Class/Skill Throwing star recharging cost is crippling for new players

Hello! I just started MapleRoyals a few days ago, and I wanted to share my perspective on the throwing star recharging cost. I know that there is a post about this 3 years ago, but I am hoping a fresh perspective on this will help change some minds.

At level 42, grinding at Wraths for about 5-10 minutes use up 1k ilbis, and get me about ~600k worth of income from looting up mesos and selling equips. It cost ~200k to recharge the depleted stars, meaning, I lost about 33% of my income just from recharging stars!

This pose a number of problems:
1) Using ilbis is simply not sustainable if you don't have a good starting amount of mesos. New players needs to be able to earn mesos, they cannot upgrade gear without the mesos.

2) The current system is also extremely unintuitive, and most new sin players will fall into the trap of spending their very limited mesos on ilbis and not know the cost of recharging them. Not to mention the UI for recharging ilbis literally is cutting off the final digit of the recharge cost, meaning many new players, including myself, will not find out about the increased cost until there is a dent in our wallet or have invested in even more ilbis. I suspect this discovery have resulted in many new players in quitting

3) Because I need a positive cash flow to maintain my stars, and I don't have hundreds of mils saved up as a new player, this limits the type of content I can participate in in the game. I have to second think any content that doesn't consistently reward me with mesos or equips/pots I can sell for mesos. For example, I need to have mesos saved up to do carnival PQ, where the only source of meso income is the necklace, which I need to sell to other players. And I can't do that while in the middle of a party.

4) Availabilities of stars, other than ilbis and subis, are extremely limited. I went through over 30 FM rooms and only found one set of steelies. On the other hand, there are tens of ilbies being put on sale.


Now, in the three years old thread, there was a number of argument put in favor of the current recharge rate. I like to address some of them:
1) New players should not play Assassin/NL
Let's say that I actually have a second class that I want to play (keep in mind that some new players do not), there is no way for me to know that creating an assassin can run into this problem. This issue will only manifest after I have committed many days into my character and earned enough mesos to buy some sets of ilbies. At that point, I would think most new players would rather quit than start a new class

2) Just use steelies as an alternative
Steelies make things better, but they're not the answer to the problem here, becase:
a) Steelies still cost 75k to recharge, in my example above, that would still equate to 12.5% of my income. That is a non-trivial amount.
b) Steelies are extremely difficult to find. They're only worth 100k in the market, most players don't bother to sell them.
c) New players may not know that using steelies is an alternative. It seems fair to assume that, given steelies is only 2 fewer w.atk than ilbis, that recharging them would cost a similar amount. You can't expect new players to know about these alternatives

3) NLs deserve to have a meso sink given the high avoid rate, the alchemy skill, and minimal pot usage
Surely, there is a better way to implement this without affecting new players. Increase MP cost of 4th job skills or add summoning/magic rock requirements to use certain 4th job skills. Both are good ways to solve this problem without affecting new players. And between class imbalance vs new player retention, the latter should be a much higher priority for the well being of the community.

Anyway, I've said all that I could. I am hoping that the GMs would at least consider reverting the cost of recharging stars. I care enough about this game to make a post about it, I suspect many new players will just quit from this.

Thanks for going through the long post

 

Your meso problem will fade as you reach higher mobs and levels.
Jr.wraith drops power crystals ore which sell for alot. Like 300-400k each.
And soon you'll hit mp3 and they will drop black crystal ores which sell for 100k each.
Leprechauns in NLC. drops insane amount of meso per hour and they are easily soloable for a ranged. Steeles, 500k bandana, Japanese map, +8int glove etc.

NL is a bossing class, you'll be able to solo bosses with ease later which some jobs can't. Your meso gain will increase.

You can't stay in 1 spot and think that's the whole maplestory life. Things will change.

 

Your meso problem will easily fade as your level up.

A lot of mobs would drop 80k-400k equips even from low lv mobs as harps / FTP1 which would heavily reduce the burden of recharging the throwing stars.

It sucks for now, but it will rapidly improve as you progress with the game.

