Do you feel Nexon exploits it's playerbase?

Here's another example of how Nexon makes the game unplayable without NX:

As I mentioned before, people without heavily cubed gear can't really pull their weight in party training situations, and either get kicked or shy away from "leeching" situations. Nexon is heavily encouraging party-play. Now even for levels below LHC, with the "sidekick" mechanism. Note that "sidekicks" need to be equally well equipped, to maintain the level difference between them. If one can kill significantly faster than the other, and therefore level faster, the relationship will break up.

But, even if the NX-less want to train alone and not have to fit in damage-wise, now they also can't train in more "traditional" areas in Leafre and elsewhere. They can't train on mobs their own level, because those take too long to kill, and hit too hard (burning potions or even killing). So they used to train on lower level mobs. But now they're heavily penalized for that: they get less exp and the mobs hardly drop meso, or anything that can be sold for meso, or equips that might be revealed or fused for better than what they're currently wearing.
"Anti-bot" is yet another way Nexon is telling us, "If you can't reach a certain level of damage - which requires either buying NX or having great merching skills - you've no business playing this game."

Here's another example of how Nexon makes the game unplayable without NX:

As I mentioned before, people without heavily cubed gear can't really pull their weight in party training situations, and either get kicked or shy away from "leeching" situations. Nexon is heavily encouraging party-play. Now even for levels below LHC, with the "sidekick" mechanism. Note that "sidekicks" need to be equally well equipped, to maintain the level difference between them. If one can kill significantly faster than the other, and therefore level faster, the relationship will break up.

I've always found partying in MS to be biased heavily towards the individual. Aside from Priests, few classes care what damage their party members are doing - their buffs, and more recently the #players 'party areas', are the major reasons to join up with other people. Most of your exp still comes from the damage you do.

I do generally aim to party players with similar damage to mine, but that doesn't require a certain amount of money.

Granted, with the awful mastery book set-up, richer players have better skills to contribute to the party. I trained 170% today, though, with a variety of party members (Bishops 13x-17x, other attackers 11x-16x) and my own exp gain was fairly constant, other than what party buffs gave me (SE and Dark Aura are the big ones on my Paladin)

I agree the anti-botting measures are idiotic, and I'm not sure how they'll even combine with the 'sidekick' business given that they're forcing one of the players to train on a monster they're designed not to. If the 'sidekick' is 20 levels below, they'll miss half the time. If they're at the mob's level, their 'mentor' is gonna get terrible exp.

And there's ways to work around NX like... ...the MTS.

Hell yes! You don't need NX! Just get NX!

I thought this was obviously implied:
MTS is a way to work around buying NX with real money.

Or do you reject this statement too?

I feel this is turning into "The rich kids with NX are so badass and I wanne be badass too without spending NX. NYAH". NX does give an unfair advantage, but that's not the discussion.

Fact still is every dollar given to Nexon is given voluntairily, so you cannot speak of Nexon "exploiting" people into giving them money. Sure endgame is pay-to-play, but if that means Nexon is exploiting their players, then WoW is exploiting all their players too for making them pay to play their game.

I thought this was obviously implied:
MTS is a way to work around buying NX with real money.

It's a way for myself personally to get around buying NX, but someone still has to buy the NX for me to do whatever I want with it.
In fact, with MTS's tax, even more NX gets purchased than if I would have gone out and bought a card for myself.

This the point you're not getting:
They've turned Maplestory into a game where NX is required to really participate in a lot of the content they're adding.

I feel this is turning into "The rich kids with NX are so badass and I wanne be badass too without spending NX. NYAH". NX does give an unfair advantage, but that's not the discussion.

Actually, the discussion is that NX gives a disproportionate advantage.
And you only see the discussion as being a whine fest because seeing it as anything else would require you to see the issue as more complex.

Fact still is every dollar given to Nexon is given voluntairily, so you cannot speak of Nexon "exploiting" people into giving them money.

Hey, look! It's a person who doesn't understand the concept of exploitation despite the fact that it has been covered multiple times in this thread!

Sure endgame is pay-to-play, but if that means Nexon is exploiting their players, then WoW is exploiting all their players too for making them pay to play their game.

