Hello! I'm AxeChris, a Rebooter. For the last few years, I've been pushing for an updated familiar system, mainly aiming towards a translated JMS system, mainly because of all the features they've added to it from 2011 to 2015. When Anna announced that we in GMS would be receiving a revamp, I was ecstatic. So much that I had dedicated much of my time to writing down explanations of both JMS and TMS's systems on a discord to help players better understand the major jump to the new system.
Flash forward to yesterday's video/guide being released. It quickly dawned on me as well as my other familiar-loving compatriots that this would not be either JMS or TMS's system merely translated, but a completely new system altogether. A fusion of both systems, even. Being able to summon three at once and utilize potentials along with multiple badges would be absolutely fantastic for Reboot! As I read aloud the post, my optimism slowly started to crumble.
"Non-Reboot worlds only: The [Red Familiar Card], purchased from the Cash Shop, also has a small chance to immediately Rank-Up the chosen Familiar while resetting its Potentials". It had dawned on me that Reboot would not be obtaining the Red Familiar Card, along with the opportunity to buy [Familiar Slot Expansion Coupons] or [Familiar Breakthrough Cards]. My mind started racing. With those restrictions, Reboot's experience with this new system will be but a mere fraction of what normal servers would get. New players would only be limited to 100 slots overall, capped at level 5, and would be forced to start over from scratch if the familiar they worked so tirelessly on turned out to have a bad potential when they finally get it to Unique.
I fear that with these restrictions, the entire concept of collecting and utilizing familiars will immediately fall flat on it's face and the meta will be to merely farm snail familiars for the ease of access and ability to easily start over from scratch if their unique potential is, essentially, crap. Familiar hunting would also be severely limited due to the fact that Reboot can't buy expansion slots either. If we're expecting to possibly have a maximum of 2,000 familiars, how could we cope with just 100 slots on average? I'm thankful that I'll have 20 slots to go with the 345 I have, but I feel this is terribly unfair to everyone else.
I would like to request that [Red Familiar Cards] be sold in either the Cash Shop for meso, much like Red and Black cubes, or in the Roro shop, along with [Familiar Slot Expansion Coupons] and [Familiar Breakthrough Cards]. Doing so will allow reboot to be able to work on hunting new familiars, level them up, and ensure they have options for bossing, healing, IED, whatever the situation calls for. I'd like to see maplers show off their "Familiar Teams", each providing a role, as well as flexing whatever they got from hunting or booster packs. Likewise, with expansion slots, players could choose if they want to go deeper into the familiar system at their own pace, rather than just limiting themselves to only 100.
Breakthrough Cards would also be a fine addition to Reboot. Allowing the level cap to reach 7 on our most treasured familiars would help us have longer farming sessions with them, have easier boss runs (if their scaled attacks are truly as strong as they claim to be), and again, to be able to show the world that yes, this player put forth the love and effort to get their familiar to a Level 7 Unique or Legendary rank. Something to aspire other players to work towards if they know the potential they have would help them immensely on their own goals.
As of right now, there's a community of familiar hunters out there who feel the same way about these restrictions and I hope that they'll see this post and respond with their own concerns - It's a larger community than you'd think; There are currently 70 members in the Familiar discord, with more hunters joining the fun every day. We feel that this new revamp is a fantastic way to get people energized about familiars, but with the current restrictions in Reboot, it simply won't be as great. Adding the Red Card, Slot Expansions, and Breakthough Cards to Reboot would change the way things work way more positively. Complaints aside, I'm excited to see GMS receiving a new system, but I would be much more excited about using said new system if some or all of these changes were made for Reboot players.
Thank you.
and 24 others.
and 24 others.
Comments
firstChris is absolutely right here. The issues, in order of importance, are:
1. Familiar slot expansion coupons MUST be added to reboot
2. Red familiar cards MUST be obtainable in reboot
3. Familiar Breakthrough Cards MUST be obtainable in reboot
4. Familiar drop rate should be increased.
Users in reboot who have over 100 familiars are presented with a dilemma: Undo our hard work and get rid of the familiars we like so much to make room for new ones OR only ever be able to add 20 more familiars to our collection. Many users value familiars for the collecting aspect and without familiar slot expansion coupons the system will miss the point.
The exclusion of red familiar cards and familiar breakthrough cards also puts meta players in a difficult position. Without red familiar cards we'll have to restart from scratch if we don't get the unique potential we're looking for. The problem will get even worse as we accumulate more familiars with good unique potentials since the number of potentials we'll want will decrease. Furthermore, we'll be working much harder for much weaker potentials because we won't have the familiar breakthrough cards necessary to obtain top tier potentials.
