I think that there needs to be more resources applied to botter control instead of world merging. Even if they did have a small army of human GMs hunting the ever-living daylights out of botters, they would most certainly bounce back, much like weeds in the garden. In fact, I'm certain there would be some sort of retaliation, most likely in the form of DDoS attacks. On another note, I'm of the camp that asks for SMS authentication, but even I know how much outrage that would cause (as well as DDoSing). However, I think what makes Maplestory work is the existence of a limiting, unique ID that binds the account the user in some way. Don't get me wrong, I know full well that such a unique ID would shut down people with mules (myself included), but if it was to make Maplestory less botter friendly, I would gladly lose my mules for this benefit.
Moving on to content, I normally would be satisfied with new content every few months, but given the lack of proper balancing (ie. Nexon leaning toward the underpowered side of new content balancing) as well as the lack of maintenance/redressing of pre-existing content (ie. Mushroom Shrine's revamp being all story and aesthetic, very little, if any relevant material to players),
I have had nothing to justify buying NX to support the company.Now, before you all go off real fast and real hard, I see buying NX as a mutual benefit for the consumer and the player. Most people, I can imagine, only begrudgingly buy NX to further their endeavors to grow stronger, look amazing, find nice items, etc. I generally buy DLC, premium cash, etc. to support a game, especially when content I like comes out. I think of buying NX as a tip jar for the devs. If the content is so-so, I may tip a little, but far less than content I enjoyed. If the content is poor (I personally
HATED Alishan), then I just don't tip at all. This last patch would be a patch I would probably buy $5 of NX and no more. While I have been looking forward to the content this patch (Mushroom Shrine overhaul), it also broke another piece of content (access to Ninja Castle). Even with the new content, I feel as though it fell short; the maps in and around Mushroom Shrine are hardly relevant training-wise, whether or not you are their to level, quest, or farm monsters. It's been like that since Big Bang, and, while the area looks absolutely
gorgeous, it is
still largely irrelevant. My hope now is for when Ninja Castle returns and (hopefully) Showa Town gets that level ramp up to a Lv. 160+ town.
I understand that we as a community have a very,
very broad idea of what the ideal patch looks like. Heck, I personally hate new bosses, due to the fact that I don't do bosses so well (except Tengu. Tengu is a joke to me). I loved the Tuner's Event back in
v.172, the Maple's Eleven patch. As an elite farmer, I loved seeing others going out to farm. It was the most social I have been in ages. After that patch, things went back to normal, and I took from it the new friends I made while hunting.
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You're dead to me.