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Familiar Feedback and Idea
So as we know this Familiar thing has gotten everyone riled up as of late. However, I believe that hate and rude comments are not a good way to get something changed. So this is what I have thought of as a slight fix. Note that this is an idea and able to be adjusted. This is also to fix the problems with how some things have become "broken" since the latest update which I will call the "Familiar update" from here on when referenced.
So as we all now know this Familiar update was not as good as we all hoped for. Jr. Boogies were to easy to get as well as other Epics which allowed for something that should be "End Game" to be theoretically achieved within minutes of starting the game for the first time. It was also terrible on servers because of the high density of people changing channels and funneling into 2-3 maps. So what I am going to propose is hopefully a fair fix.
My proposal is that Familiars should be based off of the Level of the monster you get it from. The levels I list are a guess on where it would be appropriate to place them in my opinion. Now with each rank up EX. Common to Epic the drop rate of the familiars should be adjusted as to make it harder to get Epic than Common. However, with this I would also change the Potentials that the familiars can get to be a little less powerful for lower levels. For example Epics should not be able to get 40% boss damage or 40% Ignore Enemy Defense, that is what I call to strong. However, Unique should be able to since it would be "end game" and able to be dropped VERY RARELY from monsters . I would put the drop-rate of Unique Familiars close that of Droplets from Arcana in this current patch.
Now for what would actually be "farm-able" I would make Common to Unique farm-able. The reason for not making Legendary farm-able would be incentivize either fighting select bosses for a chance of their Familiar or getting Familiar packs from the Cash Shop or from the Familiar shop (packs from the Cash Shop not available in Reboot). Now to change Epics and such I would suggest that all cards either be un-revealed (have the potentials hidden and randomized again) or keep the ones already revealed. Ex. Big Spider's potential. It increases meso and item drop rate by a large amount while still being a common.
These are the levels of the monsters that I believe would be best for their perspective tiers. With exceptions for boss familiar cards.
Common Lv. 1-140
Epic Lv. 141-210
Unique Lv. 211-275
Now this should not apply to every monster in Maplestory. I believe some should stay higher tier for their level but also lower drop rate to equal that of their tier. Ex. level 80 Epic Familiar would have the same drop rate as an Epic of level 141. Also I believe some monsters should not drop Familiars to also incentivize buying packs. However, these are just my idea's and suggestions but I do hope this may help in some way.
Edit 1: Also most of the badges are inaccessible at the moment due to either not being able to farm the Familiars needed, or them not registering due to changing names of Familiars. This would need to be addressed Ex. King Slime in the Shadow Badge. King Slime has not been accessable for many years now in GMS. So I would either remove King Slime from requirements or open a way to receive the King Slime Familiar.
Thank you.
A Familiar Hunter
Comments
Common : High drop rate (original monster card drop rate, so bosses would drop it 100% of the time)
Rare: Equipment drop rate
Epic: Slightly rare ( node stone drop rate for normal monsters and 5% chance for bosses to drop)
Unique: Extremely rare (Droplet drop rate for normal monsters and the drop rate for bosses would be 1%)
This would solve the issue of getting boss familiars for badge collections, as well as providing players an incentive to fuse/extract their familiars. If people get a unique tier familiar and get a potential they don't like, they could simply re-roll it using the red familiar cards or purchasing/grinding for a unique tier card.
If you were wanting to have people grind longer than this you would have to seriously think about cleaning up the potential lines because of the shear time sink this would be come. If you have tried to reveal potential lines with the current system, you would know you could not even find a single good potential in over 1000 of them. While you are suggesting is okish, the grasp on time scale is far to much time, equivalent towards the 10 year ring.
I know the time scale is very large. Ive farmed for about a month now and ive gotten 12 droplets so far. However, I truly believe if they want this system to work correctly they will have to clean up the potential lines and do it well. No way around that. As for revieling the potentials with the current system ive done that too. I farmed about 2k Jr boogies and didnt get a single good card. However, my point is that its far to easy to get Epic at this time because I wasnt even farming for long and ive seen people get lucky and get 40% boss and IED on the same card within the first stack. Which is what im guessing Nexon has taken an issue to.
but to summarize yes I know it would take forever however, if people can still get arcane weps in a decent time frame. They can get Unique familiars in my Proposal and they can get them from packs as well if they are lucky.
