[2025] What happened this year to Rayque?

Another year's end, another summary.

This year marks the 15th summary on this blog, and we reached the milestone of over 600 blogposts! As always, the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2026!

It's been a bit of an eventful year, more than I expected it to be. So without further ado, let's get to it before I turn into a popsicle as today's blogpost is written in a basement in Switzerland, of all places. How did I end up here? Who knows.

[2024] What happened this year to Rayque?

Another year's end, another summary.

This year marks the 14th summary on this blog. As always, the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2025!

2024's been more or less much of the same as last year. It's been rough, but I'll manage. At least in terms of progress on my LEGO portfolio I've made some promising breakthroughs thanks to the financial aid that started last year. It's a small victory, but there's still a long and arduous road ahead.

The past couple of months have been busy, hence the lack of the usual Maple updates or anything related to the one LEGO project (Ouroboros) I've spent most of this year on. This year summary will double as a bit of a catch-up, but I'll definitely revisit these topics in future posts so that they are properly recorded on this blog. Keep in mind that because so much time went into Ouroboros this year, a lot of plans for this year couldn't happen. Sometimes it do be like that.

In my ongoing efforts to find a healthier balance with how much time I should be spending on my blog, I am going to scale down these year summaries moving forward but also take a more casual approach; matching my usual writing style. The statistical side of these summaries requires the most amount of work, and seeing as our Youtube channel has been plateauing in viewership and subscribers for many years now, I'll stick to only the interesting figures instead. 

That said, I will share my plans for the next few months of blogposts. Because it involves LEGO, MapleStory and this blog, it made more sense to discuss that here seeing as the year summary covers all topics of interest.

[EMS] Destiny - Remastered Hero

"You may find these books particularly interesting, Adversary. Individually, they're glimpses into the origins of things. A bit incomplete, but a serviceable accounting. But taken together, they tell a story about how those who do not understand the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes." - Darmoa

I hate change, because it rarely is an improvement. More than often, Nexon makes the right calls when revamping Hero. If you're familiar with my blogposts, I'm usually positive about these updates because I tend to agree with the changes made as I understand them. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Destiny. It made Hero objectively worse.

The revamp is rushed, poorly thought out and should've been at least a month longer in development. In fact, Nexon admitted after its release that, in hindsight, the workload was too much and that they were short-staffed. Furthermore, the initial reveal trailer and test server over-promised what this revamp would bring, as it proposed a far better deal than what we ended up getting. They threw out thirteen years (!) worth of revamps out of the window with this one.

To make matters worse, Destiny as a revamp had more emphasis on player-based feedback than what came before. Any related forum quickly became a dumpster fire as it mainly garnered loud players with a lack of knowledge on the subject matter. Result? None of the right demands were made, and even when it rarely happened, it would never see the traction needed to be noticed by Nexon. And as a response to all of this, Nexon overcorrected by releasing too many shortsighted hotfixes back-to-back in an attempt to please the crowd, resulting in a jumbled mess of a revamp.

Because of that, the changes made to Hero are either a hit or miss. Only few changes are great, but most have been a downgrade for reasons I will explain. This revamp shows how much missed potential it was, how much has been forgotten about Hero's changelog, MapleStory's history, why things are as they are, and how easy it is to fix most of it.

Throughout this entire process, from the update's reveal to wrapping up this blogpost, I've been upset at the lack of knowledge and awareness the Hero community has on this game. I've been frustrated at how it negatively influenced the revamp. I've been disappointed in Nexon blemishing their otherwise great track record of Hero changes, and I've felt embarrassed as a bystander to see this entire debacle unfold. To that, I'll say: no more. I can either choose to keep complaining from the sidelines and lose my sanity, or I can make the best use of my experience and knowledge, and try to make things right. Two years later, and Hero is still a mess. It only further justifies the need for this blogpost.

In today's blogpost, I will examine the remastered Hero and give a critique on what we got. The discussion includes the changes introduced with the Ignition update, and those found in the update between Savior and New Age. Anything released after New Age will be saved for the dedicated 6th Job blogpost later this year, unless it's relevant to the discussion. As 6th Job builds on top of the Destiny revamp, consider that blogpost to become a continuation ("part two") of this one, as I'll be examining whether 6th Job addresses any of the issues caused by the Destiny revamp.

But to summarize, before we dive into the abyss: the Destiny revamp isn't well executed, as it fails to equally distribute its attention, changes and quality. It made for an unfinished end result, where certain parts of Hero had lots of work done on it, while others were left unchanged. There have been genuine attempts to solve some of the growing pains, but most of them are simply not enough. Believe it or not: some of these attempts made the end result even worse.

