Where did Pre Big Bang go wrong?

The gap in Maplestory pre BB was way too big to be positive and is done in the most nonsensical way possible.

From level 60-70, it's a grueling and soul-crushing experience for most players. You've pretty much maxed out all your useful skills and are just filling in the random crap you didn't bother to add points into, stat points barely did anything. The gear you got was overall useless and the PQ's at the time were more for potion gains than EXP. Then when you hit level 70 a random threshhold is hit where the game sorta became fun again, and then when you get to level 76+ depending on your glass you go through an insane leveling spike until you get about to level 90.

For most classes you hit a huge wall right here, the biggest wall the game had at the time, where you don't -really- need the rest of the skills for many classes and leveling up does very little to change the pace and nature of the game, and even LESS content is directed towards this area. If you can literally claw and bite your way to level 120, the game once again hits a fun threshhold and you can enjoy the game for a bit longer, until you reach the point to where you max most of your ''important'' skills...but 4th job did it worse by requiring many classes to fight endgame bosses for a chance at getting their skill books which required disgusting levels of high-gear, connections with a good guild, and required them to take you on good faith knowing you were at a skill-level disadvantage and that you were taking loot that they themselves sought after due to it being so rare.


That was a huge problem pre-bb and you cannot deny that Pika. You can say you prefer a poorly thought system if you like but that doesn't mean it wasn't a poorly thought progression.

I agree with a lot of that, (Actually I would estimate that the soul crushing could start as early as the 50's) but those difficulty spikes are also one important aspect of Maplestory. In PreBB, it was extremely unlikely that someone who was not invested in a character would be willing to endure the struggles and make it to a high level. Just by glancing at a 4th job player, you knew that real time and effort went into the character. Today this quality is completely absent and a max level player is more likely to be accused of hacking then having any skill. If a player just wanted to enjoy the game and burn off some free time then they had no need to engage in the heavy grinding.

One could say that another important part is a touch of the sometimes sadistic game design. (I think that is the right word) Like how for some players, Jump quests are fun but for others they are a nightmare. I don't believe its necessary to roll back the whole game to achieve this but it feels very unwise to not have the more grueling version of Maplestory available when that is where the core audience came from.

If the day ever arrived where an official Pre Big bang server were launched then it would be a whole new ball game. I would want to be right there with you on wanting to tweak some end game features and propose minor quality of life adjustments. (such as making 4th job skills that need a boss kill become easier to acquire)

But such a possibility seems very far away and customer feedback does not appear to be a priority. You need only to ask a Nexon representative about PreBB to see for yourself.

There is still 5th job to look out for but going forward, I would not expect player input to be worth much.