There have been a lot of opinions surrounding the new revamp of the Familiar collection; however, I think that the opinions are very emotion-based, and we need objectivity here. That's why I'm listing five reasons why the new Familiar system is objectively better than the old one; then I'll list five ways I think the new system could objectively be improved.
1) All Familiars are obtainable without any purchases.
In the old system, there were many, many Familiars you simply could not get without purchasing Booster Packs through the Cash Shop, which obviously took either money or Maple Points saved up through events; either way, the Cash Shop was required to get many Familiars.
In the new system, all Familiars can be obtained through the new Booster Pack in the new UI through Familiar Points, which can be obtained solely through extracting Familiars. There's no Cash Shop or money needed for any Familiars. Obviously, there is still luck involved; however, the fact is that all of them can eventually be obtained without any purchases, whereas the old system required purchases to get them all.
2) There are more Familiars obtainable.
In the old system, many mobs simply would not drop Familiars, due to them being newer additions that had not been implemented in the Crusader Codex, or due to updates changing the mobs to not having the same ID as in the Crusader Codex, or for other various reasons. Mobs such as those in Rien, Riena Strait, Arcane River, World Tree, Scrapyard, and many other theme dungeon/170+ areas.
In the new system, more mobs drop Familiars. Rather than requiring Booster Packs to get the theme dungeon or high-level Familiars, Familiar card drops have been added to areas that previously had none.
3) You can summon more than one Familiar.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. In the old system, only one Familiar could be summoned. In the new system, up to three can be summoned.
4) Familiars have objectively better potentials.
Let's face it; in the old system, very few Familiars had any decent potential at all. The vast majority raised a stat a few points at the most, one or two points at the least. We all enjoyed the very few Familiars that had nice HP/MP/Drop increases and cool graphics changes, but once again, there were very, very few of them.
In the new system, potentials are not only far better, but every Familiar can get them. Boss %, Ignore DEF, All Stats... they are all very nice to have, and because there are two potentials, pretty much every Familiar in the new system has objectively better stats than pretty much every Familiar in the old system.
5) Familiar Badges are objectively better than Set Effects.
In the old system, once you got all of the Monster Cards of a particular group, you could equip a "Set Effect" for that group. However, not many of the cards could be obtained anymore due to updates, except for Cash Shop Booster Pack purchases getting really lucky, and you could only ever equip one Set Effect.
In the new system, all badges are now obtainable without purchases (see #1); not only that, but you can equip eight of them at once, making the potentials objectively better.
Now, let's take an objective look at what could be improved about the new system.
1) Allow renaming of Familiars upon register into the new UI, or decrease the price for renaming.
In the old system, adding a Familiar to the Crusader Codex would allow you to rename it immediately. In the new system, you aren't able to name it upon the first registration; if you want to rename it, it takes 2 million mesos, which is a rather hefty price to rename a single Familiar. I would recommend either allowing a rename immediately, as the old system did, or start with between 1000 and 10000 mesos to rename initially, and increasing the price for each rename of that familiar.
2) Make Familiar card drop rate a function of both mob rank and level.
In the old system, cards dropped respective of level; the average I found (based on 800+ collections) was between (level/5) and (level/3) minutes for a Familiar card to drop. For example, a level 58 Fire Boar, with no drop rate increases, would drop its card between about 12 and 19 minutes of farming.
In the new system, cards appear to drop solely on rank and not based on level; this means that low-level familiars with a high rank drop far, far less than before; reports say about 20-60 minutes for Familiars under level 20. Although this makes sense based on current potentials (you wouldn't want to get Unique-tier potentials after 2 minutes), I would argue that it would be better to make cards drop based on both rank and level; that way, low-level low-rank cards would drop far more often than high-level low-rank cards, and low-level high-rank cards would drop far more often than high-level high-rank cards. I would also argue that high-level low-rank cards should drop more often than, or equal to, low-level high-rank cards.
For example, a Level 15 Junior Boogie (Epic) would drop far more than a Level 119 Master Death Teddy (Epic), but perhaps less than a Level 107 Bone Fish (Rare), and perhaps far less than a Level 142 Memory Monk (Common).
3) Make a way to reroll Familiar potential without leveling up.
Because Familiar potential is identical to equipment potential, I believe there should be a way to reroll the potentials the same way equipment potentials can be rerolled. Perhaps the Familiar equivalent of cubes? The issue is that you may have a level 1 Unique Familiar with terrible stats, or perhaps even a level 1 Legendary Familiar with terrible stats. For the Legendary familiar, you have no chance of changing the potential without getting a new Familiar and upgrading it all the way to Legendary again, which would take a very long time. For the Unique Familiar, you only have one chance of changing the potential - ranking it up to Legendary, which you would only be able to do through the Cash Shop, and not everyone would be able to do that. Even if you did buy the Red Familiar Card and ranked it up, if you get terrible stats for that new Legendary rank, you're stuck again.
Finally...
I'd like to remind the MapleStory community that there's a pandemic going on. Of course fixing these issues is going to take longer. Please be patient and caring, as not all of the employees working on this game are able to work, and those who can have limited means of doing so.
Comments
Actually that content use to exist, so people who were around long enough could have gotten it, but then they removed the content....
Previously those mobs were only obtainable with Gachop, not even booster packs. Which in Reboot having a different Gachop means they don't exist there. But their drop rate with the new system shouldn't be 1/hr.....
Reasons #3 & 4 were the reasons why people were excited for the Update
#5 the Leafre Codex was 30% IED +1 All Skills, In any of the equations for sorting out your 3 main lines - Attack, Boss, IED - This had a dramatic affect, compared to any other Codex set (3% m/attack) - Even more so for BTs. So while it goes to have %15-IED and 3%attack, The fact that it's gated with booster RNG that with the newer drop rate of Familiars means it's almost impossible to get now....
2nd suggestion was already the previous system that was set up for the appropriate method (Cause you only need at most 3 of a monster) but had tons of impact against for Familiar farming, which is why Set effects were separate from familiars. Now that they are together, it's insane to make them so heavily time gated. The problem with putting the 2 together means you CAN'T time wall things. Or else you get... boogies
3rd suggestion was literally the Red Card familiar... Which they didn't want to put in Reboot cause it gives Reboot legendaries.... which for some reason is bad? - It's similar to Red cubing Familiars. Which at minimum this should also be in the RP shop for everyone... Like Red Cubes and Black cubes....
Fix the drop rates, otherwise there's no point investing time into this system. I agree with Kanukov, there's no way I'm spending more than 2 - 3 hours on maple when I play, and even then I'm not always hunting for familiars.
Yeah main reason of me hating this update is the idea of nexon of hard "lets just make it more time consuming"
Like killing gollux for a month for a single item that can be destroyed in minutes while trying to get stars or farming 10 hours for a card that will basically do nothing but add +1 on the badge set. YAY a LOT of fun... f-logic.