Maple Story Summed Up

So I know that the forum is rather dead at this point. I read a post on Reddit (it is six months old but still relevant) that was linked through another forum that I thought summed the game up beautifully and I figured I would share.

Eledyssil wrote:

You know, MapleStory suffered from the same thing over the years. The game's history seems to be split based on a major patch (Big Bang).

Prior to BB, the level experience curve was insane. The game officially released stateside in 2005. The max level was 200, and it took about 2 or 3 years for the first person to reach it. Most people felt accomplished just getting to 3rd job (level 70), and the more hardcore players got to 4th (level 120) and a bit beyond.

Anyway, because leveling was so tedious, most people found enjoyment in other aspects of the game. Hunting level-appropriate gear, customizing their avatar, socializing, and playing in parties - either grinding or party quests. The game was built from the start with this in mind and there is a TON of lower level content. Equipment, areas, quests all focused on the average player who was most likely below level 100. There were also jump quests which were popular in the early days for money and highlighted a unique aspect of MS, its platforming.

And that was nice. It was the golden years of the game I think, because nobody focused on getting to the end. There was no point - it took forever and there was nothing worth doing at max level anyway.

Then came the Big Bang patch. It was a huge overhaul of various mechanics as well as the game UI. The major change was the experience curve. It was no longer hard to level.

(Granted, there were some patches and items leading up to BB that started making leveling easier, but that patch is mostly responsible for the change)

All of the sudden, the years of content meant for lower levels was now worthless. As it stands today, you can get past level 100 with a few hours of work. Maybe a day or 2 at most if you're kind of lazy.

The problem comes from the fact that there's nothing to do at higher levels. They never focused on it much. There's very little armor you can wear. There are no party quests worth doing. Only a dozen maps are worth ever visiting and grinding in (the game has hundreds of areas)

The only thing that you can do now is level and fight some of the late game bosses.

You can't really socialize anymore. Gear is worthless because your last armor set is at 120, which is piss easy to achieve. Quests are shit experience compared to some of the ezmode grinding spots they spoon feed you. You can get to max level and miss 99% of the content this game used to offer.

The developers don't care. The game has suffered from severe feature creep and now only caters to the most ADD of players. Every patch is a new character release (which is a clone of an existing character and takes less than a week to get max level). Either that, or it's a "balance" patch for the rest of the characters, which is really just buff after buff after buff. Damage is insane now. DPS in this game is measured by the hundreds-of-thousands to the millions.

They continue to obsolete old areas, classes, armors, bosses, everything. They stopped focusing on party quests and I don't think they've released a new jump quest in like 5 years.

They either add new classes or bosses, and some shitty area that's never worth exploring. The bosses, without fail, are first released being literally impossible for entire raids to kill, and then nerfed to the point where you can casually solo it.

They've gotten ridiculously lazy with their events, too. It's a complete joke. Every time they have a major patch, they have the exact same event down to a T:

You collect <name of patch> coins in exchange for <name of patch> armor pieces. Occasionally, Maple Leaves are involved as an etc. drop item. That's it. That's every event they've had for the last 3+ years.

I quit playing a long time ago. I still follow its progress a bit because it took up so many years of my life. But the game no longer has any redeeming qualities.

^^ That pretty much sums it all up. I Remember my first 120+ char, took me 6 months of solid grinding for 12+ hours a day. When I finally hit 120, it was basically a guild event, everyone doing what they could to help me get the items for job advancement, people taking SS's and throwing out smegas. Good times.

Then BB hit and true to my word, I quit maple, because they basically made the game EZ mode, which isn't the kind of game I want to play. I did come back for Demon Slayer release, because it was a class that had been teasing since well before BB, and in about a week and a half, I was already over 120. I still remember doing CWKPQ with guild and auto-pilot tanking the 3 bosses on bottom (no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't kill me, and I wasn't even using pots) and getting yelled at by Rana because I was literally watching anime while facetanking the bosses, therefore unable to see what was being said in chat and knowing that they needed me to stop so they could separate Red Nirg. Soon after that, I quit again, because the game still had no challenging aspects.

A while after that, Kaiser came out, and sure enough, within 3 days, I was already into the 140's. On the 6th day after Kaiser release, I was basically a sed mule slash secondary dps for Moses on a HT duo (took 3 tries, sed into tail right off the bat destroyed me the first time, the second time it was a dispel 1/1 sed into tail). I was only back for about 3 weeks this time around, and about 2 days before I quit again (this time for good) I solo'd HT on my Kaiser with only 27k range, using gear with next to no potential (I think i had a total of like 10 attack and 12% str for pots), and still had to wait 10 minutes for the timer to drop low enough that HT would actually drop stuff.

Nexon should step back, re-evaluate the game, and fix everything that's broken in it (I know this is wishful thinking, but it might possibly save the game), stop being so damn greedy, and start listening to their players.