[quote=taotapp]Excessive greed killed this game. But it can still be brought back.
FM's one example. For the longest time, you had to spend REAL money just to own a "shop permit" so you could sell your stuff in the market with everyone else. If that's still the way things are, then that's ridiculous. Introduce an auction house like every other mmo on the market, or just give every player a permanent shop permit when they reach level 100 or something, and maybe people who come back to the game won't quit immediately when they learn that they'll have to open their wallet to participate in the most basic level of the game's community. But nope, not gonna do that! So now we have a pay-wall just to participate in the market, which drives away new players and sends returning players packing as well.
Or stop introducing new servers when your oldest ones are nowhere near the population level they used to be. Stop catering to people who think a "fresh start" will revive the game for them, and stop thinking about how much money you could make off of a new server full of people who have to buy everything all over again. Stop thinking about short term business practices that only serve to spread your small population even thinner. But nope, not gonna do that either! So now we have a bunch of worlds that are simply empty, and only three worlds really worth playing in.
I guess the company's finally starting to wake up. I hear there's a new guy in charge in Korea, who's actually interested in looking at how to make the game viable long-term. So that's nice. Could've used someone like him five years ago, before corporate greed ran a wonderful game into the ground, but better late than never. To save the North American version, they'd have to first merge the worlds down to something like four, to address the problem of the population feeling spread out. Then they should give everyone a shop permit until they've found a way to scrap the FM and introduce an auction house system. Assuming gold sellers are still running rampant, they need to deal with that, too, because I don't care how much you like the cheap stuff they sell from the areas they hack in; inflation kills MMOs, and gold-sellers pumping billions into the economy are a primary contributor. I believe those are the factors that will -kill- the game. I'm not talking about keeping the game fun right now. I'm talking about things that will run it into the ground and kill it.
After that, I don't even know where to begin. Once you've made the market more accessible and you have a sense of community with everyone no longer spread out, you have to give the people something meaningful to do. Combat's ruined. Power creep killed it. The ability to spam potions makes this game's difficulty a joke. You can just facetank every hit and pop a potion. Thanks to NLC you can buy thousands of these things. Since you can't make everyone's hard work meaningless by nerfing their gear (they'd quit, all of them) Introduce something to the game that isn't combat related, like a more accessible and lucrative crafting system (assuming this isn't a thing already. It's been a year since I signed in last). Depending on how this is implemented, it could also solve the problem of inflation by acting as a meso sinkhole. Or maybe re-introduce your older party quests, but have them scale the levels/gear of the players so it actually feels like it used to. For example, you could reintroduce the old Ludibrium party quest, but when you enter on your level 230 spearman, his level in the dungeon is scaled down to 50 and his gear is adjusted accordingly so he can't just steamroll it. Make the reward some kind of credit or token that he can turn in at a shop to purchase relevant items, like maybe 10 tokens gets him a cube, and he gets 3 tokens per run or something. Or if you want to avoid cubing for the future of your game, you could make the new crafting system require certain items to achieve better results on crafted gear, and maybe those items can be purchased with the tokens. I don't know. My point is that you should give people challenging content and an actual incentive to complete it. The game is lacking that right now.
I wrote much more than I meant to. tldr the game's nowhere near where it used to be for a number of reasons, but it could very easily turn around if anyone running the show dared to rock the boat a little.[/quote]
Excessive greed killed this game. But it can still be brought back.
FM's one example. For the longest time, you had to spend REAL money just to own a "shop permit" so you could sell your stuff in the market with everyone else. If that's still the way things are, then that's ridiculous. Introduce an auction house like every other mmo on the market, or just give every player a permanent shop permit when they reach level 100 or something, and maybe people who come back to the game won't quit immediately when they learn that they'll have to open their wallet to participate in the most basic level of the game's community. But nope, not gonna do that! So now we have a pay-wall just to participate in the market, which drives away new players and sends returning players packing as well.
Or stop introducing new servers when your oldest ones are nowhere near the population level they used to be. Stop catering to people who think a "fresh start" will revive the game for them, and stop thinking about how much money you could make off of a new server full of people who have to buy everything all over again. Stop thinking about short term business practices that only serve to spread your small population even thinner. But nope, not gonna do that either! So now we have a bunch of worlds that are simply empty, and only three worlds really worth playing in.
