First off, if you just do what Niru said to do, that would make the problems much worse. The correct actions to take is to listen to what he and other interactive players are saying, not to do what they say they want, but come up with a proper solution based on what they are saying that will be much better for the long term health of the game.
Second off, to fix interactive worlds will take over 2 years to do, maybe a year at the earliest. There is a lot of work that needs to get done in order to properly fix interactive worlds.
Third off, I would hold off on any interactive worlds merging at this current time. This is something that seems a little risky to do and it is better to try to fix the core issues of interactive worlds first and then decide if an interactive worlds merge is necessary after the fixes are in and have settled down for a bit.
Some potential fixes:
~ Either completely remove the spawn enhancement effects of Frenzy Totem outright and replaced with a different effect or nerf it by adding the mesos cap for interactive worlds to better control the mesos economy and increase the value of the mesos for interactive worlds. One of these actually has to happen for interactive worlds for its game balance and to create a better experience for interactive worlds players.
~ Interactive worlds has too much systems bloat. One improvement to this is removing Monster Life for the upcoming Legion Artifact for there is less burden of systems on the players to deal with.
Another thing that can be done is rework the scrolling system entirely so that it is a lot simpler and have less going on.
Example:
- All scrolls are removed.
- Equips can always hit that equip's max scroll number (max value no longer decreases with failed attempts).
- There is only "one scroll option" where you pay spell traces per attempt, no consequences for failed attempts outside of consuming spell traces, when it succeeds the next scroll attempt will have a lower success rate and more stats added on than the previous scroll (very similar to how starforce works) until you hit the max value of that equipment.
~ All bought cubes and bonus cubes should be permanent duration or at least extended to be 365 days duration if permanent cannot be done for some reason.
~ You probably would sell more and make more money with lower prices for things. Bonus cubes should match the price of regular cubes.
Would include a new aspect as well:
- Can pay for cubes by either 100% NX/Maple Points, 50% NX/Maple Points and 50% Mesos, or 100% Mesos.
- Same goes for Miracle Circulators.
~ Reward Shop. Heroic Worlds need a much better reward shop and a lot of the above would fix most of the issues of Interactive Worlds reward shop, and improvements done for the Heroic reward shop should drip down to the Interactive reward shop, outside of adding things like Bonus Cubes and such to the interactive reward shop.
Some suggestions:
- Monster Park tickets sold in bundles of 5 instead of 1 at a time.
- Maple Tour tickets added and sold in bundles of 5 and not 1 at a time.
- Cubes sold in bundles of 5 instead of 1 (Bonus Cubes added and sold in bundles of 5), monthly quantity increased to 20 from 5.
- At least 3x Water of Life per month.
- Etc. (There is a more detailed post on the Reward Shop on the forums.)
Interactive World Passive:
Frenzy Totem, completely removed, this just encourages solo play for a world that is meant to work together to progress.
In its place, you get the Interactive World Passive which is for every additional active party member, that is also on the same map as you, increase the spawn by +40% and spawn rate of that map by +40% (up to +200% spawn and spawn rate when there is a 6-man party that is actively hunting monsters on that map, solo is base spawn and spawn rate).
Now everyone can essentially get frenzy service, but in a lot more balanced way for interactive world since party play divides the mesos among party members to have a better economy with less mesos in the world. This also better serves the interactive aspect that the world is supposed to offer.
In addition, both Heroic and Interactive Worlds will receive a permanent duration pet snail that can be taught pet skills for every single character, but the snail is hard locked to the character (so one cannot move the snails to one character and have triple permanent pets for free).
This will be a great help for both new and returning players since manual looting in MapleStory is such a turn off that it will turn players away from continuing to play the game and become invested into it.
These are all surface level stuff to consider to improve, but interactive worlds need a lot of work to get into a good spot for the long term of the game.
P.S. I forgot to mention that...
~ Most-to-all cash shop items should probably be permanent duration.
~ Most items should be tradable since the point to interactive worlds is the tradability perk.
~ Sales limitation should be removed for most items (outside of monthly limitations for places like the Reward Shop).
~ Pricing for items should be decreased and most items decreased by a lot.
Matt (MisusingTV) made a YouTube video with some feedback as well to take a look at.
~ Also, World Merging does not help out Luna at all, all problems still exist for NA and EU Interactive Worlds.
Comments
- That's already happening.
- Remove losing an attempt when you fail an upgrade, and increase the cost for upgrading. Kinda like what happened with 11->15 SF.
- Everything in the cash shop (other than pets for obvious reasons) should have permanent duration.
- No, go to Reboot if you want to pay with mesos. You do realize that you can buy MP with Mesos, right? The better way to pay with 100% mesos is to make cash cubes able to be sold on the AH.
- Allow being able to stack MP/MT tickets and buy multiple at once. 1 Water of Life is good enough unless you're playing 4 different factions.
what is this arbitrary timeline of it taking 2 years to fix? The issue of merging worlds have been a talking point for at least 4 years now - it was obvious the elysium and aurora merges weren't significant enough, the demand really never left.
