5th job to be released this year.

Call me skeptical but what can 5th job really contribute to the game?


You're already capable of committing mass hitboxes of damage on the screen at very minimal effort, bosses often have a bunch of artificially difficult mechanics that are unique to them which really can't be fixed by making more complex jobs, and 1-4th job lacks any sort of in-depth gameplay that suddenly shifting the gameplay to be seriously in-depth would just be kind of random.


If the 5th jobs are good and you can actually fight higher level bosses by utilizing very complex and interesting ways of dealing damage(and mitigating it).....what would you tell new players? ''Oh don't worry, you're going to be blasting the entire screen half the game till level 200 then the game REALLY starts to get interesting''.

When 4th jobs were released, it was a really big deal because of the smaller scope third jobs had at the time and they VERY creative ideas Nexon had at the time; everything about them was articulately developed...even down to the storylines and lore behind the classes, as annoying as many of the quests were(why would some of them require you to get a drop from Horntail?) they were very enriching to the lore. I mean having mages actually go through a quest to become aligned to their opposing element for their summon was really interesting and(in concept, which admittedly they failed at) brought an interesting playstyle concept.



But now? You get most skills that were once 4th job as early as second job, you get all your mobility skills at first job for most classes(and a passive speed boost), you can freely attack the entire screen at low effort, and aside from a very select few abilities that amplify damage or debuff the monsters or give you a damage increase when used in synergetic ways......the overall method for fighting bosses is to lazily spam your best DPS skill and avoid their ridiculously unbalanced 1shot kills and deal with restrictive potion cooldowns.



I don't feel 5th jobs are going to be interesting because the core gameplay mechanics of Maplestory are already pushed to their limits with hyper skills and 4th job....so they're either going to have to make 5th job a very minor improvement to characters, make the massive majority of skills passive skills and skills that just improve previous jobs skills and adding a slightly fancier animation....and that's about it. In Nexon's current state I really don't think they have the creative minds to just whip out more than 10 new and unique jobs with interesting mechanics and skills and actually have them translate well into the game in its current state, sorry for the negativity, hopefully I'm proven wrong but....meh.

You have a point. We already hit the wall with the newer skills and Hyper skills that some of them could've fit as legitimate 5th job skills. How do you expect to top that? The benefits would likely be too small to count.

 Spoiler

Call me skeptical but what can 5th job really contribute to the game?


You're already capable of committing mass hitboxes of damage on the screen at very minimal effort, bosses often have a bunch of artificially difficult mechanics that are unique to them which really can't be fixed by making more complex jobs, and 1-4th job lacks any sort of in-depth gameplay that suddenly shifting the gameplay to be seriously in-depth would just be kind of random.


If the 5th jobs are good and you can actually fight higher level bosses by utilizing very complex and interesting ways of dealing damage(and mitigating it).....what would you tell new players? ''Oh don't worry, you're going to be blasting the entire screen half the game till level 200 then the game REALLY starts to get interesting''.

When 4th jobs were released, it was a really big deal because of the smaller scope third jobs had at the time and they VERY creative ideas Nexon had at the time; everything about them was articulately developed...even down to the storylines and lore behind the classes, as annoying as many of the quests were(why would some of them require you to get a drop from Horntail?) they were very enriching to the lore. I mean having mages actually go through a quest to become aligned to their opposing element for their summon was really interesting and(in concept, which admittedly they failed at) brought an interesting playstyle concept.



But now? You get most skills that were once 4th job as early as second job, you get all your mobility skills at first job for most classes(and a passive speed boost), you can freely attack the entire screen at low effort, and aside from a very select few abilities that amplify damage or debuff the monsters or give you a damage increase when used in synergetic ways......the overall method for fighting bosses is to lazily spam your best DPS skill and avoid their ridiculously unbalanced 1shot kills and deal with restrictive potion cooldowns.



