The fatal flaw with the current business model.

All those items are obtainable with sufficient mesos. Also fun thing I noticed. Krexel gives 7.5 mil a day, assuming you do this for 280 days you get 2.1b. That's not a whole lot for work for a decent amount of mesos.

How does what I said result in a ban for violating the terms of service? Last I checked buying and selling items for mesos was perfectly legitimate.

Congratulations you discovered that fewer people play as school begins. Peaks in the summer are around 15000 to 25000 depending on the day. That's less than 136000 players but everyone and their grandmother came back for Big Bang. It's only to be expected that once the hype dies people leave. WoW lost 600 000 subscribers in 3 months, is WoW going to fail now too?

Show me the NPC shop where those weapons can be found, because otherwise, they very creation of these items is dependent on the spending of NX.

You specifically mentioned merchanting "to make thousands of dollars of NX". NX-meso trades are forbidden. Come on, you know this. There's even a yellow message that comes up in the chat window every now and then.

Congratulations, you didn't even know that the population now is roughly the same as it was when school was out for the summer.
http://www.craftnet.nl/generate_total.ph...1370703600
http://www.craftnet.nl/generate_total.ph...1378135305

or hey, how about uh...last year? 10 September 2012?
http://www.craftnet.nl/generate_total.ph...1347335000
50,000 users on at the same time. on a monday.
Compare to the server population around now, which is less than 20,000.

All those items are obtainable with sufficient mesos. Also fun thing I noticed. Krexel gives 7.5 mil a day, assuming you do this for 280 days you get 2.1b. That's not a whole lot for work for a decent amount of mesos.

Did you seriously just said this?

All those items are obtainable with sufficient mesos. Also fun thing I noticed. Krexel gives 7.5 mil a day, assuming you do this for 280 days you get 2.1b. That's not a whole lot for work for a decent amount of mesos.

Don't you have to do the prequests daily also? Those took about an hour on my buccaneer. That seems like a pretty large amount of work for so little mesos. I'll admit that MS is developing a resemblance of a decent daily quest system (nova gears for dailies was a good start), but it still has a long way to go to be at least as 1/10 viable as merchanting (for the VERY lucky that can do it), let alone as good as the daily quest system in WoW.

Also fun thing I noticed. Krexel gives 7.5 mil a day, assuming you do this for 280 days you get 2.1b.

...please take your stupidity somewhere else. please. While i do Krexel when i actually bother to play, its not breaking the bank. and 280 days for 2.1b? Might as well work an hour for minimum wage and get some nx, you would probably spend less time too. Besides, its not like you can only do it one time a dya, you could have more than one character....

Show me the NPC shop where those weapons can be found, because otherwise, they very creation of these items is dependent on the spending of NX.

You specifically mentioned merchanting "to make thousands of dollars of NX". NX-meso trades are forbidden. Come on, you know this. There's even a yellow message that comes up in the chat window every now and then.

Terminus weapons are NX dependent but at no point did you have to spend money to get it. At no point do you need to spend money to get anything in this game. Just because someone else did does not mean it's pay to win for you.

Congratulations, you didn't even know that the population now is roughly the same as it was when school was out for the summer.
http://www.craftnet.nl/generate_total.ph...1370703600
http://www.craftnet.nl/generate_total.ph...1378135305

or hey, how about uh...last year? 10 September 2012?
http://www.craftnet.nl/generate_total.ph...1347335000
50,000 users on at the same time. on a monday.
Compare to the server population around now, which is less than 20,000.

It's a full 6k lower on average. That's a 31% drop. Yeah sure "the same". We've lost a lot of players since big bang. I don't deny that. But we've stabilized at around 20k average players for almost a year now. MS isn't as healthy as it was in its prime but we're not hemorrhaging players like you claim.

Don't you have to do the prequests daily also? Those took about an hour on my buccaneer. That seems like a pretty large amount of work for so little mesos. I'll admit that MS is developing a resemblance of a decent daily quest system (nova gears for dailies was a good start), but it still has a long way to go to be at least as 1/10 viable as merchanting (for the VERY lucky that can do it), let alone as good as the daily quest system in WoW.

You don't need to do the prequests again. You just walk in and kill krexel.

...please take your stupidity somewhere else. please. While i do Krexel when i actually bother to play, its not breaking the bank. and 280 days for 2.1b? Might as well work an hour for minimum wage and get some nx, you would probably spend less time too. Besides, its not like you can only do it one time a dya, you could have more than one character....

