The fatal flaw with the current business model.

It makes me glad they're getting rid of that retarded system when RED hits. No one thought they were a good idea, and I'm surprised it stuck around for as long as it did.

I constantly argued that with other people. In game, they said it made the game hard because otherwise it would be "too easy", whatever that means.
Out of the game people told me "Oh, but there are events and you can buy them with event coins ", because that made it completely reasonable .
But yeah, I'm sure everyone is happy about that.
Despite being one of the main reasons why I quit, I wouldn't play again though.

There isn't any point to spend any money on this game when they randomly ban you and take 4+ months to get back to you on it saying woops we done messed up or nope we think you were hacking you can't play dis account anymore hurhurhur.

People that say start over must have incredible levels of masochism.

It makes me glad they're getting rid of that retarded system when RED hits. No one thought they were a good idea, and I'm surprised it stuck around for as long as it did.

Mastery books were an awful idea but an even worse idea was changing every skill book drop into a mastery book. It went from grinding on one type of monster to get a certain book to grinding on any monster that has like a 0.000000000000000001% chance of dropping a completely randomized mastery book. I seriously don't get how they thought this was better.

Yeah, I especially hate the whole Skill Book nonsense.

Especially since Adventurers still need to get books from Zakum in order to even put one point into certain skills. I recently took up maining my Hero, and he's 138 without Advanced Combo Attack. He's basically stuck until RED since he's too weak without it do decently in Evolving World, let alone Dimension Invasion. And even if I do get the ACA Skillbook before then, I only have a ACA 20 Skillbook for him to use, and even that could fail.

Good riddance to the Skillbook system.

I haven't read shet because most post are text walls and it'd probably take me 1 hour to get through it all, so let me say just this:

If MapleStory 2 ever comes to be, I hope for all there is its pay to play. There's no way of it with Nexon and the success of their "business model" with the current MS, but one can hope at the very least.

I haven't read shet because most post are text walls and it'd probably take me 1 hour to get through it all, so let me say just this:

If MapleStory 2 ever comes to be, I hope for all there is its pay to play. There's no way of it with Nexon and the success of their "business model" with the current MS, but one can hope at the very least.

Nexon's current business model thrives on F2P and all P2P options are switching to a Freemium/subscription model. Is that what you mean? A freemium subscription?

I constantly argued that with other people. In game, they said it made the game hard because otherwise it would be "too easy", whatever that means.
Out of the game people told me "Oh, but there are events and you can buy them with event coins ", because that made it completely reasonable .
But yeah, I'm sure everyone is happy about that.
Despite being one of the main reasons why I quit, I wouldn't play again though.

I don't have a problem with them being expensive, I do dislike the ridiculous random (1/500 chance to get the book you need! 400/500 chance to get a book nobody needs) and the fact that botters are at an advantage when it comes to collecting them.

If MW30 was HT-only, ok. Someone could do that themself, in a party. But collecting 500+ MMBs and finding it that way? lol GL.

I'm ok with a challenge that guarantees a reward, but when it's a challenge that gives you something you can't use it's disheartening. "Kill 50,000 monsters to get your choice of mastery-20 book" would suck but at least when you've killed 40,000 you know you're 80% done.

Nexon's current business model thrives on F2P and all P2P options are switching to a Freemium/subscription model. Is that what you mean? A freemium subscription?

You pay a monthly fee to play, as long as that guarantees there wont be any in-game advantages in exchange of money. Or maybe something like Guild wars 2, you gotta pay a fee for every patch/expansion they release, on the same condition.

If by Freemium you mean something like "League of Legends" business model, I believe thats what the Cash shop was supposed to be, but Nexon's goal of constantly increasing income turned it into what we know today, and gave birth to all the other shet like Gachapon, marvel machine, potential, etc.

By freemium I mean something like SWTOR or EQ2. You can play for free, but you can also choose a monthly subscription option.

