Hi Chris,
First of all, Asiasoft would like to thank you for your continuing support of our products and in particular MapleSEA.
We understand your frustration towards the gameplay mechanic flaws regarding the unfairness of certain players hogging the Horned Tail boss raids. We are pleased to inform you that after extensive discussions with the Nexon developers, we will be implementing new rules in the upcoming update patch ver0.91.
In patch v0.91, the following 2 rules are implemented to better facilitate fairness of gameplay in the community of MapleSEA.
Implementation of NEW Horned Tail Rules
1. Minimum number of Squad Members required to start a Horned Tail session has been increased to 12, instead of the former 6 squad members.
2. Upon the completion of each stage, a 15 minute timer will be activated. All squad members will have to move on to the next map within 15 minutes, failing which all users will be teleported to Leafre Town after the time limit.
The 1st rule will make map hoggers spend more time looking for extra people to join in order to enter the boss map.
The 2nd rule will ensure that after defeating the boss, users will have to leave the cave within 15minutes, else they will be sent back to town.
Rest assured that we at Asiasoft are always exploring new ways to continually improve our games for the betterment of the community in order to provide maximum enjoyment to all our users. In the meantime, there will be another upcoming patch in MapleSEA whereby stricter rules will be implemented regarding the HT Boss raid. However, due to the tight schedule between Nexon and Asiasoft Online Pte Ltd, we are unable to roll out all the rules in the v0.91 patch.
We seek your kind understanding and cooperation as we work towards promoting MapleSEA to be the best online game in South East Asia whilst providing maximum enjoyment to all our customers.
Regards,
Elvin xxx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~my reponse~~~~~~~~~~
thanks for the response, however as noted by many, its a partial fix.
a) does it stop someone who has 12 mules in ht to camp. there must be a check to ensure all 12 are ONLINE prior to being able to enter
sabcal was able to log out and relog in 6 mules to block ht with only 2 pcs, its just a matter of time he borrows mule accounts from people to make it to 12.
in addition to making a check to ensure at least 12 registrants are online prior to being allowed to enter,
you should make a check to ensure anyone who registers for HT squad must have a ht ticket, thus ensuring any crasher must hunt manon cries and all the other quest items to get the ht ticket, instead of the current crashing method of having 11 mules who simply stay in ht cave while only 1 main character obtains the ht ticket and is the SOLE person to enter ht cave.
b) does your current fix stop anyone from not summoning the prehead1? (I've not tested this)
c) does your current fix stop anyone from summoning the prehead1, and climb the rope to avoid all attacks, thus allowing an effective 12hr parking in HT cave?
All legitimate 30 man squads can take down prehead1 in less than 10 minutes, having a 15 minute timer to both SUMMON and KILL prehead1 will effectively stop ht camping by ht map crashers.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Part 1
This letter was sent in a dossier to asiasoft's office.
Dear Mr Sherman Tan
I am a player of maplestory for 3 years, having spent more than $10k sgd on
maplestory.
In your user abuse policy, you state.
Threatening / Blackmailing
Any attempt to force another player to do something against his/her will with threats of
harm / undesirable consequences e.g. mass defame, kill steal
In Cassopeia, a player sabcal (alternate characters caljac , toywedges) is going
around entering HT SOLO, either using a hack or using mules to register. He then stays
in HT cave without summoning horned tail, as such, any legitimate squad with 30 man is
not allowed to enter the horned tail cave.
In the forums, his stated aims are to force the expulsions of certain people he don’t like
or to force the disbandment of entire squads. For some, he wants to extort megaphone
apologies over some perceived slight he has suffered, when the reality is that he is a
scammer and a thug.
He claims to have been to your office and you staff have been quoted to say
“words from asiasoft head office , NO ONE CAN OWN HT TIMING , IT IS A FREE FOR ALL
game just like zk, lolz....”
Should such cyber bullying be allowed? If you are condoning this, then there may come
a time when people just squat in horned tail prevent everyone from going to horned tail.
I would feel your bottomline and playerbase will be negatively affected by such a policy
of non interference.
I’ve made many suggestions in your feedback forum, however all such feedback seems
to be ignored .You either need a surplus of horned tail channels so that no one can
crash, or timings such that anyone in the cave who enters without actually killing horned
tail successfully is expelled. You have your balrog boss as an example, those who fail to
inflict sufficient damage in a sufficient amount of time will result in the failure of the
quest.
As of Thursday 2:53pm Jan14th, sabcal has prevented a squad of 30 men from entering
ht by parking inside the cave doing nothing. On at least 3 other occasions in the past, he
has successfully stopped squads from entering.
