Maple Memo: Addressing v.260 and v.261 Issues

Hello Maplers, 

First and foremost, we'd like to extend our deepest apologies for the various problems and major gameplay disruptions caused by live server maintenance recently.

While we've made extensive efforts to provide a large amount of content to enjoy throughout the summer, the overall stability fell short of expectations. Internally, we have been reflecting on this matter and are preparing systematic measures to prevent similar issues in the future. 

We also acknowledge that our communication has not been sufficient.

We had intended to share a message sooner, but ongoing issues required our immediate attention. We prioritized resolving the issues and planned to provide a comprehensive update once stability had been restored, rather than causing confusion with frequent partial updates. Unfortunately, this led to a long silence, and we apologize for the delay.

This memo will address the various issues that have taken place and our responses to them.

We are aware that a single message may not be enough to address every concern. Nevertheless, though delayed, we believe it is important to speak openly and provide context regarding the decisions we made and the responses we took at the time. We hope this will alleviate some of the inconvenience you have experienced. 

To begin, we would like to address the following issues that arose after the V.260 and V.261 updates.   

Emergency Maintenance Following the V.260 Update 

Shortly after the V.260 Stargazer update went live, we found a serious error that allowed certain items to be duplicated in select situations. We quickly took the servers offline to conduct emergency maintenance and successfully resolved the root of the issue. However, due to the duplicated items and mesos already in circulation, we determined that the issue could significantly impact game balance and required a full-scale response. When the servers went offline, we conducted a thorough analysis, identified the source of the problem, resolved it, and implemented additional quality assurance for safety. All these steps were all done in real time and ended up taking longer than expected. 

The V.260 update introduced extensive changes to the game's system code, which unexpectedly conflicted with legacy Global MapleStory (GMS) code. This led to an obscure bug that only triggered under a unique condition and was not detected during our standard quality assurance processes. The issue was not identified until the update went live and the first instances began to appear on the live server. To explain, after the update, a specific condition appeared in the system code that caused an overflow error. When players unknowingly took certain actions while this condition was active, it created multiple copies of the same item.  

We conducted a thorough analysis to discover the source of the problem, before retrieving the duplicated items. The affected code was revised in full, and additional quality assurance tests were run to prevent this issue from occurring again. The depth of the investigation along with database-level processing required to retrieve all of the duplicated items took a significant amount of time, which inevitably led to the extended maintenance period.  

Sia Astelle: Hyper Burning MAX 

Another error occurred after the V.260 update where some players were able to designate Sia Astelle as a Hyper Burning MAX character. Although we quickly dealt with the issue, the community raised concerns about fairness. It was pointed out that a few players gained an unfair advantage, that they had not been punished for doing so, and that perhaps all players should be allowed to designate Sia Astelle as a Hyper Burning MAX character. 

We would like to explain what happened and how we came to our decision.  

After investigating, we discovered that a very small number of players were impacted by this error relative to the total player base. We believe being fair and equitable is important when addressing bugs, but we ultimately decided against expanding Hyper Burning MAX to all Sia Astelle characters because doing so would have gone against the intent of our original design. 

In regard to potential penalties, we treated this situation as a separate case from the previous item duplication error due to two factors:
The nature of the error meant it could be triggered accidentally, with no ill intent from players. The overall impact to the game was negligible. Considering this, we decided that it would not be appropriate to punish the players in this instance.We know there were various suggestions regarding this decision, and there was considerable deliberation internally at the time.  We apologize for causing this issue and for the frustration it created due to a lack of sufficient explanation.

Challenger World   

Challenger World was one of the key features of this update. To allow more players to participate, we introduced the Challenger World system to Heroic Worlds for the first time. However, even though we prepared thoroughly, this was our first time implementing Challenger-Heroic Worlds and there were shortcomings in processing the unique specifications of Challenger and Heroic Worlds.  Several issues arose, including Link Skills being unintentionally active, errors in Coin Shop item setups, and the inability to trade Droplet Stones. These problems and others, both big and small, inconvenienced our players.

We have since fixed these issues through maintenance and updates. To make sure future Heroic World updates don’t repeat the same issues, we carefully reviewed potential oversights during version changes and had internal discussions on how we can improve things moving forward. This experience helped us identify additional key areas of consideration when managing complex world-level systems and applying new content. With these learnings, we will strive to provide more stable service in the future.  

