[New Users] Please note that all new users need to be approved before posting. This process can take up to 24 hours. Thank you for your patience.
Check out the v.256 - The Dark Ride: Limbo Patch Notes
here!
Nexon, please reconsider your acts of "balancing"
Past few memos I have noticed a lot of decisions which do not sit well with the community have been made . It has been stated that all of these decisions have been made in order to maintain better balance in the game. The prime examples are:
1. The removal of potable badges
2. The Gollux revamp
3. The nerfing of familiar card droprates.
These three changes have an enormous impact on the game’s balance. However, here’s the thing: These three changes don’t improve the game’s balance, in fact they do the exact opposite. They all create imbalance in the game, the one thing that you are so determined about to counter.
Now how does this create imbalance you may ask? Let’s take a look at every example.
Potable badges
The removal of potable badges made it so one item in people’s whole kits (the badge) can’t be cubed anymore. This means they are flat missing out on:
1. A badge with starforce.
2. A badge with up to 36% main stat.
Both of these points completely invalidate any other badge in the game. Now the players who already had one of these badges, still have access to them. Due to the changes however, newer players are unable to get these badges in any way. This means older players will always have an advantage over newer players, thus creating imbalance between players in the game.
The Gollux revamp
After being in the game for years, the Gollux revamp gave him a huge buff. Gollux offers very strong accessories that are considered endgame. These accessories were not terribly hard to get, and were often regarded as something a player would want as soon as possible. The revamp essentially did the exact same thing as the removal of potable badges.
Older players all had access to the easier Gollux, which enabled them to grab an accessory set with relative ease. It was pretty common to have a full superior Gollux set within a month of doing Gollux. Newer players however, will now have to go through a lot of steps to take on Gollux at all. Once they’re able to finally take on Gollux for Gollux Coins they will have to wait another month to even get ONE superior accessory. This change does not improve the game’s balance and yet again only creates imbalance between older and newer players. In the end every character will most likely end up with a gollux set regardless, and all this does is putting yet another pointless time gate on early to midgame progression.
The familiar card droprate nerf
The reason this change creates imbalance rather than balance is the same as the two reasons mentioned before. Players who had farmed 100s or even 1000s of jr. boogies before the droprate nerf have an enormous advantage over those who did not. The imbalance had already been created at this point, which was only reinforced by a nerfed familiar card droprate. They have their strong familiars, while the players who did not get any cards before the nerf will have to put in tremendous amounts of work. Weeks, months, or even years to get their desired cards, while the players that farmed boogies only had to sit there for an hour. This is, just like the previous two points, unhealthy for the game and only creates imbalance between the players.
I’d love to see Nexon evaluate their past decisions of “balancing” the game, for all these decisions did was creating more and more imbalance in the game.
Comments
My Superior ring has been sitting at 17* for 2 years because I was too afraid to blow it.
Now, with the new Gollux system, I can finally bring my rings to 20*+.
I don't care too much it takes time to get the object. At least it's possible to get every Gollux gears more than once.
The new Gollux System reduces a little bit of the gape between end-game Reboot and end-game Regular Servers. The new Gollux System allows us to grow stronger. Even if we may never be as strong as people in Regular servers.
Also, now Gollux heart is affected by drop gears!
You said yourself that Superior set is end game AND that people used to get it in1 month. I too like to progress really fast. I perfectly understand you. Only, we shall both agree that it makes sense that end-game gears take time to obtain. You need to train twice the time it takes to get to level 250 before getting enough Droplets for an Arcane weapon... But the whole end-game Gollux set is 1 month. Ya, doesn't make sense!
Now as for your statement pointing out that new players are disadvantaged.
Nexon figured out an end-game set that was obtainable in 1 month doesn't make sense. Now, what are they supposed to do? Punish the old players who got their way with it? The game changes to follow MMORPGs behavior. They're not gonna punish old players in consequence.
