I will list the issues regarding New Source Islanding down below, in order from most critical to least. I will then put my thoughts and suggestions below that list. Please note that you may find a lot of common player issues/requests in this post. I would also like to preface the thread by saying this: I am well aware that we as Islanders are the minority when it comes to new features. I do not believe I am asking for anything that requires immediate attention or priority over anything else. What this thread serves to do is to remind those involved that we are a dying playerbase because of these persistent bugs/issues that have still not been addressed. I care enough about us to make our collective voices heard. MAIN ISSUES Character Creation I believe this issue to be the Big Kahuna of them all. Character creation has been down for quite some time, and that places a literal roadblock onto the entirety of Maple Island. Restricting the ability to create any characters puts a huge toll on Islanding itself for various reasons. Without any new foot traffic, we have virtually no way of spreading the word of Islanding to new players. This transforms the island into a stale, end-piece of white bread. There is extremely little to no social activity going on, which is the main draw of Maple Island itself. New players seeking to try out Islanding have no way of doing so on MapleRoyals. Broken Skills The Beginner skills have been broken since the New Source has been officially released. On the surface, they may seem useless to the average player. However, the Beginner skills allow for Islanders to improve their overall experience while on Maple Island. Three Snails (working) is utilized by ~98% of Islanders, myself not included. It is the only ranged attack/skill Islanders have access to. Without it, Islanders have nothing but their basic melee attack. Some rely heavily/solely on Three Snails for attack to maximize damage output and experience per hour. This is probably the most widely-requested skill to be re-implemented by Islanders. (It has come to my attention from fellow Islanders that Three Snails is functioning as intended.) Nimble Feet is a quality-of-life skill that is utilized by nearly every single Islander, if not all Islanders. It allows for easier movement around the island, as we do not have access to any form of teleportation and very little access to speed-increasing gear. While not essential on its own, it would be a very nice skill to have in general. Recovery is utilized by ~1% of Islanders, myself included. It allows for cost-free healing. While considered the odd one out of the three, it has it niche uses on the island. Broken Scrolls This is probably another widely requested feature to be re-implemented. As an Islander, scrolling opens up a wide avenue of player competition to see who can roll the best set of gear with the items we have. It can be a fun and addicting way to make grinding much more appealing. However, scrolling has been broken since the release of New Source. The large appeal of grinding for a good piece of gear to scroll has been lost due to the inability to scroll these items. This combined with a lack of working Beginner skills leave the few Islanders who still play questioning why they do. SIDE ISSUES Reduced Spawns Compared to what we had before New Source was implemented, the number of enemy spawn in any given map seems to have been significantly reduced. This slows down quite a few things in this list, whether it be hunting for experience or items. By having these spacious maps with few mobs to fill them in, it has created a lot of scenarios where you are walking around much more than you are fighting mobs, which can easily be mitigated with more spawns. Broken Cash Shop/Cash Items This is probably another widely requested feature to be fixed. While not essential for Islanding on its own, the lack of access to the Cash Shop has been quite a disappointment. Many Islanders choose to use their NX on equips to help distinguish themselves from others, or on items like Name Tags to personalize their equipment.Broken NPCs/Quests The NPC Roofus, an Islander's sole access to Pet Food on the island, has been bugged for an unknown amount of time. Without access to Pet Food, the convenience of having a pet will eventually disappear, adding yet another handicap to Islanders. On top of this, some Islanders have reported their quests being either bugged or broken for various reasons, most notably the new quests added in recently. Buggy Portals While this is the least important issue on the list, it happens enough that it deserves to be mentioned. Portals are the main mode of transportation from one map to another. When portals don't work or bug out, it becomes quite frustrating. PERSONAL THOUGHTS Time It has been nearly two months since New Source has been released. In that two months, I have seen improvements in various areas and aspects of the game. However, the amount of time it has taken to reach this current point is quite disheartening. New Source was supposed to be this large, new, exciting change of pace to the entire game. What has happened, in my personal opinion, is nothing more than a live beta test that should have stayed closed. I was perfectly content with sticking with what we had before this release if it meant more time was being poured into making sure that New Source was going to be exactly what was promised. There are still far too many things broken or not up to the speed that they were at before this update. Disinterest The majority of things I have listed above have been issues since the beginning of New Source's implementation. When you have bugs/issues that persist for well over a week, two weeks, a month, you become irritated and disappointed. Some Islanders have voiced their concerns about these bugs, whether it be in shoutbox, our Islander Community Thread, or directly to a GM. However, when these things are reported, and very little action/communication is taken towards them, what you are left with is an unsatisfied player who will leave and pursue other servers. I have seen firsthand the bulk of Islanders I used to play with daily leave for other private servers, or quit entirely, because of these persistent, month-long issues. I am now very lucky if I see 1-2 Islanders a day. Current State Here is what I can boil the current state of Maple Island down to: It's a bug-ridden graveyard. Lots of things that should be working, don't. What was once a bustling island full of charming characters is now nothing more than a discarded tissue in an ever-filling wastebin. The very few Islanders I've run into all have the same things to say: "Why is this still broken?" "What is