I don't feel 5th jobs are going to be interesting because the core gameplay mechanics of Maplestory are already pushed to their limits with hyper skills and 4th job....so they're either going to have to make 5th job a very minor improvement to characters, make the massive majority of skills passive skills and skills that just improve previous jobs skills and adding a slightly fancier animation....and that's about it. In Nexon's current state I really don't think they have the creative minds to just whip out more than 10 new and unique jobs with interesting mechanics and skills and actually have them translate well into the game in its current state, sorry for the negativity, hopefully I'm proven wrong but....meh.

You indeed make a point. At this point, most job can do pretty much everything we would want them to do or they could do. Most jobs except for mages got a flash jump, most if not all got a rush skill, a pulling skill, a screenwide attack, party buffs, boss debuffs, etc... The only things 5th job could bring would be improvements to already existing abilities, which, in my opinion, is totally different to why 3rd and 4th job releases were exciting back in the day. There is little room to expand a job's gameplay at this point because even if you added elements that are not already part of that job's gameplay, with 35 other jobs released there are more chances those elements are already present in the kit of another one and will make job A feel like a copy of job B.

When you finally get an erection after finding out you become... BATMAN

You have a point. We already hit the wall with the newer skills and Hyper skills that some of them could've fit as legitimate 5th job skills. How do you expect to top that? The benefits would likely be too small to count.

you could go the (original) DrK way, Berserk, rush, hex of the beholder, no real attacks, but mostly buffs to what you already had, before we got impale and nerfed to pomegranate.

What will become of 4th job mastery books? Will we have to buy all of them in order to advance? Or will we advance and use 4th mastery books at our own pace? Would be silly to buy 4th job skill books and have 5th job skills already given to us.

What will become of 4th job mastery books? Will we have to buy all of them in order to advance? Or will we advance and use 4th mastery books at our own pace? Would be silly to buy 4th job skill books and have 5th job skills already given to us.

Revamping skills so you have to buy mastery books for every skill that goes past 10 1st-5th job.

Call me skeptical but what can 5th job really contribute to the game?

I think the only way 5th job would benefit the game is getting an entirely new revamp of how the game works, like big bang. Maplestory has the potential to thrive if it capitalizes more on puzzles with very straight forward skills. The game has become to anime flashy without having the real elements of anime to begin with. They really need to tone everything down, put the damage back in check and have actual skill combos rather than a buff chain, 5th job has the potential to make those type of changes, exploiting maplestory's niche. Hopefully they are art least considering changes like these, or we're just going to get yet another 1 minute fame scenario.

have actual skill combos rather than a buff chain

Play Mercedes and have both!
50 buffs you need to keep active and tons of random floor collision bugs with your highly-mobile-yet-required combos! :p

Play Mercedes and have both!
50 buffs you need to keep active and tons of random floor collision bugs with your highly-mobile-yet-required combos! :p

Mercedes only have 5 buffs (not counting MW, 6 with that, and not counting their elemental sprite as it's arguably a summon and not a buff), one of which is becoming a passive soon. Also not sure what "floor collision" means, or what bugs you're talking about. I only know of one bug where you'll disconnect while using combos too quickly on airborne monsters... Which happens so rarely to me that it's pretty much a non-issue. That's actually the only bug I've come across in all my time of playing the class... So if there are others they must just be extremely infrequent.

Floor collision issues here generally refer to times when you are supposed to land on a platform but instead fall to a lower platform. Or sometimes when you do those jumping combos, and you end up going too high and land onto the platform above you, thus forcing your combos to stop should they require you to be airborne. Another floor collision issues that sometimes crop up is those involving stepped platforms (those with short steps), and when you land in a certain manner you fall through the steps/platform and down to a lower platform (just badly coded/prepared map layout).

Hadriel

Mercedes only have 5 buffs (not counting MW, 6 with that, and not counting their elemental sprite as it's arguably a summon and not a buff), one of which is becoming a passive soon. Also not sure what "floor collision" means, or what bugs you're talking about. I only know of one bug where you'll disconnect while using combos too quickly on airborne monsters... Which happens so rarely to me that it's pretty much a non-issue. That's actually the only bug I've come across in all my time of playing the class... So if there are others they must just be extremely infrequent.

