How do we save Mabinogi?

Debate the latest buzz in the world of Mabinogi!
Aegis

How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Aegis »

Mabi is gradually losing steam and needs new life injected. The most obvious answer is to rework the pleione engine. Nexon seems to be ignoring this so what would you all implement to try and "fix" mabi? Here's one idea to start with.

I just want them to finish the left side of uladh or commerce overseas with pirates. You can buy a boat with ducats and trade overseas. Theres already a boat battle scene from g13. You can raid coast cities. Raiding the towns get guards in costal towns and if you raid you'll be attacked if you come into town on sight like old elf/giant towns. However you get ducats from raiding. You can raid quilla, belvast, cobh and bangor. YOU WANT EDERN REPAIR? TOO BAD. To get back on good side you have to give them more ducats than you stole, so it encourages commerce. The guards wouldnt be invincible but they would be infinitely respawning so if you are trying to shop in belvast you could get attacked while looking in a shop and knocked out.
Armelle

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Armelle »

i don't think anything will really save it anymore.
it's a corpse of a game to me at this point.
korean mmos that last a long time have a really bad habbit of switching directors or the team up and leaving...i find it hard for a game to have a vision when its run by someone else every 5 minutes.
heck, blade and soul and teras team already left. any interest i had in trying generic n' probably censored soul past that korean free trial i did is gone already and its not even here yet.

i'd play a version that was locked at like g4 or whatever generation it was before races happened.
(na kinda jumped a bit there, also there was at least one director switch at this point, but the content wasn't too bad i guess.)
but only really casually and just for fun sometimes. kinda like how pso1 is still a good game but i don't think i could make it my main online game again.

mabi content wise, to me, just gets worse the more they add.
it's such a clusterfuck too. i kinda agree when solar was talking about rune factory and saying the 2 genres were too different.
this is kind of a similar case where pretty much nothing from the early game is relevant anymore.
not quite a genre hop, but yeah. content doesn't really so much expand on the base of the game than it does..add random things that will get forgotten.
and with the original design ideas long and dead i just don't see a reason to bother anymore.

varied content is nice.
flat out ignoring the base of the game is fucking retarded though.

don't really care what anyone thinks about the devs, the updates, or the way the content is. what i enjoyed about it is stale as bread and not even the focus of content anymore.

but don't mind me, just a rant from an old hag who's been with it too long if i include the foreign versions way before na even bothered to pick it up.

i think the only solution is a *real* mabinogi 2(lol arena got canned..) where there's a new engine and a more consistent design philosophy based around the mess of a game we already got.
consistency is just wishful thinking though. it would eventually ruin itself via updates too because if it gets too samey they have to draw players back with something new even though its only a small random thing unrelated to the base of the game they liked.

this really isn't a mabinogi exclusive issue, its just that mmos get stale and they want people to keep playing.
so they keep adding random things to attract old players out of curiosity, and maybe make new players try it out since its *suddenly* interesting.
its too bad mmos progressed into this really. it'd be nice if there were more just like... actual games that just happened to be online like pso1 was.
MH and its clones are close but half of them aren't even online.

i'll probably do the new drama when it's out anyway.. even though the plot is flat out stupid now ┐(´∇`)┌

but to shorten this down, it's basically players and "devcat"s fault(if you can call people who didnt even work on the original game dev devcat)
there is a need for new content and they have to pull something out their ass for a 10 year old game now.
at least ro was smart enough to make a classic server when they flubbed up. hell there are people who want it farther back than the classic server.
my view on mmos is probably not the usual, as i don't really care about the long term of the game-just that its time alive is good and true to the things that made it good to begin with.

something a game on life support for the past 6 or so years couldn't possibly be.

but anyway, one last thing so i don't accidentally start something: Opinions.
Sky

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Sky »

I think Mabinogi is good for its own strengths. like maxing skills up? free-to-rank-any skills? social-focus? (fashion / music / etc) open-world? story? Combat System? etc

But the thing is, once you finished/get tired of what you liked in Mabi, that's it. I think you made your time worth for a "game". I personally think that' each game has its own lifetime - and that's when the player gets tired of the game / have finished it.

