General

I unfortunately concur with the article.

A cohesive, coherent, logical, rational and perceptive composition.

Surely Nexon could keep their money making schemes while at the same time improving their game system. There are way too many flaws in this game that should have been fixed a long time ago.

You don't start a game company just to make money, surely you start one because you want people to enjoy playing the games you have to offer.

For what right makes he think he could write for the Maple community, speak for yourself, lots of people enjoy maple as it is right now. Suck it on and move on, quit if you'd like, Nexon is making tons of money from Maplestory alone, too late to change anything.

[quote=DrPebble]@Nonbasic: [b]Maplestory is a ghost town as of 2013[/b][/quote]

can we see where you got you got your information from, if you want people to stop badgering you then supply them with the source to support your theory, its obvious that the games popularity and population has decreased but i can assure you that its no where near as dead as you think.

[quote=Fatalerror]While i understand "making profit" is important to a company like Nexon. I and many other players think Nexon makes "making profit" too high of a priority.

The reason a person goes into business shouldn't simply be to make money, but to enrich the lives of their customers through goods and services. What Nexon is doing right now is just making money without really improving the game because there are a lot of issues with maple right now that could be resolved if Nexon did make a serious effort in listening to the community and it seems to me that Nexon doesn't really care about Maplestory as a game, but as a profit making service, and i think this is where many of us wish it wasn't so...[/quote]

I'm sure they're under a lot of pressure from Nexon Korea to be successful in the North American market. I don't know enough about KMS or JMS to discuss business models but I know the culture is inherently different in Asia and gaming is way bigger there than here. That being said, I wouldn't be shocked if Nexon America cut corners to increase numbers in the short-term and are now seeing the long-term effects of that with the community, and hopefully in future quarters, a decline in profits.

While i understand "making profit" is important to a company like Nexon. I and many other players think Nexon makes "making profit" too high of a priority.

The reason a person goes into business shouldn't simply be to make money, but to enrich the lives of their customers through goods and services. What Nexon is doing right now is just making money without really improving the game because there are a lot of issues with maple right now that could be resolved if Nexon did make a serious effort in listening to the community and it seems to me that Nexon doesn't really care about Maplestory as a game, but as a profit making service, and i think this is where many of us wish it wasn't so...

that patch was their best option at the time because they were competing against the hundreds of illegal servers popping up everywhere.. instead of sending nonstop takedown notices, they decided to make maplestory much like everyone elses server so the players would come back

[quote=DrPebble]@Nonbasic: Maplestory has been [b]dying[/b] since big-bang.[/quote]

Ehem. Allow me to proceed to talk about this open letter. Those who do not like to read have picked an odd medium of communication as you read quite a bit in text based communication and will subsequently wish to skip this post.

Deep rooted change. Nope. The fact that there is the vocal group and the larger group that is nonvocal has always happened. The population goes up and the group seems larger. Comparatively it has remained the same. Both groups have gotten bigger.

Profits are rising. Perhaps. Player count is dwindling...I cant argue the player count due to not actually knowing actual player counts, but thats irrelevant. If the profits are rising thats what matters to them. It dosent matter if its 500000 players giving them a revenue of 5 million or if its 1 player giving then 5 million. The revenue and profits they make are what they care most about, the player count just is a side effect. The fact that despite the "Rampant discontent" profits are up is a sign that no, they are not doing it wrong. They are doing it right. So painfully right. This in itself implies a different consensus. For all the discontent (Which i do add is a matter of "This is the vocal portion. It does not actually reflect the views of the entire playerbase, simply a small fraction.&quot people still pay them. This would imply that since profits are up, the consensus is actually "We dont care enough about this to stop playing and giving you money.".

The fundamental structure...I dont think this is anything but some term tossed in to add the illusion of this paragraph having any point to it. The foundation of a game...Thats the code and engine. Thats what everything is built upon. Even with a nigh invincible foundation every building will ultimately crumble. This applies to games. Change is necessary to keep the gaming moving forward yet ultimately weakens it over time. The faster the change the faster these various little weaknesses add up to the code itself.
Eventually maplestory will die...But i doubt this will add up significantly enough to be the cause of death.

The mistake was trusting what the developers said years upon years ago. Things change. The people who made these promises have a fair chance they dont even work at nexon anymore. The thing is that its easy to say "We wont sell in game advantages for real money" when a game is new. Many of the older f2p MMORPGs have made similar promises...But after the people who made these promises left and years passed, this simply logic popped up. Nexon is a company. Companies exist to earn money. So basic logic dictates that if adding advantages for real money earns them more money faster, then advantages will be sold. Sure it sucks when you are one of the people that dosent want the advantages and hates them being there...But removing them when they still make profit would be ultimately harmful to the game itself.

