Paragon Access
We fully acknowledge the ridiculousness of the EXP required to achieve Lv.300 and despite the multipliers in Aries, it is still relatively difficult.
We want to allow players to access Paragon without sacrificing the efforts that Paragon-enabled players have already achieved, and still be able to offer players who have achieved significant progress towards their character levels.
That said, our plan is to provide Paragon access to players at Lv.275 + a certain requirement that will be revealed once it's ready for release. This requirement will ensure that players have spent a decent amount of effort on their accounts before they are able to access the power that Paragon grants. This will be the current plan moving forward, and for future regular increments from official servers. We have ensured that the requirement does not tie to any point of an endgame progression, and remains realistic to achieve.
Starforce Rates
Starforce rates have been quite the discussion ever since the release of 16 to 25 stars enhancements.
The current player base heavily relies on the 'Star Force Super Scroll' protection boxes to enhance their equipment beyond 17 stars, and we have noted the concerns that many players have expressed towards the reduction of success rates when compared with GMS. While we wanted to retain most of the difficulty in progression, we also wanted to ensure that Aries progression was easier to achieve than the original game as well as provide a more fulfilling experience when you progress your characters.
Our plan for Starforce rates is that the protection boxes will remain in the game. However, there will be changes made to how success rates will play out depending on the usage of these protection boxes. Once this update is live, players will be able to enhance their equipment with the success rates from GMS, on the condition that there are no protection boxes used along with the enhancement. The boxes can still be used along with your enhancement, but the success rates will be reduced or will be what the current rates are as of now.
As for the acquisition of these boxes, they will take much longer to review and we will leave this to Phase 3. We expect Phase 3 to be somewhat completed by the end of the year, if not early next year.
I'm happy to see that most of the highlighted areas have been addressed, especially re-enabling of paragon access to new 275s in the future.
However I also would like to address the potential issues that may arise of because of the second mentioned change (implementing GMS success/fail/boom rates into aries) and also offer a counter-suggestion so that the staff team has more data to work off of in deciding how they will want to implement changes into the existing starforce system in aries.
Possible ways of balancing GMS SF rates if implemented in Aries
increase the meso cost per SF attempt.
In the Aries system currently, protection boxes are the only way to realistically go from 17/18 stars to 21stars and the rate of acquisition of these boxes and also the cost of buying each pass attempt for the boxes are constant (6k dp/31b mesos per star at current meso:dp rates) regardless of the level of the equip.
Running simulations for GMS SF costs (
https://brendonmay.github.io/starforceCalculator/),
- cost of a level 200 equip's 17>21 is 54.5B (11.5B for clean equip replacement for boom + 43b meso cost)
- cost of a level 160 equip's 17>21 is 22B + 1 boom
- cost of a level 150 equip's 17>21 is 18B + 1 boom
- cost of a level 150/160/200 equip's 17>21 in aries costs 125b if we consider only buying passes and not self farming those boxes, which would make it time gated but significantly cheaper)
problems with doing this:
changing the existing SF system in Aries by introducing GMS rates will heavily break and unbalance the existing ecosystem of items and economy, because existing 150/160 items are priced with the cost of each star above 17 being considered constant (at 6k dp per pass) and will become heavily devalued if GMS prices are used, even if the meso cost per SF attempt were scaled up by a certain rate (more on this later).
Looking at possible ways to decide how much meso cost per SF attempt could be increased by:
So right now, if the SF success rates were to be implemented, the meso prices per SF attempt would definitely have to be inflated accordingly due to the much higher meso and additional nx/farming rates. Looking at the numbers, since we have 2x-4x the farming rates of GMS (2x if we consider purely mesos, close to 4x if we include NX, elite coins and nodes).
Below are several ways to decide how much to inflate the cost of each SF attempt by (for 17>21):
Assumptions:
mid-late game meso rates in GMS are 600-700m/h? + nodes (negligible for now) + traces (negligible for now)
Aries meso rates are about 1-1.4b/h + 800-900k nx (0.9-1b mesos if converted) + coins (negligible for now) + nodes (negligible for now)
Mesos are considered at the current dp:meso rate of 1k:5.2b
- purely considering meso rate (2x):
for level 200 items, this would now cost 95b~ mesos with regular SF (inclusive of boom cost), as compared to the protection box rate of 125b (
about 76%~ of the original cost)
for level 150/160 items, this would now cost 40b~ mesos with regular SF (not inclusive of boom cost due to varied eq prices), as compared to the protection box rate of 125b (
about 32%~ of the original cost)
- considering all earnings from farming (meso, nx, coins, nodes) and converted to meso (4x)
for level 200 items, this would now cost 185b~ mesos with regular SF (inclusive of boom cost), as compared to the protection box rate of 125b (
about 150%~ of the original cost)
for level 150/160 items, this would now cost 80b~ mesos with regular SF (not inclusive of boom cost due to varied eq prices), as compared to the protection box rate of 125b (
about 64%~ of the original cost)
- making the price of SF-ing 17>21 items align with the cost of paragon boxing them from 17>21.