I don't think Mabinogi can be saved with old players. It can be saved with new players. They're adding more of the same thing - just no. What's happening there is they're making sure to keep those players who like that part of the game (e.g. more skills to max zzz). But they're not making attempts to hook more new players in. Right now, the way new people join Mabinogi is by pass-over-word by other players and also those people who player other nexon games... Their advertisements are like non-existential... You're never really going to hook more players with that with the current state of Mabinogi...

What made league of legends extremely big right now? They're like not adding anything special to the game and its core game is still there... but there's one thing that's making thing it bigger - esports. League has always been the same game and there are people who stop playing / get tired of it also. But many are staying because their friends are playing it or they still like the game or the core of the game is just continuously being polished.
I'm not saying Mabinogi to go esports, I'm saying it needs to get itself out there so more people would know it and more people would play it. It should also stay true to what made it fun in the beginning - what made people enjoy it. The base of the game is already fun in my opinion. But all these new patches mean nothing to someone who doesn't know the game.

Also, people like the mob mentality. They like games that other people like. They also like to talk about the game they like.

What could be the solution? No Idea. I'm not really giving it a hard thought right now and it's not even my expertise and probably all what I could suggest is some out of my whatever...
Armelle

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Armelle »

are you really saving mabinogi at that point though?

your'e adding more junk on top of the already messy problems the game has just to attract new players whom may just get overwhelmed with the several generations of stuff that is outdated.

I dunno, i guess when i think of saved i mean dead.
i'm tired of vaguely liking the game for what it was. been on a pretty downhill slope for me since like...g7 or so in the taiwan version.

i still think a fresh start with a proper sequel is a good idea. but last i checked mmo sequels are either the same game and engine with a few tweaks or something completely different riding on a series name alone.

pleione is way too old for just a few tweaks-at least not ones worth publishing a sequel with. and the latter already flopped somehow.

way i see it if steam didn't increase the playerbase not much else would honestly. thats "free" advertising to millions of poeple just by being on the f2p page.
Sky

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Sky »

tbh mabinogi is done for me until i get some new motivation.

also nowhere i said to add more junk??

saving for me doesn't mean to get old players to come back with the new patches and stuff but to get more people to play (first implies latter but latter does not necessarily have to have first)

also mabinogi did get advertisement on steam, but only just around the time it got out. not a consistent thing after the initial burst. it's gotta stay at the top if it wants to get known. zzz
somecoolguy

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by somecoolguy »

Making the engine run well is just about the only thing that can "save" the game. Of any MMO i've played, runescape on dial up included, Mabi has had the biggest, most noticeable, and most experience breaking lag and latency. Even if it somehow lures someone in, no beginner is going to dole through the harshness of mabi's retarded latency issues if they have any sort of standards. But that won't happen. Rebuilding an engine is no small feat. I'm also guessing the Pleiowureowiaho engine is unsalvageable, or if it is, the cost of fixing it wouldn't be outweighed by projected profit.

Gameplay wise, its gone. Any fix I can suggest would require Mabi to take many steps backwards. They've already rehauled much of the combat system to involve very little thought and lost all original vision. What made mabi unique and exciting for me was the fact that you were a puny weak little human who got killed by wolves very fast. Soloing a golem was a feat. Teaming up to smash lock a boss felt good. Discovering windmill>heal to beat black rats was gratifying. Sitting around a campfire with complete strangers to heal and shoot the breeze was great.

All of these things have been taken out. Someone probably thought the game was too slow and made things to speed things up. More stats. Faster skills. AOE pets. Wound potions. What they didn't realize was that they took out the game's entire experience too.