Also already been addressed. Holy pomegranate dude, learn to read.

If I want to transfer all of "my equips" to a new DS it is going to cost me $18 dollars in nx in scissors alone. It doesn't matter whether that comes out of my pocket or another players (mts), that's an intentional cost they put into this game and it's only getting more and more prevalent.

Being exploitative is good business.

Yes I can play without "my equips" on a new character, but after taking the time to acquire and cube and hammer and whatever else a few bucks more is a pittance and Nexon knows this, that's what makes it exploitative in my eyes. There's no reason to make these equips untradeable except to get some money out of their players. We all know this but It's not a coincidence the best items are untradeable w/o scissors.

And tax on the mts....really?

If I want to transfer all of "my equips" to a new DS it is going to cost me $18 dollars in nx in scissors alone. It doesn't matter whether that comes out of my pocket or another players (mts), that's an intentional cost they put into this game and it's only getting more and more prevalent.

Being exploitative is good business.

Yes I can play without "my equips" on a new character, but after taking the time to acquire and cube and hammer and whatever else a few bucks more is a pittance and Nexon knows this, that's what makes it exploitative in my eyes. There's no reason to make these equips untradeable except to get some money out of their players. We all know this but It's not a coincidence the best items are untradeable w/o scissors.

And tax on the mts....really?

I want to 'like' this post.

There's plenty of people who play Nexon games without spending a dime and do very well. Some of the strongest maplers I ever met were just good marketers

The biggest problem I have ever had with Nexon is with hackers. They make enough money to get rid of hackers from their game. I have played WoW for over 2 years now and have never seen a hacker once ever.

You'd need to put in an absurd amount of time to compete with truly strong players who either hack or buy lots of NX/mesos. The economy is so screwed up, especially because of the duping and a normal merchant is hard pressed to keep up. For example, when I last played, duping essentially made the the cost of a mushy shop from 400 mil->800 mil for 2 weeks. The reason I mention the mushy is because you basically require one to merch effectively. So basically you need to make 800 mil profit in 2 weeks, which is at probably 2 bil in sales in 2 weeks.

Now a good merchant can overcome this limitation without too much trouble, but the average player will probably not. However, even a good merchant will have to be very careful in such a bad economy, cause anything you invest in can be duped to hell, making you lose huge amounts money (ex GM scrolls). Personally I went from 15 to 60 bil from mid July->early September, which I thought was pretty decent. However, a legit merchant cannot compete against hackers controlling the market,duping pomegranate, as well as people who just buy mesos/NX at all.

As any reputable merchanter will tell you it's about exploiting(exploit as collect now, sell later, or collect items previously to the event and sell the required resources) events. And lately unless they are glitched they are temporary items. Unless you can provide me another source of income?

...I'm curious of how you would spot a hacker as any hacks would be within private dungeons?

QFT. If hackers, events, or glitched events change the market, you have to buy & sell items accordingly to stay competitive as a merchant. Its been like this 2-3 years ago, and even moreso now because of the duped items. For example, GM scrolls dropping were a glitch, but if you didn't merch them you lost out on absurd amounts of potential profit. In addition, when hackers duped pinks earlier this summer, the pinks temporarily dropped in value 50%, the time when a merchant should invest in the scrolls. Basically the market revolves around hackers and events -_______-.

I thought this was obviously implied:
MTS is a way to work around buying NX with real money.

NX is a way for Nexon to make more money because of the MTS tax lols =)

Honestly, i think its pretty sad design when merchanting is needed to make money as opposed to actually going out and hunting drops on your own. I mean really... do ingame item drops suck so bad players have to eat the table scraps of gachapon sellers who don't know prices just to get by?

So the agreed on definition of exploit here is "to use selfishly for one's own ends" and "To make use of selfishly or unethically". Right? the definition of ethics is "Being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession."

The problem here, in this thread is some have higher standards in the principles of the game industry., some have lower, some just don't have any. There doesn't seem to be any set standard people can agree on here. No line where we all can say 'this is just bad.'

