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How would you rebuild Mabinogi (Hypothetically)

Comments

  • TwelieTwelie
    Mabinogi Rep: 3,840
    Posts: 272
    Member
    edited July 5, 2017
    Overall just being more hands on. Listening to suggestions and filtering through them. Doing what will make their playerbase happy while still making them enough funding to run the game.

    On the issue of character customization:
    Make a color slider for eye/hair colour(possibly skintone. At the very least give elves the option to get dark skin.) Stop trying to sell more stuff like hair dyes and hair save coupons.
    Take out hair/eye/face coupons or make them perma unlocked once the coupon is used and simply making use of pons to change their look when wanted.
    Make every wig into a hairstyle. (Maybe sell coupons to turn a wig into a hair unlock.)
    Make gacha rates generally more rewarding and adding a system that gives currency you can use to buy a gacha item so if you've done plenty but haven't gotten that item you can have it.
    Outfit bags are great but if that's not possible just do the above.
    Boob slider. Some people just really want flat chests when their character is 12 years old. Or even 18.
    Make custom outfit animations available to buy and enable in the actions menu.
    Make emotes loopable as idle animations.
    Instead of putting new emotes in gacha as cards, you could sell them for nx in store or give them in some events etc. I know I personally would splurge on emotes.
    If an outfit is exactly the same for both M and F, just make it unisex. If an outfit looks like it could be worn by both M or F, just make it unisex.
    These things would probably make a more consistent and accessible way to make money. Everyone loves having a good looking character they can customise without having to always rely on lucky gacha pulls.

    On the issue of graphics (tying in some to character customization):
    Re-haul old hairstyles. I'm pretty sure there are the models in-game that some npcs have that are already upgraded. Give those redone models to players.
    Same with player models. Just update them and make sure they work smoothly with gestures and idle animations.
    Old outfits as well. Square boobs. Enough said.
    Textures would be nice in some places but it's not really necessary.
    Doing these things would immediately make the game more marketable and it would attract more players purely because of it's own style. Back in the day I was attracted to the game for the same reasons, but the graphics need a revamp. This would take time but improve the longevity of the game in my eyes. Especially because it has some good systems to fall back on.

    On the issue of homesteads:
    Bandits have a beautiful smoothly transitioned background in their homesteads. Give us one regionally depending on which area we choose.
    Giving players the option to change their homestead location was a beautiful thing. I applaud you.
    Take away HS stone tax from cosmetic HS items. It's annoying. It doesn't add to or improve the game in any way.
    Either make the housing district for houses and have a separate shop area or give us a house in our homestead that we can customise.
    When you add HS items into the game don't put them in a gacha/event. Make them permanent. I don't them being charged pons. If you have to make them limited time items, making it seasonally where you can straight up buy the item instead of gacha would be appreciated, or even just taking out alot of the crud from those gachas. If rates are decent, more people will buy.

    On the issue of VIP services and Housing/Guilds:
    Give us the KR VIP.
    Make the VIP inventory tab bigger. Everyone loves more space.
    Like I said before, housing either needs to be for housing or for shops. You could just as easily make it a market area and make permanent customisable stalls instead.
    I genuinely think guild are given too much power here. Have there not been cases when a guild gets a hold of a housing area and entirely destroys it with taxes and knocks down houses? Correct me if I'm wrong. I was never huge into housing.
    Make advanced play gifts more worth. Dyes were a good idea but there are plenty of items in there that a majority of players simply don't use.
    Add guild emblem and design options for robes or even uniforms. Make emblems have to go through approval to make sure they aren't inappropriate.

