Dear Maplers,
First of all, thank you very much for taking time to read our blog and share your thoughts. Both the team here at Nexon America and the MapleStory 2 studio care about how players enjoy the game, and always try to review all the feedback and understand the core issues to provide the best solutions for any of the topics we hear from the community. Sometimes the solutions might not be the ones you were thinking of, but please understand that we also have many different things to consider when making decisions and rolling out changes.
After we revealed the structure of the Chaos Raids, by reading everyone’s feedback, we learned there was one oversight designing the content.
The current system design of Hard Adventure Dungeons assumes the Chaos Raids will have the same level of difficulty and drop the same gear as a reward.
Initially, we thought the removal of Lubelisk (as we teased during the MapleStory 2 Premiere event) was the only issue and, as a result, we announced a change to the condition to trigger the “Dungeon Hunter” buff for MSL weapons. But after thorough discussion, we came to the conclusion this is not the only issue with the MSL weapons.
We have decided to make the following change, instead of only changing the condition to trigger MSL weapons:
All weapons - Murpagoth Warrior Weapon, Ancient Rune Weapon, MSL Onyx Weapon - will have their attributes “Shadow Hunter”, “Pirate Hunter”, “Dragon Hunter” - activated when entering any of the Chaos Raids.
Please see the detailed explanation from lead designer nemi for the reason behind this change.
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nemi:
The change behind the Chaos Raid structure was to ensure more players can start the Chaos Raids while making the challenge appropriate to rewards for those who can complete them. But after a thorough review of the community feedback, we realized that the previous design of Hard Adventure Dungeons and the new Chaos Raids wouldn’t mix well, especially because of the specific weapons optimized for each of the different raids. Our intention for optimized weapons for raids was to give players the freedom of choice, it was never our intention to require players to grind through every hard adventure dungeon to be well equipped for all Chaos Raids.
Players must have assumed the Chaos Raid structure would be similar to the Hard Adventure Dungeon structure, and we believe the above change is the best for everyone. If we do not change the current design, players would need to farm all three different types of weapons from Hard Adventure Dungeons, when we would like players to start enjoying Chaos Raids. Also, we see the possibility of parties only accepting players with specific weapons for each raid, which is not something the team intended to do.
Thus, we made a decision to let all three weapon types have their own buffs triggered when entering all three raids.
There can be unforeseen issues coming from three weapons having slightly different triggers within the dungeon, and the team is thoroughly testing the system to ensure all three weapons have a similar level of advantage when they are used in the Chaos Raids.
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This change will be rolled out with the November 8th update. Please continue to provide us with constructive feedback and we will continue to work towards improving the game.
Sincerely, Jungsoo Lee and Lambcook