I hate farming mesos, but the only way to progress in this game is by farming and spending mesos - so I farm mesos, on a Kanna.
I go to CLP (as a lazy farmer does), and start killing mobs while watching netflix, and 10-20 mins later I get disconnected. When I relog, the wealth potion is gone (unlike cooldowns that the game keeps of for weeks if not months or years), all the mesos are gone, and ALL the items dropped are gone, this includes droplets and nodestones. This is infuriating, and the items disappearing leads me to believe this is intentional as a counter measure against bots that targets normal players as well multiple times per session.
So here's your feedback - make wild totems a 5th job skill so players are not forced to play Kanna and suffer because of poor game design. I don't want to play Kanna - I'm forced to, and your policies make sure that this experience is excruciating.
The gearing RNG wall that takes Billions of mesos to overcome is bad game design.
I just thought you should know: I don't enjoy star forcing, I ******* dread it. I'm not exited spending 2B mesos on resetting flames while making no progress - I despise it. I don't enjoy scrolling items - I know that once again, the system is stacking the odds against me. These are all awful mechanics.
And if we're discussing bad mechanics - introducing RNG familiar potentials was a really really really bad Idea. I can't make a new character, because for the entire level range of 200-240 - the majority of a character's lifespan (I'm not talking about people that grind to 260+) there are no familiar drops available. None, Nada, Zilch, Zero, Null, Nula, Efes, Nul ,Cero, 제로. not a single monster in the most populated regions of the game drops familiars. The gap between players that have big spiders and any other new player is monumental. Even worse - this gap can never be bridged - you literally changed the potential pool to make it impossible for rare familiars to get epic potentials. Not that you bothered to nerf big spiders to maintain any form of balance.
I came here to play maple and have fun, and I'm all out of fun - the day a half-decent alternative to this game comes along - I'm jumping ship.
/rant
Comments
There has to be a better option than relying on them, heck even a skill with 50% uptime would make farming on your main a possibility...
Continuation Letter:
Take a Look at Maplestory Regional Earnings reports
P2W is fine to an extent because it adds value into the game currency, but when you abuse it like China's CMS you lose the hearts of people.
China Revenue 43->20%
Then Korea Dominates: 40-> 64%
On the other hand, Korea is dominant. Why? The f2p systems in place
-Mileage System (Ability to get anything in the cash shop with gameplay, few exceptions)
-Tradable Cubes
-Halved Starforce Costs
-Releases don't take half a year MINIMUM to come to other regions
-Hack/Botter Protection
-A support that aren't bots who give stock answers
o (GMS Support is so bad even if a false ban is overturned they don't give any compensation ... not even exp bebe boxes which I would think was the minimum)
-No P2W Items (Frenzy, Breath of Divinity)
-TBC
All this has made a flourishing playerbase in KMS.
No Systems in place have been adopted from the KMS branch even though the numbers don't lie
The developers (if there are any) for GMS don't seem to give a sht about the wellbeing of the game
My patience as well is reaching a peak.
The only thing the main branch at KMS had to do was hire a localization team for the translations
Leave the systems in KMS to GMS it's fine
But they didn't and there are so many unnecessary systems to hinder players
The guy above fell prey to the 2x KMS Starforce Costs idea
And these terrible ideas have to come to an end
I'm talking to you...developer who designed the magic wagon
Not much time left to fix the game
Shame these unnecessary restrictions ruined GMS
Those are Nexon regional earnings. Not Maplestory alone. The China changes, for example, were caused by Dungeon & Fighter trouble.
If you want specifically Maplestory info, look at this
Nexon's revenue from Maplestory in North America and Europe has grown almost 3-fold within a year.
That must mean that whatever Nexon is doing with Maplestory in America, is working well for the company.
Note that I'm not saying I think GMS is handled well. I don't like the client instability, the predatory cash shop practices, or the poor customer service any more than you do. I'm just saying that you can't spin Nexon's financial reports into meaning "just turn GMS into English KMS and everything will be perfect".
I hear you, but to put it simply.
There are alot of issues that need to be fixed fast
Maplestory as a game is fine, but there are so many added restrictions that make gameplay pain inducing to get us to bring out our wallets
I'm not saying GMS adopting KMS practices will fix all the problems of GMS
KMS also comes with it's fair share of issues
But you can't really deny that the main GMS issues would be fixed simply by doing nothing to KMS and adding localization
I know you're passionate, but how long will you last?