there to do now?" "Which server do we switch to?" Very rarely do I see them online for more than half an hour. OVERALL FEEDBACK/SUGGESTIONS Focus on fixing the things we have rather than implementing new features. You are only as strong as your weakest link. By implementing these new features like Zakum and Krex, and then focusing efforts on fixing bugs for those new features, you are further alienating long-standing players who just want the basics fixed. I don't think I am asking for too much when I ask for a few skills or an NPC to be repaired. Strengthen the communication to your playerbase. While I appreciate the large bulletin on the front forum page with the catalog of update threads and statements regarding "no approximate dates for specific features", I see no reason why there can't be things like "daily update threads" where you explain what bugs you are fixing on that particular day. Perhaps you could host a poll occasionally and have players vote on what feature/bugfix they want to see implemented next. More interaction shows that you are listening and truly care about the playerbase. We don't bite. With all of this being said, I am very much open to civil discussion and debate. If there is any wrong/false information found within this post, please let me know and I am happy to correct it. Simply put, I am a player who is passionate about the game they play and who desperately wants to see their friends return.
I don't know how difficult/time-consuming it will be to implement this, please increase the spawn rates for the whole maple island. This alone will bring a portion of islanders back.
In general we prefer feedback threads to be about individual issues so that discussion about each type of issue or suggestion is easier to follow and respond to. However, I understand your frustration and half of what you mention gets seen by staff members on a daily basis (usually in the Shoutbox), but I'll quickly go over each thing you've mentioned. Character Creation: Although we have some GM moderation tools currently in place and some pretty basic auto-GM alert system to bring hackers to our attention, we want to wait until we have better functionality in place before opening the gates to new characters. Broken Skills: - Three Snails: Has not been reported as broken, so probably why it hasn't been fixed if it is. - Nimble Feet: As you say this is more of a somewhat 'luxury' skill, and could be compared to how non-islanders cannot currently use mounts. - Recovery: Simply not fixed yet due to how little of an issue it seems to be in comparison to other things. Broken Scrolls: Not an incredibly hard fix, but just simply has a lower priority than others. Reduced Spawns: Although reduced spawns have affected the game as a whole for quite a few maps, it's also understood that Islanders wanted us to begin using maps from an even earlier version of MapleStory than we were before. Most maps may not actually have less mobs on the map than previously, but due to them being larger in size is causing gameplay advancement to be slower. If this is something that needs changing, or if islanders now regret the decision and want the old maps back (although mob spawns may still not be identical as before), then a feedback thread should be opened about the issue itself rather than in a feedback thread about ~15 different things. Broken Cash Shop/Cash Shop Items: Simply put; all Cash items require the Cash Shop to be in place for them to function properly. And as Cash Shop is the next big thing that we will be implementing, it shouldn't be too far away. Broken NPC/Quests: Like scrolling, just a prioritisation thing. Although I would have said the issue with Roofus should have been reported as a Moderate to Major bug rather than Minor, as it does seem quite important to assist with training, and is actually a very simple fix that wouldn't take any time away from Kevin at all (I'll explain why this is further on). I would suggest that the thread regarding the Roofus issue be bumped and asked for the prefix to be escalated. Buggy Portals: As far as I know this shouldn't be happening. If it is, have these portals been bug reported and are the bug reports still open? Time: I agree, and it's my fault entirely, nothing can be done now though. Disinterest: Islanders voicing their concerns in a random thread about islanders is not the correct place that issues should be reported, they should be reported in the bug report section of if it is feedback, then as you have done, and in this feedback section. Most staff members, especially admins and developers are unlikely to check a random islander discussion thread for concerns. The same could be said for the Shoutbox, and also reporting a bug or concern directly to a GM as that can also sometimes fail to find it's way to somebody with the authority to make a particular change for whatever reason. Use the bug report and feedback sections properly and it will give the best chance for action to be taken. Current State: Can be applied to the game as a whole, and is something we are still working very hard on towards getting fixed. Focus on fixing the things we have rather than implementing new features: The new features that you speak of took basically zero time away from Kevin, who is our main developer. These new features were implemented fully by me and Andreas as they required only very basic Lua scripting. Things like broken skills need to be fixed by Kevin himself and cannot be fixed by me or Andreas. Therefore we see no downside to implementing the new features. Strengthen the communication to your playerbase: Although these can be seen as good suggestions, I don't believe a daily update thread would really provide the information you are looking for. Kevin usually works on one issue at a time, and a daily update log could simply end up looking like this (although probably over-exaggerating with simplicity here): Day 1) Working on the Cash Shop, Day 2) Still working on the Cash Shop, Day 3) Still working on the Cash Shop, etc. Other issues like fixing skills or bugs could likely never even get mentioned in a daily update log because they would be much quicker fixes that don't take days to do, and would simply be put in one of the New Source Update announcements. As for doing polls for what bugs to fix, that could be all well and good however some issues have pre-requisites. For example if having merchants and regular stores working was on a poll, I would guarantee this would win the poll, but it still couldn't be implemented until the Cash Shop itself was implemented. I believe a better solution would be that certain bug reports be bumped and discussed to have their severity prefix escalated.
