The MapleStory Customer Conference finally took place yesterday in Seoul! It was an 8 hour event where 4 members of the MapleStory team discussed various parts of MapleStory with 10 invited players. Although I didn’t watch it all live (since it was 1AM~9AM my time lol), I was surprised at how candid they were about some issues and they actually did promise a lot. Some of the players did not let up either which was pretty funny. Obviously, I will not be translating the entire 8 hours from start to finish, but they actually provide background information and reasoning for some of their questions which was interesting. I think there are some users on the MapleStory subreddit who did more thorough translations if you guys are interested in that. Mine’s going to be a sort of SparkNotes version of the conference! Of course, I could have missed certain information or misinterpreted it as this was a long event with a loooooot of talking, so please let me know if you see any mistakes. Here is the full conference, uploaded by Nexon. The conference was divided into 4 sections with breaks in between, and each section focused on different topics. In addition, near the beginning, they said that they are going to form a customer advisory group with the invited representatives and they are planning to hold an event like this at least once per year. 01. Probability Type Items Rebirth Flames The management team predicted a 50% drop in value of additional options. The additional compensation later on further lowered item values. They are thinking about a Flame Toad system which would allow you to transfer flames from one item to another. They thought about increasing everyones’ flames by one tier but they decided not to as it would create a bigger disparity between new and existing users. Their intention was to gradually give out more flames but the compensation released a lot of them all at once. Starting from April, they are trying to give out more. Since currently, the only real way to get flames is through events and Union Coin Shop, they are thinking of ways to increase the supply of tradeable flames (making them easier to acquire and craft). This should take place in June~July. They will also make them drops from regular hunting maps and from bosses, with more from higher level areas. The Union Coin Shop will be changed in April. Ability They will release Ability rates soon. They are much more complicated than Cubes (which were also prepared in a hurry) so it is taking more time. The Ability system will be reorganized to make it easier to get desired Abilities. They are planning to release more Chaos Circulators in the future, through events and regular content (after the Ability difficulty is decreased). Cubes/Other Probability Type Items They will release the rates for non-Cash cubes such as Craftsman Cubes and Meister Cubes. The schedule for release will be: Ability rates, Red/Black Cube rates for low level gear, then Craftsman/Meister Cubes. Now that the rates have been revealed, they are open to improving on things such as removing lines like +skill levels and 20% boss damage. They do not intend to release every single rate in the game, they are prioritizing paid items. For Seed Rings, they will begin talks on reorganizing The Seed first before they release any rates. The Soul Fragment rates will be released with the next 5x Magnificent Soul event. Monster Life rates will be released after Monster Life content is adjusted. They are thinking about making probability type items’ rates more visible in-game rather than making players check the homepage. They are thinking about a ceiling (pity) system to help reduce the situations where players are extremely unlucky in things like tiering up potential and rolling hair. They confirmed that MapleStory does not manipulate rates. They are able to completely block item drops but they cannot change their rates on the fly. The Real Time Monitoring System is scheduled to be released in September with probability type items, Star Force, scrolls, and Cubes. 0.2 Provision of Services Reinvestment Problems The MapleStory development team consists of 180 people. A user asked what they think the content that users spend the most time on is and they answered ‘hunting’. The user replied that it was only half right, it’s actually ‘watching YouTube/Netflix/dramas while hunting’. They are planning to make it more fun to gain experience and add more ways to get experience without hunting. They talked about the lack of quality of the stories in-game and how they will try to improve on it in the future. A user asked why events have been held on the same schedule every year instead of adding new, creative events. They replied that they try to gradually change events to match the current situations but they realize the experience is overall the same so they will take this into consideration. They will be changing Will’s phase 1 room to help colourblind users. They have also heard concerns about the text size for users with lower levels of vision. They will be more open to users with colourblindness or hearing impairments. Communication Problems The MapleStory service team consists of 60 people. They will try to improve their customer support process. Roadmap (Discussion Board/Conference) The discussion board reorganization is in progress and is targeted to be released by June. When they began testing the 64 bit client, there wasn’t a sufficient explanation for what kind of changes customers will see. A thorough explanation will be given before it is released to the official servers. Internally, they are continuing to test and while they were planning to release it within the first half of the year, it might have to be pushed back until September due to issues that have come up. The server-side is already 64 bit. The 64 bit client will increase the amount of available memory and the speed of loading data from hard drives and SSDs. This will improve areas such as lag when opening various UIs or disconnecting if many users use skills at the same time. Server lag is not related to the 64 bit client. Information Imbalance They are planning to fix ambiguous terms in-game such as ‘special scrolls’ mentioned in the scroll Guild Skills, which refer to Clean Slate Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls. They will clarify if percentages are applied additively or multiplicatively. They will fix ambiguous skill descriptions such as Mikhail’s Claiomh Solais/Aura Weapon/Final Attack. The Seed and Monster Life Content Neglect They agreed that The Seed is definitely content which was neglected due to the lack of player base that used it. They are planning to improve it and reveal the Seed Ring rates after adjusting them. They are prearing a Seed Ring hotkey. They agreed that Monster Life was also neglected. They will improve it in the future. Monster Life Gems’ costs will be decreased in accordance to their value in event coin shops. The Monster Life Mobile app was removed due to low player base. They are considering brining it back if players are interested. 