I think the easiest fix is to make a dungeon. One worth doing, hard enough to encourage random partying, full of monsters that require cooperation or solo player patience. If this is located in a central town like dunbarton, we could easily have a new central hub like in the ciar days. The world is too big. Everything is deserted, and an mmo that feels deserted... sucks. Theres no reason for everyone to be in a certain place besides dun to sell stuff.
Sky

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Sky »

scg brought a good point that made me think of something out of my ass - a place where all dungeons /missions are accessible is better. The game is too big and has so many different channels. If there's a place where I could hang out and randomly join a party out of boredom to meet strangers, that does sound fun.

Ciar was crowded way back then mainly because it was accessible (close to tir which used to be the main town) and people train levels there.

Now, you're not sure where people are and sometimes if u log on a bad time no one is there you could hook up party with. It's too not friendly to someone who plays alone and wants to look for random people to meet up (I mean for pete's sake it's an MMO and it's hard to meet strangers (I mean you have to do extra effort just to actually find other to do this random thing))

I mean this single implementation kills a lot of what Mabinogi originally is... But you gotta face it, there's too much stuff to keep track that actually made Mabinogi worse
Euphie

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Euphie »

Before I start, I'd like to mention that I haven't been a consistent player by any means, although I've been pretty dedicated since I had first stumbled upon promotional pre-release materials (the rest is history). Everything below is organized oddly; the block of text immediately below contains my suggestions, everything after is the analysis that breaks down my reasoning for them (some complaints incoming). And the sad part is that everything below might sound like "too much work," but each step is only a small one to making a lot of the aspects of the game whose potential was never realized worthwhile.