I don't know if you're trying to prove my point with the multiple character remark or disprove it by calling me stupid. I never said it was a good method, all I'm showing is it's possible to earn mesos for essentially free. Krexel does almost no damage, barely attacks, and literally gives free money. You could work minimum wage and buy NX but I was under the assumption this entire thread is about how not spending money is not viable. I'm simply showing a process by which you can (though it's tedious) make mesos.

You don't need to do the prequests again. You just walk in and kill krexel.

Hmm might do that if I ever happen to return. I would like to see a more developed daily quest system, though.


EDIT: Wow, this thread is getting nasty. Can't we all just like have some cold ones and be friends?

I would too. I personally hate the quest system we currently have. A quest line should be more than "hunt 200 drops and come back so you can hunt 200 more". They're gotten better with theme dungeons though.

or hey, how about uh...last year? 10 September 2012?
http://www.craftnet.nl/generate_total.ph...1347335000
50,000 users on at the same time. on a monday.
Compare to the server population around now, which is less than 20,000.

I wouldn't rely on this website for 2012 servers activity. The owner took a while before making it take in consideration server merges, the total amount of player was an addition of each server's population, resulting in really high values.
I can't remember the date this was fixed, but 89 376 players online in september 2012 seems too much, even for a saturday.

We would also need to compare the average Total for each year. Selecting specific days for comparison isn't fairly representative.

EDIT: Wow, this thread is getting nasty. Can't we all just like have some cold ones and be friends?

It seems to be the trend lately here at Southperry, sadly.

Okay lets play.

Look at this guy haha.

What content did they strip from you? Last I checked no one charged me money to fight a boss or do a quest.

Probably should check again. But you know what, instead of listing them all out to you, I'll rub the salt in the wound and let you find out yourself. I assume you're going to post again, so if you don't find it by then, I'll correct you. Think of it as a mercy.

I'm not a fan of pay to win but I'm not too blind to think there's a viable alternative. They damn well should reward those who pay more than they reward diligent work, the paying ones are their entire business. Like it or not someone has to shell out money and if everything in this game could be had easily Nexon would have no money fast. The top 5% may have broke the bank but what does that prove? That being the best was worth the money for them (ignoring hackers/glitch abusers).

>Not blind

You still play a game that is so incredibly broken, so incredibly repetitive, and the owners so apathetic that you are easier oblivious to the point of ignorant of common sense, or a masochist. What can I do, as an individual, to afford 12b equipment that doesn't take me years to slowly accumulate. How many quest rewards are there out of the hundreds of quests, that are actually worth doing? What scrolls can I find outside of gachapon/nx events that actually have a value AND are tradeable? What items do common monsters drop that allow me to merchant anything that isn't from an event? Then what if, for whatever reason I can't get the nx, and there are people out there, what means do I have beyond shop permits and smega's?

There's a proportion most games nowadays give, which is what I'm arguing. For you to even allude to me claiming people who spend money shouldn't get their money's worth, just demonstrates your lack of sentence comprehension. But $10, even in a chinese sweatshop, doesn't and shouldn't take weeks, to months to accumulate. Or would you like to demonstrate to me how easy it is to get 80 million mesos from pure looting, outside of a pet, outside of free marketing, starting from level 1.

And what does that prove? The insanity of how much you have to spend to get there. This is a generational thing, it's not like you reach this point and stay there. Eventually the gear you spent thousands of dollars on is now second rate. Even computer parts don't cost thousands of dollars after 3 years. What I am alluding to is two things;

1) There should not be a system within a game which suggests you need to spend a minimum of half a grand to have a decent character, and not 5 thousand to create a character who people aspire to be. You make the choice to do so, but for it to be an option to begin with, and the only option mind you. Well unless on the off chance you've been playing for half a goddamn decade.

2) The time necessary to accomplish what you claim is outrageous. Even your suggestion to achieve the "old" max mesos limit takes 280 days doing a single quest. That.is.ridiculous. How many games have you played outside of maplestory that hold this type of extreme? Cus even dragonnest, another game nexon operates, is no where NEAR this.

I know merchanting is still a viable way to make thousands of dollars of NX. I also know it's doable without the cheating aspect. It's stupid to assume just because almost everyone pays their way to the top that it's the only way. There are other legitimate ways, they're neither easy nor viable for everyone. But you can make thousands of dollars in NX if you honestly put effort into it. Believe me or not it's been done in today's meta.

