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Fuhreak wrote: »

MapleStory does have bi-weekly maintenance as well as tons of unscheduled maint every time a major issue comes up.
I've seen much worse games that do monthly maint and don't care to fix bugs. If you've only played games like you describe, you really haven't played that many games.

Yes, admittedly I've not played very many, but I think there is a certain standard that should be kept. It doesn't make it ok to commit crimes just because other people are doing the same, likewise, it doesn't make it ok to leave the game in this mess because other companies are as well. What Maplestory is doing right now are minor bug fixes/updates- that's fine and all, but what the game really needs is a massive revamp.

A game with better programming is the worst example you can give. A better example is a game like Ragnarok Online. It has similar scope, a similar outdated engine and similar need for attention. The difference is that MapleStory is easily cared for, while RO rots and drastically needs more maintenance.

No, I'd argue that a game with better programming is the best example. It's literally the ideal, what you want or need the game to be on par with. There's hardly any point in comparing games that are both failing in the software department if you want changes. It makes much more sense to point out the level of optimization you want the game to be. Additionally, League of Legends had a massive client update a while ago- I think they rewrote the whole, or the majority, or important elements of the client's software (not entirely sure either). The end result was them dumping the old client and releasing an entirely new client. It wasn't perfect at first, but Riot (the company) had been working on it for some time trying to iron out bugs and issues before it hit live servers- and even after, the community and developers worked together to get the major issues fixed on and after its release.

Low graphics certainly does need to be changed. The problem is that the render layers are a huge sink in resources. You have hundreds if not thousands of layers all rendering on top of each other 30-60 times per second.
Rather than lower the resolution of background/character elements, the slider should just remove them entirely. This would improve render time.
Transparency sliders do work. I can barely get 20 FPS while in the legion map if my "others" slider isn't turned all the way down. With it turned all the way down, I get my normal 60 FPS.

How odd. It does absolutely nothing for me, I've tried many, many times (mostly because I kept getting constant frame stutters).

Pets still keep their main function. They still pick up items that players want to keep. Their usefulness gets more limited beyond 5th job, where there are no etc drops, but they'd still be plenty useful. This would also remove tens of thousands of mesos bags that are being constantly tracked by servers.
I would go one step further than this and have quest items automatically be cleaned up if the player doesn't have that quest.
If you kill a bunch of a mob that drop a quest item, then go back into that map after accepting a quest, you'll notice new drops for that quest.
This means that every mob you kill is dropping secret invisible quest items. Bogging down the server quiet a bit I'd imagine.

I didn't mean function as an ability but rather as an appeal or characteristic. Most people want pets for their ability to pick up items, it's highly convenient.

The developers of MapleStory probably had no clue that their casual little game would ever become this large.

No clue at first, I can give them that. If they still have no clue 10+ years later...

Even if they have the money to look into it, they might run into issues that force them to abandon that goal of optimizing something.

If they did want their game to work, they'd do their best to work through said issues. It's not just time or money that goes into optimizing software, a large part of it is dedication to fixing issues that you run into. No code is likely to be perfect on the first try, you've got to keep going until you find a solution.

This just wastes time and money. It's more efficient to have coders read/learn/understand how code works on a long term scale and fix a bug or two as they notice them. If you rewrite the entire core of the game all at once, you might end up with a broken game for several months or an entire year, if not longer.

That's what the beta servers are for. I think Maplestory has an equivalent to League of Legends' PBE (Public Beta Environment) server, I believe it's called PTE but I could be wrong.

MapleStory is an old game. There are lots of bugs to fix and optimizations to be made. I can't speak for their code in particular, but I've seen source code for other MMOs. They are a clusterfuck of nightmarish code that has been slapped together in the worst way possible. I don't think you understand the scope of what you're asking for.

I'm entirely aware of what I'm asking for. Even a person with no programming experience would recognize that Maplestory is a massive file. There are thousands of items, images, animations, etc. that are in the game that all have to work together coherently. It's not something that will take a day or two to organize. Something like restructuring Maplestory into an actually efficient system will take quite a long time, but it's still something that can be done- something that's not being done right now because they simply don't want to (for various reasons). It just goes to show that the developers of Maplestory lack initiative on pretty much every major front.

Fuhreak wrote: »

If something wasn't designed in a way that it's going to be easy to go back in later and optimize things like you want, it's going to be a nightmare to fix.
Even for the original programmer, you're asking a lot. If they don't have the original programmer/programmers who made the core engine...
You're asking people to read/understand thousands of line of code before they can even really start changing anything because they might break something.
The game isn't optimized BECAUSE it's old as dirt. They most likely never expected to be going this long.

Yes, but it's like saying not to blame a procrastinator for having missing assignments just because he/she tried at the last moment to do an entire project in one night. I'm a person that doesn't play a huge variety of games, but one thing that I know was standard in every single one of them were weekly updates/maintenance breaks. They were constantly updating their game, not just with new features, characters, storylines, etc, but actual performance updates. They do this because they realize that they'll lose less and gain more players if they keep their game functioning properly- optimization was pretty much a must since a large portion of their playerbase won't or doesn't have a powerful operating system.