By freemium I mean something like SWTOR or EQ2. You can play for free, but you can also choose a monthly subscription option.

Either that or put a proportionally fair method to gain necessary items such as pets, cubes, and whatever that isn't event dependent.

Mastery books were an awful idea but an even worse idea was changing every skill book drop into a mastery book. It went from grinding on one type of monster to get a certain book to grinding on any monster that has like a 0.000000000000000001% chance of dropping a completely randomized mastery book. I seriously don't get how they thought this was better.

Not to say the mmb system is good or not, but it is not much better than the days when we were all at the mercy of boss runners to sell us overpriced books, or the super ks warfare on area bosses in an attempt to get that skill book you desperately need.

I've played MS for nearly 7 years and spent 0$ of my own on this game. My friend has spent like 60-100$ and has 800k+ range on his DB. If he sold his ms items, he would make over 20 times what he has spent on MS. He's simply good with the market, he's really lucky with scrolls, plays a lot but he also does something many people do: take advantage of things.

And that doesn't always go perfectly in line with the ToS. I mean, just how many people in SP abuse events and hot days logging in on mule accounts? Quite many I bet, and usually those who do are also pretty rich in the game. I'm not calling you by names like if you were hackers, personally I can't do multi-accs because I only have 1 accepted account for gMS (Eu IP ban). If I could have multiple accounts, I'm pretty sure I would go for it as well.

What I think is the problem is that like many of you said, the gap between rich and poor is getting wider, I think mainly because certain things make it easy for rich people to dominate markets (they are in the minority that can solo profitable bosses, they can use their huge meso wallet to marvel until they get tyrants/RA gear, while poor people can only afford for 1 or 2 marvels with mesos). Another huge problem is that Nexon has given a way too big role for marvel, but most importantly: the potential system. And it costs just too much and it's just been too overpowered ever since release. I think the reason they are putting so much effort on these is because for one reason or another, people are not buying as much items outside gach events and potential items and they might've even lost customers in general. This would explain why they want to milk out everything they can out of those addicted on cubing and other gamble-items. That has become their cashcow, a loyal goldmine. I mean, gambling is addicting, pretty sure they've known this at Nexon from the start.

[MENTION=1152]byakugan[/MENTION] I dislike P2P (monthly subscription) for the reason being that I like having full-time access to my character. If I've been on break for months, I don't want to open my wallet just to see that the game is still boring and quit again after 2 days. That way I can feel that I really OWN the character and not the company (although company is always the true owner in the end but I hope you get what I mean here). It kind of feels like the character is not mine, but I'm just getting to borrow it for a fee.

I Actually never had more than one account and don't really pay much to win either, after i spent some money on some perm pets and perm pet equips and perm hyper rock etc. for my main and a few upgrades i stopped. Yes the everything is a bit tedious and i agree with the person that said one of the most annoying things in the game in looting. I myself only realised how much easier it is to do everything with a little pet loot and being able to teleport to any map at a very late stage in my 6+ years of playing.

That being said the game wouldn't be what it is to me without all the pay to upgrade stuff in it, even though i don't pay for much, I barely have 131k on my phantom with nothing more than 3% luk at least on each empress set which was bought when empress was low. Most i paid for was a few cubes for each item and luckily i got my card to legendary in 10 cubes. But back on topic, the game is a business, it's there to make money, no one is forcing us to pay to play it, people choose to and that's fine, but at some point they have to realise that it's a waste of money to spending thousands, but in the end that's their choice, without them keeping the game afloat i wouldn't have this game to play lol. At this stage in the game, it's going to be hard to impossible to switch to different method of making money without losing what they gain from it currently.

