The One Year Anniversary of the Big Bang

As of now, a full year has passed since the first major game update was released upon GMS known as the Big Bang. While it's been over a year for KMS, this update has brought a TOTAL change to the entire community positive and negative. It was the talk of the year in 2010 and the fuse to the keg which would explode into a series of smaller and similar updates. More revamps, such as Chaos and Legend followed but they weren't as big as the Big Bang.

With this update came the following:

*New Skills
*Easier Leveling than before
*A facelift to the UI
*New Monsters and areas
*The Resistance
* and so on.

While the Big Bang brought the chance of easier leveling for all players and bringing the first Explorer jobs up to par with everyone else, we also took some hits along, some notable skills losing its luster and being cast to the underdogs.

I want to know what did you think about the journeys made throughout this roller coaster. What have you done since the Big Bang and how far did you get across? Who do you feel about all of this and how did you feel about the Big Bang before it reached us? What major rumors did you remember when we heard about the Big Bang in KMS.

A big bang discussion thread? I thought this was going to be a discussion of the progress made since that time, since that's usually what's discussed when it comes to anniversarys.

I don't really remember anything specific about big bang itself. All i remember is that all it did was entertain me for a day, and then allow me to get back to my goals since training pre-BB was f'ucking horrendous. Killing BGA/B/grandpa/krexel everyday was so much fun. I actually leveled at a great pace, compared to everyone else over 160 who basically gave up because training on normal mobs got worse. I wasn't interested in BaMs/WHs/mechs because i didn't have significant %stat for them and there wasn't any incentive to make them so i didn't care. A lot of big bang was waiting until it was over so LHC information could be revealed, which was conveniently quick.

At BB i think i had like 25% main stat. Now i have 109%. I was 163. Now i am 193. I'd like to hit 200 before union, since buccaneers suck c'ock, but cannoneers will probably consume that desire.

A big bang discussion thread? I thought this was going to be a discussion of the progress made since that time, since that's usually what's discussed when it comes to anniversarys.

Oh you can discuss that as well, that's why I'm editing it.

Most Nexon ideas are good basic premises hampered by horrific implementation or extra exploitative features.

Rebalancing classes? Needed to be done. But not over and over again every few months. On top of that, the latest round of KMS changes seem more negative than positive.

It's natural for the game to get easier over time - existing players wont use new content if its useless or even suboptimal. But obviously the slower the rate of quantitative improvement, the better.

As far as new classes go, all the ones I seem to like are the ones that aren't gamebreaking or stupidly designed when they come out: battlemage being the only one from resistance fitting that description.

Honestly I'd give up big bang if it means we could get rid of everything else since then as well. I want cwkpq back and a game without the potential system.

the only thing I hated about big bang was the lack of maps & secret maps... it kinda killed all the secret places in victoria

well and the job revamps like every 3 months

Loved Big Bang, except for the little deatail that I was already hitting 200k damage before it, and after it I kept doing 200k..... which is far from the damage cap.


The one thing I hated is that, somehow, training alone got harder. Maybe its just me. :f6:

I wonder what kind of update will come in 2nd Big Bang Anniversary and the 1st of Legends.

i leveled 3 times- 2 times normally and 1 for free from hot time.

big bang made lvl 100-110 a peach, hate it

The one thing I hated is that, somehow, training alone got harder. Maybe its just me. :f6:

Not just you, I dislike this change as well but I kinda have to look past this as this is an MMO and thus part of the point is doing things with others. Just bad when I do have that desire to something alone it means I go bossing. I miss when these were reversed.

Big bang was the only thing that brought me back to MS after being hacked way back in the winter of 09'. The information as it came out made me feell as if Nexon really had been listening all along.

It was a very welcome change for me, Pre BB i got 2 characters to 4th job, but it just felt like a dead end at 120+ back then, for my AM it was just spam blizzard and power level to 200 so i could be useless at bosses. I remember going to newties back then, and spamming blizzard till i hit 123 when i just went, 'screw this' and quit. The dissapointment was maximum. I later initiated the polar opposite of a 1 button spam class, a shadower. and got it to 120 in a pre bigbang world, taking me 6 months to achieve. While i had much more fun that time, the game had begun to lose its shine to me after finally trying out other MMOs that weren't as broken economically and far less grindy.

Big bang cured my most major complaints with the game, the grind, the broken mage formula, Even giving shadowers the most envied Flash Jump and amazing meso explosion. With the grind made easier, i finally got to explore classes I wanted but would not touch due to the grind commitment, Finally i knew what it was like to be a Hermit and a Dragon Knight. The variety in being able to play multiple chars while being far enough to have a decent movepool makes having alts a LOT more enjoyable and less like work.

For me, i appreciated the more subtle changes to the game, Finally revamping the defense stat, the mage class formula, making potions more accessible to new players so they wouldn't struggle early on. As well as making armor drop more often, which made scrolling much more easier and less risky.Though it came later: i appreciate the new guild system as well as LHC making grinding more social than in the past where it was only seen at endgame. These changes made the game that much more welcoming to new players and casual ones.

My bishop still sucks so I hate it.
Also can we go back to the old UI?

oh god, trying to get the BB rings, oh god.

Man, has it really been a year?

I loved Big Bang, it's made grinding a lot more do-able.

Before big bang, my highest lvl was 80 ( and that's just cause I pushed myself to reach 80 before the change happened), and I way too attached to training on 2x back then =S

And nowadays I can train my lvl 129 on 1x for as long as I want and it feels fine.

