Basically, MapleStory needs to support the Mario and Kirby players at the same time. While Nintendo can make Mario for the Mario gamers and Kirby for the Kirby gamers because of how the companies do business differently.[/b]
Maplestory is already built like a Nintendo/HAL game.
Nintendo/HAL has no problem holding your hand through some content that is deemed hard for younger players. Stuff such as the L block that turns you into Luigi so he can clear the level for you exists. Most of the time, anything he collects like Star Coins isn't added to your score as he exists mainly to progress the story for you. The same can apply to even mature AAA titles like GTA V where you can certain segments such as moving you past a flight minigame if you keep failing it just so you can progress. These games are kind as they help the player complete a mission so they can go on with the story, but they also have challenge menus and achievements for the hardcore fans. These extras are hard and are optional to the game and are designed to challenging and be tackled by experts and not everyone.
Maplestory is like that already. You are already progressing through the story. If you are in Arteria, you already killed Black Mage, Kalos, Seren, Kaling, Gloom, Vhilla, Darknell etc. The bosses everyone is clearing? Think of those as rematches for those bosses via game's extra challenge menu which wasn't designed for the players who don't grow and learn with their class. Nexon already has a easy boss mode called "Story Mode" similar to how Nintendo made their games beginner friendly while offering a challenge for more competitive players in the form of extras. If you want to relive a boss fight that be played by anyone, have story bosses be replayable and offer no rewards for completion. Nexon is not rewarding players who don't put in the time and effort to build their characters and study the boss.
And this direction is a lot better for the game for many reasons, includes allowing players to have an easier time bossing on the class that they like playing on. Most people do not want to be a wind archer, buccaneer, or dark knight, etc., so supports open up players to play the class that they like and able to boss as if they had the ease of these other easy solo classes.
What kind of logic is this? If someone doesn't like a class, they just don't play it. If someone has trouble surviving with a class, a buffed support does nothing but just increase that player's dependence on that class and that player won't know how to play without that support's presence. If someone cannot survive a boss, they have to practice more or just accept they cannot do it or wait for a balance to make the boss more forgiving or a patch to give themselves more utility. Buffing Bishop to play better at your class doesn't make sense unless your plan is to tank every attack since Bishop will heal you. If that is the case, that isn't playing and Kim and Wonki made the wise decisions of creating fail conditions to remove the weak from the game.
Boss equipment is given out to those as rewards for knowing the bossing mechanics, having control of your character and building them strong. No one is entitled to them automatically just because they are high enough to enter Limbo or some other boss. Strong players don't want to carry players who are too weak or have no clue what they are doing because they are pretty much forced to shared the rewards with them, deal with a cheaper crystal or forfeit a clear because the fool didn't know his actions cause the team to fail.
So far the game has a few of legacy items that are exclusive to past event that hadn't made a return. This created a gap between players that started long time ago. I hoping Nexon can run these events again so that players who are new or missed the event or just didn't make it to completion has a change to get it back and become stronger. Here are some events that can be rereleased as well as some improvements that could be made so we aren't complaining about the same issue from over half a decade ago.
Misty Island: Can be rerun as is. The energy tent exploit has been patched AFTER the event was over so there might be a rerun for it or Nexon staff did something silly. This will allow players access to the Misty Island Totem which is the only totem in the game that has access to flame stats. Aside from that, players would be able to redo the achievements in the event to get more flames if they currently have bad stats on their totems. Also forgot to mention it was one per world so mules don't have access to this item.
Improvement to the event- Not I can think of aside from making sure player and enemy movement is smoother and not laggy.
Lab Server: The private server-esque event where everyone had inflated EXP but death made them you start over from level 10 (but you kept to keep your stats.) You get a Legion piece based on the highest level you reached as well as an additional for one completing some bonus missions. This event should run again as the Legion blocks gave a lot of attack and provided decent grid coverage. This was only once per world so it would be nice if they re ran again so a player can give another world that they play in another 2 legion pieces.
