Notice [Feedback Thread] MapleLegends' 2024 Events

Personally, I believe that Legends should have smaller, simpler events. The amount of mismatched content that's shoved into each event can be funny. Did anyone care about Torr's Horn? What's the point of Baited or Outsmarted? Some of the best experiences I've had with events are from the events that simply re-use existing game mechanics and feedback loops in a fresh wash. Examples:

a.) Boss PQ is a quick and easy way to practice the bosses.
b.) The Christmas Boss Pouches were a nice incentive to get more players doing runs.
c.) The Lunar New Year raffles of the past added a nice raffle ticket system on top of content that players were already engaging with (ex: bossing, mobbing, etc).

Events should supplement existing feedback loops, and iterate on existing content, as opposed to creating net new features.

Looking specifically at this year...

The Good:

- The events continued to iterate on past event mechanics.
- The events were well spaced out.
- The events had relatively balanced reward pools.
- The events didn't massively favor mule-ing.

The Bad:

- The Haunted Mansion questline is terrible. It's a chore. The instructions are vague. The quest itself is confusing. I love what the team is trying to do with that questline, but it's not working.

- The Jump Quests drive me insane. I've never been a fan of Jump Quests in this game, and the events are no exceptions. Content like Demon Tower (Hard) is some of the least fun I've ever had in Legends. But that's just my personal experience.

- The Time Commitment for some of these events is wild. Personally, I've preferred the shorter/simpler event mechanics of the past (BPQ, Lunar Raffles, Christmas Boss Pouches), but that's just my perspective.

As always, thanks to everyone on the team for all their hard work in making Legends what it is! Just please don't make me do another JQ!

 

I unfortunately missed many of the events in this survey, the only one that I played in was the Xmas one so instead of judging that event with my limited scope, I'll just give a little bit of information about what I as a player tend to like for events.

Events back in the old days of MMOs were awesome things that brought people to a collective location to do certain activities, this is a great appeal as it really bolsters the social aspect that many people seek from an MMO.

In my opinion events have 3 aspects I find important.
Community
Reward
Flavor

Community

Spoiler

As mentioned Events serve as a way to bring players both high and low together and I think this is a critical piece of them. It not only lets established players meet newer ones but it lets newer people feel more connected to the perceived 'endgame' players. In the context of the event this should allow most players regardless of level participate in roughly the same content and group content is always a plus! Especially if its things that is easy to pick up and not need to hyper optimize (people always will and thats fine! Just easier things to pick up can be less daunting)

Reward

Spoiler

Different events have different rewards, NX, Maple Weapons, Boosted Drops, and even temporary power items feel good to get or work towards and add a little bit more excitement into an otherwise occasionally monotonous world. Even just having event items dropping from mobs that you can do something with gives a tiny bit of dopamine! I haven't participated in an event that awarded APRs or better ways to get them but i believe this is something a lot of people would like to see since it helps newer players get a jumpstart their adventures since there does seem to be some pressure to wash.

Flavor

Spoiler

Of course this is extremely subjective, but an events content should be flavorful towards whatever its centered around. To me flavor is also the quests that you do during the event. Do they fit the spirit and are they actually enjoyable? If they're not then its kinda missed the mark since holidays/events are supposed to be fun! Maplestory isnt the most Lore focused game but seeing events tied into the consistent world is always a highlight for me.

Now that i've rambled about what i think an event should be, onto the event cadence. A lot of the time i find that events tend to be a bit clumped up towards the end of the year of course thats when Thanksgivings, Christmas, Halloween and the like are so it kinda makes sense.

But I do think having more events even if they're smaller consistently on the horizon would be nice to always give a little extra spice to whats going on, so long as it wouldn't force the team to have to do too many client updates to facilitate.

Like I said I'm new but I love what MapleLegends and private servers in general do to the game, for preservation and to breathe new life into our nostalgia! So regardless of if this ends up being helpful thanks for the work and thanks to all the Legends out there for making the world alive!