Of these features, which are bad for the game:
-Mileage System (Ability to get anything in the cash shop with gameplay, few exceptions)
-Tradable Cubes
-Halved Starforce Costs
-Releases don't take half a year MINIMUM to come to other regions
-Hack/Botter Protection
-A support that aren't bots who give stock answers
o (GMS Support is so bad even if a false ban is overturned they don't give any compensation ... not even exp bebe boxes which I would think was the minimum)
-No P2W Items (Frenzy, Breath of Divinity)
-Better servers
I feel that all of these features would make the game astronomically better
I don't think anyone would disagree (Except for the one where you have to register for an account with your SSN in Korea)
And the thing is, besides the better servers
The cost is literally free
Even the 6 month content localization delay
I do not believe it takes 6 months... voice acting/translation can be done in development of the content giving all content simultaneously to every region
There is absolutely no reason it should take 6 months
@GMs Should tell you the attitude of the playerbase
My replies in bold. People who want to turn other servers into KMS clones are snake oil salesmen; it will not magically solve any and all issues since some of them go beyond being KMS clones, and while the other servers have slow progression rates, KMS takes it one step further with how slow it is. As much as some of these issues hinder GMS, such as the constant disconnects and bad customer service, there are other solutions besides KMS-ifying the non-KMS regions.
With a thousand opinions we form one that's truly right
That's the nature of a discussion
So I'll go ahead for a second round to find a solution:
It being later gives us the advantage of being able to prepare for the events or the new classes, and also get some content after it's been fixed (balance changes for the new class are often present from first release in GMS).
Investing in servers would be nice, but a lot of our disconnection problem comes from the internet infrastructure. The game is coded for Korean internet, where everyone has single-digit latency and no packet loss. GMS doesn't have that luxury. Our problem, ironically, is that the code was in fact copied 1:1 from KMS.
You wave away the point of KMS having real-world identities for their users, but it is a key point for many of the issues you describe. It is because anyone can create infinitely many untrackable GMS accounts that, for example, our Reward Points are nearly useless. And of course the hackers, botters, meso inflation, and all that derives from it. Nexon America can't have that kind of Korean control over all their users, and therefore they can't "do like KMS" on a lot of other topics.
Lie detectors won't work because our cheaters use very different tools than Korean cheaters do. I won't go into details, but it is ultimately made possible by, again, the lack of personal identification when making accounts.
This makes alot more clear
In depth on to what AKradian is talking about
School Seasons (South Korea):
March to July , September to February
(3 - 7), (9 - 2)
School Seasons (NA):
January to May, August to December
(1 - 5), (8 - 12)
This essentially means that NA reaches those peak times 2 months before KMS does, so the old patches come in. Content releases 2 months later on the peak time of KMS
But by that time you're already 1 month into college/school, so to hit the peak time:
They release the content from KMS July to December creating that 5-6 month delay
TLDR;
So since we reach the peak time 2 months before the KMS release, they have us to wait the entire school season for the next peak time to drop content.
There are two content gaps:
KMS 2nd Month -> GMS 6th Month (4 Month Gap)
and
KMS 7th Month -> GMS 1st Month (6 Month Gap)
-Mileage System (Ability to get anything in the cash shop with gameplay, few exceptions)
-Tradable Cubes
-Halved Starforce Costs
-A support that aren't bots who give stock answers
Are approved, but
-4/6 Month Delay
-Hack/Botter Protection
-Better Servers
Have some issues
From knowing all this, I guess ridding the 4/6 month content delay isn't a good idea, because yeah I'd not coin cap swamped in college work. Even veterans will struggle a bit.
The lie detector could still work if you changed the variant to english. Don't really believe that isn't possible. Otherwise you have kanna farmers running rampant in every popular mobbing map. Like you said, GMS cheaters have the ability to create an infinite amount of accounts. Will be a ways off until we find a solution, but things like the 0 death exp loss patch will directly affect these cheaters so just have to find a bit more.
Now it can be confirmed that the server code is really the issue. Then this is even better! The cost of getting a programmer to fix the netcode is much better than getting a better server. This really is in the realm of possibility.
Everything else besides the content delay and servers were simply auxiliary boosts for the experience.
It seems as though the Content Delay is set in stone...but it was really the main thing to be improved upon
Any ideas?