Also - dajket gave you a good explanation on the situation, just here to add up some more info :3

 

I do agree that Ilbi's (and up) are too expensive for new players.

The change was made to put the top-tier bossing class cost of playing the game more in line with other classes.
Alchemy's hp/mp pot buff and attack pot duration buffs significantly lower their cost of playing the game.

For lower level players the increase of 1 attack is very insignificant and steelies suffice for all pre 4rth job content.

From level 120+ the increase in cost from recharging with ilbi+ is really no big deal at all.
Even my Ironman Chao Mule NL doesnt really notice

 

I do see that this problem goes away in higher levels, and this is exclusive to maybe first few weeks of a new player's experience.

But I still feel that this is something worth changing. The experience of the first few weeks/days is extremely important. A new player may not want to level to 120+ (or even 70+) given the extra hurdle they have to jump through.

 

This is not a real issue though since if you haven't taken time to look through the different options of actually gaining mesos.
Also if some sort of level / meso cost at a higher rate wouldn't apply, low level rich theifs would dominate completely by being able to use high level stars at low level.
You can get married at lvl 40 and start APQ for example.

Stars prices will increase and so will the meso gain.
Just like how mages will get insane potions cost after 4th job where as NLs will have close 0 zero potion cost.
I personally haven't bought any potions since I started killing pap/chao/ephenia.
Thanks to potions drop/ alchemy / drain.

So where it costs alittle at low level we will make up much later and if meso is a issue then get some mesos first, you can do this while levling.
Also where it costs more at low level you'll make up at higher level by cutting potion cost.

There's literally a thousands of Nls and it's the most popular job for a reason. They're costly as fu**.

 

I agree that a new player can definitely be taught how to make mesos, and *work around* the issue. But it is important to distinguish a solution and a work-around. Work arounds lessen the impact of the problem, but they often come with caveats. The caveats of your work around are:
1) Time sink from the new player to have to make mesos in order to sustain their class
2) Having to look up how to make mesos (these are not things new players will natively know about)

I am not sure what is the demographic like for private server players, but normally, the average player typically just want to download the game and play it. It's not fun to have to look up information to play the game.

Work arounds are great when the issue cannot be resolved. But this feels like a very solvable issue.

 

its not a work around, its part of the game

 

Although i support the idea of server being friendly to new players in general, as said above ibli was always an icon of this game and its expensive yes. Struggling in money is there however u can try hunting stealy or read guide for money making at low lvl. Ppl can only get rich when they hit 4th job as first character.

Monster drop link here
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/monster-drop-table-website.197278/

U can ask for help in giving section
https://royals.ms/forum/forums/giving.18/

 

When I was making my first few characters, I couldn’t afford pot trainning at himes at level 90+.

I had to go back grind lower level mobs and sell apr to get through to 4th job.

 

Just use mokbis bro not that hard

 

Just the way the cookie crumbles babe, just take it in the chin or make a new class that will be less harsh on newer players, like buccaneer (pirate) or other characters that doesn't require recharging utility or potions very much, and talking about time sinking, its called Maple"Story" for a reason right? Stories are not meant to be rushed, there are chapters in a story, from start, to ending, except MapleStory is a MMORPG, aka never ending story, so I suggest, just take your time playing the game, take it slow, and also *there are other ways of making mesos easily, like Daily Voting. (the nx ratio is like 1k nx to 4mil, sometimes even 5mil per 1000 nx) but yeah, sometimes when you take the wrong path, you just have to branch out and start a new story, (tree method) and you can also come back to the classes that you always wanted to play (that costs an arm and a leg) later on.

Also having to look up on how to make mesos, - it's good to use the forums and use the guides provided by many awesome people in the community, even people from 2013-2020 and even some GM's still use the guides. So I wouldn't sweat it, *it is free to use the forums* Don't be embarrassed.


to sum things up here, there isn't just one way to this game, there are many paths you can take, and if you take the wrong path, there is always another way.

love, Aprils

 

Yea don't worry about star prices, use weaker ones until you are higher level and richer. Back in the days people went to level 150+ with 1x rates using steelies and ilbis only. At level 50 go hunt zombies and get yourself some good equipments you can NPC sell later for some quick cash.