Personally, all glitches and such aside, every patch makes this game a lot better, I wouldn't go back to how things to be at all.

Big Bang, didn't feel like leveling my Dual Blade, decided to leave it for later fun, they were the strongest DPS class anyway `-`

1 year later, just leveled my Dual Blade to level 100, they have horrible DPS

Big Bang was good in some ways, and bad in others. I support the faster leveling for sure, but oh how I loath the Victoria changes and the general dumbification of everything. I hate how they think players need to be hand held. I also strongly dislike what they did with LHC. Party play was a great idea, but making it so that the best way to level is to stick at it from 110 to 200 in a single area is so stupid words can't describe it. The revamping is getting really old by now, and so the spewing out new classes deal.

Lets see. From what I've observed of the year with Big Bang...

Training got a lot easier. Easy to the point that level 120 is now considered "a joke". This meant that even a casual player could now reach level 70 and beyond without the need for any 2x cards. BB introduced party play zones, when LHC was released the was much rejoicing as training at late 4th job became even easier along with having a new never-before-seen-in-GMS viable way of training. The continual stabs in the dark when it comes to class balancing has left some classes completely screwed, some classes unaffected in their purpose some better, an example of a class that has benefitted is the Archmage class which they failed to revamp properly twice (initial BB, Chaos). Ascension actually made them somewhat resemble an attack class, a far cry from the pre-BB leech mule without HS. The new damage formulae were a godsend to magicians who had been systematically raped by every other class damage-wise due to their bizarre non-standard quadratic damage formula since the release of 3rd job, and more recently at the time hindered by the static Magic cap of 1999 post-potential.

Problems arose with BB too. As everything got easier the value of in-game achievements went down. This can be said to be natural for MMOs, but in Maple's case the "standard" hadn't really changed for years until the potential system came along and after BB Nexon seemed intent on making everything as easy as possible to satisfy their laziest and most whiny clientele. With Legends 2nd job is basically handed to you and you get the massive arrows that say HEY GO THIS WAY YOU RETARD showing up for quests well up into the early 2x levels. Maps were also compressed, their paths linearised and ALL UNMARKED HIDDEN STREETS WERE REMOVED only to be replaced with "hidden streets" that have a massive yellow ring around the entrance that says HI I'M HIDDEN RIGHT HERE when you go near it. Only unmarked portals these days are quest related. This single-handedly stabbed the exploration aspect of Maplestory to death. Nexon's amazing foresight to keep LHC because "the community wanted it" whilst copypasting the nerfed Stronghold also returned us to the dark days of Skeles when you trained in 1 map for most of your 3-digit level maple life.

There's probably more but it evades me. I'm on the fence for what BB brought to gMS really. It brought a lot of what maplers at large had been asking for for years, but at the same time spoiled them beyond belief. In gMS this has been aided by the unbelievably quick acceptance of hacked items/bots/3rd party programs/buying and selling mesos being "perfectly normal" when they aren't and should all be rightfully scorned whenever possible.

Before BB: Paladin had about 15 quests not done, could get to Oblivion.
After BB: Paladin has 500+ quests not done, not high enough level to go to Oblivion, even if the quests were still done.

Didn't really like it.

Leveling is so easy that it's become incidental to me - I almost never log on to train, I log on for other reasons and end up leveling anyway.

Before Big Bang:

I only had three 4th Jobbers and my Bowmaster was level 157. My days consisted of the occasional GPQs, regular PQs on alts, lounging around in my favorite spots and every now and then, actually training.

After Big Bang: Bowmaster is 165, but I don't do as much as I would like to on her because of lack of things to do that isn't PQ or train (though truthfully, that's just laziness on my part). GPQ is gone, so are my favorite spots in the game. PQs have changed completely, either for better or worse, with all the nostalgia gone. ALL OF IT. Training spots got screwed up (either by Nexon or by hackers @ Stronghold and LHC), so I either boss or PQ.

Oh, and my 4th jobber count went from three to eight (if you count the two Cygnus since then), with only two of them, not counting my Bowmaster, above 130 (one of them has been 140 since pre-BB, though). My stats also went up by a very noticeable amount but I can't for the life of me remember what I had before then.

Truthfully, since Big Bang, Maple's lost its touch. There were great updates, such as new areas, easier and more beneficial PQing and a profession system and even new skills and class balancing but then our old favorite past times, or at least mine, are all gone. Training's not as fun when the levels mean nothing anymore (ever since LHC and hackers came along, not even level 200 means a thing anymore because who wants to be legit anymore? But I digress...) and exploration's lost its touch as well.

What I love about Big Bang are the new class changes (... for the most part), professions and easier leveling but sometimes I wish we could go back while still keeping the good things.

Oh, and having to redo all of my ToT quests did NOT make me happy.

Big Bang was a mixed bag for me. I love the class revamps and the easier levelling. I still prefer the old UI, but I can live with the new one.

My biggest gripe with the Big Bang is how Victoria was reorganized. Hands down, some of my favorite maps include practically all of the old Ant Tunnel, dungeon maps like the Deep Forest, the old Ellinia, and the 3-Way Road-Split (I could go on - this is scratching the tip of the iceberg). There were so many interesting places in Victoria that I would revisit every now and then just because I really liked them. And what do we have now? A boring Victoria with small and boringly linear maps. If navigating huge maps takes too long, why not permanently increase every class' base speed instead? Just about every class these days have mobility moves too.

Edit: not sure how I posted twice with one click. Sorry.