The Closure of Star Planet

NoSkillKid · October 2016

I would like to first start off by saying that this is my opinion and understanding based from my viewing.

So why was Star Planet closed in the first place?
Nexon says that the participation was not as high as they had hoped because less than 1% daily number of players accessed Star Planet. Nexon views Star Planet as a deserted place, which is a mistake (and I'll get back to that later).

Now I believe another reason why Star Planet was closed is because the Reward Points was abused by hackers. If we take a look at the total Reward Points gain Nexon says that less than 5% was obtained in Star Planet. From this, we can see how big of an impact Star Planet Reward Points made on the game; less than 1% of the population made up close to 5% of total Reward Points.

Nexon concludes that players were finding Maple Reward points from other sources more efficient to obtain.
This is true. This was one reason why Star Planet was deserted but this doesn't justify to close it down. There are improvements that can be made to increase participation activity there.

How is Nexon mistaken about Star Planet?
Nexon views Star Planet as an additional source of Maple Reward points. Star Planet wasn't just a place for players to farm Reward Points but allowed others to visit each other from different servers. With the removal of Star Planet the interconnection of Maplers was also removed (Cross World Party Quest just isn't the same).

Star Planet should have never been associated with Reward Points in the first place. Star Planet should be brought back but with the removal of reward points as the main reward. The way we obtain Reward Points should not be from mini games, but from actual gameplay in MapleStory. Players who enjoyed playing the mini games in Star Planet should have the incentive to continue to play them purely from that; the Star Planet mini games should be played because of enjoyment not because we are forced to in order to take advantage of additional Reward Points. This will clean the environment from all the hackers and afkers that we often see in mini games.

What should Nexon do?
Apart from removing the Reward Points as rewards from mini games in Star Planet and bringing it back, there are many reasons why it was deserted as it was. I believe the main issue was that you were no longer connected with your friends back in your main world. Alliance chat needs to function in star planet along with the ability to chat in alliance, guild, and buddy chat. Star Planet should be recognized as a hangout spot for Maplers, where players can come from all different worlds and meet up together and have the opportunity to play mini games with each other.

What are your thoughts? Discuss.

Peiyu · October 2016

My thoughts are they should bring back star planet because without it some people feel bored, Also we got to meet people from other worlds!! So please bring it back i'm really bored and sad without it

AKradian · October 2016

Star Planet kept getting used for all sorts of item dupes and hacks. (I don't know why Cross-World PQ is not as conducive to those hacks).
Nexon kept patching them but the hackers kept coming up with new exploits (or maybe the old ones kept getting unpatched).
Even without the Reward Points, Star Planet would still be a hotbed of illicit activity.

Dor · October 2016

AKradian said:
Star Planet kept getting used for all sorts of item dupes and hacks. (I don't know why Cross-World PQ is not as conducive to those hacks).
Nexon kept patching them but the hackers kept coming up with new exploits (or maybe the old ones kept getting unpatched).
Even without the Reward Points, Star Planet would still be a hotbed of illicit activity.

The policy of "don't patch it, just remove it" is what lost us many different things in this game such as the loved Kerning and Ludi and other PQs as well as Monster Carnival and more, that's not the way to go, it's why PQs are dead, it's why almost everything's dead nowadays...

AKradian · October 2016

Dor said:

AKradian said:
Star Planet kept getting used for all sorts of item dupes and hacks. (I don't know why Cross-World PQ is not as conducive to those hacks).
Nexon kept patching them but the hackers kept coming up with new exploits (or maybe the old ones kept getting unpatched).
Even without the Reward Points, Star Planet would still be a hotbed of illicit activity.
The policy of "don't patch it, just remove it" is what lost us many different things in this game such as the loved Kerning and Ludi and other PQs as well as Monster Carnival and more, that's not the way to go, it's why PQs are dead, it's why almost everything's dead nowadays...

As I said, they've tried patching it, over and over again.

deadend5193 · October 2016

I haven't heard anyone mentioning, but I feel like what caused the demise of Star Planet is when Nexon changed/nerfed the RP rewards for some games. Some people preferred doing One Card or Yut for points, but after the change those games took a ridiculous amount of time and attempts just to get the max RP limit.

Before that, I think many people were still doing Star Planet, even if it was just mainly those two games.

SP being dominated by botters/hackers was a big issue too of course.

Lilyflower · October 2016

Agree I wish star planet would be safe from botters and hackers abusing it so that players feel safe to play the mini game and the rankings.