Iria's vastness is awesome, but could use content. As many have suggested, large scale commerce would be awesome, especially if it's implemented to give 3x the rewards "per step" than what normal commerce would. It might even present the option for a pirate situation in transporting goods from Uladh to Iria that someone mentioned above. Hopefully it'd also scale up the prices for continental Uladh commerce.
Distinguish reward systems and enhance rewards, better scaling exp/gold gains. Roughly no matter what you do, most things in Mabi give a roughly equivalent rate of gains in gold, exp, and other, unless you're at the point that you can spam Conflict or you're lucky in the realm of reselling/merchanting. Exploration has retained a fairly active flow of people just due to the fact that it rewards AP from its own exploration system, but many other systems are falling out because people reach the point where they don't require AP or other things as much. Almost none of the activities in Mabi reward life skill materials, especially in a consistent matter, and there's plenty of discontinued items from gacha that could be recycled as rewards (e.g. Spellbooks). More on this later, with regards to the new raids.
Make Alby Int for Four provide 1AP on completion, without limit. While the effect wouldn't be profound, it might inspire a lot more large scale spamming of the dungeon for those at a high level and waiting on their rebirth, and provide a more steady flow of AR8s into the economy. Do this with a couple other fairly uncommonly-run dungeons.
With life skills, they need to be re-done and re-capped. Hear me out; these rapidly became useful for nothing more than stats. That mentality is a little backwards, especially for anyone who actually finds an interest in production/merchanting, and may not want anything to do with dungeons. If Tailoring was re-capped at F, and each patch made all the just-released clothing available at the newly-released E, that'd be a heck of an incentive to rank it. Really, this should've been the case since the beginning. Make it possible to customize clothing to a degree; special insignias or custom cuts and padding on clothing and armor. Also, to reward the tailor/smith/etc., make it so that things they make for themselves to wear can have extra features (on the penalty of making it custom to them only) to advertise themselves for being a pro tailor. Expand the "Entrust" system from Enchanting to the other skills to discourage scamming of materials and encourage player-production economy. And, please, streamline all the skills by revamping and uncapping production. I recently did Metal Conversion, manually at 1x training, while training Metallurgy at 2x (r3->r1). Not cool. Why doesn't everything have an autoproduction feature by now, and why can't I just click what to make with anything and autoload materials into the window?
Nothing should be gachapon-exclusive. SMs would be more worth running and we'd have a lot of happy mages if Ladeca and Eweca spellbooks weren't only from some old gachapon, and are all but extinct from what I can tell.
New SMs/minigames. I can't honestly guess how many times I've run some SMs/Rafting/Ballooning in my life, but now that everyone seems caught up on their generation quests, I'm getting tired of too much of the same. Make these new SMs seasonal, make them week-long, make them permanent, I don't care. But I would like some new puzzles to take on with friends, not stupid multiaggro clusterfucks that I'm supposed to spam AoE pets or rank an esoteric skill to accomplish solo. Just as an example, they could release one mission for a week themed around an assassination of a fomor elite. You proceed to the belltower in Tara in a solo mission, taking out quick-aggro scouts that will alert others if not dispatched within a time limit (30 seconds of aggro), and upon reaching the belltower, click a bow left there for you and enter first person for a second to take a shot at the target. Badass and succinct.
With raids and all end-game content, the chance of receiving junk rewards needs to be abolished. Seriously. There's never a chance of me NOT consuming dura and exp for a lot of it, why is there a chance of me NOT receiving something worth my time?
While we're on raids, the large-scale ones need to be redesigned. We had great ideas with shadow mission setups and some past events, why couldn't we get more creative with BDR than just setting up a mass mob spawn in the middle of nowhere that hardly requires tactics. I'd suggest creating a lobby system that would then send small groups of players to instanced parts of Iria, each with quest roles. (Let's pretend for a second that Black Dragon is actually in Muyu instead of Longa). Say one of them gets teleported to a narrow mountain ridge somewhere south of Muyu, and is told to "stop the stampede of korsek raptors from getting to the main party!" Others are in a small area beneath the canopy of Karu's trees, focusing on attacking a foot of the dragon (Make this thing BIG). Others are in another small instance ABOVE the canopy of Karu forest that has them facing the head from hot air balloon, with one person in charge of steering and avoiding attacks (create roles for the lower-levels!). Create a diagram that shows how the individual groups are doing, and if one falls, the players doing other extraneous roles will be ported into their instance to take up their stead (say the ballooners go down, the people protecting against korsek raptors will see the spawns disappear and be ported to the balloon to replace them). A small synchronized diagram on everyone's display can show the overall body of the dragon as it gets redder and closer to defeat, and if there's a very large group of people (the whole server) the instances can repeat. Like, say each instance takes a max of 8 people, if there's 24 people, they'd divide evenly into three instances (a head, a food, and a raptor delay team). If there's more, just repeat instances (two parties might fight the dragon's head, both of their damages are taken into account for the overall raid, but they won't see each other while fighting to lower lag levels). My whole point is that it is not hard to make a seamless experience even when split into multiple instances between different parties.
Roleplays have always been a big thing in this game, if not off-to-the-side in small cliques of the community. It'd be nice to see gameplay aspects that can further enhance this. A lot of people took well to the Rath banquet in this regard. There's nothing to suggest user-generated content isn't a good thing. And for godssakes', more interiors for city houses and homesteads. Also, ingame music scroll library with a rating system, that people can search and smoothly copy/paste scrolls from. If I wanted to search a Beethoven piece, I'd do my little search, see a 1-star rating and be able to see that it's a grief attempt with the scroll actually just being silence or an annoying repeating sound, and see a 5-star rating and download that (ideally).
And, seriously, fire the guy writing the lines for the story. The "mascot characters" Yvona and Shamala -seemed- interesting enough, but upon talking to them, their unnecessarily abrasive and tsundere-like personalities were total turn offs. I didn't waste a second with keyword conversing with them. On the whole, that's not even the tip of the iceburg with regards to the writing ingame.
Scale AP gains dramatically for the new user. OR, better yet, create a system that lets a user choose a one-time target destiny or talent. Based on their choice, the staple skills of that talent are free to rank, AP wise, and still retain their skill training requirements. A battle alchemist, for example, won't face those AP costs when ranking Water Cannon and Flame Burst, MIGHT still have AP costs on other higher-level/non-staple skills (Life Drain / Heat Buster), but WILL (hopefully) NOT get a reduction on Shock costs or accommodation in obtaining that skill either. But, you know, increasing drop rates on AR/Shock pages wouldn't be a bad thing either.
Revamp the beginner quests and new user experience (I found an elven girl that had been playing for a month while commercing; she didn't have Windmill, Smash, or Defense. They throw too many quests all at once at a player), and re-do the cutscenes/storylines for the game. Someone was willing to transcribe G1's script in whole (http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Scri ... he_Goddess) for FREE onto the wiki, how can they not PAY someone to fix any of the many mistakes and the lackluster text across the storyline quests?
Create actual books for lease in the ingame LIBRARY. Lore is not a bad thing! Also, stick to it!

