To those who've quit: What would make you come back?

Bossing in maplestory has never been difficult. Nexon just creates a lame false sense of difficulty. I think bossing is one of the most disappointing elements in maplestory. They could have done so much more and made it way more interesting. Hell most bosses don’t even move and those that do are just pinned to a wall anyway.

I wanted to play Maplestory so I logged on for a few mins, looked at all my godly shiz and was thinking I might play for a bit....but looked at this anniversary and realized it's probably the worse one yet. I mean even my crap characters with the legend equips have completely nothing to gain from it either. Probably won't be logging on till the middle of next patch or so, that's if I have any interest in it anymore.

I like bosses that are impossibly hard. If they aren't, they don't feel like a boss to me. Unless the success rate for the run is under 10%, it's not really a boss, in my eyes. I remember a Zakum run I was in that took about 4:30, that was really fun, and only 3 people out of the 30 that went in survived. Sure, now we have wheels and resurrect and stuff, so that would not happen in current MS, but it was still really fun.

Hard and lengthy are not two correlating values. How do people fail to understand this? Hell, SEGA has problems with this concept and Phantasy Star. You can make a boss hard without making it take hours to kill. Once a fight lasts more than 30 minutes, the players get bored. The more the players are bored, the less likely they will stay interested in playing. Why bother bossing if every boss takes days to complete? That's just retarded.

Plus...people have lives. Expecting people to be able to fight a boss for 2+ hours is expecting far too much as a developer. People have better things to do. Making bosses take a long time is just asking people to quit.

I repeat, you can make a boss hard without making it take hours to kill.

Hard and lengthy are not two correlating values. How do people fail to understand this? Hell, SEGA has problems with this concept and Phantasy Star. You can make a boss hard without making it take hours to kill. Once a fight lasts more than 30 minutes, the players get bored. The more the players are bored, the less likely they will stay interested in playing. Why bother bossing if every boss takes days to complete? That's just retarded.

Plus...people have lives. Expecting people to be able to fight a boss for 2+ hours is expecting far too much as a developer. People have better things to do. Making bosses take a long time is just asking people to quit.

I repeat, you can make a boss hard without making it take hours to kill.

I'll elaborate; I like hard AND lengthy. It's only in a long-term battle that you get the real adrenaline rush. A constant battle to stay alive for hours at a time where one mistake screws the entire party. This is good for two reasons; one, for weeding out the terrible players because nobody will party them after the first few times they cause a failure, and two, it will cause stronger bonds to form between the more skilled remainder.

Introduce a new boss that makes it difficult to defeat.

I'll elaborate; I like hard AND lengthy. It's only in a long-term battle that you get the real adrenaline rush. A constant battle to stay alive for hours at a time where one mistake screws the entire party. This is good for two reasons; one, for weeding out the terrible players because nobody will party them after the first few times they cause a failure, and two, it will cause stronger bonds to form between the more skilled remainder.

A 30 hour boss though? There are a lot of issues with that... People have lives. Very few can sit in front of their computers for thirty hours. Sitting in front of your computer for thirty hours is extremely unhealthy. Most people don't play on their toilets. It's hard to not crash on a 1.5 hour CHT run. What makes you think you can stay online for 30 hours with a huge squad full of people spamming their attacks?

one, for weeding out the terrible players because nobody will party them after the first few times they cause a failure,

This already happens, especially with higher-tier bosses and CWKPQ runs. People aren't idiots.

it will cause stronger bonds to form between the more skilled remainder.

Strong bonds already happen. In Bera, there's one CHT squad that CHTs repeatedly, and it's the same people who go every time.

I'll elaborate; I like hard AND lengthy. It's only in a long-term battle that you get the real adrenaline rush. A constant battle to stay alive for hours at a time where one mistake screws the entire party. This is good for two reasons; one, for weeding out the terrible players because nobody will party them after the first few times they cause a failure, and two, it will cause stronger bonds to form between the more skilled remainder.

