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Check out the v.255 - The Dark Ride: Ride or DIe Patch Notes
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To those who asked for hard core server
Comments
In an mmo it actually does or at least it correlates strongly with time. Mobs aren't beefy because they can be one-shotted with minimal funding. You almost never die nowadays except for boss fights (which give you 5/10/15 lives now) and solo progression was only reserved for the really end gamed folk who could cap with 99k lines. It definitely was difficult.
Imagine thinking there's skill involved in a grindy korean MMO
Imagine thinking that every class is as braindead to play as hero
Imagine thinking arans didn't exist prebb
Imagine derailing a thread with a huge imagine quote chain.
Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try.
A Pre-BB was probably only possible because of how big the community was. (I only got to watch my cousins play at the time)
I think in any of these places: Reboot, Non-Reboot, and Pre-BB, being a casual was still enough to progress through. I mean I don’t get the intensity of Pre-BB but I imagine on the scale of the “best” to “casuals”, it should be near the same as today. So pretty much any of these servers we play in aren’t hardcore. Unless you’re talking about L@B.
Reboot might *seem* easier to outsiders, because the people for whom the game is "easy" have already spent hundreds to thousands of hours playing, farming, collecting, min-maxing, etc, but keep in mind that they also tend to be younger people without significant obligations, low incomes and ample amounts of free time (college students for example). That doesn't mean the game is easy, it means the people you're using as examples are a very small minority with lives that allow significantly more investment in the game than other people can, or are willing, to spend. I.E. You're comparing the elite player with the casual player, and then suggesting that the game is easy for the casuals because its easy for the elites.
To be fair, after you've overcome the aforementioned hump, reboot is definitely *faster* to level, but that doesn't mean easier. Remember that the hump is significantly more difficult to overcome in reboot. But yes, in the specific case of players being able to ohko end game training maps, the reboot player will always level faster. This is because leveling at this stage has more to do with spawn rate and monster EXP, than the player. Aside from how efficient a player trains, or how long a player trains, the player is essentially irrelevant. Whichever player gets more EXP for a given amount of mobs/time will level faster, period. Personally I think 2x cash shop coupons should work on regular servers after level 250, but that's just my opinion.
I'll happily grant that free to play, on a pay to win server, is the hardest. But that's kind of intentional. Outside of wanting the challenge, there is very little incentive, or reason, to try and play as a f2p on a pay to win server. Mad respect to anyone who succeeds in that venture. I started playing back in 2006, and back then, the game used to be much more free2play friendly, the cash shop was a thing that provided convenience, advantages and vanity, but was not a necessary part of progression. With the essential nature of cubes in end-game gear, the cash shop is no longer an optional thing, its now an essential part of gear progression that must be completed at some point in order to overcome the hump.
I transitioned to reboot after spending a hundred dollars in NX during a double miracle time event, and ended the day with a single legendary potential-ed item. To put that into perspective, there are 22 potential-able items that can be equipped simultaneously. It doesn't take a mathematician to see that the cost of full legendary potential gear on a regular server would cost well over 2000 dollars, and that's just for regular potential, not bonus potential, and that's during an event where its suppose to be significantly easier to tier up.
You could argue that the game provides master, meister, and 5 red and black cubes a month via maple points, which could get a player to legendary without spending money, but the fact is those items are far too rare to be a viable option. It takes an average of 35 black cubes to rank up to legendary (~5 months using only free ones from maple points), and could take another hundred red/black/meister cubes to get a useful roll on that legendary piece of gear (~1 day to ~1.5years, per item). How many meisters do you get, on average, per month? How many months do you think it would take, using only freely available cubes, to get legendary potentials, and good rolls, on all 22 pieces of gear? As you can guess, we're talking something on the order of decades for a free-to-play person to accomplish this on a regular server. Sound fun?
There's a reason diamond MVP status costs 600 dollars a month.
Finally, Lab server is not that difficult once you figure it out. Spend 700nx on the potion pot, Scroll all your accessories for 9999 HP and you're basically set up for success. Do all the sat and sunday monster parks you can for 1.5x and 2x exp coupons, and you'll be 150>1>200 in no time.
I went into lab server thinking it would be hard. After entering the first map and seeing all the drops on the ground, that idea went out the window.
Lab server could be made into a harder version of itself, but as it was, it was the easiest server of them all. An absolute cake-walk.
I'd still like to see a version without the insane loot-drops and instant win button shop.
It had what it did, the shop with flames and nodestones specifically, because it was a time-limited event. Anything you'd do to make it more permanent would, in essence, create something similar to Path of Exile's challenge league setup, with SSF being reboot and SSFHC being this other thing. It would pretty much be a reboot clone. I don't think it should be made permanent, but the event running again would definitely be fun.
On another perspective, in normal server after players learn how to merchant, they can easily reach mid game /end game by buying end game equips such as Arcane equips and become strong. In Reboot, it takes 4months+ or even years of farming to just get 1 Arcane equip. You have to put effort and time to improve. And furthermore, you have to learn how to farm mesos effectively on your class and finds out which maps is best to farm for your specific class. Another example, to even get clean Full Absolab equips, still takes 3 months + on reboot, but in normal server, as long as you have enough mesos, you can just buy them off through market.
If Maplestory had the population for it, I think it could be fun. But as of right now, it doesn't. It had a bit more going for it than "reboot clone", however not much.
It's fun but it's not unique enough to need its own server. (Not with this population, anyway.) I do want to see it return. It being made into a real server is just a dream within a dream.
Ways to make mesos for me have been Gollux on mules, commerci (780-ish voyages on lith harbor), selling tyrant boots and absolab gear since I've been able to kill hmag and lomien. Also selling a variety of other stuff like gollux scroll service, rp service, cube service, dojo on main and mules, etc.
I figured it's about time i get an umbra weapon. I've been saving up mesos for it slowly for months. Once the sup ring i got from a mule sells, I'll have 2/3 of the mesos required for a clean umbra dagger. Upgrading it will take forever.
People always ask me why i grind without kish or frenzy. I tell them i can not justify spending the mesos on it, because there are so many other things i need mesos for. Levels will come eventually, gear upgrades will not. Luckily I've been able to get some free casts from nice guildies recently.
In a game like maple, you gotta be happy with even the smallest improvements. I've given up long ago on getting any godly equips. Still i don't consider it hardcore, just hard. Hardcore would involve some kind of permadeath imo, and on a server not as easy as lab was.
Except you don't need to 1 shot to grind faster than in normal servers.
The whole problem with reboot vs normal is that reboot has much more room to grow, while normal servers cap out early with our low health low exp enemies.
Your whole point would only be true if you needed all this extra gear for the same exp, or in other words if reboot had HP increase but no exp increase.
Unfortunately, it is different on normal server. There is a thick wall that strict people to grow named cash. It is not because you are not trying hard enough, but because of that wall. Even farming won't help much since the inflation is high.
I haven't played normal server for some time tho. But are there a way for free to play players to buy cubes and bpot cubes as many as they want without cash? and how hard is it to get 1 of the cube?