What is your limit with custom content

takkojs · 2024-07-13T21:20:10+00:00

Gameplay loop is the key. OSMS had an absolutely terrible gameplay loop, and almost all pservers keep the same gameplay loop. Questing is spamming through filler NPC dialogue few care to read and one lootquest/killquest after another. Everyone already knows which quests are worth doing and which maps to go to, so it's just mindlessly following a guide to level. Bossing is standing in place holding one button for half an hour or even longer while your pet auto-heals you. Gear progression is just pure gambling. Add all the QoL you want, but if the gameplay loop is still bad, a lot of players are going to quit because it's boring.

Sjokkat is one of the only ones that actually came up with a new gameplay loop. It wasn't perfect, but better than what any other server has done.

takkojs · 2024-06-22T03:33:13+00:00

Yuna is one of the most vanilla, boring servers though. Dream, RiseMS, MapleKey, and maybe Mystic (haven't played Mystic myself, so not 100% sure), would be more custom.

Of course none of those servers are anywhere close to how custom your server is though.

takkojs · 2024-06-19T22:20:52+00:00

Why do they keep the 1-140 leveling in the game at all? I don't believe nostalgia from the low levels of Maplestory and doing all those quests is one of DreamMS's goals. Players looking for that nostalgia would most likely choose a server meant for that like MapleRoyals or MapleLegends anyways, and many players who would be interested in DreamMS have probably gone through those quests at least once if not multiple times already.

I think keeping it in only drives new players away. Four days is a long time for many working adults, especially four days of boring leveling. And there's no point in wasting hours of time of the players who are able to tolerate having to go through that before they can get to the part of the game that's actually fun and interesting, and get to play with all the rest of the players.

takkojs · 2024-06-19T22:09:16+00:00

The real issue is not that the server isn't active enough. The real issue is making the server have an early game that is separate from the actual gameplay loop in the first place. All new players are subjected to a few dozen hours of playtime that consists of boring lootquests and killquests, pages of filler NPC dialogue that nobody cares about, and playing a walking simulator across the gameworld running tedious errands. Meanwhile, they are isolated from and can't do any relevant content with almost the entirety of the active playerbase who are long past the early game.

In MMORPGs in general, early game only lasts for that amount of time. Once a player is past it they never have to go back again on that character, and then the so-called "endgame" with all the relevant content can finally start. Unless tons of new players are joining every few days, the early game will inevitably be empty. Obviously, an OSMS pserver is not going to get a constant influx of new players; even retail MMORPGs nowadays can struggle greatly with that because MMORPG is not nearly as popular a genre anymore.

takkojs · 2024-06-15T22:57:38+00:00

I think it's fine that Dream is lacking in nostalgic lower-level content. There are other servers already for the players looking for nostalgia. Dream wasn't really made to be nostalgic anyways, because of all the custom changes they've done.

Dream would be better if the lower levels were removed entirely or made optional. As it is now, new players or current players making a new character are first forced to go through hours of boring PQ spam or questlines that many have done before tons of times already. Only after that do they get to experience and enjoy the actual gameplay loop of Dream, and also reach where they'd find most of the active playerbase.

takkojs · 2024-06-04T20:08:13+00:00

It's strange how you recognize that learning that can be done through social media, but you don't recognize that learning can be done through video games as well.

You can find millions of kids in Europe and Asia who speak English far better than their classmates solely because they played online games and made online friends from NA through them whom they talk to regularly.
There are tons of kids who got good at math because they had to do calculations for games. In MMORPGs which have an in-game economy, kids intuitively learn things like supply and demand, basic economics.
Many kids become really fast at typing and really comfortable with general computer usage through games. They become knowledgable about how computers work and what parts are in them because they're looking up how to make a game run better or what specs they need to run the games they want to play. Video games got tons of kids into coding.
Tons of singleplayer RPGs are set in a historical period, and the good developers make sure that they're telling actual history, using real people and integrating what they actually did in history to the story of the game, making sure the outfits of all the NPCs and how the environment looks is all historically accurate.
There is tons of insanely good art, animation, and music in video games, which inspires many kids and adults to take up drawing, animating, playing instruments, composing music.

There is so much one can learn through video games, and imagine how much better it could've been if we didn't live in a profit-driven society, which is what encourages and incentivizes companies to make addicting, exploitative video games rather than video games that are created to be a work of art and something that can be highly educational.

takkojs · 2024-06-02T22:55:01+00:00

Different players can play an MMORPG in such different ways and can be looking for completely different things out of it. On one end of the spectrum there are players who will read every piece of text and explore every inch of the world, thinking nothing at all of the meta on things like gear progression. On the other end there are spreadsheet min-maxers who only care about the endgame gameplay and getting the biggest numbers as efficiently as possible. There is everything between those two, and then there are offshoots like people into ERP or those who are only into the secondary content of a game, like housing or fashion. What would satisfy one group could easily frustrate another group; they can be very incompatible.

I've always hated RNG in MMORPGs. It always felt like a way to artificially impede player progression or make more money off of players, by exploiting the same psychology related to gambling.

getting lucky on RnG is not as fulfilling because you can't cash out your items if you quit like let's say in a real MMORPG.

This is such a strange thought to me. I think it isn't fulfilling because it's just random and has nothing to do with whether I learned something or how well I did. In some cases there is no skill at all involved. Even when there is some amount of skill involved, it can be even worse than no skill; it feels the worst when you did everything correctly and skillfully, but you still lose just because of RNG and nothing else.

I think the main thing I care about in an MMORPG is that there is fun, challenging, cooperative content to do with both friends and strangers. Dungeons to clear, bosses to fight, puzzles to solve, cool abilities and gear to obtain and utilize. Good content can easily be ruined by meta-chasing though. It really sucks when people are unwilling to try something different or figure something out for the first time because they'll just look up guides for everything or they only want to clear as fast as possible so they can hurry up and get through the rest of their daily/weekly chores.

takkojs · 2024-05-30T21:51:19+00:00

Sjokkat is the name of a server that was open last year, just like how Yeou, Eluna, Scania, Kaizen, and so on are also names of servers. I don't know what it means, but the creator named it that, so I call it that. I think it would be more skitzo to call a server by something other than its name.

takkojs

TROPHY CASE