I can only say this then, building on a earlier point in this thread: Is it really fair for me to spend 1$ on gacha, at the risk of that 1$ to give me a POWER ELIXIR? An item i can get in 1 minute farming a common mob? Would it not be more ethical for every dollar spent on gacha to ONLY give items WORTH my entertainment money? I have NOT spent my own money in gacha in 2-3 years because of that. I feel with items like that in gacha, Nexon IS trying to exploit players, thus its an element I ignore. If they were to get rid of junk items in gachapons, I would change my mind regarding that.

Regarding hacking: with the amount of money players give to nexon, it would be ethical to put some of this money towards a serious effort to control the hacking situation. We define exploiting as "To make use of selfishly or unethically" like before right? wouldn't it be ethical to mount a serious effort to strike at situations such as the hacked account outbreak? Which... has happened for the 2nd time already? (That being, a situation where it was so widespread it could not just be written off as merely people getting keylogged.) To provide customers the items they wanted for their money but making no effort to assist in protecting their purchases on their end sounds a tad selfish really. Bars known for having trouble eventually get some sort of security at their own expense. Right? Ethics.

Its for these reasons, since i was hacked in the same spree EoS got his account compromised, that the NX purchases i make have almost exclusively been for non-gear related items such as FS clothes and Permanent pets. and the only piece of gear i have ever tried to cube is my DrK's untradable Cygnus armor set. I'm not anti-nexon, but i refuse to bite the aspects of the game that feel unfair, like an attempt to exploit or milk me: Why should i bother spending hundreds making godly gear if a security hole on Nexon's end is going to make my money vanish overnight? Why put a dollar into gacha at the risk of getting something that won't help me whatsoever, either in use or resale value? Why should I aim for godly stats for bossing when nexon won't even do anything about hackers trying their hardest to keep legit players out of the bosses they want to control?

Cute as this game is, i just have to say... this is just bad.

The silly part of the argument with MTS is that someone, somewhere, has to pay money for NX. It might not be you, but someone is. The entire game revolves around spending money on NX. Even if you can merchant well, and end up spending no money yourself, someone else is essentially flipping the bill for you. There's absolutely no way around it. The entire Cash Shop and MTS systems revolve around exploiting players for every dime they have. Jackpots, expiring items, and lucky draws on potential that are practically a necessity result in NX being a must. If NX is a must, even if you use MTS to avoid spending money, means that SOMEONE is paying money to Nexon. Even if the majority of the player base is expert merchants, and can avoid the billing page on Nexon's site completely, that just means that the majority of people who pay for NX, pay for a ton of NX. Someone is paying for the NX, it's the simple truth.

The only question that remains is if Nexon is exploiting the players with the system in general. The answer is simple, yes. The rest of this thread has made that abundantly clear.

The silly part of the argument with MTS is that someone, somewhere, has to pay money for NX. It might not be you, but someone is. The entire game revolves around spending money on NX. Even if you can merchant well, and end up spending no money yourself, someone else is essentially flipping the bill for you. There's absolutely no way around it. The entire Cash Shop and MTS systems revolve around exploiting players for every dime they have. Jackpots, expiring items, and lucky draws on potential that are practically a necessity result in NX being a must. If NX is a must, even if you use MTS to avoid spending money, means that SOMEONE is paying money to Nexon. Even if the majority of the player base is expert merchants, and can avoid the billing page on Nexon's site completely, that just means that the majority of people who pay for NX, pay for a ton of NX. Someone is paying for the NX, it's the simple truth.

I laugh at this too because Its basically the maple version of a sponsorship. You get the gear people with money want, they give you money. Time=Money.

There is an item in that cash shop that lets you accept quests from afar. There is another item that lets you turn them in. These are both separate, and both cost NX PER USE. It's the clearest example of exploitation I can think of besides the obvious 2X coupons, miracle scrolls, pan's song, Gachapon, other jackpot items like seasonal ones and CSS, the high price AP and SP resets, and potential. The only time I think they weren't exploiting us was back in 2006 before Gach and 2x.

Nexon always mentioned they believe in the '20/80' mentality, and it just shows so much. Nearly every cash shop item release is the same thing, targeting the same group.

