WALL OF TEXT INCOMING So just as a warning, I only scrolled through about 10 pages of the "Feedback" section of the forum and did a brief skim of searches to determine that this topic, at least in recent times, has not been brought up to a level of rigorous discussion that I would like propose. The argument that I would like to make is to bring back to random smega drops from monsters -- and possibly even owls or TP rocks. Why? The general philosophy of this server seems to be that certain popular NX items in the game (hairstyle coupons, shit that Albert sells, etc.) are so routinely used that it would be unfair to make players spend thousands of NX just to search up an item in FM or change the way you look. Basically, alleviating the pay2win aspect of the game that Nexon encouraged since the mid-late 2000s while also being a neat little gold sink for more established players. My biggest problem with the insertion of Albert the Drug Dealer was that it basically shifted the balance of money-making and player interaction even more towards a daily collection of NX, rather than grinding and earning your money through hard work, at least in the earlier stages of the game. I basically took a 3 month hiatus from Royals, but voted quite frequently and came back to almost a million NX that kept me just fine within my economic needs. But let me ask you this: Do you really want the server's economy to be based on a time-gated income, rather than a spontaneous and dynamic one that keeps the social dimensions of the game alive? When I first joined your server late last year, I thought the marketing/social aspects of your Maplestory were quite smart. I killed a snail or some weak shit in Maple Island and got an smega; I could either spend that smega trolling everyone else or instead hand it over for 1-2m hard cash to someone who was more experienced and wealthier than I. Smegas were, in other words, not just luxury items that you expend -- they were a way for newer players to get into the game naturally, while giving the veterans a reason to interact with newcomers and give them a nice chunk of mes0rz too. That's how I earned my first Zhelm. But in case that you wanted to use smegas for yourself, well, unless you were rich you would have to spend more time in the game farming as well. I want to make sure at this point that I'm not saying that we make this game/server catering towards hardcore powerfarmers, because I know that this server contains many players who want the old Maple experience but are now confronted with real-life obligations that they might not have had ten years ago (as I'm a grad student now, I can relate). But what I would like to suggest is simply to reintroduce a greater incentive to be in the game and actually do stuff. You guys aren't strangers to this approach -- you certainly implement the need to be active during events for Thanksgiving items, Easter egg monsters, etc. -- but obviously my argument is suggesting that this shouldn't be the case for only four months of the year. Neither should players feel like they need to always find godly equips or spend days/weeks stockpiling NX to make a huge difference to their progress. Having smega drops made player progression feel more consistently rewarding, and again I can't stress enough how much more dynamic the game is when you get to choose between social/economic privilege in exchange for simple hard work. Because let's face it -- even though many of us consider ourselves casual gamers now, MMOs always have hardcore players. Hell, even with the 4x rates on this server I would consider most of its players hardcore -- Maple is just a hardcore game full of grinding and farming, and we need to have something that acknowledges that. I myself find myself trapped in-between the two mentalities, wanting both to still be relevant in the game when I haven't played in a while, but also wanting my time spent in the game to be meaningful. Admittedly, I haven't gotten to a high enough level to boss yet, but perhaps that's the point. When I was new to this server I felt like I could do something else besides gach or sell NX to be involved, and now I don't have that feeling anymore unless I forcefully attach myself to a guild or farm in order to sink my gold into smegas. That's right, before the change, smegas would have been a privilege. Now they're meso sinks and make me feel like I'm actually screwing myself by buying them instead of looking for better gear. I don't want to open up another can of worms by talking about these implications when considering the economic disparity between players that others have been hinting at (https://royals.ms/forum/threads/price-disparity-between-chaosed-normal-gear.44506/), but for a semi-casual player like me the overall feeling I get from smegas is that they're a detriment to buy and consume, rather than being a good thing. Take a look at a game like World of Warcraft now, where basically it's turned into an extremely time-gated version of itself from its earlier days. Sure, if you log in every day and maintain your Farmville-style