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Meso botters are the backbone of maplestory
So Mesos bots are spamming smegas advertising their rates for selling mesos (something obviously against TOS) as well as continually spamming in Henesys after the Free market closed. Instead of fixing the ridiculous gms economy and policing this, it is a lot easier to let bots run their coarse and sell mesos than to make the proper adjustments. I still see a couple hackers every week in Windia (A very dead server) but I guess they accumulate so much mesos to stimulate the economy their is less incentive of policing these hackers.
Honestly, if you're in windia, you wouldn't even have Clean slate scrolls, epic pot scrolls, or innocence scrolls if it weren't for hackers duping them. That is the reality; Maple in Windia (and im sure the other servers) is unsustainable without botters. Because of this sad reality, hackers are literally integral to advancing your equipment in game, whether you're legit or not
Despite how provocative this statement may be to some people i'm sure most are already aware of this.
There are acouple obvious questions that need to be addressed:
1. Why don't meso bots get banned for spamming those messages? - Even if the answer is 'well they'll just make another account'- how is that a justifiable reason for Nexon not to enforce their terms of service? soliciting the services is still against TOS even if those accounts are not the ones selling the mesos.
2. How come nexon doesn't interfere with the illegitimacy within the economy? Is it because they know removing all duped item will ultimately remove too many essential items that legit players rely on? (i.e. css, innoc)
3. With the blatantly obvious signs that most maple servers are too underpopulated to have healthy economies, why hasn't more server merges happened?
- I have to assume for the first two questions, Nexon appreciates the service hackers give by providing enough supply to meet the maple economies demand. Demand would outweigh supply significantly without botters. CSS would be a luxury without them and there sure as he** wouldn't be stacks of 100 without dupers. how many people are really farming CSS to that extent in these dead servers?
- For the 3rd question, I have no idea why no action has been taken. Is Nexon just trying to show they will not bend to the whims of what their fanbase wants? Do they see the inevitable end of Maplestory in the near future, thus see meaningful action as a waste of time? Whatever it is they're shooing a lot of great players away from this game who have already quit before- and most of these players are in their mid 20s this time, they likely ain't gonna come back to the game again if it stays this broken.
- And in case the Nexon Team is dense enough to not understand what is happening on Discord-people are buying and selling items for >$100, and selling mesos for $1USD-1Bill meso, Despite this being against the TOS. Its almost as if Nexon could police meso botters and consequently take on this market themselves to turn a huge profit. But that is a digression.
Comments
Windia was a better example because it is underpopulated yet the hacking problem is still present to a vastly disproportionate degree. Apart of what sparked me to start this post was that I saw hackers on training maps every week for 4 weeks straight (reference first post), and I wasn't even looking for them and it wasn't even the same maps. (contrast this with the fact that if you are training in windia, you hardly ever run into other trainers).
Also, I know Windia very well, before the free market died the ONLY person selling CSS, epic 50% and innoc was ONE mule who is infamously known as being a mesos seller for illegitimate websites. (I won't put his name down). And he sold them in quantities of 100+. It would be naive to assume only high level equips are being duped- i.e. Arcane weapon crackdown raised Nexons eyebrows, but duping cheap scrolls yet being the only one selling them? Sounds like a pretty good idea, even you wouldn't think theres a profit margin for these scrolls- but they have a monopoly here. Windia is DEAD, there is noway the mesos botter attained 100's of CSS/50% epic scrolls without duping them, if you were from windia you would know even MERCHING them to this quantity would be impossible, because there simply isn't enough people farming them in Windia.
I know, they must be making too much off of these 'whales' who are willing to put 1000s of dollars into the game. The game really isn't sustainable with some of costs involved for minimal gains. I don't really see a significant amount of new people starting to play maple as likely, since they'll have the luxury of being able to look online to see how much money is required to get stronger in the game while reviewing it. Reboot might be suggested but the time required to advance for reboot doesn't make it a viable choice for the older population with other things going on in life. (I tried,I just don't have the time to grind that much) I figure alot of the 'whales' continue playing because of how much money they've invested into the game, but in the long term I could see this conversely making these players resent the game, when in hindsight they realize the damage the game has done. I think it will be very interesting to see the state of maple in 10 years from now, when the original population (who still comprise most of the current population) are into their 30's.
^
The Truth
- RNG for potential is ridiculous (giving me +%m.att or %useless stat for gear exclusive for one class that uses %att)
- Cost of tyrant enhancements + booms has made several people I know quit
- Clean slate scrolls widely used @ 10% success rate is ridiculous
All this contributes to the illegal markets that form around maple.
It shouldn't take a player spending over 1000 bucks to do end game bosses.
I've paid 400 in the last few months and still cant even finish some bosses!
I get the financial incentives that Nexon needs to prioritize and acknowledge the ptw nature of the game, but right now the ptw point for some of the game content is insane. I pity the fool who falls into this trap.
Hackers/Botters/Meso Websites strive in this economy because they can dup the system, inflate and price gouge items. The regular players get "goo-goo-eyes" at the prices of items being sold. When you can have multiple items flooding the market at over +1 Bill, that will give the impression that this is the "new norm," because everyone is doing it. That trickles down into everyone now feeling if they possessed these items, they too can turn around and sell them for massive profits. What was started as a lie, have become the "faux truth." The masses will believe this is how things are supposed to be.
This is will trickle down into players woes about the economy becoming more and more strenuous, that they will eventually leave. There was always a problem about the inflation on the economy that plagued MS. Not enforcing and implementing harsh judgments for economy inflation is what caused it to spiral out of control. Hackers/Doppers were seemingly rewarded because the mesos rates continued to rise, despite the rampant price gouging. The mesos cap rose to 100+ million after Nexon began taxing trades. Now the meso cap is being raised to 100's of Billions.