Self serving plug below

Spoiler

Would be really poggers to get these pets added eventually, they're very cute. PeepoOwO
https://forum.maplelegends.com/index.php?posts/371195/

 

Thank you staff for rolling out the events on time this year! I’ve been a casual player since 2020 and there were massive delays to events that period, so it was great to experience events which coincide with the festive/ holiday period IRL.

However, I would like staff to consider more viable alternatives for players who are not huge on JQs or prefer more solo play (not all of us have great social capital or mad player skills).

When DKT was first released a few years back, I had the (viable) option of grinding over the JQ and managed to get decent raffle rewards; this time round I had a comparatively harder time since raffle drop rates are abysmal grinding, and APRs are almost totally locked out (if you don’t SPQ, for example). The rates at which NX drops couldn’t compare to APR gains in SPQ.

The recent SPQ brought out the worst in some people as well, kicking players
or abandoning parties who are not as quick to catch up on PQ mechanics. As a player who took time to master the PQ, I really wished there was an alternative, or an option for a “training room” where I could learn the mechanics early on before PQing with others.

Didn’t proofread but I’m sure there are others who can paraphrase this chunk of text more articulately. Thanks for the feedback thread as usual! I’m glad we have a safe sharing space here

 

Suggestion for Snowman PQ: Add experience to b3 so we know who whited.

 

To give a simple yet unhinged general ranking of the events:

Lunar was pretty fun (learning to speedrun B2 and the short period of Deep Forest were the highlights)
Anniversary not as good as last year, but still very peak and the best of the 5 (and hot take but puff daddy 2024 was 1000000x better)
Summer had incredible improvements to the systems but overall still just ok, I do appreciate how lax it was
Halloween terrible (Olivia PQ neat tho + it gave us an SSS+ tier chair (crow chair my beloved))
Christmas alright

As a collective, my main complaint with these events is that they don't feel particularly friendly to those who don't have the time to play every single day, especially Halloween and Christmas in my opinion (with the exception of the Summer event and maybe Lunar), often requiring a decent chunk of timesink just learning to git gud at the content just to finish weekly caps.
Despite being annoyed by it from a time management perspective though, I will admit it also does end up being satisfying when you do finally 'master' the content, which I appreciate.

 

I won't write a full-on post about my opinions since I already forgot 90% of the events but one recurring theme that got on my nerves a little was that raffles seemed to drop very rarely from mobs despite having a (mostly) pretty weak reward pool.
Playing the game normally during event felt like you were just wasting time compared to spamming SPQ or the JQs for Lunar.

Edit: I'm sorry, I realized I forgot to be nice. Thanks staff for once again providing us with a year of content. It's apparent that you guys are actively trying to provide us with the best content for the largest amount of people <3

 

Anniversary Event 2024
1. How did you feel about the return of the Demon King's Tower?
- First year I've done it, only ran through it all the way one time, never touched it again.

2. Did you play the original Demon King's Tower, or the Hard version of the tower more?
-OG.

3. Aside from the Demon King's Tower, did you take part in any of the other content this Event offered?
-Mostly Axe PQ. Did the cake boss a few times, but event bosses that are just big HP sponges and take forever are my attention span's worst nightmare.

Summer Event 2024
1. How do you feel about the fishing mechanic? Do you mind that it ebbs and flows between active gameplay and inactive gameplay?
-Felt great, getting bait passively by doing stuff you're already doing during your waking hours, get rewarded for that passive grinding during your AFK hours. Unfortunate that the server was so heavily attacked during this event that slowly turning bait into fish was sometimes very frustrating when you couldn't guarantee to fish for an extended (or even short in most cases) period of time, but that's not the event's fault.

3. Which content did you find yourself enjoying the most from this Event?
-Fishing. BPQ was nice for farming a lot of bait quickly, and I struggle to articulate why exactly I didn't much care for it, but it definitely helped out in a pinch when you needed a few hundred bait quickly..

Halloween Event 2024
1. Did you enjoy the Olivia Boss fight? How did you find the difficulty of it?
-No. Event bosses that are just big HP sponges and take forever are my attention span's worst nightmare.