03. Development Team’s Concerns Job Balancing and Patch Frequency Improvements They believe certain job aspects should be kept but they are open to standardizing things like speed. They are planning to change some active buff skills to passive skills. There are concerns about balancing damage, but there are differences based on number of hits and attack speed, so this will be fixed by balancing more often. They agree that there can be a large difference in classes’ solo abilities which is apparent in the Black Mage’s liberation quests. They are trying to adjust this and improve the balancing of boss fights. Balance of hunting will also take place. They will change Demon/Mikhail/Zero’s items to be tradeable like other classes. They had a policy to do job balancing every 3 to 4 months, but last year, it was longer in between patches. They kept the balance patch schedule like this to avoid changing skills too often and have the ability to change all classes at the same time. In the future, they will perform balance patches more often and will be open to changing specific individual jobs if needed so that users do not have to wait. The issue of certain jobs using different stats (Xenon’s all stats and Demon Avenger’s HP) is something they have thought about. It is not easy to fix and they will try to continuously balance this through test patches. They agree that the internal team does not have thorough knowledge of all classes and their balancing might not be well received by players as the in-game experiences can be different. They will try to fix this with longer test periods. There are class specialists with a lot of knowledge about their class, but usually their requests are not made with the balance of other classes in mind. If they listened to everyone and gave what they wanted, then all classes would be the same. They do not target nerfs based on users clearing content (like the players that soloed Black Mage and their classes got nerfed in the next patch). These changes were based on collected data that stated those classes were too strong. While they tried to fix errors for classes based on their intention, sometimes this could be taken as nerfs. Now, if users are more used to the unintentional usages, they will keep them as-is rather than fixing them. Growth – New Users’ Barrier to Entry and Union System – Add Ways to Acquire Experience other than Hunting – Discrimination of High Level Areas The Union system was intended to grow the account, not the character. They hoped that users who were already high level would be able to achieve more growth by levelling up their other characters. They will take into consideration suggestions from a user such as adding Mega Burning Boosters to the Union Coin Shop, adding rank up boxes when ranking up Union, and changing Mastery Books to be tradeable in the same world. They have been lowering the difficulty of Union by adding Burning events, lowering experience required, increasing experience given, and will continue to do so in the future. They are trying to improve the issue where there is a large difference between Union effects but it is a bit difficult since the class distribution itself is not balanced. They know that users are using outside sources to optimize their Union board so they would like to improve the in-game experience. They are not planning to increase the number of Link Skill slots but they will be increasing the number of times you can change the characters they are linked to by June. They will be increasing experience from daily quests and Monster Park. For bosses and party quests, the Power Crystals and items they give are a part of the reward so they need to be more careful when adjusting them. They said it is difficult for them to adjust various items’ durations and stacking when hunting since they are all different in the internal data. They will make Wealth Acquisition Potions and Experience Coupons be saved after disconnecting. They will try to add more information and support for new and returning players so they can get more knowledge from in-game rather than having to use external sources. A user asked why users level 250-259 were left out when they lowered the required experience to level up and added Cernium. They replied that there is no excuse and they will adjust the experience so that there is no level range that is neglected. They will try to adjust their map design and monster spawn rate so that there is a smaller difference between classes when hunting. They will try to create new content to increase quantity and diversity. They know that Authentic Force takes a long time to max out and they are planning to gradually increase the supply of Authentic Symbols going forward. But they are not going to reduce the speed at which it can be maxed for the near future. Authentic Symbols will be a reward from the 18th anniversary event. They are planning to increase number of Arcane Symbols per day from Morass and Esfera. They are taking into consideration that higher level areas lose unique drops from lower level areas such as droplets. They plan to increase supply of Flames from higher level areas and other items as well. They are considering removing the meso penalty for high level players. Star Force and Meso Inflation They did not initially think about a ceiling (pity) system for Star Force because there are various events to help users with Star Force. They are planning to lower time required to Star Force and scroll items due to the animations in April. Items that were high level and very effective when Miraculous Equipment Enhancement Scrolls were used on them will not be re-released (such as the Liquid Metal Heart). There are about 269k Miraculous Equipment Enhancement Scrolls left in-game and about 1k are used per month. They began making more scrolls into Karma Scrolls to discourage selling scroll services. They will continue with this but also decrease costs so players can acquire more scrolls. Guild Reorganization They are not planning to nerf the critical damage guild skill. They are thinking of ways to increase merit for being a guild member such as a guild shop and other content. They might rework the contribution system. They will try to improve the Guild UI. They are thinking about changing the Sharenian Underground Culvert since it is a big hurdle to get everyone in the guild to participate at a single time. They might make it into a system where everyone can do it at their own times. The times for Flag Race were set at the times where most people played when the content was added. After 6 or 7 years, they thought that it would be a problem if they suddenly changed the times. They know there are issues with getting Noblesse SP and they are considering plans to adjust this so that more guilds can acquire them. They will proceed with urgent changes such as convenience of the UI before June and work on reorganizing guild content after that. They will consider creating other ways to get SP. They will improve and reorganize guild contribution, and allow the highest level guilds to acquire contribution. They are also considering adding content such as Guild House. 