Remember when...

Krosis95 · December 2016

Remember when Maplestory used to be an adventure instead of a grindfest? I miss those days.

MakazeKiba · December 2016

Brayden · December 2016

I member. Member when maintenances were finished on time and the game wasn't completely broken??? Beta was way more stable than this.

Whirlwhind · December 2016

Wasn't it always a grindfest? the only thing that's changed is the level where the grind starts.

MakazeKiba · December 2016

Brayden said:
I member. Member when maintenances were finished on time and the game wasn't completely broken??? Beta was way more stable than this.

Given the game's been around for more than a decade and has had multiple divergent content developers, I'm certain this happened:

Aggraphine · December 2016

'Member no ISIS?

Maryse · December 2016

Whirlwhind said:
Wasn't it always a grindfest? the only thing that's changed is the level where the grind starts.

Dat grinding at Gallos.
I remember when I was grinding with one of those ring mules, on 4x, and then we had a rollback because of something that happened. Went from level 99 to level 80 or something along those lines. I almost rage quit. Good ol' 2010.

MakazeKiba · December 2016

Aggraphine said:
'Member no ISIS?

I remember when Isis was an Egyptian God, as well as the name of Sterling Archer's agency name.

gamechanger · December 2016

Whirlwhind said:
Wasn't it always a grindfest? the only thing that's changed is the level where the grind starts.

A different kind of grindfest. It used to be grinding for experience so you could level up and get stronger. Now its a grind to make money to buy better gear, whether that's direct meso farming or farming events to death. I will always prefer the level grinding that Maplestory used to be over the crap that it is now.

@MakazeKiba - Well the terrorist cell is referred to as ISIL now, so Isis still refers to the Egyptian god and Archer's agency

TribalStar · December 2016

Are you kidding me?, maple used to be nothing but grind fests. I remember years ago when it took a day to get to level 30 hell even 20 if you didnt have the time. Maple used to be nothing but grind fests.

Booberpuppy · December 2016

MakazeKiba · December 2016

gamechanger said:

@MakazeKiba - Well the terrorist cell is referred to as ISIL now, so Isis still refers to the Egyptian god and Archer's agency

Huh, missed that.

Cool.

Hiek · December 2016

Krosis95 said:
Remember when Maplestory used to be an adventure instead of a grindfest? I miss those days.

No offense, not defending the new generation of MapleStory, but back in 2005~2009 the "grindfest" was 20× worst than it is now.
It took around 7 to 9 hours to reach Level 30~35 back then, and only takes us about 8 hours to reach Lv. 120+ now.

If you ask me, the game has always been a grindfest, and still is, but it's less of a grind than it used to be.

Lv. 200 (now) = old 100/or 120 then.
Lv. 250 (now) = new Lv.200 back then.
Just not as rewarding as it used to be.

MrBrownstone · December 2016

Back then quests gave almost no exp, you even had to grind in Maple Island to get to 10 (and good luck if you wanted to be a magician, as you had to roll 4 or 5 in str and dex meaning you had to train on snails doing 1-2 dmg until lvl 8). Then it was grinding until 30 in green mushrooms and sleepywood to get second job, then grind in ludi until 35 til you finally could do PQ's (until you were 50, then the grind resumed)

Cookizza · December 2016

MrBrownstone said:
Back then quests gave almost no exp, you even had to grind in Maple Island to get to 10 (and good luck if you wanted to be a magician, as you had to roll 4 or 5 in str and dex meaning you had to train on snails doing 1-2 dmg until lvl 8). Then it was grinding until 30 in green mushrooms and sleepywood to get second job, then grind in ludi until 35 til you finally could do PQ's (until you were 50, then the grind resumed)

You clearly didn't play MS in the good old days. KPQ all the way.

MrBrownstone · December 2016

Cookizza said:

MrBrownstone said:
Back then quests gave almost no exp, you even had to grind in Maple Island to get to 10 (and good luck if you wanted to be a magician, as you had to roll 4 or 5 in str and dex meaning you had to train on snails doing 1-2 dmg until lvl 8). Then it was grinding until 30 in green mushrooms and sleepywood to get second job, then grind in ludi until 35 til you finally could do PQ's (until you were 50, then the grind resumed)
You clearly didn't play MS in the good old days. KPQ all the way.