2. Would you like to see Boss fights like Olivia implemented into the game's regular content?
-Krex already exists though.

3. The last three Halloween events have been centered on an evolving questline in the Haunted Mansion. Do you like this format? Or would you prefer a less story-driven gameplay?
-I thought the concept was cool, but in practice it was very annoying, especially for multiple characters, double especially with how large the mansion is, and triple especially when you consider most other events give equal or better rewards for significantly less time invested just as the barrier for entry. (i.e. talk to Alcaster and you're good to grind away)

Winter Holiday Event 2024
1. Did you find this version of the Snowman Smackdown PQ difficult? Why/why not?
-That damn tree geometry killed me more than anything else the PQ had to offer.

2. Did you enjoy the addition of mesos to the prize pool of Snowman Smackdown PQ? If not, why?
-Personally, I did, it allowed you to make a modest side income while farming APRs, which is nice because if you need those APRs it can be a little frustrating seeing everyone else make mad money around you from the random scroll boxes and raffles.

3. Did you think that this Event had the right amount of content for the Event period (4 weeks)?
-I would argue the Winter event might have too much going on between the candles and the 2 different PQs and all the bosses being buffed with additional pouch drops during the time people are probably going to be busiest in the year, but I wouldn't say that as a bad thing. It really felt like you had a lot of options that you could choose to engage with, as opposed to, say Anniversary, where higher level players are locked out of normal PQ based rewards and were then forced to fight ol' cakey for those coveted maple equips.

Also as an aside, the Snowman boss being killable in 4-6 minutes with a well oiled squad felt like you were being rewarded for getting better at the fight, on top of the actual threat of death/failure; unlike Cake/Olivia which was going to take as long as it takes with 6 people and there's no real influence you have as a player to speed up the process.
And I forgot about Lunar New Year, but grinding 88*8 (*however many characters you were willing to get a +9 all stat ring for) etcs really burnt me out.

 

All of my feedback is ISLANDER specific, so I appreciate that this is probably a niche perspective. As always, thank you kindly to the staff for all the effort involved in getting these events over the line xx

Anniversary Event 2024
This is my FAVOURITE event of the year, it's by far the MOST inclusive for Islanders as we are not left out of ANYTHING. I wish more events followed this format, rather than giving islanders watered down separate versions (which is surely more work? no?).

Did you play the original Demon King's Tower, or the Hard version of the tower more?
Only the original. Even after the Hard version was nerfed, I still found it too hard to bother with.

Aside from the Demon King's Tower, did you take part in any of the other content this Event offered?
The pond jumpy thing It was a great way to cap on coins each week and it was relatively enjoyable. I found the axe throwing PQ kind of tedious, and the other one (with the chests? I forget the name) absolutely a waste of time except for getting that first medal.

Summer Event 2024
For players who experienced the 2023 Summer Event, did you appreciate the changes made this year of grouping all regular/special Fishes into one of each, the grouping of the Pot and Shovel together, and the removal of the Bait Points exchange step, in order to simplify the mechanics?
2024 adjustments were a welcome improvement, and I hope they remain for future years that utilize the fishing concept. 2023 was way too complicated with too many currencies.

Which content did you find yourself enjoying the most from this Event?
JQ I appreciate that islanders were provided additional JQ entries since they were excluded from other aspects.

Halloween Event 2024
Islanders are only given access to "spooky amherst" which have ghosts and ghouls that drop candies in exchange for raffles. Some thoughts:

• The increased candy requirement this year (100 instead of 50) was justified, and the speed of obtaining raffle tickets more balanced this year.
• Obtaining pumpkin coins was SO slow, since we only got them from drops! It would be nice if we could get a set amount every time we hand in the raffle quest next time (10-20?). Coins are for cosmetics anyway, so it shouldn't be so difficult to get cute NX lol.