One example is League of Legends. That game uses 3D modeling and fancy animations, but it can still be run on pretty much every operating system, even the lower end units. It's quite the popular game, having a huge playerbase with many veterans who've been faithful players for over a decade- it's easy to see why. You don't need a particularly powerful computer to run the game at high graphic settings so you can still enjoy immersive gameplay without having to skimp out visually. However, recently, some things have started going south due to a recent patch. Players began complaining about incredible FPS or ping drop rates and it was clear to see that some people even took that opportunity to stop playing- me included.

That said, they HAVE tried to optimize it, slowly over time. The newer animation system cuts down on resources required for animation, for example.

It's clearly not working, some of their performance updates have actually been the reverse of helpful. There is absolutely no difference from low graphics to high graphics in terms of performance, aside from their obvious visual change. It's like low graphics are high graphic settings displaying low graphic visuals, in the end it's still high graphics. Transparency sliders do zilch. It's like making a poop splatter invisible, you may not see it but it's still there, still stinking the place up and slowing your performance down all the same.

One easier optimization that they could make to help both players and their servers is have meso bags automatically pickup.
This would mean players would never miss another meso bag, reduce the need for pets (which would still be nice to use) and reduce a stupid amount of items that the servers have to track.

I do like the idea of reducing the amount of entities the system has to keep track of but that would mean that pets would lose their main functionality. I don't know if they would ever do that but it may be possible since they already give out the sheep pet for free.

but it's hard to respect a game if the game creators themselves don't respect it either.

Surely you're joking with this. Just because a game is buggy/laggy doesn't mean the creators don't respect it.

Oh, I'm not joking at all. Maplestory displays a blatant level of uncare in comparison to other games I've played. The maintenance and optimization of a game is basic stuff, it's not even hard to see why such a procedure is necessary. Maybe I'm just assuming things, maybe the developers really do care, but it still stands that the state of the game and their lack of action indicates otherwise. The thing in business is that even if you do care about something, if your actions/product don't reflect that, customers will think of what you produce as how you feel and it will be entirely your fault as that is the image you are projecting. Well, even without the whole "company's reputation" on the line, if you honestly cared for something, would you let it break down and deteriorate as much as this game has? If you really wanted the game to work properly, even if you didn't have the skills to make it function, you'd still do what you could to get someone else who could do it in your stead.

TwilightHime wrote: »

Performance is generally one of those things that deteriorate with age and scale.

Performance deteriorating with age is understandable- if it was a hardware problem. However, the thing is that 100% of Maplestory's performance issue lies in its software. These are things that they can literally fix right now, either by doing it manually themselves or, if they are so incompetent, by hiring capable programmers to do it for them. As this problem has continued to stay in Maplestory for years, as far back as I can remember, I'm assuming they are leaving it be largely due to laziness and/or unwillingness to spend money in fixing their product. I'm trying really hard not to blow up and rant (I literally just died again because I couldn't do anything but watch myself get killed), but it's hard to respect a game if the game creators themselves don't respect it either.

I just wanted to put that question out there. Optimization is key in any good game, even someone who doesn't understand a thing about technology or programming would agree that fast + efficient = good. Yet, I'm not seeing a single thing about Maplestory done right in terms of performance. I just don't get it, do the developers even care? I don't have the greatest PC system, but it IS capable of running 3D games perfectly fine.

In case you didn't realize (sarcasm), Maplestory is a 2D game. Not a single bit of 3D modeling involved in the gameplay. It's completely flat. You can pretty much make an exact copy of Maplestory on C#. It'll be a large file, but I'm pretty sure it's completely doable. I just find it completely ridiculous that this game has hardly changed in the performance department for how old it is. They should be releasing patches every week, at the least, in order to ensure optimal performance. They might do some bug fixes, or release new characters, or make new maps- but honestly, as a player, I WANT OPTIMIZATION. I would rather they do that than anything else.

It's incredibly frustrating when you buy a new keyboard because you thought that your old one had broken when some of your key presses weren't registering at a very frequent rate- only to realize that it's just because of garbage programming. There is nothing more frustrating than dying to mobs 10+ levels below you just because your character wasn't responding for however many seconds it took for you to run out of potions and then watch your health bar slowly chip away until it hits 0. By "you" I mean "me."

I entirely believe that Maplestory is a decent game (performance aside) because it's quite unique. I think that if Maplestory started small advertisements on Youtube or some sort of social media platform, they'd easily rake in a few thousand new players. BUT. If that's every going to happen, they've first got to fix their bloody code. No new player is going to want to play a wreck of a game like this. Why would they? There's tons of other games out there that have the latest and greatest in terms of tech and software. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Maplestory needs 4k graphics- in fact, I'd rather they kept it the way it looks now. It's a part of Maplestory's appeal and I like it. BUTT. They need to optimize, like seriously optimize. Right now, the game rolls just about as smoothly as a cube downhill. It's terrible. Please, for the love of God and ice cream, fix the game.

Can't you go to one of those star maps (i.e. Leafre), don't they give SP? Or do I have this wrong, I'm fairly new to this- I've come back to MapleStory after maybe 9+ years. Not completely back in the loop yet.