04. Users’ Voices Reboot They said Reboot was planned to be a self-sufficient server with no trading when it was created 6 years ago. A lot of time has passed since then and it needs changes which users have mentioned. Apart from the Seed reorganization, they will have a Reboot reorganization for things like Seed Rings. Like Seed Rings, Droplets were a system that was created with the premise of being able to trade them so it will also be improved. The two types of Droplets will be unified into one. They agree that the difference in luck for boss rewards makes users feel bad. They are planning to address this with a boss reward reorganization since it is not a Reboot-only world issue (although it is more prominent there). They will review things such as boss rewards not being instanced when running in a party since they cannot be traded after looting. The characteristics of Reboot World don’t match MapleStory’s business model. Items such as the Full Moon Ticket will be sold separately in the next event. For Wonderberry, it is directly connected to the release of vac pets. They are looking to see how they can release it without probability. They might have the initial price be cheaper than regular worlds but with a higher maintenance cost. They will test it a lot and proceed after they get more feedback. The meso/experience penalty per level in Reboot is much worse than in regular worlds. This is because when Reboot was first released, the penalty was meant to encourage grinding at monsters of the same level. This does not fit the current trend so they have room to fix it. They are considering changing Reboot World’s passive damage % to final damage %. Reboot’s boss crystal prices were reduced from 5x to 3x because Reboot was getting too much mesos. They tried to adjust it with Power Crystals but they will change it to be equal in the future. They need to review the fact that Reboot players must prepare for weeks before they can enter Black Mage whereas in regular servers, you can buy the materials required. They need to think whether or not this conflicts with the ‘Reboot experience’. Boss Rewards They agree that current boss rewards don’t have much difference between difficult bosses such as 6 member Black Mage vs solo Chaos Vellum. The main problem is that boss rewards are too focused on the Power Crystal price. They will try to improve this by introducing other meaningful rewards rather than just increasing the prices of the crystal. However, this might require a readjustment of crystal prices. They agree that Black Mage should drop Arcane items but this is also included in the idea of introducing other rewards. They intended for the boss Power Crystal prices to change flexibly but it was not possible so they kept the initial prices that were set. The Neo Core event was a sort of test for boss rewards. They are going to consider adjusting crystal prices and adding rewards but it is still quite difficult to match the gap between boss difficulty and rewards. They might need to add a minimum contribution system like in Urus to prevent carries. Level/Boss/Special Content They have been trying to add new content but they were not well received at times when tested through short term content and events such as Immortal Gorgons or Union Arena. They agree that they need to add new ways to get experience. In terms of party quests, the only party play in current MapleStory is boss content so there might be confusion if they suddenly add non-boss content with good experience rewards that requires parties. This requires more consideration. They are not planning to remake old content but create new theme dungeons instead. When Seren was released, Black Mage could be soloed so Seren should be clearable even before hitting 200 Authentic Force. They are thinking about adding new bosses/difficulties such as Easy Mode by September to help decrease the gaps between bosses. They will change Easy and Normal Lucid’s Nightmare Golems to have normal HP instead of requiring a certain number of hits to be defeated. Dusk has no Soul because of its strange shape. Black Mage is similar to a god in the story so it would be difficult to add. Seren is the incarnation of an ancient god so it did not make sense to hold it in the form of a Soul. Overseas versions have Horntail Souls but they look weird so they did not add them. If their designs are changed, they might be added. They will gradually change patterns which require party members such as Lucid’s bomb and Will’s phase 1 eye so that they can be soloed in things like the liberation quests, after adjusting their difficulties. The Will phase 3 poison pattern’s final damage boost was decreased because the damage was too high after the max damage cap was removed. They are open to making the liberation quest easier if required in the future. They will be increasing the limit of 5 Practice Modes per day. They are not planning to add any overseas content but they are open to it such as Maple Adventures and My Home. They might adjust these systems and import them. Management’s Stance on Proxy Gameplay Clear guidelines on proxy gameplay will be released by May. Cosmetic Items They are going to hold a cosmetic contest this year. There are no plans to re-release old Special Labels and Master Labels. They are not considering making pets/androids invisible but they will make them appear behind the character’s layer. Double gachapon systems like Master Label and vac pets will be changed only if it becomes a problem. They know that overseas services have different systems for saving hair/eyes. They said that localization is very important and other services can become entirely different games. They will immediately remove the selling of Beauty Room Slots in April to remove double charging and provide 3 Mannequins for free. Making all Cash Wardrobe shared would be a heavy burden on the server, but they will have the Cash Move events more frequently. They will try to have them once per month, for example a week after every patch. Ultimately, they are planning to unify all Cash Wardrobes. Source: Orange Mushroom's Blog