Of all the blogposts I've written in the past thirteen years, while this is not the longest blogpost I've ever written, it is the longest one that got published. But to say that writing this article wasn't fun would be an understatement. It had all the hallmarks of development hell and scope creep. I've been working on it on and off over the past 21 months, and I had to rewrite it at least thrice*. Let's see if this over 140 pages behemoth with 60000 words is going to make a change.

*You can read about how the writing process went at the end of the blogpost, in chapter 9.1. But keep this time frame in mind, as parts of this blogpost were written prior to any changes introduced during Ignition, Savior or New Age. I've done my best to update outdated bits as much as possible, but there may be a few that slipped through the cracks.

[2023] What happened this year to Rayque?

Another year's end, another summary.

This year marks the 13th summary on this blog. As always, the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2024!

To me, 2023's been a rough year. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to prevent several major setbacks that makes me unable to leave this godawful place. For the past 25 years I've been working myself to the bone trying to become a LEGO Product Designer and live a better life. But in every step of the way I keep receiving the short end of the stick.

Due to being born with abstruse health issues our government can't provide the necessary aid I need. I'm physically too disabled for a job, let alone self-sufficient. But as they can't identify what I have, they can't classify me as such, despite observations acknowledging that there is "at least something". On top of that, our government has been cost-cutting for decades on health care, which further makes it difficult to receive any aid at all. I've become stuck in a rather impossible situation to get out of, caused by an implausible scenario to begin with.

The worst part about it, is that this status quo will not change unless either they adjust the law or my health recovers. The latter is completely out of my control as the only person that is able to make any meaningful changes to my health and get me out of this mess is also the one that knowingly condemned me to this fate and chose to feign ignorance.

Despite all of it, I'll do whatever I can do. Earlier this year, I did receive some financial aid from the government. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. I'm not allowed to sit on it, but it's good enough to invest in my future. But aside from that... this year I've exhausted the last options I had left. It's going to take several miracles to get out of here, and it's clear that I still have a long journey ahead. Dangit, I really can't catch a break now can I?

Anyway, let's get to those statistics of 2023.

[2022] What happened this year to Rayque?

Another year's end, another summary.

This year marks the 12th summary on this blog. As always, the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2023!

To me, 2022 hasn't seen much of a change compared to last year. It's been another busy and expensive year where most of my time was spent on my LEGO projects, or work on our Youtube/blog. Work has been piling up; mainly in the form of unfinished blogposts. Those that come to mind: the Xenoblade DE article and MapleStory's Destiny revamp.

Truth is, work on these blogposts have consumed my daily life for months on end*. After working on and off on the DE article for about one-and-a-half year, I parked it to work seven months on our Multirandomness video. After that, I've started writing the Destiny blogpost. By the time that blogpost is published, a total of two-and-a-half years have gone by; and I'm not getting that back. That made me reconsider to scale down the amount of time I spend on my blog.

Moving forward, I'm going to put the Xenoblade article on ice. After publishing the Destiny blogpost, I'm going to take a break from writing long blogposts. Because as it currently is, the amount of time I've spent on these things has gotten out of hand, and it's been detrimental to my health. Knowing myself, I'll probably continue and finish the article at some point in the future, but it's clear to me that I'm currently in no shape to do so right now.

*This is also why the amount of new blogpost has considerably decreased since 2020.

With that out of the way, let's get to those statistics of 2022.

[2021] What happened this year to Rayque?

Another year's end, another summary.

This year marks the 11th summary on this blog. I have now been blogging for over a decade!
As always, the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2022!

2021 has been an exceptionally busy year. So busy in fact, that I haven't even been able to finish my main goals for the year: the Definitive Edition article and my Hailfire Droid. Unfortunately, due to my declining health, the amount of work I can do on anything has become limited. Lately, most of my time during the day is spent sleeping... and for the few hours that I am awake though, I seem to have the same working deficiency of when I had a burnout in 2014.

That said, I'll share some information about the work that has been done on these projects, what I had planned for the year and what has been delayed to (hopefully?) next year. While I usually prefer to avoid mentioning my declining health, I do believe that in case of this year it helps to bring some insight, context or explanation to the situation.

At least this year's summary is extra thick. Anyway, let's get to those statistics of 2021.

[2020] What happened this year to Rayque?

It's that time of the year again! It's time for another summary!

