General

@redskull: Nah I am talking older than v0.62. Been waiting for some people to finish a project for a v0.01 MapleStory.

"Now" lol.

@beefly: yours is drop dead gorgeous

The game has slowly been dying since like, '08 because the formula that worked in Korea doesn't work with the rest of the world and the other divisions of nexon are too lazy and not equipped to change it. (think all the hackers, nx cash)

@doomfire77: cute avatar

@beefly: steam takes in account total numbers of players online not just through steam

Idk I feel like when I have a goal or atleast a milestone I want to hit I want to play more.

idc about how maplestory is going, i just want the social aspect back tbh.

if any of you do some google search, there are plenty of v62 servers with no pay to win.

@gymnologize: Current servers would be constantly lagging and crashing with that many players.

@gymnologize: yeah let's all play in some v62 server

I just wish we could go to back to the days where Maple had 14-15k players on the server at once.

@ultimaxexon20: I ask the same for you. The simple answer, no one really quits maple. And also no one really plays maple either. Mostly afkers and that includes botters.

Then y still play? @ericmart

@doomfire77: idk about the first link but I wouldn't count steam as the whole population, I don't use steam when playing maple (even though I actually have steam).

http://www.githyp.com/maplestory-100895/player-count/

http://steamcharts.com/app/216150 ....

@doomfire77: Dang is it really? That's actually hella depressing.

This game is dead just waiting for other people to resurrect older versions of the game.

@rachelll: I'm pretty sure dark times started once Pam's Song was released (dang thing was when Nexon was starting to get ideas), and just now we're almost out of there. It's just Bonus Potential Cubes that's in the way.

@doomfire77: Kinda glad in a way that it's dead/dying. Hopefully it stands as a beacon of light for future releases. Don't try to over monetize a game because it's popular; you only stand to kill the very thing that gave it the popularity it has.

Also, where did you get the 800 figure from?

let me just say this the average player base in maple now is 800/give or take a few online at a time, maybe a little more on weekends, so maple is dead. 800 split into all the servers + reboot+ botters+afk ... its kinda sad

@endurance: PREACH

@endurance: LHC days were a pretty dark time....spawn "glitching" with the WH hack, familiar exploit, rampant leeching service/dc hacking, duping+wide usage of 38 atk vss, nisrock/stonetooth/craven with massive amounts of attack. In that time frame, we went from having about 1.5k lv 200s to over 12k (~6 months)

Nexon turned this game into a Cash Shop game. their decision to increase the damage cap was probably to compete with all of those unnoficial servers out there, this did not make the game more enjoyable.. it made it even more lame and gave the cash shop spenders more benefit over unfunded players

You've got a handful of players that can mow down CRA in like 5 seconds with their 6 line legendary blah blah and 30mill dmg range, while everyone else needs to be carried

This game was fun during the Aquarium / LHC days.. those days are long gone now.

@darksword: "5th job does not help out new players. In fact it punishes them for not having at least epic-unique potentials. I know quite a few players who cannot even complete the Vanishing Journey questline without getting carried. Players in middle ground benefit quite a bit, but end game players benefit the most due to already having everything they need and just adding on-top of what they already have."

That's exactly how I felt about 5th job. I was one of middle ground players who struggled a bit with the questline without the arcane force, but I found it fun because I had ambition to farm up arcane force and nodes to get stronger. A handful of people on my buddy list came back to the game aren't strong enough to clear the Arcane River pre-quests with or without sufficient arcane force. So their forced to spend hours trying kill 2000+ mobs with their reduced damage and no drop gear just to finish the quests. By the time they do finish the quests, they now have to do their dailies to finally get enough arcane force, which again, they're too weak to do unless they want to spend hours grinding for this every day. They quit again after a few weeks (though I think that was more due to the lag going on at the time).

Nodestones are totally out of the picture for them as well. How would they farm nodestones if they can't even get enough damage to kill the monsters? We've only had 3 events where we could get node stones. One was with the V boxes where we can farm node shards and convert them to nodestones. And the other two were hunt 100k points to get 10 nodestones. If you farmed these, maybe you could've gotten 45 nodes, but it's likely they're useless to your setup or not relevant to use and you probably had to dis-enhance them. Nodestones imo are the prime example of this game's gap between the strong/rich and the weak/poor. Either your strong or rich to get all your nodestones and double your damage, or you're too weak/poor and you're stuck there.

This game lacks vertical mobility for new players which is what is killing the population. Either pay money (which why would someone just picking up a new game dump hundreds on it right away?) or grind for hours (which why would someone do this on a new game that they know nothing about). I don't know why the removed occult cubes from boss drops shortly after unleashed was released. Imo, that would help new players a lot, as they could get 6% - 12% on their gears feasibly .

@beefly: Very true. There's no in-between because the design for power gain is "beyond" broken.

Funding a character regardless of what world, Reboot or Non-Reboot requires you to endlessly grind on a certain thing which is farm mesos, or bosses until you're able to fight certain content. Yet most players who grind in game on a daily basis don't even reach close if you're in a Non-Reboot world, or when comparing against hackers.