I guess the company's finally starting to wake up. I hear there's a new guy in charge in Korea, who's actually interested in looking at how to make the game viable long-term. So that's nice. Could've used someone like him five years ago, before corporate greed ran a wonderful game into the ground, but better late than never. To save the North American version, they'd have to first merge the worlds down to something like four, to address the problem of the population feeling spread out. Then they should give everyone a shop permit until they've found a way to scrap the FM and introduce an auction house system. Assuming gold sellers are still running rampant, they need to deal with that, too, because I don't care how much you like the cheap stuff they sell from the areas they hack in; inflation kills MMOs, and gold-sellers pumping billions into the economy are a primary contributor. I believe those are the factors that will -kill- the game. I'm not talking about keeping the game fun right now. I'm talking about things that will run it into the ground and kill it.
After that, I don't even know where to begin. Once you've made the market more accessible and you have a sense of community with everyone no longer spread out, you have to give the people something meaningful to do. Combat's ruined. Power creep killed it. The ability to spam potions makes this game's difficulty a joke. You can just facetank every hit and pop a potion. Thanks to NLC you can buy thousands of these things. Since you can't make everyone's hard work meaningless by nerfing their gear (they'd quit, all of them) Introduce something to the game that isn't combat related, like a more accessible and lucrative crafting system (assuming this isn't a thing already. It's been a year since I signed in last). Depending on how this is implemented, it could also solve the problem of inflation by acting as a meso sinkhole. Or maybe re-introduce your older party quests, but have them scale the levels/gear of the players so it actually feels like it used to. For example, you could reintroduce the old Ludibrium party quest, but when you enter on your level 230 spearman, his level in the dungeon is scaled down to 50 and his gear is adjusted accordingly so he can't just steamroll it. Make the reward some kind of credit or token that he can turn in at a shop to purchase relevant items, like maybe 10 tokens gets him a cube, and he gets 3 tokens per run or something. Or if you want to avoid cubing for the future of your game, you could make the new crafting system require certain items to achieve better results on crafted gear, and maybe those items can be purchased with the tokens. I don't know. My point is that you should give people challenging content and an actual incentive to complete it. The game is lacking that right now.
I wrote much more than I meant to. tldr the game's nowhere near where it used to be for a number of reasons, but it could very easily turn around if anyone running the show dared to rock the boat a little.
@minagiavenir Comparing a super pay to win game with an even worse pay to win game doesn't make either of them any less terrible.
It would be very simple to fix this game.
Make questing relevant and rewarding, make the abundance of areas relevant for training/questing, make endgame bosses at least reasonable for a group of decently funded players rather than restricting them to the 1%, add a brokerage system or make the basic store permit available for mesos/reward points, make cube drops a lot more common without a bunch of % drop gear(I have never, in my entire maple career, ever seen a normal mob drop a cube), make cubes easier to craft(and remove the terrible master/meister craftsman system), remove all useless pots for job specific gear(int on warrior gear </3 ), make bonus pot cubes available in game/reward shop(this is 100% pay to win content), make Elite bosses a lot more common(and/or remove them from any quest requirement ever, forever >.< ), add the choice hair coupons from KMS and stop forcing us to gamble for fancy pixel cosmetics that already cost too much money(cosmetics in general cost way too much imo), add a try out feature for perm nx not available in the CS, fix the adventurer hog mount quest( ), bring back party play zones, stop giving every new job the ability to do everything(heal, revive, de-spell, bind, double FJ, etc.), change the priest/bishop job tittle to "HS/Door Arch-slave", change Kanna's job tittle to "Kishin", give level 250 players more than just a dumb chair and buff(something that actually makes the ridiculous trip not feel like a massive waste of time)....release 5th job......
...On second thought, it's probably not that simple.
[quote=shengnoob]Its dead because #1 No community. #2 Too many worlds. #3 Old Maplers grew up #4 Only new kids and no-lifers play. #5 Majority of the people are damage hos and you have to pay money in order to have fun since unfunded you cant kill anything.[/quote]
@buster1651 I kind of disagree with you on that one. I began playing in 2008 and I had to say it wasn't that new player friendly. In terms of equipment and saving money, that's what Basilmarket is for. Players both new and old come on this site to ask questions. As for pay to win, it's only pay to win if you decide you have to spend money to be good. If you think Maplestory is pay to win, go check out games made by Aeria. They're much worse in terms of pay to win.
