Orange Mushroom's Blog

The latest discussion on the topic of “Opinions about story content reorganization” has ended and the developers have shared their thoughts as well as summarized the thoughts of players who participated.

Hello. This is MapleStory.

We would like to express our gratitude to all the players who participated in the discussion on the topic of “opinions about story content reorganization” from October 7 ~ November 1.

As we checked all of the valuable opinions given by players on the discussion board, we realized that once again, MapleStory has many shortcomings when developing its story. It wasn’t enough to meet the expectations of our players, but we would like to thank you once again for your interest in the story and for giving us your opinions.

In the “opinions about story content reorganization” given, we have decided that the following three points are important, and we would like to share the development team’s thoughts on them. In addition, we will show the top 10 opinions of the topics and the comments about each opinion.

1) A feature to share the completion of story quests between characters in the same world.

In the process of growing multiple characters, we deeply sympathize with the negative experiences like the boredom of having to repeat the same story quests and the lack of a quest skip feature, and we think that this improvement is essential.

We will prepare a feature that lets you choose to skip quests for required story quests if you already have a character that completed them in the same world. In this winter update, we will start by adding this quest skip feature to boss pre-quests and Arcane River area quests, and the same feature will be applied to other quests later on.

2) A system to replay the story.

Many players have left their thoughts regarding the problem of insufficient accessibility to story content due to the structural limitation where it is not possible to view the story again for quests that have already been completed.

For the players who enjoy the story content, we would like to add a ‘story replay feature’ that lets you enjoy the story repeatedly. We expect that it will improve the accessibility to story content, such as being able to easily check reorganized stories through this feature.

In addition, we expect that the various narratives of MapleStory scattered around will be organized and listed naturally to help you understand the story better. It is difficult to apply the story replay feature immediately because there are many things that must be reviewed, but we will prepare to introduce it as fast as possible.

3) Improve the quality of existing and new stories.

There were also many requests from players for improvements in the story quality. We will add new stories and improve existing stories based on the opinions you gave us, such as enhancing the unique character concepts for each job, fixing setting errors, handling foreshadowed plot points that were not acted upon, fixing typos and grammatical errors, progressing the main story faster, and diversifying the types of cutscenes.

In addition, we will do our best to think about how MapleStory can provide better narrative experiences to our players.

<Top 10 Opinions>

Opinions About Story Content Reorganization

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It is boring to have to repeat the same quests every time you make a character.

A reorganization to share certain areas’ content map pre-quest clear conditions within the same world.

• Pros:
  • In a game that encourages you to make multiple characters, having to repeat the same stories inevitably adds to the boredom.
  • Add a feature to skip quests on other characters if you have completed them already.
• Cons:
  • This is more about convenience and doesn’t fit the topic which requests opinions on the story itself.

Suggestions for a new job for an archer based on constellations and the Star Force lore.

A new archer job story concept proposal.

• Pros:
  • This is a new and unique concept different from existing jobs that can grab customers’ interest.
• Cons:
  • It’s better to provide opinions on game convenience rather than new job concepts.

Problem for existing players that want to view the new/updated scripts / MapleStory’s story changes and reorganization plan (+ added improvement plan). (same topic)

Improve the area quests for each job, and add an environment where characters who have already completed the story can replay it.

• Pros:
  • Playing through the story is a main part of game content.
  • I hope that Dimensional Library can be used as an environment where you can replay the story.
  • It would be nice to see the stories from removed content again.
• Cons:
  • Rather than easing the overall story content, we need appropriate measures such as the methods to experience quests.
  • Forcing people to play through the story for rewards may have a negative impact.

Separation of the story connected through Kao / The necessity of a solid script that makes use of the character’s personality. (same topic)

The unique stories based on the character’s job concept needs to be improved.

• Pros:
  • It would be good to play through the story that matches your job concept, regardless of which job you’re playing.
  • To prevent too much separation, the story can be organized by each job group for various characters.
• Cons:
  • Increasing the amount of scripts without a skip feature may cause inconvenience.

I want an immersive story.

The immersion needs to be improved by fixing setting errors in the existing story, minimizing the loss of character concepts, and add better cutscenes and development.

• Pros:
  • I hope that the story can become the game’s main content.
  • I hope that the storytelling of NPCs that have still only been hinted at will be added.
• Cons:
  • We need to prioritize convenience improvements before the overall story structure.

Story cutscenes – please add standing illustrations.

To make story cutscenes more immersive, you need to add standing illustrations for jobs that don’t have them.

• Pros:
  • Adding illustrations to all jobs will improve story immersion.
  • It would be good if in story cutscenes, all scripts had illustrations other than the character.
• Cons:
  • –

Levelling design problems for story viewing limits and a reorganization plan.

Improvements to alleviate the story viewing level limit so that as many customers as possible can access the story.

• Pros:
  • This can create an environment where all customers can enjoy the story.
  • Alleviating the levels can let us enjoy newly released stories without any burdens.
• Cons:
  • There are many elements that would need to be reconfigured such as existing hunting grounds, bosses, and difficulty, so this requires a lot of consideration.

It’s good to leave some room in the lore but don’t add more.

Improvements are necessary since foreshadowing done through theme dungeons which has not been followed up in a long time means storytelling cannot be done smoothly.

• Pros:
  • I hope that closed content’s stories can be done again.
• Cons:
  • –

Thank you.