Today a few different Korean news sites released interviews with MapleStory’s director Kang Won-ki and the planning team director Kim Chang-seop, where they talked about the direction the winter update will be taking and what things we can expect. They also confirmed that the Winter update will take place at the end of December, and they are currently working on the Winter update showcase. This includes the now titled Adventurer Remaster, where all the Adventurer classes will be updated with new skill effects and improvements to their skill mechanics. Only three jobs have been previewed (Dark Knight, Marksman, Captain) but I’m not sure if they will wait to show off the other jobs until the showcase comes out. Since the articles are all longer form Q&A style, I’ll summarize the content myself to make it easier, but I’ll link them below in case you would like to read them yourself. Gameple article Inven article GameFocus article Changes Since April (Customer Coneference) They received about 370 points of improvement from the customer conference and written inquiries, and more than 200 of those have been updated in the game so far. Around 60% of the issues have been worked on, but there are still some things that cannot be solved with a simple fix, so work continues on the remaining points. They are planning to resolve all of the things they mentioned in the last user conference within the first half of next year. In the past, the development team focused on updates that had a big effect on the short term, but now they are more focused on improvements that will continue to have long-term effects. This includes things like community-related improvements which are harder to see the benefits right away such as the guild reorganization, party play, and the buddy system. It was an opportunity to improve content that was ignored for a while, such as Monster Life and the Seed, rather than focusing only on new jobs and content. The development team now includes developer notes in update notices which lets them explain things that may be misunderstood or require additional explanation. This has changed how they think during the development stage on how to deliver information to users in notices. They haven’t confirmed anything yet but they are discussing events where players can meet the management team. Adventurer Remaster The Adventurers went through a major overhaul in the 2013 RED update and have not been changed since them. We are preparing a large improvement under the name of “Adventurer Remaster”. True to this name, we will be updating the overall skill effects, improving skill structure, and damage cycles while maintaining the current play experience and individuality rather than being a major remake. The most important point is to preserve the ‘core values’ of each job since there are many users that are already enjoying their Adventurers. The skill effects will be updated to a level similar to the most recently released jobs (Lara, Kain, Adele). All 15 adventurer jobs will have their own unique character, which includes their updated animations and separate character illustrations. Structural improvements for jobs that can’t battle efficiently will be considered. For example, Marksman’s mechanic of fighting while keeping a certain distance from monsters was stressful. We plan to improve structural problems like this in the Adventurer remaster. They are planning to make more active skills into passives, and making buffs that are included in attacking skills into permanent buffs. The mobility of Adventurer magicians will be improved overall, and other magicians’ mobility will be improved as well (in response to a question about Adventurer magicians’ Teleport skill being different than other jobs). For Bishops, their function of being a support character is clear but their function of dealing damage is lacking. They believe this structural problem can be solved by changing logic related to the ‘Vengeance of Angels’ skill, and we will be able to see more details in the showcase. For Dark Knight, there are many structural problems that need to be improved, so we can expect improvements to things like Gungnir Descent, Sacrifice, and Beholder. Changing the images of Cash weapons for two-handed weapons (such as Dark Knight) would require a significant amount of work. Even within the development team, there are discussions about if it is better to maintain the identity of two-handed weapons or to make characters more visible. They are not considering adding a bind skill for every job as this would remove their unique characteristics (in response to Hero not having a bind). If every job was given the same bind, same iframe, and same range, it would hurt their individuality. However, if users really do need something like this, it would be done using common skills rather than specific skills for each job. Having to enhance both weapons is defined by the development team as a unique characteristic of Dual Blade, a class that uses two blades (in response to a question asking if there will be improvements to Dual Blades having to enhance two items compared to other classes). There will be changes to movement skills in this update (in response to a question asking about the 4 different jump methods in MapleStory). While preparing for the Adventurer remaster, they were not able to have any balance patches in the second half of the year. They are planning to include a balance patch for all jobs together with the Adventurer remaster in this Winter update. (in reponse to a question about improving other classes such as Cygnus Knights) ▲ New Dark Knight character illustration, Gungnir Descent & Dark Impale remasters. ▲ New Marksman character illustration, Piercing & Sniping remasters. ▲ New Captain character illustration, skill remasters. Story Content Renewal As mentioned in the roadmap released in the summer, the main direction is to revise the existing story. This includes things like correcting dialogue, improving the direction, changing certain parts such as the existing settings, adding cutscenes, voices, and illustrations. It is