Why I am quitting, and what I think is wrong with MapleLegends

First of all I've been playing MapleLegends on and off since 2017 and have donated somewhere in the area of $150 or more (spitballing). So this is not a rant designed to attack the server, nor is it a rant in general. I have made a lot of friends here, and I like seeing this server do well else I wouldn't have been around for 2 years and donated so many times.

The main reason I wanted to play a private server was because GMS is effectively a single-player game. I don't like how everyone has flash jump, everyone mobs, levels mean nothing, it seems to be about getting gear and bossing only. Royals seems too easy, other servers are all easier versions of GMS. I like old MapleStory, childhood MapleStory, hard MapleStory. I used to think v62 was hard but I've come to realise that things like muling and the 4th job suck away a lot of the fun, and I'd like to explain why.

Muling

I feel that even if I have a high level Crusader/Hero I lose to people with the following mules:

• Haste
• HyperBody
• Meso Up
• Sharp Eyes
• whatever else is muled

So immediately the barrier to being equal with other players is to also have these mules. I could certainly not have them, but now I am slower, have less HP, and earn 50% less mesos than other players because of it. I may enjoy being at a disadvantage but I don't think that's the norm.

It saddens me seeing half of the people in FM channels just being mules and watching people on stream login to their 11th mule, their KPQ mule, their LPQ mule, their X mule, their Y mule. It's insane that it's that easy to have a spare for everything. Straight up having a PQ mule is either to replace someone else who isn't available, or is so that you can carry an entire team of 5 others in LPQ for instance. Yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong with that but it removes community interaction and thats the start of the very slippery slope that has a end I don't like. I think being able to remove interaction from other players so easily and the fact that some/most people do it so some capacity is the beginning right? Why seek out a Thief when I can just login to my haste mule. Hold up, this guy for EPQ is getting his HB mule with 17,000 HP at level 50 so his guild has one for Zakum, forget fixing or promoting players to play Dragon Knight or Dark Knight just mule it.

Leeching

Put simply, leeching sucks. My fondest memory of childhood MapleStory was seeing a level 30 and thinking they were god-incarnate. Seeing level 150 Tiger on the rankings and thinking how that was even possible, I'd been 2X for a month now back then. I was so clueless at the game as a child that I increased my STR as a "d3xl3ss s1n" just so I could equip the monkey wrench for whatever reason. The highest I ever got that char was 67 and that was in 2008/2009 or something around the time Michael Jackson died.

The other day on Legends I watched a guildie go from 70 to 135 in something like a week or two as they self-leeched with their Bishop. Congratulations for them but that makes me feel terrible, my effort in levelling is useless compared to those with mules who can level faster due to leeching, let alone them being tankier, moving faster, and earning more mesos with mules. Yes comparing yourself to others is bad but that's the standard of the game. The formula is you make a bishop (I find mages categorically boring and impossible to play) and once you have one you sell leech for mesos and leech your real main up. I find that insane. It's not a hard requirement, but it is a soft one given how essentially everyone recommends it.

Leeching removes any aura of significance around levels to the point where they are worth essentially nothing. Being a high level now has no value. I think 4th job adds a lot of power creep, as well as the ability to leech, which ruins that aspect of the game for me.

4th Job

Put simply, everything is too good. It's much more obvious in modern GMS where everyone has a flash jump, everyone can kill an entire map, etc. 4th job is the first iteration of this and things like Gensis, MapleWarrior, and other insane damage skills kind of make the other jobs useless. Yes some classes have a 2nd job that wipes out the first, same for the 3rd. Yes Assassins use Lucky7 until Triple Throw. There are some good aspects of 4th but for me the insane gap in power and balance around specifically 4th job content means the game isn't even truly fun until that cap is hit. And now I don't even feel special for it because I could straight up just merch and pay for leech and technically hit 120 without ever grinding for myself.

Voting and HP Washing

Yes I can play the game how I want and bossing isn't a requirement, but it's a huge amount of endgame content that literally is not available to me or is held back until a much later level if I choose not to HP wash. Things like pet loot items cannot be bought with donor NX because that's pay to win, gachapon was removed from vote NX because that's vote to win, yet HP washing which is essentially "wash to access the entire game" is still locked at an insane 3,100 NX behind vote-only NX. It shouldn't be donor NX, but it shouldn't be only vote NX either. It should at least be allowable for purchase via mesos and/or lowered to 1,000 NX and/or bundled.

Having to wait a whole YEAR to get access to my character is absurd and sucks the drive out knowing that I am weaker than everyone else, even with me not having 5 mules and a bishop on the side, let alone having to vote every day for a year to get access to end-game content. It feels like I vote just to get access to HP washing, because it's literally the only way bar events or GM events. I should be voting for the good of the server, not so that I can have a character equally as powerful as others.

For me, these things add up to too much. I wish MapleLegends well as it has been the seat of hundreds of hours of fun for me, but I don't see the value in grinding levels people just leech, or voting for 1 year to then get access to my characters full potential. I think I've been demystified to that now.