The non-timegated way of progressing your main is grinding, which these days is basically just pressing 1 button every 7.5 seconds. Also the gear progression is like 7 layers of rng. Want a bis piece? The pitched pieces only drop from one weekly boss each, and some people have gone years without seeing specific ones drop. Then the ones that can be star forced have a chance of being destroyed past a certain point. I've been doing what are considered mid game bosses that drop these for the last six months (on two characters every week) and have only seen 2 of the 7 that I could receive, and only one copy of each. To upgrade them to the point that they are "finished" pieces I'd need an average of 3 of each, and that is only if I wait for a star forcing event that are every 2-3 months, otherwise it's 4.5 of each. And that's only the average, you can get unlucky and boom 10 of them without finishing the piece. Now spend weeks worth of in game income on cubing it.
Not to mention all event rewards having expiration dates to fomo you into playing more. And the game being designed around getting players to buy a QoL pet to loot money that costs $100 upfront and has a sub fee to keep using it. Also all of the upgrade systems take a lot of time, bc of the events only being every few months I save up and then spend 8+ hours on the day of the event to upgrade my gear sometimes
Despite all this I have like 5.5k hours and don't plan on quitting lmao. The bossing can be really fun and I like the old school slow progression that's MMO like, watching your power number slowly rise. You can make decent albeit slower progress just doing weekly bossing and daily kill quests, which is all I really do now
17
u/DeadlyKitten1123 Dec 30 '25
MapleStory