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Check out the v.255 - The Dark Ride: Ride or DIe Patch Notes
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I recently watched and read an AMA from KThxBaiNao.
There were a few things I've noticed:
Nexon does. Or at least there are people that do. It's not really different from any other company. There are always people that care, it's just always a matter of balancing the pros and cons of every decision.
But yes, Nexon does care and they do listen to their playerbase.
... I was fully prepared for any roadblocks that I might have encountered at Nexon. And truthfully? There were far less that I was expecting. They were incredibly cooperative and oddly supportive of a lot of the initiatives and plans I proposed to them.
I definitely think that Nexon America has been growing and improving over the years. I can't say with absolute certainty that things have changed since his time, but I feel that they have been getting better for everyone. For Nexon, its employees, and the community itself.
Nexon isn't actually as messy everyone thinks it does. It's like most major companies, in that there are a lot of procedures and processes that certain things have to go through. Sometimes the delay in things happening seems like it's due to a company being dysfunctional, but I'd attribute it to the approval processes for certain things.
I think a lot of this is "selection bias"
There are quite a few instances where Nexon has been incredibly transparent both during and before my time there. The problem is that you don't always hear about these moments because people are typically quieter and less likely to post about things when they're satisfied.
I know that I'm more likely to leave a negative Yelp review of a restaurant than I am a good one.
I mean it doesn't get rid of the fact there are
issues with transparency or complete utter silence. But maybe I can tone down the bias of Nexon America not knowing what to do or always being against the players.
I don't understand, if that's really the case... why is the game and community in such in a negative state as many posts throughout the main forums and various fan-sites.
Maybe I'm just thinking too much.
Comments
Also, words are cheap. Actions are what matters. Ignored bugs, false bans, rampant hacking, collapsing servers, useless "customer support", are things we all experience every day. They are not a false impression spread by a few malcontents.
Nexon's first action after firing KThxBaiNao was to limit the coins from the Santa boxes to 10. We were all expecting a limit to be imposed, of course. 60, like last year, or 30 to match the V boxes, would have been normal. The limit of 10, on top of a cut of the box drop rate to 1/3rd what it was, just screams "spite". That is not the action of a company that listens to the community or wants what's best for the game. (And the bug that allows bypassing the limit if you're lucky, is not the action of a competent company...)
Ultimately, I agree with this post from the end of that thread: In the same breath he tells us that Nexon cares, and that he worked around the clock to push for things that needed doing.
What was he pushing against, if everyone at Nexon is so supportive?
I think Nexon America deserves a lot more props than they're given. If you think about how the programming industry works then you can see why they take so long to do things. Imagine it this way:
You have a team of people for every game. The team for Maplestory is definitely understaffed 'cause budget. They hire like two to five teams worth of people. They have to work together on certain things that have been approved to hit the game. Bug fixing, troubleshooting certain issues, working on the next game changing/end-game content patch, etc. This can take a very long time. Knowing how disorganized programming companies are I can safely say that what someone put in the last patch, is being looked at by a totally different group of people that have to work on the next patch.
Basically some guy/gal has to look through the sloppy code of another guy/gal because no one has clean, good looking code these days. As such, bug fixing will take a much longer time because the person who programmed the last patch can't even read their own code without stopping to figure out what something does. This especially will be an issue this time of year because of holiday vacations and whatnot.
Honestly, Nexon is doing a great job for a company that doesn't work weekends and who probably only has like 30-50% of their staff right now.
Some things never get fixed. They just keep telling us "we're looking into it" and "the team is aware" until we stop asking.
Some things get fixed and then become unfixed. Exploits are blocked and then become unblocked at the next patch. Why, even the Santa boxes, that had a coin limit instated last year, suddenly had no limit when they were re-enabled this year. And I'm supposed to believe Nexon is not disorganized?
"Holiday season"? They're like this all year round.
I'm a professional programmer. I've worked on projects as old and as big as MapleStory. I know that things don't have to be this slow or this messy. In fact, if we had let a patch go live with as many bugs - or as serious bugs - as Nexon lets MapleStory have, heads would roll and lawsuits would fly.
But Nexon has no contract with its customers. We can't sue them for incompetence, so they allow themselves to hire too few people and not give them the tools, time, and procedures they need to to their job right.
And yet KThxBaiNao would have us believe that none of this is happening. We have a company full of intelligent, competent people, with the best intentions towards the community and the game - and yet they have to be pushed every step of the way for any change that should have been done years ago (like the Magnus restrictions), and for every player caught in a mistake (like the false bans that KThxBaiNao is famous for getting overturned). How come?
that they think it can just slide. How long has it been since Princess No was glitched, Magnus has become worse.