When your GM’s are notified by megaphone, they do nothing substantial
GMCcandyfey warned sabcal on Thursday, only to be mega’ed by sabcal to mind her own
business
The majority of his threats can be found here
http://forums.asiasoftsea.net/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=749869
I implore asiasoft to take a proactive stance to eliminate thugs and griefers from the
game. The lack of GM action in this matter will simply embolden everyone to simply
resort to ht crashing for any minor slight, as was seen after this ht run was crashed,
everyone on opposing sides simply announced their intention to crash other people’s
runs.
If HT runs cannot be sacrosanct neutral ground, the time will come when there can only
be 1 run in any 24 hour period due to ht orgs guarding HT cave to preempt crashers.
And players like sabcal may resort to DDOS in order to escalate matters.
I would hardly doubt this situation is going to support the motivation of the 3000 players
in cass over L150 to continue their high level play.
Yours Sincerely,
Christopher xxx
Part 2
Dear Christopher, Thanks for your letter addressed to Mr. Sherman tan that we’ve received on 18th Feb, on the matter pertaining to the player named sabcal. We are conducting an investigation on the matter and we will revert within the next 7 days. I appreciate your valuable feedback. Thank you. Best Regards, kenny xxx Deputy Managing Director
part3
Dear Mr Goh,
Thank you for your kind attention, it has been a trying time getting our greviances heard.
Your help.mapleseasea.net says that gms have been notified after numerous correspondence.
GM's after being mega'ed are not present, or do not take permanent action per the user abuse policy.
GMCCandyfey dc'ed sabcal on a previous occasion only to be told to mind her own business by sabcal via mega.
so you can see how players are frustrated.
now, on jan 18th night, I was having my horntail run.
I already know sabcal was present trying to click in, i had a member of the previous squad stay in until we were ready to click in our selves.
so while our 2 shadowers were spamming the npc to register as squad leader, sabcal managed to become squad leader, we all suspect use of autoclick third party programs.
now, you can see from the screenshots attached.
there are 6 people registered for the horned tail squad. sabcal, jackiebabe (his maple wife account), caljac, toywedges, xpatriachx, toyfreezer.
you can see that momentarily after that, all of them are afk or dc, leaving sabcal SOLO in ht, while jackiebabe doesn't even go in. in fact, none of them other than sabcal actually entered.
he used 3 pcs online, then swap out two to register, thus using 3 pcs, to register 6 players for ht run
and thus just 1 man can enter with the rest outside and he can park inside locking out everybody.
I have previously suggested some quick fixes.
a) if you don't summon ht (all forms, head1,head2, fullbody) in 10 minutes = dc
b) if you summoned ht but don't down the prehead1 in 15mins,prehead2 in 15 mins = dc
c) you will need at least 24 man registered to enter HT, and all parties must be online before the squad leader can enter.
d) when horned tail is down, all people inside horned tail map should be expelled after 30 minutes.
e) reduce the timer to down horned tail to 2hrs in total
this would help eliminate this camping/crashing situation.
thank you
chris xxx
part 4
Dear Christopher,
Thanks again for the additional information and also your suggestions to improve the game.
We will work with our developer to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed resolutions and we will revert at the soonest.
I apologize for the inconveniences caused
Cheers,
Kenny
part 5
Dear Kenny,
I'd like to know what action will be taken, I logged on at 12pm and he pmed me at 1217pm informing me yet again he will crash ht. (again, by crash means he single handedly stop the entire squad of 30man by using autoclick 3rd party software to outclick our shadowers than using mules to enter help register then AFK inside, thus wasting everyone's time)
do note that he tried to crash thursday ht and saturday morning ht as well since my last correspondence. in fact, his actions (with seemingly no consequences whatsoever) have emboldened everyone who has an axe to grind to crash ht. now goldclarity/knightend is also involved in crashing people's ht run.
this really has nothing to do with "unofficial timetables", merely how can 1 man enter ht and expect to solo ht. I hope you change the registration to require 24 man to register and be online before allowing entry as soon as possible.
please see screenshot for sabcal's threat. I take it you do realise that your user abuse policy does mention some stuff about harassment, threats and blackmail?
in anycase, I hope your investigation is complete, it is afterall 7 days since 18th jan.
thanks for your attention.
chris xxx
part 6
We have reviewed the case and we are working with the Developer to consider having your suggestions included to prevent further conflicts within the game.
While we hope to see the changes implemented at the soonest, the reality is that it will take some time before we can have the game rules modified by the Developer and coded into the new updates for our testing and finally implementation. Such process typically takes few weeks to a few months. Please be assured we will expedite on the update and we will keep you posted on the development on the subject.
We will be rolling out a new program to have active gamers to be involved in our regular game reviews and also community outreach initiatives. If you are able to offer your time for the initiative, I will have my colleague in charge of the program to provide you with more information when the program is launching. I certainly look forward to working with gamers like you to provide valuable feedbacks to us.