Honestly the reason i think most people who play it enjoy how hard it is to get where you want, the game makes you work for it, and you feel accomplished when you finally get there, let's be real, how long would you stick around in any mmo or game where you can get everything in a couple of weeks and kill all the bosses? Unless they release new content to CHALLENGE you every few weeks there would be nothing to keep people around for as long as we have been here which is a couple years. There isn't any game i have played (unless you count dota) which I have played over the last 10 years consistently (unless you count dota 2 lawl), because games honestly have a shelf life of content that expires pretty fast for any gamer. Maplestory is different in that regard in that it forces you to dedicate either alot of time or money to get what you want and then some. You just have to decide where your cut off point is. I'm quite happy building up my phantom bit by bit without spending large sums my only next investment will be shield scrolls to scroll my cane with 50s and hoping to be able to solo pink bean soon.

I was lucky enough a while back before I took a long break to fight all the bosses in the game ( the strongest was empress back then) and beat or survive most of them. Do you know what happened after i was through? I got completely tired of the game and ended up not playing till the next big update.

The game has it's flaws as someone said, but those flaws, also keep us playing. I'm quite happy with the recent updates and definitely looking for RED with my phantom.

The current mastery book system isn't actually that terrible. All it needs is a boost in MMB drop rate and a free, efficient market system. On the server I play, you can get Hired Merchanges and Owls of Minerva with NX you earn by voting rather than having to buy it with NX. Combine that with a more noticeable MMB rate (they aren't super common, but you will start seeing them when you fight level 90+ enemies), and you have shops full of books for lesser classes for 1m each, while Xenon Mastery 20 might run you 50m or so. Expensive, sure, but still available, and searchable by owl, rather than "time to browse the FM again and pray."

If GMS had a free to use/search auction house, even the MMB's obtained by events might be enough. I got one in v141 and popped an Elquines 20...which I may as well drop because I'll never actually bother to seek out the I/L Mage to buy it. If I could simply throw it into a market and see who wanted to buy it, even for some stupidly low amount, I would.

The mastery system indeed needs an update, i usually don't play past level 120 on most characters that come out because mastery books are a pain to buy/find. I am a krexel killer on multi characters per day for my money, by the time i use my money on new classes book, all my days of killing krex will be down the drain.

i feel like this will go one forever until it actually fails who knows how many years in the future.

i feel like this will go one forever until it actually fails who knows how many years in the future.

Welp, people show no signs of easing away from potentials. It's prevalent in all branches of maple. Until people realize there's no such thing as being 'pro' in MapleStory... then yeah, it'll continue indefinitely.

[MENTION=1152]byakugan[/MENTION] I dislike P2P (monthly subscription) for the reason being that I like having full-time access to my character. If I've been on break for months, I don't want to open my wallet just to see that the game is still boring and quit again after 2 days. That way I can feel that I really OWN the character and not the company (although company is always the true owner in the end but I hope you get what I mean here). It kind of feels like the character is not mine, but I'm just getting to borrow it for a fee.

I get your point and consider it pretty valid, but that's a price I am willing to pay if that guarantees there wont be in-game advantages in exchange of money. I'd rather have to pay 10 bucks after a break and finding out the game is still boring than finding out I still like it but I gotta spend thousands to get full enjoyment out of it, which is pretty much the case right now.

I Actually never had more than one account and don't really pay much to win either, after i spent some money on some perm pets and perm pet equips and perm hyper rock etc. for my main and a few upgrades i stopped. Yes the everything is a bit tedious and i agree with the person that said one of the most annoying things in the game in looting. I myself only realised how much easier it is to do everything with a little pet loot and being able to teleport to any map at a very late stage in my 6+ years of playing.

>Years of playing

Do you know how ridiculous that is, that you have to play years to get these opportunities just to looting/healing less tedious, or being able to move through, downright useless maps. on one character, not account, character, It's stupid. Nexon's very model is a contradiction, they focus on getting people to make some type of charge, being dependent on the high turn over rate, yet discourage players who start, and you can see that with the population dips.