Legitimacy is the most stupid topic to talk about. You can't even list the methods, without putting yourself in the perspective of someone just starting. Trying to merchant would require at least half a billion mesos' just to start. Then most merchanters deal with duplicated and illegit equipment to begin with, which is in fact against the rules. There is nothing in this game you can mass market, ever since they took away white scrolls, to get the profit margins you are claiming, without dealing with stuff on like GS.

I'll admit self control isn't a strong point of most teenagers/young adults. But on that point these players aren't exactly thrift shopping. Those who are willing to drop 3 grand on this game are willing to do the same drinking with friends or buying consoles. They're going to make bad monetary decisions, that's how it's going to be whether or not Maplestory existed.

Are..are you really...LOL. Man, this is how you justify this money pit? "OH, JUST REPLACE IT WITH THESE ACTIONS". I don't know if you have ever been drinking before, but unless you're going to frekin clubs in new york, you aren't dropping anywhere near that cash. And buying consoles? Really?! All 4 generations don't even add up to 3 grand, but I bet you've spent that much in the last goddamn year lmao.

Never claimed they cared about their player base. I'm pretty sure they don't. Girasol did, but she's gone now. Yes the ticketing system is a nightmare. Yes they're not very good with customer service. I'm sure if I ever get hacked I'll be frustrated with it too. I'm not saying Nexon's perfect, far from it, but I'm saying their business model isn't broken. Just because you feel that money spent on this game isn't worth it doesn't mean everyone feels that way. The ones who are discontent are always the loudest and this is no exception. If every business changed their entire business model just because a vocal minority didn't like it there wouldn't be any businesses left. Like it or not you are a vocal minority. If this model really did lose as much money as those who are discontent claim then Nexon would have closed the game or changed the model ages ago. Anyone who's been here long enough knows Nexon's improved significantly in the past year and a half. They're actually giving compensation, they're better at communicating with the community, we even had a Nexon GM here for a couple of months. I get that you don't like Nexon, a lot of people don't. But this isn't about that, this is about spending money. All that matters is Nexon still makes money, we all cry and yell at them for being greedy but people still pay them. All that tells me is regardless of popular opinion here the product they offer is worth the money people are willing to spend.

Also note I wrote all that without trying to discredit you via insults, I suggest you try the same, it's amazing what you miss while you swear.

First of all, the fact they don't care is essentially saying their business model is in fact sh`itty. What the f`uck. They essentially try to get you to spend at least a dollar, if you do that, they accomplished their mission. Their entire company policy is a high refresh rate, but the thing is, it's escalated to the point where entering the metagame without cheating is so overwhelming and takes so much dedication it becomes a second job. For god's sake, look at your krexel example. Assuming you are even strong enough to kill it, in a reasonable amount of time (we're talking about poor people here, not million damage hitters) you're asking them to do the same quest for an entire month to acquire max mesos? Do you know how stupid that is? How unproportional that is? Let me give you an idea.

That's nearly $37 dollars worth of mesos. You're suggesting the opinion, of really, anyone with common sense, is discredited because of a quest, you believe, creates fair opportunity to everyone. That's like 15 cents a day. That's your "big" discreditor.

By the way, to further strip away any credibility you have, it's very against the rules to sell or buy mesos' with nx or any type of money, but that explains where you got it from at least.

Thank you, I'm not familiar with this site. I would love to see average population over the years though. That would make for an interesting discussion topic. I don't feel the thread's gotten nasty though. At least in my eyes it's a discussion on the state of the game with a bit of name calling. That last part I could do without but it's an internet forum, I sort of expect it.

It's a full 6k lower on average. That's a 31% drop. Yeah sure "the same". We've lost a lot of players since big bang. I don't deny that. But we've stabilized at around 20k average players for almost a year now. MS isn't as healthy as it was in its prime but we're not hemorrhaging players like you claim.

I don't know what this 6k is coming from. Like I said, the population now is roughly the same as it was when school was out earlier this year. School has pineapple-all to do with the fact that peak concurrency is at such disturbing lows.
"everyone and their grandmother came back for Big Bang."
fine. whatever. that was three years ago though.
you can't explain "big bang" as the reason for peak concurrency being 50,000 on a monday in september last year.
The number has leveled off at around 20k peak, not average. Such a low number isn't stable. We're not hemorrhaging players, but we're sure as hell not stable.