In the meantime, we would appreciate it if you can share with us any other suggestions to improve the game play.
Thank you,
kenny xxx
part 7
Dear Kenny
thanks for the update, at the very least, can I have a gm buddy me (edliza) who is online at 10pm to DC sabcal when he does this nonsense?? otherwise a GM schedule for Monday 10pm so that I can go to the specific world to ask for GM help.
and yes, I would be interest to offer constructive feedback IF it will be heard, afterall, I write alot in the feedback section of the forum, but I pretty much know its a blackhole .
Dear Christopher,
My colleague Lance will be following up with you on the GM support.
Cheers,
Kenny
part 8
Hi Chris,
Pertaining for your feedback, we understand your concern over this issue.
The below reflects 2 scenarios in HT based on our community feedback
Case A - This applies to a single/multiple squad who tries to control the participation flow in ZK & HT map, thus rejecting other users from accessing the battle.
Case B - It applies to an individual character who tries to control the participation flow in ZK & HT map, thus preventing other users from accessing the battle.
We’ve been constantly alerted by the community with the above 2 scenarios recently.
We do appreciate squad leaders spending the time on organizing the HT battles for fellow Maplers, however it is not official.
On the other hand, although Sabcal’s case is on the extreme, but neither he was at the wrong.
On Asiasoft’s stand, there isn’t a policy to back up both points 1 and 2 as of current.
Therefore, it would be inappropriate for us to perform any further actions either.
Similarly for Zakum system, enough feedback for HT system has been gathered and we are moving forth to the next step to tackle this problem.
Due to the fact of game engine limitation, some squads are abusing it by controlling the selection of his/her members.
Users like Sabcal has also make use of this to hog the map, thus affecting rest of the community to proceed further.
As much as Asiasoft do wish everyone to play in harmony in a virtual environment, the Game Engine limitation has made the whole system a shortfall.
If we step into this now to impose action to stop one from hogging the map, we have to perform similar policy to current squad’s organizers.
At this point, we would like to apologize to you that we could not provide any guarantee confirmation since development needs time.
Improving current HT system technically would be an approach we are adopting right now.
Rest assured that we have notified the developer of Maplestory, Nexon Corp on this problem.
Once we got their acknowledgement to our proposal to modify SEA HT service, we will be most glad to inform you right away.
Thank you for all your support over the years!
Please do bear with us for this period of time before Nexon gets back to us.
Cheers, J
Best Regards,
lance xxx
part 9
Dear Lance,
http://maple.playpark.net/policy/harassing/
So i take it that you will not enforce your policies as stated?
Threatening / Blackmailing
Any attempt to force another player to do something against his/her will with threats of harm / undesirable consequences e.g. mass defame, kill steal
~~~~
allow me to put it to you. this is sabcal forcing ALL players that he target to do this
a) quit maple
b) quit HT
c) expel members of the squad
using blackmail (ie: you either do that, or I crash your ht until you cannot run).
You are telling me that is acceptable for a game policy? so if someone were to organised a campaign to "destroy HT for all players by camping", it would be perfectly acceptable that asiasoft does nothing?
HT isn't something anything less than 10 players should be doing . it requires organisation.
Zakum can be soloed by 1 person, but HT's mass seduce makes it impossible for a single person to down. furthermore, a person AFK in ht is abusing the entire spirit and concept of teamwork needed to down HT.
for 1 person to claim SOLO is merely abusing rule semantics.
I am surprised that you tolerate such antisocial behaviour. I guess you rather risk losing players and revenue than to prevent people from hogging the MAP for personal reasons.
How difficult would it be to institute a policy that says for the time being that
a) anyone that hogs HT with less than 10 persons will be banned for 90 days.
Right now, your policy merely empowers griefers to crash HT (despite the fact that it harasses everyone who is a legitimate 30 man squad) because it has no consequence whatsoever. I don't see how supporting the rights of 30 other people to play in peace over 1 persons right to "HOG" ht is any difficulty.
I am dissappointed.
chris xxx
part 10
Hi Chris,
Thanks again for your reply.
We understand your standpoint to this.
We would like to inform you that Sabcal's act was never agreeable by us, neither do we encourage squad from monopolizing the HT organization.
A balance has to be laid upon2 sides of the communities.
1. Genuine users who wish to participate HT are not getting any slots due to some squad leaders favoritism practices.
2. HT squads are affected due to frustration act by one or more solo users.
Having said that, your points have been noted.
Before we could technically improve the game engine with the developers, we shall proceed forth an internal discussion on a possible policy to minimize the current situation on 2 sides of communities.
We'll be glad if you could input any suggestions to improve on these 2 angles for the time being.
We will be looking forward for your valuable feedback.