-----

What really happens with a lot of MMOs is they suffer from an unsustainable business model. The main ingredients to any MMO is userbase, content, and pacing. The userbase is one of the most volatile aspects of any game, as single unfortunate experiences can kill individual players' interests, and a lack of expenditure can bankrupt the game. Content is self-explanatory; it is a composite of the game's graphics, story, and gameplay to create an enjoyable experience that is (ideally) unique, engaging, and fulfilling. Pacing is the scheduling for release of any game's content, the goal of the perfect schedule being to sustain interest from the players in the game over a prolonged span of time. Pacing isn't necessarily present as "content-withholding" in a couple examples of MMOs, but generally new content generation (even new heroes for MOBA games) falls under this tag.

In Mabi, the userbase suffers from the biggest problem. There's a massive split between veteran players and new recruits into the game, and there's no fun or glory to be had in commercing with a guy that spawns monsters that should only be faced by endgame players, and hits for THREE DIGITS more than whatever you're hitting. It was always a fear of mine that I'd grow completely out of touch with the rest of the playerbase once I hit a certain level, and for that reason a massive AP pool started to develop, as I focused only on the basics (as an archer, the very basics of life skills (Refining r1) and combat (Lightningbolt r5 for stun, r1 Mag for damage, r9/rA Ranged for stamina efficient zeroshot, etc). Those playing with me saw a satisfying endgame that could be achieved in less than a year of dedication to the game. With destinies coming out (now talents) and little else to do, I ended up putting all that AP to use. The damage I do now is 10x what my mid-game self might've expected to ever reach, and 50x what a newbie would probably qualify as even being possible. Now, if they would assess what it would take to get to whatever level I'm at now, it'd be a dedicated multiple-year undertaking. After all that, I've pretty much realized that my fear came true; I can't so much as dungeon with a new player using my main and expect them to have a fun time. And, for me personally, I've found it hard to really enjoy pairing up with people near or above my own level, like there's a common mentality between all of them of spamming and grinding, rather than just sitting back and chatting (about everything and anything) as the earlier generations of Mabinogi had gotten me used to doing. There's maybe two people I still enjoy playing with that I've known for over 2 years, and there's none of my friends from the pre-Iria era that I see on at all.

Content-wise, everyone has reiterated that the engine is dated, and I'd like to add that there's little window for user-generated content and the general quality of promotional art and music ingame has varied greatly, usually for the worse. As mentioned above, skills have some serious dissonance between AP cost and training requirements that there's no "smart approach" to training them, it's just a matter of grinding that AP and grinding those requirements and hoping you've made the best decision in what to rank first. Some even require some esoteric knowledge prior to ranking to be rankable at all; Refining and Windmill being the most infamous examples. The game attempts to remedy this by scaling content, making AP easier to obtain and skills easier to train, but receives only harsh objections from those that had to earn it with only ~80 AP per rebirth. The storyline has gotten ridiculous, and between the new combat system and new skillsets, we're left with very little that reminds us of the original game. Worst of all, the new "endgame" raids and dungeons. Dragon Raids are a total mess; the combination of lag with the stupid "hurl mobs of mobs and everything else" mentality devolve Mabinogi combat into "click to damage and run when things get messy". And then, best of all, the main takeaways (Dragon Eyeball) are so rare they compete with Shock page drops, and you'll only qualify by maxing score (Which, in an especially egregious example, may involve an archer dropping their bow and smashing the black dragon FIFTY TIMES in perfect view of 20 aggro-happy Korsek Raptors). By the end of it, you've thrown so many potions, EXP, Durability, and Demigod exp at the thing that there's no way you can justify the reward, commonly a small stack of potions or full stack of Cheap Leather whose very presence in your inventory is an act of spite.

