This is why people are quitting, and how the GMs can fix it.

As I explained in one of my previous posts, one popular (top 5 in GTop100) MapleStory private server allows account sharing, and it's doing quite well right now. Players there don't complain about the "unfairness" caused by account sharing at all. I also explained why I (myself) don't have any problems with the advantages gained through account sharing.

I just think account sharing bans may not be as essential to fair gameplay as we thought, based on the rapid growth of that private server and the lack of complaints over there about account sharing being legal.

 

Never heard of League players paying money to someone else to raise their ranks? Once account sharing becomes legal, this server will most likely become pay2win. I have witnessed bans of old, influential players who lent their bishop or buff mule accounts to friends. That's at a friendly level. Remember RWT also involves selling accounts and well washed/equipped characters. There are plenty of people out there who'd pay hundreds of Dollars to get 30K hp washed NL for example. There is no way to track if the account is "shared" or "sold".

Mapleroyals (Maplestory in general) is a game where you pour in your OWN effort to achieve numerous goals. What's so difficult about keeping your own account to your self?

 

Similarly, if player A gives a 19/91 craven to player B, there is no way to verify whether or not the craven was "given for free" or "sold for real-world money". From this perspective, RWT of accounts is not a completely new problem. It just adds more workload to an existing problem (i.e. RWT of equipment). That's why I said we can consider making account sharing legal after we have made significant progress against existing RWT problems.

Whether or not we make account sharing legal, some people will always try to buy stuff with real-world money and make it pay-to-win. As long as it's managed well, RWT of accounts shouldn't be a problem, just like RWT of equipment / mesos.

Anyway, I will stop arguing about the legality of account sharing, since I have said what I want to say, and it is only a tiny part of OP's suggestion. I suggest we wait for some time (e.g. 6 months - 1 year) and see how well that private server does with account sharing being legal, then decide what step to take next.

 

Actually account sharing was a thing in GMS. Most of the pro's did it.

The reason why people are quitting is simple, the server is still broken, after one and a half year after new source release. "So what if they don't like it? Let them complain." - Andreas

 

Account sharing was never a thing in official MapleStory, just that they did not enforce it like we do here.
I don't disagree entirely with your following statement, although it would reflect better if you elaborate on how the server is still "broken". AFAIK, most of the important features are already working, with exceptions to character deletion which will be coming in less than a week, and GPQ/CWKPQ right after that. Anything else wasn't in the old source to begin with, and will be added as well(i.e. Dojo, etc).

 

Dunno how to do proper quotes on this forum, but @Kai . How about missing drop logs leading to massive RWT probem?

oh and also bring back features what made royals to be royals. LF> #bosshp#fmbutton#unlimitedapq etc.

 

There are logs that we have which we won't mention, but there are also logs we're missing which we are intending to implement soon which will further improve the situation. Perhaps it would have been better if you started off your post to show your concern regarding the issue of RWT, rather than the server just being broken because that gave me the perception that the server is not playable because of missing contents. But alright, we noted your concern.

And unfortunately, I don't ever think bosshp, fm button and unlimited APQ will ever be back, however much I wish them to be.

 

I wasn't going to reply to this thread but I couldn't stand this comment here ... I'm sorry if this is considered an off-topic comment or something along the lines of that but I'm deeply hurt about a post here that I feel I have to say something about it, otherwise some people might believe these false accusations.

Do you have any proof of your statement here? I was also considered one of those "pro"s you claim to know so well about .. And was close friends with the top ranks as well and still very close personal friends who we talk to this date (Suuushi, curryishott, you name it.). Never once they account shared with others and account sharing wasn't allowed in GMS either. Within first year or just over a year, they were even very strict about it too until GMS got very populated with several Worlds that it became very hard to keep track of it. They still don't allow account sharing and ban if they catch it. (a year or two ago, there was a Maple Youtuber who traveled to another country and got banned for the sudden changes in his IP and suspected account sharing).

I remember what they did, what I did as well to be at the top ranks of GMS. We simply grinded upwards of 10 hours straight and sometimes more, they were older than me by a few years therefore had more time than I did when I was in high school, I remember skipping school to have a big training session, having close to no social life outside of school either because all I could think about was coming on Maple and leveling up my hermit/NL, and we would chat on msn, talk over phone, Skype ... They trained their asses off just to receive false rumours by people like you which offends us more than anything ..

What you said seriously hurt me deeply. Please refrain from giving false information claiming them as facts .. You are wrong, and if you don't know the subject, don't talk about it. In this case your claim of how it was allowed and how we all did it.