You get a real adrenaline rush by sitting at your computer for hours on end pressing a couple of buttons repetitively? No matter how advanced you want to make the battle system, it still ends up like this.

Raid Bosses in WoW, essentially what you are suggesting, are one of the main things that makes WoW so awful in my opinion. It's boring. Even if the boss is able to 1-shot you at any point it becomes mundane and stupid.

I also rest upon my previous case still, people have lives. Expecting them to spend more than a couple of hours on a boss, especially when that's the worst case scenario, is awful from a design concept. It's not something players would look forward to. Do you really think people would do Raid Bosses in WoW if it didn't give them anything? The only reason they do it is because they have to, to become the strongest they can be. It doesn't matter how hard it is in terms of actual boss difficulty if it takes way too long to complete.

Plus...you run into another issue. You like it when one small mistake can ruin the entire run for everybody? So if the boss had 100 HP left, and someone screwed up, and the ENTIRE RUN is a failure, after 30 hours...how would you feel? Ten bucks says half your party would quit, or at least avoid the boss for a very long time. Wasting 30 hours of your life is not something people take lightly. Heck, I know people who get upset for wasting 30 minutes from a screw up in a PS3 game, and stop playing the game for days. How would they feel if it was 30 hours instead of 30 minutes?

Another thing; bonds form regardless of how hard the boss is. The only reason it doesn't happen in MS anymore is because parties are not required. All you would need for bonds between people to begin forming again would be bosses that require attention and actual parties. Right now Expeditions are mostly mules, because everything is soloable. Just because MS has gone too P2W does not mean bonds cannot still form, it just requires you to meet people who aren't absolutely power hungry, and who like playing with groups.

As I'm sure it's been said before, I don't believe anything could potentially bring me back to play this game. The only reason I still care for the game are my memories playing, and I don't see the game the same way as I did years ago. I guess it's because I've learned how much time I wasted on the game, and while I use the term "wasted" loosely, as I can't say I didn't enjoy that time, I find much more enjoyment in completing a console RPG or platformer. I just don't see myself playing this game again after leaving so long ago.

Oh, this is rich.

 Spoiler

All but one or two of the people I've ever befriended in this game have all quit. They quit because there wasn't anything to do. Most of them were looking forward to events that they'd seen in KMS. When those events were brought to GMS and changed in terrible ways (like that stupid cowboy outfit event, where GMS thought it'd be cool to make all the equips temporary ones instead of permanent), they left. Nexon's North America branch -- assuming they're the ones who make decisions to change content for the North American game -- has got to be the most incompetent group of all time. Of all time. They change things that aren't even broken. They ignore things that ARE broken. I read about events in other versions with permanent rewards -- permanent rewards that I'd actually want to bust my ass trying to earn. Do we get those fun events here? NOPE.

Then there are the constant balancing patches. I made my FP mage because I enjoyed poison mist training. Then they changed poison mist. Nothing was wrong with it, but they changed it anyway, and now it's dependent on damage range -- just like everything else in this awful game. So I made a Sniper, and I loved it. Then Nexon changed that class, too. Made it possible to shoot up close. Gave them double jump. Boosted their HP. Turned them into ... into goddamned Hermits with close range attacking. They took all the strategy out of it. Why should I use puppet when my HP's just been fucking doubled? So I made a Shadower. I loved every second of it, until I learned that the class was getting a "boost" in KMS, which removed band of thieves, changed the pomegranate out of assaulter, and made the class spammier than it's ever been before. Even my dark knight -- I made it because I liked dragons, and then they gave it ~DARK IMPALE~ which looks like bloody human waste, but it's so strong and so efficient that it'd be stupid to use anything else. Nexon changes things that don't need to change; they dumb down classes that were beautiful for their complexity.

Merge the dead worlds, or STOP MAKING NEW ONES. I have, like, eight characters, spread out across the worlds, and I don't play any of them because the worlds are all empty.

Then there are the account hackings, but those have been mentioned already.