Also, think that Nexon reduces the required experiences to reach level 200. Then to reach 220. Did the older players receive compensation for their harder work? No.
CRA gears used to be really hard to obtain. People were spending real-life money on Marvel Machine to get them. We were doing 6 guy parties to be able to CVell. Now people carry you and kill Cvell is 10 sec for you. Or if you're not in Reboot, then you buy them for close to nothing.
We used to spend TON of money on staring Tyrant gears. Either a lot of real-life money or billions and billions of mesos. Then we had to switch to Absolab and Arcane. As a new player, you won't waste your money on Tyrant. Nor do annoying dailies for 300 days to get a Tyrant glove.
I could go on with the examples...
TL: DR
It's normal that Nexon made Gollux longer to obtain, as they're end-game items.
You should be thankful that you can get every Gollux item many times now in Reboot.
Old players had their share of suffering and tryharding in this game too - Oh yes we did, don't worry for that
In this case we got no new content; they only made existing items harder to get and existing content harder in general. A comparable situation would be Nexon suddenly cutting the droprate of droplets in half. Your "share of suffering" by having to change BiS sets back in the day are completely irrelevant and an entirely different topic, for this is bound to happen when new content is introduced. Thing is Gollux is not new content and newer players are not changing BiS sets, this whole revamp would have made more sense if they released an entirely new gollux set.
Now I do think it's a good thing the shop is now restockable, but does it justify the amount of time newer players will now have to put in to get a set at all? Time gating has to be reasonable and realistic. If you're in reboot you'll now likely spend a good 5 to 8 months if not longer to even get to the items you need vs the previous 1 month, even with the droprate change. I think we can both agree this is unhealthy game design, especially when those same items were easier to get at some point along the run. Content is supposed to get more accessable in the long run, not harder out of nowhere, especially when said piece of content has been established for years. Like I mentioned before, the imbalance in the game has been created due to the fact that these items were easier to get at one point, meaning new players will have to put in more time and effort to get to the same level. The exact same scenario can be applied to familiar cards.
To follow Nexon's goal of making end-game content hard/long to get... Yes, It does make sense. That's even the only reason I see for them making such a choice.
It's just that we got used to directly jumping to BIS items in MS. In some other MMOs, you have to boost/scroll/enhance your current items, then get the next tier which you're gonna enhance too, then get the next tier... In MS people get CRA, Gollux, cube, and star the necessary, then go to Absolab and use that till Arcane. What you said about MMOs progression is not true for all of them.
Finally, people should not be complaining about Gollux. Hell, we've been asking for Rings refill for years. We finally got it. I'm not gonna complain.
What people should complain about is how LONG it takes for Arcane set. Just getting the weapon is as long a training 2 characters to level 250. They're gonna drop the number of coins for the set items from like 15 to 12. That's already good. But that's still years of farming Droplets. Do you get it? Gollux is nothing in comparison.
Also, this is not only about Gollux and Arcane. It's clearly Nexon's whole scheme to slow player progression. Look how they nerfed mesos farming... I know people who quit because of that lol. They want us to log every day (dailies, daily reward, etc.) and play for many many years. I have 30 million range and this cost me about 500 million mesos. This is 2 years worth of farming mesos. You're gonna have all the time to get those Gollux gears lol. Now I cannot even kill the new end-game bosses. I think your complaining about Gollux only show that you're a relatively new/coming back player. If you want to complain about something, then complain about mesos farming or Arcane set at least.
No.
Absolab is not BIS anymore. Arcane set takes longer than 1 item per month, or even 2 months. That's what Nexon wants, a game that takes YEARS to reach the end. Then in about 1/2 years, they're gonna add new end-game content.