You disconnect if the mob you attack has very fast recovery from being knocked back, when it's in the air the game just continues to launch the mob up further and further as you knock it back. I disconnected so much on my dual blade at the Lion Airplanes in Fantasy Theme Park when upper stab was the main mob skill. I still disconnect on most black heaven mobs due to the fast knockback recovery.

I acutally remembered this old videos of 5 job like this one:
[video=youtube;NhvkSeD4zzs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhvkSeD4zzs[/video]
In fact, one of the skills he imagined turned to be the 170 hyper for I/Ls :f6:
Edit: there are some weird ones or impractical ideals but still 1 or 2 actually came true someway :f6:, not to say some of the names for 5 job aren't that bad.

 Posted this ages ago

Woah look here!So last night I posted the real update were getting, that spadow failed to even find! However nexon came out of the shadows and threatened mr.basil with a million and one law suits and had to close my thread, so instead I'll take another approach and call this a hypothetical scenario. Seems like all our complaints reached the ears of Nexon about these broken legends!:
Now let's just say nexon would/maybe/ isgoingtoo post this:

Hi our loyal maplers! Summer going great huh? Who needs sunlight, pools and parties when you have a $25 nexon card and an entire town dedicated to anti-social people you can relate too! Who also happens to spam our ticketing system with oral fixations of genitials, big middle finger to you too. However we are willing to overlook this considering our game is designed for children, and will accept your parents sucked at raising you. Especially if they gave you permission to download this game which is pretty much you playing as an avatar and making money by gambling on someones stupidity or gachapon. And if we catch you avoiding our games design by buying mesos, your ass will not only be banned but we'll have a public beheading while our npc corey will then send the FBI to shove your monitor up your ass. We decided to release the new 5th job in response of the broken Legends that you won't shut up about! Excited to be the highest job advancement in maplestory? Sucks to be you because our 6th advancement will probably come out in 3 other months. Were also raising the level cap to 400 so we can watch all the current 200's fight for the number one spot. Here's the details of our amazing patch!

[header]Bowman[/header]
Bowmaster-> Defense turret
Okay we all know we have a strong urge for bowmasters, like a 40 year old in a white van near the playground, urge. What could we add to a class that shoots 8 arrows a second with high avoid and unparrellel accuracy without breaking them? You don't! You break the hell out of em and hope they don't crash the game because they have a skill that has the same effect as the disconnect hack! That's right, we weren't ignoring it, we were studying it so we could incooperate it in this bad boy. Pretty much this is how it rolls, you summon a frekin brick over your head wiht a hole in it and have it fall on top of you. Sound's pretty anticlimatic? Hell to the no! This bad boy doubles your hp, makes you invulernable to anything but a half naked blonde chickin knockin on your door. Need a bow? Pft that for panzies, we just install this miniturret with 360 degree action to shoot one concentrated laser slicing monsters like a light saber to butter. Hell you'll never be hungry again because it cooks your meals while you kill! 8 arrows a second? Ha, this weapon only has you firin once from your goddam brick house, try to blow this down wolfie.
Marksman -> MarksWomen
This class is like our secret lover, they are so good, but because they wield crossbows they are like the bubonic plague. So we decied to give the marksman some love and put some D's on it with some PMSing rage, which our bit system wouldn't let us put a weapon attack to reflect the power so we had to settle with the max 2.1b+ weapon attack. We also make this the only class that can break the damage cap, cus we have a bunch of feminists in the office.
[header]Magician -> ImmaQuit[/header]
Now you'll notice there's no specific update with the magician class. That's because we gave them all one new buff! We call it, 200BoF/Echo crack. This buff works as a generator, every 2x card you recieve you get double the exp upon the expiration of the 2x card! Gained 4 levels in 4 hours? Eff that you just gained 8! We obviously love our maplers by making level 200 BoF mules faster!

