2017-05-23, 08:22 AM
If I was king for a day, two big changes would happen;
1) Make cubes/nebs/anything stat oriented a free system. I will keep the option to purchase, but I'm talking cubes being a very common drop, and the stat orientations being with different monsters/bosses. There is a 'similar' system already incorporated but I feel it needs to be flooded more, to the point where it's not worth it to buy them from CS.
2) Consolidate, I've touched on this before, but the UI is cluttered, the characters are too flashy, and need to be toned down. I do like the direction of how the game is trying to get you to invest more time into it, rather than funds, but to keep an audience the purchasing power has to be for the cosmetic, and event items.
Blade and soul demonstrated to me almost the perfect system, it had a number of a problems that even pushed me away, but they have adjusted, just feels a little too late and the old engine isn't helping it right now. Maplestory can be paralleled, and it kind of has with the surprise boxes. See in blade and soul, you grinded for the materials, where there were two 'buy events' which deflated the items, and made them accessible to buy to win players in mass. They also had a few pets(cosmetic), and Gems which were incredible staff buffs to your weapon.
(To elaborate also the changes they made, as content became more difficult and time investments to get the materials to upgrade gear got to steep, they drastically cut material costs, and made new players able to get up to date as easy as progressing through the mainstory. It's only the last 3 stages of your weapon that require an actual grind, but as time passes they 'give' those to you as well. So blade and soul encourages activity, but gives opportunity to those who don't have the time or don't care about being on top, while adding a challenge to those who thrive being in the top %).
To elaborate on the gems, since they come across a 'pay to win item', you roughly need (iirc, or last I checked) 27 of each gem, and converting money value to the materials+Gems it's almost about $400 dollars worth of pomegranate if you want that 'now' privilege. You pretty much would have to get 3 sets of gems, fuse them, and do it 3 times (3 gems, for 1 gem, then you need 3 of those already fused gems, to make the next set, up to stage 3 I think). So 3 to the third power now that I think about it (derp). The thing is, they would rotate them in seasonal events where if you did the quests exclusively you could get those gems for free, leaving the material cost. Blade and soul treated it as a "Catch up to my materials" rather than a "YOU MUST HAVE IT". They would cycle costumes in a two week basis, which are costly, but permanent, and storage being a 'subscription' thing.
Maplestory can do the same, but rather than materials, just make it like the black friday sale for cubes, so even though they can be spammed, for those who don't want to grind for them, can get them in wholesale to catch up. Rotate costumes in CS for premium prices that are in the CS premium boxes, things of that nature. The trick is to give the option to those who want to invest, to invest, and people who just want a casual outlook to play it casually, through time investment. There are whales(high spenders), so encourage them to spend without forcing them too and they'll stay.
As for consolidation, they need to do what WoW did and rev back the numbers, 10b should be 10m imo. Obviously bosses would be put to scale. This would probably effectively squash the difference in pay players with free players, or make the difference not as drastic. Minimize multi-hit to like a 4 line cap, avoid AoE BS, limit movement speed a tad so not everyone has flash jump. Though I'm not familiar with the newer maps so this maybe necessary at this given time. I just believe we need less clutter on the screen, artifically make the maps feel larger so bigger parties can participate, and make "1 hitting a mob" a goal again, rather than a standard.
1) Make cubes/nebs/anything stat oriented a free system. I will keep the option to purchase, but I'm talking cubes being a very common drop, and the stat orientations being with different monsters/bosses. There is a 'similar' system already incorporated but I feel it needs to be flooded more, to the point where it's not worth it to buy them from CS.
2) Consolidate, I've touched on this before, but the UI is cluttered, the characters are too flashy, and need to be toned down. I do like the direction of how the game is trying to get you to invest more time into it, rather than funds, but to keep an audience the purchasing power has to be for the cosmetic, and event items.
Blade and soul demonstrated to me almost the perfect system, it had a number of a problems that even pushed me away, but they have adjusted, just feels a little too late and the old engine isn't helping it right now. Maplestory can be paralleled, and it kind of has with the surprise boxes. See in blade and soul, you grinded for the materials, where there were two 'buy events' which deflated the items, and made them accessible to buy to win players in mass. They also had a few pets(cosmetic), and Gems which were incredible staff buffs to your weapon.
(To elaborate also the changes they made, as content became more difficult and time investments to get the materials to upgrade gear got to steep, they drastically cut material costs, and made new players able to get up to date as easy as progressing through the mainstory. It's only the last 3 stages of your weapon that require an actual grind, but as time passes they 'give' those to you as well. So blade and soul encourages activity, but gives opportunity to those who don't have the time or don't care about being on top, while adding a challenge to those who thrive being in the top %).
To elaborate on the gems, since they come across a 'pay to win item', you roughly need (iirc, or last I checked) 27 of each gem, and converting money value to the materials+Gems it's almost about $400 dollars worth of pomegranate if you want that 'now' privilege. You pretty much would have to get 3 sets of gems, fuse them, and do it 3 times (3 gems, for 1 gem, then you need 3 of those already fused gems, to make the next set, up to stage 3 I think). So 3 to the third power now that I think about it (derp). The thing is, they would rotate them in seasonal events where if you did the quests exclusively you could get those gems for free, leaving the material cost. Blade and soul treated it as a "Catch up to my materials" rather than a "YOU MUST HAVE IT". They would cycle costumes in a two week basis, which are costly, but permanent, and storage being a 'subscription' thing.
Maplestory can do the same, but rather than materials, just make it like the black friday sale for cubes, so even though they can be spammed, for those who don't want to grind for them, can get them in wholesale to catch up. Rotate costumes in CS for premium prices that are in the CS premium boxes, things of that nature. The trick is to give the option to those who want to invest, to invest, and people who just want a casual outlook to play it casually, through time investment. There are whales(high spenders), so encourage them to spend without forcing them too and they'll stay.
As for consolidation, they need to do what WoW did and rev back the numbers, 10b should be 10m imo. Obviously bosses would be put to scale. This would probably effectively squash the difference in pay players with free players, or make the difference not as drastic. Minimize multi-hit to like a 4 line cap, avoid AoE BS, limit movement speed a tad so not everyone has flash jump. Though I'm not familiar with the newer maps so this maybe necessary at this given time. I just believe we need less clutter on the screen, artifically make the maps feel larger so bigger parties can participate, and make "1 hitting a mob" a goal again, rather than a standard.