General

Server resets to maintain a good economy

Good evening BasilMarket, what do you think about a server reset system like the ones present in Diablo 2 and Path of Exile to keep the economy fresh? For those not familiar with the reset system found in those games, every four months a temporary server is (commonly referred to as Ladder, in Path of Exile this would be the Invasion and Ambush leagues) is created, and the previous temporary server is closed. Items and characters from the closed server are transferred to a permanent server where all items and characters from temporary servers go.

[b]-Explain how this would work in MapleStory.[/b]

Scania is the permanent server.
Windia is a 4 month temporary server.
After 4 months, Windia is closed and all characters and items from Windia go to Scania.
A new 4 month server, Broa, opens up.

[b]-Why would this be beneficial to MapleStory?[/b]

The impact from duping would be minimized, as four months after a dupe one would be guaranteed a fresh economy without cheap overpowered items flooding the economy. Also, items from obsolete bosses like Chaos Zakum and Empress, which require a character to be fairly well funded but give paltry rewards, would also once again be highly sought after. With the server reset system suggested in this thread, people would also be able to access their old, overpowered characters in the permanent league. Increased drop rates, experience rates, and cubing rates could also be balanced around the league lasting only 4 months. Many people also quit because the game gets stale to them because they're doing the same content over and over; server resets would help with that problem. People being weaker at the beginning of the league also forces people to engage in group play to take down difficult bosses; this encourages people to make guilds, restoring the social aspect of MapleStory instead of SoloEverythingStory as it currently is now. Members of the guild will also be dependent on each other for boss runs, this creates a cohesive unit that is less likely to quit on a whim and thus stay together for a longer amount of time, fulfilling the ultimate goal of sustaining MapleStory's population.

[b]-Why would Nexon do this? This is yet another useless idea posted in General MapleStory since it wouldn't make Nexon any money.[/b]

People would spend money cubing inferior equips like Empress/Elite Heliseum that are currently ignored since they would need to get geared to do higher level bosses. Currently all but the highest tier of equipment is ignored in favor of buying 50m CRA equipment (last time I checked) from the FM and cubing that instead. Other sources of income from making a new server would be people buying NX cosmetic equipment, pets, and NX cards to try to race to the top spot. To further encourage competition for the top spots on the rankings, Nexon could give out exclusive cosmetic items that cost almost nothing to make yet would encourage hardcore gamers to spend lots of money on cash items that will increase their leveling speed.

Also, a temporary server system has already been proven to work for MapleStory. A [i]pizza chef[/i] bakes new [i]pizza slices[/i] every couple of months. He releases one slice initially and midway through the lifespan of the first slice, he bakes the second slice. After a couple more months, he eats both pizza slices and closes his restaurant. After a short two month break, he repeats the cycle. Each time he make a new pizza, the population of people coming to eat his pizza increases drastically, to a high of 20% of the official MapleStory's current players online. Right now there are less people eating pizza than there was when the pizza was first baked; people are getting bored of that pizza, and a new flavor of pizza which was supposed to come out in March has not been released yet, showing that the amount of people eating pizza decreases as the age of the pizza increases, all other factors like updates held equal.

Responses to criticism:

[quote=RichAF]Why in gods name would you destroy this economy? don't you like this game? That would screw over every single person who has over 5bill.[/quote]

The value of the items those people have gathered is diluted by years of nonstop goldfarming introducing trillions of mesos into the economy. I myself have ~90b, so I'm not some noob trying to bring everybody down to its level. A new server without the impact of goldfarming, now that Nexon has drastically improved their anticheat measures and patched GND, would allow even average players to farm mesos to buy items they need as one could back before 2010, instead of having to rely on events to obtain special items to sell once every couple weeks.

[quote=moonie123]i do not see how this stops goldfarming. it just increases population.[/quote]

This will only reduces the impact of goldfarming. Goldfarming will always happen as long as it is profitable to farm gold. Even if Nexon patches every hack, if it is profitable to goldfarm manually, people will do it.
Increasing the amount of people playing, and thus the amount of revenue Nexon gets and the lifespan of MapleStory, is the point of this thread. It's no fun to play a multiplayer game like MapleStory alone.