not a complete reorganization but it can be seen as a task to improve the framework and remove any setting errors. They are planning to add things like new cinematic videos. The story replay feature will be added in the first half of next year. The story skip feature will be explained in more detail in the Winter update showcase, which will be held later on. Older areas such as Tera Forest and Florina Beach are not high in priority currently. Boss Content Diversification The overall difficulty variation and adjustments of boss content will take place in this Winter update, including the addition of Easy Will, Normal Jin Hilla, and Normal Seren. In terms of actual difficulty, the newly added modes will be similar to existing bosses, where their health is lower, damage is adjusted, and the ways to deal with their gimmicks are slightly changed. The rewards will follow the recent boss monster reward reorganization, which added tradeable rewards based on the difficulty of each boss. There are no plans to add new bosses to fill in any other level gaps like how Guardian Angel Slime was intended. The three new boss difficulties being added will be enough to fill in any remaining gaps. There are no plans to add experience rewards to bosses. MapleStory’s bosses are weekly content, and they have decided that it is necessary to provide tradeable items and crystals rather than experience. While they are trying to design bosses to have different patterns that require different attacking methods, they do realize that most bosses have a bind and burst method. If jobs with 180 second cooldown bursts are the most advantageous and users find it the most fun, they are willing to adjust the balance for each job according to that direction. They were surprised that Chosen Seren was defeated about 2 weeks earlier than they expected. Players had raised their levels and item specs higher than they thought and defeated Seren with 10 less Authentic Force than it was designed for. Recent events providing Authentic Symbols also had an effect on this. They will be adding a Black Mage practice mode. Character Growth and Content Usage Experience Improvements They are planning to recommend optimal paths for growth through things like the Maple Guide reorganization. In addition, the “Spring Spring Project” convenience improvements will continue to take place. The Winter update will have similar events to Maple LIVE’s Maple Variety which provided a lot of experience. Of course, there will be Burning World and Tera Burning, but also many new types of events that haven’t been seen before. Coin shops have been developed into a form which continuously improve with each update, removing unnecessary things while adding necessary things. This Winter update will be similar to Maple LIVE’s coin capping which provided a variety of different ways to get coins as players wanted, and will also have a variety of unique content. There are no plans to adjust the damage numbers because of the high damage inflation as they believe seeing the high damage you hit is one of the fun things about MapleStory. If such changes are necessary, they would instead have it be an option that users can choose to use rather than forcibly reducing damage numbers. The Intense Power Crystal price change system is working as intended to combat meso inflation. They plan to continue to monitor the flow of mesos and see if any additional measures are needed. They are planning to improve level ranges where users feel difficulty in growth, such as level 170 and even after level 200. This is not only necessary for Union characters but also for new and returning users. The Maple Guide will be updated to recommend appropriate hunting grounds and quests based on the latest information. It will also include things like how long the quests will take, the experience rewards, and the number of monsters required. In addition, similar to Step-Up events, after the Winter update, continuous support will be provided through Guide Missions, which will give necessary items and rewards to new users. They do think they need to adjust levelling speed a little as the recently added updates included a focus on higher level areas which many users cannot enjoy. They are also trying to add theme dungeons to both high-level and mid-level areas, but will think about adding content in the future that can be enjoyed by players of various levels. Features such as key setting presets and equipment presets are being reviewed internally. They are still incomplete so there are no details yet, but they are planning to discuss overall convenience feature improvement plans in the future. There will be no content related to professions in this update. However, they will work on making profession rewards more valuable and try to introduce them next year. They are gradually increasing the supply of Black Rebirth Flames. They are working on lowering the hurdles of additional options slowly as doing it too fast would drop the value of existing items by a large amount. They are planning to continue to make improvements to the cubing process in the future. Currently, they have started distributing Unique Potential Scrolls more, and similarly, Legendary Potential Scrolls for untradeable equipment like in the last event. The 64-bit client is in a stable state, but even now, certain PCs with low specs experience lag so there is still optimization work being done. They are considering content optimized for 64-bit and expansions that can improve the client environment. Going Forward They have hired a lot of new staff, including many who enjoy MapleStory in-depth, such as having 8k Union or higher, clearing top-tier content, and doing a 2nd Genesis liberation. They are planning to hire more staff to double their current size. This Winter update will be much bigger than the Summer update. There are many things that will be added such as improving Adventurers, ading boss difficulties, and more, so please look forward to it at the end of December. They are also planning an update showcase to share with players soon. Source: Orange Mushroom's Blog