The Current State of Onyx Apples

The only suggestion I have noticed which would solve the apple acquirement issue is to have it be farmable somewhere at a low low rate. Unfortunately I think we hit the same problem we hit with the "Grand gachapon discussion", where the majority of people voted all scrolls should be farmable... Which mob(s)/boss(es) will drop it?

As portrayed by the Castellen Toad discussion; there is no map, mob or boss which does not favor a certain class or another. Choosing those will be crucial part of the balancing act and even then most people would complain about it not being their class which farms best there. Even with multiple mobs, the classes overlap makes it difficult to choose a suitable candidate mob.
As it has become obvious most bosses are best taken down by a NL. Farming at Petri and Skele is a bishop/archmage thing and only The Boss being suitable to be solo 'farmed' by BM. Not even to mention where both sides of pirates, shadowers and warriors would fit in.

Unfortunately hindsight 20/20, but apples should never have been introduced in the first place, in my opinion. Now you staff are caught between a rock and a hard place on this topic. Good luck fixing this one.
Also I consider heartstoppers OP. Especially during the beta period where you could get 80 Heartstoppers an hour... But that's something for the MapleLegends history books.

 

Something worth noting about the current system is that it is the most balanced and fair to all players as any other option will be. Every player can get married once a week (or twice every 8 days if you vote and marry on a mule with the rest of the 15k nx from the week). Everyone pays the same amount in NX, does the same questline, and pays the same divorce fees. The only thing restricting is that you have to be level 50, but making 4 level 50 characters takes maybe 2-3 weeks for the average player.

Also as Hyoon has said, the problem with APQ is you get married once and you now have access to APQ without ever needing to get married again. Certainly the situation will arise where players make tons of mules, get married, and can do APQ dozens of times a day on their various mules. This wasn't (as big) a problem in GMS because marriage actually cost $20, whereas here it's free. People had APQ mules in GMS, but far less than what we would have here if APQ got added. I know APQ is basically off the table for a long time, if ever, but people in favor of it should consider this.

 

New player here of about ~3 weeks.

I didn't realize I could make so much money getting married to a mule and selling the onyx apples, until a high lv character told me about 3 days ago.

I personally think this is a broken system, and needs to be changed. Out of the options you listed, I like the drop from the GPQ bonus.

Now with that being said. I think its worth noting that maybe getting married is too easy. As Ghost mentioned, it was expensive to get married in the original maple. You really had to think about who you were going to marry. So I say, why not make weddings more expensive.
So the profit of the apples is not really a plus to mess with the economy, but more of a reward for the players. Because if you really wanted to marry someone, then the apples would be the least of your worries.
If you reset the weddings database altogether then that would be a plus, it would legitimize the future players who want to get married to actual players and not mules. Also, it would bring back that prestige feel like in the old maple. Because seeing someone marry was rare, and only the elite did it.

 

It's quite nice to finally see this being discussed.

Personally the two ideas that i think would come across well are:
-GPQ
-Drops from Pieces of Time & etc

This being the fact that people will have to work for them, its not something that can be bought with NX, and it will make an area like ToT alot more populated in lower areas of the area, than just the end Oblivion grind spot.

But then i'm againast them being taken out of the game completely, i feel like they're a nice boost of damage that is extremely helpful for bosses like HT, Toad, BG's and such.

 

I didn't mean remove them from people's inventories but make them no longer obtainable until APQ comes out, or a big reduction to total # of apples obtained in a wedding. Obviously it will affect skillbook prices but that's probably expected since you have removed a pot buff that enables/makes things to be easier.

 

I mean if you're talking about HT being "easy" right now, revert the changes you did to it because that was essentially a HT nerf lmao
Runs are much faster and easier now than it was before those changes because the dark wyverns still spawned at 100%

yo no wonder your bum ass taking so long to marry me u trying to nerf it

 

So reading true the comments i notice a few common factors and added my own opinion:

Completely remove Apples, or at least until APQ comes out. They are too strong anyway.
~Yes, they are strong. This however is not the main problem, the way they are gained is. They are a part off the old maple feeling and should remain.
Not only high end bossers use them, but also hp washers trying to clear job adv, and it helps lower lvld guilds starting to boss.
Have a NPC that sells them at a set (but high) price. Availability could be a problem.
~While this is a viable option for a messo sink, having them available at a set price could hinder the overall gameplay.
Make them drop from Gachapon in tiny stacks.
~The nx will shift from marrying to Gach after removal (fact), this would only benefit that. (and please stop throwing every item issue into Gach T_T)
Make them a drop from GPQ Bonus (Would require the crash during the transition to Bonus to be fixed)
~This would require effort, and make it available for a general amount, a decent solution but with a risk of them being farmable...
Have them available for some sort of exchange (Such as Pieces of Time?) or something that would require effort/farming
~While this would be a viable option, and give room for more possible items to be gained this way. It would simply shift the leeching community to a different map. So selling leech while farming apples... Not something i would like as a future boss attacker. A possible way to combat this and give attackers a shot at apples is to potentionally have them also drop from high lvl bosses like zakum/horntail?

Also i already stated it but would like to make a note of it again:
You will always have a afk NX farming group, how do you plan to combat the shift from marriage to GACH?

