Been playing this game for about the past year. Let me explain something to you. From 1 to 200, the game is fun, if repetitive. The levels come quick, for most classes gear isn't a huge deal (although it still does help), there are many "events" to help with leveling, and you are even encouraged to level many alts via the Legion system, which strengthens all your characters for each additional character you level.
The horror begins after 200, because the 200+ content was designed after the industry really started to take a steep nosedive. What at first seems like an innocent daily system and "events" quickly becomes not only an exercise in tedium, but a downright patronizing "game" experience. The worlds in Arcane River are fantastically designed in terms of art, and some of the music (especially Esfera's Mirror-Touched Sea, unlocked at 235+) is surprisingly beautiful (if short) for an MMO like MapleStory. However, the "event" system is truly insulting to your intelligence, and it is super transparent as well. In short, since the Black Mage event, MapleStory has had an ongoing mechanic – which they describe as an "event" but is nothing like the shorter term events of past MapleStory – that lasts about a month and a half at a time. First is was the Black Mage, where players had to collect Determination. This determination would fill up a gauge and you could collect a certain amount per day. You typically had one additional skill or method to obtain coins by hunting, and that method changed every week or two. Ultimately the Determination could be used to buy rewards, some of which are usually cash-shop only on regular servers. That was around October or so of last year.
Since that time, every single "event" implemented in MapleStory has been nearly the exact same piece of code as the Determination event. The formula is "x Points", which you accumulate to obtain "x Coins". Each week you get one of the same exact four skills to earn coins – the skills that have remained unchanged aside from their graphics since their inception nearly a year ago. Keep in mind that this content is the only worthwhile content to do every day beyond regular farming, which post-240 is incredibly tedious and almost completely un-worthwhile unless you are in the upper echelon of whales and spend hundreds of dollars a month on the game.
It was around this time that I started to notice that it took me somewhere between 30-45 minutes to complete my daily tasks + "event" each day. I started noticing the drops would always fall in a way that seemed random, but was exactly enough for me to spend approximately 30 minutes playing the game each day when combined with my dailies. I presume this is the ideal retention time for gamers. In other words, the game is transparently designed to do nothing but to put you in the prime category for spending money.
In addition, there is a system for Star Forcing gear which enhances it. This is flat out required to progress to 200+ content (you need at least 100, and you really need 150 or more total if you want to get near "endgame" content). It has been proven several times that the success rate of Star Force enhancements is rigged. Even through personal anecdote it is simply too transparent. For example, the very first Star Force point on a piece of gear has a 95% chance of success, and a 5% chance of failure. At least one per two pieces of gear, I fail a 95% chance at least once – sometimes up to three times in a row. Two or more 5% chances in a row is EXTREMELY rare – for comparison, how often do you miss a move like Tackle in a Pokemon game, where we know the odds are almost exactly correct? Almost never…So why do I fail Star Force so often and so consistently, even at extremely high chances of success? Not only that, but why is it such a common complaint? Because it is rigged. Sure, "RNG is RNG", but it's next to impossible for such a thing to occur so often and so many times in succession.
tl;dr Maplestory is 105% rigged to do nothing but elicit money from you and if you don't pay it's a waste of time. Playing casually or dicking around with friends is fine, but I very highly recommend you do not waste your time getting serious. I have a 235 Demon Slayer with around 20k main stat and I just recently quit.