garrison, you'll earn tons of gold -- but what happened to the social dimensions of the game? No wonder why people are quitting by the millions... obviously this is an extreme case and can have many other variable reasons for why it's losing popularity, but to me there is no doubt from the existence of private servers like this one (and Nostalrius for WoW) that there is a desire by many to relive these games in their older iterations when they were more rigorous and challenging, but also more socially significant. Sorry for the long post, but I do think this small issue that directly ties to my standing as a ~year old member of this server is also associated with the larger issues of how you want the general economy of this server to become. While I'm still content with going AFK for weeks and voting my way back into the game, I just wanted to throw out my input that the game felt more customized and interactive when these small favors would drop -- I remember being in Skype calls with my friend and being all excited when I got an smega, lol
Well to give you a little bit of history -- the reason SMEGAs dropped from mobs in the first place was because of Matt's idea to make SMEGAs common so that the community could interact and grow. At that time, there were only about a couple dozen people online simultaneously, and the warp to FM button didn't exist. Therefore, a way was needed to keep the community connected outside of being in FM next to each other. Fast forward to today where we have several hundred players concurrently playing and we do have a warp to FM button. The community has grown exponentially and there were players with literally hundreds of SMEGAs. This eventually resulted in SMEGAs being "wasted" with spammy messages, trolling, and people literally having conversations with it. To be honest, it got to be a bit too much and we wanted to curb people wasting their SMEGAs. By eliminating it from mob drops and making it purchasable through Albert or CS, it made people realize that SMEGAs don't just grow on trees and can be found in abundance. Additionally, it serves as a sink allowing mesos and NX to be taken out of the economy, and because of its popularity to use, ensures that there's a constant sink rate. So to summarize, I certainly understand your points and desire to see SMEGAs being brought back to mob drops but really, the plans are to keep it out and it really should have been gone a long time ago.
I think its fine to leave SMEGAs out of mob drops but i really agree to your @simonc8221 points with NX being a way to big part in economy. In one way its a good thing for new players to get starting money through for example AP-Resets but on the other hand it plays a way to big role because the money you can make with gatching. I know its nothing we could easily change because the server is quite old. But i feel like moving gach tickets completely out of the NX equation would help allot. Voting eliminated the Nexon pay to win aspect but on the long term just changed it to "Vote to win". So what would i do with gach tickets ? Gaching was originally a gambling thing where u needed to invest your real money to either get something great or just lost money for nothing. Because we get the NX for free it lost this gambling effect. So i would suggest to make gachapon tickets available for meso (a price would need to be in the right spot in the risk/win equation). As i understand its nothing that can be easily changed in a server that old. But i think its an idea to be saved for a server reboot in the undefined future.
All the items Albert sells should go up in price. It's a good meso sink but the items should cost more. To the OP, as tim said there a lot more ppl playing now, having smegas drop would be spam city. With all the bishops that sell leech, they'd be a dime a dozen
If the prices in Albert go up, the prices in the Cash Shop would have to go up as well. Otherwise, everyone would buy the items in Albert with mesos or everyone would buy the items in CS with NX, completely neutralizing one of the points of sale.
I actually think gacha tickets should be sold by NPC, but at a higher rate to allow some meso sink in the economy. For instance AP reset is now about 1:3.3 and we can do like 1:5 for those who wants to gamble with gacha tickets or you can do the ratio like smega or owls in FM.
SMEGAs are becoming less useful in game. I agree with the removal of them. The price in the FM is fine the way it is, pushing the price up would have little to no effect for most users. Having watched the community grow from less than 100 players, to now nearly 1100, reinstating them as a drop is completely moot, in fact it could be disastrous for the economy with people selling leech. While they used to be used to communicate more important messages, they're now mostly being used for spam. With the addition of the ~togglesmega command, I really see no reason to make them drop in game anymore. I've still got nearly 200+ smegas from drops dating back to well over 2 years ago, and I didn't even sell leech then.
