StarryKnight

HHG1 wrote: »

iirc the suicide autoban predates reboot kanna farming meta because bots used it way before they did. Suicide abuse by other players to fit a made-up meta isn't a legitimate reason to get rid of a bot deterrent. Do it slower to avoid detection or don't do it at all.
Removing the exp loss entirely would in a way solve both those problems, but should they really have to tweak the game more for people to play it as intended?

But that's just it. Bots are far more sophisticated than they were four plus years ago when this 'deterrent' was implemented. It's highly unlikely that modern bots do not account for this and will simply delay the auto-death process to avoid detection, meaning that Nexon still using this as a method of bot detection is, well, obsolete. Especially when confronted with the fact that the meta changed, and Nexon did not adjust to the new meta or develop their own more sophisticated methods of bot detection. Its a simple matter of Nexon not changing with the times. Nexon knowingly left a mechanism that it clearly accepts will and does ban legitimate players without just reason or cause, leading to a poor customer experience for those players, who are simply trying to make efficient use of their time and maximize their farming throughput.

Further, the entire idea that the game is "intended" to be played a certain way is a flawed argument. Did Nexon intend for EXP to be lost upon death? Yes, therefore someone dying and losing exp is an outcome that Nexon intended to happen. There is no rule saying that one cannot die intentionally, thus no valid arguement to claim that dying purposely contradicts the games "intended" gameplay. At worst you can argue that it exploits an intended outcome to ones own benefit, but then that is true for every trick that makes playing the game easier. An example, if you suicide in chaos pierre to get rid of the colored hat allowing you to hit both red and blue hat Pierre in order to solo... technically "not the intended method of defeating that boss", but its the current meta when you fail to no-split. There's countless examples like this, and none of them are against the rules, so the argument that it doesnt follow the "intended method of gameplay" is a vague and nebulous way of avoiding responsibility and failing to addressing the problem.

If they are going to tell us that the solution is to wait a minimum amount of time before dying again, then what's that minimum time? Should we count to three, five, ten, thirty? Not telling us is the same as saying "I know you can't see or hear it coming, but if you cross this road too soon, one of my drivers will come out of nowhere and hit you, but I refuse to tell you how long to wait before you cross it, even though I know precisely how long you should wait before crossing... "

You could claim that they can't tell us because then the botters would know too, but they already know, even if its by a consequence of trial and error. Its the legitimate players who are suffering from these 'deterrents'. Botters will just make another account and increase the auto-death delay timer, they don't lose anything when they get banned, just a few hours of their computers time. Legitimate players, on the other hand, stand to lose thousands of hours of time invested in a single character.

Would you also claim that a certain number of innocent people getting the death penalty is acceptable because the death penalty is a "deterrent" for violent crime? Exactly how many innocent people getting the death penalty is an "acceptable margin of error"?

A non-server related problem with reducing the channels on the populated servers, is that it restricts more players from getting a map. Letting 30 people get a good training map is better than only 20 people getting a good training map. Reducing the number of channels forces people to "hold" maps more often, give those maps only to guild members, etc etc.

If this is the way it is, they should allow the frenzy totem in reboot too.

Also, If they are nerfing kishin, they should nerf the frenzy totem, and I don't mean change the way it works, I mean force it to despawn when the person who put it there leaves the map. This will prevent players from selling frenzy service at outrageous prices, since that is essentially the only option for late game training now.

And if they are making changes to kanna, what happens to telefarming at bye bye? End game is extremely expensive, just getting to end game is extremely expensive. I *hate* having to have a suicide kanna, but crippling telefarming only ruins my meso rates even more, unless they are introducing new ways to make meso, or boosting the meso drop rate of late game monsters, this move only time gates end game content even more than it already is, as it ruins the meso rates of mid-game players. There are very few good rates of meso aquisition between a 140 kanna, and a 230+ arcana farmer. Crippling meso production rates for mid level players only means its going to take even longer to get to the point where you can farm late game maps, and now even those maps will have crippled meso rates without paying someone for frenzy or spending hundreds, to thousands, on trying to get a frenzy totem yourself.