[header]Pirate[/header]
Buccaneer-> Machamp
What can we add to a class that has invisible frames in nearly every attack? Definitely not a critical that does damage to bosses! Hell we'll up your ante with a goddam 4 arm monstrosity that is the sole reason this game is rated M. After copying most anime's like naruto, pokemon, bleach, and whatever else, we lose track, we decided to give our mature players more of a turn on than copied hairstyles! With this beast you perform nothing but "fatality" combo's, and somehow we got through most of the copyright! Like sub zero? Hell lets add some elemental charges so you can turn HT into a snowman and crack him like a popcycle. What's that? You feel slow? Well that's why we added "roids" litterally giving you max speed, actually hell with that, the skills are so slow lets just half the FPS and make Dragonstrike dance macro more like TT, WE LIKEY SPAM.

Corsair-> Enal Officer
Okay screw the battleship, here's an aircraft carrier. When you summon it, the very base of the boat crushers monsters to look like paintball shots along the starboard. What your landing missed? Say hello to 5 f16's from hell ready to dig you in a 400%/400% Y to X axis grave. Seriously the explosion enough will give you a seizure, but were not responsible if you look at the screen while playing, it's somewhere in our TOS.
[header]Theif[/header]
Night lord -> IMNOTANEFFINNINJA
5th job advancment, 1 more star? Hell to the naw, we just rip your characters arms off and attach two gernade launchers.The explosions alone hitting 26 targets, unlike stars that chip away, these gernades blow it off. Ever see zakums arms fall off? Well with this phychopath, there won't be a time you won't! Hell, with 360 degree's of pure demolition, by the time you land from your flash jump, you'll probably have no ground to land on. And with Se somehow those generades turn into straight up missles, the atom bomb has jack on this.
Shadower -> Cynicower
Let's face it, chief bandits suck, shadowers suck, one dagger wielding class overall sucks. That's why we made duel blades! For christ sake two blades! So while we were pleasuring ourself to duel bladers DPS, we started feeling guilty, well not really, just the release of duel bladers gave us a lot of hate mail from the BBB so we decided to give the shadowers a break, dam one dagger using--nevermind. Obviously were expecting the shadowers to be cynical, because ya know, we hate them, hence the name! Anway, we decided to slop a big scoop of soul calibur in this beast and make these daggers more like edged whips, cus you know, the only thing shadower is, sexy. 360 attacks a second across a 500% tunnel of death. Who the hell needs some 40% fake when you're pretty much a walking projectile blender.
[header]Warrior[/header]
Dark knight-> IMADRAGON
I don't know what we were snorting when we went dragon -> dark. Seriously, it's about time we made a Knight/Dragon hybrid, which essetinally a steel plated dinosaur with wings, who the hell doesn't want that? Anyone on it's bad side. We pretty much stapled a pair of wings so, a tail, and the ability to wield 3 spears, why 3? We're asian, we like 3 okay? Anyway, this monster goes around flying like a falcon to pick up its prey and gut it 300 pixels off the ground. Seriously, who the hell needs to get their feet dirty when slaughtering a village? Not a IMADRAGOn thats who! Don't want to get your spears dirty? Hell who the hell needs that when you have 3 minions. That's right, we made your lil eyeballs into big ass eyeballs who shoot lasers. You'll feel more like you're playing metal gear slug with a giant dragon. And if you're really feeling bad ass we gave you the ability shoot purple fire. Hell yeah.
Hero-> Zero
Died as a hero, now you're a zero. Dont worry bro, you aren't in my book, especially when you're walking around with two axes with frekin chains wrapped your wrists. Ever play frisbey with a tomahawk? It's much better when you're the one doing the throwing. What boss too big to take down in a few swings, wrap your chains around it and unlock the blades within the links of the chain. Ashes ashes, they all fall down, with a thousand skin slitting cuts. Let's face it, you don't die with the impact of a barreling tomahawk in your face, you wish you did when they skin you alive. The only zero about this class is the surivors.
Paladin -> Kanye West
We already gave you double charging, a hammer that kills everything on the map and enough defense to butt plug a ramming from pink bean, seriously all we could do is give this class an ego. Once a white knight, then a paladin, now a black egotistical, taylor swift bullying jack ass.

