Game Atoms
Players
Players create an avatar to represent themselves and use it to explore the Maple world. Similar to other MMORPGs, it is multiple individual players vs the game; players can play independently, form party with other players, and form guild with a bigger group of players to proceed the game.
Objectives/Goals
The objective of Maplestory is to level up the avatar to its max level. Players can achieve this goal by completing sub objectives, such as NPC quests, party quests, guild quests, boss fight, etc..The method of achieving these objectives is varied; it can be puzzle-solving, jump quests, or territorial control.
A party is trying to solve a puzzle in order to proceed the quest.
The setup is Maplestory is simple. Players start off as beginners and soon become different classes such as warrior, archer, magician, or thief. They do not have to choose a class but it will help them level up easier and faster. In terms of rules, players have a lot of freedom to do pretty much anything they want in the game. There are rules in certain areas or quests where they require players to have certain skills or at a certain level. However, they do not affect players' freedom much as there are many other options. The rules become more specific and strict when it comes to quests.
A screenshot of a party quest in progress.
The above image is an example of how rules become very specific to players in order to complete the quest. In the party quest, players have to protect the NPC alliey from enemies until it arrives to the destination within the time limit. Failure of doing so will result players quit the quest and they have to restart it from the beginning again. Therefore, although Maplestory does not have a defined set of rules of how the game should be played, every quests has its own specific rules to tell players what to do.
Gathering resources from monsters or NPCs/quests.
The major resource in Maplestory is the mesos where players can use it to buy other things, or earn it from selling monsters' drops or completing quests. The monster's drops are also important as players might need them to complete quests. Players' skill is also another crucial resource in the game. When players are at high level, they have to learn their skills using skill books. They can be found from quests, monsters, or trade from other players, but they are very rare. Also, Maplestory releases specific items during an event which they become very valuable after the event is over. Therefore, the rarity and scarcity of the resource determines the value of the resource.
Game States
A screenshot of the game.
The game state mostly surrounds players' characters, such as their health, experience, level, items they own, or how much mesos they have, etc. Furthermore, game state includes the data of each character or monster such as their hit points, defense, or how much damage they can deal, etc., which will be considered when they interact with each other.
Information
Even though players often only sees the character's level, health and experience bar, and other buttons to access to different things, they have access to much more information about the game by using the keyboard.
The keyboard setting window that shows all the shortcut set on the keyboard.
This keyboard window shows all the shortcut players can use on the keyboard, which can provide them different information.
A quest window that shows all the details of every quest.
For example, by pressing Q, it opens a window that has all the information about the quests players can take in the game. However, the information about players' such as their friend list, inventory, or quests that they have completed would consider as private information where other players cannot have access to. Also, there are many information about quests, and items are hidden from the players. Players might not notice until they do some research or being notified by other players.
A portal that teleports players to another portal.
In the old Maplstory, there were hidden portals in some maps that teleport players to another portal or bring them to a hidden map. They were not visible until after the Big Bang update, which looks something like the above image. There were many hidden information for players to discover in the old Maplestory.
Sequencing
There is not a lot of order of player's action in the game; they can do one quest after another or multiple quests at the same time. However, they do have restriction in some aspects. For example, players have do 2nd job advancement in order to do 3rd job advancement; or the party has finish the current stage before moving onto the next stage during a quest. Under these circumstances, players' actions are limited before reaching to the next stage.
A part of the party quest where players have to eliminate all the monsters in the room before moving onto the next room.
Player Interaction
Player interaction is a big part in Maplestory, as there are massive of players helping each other to advance in the game. Players often enjoy company during the game, where they can train and travel together, trade items, and socialize with each other, and this forms up part of the players' experience. Furthermore, there are party quests in the game that require a specific class to be in the team, such as cleric who can heal party members, which involves a lot of interaction and negotiation between players and parties. This interaction is players helping players to complete quests together in the game.
Theme/Setting
The world map.
Maplestory is set in an unknown era, where players play as an explore and travel around the world, and eventually fight against the antagonist, the Black Mage. Throughout the game, there are many storylines and dungeon for players to experience, and players get to understand the story through NPC's dialogues and cutscenes.
The Game
The old Maplestory before update, was extremely hard. The states of the monsters were fairly high and the experience in rewards was relatively low. Thus, it would take a very long time for players to level up and have job advancement. In order to have fun, players started to work with each other to trade information, item, or train very often and enjoy each other as company during the process. For example, party receives 1.5x more experience than a single player when killing monsters, and open a lot of party quest opportunity. Therefore, players would always prefer to play with other players, which made the game heavily relied on players interaction. Moreover, the good items were extremely hard to obtain; it often involved group effort and some luck. For example, some of the most powerful weapon for certain levels only can be found from boss' drop. When players wanted to obtain the most powerful weapons and useful items to maximize their performance at that level, this made the trading market became very competitive, which also increased players' interaction.
Overall, the old Maplestory made it very challenging for players with its game state and resources, and these did not frustrate the players but brought them closer together. This made a lot of players miss the old version of Maplestory as they enjoy the social environment that was created, which cannot be found in the new version when everything becomes so much easier to find/achieve.
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