Best Regards,
lance xxx
part 11
Dear Lance,
if sabcal's act is not condoned, then do something about it.
a public statement will suffice even if its never actually acted upon, that any persons not making a serious effort to take down ht should not enter ht for the purpose of blocking other legitimate players from entering.
all you need is to make an example out of him which will put an end to crashing by any and all other players.
Sabcal's act has nothing to do with HT monopolies, he is deliberately blackmailing and threatening specific people on his own agenda.
if sabcal was taking a true 24 man ht squad in to have a legitimate run, I will not be this aggrieved. the fact is, he is blackmailing me and others into quitting maplestory.
that you seem to be siding with him while leaving players completely hostage to him seems to me to be antithesis to your various PR campaigns to attract players to maplestory
(eg: your msn campaign, blogging campaigns) when all it takes is the truth that player are at the mercy of griefers in game with no recourse to completely undermine all that effort.
I'm not sure if you even play the game to understand the game mechanics of horned tail.
HT requires 10 man to survive towards the end, otherwise, no drops will be available. as such, the minimum for a successful ht run is 10 man.
if you are talking monopolies and the need to have more people to be able to participate in ht, then the ideal squad size is 30 man.
30 man requires at least 6 dk, 7 bishops (of which 2 must be able to tank 30k dmg) , 2 persons (shadower/warrior job) capable of tanking 30k dmg from HT tail to act as seduce bait, and the first 10 people entering the map capable of surviving mass seduce effects.
as such, it requires ORGANISATION, you cannot willy nilly admit people into a horned tail run at without a fixed party formation.
Statistics:
based on personal experience and the gathered experience of others, maple warrior 30 sb and genesis sb seems to have a drop rate of something like 1 in every 11 horned tail runs.
I'm not certain of the population of bishops due to the lack of available statistics, so we will just deal with maplewarrior30 for discussion.
http://maple.playpark.net/ranking/SG/world/cassiopeia/568/
the ranking page shows there are 2846 people who are capable of going to horned tail (lvl 150 above) .
the number of maplewarrior drops at a rate of 1 in 11 ht runs. each book has a mere 50% pass rate.
if we assume that 1423 players will pass mw30 on their first try, how many ht runs must be made?
so we have 1423 x 11 = 15653 ht runs must be made.
right now in cass, how many runs of ht can be made in 1 week? from what i see in cass, there are 46 horned tail runs a week.
so to just get that 1423 players to pass mw30 will take at least 340 weeks or 6+ years.
so no wonder we have monopolies. it is merely out of necessity.
we have to ask the question, given a player size of 2846 people (and growing),
how many mw30 skillbooks must each person use so that at least 90% of that population passes mw30?
using a binomial distribution, we can calculate that it is around 4
excel formula =1 - BINOMDIST(0,4,0.5,FALSE)
so we are probably looking at something like 2846 x 11 x 4 runs to get 90% of the "horned tail capable to go" population to pass mw30. ~ ie: 52 years.
most people will not even have the patience with it and will sooner quit maple at the lack of character progress.
the attention span of players are limited, as such, those committed enough to stay in maple to a high level will certainly have spent enough @cash to get there
and to be continually impeded by people like sabcal who seemingly has the support of asiasoft will just make them leave and drag their guild/friends with them.
Every new job introduced to maplestory (eg: vipers, aran, evan etc.) will merely pollute ht drops with useless skillbooks which are not catered to the player job% size,
and every new job introduced increases the population that requires mw20/mw30
so to conclude, monopolies exists out of necessity because all players desire mw20/mw30/egg/gene30. so you really need to work on the supply of those.
if you feel my figures are off, you can supply me with the actual probabilities of dropping gene30, mw30, the population of bishops > lvl 150 in cass and I can certainly give you more exact figures.
Crashing and monopolies have nothing to do with each other.
to eliminate crashing
a) require all squads have a minimum of 18~24 men ONLINE at the time of registration before allowing entry
b) should the number of people drop below 10, to expel everyone from horned tail map. (send to town or horned tail registration area)
c) ht has 3 forms, the first two forms must be killed within 30 minutes cumulative. the 3rd formed must be summoned within 10 minutes.
d) after horned tail is killed, everyone is expelled from the map within 15 minutes .
to prevent monopolies, you can implement as many as necessary.
a) increase the supply of necessary and popular skillbooks (gene30, tt30, mw20, mw30), basically, it must be in proportion of a job to the population base. make it a possibility that ht drops 2~4 skillbooks of each job and mw20/30 .
b) increase number of horned tail channels, there is no reason why all 20 channels cannot host horned tail if you are that concerned about monopolies. ideally, allow all 20 channels + multi instancing (like mini dungeons)
nobody complains about scarlion/targa monopolies after all. considering the size of your active player population compared to maplestory's heyday, its probably operating at 30% of its maximum capacity anyway.
c) put skillbooks for sale in the cash shop with @cash or from an npc for mesos. either way will suffice to suppress demand.
d) limit players who have "completed their character" to 1 ht a month. (ie: they have all ht dropped skillbooks passed )
e) world change: allow players from more populated worlds to transfer their characters to other servers just like GMS and various other maplestory servers have.
