Inkwell’s Note: Frenzy Totems Are Back! Sort of…

Today Maplestory Global’s Head of Development Oh Hanbyeol also known as Inkwell released a continuation to his previous newsletter he calls “Inkwell’s Note“. These notes are focused on Western Maplestory exclusive changes intended to move the game in a different direction from Korean Maplestory to meet player needs.

Frenzy Totem

Today’s note focused and started on the hot topic of the Frenzy Totem item and how to address it’s effects on all balance involving Maplestory. The Frenzy Totem is an item that’s been unobtainable for 5 years. It increases the spawn of monsters in all maps it’s used in which sees experience and drop rates increase by up to three times as much as playing the game without it. Inkwell gave his thoughts, saying that players who have access to “Frenzy Service”(The player without the totem is given benefits by the owner of a totem in return for in game currency) have a significant advantage over players who do not. This is fairly in line with my thoughts, those being that the owners of Frenzy Totems essentially have control over the economies and gameplay of their respective servers. This was evident in the Aurora world when player “Sunny” went on hiatus from selling Frenzy service.

Inkwell has created an “Action Plan” that Nexon plans to roll out in the next 2-12 weeks. It involves a new unnamed totem item that will be released as a timed item, meaning it’ll expire after a certain amount of days.

My opinion on this is mixed. My extreme opinion is that the spawn rate should be the same for everyone whether they increase it to Frenzy Totem rates or remove frenzy totems from the game. My tempered opinion based on realistic expectations of Nexon and what they’ve decided to do here is that the idea to remove the ability to use the frenzy effect on multiple maps is actually a good idea. The players who own Frenzy Totems paid a lot for their items and feared losing their revered item. This idea firmly keeps Frenzy Totems valuable because they can still offer services to players who don’t own the new totem while also offering a free to play option for those who don’t want to pay for Philosopher’s Books. The totem duration however, is a problem, specifically for the ones that come out of Philosopher’s Books. The problem with this is Nexon can effectively choose when they want the playerbase to have spawn enhancing. Philosopher’s Books are a limited time event gacha that don’t have scheduled times of release, they’re put out at Nexon’s discretion. This paired with the way that timed items are received in Maplestory, if you were to get 2 or more 90 day totems from the books, that does not equal 180 days. The items will just expire at the same time. This creates a useless item in the Philosopher’s Books by inserting an item that is useless after the first time players receive it as well as still requiring players to rely on Frenzy Service which is what this update was supposed to fix to begin with. The “In-Game Rewards” Totem is fine, but expected to be offered sparsely in events like limited time event pets, so it won’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things.

Mystical Familiar Cards

Inkwell brought up a recently added item that was meant to address a sore spot especially for Heroic world players, however the initial release only ended up pouring salt in the wound of all players instead. Mystical Familiar Cards were released August 28, 2024 in an attempt to help players reroll the stats on their familiars without having to make new ones. This was a free to play outlet for Interactive world players since they have Red Cards, however Heroic world players didn’t have this option until now. The issue that arose with it initially is the Mystical Familiar Cards cost approximately 3 times as many familiar points as it cost to create a whole new familiar, which made them almost useless except for rerolling stats for Legendary Familiars which are almost impossible to obtain in Heroic Worlds.

With October 1^st‘s update, the cost to obtain these cards will be reduced from 10,000 to 4,000 points and the ability to purchase 3 per month instead of 1. I still don’t think this is a strong enough of a change, these familiar cards should be put into the reward point shop and have a purchase limit at 5 per month minimum. Making them cost familiar points is antithetical to what they’re meant to do since you need to destroy the materials to make familiars, to buy the cards.

Field Harvesting System

Nexon removed all harvesting plants and veins from hunting maps. This change was enacted by Korean Maplestory to deal with botters, however botters haven’t targeted harvesting in GMS, so all it did was upset players. The ideal plan would be to reverse the changes, but apparently Inkwell doesn’t want to do that. He was pretty vague about the fix they plan to give players regarding thing, but GMS will be getting an event in November that “make it easier” to collect “primary harvesting items” whatever Nexon thinks those are. After that, they intend to create a new way to obtain harvesting items permanently in 2025.

What’s Next?

Inkwell gave a lot of vague ideas about what’s coming in the coming months, mentioning overseas content besides Korean content. This is likely referring to the class Mo Xuan as well as the Kimetsu No Yaiba (Demon Slayer) anime crossover event. He said that content that isn’t in the KMS pipeline must be carefully considered due to balance and all the moving parts in regards to coding. Another point of discussion among the developers was the Shade and Aran revamps in KMS, I assume whether they should release them without making changes or not since the community at large actually views these revamps as downgrades currently.

This was all followed up with expressions of the difficulty of development, apparently Team GMS is a very small development team at the moment (small indie dev LOL) and while they’re trying their best increase the size of their team (Welcome back Lim Kwanghyun AKA Dr. Lim), it’s a slow process and updates will begin to ramp up as the team does. I’m glad they’re trying to be transparent with the playerbase, however I understand where the players are coming from too with their impatience. The players of Maplestory have been treated poorly for a decade at this point and the well of trust has run dry. It’s going to take time, goodwill, and effort from Team GMS to get that trust back. They’ll have to grin and bear it, while taking the brunt of the mess their coworkers created for them.

It’s not all doom and waiting though. Apparently with the release of GMS’ Milestone update (November 20, 2024) Team GMS has an exclusive event in store for western players and judging by the graphic above, perhaps it has something to do with Gollux? They didn’t share anything beyond that, but they plan to announce details of the Winter update at this year’s Maplefest on October 26^th. Hopefully we’ll get more details then. In his closing statements Inkwell reflected on the state of GMS’ playerbase when he’d first arrived and how much morale has improved since his team started communicating better (FFS we’ve only been asking for this for 12 years…) and actually making changes. He gives appreciation for all of the players’ feedback and ends the newsletter by announcing a small in game gift for players who login from now until the 9^th of October.

I’m sure when I approach Zakum on my next boss run he’ll be traumatized when he realizes I’ve torn his arms off and worn them like hulk hands (Or is it a cape?). Overall I appreciate that Nexon decided to take Global Maplestory off life support and give us, the players some competent developers. Better late than never I suppose. For those that said “Too little too late”, will you think about coming back to the game? Or have you been holding out all this time like me?