Hey guys,
I'd like to give some feedback and suggestions on how I think star forcing should be improved as well as some of the issues I and many others have with it currently.
First off star forcing takes far too long. It's an incredibly time consuming task. I don't know about you guys, but enchanting/enhancing all day in a video game isn't my idea of "fun". The upgrading time spent should not = hours. Let me give you guys some context.
The other day I was trying to get my Superior Gollux pendant to 22 star from 21. It ended up booming. That's fine, it happens. I tried getting it back up to 20 star after it boomed only to boom it 9 more times and finally run out of meso. Now, while it sucks, that isn't my issue. My issue is that is took a total of 5 HOURS of enhancing to attempt to get back to 20 star. Let me say that again. FIVE HOURS!
So you see, one of my many experiences resulted in hours wasted trying to get back up for 0 progress. This is the sort of stuff that makes you feel like quitting the game. If I'm to fail I rather it be a quick process so I can get on with playing the game and getting more meso ready.
So my suggestion is this. Remove the star force animation completely and allow players to spam upgrades. I have attached a video as an example of how quick it should be.
(refer to 1:08 in the video)
This is an edited video but you get the point.
The next issue regards the star catching game. According to Strategywiki, the star catching game gives a success rate of +4.5% multiplied. While we have absolutely no way of confirming if this is true, this is the only data that has ever been mentioned. Most people seem to think it does absolutely nothing and with this information, it would pretty much mean it doesn't. So the question is why does it exist?
My suggestion here is simple. Improve the star catching game so it actually gives a % that is decent and additive. Something like 5-10%. I've noticed the game gets progressively harder at random yet probably gives the same %? How about this. The base % can be 5% and as it progressively gets harder, the % goes up till it reaches a cap of 10%. This means you actually reward people for playing that time consuming mini game. Right now, you are not rewarding people for playing it so it is useless to include it in if you plan to keep it this way.
My final issue is in regards to the % chances under 15 star. This is partly related to my first suggestion.
I'd like to suggest that the values be adjusted from 10-15 star. Why? It is incredibly time consuming and it makes little sense that the values are so low when we have 15-25 star implemented. Passing 30% 4 times is already stupidly hard and takes ages. The real meso sink is above 15 star anyway, so why make it a struggle to get to 15 now that 25 stars is implemented?
That is all. If anyone has any other suggestions regarding starforce then please comment below.
thanks.
Comments
please remove the clank clank success/fail animation after pressing the button
Star Catching not being worth it is completely pointless to suggest things on. It might already be what you say, or it might be what the wiki says.
Since we don't know, it's better to not suggest changes to an unknown element.
I'd rather we get the actual formula/rate confirmed before we do anything with that.
I don't agree at all. Tell me. When has Nexon ever been fully transparent with us about the % rates of things? This game has a lot of rng and we know very little about the actual rates of things. It's always been up to the whales or endgame players to figure out these rates because Nexon is never going to tell us even when they should.
Stuff like...
% rate of obtaining all lines while cubing.
% rate of items in the style box
% rate of marvel items
% rate of tiering up
% rate of boss drops
% rate of material drops
% rate of star catching game
The list goes on and on and on. Most endgame players have gotten the achievement for 10k fails and have done far more enhancing than that in general. As one myself I believe it does next to nothing as do so many others I know which is why most of us disable the minigame. If a large portion of people think it does next to nothing then it probably does next to nothing which would mean the % is probably 4.5% multiplied. Either way the point is, it is in need of a drastic buff or improvement.
This is dangerous thinking. Just because something is meta or "commonly done" does not mean it is correct.
I would argue that because nobody actually does the mini-game, nobody knows what the rate is.
I personally do the mini-game because any increase is beneficial.
If you want to know if the mini-game is useless or not, you need to use it.
You need to use it thousands of times and record results compared to not using it.
You can't just assume something is useless because "Well nobody else does it."
I think when this was added it was basically an end game item upgrade grind. However, (and this applies to a lot of content in the game) the endgame has moved on and yet all the grinds are still stuck where they were added. Half the content appears to be some sort of end game grind at the moment, even when it isn't end game level. (Although someone finally changed the Temple of Time progression quests.)
Everyone did the mini-game when it first came out and still do use it at 15+ stars because like you said "any increase is beneficial". Thousands of attempts have been made using this mini game and many have come to the conclusion it does absolutely jack crap. Starforcing didn't come out yesterday. It's been out for ages now so we've had more than enough time to draw conclusions.
I never ask for an increase or a buff to something unless I know that my request is fair. I don't know if you remember but I made a suggestion about a month ago regarding the drop rates of certain items from bosses such as the Damien eyepatch. To put this into perspective for you. My group has been running since it came out. We have split our group into 2 parties now because we're all incredibly funded and now clear 2 times a week but despite all this we still haven't gotten a Lotus acc or a Damien eyepatch SINCE IT CAME OUT!!!!!!!!!!! So yeah, I believe I'm being very fair when I say the drop rate is absolute garbage and close to non existant. This is not a luck thing either. Sure, you see some other groups finally get one here and there but there's still barely any around despite this being out for so long. Boss drops should be obtainable. They should never be rare to the point where you need 10000 runs before you finally get one.
The mini-game desperately needs a chance increase and it needs to be improved overall. The fact that the star goes at supersonic speed sometimes without a improved % chance increase for passing the game is absurd.
Power Creep is real. It's a requirement to keep MMOs alive. High level content should be hard to obtain as that is what keeps players playing the game.
10-15 stars probably should be adjusted as you said, as 10-15 stars doesn't really mean much now. A multiplicative increase of 10% I would say is fair.
As well as an increase to the 10-15 star rates to have a slightly more forgiving curve and fall off quickly after 15+.
Maplestory has gone for the "Grind until you die" version of MMOs, so they need to always have something to strive for.
The easiest way to do this is to include incredibly low odd upgrades into the game. I used to play a game with an upper limit of 40 on upgrades.
Now having an item that was +10 was considered good. Having one that was 15 was considered end game.
Nobody had anything above a 16, as the odds fell below 5% at that point, and you had already spent a crazy amount of money just to get there.
Getting to 40 meant you had to succeed a 1% chance about 20 times in a row. And there was no "chance of break" or "roll back" in that game.
If it broke, it broke.
I would say that Maplestory is very forgiving with how they handle starforce. I'm not saying there aren't issues with starforce minigame, but as far as the rates go, it could be FAR, FAR worse. Let's fix the objectively bad things before we work on the subjective.
Safeguard checkbox. This should be a global toggle. Specifically, not to the specific star.
What would this mean? If you selected safeguard it will always pay double meso to safeguard for the stars that are eligible for it, and not for others. This means you don't have to click it back on EVERY SINGLE STAR.
Safeguard speed in general. Remove or make the animation MUCH shorter. We don't need to stare at some flashy effects for every enhancement attempt. You are only slowing us down.
The chance below 15 should be increased significantly. It's a waste of time to be stuck between 12-15 and with little to no reward at 3 stat each.