You'd need to put in an absurd amount of time to compete with truly strong players who either hack or buy lots of NX/mesos. The economy is so screwed up, especially because of the duping and a normal merchant is hard pressed to keep up. For example, when I last played, duping essentially made the the cost of a mushy shop from 400 mil->800 mil for 2 weeks. The reason I mention the mushy is because you basically require one to merch effectively. So basically you need to make 800 mil profit in 2 weeks, which is at probably 2 bil in sales in 2 weeks.

Now a good merchant can overcome this limitation without too much trouble, but the average player will probably not. However, even a good merchant will have to be very careful in such a bad economy, cause anything you invest in can be duped to hell, making you lose huge amounts money (ex GM scrolls). Personally I went from 15 to 60 bil from mid July->early September, which I thought was pretty decent. However, a legit merchant cannot compete against hackers controlling the market,duping pomegranate, as well as people who just buy mesos/NX at all.

and once again... the problem comes back to hackers...

My problem with Nexon (God how many times have I said this????) is, and always shall be, hackers. It's a good point I didn't even mention about hackers ruining the economy via duping making it impossible to merchant properly to play the game without buying NX.

All of this buying NX for cubes, n godly equips, n whatever doesn't even mean anything when people also run around with $40 worth of friggin NX clothes and pets. I mean come the hell on... if you're going to complain about spending money on godly equips, then don't NX yourself out to make yourself super shiny. It's Nexon's fault for allowing hackers to ruin the economy, but it's a person's fault for spending NX at all. If people weren't handing Nexon money left and right, maybe they would sit back and go "hmmm, maybe we should try to beef up our security a bit?".

If I want to transfer all of "my equips" to a new DS it is going to cost me $18 dollars in nx in scissors alone. It doesn't matter whether that comes out of my pocket or another players (mts), that's an intentional cost they put into this game and it's only getting more and more prevalent.

That is of course avoidable, though you end up paying a little more up front (for equiv. stats), you save on the scissors. My tradeable equips have +90 str 56% str 39 atk, which is a decent boost to whatever Warrior class I choose to play.

Plus a Deputy Badge which doesn't see much use, since my mains all have MoNs. I don't know if there's a good tradeable alternative yet, and I'm not gonna accessory-atk/chaos scroll Deputy Badges.

Transferring it all around is kinda annoying but it's at least free.

It's a way for myself personally to get around buying NX, but someone still has to buy the NX for me to do whatever I want with it.
In fact, with MTS's tax, even more NX gets purchased than if I would have gone out and bought a card for myself.

This the point you're not getting:
They've turned Maplestory into a game where NX is required to really participate in a lot of the content they're adding.


Actually, the discussion is that NX gives a disproportionate advantage.
And you only see the discussion as being a whine fest because seeing it as anything else would require you to see the issue as more complex.


Hey, look! It's a person who doesn't understand the concept of exploitation despite the fact that it has been covered multiple times in this thread!


Also already been addressed. Holy pomegranate dude, learn to read.

I'm not going to respond to you if you talk down on me.

In the end the definition of exploit isn't objective. Some call it white, some call it black, let's just all call it gray and close the thread.

I'm not going to respond to you if you talk down on me.

In the end the definition of exploit isn't objective. Some call it white, some call it black, let's just all call it gray and close the thread.

Do you always turtle when you're losing an argument? I think it's quite clear the actual business practice is considered an exploit. Which was proven like 3 pages ago.

Plus a Deputy Badge which doesn't see much use, since my mains all have MoNs. I don't know if there's a good tradeable alternative yet, and I'm not gonna accessory-atk/chaos scroll Deputy Badges.

Transferring it all around is kinda annoying but it's at least free.

Depends on what you consider to be "good".
There are a lot of tradeable third tier pendants, but none of them come with attack so you'd have to do the scrolling thing on them if you wanted to optimize them.

I'm not going to respond to you if you talk down on me.

Oh no! What would I do if someone who is clearly wrong decided to stop arguing that they were not?
I think my life would just fall apart!
I live off of your responses, dammit!
Every day, I just get so excited to see what Veneni has to say to me!
I'll miss you like a desert misses the rain!