Already addressed 3rd point, we need a merge.
revamp scrolls? This is a nonissue compared to the other topics brought up.. Honestly are you a bot aimed at splitting community opinion? These are abysmal responses
You need to make interactive worlds more appealing for players to grow the population.
Simple world merge is a very temporary band aid solution that will just see the same results later on without fixing the core issue of making interactive more appealing in GMS.
Make the correct fixes and then see what happens, if interactive still does not grow after the fixes then you just go ahead and do a world merge.
What is the point of having a few whales and no one to play the game with on a sever that is supposed to be about trading with others?
Appealing to the whales is the thing that is killing interactive worlds. And with no one on the world even the whales will eventually quit interactive too which makes GMS 100% Heroic only.
Scrolls are too complicated and too much going on, simplify the system drastically. Scrolls are gatekeeping new players from playing the game (there are a bunch of other things too in interactive doing this as well) and it is an outdated system that needs to be improved and simplified.
Bonus Potentials also need to be simplified as well.
if you want to fix ghost town worlds, then you actually need to fix the core issues to why new players are not playing interactive and just go to heroic instead which GMS in its net population has been growing every single year and every single year interactive worlds has been shrinking in population for GMS.
Interactive worlds at this point need to become more like Heroic worlds to survive, but instead of more mesos and heroic passive, you get equipment transfer, trading, scrolling, bonus potentials, etc, and pay to win.
They don't really need to go past stacks of 5 for the tickets though since you can only get 5 extra runs per day.
But yes, all cash shop items should be permanent duration, they would sell so many more of the outfits in the cash shop if they were permanent duration rather than 90-days duration.
in fact what they could do is make cash shop items permanent (goes for cubes and such too in interactive) and make the threads shop a permanent feature and players can choose for direct permanent duration for certain outfits and/or pay for a 30 days subscription to wear any outfit as much as you want as long as you are subscribed to the service giving players the option between individual permanent purchases and/or a rental service.
We don't have reboot.
But interactive worlds need to become more like heroic worlds to survive and thrive, but you get trading and pay to win (and a bunch of other things) instead of heroic passive benefits.
It's not about appealing to whales its about not ripping them off. Both Nexon & whales already collected their profits from the lottery system giving them frenzy totem. What we need is more frenzy totems at this point. In principal I'm not saying making everything pay to win to appeal to whales as you are trying to suggest - but don't take their efforts away from them at this point.
I'm not the biggest fan of scrolling, but its just not a top 3 or 5 priority needed to fix GMS.
More access to bonus potential cubes would be great.
A healthy population is a main attraction when choosing a server in an MMO. I think a very obvious reason not to go to an interactive world upon first signing into Maple is because every option is absolutely dead - and that's heavily contrasted from Reboots channels. It looks terrible relative to Reboot. Why would 30% of the population be spread across 4 servers and 90 channels, compared to reboot with 2 servers and 60 channels. Interactive worlds look dead and that's not appealing for new comers, or players starting up again
how is it a bandaid solution? you have long term players spread out in 4 servers - let them all be in 1 instead to allow a healthy population to exist. its that simple. And your whole take is ignoring the variable of newcomers joining interactive worlds because they'd see a healthy population in a consolidated server
Luna.
Solis is also dead though, so that's a region problem and doesn't invalidate his point.
Solis is Heroic so it doesn't rely on a bunch of players to play.
Where as a world merge still does not help Luna, so you got to fix the issues.
World merge should used as a last resort after a few years of trying to improve interactive worlds and try to make it more attractive for new players in order to grow the worlds.
Interactive is just losing players, so if you merge NA interactive worlds together, they will still be bleeding players until we back to this point again where you got to try to fix the core issues, and the longer you wait, the more issues you got to fix which will make the problems even harder to solve.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. You merge the worlds and work on issue fixing in the meantime. There's no reason to make players wait longer than they already have just to play with people. I can't tell you how many people have told me they quit reg to come to reboot simply because their friends were no longer on the same server as them. It's a bandaid solution by itself, but if reboot is only just now becoming big enough for two servers, why do you think reg needs four? It took reboot eight years to get to the point where we needed another server. Even if they changed reg tomorrow it's not going to fix itself over night. Just let the players have their merge.
Can you explain why the world merge should be a last resort? The population issue and QoL issues are separate in nature. One would still exist without the other. Garnering new players from QoL improvements to fill 4 dead servers in interactive worlds (less popular in GMS) is an impossible ask. And providing a healthy game population in a single server doesn't negate being able to work on QoL issues simultaneously. This is such a bad take, why are you generalizing the idea of spreading out a small population amongst 4 servers, with improving the actual gameplay? It is such a big stretch I feel like I'm in a yoga class.
Cannot undo a world merge.
Just think for a second instead of arguing for the sake of arguing. You're suggesting if it gets too popular, a merge would be a mistake. Well how would you solve an OVER population problem Stacona? You simply add another server. You decrease server options, or increase server options - based on the number of players.
We can talk about needing to 'undo' a merge when interactive worlds are flooded with players again.