 

I'm totally agreed with TS on the account sharing part, many of my friends are banned because they are brothers that play side by side, couples that care for each other and help manage accounts, just because of authorities that are afraid to deal with actual problems.

Unfair? Pay2win? there is no "win" in Maplestory to start with, you can't kill other players, you can't PvP, you can't even KS in the game, why put so much effort to maintain something that is not exist, at most they are just reaching higher level contents earlier, at the cost of two players's effort, and like some guy before me mentioned the time they can utilize the account is also separated to two players.

RWT is a totally different thing from what we are discussing here, if player is suspected of RWT, open a case for him/her, check conversation logs, do whatever you have to do with them but do not mix RWT and account sharing together, if your argument is you can't tell them apart then that is not even a problem to start with, because in order to judge you need evidence.

 

@Kai

The quote I made in my first post tells that something is broken, especially if thats coming from an ADMIN of this server.

@itsKate

Sorry if I offended you, it wasn't my purpose at all. It seems like your talking about times pre 4th job etc. as I recall the IGN Suuushi being a lvl 12x hermit. Account sharing became more common way after, in cases like racing a new job/class to be first lvl200 on that niche.

 

@Kai So, I guess no Carnival PQ for another 2 years and instead we get Dojo? Ha...ha....ha..........

 

Ha...ha.

We already have CPQ planned right after GPQ, or at least we want that to be released ASAP after GPQ. The original plan was to have CPQ before GPQ, but knowing how many players are waiting for GPQ in order to get Assassinate 30 and other skills, we decided to switch them around.

As of now, CWKPQ is already working, just needs testing and tidying up of stuffs. We are forecasting for update 56 to come very soon after 55 (CWKPQ update). Soon after, we are anticipating for CPQ. So stay tuned.

 

As someone who was very close to and actively a part of the high level community on Broa i can confirm that most high level players that i know did not account share. When we found someone who did they were removed from all bossing parties and basically ignored when they finally hit 200. It was a massive thing to level and hit 200 on your own. Account sharing cheapend it, and you were no better than a cheater. I was around for the first atleast 30 200s on Broa. I can only recall maybe 3 people who i recall account shared

 

I do not know what your definition of KS is but I guess you never visited ban appeals where hundreds of people were previously banned for KSing.

I do not know what goals you have in this game but it seems to differ quite a bit from mine and others. Large number of players, including my self, chose to play Maplestory because we enjoy the competitive challenges provided by MMORPG through accumulating features. Just because you don't like spending (or wasting from your perspective) MORE time than others, doesn't mean others feel the same way as you. People don't play royals just to login and kill snails. People grind for hours, merch day and night, set respawn timers for area bosses so they can hijack them permanently because they are competitive. If you take out the competitive feature of this game, there will be even less people here because most dedicated population spent years so they can accel above others and that achievement is what motivates them to carry on playing.

Authorities aren't "afraid" to deal with the problems. They are humans after all. There are only limited things they can do at a time. Yea, a lot of us are complaining by saying they are too slow with fixing stuff or they are making wrong decisions because they don't take our suggestions. I know.. I'm getting tired from waiting too...But seriously, whether it's good or bad, they are doing what they concluded is the best in their view (that can always be better but that's something we need to abide as we decided to play on their server). They are not sitting there doing nothing but they are actually trying everything they CAN do with resources they have.

Account sharing definitely has connections with RWT. It doesn't have to connect through a dark wallpapered blackmarket website with secret nicknames. Anyone can pass on few dollars to their friends to lvl their characters. (I promise you, there was a guy who posted in community blacklist saying his friend scammed him after he paid the friend to do his zak JQ for him). This destroys the competitive genre of this game.

Count the number of hackers that are related to RWT; too many. If account sharing becomes legal, people will start sharing their accounts with increasing number of people because hey, why not? If 10 people shares 1 account that will make lvling 10 times faster, why not 20 then? Imagine what those evil hack users can do when they have access to other people's accounts. If you lent your account to a trusted friend and he turns out to be a vote abuser, macro user or hack user in the extremity, you are f#%ed becasue your lent account is probably involved as well. Can you differentiate a good and bad person from online confrontation? One can say that's one's own responsibility but that's not what they'll say after their account gets hacked by a "trusted friend".