Not recommended because paragon box service price changes might cause this to become massively inaccurate in future
for level 200 items, this would now cost 125b~ mesos with regular SF (inclusive of boom cost), as compared to the protection box rate of 125b (
same as the original cost)
for level 150/160 items, this would now cost 45.8b~ mesos with regular SF (not inclusive of boom cost due to varied eq prices), as compared to the protection box rate of 125b (
about 36%~ of the original cost)
Pros and Cons of the above
with these data in mind I want to list the pros and cons of implementing the GMS SF rates (30% pass with low boom chance) into Aries:
Pros:
- faster progression for players looking to SF their items above 17 stars due to cheaper costs
- no time gating of SF progression, purely meso/effort gated
Cons:
- crashing of the market/heavily devaluation for existing items that are above 17stars
- existing players feel like their effort into their 18 star+ items has been significantly undermined due to such changes
- meso supply will not be able to keep up with demand if costs were inflated to a point that is in line with current prices for paragon box passes
- more luck based than existing protection box system due to high variations in price needed to reach a certain SF (because of luck, article on this below)
My thoughts on this matter
While I support a more fulfilling progression path and also easier/faster progression than GMS, I feel like this could be achieved in a more thought out manner that will not break the balance of the existing system due to how delicate it is with the large number of min-maxing and custom systems that Aries already has.
Which is why I have some possible suggestions on how this could be achieved by possibly making slight modifications to the existing protection box system that Aries has rather than introducing a secondary system in parallel (GMS success/fail/boom rates)
In GMS, each boom can easily spike the cost of getting SF back to where it was, and also the trouble/price of getting new clean equipment.
Part of what I feel makes SF a fulfilling experience in aries is because with protection boxes, there are guaranteed to be no booms from 0 to 21 stars which is part of what makes the protection box system less painful because of a somewhat linear progression in SF. for players This is a good read if you're more interested in the variance between mesos needed for different players' progression due to luck in the GMS system:
www.reddit.com/r/Maplestory/comments/ob913x/just_be_lucky_a_more_complete_look_at_starforcing/
I feel like a complete system overhaul for SF (introducing GMS rates) is not really required because it might include way too much to review when considering the rippling effects it would have on the other parts of the game, and that minor tweaks (to protection boxes) would be easier to implement and balance.
My Counter suggestion for improving the SF experience
These changes will also not break the existing custom SF system (protection boxes) that Aries has had for years and I think would be positively seen by players due to improvement of progression in Aries
Better progression for paragon boxes could possibly involve:
-Slightly higher pass rates for 17-22 when using protection boxes (20%/15% ?)
-Lower cost of protection boxes in nova coins
-Easier acquisition/additional acquisition ways of protection boxes
I feel like this would be a positive change to SF progression (as compared to bringing over GMS rates) because
- it can keep the pros I have listed for the GMS SF (17-22) rates while also reducing/removing the cons
- will not break the existing custom SF system (protection boxes) that Aries has had for years
- would be positively seen by newer players because of the reduced difficulty in progression of SF
- will not as heavily impact the market/prices of existing high starforce (18+) equips
- win-win for both old and new players as this will overall reduce the difficulty of reaching higher SF for all players, while also not massively devaluing existing equipments
This is my opinion after obtaining a joint collection of input from various Aries players and GMS players on the matter.
I hope this gives post provides further insight to the staff team on whether or not to implement the new SF system with GMS rates, and also some possible ways in which progression could be improved for new players as well as mid/lategame players transitioning to the endgame. Happy to discuss this further on discord as well with other players who do not frequent forums.
If any other players have any thoughts/suggestions on the matter as well, it will be good to provide your input so that the staff team can have more opinions to consider, and there might be interesting solutions that have not been mentioned yet as well.