And finally, pacing. The thing that killed Euro's Mabi was releasing so much at once, the game has also outlasted its expected lifetime and recycled its team so thoroughly that it's had to resort to the generation of completely OP and unnecessary content now, not even worth reviewing.
Soluna

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Soluna »

[s]How to Save Mabinogi:[/s]
A. Stop torturing Ruairi, let the guy die already, death is the only salvation to the lolicon
[s]B. Bring back Morrighan and Cichol from vacation, what the point of removing the 2 most pivotal character of the series?[/s]
[s]C. Add more characteristic NPCs = more fan made media[/s]

It doesn't need saving, all need it needs is make people spend $, which people undoubtedly will.
How many times have they market the "fastest" moving mount already? How many times have they re-skinned certain pets already? And how many people eat it up?

Thoroughbred: I was the fastest!
Crystal Deer: You mean you were the fastest...
Nightmare: Stop fighting, you both are slow...
Cheetah: I AM the fastest moving animal!
Eagle: O be quiet you guys can't even fly...
Broom: ...
Dragon: Pfft... You guys don't know what is fast...
Phoenix: :U I am fast...
Nimbus: Zzz...

And this is not even including the new "fastest" pet that was added.

Is it their fault that the new clothes are always put in gacha even if they ranked the supposed Tailor skill that can make special dresses (Where ironically the sewing patterns are also in gacha)? Is it their fault that the next step in obtaining better equipment and enhancing one's own strength is buying reforges? Is it the developer's fault design more powerful pets when statically players buy more bone dragon over let's say the yellow jindo? Is it the developer's fault when the majority of the player became more concerned with efficiency and effectiveness which can be seen with majority of the forum discussions?

With people looking down on those who spend money on the game, will it make people actually spend more on the game? When people cheats and gets away with it, will it make people want to play or spend on the game?

That turned out to be longer than I wanted to say :U

To me though... the bottom line is when a game is marketed as "Fantasy Life" and every "Life" aspect of the field start to turning into "Battle" aspect whether it be crafting, cooking, or music, can you really still say the game is about "Fantasy Life" anymore? IF by making Life aspect into Battle related is the only way to make it shrine, this game offers nothing more than plenty other game already have.

Without properly balancing the Life and Battle aspects does this game still have any sell point?

And if anything, Mabi does a better job at keeping old players than drawing new players. (*Pointing at all of you who cannot quit even if you want).
Armelle

Re: How do we save Mabinogi?

Post by Armelle »

To be honest the fantasy life aspect was always a little shoddy to begin with.

i mean, you had to actually do battle to get materials unless it was like, early weaving... or you had some battle slaves which at that point you were purposely avoiding half the game just because you'd rather be clicking a furnace all day

ignoring the battle system entirely isn't really a good thing, but the fantasy life thing really isn't a focus often.

they give us player housing but its actually a cubicle that just ends up being a market place.

they try again and got it slightly right with homesteads and then made all the new content for it cash shop based.

they give us exploration and make the exp rate horrible and then eventually narrow it down to rafting or ballooning.

and craft skills in general weren't really original. so its really only as fantasy life as you let it be.

there's also the fact that the dumb craft skills ended up being needed to be proficient at the battle skills, granted back then it was a little more lenient about not having the best stats(and the monsters had an ai past "charge multi aggro").

i'm not disagreeing with you, i'm just saying its never been really the brightest part of the game outside of maybe the composing skill, which is lost on anyone without musical talent.

you could argue the community plays a part in "fantasy life", but i prefer to not count such outside factors that are completely random in possibilities and nature. this is pure game design and mechanics here.

because if the mechanics and game design were good, the community would be surrounding themselves positively and negatively around it anyway. its kind of a futile point for an online game unless the community is flat out dreadful

honestly the more we talk about this the more i realize...the game basically had a lot of potential and didn't really follow up with it as time went on.
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