I have seen a lot of discussion over the last couple weeks about how individual changes that hit the KMS server recently will impact players, with an especially large out cry from reboot players, but I haven't seen anyone discussing how these changes work together to make the game worse. While there is a vehement hatred for reboot players in Korea, and they are often (and unfairly) pained as... we'll be diplomatic and call it reluctant spenders... there seems to be a big push to try to force reboot players back onto normal servers to become a commodify to sell to whales (see below). These observations aren't actually about reboot players. They're about the other group of reluctant spenders the game cannot live without that these changes are surgically designed to remove from the population.
I'm of course talking about the impact these changes will have on the New Player experience.
The way I see it there are three main changes taking affect that are going to interact with one pre-existing change to push out. To recap these changes are: the cap on the meso market being changed from 1b to 5b. The scaling-with-level daily earning limit, the regular servers adopting reboot cubes in a UI element, and of course the homogenization of reboot and regular servers (aka the reboot nerfs). Again, though this feedback is not about reboot players, they are involved in what is to come.
Let's start with the changes to the meso market. From what I've observed people talking about these changes seem innocuous to most, but will be the catalyst of the alienation of new players. These changes are a very loud and public embracing of MMO hyper-inflation. The devaluation of the meso in its buying power by simply allowing players to 5x their prices. By itself this change seems obvious to allow players to list an item for a "fair market value" given the new cost of upgrades but that is not going to be what players use it for. The damage this change does is not in its own implementation but as a multiplier for all the other changes so lets move to them.
The next natural thing to talk about would be the cubes. Cubes make up one-third of KSM's revenue, and are the backbone of player's sense of superiority over reboot players. With regular servers adopting reboot's cube design (we're not at prices yet) the animosity between regular and reboot players will shift from a sense of earned entitlement, to a sense of inequity of suffering. So pervasive is the sentiment that "you haven't suffered enough to compare yourself to me" that we even see some players here making equivalent statements of "you think you have it bad wait until [arbitrary benchmark of suffering]". The idea that Maplestory progression is about trauma bonding with your character through suffering is already driving away new players. We already see it constantly in the reddit and the discord and our population isn't nearly as toxic as the KMS region about this. They're going to have it much worse. That is, until mesos are inevitably re-introduced to the cash shop. At which point the purchased entitlement will return.
Returning again to the discussion of meso and cost: the cubes costing 2.5x what they do on reboot to re-roll at legendary is a problem. At 5x earnings rate, and no trades enabled, reboot's economy is both designed to be hyper inflated and non-existent (bartering services for services that can result in goods rather than actual goods). While one might point to these prices and say that they're taking that amount of meso out of the economy they're not. That is not how MMO economies work, and it is seen as plain as day during any starforce, DMT, or other upgrade events. Players go out of their way to turn their effort into money to meet the cost of upgrades whatever they are. However, what this means and how it negatively impacts new players is also clear: the cost of starting the game will become impossible to obtain.
The thing about cubes is their cost is independent from the gear they are used on, and through progression players are intended to go through multiple sets of gear. A new player who is not geared enough to handle even the lowest tier weekly boss will find cubing impossible. The daily bosses only award 22.18 million meso per day. While there are other meso-making activities they are largely weekly in nature. That means a new player will only be able to make 5 roll attempts of the lowest tier of potential per day. In two days they will tier themselves out of progression on that item entirely, as the second tier costs 16 million per attempt. One attempt, on one of the 16 cubable items (not counting android heart, or pants, because starter sets don't have pants) they're expected to have, per day, is not how you build long term investment. It moves the pay-wall to a very very early part of the game (around lv.140).
Being unable to do weekly boss for meso, and exhausting all their other sources of meso will turn them to farming. That is where the level-scaling daily cap becomes a problem. The current cap of earnings averages, many insist, about 5 hours of grinding. This completely eliminates the "weekend warriors" the type of person likely to have a job and disposable income, are the same type of players to only have a weekend tot do all of their grinding. These players may put in an entire week's worth of effort in two days to try to stay caught up. This is very common in the west and these players are just removed entirely from the game.
More to the point, though, earning less than a higher level player for their time means an established player in a similar situation--too weak for weekly bosses--will simply be able to out grind the new player, and purchase the new player gear for themselves or their alts. This takes the low price, low-end 'starter' gear off the auction house and we are now back where we began at the auction house changes.
Players buying scissors to list gear on the auction house know there are other players who are well established and trying to gear their alts. The prices of these equipments will always be set for those players--for those players who are already deeply entrenched on the winning side of the MMO hyper inflation this change directly gives up to combat. And, even if a player tried to sell lower than these prices, another established player will simply buy that item, and re-list it at a higher price for a quick and easy profit. To clarify I am not complaining about these players either. It's normal for a player do what is in their best interest, and perfectly reasonable for any player making a purchase as an investment to expect dividends as part of their return on the investment. Rather, I'm simply stating that the existence of these players is a known element in any game economy that developers need to be attentive to when it comes to ensuring the New Player Experience survives any changes they make. Especially when that behavior is encouraged by the developers as these changes seem intended to do.
This is the third angle of attack on new players where they are priced out of the game from the very beginning. Being unable to cube their own gear, being unable to boss for base gear worth cubing, and being unable to grind to buy gear leaves them only one other avenue of gearing: getting carried. However, due to this being changed earlier to require them to commit 5% of the bosses' damage to even receive drops, if they can't even do that then they have nothing. With the new player being unable to get gear from the general public their only other recourse is have a friend with that gear, or who can afford it, get it for them. Meaning, somebody has to pay for scissors to allow a new player to even play.
We haven't even talked about "the death of reboot" yet, and I promised I'd get there.
The attempt to migrate reboot players to regular servers, by homogenizing the function of reboot servers and regular servers, will result in all of the above being expedited. Reboot players are used to doing a lot with a little. The percent damage increase that reboot players get for playing on reboot is nothing compared to scrolls and bonus potential. If nexon is successful in encouraging these players to migrated to regular servers there will be a massive influx of demand on the economy by players not known for buying scissors. This will take a substantial amount of items out of the auction house and massively drive up prices to levels that new players won't even pretend are achievable.
This steps the problem up from Invite Only, by requiring someone to buy scissors specifically for a new player to join, to functionally pay to play from the outset. There is a level of acceptance of pay-to-win in korea that's part of the culture not found here. However, even those players have their limit and that is the perceived value proposition of paying. Paying to start a free MMO is never going to happen when there are other free MMOs they can join and whale in for better feeling results.
The death of the new player experience is the beginning of player stagnation which begins a feedback loop that kills games. Without new players replacing existing players that fall off, burn out, or move on the player-base shrinks, the economy becomes more insular as money is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, resulting in a more impenetrable game for future new players to fail to join.
I don't say this to be all doom and gloom. The actual death of the game is very far off, but it is down the path these changes have put us on. Given the story of the arcane river, that's pretty on the nose that we the players are holding the metaphorical seal stone with the fate of the new player Tana in our hands. This is a reference new players won't understand, and may never stay long enough to understand, which is why we need to be very vocal about their experience being collateral damage.