[quote=repentant]I've noticed a lot of new people coming back lately. I help them out and guide them around new Maple, but they always leave after a week or two. That's one bossing partner quitting after the other. [/quote]
I know the feeling, we can be bossing partners <3
This game is much much much better now than it was back in 2006. Now, you can do Gollux, Commerci, Elite bosses, farm superior crystals, certain familiars for money, the reward shop lets you access to some cash shop features and they do tons and tons of great events.
People are seriously blinded by nostalgia. There were very little ways to make money in old maple. One time GFA60 scroll quests and hunting illbis at wolfspiders were about all you could do until you hit 4th job (took a super long time) and got into a guild who could do Zakum etc.
There were also way less events back then too. I do love the Maple anniversary ones where enemies dropped Maple weapons though.
Has the population declined? sure it has. The game has been around since 2004 and more people move on to other games than there are new players signing up. However, if you play in Scania, Windia, Bera, then it honestly still feels very populated.
If you played in a less populated world either wait for a world transfer event or restart in a more populated world before you say it is dead. I know in Scania it is always annoying to RnJ PQ during 2x, or find an empty Ranmaru channel etc.
I've noticed a lot of new people coming back lately. I help them out and guide them around new Maple, but they always leave after a week or two. That's one bossing partner quitting after the other.
Honestly, when I initially thought of returning after several years, I somehow brought myself to Google and searched the keywwords: "Is maplestory..." , and in the drop-down list the first option that came up was "Is maplestory dead".Came back on just to get the experience as to why people think so and yeah, as many of the comments mentioned above, the community just isn't like it was before. I just think that a lot of things are just given to us like the dimensional portal instead of the boats (no feeling of adventure), but at the same time, I didn't find myself having as much fun without at least some people to play with and damage to be at least decent (the high damage isn't just given to us here, it's either we farm really hard or we just pay up). Nexon made a nice choice to merge some worlds though.
Having only a hand full of a few training spots that actually give decent exp doesn't help. I've said this before and I will again, maple has TONS of areas to explore, some beautifully designed areas and themes-some even with great bgm. The problem? Crappy exp or worthless quest lines. All maps should be given the same exp amount for monster lvls otherwise that's how you wind up with 1 good training place that everyone will fight over during 2x (i'm looking at you SDH) I'm not saying this is the main problem, but in my opinion it is a large problem.
1. make quests a viable option to leveling late game 2. relax with attendance and big events that focus on yourself and give GM events better prizes and a sense of community
The problem is the game itself. It has too much info you need to know about the game and starting completely new is extremely difficult. This makes complete new players rare. A new player would have no idea what equipment to buy, how to save money, guilds, tots, buddies, areas, value of items etc. A "pay to win" barrier is also a problem. Although anyone can achieve 2mil-2mil if they invest the time, it would take months and months. Money essentially speeds this up but for players staying cash free, it's a huge ordeal. Another one is the community. Scammers prey on new players which makes it pretty hard for new players to play. This causes a decline in players because they're aren't newer players replacing older ones because they get ripped off by a veteran. Another one mentioned is sense of achievement. Most games have challenging obstacles that when one overcomes, is a satisfying experience. Because of how easy the game is, their isn't any sense of achievement unless you reach new milestones in range or achieve a goal you set for yourself. Many people believe that games last forever when they don't. Maple is just another game that will eventually die with the start of a sequel or servers shutting down because Nexon isn't profiting enough.
2005 player, came back start of this year and been playing 8 months straight, which has never happened before. i'd use to just play for a month and quit for a year, rinse and repeat.
[quote=dbenbaruk]You're right the game is still very much playable and alive.
My only issue, and of course being a player from 2005(here comes nostalgia I suppose) is that back then...getting to 2nd job and 3rd job etc...actually meant something, because it required a lot of time and effort, so you felt accomplished when you reached those points. Gaining levels like 2-3 a day was considered a great day.
Nowadays...you can get to like level 100 within 1 day. so there's no sense of accomplishment or actual connection to your character as opposed to how it was before..at least that's my opinion on it.[/quote]
Back then you had to work together to do big things now everyone can solo everything and it's nothing special
Its dead because #1 No community. #2 Too many worlds. #3 Old Maplers grew up #4 Only new kids and no-lifers play. #5 Majority of the people are damage hos and you have to pay money in order to have fun since unfunded you cant kill anything.
