I normally perform these first month retrospectives on games that I’ve begun playing and thought it would be a good time to do this with MapleStory 2 (actually, next week will be the first month since head start began. But I have a full plate for the next week…)
My initial general impressions still stand. As of this writing, my wizard remains my highest level character at level 52 (max level is currently 60). Most of my leveling has come from life skills (the stuff I have in my home as I level up my masteries from mining/farming/forgaging/ranching). I plan to continue with completing the Epic Quest storyline once I hit the level cap from life skilling. Yes, I’ve truly found that Nexon meant it when you could level whichever way you wanted and while this way is a little bit slower, I like the fact that I’m progressing in multiple areas (life skill mastery, obtaining materials used for crafting where performing that will increase my mastery there, and gaining both experience to get to 60 as well as earning Prestige Experience for post level 50 extended progression sort of like Paragon levels in Diablo III).
Since my other post covering a producers newsletter, very little has also changed in the area of the cash shop. The biggest feedback they got was in regards to the cost for style crates in order to break down unwanted cosmetic items from them for the style coins that are required to acquire seasonal cosmetic sets. But my leveling has also made me realize where the monetization opportunities were pushed to; mainly in the area of quality of life convenience with purchasing extra time for AFK fishing and the real winner; the auto gathering badge (the 30 day being the most cost effective).
While you can sit there and press “F” over and over again, it gets old really fast. The badge puts your character in auto-collect mode when you start gathering a node and will continue until it is no longer possible for that day for that particular node. The process of gathering itself is fast since most nodes are placed in a plot of 4 where you collect 4 of them at a time (no huge time sinks as is the case with many other games). This badge can also be shared with your other characters since it is bankable.
They could’ve made the system just a simple account wide feature but there is a method to the madness; it’s just a little inconvenience where you have to go through this process of opening your character profile, going to the badge tab, moving it your inventory, opening the shared bank (which takes a few seconds by design), and then transferring it (and then doing the exact opposite when switching to another character to retrieve it and then equip it). The badge itself is inexpensive (360 Merets for 30 days). They know there will be some players who will just buy a badge for each character to not have to go through this process. I’m not knocking it either because I think it is very fairly designed. If you’re playing just a single character, none of it matters. But if you do this on 6 alts, you will notice this design (it is nothing like Black Desert Online’s very fleshed out cash shop convenience mechanics designed for end game players).
What about the world chat (message seen server wide) capability that costs Merets? I actually don’t see this as an issue. Sure, it’s not going to (and hasn’t stopped) gold spammers because they’ve already done the chargeback thing with Nexon. But for the average player, they’ll have to think twice about spamming world chat with nonsensical stuff.
Again, if someone were to have asked me an year ago if I’d be playing any Nexon published game for a month straight, my response would’ve been “no way”. So yes, Nexon (both Korea and America) has exceeded my own expectations. That doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the end game grind that happens at level 60 with gearing and enchanting. But that also isn’t my first priority.
Finally, having purchased the legendary pack that came with 90 days worth of Premium (in the form of 3 30-day coupons) which is Nexon’s monthly subscription, I activated one of them after the actual official launch. The health potion you get isn’t game breaking for one. I would say the free air taxi is a very nice convenience (you can go anywhere from most anywhere quickly). The game gives opportunities to earn such tickets (including the Mapleology game event which is meant to celebrate the launch of the game for the first month); I already have a huge stack of them.
What I will say is the single entry special Premium dungeon is a fairly easy and quick way to get a lot of Meso’s (gold) since a decent “run” can easily net 200+K Meso’s. I felt extremely poor from just Epic Questing (earning more Meso’s happens again at end game) before I activated a 30-day coupon; where I was scrounging to just buy gear from the Black Market so that I would have items in-line with the mob levels (it’s normal for your gear to be 2-3 levels lower than the mobs in the quest dungeons that are at your level). After a few days, Meso’s hasn’t been a problem (I know end game gear being traded costs a lot though but again, that isn’t my first priority).
Overall, I am happily having some very casual fun in MapleStory 2. I have yet to get into my housing, the music system, and the UGC design stuff yet let alone pet taming. So there is still a whole lot more of the game for me to experience yet. And I have to give a lot of kudos to Nexon for making someone as skeptical as myself to feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of the game.