 

Legit option.
I think making apples exclusive to hunting gacha is the way to go. it requires effort to get the tickets and you can't farm apples directly. kim can nerf/buff the droprate of apples how she sees fit to keep the economy healty.
in the end we will need APQ fact.

 

GPQ can be farmed solo btw. Just ask Abby and look at all the points he got Honor solo with his 6 clients...

 

That doesn't matter at all since you can't loot on 6 clients at once. Maybe you can loot on 2 characters at the same time max, and there's a time limit on the bonus stage so I doubt it would be very efficient.

 

I think the best solution would be a combination of things -- NPC apples and reduced availability from effort-based event (hunting gach, APQ, GPQ, etc).

If your database collects the information of market price of apples sold, every so often (or whenever possible), readjust the NPC price for apples to the market cost plus a premium of 2.5mil. This still allows for a market value of price over time while still leaving room for a meso sink (which is really, really important for the long term of maplestory economics).

Removing any vote-based methods to procuring apples is the only way to steer away from a vote2win system, but I don't think removing them altogether is the solution.

Another thing -- any beneficial rule in a system that has no chance of failure will be exploited. Adding a possibility of failure will always balance this out as a gamble. Makes for clean policy-making. For example, don't make apples a guaranteed reward for weddings if you're so against it. If you give weddings a lower probability of payout to apples, this could be a form of balance as well.

 

Someone suggested dropping stats. I suggest dropping stats to the point where they're still relevant, or perhaps reduce stats to similar to heartstoppers or slightly stronger than heartstoppers and reduce duration to a much shorter one.Or since people abuse the marriage system this much, why not make it weaker than heartstoppers or even some other potions?

A second possible option is to change/ increase the nx cost and/or change the method of buying marriage tickets or to limit how many marriages can happen per character

Perhaps adding a Pre-requisite that requires two players to complete certain quests or follow a questline beforehand before being able to marry? like hunt X monsters or obtain Y items

one more suggestion; untradeable apples

 

If gpq is added, it better have a max amount of times or a really really low droprate.
Its so easy to solo/duo gpq and if you have a mage or a nl, u can clear boxes pretty decently. People can even finish gpq in a mere 15-20mins...
(Which is even less time/effort than nx weddings - with no risk/loss ... compared to 20k u pay for weddings)


I think the idea of making weddings less profitable (either 2 apples or 0-6 apples) would be nice as well. You still have the chances of being lucky, however u also have the chances of gaining nothing

 

Not saying anything about looting the Bonus room, just saying they can GET to the bonus room easily. If they add to GPQ then they better make it limited amounts per day or people will farm the shit out of it more so than getting from weddings currently.

 

Make gobies drop apples so its worth farming again SeemsGood

 

I don't have a solution per say but if we shift to having no apples, 4th job mages are just going to park their chars in voodoos all day. They can just move their character once every few minutes and mindlessly farm why they play on another character. This doesn't seem too much different from the whole "vote2win" system that you are trying to remove.

My question is this. How many people have been "abusing" this system? Why not implement a longer wait period for marrying/divorce? Also perhaps set a hard cap of accounts that can be made to something like maybe max of like 30 accounts. If you are worried about people just mindlessly making tons of accounts. Or also up the level required for marrying to 70+.

 

Agreed, I think the solution to this is to make marriage harder.

 

I do not believe that issue is about people that have been abusing the system per se, but rather the whole mentality of vote 2 win concept. The fact that people can vote without any effort and can easily farm apples for mesos goes against Kimberly 's idea of making this server fair and equal for everyone. Sure, everyone can technically abuse the system and exchange nx for mesos, but then it is not fair for people who wants to spend nx on other stuff and work their butts off on earning mesos from training or leeching. In addition, I also do not think that was intention of staffs to be that way either.

Reading through current discussions so far, Ive seen a couple of comments about nerfing the apple rather than fixing the current marriage system itself. And while I can understand to some degree, I think its better for us to discuss about ways to increase the "effort" that is required to farm them. Some people might disagree, but I see apples as just another attack pot. It is surely the most powerful attack pot we can use and can be borderline op at times, but its effectiveness is still temporary and people are already paying a hefty price to use one. Nerfing them will not only hurt the current attackers that uses it to HT, but also will increase mages farming heartstoppers, which also does not require much efforts to farm them to begin with. Doing so can potentially fix the current problems, but I just believe that there are better ways to address the issue.

One of ways that I think would be step in the right direction is to increase the marriage cooldown time. A bit sucks for actual couples that fell apart that in less than a week, but I think we can all kinda agree that marriage typically lasts longer than that Kappa.

Also, like nubjulez has stated, randomizing the amount of apples you get per marriage would also help. I am personally not a big fan of "random" since it introduces another sort of gambling aspect, but I think that would also give people less incentives to farm nx for apples because now their expected profit margin is not guaranteed.

And to maintain same demands for current supply of apples, we can always introduce them to GPQ until APQ is released. This way it introduces some sort of skills into getting apples, unlike getting one for free without any efforts put onto it. As for the chance of drop, I think it should be in line with how other scrolls drop like overall int 60s.

My 2 cents

 

There are already people with 100+ accounts