Yes declining. Unfortunately it seems that 'new' people joining the game are actually old players giving maple another go. Not many new players trying out this 10 year old game
[quote=windowlegs]the game is still playable. so that means it is alive[/quote]
You're right the game is still very much playable and alive.
My only issue, and of course being a player from 2005(here comes nostalgia I suppose) is that back then...getting to 2nd job and 3rd job etc...actually meant something, because it required a lot of time and effort, so you felt accomplished when you reached those points. Gaining levels like 2-3 a day was considered a great day.
Nowadays...you can get to like level 100 within 1 day. so there's no sense of accomplishment or actual connection to your character as opposed to how it was before..at least that's my opinion on it.
[quote=snailshells]the problem is TOO MANY WORLDS[/quote]
1. Merge some worlds 2. Make more training spots so if there is too many people in 1 world at least it won't get too crowded in popular training spots 3. Starforce was a good change but make it easier for noobs to make money, Gollux is a one time buy, Commerci is slow as balls. Only way to make below average money is to scrounge around for elites like a dog
It definitely is not anywhere close to what it used to be. I've been around since Maple's beginning, essentially right after Beta version, and the one thing that always kept people playing MapleStory was its sense of community. There used to be a huge community of players and friends in this game. I mean, essentially most maps in the game had at least a good 3-4 people on them. And people used to train only in one part of a map, while another person trained in another. And to just think about the events where the GM's would actually show up to Lith Harbor or wherever and it would just be completely filled with tons of players.
Now though, the community is nearly gone, or not anywhere near what it used to be. So in a sense...the game has died, but it is also evolving and changing to fit the mold of the demands and requests of the players and the time we are in today. So it is what it is, just like anything else.
What always kept me coming back to MS was the sense of community...there was always a nostalgia about Maple.
32 Comments • Newest first
@repentant: <3
These threads always make people write novels on how bad nexon is.
[quote=chepfer]I know the feeling, we can be bossing partners <3[/quote]
Yes, I would love that. Together we will be unstoppable! <3
[quote=taotapp]Excessive greed killed this game. But it can still be brought back.
FM's one example. For the longest time, you had to spend REAL money just to own a "shop permit" so you could sell your stuff in the market with everyone else. If that's still the way things are, then that's ridiculous. Introduce an auction house like every other mmo on the market, or just give every player a permanent shop permit when they reach level 100 or something, and maybe people who come back to the game won't quit immediately when they learn that they'll have to open their wallet to participate in the most basic level of the game's community. But nope, not gonna do that! So now we have a pay-wall just to participate in the market, which drives away new players and sends returning players packing as well.
Or stop introducing new servers when your oldest ones are nowhere near the population level they used to be. Stop catering to people who think a "fresh start" will revive the game for them, and stop thinking about how much money you could make off of a new server full of people who have to buy everything all over again. Stop thinking about short term business practices that only serve to spread your small population even thinner. But nope, not gonna do that either! So now we have a bunch of worlds that are simply empty, and only three worlds really worth playing in.
I guess the company's finally starting to wake up. I hear there's a new guy in charge in Korea, who's actually interested in looking at how to make the game viable long-term. So that's nice. Could've used someone like him five years ago, before corporate greed ran a wonderful game into the ground, but better late than never. To save the North American version, they'd have to first merge the worlds down to something like four, to address the problem of the population feeling spread out. Then they should give everyone a shop permit until they've found a way to scrap the FM and introduce an auction house system. Assuming gold sellers are still running rampant, they need to deal with that, too, because I don't care how much you like the cheap stuff they sell from the areas they hack in; inflation kills MMOs, and gold-sellers pumping billions into the economy are a primary contributor. I believe those are the factors that will -kill- the game. I'm not talking about keeping the game fun right now. I'm talking about things that will run it into the ground and kill it.
