Orange Mushroom's Blog

Earlier today, General Director Wongki and Director Changseop started a MapleStory Live stream to talk to players about the plans to change MapleStory in the near future. This is in response to the extreme loss of trust from most players due to the findings from the Korean FTC regarding Nexon’s Cube-related probability changes done without notifying players in the past.

Wongki apologized and said he was ashamed for his mistakes and immaturity (as he was the Director for part of that time period). They said the only way that they could start to ask for players’ trust back was to make fundamental changes to the game, and this definitely is a huge huge huge change lol.

MapleStory will no longer sell Cubes (probability-based enhancement items). Now, potential resetting will be done through Mesos (in-game currency). This is the first of many changes, the goal of which is to make playing the game more valuable. As most people know, Cubes are a core product that currently accounts for a significant amount of MapleStory’s profit, but at the same time, they’re also an item that made players distrust MapleStory. This is why they thought they could start restoring trust by changing Cubes into something that makes players’ gameplay more meaningful.

Previously, there were many types of Cubes, but now, there will only be a single form similar to Black and White Cubes, that allow you to choose between before and after, to remove the experience of becoming weaker. The potential reset costs will be based on the level and potential tier of an item. This will help preserve end-game equipment value while also improving the equipment growth experience to be a more gradual increase.

The columns are Equipment Level, Rare rank, Epic Rank, Unique rank, and Legendary rank. The top section (blue) is for regular potential and the bottom section (red) is for additional potential. For example, if you had a Legendary/Legendary Ethernal hat, resetting its potential would cost 60m for the main potential and 80m for the additional potential.

After this change is made, existing Cubes will still be able to be used as normal, but all crafting methods will be removed and they will no longer be sold. The Ceiling system will be applied differently in the new potential reset system compared to existing Cubes.

Together with changing potential resetting from Cubes to Mesos, Reboot World’s systems will also be changed. Now, Reboot World will reset potentials in the same way and at the same price as regular worlds, and the meso acquisition rate will also be changed to be the same as regular worlds. After this measure, the Reboot character creation restriction will be lifted.

With these changes, it is clear that maintaining the game’s economy by properly managing the internal production and consumption of mesos will become much more important than it is now. In order for this to work as intended, many more internal and external changes to the game will need to be made. However, instead of delaying these changes longer to prepare a better system, they wanted to show players MapleStory’s changed look first and work together with them to solve the problems that will arise in the future. This will help in both restoring trust and maintaining MapleStory’s economy.

The direction of these changes is a path that MapleStory has never taken before, so various unforeseen variables may arise during this process. Whenever that happens, they will listen to players’ opinions more carefully and look into them more diligently.

When these changes are applied, they are planning to set a daily limit on the amount of mesos a character can acquire from hunting per day. Currently, mesos acquired from hunting can occur without any restrictions 24 hours a day, which makes it abusable by workshops and macroers.

Going forward, there will be a limit of the amount of mesos each character can acquire from hunting, based on their level. This limit is on the base mesos acquired and does not include the increased rates from meso acquisition increasing effects (i.e. Meso acquisition equips work the same way and will not lose their effectiveness. For example, if a character had 100% meso acquisition on their accessories, the limits would essentially be increased by +100% or doubled for that character).

• Level 1~99: 20m mesos
• Level 100~199: 40m mesos
• Level 200~259: 80m mesos + (5m every 5 levels after 200)
• Level 260~300: 150m mesos + (10m every 10 levels after 260)

This limit is the minimum measure they can take to be implemented as fast as possible, and going forward, fundamental changes to the game will be made, including not only the addition of new meso farming content but also changes to existing meso acquisition methods. They will make necessary improvements in line with the changed game environment as fast as possible. As mentioned before, all these changes will be made together with the players with the mindset of writing a new MapleStory. They will listen to players’ opinions, closely examine play patterns, and continue to implement changes required for players.

In addition to these internal changes to the game, they will also be further accelerating their external responses to hacks, macros, and workplaces. This is an endless task and ‘a constant battle between spears and shields’, but now that the meaning of meso generation has changed, they will take different measures to combat them. They are planning to establish a research center together with domestic and foreign security experts to advance security-related technology and fundamentally revise account policies.

Furthermore, they want to strengthen players’ trust in the game’s probability-related experiences. Probability-related information will be provided in the same way as it curently is for Cubes through Nexon Now and the Open API, and it will be verified more thoroughly. In addition, the specification which many players called an unnatural probability restriction where you could not roll 3 lines of boss damage, defense ignore, or item drop, will be removed and those combinations will now be possible. They will also review any other ways to give players additional trust regarding the game’s probability experience.

They will present more specific information and collect feedback through a separate test server patch as soon as possible, after the official server update on January 18. After listening to players’ opinions and verifying stability, they will choose a date to implement the changes on the official server. When these changes are implemented on the official server, they will implement main potential changes first, and additional potential changes will be implemented at a later date.

All changes (except for additional potential) will be implemented in the official server in January, or by February at the latest. The additional potential changes will be implemented in the official server within the first half of the year at the latest. If there are any delays from this schedule, they will explain in detail why they are occurring.

This schedule is because this is such a big fundamental change and there is only so much they can verify through internal testing and the test server. They believe that checking the economic aspects can only be confirmed after implementing them into the official server, then they can prepare additional measures to provide a more stable service to players.

Since the potential reset system is scheduled to be greatly changed, the Miracle Time that was going to take place on January 14’s Special Sunday Maple will be replaced with the experience-related event that took place on the first Special Sunday Maple.

Finally, although it can never be enough, the development team has prepared a small compensation as an apology to players. These rewards will be available from January 10 at 10:00 AM until January 23 at 11:59 PM and can be claimed 1 time per Nexon ID.

• 3 Maximum Growth Potions [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]
• 10 Sol Erda [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]
• 300 Sol Erda Fragments [permanent, untradable]
• 9999 EXP Vouchers [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]
• 20 3x Experience Coupons (30 Minutes) [expires in 30 days, can be put into storage]
• 4 Selective Symbol Vouchers (500 Selective Arcane Symbol Vouchers or 100 Selective Authentic Symbol Vouchers) [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]
• 50 Special Medals of Honor [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]
• 1 Selective Premium PC Room Outfit Voucher [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]
  • Road of Vanishing Set
  • Chew Chew Island Set (M/F)
  • Lacheln Set (M/F)
  • Arcana Set (M/F)
  • Starry Sky Orchid Set (M/F)
  • Flower Cloud Orchid Set (M/F)
• 3 Selective Mannequin/Slot Expansion Voucher [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]
• 2 Custom Mix Dye Coupon Vouchers [expires in 14 days, can be put into storage]