 

Compared to playing a sin on EMS, it was quite boring on royals when it came to upgrading stars. Everything has higher drop rates and the market was oversupplied, so there was never any buildup. You'd just buy 10 ilbis and be done.

While the high recharge cost is a workaround on top of the jenga tower of workarounds that is mapleroyals, it does make it more fun to hunt for your own stars and upgrade 1 of your stars at a time instead of all at once. So just acknowledge that you upgraded too soon and hunt wraiths with a set of subis for a bit to regain lost money

 

I think it's fair, the higher level you get, the more costly it will be, to recharge and purchase, hence why low levels would use subi,wolbi,mokbi,Tobi's and steelies etc, and higher levels will be ilbis, hwabis, crystal ilbi, BF, mtk and eventually RTK. But by the time you reach those levels, and at those lower-mid tier levels, you would be able to afford to recharge via npcing gear, voting, events and more. It just depends on the person playing with the amount of experience they have. Everyone plays differently and vary with their total play time.

Also your statement 'using ilbi is not sustainable', then just don't use ilbi, or any of the stars that cost a lot to recharge, no one is forcing you.

Also, another statement you said, 'new players need to be able to earn mesos' that being said, there's guides all over the forums, where to train for what level, what good items drop from those mobs, prices etc. There is a huge meso earning method for all levels and stages called VOTING 8000nx per 24 hours(server time reset) 1000 nx can get you 4-5 million mesos, which is around 40mil per day, so I think there is no excuse, all types of help and guidance is all provided and 100% FREE.

 

I don't care if it's possible to get around it through alternate sources of income or whatever. I think a meso sink that targets the poor is a stupid idea. It's kind of like if you implemented a tax of $10 per day: it would have no effect on the Jeff Bezoses of the server, but the fast food workers would have their livelihood destroyed.

Regardless of your stance on whether ilbis break the game when used at lv10, there was zero excuse to increase the recharge price of anything weaker than steelies. Tobies and under have always been poor people stars. That's literally taxing the poor.

 

Honestly it sounds like this (perfectly valid) complaint is mitigated quite a bit if people just started handing out Steelies to new players. I've tried a few times after selling Harp leech but its not exactly like you find a brand new Assassin player every day. Wish I could just leave them in a drop box next to Dark Lord for new players.

 

The new player experience also shouldn’t be so streamlined to:

• buy maple claws
• buy illbis
• go grind

Is it wrong to think its normal to not afford illbis on a first attacker? I couldn’t afford better pots on my first character which was a hero so I would use barbaian elixirs even at like 12k hp.

Just use your own time to get non-illbi/hwabis

• Go hunt your own steelies, the drop rate here is high.
  
• Go do the NLC phantom seed quest and buy icies for like 40k
• There’s also like 10 other stars lower than illbis, take your time to get literally any of them. (wolbis, mokbis, maple throwing, snowballs, icies, wooden tops, oranges, steelies, tobi, kumbi, paper airplanes)

And if you can’t find them, ask around. This is a community game, not a solo RPG. People will gladly tell you where to get them or if they have any they can give you.

And if you can’t bother to google it yourself, search on forums, ask in game/forums where to get illbis alternatives. Then yes, the non-communicative alternative is to farm monsters specifically to get more mesos to recharge them.

The damage drop off at low lvl/low gear is so minimal from lets say tobis to illbis.

And if you think well illbis are cooler, well it’s a goal then to afford all the cool stars and their recharge price!

Voting everyday also as stated above, just gives you free ~30m a day

Also losing 33% of your meso gains to cost of play isn’t even that bad.

• Horntail costs you 4-5apples/PE/Few stoppers/recharge/summon rocks (40~45m)
• you probably won’t have nx priority as a new player
• Horntail doesn’t drop books very often
• Not easy to get a buyer

 

Thank you for this message. I tried to explain it this way, but people are too stubborn and arrogant to read our messages but yeah. There are so many different throwing stars and ways to make mesos like voting which is once a day and you get 30-40mil off that alone. But yeah, thank you so much for putting this out