Need honest advice as F2P, how much Pay-to-Win is MapleSEA?

IMO f2p can only get you so far. At a certain point like myself, there's a huge wall that you need to get through AKA cubes. Which means paying and praying to god your rng is good to tier up.

Sure you can f2p and still progress(slowly), but you still have to grind like crazy and probably treat it like a second job.

MapleSEA can range from totally free to play and you can also totally pay to win fully, reach endgame bosses in almost no time compared to F2P.

Just a heads up, even though MapleSEA, is the practically the same game as KMS, the publisher, PlayPark/AsiaSoft, removed some F2P elements from the game and made it more difficult for F2P in MSEA than in KMS, such as our severely crippled milege shop which is practically useless, more expensive cube prices etc.

How much P2W is dependent on how much progression you want. Its totally understandable that people are not willing to get stuck for months for playing with little to no progression. Some F2P players would satisfied with making small improvements on their gears.

Not sure how farmiliar you are with how maplesea gauges progression, but its usually through dojo floors(damage check) and the tier of bosses they can clear.

For F2P, the real wall hits when start attempting the arcane river bosses, lucid and above. The damage required is a big jump from the previous tier, normal lotus and damien, but still manageable, The next wall is when they need to start tackling the easy part hard bosses, hard mode of lotus, damien, lucid and will. This is the part where most F2P players progress until before they quit and become P2W. This is because the next tier of bosses, the upgrade cost required for the next tier of bosses is too huge and it requires insane amount of hours farming and the rng involve(starforcing and cubing mainly). Resources you get from farming and events at that point doesn't even guarantee you will make progression at this point because the upgrade system(starforce) actually makes it possible for you to lose progression.

My advice is, if you are satisfied, with making small progression over long period of time, I am talking like years, then F2P is totally possible which is what I am doing. But planning for any form of P2W, I would suggest you start saving whatever money you planning to spend on the game first, try to at least get the hang of the game before you invest in it. Because maplestory is not for everyone, and if you want out, some investments have resale values while some don't, so its definitely a loss, but how much losses can you cut.

There are players that payed their way to endgame, and achieving it in months only to quit afterwards and its totally fine if thats the way they want to play the game.

Maple is extremely P2W.

You are right, initial advancement is very easy. Hitting 100 unlocks a ton of content. Suckering you in further and making the grind seem even easier than 1-100. Then you hit 200... and you hit a brick wall, get taken out back and bent over a dumpster and just wrecked.

The lvl 200 jump forces you to do dailies because otherwise your character cannot meaningfully advance.

This also gives you time to level the other 36-40 characters you need for Maple legion, to get the extra power it conveys.

Assuming you haven't done the 12 characters needed for link skills, you can do that.

You can farm a lot this way, but every now and then local gamedev will do something worse like removing sources of mesos or capping the weekly amount of boss crystals you can sell to make things worse.

Being f2p also limits your resource gathering, because you have to stop and press pickup to collect (instead of having a pet do it) or the size of storage (they removed the free option to slowly expand storage). Basically, just slowing you down.

That being said, its not all entirely bad. The grind from 1-150 is pretty breezy and fun, and up to 200 isnt too much of a pain.

This means you can experience many different classes with relatively little investment, funneling your resources into 1 main char.

Must warn you, Maple can be a multi year long investment. Some of the happiest players I've met basically quit the game, and then came back with a more chill attitude.

If the game ever feels like a grind or pain, just drop it. At the end of the day, its about enjoyment.

Hope this helps o7

Kinda F2P here. Able to solo NDusk so far but no guarantee clear.

Strictly speaking, mesos can solve almost everything in Maple. Problem is earning mesos in MSEA is super slow and building from scratch is difficult, not to mention the amount of RNG in game

F2P to end of mid game (hard lotus, Damien) is maybe about 1 year's effort and a lot of luck.

P2w to the same stage is maybe $1500 (22* top bottom, 22* absolabs, good weapon)

Beyond that, is a bit crazy and a lot of time and luck even if you throw half a million at it.

Hello, a F2P here. ive played msea for the most part for the last 5 years and due to not ideal Starforcing or cubing rates, im largely stuck at CRA level and I won't see myself going past that to smth like solo N suumien level in next 2 years unless concrete progression action is taken.

So i'm not sure what got you back, maybe nostalgia or something, but Maple has changed alot since its inception days of PQ'ing and such. Right now is mostly centralised around bossing for mesos, but to even get to bossing you need a certain progression to do so in the first place. So herein lies this circle of bossing to get mesos, then using mesos to fund ur progression, to get more bossing done. Almost a perfect circle that is hard to get into for a F2P.

Do be very careful in deciding whether you wanna return to the new Maple now. Best of Luck.

This game not ftp friendly since day one. Even simple things like inventory slots, you will find that you need to expand it. Let alone pets.

If you want to up your damage, be prepared to farm ALOT of meso. And if you have no pets, good luck pressing Z until your fingers carpal tunnel.

You will also notice that a lot of event rewards that give some stat will only last like 3 months and non-tradable. I don't even bother to put in so much effort for events anymore.

Comparing pre big bang and right now its less realistic for a f2p to progress smoothly as f2p you are gated by time, events , meso , rng so by the time you finish around maybe 5-8 years grind of materials or lets say 2 years youre better off just working part time and buy off from a player hassle free lol

I returned to msea last year, played for a year f2p and progression is basically rough as f2p. I got all my gear up to epic with the legion store, but what comes after unique potential is a nightmare, there’s the pressure to buy cash for red/black cubes for tier up to legendary. Bosses barely give cubes especially the lower tier ones.

Expansion of inventory slots, is highly reliant on events and you have to play long enough.

If you do decide to go the P2P route, then that’s the most logical decision since you will save tons of time. However, what I have heard is that Msea is extremely P2P with the cube prices, even when compared to Tms, which is also P2P in nature, but you get more boost for the value of money spent, this is according to people who have experienced both servers.

Otherwise, if you really want f2p, just play on any servers with reboot, outside of msea since msea doesn’t have a reboot version.

mapleSEA although it mentioned "SEA" its designed for SinGaPOreAnS spending capabilities, it's genuinely disgusting for other sea region to partake