Also, only CRA top & bottom are BIS.
die hard with farming or simple get it done with few $
its only balanced when its with $ else their data
carefull monitoringshows bad numbers and its time for nerfYou're completely missing the point. This is not about Gollux being BiS. It's about content being revamped in a way that is unhealthy to the game. Why do you think this game doesn't attract many new players as it is? Changes like these are the ones being detrimental to the game cause all it does it create pointless timegating which wasn't there before. It's creating a bigger gap between new and old players which ultimately will turn new players off. Just cause we got ring refills doesn't mean this isn't bad design, you fail to look at the bigger picture here. Gollux is old content. Old content that has been established in the game for years by now, and changing it up to be harder does nothing but hurt potential new players. I'd love to have you give me an example of MMOs making an old piece of content harder after years of being in the game for the sake of timegating, this does not happen in other games.
Arcane set is fine, and you know why? Because it's a longterm goal which players can work towards. Now say if they suddenly doubled the prices of droplets, would it still be fine? Would you still be happy? No, of course you wouldn't be. People with arcane gear right now would laugh since they got their gear for a good droplet rate, while you would have to suffer and grind twice as much to get there. This is basically what the whole gollux revamp is.
CRA top & bottom take literally a few minutes to get, basically just one run of the boss and are BiS. Where gollux for 1 piece you will need roughly 23 runs, if you get 30 coins per run. so 23x longer. CRA Hat we could pretty much consider it BiS, by the time you get a 22* arcane hat to replace it you will be already most probably doing vhilla, not everyone will even get there. But with the gollux buff even less people will get there. I know lots of players who quit because the time you have to sink into maple is imcomparable to any other game and mmo. The progress is already so slow you can barely see yourself progressing. So making existing content even longer is completely counter productive, they are simply pushing away newer players. There's already so much to do in the game from dailies and events and bosses that even myself, playing a lot, have a hard time trying to make some time to even make link skills or legion characters. The way the game is currently, you cannot have a normal life and expect to progress in the game in any reasonable time.
My point exactly, the content became harder and items close to tripled in price. Now if they took that 250 droplets and turned it to around 650-700 droplets for your weapon, you can say whatever you want but we all know you'd go berserk with them making it almost 3x longer than it was. Like he said, mmos do evolve, and yes i expect a somewhat slow progression otherwise people would max out too fast. But that also means, there's new content coming out every now and then, old content will eventually become easier and easier as new and stronger items come out. That's just how it is. When empress came out, they didnt buff von leon because people with empress gear could beat him easier. When CRA came out they didn't buff empress because people with CRA could beat her easier. When absolab came out they didn't buff CRA because people could face roll CRA. You don't go making old content 10x harder just out of the blue because new items you released make it easier. Otherwise just dont release new items and content won't get easier, pretty much the same thing. What's the point of getting better items if they will take the existing content and push it up to make it as hard as it was with old gear? Isn't the whole point of an mmo to get new items and beat the bosses that were hard before with more ease?
i couldnt agree more with you and OP, this revamp makes no sense at all. Yes refilling is nice but come on, im fine cuz im alrdy mid to end game, but i was considering making a 2nd main and in no way im making one now. This game just keeps adding or revamping things so that they are more and more time gated, well , people get tired of that . I think nexon should start realising that everything being RNG and time gated isnt healthy for a game, look at what happened to MS2
Extremely good post. I was looking for an MMORPG to spend some of my time with and get some reasonable progression in that time. But with this latest update, I'm pretty much cut out from doing the late/end game bosses for the next 2-3 years should I decide not to spend an exceptionally high amount of money to speed that up. And as I work full time after this covid stuff is over, I do not have the time to spend to dedicate the necessary amount of time for this game. I thought since I already had some decent gear, that I'd be able to progress in the game without spending too much money, but by the looks of it, I'll just go back to Guild Wars 2 and the expansions rather than this stupidity.
And you can bet that this will not be the only thing they will be time/money gating. It's just the beginning. With a playerbase as low as Maplestory unfortunately has, they have to get the money from somewhere, and the only way they can keep it up, is by gating stuff for those who really want to play this game, whether it is for the community or the already spent hours on the game.