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Check out the v.249 - Minar Picnic Patch Notes
here!
Closed Old Maplestory, Going forward!
(So with my lowered expectations, the goal of this thread is to have an Old Maple thread and have it to not get ruined. I think its a dark day for Maplestory when players from different time periods cant even manage to keep a civil dialogue going but it is what it is)
Anyway, this is what I wanted to show before but I got a bit distracted in the other thread. I remember being so hyped about KOC getting released. A big part of peoples nostalgia (I believe) is that sometimes events happening in the game can have relations to what players have going on IRL. For example, I can recall pretty clearly what I was doing around the same time frame! You cannot comprehend my nostalgia here! True, by comparison to some of the new trailers, its not very elaborate but I really liked everything about it. I also looked forward to making the hard choice between which class to play because remember folks, back in these days, players had to make a large commitment if they wanted to get their hands on the top level skills. Obviously each persons experience is unique according to them. No matter how many times I watch this clip, I dont get tired of it. If you have anything nostalgic that you would like to mention then this is the thread for you!
P.S.
Moments from after Big bang are also allowed
Comments
- Empress' Blessing, the forerunner of today's link skills and legion, practically forced you to level a side character in order to make your main stronger.
- The separate cash shop, called "exclusive" as if that were a good thing. They've only recently started to reverse that with "faction" cash storage, but the way is still long. So we were not only forced to level a side character, we were forced to buy it its own pet (or loot manually for the 3-6 months it would take to reach level 120) and its own cash equipment (or stare at "ugly" in-game equips for months).
- The class stories that make no sense. These are an elite force created to defend Maple World from the Black Mage, and yet they are capped at level 120 (equivalent to about a level 150 "normal" character)?
- The illogic of having classes that are supposed to be introductory "easy mode" to Maplestory - but you can't make one until you have a level 20 normal character.
- The unfairness of new classes being OP. Cygnus Knights got 6 AP every level instead of 5, in addition to their powerful skills. I absolutely hated them for it.
- The overabundance of classes. Cygnus Knights jumped us from 12 to 17 classes overnight. Which started the flood that is nearing 50 classes now, with no end in sight. Do we really need so many classes?
Personally the patch I was most looking forward to was V. Not so much because of 5th job, but because it was the first time since Maple was launched that maximum inventory size was increased. I desperately needed that extra space. Although it is long since all used up, now
1. Always having more ways to improve your character is fine. I would say it's the number of characters you're "forced" to do is the problem.
2. Absolutely. A global CS Inventory is the only thing that makes sense to me.
3. I wouldn't say this is a trend now.
4. Again, not a trend these days.
5. New classes certainly do have much better grind kits for early game. Something Nexon really should address with massive reworks to early job skills.
6. I don't see this as a bad thing. Other games with PVP elements push or even go beyond 100 characters. If there's no real concern for "balance", why is more options a bad thing?
I think MapleStory is moving in a good direction right now on the overall game design. The way Nexon is handling GMS, is not.
Whatever Nexon's goals for GMS are, players need to stop being given the run around and told directly.
Just exactly what is the plan for GMS? Every patch seems to draw us closer and closer to a KMS copy. If this is the plan, why haven't we been told?
It feels like Nexon is just slowly changing things to be closer to KMS until we'll eventually have a 1:1 copy.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boiling_frog
I'm personally fine with this, but not with the way Nexon is going about it.
Many GMS players feel mixed or just downright negative about this kind of change.
The least Nexon can do is act like they actually care about their userbase instead of treating them like 3 year olds who they know best for.
Either people enjoy games that are very one-dimensional and simple in terms of game mechanics, or they are blissfully unaware how much complexity was taken out beginning with Potential and Big Bang. Edit: In before someone spouts "wHaTS sO coMplEx aBouT tAkiNg WEeKs to gEt tO lvl 30???"
If the developers took care and re implemented these old skills into V skills cores, it would be give us some old memories while embracing the Matrix system (which is still expanding.)