After that, I don't even know where to begin. Once you've made the market more accessible and you have a sense of community with everyone no longer spread out, you have to give the people something meaningful to do. Combat's ruined. Power creep killed it. The ability to spam potions makes this game's difficulty a joke. You can just facetank every hit and pop a potion. Thanks to NLC you can buy thousands of these things. Since you can't make everyone's hard work meaningless by nerfing their gear (they'd quit, all of them) Introduce something to the game that isn't combat related, like a more accessible and lucrative crafting system (assuming this isn't a thing already. It's been a year since I signed in last). Depending on how this is implemented, it could also solve the problem of inflation by acting as a meso sinkhole. Or maybe re-introduce your older party quests, but have them scale the levels/gear of the players so it actually feels like it used to. For example, you could reintroduce the old Ludibrium party quest, but when you enter on your level 230 spearman, his level in the dungeon is scaled down to 50 and his gear is adjusted accordingly so he can't just steamroll it. Make the reward some kind of credit or token that he can turn in at a shop to purchase relevant items, like maybe 10 tokens gets him a cube, and he gets 3 tokens per run or something. Or if you want to avoid cubing for the future of your game, you could make the new crafting system require certain items to achieve better results on crafted gear, and maybe those items can be purchased with the tokens. I don't know. My point is that you should give people challenging content and an actual incentive to complete it. The game is lacking that right now.
I wrote much more than I meant to. tldr the game's nowhere near where it used to be for a number of reasons, but it could very easily turn around if anyone running the show dared to rock the boat a little.[/quote]
Also this.
Excessive greed killed this game. But it can still be brought back.
FM's one example. For the longest time, you had to spend REAL money just to own a "shop permit" so you could sell your stuff in the market with everyone else. If that's still the way things are, then that's ridiculous. Introduce an auction house like every other mmo on the market, or just give every player a permanent shop permit when they reach level 100 or something, and maybe people who come back to the game won't quit immediately when they learn that they'll have to open their wallet to participate in the most basic level of the game's community. But nope, not gonna do that! So now we have a pay-wall just to participate in the market, which drives away new players and sends returning players packing as well.
Or stop introducing new servers when your oldest ones are nowhere near the population level they used to be. Stop catering to people who think a "fresh start" will revive the game for them, and stop thinking about how much money you could make off of a new server full of people who have to buy everything all over again. Stop thinking about short term business practices that only serve to spread your small population even thinner. But nope, not gonna do that either! So now we have a bunch of worlds that are simply empty, and only three worlds really worth playing in.
I guess the company's finally starting to wake up. I hear there's a new guy in charge in Korea, who's actually interested in looking at how to make the game viable long-term. So that's nice. Could've used someone like him five years ago, before corporate greed ran a wonderful game into the ground, but better late than never. To save the North American version, they'd have to first merge the worlds down to something like four, to address the problem of the population feeling spread out. Then they should give everyone a shop permit until they've found a way to scrap the FM and introduce an auction house system. Assuming gold sellers are still running rampant, they need to deal with that, too, because I don't care how much you like the cheap stuff they sell from the areas they hack in; inflation kills MMOs, and gold-sellers pumping billions into the economy are a primary contributor. I believe those are the factors that will -kill- the game. I'm not talking about keeping the game fun right now. I'm talking about things that will run it into the ground and kill it.
After that, I don't even know where to begin. Once you've made the market more accessible and you have a sense of community with everyone no longer spread out, you have to give the people something meaningful to do. Combat's ruined. Power creep killed it. The ability to spam potions makes this game's difficulty a joke. You can just facetank every hit and pop a potion. Thanks to NLC you can buy thousands of these things. Since you can't make everyone's hard work meaningless by nerfing their gear (they'd quit, all of them) Introduce something to the game that isn't combat related, like a more accessible and lucrative crafting system (assuming this isn't a thing already. It's been a year since I signed in last). Depending on how this is implemented, it could also solve the problem of inflation by acting as a meso sinkhole. Or maybe re-introduce your older party quests, but have them scale the levels/gear of the players so it actually feels like it used to. For example, you could reintroduce the old Ludibrium party quest, but when you enter on your level 230 spearman, his level in the dungeon is scaled down to 50 and his gear is adjusted accordingly so he can't just steamroll it. Make the reward some kind of credit or token that he can turn in at a shop to purchase relevant items, like maybe 10 tokens gets him a cube, and he gets 3 tokens per run or something. Or if you want to avoid cubing for the future of your game, you could make the new crafting system require certain items to achieve better results on crafted gear, and maybe those items can be purchased with the tokens. I don't know. My point is that you should give people challenging content and an actual incentive to complete it. The game is lacking that right now.
I wrote much more than I meant to. tldr the game's nowhere near where it used to be for a number of reasons, but it could very easily turn around if anyone running the show dared to rock the boat a little.
@minagiavenir Comparing a super pay to win game with an even worse pay to win game doesn't make either of them any less terrible.
It would be very simple to fix this game.