TLDR: Give us permanent event rewards that are worth obtaining. Stop changing the whole goddamned game every two months. Make the game secure, give us free upgraded item locks. A character with an item lock shouldn't be deletable. And then bring back all of my friends who've also quit.

Oh, should change my post to something more honest. In response to thread title:

1. Some random opportunity to upgrade my already stupidly OP character for no reason.
2. Content, any content.
3. A promise of more accessible bosses. A promise is enough, not necessarily the deal itself.
4. Having not spoken to anyone for a while.

All these things would make me log on again, even after declaring a hiatus. ~_~

It's not 30 hours of wasted time, it's 30 hours spent learning to never make that particular mistake again! I say that such a system would -only- work with a game that has such a large playerbase as this, though it may still require something like cross-server bossing to round up enough people like myself willing to risk so much for a gain that is not exactly comparable. While the rewards are better than anything else in the game, they still aren't technically "worth" the amount of effort put in, I agree. But that's the fundamental difference in my reasoning for playing games; I play for the challenge, not the rewards. Even if the hardest boss in a game drops nothing, I still want to fight it just to say I've beaten it, and I'm positive there are others like me out there. Sure you can find a handful of people with the skill and the desire necessary to beat bosses like that in a pool of players as large as MS's base. I will say that the way MS bosses are now, I would not want to do such a thing; self-healing bosses with time limits and tons of crappy fake difficulty skills is too frustrating even for someone like me, like I said before, I like things to be as skill-based as possible, and when a boss uses something randomly that can not be countered by any amount of skill, I don't like it. And while I did say I like long fights, that same applies to battles like AV in FFXI; I would rather wipe at 1% HP remaining than have the boss use an unblockable 100% heal skill at 10% remaining with the entire party still alive after it took us 20 hours to get him down that far. MUCH rather, in fact.

I like hard AND lengthy.

ba-dum tsh

I don't think any boss should have a timer that lasts longer than 2 hours. I also think bosses that heal are stupid, potential lock is really irritating and damage reflection is only a good idea IF IT WORKS PROPERLY - why does the animation sometimes disappear if the boss is still on DR? It's unbelievably frustrating. I also think bosses should have a better aggro system whereby they target one player only instead of doing the same damn thing to everyone.

Also, stationary bosses are really boring.

It's not 30 hours of wasted time, it's 30 hours spent learning to never make that particular mistake again! I say that such a system would -only- work with a game that has such a large playerbase as this, though it may still require something like cross-server bossing to round up enough people like myself willing to risk so much for a gain that is not exactly comparable. While the rewards are better than anything else in the game, they still aren't technically "worth" the amount of effort put in, I agree. But that's the fundamental difference in my reasoning for playing games; I play for the challenge, not the rewards. Even if the hardest boss in a game drops nothing, I still want to fight it just to say I've beaten it, and I'm positive there are others like me out there. Sure you can find a handful of people with the skill and the desire necessary to beat bosses like that in a pool of players as large as MS's base. I will say that the way MS bosses are now, I would not want to do such a thing; self-healing bosses with time limits and tons of crappy fake difficulty skills is too frustrating even for someone like me, like I said before, I like things to be as skill-based as possible, and when a boss uses something randomly that can not be countered by any amount of skill, I don't like it. And while I did say I like long fights, that same applies to battles like AV in FFXI; I would rather wipe at 1% HP remaining than have the boss use an unblockable 100% heal skill at 10% remaining with the entire party still alive after it took us 20 hours to get him down that far. MUCH rather, in fact.

30 hours is almost physically impossible. By the end of that, you'll be so exhausted just from staying awake for that long that you'll probably mess up. This isn't a question about skill, this is about physical, human limits. There is absolutely no reason for a boss fight to be longer than 2 hours, especially considering that just organizing a run and waiting for everyone to get ready usually takes an hour or more.

The game itself really takes no skill. Unless you're talking about task-oriented bossing where you have to, I don't know, actually move and jump or something to do damage, any future bosses will still center on: A) surviving and B) spamming your damn attacks to do damage. That's really all there is to this game.