"It was always the community.", Yeah. The community hasnt changed that much. There was always the NX supremacists, there was always the KSers and hackers, there was always all these things. They havent gone away, there is still the friendly guilds and people who hang out in towns, there is still all these elements of the community you once loved...You just need to learn where in the game they have moved to. The fact that at one point you were forced to interact due to lack of content isnt a good thing. The last thing anyone playing a game wants to do is be forced to do something they dont want to do.

You can still band together and be more powerful, to say otherwise is ignoring the fairly large quantity of benefits provided for parties, the party play zones, the party quests that are still there...And yes. Before it wasnt about cubing. It was about scrolling. It was still about "How much money can you spend to get white scrolls and chaos scrolls to make perfect gear", there was this extremely small point where hard work was a factor. You can still play with people, i dont know about you but ive been in many a guild that organizes raids on root abyss for everyone to participate in. The only difference is now you dont have people FORCED to play with others if they dont want to. The motivation was "This is the only way to progress.", the result is now progression isnt "This is the one way to do this and thats it.", now its free. You can ignore partying and solo all the way if you like, or party the entire way.

Yes. The game has been exploited for profits. The main goal is to get profits, yes. But it does seem like with the multiple times the pay advantages are brought up whoever wrote this is indeed arguing against them. "no one is arguing with that." but yet this negative spin is placed upon the existance of these advantages. You dont need to just accept whats happening. Indeed, you can actively participate against it by not participating in the game. If you dont pay them they are motivated to change to get people who stopped paying back. The fact that this isnt happening is a sign that those changes they made were anything but the wrong path. This letter says profits are up. This implies the right path was taken.

The game functions as it functions. Regardless of what it seems? The people who actually work on the game will have a greater insight into how it works then the random people who think its being run incorrectly.

Yes. Potential became a pay to win thing...However, because it is such a pay to win system is the exact reason its not going to stop unless the players who all use it stop using it. Why would they ever do that? The idea is they make money. Removing a method they make money through is the opposite of what they want...The band aid is more then they are obligated to do. If removing potential becomes a course of action resulting in better profits, it will be done.

Irrelevant paragraph.

People fight hard for it...And this ones simple...Some people care. And people tend to fight for things they care about. No this community isnt the the difference. A community that will fight for the game isnt exclusive to maplestory. There is always for every game the group of players who will fight for the things they care about. Every MMORPG i know of that has shut down has had people flat up offer to pay to keep the servers running, or received offers for people to band together and continue it, or had fan remakes of it made.

Then comes the signing of the letter. Addressed as coming from all of the community...Except, as evidenced by quite a few disagreeing people so far, not everyone shares his opinions. If profits are rising then more people are pleased at how things are going then before and feel it worth paying for the game. The claim of rising profits alone undermines the rest of the letter. Summing it up as "Things need to change...Despite the fact that more people are paying more and in general this is a sign of success."

Ultimately. This letter wont change anything. It will end up being the usual "People who already agreed with the letter continuing to agree." and then things will carry on like before. A choice that seems to have been working for nexon so far.

[quote=SleekandFast]is this supposed to be persuasive[/quote]

For Nexon, perhaps. It's a combination, I suppose.

is this supposed to be persuasive

Change is a two-way street. The community has to work with Nexon and vice-versa to come up with an agreeable and meaningful change.

Might as well title it the Declaration of Independence.

@Endurance @Reflexes

People who are willingly ready to spend hundreds of dollars on the game for it? Go for it, I'm not an I get cubes at a decent rate/amount to make myself satisfied. I've gotten 70 cubes-ish without spending a cent, and was able to cube my equips to the stats I wanted it to (Granted I'm not the strongest thing out there or anything), but that's just me. Speaking of which, i forgot to add in my Paladin which I got 100k Candy Point every day except for the last, that's 8 cubes per day for 12 days. And then the RED Store I got 20ish more cubes (2 Different accounts) from just that as well.

And not even those, you can even buy Occult cubes which are tradable from fm (Granted they aren't the best cubes to use or anything, but I'm just making the points that you can get cubes)

Money is a shortcut in this game, buying cubes with actual money is a shortcut, you can still obtain what they get through in-game means. (In a fairly decent rate too)
Just because you don't get 11 cubes at your convenience when you throw money at the game, it might be a slower process- but you can still get a lot of cubes if you try to get them.

And Reflexes, the Candy point was something that happened February 7th-13th. It already ended, but Nexon will sooner or later throw out another event that'll give us more cubes so just be patient.

[quote=Reflexes]Read my post. the person (seems like the TS tho, posted on the same day) is asking that the game aint the same with all this pay-to-win features like cubes, etc and is asking for that to be reverted. Letters like this I'm sure happened before, unless this gets a lot of attention, and I mean A LOT of attention, Nexon won't give a damn about this.[/quote]

TS didn't write the editorial. Emphasis on [b]editorial[/b], people. The letter isn't calling for anything other than Nexon taking a [b]real[/b] step with the community to work on building a better game instead of lame PR stunts.

Love the discussion, though, and thanks to the TS for sharing.