Winter Holiday Event 2024

• Give the island access to Happyville OR add Mapleclaws + O-Pongo to Amherst as well We got the Little Suzy NPC but we couldn't finish he quest because the people we needed to talk to weren't available.
• The little cake/candle map was a little bit useless. While cute, they take 3(? i can't remember exactly) set-damage hits to kill so there is no value in using them. The EXP ratio vs number of hits to kill wasn't viable vs just training on pigs or mushrooms (which also dropped the event items).
  
• Coin (present) accumulation rate was really nice compared to other events (even though they were only available to us as mob drops, the chance to get 3 at a time really sped things up. I got a lot of the NX I was after this event).

 

1. Which Event of 2024 was your favorite and why?
- Summer event because farming event points were not too hard on multiple characters.

2. Were you disappointed by any of the Events of 2024? If so, why?
-I felt halloween event made me feel too overwhelmed to clear all prequest on some mules.

3. Which do you value more? The event content (the gameplay associated with the event) or the rewards from the event?
- Personally the latter.

4. Did you find any of the Events this year difficult to participate in? If so, why?
-Yes, especially the first week 2025 DKT was released. It was too hard to clear for casual player(Some of my friends just did not participated on first week).

5. In 2024, we had a lot of repeating Events from years prior, along with minor tweaks to enhance the player's experience. Do you like this format/style of events? Why/why not?
-Yes and no both. Repeating itself is nothing wrong but i wanna see other creative events this year.

6. With the current format of Events that we have, is there anything missing or lacking in terms of content or rewards?
-Nothing. All good!

7. Ability Point Resets (also known as "APRs") have been absent for quite a few Event prize pools now. Do you prefer being rewarded NX to spend on APRs, or would you prefer to use an event currency such as points or raffles to -exchange for APRs?
- I prefer the latter.

8. Do you prefer Events with limits (i.e. daily and weekly caps) imposed on how often you can enjoy content and obtain rewards, or do you prefer an unlimited content structure?
-I think there should be weekly cap because unlimited structure is too broken to make attackers.

9. Which Event did you have the most time in your personal schedule to enjoy, regardless of the Event's actual enjoyability?
-I spent a lot of time clearing DKT on multiple characters, which negatively affect my health. It was definetely homework for me.

10. Is our current schedule of 5 Events a year something you find satisfactory? Should we do more or less Events, and should they be longer or shorter in length?
- 3~4 weeks length is fine! Not too short, not too long!
Anniversary Event 2024
1. How did you feel about the return of the Demon King's Tower?
- I enjoyed adjusted version(after we could choose hard/easy mode). Hard mode was not too hard to clear, and i could chill at easy mode(But, boss on easy mode was harder than that of hard mode for me).
2. Did you play the original Demon King's Tower, or the Hard version of the tower more?
-DKT 2025 version was first time for me.
3. Aside from the Demon King's Tower, did you take part in any of the other content this Event offered?
-Did some cake PQ to farm ap reset.

Summer Event 2024
1. How do you feel about the fishing mechanic? Do you mind that it ebbs and flows between active gameplay and inactive gameplay?
-If i could fish a little bit more faster, it would've been perfect(every 0.5 second)
2. For players who experienced the 2023 Summer Event, did you appreciate the changes made this year of grouping all regular/special Fishes into one of each, the grouping of the Pot and Shovel together, and the removal of the Bait Points exchange step, in order to simplify the mechanics?
-I highly appreciate saving my etc inventory.
3. Which content did you find yourself enjoying the most from this Event?
-BPQ, and farming ap reset while doing jump quest.

Always Thank you for your service!!

 

I was waiting for this thread to give some "informal" feedback. I liked all the events themselves, they were all well planned and executed (despite the lag spikes, for example). 10/10
The only suggestion I would give is that, in a fishing event for example, it would be possible to get all the material in 1 week and deliver it week by week,
at the Christmas event for example, it is a date that I know many people who travel (it goes beyond my geographical knowledge if outside of Brazil too), so if at this event it was something like that I believe it would be me better used

 

I had fun in the events. Thank you

 

1. Which Event of 2024 was your favorite and why?
Anniversary event. DKT was the most fun event content, by far. Great variety of challenges to overcome; felt very good to get good at it; and even had (optional) social aspects.
I feel most event content (that I engaged in) was otherwise pretty boring; fights are just holding down a button and waiting for a boss to die, or simply overstay their welcome despite having some interesting mechanical challenges (Snowman PQ).