Most of the people who continue to expand the ridiculous numbers of end game content is those who've maxed out their set-up via throwing money out of their wallet or brutally hacking it. Zakum, Horntail, Pink Bean, Cygnus, Magnus, Chaos Root Abyss all showcased some form of imbalance. Sure, power creep wasn't really a thing back then but hackers still managed to control who gets to go into the boss "or else get d/c hacked or locked".

The problem with most boss content is that it doesn't help you fight the next boss. Clean gears provide very little advantage which requires scrolling, cubing, Nebulites, Star Force, etc. I agree that Hard Von Leon is a perfect boss in terms of diffidently aside from Mini Castle Golems giving him an HP heal.

There might be a problem with Ursus now with the introduction to 5th job is that not all of his breakpoints can be broken before being defeated due to power-creep. His breakpoints are supposedly based on the number of times it was hit, not the amount of damage done to it. I can't verify these claims myself but that's what I've heard about Ursus.

Potential is the wildcard that determines power. It could take a small number of cubes, or hundreds and maybe even thousands of them. Free-to-play has very limited access in Non-Reboot while in Reboot it takes a lot of time or some people just bot for it.

5th job does not help out new players. In fact it punishes them for not having at least epic-unique potentials. I know quite a few players who cannot even complete the Vanishing Journey questline without getting carried. Players in middle ground benefit quite a bit, but end game players benefit the most due to already having everything they need and just adding on-top of what they already have.

Cutting it short, generally the only people who actually reach end game content are either hackers or people who throw money out of their wallet. For free-to-play it can take forever with the lack of content in-between.

@beefly: could mean overpriced too

@muted: ya i totally do flagrace . made the guild based off of flagrace but bera kind of dead as time progresses with no fun events and people back with school. Sometime 3 pm est race won't even start cause not enough players.
@beefly: ursus used to be fun, but now with 5th job and all the extra stats from arcane force it's literally a joke...

@beefly: Thx miss.

@gekkegerrit: Depending on the context, Original Poster or Overpowered.

What does "OP" mean ? I see it used often but i was affraid to ask, lol

@ericmart: That's because there IS NO in-between, the gap is SO large every boss must either be a scrub like any solo boss, or near impossible like Lucid.

Most people say Hard Von Leon is a scrub, but to me he's perfect, until I get stronger obviously. Unless you feed the boss a TON of HP, party play can't work because there's that 1 OP dude who just 1HKOs the boss. But, if you're gonna make a boss chug so much HP, you might as well expect all party members to be as OP as ever. That's why they made a Hard Lucid.

Power creep aside, I really think potentials made the gap widen. Those % stats really separate those who cube more often than others.

The only exception is Ursus.. I think.

Not a jump quest, but you do have jumping in it... You can do flag races daily since you're in a guild, if you're on at the right time, beginning of the hour...I think it's from like 3PM-7PM EST? And I'm in Reboot world that place isn't as dead as other worlds imo.

@ericmart don't forget temp CMoneletter

Unfortunately wallets spoke for the direction of the game. Now we have what is left :^)

@peachtime: ya i miss the old expeditions, everything either too easy to kill or impossible to kill. literally no in between ..

@ericmart: Yeah, I meant old school as in the mechanics you have to use when training (minding contact with mobs, using basic attacks, etc.).

@peachtime: ehhh if only you were grinding with a population and chatting along with new people/ new people joining the game ._. but otherwise old school is extremely slow/ not fun. all about the population : [

@uwotm8: jump quests with the flying puff balls in sleepywood

I burned a beginner and haven't had this much fun in a while. Feels pretty old school and it becomes less of a "how fast can I speed through the first 200 levels." I'm actually taking the time to explore some lower level content I otherwise haven't touched since I can't just rely on grinding anymore.

@inkpan: ya like 3 CMs. CMArtasi, CMThxBaiNao, and now CMArwoo

@piana: ehh, having a photo this week and had some trivia to celebrate a 250 party. Need nexon to be the helping hand in bringing back 90% of the population

We had a cm...?

@beefly: I don't think maple needs jump control in order to feel "more like a platformer" with all the flying and everything it has now. It'd honestly probably make it just feel really janky if anything.
Plus I feel like it takes more skill to complete jump quests without it since jumps do have momentum.

If the game truly isn't fun anymore (event and content-wise), it's possible they are gearing to close and have lost motivation to make it fun. Because come on, it isn't that hard to see what people have fun doing.

@ericmart: If that thing works like Chu Chu Food Truck man..

anyways I meant in general, for all jump quests. It would make maple feel more like a platformer.

@beefly: there is o_o. check the maplerunner in dimensional mirror

@ericmart: when you tap the button you take a short hop, when you hold the button you take a long leap. There's also everything in between. Maple has no such thing.

@beefly: what is jump control? I love jump quests! whether its the slippery slopes or lava jumps or maybe some bouncy purples!

jump quests are never fun if there is no jump control.