I have considered quitting MapleStory almost 2 months before liberating on my Beast Tamer because how this game becomes so grindy nowaday especially when reaching content past Black Mage. It is already bad enough to reach that point with the ridiculous amount of RNG there is on all aspects of the game, content rewards and equips upgrade, especially Starforce, Potential and Bonus stat (flame). Past that moment, a lot of stuff happened in-game (just reading orangemushroom.net), including Nexon related recently and I had a reflection period.
Several players will likely reply by saying the game keeps upgrading with more contents being cleared. It is mainly true for end game player, not even 1% of KMS player base when it happened. Giving one example here, 1-2 players only cleared Mu Lung Dojo 80F in KMS plus one player has reached 10k legion and already they decide to revamp these contents to make them impossible to reach... well only Legion is possible after decades by mass funding 42 characters doing SAC symbols daily and reaching Lv297 on all of them... But reaching 100F Dojo?? Right now, the highest floor cleared is 90F, in TaiwanMS. Then at Ignition, we see Extreme mode BM/Seren... I don't know Seren mechanic at all, might have shield system similar to BM? I have seen Extreme BM attempt video, the party seemed to stuck at phase 4, not being able to clear the shield HP bar every 30 seconds at all. It looks like KMS dev team already planned far ahead the requirements to beat it, getting the full Eternal Set which is pretty much timegate, especially if you try to SF up to 22 and get some booms.
KMS make contents for hardcore korean players who are much addicted to maple, we in GMS, besides certain type of players, completely live in a different culture. I really feel like there are a lot more casual players in GMS non-reboot compared to KMS non-Reboot, especially since GMS Reboot came out far before botting problem got fixed. Releasing Reboot NA way too soon, with pretty bad Meso market rate, was the main reason why a huge majority of the F2P playerbase went Reboot, then there was the 2-pc meta for much easier meso farming + Wild Totem. Even right now, still many players decide to just quit maple or migrate to Reboot because it is easier to upgrade. This hurts regular servers so much. Despites obtaining more rewards from hard boss, the in-game Auction House and Meso Market is really not active + Meso Market rate doesn't reflect the item prices being sold in Auction House due to Blackmarket.
HOWEVER it is too much time consuming playing and this doesn't really feel like a MMORPG since you can't trade. Especially when seeing many reddit posts showing pure solo progression hard boss solo... where is the RPG at that point?? How fast did they upgrade, how many hours daily? Probably much more than recommended. I remember in old time, we used to to see a notice showing the amount of time, in hour, we are online and suggests us to take a break after 3 hours online, why does it get removed now? I also remember a KMS Dev Team answer on why they haven't created a Small Wealth Acquisition potion (30 min), it's for letting players stay online longer, like what???? Everyone in GMS WANT 1hr or even 30 min version of some items, mainly Wild Totem coupon and CS EXP/Drop cards (drop card is no longer present in CashShop). We were providing many feedbacks and recommendations (just looking at Boycott GMS), yet only the server lag and more transparency are fixed, still many points remain unfixed.
Ok enough talk about grindy fest game... else this will never end, only talked about the main points. Now I would like to enumerate several points I hate toward certain non-KMS contents/items and how bad Nexon NA is to listen players, to handle the game and their service. The service also includes how GMs treat their customers via tickets and don't take any appropriate actions at all. Depending of the type of ticket, you can receive an automatic reply or the most part of the reply. All those points together are pretty much the reason why I quit maple for good (once I refund my friend for in-game purchase). I will detail these points below.
Non-KMS stuffs:
What irritates me the most is the current Frenzy Totem. Sure this item is a great welcome game changer. Well great... on the bad hands, it quickly becomes an unwelcomed item in-game. In fact, with how strong is RMT (real money transaction) aspect in the game, for a reason I don't know, many players who have earned Frenzy Totem in Bera keep selling to other players, including to the well known 24/7 or long hours frenzy sellers. All these sellers provide long hour service to certain "people" (i am not even mentioning player word...). They are massively abusing Frenzy Totem. I was trying to report some of these people via ticket system, they promised to take appropriate action. Nothing has been done, how is that possible??? These people negatively affect the maple economy for F2P players and those P2W who play legally, including myself. Most of the good items are being sold/bought through RMT plus I obtain less mesos by buying via Meso Market compared the blackmarket rate. I am not playing for competition especially with this current situation and the fact I am canadian, so even lower money value.
Nexon NA game management and service:
Nexon doesn't seem able to clean the game by removing the people who abuse from the current Frenzy Totem version. Why don't we receive the Taiwan Frenzy version instead? No more Frenzy effect as the caster leaves the map... this will fix all those issues: Limina map monopolization, massive meso generation and RMT meso:money. I have reported a few people and, as I said on the previous point, no action is taken. They are still present in-game.
They pretend to not have tools to enforce their ToS... sure if no one report. I even reported a social media server to Nexon, why doesn't Nexon investigate with this social media employees? A GM recommended me to report them instead of Nexon ticket system since GMs have no control on social medias.
And finally, one reason that made me frustrated... I went to purchase Karma Koin at some convenience stores and lately they were out of stock of cards. Seems to be out of stock for a long period, like if Nexon doesn't plan to restock the stores or something. What is really funny is Nexon games are far from popular in the region I live. I wrote a ticket to let Nexon know these stores are out of stock, I also looked at the stores showing on karmakoin.com website at my location. I mentioned on my ticket I don't own a credit card and I have no plan to obtain one specifically for maple by buying via pcgamesupply or other sites. I even asked if they will be restocked soon and guess what I obtained as answers .... They were sorry that I was not able to buy cards at my location and they refer me at sites I can buy NX.... wow such disrespectful not paying attention of everything I said.
Not just all those incidents. I can mention one more incident here, remember the false Beast Tamer ban (auto-bans). That happened right on Night Trouping event. I got 0 compensation from getting autobanned one whole weekend when I was mostly avaibable for massive grinding.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, I have been MVP Diamond for long time. I will drop right away at the beginning of next month.
Comments
I think Nexon isn't planning on doing anything unless kms says so lol. I think the game will never change or get it right for players.
I feel that a lot of us voiced our opinions and some of us got banned for it. But yeah gl with whatever game you play maple ain't changing any time sooner.
seriously bring wild totem back or make frenzy totem either what you said above or self-casting buff, only affecting the caster of the frenzy buff.
Regular server is dead...
I miss good old party quests where people join together working toward specific goals.
well, Nexon took out a lot of good things in the game that could have kept the activity up. Also the world transfer event "worst decision ever" made the game lose 2/3 of its players.
So yeah nexon needs to take some of my advice and save the game cause too many people are quitting for things they can fix rn.