The one good take away is getting out 3rd and 4rd Mastery Nodes as soon as possible and then tune and make fixes over time where needed, the Mastery Node system just needs to be completed due to how it operates.
Another new end game boss is overall neutral, but bad at this very specific time and this could have waited at least 6 to 12 months and just sit on Limbo as the current hardest boss for a little bit longer.
~Bossing is one of the worst forms to get players to chase after content and to keep players engaged since you get so little time to experience the boss when you can do it once every week and it is too difficult for the vast majourity of players - especially with the obsession to constantly nerf supports which should be the opt in way for players to make bossing easier while keeping the boss hard for those that like the challenge.
~Bossing is also the most wear and grind you down content over repeat extended play as well. Meaning, bossing is very short term content and bad long term overall by itself.
I will try to break things down to why the rest of this "NEXT Update" is very bad for the game for the short and long term.
Accelerate to almost instantly receive level 260.
~ New player standpoint, this will overwhelm players with too much information progressing too quickly.
- Content needs to be consumed one at a time and interact with things on their own time and play experience to properly learn how things work in the game.
~ New players will not properly appreciate the journey they go on to 260.
- Experiencing the areas of the game before this point is very important for proper enjoyment to any game, MapleStory especially.
- The pre-200 experience and 200-260 experience just needs to be improved base level.
--- Speed up things while still having it slow enough where players can properly take in and appreciate the game as they grow.
--- Pre-200 experience needs to be improved where players can freely explore the world and just have fun experiencing, leveling up, and given enough time to actual learn the job's skills and really know what the job can do. Players cannot know if they like that job or not without having real experience with it first.
-> For Heroic Worlds, reverting the monsters to how they used to be with old Reboot really helped improved the leveling experience as a baseline state. Plus having an overall level 1-200 EXP curve reduction instead of instantly shooting players to 200 (and to 260 with Hyper Burn MAX) would help players get into the game faster without it being too fast.
More damage and no gameplay new system.
~ If you were just going to have damage stats as thing to give, then simplify this further to +2-4% Final Damage per new legion system card, 12-24% Final damage with all 6 cards (somewhere within this range).
- This then is equal in power to every job and is even a simpler way to get across something that is otherwise boring and uninteresting.
~ A system like this could have been way more fun and interesting by having a bunch of different option to choose from and not just more damage like:
- Chance to skip cooldowns, % cooldown reduction, flat cooldown reduction, healing over time that ignores anti-healing mechanics, % damage reduction against all sources of damage, critical rate %, critical damage %, damage %, all stat, weapon / magic attack, increased movement speed that exceeds the speed cap, increased jump height that exceeds the jump cap, gain increased air control, reduce the affects of gravity (fall down slower), etc.
-> This way the player has pick and choose options to customize their character(s) / account to how they like things and choose what they want/need to help them boss better. Making the game more fun with experimenting with different stat values.
~ Another way to implement a passive progression system with real gameplay to it that keeps players engaged long term is something like:
- Players have a new world to freely explore.
-> Within this world, there are different types of monsters which scale to your character's current level and are significantly tankier to fight and take down. All monsters would give Nodestones, Sol Erda Energy, and Sol Erda Fragments at a significantly higher drop chance, but nothing is affected by outside increased drop rate chances. No mesos can drop and no EXP the monsters give.
--> What monster you fight will give a particular passive skill (passive stat) EXP to level it up, up to a cap, and the cap will be a high level and the system very grindy in the early days. The only action the player needs to do is fight these special monsters and search out what each monster offers to power up your character and/or account.
--- This would be level 260+ content and gives players something to do that is different to normal monster hunting while still being easy enough to just wind down and relax, but be more engaging than regular hunting. This be done in monsters are more difficult to take down (HP values) and actually fight back (hit harder), and the map layout being a lot bigger and far more interesting to navigate.
Yes, you need to slowly increase the end to go further, but you need to solve the issues of giving players things to do as they work their way to the end game.
Yes, you need to speed up earlier levels and progression for newer players can catch up and not take as long as we did to get to X part of the game, but needs to be done in a good way for the long term health of the game so new players are not overwhelmed with information and content because they blazed through literally everything without experience things for themselves first.
It is more important to create more permanent ways for players to have different kinds of fun experiences as they power up their characters and get back to MapleStory creating your own personal story, the story is the journey the player creates along the way and not getting to the part of the book where it says "The End".
(This was all I could remember as the broad points from the KMS "NEXT" Showcase.)
To sum up: The game direction needs to be corrected to go back to having things to do in the game that are just fun things to do and back to improving the experience getting to the end rather than current direction of getting to the end as fast as possible with nothing to do while there.