[TR]

[TD="class: uxp_ftr_left t_lnksi"] © 2016 Microsoft

Terms

Privacy & cookies

Developers

English (United States)

[/TD]

[/TR]

well uh, you got one of them sort of correct at least

General Ideas brainstorming:



Adventurers shared active skill:

Indomitable Curiosity:

When in a party with other players, positive buffs have their potency drastically increased. Unique buffs(if possible) will have their potency increased depending on that skill( Speed infusion will add another level of attack speed, that breaks cap, would need to be uniquely balanced for every skill). Additionally, negative status effects cast on the enemy has their potency increased in a similar fashion. Balanced to benefit classes that have low buffs, but have a unique status ailment they can inflict on bosses.


Maple Champion:

For a period of time, increase critical rate, damage, speed(Independent buff that breaks cap), jump(Independent buff that breaks cap), Ignore damage reflect for your party. Has a hefty cooldown.



Resistance:

Survival Kit:

Increase Abnormal status resistance(all status ailments possible in the game that don't break bosses and gimmicky minigames) by 100%. Makes it impossible to be killed by 1hko skills, if death is prevented this way this skill will go into cooldown and the abnormal status resistances will be rescinded until the cooldown is over. Resistance players are given a more forgiving approach to bosses, however playing badly will still be punishing for them.


Hope of Edelstein:

Toggleable skill, when the player reaches critical levels of health; as long as it did not kill them HP/MP(or Dark Force for demon slayer) recovery 100%. Invincibility for 30 seconds. Abnormal status resistance(not unique ailments) 100%(this is to synergize this buff with survival kit). All members of the party get 50% critical rate and 50% critical damage increase. If survival kit is not on cooldown(you enter this state from taking too much damage naturally), puts survival kit on cooldown and increases unique status ailment resistance by 100% for the party, Survival kit will then be put off cooldown immediately when this skill expires.



Legends:

Legend Awakened:

Attacks are very likely to stagger any and all targets, which puts them in an inactive state for 4 seconds. Monsters can be stunned even if they are invincible by skills such as Weapon/Magic guard. When a monster is considered ''inactive'', increase all damage done to said monster as well as critical rate. A monster gets a passive stun tolerance as it is stunned more and more, after it reaches the cap it enters a state of concussion where it cannot take action for 10 seconds and receives a PDR debuff(can go into negative) and then gets a passive immunity to stuns for 30 seconds. Monsters cannot be put in an inactive state while they are already in an inactive state(so players don't immediately stack up stuns within the first few hits).


Hope of Maplestory:

Buff; The next attack you use on a monster in a concussive state will do an absurdly boosted amount of damage. If it is a multi-hit skill, instead critical rate is increased 100% and critical damage is astronomically increased. If this skill is used against a monster in a concussed state, all cooldowns for skills are reset and Arans combo counter becomes capped(other legends will need some sort of unique compensation buff as well).



Cygnus:

Protection of the Goddess:

When inflicted with a debuff, you are given a positive version of its effects, which will be boosted or lowered to actually be useful. (If you're poisoned for ticks of 46 damage per second, that's obviously a stupid buff, so it's instead boosted to.....say...10,000 hp per second. Actual numbers would need to be balanced but you get the point). This skill can only absorb one normal ailment, and one unique ailment at a time. Any repeat attempts to debuff the player will be treated as normal and they will receive that specific ailment if the monster is successful.



Goddess Anger:

Detonate any negative debuffs you have absorbed, and enemies hit by the skill will receieve a massively boosted debuff similar to what the skill used on the player was, unique buffs will not be applied to monsters. If a unique ailment was absorbed and used on a monster, the victim is converted to a ''no-type'' monster, in this state it has absolutely no resistances to any element whatsoever, and the first element that is used to strike the monster will cause it to become weak to that element for the duration of its debuff. Their PDR also becomes 0 when in this state. If this skill is used, protection of the goddess will go off of cooldown, and this skill will enter its own cooldown.