I agree with everything oahu said, and personally I would be very much in favor of reverting the changes to the island maps. Also, I know its probably very low priority but I would love for the rankings to be up again.
Many of these issues apply to the entirety of royals, not just islanders. As far as I can tell, three snails is fully functional. Portals become buggy after using nimble feet, so you shouldn't have any problems if you don't use nimble feet (there currently is no reason to use it since the skill isn't working). You can fix a buggy portal by sitting on a chair or drinking a potion. As for spawns, Sila, Dimitri and Andreas or Matt have said that spawns will be increased on island, so we'll just have to wait for that. Most of the other issues you mention affect everyone, not just islanders. If, like Matt said, scrolls aren't that hard to fix, I would love to see those fixed soon. After almost two months, many people (mainly offland) are using sub-par weapons and armor because they can't scroll them. Also, if you need petfood, you can get some from me, I have over 5000 petfood. I'll stay online for the next 10 hours on isiandChrizz. I think two other things that affect islanders a lot is the fact that the rankings are offline and alliance chat is still nonfunctional.
Broken Scrolls: Not an incredibly hard fix, but just simply has a lower priority than others. Yes its simple and it took 2 month
I don't understand your point. Either that or you don't understand what I mean when I say the word priority. We have not spent the last two months working on scrolling, we have spent zero time on scrolling because we have worked on other things thought to be more important.
Do you have a priority list that you can share with us? Frankly speaking I have stopped logging in to play my account mainly because 1) I can't HP wash my characters 2) I can't scroll my equipments, and 3) quite a number of skills are still not working.
Obviously we can't list every single feature specifically or every single bug but our main priorities right now are: Disconnecting Issues Cash Shop and Cash Items Character Creation/Deletion Alongside those which require little to no time from our developer would be things like getting more PQ's working like OPQ, PPQ, Dojo and CWKPQ, and no doubt there will be a few small fixes that do take a little bit of his time like further fixes to the party exp issue, any remaining skill and skill quest bugs, amongst other things.
I afraid that from Matt's post, he meant we should create thread discussing specific feature, and state our stands clearly. If no thread on that means delayed or no actions taken. Regarding spawn rates, since the map became bigger, the spawn rates should increase to correspond with it, such that it maintain the "spawn rates density"( The spawn rates per unit area of the map) to be similar to the ones in the old source. And this might as well to be implemented for the whole maple island instead of only the training maps. Personally, I am not against the current maple island as long as the "spawn rates density" is adjusted appropriately
@Matt I apologize for creating such a large thread with multiple issues, I figured it would be an easier way to organize these problems as opposed to spamming/bumping the Feedback/Bug Report sections with their own respective threads. I really appreciate you responding to each individual piece of this post. Fixing these things will take some time, I understand, and the fact that they are recognized and known issues is good enough for me. I will be more diligent in the future about using the correct forms of communication when it comes to sharing feedback or reporting individual bugs.
Not all of them of course. Like you mentioned Three Snails which hasn't been bug reported and issues with the changes to Maple Island, new threads should be made for these.
I don't really have anything to contribute except to say that I really appreciate the civility of your post. A lot of people who are complaining about the new source seem like they just want to flame the staff rather than have an actual discussion about things they want to see changed. Props to you for handling yourself like an adult. But also I want to see scrolling back soon too, because I play an ironman character and scrolling is the only way to get better gear.
I've been informed by a fellow Islander that Three Snails is functional and working as intended. I've edited the main post to reflect this.