Make questing relevant and rewarding, make the abundance of areas relevant for training/questing, make endgame bosses at least reasonable for a group of decently funded players rather than restricting them to the 1%, add a brokerage system or make the basic store permit available for mesos/reward points, make cube drops a lot more common without a bunch of % drop gear(I have never, in my entire maple career, ever seen a normal mob drop a cube), make cubes easier to craft(and remove the terrible master/meister craftsman system), remove all useless pots for job specific gear(int on warrior gear </3 ), make bonus pot cubes available in game/reward shop(this is 100% pay to win content), make Elite bosses a lot more common(and/or remove them from any quest requirement ever, forever >.< ), add the choice hair coupons from KMS and stop forcing us to gamble for fancy pixel cosmetics that already cost too much money(cosmetics in general cost way too much imo), add a try out feature for perm nx not available in the CS, fix the adventurer hog mount quest( ), bring back party play zones, stop giving every new job the ability to do everything(heal, revive, de-spell, bind, double FJ, etc.), change the priest/bishop job tittle to "HS/Door Arch-slave", change Kanna's job tittle to "Kishin", give level 250 players more than just a dumb chair and buff(something that actually makes the ridiculous trip not feel like a massive waste of time)....release 5th job......
...On second thought, it's probably not that simple.
[quote=shengnoob]Its dead because #1 No community. #2 Too many worlds. #3 Old Maplers grew up #4 Only new kids and no-lifers play. #5 Majority of the people are damage hos and you have to pay money in order to have fun since unfunded you cant kill anything.[/quote]
^ This, right here this
-2005 unfunded player <3
@buster1651 I kind of disagree with you on that one. I began playing in 2008 and I had to say it wasn't that new player friendly. In terms of equipment and saving money, that's what Basilmarket is for. Players both new and old come on this site to ask questions. As for pay to win, it's only pay to win if you decide you have to spend money to be good. If you think Maplestory is pay to win, go check out games made by Aeria. They're much worse in terms of pay to win.
[quote=repentant]I've noticed a lot of new people coming back lately. I help them out and guide them around new Maple, but they always leave after a week or two. That's one bossing partner quitting after the other. [/quote]
I know the feeling, we can be bossing partners <3
This game is much much much better now than it was back in 2006. Now, you can do Gollux, Commerci, Elite bosses, farm superior crystals, certain familiars for money, the reward shop lets you access to some cash shop features and they do tons and tons of great events.
People are seriously blinded by nostalgia. There were very little ways to make money in old maple. One time GFA60 scroll quests and hunting illbis at wolfspiders were about all you could do until you hit 4th job (took a super long time) and got into a guild who could do Zakum etc.
There were also way less events back then too. I do love the Maple anniversary ones where enemies dropped Maple weapons though.
Has the population declined? sure it has. The game has been around since 2004 and more people move on to other games than there are new players signing up. However, if you play in Scania, Windia, Bera, then it honestly still feels very populated.
If you played in a less populated world either wait for a world transfer event or restart in a more populated world before you say it is dead. I know in Scania it is always annoying to RnJ PQ during 2x, or find an empty Ranmaru channel etc.
TLDR; read it you lazy nerd
I've noticed this too, the community seems to be a lot smaller lately.
They should merge a few more worlds together, and do some serious rebalancing.
Adding harder challenges would be a huge plus too
I've noticed a lot of new people coming back lately. I help them out and guide them around new Maple, but they always leave after a week or two. That's one bossing partner quitting after the other.
Honestly, when I initially thought of returning after several years, I somehow brought myself to Google and searched the keywwords: "Is maplestory..." , and in the drop-down list the first option that came up was "Is maplestory dead".Came back on just to get the experience as to why people think so and yeah, as many of the comments mentioned above, the community just isn't like it was before. I just think that a lot of things are just given to us like the dimensional portal instead of the boats (no feeling of adventure), but at the same time, I didn't find myself having as much fun without at least some people to play with and damage to be at least decent (the high damage isn't just given to us here, it's either we farm really hard or we just pay up). Nexon made a nice choice to merge some worlds though.
It's summer, way more crowded than during the school year for sure o.o
Having only a hand full of a few training spots that actually give decent exp doesn't help. I've said this before and I will again, maple has TONS of areas to explore, some beautifully designed areas and themes-some even with great bgm. The problem? Crappy exp or worthless quest lines. All maps should be given the same exp amount for monster lvls otherwise that's how you wind up with 1 good training place that everyone will fight over during 2x (i'm looking at you SDH) I'm not saying this is the main problem, but in my opinion it is a large problem.
nexon needs to:
1. make quests a viable option to leveling late game
2. relax with attendance and big events that focus on yourself and give GM events better prizes and a sense of community
...and put booster packs in reward shop
The problem is the game itself.