Some basic concepts for the classes themselves:


Clerics:

Give clerics the ability to create towers that exert certain effects on players in its area of effect, and give the statue the ability to be damaged by enemies. Tower examples can include the ability to cure any ailment while being in its area of effect, resurrecting players who die within its area of effect, etc. The idea is that these buffs will be pretty overpowered, but the player still needs to be careful considering their use as the towers will enter cooldown when a boss damages them enough. Additionally, they should have the offensive capability to ''detonate'' their turrets, so they can quickly rid themselves of any towers that have served their use. Doing so can buff the party massively, or damage the enemy by a lot. Managing cooldowns and knowing when to properly set up these towers would make it an active supporting class that benefits the overall DPS of the team while still requiring brain activity from the cleric themselves.


Give Bahumut another tiered upgrade.



Buccaneers:

Give them back an invincibility gimmick. The idea is that they would have mastery over time in 5th job, so while they do attacks they ''freeze'' time for themselves and any attack used on them in a certain period of time while that time freeze is in effect will do no damage. This would be a passive skill for pirates and would activate on nearly every skill. Give the player a buff that stops this effect, but compensates the player by allowing them to cancel the animations of all their skill for..say....10 seconds or so, which would give them an attack speed that no other class could compete with. AT the cost of putting their invincibility on cooldown. Also, give them the ability to actually ignore debuffs and status ailments while ''invincible''. Bring back transformation, and make it work like energy charge instead of being an active skill. Give them unique skills that they can use in this state, however make it so that this ability isn't on 24/7 and is instead a truly temporary state like it was originally intended to be in concept. This way I can look at how awesome I am as a super-saiyan but I also have time to appreciate my non-transformed look as well. Also, give us a new transformation sprite, don't re-use the gold one.



Ice/Lightning mage:

Give them more ''summon'' type attacks, like Ice Orb where they throw it out and it has a continued effect while it's out. Make it impossible for damage reflect to activate on them when they leave their ''ball'' state on summon. The idea would be to amass an army of Ice-like creatures all over the field, but having to upkeep them to a realistic degree. Allow them to take damage, like the clerics towers, and give them the ability to be detonated(ideally with an electric attack). Allow Dragon-Breath to be deployed as a turret, like Bowmasters can with their skills, we're talking 5th job here so this isn't an overpowered suggestion at all in my opinion.

Additionally, allow the ''lightning'' element to be used to buff summons further, and have unique effects when cast in their area. For example, when deploying Dragon-Breath as a turret, you can use a skill that would electricute it and it would do electrical damage to the victim it is currently putting in hold. Give the ability to buff Elquines with lightning as well, which would have her the ability to cast a mini version of chain-lightning herself(with a freeze-counter effect still).





Fire/Poison:

For the poison aspect, give an ability that lets poisoned monsters grow fungi or some type of plant in them that converts them into a plant-type monster where they take increased fire damage. The idea is that poisoned monsters should be exploited for your benefit, rather than outright exploding them or killing them. Poisoned monsters with sprouts growing in them will increase your powers bit by bit with each increasing monster, and the length of time it has had to grow. You basically get mastery of plants as well and your skills will involve draining HP/MP off of monsters, turning them passive to you, and leeching EXP off of them as they continue to live under the effects.

At the end of its duration, cause the spore to detonate, this allows them to be killed while poisoned without retaining 1 hp. Give them a summon called Hivemind or something, which would be a stationary addition to the map and would be a creepy plant, that does unique things to monsters who are infected with spores when near it but otherwise doesn't actively attack anything. Allow it to be able to take damage. Perhaps it could have an effect to where it will command poisoned monsters to fight each other, there can be a alot of ideas to go with. Maybe it will teleport all infected monsters to it, and constantly give the player EXP while also defending the summon itself from other monsters trying to attack it. It can have a big cooldown when disabled though to compensate for what sounds really overpowered.


On the fire side, allow it to prematurely detonate the spores in situational.....situations and give it increased damage to infected monsters, Meggido Flame would syngergize well, instead of just using it whenever the player is rewarded for putting it on hold until a spore on a specific monster is grown to its max stage so they can reap the best rewards.


Just some ideas I think sound cool.

The fire poison seens pretty good , but i don't know about this tower thing for bishops :f6:

I hope 5th jobs comes with A LOT of development to each individual job's story. So many jobs got story that just end in a "to be continued" only to never be developed again. At the very least give each a pleasant clousure.