Props to you for keeping your composure during this awful update and constant maintenance.
Looking into JMS pages further this seems to be very similar to the method they use.
There is a cap on the tier grade they can drop but they can drop multiple tiers of familiar cards. So for example you can get common/rare/epic grades from Jr boogie.
As you stated, I think this is pretty fair for nexon and the players. Not only does it solve 50% of the badge collections (other being non-existing mobs that HAVE to be obtained from booster packs) but it also allows the playerbase to either grind it out to get the 40% boss/ied potentials or pay to reroll. If players want to get a familiar pack with common grade familiars allow them to do so with reasonable time (1 every few days with about an hour's time spent per day) and not what the hotfix did which would around 7500+ hours for one card pack. That essentially makes the whole in-game system unusable for everyone and does promote people to play with their wallets.
The Familiar update as been nothing short of a disaster and clearly shows us how much Nexon needs a public test server and actually act on the data they collect from it. By pushing this update to the live server Nexon has put itself in a difficult situation where nothing they do going forward will be well received.
Since the Familiar System has been disabled now I think it would be in everyone’s best interest to iron out the issues that plague the system. Even prior to the revamp players had expressed concern that the only way to reroll potentials outside of ranking up, was to use the cash shop exclusive Red Card, something that doesn’t exist on Reboot.
Once the release happened, the early meta for farming focused on Jr. Boogies and other low-level familiars that happened to drop as epic card, as it was the only reliable way to get potentials and familiar points. I think it is obvious that this was not how the system was intended to be used; in Nexon's promotional video they suggested that the new system was designed to move away from a few select familiars and allow players to freely choose the familiars they want to use. With the card drop rates nerfed into oblivion though, it is going to next to impossible for players to get any familiars.
So summing up the issues; Low drop rate, Red Card is a CS exclusive, and a concentrated focus on farming epic familiars.
To combat these issues I believe Nexon should introduce a new familiar card that costs meso that simply rerolls the current potentials, no chance of ranking up. Let's call it the Blue Card. For all servers, a limited quantity of Red Cards can be added to the Maple Reward shop and possibly to event shops.
Mobs should not drop at a specific rarity. Rather, like equipment, they can drop anywhere from common to unique.
Next, the drop rate for all cards should be equal. This allows the player to focus just on what familiars they personally want, not on what happens to have the highest chance of dropping or has a good rank. What the drop rate is should help determine the break down of the cards rarity. If the cards have a high drop rate, then epics and uniques should have a lower chance of dropping, while if say the current abysmal drop rate is kept, there should be a high chance of epics and uniques.
If I’m to be honest, the epic familiar potentials are where I’d have expected legendary to be. I’m sure there will be plenty of players that don’t agree with me but I’d like to see these numbers cut down. 10% BD and 10% IED on epics, 20% BD, and 15% IED on uniques and 30% and 20% IED on Legendary.
If Nexon feels like they won’t be making enough money off the system, they can always introduce VIP card packs that have a slightly higher chance of unique familiars or even familiars with curated rolls.
I like some of the ideas proposed; especially having all mobs drop various tiers rather than a set one.
Though I'll put in my own suggestion as well.
**Suggestion**
Sweep across the board, and have Drop Rates as follows:
Common - 80-100%
Epic - 5-10%
Unique - .01-1%
Legendary - .001-.01% [Bosses could be higher or have a system similar to Soul Shards where you can save up enough to *buy* that Familiar Card]
With all mobs sharing drop rate based on tier
Mobs Levels correspond to the rarity
0-100 = Common
101-150 = Epic
151-210 = Unique
211-275 = Legendary
Obviously this can be altered, but having better drop rates, and toning back the benefits would be better than having good benefits, but basically impossible to get familiars imo.
What I'm saying is revert the system to how it was suppose to be without the glitches and bugs even though it may be promoting Serpent, Jr. Boogie, Oda Warrior and Fairy Familiar for being a super available epic familiar with good stats.
Some changes I am proposing on top is to remove the purchase limit on the shop or raise it significantly. 1 booster pack a day is joke as well as the fauxmiliar being limited to 1 day is kinda hard. Removing the limit would allow users to have access to higher tier familiars or find something that has low drop rate without being like opening a pack and being upset and calling it a day (unless you extract on a mule that shares the same cash inventory and buy it there and transfer it over)