That being said the game wouldn't be what it is to me without all the pay to upgrade stuff in it, even though i don't pay for much, I barely have 131k on my phantom with nothing more than 3% luk at least on each empress set which was bought when empress was low. Most i paid for was a few cubes for each item and luckily i got my card to legendary in 10 cubes. But back on topic, the game is a business, it's there to make money, no one is forcing us to pay to play it, people choose to and that's fine, but at some point they have to realise that it's a waste of money to spending thousands, but in the end that's their choice, without them keeping the game afloat i wouldn't have this game to play lol. At this stage in the game, it's going to be hard to impossible to switch to different method of making money without losing what they gain from it currently.

Honestly the reason i think most people who play it enjoy how hard it is to get where you want, the game makes you work for it, and you feel accomplished when you finally get there, let's be real, how long would you stick around in any mmo or game where you can get everything in a couple of weeks and kill all the bosses? Unless they release new content to CHALLENGE you every few weeks there would be nothing to keep people around for as long as we have been here which is a couple years. There isn't any game i have played (unless you count dota) which I have played over the last 10 years consistently (unless you count dota 2 lawl), because games honestly have a shelf life of content that expires pretty fast for any gamer. Maplestory is different in that regard in that it forces you to dedicate either alot of time or money to get what you want and then some. You just have to decide where your cut off point is. I'm quite happy building up my phantom bit by bit without spending large sums my only next investment will be shield scrolls to scroll my cane with 50s and hoping to be able to solo pink bean soon.

This argument is the biggest fallacy, in fact, the top 3 that Nexon white knights jump too. "I'm a business, I need money, I'm justified to charge you out of your ass". Nexon wasn't exactly struggling until 2010 hit then they finally made a profit. Gachapon, smega's, pets, clothes, safety charms and the 2x cards. They all made profit. Unfortunately they weren't made public until 2011. However they claim they were making 30 million by 2007. I want you to think about that, 30 million, based on what nx items? The ones I frekin listed. Granted that includes combat arms and mabigoni or however you spell it.

You're right though, business' should be focused on increasing that net gain profit, but when your player base has almost been at a constant static for the last 2 years, I feel as though there should be some encouragement for those who just have to get started. The work you suggest is absurd, it's a second full time job, you're working months to years just to experience the full potential of the class you selected, that doesn't even include gear. The proportions are completely unreasonable, and for anyone should go to any extreme from "Oh you just want hand outs" to "Oh, work for a few months to get your level 20 skill book!" is asinine. As a player, if I want a pet, it should take me a days worth of questing/farming or something to gain it. If I want some wheels of destiny, there should be some generic repeatable quest for me to gain 5 a day, if I want miracle cubes, there should be some type of in game drop rate for me to attempt to farm them. These items are not "optional" they quickly become staples to actually gain a decent net profit from bossing, assuming you can afford the nx and time to get a shop up.

When a game suggests that you struggle for months just to make the very basic skill mastery of your character when you could probably spend a week of a minimum wage paycheck, it's no wonder people jump the nx train. Then you have to make how many link characters? How many of them have nx transferable items? How many items can you reuse without karma scissoring? I mean it's like paying a fee just to use items you rightfully own, that you rightfully worked for. Not only do you spend months doing it, even years, making this one piece of equipment and they charge you to reuse it. It really isn't about discipline anymore, to resist this urge to be lazy, it's about common sense. You aren't going to struggle, wasting hours to progress for half a percent, in comparison to someone who spends $50 and progress' 18%+.

>Years of playing

Do you know how ridiculous that is, that you have to play years to get these opportunities just to looting/healing less tedious, or being able to move through, downright useless maps. on one character, not account, character, It's stupid. Nexon's very model is a contradiction, they focus on getting people to make some type of charge, being dependent on the high turn over rate, yet discourage players who start, and you can see that with the population dips. .

