Suggestion to economy

I feel like most of the necessary points have already been made, but just to chime in with some overall (likely repetitive) thoughts:

• ML economy has some faults - probably a statement no one will disagree with, but as people have stated the areas and manners through which it should be fixed lack meaningful consensus.
• I don't think any "end-game" player that has responded to this thread has come out with guns blazing by saying that attaining perfect gear is easy. If anything, it's been the opposite. Aside from outlier cases where people craft impossible items (typically godly chaos scroll luck), most people that I know with perfect items have worked (1) intensely over a shorter period of time; or (2) still just as hard but not to the "no life" extent over a longer time horizon. I fit more in the latter category as having obtained my first perfect weapon after being on this server for over three years. If you want to complain and feel bitter about having less luck than those that RNG gods have smiled upon, that's a separate issue. But it's also an issue you'll have to face in real life.
• When people tell newer players that it's unreasonable to expect the same gear progression or god luck as "end-game" players, I don't believe that it's coming from a place of entitlement or condescending perspective. As I stated, most people have to work very hard for their perfect gear, and perfect gear is in no way a requirement to enjoy this game to the fullest. Your reputation and social capital carries way more weight in this community than your gear at some point, and as long as you're using reasonably attainable gear (NOT perfect) and respect others, you will be able to join any content in the game. So when people tell you to lower your expectations, it's to help you save your own mental by avoiding a toxic cycle of irrational expectations and comparisons with others that earned their perfect gear.

 

Throughout this post, I've seen the phrase "improve the economy" thrown around, but I'd say the underlying issue isn't actually about the health of the economy. While the OP suggested changes to the economy (eg. adjust meso generation / meso sinkage) as a solution the the issue he identified, the underlying issue seems to be be more about game progression.

• How to make money
• How to afford gear upgrades
• The rate at which these upgrades take

For the value of money to be higher than it is currently, our economy (I believe) would need to greatly deflate. Imagine we currently have 1 trillion mesos on the server. Just because we slow down the printing of money of alone, doesn't somehow erase the 1 trillion mesos that are already on the server.

1. Scenario 1. Meso generation is slowed down to a point where net growth is still positive. Value of meso will still, over time, depreciate as the overall money supply would continue to grow. This itself isn't a bad thing, since prices will still adjust to supply vs. demand. But at the same time, it doesn't change much from the status quo.
2. Scenario 2. Meso generation is slowed down to a point where meso sinks bring net growth to 0. This isn't really possible. Players come and go. Players get banned, extracting mesos from the economy. Players continuously use meso sinks (eg. potions). On the flipside, you'll always have people trying to generate more mesos. That's just how the game is designed. Getting to 0 is simply not viable.
3. Scenario 3. Meso generation is slowed down to a point where meso sinks bring net growth to negative. A deflationary economy is quite dangerous. If we could control how slow it deflated perhaps that would be fine. But like scenario 2, there are way too many unknown variables to keep track. If the economy reaches this state, you'd also need to consider the impact on newer players. I'm assuming that to reach this point you'd need to have slowed down generation by an insane amount and/or added new meso sinks that force the economy into a deflationary state. Imagine a new player's experience from Level 1. Until 120 they might be okay, but that Level 120 onwards grind would end up bankrupting them. They won't be able to afford potions and they'd barely get by. (Once again assuming mega slow down on generation from natural grinding + implementation of harsher meso sinks).

Increase alternative ways to get coins and money is the tldr for this suggestion. Quests are an fickle things to balance. I'd assume for this type of method to be viable (and not just a forgotten piece of content), the following should be true:

• Quest reward >= Time spent completing quest * hourly expected meso gain from leeching/farming/bossing

If the time time spent is too low, then you'd have people just spam complete quests and flood the economy with money. If you add in a time-gating (like daily or weekly turn in), you'd just have mule-central. This could be avoided if you make the required time investment higher or the quest more difficult. But how do you achieve that in MapleStory... Higher number kill quests? More walking from map to map?

It is definitely possible to balance these things, but it is something that would need more fleshing out if this is a route that players want to go.

At this point, why not just increase the amount of WS/CS that can be redeemed per 100 coins? It would be a less market intrusive way to achieve similar results to the goal you'd wanna achieve I think.