한국어 편지는 영어 편지 하단에 있습니다.
The last two weeks have seen a dramatic change to the old crusader codex and the familiar system. Following an unscheduled maintenance on 4/24, the drop rate of familiars from most monsters has been dramatically decreased. At the time, many of us players thought this was a temporary measure until a permanent solution to the glitches and other issues could be found.
Nexon has stated that it would incorporate player feedback in balancing the new system. However, while the Maple Note on May 1st has acknowledged the player concerns about reduced familiar drop rates, it has also not provided anything specific about the future direction of the familiar system. As this is a major game-changing decision that will affect us the players, many of us are rightly concerned about how the future balance patches regarding familiars will be applied.
Most members of the community feel that the current familiar drop rate is incompatible with how the new system was intended to function. The new system allows players to fuse duplicate familiars, extract familiars for points, and spend those points at the shop. Furthermore, players are incentivized to collect various kinds of familiars with the badge system. All of these new features require players to farm duplicate hundreds of familiars to use as materials.
It is fair to say that epic-level familiars like Jr. Boogies and Serpents had a too high of a drop rate for what benefits they could potentially provide. However, after the nerf, players report not only the drop rates of epic-level familiars have been nerfed, the drop rates of common familiars have been reduced as well. It now takes dozens of minutes to farm a single common snail familiar; another video shows a player obtaining a single serpent familiar after 100 minutes of nonstop hunting. Since hundreds of low-tier familiars need to be farmed, making familiars this rare renders the whole system basically unusable.
Furthermore, there was a lot of dissatisfaction in the Reboot community over the fact Red Familiar Cards, which are items used to reroll potentials on familiars similar to cubes, were not going to be available on the Reboot server. This meant that not only was the highest tier of familiars not available for Reboot players, Reboot players who were diligent or lucky enough to obtain an epic rank familiar would have to start on square one if the revealed potential was undesirable. Should this happen, the lack of red cards will force Reboot players to grind common familiars in low-level maps, regardless of their character level.
In the players’ perspective, Nexon has made it clear with the meso level penalty that as part of game design, they want to not incentivize high-level characters farming in low-level maps. The lack of the red familiar card in Reboot goes against this design philosophy by forcing high-level players into farming for hours at low-level maps for much longer than necessary. Furthermore, this is unhealthy for the state of the game as the high-level players can easily crowd out lower level players the maps were intended for.
As a result, there is currently a great deal of anger and frustration in the community towards Nexon over the events of the last few weeks. Players returning to Maplestory due to the COVID 19 epidemic found that they had lost 30% Defense Ignored that they had from the original crusader codex. New players getting into Maplestory were told that according to the 5/1 Maple note, Nexon has stated the familiar drop rate nerf was intentional. With how rare familiars are currently, new players are now at a situation where they will never catch up to the older players. Personally, as a long time player and a supporter of this game, it was exciting to see so many new faces in-game – and saddened to see so many of them leave in frustration.
As things stand currently, the revamp was a complete reversal of expectations: it has not helped us players become stronger, but took away what benefits the old system provided us with no way to regain those benefits without spending hundreds of hours or thousands of dollars. What also did not help was the fact that players were left in the dark after the surprise nerf with no knowledge of what direction the future will hold. At best, some saw this as Nexon being out of touch with how the game is played. At worst, others saw it as a myopic cash grab with no regard for the players.
In the coming weeks, Nexon has the delicate task of re-enabling the familiar system while addressing both balance of the game and legitimate player concerns. It would help greatly in letting the community know that Nexon is taking the voice of the players seriously if these concerns were addressed in the next memo:
1) Is Nexon leaning towards making common and rare (gray and blue tiers) familiar drop rates more common to reflect their tier?
2) Currently, Reboot Players have no way to reset a familiar’s potential. This causes crowding in low-level maps and is unhealthy for the state of the game as explained above. Will Nexon take this into account in deciding whether to allow Red cards to be purchased for mesos on Reboot?
3) Will the new system at least allow new and casual players to regain the 30% Enemy Defense Ignored stat that they had with the old crusader codex with relative ease?
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, and I hope that in the coming days, a solution could be reached that satisfies the community and game balance.
and 32 others.
and 12 others. 