I agree. It becomes extremely tedious to be constantly grinding with no challenge, especially early game. You can one shot the entire map and only receive 1% of a level up (or less depending on your level) for every map clear.
It becomes so monotonous and boring. I'm not engaged at all in the game, I'm just jumping around clicking a button to clear the map, while having a video playing in the background that I can fully focus on.
Maplestory should be challenging to level, but not challenging in the sense of number of mobs to kill/map clears needed. If it is not engaging and is repetitive, a lot of players would get burnt out, which is strange to say about a game since a game is supposed to be enjoyable. Reaching 260+ is impossible to level up through grinding without putting hours into the game.
I remember when Maplestory was more about discovery and challenges back in the day. There used to be a mob map in Henesys where golems resided, and if you didn't use dark sight to turn invisible, you would get one shot if touched.
Nowadays it's just a challenge of fighting bosses, which adds to the end game, but does not add to the journey to get there.
I have 3 accounts right now which can easily clear normal daily bosses. I clear Von Leon, Arkarium, Magnus, Papulatus, Ranmaru, OMNI-CLN, Horntail, Pink bean, and the Root Abyss bosses in a matter of ~6-8 minutes per account.
Bossing has become easy with the new boss content available on the Maple guide teleporting you directly to the boss portal. I love this system. However, there are a few improvement I believe which can be done to help remove some "clunkiness".
Once a boss is cleared, you are sent back to the map where the boss portal is located. You must go through another portal (+ loading screen) to return back to your original location. You then have to open the Maple guide once again, select the next boss you would like to fight, and be redirected to the boss map for difficulty selection.
There are quite a few unnecessary steps in this process and I believe there could be quality of life improvements to the system.
My thoughts on this new system is to allow the player to queue the bosses they would like to fight back to back. A GUI is open displaying a list of bosses which the player can challenge. Here, the player can select the bosses (+ difficulty) they would like to fight in order. Once started, the player is sent directly to the first selected boss map to begin the queued fights. After completing a boss and all is looted, the player can exit through the portal / NPC chat to be routed to the next boss in the queue.
Bosses which have requirements to enter will be validated before entering. If the user does not meet the requirement, that boss is skipped. For bosses that provide a free requirement, this requirement can be given on start of that boss (i.e. Zakum's eye of fire, Papulatus's dimension piece, or Root abyss daily keys [if 5 were already consumed, the player must purchase more from the Root Abyss location]).
The user should also have the ability to leave the boss and end the queued fights if needed. If logged off during a fight, the player would simply be brought back to their original location.
Sure, that's a fair point, but I think it doesn't feel as satisfying when you level up rather quickly to the level in which you are able to become the job profession that you want. I don't mind grinding a good bit in order to get one level, that's fine with me.
Maplestory has turned into a whole different beast from what it once was. I remember struggling to get past level 30s, until Carnival PQ was release. Then the new wall was at Lv50. But the game direction as a whole was geared toward the social aspect, now it's all about grind. Getting to Lv200 is pretty much handed out for free, even 210. I was able to create 15+ level 200 - 210 accounts, from 0, in a matter of one month with the previous event.
Maplestory is not what it once was, that's for sure.
I agree that the information needs to be available to the user, but as you mention, you don't need 3 popups for what can be done in one. And if you fail to read the information on the popup, it becomes 100% the players fault.
That's exactly why I think these validation checks are excessive. For those who do read and understand what they are accepting, there is no issue. When you cube something, you know you want to cube an item. You know what the change is that you are asking for. There should not be 3 validation checks.
There is a popup today where you type the symbol you'd like to claim + your characters name. This popup has red, bold, and large text which tells the player what to write in the text box. This can be used as a warning when claiming a time-bound item, with a simple "Claim" or "Cancel" button as selectable options which cannot be mistakenly accepted by clicking "Y" or NPC chat.
The idea of UI is to make UI intuitive and minimally invasive. Having 3 popups asking the user if they are really sure if they want to cube an item, or asking the user to use their mouse to click on a text box and type a command to accept an item, are examples of bad UI practice.
