MapleStory 2 Feedback from Saint & Friends

This message seeks to introduce ideas that would improve quality of life and overall player satisfaction in MapleStory 2 without making the game too easy or without making the game experience too on-rails, leading players to quit sooner due to lack of progression.


PLEASE READ: I understand that not all of these ideas may be good ones, however I firmly do believe that some of them are. I do not expect a majority of these ideas to take off or be adopted by Nexon. I write this because, I am a decently popular streamer for the game, and I think it may be responsible if I have any influence at all to try to provide feedback for the bettering of the game.


Moreover these are ideas that were came up with over like half an hour, I'm sure there's much more that can be touched upon.


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PVE

    Treva farming was nerfed in GMS2. I don't know why, but generally speaking the rates on gemstone materials for overworld farming are terrible. The loot you get in other regions for Treva farming are way better. Here, you can spend hours upon hours farming for morsels of dust, only to fail and all of that time going to waste. Please return the chance of looting a T1 full gemstone from Treva boxes to make it more worth one's time.

    Create more variations of the Dark Descent belt and increase the amount of players that can obtain it. Instead of top 10, perhaps top 10% of competing players in the season, with the top 10 still retaining the best version of the belt.

    There used to be crates for clearing Dark Descent up to certain floors. Sometimes, when you opened these boxes, you would get a temporary (2-week) weaker version of the Dark Descent belt as well. Not sure why this was removed.


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SYSTEMS

    Socketing RNG can feel very demotivating for players. This game promotes systems that constantly allow players to progress towards improving their character, and socketing should be no different. A number of decisions could be made here that would improve this system, because even though people do not realize it now (since most players are socketing Absolute accessories), they will feel the pain once we get to legendary accessories and you only get a couple of duplicates every now and then. The cost of creating accessories should be less (because I know it's 2'000'000 in Korea to make one) or the amount of accessories that you should get to increase. Knowing the future (based on precedence), socketing accessories can be a daunting task considering the need to replace accessories when new content comes out.

    Offer a way to convert a gemstone from one type, into another. It is not recognizable by many, but due to weapon scaling, there exists a time where there is a shift in when one gemstone outpowers another, simply by changing your weapon alone. The concept of bonus attack and main stat is good, where one is more powerful than the other at low vs. high tier, however this concept is rendered moot with higher tier weaponry in other servers. It has to be consistent, or otherwise players need a way to make one gemstone into another through some process.

        Alternatively, create ONE singular "main stat" gemstone that gives the main stat based on your class. We have an enormous amount of wasted, useless dust currently. As we have no way to convert dust, I earnestly feel like this is one method to consolidate dust types

        KMS2 offers you the ability to convert 800 of one dust into 100 of another dust. It's a bit extreme in cost, but at least it's an option. Give players more options, not less.

    Toad's Toolkits are a great addition to the game that offer dungeon versatility without penalizing players for doing a different dungeon than what they need to progress. I think the rate is a little too good right now, with it being 2 dungeons per kit in addition to whatever drops we're getting, but it'd be nice to see this stay as a permanent addition to the game instead of just an event. Maybe make it 3 for 1 instead, as right now people can seemingly achieve +15 in just one week. But Toad's Toolkit is a welcome catch-up mechanic that should stay for good.

    That being said, upgrading a weapon that is unbound using these kits should bind them to your character. It actually is nonsensical that someone can make a bunch of alts, and use the Toad's Toolkits on something like a Varrekant's Longsword repeatedly across multiple characters to hit +15 extremely fast. Seems like overlooking.

    Implement the Dungeon Expert system in a meaningful way to discourage run selling and encourage players to help others without gouging them for meso. The idea of the Dungeon Expert system is players will be encouraged to help out others without seeking incentive, as they'll naturally gain one through these tokens.

        Doing dungeon runs with a Dungeon Rookie in the party (cleared the instance less than 10 times) will enable the full effect of Fair Fight as we have it now. In return, clearing the instance will award you a token for each rookie in the party, which could be spent in Queenstown for useful materials for player progression. The amount you can loot would be limited per day.

        Qualifications for Dungeon Rookie/Expert would be account-bound, meaning you could not abuse alts for this.

        In Hard Adventure Dungeons and lower, if all members of a party are considered Dungeon Experts (cleared the instance at least 10 times) then the effects of Fair Fight would be diminished.

            1 Player Expert - 60% Fair Fight Reduction

            2 Player Expert - 40% Fair Fight Reduction

            3 Player Expert - 35% Fair Fight Reduction

            4 Player Expert - 30% Fair Fight Reduction

    Peachy needs a serious overhaul. She is a leftover busted system from the past. The cost of using Peachy becomes too extreme after +11. It goes from useable to completely not worth it. The cost needs to be downscaled tremendously. As it is right now, it takes literally 29 weeks of Crystal Ore (including the dungeon reset) in order to fulfill the Crystal Ore requirement to +12. In that time, you could probably succeed with Ophelia 5 times over if not more. That is just to +12 alone.

    Offer a chance to obtain a B4 Abandoned Mine dungeon key from the chest at the end of a B1 run. The reason for this is because literally nobody likes B1. Converting B1 to B4 doesn't work, because then literally no one would ever use their B1 keys.

    When failing a gemstone upgrade, the gemstone should gain experience towards the next tier. That way, people who are seriously unlucky, will eventually reach the next tier through failure. The current experience would be halved if you succeed to the next tier in a single attempt.

        The amount of experience would be less the higher you go up. For example, maybe 4 failures would guarantee +2 from +1, but you'd need maybe 20 to succeed +9 to +10. Needs more thought to develop this idea. It's a variation of failstacks, but for gemstone upgrades.