Lastly, the drop rate of high level familiars should be increased. With the way the current system is now, players will be forced to enhance only the familiars with the highest drop rates (shroom, snail, blue snail, red snail, slime, orange mushroom, etc). It would be extremely unsatisfying to have the weakest and lowest level familiars be the best because they're the ones that can obtain the best potentials. I'd hate to see the first reboot black mage clear done with 6 of each color snail. It would look much better with Limina familiars.
I was far from a child when I first played MapleStory, but I remember being in awe as I chose my first character (A Wild Hunter) and went to whack my first Potted Sprout for a quest. Everything seemed pretty par for the course of MMORPG except for an item that it dropped: A "familiar" card. I got a notification from Maple Admin that explained what it did and my mind went wild. I went to the next area, and the next after, and I saw that there were many familiars to collect and have fun with. It was like a monster-taming game, and I am a total sucker for those!
I was far from a regular MapleStory player: While most users were content with power-leveling and increasing their damage, I did quests, took my time and, of course, farmed familiars. My first roadblock was King Slime, but by gosh I managed to get enough people for more and more King Slime runs...
Several years later I came back, this time for the new Reboot server that was all the rage. Probably one of the better PR moves I have ever seen and I had a blast playing there! But real life had other plans.
My story is far from over but you might get the gist: Familiars were kind of a big deal. Recently (30 days ago, as a matter of fact), as I was bored out of mind thanks to quarantine and related problems, I saw slight glimpses of a new MapleStory feature: Apparently they were going to revamp the familiar system and make it better. So I left my two/three-years-old hiatus and downloaded the game again! So much changed and yet so little, but I didn't feel comfortable in my older accounts. Despite the amount of removed and deleted content, I wanted to re-do everything as a now-seasoned adult and player, and needless to say, I have been having a blast rediscovering everything at my own pace in the Reboot server! I was never into trading and commerce anyway so this server is great for me.
I have been following all the news about the familiar system as closely as possible, and I am mostly really loving how it is based on other systems, yet brings several new things to the table. I can't wait to bring as many familiars as possible to GREAT tiers for my own fun, as part of one of my many self-imposed challenges.
But then come the bad news. This new familiar system seems incomplete for Reboot, and I cannot really tell why. I am aware that they cost NX on the main server, but in Reboot we have several game-impacting things available just for Mesos, so I do not know if it's a balancing issue or not: Extra potential stamps, cubes. I will level it up to you: I am far from a "meta" player. I do not got out of my way to grind, become "stronger" or plow through the levels, so I really cannot give an opinion on what is or what isn't "fair", "broken", "OP", "unfair" and such. However, I do know that not having these features will be detrimental to the familiar system.
Back when I played, I was a "Maple shut-in", so I thought I was the only one who actually cared about and collected familiars (specially on Reboot), besides some fringe millionaires with nothing better to do. This always made me feel slightly alone and like a social outcast. People always jest that MapleStory is a "1-player MMORPG", but when push comes to shove, it DOES get slightly less fun if you have no one to play with. However, I couldn't be further from the truth now that I have discovered people like AxeChris and his discord group "The Familiar Room", as well as the more new people who wish to join Familiar Hunting thanks to the new revamp!
Not getting these features clashes with the enjoyment of familiar collectors such as me as well. My newest account is 28 days old and I have around 140 familiars, but since I am in Reboot I will be looked to have 160 or so only. But there are so many Monsters I want to get, because I consider myself a collector. Having this limit in place limits me, making me unable to "catch them all", I would even have to delete my hard-farmed familiars to make room for others. And I do not want that. If I could, I would have familiars of EVERY monster in the game, and farm them all! Reboot requires these items available for the better work of the new familiar system, either via mesos in the Cash shop, Maple reward points or in the Familiar shop. Particularly, the Familiar slot one.
This system can be interesting and perfect, and if I can do anything to help improve it, then I will. I would like you to know that some people care about this system, and we appreciate your time trying to improve it.
Overall a lot of the decisions made seem to lack direction, it's a strange decision to me for gms to make yet another version of the familiar revamp when it's already taking so much from Jms/Tms's versions. I also question why there were so many decisions made to spite Reboot. I hope that this thread encourages Gms to reconsider some of the choices they've made regarding the revamp and the adverse exceptions in Reboot.
Lastly, on a more personal note, I really hope that the drop rate of the familiar cards is made to be that of Jms's version. I was very much looking forward to collecting familiars with the increased drop rate. I understand that this change is still under consideration, but I feel that the increased drop rate is integral to the system as a whole.