NOTE: Our previous Lab Servers were Explorers (excluding Dual Blade and Cannoneer) only so we got to play with those. TMS ran the event twice so the second season consisted of Cygnus Knights
Improvements to the event- Not really. We can either get the Explorer version or the Cygnus Version.
Abyssal Expedition: There wasn't much challenge. Just AFKing and assigning gear to your party to get a Legion Piece. This was the second time we got a Legion piece as a reward at the end for killing Manon. Wasn't fun due to the long time it takes to cap and we couldn't do anything during that time so skill couldn't be used to speed up clears.
NOTE: Since it was the second time we got a Legion piece as a reward for clearing, it introduced the 2 event legion block limit. Out of the three Legion Blocks (2 from Lab Server and 1 from Abyssal Expedition) only 2 of them can be placed on the board at a time. Players would pick the best 2 pieces that block assuming they didn't reach 250 in the Lab Event and only got 200 and did the special mission. Might had been an effort to reduce FOMO or reduce legacy event by having this event sub out of of the 2 previous Legion pieces.
Improvements to the event- Since we couldn't die and only the attackers in our expedition mattered (except maybe 2 skills to group or power up our team,) the event could had been designed like Monster Collection where we move our characters through the maps. The event was very braindead except when entering a boss.
Sengoku High:This event was very basic. Just a gauntlet of classes to fight. Was doable in a few minutes. The reward was none other than the Sengoku Hakase Badge. This is the one of if not one of the most powerful legacy item items. It is the pottable badge everyone has been wanting to see return. Players are missing out on a Level 160 22 starrable and pottable badge which even beats the Pitch Boss's Genesis Badge. Returning this item is pretty much a must to level out the playing field between veterans and newcomers. This also affects older players who are playing new characters as I've seen players complain that their new main doesn't hate a badge but their old mule/main has one. Aside from that, you can get the Sengoku Totems which were strong totems back in the day (not BIS.) A completed totem set granted the user a 3 minute FMA skill (500x 3) which was strong back in the day.
Improvements to the event- This event was super old and predates 5th Job. Could be returned as is, but it would be the easiest event with the biggest reward.
Ride or Die: Ongoing event. 6 bosses in random order with up to 20 random crap added in. The rewards are dictated by your score and how hard you chose your bosses (HP and extra junk.) A day before boss reset, you are given Kazax Fragments based on last week's performance. For regular servers, the ultimate reward is when you open your Kazax Fragments and get a Chains of Resentment, which gives the caster a higher spawn rate and increases mob capacity in the map. There are also the coin shops for your growth like cubes and flames. At the end we will also get a Legion Piece for doing it for 10 weeks. Since we aren't at week 10 yet, we are yet to find out if the legion piece counts towards the 2 limit or it is a new piece we can plop alongside the other 2.
Improvements: The end rewards are fine, but the content is horrendous. If it weren't for the Chains of Resentment being a prize, this would be the worst event.
In the room where you select your difficulty, you are unable to summon familiars. WHY? You will have a harder time fighting because you have to re summon your familiars when the fight starts or forget 120% Boss damage because the boss is already on the offense.
KMS usually gives us QOL for bosses and so far none of it even applies here. When you begin the battle, you are forced to watch an unskippable cutscene. KMS has allowed us to skip boss cutscenes so that we don't waste seconds of our pre-boss buffs. We cannot make use of our full buff because of a cutscene in a way and the fight is already extra dangerous thanks to the extra challenges. KMS has done other things as increase visibility such as VHilla's portrait in the lower right corner being removed as soon as the battle starts so you can see where you are going. During the boss rush, Kazax has to say something every 10 seconds and it blocks the screen. Aside from that, when we activate Althea's skill, half the screen is covered. I know it is somewhat fine when you are mobbing and your proc the event skill FMA that gives a butt-ton of points and EXP and kills the screen, the same cannot be said when you focusing on a boss with extra hurdles thrown onto it. The fight becomes a mess since you cannot lower the opacity or disable the NPC portraits.
