What are we smoking?

Recent events all shows people dissatisfactions with the game "Maplestory". If someone who read the things I have, then I have no idea why people are still playing this game.

The game itself: the classes are imbalanced. Archmages everywhere are unhappy about the favorable life of the bishop. This isn't something that's just said. It's proven over and over: how genesis is stronger, how genesis is faster, how genesis is better. Even some people who play their own job, are not even satisfied with themselves as a character/job, let alone others.

The game play itself: do people even ‘play’ this game anymore? Are people so obsessed with level ups that they’re only looking for ‘legitimate’ ways to cheat? Exposing ways to bot this game and publically asking for abuses of its glitches for benefits.

Maplestory might be entiltled as a “MMOPRG” but there it lacks the quality of what an RPG is.

 Spoiler

Every microtransaction (cash shop) based game is a failure by design. To increase profits you must get more people to buy more ridiculous advantages in game by paying tons of real money. This causes heavy imbalance, which leads to an unfun game.

MapleStory in itself is flawed in many ways, even ignoring the poor customer service. There are many classic MMORPG game mechanics directly related to psychology that MapleStory does in a very negative way.


- Death Penalty

Extreme death penalties are a bad thing. In games like EQ, you could make a friend by having them help you get your corpse or save your life, and that's really cool. However, heavy death penalties tend to cause more negative effects than positive due to time wasted, and the stress and frustration caused. In MapleStory it is basically impossible to help someone with the death penalty (outside of spending money on them, harhar), and the higher your level gets the more extreme the penalty becomes (hours wasted because of a single death on enemies that two shot you, easily done by a lag spike).

- Downtime

There is no downtime in MapleStory, just grindgrindmovegrindmove. If you stop to chat you are losing valuable experience. The only real exception is boat rides. Many other games have some form of resting between combat, because there is no spamming endless pots. Downtime gives you the chance to genuinely talk to other people (the entire point of an MMO, really), instead of cramming in sentences between mobs.

- Smegaphones

Terrible. Server wide chat channels are bad, but and on top of tha it costs $1 or more to say one line in said chat...just wow. Nothing in a Global-wide chat is meaningful, ever. It's spam or an advertisement for a group/trade that rarely pertains to you. Even worse in MapleStory, there is no turning them off. Sales/grouping should be done in towns.

- Quests & Crafting

MapleStory quests are beyond unintuitive and only a select few are remotely rewarding (zomg scrollz). Quests are one of the main attractions people have to MMOs and RPGs in general. Yet the developers choose to continue to ignore this very important aspect of the entire genre. The only things I've truly felt were a quest were the 2nd/3rd/4th job advancement and fourth job skill quests, and that's mostly because of the reward and apparent progression of your character involved.

Crafting is also virtually non-existent. Crafting encourages item collection and trade, and could pave the way to a lot of reasons to team up and kill certain certain strong monsters that drop crafting materials. kMS has supposedly shed some more light on this, but I can't imagine its anything close to groundbreaking.

- Grouping

It's generally not beneficial. There's also mostly no way to help a random stranger without them accepting a party invite, and there's generally nothing you NEED a group for. There are the big bosses of course, and to an extent party quests. PQs are very cool in theory, but they're pretty poorly executed on the developer's part. Between the limitations of one per channel, the level range restrictions that (mostly) keep you from doing it with friends, the fact that a single disconnect can ruin the run, and the fact that you're pigeon-holed into taking certain classes is lame.


The complete apathy shown by the tons people who think the game is fine the way it is disgusts me. You pay them so much money, and yet you let them get away with inexcusably poor customer service and a low-quality product. The money they make goes toward making their executives have a fat pay check and making more poor quality games to suck more money, not so much improve the game. The updates gMS gets are pathetic, especially if you consider how much of that is IP from other versions (Masteria is the only thing they've really MADE, so to speak).

I am fully aware of the fact that it is mostly a delayed Korean port, therefore making it impossible to stand up to a North American based game like WoW, but you have to know where to draw the line. I don't think kMS developers take any real interest in the player concerns of gMS/eMS/etc, it's repulsive.

I could go on for ages about this pumpernickel, I think I'll stop now.

I was gonna post this hours ago but SP was down, and I went for AFK. Nexon is controlling everything!!!!!!!!1111

Customer service… or lack of. Exposing a reality of the Nexon Corporation is a bannable offense apparently as ComputerProf’s famous incident has shown us.

