thought put into the fact that Genesis costed less MP than meteo and blizzard, and the fact that in order to even compete with a bishops damage(in undead-weak areas, which at the time skelegons were good training) they had to use element amp and pay up double the MP on top of their already more-costing ultimates, White Knights had no realistic role to play in the game among other things.
What Pre-BB did have was a much better vision in their game design, you can tell there was a lot of thought put into the finer details of the game, bosses required parties of people to beat and you can see by the early-boss designs that they were balanced with this in mind. Zakums arms were all uniquely resistant to certain things and many jobs had significant parts to play in the party, they were pretty much vital. Soloing Zakum was not only impossible, it wasn't feasible to even consider trying, Nexon didn't hand players the potential to do trillions of damage, with elixirs that healed 5billion percent of your HP while you could literally stand inside of Zakum and spam some overpowered skill that virtually reaches the entire screen. and Zakum had an appropriate reward for besting him, it was actually something worth achieving.
Once fourth job came out, there was a significant weapon-type imbalance, axes for example were utter crap and they definitely should have fixed that(looks like they are just now putting an effort into fixing this). They still suck compared to swords but at least they're not as glaringly useless, but there were a lot of options for each classes. People often complained about ''statless'' builds, but those types of builds added another layer of depth to the game for people who cared, they should have balanced regular armors to have their own pros and cons compared to sauna robes to give more choice either way, but you can tell for a time they were actually welcoming of this, they released many items that were designed just for people who wanted to try going statless and in my opinion much better than the brainless act of clicking ''auto-assign'' points to a single stat.
In current Maplestory, almost every new class has what you would expect. Giant, screen-encompassing skills that utterly decimate mobs and clog up the screen with Dragonball Z esque vigour, some bossing skills, ridiculous mobility skills that made traveling the maps pointless and ruined another layer of depth that was good for the game, giving every class a flash jump equivalent and possibly even more like zooming up ladders and gliding/double jumping upwards took away the realistic sacrifices players had to consider when picking their class. There is no depth to half of the new characters, a character-swapping mechanic is okay but the character they allow you to pick that can do it starts off halfway finished with the game already and is given action-game tools like, immediately past the tutorial, it's just so weird and out of place with Maplestory and in my opnion belongs in a devil-may-cry game.
They've made some really good changes post-BB, giving mages a realistic formula to compete with other classes was a good idea that they should have done way earlier, nerfing ultimates and now giving them a utility purpose to put more depth into damage rotation was also a very good idea and made it to where classes with a -one of a kind- skill that they mindlessly spam had some more to do to add more spice to their gameplay, as well as adding similar mechanics to jobs liker Heros where you are rewarded for giving enemies status ailments, the improvement to the wild-hunter class and allowing you to command the jaguar differently from the player-character was what I honestly felt the class should have been like in the first place. Post-BB wasn't entirely bad, but with the changes they added came a price. Pirates became mindless blast-beam spamming jobs that lost any appeal they had when they were first introduced. When pirates were introduced they felt like a REAL expansion to the game, they each had very unique elements to them that no other class had like managing your ship and utilizing invincibility frames and energy training to circumvent pot-burning, which at the time was a much bigger deal because they didn't hand out elixirs like they were candy. Now every new class is just some tacky character with some stupid aethstic equipped like ugly wings you can't remove easily and given buff skills that makes them light up as if someone shoved a bunch of NX-effects up their ass to make them light up like a christmas tree, with different animations than other classes but overall the same general concept.
Now you just solo bosses and mostly train in solitude with your little God-of-mass-destruction toon with whatever class Nexon shits out at that time of the month. Pre-BB definitely felt like it had more soul and vision than what it is today. Fixing the paywall isn't going to fix that this game is simply not what it once was, I personally wish they would have taken like a few handfuls of good updates and incorporated them into pre-bb and removed like half of these redundant classes. What the pineapple is a Kinensis? Some stupid telekenetic one-off guy who throws trucks at people? Yeah that looks like it'll be fun for a few hours but what is it actually going to contribute to the game? Most random idea for a class if I ever heard one, likely just there to show off their new skeleton system, another okay update but nothing really meaningful. I didn't start playing Maplestory to see some bushes being animated or see a boss move in a non-sprite animation but whatever floats your guys boats.