Please don't let the "for now" in that comment be the same "for now" as we've seen in other places like Cwkpq
or custom avatars for the forumsquoted for emphasis
To not be able to obtain the red familiar breakthrough card in reboot is a severe disadvantage to reboot players as well as being limited to 100 familiar slots only with no possibility of expansion
Reboot is a nice place and it deserves to get at least a chance of competing with normal servers.
Why they couldn't just port over Japan's system instead of wasting development man-hours on some Frankenstein's monster abomination...
Technically, non-Reboot can use the Meso Market, so anything but Marvel Spins is obtainable with meso. But at what price? Currently in Aurora, if I wanted to buy enough Maple Points for a Red Cube, I'd have to pay 200m meso. Compared to 12m that a Red Cube costs in Reboot. While mobs drop 1/6th the meso, bots undercut the prices of anything that can be found, and Nexon makes it harder to obtain items bots can't undercut (like Dojo honor medals and Gollux accessories). And this, btw, at a time when meso is considered "strong". I suspect that once the patch arrives and more and more people try to obtain Maple Points to build their Familiar squad, the value of meso will plummet.
Now the Reboot players will say "nobody is forcing you to be f2p in regular worlds" and they're right. I don't particularly mind the cube price disparity, because I don't actually need to buy Red or Black cubes with Maple Points. I get a few for free from Rewards Shop and Fairy Bros, and I do the rest of my cubing with in-game cubes: occults, master craftsman, and meister cubes.
But there is no free in-game equivalent, or near-equivalent, to the Red Familiar Card or Familiar Breakthrough Card. Nor have we been told that they'd be available through reward shop, event shops, fairy bros, or other free means. I feel that before we can talk about making these items available to Reboot for meso, especially at Reboot's easy "conversion" rate, we need to talk about making them available to all f2p players, in whatever world they are.
As for Familiar Slot Expansion Coupons: As far as I can tell from the guide Nexon posted, 100 slots is more than enough for power-mongering purposes. Which means that the only people who truly need more than that, are the collectors. That makes the slot expansion coupon a cosmetic item. It should simply be sold for NX in Reboot.
Pretty sure this topic is about Reboot getting all the features in a different way (preferably through Meso) rather than another useless tirade about how Reg servers have it rough cos X and Y and Reboot has it easy.
Focus on topic that AxeChris is trying to get to your attention. I'm writing "your" cos you make private posts while looking like Nexon employee with this fancy red border. I'd suggest using different account for voicing own opinions and VFM one for "Moderating" stuff
Don't make this topic a fiesta with people tossing bs at regs and reboot.
To not make it completely off-topic:
I'm skeptical about revamp - how much power will Legendary tier have compared to Unique. If its negligible then I'm fine with farming my stuff over and over again if cards are accessible. Not a fan of being unable to make them transparent. Bossing with 15 familiars will be a mess.
If you had read beyond the first line, you'd have seen I suggested a solution that would work for both Reboot and normal server f2p'ers.
Reboot demanding to get whatever normal world whales have to pay for, but for free, didn't work for the Re:Zero medal, nor for Frenzy Totem or anything else that is hard-locked behind cash in normal worlds. In my opinion, It will likely not work for Familiar items either, unless Nexon makes them not-that-premium for reg too.
What a misguided, off-topic and selfish post,. Once again, it's the age old "normal does something, so reboot must not!" argument fueled by sunk-cost fallacies and false comparisons that shouldn't even be there.
Reboot is a different game experience to regular server. That much should be clear by now, yet people like you keep insisting on helding them to the same regard. Also, this thread is to talk about Reboot only, yet you bring the unrelated Normal Server into this.
What happens in Reboot stays in Reboot, and whatever Reboot can access to shouldn't undermine your effort in normal servers.
What happens in Reboot is a reboot thing like I said before, and it should not be related to what happens in Normal. Reboot players being able to access a feature does not devalues it for normal players. It was your choice not to switch to Reboot or play there.
Let's not push this any longer because it has nothing to do with this thread. This thread is about reboot trying to get a full feature for collectors everywhere. Are you really just saying to all the 70 or so people here to basically "suck it up" because normal servers can't?
This is just a huge spit-on-the-face for familiar collectors such as myself. Slots are necessary to continue a collection, and it would be basically pay-walling something that we previously had for free. Several familiar collectors are under stress right now trying to panic-farm as many new familiars as possible before the update comes.
Personally, I would not be annoyed of paying NX for some extra slots, but I would also very much want a free alternative. I already have to pay tons for cosmetics in Reboot because they are always random (It's one of the few flaws in Reboot).
Had to Ctrl+F to find anyone saying stuff about being free and it's only you. It's not about X or Y being free, its about having access to them.