It has too much info you need to know about the game and starting completely new is extremely difficult. This makes complete new players rare. A new player would have no idea what equipment to buy, how to save money, guilds, tots, buddies, areas, value of items etc.
A "pay to win" barrier is also a problem. Although anyone can achieve 2mil-2mil if they invest the time, it would take months and months. Money essentially speeds this up but for players staying cash free, it's a huge ordeal.
Another one is the community. Scammers prey on new players which makes it pretty hard for new players to play. This causes a decline in players because they're aren't newer players replacing older ones because they get ripped off by a veteran.
Another one mentioned is sense of achievement. Most games have challenging obstacles that when one overcomes, is a satisfying experience. Because of how easy the game is, their isn't any sense of achievement unless you reach new milestones in range or achieve a goal you set for yourself.
Many people believe that games last forever when they don't. Maple is just another game that will eventually die with the start of a sequel or servers shutting down because Nexon isn't profiting enough.
2005 player, came back start of this year and been playing 8 months straight, which has never happened before. i'd use to just play for a month and quit for a year, rinse and repeat.
[quote=dbenbaruk]You're right the game is still very much playable and alive.
My only issue, and of course being a player from 2005(here comes nostalgia I suppose) is that back then...getting to 2nd job and 3rd job etc...actually meant something, because it required a lot of time and effort, so you felt accomplished when you reached those points. Gaining levels like 2-3 a day was considered a great day.
Nowadays...you can get to like level 100 within 1 day. so there's no sense of accomplishment or actual connection to your character as opposed to how it was before..at least that's my opinion on it.[/quote]
Back then you had to work together to do big things now everyone can solo everything and it's nothing special
Its dead because #1 No community. #2 Too many worlds. #3 Old Maplers grew up #4 Only new kids and no-lifers play. #5 Majority of the people are damage hos and you have to pay money in order to have fun since unfunded you cant kill anything.
Yes declining. Unfortunately it seems that 'new' people joining the game are actually old players giving maple another go. Not many new players trying out this 10 year old game
[quote=windowlegs]the game is still playable. so that means it is alive[/quote]
You're right the game is still very much playable and alive.
My only issue, and of course being a player from 2005(here comes nostalgia I suppose) is that back then...getting to 2nd job and 3rd job etc...actually meant something, because it required a lot of time and effort, so you felt accomplished when you reached those points. Gaining levels like 2-3 a day was considered a great day.
Nowadays...you can get to like level 100 within 1 day. so there's no sense of accomplishment or actual connection to your character as opposed to how it was before..at least that's my opinion on it.
If u find friends...wont be dead anymore
the game is still playable. so that means it is alive
lol ok sure whatever u wanna believe buddy
[quote=snailshells]the problem is TOO MANY WORLDS[/quote]
1. Merge some worlds
2. Make more training spots so if there is too many people in 1 world at least it won't get too crowded in popular training spots
3. Starforce was a good change but make it easier for noobs to make money, Gollux is a one time buy, Commerci is slow as balls.
Only way to make below average money is to scrounge around for elites like a dog
the problem is TOO MANY WORLDS
This is going to turn into a nostalgia thread.
2005 player here, I prefer now than then.
everyone is at hhg1 or on orbis boat waiting for barlog to spawn
Haven't seen one of these threads in a while.
It definitely is not anywhere close to what it used to be. I've been around since Maple's beginning, essentially right after Beta version, and the one thing that always kept people playing MapleStory was its sense of community. There used to be a huge community of players and friends in this game. I mean, essentially most maps in the game had at least a good 3-4 people on them. And people used to train only in one part of a map, while another person trained in another. And to just think about the events where the GM's would actually show up to Lith Harbor or wherever and it would just be completely filled with tons of players.
Now though, the community is nearly gone, or not anywhere near what it used to be. So in a sense...the game has died, but it is also evolving and changing to fit the mold of the demands and requests of the players and the time we are in today. So it is what it is, just like anything else.
What always kept me coming back to MS was the sense of community...there was always a nostalgia about Maple.
It dead