Dor · October 2016

AKradian said:
As I said, they've tried patching it, over and over again.

They should employ people who don't have the IQ of a newborn, the game still has so many mistakes pushed into it, so many exploits, bugs, glitches and crashes "slipping through" their "testing".
Stuff like the Water Wars nerf getting people banned, how does that "slip through", how does that even happen in the first place, regardless of testing?

AKradian · October 2016

Dor said:

AKradian said:
As I said, they've tried patching it, over and over again.
They should employ people who don't have the IQ of a newborn, the game still has so many mistakes pushed into it, so many exploits, bugs, glitches and crashes "slipping through" their "testing".
Stuff like the Water Wars nerf getting people banned, how does that "slip through", how does that even happen in the first place, regardless of testing?

While I agree with you that we all too often see bugs that would never make it to the live servers if the development was professional quality, I am not going to blame the developers themselves.
They are capable of good quality coding, as can be seen by the fact that the game mostly works as intended. However, there seems to be too few of them, so they're chronically overworked - which is pretty normal for this industry. What is not normal is that they seem to lack both the tools and the procedures needed to catch mistakes long before they get to the live servers. Proper development methodology (and tools) would certainly prevent bugs from reappearing after being fixed once, which is something that plagues Maple constantly (and Star Planet in particular).

gamechanger · October 2016

AKradian said:

Dor said:

AKradian said:
As I said, they've tried patching it, over and over again.
They should employ people who don't have the IQ of a newborn, the game still has so many mistakes pushed into it, so many exploits, bugs, glitches and crashes "slipping through" their "testing".
Stuff like the Water Wars nerf getting people banned, how does that "slip through", how does that even happen in the first place, regardless of testing?
While I agree with you that we all too often see bugs that would never make it to the live servers if the development was professional quality, I am not going to blame the developers themselves.
They are capable of good quality coding, as can be seen by the fact that the game mostly works as intended. However, there seems to be too few of them, so they're chronically overworked - which is pretty normal for this industry. What is not normal is that they seem to lack both the tools and the procedures needed to catch mistakes long before they get to the live servers. Proper development methodology (and tools) would certainly prevent bugs from reappearing after being fixed once, which is something that plagues Maple constantly (and Star Planet in particular).

I think the problem is even simpler than that. Their managers/directors just seem to have this idea that we have to constantly be working on new all the time instead of having a patch cycle dedicated solely to major bug fixes and optimization (and I mean optimization at the engine level (if MS even uses an engine), not the small stuff we have been getting lately even though it is much appreciated). Judging off of how often they push out relatively large patches content wise, they have enough developer time, they just aren't given any time to actually bug fix, what's done seems to mostly be done on spare time on the developers part.

AKradian · October 2016

gamechanger said:

AKradian said:

Dor said:

AKradian said:
As I said, they've tried patching it, over and over again.
They should employ people who don't have the IQ of a newborn, the game still has so many mistakes pushed into it, so many exploits, bugs, glitches and crashes "slipping through" their "testing".
Stuff like the Water Wars nerf getting people banned, how does that "slip through", how does that even happen in the first place, regardless of testing?
While I agree with you that we all too often see bugs that would never make it to the live servers if the development was professional quality, I am not going to blame the developers themselves.
They are capable of good quality coding, as can be seen by the fact that the game mostly works as intended. However, there seems to be too few of them, so they're chronically overworked - which is pretty normal for this industry. What is not normal is that they seem to lack both the tools and the procedures needed to catch mistakes long before they get to the live servers. Proper development methodology (and tools) would certainly prevent bugs from reappearing after being fixed once, which is something that plagues Maple constantly (and Star Planet in particular).
I think the problem is even simpler than that. Their managers/directors just seem to have this idea that we have to constantly be working on new all the time instead of having a patch cycle dedicated solely to major bug fixes and optimization (and I mean optimization at the engine level (if MS even uses an engine), not the small stuff we have been getting lately even though it is much appreciated). Judging off of how often they push out relatively large patches content wise, they have enough developer time, they just aren't given any time to actually bug fix, what's done seems to mostly be done on spare time on the developers part.

Which does not explain why bugs that were patched don't remain patched.

Besides, how do you define "enough developer time"? Enough for what?
When you're doing your monthly/yearly planning, you balance the requirements with the resources.
If they are allocating all available developer time to new stuff (and even that often reaches the test server in unfinished or downright unplayable condition), then they don't have enough developer time for all the requirements, because bug fixing must always be part of the requirements.

The Closure of Star Planet

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