In the end the definition of exploit isn't objective. Some call it white, some call it black, let's just all call it gray and close the thread.

We know the definition of exploit. Once again, that's why dictionaries exists.
From that definition, it's clear that Nexon is guilty of exploitation.
There's no compromise here.

That is of course avoidable, though you end up paying a little more up front (for equiv. stats)

Transferring it all around is kinda annoying but it's at least free.

Yeah I went this route for a long time but I've started to hit a wall. The main problem is that I don't want to cube anything and so rely more on buying pre-cubed gear (it's so much cheaper), there just isn't a large supply of pre-cubed trade-able warrior helms for example. Plus paying a bit more for equivalent stats just isn't possible in some places. I've made the tradeable gear my priority when it comes to upgrades so the drop isn't as significant when I move to alt chars but overall it's just easier to stop hopping from char to char as often.

I'm not even really against making it a few items that are untradeable, it's just this trend that it's becoming every higher level piece of gear out there. The entire lvl 130/140 set is this way. Every makered ring out there is this way, almost every pendant, every (?) belt, the entire VL set. Boss helms, boss pendants. The list goes on and on. I see no reason for this other than they have scissors to sell. Prioritizing tradeability in the gear you use if you wanna use it on multiple chars (even on the same account) shouldn't be a necessity.

Do you always turtle when you're losing an argument? I think it's quite clear the actual business practice is considered an exploit. Which was proven like 3 pages ago.

I don't mind losing an argument. I just don't feel like argumenting with someone that's just going to ridicule everything I say. (Which he succeeds in even when I don't say anything at all apparently lol.) And I learned from other thread that he'll not stop untill I "give up" explaining myself so "he wins".

OT: Nothing was proven a few pages back. As the poll reads 13% agrees with me there is no exploiting.

Dropped in an environment where you are ridiculed and hampered in-game in terms of performance at certain places for having "sub-par" equipment, you are unable to get really good without investing in the cubing system or buying very expensive pre-cubed items, you are unable to trade most "good" items without NX, you are always travelling to places slower than someone who can buy NX and do it instantly, where NX can basically buy you everything and something extra that the scrubby "free" players can never get. An environment like this is perfect for Nexon, who is making millions off the cornered players who want to continue playing but are finding it difficult to continue without NX in a game ruled by it.

"But you aren't exploited if you avoid/don't do actions w, x, y, z!" isn't an argument here. If Nexon knows that people want to and to and WILL do actions w, x, y and z then they can milk those actions for cash, and that's what makes it exploitative. Avoid it all you want but that won't change the fact that Nexon exploits its customers. Oh, and just because every other MMO company with micro-transactions does the same, doesn't make it any less exploitative.

Can't shake the feeling I'm a bit late to the party, but oh well. Not like we get the service in return for being raked either lol.

Yes they do. Let's look at a semi-recent Nexon action on potential, they added crappy lines to possible potentials without telling the customers about it. This is not just a potential is a broken system rant, this is the simple fact that Nexon deliberately altered the probability tables from cubes to make it so that you must spend even more money to get good stats without telling it's user base. Now that, that's exploitation of their customers. Casinos are required by law to give back at least a certain % of their income back to the customer. That is, let's say the winning rate in a slot machine is 60%, a casino is not allowed to one day change it to only give 20%. And that, that's wrong, that's unfair, and that is why I voted that Nexon exploits their costumers.

Oh and not only that, but it took them over a month to clarify the cubing glitch, to say it was only a "text error". Why did it take you so dam long to clarify that? Was posting a notice that hard. I know of quite a few people who have premium cubes their items once it "went down to 2 lines". And now it seems like it didn't really went down to two lines but rather the third line text just wasn't showing. That's exploitation. Deliberately taking advantage of yours customers that's exploitation. Oh but they can't fix it yet, they have to wait for the next patch. We just had a patch, no more than a week ago. Why didn't you fix it then? Are you going to tell me you have JUST found out about the error now, and nobody made you aware of this before Nexon? What kind of crappy service is this, seriously.