2. Were you disappointed by any of the Events of 2024? If so, why?
I didn't go in with any expectations, so it's hard to be disappointed.

3. Which do you value more? The event content (the gameplay associated with the event) or the rewards from the event?
The content... But the rewards are nice. I would go back and replay DKT without rewards, just for fun.
But I don't think I can say the same for any other event content. You really will have to pay me in APRs to sit through stuff like SPQ.

4. Did you find any of the Events this year difficult to participate in? If so, why?
Summer PQ? The one where you need an actual character to blast things with, lol.

5. In 2024, we had a lot of repeating Events from years prior, along with minor tweaks to enhance the player's experience. Do you like this format/style of events? Why/why not?
I think it's fine. You should reap the rewards of having spent development effort into your events. You shouldn't feel pressured to drop something new and sparkly every single season, every single year. That's just unrealistic.

6. With the current format of Events that we have, is there anything missing or lacking in terms of content or rewards?
Not really.

7. Ability Point Resets (also known as "APRs") have been absent for quite a few Event prize pools now. Do you prefer being rewarded NX to spend on APRs, or would you prefer to use an event currency such as points or raffles to exchange for APRs?
It's all APRs at the end of the day. Don't really care. If you give me APRs directly, there's less chance that I forget to exchange for APRs before the event is over, I suppose.

8. Do you prefer Events with limits (i.e. daily and weekly caps) imposed on how often you can enjoy content and obtain rewards, or do you prefer an unlimited content structure?
I think weekly caps are probably ideal. I resent dailies, but will begrudgingly accept weeklies. I know there are certain things you can't afford to just reward at an unlimited rate, so I'm very OK with something like weeklies. But the time commitment needs to be more reasonable, I think. I'll talk about time commitment later.

9. Which Event did you have the most time in your personal schedule to enjoy, regardless of the Event's actual enjoyability?
Anniversary event lined up with an easy point in my schedule this year.

10. Is our current schedule of 5 Events a year something you find satisfactory? Should we do more or less Events, and should they be longer or shorter in length?
I think your current pace is great. If your team feels it's too fast, it might be too fast.

Event-specific Questions:

Anniversary Event 2024
1. How did you feel about the return of the Demon King's Tower?
This was my first experience with DKT, and I had tons of fun with it. Easily the most enjoyable piece of event content I engaged all year, and it's not close.

2. Did you play the original Demon King's Tower, or the Hard version of the tower more?
Hard

3. Aside from the Demon King's Tower, did you take part in any of the other content this Event offered?
I also ran the axe PQ and cake boss, of course.

As far as reward structure goes, I think this event was pretty great; you had a choice between getting your rewards from DKT; or if you didn't want to do that, you could sink time into axe PQ instead. Not everybody could do DKT, but anybody could hold two buttons down to clear axe PQ; I consider it a nice safety valve. I didn't like cake boss effectively requiring axe PQ participation, though. I really, really hated axe PQ, lol. Would have been nice to just get my cake entrances from DKT clears (I don't remember if this was the case by the end of the event; but I don't think it was).

I'll say it again later, but fights like axe PQ and cake boss where you're just holding attack buttons down and waiting for the boss to die are incredibly dull. I understand there is a balance to be struck, since you'd want people to have a reason to do DKT instead... So I don't really have solutions. Only complaints, for this one. But since DKT existed, I didn't have too much to complain about.

Oh, I also liked the tutorial jumpquest. It was fun learning to speedrun it, and I wish it had a leaderboard, haha.

Summer Event 2024
I didn't really like the fishing mechanic. In general, I don't really like "events" where you literally are just asked to leave your PC on and do something else. That's okay. It's not for me. I did it anyway. But I didn't like it.
My favourite content was the jump quest; it was pretty fun.