Also I noticed that old discontinued Ultimate Explorers (created by the Cygnus Knights and the Peridot quest) have a small advantage over Explorers who done the Empress Might quest. They would both have the same Ultimate Explorer skill (Oz's Flame Gear, Eckhart's Vampire etc.) but the ones created by the Cygnus Peridot quest also have a summon that attacks mobs (very minor damage but whatever.) I am wondering if the devs would ever revisit Ultimate Explorers and grant them that summon skill for those who took the Lunar Dew route instead of the peridot route. It would also be nice to see these skill reorganized to the revamped Cygnus Knight's skills.
Now for me, I've played during 4 different "periods" before the big bang, I was a 13 year old who made a fighter when Broa released, made some friends, hit 53, and got bored, something that many people still do to this day. When Khaini was released, I made a bandit, spammed savage blow joined a guild, got promoted to officer, and got bored of training at zombies in El Nath. On this char, I distinctly remember riding the very first ship to Ludi when it released. When Mardia released, I played to be the top Hermit (though did not achieve that), I remember the top player was AzenZagenite, and that he had a HS mule on 2 PCs, something that in the future becomes the meta in reboot. I also remember failing the first server Zakum run and watching Azen running around in there solo after everyone else died out. Soon after when Kradia was released, I tried again to become the top hermit, and remember falling into gaming addiction trying to achieve that (which for a very brief moment I did). I was grinding at Himes then, before that, dolls in the haunted mansion(which I felt was my favorite area), and wolf spiders. I remember d/cing out of a successful Zakum run and raging about it. I remember having my best friend quit on me one day for no reason, and finally making this video when I quit that server:
I came back to play again when Galicia came out, to try out the Evan class, although more casually. I remember grinding at the toy area spamming earthquake, and later on flame wheel on bigfoot and the ice mobs in temple of time. I spammed Dark Fog in the FM to show off, though I never got high leveled enough to spam blaze. I also remember getting scammed out of 10$, and also that was when my wisdom teeth came in and had to be removed; getting a fever from the infection. When Dual blades got released, I quit a few months after due to just how imbalanced the class was compared to mine.
Many years later, I started in Reboot, December 2016 to play the 5th job, and started up another Evan to see the new changes. I played casually, quit, came back again, quit again, repeated 6 times on that server alone, and here I am, trying to solo-progress to lucid, on my 7th return grinding mesos for the upcoming SF event.
As people can see, many people have their old stories, but many of them also grew up and just view them as the past, people move on, the gaming industry moves on. If that game that I played with so much fervor in the past came out now, I would quit within a few hours. Being able to experience the past again in my opinion is disingenuous to the feeling of nostalgia. Though I am in favor of being able to play "pre-buff" style classes as an event of sort just to see how much more balanced the game is now.
You might treat the idea of picking a class as having the same amount of weight as buying a home, or making 6 US-figures, but I definitely don't see things that way and if that was how this game was, I'd find another game to spend time and money on.
With the trend in gaming these days, where it's quite easy to level up to a point where you can experience most of what a particular class has to offer, it wouldn't make sense to make someone grind 3 months just to unlock 4th job.
What's the difference, in terms of level of enjoyment and time invested, between spending months to reach 4th job and spending months (time plus money) to upgrade gear and get high enough DPS to kill a boss? The progression of the game has merely shifted from leveling (unlocking skills, quests, equips, areas etc.) to an equipment-upgrade based approach where the objective is to pass various DPS thresholds for different bosses. Is your assessment of the state of the game based on deriving more satisfaction from being able to access many character skills than from killing bosses?
As a follow-up, suppose a game allows any casual player to unlock all of their character's abilities in a day. What would then be the follow-up objective of that game? For modern MS1, that objective is to spend months/years to obtain and upgrade equipment to increase one's DPS to be able to kill many endgame bosses. Would it then not be sensible to claim that allowing players to obtain endgame gear more easily and in a much shorter time (days/weeks) make for a much better game based on the rationale that spending less time on another aspect (leveling and unlocking skills) also makes for a much better game? What would be the subsequent follow-up to killing all of this game's bosses?
Clearly time invested into a goal is lacking as an argument unless either (1) a game that can be effectively clocked in a very short time frame makes for a great game, or (2) goal B taking a lot of time is more enjoyable than goal A taking a lot of time. If spending months/years in "upgrading equipment to kill bosses" is better than "leveling up to unlock new skills/content" I would like to hear your reason why.