Maybe I just don't understand something here, but I see absolutely no benefit for legitimate players by this move. Hackers will simply add another line of code to their macros and programs that mitigate the changes, and simply deal with the slower rates, its no big loss for them because they are farming 24 hours a day. Normal players can't do that, and crippling the rates of meso production for them just incentivizes them to consider hacking as an alternative.

Does nexon not realize that farming the meso for late end game already takes thousands of hours? And that's *before* a kishin nerf.

Yes, the 2 computer meta is bad, yes forcing the players to have a suicide kanna is bad, but is crippling one of the only few productive methods of meso farming really the best solution? Making meso harder to obtain doesn't help players, at all.

Reboot is harder, but not for any reason mentioned. It's harder because the 'hump' which turns the game into "easy mode", is much higher and much more difficult to get past on reboot than it is in regular servers. The hump being the point at which you can OHKO mobs on the best training maps. There is a significant amount of time needed to be invested in order to crest that hill in Reboot. On a regular server, you could reach something comparable to what took over a year in Reboot, in a few weeks, provided you're willing to spend enough money.

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.

The EXP rates are not so disparate between reboot and regular servers once you account for the differences between the servers.

If you play on a regular server, Nexon assumes you're doing the following:
Scrolling your gear (reg)
Cubing your gear (both)
Flaming your gear (both)
Starforcing your gear (both)


There are benefits to players on regular servers. Such as 2x exp coupons that stack with all other in game coupons (mvp, runes, 2x) which can be purchased from the cash sop. The ability to scroll your gear, which can easily net an extra 100 more attack than the same weapon on reboot. I think nexon assumes that if you're playing in a pay to win server, you're maximizing your opportunity to succeed, which kinda means what it sounds like... paying to win. Its hard to be unfunded on a reg server.

The problem with that, is that Maplestory is actually really really expensive when you play on a pay to win server. To make a character on a p2w server that is comparable to any one of the those characters on the top 50 in reboot would likely cost well over a thousand dollars, and that's just for cubing every potential and bonus potential to legendary with good potentials. Yes you can buy cubes with reward points, but it takes an average of like 30 cubes to tier up from unique to legendary, and you only get 10 a month, meaning a single piece of gear might take 3+ months to get legendary, if you're not spending any money. That's approximately 5 years to get all your gear to legendary using only reward points, and that's not including getting them from rare to unique, or how many cubes it takes to get a really good roll on a stat, which could take 100's of cubes. Meaning if you have bad luck, it could take 20 years or longer to get every gear to legendary with good potentials, using only reward points.

In reality, a lot of players on regular servers are young, and don't have a job, or parent's willing to plunk down thousands of dollars just so their kid can one shot the monsters in CLP. Most people on pay to win servers aren't willing or able to spend the amount of money nexon has ultimately designed the game to be needed to reach end-game. If people in regular servers are not spending the amount of money needed to maximize their gear, then it's no surprise people in reboot are topping the list, as they have spend hundreds of hours farming hundreds of billions of meso to pay for cubes and flames and starforce, not to mention farming droplets for arcane weapons, and nodes to max 5th job skills, etc etc. Where people in regular servers can literally buy those, or the materials needed, in the auction house.

Because of this, there is an inherent issue of perspective, people on regular serves will simply assume the top players on reboot are botting/hacking, and therefore not legitimate, but I expect Nexon pay's particularly close attention to the top players, keeping an eye out for suspicious activity. You can be pretty sure the ones still on that list are probably not cheaters. That said, I imagine most, if not all people who play consistently, automate gameplay in some way, whether its putting a weight on a keyboard button, or using a keyboard with programmable buttons to automate common keypress sequences.

So basically, what I'm suggesting is that people are typically behind reboot servers in progression primarily because they are not maximizing their opportunity for success, meaning:
not spending enough money on 2x coupons
not spending enough money on cubes
not spending enough money on maplepoints, which can be traded for meso, which can be used to buy materials or equipment from the auction house.

For this reason, I don't really see a problem with "both" being listed. If you're willing to spend the money, reg servers can definitely level faster than reboot, reboot simply forces players to trade spending money for spending time.