This year marks the 10th summary on this blog. As always, the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2021!

2020 to me has been a pretty good year, for a change. It's been an incredibly productive year, although expensive. Regardless, among the specific milestones achieved this year are some pretty significant ones...

Anyway, let's get to those statistics of 2020.

[2019] What happened this year to Rayque?

It's that time of the year again! It's time for another summary!
This marks the 9th summary on this blog. Next year will be our tenth!

As always: the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2020!

2019 to me was a year where the ups were fair but the downs were rough. For instance, this year marked the end of my time as a student as I've graduated from school. However, doing so was not an easy thing to do, and neither was graduating without consequences. From what I'm aware of, I now tick all the necessary boxes to apply for the job I've been working my entire life towards. But that of itself has become a difficult situation of its own.

Basically, I'm stuck in a limbo for the time being until I can apply for the job. Despite that I'm now ready for the job from an objective point of view, working abroad for the remainder of my life on my own requires more than just being a potential candidate for that Product Designer life. How long this "limbo" will take, I don't know. But what I do know is that it'll be time to finish my Hailfire Droid next year and hopefully be done with the Constructor in (early?) 2021!

Let's get to those statistics of 2019.

[2018] What happened this year to Rayque?

It's that time of the year again! It's time for another summary!
This marks the 8th summary on this blog.

In tradition, I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you a great 2019. This year has been an interesting one...

It started out to be like the majority of 2015 to 2017; a lot of things in my personal life hasn't been all that great. Fortunately, my life has been improving throughout the second half of 2018, to a point where 2018 had some actual game changers that made it worth my while. Especially one particular event that managed to give me some much needed confirmation in where I currently am in life, and where things will go from that point forward. Hopefully this (positive) momentum will stay as long as it can. Next year seems to have a solid chance of being good, for a change.

Anyway, that said - let's get to those statistics of 2018.

[2017] What happened this year to Rayque?

It's that time of the year again! It's time for another summary!
This marks the 7th summary on this blog.

In tradition, I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you a great 2018. To be honest about my personal life here: 2017 has been such a mess with a scarce amount of redeeming moments. I wouldn't say it's "the absolute worst year I've experienced", but I could say it's definitely among the top 10. Either way, there's not much I can do about it, and even if 2018 to me doesn't feel to become any better, I'm always optimistic and stubborn enough to give it a try.

But enough "boohoo-ing" about something that will probably be an afterthought in a few years, I know we're all here for the statistics, achievements, shameless bragging and loads of numbers! So, let's get to it!

[2016] What happened this year to Rayque?

It's the 31st of December - it's time for another summary!
As the tradition here as always, this marks the 6th summary on this blog.

In tradition, I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you a great 2017. Unfortunately 2016 has been a year quite similar to 2015, and I hope that 2017 can make a change in that sequence.

[EMS] 5th Job!

Oh boy, 5th Job is here. Well, to be exact, it's been out since the 14th of December. "But Ray, why has it taken you two weeks before you'd actually published something?" - It's because unlike most people, I prefer to go through something new first, collect my mind and give it some time to find the right place. And especially with something like 5th Job, which has been one of the most significant updates for this game in years, I rather give it the patience and time it deserves.

I can't get myself to the right judgment for something on the first day. Fortunately not many people can, so I can't blame myself for giving it two weeks. However, that did buy me enough time to figure out a thing or two about my final thoughts for 5th Job's first wave. And it also allowed me to work on some sweet GIFs for this blogpost because they take days worth of my spare time to create, and with the holidays around December, it's difficult to find the right moments to work on them. And yes, you read it correctly: it's only the first wave. Apparently it is one of many to come. That means, I will most likely share my thoughts about those too when they arrive.

Because it has taken me two weeks to get this blogpost to air, you should be damn sure to expect one lengthy blogpost. Because I will most likely cover a lot. So to prevent my blog from taking forever to load because of all the GIFs and become even more laggy than the Reboot server from Global MapleStory, there will be a jump break. This won't be a 5th Job guide, it'll be an extensive collection of my thoughts about it. I will only cover the cores I think are worth to mention. So stuff like Erda Nova and Blink are pretty straightforward and there's no need to cover those today.

[2015] What happened this year to Rayque?

As the always recurring tradition on my blog, it's the 31st of December - that means it's time for another summary! This is the fifth annual summary on this blog, which also means I've been blogging for quite a while by now.