I hope you now realise that ht demand is far outstripped by the current single channel availability and if you are serious about addressing the monopoly situation, to take that into consideration.
No player monopolises out of malice, its just out of necessity. Organisation is required for fair and fixed distribution of drops, anarchy merely ensures failure of runs.
thanks
chris xxx
Part 12
Hi Chris,
Once again, thanks for your valuable feedback.
Your suggestions will be taken into consideration in our improvement on HT game engine.
Thank you.
Best Regards,
lance xxx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
my conclusions:
so my conclusion.
severe obtuseness.
executives know nothing about the game, or game theory.
there is no reason any player should stay in a hostile environment that subjects them to abuse with the knowledge that such actions are supported by the game management.
I've already quited maple due to this. I see no hope in continuing to play until they rectify this.
in my opinion, I'll probably quit maple until they fix up ht or at least stop spending any more @cash. just log in, do neo tokyo bosses, and log off and play perhaps mass effect 2, dragon age or sg mahjong on my iphone.
This letter was sent in a dossier to asiasoft's office.
Dear Mr Sherman Tan
I am a player of maplestory for 3 years, having spent more than $10k sgd on
maplestory.
In your user abuse policy, you state.
Threatening / Blackmailing
Any attempt to force another player to do something against his/her will with threats of
harm / undesirable consequences e.g. mass defame, kill steal
In Cassopeia, a player sabcal (alternate characters caljac , toywedges) is going
around entering HT SOLO, either using a hack or using mules to register. He then stays
in HT cave without summoning horned tail, as such, any legitimate squad with 30 man is
not allowed to enter the horned tail cave.
In the forums, his stated aims are to force the expulsions of certain people he don’t like
or to force the disbandment of entire squads. For some, he wants to extort megaphone
apologies over some perceived slight he has suffered, when the reality is that he is a
scammer and a thug.
He claims to have been to your office and you staff have been quoted to say
“words from asiasoft head office , NO ONE CAN OWN HT TIMING , IT IS A FREE FOR ALL
game just like zk, lolz....”
Should such cyber bullying be allowed? If you are condoning this, then there may come
a time when people just squat in horned tail prevent everyone from going to horned tail.
I would feel your bottomline and playerbase will be negatively affected by such a policy
of non interference.
I’ve made many suggestions in your feedback forum, however all such feedback seems
to be ignored .You either need a surplus of horned tail channels so that no one can
crash, or timings such that anyone in the cave who enters without actually killing horned
tail successfully is expelled. You have your balrog boss as an example, those who fail to
inflict sufficient damage in a sufficient amount of time will result in the failure of the
quest.
As of Thursday 2:53pm Jan14th, sabcal has prevented a squad of 30 men from entering
ht by parking inside the cave doing nothing. On at least 3 other occasions in the past, he
has successfully stopped squads from entering.
When your GM’s are notified by megaphone, they do nothing substantial
GMCcandyfey warned sabcal on Thursday, only to be mega’ed by sabcal to mind her own
business
The majority of his threats can be found here
http://forums.asiasoftsea.net/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=749869
I implore asiasoft to take a proactive stance to eliminate thugs and griefers from the
game. The lack of GM action in this matter will simply embolden everyone to simply
resort to ht crashing for any minor slight, as was seen after this ht run was crashed,
everyone on opposing sides simply announced their intention to crash other people’s
runs.
If HT runs cannot be sacrosanct neutral ground, the time will come when there can only
be 1 run in any 24 hour period due to ht orgs guarding HT cave to preempt crashers.
And players like sabcal may resort to DDOS in order to escalate matters.
I would hardly doubt this situation is going to support the motivation of the 3000 players
in cass over L150 to continue their high level play.
Yours Sincerely,
Christopher xxx
Part 2
Dear Christopher, Thanks for your letter addressed to Mr. Sherman tan that we’ve received on 18th Feb, on the matter pertaining to the player named sabcal. We are conducting an investigation on the matter and we will revert within the next 7 days. I appreciate your valuable feedback. Thank you. Best Regards, kenny xxx Deputy Managing Director
part3
Dear Mr Goh,
Thank you for your kind attention, it has been a trying time getting our greviances heard.
Your help.mapleseasea.net says that gms have been notified after numerous correspondence.
GM's after being mega'ed are not present, or do not take permanent action per the user abuse policy.