Well it's hard since it wasn't even in the game yet.
Edit: got confused and was thinking of HPQ. Yes, KPQ, the sh*tfest of not being able to hit anything till 25 or so.

blasterbill · December 2016

I remember when they robbed us all of our mesos

Booberpuppy · December 2016

Oh, I only seem to releasing the monster sack on PQ waiting spots and turning them in to graveyards...mwahaha

RailBird · December 2016

Krosis95 said:
Remember when Maplestory used to be an adventure instead of a grindfest? I miss those days.

What the hell are you talking about? If anything, Maplestory has become less of a grindfest. At least now, grinding actually gets you somewhere instead of forcing 90% of the community to quit at lv30 because they make absolutely no progress.

The only reason people think today's Maplestory is a grindfest is because everyone's obsessed with getting to lv200 as quick as possible. That's not Maplestory's fault. There's dozens of fun and interesting questlines all across Maple world.

WillSuffice · December 2016

MrBrownstone said:
Back then quests gave almost no exp, you even had to grind in Maple Island to get to 10 (and good luck if you wanted to be a magician, as you had to roll 4 or 5 in str and dex meaning you had to train on snails doing 1-2 dmg until lvl 8). Then it was grinding until 30 in green mushrooms and sleepywood to get second job, then grind in ludi until 35 til you finally could do PQ's (until you were 50, then the grind resumed)

Agreed. I think it took me a year to get to lvl 40 (of course, I was 10 then and could only play for 1 hr a day). I do miss the slow progress at the beginning with a big Victoria Island, though.

MakazeKiba · December 2016

Booberpuppy said:
Oh, I only seem to releasing the monster sack on PQ waiting spots and turning them in to graveyards...mwahaha

You used to be able to get Diabolical Jiangshi Scrolls (Lv. 150) from the Far East and sic 'em on people in towns and the PQ room. Sadly, that was changed to maps that aren't those.

RailBird said:
<
What the hell are you talking about? If anything, Maplestory has become less of a grindfest. At least now, grinding actually gets you somewhere instead of forcing 90% of the community to quit at lv30 because they make absolutely no progress.

The only reason people think today's Maplestory is a grindfest is because everyone's obsessed with getting to lv200 as quick as possible. That's not Maplestory's fault. There's dozens of fun and interesting questlines all across Maple world.

Perhaps the grind he means is the ones for better gear? As for the quest lines, I can mostly agree- I did like Crimsonheart, The Far East, and Commerci. However, these areas and quests tend to be poor once you hit the higher levels. I wish there were more quest chains for all areas. In Dark Ereve, there is a skeleton of one, with a cluster of related quests for the area. However, it's not a very lengthy one, nor a rewarding one. At the very least, there could be more quests that told more about Future Henesys's fall. Hell, even in Twilight Perion, there's a rather interesting implication: Dances with Balrogs was killed in battle, and his son is in Twilight Perion. You could have had an entire quest chain about, say, inheritance between fallen father and surviving son.

Story aside, I wish there was better scaling for EXP rewards or even better item/meso rewards. Considering how insanely grindy it is to have gear progress in terms of potential, how about reward boxes for quests completed in a certain locale? For example, if you complete all SH quests minus the Cygnus kill quest, you could get Master Craftsman Cube x3 or something. To make it even better, make these quests repeatable every month. If that's too good a reward, make it a recurring EXP reward. EXP for level or Honor EXP (because more sources of that would be nice).

Lastly, there's the community's shift to soloism. This one is the harder problems, since it has to deal with player psychology on the individual and social level. How would you incentivize social play as opposed to solo play? Moreover, how would you do so in a way that isn't abuseable? In the past, I suggested for bosses, you could have a drop rate bonus based on your party size on the social level and participation on the individual level. For example, a full party would see a 100% drop rate bonus that stacks with all other drop rate bonus sources. However, if a party member doesn't contribute enough to the fight damage wise (say, at least 5% of it's HP, changing depending on the boss), they do not get that drop rate bonus (in my original version of this plan, they even got a penalty!). In addition, drops are instanced in ALL bosses. My system is still potentially abuseable, looking at how RA parties worked in the past and even now in Reboot, so it still needs refining. Moreover, that whole penalty system would likely get alot of angry players, whether or not they could deal X% of the boss's HP.

Remember when...

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