Problem The lounge room (the room accessed by clicking the green lounge button) was added to prevent people going directly to the FM, where they would store buff mules etc. This has seemingly rendered the lounge functionality useless. The lounge room is unpopular and under utilised, and could be vastly improved with some minor modifications. Proposed modification Modify the lounge room to contain an NPC that sells potions, and allows users to sell items from their inventories for some extra pocket money. Result Active users who are busy training/exploring will have a safe place to come to, socialise with other users, clean out their inventories and restock potions before getting back to their activity. Benefits: Save the users precious time, allowing for less time spent travelling to/from random towns, more time spent playing and/or socialising Encourage users to take short breaks from training, preventing RSI The increase of traffic to the lounge room will allow users to meet other users who are engaged in similar activities (training), unlike the FM which is purely designed for trading Give users a common place to meet and organise training parties, bossing parties, or party quest parties Continue to prevent abuse as buffs will still be disabled so users can't use the room to store buff mules Summary We have a great opportunity to vastly improve this under utilised lounge area with a small modification. Make Lounge Great Again
Remove lounge, replace lounge button with FM button, who cares if people use the FM to buff. gMS like, not some custom weird shit catered towards casuals who wanna sit in a lounge and chat. They have Ch 1 Henesys for that just like how it was on old school gMS.
What's a fishing function involve? If the lounge button takes you to the FM, then the FM just gets crowded with 100 priests spamming Holy Symbol on the portal, and it's already crowded with chalkboards saying notice my store senpai. The lounge should be aimed at players who are out there on their grind and need a place of temporary refuge. Casuals will always remain at CH1 Henesys, you can't take the henesys out of henehoes.
That’s the point man! Old school gMS-like. Ch1 FM was always absolutely packed and some people would lag up a storm just trying to enter.
Not sure what it involve, but i remember there are fishing function in the original maple at some point in the exactly same map as our lounge, maybe get fish with healing effects or heart-like buffs?
In its design, they wanted the loung to be completely social orientated. And on the same beat they removed the fm command so people will walk there. I do support this idea, as it is convinient, and a way to bump into friends while training in different areas without visiting fm. It also makes grinding at ToT without a door really valid, and doable for charas that need to buy ammo. But tbh, i dont see the devs doing that, considering how much they harp “nostalgia” and whatnot
I think it was a good idea, making the room completely social, but due to the rooms restrictions and lack of basic functionality it turned out under utilised and under appreciated. It would definitely be convenient and save people from having to walk back from town just to restock ammo and potions, and I believe this can't be abused as you still have to walk to your training spot in the first place, it would just save you from walking back every 30 minutes to restock ammo and sell equips. Like you said a great way to bump into friends while training! Thanks for your support!
Just a few non invasive ideas for the lounge room: 1. Adding a NPC with access to all the jump quest available in the game with a leaderboard displaying who can do each JQ the fastest. 2. Adding pet food NPC 3. An NPC that can change the background music in the lounge room of that channel to any of the maple background music by paying like 3m (mesos sink). 4. A NPC that can access to all PQ in the game. This may encourage and increase both lounge and PQ activities.
This idea sounds amazing, primarily for leechers and nightlords (recharging) but again it takes away from the nostalgic feel of Maplestory (I’m sure many GMs agree, otherwise they wouldn’t have implanted fast travel tickets and made everyone travel everywhere instantly for free). To propose a middle-ground, what if it also became a meso sink? Some options just off the top of my head: 1. Charge a tax on all transactions made at the NPC (everything you NPC you will be taxed 2% or something) or make pots have a 2% increase. 2. People can buy a 1-day ticket to gain access to the NPC for a day. 3. You may only buy or sell 10m worth of items each day. (This last option isn’t a money sink but just another idea) Just some ideas because I really like the idea of an NPC being implemented at the Lounge because I agree right now the Lounge seems rather useless. My only purpose of the Lounge is to leave my leecher afk there and even then I could just do that in the monster map.
I support all of these ideas! These ideas aim to increase player engagement and community, I could see the lounge becoming like an FM but for actually playing, not just trading. Thanks for your input A 2% convenience tax could be feasible, it makes sense. I do not support buying 1-day tickets to access an NPC, or putting limits on how much you can transact in a day. These ideas only create additional workload for developers and put additional strain on players. A brief note on nostalgia Spoiler Nostalgia is great, to a point. Hence why the term "nostalgia goggles" was created, which refers to remembering something as much better than it really is. Using "nostalgia" as reasoning to dismiss ideas is unproductive and hinders creative opportunity. Take the godly system for example, it's not nostalgic, but it's an absolutely awesome feature and gives players more incentive to work towards another goal.
I’m all for the tax idea, and here’s why: one of the gms shared some data last month on how much money is generated from shop selling. If selling stuff to npc becomes easier, then more money will be made per day. There’s a need to mitigate it, with a 2-5% tax on sales to make sure the inflation wont get any worse.
Buffs weren't the only reason the decision to remove FM from button was made, iirc, it was also due to the fact that people could NPC stuff/ recharge stuff in the FM.
Voting : For But I think you should need to complete the real JQ before unlocking it in the Lounge. Voting : For It wouldn't hurt I guess. Except Doofus will lose many of his customers so maybe the Lounge Pet Food should be sold at a rip off price? Voting : For In the thread that gave birth to the Lounge idea, this was also suggested and I believe the response was so positive, that a gramophone was placed in there. I'm expecting this one to receive some functionality in the future. Voting : Against Lounge would become a "R> party" map, and I believe it's not that much of a problem to walk to the PQs, or tele to a party member there. Too quick travel was one of the things I disliked about BB and the time near before BB.
Would any server staff/devs like to chime in on this discussion? Would be great to hear your take on the brainstorming that has occurred in this thread.
The lounge is definitely currently lacking in compelling features, and is something we plan on developing further, however some suggestions in this thread do not really fit in with its desired purpose. The lounge is meant to be a an area for players to go and socialise and have fun, rather than to provide additional conveniences that aren't otherwise obtainable in a similar instantaneous manner - so things like being able to buy/sell/recharge items would likely not be implemented. As for some of the other suggestions... Fishing: All it does is let you gain meso whilst sitting down, there's no interaction involved at all and so it is simply just a meso botting feature. Wouldn't be added unless we can figure out a way to make it more interactive. JQ NPC with leaderboard: Maybe once fly hacking is eliminated. Jukebox: We do plan to release a jukebox NPC (as some may have guessed by the grammaphone NPC in the lounge). We intend for it to act similarly to a real jukebox, with features like being able to search by name, top tracks of the week, and even genre. As well as being able to queue multiple songs in a row. Songs will also have a description explaining anything about it and where it can be found in the game (if released). PQ NPC: Most (if not all) PQ's do not overlap in level, so I'm not sure what advantage there would be of looking for PQ members in the lounge compared to looking for PQ members in the PQ lobby area. There is also a find party function built into the client which will eventually be coded, which would be a better way of finding party members in your level vicinity.