I don't know about you, but in games where it takes forever to unlock all the skills, they better be a single player RPG.
In MMOs that stuff is annoying as hell and not a game I like to play. It's much better imo to develop into a full kit early on.
The rest of the game should be spent slowly improving that kit slowly unlocking extra perks for skills you already have.
5th job does allow for slow improvement on the kit, but doesn't unlock extra perks for most characters. Just more damage.
I'd like to see 5th skills give extra things every 5 or 10 levels instead of just getting stronger.
The same mentality somewhat existed in old MS, but it took a very long time to unlock the full kit of each job.
As well as those skills were barely worth using when first unlocked. Modern MS the skill is instantly worth using.
Modern MS does have the problem of replacing skills in the future jobs though. Nexon has improved stuff while also ruining other areas.
I think on the overall, modern is much better than old Maple. However there are plenty of aspects I'd love to see return.
At this point we really need a second big bang patch that changes the core design of the game to be a mix of old + modern.
I was honestly hoping that Black Mage boss was going to be this patch, but I guess we're going to have to hold out longer for it.
Really dropped the ball by not giving us a bigger patch for Black Mage, imo. A second BB is long overdue.
What aspect of "unlocking skills" makes it better suited towards single player RPGs? Why would adopting a similar progression style for an MMORPG be indicative of a poorly designed MMORPG (in your opinion), or not fancy your tastes? Many early MMOs adopted this progression style. Did you not enjoy MMOs back then, or perhaps you didn't play MMOs in the 2000s? Furthermore, what do you think about the shift towards an "equipment upgrade" progression style? Doesn't taking forever to "unlock" the ability to kill endgame bosses (due to the time consuming and arduous task of having to upgrade your equipment to meet certain DPS thresholds) annoy you also? Considering the fact that many bosses are soloable, wouldn't this also not make much sense for an MMORPG?
Why? From what I understand, you prefer almost full access to skills early on with additional minor adjustments as you progress. So if, in old Maple, this style was adopted, i.e. by significantly lowering each job change level or providing players with most of the skills near the start, it would make for a much better game? Is it the fact that you don't enjoy spending time to unlock major milestones for your character? If so, what do you think about spending time to obtain good gear or high DPS?
If you refer to the fact that you level up so fast in modern Maple, I really think that's a trivial thing.
I have the opposite opinion, obviously.
An aspect of early Maplestory that I think was good is that it was honest about what kind of game it was right at the outset. So for instance, if a player got into the game and the first hour of playing was nothing but agony then they can discover that maybe they would get more enjoyment out of doing something else. This is just a personal thing mind you but I think it is way better to find out stuff up front then to get sucked into something, possibly dropping some cash only to later find out that it was a trap. Or has some manner of horrible surprise that the person would have hated and never gone along with it, if they had known about the horrible surprise from the beginning. Thats not only a game topic but something to remember for everyday life, like for real. Just another reason why I liked Classic Maplestory, what you saw is basically what you got.
While Old Maple already set the bar high in terms of balance, I would also be interested in something like this.
Single-user games are closed-ended. Finite.
In RPGs, you spend your entire time in the game gradually learning skills and gaining stats and items, until you are strong enough to defeat the Final Boss, and then you win the game and put it aside.
Online game publishers, on the other hand, endeavor to keep you playing the same game forever. Since content is finite, MMORPGs (and especially those without PvP) will always have something you need to grind eternally to reach.
So the question becomes, what and how would you rather grind?
Personally, I would rather get my full skillset quickly, and then grind forever trying to perfect my control of the playstyle as well as my gear and character stats.
I'd really rather not grind for a year, only to discover that my class's 4th job isn't nearly as fun to play as I had thought it would be. Especially when much of the grinding for that year is on a character with a very limited and limiting moveset which would be replaced as soon as I get a new skill.
Obviously this is a personal preference, and other people may prefer to constantly look forward to a new skill and a change in playstyle every few weeks or months.