You are only looking at the good side of account sharing. Yes good close friends and couples, even families can benefit. I remember a guy named Skadi (who should have been 1st lvl 200 on royals) who got banned for account sharing after trying to surprise gift his GF on her account. That was truly sad. But you gotta realize not everyone is good hearted here. People will always find a way to abuse the shit out of it. Look at number of daily scams here. Account sharing will open a flood gate to dozens of new problems while we are still struggling to solve old ones. But what do people say when they confront those new problems? "It's Staff's fault for not fixing the problem".

 

You all changed my mind about account sharing - definitely agree to bannable offense. Perhaps some leniency can be had - I knew someone who recently joined and got banned within 5 days for vote abuse, which turned him away from the server entirely. He really loved it and was making a good name for himself, but now he's gone.

Perhaps accounts that have existed for under 3 months should get a 7 or 14 day ban for vote abuse - or a 30 day ban from voting.

Anyways, @Kai a lot of people make a lot of great points here but I don't want the talk about account sharing to be the focus of this post. This post may have issues in terms of the 2nd point OP made, but all his/her other points stand in my opinion.

Current GM events are boring and people participate if they're already online and available. No one really logs on just for the event, there's not a massive surge in population during these events. More community involvement is always better.

Same with addressing minority issues. I'm thankful you guys addressed CWKPQ, CPQ, GPQ, Dojo, and more. But no matter how much more content you add, class balancing will always be the biggest thing that turns people away. I believe that the small but loud voices of Paladins, Buccaneers, Arch Mages (for bossing), Marksmen, Shadowers, Axe users, Pole Arm users, and Staff users deserve a lot of attention. Class balancing issues are easy to at least test out even if you don't make it right at first. As OP said, large companies like Blizzard arent afraid to make daring changes, test them out, and rebalance them a month later when the community complains.

Same with leeching. Not many people complain too actively about it now because it's always been a thing for 4 years but in reality there are a lot of people who would just prefer training with a party or grinding. As someone said in another post in another thread - The only benefit of leeching should be being able to level up without being present, or being able to level up faster if you are weak or a bad mobbing class. It should not be absolutely and always better than training.

 

Sushi = originally Susan, info. given to Craig AKA account sharing
Tiger = originally Gavin, info. given to Craig and Zoe AKA account sharing

They weren't banned for it either. JUST SAYIN'

 

Idk where you got this info from, if it's based on some sleazy BasilMarket forum post, then it's completely wrong. There were around 15 to 20 forum posts all with different stories and assumptions as to what happened to them. I've known Susie for 13 or more years as a very close friend, met her number of times in real life, met her husband, we've started Maple pretty much together and continued together until she quit. I've known her better than most people in my life. She had never given her account info to anyone. Never shared accounts. Never logged on someone else's. It was always her logging on and playing with her character. Gavin was more secretive about this, as he was a person of few words, but from what I know, he had different stories as well based on what he told me himself about his situation compared to what we see online.

Frankly, I'm sick of and sickened by any small rumour that people think it's the truth when they literally have no idea who they are and how they reached where they reached. For this very reason, I try not to talk about these because I seriously get so frustrated. People like you make me really sick .. People like you who are so single minded that believes every little rumour, every little thing they see on the internet, without knowing the person themselves and/or knowing the situation they were in and believe it so much that they try to convince others as facts .. Believe what you believe, I seriously couldn't care less about what you think yourself, but when you state it as a fact and try to convince others, that I can't accept.

I don't know if this post gives me warning points for flaming or off-topic content and I seriously don't care anymore. I knew there was gonna be people like him to piss me off when I was posting the first reply ... So yeah ..

 

People are quitting the game because they come to the game for nostalgia. Once they reach end game and stuff its only a matter of time before they quit.

Account sharing is prohibited in most games because of many complications; and i don't think it allows players to get an advantage over others is really one of them. I believe its more than there needs to be a primary owner of the account for security reasons.

Siblings can still account share as there would be no logs of different IPs on the account. Then this would extend to "my brother cheated i didn't" situations. Its just easier to have a player tied to their own account.

Account sharing becomes a problem in private servers because it effectively allows an advantage in voting. Because while voting is still limited to one account, account sharers would have two accounts. Voting provides a significant advantage over non voters.

Then, moving on.

Rewards. This is the silliest thing I've ever read. You want more rewards for playing the game. You want something to keep you entertained. Its like, you aren't accepting you are out growing this game (which everyone needs to do eventually). Events have always been afk central. People don't want to feel like they achieved ANYTHING on events. They just want the prize and thats it. ITs not interactive to have a mob spawn and everyone attack it. But, if you even consider the action you are performing, its identical to farming end game boss, except with less risk and less reward. So realistically, you are doing what you do most of the time.