There challenges a few very poorly designed extra designs added to the boss. Movement inhibitors such as reverse, stun and being launched are not and is just a cheesy way of dying. So far all these extras just make the boss more annoying hard because your dodging becomes worthless when you are under Vellum's breath but Kazax decides to launch you away anyway. There are so many random elements added that your experience soloing Ctene becomes worthless when Kazax is only going to cheat. This boss content becomes agonizing from the lack of visibility and controls from the NPC portraits blocking your view or Kazax sabotaging your movement/view. The only way to get a good score in this to blow it up with your origin and burst.
The way the rewards are distributed are bad. When you kill the boss, you get a floor of coins and other stuff such as event bags of herbs/ores. The problem is the coins not stacking properly. Instead of dropping coins and you they get added to your total without clogging your inventory, the coins drop and they fill up your USE Tab and it is in the most cruel way. If the boss drops 15 silver coins, he will drop it as 5 sprites each worth 3, and they will need 5 USE slots. Why does one currency need 5 slots? Then you would need to click on each individual coin stack in your USE Tab to add them to your total. KMS, you already know how to make Sol Erda Energy from bosses not go in any inventory, you made cubes obtained in the same day stack and you also know how to stack basic coins like Root Abyss. Why is coin obtaining this tedious? It is like they purposely chose the worst way for us to stash our coins by making them not stack and having to almost individually claim them when they already perfected the art of coin storage.
TLDR: We need these events to return or rather take the rewards from the old events and make better events with them otherwise new characters will be at a permanent disadvantage. Ride or Die is just a lost cause and the totem being a reward prevents it from scoring a 0 on a scale from 1-10.
The rewards for the "EXP" section horrendous. Why are they giving out Storm Growth Potions? The last time I seen these potions was back when the level cap was 200 (or 250.) The fact the GMS team included these is just horrible as they are completely unusable for 200+ characters (at least Extreme Growth Potions are usable even above 200.) If those items weren't there, we would had a better shot at EXP coupons and the actual usable growth pots like the Typhoon Growth Potion.
Not seeing Symbol Selectors but just Arcane Symbol Symbol Selector is just a disappointment as this doesn't boost progress for those who are in Grandis. Also the entire "Dark Maplemas Treat" section is horrible and is just a dud. No one wants potions as their reward especially when they are the untradeable kind. It has been this way for over nearly a decade. It doesn't matter what the season is as I remember complaining with a bunch of other users when we got Easter Eggs cluttering the drop table and making Hungry Muto impossible due to the access crap on the floor. At this point, the rewards from Bounty Hunter and Elite Bosses and even Monster Collection Exploration provide better rewards as they aren't filled with outdated stuff.
UPDATE:
The Storm Growth situation is worse than I thought. They won't even let you throw them out. So it really is a dud if all your characters are 200 or above.
I think GMS and TMS may had experimented with Attack Speed on hurricane classes. If you recall, we had the Pharaoh's Treasure even and some classes such Archer attack and Pirate's Rapid Fire from skill alter seemed to be affected by Attack Speed. When I was firing bullets on Attack Speed 20, I was firing a solid beam instead of firing a rapid stream of bullets. If they could study how attack speed influences rate of fire for Archers and Pirates, there might be hope in bringing it to the main game's system.
I am not sure if KMS players would ever get AS 10 or we drop to AS 8 to somewhat normalize us. If we lose Attack Speed, many classes would feel sluggish and we may need to redo abilities where Attack Speed is swapped for something else that may be useful. If KMS adapted Attack Speed 10, they would have a similar confusion, but it would lead to buffs pretty much across the board and Korea's in house team would have a better understanding of it than leaving it to the overseas department.