    On the issues of gameplay/general fixes:
    Fix bugs that have been in the game for years. Mabi is a collection of black boxes so I'm really not sure what could be done. but I'm optimistic that there could be some sort of patch.
    Lag everywhere. Fix it. It's not just for players with a bag connection. There are a ton of latency issues. Tara, elf archery lag, etc.
    Make skill training much less grindy, at least for rF>2. Not having CP involved reqs is nice but since the other update CP skills are as easy to train as ever, making the grindy non CP skills feel entirely boring and painful to train. I'm not saying to make them as easy as those CP skills, In fact I do think for some skills there should be a bit more work done, but make them reasonable.
    Adding to this, there are a couple of basically useless skills because they do a set amount of damage and not a % therefore they can get out-damaged easily and have little value, usually.
    Racial balancing is being worked on, but I still feel as though there are legitimate issues. However, I feel that I don't have enough information and insight to really properly suggest a solution. I appreciate the effort.
    I would personally like to see the KR sounds on instruments which I'm not sure if we never got or if they're near impossible to get with drop rates. Those sounds are amazing. I've heard MMLs and videos from KR mabi that put them to use. It's fantastic.
    Spirit weapons definitely need a revamp. If I were to really go in depth this post would become even longer, however.
    Blacksmithing, carpentry, tailoring, etc need more viability. Everything really good you can either get in a gacha or from magic craft/shyllien. Plenty of patterns for these things were released in an old gacha and never appeared again. Bring those patterns back and make them available in shops. Make clothing/equipment that looks cool and is only available through these skills. That way, even if you make more powerful weapons, people will enjoy the style aspect and make it because of that.
    Add the option to view commas in prices.
    Make the friends list either bigger and have a separate limit for blacklisting. Last time I checked (which was albeit a long time ago) the limit counted towards blacklisting so I had to delete friends just to blacklist bots etc.
    I personally don't agree with making every GM talent avaliable to get. Players are already steamrolling content as it is and this just gives everyone more extra stats. GM was supposed to be a special expertise your character has in my eyes. I would stick to limiting it to one, or possibly 2.

    On the issue of story:
    I feel as though there needs to be more order in general in these stories. My friend who just started playing was immediately bombarded with different story quests and as a result of trying to do all of them was completely lost.
    There are some very unfair story missions which need rebalancing.
    Some of the RP dungeons can feel very hamfisted in. I would look through the whole generation and place my battles strategically so they could be more fun and less... walk through a dungeon and oneshot things. Later generations seemed to have fixed some of this problem.

    Advertise more. Not once have I seen a Mabinogi ad I haven't explicitly been searching for.

    I could honestly go on and on but this is taking so long to type out and I've already wrote a book. Mabi could be an amazing game that attracts a wide audience and makes people generally happy with their practices. More often than not I find myself continually frustrated at the choices it's team makes. It's such a unique game and to me it's largest selling point is the flexibility of your character. Being able to change roles and skillsets on the fly is something that hardly any MMO has done. I just wish they would make use of everything else that fits into this system better.

    I understand fully well that some of these things may not even be possible with the current coding of the game. I'm simply speaking of ideal solutions.





    Huw
  • RheyRhey
    Mabinogi Rep: 10,175
    Posts: 1,499
    Member
    edited July 5, 2017
    Incorporate some weekly cash shop(reforge/eweca orb/etc) give away for logging in consecutively for a hour every day for an entire week. Include sum 3 daily task as well to deter afking?
  • 암호암호
    Mabinogi Rep: 1,985
    Posts: 59
    Member
    edited July 6, 2017
    If I had the rights to Mabinogi after purchasing them from devCAT, I can tell you that I don't expect to make that money back very quickly, here's why:

    Scrap the entire original game and rebuild from the ground up, using a new engine, starting with Generation 1.

    1. Revamp the Music System if possible and allow users to create their music with staff and notation rather than MML. If not possible, than to revamp the current Music System to allow more notes to be played at once and/or longer if using certain instruments.

    2. Turn the Dungeons into a Keyword Hub station (similar to that of .hack// series and games). Specific Keywords can unlock different difficulties, monsters, and items, which can be found by exploring the game, while still holding true to it's original random generation feature.

    3. Upgrade the textures of the game and expand the towns of Tir, Dunbarton, and Bangor (remember, this is starting with Gen 1 first). Make them feel like an actual city, blacksmithing haven, and beginner town.

    4. Revamp the Life Skill system to allow a request and create additional features for those who wish to take the time to craft items for other people.
    4a. Provide them with a "Trust" ranking feature to allow those to seek out trust-worthy folks in the server. Did they do a great job? Give them a good rating! (To avoid trolls, those being unfairly given a poor rating can submit a ticket for customer support to look into).
    4b. Revamp the mini-games to be more in-line with it's actual skills. Blacksmithing would be more of a timer on how strong the weapon can be (think of a cross between the wine-making mini-game and the original finishing mini-game for Blacksmithing to begin with). Potion-making would be more on a timer. Adding the ingredients at the right time during the brewing can determine how potent the potion will be. Etc.

    5. The inventory system will remain partially the same, although bags now become tabs to avoid cluttering your inventory. The search system will be implemented in G1 rather than G18/19 to ease such strain.