 Spoiler

If the "rules" to MapleStory's customer service is in the "Terms of Service" (ToS) and forum rules, the word "service" needs to be re-evaluated. ToS is null and void as a contract. For instance, it is not legal to hold the consumer responsible for remitting taxes (check out the ruling for Lands End catalog sales in states outside Wisconsin). Unlike Maplestory NX cards from Target, music cards are taxed as they are used by the music suppliers. For another instance, either all characters should be banned for their name, or any character can be arbitrarily banned without consdiring what's fair. ToS states both that your character name cannot be non-sense (l33t or random numbers), and it cannot be a name OR phrase. I challenge you to post anything that meets that condition. Paradox in the ToS is endless, too innumerable to list here. But customer service ultimately becomes one-sided, where the original service (the game) and the remedial service (tickets and forums) are beyond reproach. Since service becomes wholly oriented toward players that might cheat, players that do no cheat either receive no service, or are treated as cheaters unfairly. It's like the domineering police officer who pulled me over in a quiet small town in a well-lit public area because one headlight went out. He was either conditioned to be a jerk, or became an officer to express his natural tendencies, but he was bullying, snide, and had a major chip on his shoulder. I didn't ask if he moonlighted in customer service for a certain gaming company.
If you are playing MapleStory NX-free, you can't complain if customer service abuses (I mean, "services") you, except perhaps for the betrayal and the many long hours of enjoyment that are suddenly soured.
If you or your parents pay real money, the legal standards are different. A groundswell is less likely for surfacing real issues and root causes if a company relies on players' competitive spirit and the need for "privacy," as well as outdated instrumentation of their software. Some attempt to throw a threatening dog a bone of distraction. For instance, while a purchase may be legally non-refundable, a company is still held to the contract to DELIVER the service you have purchased. In MapleStory, when high-levels complained that 2X drops were failing for many weeks, (and SW heavyweights couldn't profit from z runs), a promise was made to add MaplePoints for those that purchased 2X. Now I personally maintain 2X drops and experience (at least $31 a month) continuously for training each of my accounts, and have not seen a single MaplePoint. Clearly there is no method of correlating the purchase of products with the use of the software. If MaplePoints were only given to those filing tickets, even though thousands were affected, someone got off cheap, and it wasn't the customer. The Guild Hack "event" exposed the same apparent inability to provide proactive and responsive customer service. I personally don't see why a list of guild members wouldn't exist on server backups, to allow systematic outreach to the guild leaders and members that were affected. That worries me, because it gives the appearance of little forensic evidence, or little effort in terms of service.
Maplestory is not managed as a software product by customer service. Best-practice software customer service focuses on identifying and remedying defects in the product. For MapleStory, tickets are summarily closed (often not closely read, based on the responses I've seen). A standard in software support desk training is to insure the problem is clear (which might require some back and forth), and the customer accepts the resolution. On the contrary, if you dare file a follow-up ticket on an issue you feel has not been resolved to your satisfaction, it can be deemed a "duplicate," which is apparently considered a major nuisance, and can result in all your tickets being removed and your account being permanently banned. If that's service, I'm a flying gorilla.
Further, is there a real interest in identifying and limiting deliberate hacking, scamming, and harassment. MapleStory gives you the opportunity to report another user for an abuse (and claims you'll never know if they took action so as to protect all players' privacy). But if the abuser admits more in the chat log, you cannot report for about 5 minutes. From there, you must stay on the same map as the abuser to right-click and report them. If you can't move fast enough for that, you can no longer include a screen-shot as evidence of an abuse with a MapleStory ticket. An further still, if you stay on a map with an abuser for any length of time, you risk being incriminated as participating in their abuse. All this discourages effective user-policing of "their" game.
Conversely, MapleStory relies blindly on buggy GameGaurd autoban software that bans more legitimate users than true hackers. For example, the no damage "glitch" is a bug in MapleStory software that GameGuard can detect. (How "no damage" can be detected to reliably yet cannot be fixed is another mystery.) Legitimate players never intentionally continue to play if they "see that they don't see" damage. Yet autoban's monitor blindly decides what a player sees and doesn't see, no matter how cluttered the map, and decides the player's intention as well. ILLEGITIMATE player don't leverage the MapleStory software bug that GameGuard's autoban detects. True hackers hack under 1 damage because they can easily figure out what triggers the autoban. I've seen them prance through to loot my drops too many times, often extorting the players on the map. Therefore, one can conclude that the autoban for no damage ONLY affects legitimate players 99% of the time.