Instead of keeping thing this way, they need to do a complete overhaul of the economy to the bare bones, enforce measures that punish abusers automatically, and completely undercut hackers/botters. Increase Mesos drop amounts to become compatible with the economy (they could with the click of a button). Remove Taxes, Remove Meso locking key components of the game (like refreshing Throwing Stars/Bullets/Arrows, Leveling Arcane Symbols, and etc.). There are no reasons to enforce so many fee's and taxes because Meso is a fictional money that could be raised and lowered by Nexon. Quests should also reward players with healthy amounts of mesos, so new players can feel rewarded and want to stay, instead of feeling overwhelmed and leaving. This would give quests importance again.
Doing so would increase players faith that this long overdue issue has been fixed and many people will return. There has to be some type of balance to properly stimulate the economy. As long as there are big lofty 100+ bill meso caps, Meso Sellers will continue to strive, feeding off the false senses of wealth and status that this system provides to those that benefit from it.
There's no way to prove this hypothesis. It'd be stealing money from the company. How exactly would they "come down hard"?
Fixing the economy, and making mesos easily obtainable would significantly reduce the Mesos Seller effectiveness. Harshly punishing, IP Banning, etc Hackers/Duppers, and erasing all known dupped items from the game would send a stark message. Placing measures to Autoban people attempting to do so afterward, hackers would be less inclined to continue their practices.
Nexon does have instances of erasing duped items. They cant just snap their fingers and fix the economy after 13 years of turmoil.
Looking at the state of the servers, they have no options at this point. Another mass exodus of players can cripple this game. I have never seen the game this unpopulated. Ignoring problems and not fixing anything is why things are like this. They don't have the luxury of ignoring glaring issues, look at what happened to WoW
We have a winner.
I agree meso drops are ridiculous and almost meaningless at this point in the game for me, i dont know how that hasn't been revamped. A big problem with all this though is it doesn't isolate the 'black market' variable. more mesos would simply make stuff just more expensive- I guess we have to come to terms with that. But what really should be addressed is how easily accessible mesos is with mesos botters. As a previous comment mentioned, I wonder how deep Nexon is with them, I would hope they are not in cahoots with botters, but the fact that they still run ch1 hene and haven't been cracked down on makes me skeptical. I have met some new players who genuinely thought they were officially a part of the game (I mean there is atleast half a dozen advertisements all the time, you'd think if they were advertising something against TOS it would be addressed by now)
We can atleast discuss the possibility considering some of the signs. Yes they've cracked down on duping before, but on the actual botters i'm not sure they have. Those spammed advertisements have been a issue in the FM/Hene for years now. Their websites have been running for years, yet Nexon has logs of a lot more than we think. There is simply just noone going over this information to make any connections unless a official complaint is ticketed. But i honestly don't know if this is strategic as to not ban any whales, or if its just incompetence.
I don't think Nexon is directly in cahoots with meso botters. I just think its obvious how they indirectly benefit from this. and that is probably why it is not addressed properly. Mesos has an integral relationship to NX purchases and trades, with these illegitimate botters people can afford to trade mesos for nx, and can afford to buy items they'll need nx scrolls for. additionally, the mass amount of mesos in the game incentivizes other maplers to scroll and enhance equipment (with nx ofc) in order to sell it. If this mesos problem wasn't around, a lot less people would be in the market for end game equips, thus there would be less incentive for people to use nx to MAKE end game equips.. Leading to less people buying nx all around. This is objectively true of any economy- things (or maple items) will not be heavily invested in if noone can afford them. whether or not we think Nexon's inaction on the issue is strategic or not is debatable.
when you reach level 60 you can buy money bags the best one is only 3000nx which gives you a 100 million I think
How are you basing this 2moths to a year? It's a separate game, MS2 is more focused on community, it doesn't have the same progression as maplestory. not everyone is going to flock to it.
That is jut not going to happen.. Unless you could bring your characters into the new game there is no way people who've invested hundreds or thousands into this game will just switch on a whim. Maplestory could probably run indefinitely with 1 server in the end, making minimal money off a few remaining players in the years (or decade) to come. Its going to take awhile for any 'shutdowns' - although I do think they'll consolidate ALL the servers soon (maybe minus Scania? - Right now windia is more populated than bera..) So there is definitely a lot of quitting happening. But all it takes is afew dozen maplers who are committed (mainly financially) to continue playing the game to keep the server up viable.
Also, that trade system is garbage- 3k nx ($3USD) for 100m? I think the max you can get for 3k nx meso bag is 750mill... The illegitimate rates are $1 USD for 1Bill... I dont think Nexon's system is going to be effective.. and I can assume Nexon is aware of these blackmarket rates considering botters blatantly advertise them all day.. So I truly wonder why they would make mesos bags with these payouts - you'd have to be very misinformed to put your money into those.
if they don't come out with Maplestory 2 I'm not going to invest into this company and he further I don't see a reason to all their MMOs are on a decline they currently have at the moment
With all due respect I think this is a little naive.. I am pretty sure a significant amount of people are doing this illegitimate method of buying and getting away with it.. Just read the unofficial forums online. These botter websites make such a killing off the population that stealing credit card information would be a loss for them because from what I read on other forums people feel safe using them. Acknowledging all this, I think it's obvious Nexon should take this market more seriously, and intervene. it is a HUGE profit loss for them, to the point where you have half a dozen companies overseas making it a competitive industry, and making huge profits off it (illegitimately). It creates a scenario where people following the rules are significantly disadvantaged while nothing is being done to accommodate that. At the very least Nexon should enter this mesos industry as well and undercut botters prices.