Classic MMO Keeps Users Coming Back or Present

Xeraphim

You folks at MapleStory are doing an excellent job of keeping users not only present, but coming back. There are a lot of other options out there today but most of them lack the style and dedication that the MS team is clearly pouring into the game on a regular basis. A few contenders are Dungeons and Dragons Online and the "New Kid On The Block" MMOs that pop up here and there and occupy folks for a year or three. Only a few have true Staying Power and MS is one of those few.

My only complaint is that MS is super-grindy at higher levels for specific gear and bonuses (Cash Shop Meso items like Miracle Circulators and Black Cubes) and some of us find ourselves in Pensalir soloing everything after level 205. We should not have to beg for carries. If that's my only gripe and I like everything else, what does that say for the game?

You set the "100% Completion" level sky-high so that a casual player can never attain it. That keeps the dedicated players busy for over a decade though (not an exaggeration), so they stick around to occasionally help the average folks out. Unfortunately this has the side effect of massively encouraging shortcuts like Kishin and hacking. Still, this allows a stupendous amount of room for growth for newer players and gives them plenty to do (and keep doing).

Presently, November 2018:
I would like to see hard caps set on stat boosting. Your team likes the soft-cap method of hoping that someone doesn't manage to max out all the Potentials and Bonus Potentials but that hurts the newbies more than we'd like to admit. Unfortunately this had the direct impact of causing boss HP and Defense/Attack ratings that are through the roof for casual players who due to their play time (and sometimes, style) cannot complete a boss at or near (above) the level recommended. Perhaps a "Per Level Maximum" would be best (stick in in the Character Sheet and don't allow gear to add up past that number), which would allow for ridiculously high stats *later on* while not directly penalizing newer players. Then allow hard-set bonuses (like the non-percentage ones granted by the Cores in 5th Job for example) to bypass those maximum limits so that metagamers still have something to shoot for. Otherwise the mad power creep that already crushes new characters will only cause more problems. Having Bonus Potentials on gear is nice, no need to remove it. Just replace the "let's get rid of it" with "let's cap that bonus percentage off so that they can't get over 500% or whatever."
End of this section

I look forward to MapleStory being around for decades to come :-)

I play on Reboot and wish I had Zero.

Fuhreak

Completely disagree with the hard cap.
That kind of thing makes me quit games, or never pick them up.
If I was a new player and saw the hard cap, I'd avoid the game rather than play it.
If I was already playing the game, I would be super pissed and probably quit the game.

IMO, this is the worst possible idea. Power creep is in MMOs because it works. Don't mess with it.