Codex is ruined. Santa boxes being limited to 10? You must be joking, I mean at least 100 would make more sense.
There is just so many problems with Nexon, its really hard to show them support.
Lag-fest 2x Events and the compensation is more 2x Events. Without 2x Events it's still a lag-fest.
Tons of Events with outrages limitations to the point where it's unbearable or the the point a maintenance can ruin your plans. An extremely thin line for leniency to complete an event.
The game is still poorly optimized. My client crashes so many times more than the times I actually log off on my own.
Tons of glitches that I don't even bother to mention because those I've reported are "not important and not game breaking". I guess lag isn't game breaking too but Unlimited Coins from Shining Santa Boxes are. I guess people not getting certain buffs from Shining Santa Boxes aren't game breaking.
Sure that's true maybe it's not game breaking. But it is sure to HELL A NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE TO PLAYERS. Dealing with "legacy bugs" for years and the only one fixed is conveniently is Kanna's Kishin Shoukan at the same time Frenzy Totem is released.
The time when Gollux is closed is a strange coincidence that Marvel Machine offers Gollux items.
I don't care if it's just a coincidence. The fact that so much of this crap has been happening for FREAKING YEARS is making me sick.
Since this update there are so many bad things that have happened and it really doesn't look good to both new and returning players. Although I wasn't affected, the Fredrick FM issue is among the absolute worst from Nexon. People losing hundreds of dollars to thousands worth in progress and being given measly compensation. Nexon has absolutely no excuse for this. Other companies that run MMOs have always been able to restore items in full if they are at fault (even if they aren't they can). This to me just screams "easy way out".
You aren't at all insightful, you're just feeding everyone's misplaced rage.
They wait until all of those pointed out is resolved then they place money into it because they know that if there's a problem that they're actually working and fixing on it.
The fact that multiple bugs can now be considered as "legacy issues" which have little to no coverage on it's state let alone the whole Customer Support sections (forums and actual support site), do you really expect people to just continue throwing down money?
False bans, improper compensation, and other various issues that would generally give a player bad experience? Most likely a new player would quit within a weeks time.
I understand there is a process, I understand it takes time for them to resolve issues. The fact that there isn't a properly maintained list of known issues and instead it becomes common knowledge that such bugs have existed for years is no way acceptable.
I know I would feel shame if I was assigned to fix something and a year later it still isn't fixed. But is anything even being done at this point? The Bug Reports and Suggestions are probably a huge abandoned graveyard that none of the Nexon Officials look at after letting go of KThxBaiNao.
There's no excuse.
Well sometimes the real world can cause vicious circles with its idiotic tendencies.
My point is that it's a dead topic and instead of beating a dead horse we should just stop spending money on the game. Nexon can't run so many servers on only a few hundred peoples' cash shopping. Start a boycott, anything is more productive than just whining about it on the forums they supposedly don't look at.
Things that bugged me on support tickets:
- Mad house badge not in collection for months and the ticket "fell through the cracks"
- all my planet chairs (other than my sun chair) were in a chair bag and when a event gave me another chair bag they all got deleted -- they compensated me A LOT (with a bit of persistence on my end) so it's not a big deal
Things they got right:
- Evan flight bug (when there used to be flight) - Could not fly on my dragon, I reported it, and they fixed it with the very next patch.
- Potion pot bug - the potion pot used to stop you from being able to use skills, use items, use portals, and anything like that until you d/c'd - again, with a bit of persistence, they fixed it. It works fine now (other than a annoying chat message when using it with pets on hp and mp)
- Crashes in bosses - I used to crash a lot with bosses for some reason, they offered support and we got it fixed.
- General tech issues - When in doubt, I go to nexon support about seemingly unsolvable issues (I am a computer guy, so it's not often but still) - 7/10 times they solve it when we work together.
- General polite behavior - I have never had a support agent behave in a way I could ever call offensive. They always treat me well, and are always understanding of my issues.
- There are a lot more that I can't remember
I'd say overall nexon does a good job with tech support if you actually try to work with them instead of expecting nothing good to come out of it. It's a support center, tickets get lost, just like emailing a major company, sometimes the email just gets drowned out! You don't just give up and complain to your friends, you email them again until you get a definitive answer.
Idk that's just my history and two cents on this matter.
dude got fired? really? man sorry to hear that =((