I remember that being a huge deal. "What are you gonna put your first SP into at 3rd job?" and then it would literally not matter because you'd still be using the same previous job skills for hours upon hours grinding for 5% per hour. Your first 3rd job skills were literally just for flexing in Orbis PQ if you didn't go for passives first.
If you were doing none of that, then you simply were not playing the game. There was essentially nothing to do that didn't involve grinding endlessly back then, but ya boi over here waxes nostalgic like having piss-all to do was the epitome of the online gaming experience. Things change, the vast, vast majority of people move on and adapt to change, only a very annoyingly-vocal minority cries for the days of old.
Nostalgia is one of the worst, most low-effort arguments you can make for something. Acting like a bunch of member berries and having no "for" points beyond "hey remember when we were all kids and everything was new and exciting" is a nigh-meaningless appeal to emotion.
True. One main way to keep players hooked in terms of combat is PvP or something that requires skill; people like competing with each other. It's how people can play, for example, the same FPS/battle royale game for months and years.
Is it merely a personal preference or do you have some other factor of which you have considered? For example, what if you felt that spending months on upgrading your equipment to solo Lucid wasn't all that satisfying?
I would never prefer the gear based progression that modern Maple adopts over leveling/character development. It's simply a flawed progression system because it simplifies the game (linearizes stats and makes many other factors such as skills, party play, and dynamical interplay between stats and content redundant). It's one major reason why, in my opinion, old Maple had far better mechanics.
Sure. However, that was never anyone's argument in the first place. To claim it is and then attacking your interpretation of the other's argument, and their character, is blatant straw-manning (add ad hominem to the mix).
It is a difference in what you consider to be progress and achievement. Everyone has their own set of achievements, which is why a lot of games (including maple) list a whole bunch of different things as achievements (leveling up, killing bosses, exploring maps, finishing quests, collecting chairs, making friends, etc etc)
It would certainly be sensible to allow players such as myself to get better gear easier. And the option is there: you could spend a lot of money and achieve that. And some players do take advantage of that option, even if a lot of people don't like it.
Your argument that time invested is moot assumes all achievements are equal. For me, leveling is not an achievement. I prefer to clear dungeons and kill bosses, rather than simply being able to access it. So yes, it is the case that "Goal B (investing time/money towards bossing) taking a lot of time is more enjoyable than goal A (investing time/money towards leveling)".
Would it be possible for you to rephrase that message in a non confrontational way? I see you on the forums and therefore maybe you have something from time playing the game to share?
I was speaking to having witnessed nostalgia-fueled circlejerks across a number of different games. I'm unable to find what was my favorite take on "rose-tinted nostalgia goggles are bad", due to the forum it was posted on disappearing under dubious circumstances involving physical hardware being relocated. Suffice it to say, those who pine for the days of old, the amorphous days of "back then", are blind to improvements that were made along the way. Everything new is bad and "if you'd just revert the game to a version from several years ago then everything will be good forever". Nostalgia disregards bug fixes, exploit patches, it disregards bland or scarce content in favor of the memory of simpler days.
Specifically on the point of "better game" (forgot to get to and now can't edit), I agree that it would be a better game to me. I've played hundreds of single player indie games where I spend 20 mins to 2 hours to unlock the majority of achievements and then move on to the next thing. For me, I got the enjoyment out of it (story, mechanics, progression) and then moved on. Much like watching a movie.
Not a fan of level-based progression or gear-based progression in general. Most games impose some combination of these mechanics, which makes it less skill-based. I'd much prefer a game where I could just pick it up and accomplish all of the goals as long as I had the skills to do so. But it's a different model and requires different monetization strategies (eg: constantly adding new content to keep players interested, which maple definitely isn't about)
O REALLY? You say that even though your post sounds a certain way, that would be a misunderstanding and that what the post is actually referring to is the concept of Nostalgia? (and not necessarily the people who like it?)
Well, I myself have had some troubles with misunderstandings on the forums so I can relate. But for your information, this thread is for the discussion of Maple related stuff and not the flaws or merits of the concept of nostalgia. I would suggest making a new topic if that is the subject you wish to talk about.
On the other hand, you are more than welcomed to stay if you have something about Old Maplestory that you would like to add. (and for the purposes of this topic, periods after Big bang are also included)