CPQ killed Maple.

[Tesiqurasa]

Okay, this rant might belong in Empy House, but I felt it wasn't so much of a slam or rant, as more of a sad nostalgia of the Maple experience. One of my recent posts got me thinking about this subject. I may be getting a few dates skewed, but I'm not talking specifics, I'm talking this general timeframe. This is entirely off of memory, so leave the 'MANG dat didunt happin DEN" flames out of here.

We are quickly approaching the 1 year anniversary of the well-known CPQ. Last March was one of the best times in my maple 'career'. I had just bought my first NX a while earlier, so I was swimming in mesar (well, having 10m compared to 100k IS swimming in mesar). I had a smexy and insane outfit, and had joined my first friendly guild. One day specifically sums up how I was feeling.
My younger brother and I had a friday off of school, but most of our friends were busy, so we decided to just play maple all day. I was sitting at a table with my laptop, and my brother was on the desktop. We partied up and headed down Eos tower. For hours we climbed up and down the tower completing quests and killing random monsters. I felt so pro taking my tiny avatar against the massive block gollums, and us two against the RomBot was my first 'bossing' experience.
Anyway, back to the point.

Around Easter break, Nexon released the CPQ (and soon after, the MTS). At first people were freaking out at the new pendants. Until this point, only the very rich, or very lucky had pendants. (bow-ties and HT necklaces). The Spiegleman Necklace was a massive step for GMS. At first I loved going into CPQ and actually trying my hand at defeating my opponent. Everyone seemed to understand it was PvP, and it seemed everyone was having fun with it. After a while, we realized that the SPG marble gave +30 hp to the necklace, and necklaces could be 0-3 stats. This brought about the coin farm PQs. Dropping the whole POINT of cpq, this focused on getting as many coins as possible in the 10 minutes. The Coin farmers were only the first step into 'pro'-ing out the noobs of GMS.

Eventually, people realized that 500 kills got an A ranking, and 30k exp. The trade-win CPQ started up. I HATE trade wins. CPQ is meant to be a form of PvP. Trading wins, while a legit way to lvl, is weak. It basically says 'I am too scared to try, so let's just BOTH win!' Nowadays, nearly half the PQs I try to join on my newb chars are either Trade Win, or Coin Farm.

People also figured out what characters do best in CPQ. The place is obviously slanted toward the funded dexless-sin and lukless-cleric. People constantly pick and choose, and determine what classes are the 'pros' of the newbs. I took my page in there a few months ago, and started up my own PQ. After a TON of tries and "EEW its a LOLpage, no noobs plix", I finally got a room going.
Now, it I feel I should note, this page was not your typical page. I spent an ungodly amount of money funding the char.
We jumped into room 6, and I ran down to bottom to take Roms. Now, I am a page 1-3 hitting rombots, so you can imagine the suprise of the other team. They actually had the nerve to defame me for 'hacking'. Because apparently "No page can ever hit that high noob hacker".

I hate 'pros'. Dont get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with high-lvls. I just hate people that believe they run everything. CPQ instilled a 'pro' sense into anyone that passed through its portal. There was a 'right' way to CPQ, and if you did not follow that, you were noob. One big 'pro' train of thought is that CPQ is the ONLY way to train from 30-50.

The trade win exp and rise of the dexless sin made CPQ a must. Only noobs train lvl 30-50 right? CPQ is DA BOmB DIggedY. No.

So, now we have countless lvl 51 noobs running around who have NO idea how to play their character. They dont know how or were to train, they have no mesos, they dont know how to quest, they can't boss, they can't really play their characters. On top of this, the GOPQ is going strong during the late spring, so these CPQ noobs run along to GOPQ and hit lvl 71. Now we had a ton of lvl 71 noobs running around, being even more idiotic than before.

If you are playing your first lvl 30+ char, then I shame you if you lvl ONLY in cpq. You need to step outside and experience your character. Once you leave CPQ, how will you know how to actually train? Oh that's right, you can just go to LMPQ and basically noob your way to lvl 71. Ok, what on earth do you do after 71? I guess you can MPQ now, but that brings you only to 85.

So it's even worse now. We have a ton of lvl 8xs who have NO idea how to play maple. They basically trip over themselves trying to lvl their chars to 9x. It is hilarious to some extent, but really just sad. If you have a desire to play maple, then actually play. Don't live your experience through the set down map of PQs. Go out and explore a bit, and actually PLAY the damn game. Lvls are not everything. Just because you may be lvl 8x does NOT mean you are 'pro'. Not sorry if I offended anyone.


Im actually not gonna post any comments related to this. Normally I spam replies, debating and discussing, and sometimes flaming =)
This time, I'm just letting it stand as-is.

[FailFTW]

Sorry to say that I was a PQ hore from lv35-71.

However Singapore came out when I was lv6x and I found out how godly truckers and mp3 were.