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PVP

    Earnest to god, I am a PVP player. The PVP gear is poorly designed. It is based off of weapon attack, but worse yet, it's based off of bonus attack on low coefficient blue weapons. This means, this gear has effectively made all 10 classes have the same exact weapon attack in PVP. This is not good - these classes and their skills were designed to have less or more attack than the others, and their skills and the % on their skills reflect this. Knights are meant to have lower weapon attack, and so they are compensated with higher % on their skills. But in this PVP, we all effectively have the same weapon attack, meaning that those with high % on their skills are benefiting the most, while others are straight up suffering.

        Going back to the old method of scaling off of PVP Damage was better, but I don't know the logistics of this.

    Assassins were only relevant in Korea because of the main-hand weapon glitch. Please don't forget that, and give them some quality of life. The same can be said about Thief. These classes could use an artificial boost to their weapon power to make them more competitive, as right now they are very high effort very low yield.

    Wizards were already considered high tier. Why were they given jumping Flame Wave, increased stagger duration on Arcane Blast, 50% buff on Ice Spear slow, and a stagger on Thunderbolt, all which never existed before.

    The same can be said for Priest, though Priest is not benefiting as much from PVP gear, so the effects of increased stagger on Angelic Ray and giving them a pseudo-Earthquake with Sanctuary are not as apparent. Please revert.

    Archer buffs are fine but I feel bad for those who don't know how to deal with stagger. It's a straight up counter match up for some classes like Thief and Priest.

    Hidden MMR is not a good system in MS2 PVP. Players should not be penalized for winning too often to the point where it becomes extremely high risk for them to play against another player, even those who have higher MMR than them. This current system encourages you to lose several times early on to exploit your hidden MMR, and making climbing to higher rating easier. You can forfeit 30 matches in a row, and you'll find that you're even able to gain a large amount of rating from players lower rating than you. It is fundamentally flawed. The blogpost mentioned that we would gain and lose a static amount of rating depending on what bracket you're in. This would have solved this problem, but it never really went through.

    Because in PVP players were given so much HP, classes that benefit from shielding effects or resistance effects benefit greatly from this. The increased HP does not reflect our increased damage, and because of that the general match duration is longer than it used to be. Classes that have % based overshields or resistance buffs benefit hugely from this. This includes Wizard, Soul Binder, Knight, and Rune Blade. Previously, players were not able to shield more than once in a fight, but currently they are able to since matches last longer than they ever have before. It's a huge advantage, especially given how the revenge mechanic works under 25% HP.


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QUALITY OF LIFE

    Life Skills. There's no reason to make it so that chances of gathering decrease as you gather something more throughout the day. It prolongs an otherwise mundane activity that no one actually "enjoys". Please streamline success chance to a static higher amount, or keep it consistent all the way through. Or, just make it 100% entirely. It's understood that the lowering of chance is to encourage purchase of auto-gathering badge. This should not be a reason though to trap players in a frustrating chore.

        Otherwise, make instant gathering vouchers a lot more accessible or farmable.

    In other regions, there are meso assistants in the game to craft things like beverages. They should not have been removed, considering how useful the consumables are. Locking them behind a paywall is pretty lame. In return, the merit-based ones should have more incentive. For example, crafting extra quantity. The point is, F2P don't have any way AT ALL to obtain useful healing item like High Flyers.

        Meso-to-Merit could have solved this, but as I understand it, Nexon America has already made the decision to cancel Meso-to-Merit altogether.

    UI management, allowing players to actually move elements of their interface where they want. Many modern MMOs allow players to actually customize. MS2 is one of the most limited modern games in this regard. Also, being able to lock in place things.

    It is incredibly difficult to switch mains in this game. People basically don't have an option to play anything other than their main character if they're heavily invested into a given one already. With many players not knowing that unbound gems exist, most have upgraded bound gemstones, and they are stuck with them. Re-rolling in MS2 puts you behind months of progress, as everything is bound to you. Whether it is pets, gemstones, accessories, or trophies, you have to start over from scratch. In KMS2, accessories are ALWAYS account bound, and I really respected the decision of being able to move my accessories between all of my characters with the gems within them. It made playing other characters a lot more feasible.

        Pets should be account bound. Asking that any player who wants to invest heavily into a good pet to be stuck with it on that one character is terrible. If at best, at least make a way to unbind it from the character, but keep it account bound. Even if at a cost.

        All gemstones should be account bound instead of character bound. It is nonsensical that specific gems are account while others are character bound, and due to the lack of teaching in this game by it's own systems, most players are unaware of the fact. The cost to remove a gemstone as it is, is already enough to penalize players for wanting to move gemstones across characters.

        I don't know why things like exploration and trophies are character bound. I feel like if someone achieves something, it should be one-and-done. Some of the trophies are completely unrealistic to obtain even for one character, let alone for people who actually want to play multiple characters.

    Weekly reset and maintenance day should not be on the same day. Players who are able to play within the timeframe of maintenance ending on a patch day and weekly reset almost always have a major advantage over those who cannot play until later in the day.

    Can we not trap players in mundane dungeon grinding. Instead of doing 60 dungeon runs with normal loot, can it please just go back to 30 with double loot in general. It would be a button you can use on a single character on a server that activates double loot for 30 runs for that character only.

        This button would also double the Weekly Dungeon Bonus boxes.

    Hidden stats shouldn't be a thing. Increasing stats like Luck and Dexterity, and the hidden Bonus Attack conversion on pets should reflect on one's stat page, so players know exactly what they're getting.