As for abilities, I'm with Khanie here. Unless they do something like restructuring jobs from ground to 5th job, I only see this as another power boost. Most jobs gameplay has already been well rounded, most jobs already got everything they could need, and whatever they don't and could work on making them better is already in another of the 3x other jobs out there. Take Hero for example, I tried to come up with ideas of ways to improve the job with 5th advancement and here is how it turned out.

- I wanted to suggest they should make combos into a small energy pool so we use Brave Slash as a means to keep the pool filled while use our finishers like Coma, Incising and (insert 5th job finisher) to as our main damage source, but hey guess what? SOUNDS LIKE DEMON SLAYER!.

- Or they should get rid of combo attack for Heroes, maybe switch it into something else, like a momentum-metter where the more hits you deal or enemies you kill the stronger you get, oh wait? THATS FREAKING ARAN !

- What about making finishers into acrobatic attacks that increase the mobility of Heroes? like Incising turning into a raising slash that allows to move vertically, Coma into a fast slash forward through monsters, and (insert 5th job skill) into a rolling slash while jumping over monsters... HAYATO, DAWN WARRIOR, ZERO

- Maybe add finisher versions of skills like Rush, and that chain skill, then make it so combos only charge through critical hits and finishers can only be used with a full charged combo count, then increase by A LOT the damage of all finishers deal so they can be used as 1HKO abilities depending on the situation. Problem is:
A) Most heroes already kill everything with 1 Brave slash
B) Muliple hit abilities would screw the critical combo charge system.

The combo attack system already feels like a pretty lame version of other systems out there, which you cannot improve without making combo into a copy of those. Problem is without combo attack, Heroes lose the main element of their gameplay identity

I just wish the combo orbs weren't as obstructive, might as well not even get NX items because half of the time you're going to be covered up by a giant pink circle with floating symbols.

Spadow has shown on Twitter a MapleSEA note from a Korean overseas director which mentions 5th job.
http://www.maplesea.com/news/view/letter...GLHoH.dpbs

I just wish the combo orbs weren't as obstructive, might as well not even get NX items because half of the time you're going to be covered up by a giant pink circle with floating symbols.

I never understood why they don't layer behind the character

I think the only way 5th job would benefit the game is getting an entirely new revamp of how the game works, like big bang. Maplestory has the potential to thrive if it capitalizes more on puzzles with very straight forward skills. The game has become to anime flashy without having the real elements of anime to begin with. They really need to tone everything down, put the damage back in check and have actual skill combos rather than a buff chain, 5th job has the potential to make those type of changes, exploiting maplestory's niche. Hopefully they are art least considering changes like these, or we're just going to get yet another 1 minute fame scenario.

Pretty much this. I've never been all that excited about the concept of 5th job back a year or more, when people were first conjecturing that they were going to add it, simply because it doesn't make sense. The game has no room to improve any of the classes to be any better than what already exists. The only way they're going to make 5th job work, and not simply make the game an even bigger numbers game, is to revamp the entire game...again. Hell I've always said that Big Bang was a pretty progressive move for the game anyway and fixed many of the flaws it had. I can see it being possible, but I'm not sure they'd do it. They risk alienating the people who give them their money, the whales. The whales don't care about interesting game mechanics, they care about their epeen being bigger than everyone else's.

The overall problem with MapleStory at this point is that there's no comboing or anything like that. It's, "Use this skill forever. Once in a while use these other few skills that buff you or debuff them." Honestly one of the reasons I don't play anymore, it's not interesting. The classes I've enjoyed the most are the classes that move away from that concept, and the fun part is that those are also some of the weakest classes in the game (Paladin especially, yet is by far one of the more enjoyable ones to be honest). Basically, we need more skills, and they need to have cooldowns and such so there's no spamming of "the best one". If 5th job is their way to revamp the game to have more interesting comboing systems and what not, then I'm all for it. But I highly doubt it. I suspect it'll just be "100% more range than the last skill AND it hits 60 times?!?!"