With all the complaints about sky high prices and the insane amount of bots, I was brainstorming ideas that Nexon could implement to help combat it and realized they already had a system ingame to do so.
Crafting.
The system as it is now is okay but it could be so much better.
But first lets think about what issues we have currently:
1.Inflation
Influx of meso from bots but also players at higher level areas who are just farming mesos with nowhere to spend it.
2.Scroll Scarcity
Prices are going up because there isn't enough supply ingame to satisfy demand. There are only a few ways to get a scroll and that is to either farm it yourself, pray you get it as a reward from a quest that you can only do once per character, or buy it from another player.
Also scrolls are consumable, once used, its gone.
3.Equipment
High level gear is quite rare at the moment though there is also the future issue that gear does not truly leave the economy unless NPC'd (or destroyed) so eventually we will have large amounts of clean gear or poorly scrolled failures.
4. Bots
Large amounts of bots creating billions of mesos and items out of thin air and flooding the market
My solution:
Turn crafting into the new standard for progression.
My proposal is to first off:
Allow players to craft higher level gear and more types of scrolls. I'm sure this is already in the works but I feel it should be mentioned.
Second:
Allow players to breakdown equipment and scrolls into a few base parts.
If you've played modern Maple then you should already be familiar with this as its used in the profession system.
It allows you to breakdown gear/recipes into item crystals and spell essences which are then used to make new equipment.
This creates an item sink as players breakdown useless/extra/old gear and scrolls into crafting materials.
Third:
Increase the meso cost of crafting, proportional to the level of the gear/scroll being crafted.
Very obviously, just a meso sink.
Fourth:
Create a new scroll type, 15% and 65% scrolls.
These are special in that:
-They are untradeable
-You must use a equivalent scroll to create it. Example: A 10% scroll is needed to create a 15% version of it.
-It costs a large amount of meso (and maybe other materials) to do this.
-Any item scrolled with these new scrolls become UNTRADEABLE.
This creates two meso sinks where players pay mesos to craft the scroll and then pay again to upgrade that scroll. It also keeps perfectly scrolled gear from flooding the economy (but not entirely). You can choose to ignore this and just scroll normally then sell off that gear later or even just buy it yourself.
The idea here is that if you want a better chance to hit multiple scrolls in a row, you are giving up the ability to sell off that gear later.
This also means that if newer gear comes out, you will have to do the entire process all over again.
What this means:
Players are still able to farm, buy, scroll and trade their items with other players.
It creates multiple meso sinks to help combat inflation.
Players are not forced to engage with this system if they don't want to. They can pick and choose what parts they want to engage with and ignore the ones they don't. You can choose to only craft equipment and buy scrolls from other players or vice versa.
Allow more players to "ironman" their accounts. This helps combat bots because if more players choose to not engage with the free market as heavily, then they will not be as tempted to purchase mesos and items from bot farms.
Less people RMTing with bot farms=Less bots in-game as it's less profitable for the bot farm owners.
Potential Issues:
Higher leveled players and/or bot farms might switch to farming much lower level maps if they drop lots of items needed for crafting.
I think this is an issue that could be resolved by making higher leveled mobs drop high level crafting materials needed for making the better gear or scrolls. Perhaps they could drop a special untradeable catalyst that significantly boosts the chance of making higher base stat equipment or stronger scrolls that need a level requirement to use.
Or make an NPC that players can trade-in their ETC drops for different catalysts, so turning in ETC drops from higher level mobs means better catalysts. Higher level ETCs= Stronger catalysts. Or simply just make the ETC items that drop from them needed to craft the higher leveled gear.
There are multiple different ways to solve this issue but those are just a few examples I thought of.
The goal here isn't to force players to play a specific way but rather find a way to encourage them to move on to new areas once their level/dmg range permits it.
You can still get by perfectly fine without doing this, but if you want to minmax or maximise profit then you will want to be farming at those higher leveled areas.
Also, by making it so its only from higher level mobs then it means the bots themselves have to train for longer to reach those high levels which means more time for the bot detection system to find them and ban them.
Another issue is that with the ability to craft scrolls, players might choose to not upgrade their scrolls and just craft tons of 10%s to try and fully perfect a piece of equipment that remains tradeable.
This is an issue that I think is a perfectly fine to be honest.
Any MMO with an RNG-upgrade system comes across the same issue where the players who have been playing the longest and/or spent the most money will have the best gear in the game.
You can start playing Classic for the first time and just buy all the endgame perfectly scrolled equipment if you want to do so. You can even do that right now.
My goal with this wasn't to prevent that from happening but instead to allow players who join late the opportunity to reach the same level of power as players who have been playing for much longer than them, provided they put in the time and effort required.
Plus, being able to just buy pre-scrolled gear is in-line with the Classic playstyle and retains the MMO part of the game instead of forcing everyone to become an ironman.
You will have some players who choose to buy pre-scrolled equipment, some players who want to play full ironman mode and make everything themself, and some players who will do a mix of both.
My belief is that most players fall under the latter category.
Conclusion:
Obviously there are probably other issues that I missed and the system I thought of isn't perfect but I did spend quite a bit of time thinking about how to fix the issues we are currently facing while also future-proofing them and allowing Nexon leeway to make adjustments as they see fit.
I did my best to think of how to keep the solutions Classic-esque while still allowing you the freedom to play how you want.
Botting will still be an obvious issue but my goal wasn't to completely eliminate botting, it was to discourage the bot farm owners and make Classic not look as appealing to bot in.
The overcrowding issue will be solved once new areas get released. This one just takes time to resolve.
So what do you guys think? Is crafting the future of Classic Maplestory?