In software customer service, it's very bad practice to purposely LIMIT the evidence on an issues for fear you'll be assisting the customer's defense. Open communication is vital to get to the root of persistent problems. Most software publishes a list of specific bugs (usage notes). For MapleStory, that would include the actions that are known "glitches" that need to be avoided. When you accidentally cross the invisible lines drawn by autoban, the customer service response remains very general. You won't be told what evidence the autoban detected, and for those that play long, hard, and legitimately, they are left to walk on eggshells once the ban is lifted, not knowing what time, what map, what glitch, what monster, what skill, or what party member might have triggered their ban. In fact, you'll be told that specific details of your own actions are "proprietary." There is nothing proprietary about calculating the change in levels for each player and sorting to identify the top 1000 fastest levelers (it seems a reason for a reward, as in fact it WAS in Yellonde's opening).
Regardless, a basic legal right is to be able to face and question your accuser. As a computer professional, I personally don't want any accusation of hacking to stand on my record undefended, because it amounts to defamation of my character. To provide support for a hacking ban would first require the software collect such details, and would second require that customer service eventually see that the autoban software actually has defects in it's design and implementation. Did someone spend too much money or take too much pride in this bad idea to simply turn it off?
My least favorite thing about playing MapleStory is the arrogance and obvious bullying inflicted upon players in the name of "service." Consider the unabashed threat of "dire consequences" for those "abusing" the Bigfoot "glitch." Again notice no clear definition of "glitch" was published. Players were left to assume the use of poison, ice demon, shadow web, or doom on a "boss" was an accident--just as had happened on the initial release of Headless Horseman. But when the "fix" came out, none of those were changed, the Bigfoot "boss" was not made a true boss, and instead the experience for this 35 million HP adversary was reduced to nil. Bigfoot has been reduced to a nuisance for the majority of players that would like to play on all the new maps of Masteria. To pretend that the "glitch" was actually Bigfoot's experience is an absurd backpeddling spin on an obvious mistake. More "service" was then pursued to "remediate" the "glitch," by banning anyone that leveled "too quickly" during the several days it took for some group in a conference room to figure out they didn't learn from HH, and the software developer that once knew how to configure a boss took a better job. How unfair to anyone that may have killed one Bigfoot for a toe, but leveled quickly using other hertofore legitimate means. Being unable to actually go out and "catch" people taking advantage of Bigfoot, they then decide that a heretofore legitimate part of the design of the game (leveling a character in a party through leeching experience from other party members' kills) is now illegitimate, because they could not discriminate between those leveling off Bigfoot, and those leveling on other kills. It remains a mystery why a course of actions that COULD affect one or more innocent players was pursued when it was clear only a handful of those guilty players poisoning Bigfoot "before and after" the warning could be irrefutably identified. I'm glad this extreme notion of deterence in lieu of service isn't followed when juries are instructed on capital crimes.
From here, I realize can't begin to detail all the ways customer service competes against customers, and the MapleStory service, not the product, has gone awry. Anyone who has never been abused by customer service, or had a trustworthy friend abused, is either very lucky or very new/sheltered. In a guild of 80 and alliance of 250 over the last year, with many people I know in real life, I know of one legitimate abuse (which merited expulsion but no ban by the game), compared to at least 25 (and growing) cases of long-time legitimate players banned for 3, 9, 30, 90 days, and permanently.
I would become the number one fan of a game service that turned these abysmal service trends around, and recommend the game, even with the old bugs and the few abusive players, to my other adult friends. For now, every computer professional I tell about MapleStory practices does a real life F6, and I only keep playing in hopes of seeing a transformation.
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**This member has been suspended for inciting inappropriate assumptions.**

Their negligence of standards for paying customers, their disregards of their game’s glitches, their greed for limiting the best of the game’s quality to paying customers only. The gashapon and it's nightmare with dark scrolls, elemental weapons, facial accessory, etc. all of which are extremely nice to have for your character but is limited to cash paying customers--making the gap between the paying and nonpaying extremely wide. Ironically, the paying customers are treated with no more “attention” then non paying customers or even the attention you would give to any random person on the street.

This was shown by a more recent event of a paying customer’s issue where he lost access to his PAYING account. Not only neglect of a customer, but banished from their forums as well as their service.



I recently talked to a friend of mine about this whole “modern Maplestory” businesses. I used to play this game for fun, but not anymore. We came upon a few agreements that we all have our own reasons to play Maplestory. One of the bigger reasons was friends—on other words, interactions with other players. Friends that can be “pulled” out of the game into reality (obtaining their AIM, MSN, etc). Or even in some instances, love. I’ve seen a few relationships become real from this game where the two live happily ever after.

That said when we open up Maplestory.exe and KNOWING that the game, the gameplay, the glitches, the abuses, the inequality, the lack of quality, the company, the service, all suck, then what are we really doing?