More chairs i disagree with unless they are untradable chairs. 2x EXP coupon would be pretty nice, I actually don't know why this doesn't exist. If its an issue with leeching, just make it only effective for monsters you kill.
But in general, the events are fine the way they are. They require some effort put in, but not a time sink of effort. I like the way it is, and Im sure a lot of players who don't have time to play more than 3 hours on week days would appreciate keeping it so that time is not a requirement to participate in events.


As for other restrictions, why are people scared about trade logs? If they aren't breaking the rules how can they get in trouble? I have traded items back and forth between my characters and never got even questioned about it. I do agree some chat restrictions are a little too much and the punishment is just a little too brutal, but I don't care much about this as its usually temporary. I do think the server is "babied" far too much and its becoming very apparent in the way everyone feels like their opinions MUST BE considered or heard otherwise they just complain that no one listens and the staff are bad, which is definitely not true.

This brings up to Lack of willingness to create solutions to existing problems and Overreliance on majority rule and negligence on minority request

This alone is just dumb. This is not a democracy. You do not own stocks in this server. Your opinions/suggestions/requests do not need to be responded to or implemented for it to be "considered"
Everyone feels like just because their idea wasn't told it was a good idea or because it isn't being replied to by staff, that its not being considered.

And you said that you believe the server needs to look out for the minority sometimes instead of the majority. I think you contradicted yourself by saying that. Because if you look out for the minority, the majority would be upset and can quit, which lead to decline in numbers.



"People flock to the most populated private server and if MapleRoyals loses its #1 place then it can quickly downfall into an inescapable pit. "

This is just not true. People play the server that they want to play. People have joined here and quit within a few days and others have stayed for years. You cannot go and assume everyone plays one way. This is the issue with the server. Everyone thinks one way is the only way. This being said, I do not think simply "Addressing" issues will be enough to keep players from quitting. IF they want to quit, they will quit. For one reason or another, and you cannot stop all the reasons to quit playing the game. Ever consider, most people quit because they do not have the time to compete with everyone or to form the friendships that usually bind people to a game?



You think people are quitting because the server is bad or because of HP washing or the significant disadvantage X class has over Z class. Thats just simply not true. You have no form of evidence to support this. I don't either but Im not making the claim. As a nostalgic server, it attracts many players who are looking for this type of game play. A lot of older players who are returning to maple simply may have forgotten how tedious and grindy this game was in these patches. Simply put, players come for nostalgia and leave after they are not having fun anymore.

This is what happens all the time in video games. People do not ever stay in one game forever, especially now with the rise of "ADHD," its hard to keep younger players playing a game for very long. The majority of players here are 18-26 because we were likely 8-16 during maple's glory days. We simply forget how the game was back then.


During new source, royals went down to 3rd-5th. We had a time where voting was disabled, or it was disabled for NX (can't remember so long ago).
Then we were able to vote, but CS was still broken.

Either way, Royals recovered. Its still up here top 1


Change is good; too much change will ruin the natural flow of things.

If we are comparing this server to the competition, there is no server with even remotely close to the number of players this server has at peak times.

Come on, whoever mentioned that the drop of 1000 players to 700 players on the player counter would affect anything drastically rofl.

Other servers drop from their peak of 400-500 to 100-200. Tell me you would actually care about the number of players dropping by 300 and still being higher than the peak of other servers by almost double.




EDIT: I also highly doubt that GMs don't disagree with each other in private matters and that they just agree with "1-3 leader types" lmao. Why do people assume these things and add it into a post meant to be taken seriously? How can you take assumptions based on nothing seriously?

 

I feel this is absolutely correct.

I believe he was simply stating ignored players are more likely to quit rather than "give everyone a chance to voice their opinions and be heard". I would compare it more to a PR thing rather than comparing it to a democracy or being a shareholder in some company lmao.

To be absolutely honest with you, I'd give others servers a chance if they weren't empty. I play this because I settled rather than picking my favourite. What OP stated is true to an extent. It might not be entirely true but it definitely happens so you can't really say its either one way or the other when both your statement and his are true.

Also, with these new FM store mechanics which make stores a non-permanent item, along with increased leech supply and demand (possibly due to the LMPQ exp nerf) the "players online" feature is really not a good indicator for how many people are actually playing the game lol. Right now, there's 7 logged users on my guild but I know we're actually 3 people with their mules.

 

I don't think any server count is ever accurate for any server.

Maybe its all a tactic by making FM stores a limited time item to increase the player counter to attract newer players. A lot of "new" player's mindset are to play the server with the higher number, regardless of content.