Compensation Boxes 

As the development workload grew due to the extended maintenances before and after the V.260 update, fatigue set in, leading to human error during the compensation box distribution process. Regardless of these circumstances, this mistake should not have occurred. We are reviewing and improving our live fix procedures to prevent similar issues from being repeated in the future.  

Over a short period of time, the unplanned compensation box went out to a small number of players. At the time, we considered various responses, including if we should distribute the same rewards to everyone. While we understood the potential value of expanding the rewards, we also had to carefully consider the long-term implications for game balance and operational stability, which is why we ultimately decided not to proceed with that approach. 

We have thoroughly discussed this issue internally and take the community's concerns around fairness seriously. Moving forward, we will give greater care and oversight to our compensation plans and distribution processes to ensure that similar incidents do not happen again. 

Pottable Badges  

In last year's Ride or Die event, we introduced the Chains of Resentment as a limited-time item to help reduce the power gap caused by legacy content. Although it wasn’t a perfect solution, we believe the attempt to reduce the power gap through this approach was generally seen as a step in the right direction by many players. When bringing back Ride or Die, we attempted to apply a similar philosophy by offering a limited-time pottable badge from existing legacy content. However, we overlooked the fact that this item plays a different role than the Frenzy Totem, causing it to be far from what our players expected.

While both were introduced with the goal of reducing the power gap from legacy items, the way we implemented the Shackles of Resentment did not align with your expectations. We should have ensured that we had a deep understanding of player and community sentiments before approaching legacy items. However, our process of prior communications, feedback collection, and understanding overall sentiment was inadequate.  

We deeply apologize for the confusion and disappointment this has caused. 

Recent Preemptive Bans

To quickly stem the spread of fraudulent activity, we took action by preemptively restricting accounts with even slightly suspicious log data and then investigating further. This approach caused some legitimate players to be affected, and we apologize for that. Moving forward, we will make improvements to ensure bans are done more carefully, based on thorough investigation and according to clearly defined criteria. 

Repeated Emergency Maintenances and Maintenance Schedule Changes 

The increased frequency of emergency maintenances, announcements of said maintenances being posted too soon, and last minute schedule changes have caused our players great inconvenience.

Shortly before maintenance began, our internal testing revealed unforeseen errors and risks. In order to prevent further issues, we ended up needing to adjust the schedule and extend the maintenance period. We apologize for the inconvenience and confusion that these oversights caused.

We will strive to improve our internal processes to minimize the need for emergency maintenances and maintenance extensions.

Management of GMS-Exclusive Content  

GMS includes many pieces of original content, and we plan to continue adding exclusive content for our Maplers to enjoy.

Recently, we have seen numerous unverified claims and rumors in the community suggesting that content produced by TEAM GMS will lack future support or maintenance.

However, we promise that the content produced by TEAM GMS, such as Sia Astelle, will continue to be actively serviced alongside our ongoing development efforts.  

Closing Message 

The GMS team has been working hard, through nights and weekends, to address the issues that have arisen and stabilize the game service. 

As GMS has continued down its independent path, we've encountered new kinds of issues stemming from incompatibilities with the code base. This has certainly caused instability, but it has also allowed us to clearly see our shortcomings and determine necessary improvements through discussion. 

As GMS continues to grow, we are actively building out our team to establish long-term stability. Upon reflection, we’ve had to wonder if simultaneously developing GMS-exclusive content alongside our other various efforts was overly ambitious.  However, we want to once again reassure the community that we won't back down from this challenge. We understand that meaningful progress takes time, and we remain committed to making steady improvements, step by step. While it may take time, we are focused on providing a better, more consistent, and enjoyable experience for all players. Your ongoing interest, support, and feedback through various channels are always a great encouragement to us. 

We've prepared a gift to express our sincere apologies.

Please understand that the purpose of this memo is to summarize the recent key issues and address them transparently. We’ll be back to share more about our vision and and what you can look forward to in the future.

We once again sincerely apologize to all our Maplers who experienced inconvenience during this process. We truly appreciate your continued passion and support. 

All the members of TEAM GMS are devoted to providing a better service for our players. 

Thank you, 

- TEAM GMS