KappaDrew

Good Morning, Afternoon or Evening, and to whom it may concern at Nexon America INC.

It has recently come to many of our attentions the updates occurring in Korean MapleStory in response to the cubing rate manipulations that have occurred over the past decade. as investigated by the Korean FTC. As a result a majority of your customer base is (rightly) extremely worried for the changes that have occurred in light of this situation. Seeing as many times Nexon has stated they are wanting to be more transparent and upfront with all communication about changes, and concerns your community has I believe this is a wonderful time for you as a company to demonstrate that will to be transparent. In my opinion the best way to do this is to hire a 3rd party investigation to look at ALL "RNG based" systems that are and have been implemented in GMS in the past decade, similar to how the Korean FTC has been forced to do, The reason I believe this to be in your own best interest as a company is as follows.

1. Shows your willingness to display accurate and real information regarding your game which MANY of your own consumers do NOT have good faith in Nexon NA even being aware of how your own systems work.
2. Shows proof that you have in-fact NOT been manipulating your game systems and monetary systems as previously inferred by previous statements by your team.
3. Brings more confidence in Nexon NA to have better consumer faith than ever before, which would be a first for the company in a VERY long time.

The systems that need to be looked into are as follows.

1. Cubing, Tier up rates, rates for rolling specific stats, and rates for different random stats have NEVER been disclosed for the GMS player base this is something that is frankly illegal in many country's as you allow consumers under and above the age of 18 to freely gamble on systems which the consumer has no way of knowing the rates of without researching via 3rd party means which have no way of being confirmed officially.

2. Premium Surprise Style Boxes (PSSB), and all their variants. Whilst we have official rates disclosed on the website each time the PSSBs are updated or a different variant is implemented, I believe this would benefit from having a 3rd party investigation to see the rates and disclose the rates, I personally have a hard time believing that this has not been tampered with multiple times depending on the box rotation with the existence of certain items sets in them from the KMS "Master Label" sets and they not have lower rates than others on specific items. As it does not make sense to have such desired items be attainable at a lower rate in comparison to other items.

3. Marvel Machine, I personally do not have much experience with this system however there are disclosed rates of what to expect, and MANY of the high value items appear to have much lower chance of being received than is displayed. A 3rd party investigation would alleviate such concerns from your customers.

4. Wonderberry's, Again another RNG reward system which has a few layers of RNG to get the most premium rewards from it, AKA Petite Luna Pets which have a "vacuum" function. A 3rd party investigation would alleviate such concerns from your customers.

In closing, these are the main 4 systems which I am personally concerned with and believe that you as a company would be most wanting to have shown as being manipulation free as they are Global MapleStory's main 4 forms of revenue production and specifically rely on RNG. I would highly recommend launching your own 3rd party investigation into these systems to prove the accuracy of your state rates, as well as disclose any undisclosed rates for all systems to avoid potential intervention from an entity such as the FTC needing to be brought in to investigate out of concern for Nexon America Inc violating consumer protection laws in multiple countries.

Best Regards,
a VERY concerned Mapler and his community.

To my fellow Mapler's If you are concerned that Nexon America INC. will in bad faith not perform a 3rd party audit of their RNG related systems you may file complaints with the US FTC at https://www.ftc.gov/ under the appropriate listings.

To whom it may concern -

The Global MapleStory (GMS) Community pleads that you consider the feedback below with sincerity.

Severely alarming information has come out from the Bean Brigade GMS Tespia streams regarding the upcoming New Age update. This information casts a very ugly stain on what was set to be one of the most anticipated updates to this game in its history and has led to community outage on a scale of which has not been seen since the massive flame scandal that landed the Nexon Corporation in very hot water. As a company that prides themselves in their commitment to "Player Satisfaction is our End Game", the decisions made leading up to this point seem to be headed towards a different end game of completely losing trust and a significant amount of your Global player base.

The decisions to make major adverse adjustments to the New Age update have already been a disaster for your customers and customer facing staff with your shareholders set to face the result of the backlash. Black Friday is one of the highest grossing financial segments of the year and is currently marred with a perception of consumer fraud based on the complete lack of communication and intent around the changes, the means in which the timing of release was modified as a direct insider knowledge and impact of the changes, and the way the community had to find out about about them. As a result of the current reality, there is a rapidly growing potential to set in place long term ramifications for GMS both in quality and general service delivery.

The following is a list of grievances that need to be addressed, several of which have been unresolved for months or even years, and please bear in mind these are not all grievances the community has with the game:

## 1. Censoring your Customer/Client base's feedback and suggestions

Your Community Managers do not have sufficient information or training to properly handle their operating environment. Invest more in your customer facing staff and provide them with the appropriate information and guidance on how to properly address player feedback more effectively. More effective Community Managers fosters a better experience for the player base and leads to less confusion and vitriol when significant or questionable decisions are presented.