Pre-BB Maple was unfinished and not entirely polished, I'll admit that much. There was a significant amount of imbalance in the game, the top-level training area usually favored bishops ult spamming, they were simply ''better mages'' because they were actually desirable in parties unlike mages and there was no thought put into the fact that Genesis costed less MP than meteo and blizzard, and the fact that in order to even compete with a bishops damage(in undead-weak areas, which at the time skelegons were good training) they had to use element amp and pay up double the MP on top of their already more-costing ultimates, White Knights had no realistic role to play in the game among other things.
What Pre-BB did have was a much better vision in their game design, you can tell there was a lot of thought put into the finer details of the game, bosses required parties of people to beat and you can see by the early-boss designs that they were balanced with this in mind. Zakums arms were all uniquely resistant to certain things and many jobs had significant parts to play in the party, they were pretty much vital. Soloing Zakum was not only impossible, it wasn't feasible to even consider trying, Nexon didn't hand players the potential to do trillions of damage, with elixirs that healed 5billion percent of your HP while you could literally stand inside of Zakum and spam some overpowered skill that virtually reaches the entire screen. and Zakum had an appropriate reward for besting him, it was actually something worth achieving.
Once fourth job came out, there was a significant weapon-type imbalance, axes for example were utter crap and they definitely should have fixed that(looks like they are just now putting an effort into fixing this). They still suck compared to swords but at least they're not as glaringly useless, but there were a lot of options for each classes. People often complained about ''statless'' builds, but those types of builds added another layer of depth to the game for people who cared, they should have balanced regular armors to have their own pros and cons compared to sauna robes to give more choice either way, but you can tell for a time they were actually welcoming of this, they released many items that were designed just for people who wanted to try going statless and in my opinion much better than the brainless act of clicking ''auto-assign'' points to a single stat.
In current Maplestory, almost every new class has what you would expect. Giant, screen-encompassing skills that utterly decimate mobs and clog up the screen with Dragonball Z esque vigour, some bossing skills, ridiculous mobility skills that made traveling the maps pointless and ruined another layer of depth that was good for the game, giving every class a flash jump equivalent and possibly even more like zooming up ladders and gliding/double jumping upwards took away the realistic sacrifices players had to consider when picking their class. There is no depth to half of the new characters, a character-swapping mechanic is okay but the character they allow you to pick that can do it starts off halfway finished with the game already and is given action-game tools like, immediately past the tutorial, it's just so weird and out of place with Maplestory and in my opnion belongs in a devil-may-cry game.
They've made some really good changes post-BB, giving mages a realistic formula to compete with other classes was a good idea that they should have done way earlier, nerfing ultimates and now giving them a utility purpose to put more depth into damage rotation was also a very good idea and made it to where classes with a -one of a kind- skill that they mindlessly spam had some more to do to add more spice to their gameplay, as well as adding similar mechanics to jobs liker Heros where you are rewarded for giving enemies status ailments, the improvement to the wild-hunter class and allowing you to command the jaguar differently from the player-character was what I honestly felt the class should have been like in the first place. Post-BB wasn't entirely bad, but with the changes they added came a price. Pirates became mindless blast-beam spamming jobs that lost any appeal they had when they were first introduced. When pirates were introduced they felt like a REAL expansion to the game, they each had very unique elements to them that no other class had like managing your ship and utilizing invincibility frames and energy training to circumvent pot-burning, which at the time was a much bigger deal because they didn't hand out elixirs like they were candy. Now every new class is just some tacky character with some stupid aethstic equipped like ugly wings you can't remove easily and given buff skills that makes them light up as if someone shoved a bunch of NX-effects up their ass to make them light up like a christmas tree, with different animations than other classes but overall the same general concept.
Now you just solo bosses and mostly train in solitude with your little God-of-mass-destruction toon with whatever class Nexon shits out at that time of the month. Pre-BB definitely felt like it had more soul and vision than what it is today. Fixing the paywall isn't going to fix that this game is simply not what it once was, I personally wish they would have taken like a few handfuls of good updates and incorporated them into pre-bb and removed like half of these redundant classes. What the pineapple is a Kinensis? Some stupid telekenetic one-off guy who throws trucks at people? Yeah that looks like it'll be fun for a few hours but what is it actually going to contribute to the game? Most random idea for a class if I ever heard one, likely just there to show off their new skeleton system, another okay update but nothing really meaningful. I didn't start playing Maplestory to see some bushes being animated or see a boss move in a non-sprite animation but whatever floats your guys boats.