[quote=Reflexes]Read my post. the person (seems like the TS tho, posted on the same day) is asking that the game aint the same with all this pay-to-win features like cubes, etc and is asking for that to be reverted. Letters like this I'm sure happened before, unless this gets a lot of attention, and I mean A LOT of attention, Nexon won't give a damn about this.[/quote]

this wouldve been a valid point if nexon didnt make cubes free

Oh, bet he hasn't seen that one before.

Them comments though, lul.

@DrPebble: no no my friend when nexon put up a letter saying the game is ending on xxx-xxx-xxx then its dead.

DFO died. this game is stagnate at best.

While I agree with the message as a whole, I do take issue in certain parts of the argument. Personally, I do not agree with parts of the potential system, as you mentioned, but I do have to call it a somewhat vital part of the game. Part of the potential system's purpose is to act as, in the loosest sense of the word, a remedy for a smaller player base, where it is difficult to find people to accompany you on certain aspects of the game, and the higher damage allows you to take their place. And while potentials are responsible for some of the player bas die-off, it's not the only reason (boredom, alternative games). Personally, I wouldn't mind keeping the system too much, if the magnitude of the benefits were reduced. And as for the topic of Big Bang, I wouldn't necessarily call all of Big Bang a bad thing. While it did make the game a little too easy to proceed through, it did allow the more newbier players to get to levels they had never gotten to before. If I were to point blame at a series of updates for breaking the game, I would personally look at Tempest (tyrants), some of the recent events with the overpowered scrolls, and a little bit at Chaos, solely because of the empress set, which was the jumping off point for overpowered equipment. Anyways, that's my two cents.

@Kaneusta: Candy Point event? When did that take place?

but it is! people are spending over $20 for 11 cubes (only 11) and with those 11 cubes their most likely not going to get the stats they want.. the majority of the videos i've seen on youtube people have over 500 cubes in their inventory to perfect their equips, some even buy more after that.. it really is expensive

[quote=Kaneusta]The thing is- cubes aren't even pay to win anymore. Haven't spent a cent in this game, I've gotten around 20 cubes via Mysterious Vein/5-6 cubes from Root Abyss itself. Then the Candy point event, I got 10k on all my link skull mules and an extra 30-40 cubes from just that.[/quote]

[quote=Reflexes]Read my post. the person (seems like the TS tho, posted on the same day) is asking that the game aint the same with all this pay-to-win features like cubes, etc and is asking for that to be reverted. Letters like this I'm sure happened before, unless this gets a lot of attention, and I mean A LOT of attention, Nexon won't give a damn about this.[/quote]

The thing is- cubes aren't even pay to win anymore. Haven't spent a cent in this game, I've gotten around 20 cubes via Mysterious Vein/5-6 cubes from Root Abyss itself. Then the Candy point event, I got 10k on all my link skull mules and an extra 30-40 cubes from just that.

if he wants to make maplestory a fair game hes gonna have to permanently lower the cost of NX cash.. that would totally make the economy prices more stable, less hackers, and more people would purchase NX and make better equips

Although it's well written, it offers nothing new in conveying overwhelming dissatisfaction. If they wanted to augment anything, they wouldn't learn anything new through it. They know that if they were to take a straw poll, people would be favourable toward that which it contends.

Here's why they aren't changing: they don't care enough to because the player base doesn't care. Every time NX is bought and spent on cubes, for example, the trend reflects the notion that despite all the flaws, they're not bad enough yet for people to change their consumer baskets.

Enough players spend enough on features that happen to do enough damage (I'm not talking about range here, but it would be a funny conflation ); this cycle rinses and repeats often enough, too. It's all business and make no mistake it's all the players' faults. Stop letting them know you're okay with it if you want change by way of your wallets. No remedies or even platitudes as far as I'm concerned will be offered until then.

If you're dissatisfied, prove it.

@alanliuis Care to elaborate? I don't see any reason for the writer to argue the side of Maplestory's having much... -clears throat for sarcasm- 'recent success and non-pay-to-win content'. If you're going to diss someone's work and opinion, at least give a reason or point.

Except the community won't change by removing or adding anything to the game. They'll still be the same power/meso-obsessed jerks they were when MS first opened.

The people themselves have to change, which isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Well written, well stupid.

[quote=Critias]tldr please? which im guess is just the same old ms is dieing bs.[/quote]

Read my post. the person (seems like the TS tho, posted on the same day) is asking that the game aint the same with all this pay-to-win features like cubes, etc and is asking for that to be reverted. Letters like this I'm sure happened before, unless this gets a lot of attention, and I mean A LOT of attention, Nexon won't give a damn about this.

What a biased letter.

tldr please? which im guess is just the same old ms is dieing bs.

Like that's going to do anything...letter is basically asking to go kinda like Pre-Big Bang but without cubes and stuff. Hopefully MS2 can take these suggestions into effect.