2015-08-10, 03:10 AM
hadriel Wrote:The Easy, Normal and Chaos mode bosses are a way to address the boss-ability of differently funded characters, and I think it's still ok (I just woke up with an empty head).
It's very poorly executed, at least with the newer boses. It does very little to alleviate the gap that exists between the really easy bosses and the really hard bosses, especially with the pretty pomegranate tier rewards for the easy versions compared to the hard ones. In fact, the gap between Normal and Chaos is so huge, they could have several intermediate difficulty levels. I would say, if a player can solo one level, they should have, at least, a decent chance against the boss on the next difficulty up with a full party of 6, all of whom can solo, being able to do at least 50% of the boss's HP with little to no practice. Take CRA, for example. A party of people who can just barely solo Normal RA would barely make a dent in Chaos RA.
In terms of rewards, Magnus is pretty decent at this. Easy Magnus is quite a bit easier than the other two levels, but you can still (rarely) get Nova drops from him. Gollux is even closer, with a wider selection of difficulty levels and rewards that aren't absolute crap at each tier. I mean, Cracked and Solid Gollux stuff are pretty worthless in terms of market value, but they're not awful equips, especially for newer players.
Just closing the gap isn't really enough, either. What are we looking at? Everyone being able to solo all the bosses? Or being able to do them as a party? What then? I might be suffering a case of tunnel vision here, since it's all I really care about with regard to Maple, but bossing is very likely the only thing that matters to many people, it's basically the only content that exists after a certain point. You get strong enough so that you can kill bosses, so that you can have the means to get strong enough to kill other bosses, which is currently at a standstill, at least with regards to the new Absolabs Set, given that it's an overall set with items that would take the place of Tyrants. It's pretty silly that the only way you can reasonably get Absolabs stuff is if you could already afford better things, and then the only people who could buy them probably already have nicer things. It's not a bad et, and it would probably be pretty nice for someone who couldn't afford to have Tyrants, but they probably won't see it for months, much less get them, until Lotus is easy enough that everyone can do it and they become dirt cheap.
I wouldn't mind the gap so much if there were things you could do besides bossing to get nice things. New areas, new quest lines, hell, even new skills. Back when getting to 200 was still a grind, at least you had 4th job skills to add into. Now they've reduced it so that you'll max everything by 140, a full 110 levels before the cap, with like 3 new active skills from Hypers by 200. There's little point in leveling past 200 except for the glory. I get that they want(ed?) the cap to be unreachable, but that's not how people have been playing the game as of late, possibly inspired by other MMOs where the game really begins at cap. Release new 200+ places that aren't just training grounds. When there's content above 200, people will be motivated to train to do the new content, and then make it easier to get to cap so everyone can experience it.
Have new equips sets that are a good alternative for the current best boss equips, especially for alternative activities. For bossers as well, like the Gollux stuff, have different tiers of each equip set, can't do hard mode?? Well, do normal, here's the same equips but a bit weaker, upgrade them, use them to try and take on hard. Not just a stats game, give the weaker equips mechanisms for countering the mechanics of certain bosses, for example, Normal Von Bon's tops let you add time at some probabilty (with a cooldown, you know, so it isn't absolutely OP for rapid attackers) when attacking Chaos Von Bon
If there are people who like to explore, reward them with items that aid in exploration (like HP, DEF, Speed, mystic door, dark sight, town scrolls) and have more content like Leafre's mystic seed, it's rudimentary way to track "favor" with a town, but it can surely be expanded upon, bring back hidden streets.
If there are people who quest, give them equips that grant bonus experience for completing quests, and maybe have some tangible way of showing off their progress, not just a medal, maybe titles, special equips (for example, Chief Stan's Hat), give them bonuses for helping people out, again, somewhat like Leafre's mystic seeds.
If they like the grind, give them EXP equips, portable potion shops. I'm not a huge fan of disincentives, but find a way to motivate people to train in multiple places, preferably other than reducing the EXP they get if they're in the same map for more than a period of time.
Entice people to do more than what they set out to do. You like bossing? Well there's a hidden boss somewhere in the game, but you'll have to find it on your own (explore), ask some NPCs, maybe they've heard something (quest).
With regards to Reboot. I didn't really get why they had to make a whole new server, and franky, I thought it was stupid, to implement the meso cubes and such, but thinking about it, it's pretty nice to have such things in a server where everyone starts off new on the same page. No primes, no MEEs, and the like, which were fairly broken.
Maple is getting better, but it still really sucks. The fact that it's quite possible to get really far into the bossing scene without spending money isn't enough, it has to be viable and preferably not a chore. Right now, the way funding is, it's sort of like, someone can spend hours a day gathering a few bricks, while someone else can just buy a house, sure, with enough time, the first person will have a house too, but it's by no means something that should have to be done. In terms of improving that, I think implementing legitimate cash trading in GMS might help a bit, at the very least it opens up competition and makes it less risky for both parties (one of the key differences between GMS and EMS, by the way, and several other versions). It should be viable for you to do other things, extending the metaphor (terribly, I admit), maybe you don't want a brick house, maybe you want to live in a log cabin (for example. questing over bossing). It's not the same as a brick house, but it's still a viable shelter.
It's honestly too late for most of us, we've been poisoned badly, disillusioned by the way things are, but still, I'm not ready to throw in the towel (though, I am pretty ready to quit the game, given my epiphany today at how bad things have gotten). MapleStory can be fixed, and it can recover, its death is not yet certain. Every year someone makes this thread, and it exists another year so that someone else can make this thread again, and from what I've seen, GMS is doing the best out of all the versions, minus KMS Reboot, of making cash things available to non-cash players.
So, those are my two cents.