30 hours is almost physically impossible. By the end of that, you'll be so exhausted just from staying awake for that long that you'll probably mess up. This isn't a question about skill, this is about physical, human limits.

It's not like they -have- to fight them if they can't handle it. Maybe they could keep a wimpy version of it with current drops in place and name the new one "hard mode" or something. However, I will have to disagree, 30 hours is nowhere close to an impossible achievement, when I was playing Diablo II as a teenager competitively that was my severe low-end, my normal was 50-100 with the extremity being almost 200 hours. And even that only (almost) put me in a hospital overnight, nothing truly life-threatening. Our bodies can withstand a lot more than you give them credit for.

It's not like they -have- to fight them if they can't handle it. Maybe they could keep a wimpy version of it with current drops in place and name the new one "hard mode" or something. However, I will have to disagree, 30 hours is nowhere close to an impossible achievement, when I was playing Diablo II as a teenager competitively that was my severe low-end, my normal was 50-100 with the extremity being almost 200 hours. And even that only (almost) put me in a hospital overnight, nothing truly life-threatening. Our bodies can withstand a lot more than you give them credit for.

If you think that 30 hours of sitting on needles, unable to leave the "action", is something that humans generaly are capable of, you are severly mistaken. If you take breaks for stuff once in a while, then it is a whole 'nother matter, but that was not in the scenario you described.

It's not 30 hours of wasted time, it's 30 hours spent learning to never make that particular mistake again!

I'm going to assume now that you have piss bottles within reach, as well as cans of energy drinks at all times?

30hours is horrifically unhealthy. It's not about ''weeding out terrible players'', it's more like encouraging gaming addiction and just irresponsibility in general. Again, in Maple, boss battles shouldn't even last over an hour because you're only pressing one button the entire time in order to attack something that doesn't even fucking move!

Though in general, for any game, bosses shouldn't take over an hour. There are actual ways to make boss battles engaging and overall enjoyable experiences, but making them last past a certain point is not one of them.

I'll say it before, and I'll say it again.

Nothing.

The american version of the game is broken beyond help.

What's the best way to summarize MapleStory GMS?





Now, I'd go to KMS if I could read korean, and it didn't have phantom.

Why do you keep arguing about 30 hours? Screw that, even 5 hours is way too much, let alone 10 or 20.

I only know of someone that spent like... 6 hours through a Zakum solo, and that was for the recognition of being the first one to kill it in his server (it was among the first zakum solos in GMS). What about that guy which Soloed zakum as a lvl 140 Dragon Knight? I believe he spent like 10 hours and even then he was probably sharing the character. Fighting a boss for more than 5 hours is only bearable if the reward for it is only as good as to earn you recognition from all the comunity, be it here or in wow or any other game.

It's not like they -have- to fight them if they can't handle it. Maybe they could keep a wimpy version of it with current drops in place and name the new one "hard mode" or something. However, I will have to disagree, 30 hours is nowhere close to an impossible achievement, when I was playing Diablo II as a teenager competitively that was my severe low-end, my normal was 50-100 with the extremity being almost 200 hours. And even that only (almost) put me in a hospital overnight, nothing truly life-threatening. Our bodies can withstand a lot more than you give them credit for.

Punching yourself in the crotch for hours on end also could probably be called "difficult" and after you're done you'll most likely feel relieved but there is a reason most people don't engage in such activity.

I'm going to assume now that you have piss bottles within reach, as well as cans of energy drinks at all times?

30hours is horrifically unhealthy. It's not about ''weeding out terrible players'', it's more like encouraging gaming addiction and just irresponsibility in general. Again, in Maple, boss battles shouldn't even last over an hour because you're only pressing one button the entire time in order to attack something that doesn't even fucking move!

Technically, my bathroom is 5 feet from me, so I can put up enough sustainables that take a while to cast or overheal the tank in most games so I can take a 20 second bathroom break. Good point though, MS bosses wouldn't work with that setup because they don't move, and even I'll agree that it's only tolerable for that long if it's a constantly changing, dynamic battle.