While it's relatively still early today - but at least "with a few hours left", I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you
a great 2016. 2015 has been a very interesting year for me - I dare to say it had one of the largest ups and downs in my life, with a lot of game changing events. This year has been a very important foundation for the next two years.

[YT] Behind the scenes - "Xenoblade Chronicles - Main Story [New Game+]"

It started as a joke back in 2013. After finishing the Super Smash Bros Brawl video of 6 hours, I said to Lux:
"Never again. But I know I'll probably go nuts one day and surpass this video once more."

A Single-Part-Video that would pass my limits. A Single-Part-Video that would break Sony Vegas and
couldn't be rendered. A Single-Part-Video that would go way over Youtube's upload limit.

In our second issue of Behind the Scenes, we're going to evaluate a Single-Part-Video that took almost
an entire year to finish... to be cancelled for a permanent appointment until Youtube is going to raise their
upload limit once again.

The video is cancelled temporary.
Don't think this video got cancelled for good. Everything's already here. We got the final video that we would upload, we got that custom thumbnail, we got a full index, the video has been quality checked... Just that uploading.
It's still going to happen, one day...

[Lego] My LEGO® Inside Tour 2015 Experience...

Dear reader, please keep in mind that the LEGO® Inside Tour (LIT) contains a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The topics I'm going to talk about and the sentences in this blogpost have been chosen carefully and all confidential information are not included. Any questions (in the comment section) related to the confidential information will be ignored.

 

 

Hotel LEGOLAND, being the main headquarters for the LEGO® Inside Tour of 2015.

Hi guys! As you might have remembered from my summary of 2014, I kind of "announced" (quite hidden) I was going to attend the first LEGO® Inside Tour (LIT) of 2015, during the 5th to 8th of May. Having finally found a timeslot to write about this, with my memory still fresh in mind, let's talk about my experience, shall we?

Keep in mind that the following information about the LIT will contain quite some subjective opinions. However, I'll give honest non-biased opinions about the tour itself because I feel the need to - even though I've poured my heart and soul into the brand. There won't be many pictures in this blogpost as well, because:

I don't want to spoil the tour for future attendees.

There was quite some NDA locations where photography was not allowed.

I prefer to memorize the tour by mind and making a lot of pictures reduces what I can remember.

Sometimes I'm just lazy to get my camera from the bottom of my bag.

After all, this is a blogpost about my experience, and not really a precise review... there's quite some good reviews out there on the internet already, including this year's tour.

[2014] What happened this year to Rayque?

Several hours left for 2014, I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you a great 2015. For me, 2014 had some major milestones, but didn't feel as successful as previous years. As the tradition to every year on this blog, this post is a summary of what happened to me, Rayque.

[YT] Behind the scenes - Single-Part-Videos

Footage from the Xenoblade Chronicles' final hour of its storyline

Hi guy! With the recent kick off for the Kirby's Return to Dreamland - All Mini/Main/EX Bosses video, I would love to talk about something that's not very frequently talked about on our Youtube channel. Let's take a look behind the scenes for creating Single-Part-Videos, shall we?

[EMS] Several Hero-related techniques that I don't see other Heroes use often

Hi guys! Tomorrow is my 7th (!) year of playing MapleStory Europe on my Hero, without any quits or ever having created other (new) main characters. I actually had the idea to write down in my blogpost of techniques that I use often but I rarely see other Heroes use them. I actually encourage other Heroes trying these out, because it may actually become highly useful during defeating large groups of monsters. With just several of these techniques I'm actually able to solo Alien Visitor PQ, as shown in this video. Below the jump break you can see a list of useful (and rather unknown) techniques that I recommend. Prepare for a long wall of text.

[EMS, Drawing] The world of Rayque

My almost seven years in MapleStory Europe on my character "Rayque", filled on a single paper.
The image portrays two different lifestyles in the game. On the left side my social hood is shown with some important people (not all) I met in the game. On the right side my combat hood is shown with various (not all) enemies in the game who had an importance in those seven years; including enemies from my High-Dex Hero series on Youtube.

I wasn't able to fit all the things I wanted, this would rather be impossible on paper. Almost seven years is long. Take a few hundreds of people and massive amounts of in-game content in consideration.

Layout/idea inspired by comic books, drawn on an A3 paper with only a single black pen. It took three hours to draw everything on paper.

[2013] What happened this year to Rayque?

Several hours left for 2014, I (and the rest of the Rayque3 Staff) wish you a great 2014. For me, 2013 was actually an amazingly successful year. This post is a summary of what happened to me, Rayque.