GMCCandyfey dc'ed sabcal on a previous occasion only to be told to mind her own business by sabcal via mega.
so you can see how players are frustrated.
now, on jan 18th night, I was having my horntail run.
I already know sabcal was present trying to click in, i had a member of the previous squad stay in until we were ready to click in our selves.
so while our 2 shadowers were spamming the npc to register as squad leader, sabcal managed to become squad leader, we all suspect use of autoclick third party programs.
now, you can see from the screenshots attached.
there are 6 people registered for the horned tail squad. sabcal, jackiebabe (his maple wife account), caljac, toywedges, xpatriachx, toyfreezer.
you can see that momentarily after that, all of them are afk or dc, leaving sabcal SOLO in ht, while jackiebabe doesn't even go in. in fact, none of them other than sabcal actually entered.
he used 3 pcs online, then swap out two to register, thus using 3 pcs, to register 6 players for ht run
and thus just 1 man can enter with the rest outside and he can park inside locking out everybody.
I have previously suggested some quick fixes.
a) if you don't summon ht (all forms, head1,head2, fullbody) in 10 minutes = dc
b) if you summoned ht but don't down the prehead1 in 15mins,prehead2 in 15 mins = dc
c) you will need at least 24 man registered to enter HT, and all parties must be online before the squad leader can enter.
d) when horned tail is down, all people inside horned tail map should be expelled after 30 minutes.
e) reduce the timer to down horned tail to 2hrs in total
this would help eliminate this camping/crashing situation.
thank you
chris xxx
part 4
Dear Christopher,
Thanks again for the additional information and also your suggestions to improve the game.
We will work with our developer to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed resolutions and we will revert at the soonest.
I apologize for the inconveniences caused
Cheers,
Kenny
part 5
Dear Kenny,
I'd like to know what action will be taken, I logged on at 12pm and he pmed me at 1217pm informing me yet again he will crash ht. (again, by crash means he single handedly stop the entire squad of 30man by using autoclick 3rd party software to outclick our shadowers than using mules to enter help register then AFK inside, thus wasting everyone's time)
do note that he tried to crash thursday ht and saturday morning ht as well since my last correspondence. in fact, his actions (with seemingly no consequences whatsoever) have emboldened everyone who has an axe to grind to crash ht. now goldclarity/knightend is also involved in crashing people's ht run.
this really has nothing to do with "unofficial timetables", merely how can 1 man enter ht and expect to solo ht. I hope you change the registration to require 24 man to register and be online before allowing entry as soon as possible.
please see screenshot for sabcal's threat. I take it you do realise that your user abuse policy does mention some stuff about harassment, threats and blackmail?
in anycase, I hope your investigation is complete, it is afterall 7 days since 18th jan.
thanks for your attention.
chris xxx
part 6
We have reviewed the case and we are working with the Developer to consider having your suggestions included to prevent further conflicts within the game.
While we hope to see the changes implemented at the soonest, the reality is that it will take some time before we can have the game rules modified by the Developer and coded into the new updates for our testing and finally implementation. Such process typically takes few weeks to a few months. Please be assured we will expedite on the update and we will keep you posted on the development on the subject.
We will be rolling out a new program to have active gamers to be involved in our regular game reviews and also community outreach initiatives. If you are able to offer your time for the initiative, I will have my colleague in charge of the program to provide you with more information when the program is launching. I certainly look forward to working with gamers like you to provide valuable feedbacks to us.
In the meantime, we would appreciate it if you can share with us any other suggestions to improve the game play.
Thank you,
kenny xxx
part 7
Dear Kenny
thanks for the update, at the very least, can I have a gm buddy me (edliza) who is online at 10pm to DC sabcal when he does this nonsense?? otherwise a GM schedule for Monday 10pm so that I can go to the specific world to ask for GM help.
and yes, I would be interest to offer constructive feedback IF it will be heard, afterall, I write alot in the feedback section of the forum, but I pretty much know its a blackhole .
Dear Christopher,
My colleague Lance will be following up with you on the GM support.
Cheers,
Kenny
part 8
Hi Chris,
Pertaining for your feedback, we understand your concern over this issue.
The below reflects 2 scenarios in HT based on our community feedback
Case A - This applies to a single/multiple squad who tries to control the participation flow in ZK & HT map, thus rejecting other users from accessing the battle.
Case B - It applies to an individual character who tries to control the participation flow in ZK & HT map, thus preventing other users from accessing the battle.
We’ve been constantly alerted by the community with the above 2 scenarios recently.
We do appreciate squad leaders spending the time on organizing the HT battles for fellow Maplers, however it is not official.
On the other hand, although Sabcal’s case is on the extreme, but neither he was at the wrong.
On Asiasoft’s stand, there isn’t a policy to back up both points 1 and 2 as of current.