[pyrofyr]

You didn't figure this would happen in Maple? They always try and whore something out, they also use stupid terms like 'whoring' for everything, because it starts with little immature californian kids.

[Poisonous]

Ahh yes, the bliss of wild boar maps back in beta.

[OrangeGuy]

It's just going to get worse once CPQ2 gets out.

[Dae314]

Hmm... well I can't agree with you that pqs mess up all of your training ability. My first character (now a 14x bishop) was pqing until 71.

I played before there was hpq, so I just trained like normal for the first 21 levels, then kpq hit. I kpqed until level 31 at which point, there wasn't cpq yet, so I then trained at zmush (I'm a cleric now) until 35 when I could lpq.

I learned the flow fast, and the code even faster 133 221 333 123 111 I bet anyone who trained at lpq before the cpq age still remembers this code lol. From lpq, I went back to vic to train on wraiths (haunted house wasn't out yet) and I did so successfully until level 55 when I got really extremely bored.

I almost quit until my friend got me into ropq. I only managed to do this for one level before lmpq came out. I was hesisitant to try at first, but after a couple runs I found what was quite possibly the best pq of all time for me. Levels 56 to 71 consisted entirely of lmpq. I mastered the portals so well I could end up anywhere in the maze in seconds, whenever I got out, I'd collect my prize and npc it before getting back in in 5 seconds. And on 2x drop days the exp was simply amazing. I chained lmpq all day for quite a while until I finally leveled past the level range.

Now from 71~145 I have grinded for hours which I won't bother detailing. But obviously pqing didn't ruin this bishop's training career.

When I was somewhere around 110, cpq came out. At first I paid no attention to the "noob pq" but soon the necklaces caught my attention. I was way way too low level to even consider a ht pendant, and I figgured that the spinglemann was the best way to go. I bought a nice pendant (which I kept till reciently when I got a cwkpq pendant) with 2 luk on it, but it was missing something. 3 slots worth of marbles still needed to be filled. So I set to work making a cpq noob, it was a bowman and a sad one at that. I put barely any funding into it because it was a critical time for my priest as it was about to make the jump to bishop, but eventually I managed to get my necklace scrolled 3/3 ^^. This was my first taste of maple story's long sought after pvp. I could see at this time the multitude of stratigies that people were trying on other parties, the coin farmers (I was 1 of em woot :D they're like extinct now), and the start of the rise of dexless sins. Then I hit bishop and forgot about cpq.

Now, my main's stable at 145 bringing in 8m/hr, and it's time to cpq for real. I remade a strless bowman and decked him out as best I could, and sent him off. Imeadiately I noticed a difference. CPQ had turned into "the most wreched hive of scum and villany you'll ever find in the galaxy." Hackers were everywhere. Snobby ultra funded dexless sins dominated the arena. Instead of intrepid stratigists, there now was only 1 way to win a certain encounter, and if you didn't stick to it, you were a noob. Cold voices shout out for parties "J> cpq NO DELAY", "J> pq dexless sin throw ilbis", "R> 3v3 no noobs." Coin farming is dead because of the introduction of better necklaces. About 70% of the parties are not trade wins because of fear that an opponent will be a dexless sin. CPQ is not what it used to be. It was better before, and probably less corrupting than it is now.

I agree with you on this: CPQ now spawns uncultured noobs who cannot function on their own. They barely know how to pot themselves, and some of them have not made a meso since level 30. They can't deal with the fact that they are no longer pro outside of the cpq bubble. Dexless sins come out of there with an inflated pride, and some go on to be channel stealers and ksers.

CPQ was not meant to be this way, but the end outcome is this. I don't think nexon meant any harm in adding it, it was something new and fun for the players. CPQ was such a hit that nexon even developed acpq for levels 20-30 to take some stress off kpq. So it can't be all bad. I think that maplers will learn to adapt in time, and overcome the unintended disease we call monster carnival.

[ThatNoGooT]

don't know if my opinion means anything but

i cpq'd starting at about 40ish on my slinger simply because at 3x, slinger would take forever to kill just about anything in cpq. Even with tradewins, after someone realizes that u cant kill anything, they will expel.
i also think you're making it a lil too dramatic @ 70+ that doesnt know anything on maple. Yeah, in the beginning some commands/ hotkeys/ quests arent familiar but when i was new, i felt that i shouldnt constantly annoy guild/alliance/buddy list so i simply google w/e i need help with.

[Poomanchu3]

I still Ludi PQ'ed for old time's sake when I still played a couple months back with friends of mine.

Napolean gallore :E

[Tharticus]

PQs is now implemented on all levels. Sadly, grinding only exists if people hates waiting for people for a party group.

[pyrofyr]

Ahh yes, the bliss of wild boar maps back in beta.

Actually I was a big fan. It's the first place I witnessed getting 0.01% exp per monster in a game and still being able to level without a problem. This was also a 'limit' that would be annoying to pass.