This thread has been one hell of a read. Please let this continue.

o yay a 3 way battle

I guess I'll throw in a few things. I'm normally a pizza slicer who shows up for the GMS party when there's a new class involved, which often leads me to investing at least a little time in the latest event. Like how my Kanna has epic Tempest accessories, my Hayato has the Grand Maple 8th anniversary set, my Demon Avenger has chairs from moon bunny's Spin Spin Spin (I realized I quit again with like 160 unspent tickets and just threw them out, lol >_>), and now my Wind Archer is a 2013 Excavation helper.

Maple Story SUCKS without a looting pet. Like, maybe some of you just don't know the other side of it, yet others may just slap down the $10 every 3 months to keep loot ability on the main character, but as someone who goes from having pets from "vote for this server" NX to being a dirt poor GMS'er who needs the loot, I find that trying to manually pick up everything really detracts from the whole gaming experience. And while I get that the majority of players haven't experienced unofficial servers, most of them HAVE played other games where looting is not such a severe hinderance. Other games either have basic pets that loot that don't cost real money, or a "loot all" button, or, just any system that doesn't involve having one attack kill 6 monsters in one blow, only for each of them to drop 2-3 items each and only allow you to pick up two per second by walking to them and holding down a button.

Which basically leads me to the main point, which is that the game can't live without its free players. We've already seen the KMS meltdown where NX users could MEE all their equips to ridiculous stats, which blew free players out of the water so bad, a ton of them quit and led to insane amounts of server merging and GMS going "oh crap, we absolutely can't add that." People pay money to look all pretty and have better stats when there's an actual player base to impress. If Nexon opened a server where all NX was 90% off but only 100 people were allowed to join, the people on it aren't going to throw money at it because there's nobody to dress up for and try to outdamage. So if Nexon continues not to throw enough free options for looting, marketing (efficiently, not spending hours merching), and upgrading equips...the game will eventually lose its base and nobody will pay to win without anybody left to beat.

But...it does look like KMS is working to fix the problem and get their players back. So if GMS adapts a number of those same things? Who knows, the game might start being enjoyable beyond the first week again.

I'm really enjoying reading these walls o' text.

Best thread NA.

No, wait... best thread WORLD.

The only fatal flaw in Maple Story is people that spend thousands of dollars cubing items.

And thanks to that flaw, Maple lives.

Long live the flaws.

The only fatal flaw in Maple Story is people that spend thousands of dollars cubing items.

And thanks to that flaw, Maple lives.

Long live the flaws.

First of all, yeah I know your paradox is intentional.
I don't really care for the big spenders claiming that they are the only reason this game is still running, and that all us low spenders or free players are indebted to them for the privilege of being able to play this game.
Even the free players pay for this game. Up until some revamps of certain towns and areas contained certain NPCs like this:
Hey look a corporate advertisement. You just helped pay for this game with only your eyes.
Now, if you are running MapleStory right now, go ahead and close your client. Hey wow look a window popped up with an advertisement. You just helped pay for this game with only your eyes.

Nexon has so much untapped potential for implementing an ethical business model, but they continue to focus on their pineappleing pomegranatety cubes. Let's look at Evolution System. There's three cosmetic modifications that can be made: the map background, the background music, and the monster appearance. A wise decision would have been to monetize the Evolution System by just having the "free" option being just the default, and all of the cosmetic cores come from the Cash Shop. But Nexon is not wise. Nexon only knows one thing:

 Spoiler

We also recently received an update to our chat messenger system, and one of the included features are little icons you can include in your messages. A wise and profitable decision would have been to have all or most of these icons as Cash Shop exclusives, but once again, Nexon is not wise, and knows only one thing:

 Spoiler

Nexon may have people spending thousands of dollars cubing items, but how many people actually do that? Fifty? How many people has Nexon driven away that would spend ten dollars every three months? How much less ad revenue does Nexon collect because fewer people are around to see the ads?

Ad revenue in general is sh`it. By accessing the website they get that generated. What nexon should be doing is encouraging a free version of the miracle cubes, with none of these ridiculous draw backs. The option allows people to work for them, or if they don't have the time to pay for them. Honestly the rates should be adjusted as well. At this point I believe nexon's view point is simply;

"Lets give big spenders something else to spend on!", and unfortunately, the big spenders eat it up. Overall there has been lots of talk about this, and the default answer is "Write it to Korea and send it to them".

First of all, yeah I know your paradox is intentional.
I don't really care for the big spenders claiming that they are the only reason this game is still running, and that all us low spenders or free players are indebted to them for the privilege of being able to play this game.

At the same time, you don't deny that it is the truth.