As i said i never realised until quite late in the game how useful certain things were because i was dead set on never paying for anything. So my years of playing didn't pay off until i already had like 4-5 characters over 120, which was after i stopped, came back, took a break, then came back again.

agree it takes quite alot starting fresh for new comers, the learning curve as i would call it is kinda high. Looking at the other game i play however that isn't so far from the norm for me, Dota also takes a while to get into, you WILL get pineappled on first couple of weeks of playing, it's only after some studying and coaching with some friends, or playing with other newbies your level for a good while that you start to come into your own as a player and really start to grasp the vast concept of dota as a whole. Some games have high walls of learning, and that's fine, to some people it makes them feel good that they were able to overcome that hurdel, we all have the option of not going through it, that's the main point. You choose what you want to invest into.

If a person can't realise that and ends up spending their whole retirement fund on a game then that's their problem, if a person decides they want to spend 5+ hours for 365 days getting to a certain point in maplestory guess what...that's also their choice. They are loads of the same type of schemes in the real world, hell even an entire nation was built on it, Las vegas. WE have a choice WHAT we choose to indulge in, whether the game is rigged or flawed or sucks money out of us, it's up to us to determine if it's worth it or not. As i said i'm quite enjoying the recent updates and free giveaways recently and though i don't spend money on the game like alot of ppl i know/knew in my server i'm happy with it so far. Can it be better? Hell yea. Can it be easier to get into and not have such a dumb looting system? For sure. Can they make it alot easier to fall into the trap by making it easier to upgrade in the lower levels without spending money especially when starting fresh? Indeedy do. But that's their choice if they want to make it more attractive or not. Only thing i have to care about is how i manage with what they are currently putting forward, and don't give me that oh your just condoning what they are doing and not seeking to make things better, come on i'm pretty sure they are adults, i'm pretty sure they have teams of people dedicated to understanding what works and what doesn't, i'm pretty sure they are hearing the cries of maple players all over, if they wanted to do something about it they would have done it. They aren't ignorant, they just have different objectives, and that's fine, i have my my own as well.

Now for your second part, i'm a new member to SP (been guest browsing for years but saw this thread and finally decided it was time to give my input on this forum and not just basil) so i'm not sure how to get the multi quote thingy done lol so i'll just say this is in reference to w/e else you said. Put simply as i said before, it's their choice, the way you talk it would appear as though they are the government raising taxes or some other detrimental economic burden they are placing on the taxpaying people of the nation. I get what you are saying, believe me i sure do, the game is hard and kinda unfair/ unproportional for the rewards you eventually get out of it, really disproportionate and all that, but guess what, no one has to do it, people choose to do it. That's the biggest point and most important when it comes to a game, which is a want, NOT A NEED, so anything you say concerning their tactics and what we have to go through is completely irrelevant, because we choose what we want to go through, we are capable of reason and making choices that make us happy, that's part of the definition of the human condition, the search for gratification. As a person who hobbies in anthropology and psychology, i have seen that people will do what they w/e they want that makes them happy as long as they can get away with it without any negative consequences (subjective to them as what they see as negative) depending on a person's intelligence to discern long and short term consequences.

Maple is a want, no one forces us to play it, your arguments are nice and make alot of sense, but when put to the realization that this is a game and we can stop at any time......then it just sounds like whining because you want something but can't get what you want but truth is you really don't need it at all. Anyone who is willing to go through what they go through in maple can simply pick up at anytime and find a game more suitable to their needs. Humans do what they want to do. If people want to be stupid and waste/invest their money then so be it, that's their right as a human being, If nexon wants to ignore our cries for easier stuff then so be it, game will either continue to float or sink eventually. It's their choice. I made my choice not to waste large amounts of money on it because i want to have life outside of it. That was my choice.

Let me say this to all those who might not know or too young to understand, the world sucks and is not fair, research what you are getting into and prepare for the consequences. Don't wait until something happens (in this case maplestory) such as you get unfairly banned, get scammed, get hacked, rewards aren't what you thought they were or whatever else, to complain and wonder how is this right or i should be refunded blah blah. The game has a history of being unfair, look it up, if you still decide to push on knowing this, then it's your own dam fault if you get "screwed over", no one else's. Go play something else.