    6. The Kiosk and Shop Store will remain the same due to it's charm in the game. They will be free for all users immediately instead of waiting for G16 or whenever.

    7. Moon Gates will begin with a Global voting Event. When the Moon Gates first fall to Erinn, players will be given the opportunity to decide where at in the towns and cities they would like to position those gate(s). Due to the heavy magic that surrounds them, they will only be free at night (as Eweca and Ladeca will power them), using them during the day will require a small gold fee (gotta pay those NPCs using their own mana to keep it open after all).

    8. The storyline will be revamped to ensure no continuity errors arise.

    Etc. etc.

    I could go on, but if I was serious enough, I would make sure to write a 150+ page design document for the recreation of the game which would specific details that cover storyline, skills, dungeons, friend system, housing system, etc.
    Huw
  • HabinogiHabinogi
    Mabinogi Rep: 735
    Posts: 10
    Member
    edited July 7, 2017
    Are the server-populations now dwindled or dwindling ? That might explain why hardly anybody is ever on-line on any of my friend-lists for any of my characters if it's not just a result of them removing me from their list for my own absence/inactivity (that opponent called the «real-world» can certainly throw a lot of interference into our lives and free time available).

    With ANY «business» models, the PRIMARY function that keeps any «business» ALIVE is advertising, and I mean CONSTANT advertising. Mabinogi has simply fallen behind in its advertising efforts. This game already has more-than-enough activities available to keep players occupied all day, and I mean ALL DAY long, and it has also been my observations and experiences that games are better off expanding and advancing slowly, gradually introducing one new thing to try out (such as a new skill/quest/etc or flavour/alternative to said skill/quest/etc only a maximum of once a week), rather than dumping out too much content too quickly with hardly an «established» player-base.

    Unfortunately, I just don't have the free time available these days to explain all of how/why, but I CAN post a link to a video that helps to explain the things that may help the Mabinogi «advertisers» to understand what they may need to do in order to keep generating «fresh» NEW players to replace those who fall-off (compared to other games/MMORPGs Mabinogi actually does have a fairly decent «retention-rate» such that many of its players eventually return at some point or another).



    With that above video posted, for purposes of generating a «playerbase» that is community friendly, the «demographics» that the «marketing team» should want to advertise to are going to depend on the RELATED types of contents that a «consumer» is already consuming. For example, a number of «animé-sites» exist where people watch those new animé-episodes that get released weekly. Mabinogi is animé-themed, therefore, getting Mabinogi-banners to be visible/advertised on such sites that release Manga, Animé, etc., can be one good start. For more «control» over the «type» of demographics to whom the game is advertised, you would want to pick specific animé-genres that tend to attract the more community friendly type, rather than being displayed along pages where the animé-genre might be of a darker mood that «gets one's rocks off» for the «enjoyment» of watching the «suffering» of others (but to the credit of most Eastern-hemisphere cultures they often tend to promote moral-ideologies in their «entertainment» story-lines), although controlling which particular TYPE of manga/animé/game-genre that Mabinogi-ads might appear beside may not necessarily be an option since those sites tend to set their advertising spaces to the very web-site itself rather than having them apportioned.

    YOU people, within the community, can also make your own efforts to advertise, even at your own local-community. For this NEXT «method» for «advertising» that I am about to explain, the Mabinogi «Marketing Team» need only to create advertising banners/posters, with various Mabinogi-themes, and make them into such that they can just be printed out and posted onto Bulletin-Boards or other such places that allow it (for example, I once posted an advertisement for a game that I used to play on a McDonald's bulletin-board, stacked a few sheets together with the thumb-tacks, and they actually kept it up there in order to make sure that it remained visible, and me simply doing that was able to get several new players into that game, although I avoid that old game's particular genre now). You can do the same or similar, just by getting creative, whether a music-themed or chef-themed or swimsuit-themed or raid-themed MMORPG-poster, and of course all «marketers» know to put onto such «banners/posters» a «call-to-action» such as «Play Now! Visit mabinogi.nexon.net» (Calls-to-Action are basically a Marketer's/Entrepreneur's Jargon for: «Now that you have seen our advertisement, instead of just looking at this ad, come and try out our product so that we can win you into becoming one of our customers!»).