Therefore, it would be inappropriate for us to perform any further actions either.
Similarly for Zakum system, enough feedback for HT system has been gathered and we are moving forth to the next step to tackle this problem.
Due to the fact of game engine limitation, some squads are abusing it by controlling the selection of his/her members.
Users like Sabcal has also make use of this to hog the map, thus affecting rest of the community to proceed further.
As much as Asiasoft do wish everyone to play in harmony in a virtual environment, the Game Engine limitation has made the whole system a shortfall.
If we step into this now to impose action to stop one from hogging the map, we have to perform similar policy to current squad’s organizers.
At this point, we would like to apologize to you that we could not provide any guarantee confirmation since development needs time.
Improving current HT system technically would be an approach we are adopting right now.
Rest assured that we have notified the developer of Maplestory, Nexon Corp on this problem.
Once we got their acknowledgement to our proposal to modify SEA HT service, we will be most glad to inform you right away.
Thank you for all your support over the years!
Please do bear with us for this period of time before Nexon gets back to us.
Cheers, J
Best Regards,
lance xxx
part 9
Dear Lance,
http://maple.playpark.net/policy/harassing/
So i take it that you will not enforce your policies as stated?
Threatening / Blackmailing
Any attempt to force another player to do something against his/her will with threats of harm / undesirable consequences e.g. mass defame, kill steal
~~~~
allow me to put it to you. this is sabcal forcing ALL players that he target to do this
a) quit maple
b) quit HT
c) expel members of the squad
using blackmail (ie: you either do that, or I crash your ht until you cannot run).
You are telling me that is acceptable for a game policy? so if someone were to organised a campaign to "destroy HT for all players by camping", it would be perfectly acceptable that asiasoft does nothing?
HT isn't something anything less than 10 players should be doing . it requires organisation.
Zakum can be soloed by 1 person, but HT's mass seduce makes it impossible for a single person to down. furthermore, a person AFK in ht is abusing the entire spirit and concept of teamwork needed to down HT.
for 1 person to claim SOLO is merely abusing rule semantics.
I am surprised that you tolerate such antisocial behaviour. I guess you rather risk losing players and revenue than to prevent people from hogging the MAP for personal reasons.
How difficult would it be to institute a policy that says for the time being that
a) anyone that hogs HT with less than 10 persons will be banned for 90 days.
Right now, your policy merely empowers griefers to crash HT (despite the fact that it harasses everyone who is a legitimate 30 man squad) because it has no consequence whatsoever. I don't see how supporting the rights of 30 other people to play in peace over 1 persons right to "HOG" ht is any difficulty.
I am dissappointed.
chris xxx
part 10
Hi Chris,
Thanks again for your reply.
We understand your standpoint to this.
We would like to inform you that Sabcal's act was never agreeable by us, neither do we encourage squad from monopolizing the HT organization.
A balance has to be laid upon2 sides of the communities.
1. Genuine users who wish to participate HT are not getting any slots due to some squad leaders favoritism practices.
2. HT squads are affected due to frustration act by one or more solo users.
Having said that, your points have been noted.
Before we could technically improve the game engine with the developers, we shall proceed forth an internal discussion on a possible policy to minimize the current situation on 2 sides of communities.
We'll be glad if you could input any suggestions to improve on these 2 angles for the time being.
We will be looking forward for your valuable feedback.
Best Regards,
lance xxx
part 11
Dear Lance,
if sabcal's act is not condoned, then do something about it.
a public statement will suffice even if its never actually acted upon, that any persons not making a serious effort to take down ht should not enter ht for the purpose of blocking other legitimate players from entering.
all you need is to make an example out of him which will put an end to crashing by any and all other players.
Sabcal's act has nothing to do with HT monopolies, he is deliberately blackmailing and threatening specific people on his own agenda.
if sabcal was taking a true 24 man ht squad in to have a legitimate run, I will not be this aggrieved. the fact is, he is blackmailing me and others into quitting maplestory.
that you seem to be siding with him while leaving players completely hostage to him seems to me to be antithesis to your various PR campaigns to attract players to maplestory
(eg: your msn campaign, blogging campaigns) when all it takes is the truth that player are at the mercy of griefers in game with no recourse to completely undermine all that effort.
I'm not sure if you even play the game to understand the game mechanics of horned tail.
HT requires 10 man to survive towards the end, otherwise, no drops will be available. as such, the minimum for a successful ht run is 10 man.
if you are talking monopolies and the need to have more people to be able to participate in ht, then the ideal squad size is 30 man.
30 man requires at least 6 dk, 7 bishops (of which 2 must be able to tank 30k dmg) , 2 persons (shadower/warrior job) capable of tanking 30k dmg from HT tail to act as seduce bait, and the first 10 people entering the map capable of surviving mass seduce effects.
as such, it requires ORGANISATION, you cannot willy nilly admit people into a horned tail run at without a fixed party formation.