Halloween Event 2024
I skipped this. Was busy with work during this time.

Winter Holiday Event 2024
The first few days when we had Long Jump were super fun. Having it taken away sucked. I would love love love for next year's fight to incorporate LJ, and for you guys to add whatever difficulty knobs you feel necessitates having LJ. It was fun.
The fight itself... Is better than the anniversary cake boss. I guess I don't have a problem with the fight if I compare it to cake boss, but my problem with this fight was actually the amount of time ML asked me to spend in SPQ every single week. Considering the drop rates of APRs weren't guaranteed even on a full clear, I felt it was a lot of time. Even if it were 100% drop rate on a full clear, it would still have been too much, for me. I could max out on APRs for the week from DKT in maybe an hour or a little more. SPQ, even if I had a group that could get 10 clears/hour (I could not get these kinds of groups), and even if it were 100% drop rate (obviously this was not the case), would take a *multiple* of the time it took to cap out from DKT. And unlike DKT, the experience was a lot more repetitive, so I felt a lot less inclined to actually do that grind. The first two bodies are super boring and serve only to pad out the fight, imo...

I remember complaining about this a few months ago, and someone rationalised it by saying something to the effect of "anniversary is supposed to be better for APRs," but I guess I just don't see why that has to be the case. Of course MapleStory is a grindy game and it's nice to be rewarded for the time you sink in, but part of the reason I play ML and not GMS is because for the most part ML doesn't try hard to give me FOMO and doesn't try to turn the game into a job (for lack of a better word; I don't want to be THAT dramatic). SPQ was the closest ML got to feeling like a "job", so I actually just quit this event after a couple weeks.

---

Anyway, thank you for reading, and thank you very much for working hard on these events. They help to punctuate the year and spice up Maple life!

 

I be plain and simple
after 1 year of event rotation where I semi sweated
the following year I just didn't even bother to participate not to be rude but the repetitious brain rot format event have aint fun after 1 year
ESPECIALLY Retro axe throwing pq literally lost brain cells.

 

Personally I dislike event that requires a lot of grind. Pq felt more like transactional relationship with pubs or doing it within own friend groups. I like that muling is somewhat balanced for event other than the fishing one.

Just a suggestion of mine, why not make an event like pb mayhem that everyone can only attack the main bean normally with fixed damage (balanced hp). No spells, no shifters, only melee weapon damage. Let players have a taste of DR, seds, zombify (even though the mode I suggest won’t matter). Players start with 3 hearts, like Demon Tower. Damage receive takes 1 heart. Player that dies respawn at the banish map and has to walk all the way back. A good time where the sweaty people hit bean more and noobs suiciding and hitting a few times to contribute. People can be in it just for a good laugh and maybe a cosmetic / chair reward since there might be muling issue. A damage done by all players can also be posted at the end of run to keep it a “challenge” among friends.

 

This thread sure does show how maplers all want different things. Half hate spq/dkt, half can't get enough of it.

Hats off to staff for having to balance around such diverse tastes.

 

I made 2bil mesos from spq and I NEVER once said "R/J>pros/exp/clear". That stuff kinda turned me off from some people and felt discriminative. I had the pleasure of taking in about 5 people who were completely new in spq and watching them get better over time. It was one of the most satisfying experiences I had in spq. As for the pq itself, I absolutely loved the glass ceiling of learning and improving on how to heal and attack at the same time. It was one of the most thrilling experiences I've ever had on this server only beaten by demon king tower hard mode in terms of events.

 

I think anniversary event was really great about this, since it had a safety valve in axe PQ.
...Now, actually playing axe PQ was dreadful (imo...), but at least anyone could do it.

 

Can we get an Event every 2 months lol. I can't wait half a year for the next one.

Feb - Lunar (brief Valentine)
April - Anniv
June - Retro
Aug - Summer
Oct - Halloween
Nov - brief Thanksgiving
Dec - Xmas