    I'm going to give YOU (yes, ALL of you reading this, including the «Mabinogi Marketing Team» if they even exist), yes, YOU, a «challenge» that should be fairly simple. I will even provide my OWN «example» for how I «quickly» decided to find an already existing Mabinogi image on-line and then «caption» it into an «advertising» poster that can then be printed out onto brochure/flyer/gloss-paper that you can try to find places of high-visibility (like the bulletin-boards of grocery stores, department-stores, local community buildings, although there are a number of places that do require their approval before they'll post your ad, most of them should allow you to post for free, for many «business» people like to put their «business-cards» onto these boards, too). Anyway, without further ado, here is the link to an image that I decided to grab after a brief search for something I might deem as appropriate...

    http://wfiles.brothersoft.com/m/mabinogi-write_113727-1920x1200.jpg

    ...followed by my «edited» version to make it «advertisement-oriented» for its public marketing campaign. Due to the «theme» being Shakespeare-stories, this type of flier/promotional-poster would be best posted up in or around locations like book-stores and libraries. When advertising on-line, for purposes of targeting potentially game-minded Shakespeare-fans, said banner/poster can be made to be displayed (linking back to the mabinogi.nexon.net web-site of course) amongst literature-forums, web-sites that are dedicated to Shakespeare-articles, displayed along on-line book-stores that sell Shakespeare-books/stories, etc. All kinds of ways to market and advertise. If your game-director don't know how to advertise or its importance, then don't even bother trying to make massive changes to your game-system, because just as merely building a ship does not automatically make them come, neither does converting said ship into some fancy space-craft make them come either; you MUST «advertise» CONSTANTLY if you do not wish to waste unnecessary resources on the over-head-costs of servers that are no longer even being kept active.

    http://i.imgur.com/BOFahfQ.jpg

    Feel free to «flood» the «Mabinogi team» with a link back to this post that I made BUT, BEFORE you do that, I recommend that you first create a Mabinogi advertisement-poster of your own, such as how I did (example above this paragraph), even going so far as to have it printed out onto brochure/flier paper and posting it somewhere in your local town (and even multiple copies in multiple buildings of surrounding towns if you are so inclined), take a digital-photo of where your Mabinogi-advertising poster is being displayed, and include an «attachment» for them to be able to see it for themselves. The purpose of this is to show them that you are «serious» with wanting to help re-populate the servers with more players, and I GUARANTEE you (yes, you, and YOU, ALL of you), that CONSTANT «advertising» DOES work and have an effect to keeping the «business» running. I am also MORE than «qualified» to be making these claims/suggestions, for one of my past associates ended up going from some financially undisciplined broke dude who was always in debt and pestering me for money to now running his own businesses and even owning his own house and a building for his primary business, and a current local-associate wants me to practically run his Kennel business (other than the feeding and taking care of the dogs each day since he already has other people hired for that purpose) because of how much knowledge I have about being able to run a business efficiently (but it's also taking up a lot of my time since I am also that business' current web-master and there's a lot of work I need to do in order to have it re-designed and structured properly unless I decide to hire well-qualified employees to do so but nobody in this local-area seems to have any professional-level skills so I'll probably just hire someone from the Phillipines to do the time-consuming portions of the work for me after I've set things up to where they have access to being able to do the menial repetitive-tasks for me whilst I get the main tasks completed; or maybe have them also do the main tasks after I show them how, I just don't want them to be using platforms like Word-Press for a professional business web-site since Word-Press is not really the best choice for business web-sites for a variety of reasons, but I digress; this is also win-win for me and them since I'd only have to pay out something like 200$US/month for QUALITY FULL-TIME work from someone within the Phillipines who's look for a job, and they'd also be happy to have a job that pays them more than nearly any other job available to them in the current world-wide economic-environment, and they also tend to be hard-workers who WANT to work and are able to take pride in providing QUALITY work so that their boss will continue to hire them and keep them employed; this is in STARK contrast to the «workers» that MIGHT exist around our current local-region). Anyway, I have taken a lot of time out of my day to be able to provide this information, PRICELESS information that I actually SHOULD be charging at least 1500$US to reveal, so don't «waste» the «time» and «effort» that I took to write this all out. I'm sure you guys can do even MORE «professional» jobs than this than I did, but I am on limited time, and this is meant to be a «basic» example I provide anyway due to my time-constraints (I am literally able to write a full-and-complete actual «book» on advertising/marketing/entrepreneurship/business by now, amongst many other topics of course, and I still often get comments from people telling me that they'd buy my book/s if I ever published any).

    Anyway, with all that said, good luck with «restoring/[re-]populating the populations» for all of the servers. Have [some creative] fun!
    Huw