Statistics:
based on personal experience and the gathered experience of others, maple warrior 30 sb and genesis sb seems to have a drop rate of something like 1 in every 11 horned tail runs.
I'm not certain of the population of bishops due to the lack of available statistics, so we will just deal with maplewarrior30 for discussion.
http://maple.playpark.net/ranking/SG/world/cassiopeia/568/
the ranking page shows there are 2846 people who are capable of going to horned tail (lvl 150 above) .
the number of maplewarrior drops at a rate of 1 in 11 ht runs. each book has a mere 50% pass rate.
if we assume that 1423 players will pass mw30 on their first try, how many ht runs must be made?
so we have 1423 x 11 = 15653 ht runs must be made.
right now in cass, how many runs of ht can be made in 1 week? from what i see in cass, there are 46 horned tail runs a week.
so to just get that 1423 players to pass mw30 will take at least 340 weeks or 6+ years.
so no wonder we have monopolies. it is merely out of necessity.
we have to ask the question, given a player size of 2846 people (and growing),
how many mw30 skillbooks must each person use so that at least 90% of that population passes mw30?
using a binomial distribution, we can calculate that it is around 4
excel formula =1 - BINOMDIST(0,4,0.5,FALSE)
so we are probably looking at something like 2846 x 11 x 4 runs to get 90% of the "horned tail capable to go" population to pass mw30. ~ ie: 52 years.
most people will not even have the patience with it and will sooner quit maple at the lack of character progress.
the attention span of players are limited, as such, those committed enough to stay in maple to a high level will certainly have spent enough @cash to get there
and to be continually impeded by people like sabcal who seemingly has the support of asiasoft will just make them leave and drag their guild/friends with them.
Every new job introduced to maplestory (eg: vipers, aran, evan etc.) will merely pollute ht drops with useless skillbooks which are not catered to the player job% size,
and every new job introduced increases the population that requires mw20/mw30
so to conclude, monopolies exists out of necessity because all players desire mw20/mw30/egg/gene30. so you really need to work on the supply of those.
if you feel my figures are off, you can supply me with the actual probabilities of dropping gene30, mw30, the population of bishops > lvl 150 in cass and I can certainly give you more exact figures.
Crashing and monopolies have nothing to do with each other.
to eliminate crashing
a) require all squads have a minimum of 18~24 men ONLINE at the time of registration before allowing entry
b) should the number of people drop below 10, to expel everyone from horned tail map. (send to town or horned tail registration area)
c) ht has 3 forms, the first two forms must be killed within 30 minutes cumulative. the 3rd formed must be summoned within 10 minutes.
d) after horned tail is killed, everyone is expelled from the map within 15 minutes .
to prevent monopolies, you can implement as many as necessary.
a) increase the supply of necessary and popular skillbooks (gene30, tt30, mw20, mw30), basically, it must be in proportion of a job to the population base. make it a possibility that ht drops 2~4 skillbooks of each job and mw20/30 .
b) increase number of horned tail channels, there is no reason why all 20 channels cannot host horned tail if you are that concerned about monopolies. ideally, allow all 20 channels + multi instancing (like mini dungeons)
nobody complains about scarlion/targa monopolies after all. considering the size of your active player population compared to maplestory's heyday, its probably operating at 30% of its maximum capacity anyway.
c) put skillbooks for sale in the cash shop with @cash or from an npc for mesos. either way will suffice to suppress demand.
d) limit players who have "completed their character" to 1 ht a month. (ie: they have all ht dropped skillbooks passed )
e) world change: allow players from more populated worlds to transfer their characters to other servers just like GMS and various other maplestory servers have.
I hope you now realise that ht demand is far outstripped by the current single channel availability and if you are serious about addressing the monopoly situation, to take that into consideration.
No player monopolises out of malice, its just out of necessity. Organisation is required for fair and fixed distribution of drops, anarchy merely ensures failure of runs.
thanks
chris xxx
Part 12
Hi Chris,
Once again, thanks for your valuable feedback.
Your suggestions will be taken into consideration in our improvement on HT game engine.
Thank you.
Best Regards,
lance xxx
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
my conclusions:
so my conclusion.
severe obtuseness.
executives know nothing about the game, or game theory.
there is no reason any player should stay in a hostile environment that subjects them to abuse with the knowledge that such actions are supported by the game management.
I've already quited maple due to this. I see no hope in continuing to play until they rectify this.
in my opinion, I'll probably quit maple until they fix up ht or at least stop spending any more @cash. just log in, do neo tokyo bosses, and log off and play perhaps mass effect 2, dragon age or sg mahjong on my iphone.
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