## 2. Sol Erda Energy Cap

Many decisions met with backlash from the community have been justified as "to keep in alignment with KMS." This system has no reason to be changed from the Korean version of the game. Placing a cap on this system completely removes the purpose and benefit of farming in games centered around farming. The proposed capped system would take roughly 630 total days of dailies and weekly bosses up to Kalos, which has a global completion rate of 0.19% in GMS Reboot for the first time clear, to complete what is currently released and does not include the HEXA Stat mechanic. Each unreleased Mastery Core takes 83 days and each unreleased origin skill takes 145 days for completion. The limitations proposed are at odds with a good player experience. There are already significant time gate mechanics in place for the Sacred/Authentic Force system that serve as a daily login and player numbers driver, so introducing more of these systems has no purpose other than to compound FOMO, fear of missing out, and further the gap between players. These metrics are very valuable to the company and stakeholders, but introducing inconsistent systems that limit player return will ultimately lead to a decline in player engagement.

## 2. The Sol Erda Booster Ticket

This is newly released information from MapleStory South East Asia server patch notes, and is a new microtransaction item. Whose goal is revenue growth through a subscription style format via the in game Sol Erda and Erda Fragment resources. This ticket is currently set up to be $30 USD per month. The function of the item is to reduce the amount of time taken to finish the currently available HEXA Matrix and HEXA stat systems by 20-25% based on current estimates. to the total cost to the player of $540 USD for just the HEXA Matrix assuming it will reduce to roughly a year and a half. Whilst this appears to be a very good way of generating money per player over the course of a number of years. This also creates a significant imbalance between the Korean distribution and Global distribution, which is not coherent with your company's previous statement of wanting to bring the different versions of the game closer in alignment with each other. If you are required to implement a microtransaction for the sake of profit you may want to consider implementing the direct purchase of Sol Erda in the “regular servers” of the game. This is how the Korean version has at the moment, at least then you have the foothold to stand on if you are aligning the regions closer to each other which has a much larger chance of being acceptable, however given the current circumstances may not be.

## 3. Frenzy Totem and other Non-KMS Items

This is a topic specific to "Regular Servers" (Reg Servers) and is integral to both the economy and upkeep of said economy of those servers. By implementing instanced maps on Reg Servers with hamstrung Frenzy Totem functionality, the Reg Server economy is likely to collapse as the game forces players out of the Arcane River zones and into Grandis. Frenzy Totems were changed in the past to stop functioning in level 300 and beyond zones over two years ago. This change effectively drops the limitation from future level 300+ to all current level 260+ Grandis Zones. Before this change, the item had an insurmountable value to the players in Mesos and also shows a lack of faith towards Items not present in KMS such as Breath of Divinity, Lucid Earrings, Battle Roids, and others. All of these items have potential and real costs in the thousands of dollars with all coming exclusively from gambling systems like the Marvel Machine. It appears that a lack of understanding between the differences between the GMS Reg Server economy and the Korean Reg Server economy has led to a potential collapse of GMS Reg Server economies. There are many players whose current plan is to move away from Reg Server options and switch to the newly announced "Hyperion" Reboot Server which will have further consequences to the economy. By keeping the current functionality of Frenzy totems and working towards a more long term solution might serve to retain players in Reg Servers.


There is a large portion of your customer base boycotting spending on your game. Addressing and reassuring your customers should be your number one priority, especially as we enter what should be a lucrative financial season. It would be very sad to see a complete toss of the 10% recovery so far in Fiscal Year 2023 and further declines into Fiscal Year 2024. I wish you the best of luck with this as I would hate to see you disappoint your shareholders further after just recovering from a 10% decline in value. I would hate to see it crash further once again, in spite of being poised to drive back towards your all time high with current updates. Would be a shame for you to throw it away with bad decisions for one of your core products such as the ones shown on the test client, and in recently announced patch notes.

As a final note, if money is an issue, there are many more options that you can explore should you want to go down that route. We as the community would be more than happy to explore those options, at this time however Nexon Corporation has lost that good faith and opportunity. Should that be something that Nexon Corporation wants to explore, reach out to the community at a later time.

Sincerely a Very concerned Mapler, and community.

Edit: Forgot to thank Panik on GMS Reboot Kronos for assisting me with organizing this write-up.

I understand your logic, however this is not the correct solution in my opinion. There is no reason to cap the Sol Erda Energy, if you want there to be 2nd main and mule support have the Sol Erda Energy be a daily character based not world based. And then let those who what to grind on their mains grind.

Hello, we need to remove this absurd Sol Erda Energy cap that has been implemented on tespia today Matt, MisusingTV has shown there is a 400 energy cap of farmable energy, This means you would take 720 days to cap the current 6th job skills. This is absurd and needs to be changed, WE DO NOT WANT ANOTHER SAC GATE. Please share this around and leave feedback all places for official feedback and make sure its constructive...

https://clips.twitch.tv/CrackyAbrasiveTroutMikeHogu-DgFua8crfkkbu2VX

#DontSpend #NoNXNovember

Please Give us an Update Regarding familiars, Especially in regards to Grandis this is a massive conflicting system to 6th job and needs to be addressed before New Age patch even on reg servers this would be a gain due to fam gas issues when farming Grandis.

The fact that our own maple global Director Won-ki admitted at maplestory fest that he does NOT know the differences between KMS and the other regions, and is focusing on GMS means that this topic STILL had not been brought up to the management team that can actually look at this system and get it fixed up. Its a very simple thing to do and needs to be prioritized.